Category: Being a girl

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"Other people" Being a girl Friends Memoir

My Friends…Cut Yourself Some Slack.

I think there’s an epidemic afoot.

Yesterday, two of my best friends each brought up the same concern: a feeling of failure or being tried and found wanting, compared to other people of our same age and background. 

One referred to herself as suffering from the “never enough” syndrome.  She suggested that this was the fault of the feminist movement: since now women can “do it all,” now we are required to do it all.  (This is actually what Lucinda Coxon’s play Happy Now? is about.)

My other friend just started a chat with me out of nowhere, saying that she needed to get off Facebook because all she could see was high school friends getting engaged and having babies.

They both speculated that maybe Facebook is causing the problems, and maybe the answer is just to stay off of it.  (What’s funny is that each of these conversations happened on Facebook.  Hm.)

Having two of my best friends bring this up – in the same day, no less – really made me think.  After all, who doesn’t Facebook stalk and then envy other people?  That’s the great thing about Facebook: the low-key keeping in touch with people.  It just means that you get to see every time someone makes good, gets married, has another baby, gets another promotion.

Both friends seemed kind of bleak about it though.  Which I get.  We’re 26 years old and all three of us feel like we should by all rights have our careers, our relationships, and our lives in order.  None of us have managed to go 3 for 3, although none of us is doing too badly.  But there are people out there with houses, careers, marriages, kids, dogs, cats, car payments, iPads, vacations, gym memberships, and 14-foot Christmas trees.

They’re not the only friends to ever have this conversation with me, which makes me think that it might be a much more widespread thing (hence the “epidemic”).  There’s pressure on us to be amazing, because we’ve been told our whole lives how awesome we are.  Then at some point each of us ends up leaving our small pond and realizing that we’re not really the giant fish we thought we were.

I think that one reason that I’m a lot more comfortable with my “ordinary” life, is that during my freshman year of college, I lived in a dorm with a bunch of smart geeks – we’re talking math, physics, computer science, engineering, hella smart geeks.  I was one of two English majors in the entire dorm (and the other girl changed majors).  So I figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t going to impress everyone anymore.

(This is the part where I tell the story about the guy in college who, while telling me about his plans to get his physics PhD in the next couple years, said to me, “You’re not smart enough to get a PhD in physics…I mean, I’m sure you’re smart in English or whatever.”  We did not end up dating.  It may have had something to do with that conversation.)

So I’m not having to learn, post-college, that I’m not a unique and perfect extraordinary snowflake.  I figured that out already, and I know how to own it and be happy even if I’m not rich or famous.  I think all my friends who are learning that now are having a harder time with it.

The funny thing is that I have a pretty healthy level of self-esteem.  I know I’m pretty cool, and I know that if we hadn’t gone to New York for 3 years, I could have set up a career for myself in California by this time.  But the time out there, and my adventures and experiences, were totally worth it to me.  I also would rather spend the extra years scraping it together now, while I’m still only 26, than be trotting along in my mid-30s and have everything suddenly swept out from under me.

Both my girlfriends are the same way.  They’ve each had kind of a bumpy time since college, with graduate schools and moves and relocations and other graduate programs.  Give us a few years and we’ll all have things figured out…or at least more figured out than they are now.

In the meantime, I told each of them, maybe staying off Facebook is a good idea if it’s bothering you so much.  But what’s even more fun (and doesn’t require limiting your social networking) is just to practice making fun of other people instead of envying them.  Hey, I too stalk other people’s pictures and feel jealous of how pretty they look or how nice their vacation was or how big their new house is.  But the percentage of people I envy is only, like, 25.  The other 75% of people on Facebook is just begging to be mocked.

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Being a girl Not awesome

I don’t read my mail anymore, man, it just makes me paranoid.

So WEEKS AGO I got a notice in the mail from Prudential saying that my IATSE Annuity Fund had been inactive for 6 months and that I needed to either tell them to keep it open, or if I said nothing, they would cut me a check for the balance: $13.62.

