The setting: Early morning, Christmas Eve. (Okay, like 10:30 am BUT IT'S A HOLIDAY OKAY EVEN THE POPE IS STILL HUNGOVER AT 10:30 AM ON A WORK HOLIDAY.)

The players:
- MILO: One week out of grad school with a shiny new master's degree in rocket science and no particular prospects in the worst economy since the Joads tried to start a mom and pop coffee joint.
- ROO: Me.

The scene:
[A phone rings, shrill in the cold air. A sleeping MILO fumbles for it.]

MILO: Hullluggggggghhh?

ROO: [mumbling, pulling blanket over head] Shuuut up.

MILO: [slurring] Oh...oh? Yuuh? That's...uuuum, great. Yeah.

ROO: [from under blanket] Seriously. Holiday. Tell wanker to call back.

MILO: [still slurring] Huuughhhhhh. Yeah. Great. Excccel - ex - terrific.

ROO: [suddenly thinks of something and bolts awake] Oh my god, is that the place? The place you had the interview with? Oh my god, seriously? Is it? Do we know any wankers who would actually call us this early? Is it them? Are you getting a job already? Seriously? Can we buy a house now? Can I have a swingset in the backyard? Can I have a pony? I PROMISE TO FEED IT PLEASE PLEASE.

MILO: [staggers like an armless torso into the kitchen, away from the shrieking, and opens his laptop] Yuuh. Mmmmhm.

ROO: [following] I NEED A DR PEPPER. WHO'S WITH ME? DR PEPPER?

MILO: [begins furiously typing words like "Relocation reimbursement" and "401k options" while making indeterminate sleepy noises into the phone]

ROO: My god, WAKE UP! YOU SOUND STONED THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE BACK THEIR OFFER BECAUSE THEY'LL THINK YOU'RE STONED AT 10:30 IN THE MORNING ON CHRISTMAS EVE JESUS WATERSKIING CHRIST

MILO: Mmmhmmm. Yeah. I'll have to talk it over with my fiancee, of course.

[ROO grabs own laptop, opens AIM, and types "TAKE THE JOB YOU STONED WANKER"]

MILO: Right. I'll discuss it with her and -

[ROO creeps up directly behind MILO's shoulder, intending to coyly whisper, "Take the job" in his ear. Instead, the hastily chugged Dr Pepper suddenly rushes back and ROO lets out the loudest belch ever recorded by modern seismographs. The CAT bolts from the room. A beat of silence. Flakes of plaster drift carelessly from the ceiling.]

MILO: ...call you back. Right. That was the dog. I'll call you back.

[MILO hangs up the phone, looking completely knackered.]

ROO: WELL?

MILO: Wanna move to Wisconsin?

ROO: Sure, why not.

MILO: ...Next week?

ROO: Can we buy a house?

MILO: Sure, why not.

ROO: Can I have a pony?

MILO: They'd have to give me a raise.

[The phone rings. It is MILO's new employer, giving him a raise. The narrator SHITS YOU NOT.]

Happy holidays and a bitchin New Year, everyone. I have to pack and buy a saddle.

I've spent quite a lot of time over the past year (wait, YEAR? I've been engaged almost a WHOLE YEAR and I STILL HAVEN'T ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING BUT BUY A WEDDING DRESS AND MAKE OBSCENE INVITATIONS WHAT THE HELL, ME) musing on the nature of marriage - how do you know for certain that it's right? How do you really, really, beyond a shadow of a doubt know that one day, when he makes that gacking sinus-clearing noise one time too many, you aren't going to snap like an old lady's hipbone on a wet kitchen floor?

I finally have a firm answer to that question, and that answer is: Because he bought me a Snuggie. Because he walked into a store, and he thought about how I almost lost a foot last winter because the average temperature in my office is 29 degrees, and he wanted me to be warm and also be dressed for an emergency goat sacrifice, should one arise. One day, he will make that gacking sinus-clearing noise one too many times, and I will think to myself, "Snuggie," and I will put the frying pan down.

The Snuggie is a miracle of the modern world, I'm not ashamed to admit. It's a blanket - WITH SLEEVES! It's TWO THINGS! It's like, have you ever been sitting around drinking your glass of gin, and thinking, "This is fantastic, but what if there were rum in it?" THIS IS LIKE THAT, ONLY TOASTY. Let me tell you, I got that bad boy out of the box, put it on ("One size fits all? All what, sumo wrestlers?"), and was promptly moved to make up a song, which goes, "MAH SNUGGIE AND MEEE! NA NA NA!" to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw." And then I tripped and fell over it, because seriously, this thing is at least three feet too long for me. These are the things I do instead of watching the news or filing my income taxes.

So I've worn it to work all week, and yes, I may have gotten the sleeve jammed in the printer once, and yes, I may have rolled my desk chair over it and sent myself ass over teakettle three or four times, and yes, I do look like I'm about to start preaching the Good News of Zarquaan, but at least I still have all my limbs. Thank YOU, Snuggie, and Milo, I now know that I love you enough to pretend that I don't hear you gacking in the other room.

Because it's really hard to maneuver a frying pan with these sleeves.

The hell, self. I keep trying to write this post on how I wrecked my car - no, I did not get into an accident, I fucked up that bad boy MYSELF, with my BARE HANDS and a WRENCH - but it keeps coming out so much angrier than I actually am. Like, if I were you, and I read this, I would be legitimately worried and maybe a little turned on by the amount of rage I'm capable of taking out on a machine that's done me very little personal harm if you don't count the time I ripped out a hunk of hair in the glove compartment or the other time I nearly lost an eye to the rearview mirror.

