can't post must wed be back bear with

The Gallivanting Monkey experienced a wedding meltdown last night, weeping and weeping without ceasing. The Gallivanting Monkey's mother lectured her, "[The Gallivanting Monkey] [doesn't] know how to budget [her] energy. [She's] never known how to budget [her] energy. [She] just [goes and goes]--"

The Gallivanting Monkey cut her off.

Lecture = Not Like a Massage

Massage = More Like It

Be back next week.

what happened in clown class

For those of you who are like, "Tina, we do not care that you are getting married. Blah Blah Blah with you all the time! Go universal or shut it," I am here promising that I will make an effort to bring you the stories you're looking for.

Maybe you're looking to know about Clown Class.

Perhaps you want to know why I took it. You might want to know, "Tina, are you a CLOWN?!" Because you might be like, "Oh, shit. I don't want to read some clown's blog."

I am not a clown. I'm an actor. And, look. I took the class because the description of the class on the website was something like:

The clown goes on stage intending to succeed, and fails.

This seemed so character-building to me. I thought, hey! I'm afraid of failure! I'm afraid as an actor, and as a person. This is my chance to make peace with failure. This will be great!

Who in their right mind thinks the process of making peace with failure will be great?! It isn't great. It is sucky in the extreme.

But I didn't know that then. Also, the teacher was someone I knew to be very fantastic and right-on. HE wasn't the problem. Clown class was the problem.

In a nutshell, what you had to do was find yourself a clown character. No, actually, you were really supposed to let it find you. Let the clothes find you, let your inner clown out organically. Release your inner Clown David like the Michelangelo you are.

I tried some different personas. Uptight maitre d' clown. Neither here nor there sort of upbeat messy clown. And then, goddamn it, my inner clown found me.

And she was a sad clown.

Oh my god! Who wants to be a sad clown?! Nobody wants to be a sad clown! I scrambled in every direction away from Sad Clown but she wouldn't let me go! How I could tell that she wouldn't let me go was that every single time I went to clown class, I ended up weeping in there, right in front of everyone, all the time. Like clockwork, like a clown Ally Sheedy in the clown Breakfast Club (although she was more catatonic than a weeper, I realize - but you feel me, I hope. You can picture the type of clown I was becoming). I wept during exercises, I wept watching other people work. I wept at the beginning of class and I always wept at the end.

And I wasn't a FUNNY sad clown. No, I was just a sad sad clown.

I remember driving once to clown class after my teacher, George, had convinced me not to drop out. I was crying already in the car on the way there. I didn't want to go face down failure anymore. The song "Hang On, Sloopy" was playing on the car radio. I sang along to it, weeping, thinking of myself as Sloopy.

Hang on, Sloopy.
(Sloopy, still go to clown class.)
Sloopy, hang on.
(Look at you, Sloopy, so brave, going to clown class.)

There was a clown in there, Eva, whose clowning was always funny. Her clown was all sleek and realized and kind of acrobatic, and she always made George laugh. I was beyond jealous. My clowning mostly just made George speak gently to me, as one speaks gently to an unhinged, unsuccessful, unfunny, crying clown.

And the failure part came in (apart from in my case, which was nearly all the time) when we had to go up there and do prepared or improvised routines, which would be met with stone cold silence. You had to just flail away and make shit up until you'd lost your mind - until you'd truly failed - after which it was possible that you'd stumble on the "bid" (pronounced bead), which was the sort of essence of the thread that could lead you somewhere truly out-of-left-field funny. Some people made it there sooner than others, and got to enjoy the sincere laughter of their teacher and their peers. Others, like me, would be staggering around for what felt like hours, searching for the goddamned bid, totally cold, colder, freezing in relation to whereabouts of the bid. And we'd end cold. I'd end cold.

Now, a lot of things in the class were great. It was very fun running around in an exercise pretending to be made of fire in my upper half, and water in my lower half. Some of those other clowns, also, were really funny and didn't send me into paroxysms of envy, and they were fun to watch. We learned this great scale of intensity we could use, from 0, being almost entirely inert inside and out, to 6, in which you come as close as you can to dying in a self-created explosion of feeling.

And if you think that you would get something out of taking a class to make peace with failure, by all means. You should do it. You will get something out of it. I don't mean this to be some kind of cruel dog dare. Totally, do it. My honey is going to try it, and I almost would take it again just to be a fly on the wall and see him go through the clown process. I really almost would. Except that I totally will not.

Goodnight, friends. Soon I will tell you the story of how I went to jail.

Coming Summer 2005.

i am not big enough for my bridal shower, i have to grow.

Last night, Elizabeth threw a bridal shower for me. I am not big enough yet in my being to even be able to take it in, how over-the-top beautiful it was. I am scrambling to enlargen myself, and I hope the essence of the event will follow me into the future until I'm able to absorb it.

Some of what happened:

A tower of cupcakes, with ROSE FLAVORED FROSTING.
Mojitos with fresh mint from Morgan's backyard
A new patio put onto Elizabeth's apartment just for the occasion
Wafting French and Latin music
Candles here, there, everywhere
The little girl with no underpants who lives upstairs who kept whizzing by on her bike, and finally joined us for the party, who presented me with the gift of a homemade envelope stuffed with flowers and soft leaves
A box with gathered notes in it from all present and from my impending husband, which I will read the night before we wed
The fucking most soft soft robe that erases stress instantly as a gift for me
Carolyn taking humorous notes
World of lingerie, all my taste and also flattering - what?! how?!
My mom describing my birth, "Tina POPPED OUT!!!!!"
Polaroids, who make instant gratification/mortification
Me weeping
Me weeping
Me weeping
Me raking in bigger than the Baby Jesus.

Soon, what I talk about won't be weddings. Please bear with. In fact, I'll try to get something non-wedding based up there right now. Hang on while I go compose. Here I go. See you later.

my mistake

It's:

YOUR best friend Harry, etc.
He's hoping YOU can make it there...

