Hokay, so you know when your significant other asks what you want for your birthday and you say "Surprise me"? And it's not that you're being coy, because you really don't have one exact thing in mind and the anticipation is half the fun? But you did have a vague NOTION in mind, like, I don't know, a spa day or a Blu-Ray player or something, and so you get reasonably pissed when he gives you a Gas Mart card with $9.75 on it? And he's like, "Well, I'm not a mind-reader!" and you're like, "You didn't have to be, you just had to be NOT A MORON"? We've all been there? Okay, good.

So, every day with my iPod is like getting a series of unsatisfactory birthday presents.

It's my own fault, really. I have this bizarre compulsion to hit "randomize" every day as I settle at my desk - no playlists, just 2200 individual songs completely at random - and then proceed to spend the next four hours angry as fuck that it's not playing the song I want. THAT ONE. PLAY THAT DAMN SONG. But I can't CLICK on that damn song, because that's about as fun as buying your own birthday present and wrapping it yourself and maybe, like, putting on a little party hat and singing a little ditty and pretending to be shocked when you open it, which is to say a lot of fun but also slightly tainted with shame and the fear that your fiance might walk in and catch you. And anyway, the surprise element of it is the best part. There's just nothing quite like the rush of sitting through all 18 minutes of Rachmoninov's third piano concerto and then hearing the opening drum beats of When the Levee Breaks, like THANK YOU, GODDAMMIT, THERE WE GO. FINALLY. FUCK.

Also, I kind of don't know how to make playlists on my iPod.

But today I started thinking I should really consider learning how to make a playlist for the gym, at least, for safety reasons.

Me, on the exercise bike: "Okay, I need some good, upbeat workout music."
iPod: "I know! How about Enya?"
Me, skipping ahead: "Nah, not for working out."
iPod: "How about Enya?"
Me, skipping ahead: "No."
iPod: "Enya?"
Me, skipping ahead: "No."
iPod: "Have you considered Enya?"
Me, skipping ahead: "NO."
iPod: "Maybe some Enya?"
Me, skipping ahead: "NO!"
iPod: "Barry Manilow?"
Me, skipping ahead: "Why the hell do I even HAVE this?"
Barry Manilow: "OH MAAAANNDY!"
Me: "WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"
iPod: "How about Zach Quinto reading the Star Trek audiobook?"
Me: "...okay, fine, that works."
Bike: -hums along steadily-
Zach Quinto, reading as Gaila in the gayest voice imaginable: "I can't stand it anymore, Jim!"
Me: "OMG EPIC ROFLCOPTER" -falls off bike-
iPod: -falls on my head, skipping ahead in the audiobook-
Bike Pedal: -continues spinning and nails me in the crotch-
Zach Quinto: "SON OF A BITCH BITCH BITCH"
Me: "...indeed."

If it's the thought that counts, my iPod is a hateful bastard.

A long time ago, I made it my goal to learn something new every day. Something big, something small, important, trivial, whatever - I had it all figured that if I learned one new thing every day I'd make my life 50% more streamlined once over every three months, particularly if any of the things I learned were Microsoft Word shortcuts. (So far I know one of them, which is to yell over my cubicle wall, "Hey, does anybody know how to double space in fewer than eight steps?")

I wasn't entirely accounting for all the things I'd forget, or all the things I'd learn that would later turn out to be wrong or utterly useless or that no one in their right mind would want to know, but mostly I did well. For instance, did you know that Jimmy Page plays the guitar line on Joe Cocker's cover of "With a Little Help From My Friends," better known to pretty much everyone not in AARP as the theme to The Wonder Years? Is your life not INSTANTANEOUSLY BETTER because of this knowledge? I know mine is.

Sometimes, though, I get extra lucky, to make up for the day I learned all about the megalodon. Sometimes I learn something - completely by accident! - that increases my life's efficiency WHILE nourishing me psychologically and spiritually, cleansing me of my apprehensions and fears. For example, did you know that the back vent of a hairdryer is built to pop off and allow you to pull out the years of matted lint and hair that's gotten sucked inside? Did you know that doing so will restore air flow to the machine and allow your hair to dry twenty minutes faster?

Did you know that air being sucked futilely through an impenetrable clomp of hair makes a kind of whhrrrrrrr noise?

I found the problem.

I knew, from the moment Milo got down on one knee, that we - like all betrothed couples - were eventually going to be confronted with the make-or-break moment. You know what I mean; you're having your thirty-ninth fight about which way the toilet paper roll goes, and suddenly you look at this person and wonder whether you can truly face all the years of your life alongside someone who thinks the toilet paper should roll under instead of over. (Answer: This is not only incorrect but also should be punishable by steep fine with option of jail time at the judge's discretion, depending on whether the guilty party also insists that he didn't NEED to change the roll because he didn't FINISH IT, there's still a PERFECTLY GOOD quarter of a sheet still hanging right there, partially shredded and covered in cardboard glue.)

But I couldn't really guess at what our problem was going to be, because we don't fight, ever. Which is to say that we are so fundamentally, mind-bendingly opposite in every imaginable facet of existence that we can't even get on the same wavelength long enough to fight. I would be in the bathroom, measuring the toilet paper roll with a level, and he would never notice if there was toilet paper at all, because there's always kleenex, or the guest towels, or his sock. Though I did wonder for a time if our equanimity wasn't the problem - when you get right down to it, how can you really know you want to marry a person until you've snapped the lid off your scanner for the express purpose of throwing it at them?

