michele

today i went bra shopping at macy’s and now i must vent.

now some people, understandably, may think bra shopping is a wonderful feminine mystery of lace, silk, and pushed up, pushed together boobage. let me gently disillusion you. bra shopping sucks like being broken up with sucks. there’s a sense of worthlessness and a complete apathy towards continuing with your life afterwards. this is compounded if you really liked the dastardly dumper/have a large chest.

i’ll tell you something about having an enormous rack. it’s not all double-D jokes about being top-heavy, my friends. having a cup size in the double letters means you basically have access to the most hideously ugly fabrics known to man. it’s all synthetic polyfibers with a dearth of lace and an even greater paucity of colors. when you’ve got big breasts you’re offered 3 main colors: white. black. khaki. that is all.

people with A-C cups get offered lacy confections of pure artistry! they’e offered MUTLIPLE COLORS in the same bra. what i wouldn’t give for multi-colored bras! sometimes there’s even lace ON TOP of lace. i’m offered bras that promise to minimize my bounty. you know what this actually entails? pushing the breasts out and down. that’s not minimizing, that’s accentuating the sag of old age.

i hate the bra industry and now i hate my life and my day. thanks a lot, macy’s.

today i had jury duty. as some of you might recall, i was actually supposed to have jury duty last week. but i forgot to go. ha ha ha, $1,500 fine or possible jail time, i spit in your face. nothing but rescheduling happened to me.

this morning, i got up and showered before 8am. a shocking turn of events. and then drove to the courthouse in martinez. it immediately became apparent to me that jury duty is a very lame and boring interruption of my days of laziness. i sat in the waiting room for 2 hours doing homework and listening to my IPOD. 12 people got called and went away to be on a jury. the rest of us sat. finally at 11, 50 of us got called to be on a jury selection process. unfortunately for me, i was juror #12. actually ON the jury already. a sad day in the neighborhood, my friends. my tail drooped to dropping and i sat under my own little cloud of gloom. for an hour the judge nattered on in his senile way and then started asking the potential jurors questions. i made googly eyes at the assistant district attorney and the defendant. also the other jurors, the court recorder woman, the judge, the freakish looking defendant attorney, and the singing gun-toting black woman guard. it was incredibly dull. i attempted to get out of the whole nonsense by saying i was a student and had to go to class on friday. but it was only supposed to be a 3 day trial so they said tough luck. after that i tried nothing and just sat and was agreeable. though i did keep catching eyes with the assistant DA and the defendant. smiling.

we went to lunch. i called kristen and complained vociferously about the boredom and stupidity. kristen tried to coax me into admiring the legal system. it didn’t work.

from 1:30 to 3:30, i continued being juror #12 as other jurors disappeared all around me. one old man cried and had to go into chambers before he was excused. i was a little worried for him. he was old, after all. then the lawyers asked us questions. neither asked me anything. i sat patiently smiling politely at people, settling into my swivel chair for a 3 day stay.

and then, AND THEN, the assistant DA excused me. she excused me first and only! i was excused! given a slip of paper and sent on my way! and why?, i ask you! why was i excused out of all the people in the room? because i’m young and female and they were trying a young male for joy-riding in a car! ecstasy! certainly i offered no other resistance to the process and had nothing against car thieves, relationships with lawyers or police officers, or incidents of personal injury to report. i had no moral problems with serving (or at least i didn’t reveal any). no one asked me any questions at all really. and yet she excused me.

i sort of love her now. she was kind of cute. also married, so i’m not getting any ideas. but thank god i made eye contact with her and also with the defendant. she must have suspected me of being sympathetic to his plight or something. though i wasn’t. i’m pretty sure he was guilty and distrustful of the whole bit about not being able to say someone’s guilty when you’ve heard no evidence. well, i admit i wasn’t being fair. maybe she knew that too. though if so then i was on her side and she should have kept me. or maybe lawyers just don’t like people under 30 (jason’s thought). or students. whatever. it doesn’t matter now because i’m free! gloriously set free from stupid jury duty of boringness.

With The Vet

Vet: I have good news! She has pancreatitus!

Me: Uh. how is that good, exactly?

(Apparently the pancreas is not a necessary organ for survival in cats. Hooray!)

With The Comcast Guy

Comcast Guy: What are you doing up there?

Me: I haven’t had internet for FIVE DAYS. Where do you expect me to be if not climbing the walls, you goddamn nose-wipe?

With 4th Graders

Bianca: Is that a real tattoo?

Me: Um, yes.

Brody: Are you a real girl?

Me: Stupid punk fourth graders.

With Punk the Cat

Punk: mufflemmmmfllle

Me: Shit goose! Put the freaking mouse down!

With The Mouse I Saved From Punk

Mouse: (shudder, shudder)

Me: I know I’m grateful you still have your head too, but don’t get carried away and bite me. I will fully drop you from a (not-so)-great height.

With A Cloud

Me: You’re pretty.

Cloud:

With Myself:

Me: You’re pretty.

