Dear Evil DJ Company,

Why are you not returning our calls or e-mails? Is it because you know we're going to fire you and hire Marita's awesome grandpa Rocco to DJ our wedding instead? Because rest assured, we are justified.

Since entering into a contract with you, you have:

*Purposefully rescheduled two meetings to make us miss the $50 bridal show discount deadline

*Assigned us a terrifyingly bland DJ named Gary, who has a mustache, which everyone knows I am not all right with

*And might I add, that Gary actually refused to come to our house to let us meet him? And then, when he finally came, he mostly told stories of how he used to spin records at the now-defunct Beachland Ballroom?

*Sent me e-mails addressed alternately to Mr. Shable, Ben Oja, and, most confusingly, "Heather"

*Charged us three hundred dollars more than Rocco is planning on charging

And now, you're not returning our calls. So call me, so that we can end this horrible charade and I can delete the backlog of e-mails you've sent (to Heather) advertising all the wonderful extra services you provide (our names in lights on the dance floor!) for just a small additional fee.



We don't want to fight. We just want to party like it's 1999.

All best,
Kim

The fall of Chris Benoit

A totally fucked-up story from Yahoo: former WCW wrestler (and member of the Four Horsemen along with Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, and Dean Malenko) Chris Benoit killed his wife and son over the weekend, and then shot himself.

Chris Benoit was totally a favorite of mine during my WCW glory days (along with sorely missed Eddie Guerero). Rich and Alan and I watched many a Benoit match, and marveled at his cheerful Candian-ness. I even had-- and still have, actually-- a Chris Benoit valentine card (because apparently, nothing says "I love you" like a sweaty, half-naked wrestler on a flimsy cardboard card).

But apparently, my former WCW heroes are not faring so well.

So please, Ric Flair, hear my impassioned plea-- do not die in some horrible way. Don't kill anybody, don't do any drugs, don't fly in any planes. Shirley might not miss you, but my heart, it would break.

Dear Shithead Neighbor,

First of all, the six flowering plants you have deposited haphazardly into the ground around your light pole do not constitute "a garden." And second of all, if my dog needs to poop two feet from them, and I am standing eight inches from her ass with a plastic baggie, ready to collect the damages, you do not have the right, as a decent person, to scream at me about how I need to "keep my filthy dog out of your garden, because that's what the tree lawn is for."

Obviously, you have never had a dog, and are not aware that they are not, in actuality, genetically programmed to shit on the tree lawn, and it is impossible to direct them to do so.

But aside from that, I am aghast at your inhumanity. What gives you the right to scream at me, in broad daylight, in front of other neighbors? I wasn't dancing on your "garden." We actually weren't even in your "garden." And may I remind you, I do not believe those plants constitute a fucking "garden!"

Does it honestly give you pleasure to make people like me feel bad about myself, and make me afraid to walk down your street again for fear of incurring your vengeful wrath? Once you got out of your iffy-looking pick-up truck, did you go inside and say to your husband (if he's even still with you, considering you probably berated him daily for not remembering to put his shoes back on his shoe tree) "I had quite the productive day, I went to the grocery store and then I made a nice-looking girl and her cute pet dog doubt their self-worth"?

Listen, I saw the sign on your lawn that says "Best Yard on the Street." I'm not quite certain if you made this sign yourself, or if some sort of pathetic block party committee gave it to you to shut you up for a few months so everyone else could enjoy their summer. But in my opinion, the Best Yard on the Street is not the one with the randomly sodded flowers, but the one in which people are not afraid to congregate, let their dogs and children run, and have a good time.

You probably don't have any children. And if you do, they probably left town right the fuck away.

Anyway, don't worry, Che and I won't be back to darken your "garden" again. Do not be surprised, however, to find that, in the middle of the night, your "garden" meets with an unfortunate accident. I'm just saying.

All best,

Kim

Could you hate this dog?

Night at Giant Eagle

Having slept until nearly noon this morning (after finally coming down from my mouse-disposal adrenaline high at two a.m. the night before), I found myself with an excess of energy around ten o'clock and decided to make the most of it with a trip to the grocery store, thinking it would be less crowded.

While there, I learned the following things:

1. Really, really ugly people go shopping at night.

2. They often bring their children, who are often barefoot.

3. They buy the following items: Spiderman popcicles. Fatback. Thomas' English muffins.

4. They have coupons for every item they buy.

5. They always pay by check.

6. They hate Oprah Winfrey ("Why that God-damn Oprah Winfrey got to be on the cover of every magazine? Give someone else a chance, girl!") and, confusingly, Maya Angelou ("That woman a bitch.").

7. They are very interested in what you're buying. ("What you got there? Peas? Why you buyin' peas? In the pod? That makes no sense.")

All in all, a highly depressing trip. Which I then decided to follow up by depositing two of the $2 checks I've received as dividends from the stock I got from work. Because nothing caps off a night at Giant Eagle like a $4 deposit slip.

Red Alert

I don't mean to alarm you, but it is 11:30 Friday evening, Ben is out of town, and there is definitely a mouse in my bathroom and I don't know what to do. I was just sitting on the floor in the living room, ripping up junk mail (the poor man's shredder), when I heard a fracas in the hallway and found Mamie crouched over what was most assuredly a brown mouse on the bathmat. At the time, the mouse appeared prone.

After stepping away for a few moments to freak out about the prospect of having to remove a dead mouse from my bathroom, I returned to find that the mouse was no longer there, and that Mamie had wadded up the bathmat into a big blue ball.

This is most disconcerting because it can mean only one of three things:

1. The mouse escaped and is now limping angrily around my house, waiting to wreak its horrible vengeance upon me while I sleep by pooping in my mouth.

2. The mouse is, in fact, dead, and is wadded up in the bathmat.

3. Even worse, the mouse is only wounded and wadded up in the bathmat, meaning I will somehow have to find a way to remove a wounded mouse from my bathroom.

Worse yet, this is my only bathroom, meaning if I intend to pee or shower at all over the next 48 hours, I am going to have to face this situation sooner or later. Probably sooner, as I just chugged down an entire Coke Zero in an effort to calm my nerves.

More news as events warrant.

UPDATE (12:01 a.m.): There is definitely a dead mouse rolled up in the bathmat. It is now up to me to remove said bathmat from the bathroom without freaking out to the max. Also, just as I typed that last sentence, a big, fat, horrible-looking Super Ant of some kind crawled across my writing desk. Face it: My house is being overrun by wildlife, and I will be dead by morning. Don't cry for me. It is what nature intended.

UPDATE (12:07 a.m.): I have successfully removed the dead mouse from the bathroom, using a complicated plan which involved scooping the entire bathmat into a garbage bag, taking said bag behind the garage, shaking it out vigorously so the dead mouse would fly off into the dark and I would never see it again, and bringing the (mysteriously unsoiled) bathmat back into the basement to be washed. I feel strangely empowered with my new dead animal removal skills.

Thank you Cavs

Okay, so we were swept by the Spurs. But, we went to the Finals. And by we, I mean you. So thank you, Lebron, Z, Drew, Sasha, Booby, Andy, Larry, Eric, Donyell, and Damon (and even Scot Pollard). I am a witness.

Also, thank you for giving me my evenings back. Seriously.

Vote for Madelyn!

You love soda. You love babies. So wouldn't you love your soda to have a picture of a baby on it?

Click here to vote for my best friend Megan's baby Madelyn to be featured on a Jones Soda label. If you don't, Madelyn will know, and will cry and cry, and Megan will be so mad at you.

If nothing else, check it out for the awesome photo of Angry Madelyn-- seen below in much less angry, cuter form.

Call me

After two years of carrying Big Blue, I finally broke down and got me the kick-assiest new phone. Which is pink! Which I can't decide if that's acceptable or not.

I also got my own Bluetooth headset, which again, not sure about the acceptability of. I do feel like sort of a jackass wearing it. But if it means I can make a salad while talking on the phone and not worrying about slicing through the hands-free cord with my mondo giant vegetable knife (yes, I know I'm supposed to use the paring knife, but it just seems so weenie), then I'm all for it.