But no, there's a much, much bigger problem. The real problem is that the poltergeists are going to feast on our flesh.

I've mentioned before that Milo is a wee bit, ah...skittish. I can walk up to him in the middle of a crowded Home Depot and whisper, "Little girl from The Ring" and he will scream "OH GOD WHERE" and possibly soil himself.

The point was hammered home a couple of weeks ago, when I went to my parents' house for a weekend and left him alone in our apartment. When I returned, I discovered he'd been sleeping on the couch next to our dog's kennel every night.

"Was she lonely or something?" I asked. "She's been sleeping fine in her kennel for a year and a half."

"N-no. I just needed to be closer to her."

"What for?"

"Protection."

"From...?"

"There was a scary noise in the bedroom. When I turned on the fan."

"What kind of noise?"

He cleared his throat. "A scary one. Like whhrrrrrrrrrr."

"...You mean the noise a fan makes?"

I cannot make this shit up, people.

But I'm not mocking him, mind, because the thing you have to understand is that I am EXACTLY the same way. I'm not, in my lucid moments, a believer in the paranormal in the slightest, but when the cat freezes and starts to watch the recliner intently, OH GOD CATS CAN SENSE PRESENCES THERE'S AN EVIL SPIRIT IN THE CHAIR MILO GET AN AXE THE POWER OF CHINTZ COMPELS YOU. One time I threw away a perfectly working hair dryer because it started making a scary noise and I never wanted to turn it on again and find out why. Come to think of it, it was kind of this whhrrrrrrr noise.

So last night I'm on the computer, clicking through links in search of something to read, something to make my life an hour shorter - as you do, because it's in June and there's nothing on TV - and I end up wasting a few minutes reading about the Union Screaming House for no reason other than I clearly hate myself. I suddenly decide that I have urgent business in the kitchen, where Milo is.

I plant myself in his lap and announce, "I'm scared."

He looks at me with apprehension. "Was it the fan?"

Clearly, the only thing to do is to hurry up and have a child so we have someone to check under the bed for us. Maybe check out that whhrrrrrrrrrr noise.

I can't let go. I just can't. We've spent so long together. The highs, the lows. The memories. So many memories. Every drawer I open in my mind reveals some stinging reminder of you. Remember the New Year's party where we awoke wrapped awkwardly, but without shame, around each other? Remember when we went to Six Flags and rode Batman 17 times in a row and I threw up on you? Remember spending every warm, lazy moment together two summers ago? I've hurt you sometimes, I know. You still carry that scar across your right thigh where I was dumping out the Fry Daddy and dripped boiling grease on you. But you forgave me. Never complained. Still wrapped me in your loving embrace two, three times a week. Sometimes four, when I'm feeling insecure and need the comfort of an old friend. But it couldn't last forever, could it? Nothing does. Things change. I knew it was coming sooner or later.

I pulled you out of the dryer, shook you out with practiced, tender habit, and...I realized I could see right through your ass.

Oh, my beloved Mudd Jeans. I have owned you since the EIGHTH GRADE. We have spent a long eleven years together. When I was a chubby and ungainly middle schooler, you were there. When I was a slightly less chubby but even more ungainly high schooler, you were there. When I gained forty pounds my freshman year of college, you were there. When I got mono and lost sixty pounds my sophomore year of college, you were still, inexplicably, there. When I graduated college, afraid that Ann Taylor Separates might come between us in this new, cold, professional world, Fate intervened and gave us a casual office. And you were there. When I cried that I have the legs of a stumpy troll and have never, not ever, in eleven years, owned any other pair of pants without six extra inches of useless, flapping fabric at the bottom, you skimmed my ankles lovingly. You were there.

The world has been a better place because of short-legged, wide-hipped, stretch fabric like you. Godspeed, my friend. Say hello to my old combat wingtips for me.

I may have just purchased a certain album. I may be walking down the aisle at my wedding to track one of that album.

If my grandmother asks, it's Brahms. BRAHMS, OKAY. BACK ME UP ON THIS.

Hey, hey, we finally picked a wedding date! I mean, I picked out the dress weeks ago, so it seemed like a natural second step. Anyway, with a date on the distant horizon, I finally got to start building our wedding website.

Yeah, okay, I'll probably update it with some actual useful information as we get closer to the day, but HONESTLY. I had to do something, because all the "Our ~*~DREAM~*~ is coming ~*~*~*TRUE*~*~*~ on June 12, 2010 <3 <3 <3" wedding profiles were really making me want to throw up. Or kick a puppy. Or throw up on a puppy. Something like that. You know, guys, I'm really beginning to think I'm not the wedding type.

Apartment life bites. Apartment life bites in any one of something like 135,000 distinct and maddening ways, but it bites for me in the extra-special way of everyone hating me because I own a dog.

Did you read Marley and Me? Yeah, I read that book, and when I finished, I closed it and gave a wistful sigh at the thought of owning a dog that well behaved. In fairness, now that Delilah is nearing two years old she isn't very destructive anymore (though she still eats garbage, plants, and anything that came out of either of the cats), but as she grew, she developed the kind of bark that one usually hears just before losing a limb to an angry K-9 unit. It's not just that it's loud - though it is - and it's not just that it's frequent - though it is - but it's the kind of gravelly, perpetually angry snarl of an underfed junkyard hound. You hear this dog barking on the other side of the door, you fucking drop the pizza and run, leaving a trail of urine down the stairs and out to the parking lot.

