Sunday morning
And he said as he delivered the tray, “A little pussy goes a long way.”
I hit him up for a new pair of shoes, too.
The simplest anniversary is perhaps the very best
Because we chose to host a big holiday party last weekend and because we accidentally, shamefully went a little overboard with Christmas gifts for our daughter and because we’re about to take a trip to the Pacific Northwest (if we can get there), and because we’re likely to be dumping money into not one but two new computers in the sickeningly near future, Sam and I decided to scale back the anniversary celebration this year. We’ve still got our holiday cards to address and send out, so we’ve skipped the card exchange. I even banned all bouquets since we already have one that is so breathtaking, I hardly need another. Remember, I’m trying to simplify things and I think we were both in need of a little simplicity where our anniversary was concerned.
But on a whim, I left work (very) early, sped home in time to freshen my make-up (which didn’t make me look any younger or any less tired) and jump into the mini for an afternoon drive.
We drove to the dry cleaners and then…to Café Chloe (be still my heart!), where we ordered frites and a salad and their delectable mac ‘n’ cheese to share. Since Sam doesn’t eat meat, the owner offered—without me so much as mentioning the possibility—to put the prosciutto only on my half. Imagine that! This bi-polar option is the macaroni and cheese version of the marriage blanket I’ve designed so many times in my head: One half is stuffed with the warmest down feathers known to geese, while the other is nothing more than a whisper-thin sheet. You can guess which side I’d be under.
Prosciutto or no prosciutto, that is the question; it’s important to understand the answer isn’t “either/or”. You see, the secret to our seven years of marital bliss (and bummers, too, don’t forget those), is that we have the freedom to purchase both smooth and crunchy peanut butter. Seriously. It may sound like nothing, but this was a breakthrough realization for us. Another survival secret? My man knows when to keep his trap shut.
After lunch, we got stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the way to an antique shop, thanks to some bomb-esque package left on a road that leads to the airport. Cars were lined up in every direction filled, I imagine, with increasingly anxious would-be travelers as they realized their flights would not include them. And while we managed to subvert much of the backlog with Sam’s Bond-like driving techniques, my bladder wasn’t happy with the delay. Leave it to me, I almost ruined the day by snapping at Sam for waiting, unlike Bond, for the light to change at a four-way stop. But he’s patient and loving and probably a little afraid, too, all of which allows me plenty of room to be an ass.
And so our marriage chugs along at a relatively even pace (he’s even; I suffer random and acute muscle spasms). It’s a marathon, not a race, Sam likes to say. It’s about endurance and we’re merely splashing cold water on our faces as we hammer past the third water station.
I *am* the Don Music of the modern day keyboard
My computer karma continues to deteriorate, going from worse to unbearably awful. I can’t fathom what I did in another life that has caused me to suffer so in this one, but I must have been pretty bad with the abacus or something.
I got my laptop back on Thursday night, complete with a new hard drive but with all extraneous software removed–including photoshop–rendering it useless for anything more than writing and Fakebooking, the evil online activity that takes the art of procrastination to a whole new level.
Given the new limits of my laptop, I downloaded all the photos I’d taken on Friday night to an external hard drive connected to our desktop computer, the final frontier in my photo processing. And before I could begin editing them and give thanks to the computer gods for having all of my machines in working order, the desktop quit on me. I’ve tried re-booting, I’ve tried zapping the P-Ram (going the two-bong and also the three-bong routes) but: Nada. I’m not allowed past the very first grey page, with the grey apple and the little grey start-up wheel spinning like a fan in taunting eternity.
I very nearly popped a blood vessel while screaming at Sam and now I’m afraid there’s a greater possibility I’ll be served with divorce papers on our anniversary this Tuesday, instead of getting the tattoo I want. After I blew, he high-tailed it out the door to pick up some Thai food, knowing that part of my angst was rooted in low blood sugar and that at least this much he could control. While he was gone, I enjoyed the remainder of my meltdown in private.
What about the ember of love?
I’m not a huge fan of Keith Olbermann. At one time I was; I found his sharp closing comments to be a welcome relief from a media that was busy giving Bush and Cheney a collective suck-off. I liked that he railed against the administration and their policies when it was so dangerous to do so. That, and I liked his giant pin-striped suits and shiny purple ties with the wide French knots.
But I quit watching television for a gloriously long time and when I came back to him during the past few months, I found that he’d taken a turn down Dramatic Street, steering sharply away from his Edward R. Murrow-style homage in favor of Enquiring-minds-want-to-know antics. I find his “Stupidest Person in the World” as ghastly as O’Reilly’s “Pinhead of the Week” segment. That I even know what the Pinhead segment is makes my aortic valve stick in the closed position.
