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!
posted by Citycat @ 11:40 AM
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