It totally messes with your sense of equilibrium when she actually comes into view, by the way. Despite her partial German shepherd heritage, she grew to an ungainly, middle-puppy size of 45 pounds and about knee height and just stopped, all big floppy paws and big floppy ears. When our new neighbors moved in and heard Delilah's welcome, we overheard them say, "Christ, those people must have a huge mean dog," and I laughed and laughed, because what I have is an oversized puppy that wants to come over and lick you until you develop a mild friction burn.

So maybe I'm overly defensive because I know that she would never purposely hurt anyone, but I thought it was unnecessarily rude when I came home this afternoon, jingling my keys merrily, and said a bright "Hello!" to my neighbor, who was coming out of her apartment with a basket of laundry, only to have her glare at me and snap, "I don't want that mutt coming out of there at me, lady."

I paused, multiple thoughts reeling through my mind. One, I was just none-too-politely called "lady" by a woman certainly old enough to be my mother, if my mother had smoked three packs a day since Ford was in office and had skin like a crocodile handbag. Two, I have fucking impeccable manners. You would probably not believe this about me based on what you read here, but in real life, with strangers, I'm goddamn Emily Post, and I'm offended at the insinuation that I'm impolite enough to simply allow a vicious dog to come out of my apartment and maul someone. Three, I'm offended on behalf of my dog, who yes, may SOUND huge and mean, but is in fact neither and is only excited at the idea that there are people in the hallway who should be INSIDE, playing with her, RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

I can hear Delilah inside growling her warm-up growl, the one that comes right before she lets loose with a barrage of snarls and howls like she's got an insatiable craving for human flesh. My keys are dangling limply from my hand. Finally I do the only thing I can think of - I arrange my face into a mask of confusion and say, "What? I don't have a dog."

Bitch.

Man, nothing makes you popular like getting married. I'm like the rich kid at school that will let you come over and play with his expensive toys and harass his butler if you give him the Oreos out of your lunch. Except replace "play with expensive toys" with "buy your overpriced shit" and "if you give him Oreos" with "if you leave him seven voicemails a day."

I have, admittedly, done nothing to plan my own wedding aside from trying on some dresses. I mean, we've made a couple of halfhearted stabs in the dark about when (May 2010...ish) and where (on campus, or maybe not on campus) but most of Milo's and my wedding conversations have gone something like this:

"Did you call that person?"

"What person?"

"You know. That one guy. Who was supposed to tell us if we can book a date next May."

"Oh, yeah. No, I didn't."

"Oh. Are you going to finish that yogurt?"

So motivation is maybe going to be a factor here. But damn, do total strangers want to help you out, and it turns out that the part where they demand all your personal information before they let you try on dresses is a tactical maneuver. The week after I tried on dresses, I got two thank you cards from the dress shops, which was unexpected. I mean, for one thing, I can't say Abercrombie and Fitch has ever sent me a thank you card, and I single-handedly keep them in business, so I don't know why I'm being thanked for not even buying anything. And for another, christ, YOU'RE the one who hauled around heavy dresses and tied corsets and fetched brooches and didn't even flinch when I tried on the same dress three times because I couldn't decide how I felt about it. YOU deserve a thank you card.

I felt courted. It was nice.

Then I got emails. "We're having a trunk show! 15% off all wedding dresses!" "75% off bridesmaid dresses!" "Free bridal canvas tote!" "We'll give you a veil and $200 cash! Just sign up!"

Well, fine. I get tons of email like this because I shop online a lot, so sometimes you come up with good deals if you have the patience to sift through the irrelevant stuff.

Then more mail - not sweet, personalized thank you cards, but fliers for bridal conventions and honeymoon deals.

I'm not sifting through this. First of all, paying an extra couple hundred dollars for a dress in the privacy of a little bridal shop is, in my opinion, money well spent to avoid having your hair yanked out at one of those conventions by a half-mad professional bride trying to win a Vera Wang for a buck seventy five. Second, I would like to know why every honeymoon ad, honeymoon special, and honeymoon contest are for some beach destination. I hate the beach. I loathe the beach. They're boring and smell like dead fish and your options are pretty much either go swimming and get knocked around by the waves until you throw up a gallon of salt water, or lie out and read a book you could have read at home and get a two-thousand dollar sunburn out of the deal, and either way you're still finding sand in your special places at the divorce hearing. SOME OF US WOULD RATHER GO TO DISNEY WORLD, OKAY. AT LEAST YOU CAN BUY AN ICE CREAM BAR SHAPED LIKE MOUSE EARS.

Then came the phone calls. "Hi, this is Mitzi from Bridal Place! I really loved helping you try on dresses the other day! Would you like to make another appointment to narrow it down some more?" Beep. "Hi, this is Mitzi from Bridal Place again! So good to see you when you tried on dresses. Can you come in again soon?" Beep. "Hi, it's Mitzi. Are you going to make a decision about a dress?" Beep. "It's Mitzi. Call me."

