built a tower in my bones
Back at work, blah. I was feeling kind of sorry for myself, in a Monday way, until the Drunkest Man Ever “stood” near me on the El, swaying all over the place and stinking like bourbon and asking everyone within earshot if this train would get him to Traffic Court. Way to go, sir! Way to show up at Traffic Court wasted! Judges love that!
Someone was searching Google for TRILOBITE JOKE and happened upon my site, although I have no trilobite jokes to give. E-mail me with the trilobite joke, please! That seems like it could have huge comedy potential.
I had a very mellow weekend. Friday I was still kind of a sniffly snurfly virus-stricken kitten, so I came directly home after my horrifying corporate-rhetoric experience (see the last entry), got all pajama'd up, and waited for LT to arrive. Then we had dinner, watched some Discovery Channel, and performed some marital duties, repeatedly. I have been a right wiggly little minx lately,* and if I were a different sort of crude-joke person I would say something here like “and boy are LT's arms tired!” I guess I am enough of a crude-joke person to make the joke while at the same time denying that I am doing so, which is the faker's way out, goddamn this age of irony, I'll just be over here in the corner killing myself.
(*No really, it has been bad. I am rubbing up against furniture and getting turned on by the concept of “three-way bulbs” when shopping at Home Depot. Eeesh.)
Saturday was all productive with the running of errands, and then not so productive with the taking of naps and reading, and finally abandoning the concept of productivity altogether in favor of a compressed version of Everything I Like—beer, tofu satay, tea, and talking too much with that guy. It has been two years to the day, almost, since we met, From The Internet. I suppose From The Internet is no big deal anymore, really, but I have trouble making friends (I can see it on my report card now: Mimi is a good student but she Has Trouble Making Friends), so it seems noteworthy to me. Even without the phenomenon of personal webpages and e-mails from strangers, the best meetings are always the slightly unusual ones. LT and I met across a crowded room, literally, and now we are all married and stuff. (And hooray for the stuff!) Kat I sort of accosted on the street, on a horribly hot summer day, when I was dressed like a total freak in a ratty Dead Kennedys t-shirt and mismatched socks. S. and I met through a friend and sort of gradually realized that we probably had more in common with each other than she did with her other point on the triangle. But the From The Internet thing will always remain kind of special to me, since I had never done that before, and it turned out so well, and we are still friends two years later despite all the encroaching alienation of adulthood and such, and it is good to have another person with whom to share Old Style and Scrabble and severely tasteless jokes.
And yesterday, LT and I went out on a semi-whim and bought bikes. They were cheap bikes, but it still was kind of an alarmingly rapid purchase. There are tons of forest-preserve bike trails just a few miles to the west of us, and of course the humongous Chicago lakefront just to the east of us, and we had been kicking the bike-idea around for a while. My bike is purple and ridiculously puny (twelve-inch frame). I tried bigger ones but the twelve seems to fit me better and I feel more secure. So embarrassing though. The bike does not have handlebar streamers and glitter tires and a sheet of Strawberry Shortcake decals to apply to the frame, but it might as well.
I want to make lists! Get ready!
A LIST OF POSSIBLE RESPONSES FOR WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “YOU KISS YOUR MOTHER WITH THAT MOUTH?”
1. No, but I kiss yours.
2. With this mouth? Never! I rent a special non-swearing mouth for the occasion.
3. Oh ho ho, I do more than kiss her, baby.
4. Sod off, you fairy!
Yeah, the first three were better. I got tired, turkey.
FIRST-WORLD ACCOUTREMENTS THAT IRRITATE ME WITH THEIR WASTEFULNESS
1. Plastic-applicator tampons. An extra bit of petroleum-product for no good reason.
2. Individually wrapped slices of American cheese. Where do you need to transport cheese?
3. Sport utility vehicles.
4. Something ephemeral like a haircut costing a hundred dollars or more.
5. Double cheeseburgers. Even though I am a vegetarian, it is not the amount of meat that bothers me—I don't think I would be so cranky if it were just a giant hamburger. It's that extra patty, that little slap to the face of the rest of the world: “Hey look at me! I am so rich I can cram two sandwiches into one! Enjoy your bags of refugee-relief gruel, and sorry about your dead children!”
TWO BAD PHOTOS OF ME WHICH I SECRETLY KIND OF LIKE
1. A candid snapshot my mother snuck up and took when I was around four years old. I had gathered an entire chorus of stuffed animals around my Fisher-Price record player and we are all obviously having some sad fantasy sing-along, me and about twenty-five plush cats and dogs and rabbits and the grand patriarch of Animalworld, my stuffed llama. I had a rather complicated mental relationship with my stuffed animals as a kid, we could communicate telepathically and I would sort of conference-in other animals as needed for the conversation. Yeah. I spent a lot of time alone.
2. One from college, where I am affecting one of my early-90s Giant Men's Sportcoats. Inexplicably I have pinned a long string of linked-together safety pins to one of its lapels, which must have been some drug-inspired DIY jewelry because how could I have soberly thought that it looked cool? I am sprawled on my floor-mattress with a pile of dissolute friends, hair in my eyes and cigarette in my hand. I might be making it sound kind of bohemian and cool but it is really a terrible picture, but I like it because I am laughing and I look seriously relaxed for once in my life.
Work probably wants something from me now.
—mimi smartypants, the devil may care but she doesn't.