Monthly Archives: March 2005
Silent but deadly
| March 1, 2005 | Filled under Internerd |
It has recently been brought to my attention that several lurkers have been visiting this site without making their presence known — namely James, my own fiancé and a couple of others.
Um, HELLO!? How’m I supposed to know you’re here if you don’t comment?
Clock, Clock, Goose!
| March 1, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
My parents are both borderline obsessive compulsives. So is C, and so am I.
Actually, my mom is a neat freak, but when I say neat freak, I mean she is psychotically freaky about wanting her home to be both spic and span.
My dad is the repetitive type of OCD. Life for him is really just a continuous string of rituals and habits, but things can go wrong in a Hitchcock-like way if you try to mess with his chi.
I guess C isn’t so much OCD as he is really just an only child who has lived as a bachelor for the past decade, giving him ample time to perfect HIS WAY of doing things, and by God, if you aren’t doing it HIS WAY then you’re the crazy one, because his system has been PERFECTED OVER A SERIES OF DECADES WOMAN!
I’d like to think that I’m not obsessive compulsive, but like any true OCD, I’ve self-diagnosed… my… self.
At work, I can’t function to full productivity if my workspace is all disorganized. It’s not like everything has its own space or anything, but everything has to at least be in some order.
I also get weird compulsions, urges that I know are beyond the ordinary, and so I try to suppress them. The problem is that suppressing them usually only makes them stronger, and it makes me feel nervous and hyper and crazy until I finally give in and submit to the urge already.
I once dated a guy whose house was just a few miles from mine. To get there, I always drove through one of the older neighborhoods in Oklahoma City — houses that were built in the late 1940s, and thus were just cheap enough for people my age to own and just charmingly retro enough to be hip for people my age to own.
One house had no curtains, and in their living room, clearly visible from the street, was a clock trimmed with a bright blue neon light.
I usually drove past this house at night, when the neon clock was beckoning me with all its gaseous glory. And for some reason, I’m not sure why, I had the compulsion to shout out “Clock!” even though I was alone in the car.
Giving in to this desire created a monster I could not control. From then on, every time I drove past that house, I couldn’t help but yell “Clock!” no matter who was in the car with me.
It went beyond habitual. It began to torture me. Several times I tried to avoid outing the clock, announcing its presence to the radio or any passengers I might have or oncoming traffic. But the longer I held in the primal scream, the louder I had to yell it, two or three clocks later.
I tried taking another route, but passing the clock house was the quickest route, and it had become such a routine that not going that way messed up the rest of my immaculately-organized schedule.
Finally, in order to get away from the Clock! I decided I had to move to Texas.
After I moved, the bar I started working at was located off a one-way street. I had to go another block down in order to head north to go back home each morning, and I quickly noticed that along my route there was a house with a plastic lit-up goose lamp looking down on me from a second-story window.
Each time I passed, I always looked to see if the goose was on, and infallibly, it was. When I got home, I had dreams about breaking into the house, kidnapping the goose and stowing it away with me on a trans-Atlantic trip, taking pictures of it in front of the Eiffel Tower and the Peeing Boy statue in Brussels, and sending the proofs back to the goose’s original owner in Houston.
Then one day, as some scooterist friends and I were passing the house, I pointed to the second story window and yelled “Goose!”
Housewife in training
| March 2, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
Last night, in a desperate display of nesting, a frantic attempt to cope with all the stress that is about to descend upon me, what with the planning of a wedding and the packing of every last one of our possessions and the moving to a foreign country and the love of my life leaving for the afore-mentioned foreign country for six whole weeks, I decided I needed to clean the house.
When C came home from work last night I was standing in the downstairs bathroom, wearing an old tank top and a pair of his boxer shorts, yellow rubber gloves on my sponge-wielding hands and my arms elbow deep in the toilet no one but the dog uses. To drink out of, that is. And the wonderful man immediately commented on how hot I looked.
In approximately two months, I will quit my job to become C’s kept woman. He’s going to whisk me away to South Korea, where I’ll surely spend my days being gawked at by locals while I try to memorize the Korean phrase for “Yes I’m blonde and totally Anglo and, like, almost six feet tall AND American, but I’m no sideshow, y’all!”