I have no idea why I would have an account through IATSE (which is the union of “professional stagehands, motion picture technicans, and allied crafts” – but not stage managers, who are part of the Actors Equity union) but I checked with Marin anyway, and they said no of course.  So then I carried this letter around with me for like 2 months, and never got around to calling to find out what it was from.

On Thursday night my parents stopped by our apartment on their way to San Jose, with a grocery bag full of pears, another grocery bag of vegetables, and a stack of mail.  One of the pieces of mail was a check from Prudential for $13.62, which I was like, Score!  Every little bit helps, right?  But this morning, I determined to figure out why I was getting this money (especially since technically I’ll have to claim it in my taxes next year), so I called the phone number listed on the letter.

I went around and around with the automated voice messaging system, trying not to put in my social security number and just get a person on the phone.  But it was stubborn so I finally just did it, said “I don’t have one” when asked for a PIN, and gave my date of birth.  They said they couldn’t find an account for me and to call back during the hours when they had someone working there.

Jeez, this makes me nervous.  A Google search for “Prudential scam” returns nothing of consequence except the standard page on Prudential’s website that says generically, “Sometimes people use our name in scams.  Call your bank” or whatever.  Part of me is like, This is the most thorough scam ever, if you don’t give in to your curiosity and give them your social, they still send you a check.  I don’t know.  I’ll have to call them first thing on Monday to allay my fears, but in the meantime I just hope it’s all right.  It probably is.  I should do a credit check anyway, I guess.

One of the other pieces of mail was a new credit card, like, with my name on it and everything, that I absolutely did NOT sign up for…but the other part of me is like, take it and activate it and never use it.  So I have to figure that out today.

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Being a girl cars

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Lagan

(Side note: For years now I have remembered that there was a third type of wreckage besides flotsam and jetsam, but I could never remember what it was.  So I typed “flotsam, jetsam, and” into the search bar and Google filled in “and lagan.”  I love the internet.)

(Flotsam: goods that have are floating on the water, not deliberately thrown in, as after a shipwreck.  If found, remains the property of the original owner.
Jetsam: goods that have been thrown into the water (jettisoned) by the crew deliberately, so as to lighten the ship in an emergency.  If found, becomes the property of the finder.
Lagan: goods tied to a buoy, so the owner can find return and find them later.
Derelict (bonus word): property abandoned at sea without hope of recovery, including shipwrecks.)

On Wednesday I parked my car in a valet lot in San Francisco.  The backseat of my car has been collecting goods for some time now, and although I knew it was mostly stuff of little or no value, it made me nervous leaving it in a lot in the middle of a big city, probably with the windows down and the car unlocked.  So I took a giant Target bag out and filled it up with everything worth keeping, filled a Safeway bag with stuff that was obviously trash, and stuck the “save” stuff in the trunk.  I now bring you a list of the things that have been so important they’ve been riding around with me for probably thousands of miles.

-A binder with scripts and various notes from each of my 3 shows at MTC
-A box of Lipton decaf tea bags
-A UC Davis hoodie
-$1.84 in change
-1 sock
-5 single-serve packets of Crystal Light raspberry lemonade
-My high school graduation tassel
-The purple sunglasses I don’t wear anymore because they leave marks on my nose
-The end of a roll of black gaff tape
-The bill for my car registration
-3 scarves, none of which I’ve worn in at least a year and a half
-Roseanne Barr’s autobiography, My Life As A Woman
-My cigarette-lighter phone charger (I actually use this frequently)
-3 empty plastic bottles
-Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
-Thank you notes from 2 of the MTC shows
-Varying feminine hygeine products

I need to simplify my life.

Categories
Being a girl Not awesome

Cue lightning

The scene: Katie, my parents’ second-most skittish cat, is sitting on the windowsill, pressed up against the screen. As I walk past her to the fridge to get more Diet Coke, I say in the babytalk voice I can’t seem to shake, “What are you looking at? What do you see out there?”

When I turn back to look at her, she’s looking at me with big eyes. To cover my bases, I say:

“Nothing. The correct answer is, ‘I see nothing out there.'”