Since no one ever actually calls me except for Ashley, Megan, Marita and Kelly, I haven't had much of a chance to actually use the phone yet. But this has not deterred me from filling it to bursting with sweet-ass new ringtones, because yes, I am, unabashedly, one of those assholes that has annoying ringtones. But my phone plays "The Impression That I Get" when calls are received from people without caller ID!

I can even assign ringtones to specific people-- Ashley, for instance, has been assigned "Hedwig's Theme" from Harry Potter (which replaces her ringer on my old phone, Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough").

So if you act now, and tell me what ringtone you want, I will totally download it and assign it to you, depending, of course, if I actually have your telephone number. However, you will then be obligated to call me, because otherwise I will never hear my sweet, sweet ringtones in action.

Oh, my God, I sound like such a douche.

But, on a side note, I can tell you that Ben got an even cooler phone than me-- one that he can watch TV on. But it's not pink. And it doesn't play "The Impression That I Get." So I still think mine is better.

This person totally pisses me off.

Why another Kim Oja? Why so pretty? So unfair. SO UNFAIR.

That is all.

Devil Pants

Some of you may remember the shopping spree I went on earlier this year, in an update to delame my wardrobe? Well, on this shopping spree, it happens that I found the perfect pair of black pants, made of just the right fabric to repel dog and cat hair, and with just the right leg flare, so as not to look too librarianesque. And, they are a size six, which is most definitely not my size. But if I were to die in a horrible work-related incident, when they came to take my body away, they would find that I was wearing size six pants, and probably would have that figure engraved on my tombstone.

But these pants, I tell you, were sent here by Satan himself. Oh, yes, they're alluring, as many of the devil's creations are. And I totally do look foxy in them. But they deceive you with their good looks and pet-repellant surfaces into a false sense of security, because these pants want to kill you.

I say this based on the fact that in the two times I have worn them, I have nearly fallen to my death seven times, due to snagging my heel in the descreet cuffs that ring the bottom of the legs. Today alone, I did it in the bathroom at home while applying make-up (leading to horribly misplaced pink eyeshadow), in the bathroom at work, and right in front of my co-worker's desk, causing her to announce loudly, "My God, are you okay? What's wrong with you?"

It's the pants, Ann. The pants want me dead.

So be warned-- if I turn up the victim of what appears to be a routine slip and fall, smeared with eyeshadow and missing a shoe heel, you'll know who did it. Because I'm not going to stop wearing the pants. No. They make my ass look too fine. But please, make sure whoever finds me there checks the label in front of everyone before carting me off to my final resting place.

We are the champions

Please note! This entry is not entirely about the Cleveland Cavaliers. Only partially. So please read it, because I am bleeding readers due to my Cavs obsession. But dammit, I cannot help the love!

I don't know if you've heard, but Cleveland kicked all of your cities' collective asses at basketball (except you, San Antonio-- not yet, anyway), which makes Cleveland better than all your cities, using my false logic, even those cities that don't have basketball teams at all, and therefore can't even participate.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are now, officially, the Eastern Conference Champions, which has never, ever, ever happened before, and are going to the NBA finals, which, if they win, will cause this entire city to erupt into a chaos the likes of which has not been seen since Old Testament days. I, for one, plan to turn some people into pillars of salt. I won't tell you which people. But they'd better be ready.

This is something that the people of Cleveland have needed for a long, long time. Approximately since the time that our river caught fire. Which hasn't happened since, all right? So shut up about it.

But there is one major downside to this-- the Cleveland Cavaliers are eating up pretty much all of my free time. If I'm not staking out a table at a restaurant so I have a prime seat to watch the game, or actually watching the game, or discussing the game for hours on end with Ben and the people at work, then I am frantically running around doing errands that should have been done on the nights when I was watching the game.

Bike riding? Gone. E-mail correspondence? Spotty, at best. Blog posting? Pathetic. (Although Pen and M, I think you have to admit that even though I'm ONLY blogging about the Cavs, I feel that I should be upgraded back to normal blogging status.) I have only two modes: Game mode, and Doing The Bare Minimum of the Rest of My Chores In Order To Survive mode.

Not only that, but the Cavs are single-handedly forcing me to gain weight! Because why make a salad at home, when I can enjoy this tasty burger and three beers at Panini's while watching the game? I tell you, I went to try on my dress this weekend for the first time, and it felt as if all my vital organs had been squeezed into a small knot at the center of my abdomen. And, I had back fat. Not good.

So Cavs, I love you. I love you more than any non-athletic, book-reading trombone player really has the right to love you. But please, just hurry up and beat the Spurs in four games so I can bask in your reflected glow just long enough to eat one more plate of onion rings at Panini's and then return to my regularly scheduled life events.

What I'm doing instead of blogging (my deepest apologies)

Player haters/

Elevators/

If you cross me/

you'll die

--Wise Lebron

Cavs win in double OT, go up 3-2 against Pistons. I am seriously in tears right now. Why? Why am I such a basketball tard?

Two weddings and a cookout

I know I've been absent from the blogscene for almost two weeks now, and I apologize (but come on, you didn't really miss me, did you?). But seriously, this has been a busy couple days, as I have been out:

1. Getting into a fight with Ben about the Cavs
2. Attending a wedding in Syracuse for Ben's cousin
3. Attending a second wedding less than 24 hours later back in Ohio for my good friend Marita
4. Eating too much food at a cookout at my parents' house
5. Booking an oboe trio to play at my wedding
6. Harrassing Ben about getting his save-the-date info together

and so on.

The weddings were of particular interest (although I'm sure there are some of you out there that would love to hear the particulars of my fight with Ben, which ended with me sobbing about how Sasha Pavlovic is purposefully trying to sabotage our chances at success), because they were the last two weddings I will ever attend as a single person, so I was trying really hard to inconspicuously take note of every single detail.

I did learn, at Ben's cousin's wedding, that Puerto Rican-style dancing is really fun to watch, but really, really difficult to do, especially when there's no alcohol involved. It also strengthened my resolve to not do the dollar dance, because surely no one would dance with me, and I would have to do the Carlton on the dance floor just to avoid looking unloved.

And at Marita's wedding, I learned that Marita does everything way cooler than me, and my wedding will look like a BBQ at the state park in comparison. And I learned that too much alcohol mixed with a lot of jumping up and down is not good for you.

All in all, an excellent weekend, especially since I got to meet Ben's family, who were totally awesome and really, really funny (and they laughed at my dumb jokes, which is a sure way to gain my trust). And of course much love to Marita and Chris, who (curiously enough) did the Carlton by dancing the wedding party dance to Sugarhill Gang's "Apache."

Congratulations, Kathy and Jose and Marita and Chris! Now, don't mind me as I shamelessly copy all your wedding secrets.

Done and undone

Done:

• Called Direct Loans re: student loan default letter. No answer, but I'm not as worried anymore, as I now have the letter in my possession, and have found that it doesn't actually have my name on it anywhere, meaning it was probably just mailed to the wrong person. Will begin obsessively calling tomorrow at eight a.m., just to make sure.

• Purchased corset for wedding. Not as easy as it sounds, as it also included a quest to find the apparently no longer open Solomon's Corset Shop, famous in Cleveland for its excellent corsets and mean employees who tell you your bra is wrong and saggy, even if it is made of cast iron. Ended up at David's Bridal, where I also bought my veil. The only downside-- my mom had to see my boobs. Gross.

• Washed and dried four loads of laundry, although sadly, got purple fabric softener spots over 80% of the whites.

• Wrote two new columns to send to the Dispatch while doing the ill-fated laundry

• Watched season finale of The Office-- twice! Anyone who wants to begin obsessively discussing the season premiere should contact me immediately.

• Harrassed Ben about making his guest list.
  

Undone:

• Did not mail save the date cards, as one half of guest list is missing.

• Did not upload new songs to MP3 player in an effort to get it to stop playing the same songs over and over and over again.

• Did not ride bike.