Me: You’re an idiot.

the internet at my house has been broken since sunday night. as brody puts it, “that would be the end of the world for me.”

brody, as you might now be wondering, is the 4th grader i’m seated next to right now in my mom’s classroom. an astute little 4th grade observer, he has summed up my distress at having to be in this classroom with 32 little kids.

seriously, imagine my face as red as can be and that is how it is. there’s so many of them! one of them just asked if my tattoos were real! inquisitive! argh! i’m freaking out!

sadly, i really had to come here today and do school stuff as i’ve already missed out on 2 online meetings with my library class discussion group and i had to take a quiz today for the class before the deadline. i did get full points for the reaction paper i wrote for my other library class a couple weeks ago. A+, suckers. my streak of always getting perfect on the first paper of a class holds. we shall see if i manage a B on the next one and maintain that streak as well.

my mom is now reading a story to them for 15 minutes before they go off to music class. brody is reading his own book on the weird and wonderful. pay attention, brat!

the main character of mom’s book just died while an owl hooted her name. this book is incredibly stupid sounding. at the close, the kids are all, “she died?!” “who died?!” “she was only 17 summers old!”

kids, get used to it. you’re going to die.

for the last two weeks i’ve been convinced that moo cow (my cat) was dying. she had elevated enzymes in her liver and bile system which is indicative of either a liver disease curable by antibiotics or terminal cancer. the symptom i developed from this disease was an antipathy for dealing with other people. i pretty much haven’t left my house for 2 weeks. i’ve been awful about answering the phone and initiating email.

yesterday, moo cow had a second set of blood tests done which came back with significantly decreased enzyme levels. which means the antibiotics are actually helping. which means she probably won’t die. i started feeling better about things. i actually emailed people today to ask how they were doing. i commiserated with jason’s story of mexican food poisoning. i matched electronic wits with sean and lost (because, as we know, he’s so much funnier than me). but that was this morning.

last night i walked out into the backyard where fats waller (my other cat) was lying on the grass meowing piteously in a voice not his own. he actually let me walk right up to him and pick him up. if you know fats, you know this is completely against his normal behavior. this morning he was still doing no better and we were worried about him so a trip to the emergency vet was in order. first they thought it was just kidney stones–treatable. but then they thought it might be a kidney infection–again, treatable. so for a great part of today i was feeling all right about things. fats would be ok, he’d be treatable. soon he’d be back meowing his actual meow and flopping over for me to rub his belly.

it turns out though that he had kidney cancer–really not treatable. this is the first time in my life i’ve been around for the death of one of my cats. it’s not an experience i have any desire to repeat. the vet injected him and he turned to me for comfort. he put his head in my palm and i watched him die.

twisting the knife

this weekend i went to santa barbara where i ate amazing food and dealt only with migrant farm-workers and not dirty hippies.

san ardo

on the way down i squealed in feigned terror while driving through san ardo. i had to take a mini step back though and realize the absurdity of my own reaction when i didn’t have sean in the car talking about slurping out my brain pan in a zombie voice. i think possibly i made up a little song about my brain pan, so delighted was i by the phrase. i don’t remember it now. and even if i did, i probably wouldn’t share it. who am i kidding, i would fully share it. i am the naked sushi girl without secrets.

gilroy outlet malls

why must they taunt me so?!?! et tu, dsw shoe warehouse?

willoughby the cat

argh! the cuteness! and the kitten-ness! he woke me up every morning at 6:30 by kneading my face and purring while sitting on my chin, but did i care?! no, i did not care! the most amazing thing about this cat? he thinks he’s a dog. much like the book ‘a dog called kitty’ but with less of the animal mutilation at the end of the story. why did someone give that to me to read when i was in 3rd grade? fucking scarred for life, people. willoughby plays fetch. HE PLAYS FETCH. better than most dogs i know too. except oreo. oreo is a champion fetcher. but willoughby will bring you a rubber-band over and over again every time you throw it for him. the same goes for water bottle caps. grah! the unmitigated cuteness, mommy-matching cuteness!

couple-hood

rosemary turned to me at one point in the van and whispered in a totally audible voice, ‘it’s so strange to see my girls with boys. i’m used to having them all to myself.’ seriously, the crazy PDA face-sucking behavior was likened (in my head) to the pornographic laurell k hamilton vampire/lycanthrope/necramancer nonsense entitled danse macrabe i read in quiet snatches all weekend. ha ha ha! if only the situations had been anything alike, but at the moment no baby scares seem imminent.

or DO they?

…dwayne.

wine

i still know nothing about wine. though i think i can now say with certainty that i like whites more than reds. this, i think, is a good lesson to have learned. though pam warned me that i would eventually like reds more once i knew anything about wine. ‘more variety and flavor,’ she claimed. i drunkenly agreed with her. what i do know for sure though is that being driven around in a giganto van with 9 other people and drinking a lot of wine in a gorgeous valley is the way i’d like to spend everyday. the scenery, conversation, food, and drinks were all incredible.

pictures

of course i took them. other people had cameras too so there’s got to be some more photos out there. potentially of me even. though there are some of me even in my photos. the amazing thing about these photos is that the cuteness leaps out of the frame and bites you on the nose. with cute love. so maybe more like an eskimo kiss than a bite. i’m just jumping to biting first because my personality is a little too anita blake-infused right now (and not for the first time). also i deleted down from 200 to 72. helped a little along the way by adie who commandeered the camera to delete what she perceived as awful photos of herself. she’s crazy and gorgeous and thus a little crazy gorgeous but maybe not crazy like kirsten dunst in that crazy/gorgeous movie.

mad props

are due to nuala who planned and executed the entire weekend from dinner on saturday to hangovers on monday. from cafe zaytoon’s dinner watching rosemary push dollar bills into the belly dancer’s bra, to the first sip of the amazing winery tour, to drunken yells of “i love you more” across the backyard BBQ, to the morning after’s embarrassed laughter. nuala, it was an amazing weekend and that is completely due to you. thank you thank you for i had so much fun.

so ‘happy birthdays’ are in order

and the order of the day. live long and prosper/procreate/procrastinate. whatever. follow the first half at least.