Quodlibets

Vegas

Vegas is weird, man.  I'm not a gambling person.  I don't understand the risk-taking.  I do understand why some people like it, but yeah.  Not into it.

I'm here to see shows, really.  Beatles Love specifically.  And eat.  Vegas is a great restaurant city now.  And there's an In-N-Out, which makes Sam happy.  Made Sam happy, about an hour ago.

We're having fun.  I'm a little tired, because the hotel bed won the argument last night, and I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep.  I took a nap today, but it's left me feeling like I've got a wicked hangover. 

I've got nothing else to say right now.

I don't know how this will work

Light posting for the next few days.  I'm going to post (I think I hope), but I'm not 100% sure how.  I'll figure it out. 

I don't have much else to say today.  Busy getting ready. 

Paper Towels

Ok, this is trivial.  But there is someone here who does not know how to use the pull-down automatic paper towel dispensers in our bathrooms, and it drives me nuts.

It's not very hard to pull down a towel, which also pulls down the next one part-way, and then rip off the bottom one.  Does everyone know what I'm talking about here?  Automatic machine.  Paper towels in a roll, perforated for easy ripping.  SO EASY TO USE.

And yet, I go in the bathroom, and the next towel hasn't descended.  Is someone pulling the first towel wrong?  Maybe from the side?  And then, dude!  If the next towel doesn't come out, by some weird occurrence, turn that red knobby thing on the side, so that the next person that comes in doesn't end up doing it while dripping water all over the floor.  It's NOT THAT HARD.

Okay.  I'm done now.

Affianced

I hate that word.  I hate the word fiancee too, and I refuse to use it.  Our wedding planner (yes, we have one; it's not as bad as it sounds, trust me), the first time I spoke to her on the phone, scolded me for using the word boyfriend to describe Sam.  "He's your fiancee!" she practically shouted at me.  Fiancee, schmiancee.  He's my boyfriend.  Perfectly describes his relationship to me.  Yeah, we're getting married.  But we're not fancy about it.  You can be quite certain I will never EVER call him my fiancee while speaking of him to others. 

Here's another way we're not fancy: I have no engagement ring.  Have I talked about this before?  I STRONGLY object to engagement rings as tokens of ownership.  Especially in light of the fact that in this instance, the man is clearly owning the woman.  How many men do you know that wear an engagement ring?  The world doesn't know men are off the market, but oho! the woman is taken.  You can tell by the GIANT EARTH ROCK she's wearing on her finger.  Now, I don't object to diamonds (though I probably should), or gems in general.  I happen to think they're very pretty.  But I don't think they're pretty when they're signaling to the world that some man has claimed me.

Frankly, doesn't it seem in some ways like a woman is being bought?  The bigger the ring, the better!  Because if you've got a big rock, he paid A LOT!  Which means he is AWESOME and POWERFUL and can afford to TAKE CARE OF WOMAN.  Ugh.  And this modern bride price sets up this hideous competition between women, because when you show up with that humdinger, and the person next to you has a chip, what does that say?  I'll tell you, it says that he doesn't love you enough to buy you a big ol' whopper.  Or *gasp* he might not be a good provider.  Everything about those last two sentences MAKE me want to puke. 

Please don't tell me that you understand all this and when you are proposed to, and the ring is whipped out, you are accepting it and you can shed all the implications of it.  I'm sorry.  You can't.  And even if you and he can, the rest of the world certainly cannot.  And you cannot explain to every person who looks at your ring: but wait!  not me!  I don't believe in all the things this shiny rock represents!  Not me!  I swear!  And look, I'm sure you don't care what size the ring is, because you love him no matter what, but you know what?  Other WOMEN are going to look at that ring and they are GOING TO JUDGE YOU.  And him.  And that's fucked up too.  You can't escape that.  You can put yourself above it and not care what other women think of you.  You can make a vow not to judge women based on their rings.  You can do those things, but you are STILL buying into a system that creates this dichotomy. 

Engagement rings are harmful to women.  Point blank.  You can't convince me otherwise, even if you argue that he's getting a flat-screen HDTV as an engagement present.  Unless he's going to wear that TV everywhere, and everyone in the world will know what it represents, the two things ain't the same.  All the HDTV tells me is that you have lots of money.  So buy the HDTV for him, fine.  But don't put on a ring that tells the world that a man FINALLY bought you, and that hallelujah, you are loved by a rich man.  

