All the More Reason to Hate the Patriarchy
This weekend was fabulous, except for the one giant problem of being way too short. It was the kind of weekend that makes Monday suck that much more, because the contrast is so damn stark. Sigh.
Friday night I bolted out of class on an adrenaline high, came home, picked up Kate, and we headed out to meet the Joker at a party. Lot of drinking, some dancing, and possibly falling down ensued, and this time I was SO not the person that fell down. Really. No,
really.
Saturday morning I headed to the gym. My wonderful personal trainer moved to Hawaii, so I have a new trainer now. This trainer? Is so not kidding around. I am in as much pain from my workouts now as I was when I
started. Back in
January. And he is also an evil ab man. Luckily, he was right and working out my abs on Saturday relieved some of the excruciating pain they had been in since my work out on Tuesday. Remind me again why I ever thought this was a good idea?
Anyway, Saturday afternoon Kate and I went looking for places to live, and promptly entered into the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The first house was too big. The second condo was too small. But eventually we ended up at an apartment complex that seems entirely doable, and the price is definitely just right. So we’ll put in our applications and hope for the best. Saturday night we cooked dinner and then the Joker and I watched more Buffy. Not any less addicted to that, by the way.
Sunday I headed out with the Joker and his roommate WitchHunter to the Ren Faire. I love stuff like this, and the two of them are really into it. So of course the first thing I wanted to do when I got there was buy myself a costume. So WitchHunter helped me find some corsets, and we found a nice woman to help me try them on.
Except, by “nice woman” I kind of mean “extremely loud and grabby woman who made many comments about my chest and then proceeded to try to cut me in half with the corset.” I, apparently, know nothing about corsets. Because I had grabbed a size 12, and she put it on, and I thought it felt
fine, and she is like, “Way too big.” Um, ok. So I had also grabbed a really pretty green one I loved, but that was an 8, and when she put it on me I kind of giggled because- seriously?
No way in hell. So then we grabbed a 10, and that felt kind of tight, so when she said, “Oh, you’re between sizes, we should go with the other size”, I assumed she meant the 12. She meant the 8.
Come again?
Oh yes, people, the 8, which apparently fits JUST FINE if you introduce my ribcage to my spine. Now look, I never took anatomy, but I am pretty sure those bones?
Should not ever touch. And the lady and WitchHunter are all like, “Oh,
breathing? Haha. You’ll get used to it. You just breathe lower, is all.”
Breathe
lower? I assume by this you mean, “Somehow learn to breathe through your pancreas, because your lungs are completely deflated between your ribcage and your spine”. So yes, here I am laced up in a pretty green corset with a skirt and a pretty gold scarf and everything is fine, except for the fact that the world was sort of graying out around the edges.
And now I actually owe men in general a little apology. A few weeks ago A and I were having a talk about how he feels that there is not enough swooning anymore. Just to clarify, I asked him what he meant by swooning, and it was what I thought, in the “My hero
(swoon)” sense. My argument at the time for lack of swooning was that men today are all too busy buying product to be heroic. I now know that I was wrong. Not that men aren’t buying far too much product, but that actually has nothing to do with swooning. In fact the heroics of the man have absolutely nothing to do with swooning. The reason women no longer swoon is because we no longer wear corsets and can actually BREATHE. Trust me, there were a few moments in the beginning there where I was seconds from swooning into the Jokers arms, and he was just
standing there.
So we wandered around the faire a bit and then I discovered that although I could not eat or breathe, I could drink, and there was mead, and after a few glasses of that, breathing began to seem highly overrated. So I am finally feeling fairly comfortable and very, very in love with mead, and we are all sitting on a bench and listening to a very nice Irish band, and I am singing and clapping and life is good, when a pirate walks by.
(Oh, y’all. Just the fact that I get to type that sentence would have made the weekend worth it by itself).
Anyway, due to a combination of: A. friendliness, B: Mead, and C: Lack of oxygen, I forgot my cardinal rule of “never make eye contact” and smiled at the pirate. Who almost turned away, got an evil grin on his face, came back over, and announced to me that he just knew I would like to help him and his band up onstage.
Come again?
Of course, at this moment I was promptly thrown under the bus by the Joker, WitchHunter, and every single perfect stranger around me, who loudly and enthusiastically agreed that yes, that was a
fabulous idea, and nothing would make me happier than going up on stage.
In a corset.
With a
band of pirates.
By the time my oxygen starved brain had processed what was happening, it was far too late. I just tried to concentrate on my mead, but it was a lost cause, and before I knew it I was up onstage being asked to “shake” things with the pirates.
I am still not sure sometimes how my life happens.