I overreacted. Young MC was just hypothesizing. He was being crazy! Like, what if that happened?! That would be so silly, and all that. Nobody would just give a best man five days notice. Young MC was just being hilarious.

harry's brother larry's questionable wedding

My best friend Harry has a brother Larry.
In five days from now he's gonna marry.
He's hoping I can make it there if I can,
'Cause in the ceremony I'll be the best man.

Young MC, "Bust a Move"

First of all, why is Young MC the best man in the wedding of not Harry, but his brother Larry? Harry is Young MC's best friend, not Larry. And why isn't Harry Larry's best man? Do the brothers not get along? And doesn't Larry have other friends of his own?

Second of all, regarding "in five days from now" and "he's hoping I can make it" --did Larry only give Young MC five days notice? The best man position is very important. Never mind that Young MC doesn't seem to return Larry's feelings of friendship for him with the same intensity. What if Young MC hadn't been able to do it on such short notice? Larry would have found himself in deep shit, I think, if he has no other friends and this bad relationship with his brother. Or was this Young MC's fault? Maybe Larry asked Young MC long ago, and Young MC hadn't gotten back to him clearly by the five-days-away point. Young MC doesn't make it explicit whose fault the unclearness was, but somebody was in bad form.

The whole wedding frankly sounds very sketchy to me.

we come to do beautiful hair or we don't come at all

I don't know if I'll be able to express properly how much I love watching Jonathan Antin freak out on "Blow Out". This show is unbelievably exciting. Sometimes the sample hair products come, and they are below par. And sometimes at the same time, stylists need to resolve issues with him, and graphic designers throw attitude at him. And all he's about is hair. Just doing great hair. Wait, he's also 'about' beautiful women. So, all he's about is doing great hair, and also about beautiful women. And everybody is tearing him apart. And even when he's freaking out at top level, his voice sounds all slow and low and bass, like he's talking in slow motion, or like he's a shadowy mystery interview silhouette person whose voice had to be altered to protect his identity. "TheRRR IZZ no JOHHHnuhthun PROHHduct!!"

I just watched this week's episode, and already I long for next week's.

Look. I know I should have linked up there, where it said "Blow Out" - that should have been all blue and linky. I promise that after the wedding, I will do my link homework. But if you would like the half-assed experience of a link, read this post again, then type really fast "bravotv.com" in the thing up there, and read it really quick, and then come back, and then pretend you didn't type anything.

It can work like that between us for a minute. Baby, I promise I'll change.

we're going to need to raise those roof beams even higher, carpenters

Our wedding is now less than two weeks away. Today, Dave and I met with our beautiful writing teacher, Vicky, who generously offered us some free classes to write material from which to cull our vows. (She's one of the three muses who will officiate at our wedding.) If any of you are getting married in 12 days, and are beginning to feel the stress, beginning to sweat the colors of the napkins and whatnot, I highly recommend dropping all of your tasks for a couple of hours and sitting down and writing paeans to your beloved instead.

Because now I feel like, who gives a tiny flying shit about which flower is going where? Who needs to freak about about the pear tarts? Nobody does. Nobody needs to.

In 12 days, I'm getting married to a man about whom I have no doubts. I practically married him the minute I met him. I met him in a room full of new people, and his was the first face I saw. Before I even saw any of the others, I decided I liked everybody in that room. It was a split-second thing. They were all instantly grandfathered in on the strength of my first impression of Dave. Anybody remotely associated to that face had to be someone I would endorse.

I'm going to marry that man in front of a group of the most loyal, loving, smart people you could ever meet, many of whom are going to be dropping their insane talents all over the evening.

I got me a peacock blue dress that shaves ten pounds off of me, through no help of my own.

Luck been, and continues to be, a lady to me.

le doublemint commenter, c'est moi

I was reading a delightful Shane Nickerson post today (link over to the right onto Nickerblog - still figuring this all out on this computer!) and decided to make a comment. It posted twice.

The same thing happened to me a few days ago on his blog. Left a comment about Iron Maiden, and it posted twice. Apologized. The apology posted twice.

When it happened today, someone commented on my double comment. I COULD NOT RESPOND FOR FEAR OF LEAVING ANOTHER DOUBLE COMMENT.

Damn! Damn!

a bit of advice

When you're driving around and listening to the radio, don't tough it out through a song you don't like. Your mood will drop. And then you will need two good songs worth of, um, song to hoist it back up.

Toughed it out today through something kind of steel drummy. Regretted it.

Word to the wise.

green

Now we must talk about jealousy. I'm going to show you a few pictures from the jealousy photo album of my life. Here we go:

The girls I was jealous of as a child (in no particular order, so don't get all excited, Dana Sugarman):

1. Dana Sugarman. Her last name had SUGAR in it, her teeth were crooked in a way that was, in first grade, a bit hip. Who knows what created the popular aura in children all the way back when every last bastard of us was wearing Garanimals? She had it. I think I was jealous because even then, I knew she had it, but I couldn't quite figure out WHY.

2. Same goes for Gwen Lighter, except for the sugar part and the crooked teeth part (substitute freckles). No, wait. Maybe I can put a finger on it. Maybe she seemed a little ruthless. Yeah, she did. That's it.

3. Abra Potkin. Now this chick, I totally know why I was jealous of her. And also, I liked her. But her name was ABRA POTKIN. Come on! What a spicy name. She had this thick, long, wavy hair, and an absolute celebrity vibe, even at 9 years old. I just saw her name fly by on the credits of some television show, as a producer, maybe? She had another name tacked on there that I can't remember, her married name. Abra told me that if a guy takes his shirt off in front of you, he wants to have sex with you. We were hanging out in this little atrium at the small private school we went to, and moments before, this guy Rob Efird had come in to talk to Abra, and taken his shirt off.

