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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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Although I drank like it was going out of (Old) Style Saturday night at the Gaper's Block All-Blogger Reading, I do not think I embarrassed myself too badly. I could have done better, of course. I talked too fast, and I slurred a little, probably, and I gushed all over Alex Golub because he's the ginchiest and so smart. You know how when a certain subset of girls are deemed good-looking, a certain other subset of boys who are into the kreative spe11ing say that they are "hott"? Because the extra "t" stands for extra hotness or something? Alex deserves an extra t. He is smartt. I gushed all over Wendy too. I guess it was a night for gushing all over people. Somebody hand me a towel? AH, THERE'S THE SEGUE---HOWEVER, THE FOLLOWING IS NOT FOR THE MENSTRUALLY SQUEAMISH I have a bone to pick with Mr. Bushnell. He read an excerpt from his serialized fiction experiment thing that featured a female character in need of a tampon change, and he wrote that she could "feel the tampon sliding out" or something like that. Jeremy, you seem like a good egg and a good writer, but an evening seminar at Vagina School may be in order. Or maybe you could employ a Vagina Fact Checker the next time you decide to write about vaginas. Because as far as I know, this never happens. As a 1970s feminist bumper sticker might say, "It's Not A Hole, It's A Muscle." Tampons can overflow, and cause embarrassment and curse words while doing the laundry, but I have never in my life heard of a tampon just deciding to make an unscheduled exit. If any actual girls have experienced this, please contact me so I can revise my stance if necessary. And Jeremy, please don't kick my ass for critiquing this section of your writing---the other things you read, that were not about vaginas, pleased me mightily. So yeah, it was an okay night. I really hate the word "blogger," though, and that word got said a lot. Every time I hear the word "blogger" my brain sort of spasms and I have to think the word FROGGER! in all caps like that, and I have to mentally hear the Frogger theme song. It is the only way I can cope with such a horrible word, it is a spell I use to keep evil away. I keep it in my bag of holding. After all that social interaction I did not think I could handle any more of it, so instead of going out to a bar I just went to my sister's place for beer and marijuana and DVDs of old educational films about hygiene. Then Sunday I went to a Gold Coast baby shower for a friend, taking Nora along, and spent most of the time trying to prevent her from destroying numerous priceless artifacts in the palatial, overdecorated, gigantic high-rise apartment of the hostess. This place was alarming, and so were a few of the peanut-brittle-thin women attending, but it was worth feeling like an underdressed chambermaid to see some old friends and to show off my hypercute child. If I hadn't had Nora to wrangle I would have focused solely on eating, as the spread was not to be believed. Nora nibbled on quiche and fruit salad and repeatedly tried to toddle into the kitchen where the caterers were toiling, causing much delighted cooing in Spanish: so either my daughter fancies herself a working-class Champion Of The People or she just likes to get in the way. Nora really is tiny. At thirteen months old and barely eighteen pounds, she looks like a puppet next to other big strapping breastfed American babies. My friend's child, one month older but a head taller and just gigantic in comparison, got a rude shock when she thought she could swoop in and take away a book Nora was holding. Just because she is small doesn't mean she won't defend herself, and I almost had a stroke as I tried not to laugh at Nora's white-knuckled kung-fu grip, guttural monster yell, and crazed expression. Oh help me. I feel like I am trying to gather up all my shards of personality and make them into...not a whole, exactly, that would be dumb and outdatedly Modernist of me, but how about an orderly pile of shards? Would that be too much to ask? I feel a bit like Stretch Armstrong lately, by which I mean "pulled in all directions" and not "blonde and beefy." I really miss the afterwork stuff I used to do with friends, but working full-time means that even if I fly home as fast as the El will take me I have exactly four hours of Nora-time available to me each workday, and that is not enough. I don't feel guilty about working (the kid is with her father, after all), and this is not some fake Lifetime Channel drama called Mimi Is Torn Between Her Kid And The Bottle. It's not the going out and drinking that I miss. I miss my friends. And I miss Nora, now, even though I am writing this in the early early morning before work and she is sleeping right next door. And I miss all the shards that I seem to have misplaced somewhere (see abandoned metaphor above), and I feel like I have to work overtime to battle the Great Drifting Alienated Orb Of Adulthood (see ill-conceived metaphor here). (Why do I see it as this huge unanchored silver weather balloon that just appears in your backyard one day?) And I wish Chicago would get warm already. This is a transitional time. But I do not want to think of it as "okay, now LT and I switch from our old lives to our new, parental lives." I want to integrate. I want to cut and paste, not find and replace. It takes a village, people. (Ha!) I think this is a long-winded way of saying you should come over to my house and drink a lot of wine and laugh at the baby and talk to me all night long. Hi. ---mimi smartypants graduated from Vagina School with high honors. back/forward |