I’m currently reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and I’m really into it, but I’m hesitant about settling down to read it if I’m going to keep pricking up my ears at every little creak. Katie just took off running and skidded on the hall runner, which slid along the floor! My stomach just growled! Oh jeez…

[I was trying to insert a picture here from the movie The Grudge, of the little boy looking absolutely terrifying, and shirtless. The computer knows better than me, though, and is refusing to upload it.]

UPDATE 7/15/10: Well, at first both cats settled in on either side of me to guard me, but then they got bored, so I woke up about 10 times last night, each time one would run across me or jump onto the bed. All in all not a very restful night. Also I’m now covered in cat hair and see no way of ever getting myself clean again.

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Being a girl Sentiment

The real difference between men and women

I remember reading a column in the Cal Aggie (UC Davis’ school newspaper) about the difference between the way guys and girls treated their birthdays: guys are like, “Oh yeah, my birthday’s this weekend – I’ll invite some people over and buy some beer.”  Then they’re done.  And girls spend all this time obsessing about what it will be like and what they’ll do and what they’ll wear.  Then they spend the whole day thinking, “This is my birthday breakfast!  This is my birthday bus ride to school!  This is my birthday coffee!” and so on and so forth.

I basically embody this principle, with the minor twist that I let myself off a lot of hooks because it happens to be the anniversary of the day I was born.  So it’s all about, “It’s okay if I don’t exercise today” (of course, it helps that I have been in rehearsal all day and we have a show tonight too).  Or, “I can eat a plate of tater tots for lunch,” or “Sorry I’m texting while in line at the bank, but I’ll still just finish up this text while I walk to the next open teller and send it even though normally I would hate when people do that…because it’s my birthday!”  Somehow I assume everyone around me can tell and is also letting me off the hook for my behavior.

I also thought I should get something “nice” for dinner break.  “Nice” meaning a little out of the ordinary, maybe more expensive than usual, maybe just something I wouldn’t usually pick up.  Maybe something Drew doesn’t like that I do!  I went to the grocery store to just look around and see what struck my fancy.  I walked out of the grocery store with a cache of Smart Ones frozen dinners, and one seedless watermelon (which, when I opened it up, turned out to be just okay…not great).  Like, the only food I can think of right now is “sandwiches.”  I can’t even think of what “something nice” would be exactly.  Maybe I should go stroll around Whole Foods and see if there’s anything there, because right now all I’ve got is a frozen ziti marinara and a Tupperware of watermelon chunks.

26 feels exactly like 25, only closer to 30.

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"Other people" Being a girl Endings Not awesome

Sunday Night Adventures and Heroes

So Sunday night, the end of an 8-show week, I’m worn out and over it and my attitude is souring fast.  Everyone still keeps asking for things, right up to the end of the second show (“The bathroom in the boys dressing room is out of soap.” “Okay, use the other bathroom, it’s like 20 minutes until the end of the show.”) (Although then I totally did refill the soap for them.) (I can’t exactly figure out whose job that is, which makes me think it might fall under the “production assistant” umbrella).  Anyway, it’s been a long week.

I finally get out of the building, get in the car, start digging for my iPod, Himself has been off work and I just want to get home and sit around and watch TV with him…and I remember that I left my food in the fridge, and I was going to eat it tonight.  I debate for about 3 seconds, then get out of the car, slam the door, and start striding back toward the building.  Feel for keys in my hoodie pocket, and…nothing there.  Keys in purse, which is actually in my hand?  Nope.  Keys in the ignition of the locked car?  Check.

I call Himself because I’ve heard you can use a remote fob thingie and unlock a car from far away, through your cell phones.  He’s not at home but heads back there.  There may be a little bit of crying as I explain what happened, because this is just embarrassing.  I locked my keys in the car like an idiot because I had to go back inside to get my food?  Come on now.