• Did not sign and mail contract for oboe trio for ceremony as promised.

• Did not return Netflix.

• Did not begin rereading Harry Potter series, despite looming release date of book seven.

Good news/Bad news/Weird news

Good news: Despite rumors to the contrary, I have easily conquered the mail merge, effortlessly producing beautiful labels on clear sticky paper to be applied to my awesome, awesome save the date cards. (By "easily conquered," I mean "conquered after seven tries." But still!



Bad news: According to my parents, I have received a vaguely threatening letter from school, stating that I have defaulted on my student loans. First of all, let me state categorically that I have NOT defaulted on my student loans. I have, in fact, made every payment early since the first one in November 2004. This does not, however, stop me from having terrifying thoughts of somehow having not been informed about some clause stating that I needed to hand-deliver each and every copy of my cancelled checks to the registrar's office in that horrible building on-campus that smelled like sweat and pencil shavings, and that now, I owe the school some catastrophically high amount of money that will prevent me from taking a proper honeymoon, and I will end up spending it in Hershey, PA.

Good news: the Cavs won, which must mean that they are not pissed that I called their playing pathetic. This is probably a good sign that LeBron will, in fact, be attending my wedding, and bringing a totally awesome gift, and probably high-fiving me, at which point I will pee my pants.

Bad news: My MP3 player (which, Frisby, is 1G SanDisk Sansa) is still only playing the same songs-- fortunately, it has selected new ones, as I was getting really tired of fucking "Bad Day." The list is now:

• The Real Slim Shady, Eminem
• Stacy's Mom, Fountains of Wayne
• Seven Nation Army, The White Stripes
• Ready to Go, Republica
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder (still)

Weird news: Two girls at work witnessed a chipmunk attack and behead a bird, which I thought very odd, as chipmunks are supposed to be vegetarian, forcing me to worry that the chipmunk has rabies, and might charge out at me at any time and gnaw on my ankle, turning me into a rabid monster a la Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and someone will have to shoot me.

Kim smash!

So, my happiness level has decreased dramatically since my last post, due mostly to hormones (currently, my normal, happy self has been swallowed deep into the belly of an evil, raging monster who earlier today compared one of her co-workers unfavorably to a ball of yarn). Luckily for all involved, I did not Blog While PMSing (BWP), and have allowed myself to mellow out from Super Angry to Generally Pissed Off. About what, you ask? A number of things:

1. As I type this, the Cavs are losing in a most spectacular fashion. I don't have the sound on, but I imagine that they're just playing the audio track of one of the cameramen's daughter's middle school intramural games. It would probably sync up very nicely to the action.

2. No matter how many new songs I put on it, my MP3 player insists on playing only the following songs, again and again and again:

• End of the Movie, Cake
• Bad Day, Daniel Powter (I am the only person still to have this on their MP3 player, right?)
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder
• Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Dadies
• Jesus Walks, Kanye West

3. The railings on the stairs leading to the front door of my office building have been removed, and these vaguely ominous silver speed bumps have been put up along the stairs, ostensibly to prevent skateboarders from using our parking lot for their illicit purposes. I'm actually torn on this, because it seems sort of fascist, but also, I believe all skateboarders secretly make fun of me whenever I walk by.

4. Jaslene won America's Next Top Model, despite the fact that she is a man.

5. The dog went and slept on my pillow after a long walk in the rain, and now my pillow reeks of wet dogness.

6. Every time I tried to get a book from the shelf at the library today, a weird old man in a Lake County Captains raincoat magically appeared and wanted the same book. Or else he wanted me to look at his ween. I was not willing to find out.

7. In general, all people, everywhere, are annoying (except for you, my faithful blog readers, who are cool and understanding of my Incredible Hulk-esque tranformation, and know in your hearts that I will become a functional member of society again within a few short days).

In conclusion, someone needs to invent something, other than wine, to which I am allergic, that can free me from this hormone driven beast! Please, do something! Before I start bitch-slapping nuns and kicking the invalid!

NOTE: LeBron James just got hurt, probably because I wrote something crappy about the Cavs. I am the worst person ever.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Things haven't been too exciting around here (with the exception of Amy's big 30th birthday blowout), so I apologize for my lack of bloggyness. But, I have exciting news-- I crossed the 20,000 hit threshold yesterday! Because I am a gigantic web-counter whore, this obviously makes me very happy.

Other things that have been making me happy lately:

*My super-sleuthing skills, which led me to find Amy D., long-lost trombone hero (p.s.: Amy, I sent you an e-mail at your [probably very old] yahoo account-- write me back, or else.

*TiVo's sudden, intense desire to tape old episodes of the cartoon classic Home Movies, which is about the greatest show ever made.

*That commercial where Dwyane Wade tells Charles Barkley that his old short shorts make him look "sexxxy."

*The imminent arrival of the sample of my save the date cards, which is totally going to blow your mind with its sheer awesomeness.

*The smiling, non-thuggy pictures of my favorite Cavaliers (I have a problem with athletes who feel the need to look like they want to beat the shit out of me in their team photos):

*The fact that I had a column in the Dispatch last Wednesday-- it didn't run online, but e-mail me and I'll send you a scan of the article if you're in the market for funny shit involving the name Mojo and mounted police.

I don't know why, but I am totally, totally obsessed with uncovering the identity of the trombone commenter. And I feel the only way to do this is with a set of overly long lists.

The following is a list of every single person I know that plays the trombone (as far as I know):

• My grandpa
• My dad
• My Aunt Emily
• Cristin
• Randy
• Jordy
• Travis
• John
• Justin
• Dana
• A different John
• Eddie
• Brian
• Becca
• Beth
• Drew
• Nathan
• Kelly
• Adam
• Jared
• Marty
• Vern
• Amy D.
• Amy B. (for like 15 minutes)
• Mike
• Rich
• Jena
• Some other people in jazz ensemble that I totally forget right now
• Hank
• Dan
• Yet another John

From this list, I can deduce that:

1. I know A LOT of people who play the trombone.


2. If your name is John, you are highly likely to learn to play the trombone.


3. More dudes play trombone that girls.


4. Of the nine girls on this list, one is my aunt who does not know of the existence of this blog (as far as I know), three likely don't remember that I exist, one only played trombone one in one concert, just to piss somebody off, and two have left comments under their own names, meaning they are not the person who left the comment on my trombone blog.


5. This leaves only two choices (unless there is YET ANOTHER person out there who plays the trombone that I know and yet cannot name): Cristin, or Amy D.

Am I right? Did I do it? I would be so freaking proud of myself if I solved this. I would probably go around boasting of my Columbo-esque powers of deduction. Which is way hot.

Anyway, mystery trombonist, whoever you are, I'm really excited to find out your identity. And don't worry, I could never consider you a foe-- any trombonist is a friend of mine.

Which is sort of depressing, really.

Interview With an Auditor

Many thanks to Meg for turning me on to this awesome meme (question: is "meme" pronounced "me-me" or "memm"?)-- I feel honored to be interviewed by such a luminary!

And in turn, I'd like to interview you! To participate:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." (PLEASE NOTE: If I don't have your e-mail address, I probably won't be able to interview you. And unlike Meg, who is brave, I am too wimpy to put my e-mail address on my blog, because a lot more people hate me than you would think, given my pleasant and sunny nature. So if I don't have an e-mail address for you, or you can't get mine from a friend or trusted neighbor, then I might have to exclude you. My apologies!)

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions of my choice.

3. Then, you should update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You have to include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you get to ask them five questions.

And now-- Incredible Megs Interviews Kim Shable: Two Units of Awesome UNITE!

Quick! The house is on fire! Excepting the obvious people and pets, what 5 things do you take?

I would take the following items:

• My photo albums (which hopefully count as one item)
• The big grocery bag of mementos that I've been hoping to scrapbook one day, in case I ever become crafty enough to scrapbook
• My computer
• Willie, my stuffed bear
• My CD book (or, if I had to choose only one CD, I would take Fashion Nugget by Cake)

What is the best or weirdest reconnection you have made via the internet?