I've taken to deleting voicemails without listening to them, deleting email sight unseen, and refusing to even open my mailbox. I mean, I understand it's something of a significant investment for them to book an appointment, assign a salesperson to help you and cater exclusively to your every whim, dress you, tell you how pretty you look, and not cry when you toss a dress that costs more than six months of their salary on the floor, so they want you to come back and actually buy a dress from them. It's like saying no to the nice but awkward chess club guy that keeps asking you to prom - you rationalize that you don't owe him anything, just because he's persistent doesn't mean you have to say yes, just because he helped you out by reformatting your hard drive that time doesn't mean that you can't go to the dance with someone else - but you can't stand to hurt anyone's feelings. So you sent him an email that says you moved to Peru and you hide behind an oversized fern when you see him at the mall.

So, Mitzi, believe me when I say that I sincerely love all the dresses that you picked out, and I would really love to make an appointment to come in and choose the most special gown to buy for my big day, but we've decided to elope. In Peru. Pay no attention to the girl behind the fern.

I just woke up from an impromptu nap feeling that sort of drunkish woozy where you can't figure out if it's day or night or if you might be late for work or dinner or school or your baptism like...what year is it? That's my headspace right now.

So with that in mind...could somebody please tell me what icon they're seeing with this post? Because I opened Livejournal and instead of the WTF Kangaroo that has been my default icon since God was in short pants, I was greeted with a Johnny Depp .gif that I have never seen in my entire life and I would just like to know if I'm still asleep.

Also, I'm kind of pissed because if ever there was a post that needed WTF Kangaroo...yes.

Being an editor has made me stupid.

People tend to think the opposite when they learn what I do - “You read all day? You must learn so much!” - which isn’t a totally unreasonable assumption. I’ve read more textbooks in the year and a half since I graduated college than I did during the entire 17 years of formal schooling that preceded it; surely I must have gleaned something of value? Well, yes, and that thing is: I am stupid.

I didn’t USED to be dumb, although I’ve always had the potential for it. I’ve always been what you put down on your resume as “detail oriented” and what you admit to your therapist as “anal retentive,” “obsessive,” or “shitstick crazy.” I’ve been known to get up in the middle of the night to make sure the hangers in my closet are still evenly spaced, and I get really cheesed off that Milo sometimes doesn’t set the mail on the desk aligned at right angles.

Those tendencies turned out to be pretty useful for my job, because I can spot a tiny misalignment of text out of the corner of my eye, a gap in spacing from forty paces, and a missing comma without even being in the room. What I CAN’T do, what has never been my strong suit and has only worsened with practice, is noticing, say, that 50 pages are missing out of the middle, or that the font is completely in Wingdings, or that I’m reading the wrong damn book. It's honestly as though I become so overwhelmed with the details that I regress into a blathering idiot.

I recently joked that my mind has become so blunted that the typesetters could slap a naked man in the middle of the page and I’d probably not notice, other than to make sure that his junk was hanging straight, but actually...um, that might be true. I say that because at the bar last night we played one of those games where you feed a dollar into one of those flashing boxes bolted to the counter and play a few minutes of Collapse or Spank the Monkey or whatever (...god, this entry is really shaping up). We chose Erotic Photo Search, one of those “find five differences between these two pictures” games; the hitch being, obviously, that instead of two little farm scenes you got two low-rent porn outtakes.

I know what you’re thinking; I ought to be fantastic at this, right? I’m not fazed by nipples and I can spot discrepancies down to the atomic level. But I forgot that the Idiot Within can't spot discrepancies the size of Clydesdales, because it would go something like this: Good old Candi would flash up on the screen (terrible pun most intended) and I would spot four differences instantaneously – there are two blurry flowers in the background instead of one, this shadow is tilted at a 30 degree angle in this one and a 45 degree angle in the other, and so on - then sit there helplessly as time ticked down, scrambling to find what the fifth tiny, tiny difference might be that I, Queen of All Things Neurotic, could not see. And the buzzer would sound and the differences would be circled off and it would turn out that Candi only had one arm.

Truly, my Native American Name is Can’t See the Forest for the Trees.

Y'all, I had no idea that choosing a wedding dress was fraught with so much nudity and inappropriate familiarity.

I am the Dress Girl. Some girls dream about their destination wedding on the beach, some about the perfect ring, some about the giant cake - hell, some girls even dream about the groom, though god knows why you would bother about that. For me, it has always begun and ended with the dress. Which is why, though we're still grappling with choosing a simple date/venue combination before we start getting AARP fliers, I've already gone on the Quest for the Dress.

My plan for the weekend, as long as I was home for the holidays and had the time, was to take my trusty maid of honor (who moonlights as my sister on the weekends) on a preliminary scouting expedition, just to eliminate some of the more obvious horrors. Now, I took her both because I enjoy her company and because I trust her to tell me when a dress makes my arms look like overstuffed sausage casings, but I had no IDEA I also needed her along to physically dress me. I thought maybe I'd just slip on a handful of possibilities, maybe come out of the dressing room if anything seemed particularly promising, but it turned out every confection required me to swan dive into a wall of crinoline while my sister - and I really think she deserves some sort of Nobel Prize for this - obligingly yanked corset strings and did up buttons and hooked bungee cords and tightened clamps, then frog-marched me out to the viewing gallery and hoisted my immobile ass onto an actual goddamn pedestal. It was great fun, needless to say.