Since C is getting off on the whole “provider” thing, I feel like it should be my duty to try to act a little more womanly, which means doing things like Taking Care of The Homestead! And Learning How to Cook Dinner! You know, since he’ll be working all day long and I’ll be doing nothing but essentially living off his money.
I’m absolutely positive that in the two years C has owned his house he has not swept the floor, not even once. I have seen him clean the toilet before, but only when he knew we were going to have guests.
And in the two months since he let Gus and me move in, Gus has shed enough dog hair to practically carpet the entire house. The floor didn’t even feel cold anymore, which is pretty gross considering every square inch of flooring in our house is stained concrete. I can’t believe that dog is not bald yet.
When he was still a bachelor, C bought the greatest bachelor gadget ever created, and that gadget is The Roomba. It is an electronic toy! That cleans your house for you! My soon-to-be husband is a total yuppie! Last night we pulled so much hair out of the Roomba that I could have used it to weave a king-size bedspread.
One time early in our relationship, I was at his house one afternoon and he decided he needed to run the Roomba. I’ve never seen a vacuum with so much personality. The two of us sat on the couch for hours watching the little electronic butler clean the living room floor.
The Roomba can’t navigate the stairs, though, and the staircase is Gus’ most favorite place to hang out, because when I am upstairs and C is downstairs he can act like the nosy little dog that he is and keep his buggly eyes on both of us. Up and down, up and down. Maybe Female Human is doing something fascinating upstairs, but wait Male Human is playing his guitar downstairs and I think it might be helpful to him if I go downstairs and press my cold wet nose against his calf while he tries to play the guitar but Female Human is upstairs in the kitchen and I smell food and if I whine just long enough she’ll give me a piece of cheese or a slice of banana and whisper to me “Don’t tell Daddy, okay?”
Last night I swept each of the stairs, one by one, to get all the Gus hair up. Sweeping is one of Gus’ favorite games, one of the very few times when he barks. I guess through his eyes the broom looks like some sort of bristly little animal dancing back and forth, begging to be chased, because the broom puts Gus in attack mode. He’ll hop back and forth, buck like a little bronco, lean down in pouncing position with his stubbed little tail nub in the air and bark bark bark.
When I am finally able to sweep some of the dust and dog hair and dirt into a pile, suddenly Gus changes his plan and decides, Wait! This furry little creature isn’t moving! I can pounce on it with much less effort and energy! And then he proceeds to run right over the neat little pile I’ve made, stirring up all the dust and fuzz and stuff, so I have to resweep that area all over again. So over the dim of the Roomba and the radio and the barking, there is also me yelling in my serious stern exasperated Serious voice, “Gus! NUH UH UH!”
All this sweeping and dusting and Roomba-ing had every single member of our household sneezing last night. Sneezing in the bathroom, sneezing in the dog room, sneezing in the kitchen. And just when I had swept the last pile of dust into a neat stack to be put into the dust pan, that damn little dog had to go and stick his nosy, cold, wet snout right into the pile, sniffing at it frantically to see if it wanted to be chased.
Bachelorette Party: Day 4
| March 9, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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C left for South Korea, where he’ll be spending the next seven weeks, early Sunday morning. So early, in fact, that I had no plans to drag myself out of bed to walk him to the door, so we said our goodbyes the night before, and I laid in bed futilely fighting fatigue until 1:30 or so in the morning, afraid to fall asleep because I knew it was the last chance I’d have for the next seven weeks to lay in the arms of this wonderful and amazing man.
When he gets back, we’ll have a month here together in which we have a checklist of things to accomplish. Some of those things include getting married, getting vaccinated and visa-ed, packing everything we own and trying to fit it into a 10-by-10 storage space, and moving to South Korea. Until then, I’ve been trying to keep busy with wedding planning, 40-miles bike tours of Houston and running with our running club each week.
C called at 11 p.m. Monday evening, which was 2 p.m. Tuesday afternoon his time, to tell me that he had landed and was safe and okay. I was so glad to hear from him that I couldn’t really think of anything to tell him other than I love you and I miss you.