My childhood friend Wendy found me through the (now sadly defunct) journazine Convincing John-- we hadn't talked in like ten years, so it was fantastic to catch up with her and get back into each other's lives! I have to say, though, too, that I'm still really interested in whoever left the comment on my trombone post-- still no leads there...

What is your most hated word?

That's hard, so I'll break it down into categories. My least favorite swear word is the C-word (which I can't even usually bring myself to write out fully, but, paradoxically, which I yelled at a player on the Washington Wizards while he was trying to shoot a free throw last Wednesday). Least favorite business phrase: "Going forward," as in "Going forward, we will no longer be using the microwave for tasty popped-corn treats." And probably my least favorite overall word is "moist."

Tell me something funny that you've never blogged before.

I once knew a guy who told me he would turn gay if Ricky Martin asked him to.

Is there a part of wedding planning that you totally didn't expect or are particularly baffled by?

I'm just surprised by the sheer amount of things that need to be done. Favors for the wedding and the shower. Music for the ceremony and the reception. Readings that need to be selected! (By the way, anyone have any suggestions for non-Biblical love-related readings that we could do? Because if not, I'm going to have someone recite, with deadly seriousness, the words to "The Rose," by Bette Midler.) I simply cannot believe that all of these tiny decisions are going to add up to one big awesome kick-ass wedding. Chances are, I will freak out before I finish, and the whole wedding will be janky. To use an analogy, my wedding will be to normal weddings as The Tonight Show is to local cable access' "Chattin' With Chaz."

All right, having honed my interview answering skills, I am now ready to practice asking. So fire away!

The ups and downs of Wednesday

Down: A water main exploded in front of our house yesterday morning:

Note! In this next picture, you can see our garbage cans! And also, the box for the fan we bought the other day to fight the stifling heat in our attic bedroom:

See them there, right on the left edge of the picture? Our garbage is famous! Fortunately, the water was turned back on by the evening, so except for some occasional but very scary air bubbles that cause the water to shoot out in all directions at a very high power, everything is better. As for the street crater, it has been filled with dirt, which immediately became mud, as the entire road was flooded. Thus, I am a very muddy person. BUT! I can easily shower, so it's all good.

Up: Later that same evening, I got to go to the Cavs playoff game with my mom! Other than the fact that we were seated next to an extremely drunk woman, and a Dude Who Would Not Cheer, No Matter What, we had an awesome time.

As you can see from my hat, I am a Witness. Rise up!

Even better-- I won the chance to buy tickets to game C (for those of you not from Cleveland, I'll explain-- tickets to the Cavs are so in demand that you have to enter a lottery just to be allowed to BUY them), so I might be going again-- there's a chance I might have to miss it for Amy's birthday (GO AMY!), but if not, I will totally be there again, representing in my Witness hat and Lebron jersey.

I bet you never thought I'd be a jersey owner. But I showed you-- I showed you all!

You will bow to my Newberry Award Winning novel of awesome

I've been in a bit of a reading phase lately, although sadly, our library book sale isn't until next weekend (Pen, Megs, you lucky dogs). Although I'm currently wrapped up in Lolita-- one of my favorite books, although it always seems kind of pervy to admit, doesn't it?-- I just came out of a Young Adult binge (which seems even pornier when you throw in the Lolita situation), mostly focused around The Westing Game.

For those of you who have never read The Westing Game, I feel great pity and regret for your deprived and squandered lives. While you were out staying fit and basking in the sun, I was hunkered down on the living room couch, reading and rereading The Westing Game, a YA novel with a plot so intricate that I still have trouble fully comprehending it to this day.

This reading was preceded by The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, and followed by From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, both of which involve probably my favorite YA theme-- young people run away from home and wind up involved with crazies.

All this YA reading has gotten me revved up to write my own YA book, an idea I've been toying with ever since my mentor Joe Mackall kindly informed me that what I thought of as my Very Important Novel With Deep, Deep Meaning would really be a hit with the tween crowd. (I really do think he meant this as a compliment, but as I was expecting to win the National Book Award with it, and not the Newberry, I was a bit bummed.)

I'm not quite sure what my book will be about yet, but I think it will involve the following:

• Doing It


• Unexpected teen pregnancy (not on the part of the narrator, because that is SO DONE)


• Men fistfighting (because fistfighting is hot hot hot)


• Probably some sort of complex series of clues leading to the identity of a killer/the father of the baby/a vast Papal conspiracy

It will probably also be set around the turn of the century, like another of my favorites, The Callender Papers. This, I realize, might hamper my Doing It/unexpected teen pregnancy angle, but could really benefit the Men Fistfighting angle, as men seemed to do that a lot back then.

It's my sports team, and I'll cry if I want to.

I totally just wept openly as the Cavs won their first playoff game. And it's not even like it was close, they won by like 17 points.

Does anyone else have this problem? Or am I the only one? Because I mean, I don't just cry about the Cavs. I cry at every single sports-related movie. Once, I cried while watching I Love the Eighties, because they showed footage of that one Olympic hockey game. I don't even know what the significance of that game is, or even care remotely about hockey, but I totally cried about it, like a lot.

In fact, I would wager that apart from animal movies, sports movies make me cry the most. And I was never even on a sports team, unless you count the Aurora High School Marching Band or the Quiz Bowl team, which I am sure you do not.

I really need to get this Sports Crying under control, before I head to the Q for game two on Wednesday. With my mom. Which is hot.

What's going on

Okay, so I know I haven't been the best blogger lately (although traffic on my site is way up, which I find both exciting and sort of creepy), but since it's Sunday, and I'm home alone and sitting on top of the washing machine, as is my custom, I thought I'd redeem myself with a short recount of my latest activities (or non-activities, as the case may be).

1. Remember a few weeks ago, when I was called for jury duty? And how I was totally panicked about having to drive downtown, and made Ben do like three trial runs with me to the courthouse, and became convinced that I was going to be gunned down by a rogue defendant, like I saw in this one episode of "American Justice"? And wept openly over it at work, because I was so freaked out that I would get called for some sort of OJ case, and be sequestered for months and months, and then everyone would expect me to write a book about it, only I was afraid the book would be totally boring and no one would buy it?

Anyway, if you can forget all that, I would appreciate it, because I never got summoned. I called the jury hotline today, and was thanked by a recording for completing my jury service. And I have to admit, I was totally bummed. Mainly because I had worked myself into such a retarded frenzy over it for no apparent reason, but then also because that meant that I myself would never actually get to appear on "American Justice," which (when not documenting cases of gunned down jurors) often features them as key performers.

2. On Friday, our dog pooped herself. This was not acceptable, as all of our furniture and carpets are white or beige. (Not that it would have been acceptable had the furniture all been brown, but I admit, it might have eased my worry a little.) Nine pre-wetted paper towels and a day-long confinement to the basement later, Che is now socially acceptable again, only now she has pronounced dingleberries, which makes me wonder if the people in the neighborhood think I'm a bad dog mom when we're out on walks.

3. Fed up with my horribly librarianish wardrobe, I went on a shopping spree and am now very fashionably dressed (except right now, with my unshaven legs and "What Up, Dog?" t-shirt, but I feel that I can afford to be poorly dressed in my own basement). My favorite purchase-- a pair of footless lime green tights, which I don't actually think I'll ever be able to bring myself to wear in public, but which are really fun to run around the house in.

4. Ben and I met with the florist and picked out our wedding flowers, which are totally awesome (my bouquet will have wheat in it!). I never thought I would be the kind of person who would care at all about flowers of any kind (other than a heartfelt hatred of carnations, especially in unnatural colors), but apparently, I do. Next weekend, we're meeting with our minister for our first marital counseling session, which will most likely reveal that I am tired of walking the dog all the time, Ben is tired of doing the dishes, and neither of us really wanted to go to premarital counseling in the first place.

So as you can see, I have been very, very busy

• worrying needlessly about things that didn't happen
• chasing the dog with scissors to remove the offending dingleberry
• running around in footless tights
• being wedding-y

I hope you will forgive my lapse of blog activity, and I do hereby solemnly swear to be a better blogger. Keep in mind that I could have posted dinglebery pictures, but I didn't, because I have that kind of restraint.

