Momomama
(post, post, where's that old post?)
Dudes. You want some awesome seafood stew, you go to the Topside in Bristol, Rhode Island. Unless you are a vegetarian, in which case you can hang out in the sea themed bar with some men in awful sweaters (tiger strip knits and Cliff Huxtables) and some women in too tight jeans and Rhode Island accents.
My blogging this week is really pointless, be the way, but may be round next Monday or Tuesday, it will improve.
Happy Merry, and all that!
It's Christmas night and I feel like my holidays have only just begun. Since Tuesday evening, I have spent time with some of my best girls, some of the cutest kids, two cuddly yellow labs and Time's Person of the Year. Can't beat that.
Here's hoping the Plattsburgh office of that national reproductive rights and family planning organization wants me to direct their public relations and marketing! My two and a half years of pain can't begin until I have a job.
Last night was another holiday party. This one in Boston, and for work. Of the thirty people who said they would be coming, only ten showed (including me.) Alana, Jenya and I had a nice time anyway - we mingle with ourselves very well. Three of the party people were of the late twenties early thirties variety. The other four were couples in their forties or fifties. We stood in age-centric clumps. Once one of the couples left, I decided to break out, and do my job, and mingle with the "older" folks. I already knew the wife. She's a librarian. Her husband though, he was new to me. I talked with her a little bit about my impending move and life change before he started listening, and it took a few minutes to dissuade him of his notion that I was moving to Wyoming to raise sheep. He was not a good listener, but he quickly decided that we should talk about my favorite subject. Me.
"I have a gift," he says. "I sense things about people and I am always right. You see, that waiter with the dark hair is going to be a very successful writer. He is going places. I wrote down his name." He pats his breast pocket. He has unblinking eyes, and leans in to talk. He's an actor and a voice over artist and I wonder if he is in character now. He is doing what seems like an impression of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lechter.
"I am feeling something from you know, Ms. Fuller." He nods. "Very stong energy. You are about to go through a large change. You are stepping into trouble. This man you are marrying, you think he is more adventurous than you, but you are wrong. You have this intellectual adventurism." He looks pleased with himself.
"In two and half, maybe three, years, you will see this trouble you are entering." He keeps pausing between words, as if he is listening to something. Like he is grabbing what he is translating what he is saying to me from somewhere else. "Yes. Two and a half years. That's right." I look to his wife, expecting to see her rolling her eyes. But she is just smiling. He asks me how long I have known Bill, and I am fascinated, so I answer.
"Yes, then. Perfect balance at two and a half years." He nods again. "But there is something more I don't quite have yet. " He spends ten minutes repeating what he has already told me, in different ways. I will have trouble. I must strive to not be bored. I must make change. I will see all he is saying come true in two and a half years. I MUST let him know what happens. Finally he gasps. He has it!
"You will experience pain, but from that pain, will come great creation. I see you have this sparking blue energy, it shoot from here." He points to my right breast, which is covered with a nametag. "And it flows up around your mind. Your beautiful, stong and creative mind. Do you have an editor?" I echo him with just the word editor. "Oh, you will need one after this time has passed and your pain. And there is something also with pity...but I do not know yet what that means. But, yes, pain."
Suddenly his wife throws her arms around me and strokes my head. "Oh Will!" She looks at me. "That's all life is anyway," she reassures me. "Pain that we learn something from. What will you do for a job? Are you going to have kids? What a life!"
Her husband looks annoyed. "Ah, she's mothering you! All the female elephants get upset together. But you'll see..."
"He does have a gift..." she says, giving me another squeeze.
"You have seen these people with the neon lights, and the signs for tarot reading. And you are getting this for free!" He is very self congratulatory.
"Go home and write all this down. Oh, and one more thing, two and a half years begins TODAY. Also, when you write this book, which is by the way, like Charles Dickens' stuff, when you write it, use your maiden name, Ms. Fuller. Use your maiden name."