Anyway, apparently the corset does do good things, however, because I did get lots of compliments. Many people actually came up to me and opened with, “Do you work here?”, which… lame, because although I was becorseted, I was also wearing designer flipflops and carrying around my replica of Jack Bauer’s man purse. (… Of
course I have one of those). This was inevitably followed by, “Do you come here often”, which… For real? I mean, that line doesn’t even work in bars, why would people think it would work at a Ren Faire? Anyway, my response was as to the point as I could make it, namely, “No, but my boyfriend does, and I’m just his doll for the day letting him and his roommate dress me up.”
(Sidebar: Y’all, there is not a single word in that conversation above that I could have even contemplated saying, let alone saying with a straight face, a month ago. I choose to call this “progress”.)
So anyway we finally left after the big group singalong, and I got home and was able to unlace the corset. I spent the rest of the evening feeling my internal organs slowly returning to their normal places in my body, (although I think there is a chance that one of my kidneys and my liver are now having an affair) and finishing season three of Buffy.
And on this Buffy thing? Yeah, I definitely dreamed last night that I was Buffy and I was with the gang and it was one of the oh so common apocalypses that occur, and we had like 4 levels of demons to fight. (Maybe in my head “Buffy” has a lot in common with “Super Mario Brothers”.) Anyway, we got through the first two or three levels fine, but then there were spiders. Large, scary spiders. And as you all know, I do not do spiders. So what did I do in my dream? I burned the house they were in down.
With the rest of the gang still inside it.
I think I eventually dreamed most of them out of danger, but I remember thinking even in my dream that that had been a bit extreme. But of course, my dream came complete with a
cliffhanger, and evil has not been entirely vanquished, because some of it survived in the water we used to put the house out, and that kid on the bike fell in it.
Y’all? I need to stop watching so much TV.
Anyway, that was my weekend, hope yours was just as great!
I Have Apparently Set My Internal Controls To “Self Destruct”
Oh Lord. On one hand, I should be happy because two whole entries in two days! On the other hand, the only reason for this particular entry is that I am so profoundly stupid and have had such a disheartening morning my choices are to blog or weep. And while I am still not entirely counting out the crying thing, it is also extremely out of character for me, (unless I am watching Little House on the Prairie), so I’m going to go with blogging.
The first bad decision came into play last night. I am exhausted, I am sick, and I had to get up at an insane hour this morning to go to the doctor. So… perfect night to get drunk and stay up until after 3 am, right? Needless to say, morning came far too quickly and I slumped out the door and headed for the doctor. Which, seriously, is never a pleasant experience. No matter how great my doctor is or how many times I talk to myself about prevention and tests and how this is good for me, I can’t help but feel more like it is punishment. Anyway, everything went fine and I had at least achieved the main goal of the entire morning, which was to get a prescription. That taken care of, feeling a little vulnerable and out of it, I grabbed my iPod and headed for the metro.
I was happily bopping along at the metro stop, and then the train came, and I was walking onto the train, and then… and then, for absolutely
no discernable reason, I felt a tug at my side, and the music cut off, and I looked down…
And my iPod was gone.
My iPod had somehow managed to leap off of my body, where moments before it had been firmly attached, and fall in the ITTY BITTY gap between the train and the platform. I just stood there, stunned, with several other commuters all looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief, as the doors closed.
I got to work, and immediately called the metro people, where the lady at lost and found managed to tell me that I had to actually physically talk to the station manager in a way that was completely polite on the surface while also conveying the exact level of moron that she thought I was. Unfortunately, I could not go at lunch, because I have another appointment booked for then. (I hate my life. Really.) Luckily, yesterday my office was In Crisis, and I was feeling Unusually Helpful, so I had build up a lot of cred with my boss. This, coupled with the fact that he has known me for years and is used to my occasional, if spectacular moments of idiocy, meant that he had no problem with me going to retrieve my iPod.
So I head back to the metro, and I am reading my book, and as I am getting on the train I hear a very nice British voice saying, “Excuse me, excuse me”. I turn around to see who was ignoring the nice British lady, and realize… me.
I am ignoring the nice British lady, who is trying to give me back something that I dropped, and that something happens to be…. My prescription.
Y’all? I cannot even tell you what would have happened if I had gone through everything this morning only to
lose the
prescription. Instead of retrieving my iPod, I would have been
joining it, it is safe to say, only
much closer to the third rail.
So I get off the metro and look down, and sure enough- there is my iPod. Encouraged, I went to the station manager, who was very, very nice to me and promised he would get someone to jump down there and get my iPod. So I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, I looked up on the floor above me, and the Station Manager was talking to a Nice Man With A Stick. “Yay!”, I thought, “What a brilliant idea! A STICK! Maybe the stick is grabby, or sticky, or something, but the nice station manager is pointing me out and in just a few minutes I will have my iPod back!” Not so much, people, because Nice Man With A Stick… never came down. He wandered the floor above me for awhile, then he just sort of… stood there. Not looking at me. He was not so much nice, as Useless Man With A Stick. So I continued to wait, and trains continued to come, and the small amount of self control I had began to fray, and I began to think Very Bad Thoughts in the general direction of Useless Man With A Stick while trying not to cry. At this point, I was probably lucky that my cell phone doesn’t work in the metro, because I was THIS close to calling A and asking him if I could come over to his office and cry for a bit. Which would have
scared the everloving shit out of him, because in two plus years, I don’t think he has ever actually SEEN me cry, except that one time he made me watch Nip/Tuck, and that doesn’t count, because EW.