Today at the post office, I saw a guy that I was almost positive that I went to high school with.

This is always highly exciting to me, because I never see people out in public that I know. Other people that I know are always running into each other in the biggest, most crowded places-- Jacobs Field, The Q, effing Christina Aquilera concerts. But in the two years that I have lived in Euclid, I have never seen my neighbors outside of the confines of our street, ever. This one time? Ben and I saw our neighbor's truck at the grocery store, and I almost made him go back in with me so I could force a surprise meeting with him.

So I was understandably excited to see this possible Aurora High School class of 1997 graduate. Never mind that I don't think we had ever actually spoken to each other, or really knew of each other's existence except that our names were relatively close (but not even really that close) in alphabetical order.

Anyway, I pointed him out to Marita, who immediately began trying to get me to go over and say hi. But I couldn't, because

a) It probably wasn't him, although it did look exactly like him; why would he be at the Seven Hills post office at one thirty on a Monday?

b) Even if it was him, what was I supposed to do, go over and be like, "Hey, Todd, I don't know if you remember me, but I think we went to high school together. Don't worry, you don't even have to pretend to be interested in my boring life since graduation-- I just wanted a quick confirmation that you are who I thought you were, so that I can remember this as 'That one time I ran into Todd in the post office.'"

So I never did go over. If it was really you, Todd, I'm sorry I ignored you. But if it wasn't Todd, then there is a total Guy Who Looks Just Like Todd with a lot of shit to mail in the Seven Hills area.

Dear Barenaked Ladies,

How could you do this to me?

Do you know how embarrassing it is already to be the world's biggest Barenaked Ladies fan? No one takes you seriously! Even after I explain that your genius lies not in "One Week" and "Pinch Me," but in your other varied, beautiful, soul-searching tracks. No-- once I explain that I am a Barenaked Ladies fan, people's image of me drops from Well Educated Literati to Girl Who Probably Watches "Pants Off Dance-Off" While Making a Scrapbook of Her Cat.

But I always stood by you. Even after you released Everything to Everyone, which, let's face it, wasn't really that great. Except for "Upside Down." And the song about the monkeys.

But now you come at me with not one but two CDs O'Crap, Barenaked Ladies Are Me and Barenaked Ladies Are Men. Which I had such high hopes for! Because maybe? They would be a return to form? And I would find another song like "Enid" or "Break Your Heart".

I did not find anything remotely like that.

Oh, that one song, "Bank Job," that was good. I liked that. Because there were nuns in it. And catchy!

But then I go get BNL Are Men, and find that not one but two of the songs on it are the exact same song as "Bank Job," only with different lyrics! (For anyone else out there who's been burned by these CDs, which I think at this point is just Kelly, I'll point them out for you-- "Fun and Games," and "Quality.") Also eeriely familiar-- "What a Letdown" ("Never Is Enough") and "Beautiful" ("Conventioneers").

Point is, I sense that you've given up. Your new music is hookless and unmemorable, and the drawings on the covers of both Me and Men are creepy and upsetting.

And so, it is with great sorrow that I announce that I am renouncing you as My Favorite Band Other Than the Beatles. Of course, your entire catalogue, up until Maroon (and some portions of Everything To Everyone) will still be celebrated in my home. But I deny the existence of these two CDs entirely, and a good third of Everything.

In your place, I name Cake my new FBOTtB. As such, I will be forced to rearrange my CD book so that their CDs come before yours; in a fit of rage, I may also place you behind Elvis Costello and possibly even The Presidents of the United States of America, which I know is a severe blow, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Okay, I won't do that, just because the only thing lamer than a BNL fan is a POTUSA fan. I obviously know how to pick them.

To the rest of the world, I urge you to listen to BNL as they once were, and discover their glory anew. But to you, BNL, I can only express my disappointment and sadness.

Thanks for everything up to, well, Everything.

All best,

Kim Shable

PS: Some awesome new music? Lily Allen (especially "LDN," which I can listen to on incessant repeat), Mika, and Avril Lavigne's new song, "Girlfriend," which I understand is geared toward thirteen-year-old girls, but which I cannot stop rocking out to.

Kim's Obsessions Du Jour

Thanks, Pen, for the tag-- does it count in the total if I admit that I'm obsessed with being tagged for things? It makes me feel like I got picked in gym!

1. My sudden realization that Hugh Jackman would be perfect as the lead role in the horrible novel I've been writing since I was thirteen. This is a position that has been held, over the course of the last fourteen years, by Mark Harmon, George Clooney, Colin Firth, and, most recently, that big Scottish guy from 300. Of course, it would have to be big Wolverine Hugh Jackman, and not skinny, sort of creepy The Boy From Oz Hugh Jackman.

2. Procuring a new wardrobe, as I have come to the vastly horrifying conclusion that every piece of clothing I own is horrible, and not in a trendy way, but more in a middle-aged blood bank volunteer way. I will approach this scientifically, procuring only those objects that I actually need (black pants that are flatteringly cut and do not pick up lint) and avoid those that I do not (Cherokee cardigans from Target).

3. Riding my new bike, which is currently chained to a lawn tractor in our garage, but which I went to visit a few minutes ago, trudging through the three inches of snow on my driveway, just to reminisce.

4. My wedding dress, which just arrived in town yesterday. Sadly, I have to wait two more months to try it on, which is both good (two more months to get my monsterous double stomach under control, so that it does not explode out of my dress like a muffin escaping a pressurized Pillsbury tube) and bad (two more months of slowly morphing its super-cuteness to hideous Seinfeld Puffy Shirt-esqueness in my mind).

5. The identity of the person who left this comment on my trombone blog:

I also play trombone...I also know kim shable and kim shable knows me

Was it you? (I don't like to name names with all the evil Internet predators out there, so I'm hoping you'll recognize this artfully cropped portrait of the person whom I believe it to be, at least for now.) If not, I'm at a loss... weirdly, I really do know a lot of people who play trombone, so it could be almost anyone...

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday:

• Temperature: 75 degrees
• Sky: blue
• Sun: out
• Precipitation: none
• Dog-walking outfit: cute pink tank and brown gauchos
• Minutes on bike: 35
• Opinion of Ohio: Swell!

Today:

• Temperature: 31 degrees
• Sky: gray
• Sun: mysteriously imploded; dawn of second ice age?
• Precipitation: that annoying snow that comes in pellets that get stuck in hair and don't melt for a really long time, but when they do, they sink onto your scalp and run down your back in a totally grody fashion
• Dog-walking outfit: big brown coat over long-sleeved shirt and gray yoga pants, with white tennis shoes (hot hot hot)
• Minutes on bike: none
• Opinion of Ohio: Why do you taunt me, why, you wretched state of death!

Things I find vexing

• I just bought this bike:

And tomorrow the temperature is supposed to go back down into the thirties.

• I am, as I type this, compiling a mix CD that I do not feel has a solid anchor song. It does, however, feature both "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and the Presidents of the United States' of America's "Puffy Little Shoes," so I am hoping its eclectic nature will save it.
  
• I still have no music for my wedding ceremony...

... and this guy is an actual option available to me. This isn't just a picture of a bagpiper. This is an actual Cleveland bagpiper that I could get to play at my wedding. For $3,000. I am seriously considering this.

• Not really.
  

I have been having a lot of trouble lately with the fact that I'm getting older. I don't mean, Oh, My Back Hurts older. Or even Old As My Parents older. Really, just Not a Kid or Even a Cool Youth Anymore older. Older like that one student teacher that always wanted to be hip to the young people.

Specifically, I started feeling older when I pulled out some old CDs I made in college (I was a very early adopter of the CD burner, one of the only things I can officially claim to have gotten in on near the ground floor) and the song "Good" by Better Than Ezra came on, and I realized that that song had been old when I put it on the CD, meaning it was even older now. Specifically, it is twelve years old. Meaning it would be in the seventh grade now, if it were a person. It would be learning pre-algebra.