I climb up onto the trunk to sit there and mope, with maybe a few more tears.  Suddenly Ted the sound designer/mixer calls from behind me to ask if I’m okay.  Instead of responding how I’ve been responding to any personal inquiries all week – “I’m fine” – I let it out.  He pulls his car around and parks next to me, asking questions like “Power windows or manual?” and “Have you ever broken into your car before?”  Which, funnily enough, I haven’t.  At some point, Himself calls back and we try the remote-unlocking, which of course totally doesn’t work.  So he and the two friends he was out to dinner with start the drive to Marin.

Ted works diligently using a heavy-duty coat hanger we steal from the costume shop (I also shamelessly pick up the oh-so-important food), while I hold the flashlight and make helpful comments like “Seriously, thank you so much.”  At some point the stage manager comes out of the building and stands near us, but I get rid of him pretty quick.  About 5 minutes in I get the brilliant idea to see if the passenger side window is down any further, which it is, and even better, I can wrench it down another inch or so.  So we’ve got about 2 1/2 inches of room to work with, and luckily Ted has little girl wrists.  He sticks with it though, and it’s 15 minutes later, maybe 20 minutes tops, that he pops the door lock with the coat hanger.

I call Himself and tell him to turn around (luckily he hadn’t made it very far) and tell Ted about ten times that he’s awesome.  I’m home by 11:00, which is only maybe half an hour after I’d planned to be home.  Not exactly the relaxing Sunday night I had envisioned but it could have been a lot worse.  So I’m bringing Ted a 6-pack of Stella today, which will come in extra-handy, since they had a 5-hour music/sound rehearsal today at which I wasn’t needed.

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Awesome Being a girl Friends

Alcatraz

When you haven’t seen your bestie in 6 months, and she schedules a trip home with her boyfriend so he can meet her family and see California for the first time, and she makes plans to be in your zip code for a night and a day, what else can you do but agree to go with her and her boyfriend wherever they want?  Even if “wherever they want” turns out to be Alcatraz.

I learned a lot of things, that day, about the history of Alcatraz and its many uses and purposes.  Here are some interesting facts: 

In the 60s, Native Americans took over the defunct prison and lived there for 19 months, claiming the land for Indians.  In fact one of the first things you see when you pull up to the dock on the boat is “Indians Welcome” which I thought was some kind of prison threat, but was actually totally sincere. 

They do not sell souvenir shot glasses, which really surprises me, as they sell a wide variety of other things, including tin cups (“replicas” of the ones issued to prisoners) and Alcatraz salt and pepper shakers.  Also lots of cookbooks, including non-Alcatraz themes.

The corrections officers used to live on the island, with their families, and the kids would take the boat to school in San Francisco, and come home at the end of the day.  They basically never saw the prisoners.  But I think I would be nervous to have my family there, because if I was a bad guy, and I had a lot of anger, and I broke out of prison, I wouldn’t bother trying to swim to shore – I would just go to the families’ houses and take them all hostage or something.  I don’t know if that whole concept would fly nowadays anyway.  Do corrections officers’ families live on Rikers Island?  I just wikipediaed it, and while there is nothing about families living there, it does say Rikers Island is “the world’s largest penal colony” as it contains within it “schools, medical clinics, ball fields, chapels, gyms, drug rehab programs, grocery stores, barbershops, a bakery, a laundromat, a power plant, a track, a tailor shop, a print shop, a bus depot and even a car wash.”

But this isn’t about Rikers, this is about Alcatraz.  Alcatraz now is all about tourists, and flourishing flora and fauna.  Here’s a picture of a seagull real quick, just in case you’re getting bored.

The day was warm and overcast, not a great combination, but at least it wasn’t raining.  We pulled up to the dock, walked uphill for what seemed like a long time, and got to the main jailhouse.  We picked up our audio tour headsets in the shower room (they even had put in prop soap in the soap holders, to really drive home that this was where prisoners took showers in rows), and started off.