I don’t know how military wives do it, waiting for the letter or phone call that — for a few days at least — sets their concerns at ease. Sunday night, Monday night and last night were pretty sleepless for me. Here I am, alone in his house, trying to fall asleep in his bed, the bed I’ve never slept in alone.
“It’s hard for me to imagine you there without me,” he said over the phone.
Sure, my stuff is there, I live there too, but when I walk into our closet in the morning to get ready for work, all I see are the rows of his vintage dress shirts from Sears hanging all around me and his gigantic house shoes — the shoes that normally annoy me in the morning because they make a “clop clop” noise on our concrete floor. But I look at them now and wonder if, since it’s still winter in South Korea, are his feet cold? Does he come home after work and just lay in front of the television until he falls asleep like I’ve done for the past several days? Does he feel displaced too, or is he settling into the far-away apartment that will be our first home together as a married couple?
I’ve been trying to keep busy — I really have. I have plans for every weekend this month. I’ll be doing this, celebrating this and going to a party here. And I have plenty of friends who are begging at my door to take me out and show me a good time.
The problem is I don’t want to be shown a good time. When I’m with C, I always have a great time. Life is so much better when you have someone you love to share all your experiences with, miserable and euphoric.
I can’t wait to move to Korea.
A series of anticlimactic endings
| March 10, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
Now that I’m doing something I thought I would never do — getting married — I thought it might be entertaining to take a look back at all the notable gentlemen who’ve had the pleasure of dating me.
I’m joking, of course, but I happen to have dated a disproportionate number of men who are now moderately famous. I’m not going to names, because I’m a lady, but I think its worth noting that just because you grow up in Oklahoma or some other small town that doesn’t mean you can’t make something of yourself, like, for example, join a rock band that is only critically accepted here but is wildly popular in Japan, or become a country and western singer with a fading career and an alter ego, or be Opie, or become a writer and soon-to-be-housewife who works out all of her passive-aggressive tendencies via her weblog on the Internet.
My very first boyfriend ever literally sent me a note that said “Will you go out with me? Check YES or NO.” I probably still have it somewhere. He sat near me in Mrs. Keener’s classroom in the fifth grade. At that time, “going out” was really just a title — I don’t think we ever uttered more than five words to each other during our torrid romance. He was on the little league football team, though, and I seem to remember wearing his football jacket around at recess.
Later in life, this former boyfriend became very successful at one thing, namely, bulking up in the off season and smashing into quarterbacks for college football’s three-time national champions. He was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens after graduation, but then he had to go and blow it all by breaking his leg during pre-season practice, causing him to miss his entire first season in the NFL. Loser.
A few years later I dated Mr. Beginner Pedophile. I should have know this guy had issues when he first asked me out, namely because I was 16 and he was 20. I thought it was okay because my parents are four years apart, but it turns out that doesn’t make a very convenient excuse when your mother doesn’t approve of your new boyfriend.
Mr. Pedophile used to write me the most amazing, angry poetry. We broke up when I found a notebook of his stories about watching a little girl sleeping, wearing only cotton panties. Mr. P now lives in New York City, where’s he’s a prominent guest at poetry slams.
Another old flame (God, why did I ever?) is now gaining fame on the hot L.A. music scene. His Web site is full of accolades from 13-year-old girls, which is fitting, seeing as how he was once in a band with half the members of that other sugar-pop quartet from Oklahoma, the All-American Rejects.
After that guy and a couple of others, I swore off musicians forever. I’m not a jealous girl, but there are some lines you just shouldn’t cross, and one of them has to do with a bunch of desperate teenagers who would do anything to get their photo taken with you. Nope, I wasn’t cut out for that life – always on tour, always on demand, drugs, booze, boobies and more money than and 25-year-old should rightfully have
When I repeat on this site and to my friends over and over and over again that I never planned on getting married to anyone, it’s because the guys I dated were always more interested in themselves and their own lives than in compromise or commitment. Marriage was never part of my grand scheme mostly because I had never met a man like C, who is the most selfless, understanding and giving person in the whole wide world. Despite his flaws, he’s so concerned about the rest of the world’s well-being that sometimes I have trouble believing he’s real.