Anyway, I am standing there, beginning to despair of ever getting my iPod back, when I look up and notice… Useless Man With A Stick, now has…
two sticks. Well then. He wanders around awhile longer, and then, to my utmost joy, actually came over to me! And I realized that the two sticks were actually a broom and a dustpan. And I sort of saw the problem, because the dustpan was actually on the end of a very broken stick, and it appeared to have been scotch taped together, which… Come on, Metro. Couldn’t you at least spring for the duct tape? Anyway, scotch tape notwithstanding, the Now Very Useful Man With Two Sticks, One Of Which Is Barely Functional swept up my iPod, and I recanted every bad thought I had had about him.
The iPod works, which is very good. And I am not even going into detail about how I went to get coffee and left my card at the register. Or about how I am wearing a favorite new shirt, which is white, and how I maybe spilled coffee all over it. Or about how when I went to dab the coffee with cold water, I grabbed a Subway napkin, which has red ink on it, so now I have coffee AND red ink on my new shirt. No, I can’t think about all of that, because it is only 12:30 and that is just too much, people.
I am clearly not ok. Send chocolate. And wine.
Don't You Hate It When People Hint At Big News and Don't Tell It?
Hi, y’all! I have not written in ages! Sorry about that!
This time, it is not even that nothing has been going on. Because, y’all,
so much has been going on. But I still can’t write about most of it, because there are secrets and careers involved. Well, my career. But that tends to be the one I care most about.
And it’s not like I have forgotten about you. Because I totally have not forgotten about you. In fact, I have Post-It notes all over my desk with things like, “How Products Mystify Me”, “Ways I Could Totally Make My Life Easier But Do Not”, and “Making Up With Nature” written all over them. I have an entire diatribe in one of my work notebooks regarding how Crest WhiteStrips do not so much make my teeth
white as make them
shiny, and how I am not sure shiny is what I was going for here. And also, really really smooth, which causes me to lick them in a vampirish manner, which finally caused Kate to threaten to move out if I continued to do so. The WhiteStrips live under the sink now.
Anyway, other than the Insanity of Last Week That I Can’t Write About Yet, there is… more insanity! Beginning, of course, with Law School. Because… Hi! I’m back in law school, which we all know signifies the slow degeneration of myself until by Christmas all of my entries will begin with the words “lalala” and chronicle exactly how I lost various pieces of my mind that particular week. And from the looks of the class I have been to and the e-mails with assignments that were due
before class even started, I have a really bad feeling that law school isn’t fucking around this semester. And A and I have already had the conversation in which we commiserated over the fact that “sovereignty” clearly stole an e from “judgment”, which should TOTALLY be “judgement”, and how we are still very angry over that fact. And if that isn’t crazy, then I want to meet YOUR friends.
To add to the insanity… I’m moving! Because mid-semester moving is always the best way to add stress, you know. I don’t actually
want to move. I love my building, I love my area, and I love the fact that my gym is so damn close that I actually go. But what I love MORE than all of those things is my roommates, and THEY have to move. So originally, I was all brave and “I will find a new roommate”, but then they left for 12 days and all hell broke loose and we realized that all of us together is a pretty good combination. So if anyone knows of a reasonably priced, walking distance to the metro house for rent in Silver Spring, let me know!
And finally, just to throw my work-life balance off a little further, I have been spending a lot of time with a new person, whom I will call The Joker, because that is easy and he already came up with it. (Ok, y’all. With the pseudonyms. I am the worst one with this, because I refuse to use people’s actual names anymore and the letter thing doesn’t always work and I demand that I never be mentioned by actual name either, but really?
Who does this? This is so a People of Our Generation Who Blog thing. I mean, short of college fraternity guys (whom I have absolutely nothing against, being a sorority girl myself) who walk around all “Soup” and “Blumpy” and the like, most people have dropped the twee nicknames by the onset of adulthood. I totally understand why we do this, I just feel like it is incongruous that someone who does their own taxes has a life that sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon show.) Anyway, The Joker is great, and I guess if you’re going to screw up my work-life balance you ‘d better be pretty fantastic, and he basically fits the bill. Also, I have now finally accomplished my longterm goal of seeing Twin Peaks, and he’s even gotten me addicted to Buffy.
I’m not entirely sure this last one is a good thing.
Anyway, that is as much of an update as I can give currently. I will try to post more frequently, if not coherently.