"I'll order it for the library!" She is so proud of me already.
I am blessed. Last night I was granted my very own Christmas miracle. The arrogant, blowhard asshole that neither nor my co-workers can stand was lost for an hour in half in Yonkers - causing him to miss the first hour and a half of the two hour office holiday party. But because even the blessed need to be kept humble, he still managed to make a sexist comment to me about making babies and churning butter or something in the half hour he did have.
I may very well be the world's worst holiday secret keeper. I just can't help myself. I even shake the presents that I am giving to other people after they are wrapped. And I have to tell someone what everybody is getting. (This year, I made my mom listen to the list all the presents for everyone over the phone. I stopped myself, barely, before telling her what she was getting. Then, last night, over pizza with Bill, I nearly told him what he was getting. I had been debating a new camera vs a dvd player. He loves to take pictures and he lost the camera he bought himself a few years ago so he uses the little disposables. But he needs zoom. He really does. And I want a dvd player, so I decided that's what it would be. Because it's all about me. But then I remembered the baby jesus and the wise men and all that and I decided I better do more research. So last night, in all the flourescent romance of the Italian Pavilion, I leaned into him and said,"So, do you want a dvd player, or what?" Very subtle. When he answered, "Yes, but since it's for the Bunkhouse don't buy one for me," I had to refrain from shrieking - "i'm getting you a camera!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" See I had to tell someone.
It's one of those days, one margarita at lunch and I have no desire to do anymore work. So I printed out the annual dumb holiday letter for friends and family and looked at my booty from our office holiday luncheon (where I had said Margarita.) Other plans for this afternoon include Bill's Queer Eye application email, and stealing glances at the book I am reading right now -
The Time Traveler's Wife. I should be fired, but after lunch the boss decided to run some errands, my coworkers are chatting about dance movies with our work study student and no one wants anything from me anyway. They should just cancel the week before Christmas, in my book.
Tonight, I clean! Bill's is stopping in on his way to Newport, RI, and after that, St. Thomas. Bastard. The only consolation is that his Christmas in the Caribbean is tempered by the fact that he will be working for a man we call "Captain Cocktail," and will basically have to be in charge of sailing a really expensive
boat after (rum drink time) every day. Yeah right. Like it's any reason to feel sorry for him. He loves that shit.
Last night I put the duvet and its velvet cover on the bed. I realized it was time when, yesterday morning, I dreamed about spider holes, realized that the radio had gone on and was infiltrating my dreams, and found that my blanket and quilt weren't going to block out the news.
The event of the weekend was the world premiere of "Elliot: A Biography." Elliot is the prancy Maltese who lives upstairs. The one that Mo peed on. The one that goes to dog camp, and dog brunch, and dog dance lessons. He's a model. Mr. February. We love him anyway. Mo and I had a great time at the party, drinking champagne and chatting with Lisa, Owner of Madison the Terrier. As long as we let ourselves forget that we were at a party for a dog. A DOG. Now, I love my Momo, and my blog is named after him, and he sleeps in bed with me, and I kiss him on the cheeks, but I would never, ever pay someone to make a movie of his life. (And not just because I am cheap.) Because he is a dog. But maybe if he could dance I'd feel differently.
Why is it that, in the end, I could not convince Bill to audition for "The Amazing Race" with me, but he is all gung-ho about trying to get on "Queer Eye..."? He is a rugged outdoorsy type, which makes him perfect for either show, really. I just don't understand why he wants dance lessons for our wedding more than he wants COLD, HARD CASH. Gee, when I put it that way it seems really sweet!
At least now, I have a plan. Last night I sat down, listed all my beloved to whom I plan to give prexxies for Christimas/Hannukkah/Three Kings Day, and decided the monetray equivalent of my love for each and every one. Except it's all blown out of porportion because of a mandated gift spending amount for one of my beloveds. So the person I know least will end up with the gift of the most. And that, my friends, is the true meaning of Christmas. Or something.