So I got a few general ideas - I'm thinking I'd like the dress to be white and preferably not ugly - and headed back to Champaign with my Quest for the Dress off to a promising, if still slightly vague, start.

And then I popped in at David's Bridal this afternoon.

Now, I really only stopped by quickly to look at two specific dresses I liked on the website, and I didn't take anybody with me because, well, just two didn't seem so terrible to get myself into if they turned out to be worth trying on. But oh, David's Bridal had some other fucking plans. In fairness, they were very nice and very helpful, but I didn't get out of there for over TWO HOURS. First, before they let you near the dresses you have to undergo a screening process whereby they determine you are actually a bride-to-be by drilling you on your wedding date, groom's blood type, numbers of carats in your ring, measurements and addresses of every bridesmaid, and whether you intend to perform the chicken dance at the reception. Then they assign you your own personal helper, who chooses dresses, pins straps, tests veils, and, as it turns out, dresses you in absence of a trusted bridesmaid. I mean...let that sink in for a minute. At what point does the GROOM have to stand in his underwear in the middle of a very public store - because two people and a forty pound ball gown don't all fit in a single dressing room - while a complete stranger helps him into his tuxedo pants and zips his fly for him? When does the GROOM have to feel embarrassed that he didn't bother to shave his legs today and now he's giving stubble burn to a stranger trying to help him into a slip? When does the GROOM get left standing with his head lashed in place because the salesgirl accidentally zipped his hair into the dress and wandered away to get a veil, and he can't even fix it because if he lets go of the oversized bodice it'll fall down to his waist and flash everyone in the store for the third time? I WOULD JUST LIKE TO KNOW.

And my helper - bless her, I can't remember her name, but she was a trouper and chose some beautiful gowns for me and we became so intimate at times that I almost felt obligated to invite her to the wedding - for some reason could not allow me to try on ONLY the two I came to see, but also couldn't bring me more than one dress at a time, so for two straight hours I'd spend ten minutes struggling into a dress, then I'd look in the mirror for five seconds and decide that no, this was not It, and then I'd stand there twiddling my thumbs and/or holding up my top for five minutes while she disappeared to parts unknown for the next dress.

Which STILL wouldn't have been so bad, except...I was alone. Now, I am not a person who gets embarrassed about being someplace alone. I wouldn't have cared at all, except there were four other brides-to-be in action, each of whom had a mother and a minimum of two bridesmaids with her, and one of whom appeared to be having some sort of family reunion, and these people Would. Not. Stop. Staring. At. Me. It was sort of subtle at first - the brides were all sizing each other up anyway - and then one of the moms came over and plopped a tiara on my head, completely unprompted and unannounced, while my helper was getting another dress ("There, darling, you look lovely") and then a random bridesmaid tried to bring me shoes "just because they'd look great with this gown," and I swear to god, I'm not being self-involved when I say that every time I turned around to check out the back of a dress, ten people were staring and one was touching my dress or trying to put a necklace on me. I couldn't even figure out what was going on until the grandmother of Family Reunion Bride said, without so much as lowering her voice or looking away from me so as to be less obvious, "Poor dear. Doesn't even have anyone to tell her she looks beautiful," and six cousins murmured in agreement.

Oh god, I thought. They're taking pity on Pathetic Friendless, Motherless Bride. They're swooping in on the charity case to make sure I don't end up sobbing, desperate and alone, in the satin. "I have friends! Loads of friends! Four sisters! Two sisters-in-law to be! Two mothers! One mother-in-law to be! Did I mention loads of friends!" I wanted to scream. "I didn't bother to bring them because I didn't even mean to try on dresses! I'm being dressed against my will!" And instead I said nothing and the grandmother must have decided to adopt me, because she completely abandoned her own bride to gush over my "lovely skin" and wasn't I going to be the prettiest bride in the whole world and then she saw me in one dress and she practically wrung my arm off squealing, "THAT'S THE ONE! THAT'S THE ONE!" (It wasn't, but it was nice of her to say so.) And the real bitch of it was, the two dresses I originally came to try on looked terrible on me.

I finally stumbled home after dark - dazed, hazy, having abandoned all hope of doing any other shopping - slowly mixed a drink, and decided that it wouldn't be so bad to be Sweatpants Girl instead.

I went Christmas shopping this afternoon - that's "Christmas shopping," as in walking briskly into Borders, grabbing eleven gift cards, flinging a wad of cash onto the counter, saying, "Yes, just distribute that somewhat evenly on those, please," and calling it a day - and I got to thinking that it probably wasn't TOO early to start wedding planning.

Granted, Milo was still wearing the same filthy, slushy pants he proposed in - having gotten down on one knee in the middle of downtown Chicago in the damn fool snow - and I still hadn't mastered navigation with The Rock on my hand, having gouged myself in the face with it twice while fixing my hair, but you know, doesn't hurt to look, right? RIGHT?