Things that people could do that I was jealous of as a child:

1. Ride a bike. I never learned. I still don't know how. My dad tried to teach me when I was nine, and we'd just moved to Seattle. But there were kids around in the neighborhood that might be WATCHING, and I was too old, too old for that kind of humiliation. Better to just let it lie.

2. Eat meat. We were vegetarians - 4th or 5th generation on my dad's side. I remember going to this girl Dina's birthday party when I was six or so. My parents had just been to Hawaii and I was wearing this long orange muu-muu they brought me. Dina's mom brought out the hot dogs, which looked fucking FUN TO EAT, but I had to remind her that I was a vegetarian. She went into the kitchen and made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and brought it back. She seemed annoyed.

3. Listen to rock and roll at home. No go at the Kunz household. My parents couldn't stand rock music. Also, they'd read The Secret Life of Plants, which talked about how rock and roll stifles plant's growth. (This effort, on my folks' part, to stifle the stifling of our growth...IN VAIN. My brother and I ended up teeny tiny.) My parents talked about how the basic beat of rock and roll, duh duh DUH duh duh DUH, disharmonized with the beat of the human heart, duh duh...something else. So, I'd go to my friend Allison's house and we'd listen to Abba, and I would SHAKE IT with every fiber of my being. My friend Hiroe snuck me a bootleg tape that had Abba on one side and Xanadu on the other, and whenever my parents went out to Sears or whatever, I would smack that baby on.

note on 3. There was an exception one bizarre day, when I was seven years old! My dad brought back a Simon and Garfunkel record from the library. I was like, WHAT'S GOING ON?? My dad brought it home for "Scarborough Faire". But with Scarborough Faire, you get the Mrs. Robinson song! Oh mama. I was freaking out. And I was mildly scandalized, too, because when Simon and Garfunkel sing, "woo, woo, woo" -- well, what you said in school when someone had a crush on someone else, you said, "wOOoo wOOoo!" So I was like, not only am I listening to rock and roll, but this shit has some sexual content. My WORD.

Things I was jealous of between the ages of 12 and 20:

1. Girls in my junior high who had big asses. The tough, awesome, scary, popular girls all had ginormous booties. I was a teeny 12 year old masquerading as a broken-lockered 13 year old, and I really needed my ass to be bigger. I would try to roll the waistand up on my jeans, which created a mild wedgie, but also the temporary illusion of a slightly juicier ass. 24 years later, my dream of a big ass has come true. HurrAH.

2. The 1986 class officers of Nathan Hale High School, from '82-86. What the fuck did it take to get elected?! I wasn't ever aiming for PRESIDENT or anything! I had the modest goal of becoming VICE president. One morning, the morning of election results for our upcoming junior year, I called a radio station and asked them to play Van Halen's "I'll Wait", and dedicate it to me, as I would find out later whether I'd be the new vice president. I don't know why I picked that song, other than the fact that I just liked it, it was the song I liked most at the time. But in retrospect, it's so fitting:

I'll wait til your love comes down.
I'm coming straight for your heart.

That's right. I was gonna wait, class of '86, until your love came down. I was coming straight for your heart. No way you could stop me then, as fine as you were. But you could stop me. You did stop me. I was not the new vice president. Phyllis Scott was. THANKS.

3. Claudia Cumes. A guy I dated in college, in between the two rounds of dating me, dated her. She was from South Africa. She was like RAPUNZEL HERSELF. Tall, beyond-shampoo-commercial thick blonde hair to her waist. Slender, crazy gorgeous. Intelligent as hell. Had an elegant little South African accent. Her first name was not pronounced "CLAW-dia." It was pronounced "CLOUD-ia" ClOUDia Cumes. Cumulous Cloud. Legs to the sky. When the guy and I got briefly back together, I was like, buddy, how does a girl compete with Claudia Cumes? And he was like, "With Claudia, it was like, the hair, the legs...the legs...I mean, physically, [long whistling sound]she's GOT it. But with you, it's not your legs or anything. It's you." That's a nice thing to say. But I was sorry I asked.

batdance and soft sweater

Tonight Dave and I abandoned our tickets to go see the Eels. (I know it's just "Eels" but I'm not saying that. Back in the back when, I wasn't saying "Eurythmics". I put a trusty "the" in there, and I'm doing it again now. If your band's gonna be all plural about everything, put a "the" in there or I'm putting one in myself.) We were too tired to just sit and listen to one band play songs - even if it were a really fine band like THE Eels. Instead, we went to go see Batman Begins.

(How I wanted to italicize that, the movie title. I'm using a friend's computer these days, and I can't see a way to get to italics or different font sizes or colors here at Blogger with this computer. I had a dream last night that the front of my tongue was cut off and sewn back on, and that I lost a front tooth. I feel that this means that I miss italics and colors and font size variations -- that I can communicate, but I don't sound right or look pretty.) (But then in the dream I still got to do a staged reading that Sean Penn directed, even with a missing tooth and fucked-up tongue that made me lisp, and it went well. You suckers who tried to cut off my tongue! You didn't silence me! You made me STRONGER.)

I read on another blog -- Shane Nickerson's blog -- I'd link you but I'm still a baby and I don't know how yet, but hit my link to Dup's blog and he'll escort you right over -- that the new Batman movie was fantastic. Run, don't walk, he said.

The people at Pacific Place were an inch away from taking that advice literally. We went and got our tickets, and then had an hour to kill, so we took the elevators down to go to the bookstore. When we got out of the elevator, there was this WALL of people, and they were moving fast, like whooooooooooomp, whooooooooomp, we're late, must waaaaaaalk, get out of the waaaaaay, we gotta get on the ELevaaaator.

It was alarming.

Me, I loved the movie. Super big movie satisfaction.

While we were killing time down at the Barnes and Noble, there was this girl on line to buy a book in front of me. She had on this pink sweater that looked so crazy soft. I miss my italics now, so imagine that whatever I say below that's in quotes is also in italics. I am wanting to convey a baby softness of speech. This is what I was thinking in my mind, talking to her sweater:

"hello, sweater."