So instead, while I try to think what I can write about that wouldn't hold up badly in a court of law, have another Guitar Hero video, which YouTube reminds me I uploaded a month ago and promptly forgot about. Ignore the dozen or so really earsplittingly bad mistakes, because I can't play Younk Funk more than once without feeling like I should quit showering, buy a Volkswagen, and take up a weed habit, which in fairness would probably dissipate the rage a little.

Today it occurred to me that there is - to my knowledge - not a single video of me anywhere on the Internet. Well, now, I thought. I can't allow any old questionable pervert who totters onto my journal to judge me by my writing and pictures alone. They might get some mistaken impression of me. I should make sure that perverts are WAY too offended to come back here.

Today, after several hours of frustrated recording, it occurs to me WHY there are no videos of me on the Internet.

Oh, I stupidly thought this was going to be a simple thing. I couldn't think of anything in particular to talk about, so why not film myself doing something I happen to be really fucking fantastic at? Well, it turns out YouTube doesn't allow those sort of videos, so I went with the next best thing, which is Guitar Hero. Just set up my laptop on a chair in front of the TV and have at it, right?

Yeah, so, now I have about 70 videos of the cat planting herself on the keyboard and recording her ass for six minutes, Delilah overexcitedly knocking the chair askew and recording the wall for six minutes, my overexcitedly knocking the chair askew and recording the wall for six minutes, my turning around to see if the computer was still pointed at the screen and missing a whole string of notes, the cat's ass some more, my neighbors screaming "STOP PLAYING THAT FUCKING SONG," and many, many takes of my devolving into total degeneracy ("Hi, I'm Roo! This is Smells Like Teen Spirit, take two!"... "Hnnngh. Smells Like Teen Spirit, take 17"..."This is SOME FUCKING NIRVANA SONG. PAY NO MIND TO MY PAUSING TO BEAT MY DOG WITH A GUITAR CONTROLLER A MINUTE IN").

So with mind to how many years it's taken off my life, enjoy this helping of awesome. Perverts, kindly enjoy your stay.

-cough-

Is it wrong I'd rather invite all of ontd_startrek than my own family just so I'd be able to send out these fine-ass wedding invites?

I know you've all been lying awake at night, rigid with terror, wondering if my hair might have finally developed rudimentary language and begun crawling around of its own accord, creeping into bedrooms looking for fingers to eat or something. It was a near thing, let me tell you, but in the end we were all saved when it was weakened by some sort of fatal hair leprosy. At least I think that was it, because there was a point starting about a week after my last entry where the vaguest nod would cause tufts of hair to drift, anemic-like, from my head. It still wasn't easy putting together a counterstrike of this scale, though - plans had to be drawn up, stylists called, back issues of Cosmo consulted. Should we attempt products or will that anger the hair? Can I handle a heavy bang? What if the hair counters with a cowlick?

In the end, though, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, and so we did what we had to do.

( Before! )

( After! )

Sleep deeply tonight, my lovelies. The beast has been slain.

Oh hey, guys, can we talk? I am having a hair crisis of the first order I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU.

You know how you can't really see yourself in the mirror? I mean, I take a glance every now and again to make sure none of the major features are leaking blood or to aim lip gloss somewhere in the vicinity of the lower half of my face, but for the most part my life is so structured that it's not even necessary. Like, in someone's attic there is a portrait of me getting hella fucked up from eating Big Macs and putting on eyeliner while driving, is how inexorable we're talking.

So a couple weeks ago I got a new laptop and I did the first thing you do with a new laptop - well, the second, after you transfer out all your porn - which is to go "HEY THIS HAS A WEBCAM HEY MILO DID YOU KNOW THIS HAS A WEBCAM THE GUY DIDN'T SAY IT HAD A WEBCAM HEY." So I was playing around with it, taking a lot of absolutely ridiculous self-portraits and okay maybe practicing smiling with my eyes so hard I could melt Tyra's face, when I suddenly realized that seeing yourself in a webcam is not seeing yourself in the mirror. This me - this webcam self - was an honest and unflinching portrayal I couldn't ignore. This girl had major split ends. She had a matted hank that used to be bangs about a year ago. Don't even get me started on her roots, because things will go down.

I've sort of been growing out my hair by default, because - true story - I went over to my salon several months ago and IT WASN'T THERE. I walked in and it was a damn florist, and I was like, "Can I maybe..." and did that thing where you wave at your head to indicate "I'd like an appointment" or maybe "There are wasps in my brain" and they were like, "This...is a florist?" and I'm, "Yeah, I get that, but my hair? Do you see this shit?" It didn't pan out, needless to say, and I never figured out where my salon actually went. I didn't even know I'd been getting my hair cut in Brigadoon.

So I've just been surfing along on a vague notion of "Oh, yeah, I'm getting married or something, might as well grow it out," but...okay, seriously, look at this:

( I added helpful text for you. )

This is bad, folks. I'm really crap at choosing haircuts, because my imaginary self is Girl with Big Sassy Curls and my real self is Girl with Hair the Consistency of Dental Floss, so maybe could you guys hit me with some suggestions? It's urgent; that portrait in the attic is molting.

Me: So what did you do today?
Milo: Well, I went to the drug dealer and -
Me: What?
Milo: I went to the drug dealer and -
Me: You went to the what?
Milo: I'm trying to tell you! I went -
Me: You who in the what now?
Milo: - and they can't fix my radio without the serial number.
Me: ...
Milo: ...The car dealer. I mean I went to the car dealer. For the radio. What did YOU do today?
Me: I worked on - like, I just...you...I don't even - whatever, I don't know.

Do you think there's some sort of government assistance program we could look into, or something?

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.