Turns out I should have just gouged myself in the face with my engagement ring a few more times, because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. I mean, I don't live in a hole in the ground. I know the wedding industrial complex feasts on the flesh of the betrothed and insane: I've logged plenty of man hours on Vera Wang over the past decade. (FOR FUN. JUST FOR FUN. I NEVER ONCE SLAMMED MY LAPTOP SHUT AND TRIED TO PRETEND I WASN'T WEEPING WHEN MY BOYFRIEND WALKED BY.) But when I wandered into the wedding planning section at Borders I was calm, thinking I'd just get a little planner to write some things down in (probably "Mrs. Roo Milo" a few dozen times, in my best cursive, next to a doodle of a unicorn) and maybe a Wedding Planning for Dummies or something.

But do I want "Wedding Planning for Dummies" or "Wedding Kit for Dummies" or "Weddings for Really Extra Stupid Dummies" or maybe "Wedding Planning, Pocket Edition?" Do I need "1001 Wedding Tips and Tricks" or "Bridal Bargains" or "How to Have an Elegant Wedding for a Buck Fifty"? How helpful is "Simple, Stunning Weddings" versus "The Big Book for Your Big Day"? Maybe "Your Stress-Free Wedding Planner"? What about "How to Keep from Spearing Your Drunk Groomsman Through the Forehead with a Meat Fork?" Am I an "elegant" bride or a "classic" bride? How many people constitute a large wedding, anyway? What if there are white horses involved? What if I have horses but no people? Why does this planner say it includes "worksheets"? I mean...worksheets? Do I have to pass fourth grade math before I can get married? Is there going to be a pop quiz? I don't think I'd pass a pop quiz on weddings; I don't even know why they make you take a blood test. Maybe they want to make sure you're not actually related. OH GOD WHAT IF WE'RE RELATED AND WE DON'T KNOW IT. What if they - oh, god, there's an entire etiquette SECTION? There's wedding ETIQUETTE? I can't chew with my mouth open at my own damn WEDDING if I want? Can I still wear Birkenstocks?

...And it pretty much just escalated from there until I was, like, sobbing and flinging money and gift cards across the counter mumbling, "I want to go barefoot at the reception, WHY CAN'T I GO BAREFOOT AT THE RECEPTION" and wondering if this is where it all starts.

And then it hit me: Guitar Hero themed wedding.

Folks, I am fucking STOKED.

Milo proposed.

I said yes.

My name is Roo, and I like ugly shoes.

I like to think that, somewhere in that shrill echo of hysteria that is my interior monologue, there is a voice of practicality. She occasionally gets elbowed in the face by the part of me that thinks that forty-five dollars an ounce is a really good price on liquid eyeliner, but she's firm when she needs to be. "UGLY SHOES!" she cries. "WEAR UGLY, COMFORTABLE SHOES!" (And then the Retail Thugs stuff her in a dumpster and commence with convincing me that I need fifteen identical pairs of Victoria's Secret boy shorts.)

But I get the message, because despite my addiction to buying sweaters, despite the opiate-level high I can achieve with the perfect pair of hip-huggers, and despite the fact that I have over thirty Clinique lipsticks that I'm currently using up at the steady rate of one per year, I can always ruin a good outfit with hideous footwear. I can admire nice shoes, the way I can admire a really nice Tiffany lamp, and then my mind's eye sees it in shards while the dog tries to stuff herself guiltily into the laundry hamper, and I think, "How lovely this will look in someone else's home!" Those heels are amazing, I'll say, but honestly, I will probably wear Birkenstocks to my own wedding.

So this weekend I decided I needed a comfy pair of boots. Not, like, sexy, leather, high-heeled, pointy-toed boots. (I already own a pair and last time I wore them I actually chucked them off after a half-hour and went barefoot. Outdoors. At a BONFIRE.) I mean like the hugest, most steel-toed, most furry fuckers on the planet. I mean the kind of boots that would make you not afraid to kick a Yeti. I mean, you know. If you saw one out somewhere.

So I skulked around the mall for a couple of hours, with the vague idea of what I wanted ("Excuse me, if you were a Yeti and you saw me wearing these, would you run?") and everything I found was just...not ugly enough. I mean, that seems a little disingenuous - "Do you have anything more hideous in a size 8?" - but I just can't wear boring, nice looking, painful shoes. Yeah, I know, "Uggs," you're shouting at me. "UUUUGGS!" But no, for one thing I distinctly remember my sister coming to visit me at college when I was a high and mighty freshman with her brand new, cutting edge (at that time) Uggs, and I don't know if she accidentally bought the barbed-wire-lined pair or what, but I was carrying her sobbing and bloodied before we even got to the clubs. I think we gave them to a hobo. And besides that...well, come on, where's the erratic tufts of fur? The giant metal clasps? The bulletproof leather soles? I need shoes that say, "Yeah, shins up I'm an uptight, preppy chick who sometimes blows the rent money on ill-advised lingerie, and shins down I will KICK YOUR FUCKING FACE IN."

...Yes, the PRACTICAL side of my brain, the part that forgets that I'm 23 years old and work in an office, really wants a pair of boots I can stomp around in pretending to be a dinosaur. And the other half wants ice cream for dinner. God alone knows what's going to happen the day they compromise, but Yetis beware.

The problem with being remarkably staid is that you don't change much. Oh, THINGS change; things have a way of getting away from you like that, but in general, I'm a creature of extreme habit, unfailing routine, and a generally slow way of life. Days of the week underwear were made for people like me, is what I'm saying, and I totally do not mean in the ironic "I wear the Tuesdays on Friday, tee hee!" way. There are distinct advantages to being like this - it's unlikely I will ever awake in a prison in Cuba without my corneas, for instance, and happily, the fear of death by freak balloon animal accident only crosses my mind once a week or so.