But.
Sometimes I’m able move past Olbermann’s self-aggrandizing oration and let myself focus on the words. Such as in this video where he absolutely nails It.
Get it together, California
I drove Ruby to school on Tuesday morning just like I do every Tuesday morning and as I turned from North Park Way onto 32nd Street, I saw these two angels standing on a corner.
They were huddled together beneath their umbrella in what had to be the first real rain storm we’ve had in San Diego in six months. They were not deterred by the weather but instead were sunny as they smiled and waved at passing cars.
After leaving Ruby, I went back to the corner and snapped a few photos through the rain drops on my lens and the tears in my eyes. This is Gina and Carla Grossini-Concha. They are in love and they were married a couple of weeks ago. They planned on a big family celebration next autumn but despite being able to convince some voters to cast their ballots against Proposition (h)8 that day, a disturbingly misguided 52% of Californians have decided that Gina and Carla aren’t entitled to the same rights to which Sam and I are entitled simply because they love each other, instead of men. Look at them:
Do you see anything but two beautiful people in love?
I believe we have a moral responsibility to stand in solidarity with Gina and Carla and all gay citizens. If you live locally, there are two rallies being held this weekend and, as Carla wrote to me in an email today, “…for the sake of the freedoms and equality that the constitution is intended to protect for everyone, please come!”
Friday 11/7/08 (TODAY!) at 9 PM
From Balboa Park -6th Ave and Laurel Street, down to City Hall
Saturday 11/8/08 at noon
From 1st Ave and University all the way down University to 30th Street
Marriage at 3:AM
“Do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to do it?”
“Sure. If you do.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, if you think you’re not gonna fall asleep in the middle.”
“Please! I’m not going to fall asleep. I’ll go get the splitter.”
And that’s where you would have found us, lying in bed with my laptop open, ear phones in, listening to this very enlightening episode of This American Life. And P.S.? He fell asleep halfway through.
I know where Congress can get some cash, but quick:
Revoke the tax-free status on all churches immediately. In fact, in face of this current crisis, I suggest they levy a hefty back tax—plus interest—for their endorsements in 2000 and 2004.
This Sunday, 33 pastors will be endorsing candidates from their pulpits and here’s what one of them has to say:
“I’m going to talk about the un-biblical stands that Barack Obama takes. Nobody who follows the Bible can vote for him,” said the Rev. Wiley S. Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. “We may not be politically correct, but we are going to be biblically correct. We are going to vote for those who follow the Bible.”
Who are these people and how did they get so stuck back there on the evolutionary chain? Oh…! Right! There’s no such thing as evolution. Just ask Sarah Palin. She’ll tell ya!
People: I could totally be Vice President. And this would be my running mate:
Back to school
I believe that a society is judged by how it treats the least among it. The elderly, the sick, the young. Someday, when history takes a look back at what kind of place the United States has become under George W. Bush and the Republican party (and, to an extent, the neutered and all-to-frequently ameobic Democratic party), it will be glaringly obvious that we do not value family, children, education. In other words, we do not value our future.
During another bout of insomnia, I read this article in the New York Times, all but guaranteeing that I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. Everyone, even non-parents, should read this piece; it is about all of us.
Go read about our flailing public school system, about the record number (nearly fifteen million) of children qualifying for free lunch, about the cuts that leave kids with no way to get to and from school, about four-day school weeks and, presumably, longer hours in the classroom during those four days. Read about parents who can’t afford backpacks or school supplies. Read about how the number of homeless children—that’s kids without a place to live—has tripled in Mobile, Alabama since the end of the last school year and how this is no isolated occurrence but rather is a reflection of what is happening all across our “great” nation.
Please. Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted and then read the article slowly, sentence by sentence. Maybe you’ll even have to re-read some of the more shocking points just because they’re so unbelievable. Don’t skim. Ingest it. And then percolate for a while on precisely who we as a culture have allowed ourselves to become. Imagine if you’re that family they’re describing. Maybe you are that family. Imagine what a working class family will do with their kid(s) on that Monday each week when schools are closed. Imagine, too, your child going to school with a child from that family. While you’re imagining, keep reading.
And while you’re reading? Try not to think about the words “No Child Left Behind.” Try not to think about the wealthiest people in this country enjoying unprecedented tax breaks. Try not to think about those tax breaks becoming permanent under John McCain. Because if you think about those things while reading this heartbreaking piece, you’re likely to be awake all night tonight. Quite possibly tomorrow night, too.
History will not be kind to us because we do not deserve it to be so.
Vote Barack Obama.