I swore I’d never date a musician again, but here I am now, getting ready to marry a man who is spending the seven weeks before our wedding trying to build a floating city in Asia. This was a decision we made together, and a decision I support, because his job is what is going to allow me to quit my job and travel Korea and spend my spare time writing for the next year and half. But I miss him, and I wish I could be there now, not two months later.
C, if you’re reading this, you better not be giving your autograph out to a bunch of 13-year old Korean girls!
A collection of completely random and unorganized thoughts that do not merit their own independent posts
| March 11, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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The following comments may or may not have been overheard either in my workplace or during private conversations in recent months. That’s right, I eavesdrop. ALL THE TIME!
— “I’m not going to have you wearing shitty-ass shoes at your wedding,” said by my wonderful stepmother, after making me promise to call them and ask for money for afore-mentioned wedding in the case that I need it.
— “I don’t call you to BS, so I’d appreciate it if you called me back when I leave you a message,” said by my publisher into the phone shortly after reprimanding me for not being polite enough to readers when they call me to complain about a story they wish I hadn’t written.
— “If he gives me a good angle we’ll do a story. What — does he want me to just write about his dojo?” Sounds really dirty, huh. Spoken by my editor after receiving an annoying phone call from one of the thousands of people who think their everyday lives merit an entire story in the newspaper. Most of the time these people own completely unoriginal businesses and want publicity. One word: advertise.
— “Anybody wanna try some of my cheese?” Okay, I said that one during lunch yesterday.
— Also, the head of advertising, a 50-something white woman, recently attacked the only black girl in the house, a recent college graduate, by talking about how hot black men’s posteriors are, punctuated with “Right! Right!?”
Other things not necessarily of note:
My friend Lance called me at work the other day.
“Hey, I have free tickets to this movie preview and I wanted to know if you want to go with me.”
I was busy so I was only kind of half listening to him. “Hmm. What’s the movie?”
“’Sausage.’”
“’SAUSAGE?!?’”
“No, you dummy! ‘Hostage.’”
“Oh.”
Vocabulary
Lance also coined a new phrase, thanks to a song on Gwen Stefani’s horribly horrible new CD. Since I’m trying to cut back on the sailor-like vocabulary, every time I want to say something is the shizzle! I’m now going to say it’s the bananas.
Bob also coined a new word: Vietnails. Synonyms are Japanails or Chinails. I don’t think you really need me to tell you the definition, but suffice it to say that before my wedding I’m going to get my Vietnails done.
My favorite word right now is screwvenir. That’s what you take when you leave the house after having noncommittal intercourse with someone.
You men and your size thing
| March 15, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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My friend Lance, the e-mailing genius, the part-time photographer, the man who will be photographing my wedding, sent me another e-mail yesterday. The text in parenthesis was added by me so the e-mail makes a little more sense:
“hey ding-dong, i was planning on going (to the Y) tomorrow night after work but i may be going to a “gentlemens club” to take some photos for my hempstead rd project. ill let you know tomorrow morning. hows life minus a (future husband’s last name redacted)? we should sell his tv and buy a fucking helicopter. if you get lonely come over and have a drink. that soundtrack (“The Life Aquatic”) is the bananas, annie has it.
When C and I first started dating, one of our very first dates was a “movie night” at his house. We both love old movies and artsy films, and he subscribes to Netflix, so much of our time together in the following months was spent on his couch in front of his TV. I had been to his house before, but this was the first time we had really planned a night in. I think he cooked something, and I’m positive he mixed some rum drinks.
As we sat down on the couch, he turned to me, in all seriousness, waved his arm in the general direction of his six-foot-tall flat-screened high-definition television, and said “You know, there’s only one TV on the market right now that’s bigger than this one.”
That right there sealed the deal, folks.
Bachelorette Party: Day 11
| March 16, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
Despite the fact that I have tons of wonderful friends coming out of the woodwork with offers to take me out to dinner or distract me with Elvis Costello tickets, I’m still having a difficult time adjusting to life sans C, at least for the time being.