One day, I will have kids who will listen to "Good" and tell me what a humongous spaz I was for ever liking that song (I'm assuming that by then, music will have deteriorated into the sounds of actual murders being committed while the trumpet riff from Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" is sampled in the background).

Another factor that is really not helping my feelings of oldness is the fact that I am actually looking older, I think. Sort of puffy and wrinkly and my hair is definitely turning white at an alarming rate. I mean, look at me here, circa 1995 (the same year that "Good" came out, not coincidentally), with my brown, brown hair and big full eyebrows. (In an unrelated by very interesting note, that cat that I'm holding was named Sly, and when he died in 1998 my parents had him cremated and the tin containing his ashes sits under our Christmas tree every year.)

All I know is, I only have a few more years before my youthful exuberance becomes "creepy 30-something woman behaving in an upsetting fashion" at parties and sporting events. So I'm going to make the most of them, and spackle every last wrinkle into oblivion (because caked-on makeup is so youthful).

PS: This picture was actually taken for a faux fashion catalog that my friends and I had to put together for French class. So, that should tell you how into fashion I was in 1995. Maybe getting older isn't so bad, after all...

Trombone-tastic!

This fancy trigger trombone is not unlike one I used to play, until the one I used to play was hit with a hammer by someone who shall not be named.

My friend Denise was awesome enough to send me the following letter to the editor to the Daily Iowan, in reference to Iowa's search for a state instrument:

Trombone represents Iowa

If Iowa legislators want to declare a state instrument, the trombone should be it. Not only to honor Glenn Miller and Meredith Willson, but because the character of the instrument is in perfect harmony with Iowa and its folks.

Take a look sometime. Trombones are plain and simple, like the Iowa landscape, yet still beautiful. There are no fancy keys, no valves, no reeds, but still the trombone holds a note with all the rest. Its versatility as an instrument in many styles is in tune with Iowa's land and its people. Its ability to make only one note at a time, unlike many of the strings, speaks best of Iowa people - while we may do something by ourselves, we know that a much better song is played when many work together. And just as Iowa works hard to feed the world, the trombone works hard to hold up the band.

The trombone and Iowa: simple yet versatile, underappreciated but important.

Paul Worrell

UI student & trombone fan

First of all, congrats to you, Paul Worrell, for being as trombone-obsessed as I! It is lonely here, Paul. So very, very lonely. But oddly gratifying in its self-righteousness!

Secondly, I am so jealous that I didn't write this myself, only about Ohio! Because of my slight, we'll probably end up with the effing accordion. Or, like, the hammer dulcimer.

The day the wedding stood still

I've reached a really strange point in wedding planning where phase one-- finding a site, getting a dress, hiring a DJ and a photographer, getting a minister-- has all been completed, but it seems too early to move on to phase two, which seems to involve about eight million small but infinitely significant details-- yes, we have a caterer, but we never told them what we want to eat. We haven't yet picked a cake for the baker to make. We have no invitations, or save-the-dates, or even a master guest list. Or any music for the actual ceremony (note: if any of you play a musical instrument, or know someone who does, and they want to play at our wedding, we will give them a million, billion dollars.).

Even though I know it's too early to start on most of these things (or, rather, I have been informed of such by my mom and by Ben, who just want me to stop freaking out for five seconds), I am already secretly in a panic over them, a panic which manifests itself in these horrible dreams where I wake up and it's the wedding day, only we only have planned what we actually have planned in real life. Which means we have a reception hall, and photographer and DJ and dress, but no menu, or seating chart, or guests, for that matter, because we never sent out any invitations.

And on top of all that, I feel intense pressure to have a really cool wedding, especially since so many people are (theoretically) coming in from all over the country to attend. But this is a fatal flaw in my character-- while I may be a decent creative writer, I am not even slightly creative when it comes to almost anything else, including decor, costume-making, and yes, wedding planning. So in my mind I picture all my cool friends from all over the world arriving in Aurora, Ohio, and going, "eh."

Actually, let me take that (slightly) back-- I DO have creative ideas, but they cost a lot of money. Like my idea to have a photo booth on site at the reception, which would have offered up all sorts of weird and wacky portraits of my guests that I would cherish for decades to come. Yeah, those booths? Cost, again, a million, billion dollars.

Sadly, there's nothing I can really do to overcome this crippling defect in my character, except to artfully steal from other weddings and hope that no one in attendance at my own remembers them.

Behold my sword and scales

About a week ago, I received a very angry letter from the government informing me that I was a wanton hussy who had refused to fill out my jury selection questionnaire and that if I did not do so within ten days of receipt of said questionnaire, Scooter Libby would come to my house himself and beat the crap out of me.

This was highly upsetting to me, as I had not received any of the supposed previous attempts to get me to fill out this questionnaire because the government had my wrong address (which is so weird, since they knew exactly where to mail my income tax forms), and even this one was late-- the deadline for filling out the forms pre-ass-kicking had already passed.

So, like the good citizen I am, I filled them out immediately and returned them.

And was almost instantaneously called for jury duty, about eight days later.

I mean, I knew filling out the forms might meant they might want me to be on a jury someday. I didn't realize it meant before the hiatus of The Office was even over.

After overcoming my initial shock-- I don't know if any of you have ever been called for jury duty, but just getting the letter made me feel like I had dome something really wrong, like this was all an elaborate trick to get me to go down there so they could bust me on some trumped up littering charges-- I am now actually quite excited about doing my civic duty and serving on a jury. I am also excited about the $40/day I could potentially earn as a juror, which I plan on putting toward a sweet new bike... of justice.

Seriously, though, I honestly am kind of excited about it now. Which means that my jury pool will most likely not be chosen, and I'll never get the chance to actually be a part of a jury. Which is too bad, because Ben and I watch a lot of American Justice, so I would probably be quite the worthy candidate.

Whoot whoot!

I'm in the Dispatch again today-- you can see the column here.

I feel compelled to note, though, that this is the first time I have ever ripped off my blog for column material-- it's a rewrite of the Stuck In Traffic post of a few weeks ago. But funnier, I swear!

So check it out-- enjoy! Also, your thoughts on blog ripoff? It was justified, I swear!

"Anything" Was Mine First

I would just like to share my abject horror at the fact that the new

Gap ads feature the song "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" from Annie Get Your Gun, as sung by Ethel Merman. Not because I dislike this song-- actually, I like it very much-- but because up until now, I believed myself to be the only person on earth who knew this song existed, other than the rest of the cast of the Aurora High School 1994 production of the aforementioned play. And this somehow made me cool. I'm not sure how yet, I haven't worked that part out. But my knowledge of that song made me cool.

And now everyone knows it. And I've heard like seven people humming it. And I guarantee everyone's going to download it, and soon the whole country will know it, and will have developed Ethel Merman impressions that rival my own, which anyone major dude will tell you is very good.

Come on, Gap people! That was my one theater thing that I had going for me. Everyone knows "Music of the Night," or even "No Business Like Show Business," which, as you may or may not know, was also in Annie Get Your Gun. But this was my one big song. I used to sing it while waiting in line for stuff, which really used to annoy people. I was annoying like that. But still, I bet they couldn't help but marvel at my obscure musical theater knowledge.

What I believe now #3

It is never all right to have rubber testicles dangling from the ball hitch of your truck and van, as I have seen twice in the last two days-- actually, I think it was the same white van both times, but still. What is the message he is going for? My van has big cojones? Ladies, sweet loving is available in the back of my rusty, windowless white Econoline cargo van?

Unacceptable.

Ooo, baby baby!

So I'm heading out on the wide open road again tomorrow, ending my sweeping tour of the south (Okay, North Carolina and Virginia) with a visit to my best friend Megan, her husband Matt, and their new baby Madelyn! This, of course, means no blogging from me, but seeing as how I don't really blog that much while actually seated in my own home, I don't think it will really hurt your hearts too much.

