Thank Garp it's Wordless Wednesday

Lydia, before she got her thyroid fixed. She was sad cause she was fat.

Playing Dress Up

I'm going to a wedding next weekend. For which I will be wearing a dress. And, hopefully, nice shoes. Perhaps a piece of jewelry. I will almost certainly shave my legs, brush my hair and put on make up. Even lipstick. In short, it will be the nicest I've looked since the last wedding I went to, a year and a half ago. Except that this time I won't have cuts and green stains all over my hands from doing the flowers.

And as far as I can tell, this will be the last wedding I will attend until the kids are grown. Absolutely everyone I know is married. 

Except me and Eric. But that's a whole different story.

My point is, I either need to make more (unmarried) friends, or find some other occasion for getting dressed up. Because doing it as infrequently as I do, I am out of practice. I have to buy new things each time because just enough time has lapsed since the last occasion that my formal wear is out of style. And since I'm not accustomed to wearing things like strapless dresses and fancy shoes I will probably look as awkward as I will feel; tugging at my bra, squirming out of my shoes, covering my naked, farmer tanned arms.

But I love it. I really do. I love to dress up. I love wearing dresses. Especially the kind that twirl out around you when you spin. So, if you're out there, if you're reading this, please invite me to your next formal occasion. I will wear my pretty plum colored dress and toast your happiness.

Dear Miss Manners,

There is an another business across the hall from my office where two elderly women work. It's some kind of christian charity or something. I dunno. Our office and their office share a set of bathrooms. The women's restroom often smells of baby powder and Miss Dior, but I usually have it to myself.

The older of the two women wants to retire and the other one has been searching for a replacement for her. I exchange pleasantries with them in passing, so when the woman began sharing her struggle to find a replacement for her partner, I listened politely. I smiled and nodded and oh deared and good lucked.

So today when we ran into each other in the bathroom, me going in, her coming out, I smiled and said hello and she started to tell me how excited she was that she had finally found the right candidate. I congratulated her and went into the stall. She kept talking. I sat down. She kept talking.

Now, I've never been one of those girls who go to the bathroom in groups of other girls. I don't generally carry on conversations in restroom stalls. So I'm unfamiliar with the rules of etiquette here. Would it be rude to start peeing while she's still talking? Do I hold it till she finishes her story? Or is this OK? Can I go about my business as she chats at me from the other side of this partial wall? Do generational rules apply here? Like, if the more mature woman is speaking, the younger woman holds her pee until the end of the conversation...? I'm at a loss, and I need to get back to my desk before the phone rings again.

Please help me Miss Manners!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth

Sunday Night

Spooning with my dog, watching Mystery.
And watching Eric sleep, spooning with his dog.

We are all tired.

Eric has a theory about how two siblings can't both be decent humans at the same time, one is all of a sudden sweet and compliant while the other throws himself to the floor in a fit of temper.

But what happens when they both come apart at the seams simultaneously? Mommy locks herself in the bathroom and cries into her wine, that's what.

Muddy Merry

Books

This picture is blurry on purpose. I don't want you to judge me for my bottom-shelf trashy titles: bodice rippers and wizards.

I love to read. I don't have a ton of time to read anymore what with kids and work and a boyfriend and a house that's falling down around me, but there have been times in my life when I have consumed books like food and lost touch with reality, wrapped up in stories.

I still read, when I have a lunch break at work where I don't need to do my grocery shopping, or at home when Eric is studying. Or, you know, in the bathroom.

But it has been so long since I've read the kind of book that keeps me up all night, unable to sleep till I know how the story ends, or cried at the beauty of the words, or felt that a book was telling the story of my inner... um... junk.

Since my teens I have devoured everything by Sommerset Maugham, E.M. Forster, the Brontes, Jane Austen and Shirley Jackson. And Mary Webb. Oh! Mary Webb. Precious Bane is the most beautiful book I have ever read.

And science fiction, too. William Gibson and Iain M. Banks. And fantasy, John Crowley and Neil Gaiman. I keep these books segregated on the shelves. Separate but equal.

Eric disapproves of the way I've organized my book shelves. I group my books by genre, and then by era, and then by mood. He uses a strict alphabetical fiction/non fiction method on his shelves.

Funny story. Eric's dad was visiting us from England over the summer and I came upstairs to change my clothes. I'm halfway up the steps with my shirt half off and I find Peter IN MY BEDROOM perusing my bookshelves. He said he liked the way I had my books organized. That it made perfect sense to him.  I put my shirt back on.

Anyhoo. What I'm getting at here is that I'm at a loss. I'm looking for suggestions. Have you read anything amazing that you can recommend? No downers - I've read my fair share of Hardy and Eliot. Nothing too modern-day-real-life. I like a little escapism. If it makes me laugh or cry I'm sold.

Storytime

My boyfriend Eric is from Long Island, and although he has a slight accent, mostly you don't notice it. Except when he reads to the kids. Then Yurtle the Turtle is a Port Jefferson used car salesman and the little turtle named Mack is a Jewish grandmother.

Trip Planning = No Blogging

Just spent an hour and half trying to figure out tickets to NY for Ethan and Christina's wedding. Can't look at the computer anymore.  

So here's a picture of me on a different trip I went on once. To Guatemala.

I am the champion of going home.

I work in a suburban office park. The kind they designed in the early eighties with all one-way, serpentine roads -- a mass of tangled figure eights with no stop signs. Viewed from above it must look like a bowl of Spaghetti-Os.

This is Minnesota and when it snows, the plows can't really see where one road turns and the next one starts, so in the fall they mark all the curbs with these little stakes. Tall and skinny with reflector strips at the top. They look just like those poles that slalom skiers whip around in the Olympics.

So as I'm leaving at the end of the day, it's hard not to imagine myself just sort of tapping them with my rear-view mirrors. Right turn - whap! Left turn - thwap!  Merge right - whap! thwap! I am Picabo Street in a Jetta. Racing for the gold. And Home.