The other night, after spending several hours taking advantage of my friend Steven’s high-speed Internet access to redesign this site, I went home at midnight and decided to watch a movie.
I fixed myself some food, curled up on the couch and turned on the DVD player. Nothing.
I grabbed one of our four remotes (four!) and pressed the “DVD” button. Nothing.
Another remote, another “DVD” button. More nothing.
I spent about 45 minutes frantically trying to get the DVD player to work. I could hear the opening titles song, 30 seconds of it, on a loop, playing over and over and over again, as if to taunt me, but no picture. Only the repetitive sound of Brittanie going mad.
I got so frustrated that I wanted to find the heaviest remote and throw it at our ginormous flat-screen hellaciously expensive high-definition television. But instead, all I did was start sobbing.
These are the types of things that usually get me very, very worked up. It runs in the family. In fact, two Christmases ago I remember a very similar incident during which my non-technology savvy dad was trying to set up their brand new DVD player and, unable to figure it out, stormed out of the house in a disgruntled fury. The fact that my stepmom and I were cracking up laughing the whole time didn’t help matters.
Typically, however, C the zen master is able to take control and make everything better, giving me time to simmer down.
Now that he’s in Korea, though, I’m out of control.
A couple of mornings ago I decided I wanted to try to call him and wish him goodnight. So I dialed the number I had, but it didn’t go through. I tried a couple of different times, dialing 1 first, then dialing 0 first. No luck. So finally, frustrated as usual, I dialed the operator.
“Hi. I’m having difficulty trying to place an international phone call from Houston to South Korea.” Although I was extremely stressed out, I was actually holding it together here, and asked in my sweetest and most polite voice.
“What’s your long distance carrier?” the operator said in a tone even more exasperated than I felt.
“Umm, I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to connect you to I Don’t Know long distance?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I can connect you to I’m Not Sure long distance.”
“What? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”
“Ma’am, those are all names of long distance carriers.”
LanceSpace
| March 17, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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I met Lance last night for dinner at Niko Niko. The place was packed at 6:30 p.m., when we met, and we both had to park on the street around the corner AND sit outside in the cruel and very un-Houston like 45-degree weather.
Just yesterday I was reading an article about how Yahoo! plans to create some wonder-software that combines both blogging and social networking. I usually read any story I can find about blogging, the future of blogging, how blogging is so passé, mommy blogs, daddy blogs, baby blogs, home improvement blogs, political blogs. So far they have not yet created a category for 20-something pseudo-feminists who are about to move to demilitarized zones blogs, thankfully.
Yes, I blog, but one thing I don’t do is social networking. Uhg, I even hate the way that sounds. I mean, look at my blogroll — six names. I prefer real-life friends, thankyouverymuch.
First there was Friendster. I remember reading a story one year ago in Rolling Stone about Freindster and how it was going to “change the face of the Internet.” Umm, okay, where is it now?
Now there is MySpace, and two of my friends, god love ‘em, are OBSESSED WITH THIS THING. It doesn’t hurt that they are both in their 30s and are routinely meeting jailbait through the Interwebs.
At dinner, Lance was telling me about all the fake profiles he’s created on MySpace. He’s been operating under the guise of Osama Bin Ladin for several months now — which is actually really funny — and he recently created a profile for a “average guy” named Gene, who likes to hang out at Home Depot and eat at The Outback Steakhouse. In just a few days, “Gene” has received tons of requests to befriend teenage girls. “Gene” and “Osama” are also on each other’s buddy lists, and Lance routinely amuses himself by going back and forth between his many MySpace characters, trying to see who gets the best reaction. Recently, a woman named “Miss Raven” who is obsessed with serial killers joined his buddy network.
“I’m becoming tangled in a web of my own lies,” he said to me at dinner last night.
After we left the restaurant, we walked out to our cars which were parked on a public street right beside the building, and when I got to my door, there were two pink Post-it notes on my window.
“PLEASE DON”T PARK…
IN MY DRIVEWAY!”
“What!?” I said to Lance. “I’m not parked in anyone’s driveway!”