But there ARE disadvantages. The first problem is that my unremarkable set of routines leads to not much happening to me. The second is that I tend not to notice when things actually DO change because I'm so wrapped in habit, as the perceptive of you might have gathered: "Hmmm, haven't had much to say on the ol' Livejournal lately, looks like I haven't updated in...six months? Babe, how long was I in the bathroom?" (WHAT D'YOU MEAN TIME IS STILL PASSING? MY TUESDAY PANTIES AND I PUT A MORATORIUM ON THAT SHIT, OFFICER.)

It's the not noticing thing that I suspect is going to get me someday. It's going to be the day that I walk past some giant warning sign and step into the open shaft where the stairs tend to be; the day that I get pancaked by a car because I NEVER get run over when I cross the street; the day that I ignore the smoke detector in the dead of night because, come on, the place wasn't on fire LAST night. That or freak balloon animal accident.

So yesterday morning I started thinking I ought to shake things up in my life. I mention this because yesterday morning was exactly the same as the preceding 317 mornings, as follows:

My alarm goes off at 6:43 to the sounds of Led Zeppelin's "Bron Yr Aur Stomp," as it is programmed to do every single morning. I hit the snooze a respectable single time and then get up, as I do every single morning. Peck a good morning kiss on Milo's head - he gets up about the time that I have to leave, so I'm used to being quiet and getting ready in the dark - then pet Cat One sleeping at the end of the bed, go into the bathroom, and pet Cat Two sleeping in the sink. Just like every morning. Shower, towel off, drag comb through wet hair, go to the bedroom, and choose a sweater. (I am somewhat ashamed to admit this, but those who know me personally can vouch for this - I own eleven or twelve completely identical, except for color, sweaters. I get dressed in the dark because of Milo, and as a result I am occasionally surprised at my choice when I get to work. That this is often the most spontaneous part of the day will probably surprise no one at this point.) Medication: one and a half pills, swallowed dry. Today I drop the bottle with a rattle that seems much too loud in the silent early morning. "Sorry, sorry," I hiss as I fish it out from under the dresser, but I don't seem to have woken Milo. Bathroom again: brush teeth, dry hair, put on makeup. Poke head into bedroom, blow a kiss, and softly say, "It's about time to get up, sweetie. I've got to go. Have a good day."

It's about 11 am and I'm at work doing some cheerful stapling when I get a call from Milo: "Did you walk the dog this morning?"

"You walk the dog in the morning; why would I have walked her?"

"Because I wasn't home this morning?"

"...What?"

"I went out last night and stayed over on Dave's couch so I didn't have to drive home."

"Huh?"

"I woke you up and told you this. You said it was fine."

"You did?"

"Yeah....wait, you didn't notice I wasn't there this morning?"

"...who in the HELL did I give a good morning kiss to, then?"

That's right; the great theater that is my life is so well-rehearsed that I DON'T EVEN NOTICE when a major actor drops out of the show.

Come Monday morning, I'm wearing my Thursday panties.

...Snagged from, uh, everyone.

* Take a picture of yourself right now.
* Don’t change your clothes.
* Don’t fix your hair.
* Just take a picture.
* Post that picture with no editing.
* Include these instructions.



Bully. Apparently I walked around at work all day with my bra strap hanging out and my hair looking like I'd just been unmercilessly shagged. Then at dinner tonight, I blew a straw wrapper directly over Milo's left shoulder and it lodged itself into the hairdo of the woman sitting behind him.

I feel like I have problems being taken seriously, but I can't imagine where it all began.

I never thought I'd see a commercial I loathe more than the Mentos ad. No, not the old ones.("Mentos something! Mentos something! Fresh something something Mentos something fuuuull of liiiife! Mentos: The Freshmaker." You're welcome.) The old ones always made me feel really good about life, like no matter what devastating trauma befell me, all I'd have to do is pop a mint and four burly German construction workers would burst through the wall and rescue me and then patch up the wall and maybe put up a nice window treatment over the spackle. They were those kind of Germans.

No, you know which one I mean: where the Mentos are supposed to be "mouthwatering," so there's a guy sitting in a chair next to the office watercooler popping Mentos, like what the fuck, do they PAY you to sit around next to the watercooler and snack, and this chick walks up to him, flips up his nose like a spigot, and proceeds to sloppily and WITH AUDIBLE SLURPING AND GULPING SOUNDS make out with him, then wipes her mouth like she just finished giving really inadequate head and walks away. Get it? Mouthwatering? He has a Mentos and his mouth waters so much that YOU'LL WANT TO DRINK HIS SALIVA. I mean, I find this ad to be downright vile, and I think boogers are pretty funny. Ordinarily when I don't like an ad I just sniff and mumble about how they're not going to get a penny of MY money (that's an empty threat; it's always something I never would have purchased anyway) but like, this ad actually makes me want to write an angry letter or sue Mentos for distress or maybe strategically slip a little arsenic into a few packages so they'll get pulled from the shelves and get just awful press - God, wouldn't that be GREAT? They would fucking GROVEL - and they only way to win back my love would be to reinstitute the burly German construction worker era. I've never bought mints in my life, but I would consider it, for the German men.