If you are planning a trip to Alcatraz, well, the headset audio tour fee is included in your boat fee.  But if for some reason you were thinking you’d go it alone, working out of pamphlets and handouts, and explaining to your pre-teen children what you think each new room is, let me just make a suggestion: pick up the headsets.  I cannot imagine walking through that building and not having the information from the source like that.  It is narrated (allegedly) by 4 corrections officers and 4 actual prisoners, and they have sound effects and stuff.  It’s actually really cool.  They take you all through the building (although when we got to the outside part we all paused our tours and took a little break) and it only takes like 45 minutes or something like that.

(At some point when you’re in cellblock C, slip your headphones off and listen to the faint echoes from footsteps and rustling bodies, but it will be the only sound, because no one is talking.  It’s kind of eerie.  Now, put your headset back on, you’re missing the story of how the one guy starved himself to fit through the bars and almost got out.) 

We kept being surrounded by the same people: the obnoxious guy who’s filming everything, and keeps just walking in whatever direction he wishes to go, without looking around him because he’s too busy staring in the viewfinder; the fiesty looking kid who chose to forego the “I’m stuck behind these bars!” shot and instead marched right over to the toilet and sat down, doing a Rodin’s “The Thinker” pose instead; the mom-and-daughter team wearing scrunchies and oversized t-shirts, who were buying armloads of stuff in the gift shop when I passed them last; the bored looking 12-year-old kid wearing a Donkey Balls t-shirt.  (I gather Donkey Balls is some kind of gourmet Hawaiian chocolate?)  Actually, I saw that kid (again) in the restaurant we finally landed in on Pier 39, and I thought, what a tacky shirt (again).  I kept wondering what brought those other people to Alcatraz.  Where were they from originally?  Were they bummed out that the weather was so gray?  Was that kid as bored as he looked or was he doing that 12-year-old thing, where everything is boring?

On the boat on the way back, the weather cleared up and San Francisco looked really nice with a backdrop of blue sky.  Don’t worry though because it definitely sprinkled a little later that night.  We got it, San Francisco, you’re famous for your fog, I know.

The best part of the entire day was getting to see Megan and meet Dennis (and then, to steal his pictures for this blog post, thanks Dennis!), oh, and also to eat clam chowder sourdough bread bowls.  I hope that it doesn’t take another 6 months to see them again.  Maybe NYC next time?

(That’s our guardian in the background.  You’re never alone.  You’ll never be alone.)

Categories
Being a girl Drew Fiction

Situation: Comedy

Yesterday, DMP informed me that each of my stories sounds like it is just the set-up to an actual story.  Every time I finish one, he is apparently left waiting for the action to begin.  I don’t tell stories, I tell situations.

When pressed, he admitted it’s endearing.  (“But don’t you like that about me?”  “Not really.”  “But, if I died, wouldn’t you miss it?”  “Um…yes.”)  I think it’s an interesting character trait.  Something I will keep an eye (ear) on.  Pay attention to what my “stories” want to be, and whether they seem complete.

In celebration! of endearing character traits, here are a few actual stories I have told him recently…and then the endings I am inventing now to fulfill him (and whoever else jumps on this train).

1. The Misplaced Priest

“The Hayward Daily Review had a story today about how, sometimes, when priests are accused of things like inappropriate behavior around children, and stuff, sometimes the Catholic Church just sends them away to faraway countries where they are already doing outreach and missions and stuff.  And there was this picture of a priest who was accused a few a years ago, and in the picture he’s in like Venezuela or somewhere, and he’s holding this little boy, and there are two more standing next to him, and they’re all under 5 years old and they’re all just wearing shorts, and he’s got this look, like, this half smile on his face, and I’m like, This is a bad idea, right?  Does this guy not look exactly like Ronnie McGorvey in Little Children?”