"hi, sweater."

"if there weren't a person in you, sweater, i would want to pet you."

"you're leaving."

"damn."

"goodbye, sweater."

Goodbye, sweaters. I have to go to sleep now.

the twilight neighborhood of the blogs

You know when you're driving around in the early evening, and the lights are starting to go on in the houses? The sky is dipping into the deeper blue and the windows are yellow and lit behind the dark yards? I always want to go into all the houses and see what they're eating for dinner, see if they did their homework, see if they're fighting, see what magazines they read, look in their refrigerators. The early evening's when I want to do this. I don't want to be there in the morning when they're freaking out and getting ready for work and school. I don't want to be there when the business minds are getting all revved up. I want to be there when it's all winding down, and people are taking off their fancy people identities and beginning to get lazy and silly. I want to be there when it's all unravelling, nice and easy. I want to be there right at the moment when someone says, "Soup's on."

And now I get to do that. I get to drive around on the internet, and if I see a window that calls my name, I can just let myself in and take a look around your lives.

Dreamy.

it will go away if i don't say it

In college, when I smoked my head off and majored in drama, I was leaving the theater one day. This younger dude, Todd, was leaving the building at the same time. He asked for a smoke and I gave one to him, after which we headed off in our separate directions. A couple of seconds later, he called out, "Thank you!"
What I wanted to respond with was a "No problem, man," or a "No sweat, man." What I ended up yelling instead was, "PROBABLY NOT, SWEAT MAN!"

on the other hand, the ice cream was so good it made me curse

When I was going to sleep last night, after having eaten peach ice cream from the Cold Mountain Creamery, I imagined how I would blog about it. And my headline was going to be:

Do you fuckballs like ice cream??

And my text was going to be:

Holy fuck, fuckballs! Fuck off!!! I just ate the best cocksucking ice cream of all time! Goddamn it, you cowardly bitches, go eat some! Jesus Frankin' Fuck!

That ice cream was so good, I was mad at the world.

Edit: It's not the Cold MOUNTAIN Creamery. It's the Cold STONE Creamery. Jude Law and that Oscar-winning hillbilly Renee Zellweger had nothing to do with it.

My bad.

horrible thing, part two: in retrospect

In retrospect, I think that all of the rest of the crabs who were clearly not dead HAD TO BE THINKING:

I'm not here....I'm not here....I'm not here....I'm not here....I'm not here.....

And also, I feel certain they made damn sure to shake their doomed moneymakers from time to time, so NOBODY COULD GET THE IDEA THAT THEY WERE DEAD.

a horrible, horrible thing

My eyes are still aflame from seeing what I have seen. The crabs, the crabs in the live crab tank at Larry's Market. The crabs...last time I saw the crabs, they were mostly just lying around. But two of them were having crazy, crazy sex. And that, you know, was whatever, sort of amusing - the abandon of them, the, er, sex-positive vibe of the whole thing, if you will.

But yesterday, in that same tank. Horrible, horrible horror. The bulk of the crabs were lying around in a stupor: traumatized, stoned, what have you. But one crab was not moving - or rather, not moving OF ITS OWN VOLITION. Because there was movement involved. And the busy, horrible crab behind it? What was it doing? Was it having sex with the motionless crab? No.

The crab in front had died. And THE CRAB IN BACK WAS EATING IT. The. Crab. In. Back. Was. Tearing. Pieces. Out of the crab. In. Front!! Waving the pieces around, and EATING THEM. With, I have to say, as far as I can make out crab expressions, a totally psychotic look on its face.

I wished I had never been born.

put THAT on your google-goggle

It's going to seem like I permanently live with my mom, here, and I don't. We're just getting our bathroom remodeled! It's temporary! But I was sitting and chatting with my mom tonight, and she was going on and on for some reason about how drinking alcohol WASTES YOUR LIFE. And I was talking over her, trying to get her to stop, like, "Mom. MOM. MO-OM." And she just kept talking louder and louder, giving this sermon apropos of nothing. I mean, I barely drink a drop these days. I can make a quarter of a glass of wine last for three hours. And finally, both our volumes reached the same height and somehow that was the magic off switch. But not before she tossed out there, "Put THAT on your google-goggle."

She was looking for "blog".

goodwill industries

That's it. Payback time. Everybody be smart and go to Jason Grote's website. He wrote a play and sent it to a couple of us Printer's Devil folks, and we got to read it here in Seattle when it was published in the journal Knock, and it was called The Island of Never Giving Way on your Desire and all of us who worked on it exclaimed over its charming majesty. The link is below, in my group of links way down in South America down there. I'm still learning how to link in a post. If I did it in another one it was by accident. I don't think I did, though.

n-n-n-nobody messes with the raider machine

It's time to talk about school spirit. We will begin with Freshman Orientation at Nathan Hale High School, September 1982. First of all, I was thrilled, psyched, amazed to be joining the high school experience. It seemed to me that there was no difference, NONE, between high schoolers and adults. We were all as big as a person humanly needed to be. Freshmen were perhaps on the petite side of adulthood, I allowed - if I had known of David Spade back then, it would have been like, we're like David Spade. Small, yes, but old.

A couple of weeks before school began, my friend Tammy's mom drove us to Alderwood Mall in her black sports car to shop for school clothes, and we listened to "Urgent" by Foreigner, and "Don't talk to Strangers" by Rick Springfield, and most tinglingly of all, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. I think that's the moment that the school spirit was born, in that car that day. We would all need the eye of the tiger in high school, and by gum, I felt, we would have it. For freshman orientation, I planned to wear a white oxford, levi's and a blue fair isle sweater draped over my shoulders. I meant business. This would be like The Paper Chase.