But no, there's a commercial running right now that I hate even more than that, because it made my dog psychic.

It's a pretty innocuous commercial in and of itself - I'm not even completely sure what it's for, because I never get to hear the end of it for reasons that will become clear in a moment - but I think it's for Domino's? Some sort of pizza delivery? There's a wizard in it. That one. In any case, there's a ringing doorbell in it, and this never fails to make Delilah go completely apeshit. "DING-" WHAM as she plows headlong into the front door "-DONG" "BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK" "OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THERE'S NO ONE THERE SHUT UP"

She'll generally peter out into a low frenzy about fifteen minutes after my show returns from commercial, at which point they'll run the goddamn ad again. "DING-" WHAM "-DONG" BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK "OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD..."

The thing about this is: I DON'T HAVE A DOORBELL. I've lived in this doorbell-less apartment since I got her as a tiny puppy nearly a year ago, and she only lived at the shelter before that. As far as I know, she has never heard a real doorbell in her life. She almost never reacts to my buzzer, which actually indicates someone is on his way in, yet when that goddamn wizard just has to have his goddamn pizza for the fifth goddamn time in an hour, Delilah thinks that an axe murderer is hanging around on the doorstep. HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

The pervasive effects of advertising, that's how. Like Pavlov's dogs, we're so conditioned to react to stimulus that we can't even control it - all I have to do is sense the first microsecond of that commercial and I'm out of the recliner like a sprinter, desperate to hit mute in time, oh god, let me hit the mute in time, please - and then I crash and take out the table lamp and Delilah plows over my sprawling, prostrate figure to howl and wet all over the area rug in excitement and if goddamn Mentos weren't so goddamn foul the burly German construction workers would be busting out of the wall right about now to fix the lamp and taser my dog and make everything all right again. But they aren't there, because I've never bought Mentos, and now I'm so tired from the constant sprinting and the crashing and the barking that I don't want to cook dinner and instead I order Domino's.

Because they get you. They always get you.

...when you receive a phone call from an unfamiliar number, hear a cheerful woman say, "Hi, this is Kathy from Dog Day Afternoon, letting you know Gus is ready!" and reply, "Great, thanks," whereupon you hang up the phone, then have to rack your brain about whether any of your pets are named Gus and whether you might have left them at a place called Dog Day Afternoon.

I don't believe so, but I can never be sure these days.

Oh, you guys. -glows-



It's a lot to live up to, actually, which is probably why I've written three entries in the past week and discarded all of them on the grounds of being Not Funny Enough. To whit: Delilah got loose and terrorized some small foreign children, I'm old balls because I hate Kids Today, and I'm also old balls because I got invited to my FIRST HIGH SCHOOL REUNION WHAT.

But since I'm going up to Chicago this weekend and didn't want to abandon you all for a few days without much thanks, I thought it was only fair to let you know why I don't hang out with decent company.

Last night two of Milo's roommates invited us to try out a new restaurant, and...look, when two 20-year-old guys want you to try out a new restaurant, I'm pretty pleased when the place doesn't offer lap dances, you know? So we show up - me, in Converse, a ponytail, and zero makeup; Milo...looking like Milo. There were soccer sandals with socks involved, is what I'm saying - and the place is fucking pitch black. Like, I walked in and immediately fell into a giant decorative planter pitch black. NICE RESTAURANT pitch black. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and realized that the only light is coming from CANDLES. This restaurant is CANDLELIT, and I'm upside down in a giant fern, and Milo is still wearing sandals with socks. I'm thinking they don't offer lap dances.

The host eyes us like we have leprosy and proceeds to take us the long way around, taking care not to expose the other customers to us, and deposits us at the back table with an amusingly clear view directly into the men's restroom. I can't blame him for this.

And I open the menu, hoping that maybe they're just having a power outage, and there are words like "braised" and "compote" and "reduction," and at this point I did the only thing I could do when you find yourself accidentally in a nice restaurant accompanied by a man wearing socks with sandals. I ordered a fifteen dollar mimosa.

Now it was, as incredibly expensive drinks in candlelit restaurants tend to be, quite small, but as I take several kinds of medication and had an empty stomach, I was significantly woozy by the time the entrees arrived. It was the kind of woozy where you're not even totally aware of it, because the place is still pitch fucking black except for the florescent glare every time the door to the men's room opens and exposes a man in a suit standing at the urinal, and all the art on the walls are those close-ups of flowers that look like vaginas, so...like, you'd feel like you were drunk no matter what, is what I'm saying. So I'm enjoying my amazing steak, unaware that I'm kind of intoxicated until Milo slipped his hand under the table to hold mine, then made a face and pulled away.

"What?" I asked.

"What's in your hand?" he said.

Confused, I lift my hand to my face and squint at it in the dim light. For no reason that I can see or recall, I have a handful of mashed potatoes.

On a whim, I took a sick day from work this morning.

Dear Champaign-Urbana:

Thanks for knocking me out of bed with an earthquake at 4:30 am, causing my cat to leave great gashes up my leg in her quest to achieve orbit and also causing my dog to start howling and gnawing on her own ass. I know you have delusions of grandeur, but this is Illinois, and you will always suck, even if you start doing cool things like this.

Loooooove Tyra Roo

P.S. 5.4? Good show.