This is where my story originally ended.  But maybe DMP would have been happier had it gone on:

“So then Craig says, You know what?  My favorite cousin down in Santa Barbara is a Catholic priest.  And about 8 years ago one of the families in his church got in trouble, and he helped them personally as well as through the church, with money and food, and he even let them stay with him for a week or so, a single mother and her two boys.  Eventually she got back on her feet and she was very grateful and gracious.  Now one of the sons is like 18 or 19, and is calling my cousin asking him for more money.  My cousin keeps saying no, he’s helped them a lot, he’s not exactly well-off by anyone’s standards, and this kid doesn’t need money, he just wants money.  So a couple weeks ago my cousin calls my parents and tells them that this 18-year-old kid said he is going to go to the police and say that my cousin abused the two kids all those years ago, which is absolutely not true.  So he’s dealing with the possibility of this accusation – which would be devastating even if unfounded – and he’s thinking about just resigning before things get messy and saving himself the trouble.

“But then he finds out through one of his superiors that he’s been talking to about this, that the church is looking for a few priests to send to Afghanistan to do outreach there, and even before this mess with the 18-year-old he was praying about a way to reach out to more people.  He had even been thinking about going over to the Middle East, or to Africa, and trying to do some work there.  Building wells or whatever, helping people, like priests do.  So he talked to whoever is in charge and now he’s working on all the paperwork and going through the process to fly over there and minister to people.  And he’s not running away from guilt or from fear.  He’s going because he felt called to go, and now he’s even wondering if this kid was just the one last sign from God that he needed to take the plunge.”

I figure in a good, full story you always learn a lesson, and my lesson in this story is not to judge people by a single picture in a newspaper, even when accompanied by a pretty thorough article and some pretty compelling evidence.

2. The Case of the Rude Driver (Installment 35 of 119 – I seem to often have “stories” about rude drivers)

“Dude, so all the roads in Mill Valley were flooded from the rain and high tides today, and so everyone is driving really slow.  And there’s this part of the road where it splits into two lanes for like an eighth of a mile, so more people can fit behind the traffic light, and I was driving carefully through this sort of deep water, when a red jeep zooms by me on the right, and splashes a huge tidal wave of mud over my car.  My windshield wipers had a hard time cleaning it off.  And now my car is coated with this film of dirty skanky gutter water.”

Continued…

“So, I freaked out, because on top of being rude, it was really dangerous, and I decided, the heck with my calltime, I can be a little late today.  And I followed that jeep for about 6 miles out toward Stinson Beach.  They finally pulled over, and I got a little scared, because I thought maybe they were ready for a confronation and would jump out of the car with a crowbar or something.  But when no one got out of the car I turned my car off and got out (carefully, expecting an ambush).  I walked up to the driver’s side and looked in the window, and there in the driver’s seat was a 9-months-pregnant woman!  I knocked on her window and she rolled it down but I could hear her Lamaze breathing even before that.  “Do you need help?” I asked her.  She nodded, fearfully.  But luckily I had my emergency first-aid kit in the car, along with plenty of distilled water and road flares.  I set it all up, called the hospital and had them send out an ambulance, and decided to wait with her and talk quietly to keep her calm.

“That probably would have worked, but she had waited too long before leaving her work, because she wanted to stay long enough for her workday to count as a whole day, and not waste a half-sickday.  So she was already pretty far along.  I ended up delivering that baby on the side of Hwy 1, right before the ambulance arrived.  Thank goodness!  They took care of it from there, but I made sure they had my name and phone number, and she promised to call me.  She also hinted that she was thinking about naming her baby after me, but it was a boy, bless him, and I told her it’s okay if she wants to go with something more traditionally male.”

This story has action, suspense, a hero, and new beginnings.  How can you not love it?

3. Fergie Who?

“Today, in Safeway, Fergie was on the cover of a magazine, looking hot as usual, and the woman behind me in line was studying the cover pretty intently.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see her glancing at me a couple times too, and finally she asked me, “Is that Fergie, who was married to Prince Andrew?”  I said, “Oh, no, that’s Fergie the singer, from the Black Eyed Peas.”  “Well, I didn’t think she was that nice redhead!” she said, sounding relieved.

Okay, even I know that’s not a story.  But I would still totally tell it to someone like it was.  What is wrong with me?

Let’s continue.

“Fergie the Duchess is a lovely person,” she went on, “just lovely.” 