Tammy's older sister Tracey was a cheerleader. What an in! What a way to start things. I had an unofficial sponsor. Other good news was that over the summer, I had finally learned how to open a locker. The goodness of this news can't be underestimated. In 8th grade, where I was the new girl at the school, and had skipped a grade (which I kept all the way on the down low), I never used my locker, because I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know how to open one. This should have been taken care of already, in my imaginary 7th grade year somewhere. So I always claimed that my locker was broken, and lugged around this brown adidas bag with all my stuff in it. Everyone always offered the use of their lockers, and I was like, no, naah, no thanks. So when summer came, every night I prayed to some Lord I didn't even have a particular relationship with, "Please, you Lord I've heard about, please let me learn how to open a locker." Every night, "Oh Lord, perhaps you'll remember I'm the one who wants to know how to open a locker," "The secret to opening a locker, Oh Lord, please unveil it before me," "But above all, Lord, my locker..."

The Lord eventually appeared in the form of my friend and upcoming locker partner, Donnette, a pleasant unthreatening soul who seemed like she wouldn't hold this locker secret over my head. We went to the high school a few days before orientation, and spent a few minutes working on it, and I cracked it. Closed locker, me working on it, open locker!

So I walked into freshman orientation fairly euphoric to begin with. Signed up for the classes, filed into the gym for the assembly. The pep squad came out, unspeakably glamourous, with Tracey's friendly face on it to boot. And then the motherhumpin' Beach Boys started in over the loudspeakers, "When some loud braggart tries to put you down and says his school is great....you tell him right away, now what's the matter buddy ain't you heard of my school, it's number one in the state....BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL NOW NOW, JUST LIKE YOU ARE TO YOUR GIRL OR GUY, BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL NOW AND LET YOUR COLORS FLY, BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL..." My hair was standing on end!! The pep squad was peppin' around, as sexy as can be, the music was thumping the bleachers,

WAS IT GOING TO BE LIKE THIS, THE HIGH SCHOOL??
(actual school colors represented above, minus the difficult-to-represent-here white)

No, it wasn't. But as Journey had exhorted me the year before in a dictated memo on my sneakers, I didn't stop believing. I ran for class office three years in a row and lost. I tried out for cheerleading, and didn't make it. I was on the committees for the school dances, I toilet-papered the football players' houses to put the eye of the tiger in them, I organized homecoming. At games, when we did the "We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how 'bout you?" thing, I reached deep within to summon the Raider spirit, as deep as situps, as deep as Pilates, ab-boomingly deep. And when we were ahead, and we did the TOTALLY INCONTROVERTIBLE cheer, "We've got more, check the score," the satisfaction I felt was so sublime it's a wonder I didn't pee.

synaesthesia now??

It's ridiculous, ridiculous I tell you, for me to start this catalogue that I'm about to start for you at this time of night. But I feel like I need to ride these blog impulses, because sometimes I sit in front of this blog, and I really want to write something, but there's nothing in my mind but things like, "And then I was thirsty, but water didn't sound good, so I was like, maybe tea? But we were out of tea. Not totally out, but out of the good kind..." etc.

The colors of the days of the week in the calendar a couple of posts below are very close to the colors I see in the synaesthetic way for the days of the week. And I thought that in that vein I would tell you about my color and gender and personality associations for each letter in the alphabet. I will use the colors I have access to here, but they may not be close enough, so I'll describe the difference.

A is a girl, straightlaced - no surprise, there. "A" Student.
B is a warmhearted, fat, male-to-female transsexual who loves to make pancakes.
C is a popular girl, but 2nd in command, S's toady.
D is a boy, quiet, flies under the radar. Studious.
E is an irritating boy, a non-stop un-funny wisecracker.
F is a girl, just a tad prissy, with a voice that sounds like she has braces.
G is an extremely popular boy, student body president, loved by peers and adults, both. He's got a firm handshake.
H is a boy, very literary and well-read. Okay, he's pretentious.
I is a boy, an offbeat, groovy musican with a dry sense of humor.
J is a boy, similar to D (they're friends), but a touch more athletic and popular.
K Here we have a female-to-male transsexual, who looks feminine and acts quietly macho. Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry is a classic K.
L is a quiet, churchgoing girl who needlepoints.
M is a brassy, masculine woman - but not a transsexual! Bette Midlerish.
N is an effeminate, but not transsexual, but maybe gay boy, who reads poetry and is very literary, but is not overbearing and pretentious like H.
O There's an O there, and he/she is white, which is why it looks like there isn't an O, and totally androgynous. A spacey ballerina/ballerino!
P is a guy and everybody loves him. Loyal, funny, life of the party.
Q is a golden, ladylike man.
R is a preppy boy, wearing a dark green and white striped rugby shirt.
S What a bitch! S is the queen of 8th grade, and she will trip you.
T is a girl, an exchange student from Spain. Very artistic.
U is a boy, very political, an activist, but somewhat quiet.
V is a boy, a complete fop. Vintage! Velvet!
W is a boy, friends with R. They're pretty interchangeable, really.
X is a boy, great friends with H. Who can talk louder? H can. Who's funnier? X is. X has more crossover appeal.
Y is a boy, a hippie skateboarder with blond hair.
Z is another boy, a musician again, like I, but I is funnier. I has short hair and Z has long hair. Z and Y agree, "It's all good." They reaffirm that with each other all the time.

goose stepping

I overheard this at Bartell Drugs:

Small child: Has it been 227 days?
Adult: What?
Small child: Has it been 227 days yet?
Adult: Since what?
Small child: Has it been 227 days.....since the morning? No...wait...has it been 227 days since I was born?