In general, my whole life has been awash in babies for the last year or so, as like a third of my friends have been dedicating their lives to reminding me that I totally want a baby, even if it means giving up laying on the couch and watching cartoons. (But babies like cartoons, right?) Among those prestigious baby-havers (and baby-havers-in-waiting) of the last year or so:

• Angela (and one on the way!)
• Deidre (and one on the way, part two!)
• Megan
• Diane
• Stephanie
• Alyssa
• Cassie (actually, has this baby arrived yet?)
• And finally, one friend who I will not mention by name until she has revealed it on her blog, which is the true sign that it's okay to announce!

Actually, that list seems kind of small, like I forgot someone. Which is really crappy, when you finally realize that you've forgotten that one of your friends had a baby. So if I forgot you, please write in to berate me, so I don't have to spend too much time worrying myself nauseated about it.

So until I can have some babies of my own, which is still probably a few more years down the line (I want to be mature enough to at least watch the live-action shows on Nickelodeon), I will avail myself of these people to play with their bundles of joy. I can even change diapers! I don't like to, but I can.

Oh, and in unrelated news, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEGAN! And furthermore, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DENISE, whose birthday is coming up while I'm out of town-- curse you, state lines!

Dear Aspen Dental,

I hate you.

Here is why:

1. Your bad, evil dentist did all of my copious cavities wrong, leading to a "redo" that inevitably led to a root canal and a crown. (Please note that the new dentist is much nicer, but also gives off a distinct "I hate you" vibe.)

2. The ladies behind your counter treat me as if I were a suspicious dissident.

3. The bathroom in your office requires a screwdriver to unlock.

4. The radio station your reception tunes to is always staticky and tuned to Delilah, which is the worst radio show EVER.

5. And finally, I just received a threatening letter from you demanding the $31.20 I owe you, despite my never having heard of this debt before, especially when I specifically remember asking the dissident-fearing receptionist how much I owed, and she said "nothing."

Your $31.20 is en route. I hope it makes you happy in your cold, cold dentistry heart.

All best,
Kim

All-stars

Tonight I got a phone call from an old middle school teacher, which I realize doesn't happen to most people, but that's just because most people aren't the shit, like me. Anyway, he wanted to confirm that I was actually getting married (as I had hinted in an earlier e-mail) and asked if he could tell various attendants of a Harmon Middle School retired teachers lunch the following day.

I asked him who was going to be there, and it was a cavalcade of old favorites-- Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Wolfe, and others. And as he was listing them off, it hit me how strange it is that, while pretty much unknown to the rest of the world, the teachers you have when you are young are like your first encounters with celebrities-- like when I freaked out when I was nine and saw my old second grade teacher, Mrs. Mills, at Heinen's, which made no sense, because teachers do not go out in public or appear anywhere other than in their classrooms.

This is a feeling I was never able to shake-- I once ran into another teacher, Mrs. Brookhart, out at the same Heinen's (only in a different plaza now, so can that really be considered the same Heinen's?), while visiting home from graduate school when I was 24. And I was still like: "Wow. Mrs. Brookhart. In Heinen's."

Maybe this isn't a phenomenon common to other people, as I was freakishly attached to my teachers growing up (which might explain why I still consider the original aforementioned sixth-grade teacher one of my favorite people). I do remember that some of my own (male-- just to clear up the coming confusion) students seemed totally freaked out to see me at the beach one day when I was a TA, but I think that was more because they didn't have their shirts on and felt totally grossed out that their TA could see their nipples.

But still, I couldn't help but feel sort of proud that news of my impending marriage was being carried back to the all-star crowd at the Harmon reunion lunch tomorrow. I just hope a certain gym teacher doesn't ruin it by doing his hilarious impression of the way I run.

I don't run like that anymore, ass! And I'm marrying a hot guy. So bite it.

Fergie's Insecurities, brought to life

So I borrowed Fergie's CD from the library, because not unlike the rest of the nation, I apparently find her "tastey". And I have to say, there are some pretty interesting songs on there-- I hope this does not diminish whatever little amount of music cred I have garnered by being an Elvis Costello or Cake fan for all these years. But there is one song in particular that irks the shit out of me, which contains the following lyrics:

Would you love me if I didn't work out/

or I didn't change my natural hair/

And I could be the/

One you want to grow older with baby/

I'll give you all that I got-t-t-t

There are several issues with this:

1. Fergie, if your boyfriend doesn't love you because you don't work out, then boyfriends across America must be living shams of lives.

2. What do you mean by your "natural hair"? Are you refering to the color? Or is your natural hair actually a matrix of snakes, a la Medusa? In that case, I, too, would be apt to leave you if you did not change it.

And, most importantly,

3. THAT LAST LINE DOESN'T FUCKING RHYME WITH ANYTHING! This isn't free verse! It's GOOD for things to rhyme in POP SONGS! It is ENCOURAGED! And for no apparent reason, that bothers me above all else.

Anyway, I thought I should make this lyrical gem available to everyone else, so we could discuss its badness. Meanwhile, I am off to go listen to Warren Zevon's greatest hits, so as to counteract whatever Pop Music Haters I may be attracting here.

(By the way, pop music RULES! There. I said it. Just not this song.)

The following activities were performed in my car between the hours of 5:05 pm and 8:15 pm yesterday, when I was caught in a really bad traffic jam on my way home from work.

1. Called Ben to find out the situation: overturned cement truck at E. 140th. Minor annoyance.

2. Called Megan to find out when I will be going to visit her and her husband and their new baby! Fun times! Too bad I'm not moving at all. Urge to pee rising.

3. Called Kelly to discuss the newest BNL release, which I had planned on buying when I got home. Not only was it beginning to look like I wasn't going to get home in time, but Kelly infomed me it's not even that great, anyway. Then, phone begins to die. Must hang up with Kelly. Distance traveled: 1.3 miles in 30 minutes. Urge to pee rising.

4. Called Ben despite dying battery. Began to cry. Not good. Cut off old woman to get in far right lane, which I have learned from the radio is the only place to be to pass the overturned truck. Looked forward to seeing truck in flames, with cement volcanoing out from every direction.

5. Listened to Blue Collar Comedy on Sirius. Blue Collar Comedy is not really that funny, so I listened to a CD I made to take to Wilmington. Upon three consecutive listens, decided that I really don't like the song "You Can Call Me Al." Who knew?

6. Sobbed uncontrollably for about 15 minutes for no reason. Urge to pee reaching deathcon-4.

7. Popped massive zit on cheek, only to discover too late that it was one of those zits that is filled with blood, which made me look like a crime victim and thoroughly freaked out the people in the lane next to me.

8. Did more crying. Wondered if a pack of travel tissues would absorb at least a little pee if needed.

9. Finally approached the location of the so-called overturned cement truck, only to learn that it had been removed several hours before, and that absolutely nothing remained to impede the flow of traffic. Immediately began going 60 miles an hour again. Cried over lack of flaming truck. Cried bitter, bitter tears.

Unfunny bop

So, I haven't been feeling very funny lately.

This scares me, because it makes me feel like I was only given so much funny, and squandered it all in my youth, so that by the time I have children, I'll be the mom who makes inane banter about cartoons that went off the air years ago and encourages my kids to join a social group like Scouts, but not even as cool as Scouts, more like Indian Princesses.

Not that there's anything wrong with Indian Princesses. If there even is such a thing. If not, I could found it, which would give me even more humorless crap to talk about.

I don't exactly know where my funny has gone, but if you read back over the last few weeks of blog, you'll see that it's been sadly lacking. Could it be due to:

1. This shitty weather, which went from blizzardy cold to unseasonably warm, causing the two feet of snow here to take on the consistency of florist's styrofoam-- the kind you like to touch at the craft store because it so willingly accepts thumb prints?

2. The presense of TiVo in my life, which makes it so I don't have to come up with funny things to entertain myself?

3. My slow but persistent transformation into The Bride, but not the cool ass-kicking bride from Kill Bill, but rather the kind of bride that wonders if post cards or magnets would make better Save the Dates? (We're leaning toward magnets.)