It’s important to have the right tools for the job
For whatever reason, I received a catalog from “Birkis” today. Have you seen their shoes? They’re obviously the toothless bastard cousin of Crocs (which I loathe just slightly more than cotton jersey culotte pants). To look at them is to realize everything that is wrong with America, an offense that is underscored when mom, dad and all the little snot-faced Johnsons sport them for their Saturday afternoon shopping frenzy at Ikea. For chrissakes, our president wears them with anklebiters. That alone is a stinging indictment.
My distaste for these aerated, heel-strapped, charm-dangled, rubber-slipper-galosh-thingies is well documented. I’m being generous when I say this particular footwear has no place outside of the backyard because my true feeling is that it has no place. Period. I do have friends who wear them in public and despite the blackness of my heart, I haven’t scratched their names from invite lists or mocked them openly.
Okayokay, fine! So I’ve mocked them openly. But they’re still welcome at my parties. It gives me and the other guests with good taste something to snicker about. It’s a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin kind of compromise.
Just to confirm my superior sensibilities, I thumbed through the pages of the Birkis catalog as I made my way to the recycle bin, and smack me upside the head with a Mickey Mouse Birki if I didn’t come across something that does, in fact, have a place:
They come in orange, black, white and apple green. They even offer one pair with straps!
Sam was excited because he thinks if I have some padding for my tender kneecaps, I’ll be more liberal with my blow job distribution. (Sort of like having the right workout clothes: Get the top with the built-in shelf bra and wicking fabric and suddenly you’re running 5 days a week.) Ever the optimist, he immediately suggested we place an order for one in every color. To—you know—suit my mood.
The poor guy never seems to learn that there really is only one mood—and it’s a rare one, nearly an annual one—in which we’d need to break out the knee protectors. But his persistence is endearing; I do so love that never-quit attitude. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that his concern for my comfort is moving.
I stuck the landing (or) EWW! EWW! EWW!
I woke up this morning in what I like to refer to as Soap Star Mode. Just like Hope Brady coming out of a coma, I had a smile on my face, last night’s lipstick matted on my lips, all my makeup in tact, hair full and bouncy with just enough muss to it. “Baby,” Sam said to me as I wiped the drool from my cheek. “You Michael Phelpsed it!”
So many of my peeps came out of the woodwork to support me and I know how big that is, given it was a school night and all. To each and every one of you: The checks are in the mail. Rachel, even though you videotaped me when I asked you not to, I’ve decided against docking the originally agreed upon payoff amount. Instead, I’ll send you the bill for the nose job I will have to get once I see myself on YouTube. If you can’t afford that, the least you can do is cover the cost of the chin implant.
But about my first evah reading…
Fortunately, I didn’t trip as I took the stage and my knees didn’t buckle. My ankles held firm in my shoes.
But that’s probably because they’ve got such great arch support.
I didn’t spit on anyone—at least, I don’t think I did—my hands didn’t shake, and I didn’t lose my place while doing the look-up-at-the-audience-then-back-to-the-page routine. There was one row of people forced to stare at my ass the whole time I read, and for this, I felt a twinge of self-consciousness. It certainly didn’t help that I was on day two of my period and things were—are—a bit bloated. Good thing I didn’t pack it all into my most favorite and extra tight pair of jeans!
Speaking of being on my period, my dog has a thing for (and this is where this blog post goes south faster than China can falsify it’s gymnast’s birth certificates) used tampons. I, of course, don’t flush them but wrap them in toilet paper to create what we call in these parts “menstrual bundles.” These menstrual bundles end up in the waste basket, which subsequently gets emptied each day. Unless I forget to empty it in which case, it doesn’t get emptied.
So. Ya still with me or are you dry heaving yet? Right. So yesterday, not only did I not empty the trash but I also forgot to barricade Ella into the kitchen when I left for work. (All you dog lovers and burglars, please know, we have a dog door and our vicious beast can roam when she wants to.) When I came home, it was clear there’d been an afternoon feast, a smorgasbord, a menstrual bundle buffet. And wouldn’t you know, what goes in must come out. It’s the damndest thing.
Too bad for Sam: Peristaltic contractions sometimes just don’t cut it when it comes time to expel items that have been ingested. Tonight, while on a dog walk, my husband had to pull four (that would be F-O-U-R) tampons out of Ella’s ass. He was relieved that the dog park was free and clear of any witnesses to the extraction. I can’t be certain because I quit listening so I could go throw up, but I do believe he made sound effects as he described the removal process.
Yes, he’s a saint. But it’s not like I wasn’t at home with a vomiting, shitting child all afternoon or suffering cramps that would level the most seasoned childbirth veteran of them all, Michelle Duggar. So I think we can just about call it even.
Just about.