Another delightful, child-related thing has to do with my cousin Irena, our flower girl. She's nine years old, soon to be ten. After we went shopping with her, we came back to my mom's place, where the wedding will be. She and I went outside so she could practice her walk. She assured me that she'd been a flower girl before, so she was hep to the whole deal. And her walk...oh, mama. Awesome. A very deliberate sort of goose-step. I told her that she didn't need to do any kind of special step, she could just ease on down the aisle at a slowish pace. So she did it again. And again, crazy awesome goose step. So, now I feel like everything's as it should be. I told her that she doesn't have to walk in a special way, so that's off my conscience - the pressure of making a little person do this fancy walk on purpose - but, it looks like she's gonna bring this wickety-wackety fabulous walk to the table on her own. Sweet piece of fruit!

no, really, look at me

Tonight, Dave and I went to go see "Look At Me" at the Crest, which (the Crest) is so great because it's only 3$ a person. At first, we thought we were going to be the only two people in the theatre, but right before the show started some other people drifted in. This thwarted my plan for us to make out and crinkle our contraband sandwich wrappers. But who needed to make out and crinkle wrappers anyway because this movie was merveilleux! (If anybody knows punctuationally what to do when you have a rhetorical question in the first half of your sentence, but then it finishes out with a statement, please let me know. It looks ridiculous both ways.) It's the second time in a few years that I've been to see a movie where I got so involved that I started throwing characters dirty looks in the hopes they'd see me. The other time that happened was when I saw "The Fast Runner", and I was dying for this one Inuit lady to see me glaring at her from the audience.

The wedding is less than three weeks away now, and the stressful feelings are mounting. Today I made three huge week-long calendars on big pieces of drawing paper, which looked a little, but not quite, like this:

June 13-20th

calendar of totally do-able things

monday tuesday wednesday

thursday friday saturday sunday

I needed something big and spacious for my to-do lists, with a non-threatening color scheme, and affirmations built into it. This is a good idea that I recommend. It's the only way.

stalemate

A few nights ago I got in a fight with my mom. We're fine now, but I just have to say that if a fight with my mom were a tennis match, you'd serve the ball and either a watermelon would come back or you'd get a blank stare. Or you'd serve the ball and a ball would come back, but from behind, doinking you on the back of the head.

ampersand

I'm realizing that if you're the sort of person who hates it when people start written sentences with

"And"

you are going to hate this blog.

Peace be with you.
Ampersand also with you.

strawberry encounters of the ripe kind

That was the banner at Larry's Market today. Like a big strawberry coming down from outer space.

Also at Larry's Market today, at the Peet's coffee counter, was the girl who works there that Elizabeth and I secretly love. We each began to secretly love her independently, and then it came out that we both love her. We're both friends with her already, although she doesn't know this. I began to love her one day when I was trying to weasel some pennies out of the plastic change pocket in my wallet, and I was saying something in the voice of the pennies like "wait for us" or "we can help" or something like that. And she replied very kindly, "Pennies are so sensible."

My love grew when I went in there another day wearing this pink plastic shell necklace I got in Australia, and she said she liked it, and asked if they were real shells. I said no, that I thought it was just plastic. And she said, "The things they can do with plastic these days," in this really nice old lady kind of way.

I don't know when Elizabeth began to love her, but I do know that Elizabeth feels a little like, why don't they ever make her the customer of the week? She lives right by that Peet's, and is in there all the time. At the Peet's near where Dave and I live, the customer of the week thing is all about answering a trivia question. We're never going to be the customers of the week. But up at Elizabeth's Peet's, it's all about showing the Peet's spirit. Whatever that may be. But Elizabeth's got all kinds of spirit. The only thing that might be in her way is that she's always in a hurry when she goes in there. If they're going to see her spirit, they're going to have to do it fast.

Remind me at some point to tell you about how I felt in high school when we'd do the "we've got spirit, yes we do" thing. You see, I felt a certain way.

Today we took my little cousin Irena out shopping for her flower girl dress. Then we went to Baskin Robbins and got an ice cream cake! I'm proud to report that I didn't ask for anything to be written on it. I said to the lady behind the counter, "We're going to have a generic celebration." I have grown.

it made me laugh until i cried, but you won't

What was funny was I just looked at our wedding website, where our gift registries are. Now, one the one hand, you feel like a jackass picking gifts for yourself. But on the other hand, it is, of course, awesome. And you can peek to see what people have gotten you so far. And so far we've gotten two things: a juicer and a comforter. And I made myself laugh, imagining that those would be the only two wedding presents we got, and imagining that we could wrap ourselves up in the comforter and drink juice to comfort ourselves for only getting a juicer and a comforter.


It's late.

goddamnit, I'M the flaneuse

I'm steaming!

Let me lead up to why. I've been looking around at other people's blogs, and frankly -- now listen, I know I'm new at this. Really new! It's been, what, like, a day. Two days. Three tops, that I've had this blog. But other people's blogs, a lot of them, they're -- they look better. They have good titles, clever ones that make me think that if I saw that person, they'd be dressed really hip, and if I talked to them, they'd be funny. Like, zippy funny, really quick and possibly a couple of inches over my head. They've got graphics, and they know how to get photos in there, and THEY'RE JUST AWESOME, some of them.

So, in the last 20 minutes or so, I'm thinking, what can I do RIGHT NOW that will style out my blog. And of course! It's the title! I can come up with a title, right now, and that won't require graphics or anything, doesn't fall outside the range of my little Fred Flintstoney computer skills. And I'm like, I'VE GOT IT. Right here in my hand! And I've been dying to use this term. My blog is going to be called:

Diary of a Flaneuse

Beautiful! Can't wait! And then I'm all, I'm just gonna look up the definition of "flaneuse" real quick on the internet here to make sure it means what I think it means. Yes, it does. It does, I find out. It's basically a woman wandering around enjoying the urban pleasures. Yeah. I find that out. And, uh, concurrently, I find out that some other goddamn blogeuse has NIPPED IT for her blog, which is called 'Flaneuse'!!

Edit: Some of this had to go.

O Flaneuse, you blogging slut, why?! Why?!

move slowly yet be brave

That might become my motto. I really got something from PerfectMatch.

Also, if you didn't see the movie "Millions", I think you'll feel better when you get that taken care of. When you of that get that taken care.