I do love the the Holidays, but I get so stressed by the giving. The minute the "have to gets" get added in is the minute I start to resent all the gift giving. And the little baby Jesus cries.
In the end, I come around, and decide that I love the giving, the wrapping, the making, and the, I admit it, getting. Probably because it's wrapped up with all the other good things, like my Mom's date nut bread with cream cheese, smelling the tree, all the lights, and, the last couple of years, the clank of quarters streaming out of a slot machine at Mohegan Sun.
On Sunday, stuck in the Adirondacks as I was, I broke out the snow shoes. Bill insisted on driving over to Lake Champlain to look for ducks and I insisted on putting my hands over my eyes and screaming whenever we went over 30 miles an hour, or skidded in the slightest. It's what I do. This is one of the reasons I CAN'T be a school bus driver (though I have already perfected the movement necessary to use the special door opener thingie.) I don't think the children would react well to my shaking and sobbing at ever turn. Anyway. Bill bored some snow shoes from a friend, and after we got unstuck from the four foot drift Natasha van GMC got herself lodged in, we strapped them on and waddled up the snow covered park road. I led the way, occasionally turning to watch Bill holding his ski poles totally the wrong way and stepping on the heels of his really long snow shoes. Then the cursing started. Then he announced his hatred for snowshoes and clomped back to the truck. I kept going, and after ten minutes, I was feeling pretty good about my workout and pretty bad about Bill sitting in the truck waiting for me (and also I was tired) so I headed back to the truck. Just as I got there, I saw Bill relocking her doors. He headed toward me in just his boots and asked if I minded if he just walked to the end of the road without the special snow flotation shoes. I turned around and we headed back the way I came. After ten minutes, I was completely exhausted, sweating like a pig and flopping around like an idiot. Bill was far, far ahead of me, making time by walking in the tracks of the truck that had come through the road earlier (A truck that could not be stopped by four foot drifts.) I took off the snowshoes and increased my speed tenfold. When we got out to the point, we peed in the snow and watched snow geese fly overhead. And I contemplated this question: was it possible that, in regard to snow shoeing, we just weren't doing it right?
I am eating a giant sugar cookie that resembles nothing so much as Don King.
I was flipping through old yearbooks today. Not my yearbooks, of course, but the yearbooks of past classes of the fine institution of progressive education at which I work. Some damn classy women went here, in my humble opinion. I suppose they still do, but to look at the yearbooks classfell by the wayside in 1970. After that the yearbooks are full of color photos of leather clad coeds, all olied up and and making out on the dance floor, and really unfortuante hairdos, with big bangs, sweatbands, and unnatural hair colors. (Since when did I become such a prude about this kind of thing???) But before the 70s, 80s, 90s and Naughties, Scary Larry's women had class. They were photographed lounging in rocking chairs, chasing dogs across the lawn with flushed cheeks, pirouetting in leotards, and up to their elbows in clay. (JD Salinger knew from whence he spake when he described our lovelies in Franny and Zooey - of course, one of our alumnae told me about how he used to pick up her classmate at the dorm for their dates, and everyone would peer down from the landing above to see him. By the time I was a student there, off campus boyfriends were so rare that we were reduced to glaring at Robert Sean Leonard over the tops of our red plastic beer cups.)
I have to reprogram my vcr to tape not only 24 but the premiere of Paris Hilton's new show, The Simple Life. Paris and I have a connection. Last week, I spent the evening with her on her patio in Greenwich. We were sipping margaritas and brushing each other's hair. "Listen, Paris," I said. "EVERYONE has a sex tape. It's nothing to be ashamed of." She breathed a great sigh of relief and then showed me her new lipstick. I have such an active dream life.
Ah....Thanksgiving. We deep fried the turkey, celebrated with Canadians and their pate, and learned how old Bob McGillicuty came to lose his giblets, as it were, on that fateful night down in the quarry with a woman who was not his wife. It was a beautiful evening.