I was, however, parked RIGHT NEXT to a driveway that had a small truck parked in it. A truck with a Phish sticker on it, nonetheless. The truck hadn’t been there before, so the driver obviously had plenty of room to pull in while I was in the restaurant.
“I’m gonna write them a note,” I said. So I got my pen out of my purse and scrawled on it, “It’s not a driveway — it’s a public street!”
As I walked up to the truck to slap the note back on their window, Lance said. “Whoa! I’m getting out of here. Someone’s going to pull a shotgun out on you. Let me know if you get killed!”
This coming from someone with a MySpace profile for Osama Bin Ladin.
Some things I learned during this year’s St. Patrick’s Day
| March 18, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
— The girl at Urban Outfitters has noticed that I go in there way too often. Yesterday, she asked “Do you work in the mall?”
— When you’re driving down the highway and you approach a totally beat up Bronco II, painted primer grey, with no tail lights, no turning signals, no cover over the spare tire and no driver’s side mirror, you should not be the least bit surprised to find a fairly hot looking 20-something chick behind the wheel. You should be surprised, however, when she reaches up with her left hand to take a big ‘ol drag off a gigantic cigar.
— At the bar, men will continue to hit on you even if you’re wearing a wedding ring. You can try to make it as obvious as possible by playing with it, spinning it around on your finger, slipping it on and off repeatedly, even holding your hand out at arms length to admire it, but they will still hit on you.
Fun with numbers!
| March 19, 2005 | Filled under Internerd |
Last time I looked up my site stats, I found that half of my hits were from people looking up “fast cars” on Google. I can just imagine the disappointed look on the pimply face of the 15-year-old boy that came to my site hoping to find information about a souped-up 1998 Honda Civic with spinning rims, wide wheels and extra tweeters.
Eight hits were searches for either Tina or Piper Rountree, including one especially ambitious searcher who entered the words “piper murder virginia blonde wig.”
On a related note, someone also searched for “exasperated housewife,” which took them not to my post about the Rountrees but instead to this post, where there are no naked pictures of Nicolette Sheridan or Eva Longoria. (Oops! That phrase alone is going to generate several more false searches!)
But my most disappointed visitor — someone whom I sincerely owe my apologies too, because I’m sure they didn’t find what they were looking for here — must have been the person who came upon my site by entering the phrase “huge stretch-marked tits.”
The answer is FIRETRUCK
| March 21, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
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I have a city council meeting tonight that I have to attend for work. I’m really dreading it, because, you know, the last thing I want to do until 9 p.m. after a long day at work is attend a small-town city council meeting and hear Area Man complain to Rep. Socialladderclimber about how the streets need fixin’.
I have to attend this meeting every month, and last month I had the pleasure of sitting in front of Mr. New Volunteer Fire Department Chief. When I interviewed Mr. NVFDC at the beginning of the year for a story about how, well, he was the new volunteer fire department chief, he was very rude and acted all exasperated with each question. So you could say I was already not a big fan of his.
Anyway, I sat in front of Chief at the meeting last month, and the next morning, right as the newspaper I work for was breaking a story about how the old fire chief HAD STOLEN MORE THAN $50,000 FROM THE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT, FOR GOD’S SAKE, New Chief called my editor to complain that I was — get this — doodling during the city council meeting the night before. DOODLING! Instead of taking notes!
Now you could say that I really really don’t like this man. I pretty much think he was feeling threatened by all the negative coverage Volunteer Fire Department was getting and wanted to lash out at someone. But me? For doodling? And besides, what kind of sick freak looks over someone’s shoulder during a city council meeting to see what she’s writing down?
I think tonight I’ll sit in front of him again, and in the biggest letters I can muster I’m going to write: I HATE ALL FIRE CHIEFS. Then I’m going to lean way, way back, just to make sure my notebook is completely visible.
Then, under that I’m going to write: WHAT STARTS WITH ‘F’ AND ENDS IN ‘U-C-K’?
The thing that has already ruined my whole day, and it’s only 9:14 in the morning
| March 22, 2005 | Filled under Shorts |
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I realized while driving to work that it has been 17 days since I was last kissed.