My friend Dup said nice things about my writing on his blog. He had just written in his blog about how long you can live on a compliment. I will be riding "playful, profound and hilarious" on into I think my 40's. I will soon be 36. I am playful, profound and hilarious.

This is what happened with the ice cream cake. If not now, when? I'll tell you now. Although, if you're reading this, you probably know me and then there's a strong chance you'll have heard this story. My mom and I were sitting around one summer afternoon when I was home from college. We were in the mood for ice cream cake. Then it struck us that you don't have to luck into ice cream cake. You can go to Baskin Robbins and get one for no reason. But I don't think they know this at Baskin Robbins. At Baskin Robbins, they will automatically assume you have a reason, and they'll want to know what it is. I say this because I went immediately to Baskin Robbins, and said, "We want that ice cream cake," pointing to a mid-size rectangular number. And the girl got it out for me and said, "What do you want written on it?" And I panicked. In that moment, it seemed impossible to tell her that no, my mom and I are just going to eat it. I thought she would think that was too shockingly piggy or just out of bounds, somehow. But I wasn't in the mood to lie in that moment and make it be someone's birthday or anniversary or something. So, I told her to write "Sisu". Sisu is a Finnish word, it's like the Finnish national characteristic, and it translates loosely to something like 'true grit' or 'perseverance' or 'toughness'. (My mom is from Finland.) (I love how I think there are people out there reading this that don't know me and thus don't know this. The hubris!) So, I spelled it out for her, and thought that was it, we were done. But she wrote it really small with the icing, off to one side, like she was expecting more words, and then she looked up at me like, and then? But there wasn't anything else to say. So I told her to put exclamation points after it, however many it took to stretch it out enough to cover the cake. So I brought home this weird-ass cake that was like

sisu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and my mom was like, what's going on here? And I was like, never mind.

also

Also for my username for PerfectMatch, I chose "ahhbach". Because once on M*A*S*H, when Radar O'Reilly was trying to impress a lady, he thought that he would be more seductive and impressive if he was into classical music. So he would try to throw an "Ah...Bach." into the conversation when he could. I just threw in the extra 'h' so it wouldn't read like "AHbock."

gwendolyn, mike and muhittin

Oh, man! What have I wrought? Last night, while I was crazy, I went on Perfect Match.com. Now, listen. It's not like that. I'm married. And about to get even marrieder, and I love my husband to pieces. So why I did that is I have a friend who signed up for PerfectMatch.com, and she told me all about how you make your profile - you take a questionnaire and find out who you are and what you're like, and then they find the people who would match with that in the different ways, blah blah. And I love questionnaires about myself. So, I thought, I'm not going to pay for anything or sign up for anything. I'm just going to make a fake profile and then take the questionnaire for real to find out what I'm like! (I'll tell you what I'm like later.) (I'll also tell you what a psychic said I'm like later.)

So, I filled out the profile and changed a few things about myself. I said my name was Gwendolyn, and that I was 5'5" (the default height, apparently) and blonde and blue-eyed, and that I spoke Finnish as well as English (false) and that I was carrying a few extra pounds (true). And I said in my "about me" thing - my headline was "lower low the roof beam, carpenters" --get it? the opposite of "raise high the roof beam, carpenters", and then in the text part I just finished it, "like Ares comes the bride, shorter far than a short man." Because I'm short. Even though Gwendolyn's not that short. It was LATE. I just threw something out there so I could get to the questionnaire. (That reminds me that I should tell you about the ice-cream cake I picked up from a Baskin Robbins a few years ago.) (Later.)

So I did the questionnaire, and I'm like this:

Risk Averse, Relaxed, Optimistic, Seeks Variety

You are cautious at the beginnings of relationships not to fall in love too fast. However, once you've gotten into it a bit, your optimistic nature looks to the possible rather than to the difficulties that may lie ahead. You are likely to put your love at the center of your life and you need someone who wants to be there. You take time for love and you need someone with the same priority. You do, however, like varied experiences, so your life needs growth, change and perhaps, adventure. Boredom and habit are a part of all long-term relationships. You need someone who, like yourself, will need to keep life (and the relationship) stimulating and new.

and also like this:

Flexible, Compromiser, Temperate, Extrovert

You are the universal connector. You get along with just about everyone, except perhaps a serious Introvert, if you are an extreme E (say a score of six true answers out of six questions on our quiz). But, you will do well with almost anyone, except someone looking for someone who wants a highly structured life with a dominating type who will direct the relationship. You on the other hand, might enjoy someone who is a bit more intense and more dominant than yourself. You are flexible enough to meet the challenge! In any case, you have the tools to be a great partner: You are not insecure in relationships, you like to work with someone on creating a life together, you don't get upset easily and you seek intimacy and open up your heart to a partner. What's not to love? Someone who is a D might make the mistake to take some of this good will for weakness and try and take advantage of your good nature. You have to be careful and not let that happen. Your need to be liked and your willingness to bend may allow you to compromise too much, so be careful of dominant types that don't have a good sense of fairness and don't appreciate your own kind of strength. Your easiest match is probably someone like you. An FCTE or an FCHE, if you like the passionate type, or even an FDHE, if you like charismatic, big personalities. But, there are other types that might be intriguing, a little more of a stretch, but maybe what you might want.

I was interested and glad to learn about myself, and what I'm like, and then I went to bed EVENTUALLY and forgot about it. But then I woke up and checked my email and I found this:

Dear Gwendolyn and Mike,

Exciting news!

There was more, as will be shown in the other email I got, where I'll show you the whole thing:


Dear Gwendolyn and Muhittin,

Exciting news! We’ve been searching the PerfectMatch.com community for members identified as having a high probability of compatibility with you. We’re happy to let you know our ongoing and exhaustive search has netted a perfect match. Based on your personality profile, DealBreakers and other vital attributes, this member could be your ideal partner. Within the match details below, you’ll find a link that will take you to your PerfectMatch area, where you can review your match’s profile in detail:

Muhittin is 29 years old and lives in Istanbul, Turkey
Gwendolyn is 36 years old and lives in Seattle, WA, United States

Move slowly, yet be brave. Always review all of your match’s profile very carefully. If you’re comfortable about taking that next significant step in your important journey, I encourage you to send an IceBreaker. Let’s see if we do indeed have a perfect match. Keep us posted.