Again: engagement rings are harmful. to. women.

FAIL

Third day fail.  I just plain forgot.  Moving on.  Post later today.

A Tribute to my sister, on the occasion of her Birthday, in Haiku Verse

Katie has blond hair.

Very different from mine.

One difference of many.

*

Oh! that balloon. Pop!

The babysitter is here.

Now you can't show Mom.

*

Do not eat that cake!

Mom made a sitting Care Bear!

Ruined! By Katie.

*

You eat that orange.

Even if you don't like it.

Else Mom will chase you.

*

Justin Timberlake.

Knitting. Cookies. Color Red.

Things you like a lot.

*

Coconut. Textures.

Folk Music. Pepperoni

Things you hate a lot.

*

You bought a prom dress

On Capri. Sparkly and black.

It was the best dress.

*

I wish you liked sports.

Could play fantasy football.

Oh well. Won't happen.

*

Sorry to say it

But your torso is crazy.

You know already.

*

We laugh all the time.

Add Mom, and we can't control

the insanity.

*

I admire your

loyalty, intelligence,

fierceness, bravery.

*

Wish only good things

for you. Happiness and joy,

some big dogs to love.

*

Lucky you're my sis,

Lucky we can be friends too.

Too sappy?  Sorry.

*

Was going to write

Twenty-eight. But damn, I'm done.

Happy Birthday, Kate.

NaBloPoMo 2009

That's right.  National Blog Posting Month.  I'm doing it.  Once a day, every day, for one month.  Even while on a trip to Vegas.  Even on Thanksgiving (and anti-Thanksgiving, which is always fun).  I've been saving up some posts.  I'm going to talk about things. 

And I'm quite sure I'll be making some random lists.  So here we go:

A LIST OF CANDY SAM AND I BOUGHT FOR 50% OFF THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN:

• Twix
• Snickers
• Twizzlers
• Reese's Pieces
• Pay Day

Yes, we are living in a land of candy excess.  The Twizzlers and Payday are going to his work, though.  A treat for his co-workers. 

The rest are living in a candy bowl on the coffee table.  We don't have a good track record of eating that candy, so we might be talking about months of living there, and then the bottom of a garbage bag.

Or maybe we'll surprise everyone and eat it all.  Or more likely, we'll give up and Sam will end up taking it all to work.

Happy Day after Halloween!  Half-price candy day!

Another wasted $20

***There may be spoilers in this post, so if you're planning on seeing "Where the Wild Things Are", don't read it.

Let me start out by saying that the "Where the Wild Things Are" trailer made me teary-eyed.  It was probably a combination of the song ("Wake Up" by Arcade Fire, a beautiful, beautiful song), and the images of the Wild Things--amazing and hairy and also beautiful.  I don't have a great deal of feeling for the original book by Sendak; of course I knew of it, of course I've read it in the past, but it meant nothing to me.  (Unlike "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," which is one of the touchstone books of my childhood.  But that's another story.)  So my teary state wasn't brought on by my emotional attachment to the book.  It was produced purely by the lovely trailer.

And I am so sorry to say it, but that trailer was so much better than the movie, it was sad.  About halfway through, I used my phone to check the football scores, and I realized that a) I wanted to be at home watching the games and b) oh my god, I was bored.  Bored out of my head.  And there was still a LOT of movie left.  Now, there were a lot of problems with the movie--producing boredom, yes?--but one of the worst was that it created NO emotion in me.  I wasn't attached to Max.  I didn't really care about what happened to anyone in the film.  Including the monsters.

Now, the monsters were amazing.  They just looked great (though at times they moved more like men in big ol' hairy suits than actual living breathing creatures), and they were very fun to look at.  But the voices?  Distracting, for me.  Every time Judith talked, I had a moment like this, "Hey!  That's Catherine O'Hara!"  I spent a good portion of the movie trying to see in my head the actress voicing KW.  If I was into the movie, would that be happening?  (Or maybe Jonze should have chosen obscure voice actors for the roles.)

Sam wasn't all that impressed with it either, which made me feel better, because as the movie was ending (finally, oh my god, finally), I was hoping that he wouldn't turn to me and say, "That was so good."  There's something reassuring about the fact that he didn't like it.  He may not be as vehement as me about it, but it's just nice knowing that someone else felt the same as I did.  I don't always need this reassurance, but when it's a movie like this, that you a) expect to love and that b) everyone else around you loved and that c) everyone thinks you should love, well the expectations make you feel a little weird about things.