Miscellaneous
| March 24, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
Awe. Some.
The thing that totally made my day today? The thing that I found sitting on my editor’s desk, and then stole when she left her office to go to the bathroom? The thing that makes up for me not having been kissed by my fiancé, the most wonderful man in the world, for the past 19 days now? It’s this.
But wait, there’s more
A few hours later, feeling guilty that maybe she needed that piece of paper and I shouldn’t have been such a sneaky wench and just taken it without asking, I confessed to my editor. Which totally paid off, because she turned away from me and said, “Oh, that guy sends me stuff all the time.” She then dug through piles and piles of junk on her filing cabinet and produced not one, not two, but FIVE! full-length, home-burned Jesse Aron cds. With “Jesse Aron” written on them in black Sharpie.
What’s with…
Okay, I’m all about the token black man. But lately, I’ve been seeing all these commercials featuring not just a token black man, but a goofy token black man featuring the token black man hairdo — an afro. First 7 Up, then Office Depot, and now Best Buy. I’ve had enough.
A new woman
I got my haircut this week and now I’m totally rocking a new hairdo. Do you think it works for me? It’s kind of got a Jane-Fonda-as-a-Vietnam-War-protestor vibe.
Also, sometimes I like to move my wedding ring from my left hand to my right hand, because it makes it look like a totally different and new ring.
Longest intro ever
I had an awesome dream the other night where I was hanging out with Green Day (lame, I know, but stay with me here) and I hummed the first few notes of “Green Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf, and Billie Joe Armstrong turned to me and asked what song it was, and then I broke out into the whole song, including the super-long musical interlude, and it totally won me street cred with aging punk rock hipsters who used to be my teen idols.
I have no idea what promoted that song, which, if you didn’t know, is one of the best songs ever, to make a guest appearance in my subconscious, since I haven’t heard it in forever. But I’m really glad it did, because it’s been stuck in my head since yesterday morning, and that, compared with a really bad Elvis impersonator, has made for a pretty awesome day. I may consider adding “Green Eyed Lady” to my karaoke repertoire.
Rain
It’s the time of the year for freak thunderstorms. I experienced this head-on last weekend when Steven, Julie and I were at a cafe having lunch. A spring storm started to roll in, making all sorts of loud noises and flashes to announce its presence, but we continued to hang out, since Steven only lived about a mile away. Well, we pushed our luck, and ended up having to ride our scooters home in the driving, pounding, vertical rain. The drops were so big and the wind so strong that it hurt. Bad. I had on just jeans, a thin t-shirt and my helmet. When we got to Steven’s house, everyone took off their wet clothes, Julie put on some of Steven’s karate pants, and the three of us fell asleep on his bed. I love my friends.
Dear Mr. City Councilman,
When you’re tying to compliment me by telling me that you regularly read my column (it’s an article by the way. Columns require absolutely no research, thankyouverymuch) it helps to A) know my name, and B) be able to remember what publication I actually work for.
Rest on your laurels much?
A new restaurant is coming to town, called, inexplicably, “Raising Canes.” They’re based out of Baton Rouge, La., and their press materials state the following: (I swear I’m not making any of this up.)
“They bring a high-class environment that promotes family dining and a fun atmosphere. Their menu is compiled of freshly cooked chicken fingers, and chicken fingers only. They perfected the recipe for this item and have valued that as there trademark.”
Okay, first of all, it’s “their,” not “there.”
Second, nothing says high-class environment like fried fast-food chicken.
Thirdly, can we not come up with a better name than “chicken fingers.” Ugh. All I can think about when I hear that term is fourth-grade science class, when Mr. Scott, who was also the boys’ wrestling coach, would take an old dry chicken’s foot and pull on the tendon to make the chicken’s claw open and close. Nasty.
We love to fly, and it shows
About two years ago, when I first moved to Houston, I was desperate for a real job, and so I got online and applied for a position as a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines. Well, they send me an e-mail yesterday saying my resume had made it through the first round of inspections and I’m invited to reapply for a position. Umm, okay. Do you fly to Okpo?