Oops.

Here's what the famous psychic Sonia Choquette said about me. I was looking on her website and found this thing where people can email in a question to the site, and she'll randomly pick a couple of them a month and give her psychic take on the matter.

Let me pause to say right now, I LOVE PSYCHICS. I would see one every day if there were enough to talk about and I could afford it. I don't like fake psychics. You can tell when it's a fake, because it feels all flat and your eyes start to narrow and you just know that it's fake. But when it's real, my hair stands on end and it feels like I'm taking a shower, only not with water, with rushing energy that pours onto my head.

So, I had this phone reading with Sonia Choquette almost two years ago. Two days before I met Dave! (My husband.) And she said that within two years I was going to be married and that I'd think it was too good to be true but it wouldn't be. She was right! But then she also said something almost exactly like this:

Believe it or nor this is a lifetime for rest and relaxation. You come from a soul history that has been overly oriented toward crisis and rescue and indeed have saved many from tragedy, at times at your own expense. Consequently you have acquired a great deal of good karma. That means many people are positioned to bring back to you good things and positive benefits. When unexpected gifts arise, accept gracefully and do not struggle with whether or not you deserve it. You do. As for work, this is a lifetime to recuperate balance and recover your childlike sense of joy and wonder. It is not a hero lifetime or one that requires a lot from you in terms of grand accomplishments. Allow your inner child to speak and lead you toward work that is fun in its nature, not too deep or serious and certainly not crises oriented. Work in a shop for beautiful things, in design, hospitality, even a spa. In any place that speaks to the good life. Keep things light this time. This is not a waste of time. You are here to learn to love earth, and enjoy the experience of being on earth.

The above wasn't from my reading, but it was just like it. It was from an email someone sent in to the website with their own question, and that was her response. And I was like, that's what she said to me! And then I was like, does that mean I wasn't a hero in a previous lifetime? I want to still believe that I was a hero, and that I was meant to just kick it this time around. I do. I'm going to. It's true. I'm living my destiny. That's why I haven't accomplished anything. Because it's my DESTINY not to. But I'd like to think that my longer cosmic resume is still looking good.

my mom's fears about using concealer

So, my mom has this running thing that she's had over the years. It's a fear of being too beautiful. I'm not kidding, even though she is, a little. I think she is, but also, she isn't. Here's how it works:

You can compliment her on her looks in the present, to a degree, with no problems. You can say, "You look great in that tunic, Mom" and she'll be like "Do I??" with this tone like she's been WAITING for someone to mention it. But, if the compliment is too big, it taps into that fear, so it'll be like, "You look SO beautiful with that scarf on, really ravishing" and this will have crossed the line past good news, and she'll get serious and say, "I don't want to be too beautiful."

This has gone on for years. But day before yesterday we're talking about my upcoming wedding, and how she's going to do her makeup. Lipstick, foundation, a little blush. No powder. Her skin's too dry. She brings up concealer. Maybe she should use some. I offer forth the idea that maybe liquid concealer is the way to go. And I extol the virtues of concealer for a few seconds, ending with, "It'll make you look ten years younger." And my mom gets that serious look on her face and says, "I don't want to look too--" and I cut her off, "MOM." Like, Mom. It's concealer. You're 70. I think you're safe. She got it, right away. We started laughing and really, really busted a gut.

See, she used to be a real looker when she was young. She was, she was gorgeous. She talks about how she thought that all she really needed to bring to the show was just looking pretty, that that was enough. But something about her beauty has stuck with her, and I love it. You have to love a 70 year old woman who's afraid to wear the wrong concealer for fear that the superegos of every man in the room would self-destruct and she'd find herself at the center of a raping, pillaging festival of id.

remind me to talk about my mom's fears about using concealer

it's still the same night! but i didn't want to forget. that, i think, is going to be real blog material. just you WAIT.

one last thing and then i'm REALLY going to bed

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/06/08/pilots/index.html

Jesus Louise.

It starts now? At 3 in the morning?

Of course it does. Of course I have picked 3:30 in the morning to begin my blog. I stop by the computer on my way to bed at midnight or so, and I'm like "I'm just going to check my e-mail, return some e-mails" and then I'm like "and look at our wedding website" and then "and also Salon" and then "mcsweeneys is funny" and then I'm like "Okay, it's 12:50 now. I will be online until 1:00 and then really, really I will go to bed."

And now it's 3:30 and I'm STARTING a blog. What a bad idea! I think when I get past a certain point of tiredness, the tiredness starts pushing on my brain. I can feel it pushing on my brain now, pushing good ideas to the bottom, which hurts. The great idea of sleeping now in my bed with my husband is crushed underneath what feels like an enormous pile of boxes of books. Nothing is heavier than a box of books. I wish somebody would come save me and make me go to bed.

What I hope for with this blog is that the people who read it, all maybe three of them, will like me more with every post. What I fear is that all three people will secretly, in a way we'll never speak about, like me less. What I hope is that my posts will be charming and knockabout in a tiny way, like a movie stub or a receipt you find in your purse that you actually enjoy looking at, because it reminds you of something, like perhaps the movie, if the movie was good, or the thing you bought, if the receipt was for something you use and like. What I fear is that my posts will be more like how a movie stub or a receipt actually are most of the time when you find them, that they'll elicit a feeling parallel to, "Oh, stupid Space Cowboys" or "What a bad hamburger" or "Those pants, I can't quite get behind them."

It will be Dup's fault, whatever happens. He started it, with his blog. His blog works like I want mine to.