“You know The Duchess of York?” I asked her, being kind since I was still third in line and the person at the register was still trying to remember their phone number. 

“Oh yes,” she said, now turning to face me full on.  “Well, I used to date Prince Andrew before their marriage, so we met several times, and then we would get together and she would ask me how I dealt with certain habits of his…” 

“What type of habits?” I asked. 

“Well, he would clip his toenails in the bathtub but forget to rinse them down the drain,” she said, “and he would never finish a bottle or carton of anything – he always left just a half-inch in the bottom, not even enough for a full glass.  So irritating.”  She sighed.  “Fergie – the duchess Fergie – would call me up sometimes and ask how I ever put up with it.” 

“That is very interesting,” I said. 

“You know Andrew told me once that he didn’t like redheads.  Just thought it was unnatural.  That’s why I always took care to keep my hair very dark.  To blend in.” 

“Wow,” I said.  “So that’s why they got divorced.”

“Yes,” she said.  “That’s why.”

And then it was my turn at the register and I scanned my way through quickly.  Before leaving I turned back and did a little half-wave to the crazy brunette behind me in line.  “It was nice talking to you,” I said.

“Don’t eat any underripe persimmons,” she said back to me, and I left.

Categories
Awesome Being a girl Drew Sentiment

Cucumber Eyes

I have been known to say that marriage (or co-habitation) is really just an extended slumber party.  The other night, rehearsal went until 9:00 pm.  And then, the stage manager and I taped the spikes onto the stage floor in prep for moving into the theatre the next day.  And then, I drove him home to San Francisco (the second time, and he still did not offer to chip in for gas or toll.  I’m pretty sure he catches rides in order to avoid paying the toll). 

So by the time I get home it’s around 10:30 and it’s too late for dinner, but I haven’t really eaten.  Drew cuts up a cucumber that’s in the fridge and I eat some slices and then I appropriate two slices to put over my eyes and lay on the couch.  Drew comes in and changes the channel on the TV from Frasier to Golden Girls.  “Let’s play a game.  You see if you can guess the show.”

“Golden Girls,” I say immediately.  [Pause]  A male voice says something about politics and everyone laughs.  “Stephen Colbert,” I say.  [Pause]  I hear weird intonations in a female voice and I’m not sure, then I hear the familiar voice of Quagmire.  “Oh, Family Guy, it’s the one where they’re in Lord of the Rings.”  [Pause]  Music and inspecific noises.  “Is this VH1?” I ask. 

“Nope,” he replies. 

“TLC?” 

“Yes!” 

I hear someone say, “One, two, three…”  “17 Kids and Counting?” I take a stab in the dark. 

“Yes!  How did you do that?  Are you looking?”  I cross my heart I’m not.  “But the show is now called 19 Kids and Counting, but this is an old episode so it’s still just 17 kids.”  I promise I’m not peeking.

More inspecific noises and ominous generic background music.  “Is this a Discovery show?”  (I’m thinking about shark attacks here.)  It’s not.  “Law and Order?”

“Yes!”  He practically says “OMG.”

The next one is Will & Grace, I get it immediately based on Rosario’s voice.  I then have a run of bad luck which includes Millionaire Matchmaker (I know I recognize her voice, I just can’t place it, and I’m getting smug, which doesn’t help), Unwrapped (I guess Frasier again based on the theme music) and China Mandarin Intern (which I guessed as “The China Channel,” close enough, right?).  We land on The Tonight Show, which I guess right, and then I get tired of the cucumber slices which keep sliding down whenever I talk or smile.  I take them off and consider eating them but they have mascara bits on them.

So we watch Hugh Jackman be incredibly racist for about 10 minutes (did anyone catch that?) and we never do figure out what he’s supposed to be promoting.  Maybe The Tonight Show just couldn’t get anyone else.

Sometimes after a long day you just have to relax, in inventive ways.  (Also, I’m pretty sure that the cucumber slices totally did work magic on my eyes, just the way they do, well, on TV!)