I still feel a little bit like maybe *I* just didn't get it, and other people will see it and freak out about how good it is.  Regardless of Sam's reaction.  But it seemed empty to me, at the very end of it.  I can't think of another way to describe it.  Empty, is all.  Beautiful at times, but empty. 

Loop

I've been struggling with the issue of whether to make myself write posts, or to only do it when I'm truly itching to say something.  The thing is, I've got all this stored up writerly energy, and it makes me want to post post post, but then I start thinking about what I'm going to write about, and I freeze.  Which, incidentally, is why I didn't blog here for almost a year; I had the above experience nearly every week, and it was enough to keep me from blogging completely.

Even now, I've just erased three different paragraphs that said three different things, all about this topic of not blogging.  Or blogging.  I don't know why, but I'm suffering from the fear of putting a word wrong.  I have things I'd like to talk about, but I also don't want to....start something.  That's a weird thing to say, right?  I'm talking about writing about personal things, and I have very strong feelings about some things--many things--and where I used to just let it all hang out and type it all up like a battering ram, now I am mindful of the silence I've kept for the last eleven months, and unsure.

If you know me, you're probably yelping from the hilarity of me keeping any opinions to myself.  Probably I didn't when I was speaking in the last eleven months.  But writerly silence is still a silence of a particular type, and in those silent eleven months I mourned the loss of writing; now I am mourning the breaking of that silence.  It's a very weird loop to be caught up in.  When I am not writing, I am thinking "I would really like to write again," and when I begin to write, I am thinking, "I am wondering if I should actually type these things so people can read them.  Perhaps not."

I don't know how to reconcile the loop.  Again to the options of the first paragraph.  I could force myself to write, thus hopefully breaking the loop.  Or I could wait until I feel really compelled, and hope that compulsion comes more and more often.  I don't know what I will choose to do, but I do know that November will in fact break the stalemate in my head, because I will be doing NaBloPoMo this year.  The original month was always November, and so November it is.

One of many posts on marriage and weddings

I obviously have complicated feelings about weddings and marriage, which you know if you read this blog for the course of its life before the hiatus.

Nonetheless, Sam and I are doing both--having a wedding and entering into a marriage.  You should know from the outset that there won't be any romantic talk about how it's my day, or how we're starting a new life together, or how much I love him and can't wait to spend my life with him.  I've already BEEN spending my life with him, and suffice it to say that there are still enough gooey feelings in place to convince me that in another 8, 10, 15, 30 (or until the mortgage is paid, ha!) we'll be still hanging onto gooey feelings.

But put simply, we are not getting married because we are in love.  I'm not deliberately being anti-romantic, but when we discussed getting married (which we did), and when we decided to go for it (which we did), love was never part of the equation.  I think both of us understand that the love is there, otherwise why would we even be discussing it?  The fact is, when we entered a 30-yr mortgage together, we made a practical commitment to one another, and it was an acknowledgment of how we feel about one another.  A practical acknowledgment.  The marriage part that followed the mortgage is an acknowledgment that there are some practical benefits of marriage given to us by the government and private companies, and we would like to be able to take advantage of these if we need to.  (I'm speaking of health insurance, above all else.) 

Now, I have incredibly conflicting feelings about this, because I feel a serious sense of guilt that I can get married legally and friends of mine (no exaggeration) cannot.  Because they are gay.  I've often said that I wouldn't get married as long as homosexuals could not, and I find to my sadness that I'm going to.  I could probably wait; the mortgage was the commitment, after all.  But what if (holy crap I hope not) Sam loses his job in retail, and he's without health insurance?  What if (holy motherf-ing crap I hope not) something happens to one of us, something impairing?  Realistically, our families would NEVER ever do anything contrary to our wishes, but at the same time, the best protection in this instance is marriage.  It is what it is.

So we're doing it, regardless of the complicated feelings on my end (and the complicated feelings on his?  Not sure.) and again, it is what it is.

This post is mostly addressing the marriage side of this equation, and the actual marriage--the day to day, the living together, the loving him--that's going to be the easiest part of all of this.  I don't think anything will change from how we are right now, to be honest.  It's the abstract feelings about it that get in the way. 

And then, there is the wedding.  That's for another post.  Probably more than one.