July 13th, 2009
This weekend, my sister came up from Austin for a visit and we did lots of important things like watch The Princess Bride, lounge by the pool, and eat stuff not sanctioned by the American Heart Association. A hard knock life, I tell you. And even after she and her boyfriend drove off on Sunday, I carried on the noble tradition of sloth and gluttony with a nap, fajitas, and a viewing of Up* – all in all, a fine, fine beginning to Birthday Week Oh Nine.
Thirty was a… strange year. It’s ending so well that I’m tempted to call it a great year, but then there was all that bit about losing my job, being forced to sell the rights to my unborn children to pay the IRS, and oh, yes, there was the rather auspicious beginning the whole thing took when I was stood up the night of my birthday by a man-child who’d invited me to a party and then developed an acute case of sudden onset amnesia. See? Icky. But then I got a job, a nephew and a perfectly imperfect boyfriend (all on the same day even!) and things, they took a steep upward turn. And even though this year my actual birthday will find me squished into an economy seat of a Dallas-bound airplane, I’ll be squished right next to the Dork Lord after a weekend of goofing off in Vegas. So, you see, I have to dig pretty deep to find any complaints. Except about elbow room.
* I cried at least three times during this movie. Heart strings = tugged. HARD.
July 9th, 2009
Yesterday morning, I got out of bed at the normal time (ok, let’s not pretend that 5:55 is normal, but it’s the current standard), put on my workout clothes, sat down on the couch to put on my shoes… and woke up at 7:15. The best part is, I was sleeping so hard that the cat was curled up on my lap taking a snooze. One big happy! Anyway, I don’t have to tell you that starting off like that doesn’t make the best day. It took a good forty minutes at work for that Just Awoke from a Six Year Coma feeling to wear off. I just sat at my desk feeling spacey and disoriented, sipping coffee and typing and retyping the same words over and over because seriously, is it really i before e except after c? because that just looks wrong. Then things proceeded to get awesomer and awesomer with a dead battery and the flaky maintenance man not showing up again and computer viruses and such, that we were forced (forced!) to medicate with margaritas, mexican food and Johnny Depp. Which brings me to:
Movies I Have Seen Lately That You Should A) See or B) Paper Cut Your Eyes out First:
Away We Go. See it. Gosh, what a charming, warm, honestly delightful movie. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so good about spending ten bucks since I lived in the vicinity of an H&M.
Inkheart. Skip it. I know it’s on On Demand and that makes it very convenient. Likewise, the cast seems promising (Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren), but even as a kids movie, it’s insultingly witless.
The Proposal. See it. One, Ryan Reynolds is really funny. He always has been (come, sit. We’ll watch Van Wilder together). Also, he is hot and he takes his shirt and everything else off. And then there’s Betty White who almost made me pee.
Passengers. No. Just no. See that part about the convenience of On Demand, mix it with any good feelings you may have for Anne Hathaway (look, I own The Princess Diaries on VHS and I watched Get Smart twice) and your love of bad sci fi (I know. I can’t help it either) and even that will not be enough to save you the pang of regret from hours wasted on total crap.
Transformers. Wait for the DVD. Holy cow, for how much shit that blows up in the movie, it’s so freaking BORING. I expected silly. I expected gratuitous blow uppage. I expected Megan Fox’s permanent porn mouth. But boring? That really threw me. The Boy was less bored, but that’s because he poured about four shots of bourbon into his Diet Coke.
Public Enemies. See it. Excellent acting (even Christian Bale’s muppet-like growling affectation is totally absent), lots of intensity and it requires no bourbon at all to appreciate. The only disappointment was that despite knowing the outcome of the actual historical events, I was still kinda hoping the bad guys would win. That says so much about me.
July 6th, 2009
By some crazy miracle, I found a spot on the ground floor of the parking garage and pulled in. The thermometer on the dash read 105 and the scowl on my face read What the hell, Texas. I’d had the air vents trained on my head and neck since I left the apartment and the idea of stepping out into the heat, even to make a mad dash to the shiny glass doors at the mall, sent a drop of sweat rolling racing for my butt crack. It’s a good thing I’m stubborn, because had I not been on a very specific mission, I’d have stayed in that car until the gas ran out. I do not do butt sweat.
But, as the elastic on the strapless bra I was wearing was about six years past its prime (I’m pretty sure I remember wearing it to a Fourth of July barbecue in Boston in 2001), I’d decided it was high time to take that boulder holder out to the barn and give it the Old Yeller treatment. Out with the old, in with the Buy One Get One 50% Off. I won’t lie, Macy’s is making this recession exciting.
I got sidetracked only once. Passing by the Junior’s Department, I sought to rectify a sin of omission. The other day, I realized I must be the only woman in the whole free world who doesn’t own a maxi dress. But right then I discovered there’s a reason I don’t own a maxi dress. Not. Flattering. The magic of the maxi dress seems to be a whole lot of fabric bringing a whole lot of attention to the least attractive areas of my body. When I do finally find a dress that highlights my cheek bones and shiny hair, I will buy it in every color. But as for the maxi, well, I took my pear shape and beat it out of there as fast as I could.