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"Other people" Being a girl Drew Family Not awesome

The Wedding Photographer from the Black Lagoon

So, I got married last November.  It was a wonderful affair, with wine and family and dancing and cake and guests coming from New York and Spain to help us celebrate.  It was really much better than I expected and lots better than I even wished for.  The caterers were thorough and invisible when they were supposed to be, the DJ played all the right music and none of the wrong music, and the cake was 5 layers, not 4 like we were expecting, because the baker wanted to give it some extra drama.  I love me a 5-tiered cake.  The photographer and his assistant were everywhere at all times, stayed from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, and didn’t mind when our set-up shot plan changed 3 times.  They left the reception when we did, and promised us our pictures in “4-6 weeks! by Christmas!”

Here is a timeline of how the next 4 months have gone.

Dec 15, haven’t heard anything from him, so I email him just to find out if he’ll post them soon. We’d love to sit down with our sets of parents and go through the pictures.  Photographer doesn’t respond.
Dec 22, Facebook informs me he’s going to Mexico for Christmas.
Dec 22, I email him again because I haven’t heard back.
Dec 23, Photographer informs me via email that he’s “out of the country” for the holidays and will return after the New Year.
Jan 6, I email him again asking because I haven’t heard anything.
Jan 6, He writes back saying he’s almost done!
Jan 11, They’re posted! We’re so happy. I email him back asking for a couple others shots – one, a group shot with the girls I used to babysit, which I definitely remember being taken. Two, anything, from any point in the night, of me and my mom together. He tells me he’s out of town until Jan 17 so he’ll get back to me.
Jan 26, I call him. No answer.  No callback.
Feb 12, I email him. No answer.
Mar 2, I call him. No answer.  No callback.
Mar 6, I call him around 9:30 in the morning..  He answers!  Holy cow!  He tells me he’s “just looking at the pictures” and he can’t find the one of me with my babysitting girls.  Also, he says, “this has never happened before” but he can’t find anything of me and my mom.  He’s “never had to set that up before, it always happens naturally.”  I basically give up and say sweetly through my teeth, “Okay, well, everything else is great, so can you mail us the DVD?”  He says he’ll do that right away.
Mar 11, Silly me, I assumed “right away” meant he’d mail the DVD on Saturday, or Monday at the latest.  No DVD has shown up yet and shipping from San Francisco to San Bruno shouldn’t take long.  I email him asking if he’d sent it because I wanted to take it to my parents’ house over the weekend (not true).  He writes back saying he’s at a “wedding photography convention” in Las Vegas to get some new slick DVD cases that he likes.  He’ll overnight one to my parents’ address, if I’ll give it to him.  I give it to him (anything to get a copy of that DVD!).
Mar 12, In the morning he leaves me a voicemail saying he’s been to the post office, UPS, and FedEx and no one can get it there by Saturday.  I text him saying to just send it to me here.

Today we got home and there was a (granted, pretty slick) DVD case leaning against the door.  Which means he just brought it by and left it at some point today?  There are 2 DVDs inside, one saying in Sharpie, “Copy 1” and the other, “Copy 2.”  For needing to be placed in such a slick case, the DVDs are pretty unimpressive, but if I pop them into the computer and my wedding pictures exist thereon, everything will be forgiven (if not immediately forgotten).

So here it is, over 4 months later, and we have our pictures.  The next step is to upload all 600 onto some photo sharing-and-purchasing website, send the link to everyone, and then order the prints.  Now the only thing to kind of bother me is the fact that everyone else has that one great the-happy-couple-kissing-in-a-very-posed-manner-in-front-of-a-tree picture, and we, for some reason, have none of those.  I mean, we have lots of good candids and that’s what I wanted anyway, so it’s all good.  I just kind of miss not having that gazing-at-each-other-lovingly-in-front-of-a-pond picture.

Oh yeah, and I need to write that photographer a scathing review on Yelp.  My only question is, is this the kind of thing where I should warn him beforehand?  Or should I just cut into him via the faceless internet?  Major dilemma.