I don't know. But I am so unfunny right now, it kind of hurts. Do you guys still love me?

Pepzilla

In an effort to prepare for our overnight journey to Charlotte this evening, I have already drunk one 24 ounce Diet Pepsi (left), and have moved on to a comically oversized 1 liter Diet Pepsi (right).

My entire upper lip fits in the mouth of the bottle. It is madness!

Never Mind

There are only two ways to get to work from my house, and they're both closed. Snow day!

To those of you out there in the thick of it, please don't think I'm a wuss, but I am just not the kind of person who is cut out for Great Adventure. PLEASE BE CAREFUL!

If I die on the freeway on my way to work

Please

*Call my parents and Ben and tell them I love them

* Don't read my journals-- ever

* Make sure someone feeds Mamie

* Try to forget all the times I freaked out and cried or screamed for no reason, and remember as someone cool and socially acceptable

That, by the way, is not my house, but is somewhat similar. I took a half day from work and am now steeling myself to head out. I also broke Ben's coffeemaker this morning in an attempt to make him some coffee while he so graciously and uncomplainingly shoveled us out of our driveway. So if I die on the freeway on my way to work today, also make sure he knows I really am sorry about that.

The Blizzard of Aught Seven

Once, 29 years ago, Cleveland was hit with a blizzard, commonly known as The Blizzard of '78, that people still talk about to this day. I, being young and vibrant, was not alive then, but have heard much of its fury and anguish.

But let me just say, that blizzard was probably pansy-esque compared to this.

After finally being released from work today at 4:30, it took me three hours to complete the normally 30-minute drive home, including an unscheduled and most unwelcome stop at a BP to chisel free my windshield wipers from their awkwardly-frozen ice prison, which caused them to seize up and completely stop functioning about ten miles from home. Finally, after prizing them free ("THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, MOTHER FUCKER!" was, I believe, the exact phrase I used once they finally began moving again-- Ashley can corroborate this, as she was on the phone with me at the time-- on my hands free, of course, as I do not have a death wish), Ben came and rescued me, and I followed him the rest of the way home.

I would like to thank the manufacturers of my intensely oversophisticated ice scraper and the makers of Orbit Mint Mojito gum (it really tastes like an alcoholic beverage!) for helping me survive this ordeal.

In the meantime, I thought it would be prudent to announce, for those of you who don't know, that I WILL BE IN WILMINGTON THIS WEEKEND, and expect to see all my Wilmingtonian friends while I'm there. Please tell me the temperature is about 18 degrees, and I will be able to get the car wash I so desperately, desperately need.

Drama, deferred

At work, we have Fox News playing in the lunchroom at all times (not because we are particularly interested in the thoughts of Greta Van Susternen, but because we don't know where the remote is, and therefore cannot change the channel), so it didn't take us long to find out about the death of Anna Nicole Smith. And soon, the entire office-- men and women both-- were abuzz with the information, speculating on cause of death (TrimSpa? Was it TrimSpa?) and remembering our favorite ANS moments.

I have to admit that, even as a well-educated woman of literate aspirations and supposedly lofty life goals, I am utterly fascinated by all celebrity disasters. For instance, I wrote a paper on the OJ Simpson civil trial verdict that got me a scholarship to my undergraduate university-- and I wrote it not to make an ironic statement, but because I was genuinely addicted to the OJ trial.

And now the death of ANS gives me a whole new stable of things to obsess over-- was it suicide? Did someone kill her? Does this have something to do with her dead son? Who is the father of that baby? Things I never would have really put any thought into otherwise-- ANS was not particularly high on my Celebrities To Watch list, despite her being batshit crazy.

But the question remains-- why do these things so interest me, when in theory, I am supposed to be reading up on literary theory and paying very close attention to the political climate around me?

I have two theories on this:

Theory 1: I. Love. To Gossip. But yet suffer from a crippling fear of fully gossiping about anyone for fear of being caught, and also, yes, because it's really just wrong to do so. I try to limit my gossiping to only well-trusted sources, whom I know will not repeat my gossip; I try also to stick with gossip I know to be true, not things I heard or thought possible. But my thinking is, celebrities sign away full gossip rights by stepping into the spotlight, and I am free to gossip about them with impunity. So now, I am free to go buckwild with my theorizing, and to share my speculations with anyone I see fit.

Theory 2: I also love drama, but as anyone who has attended an MFA program (or any school, for that matter) can tell you, too much personal drama can lead to very bad things. Celebrity drama, however, can be enjoyed at full-strength, because while you know Anna Nicole Smith, you don't actually KNOW Anna Nicole Smith, which enables you to delve as deeply as you want into the sordid details of her death without any personal emotional repercussions.

This, of course, does not mean I'm glad Anna Nicole Smith is dead; it's never good to hear that anyone has died. But am I interested in her death? Indubitably.

Death to Scum

I highly recommend that you all go out and buy this Scumbuster RIGHT NOW. If, for example, you have a scummy bathroom, like I do, it will allow you to destroy scum in a most satisfactory manner, as well as unidentified blue-black smudges of what can only be Super Scum, various types of mildew, and other nastiness.

You can also use Scumbuster to clean:

*sinks
*toilets
*the lid to your perpetually scum-covered metal garbage can
*windowsills (which get very, very dirty, in case you haven't noticed)
*carpet (or so the packaging says, although I can proudly say that at least my carpet is free from scum)
*the other heads of the Scumbuster

and so on.

All I know is, my bathroom is a million times cleaner than your bathroom. At least a million. Which is why it pains me so that, immediately upon completion of Operation Scumbust, Ben suggested that tomorrow, we wash the dog in the bathtub.

The prodigal poster returns

So, I know I haven't been the best at keeping my "blog more and comment more" resolution, but I have to admit, this whole wedding planning thing is a real ass-kicker! But we now have an official date (after visiting the worst location ever for a wedding reception-- in the worker cafeteria at the BP building), a dress, a caterer, a cake, and possibly a DJ. So it's all coming together quite nicely.

But on top of that, I have been:

• working with the Aurora High School Class of 1997 Reunion Committee to pull together some semblance of a reunion. So let me just inform you right now that if you are a member of the Aurora High School class of 1997 and you read this blog, you will be attending this reunion. There's really no way around it. Jeremy. Thaddeus. I will come to your homes and get you and make you dance. We'll be doing the Macarena. Oh, the joy, the joy of it all!
  


• returning all the e-mails in my inbox. This does not include the seven bazillion e-mails I got in response to my "I'm getting married!" e-mail of 12/26. Those of you who sent one of those e-mails, I greatly appreciate each and every one of you, but I must declare e-mail bankruptcy regarding those messages, lest I be found dead at my computer.
  


• working out with my new arm and ankle weights I got for my birthday, in an attempt to not have big scary flappy underarms on my wedding day. Thus far, I have accomplished only Looking Like a Supreme Idiot, as I tend to talk on the phone while wearing the weights and walking the dog, so I can often be found standing in front of various neighbor's houses, pumping my arms wildly and apparently talking to myself while my dog sniffs around in the garbage.
  


• attempting to overcome my fear of the woman who runs the place where we're getting married, because she totally hates me, and I think it's because my mom mentioned to her that I drank too much at a party I once attended at the same party center, thus securing my reputation, in this woman's mind, as "the girl who will almost certainly get drunk and ruin her own wedding."

And so on.

So, I must apologize, but it seems likely that my posting and commenting will be sporadic, at least until we get past this initial phase of wedding planning. But I am reading everyone's blog, and thinking of funny comments in my head. Which has to be worth something.

If it makes you feel any better, my hair is turning gray at a fantastic rate, which is alarming not only in and of itself, but also because I cannot resist the temptation to rip all the gray ones out, which will only ensure that, while I may have tight toned wedding underarms, I will probably be bald.

Also, please enjoy this picture of myself as a seventh-grader. Please note that yes, that is my dad's shirt I'm wearing. And I'm out in public. And those really were my glasses.

I feel that this display of naked humility should excuse me from all further anger at my not posting very much. Thank you!