Names with backbones
NPR commentator David Chartrand can just suck it. I didn’t ask to be named Brittanie, and it doesn’t define who I am, and I most definitely was never popular in high school. Like David is any more original than Lindsey or Thomas or Marcus is.
Question?
I have never wanted to have a traditional wedding, and even before I met my soon-to-be husband I knew I wouldn’t follow status quo. So, I’ve had a difficult time finding a wedding dress. I wanted something very “West Side Story” — a 1950s-style party gown, preferably with a big tulle knee length skirt. I found a great Betsey Johnson dress that is seafoam green, is strapless with a big tulle skirt, and has a turquoise chiffon waistband. I love it, but I also feel like I should be wearing white. So I also found a very simple ball gown that can be cut shorter so that the tulle skirt sticks out the bottom a bit. But it has no personality. Is it acceptable to wear seafoam green to your first (and presumably only) wedding?
Shock of the day
When returning from lunch with some older women from advertising, Sara, my bikini waxer called me to return an appointment request. When I got off the phone, one of my coworkers, Margaret, a 50-something single, conservative-looking woman, asked, “Do you wax your whole twat?” I almost swerved off the road.
Someone thinks I’m funny
Which is pretty much the easiest way to win me over. Because, you know, I think I’m HI-LARIOUS, but corroboration makes it even better. Gentle reader Morgan also wrote in to say she hasn’t been kissed since last August, which makes me sound like a whiny little brat. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” she asked.
Confidential to Morgan
It’s okay to be forward with guys. I was totally the first one to hit on C. And it took like three tries for him to get the picture, because I kept saying things like, “Yeah, all of our friends are going out to this event,” and then when he showed up, I’d be the only on there. Some men take a little coaching, but hey! I’m getting an awesome husband out of it!
Contest!
But what’s better than me making myself laugh is when other people make me laugh. So just for kicks, I’m going to have a little contest. You in? Okay. The first person to make me laugh out loud will win an illustrious Jesse Aron CD. You can tell a joke, a story or just string some silly-sounding words together — whatever rocks your boat. Or you can just utter the word twat in the voice of a 50-year-old spinster. Oh, and put your submissions in the comments, that way everyone else can get a kick out of them too.
In bed
| March 27, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
So my friend Steven hosted a ’70s party tonight at Numbers, the dance club around the corner from our house, and I got all dressed up in vintage gear and walked over there to support him and all. And I stayed for a few hours, and then walked home and washed my face and changed into an old t-shirt I’ve had since high school, and just now opened all the windows in our house and laid on the bed on top of all the covers to check my e-mail. And just now, all of all sudden, it started raining really hard, which is one of my favorite things in the world, because we have a corrugated metal roof on our house, and the windows are open so I can hear the rain really well in this sort of acoustic through-both-the-windows-and-the-roof kind of way, and it has just made my day, even though it’s only 1:50 a.m. Sunday morning. The only thing that sucks is that my favorite person in the whole wide world is not here laying next to me and enjoying it as well.
Recent, ahem, developments
| March 28, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
Dear Interweb,
Do you want to see my new wedding dress? Of course you do. Click here.
I think it’s very “West Side Story,” don’t you. Instead of C and I cutting the cake, we’ve decided that the grand finale of our wedding reception will be a homoerotic dance number featuring 1950s Puerto Rican gang members.
The best part is that my dress exactly matches the underwater-green color of our upstairs bathroom walls.
But the real best part is that after I bought my dress, I went Victoria’s Secret to purchase a strapless bra to wear with it. While I was there, I decided I should be properly measured for my bra size, because I haven’t been measured since my recent growth spurt. I almost choked on my own saliva when the lady said, “Yeah, you’re about a 34D.”
For those keeping score at home, that’s an increase of TWO cup sizes. I finally have the hip-to-chest ration of a Barbie doll. Thank you, Seasonale™.
Just one quick, crass note
| March 31, 2005 | Filled under Shorts |
A group of my coworkers just returned from lunch at a new fast food place near our office called Backyard Burgers. While they’re ranting and raving about how good it was, all I can do over and over again in my head is refer to it as Backdoor Burgers.