In the intimates department, a smiling Eastern European woman (let’s call her Magda) pulled out the measuring tape and some advice to make sure I didn’t leave that place with a lemon. You know how they say that nearly every woman on the face of the planet is wearing the wrong size bra, and how every episode of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style shows some hapless femme in a 36B given the beautiful gift of learning she’s actually a 32C? Yeah, not me. No magical extra cup size intervention here. I’m still a 34B. And now I’m a 34B who owns two very nice strapless bras that pass Magda’s Flip Test.
“Go like zees,” she said, bending at the waist. “And if zey don’t fleep out, it fits!” I laughed as Magda explained that she’d once wore a bra that did not pass the Flip Test. That’s what I call taking one for the team.
At the register, while keeping one eye on the TV monitor in the corner and another on my purse, I learned two things in rapid succession. I sent out an SOS text.
Sarah Palin resigned, and I lost my keys in Macy’s. One of these things is bad.
Palin was on the TV, but my keys were not in the dressing room, or next to the clearance rack I’d ransacked. Not even in the compartments in my purse they usually are when I “lose” my keys. I knew they were really for real lost – downstairs in the Junior’s Department, among the maxi dresses that made me look like a boa constrictor who’d just swallowed a goat.
I’m telling you, I almost let them stay lost.
June 30th, 2009
Ah, the travel bug. As far as recurring afflictions go, this one is a gnarly beast. It sneaks up on me, slowly, over a few months or so when regular life is plodding along and the things I’ve put in the Looking Forward To column are far away and a little less than grandiose. Like, the work trip to Vegas in a few weeks. It’s Vegas! But it promises to be hot and schmoozy – two things I can manage with any amount of grace for very short periods of time. Disney World and all its awesomeness is all the way in December, which, because I am six, is too many months away to seem real.
If you’ll pardon me channeling a certain little mermaid for a moment, I want more. Wait, or is it less? I think it’s less. Less time busting my tush on projects that go nowhere. Less grocery shopping, and litter box cleaning and loads of laundry that I’m just going to wash again in a few days. In short, less of real life. And just for a bit. I want an island with a hammock – make that two – and the smell of brine and Cyprus trees and water so blue it makes my heart take up temporary residence in my throat. I want to walk up crumbling stairs to places so old and magical that I won’t be quite sure that I’m not imagining them. To fall asleep next to my snoring fella, tipsy on cheap wine and wake up in puddles of other-hemisphere sunlight to no plans at all. To wear white linen and tan lines and feel the slight sting of an almost sunburn on the top of my nose. Freckled, smiling, full on new food and adventures.
Instead, because travel is expensive and the reason I’m in debt I might never dig myself out of, I’m sitting on the ottoman in my living room, filling out government forms for work, while the dog lays on the couch occasionally emitting farts that smell like rotten broccoli.
It’s probably a good thing I let my passport expire.
June 24th, 2009
In the short version of the story, I drove home to meet the Boy for lunch yesterday and smelled a very strong gasoline smell. Alarmed, I called the VW dealership and spoke to a service advisor who shared my alarm. So I arranged for a tow truck, and waited to be picked up and taken to the service center where I’d be given a loaner and sent on about my business.
Only, it got complicated. And thus the long version of the story has me walking back to where my car was parked in a stall in the dealership lot (in search of my insurance card – for the loaner), to find that the tow truck driver had scratched the hell out the passenger side. A representative from Tow Jam (totally not kidding) came out, spent many inarticulate phrases telling me that the truck driver could NOT have been responsible. The down-to-the-metal chunks out of the paint were…wait for it… door dings. And the series of scratches on the wheel well? They must have been there before.
“If the driver hit something,” he explained, “there would be many more scratches.”
“If there driver had not hit anything, there would be no scratches AT ALL.”
It went on like that for a while. He talked to me like I was an idiot. I calmly told him he was effing nuts. I even shared with him the heartwarming tale of sniffing around my car in search of the gas leak earlier that very afternoon, with my face within inches of the now scratched-to-hell door panels, seeing no evidence of the current and appalling ruination. He remained unmoved. So we both took pictures. His photo album will be a bit thinner than mine; he took pictures of only one door panel because, if he gathered evidence of the whole show, no one would buy his story.
Then, when I was about ready to fall apart if I did not go home – where no one could break any more promises or talk to me like I was the intellectual equivalent of a box of hair – right that very second, it was revealed that there wasn’t actually a loaner car to be had. And the rental car that would have taken its place was given away while I was trading witticisms with Mr. Tow Jam. They’d have one in oh, maybe an hour or so, if I wanted to go wait at the Enterprise office. Near to tears, I texted the Dork Lord, Please come get me. He arrived twenty minutes later – pissed.
“Calm down,” I said, patting his arm as his head spun round in circles looking for someone to kill.
“No. They aren’t treating you how you deserve to be treated.”
He stalked off toward the Service Center and I put on a solemn face. But it was really hard not to smile. Even with all that overdone hype about white horses, spell-breaking kisses and climbs up long braids of hair to the tops of very high towers, being rescued is still totally underrated.
Even when being rescued means driving off into the sunset in a rented Chevy Cobalt.
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