this post…
has moved here due to space.

you’re all invited
in order to give advice to a recently-engaged friend, i just had to register at weddingchannel.com so that i could view some bridesmaid dress options. i have now committed to marrying “bob smith” on the 10th of October, 2009. “bob” and i are very excited about our far-future nupitals. currently, the wedding theme is “disney villains” and i’m planning on walking down the aisle to the tune of “poor unfortunate souls”. this may all change in the two thousand and twelve days bob and i have until our nupitals.
from now on, please refer to me as the future missus bob smith.

“oh yeah? well you SUCK.”
the world of feeble insults just got another golden nugget. this weekend, in an attempt to explain to my brother why i was incapable of some of the world’s simplest tasks, my father said, “yeah, well, she’s missing some DNA in her head.”
i seriously have no idea what that means, but i mocked him all day for it. you know, by refusing to do the world’s simple tasks:
dad: “take out the garbage, would you?”
me: “i can’t. i’m missing DNA in my head.“
in other news, i was able to answer the trivial pursuit question “how many countries claim to have stockpiles of nuclear missiles?” based solely on my repeated viewings of this piece of unadulterated brilliance.

a million lights, a million stories
here, charles tries once again to spend christmas with his mother. he wakes up, chooses the shirt hanging at the back of his closet, the button down an aunt gave him that he never wears. his car won’t start in the snappingly cold air. never mind, he tries again. he arrives at his mother’s shingled cape cod home and spends exactly three hours and seventeen minutes there, according to the swinging-tail cat clock with the shifty eyes. they eat dry turkey. his mother oscillates between nagging and silence. she looks older. he leaves at the stroke of five.
the streets are quiet, resignation palpable in this forgotten town his mother lives and will die in. there’s a bar, a shack drooping at the edge of the farm route. he stops there. there are two cars, only two other loners, perched at the edge of the bar. the bar is simply called mike’s. charles slumps into the bar stool like molasses settling and orders a beer. when the shaggy redheaded girl at the other end of the bar looks up and gives him a weak smile, he figures, what the hell. he walks over, sits down next to her, and says with a laugh, “hey, merry christmas.”
****
here, sherry knows peter is coming to her house for christmas, because mom invited peter’s parents. mom is humming some cheesy christmas song in the kitchen, obsessing over the gravy. sherry leans forward carefully over mom’s vanity mirror, carefully destroying her mother’s eyeliner pencil by giving herself heavy-lidded eyes. she tilts her head and sucks her cheeks in and thinks, if you squint the right way, she looks a little like angelina jolie. except, you know, thirteen with brown hair. nevermind. he’ll like it.
but when she opens the door to let the macallisters in, peter doesn’t even notice her deliberately torn black tee and jean skirt. nor does he even glance at her coup de grace – eight hole doc maartens. all through dinner, sherry throws what she assumes are “come-hither” glances at peter and his long black hair, but he just pushes the cranberry sauce around and snorts derisively every time his dad talks about his job.
it’s only at the end of the evening, when she’s standing on the back deck. that he comes outside, having stolen a coors light from the fridge, and nods upward in her direction. “nice shoes.” that’s what he says. she knows not to smile – she just shrugs. he walks over to her, his breath hanging in the air like mist. she tosses her bangs out of her eyes, trying to control her shaking hands behind her back. one side of his mouth turns up into a grin. and then peter macallister says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, catherine is at home, her crepe-paper hands carefully dusting the fireplace before her son and grandchildren descend on the house and the piled-up presents. her hands only just betray a slight tremor of the disease that will claim her in five years.
but the hands are still capable enough to pick up the picture frame of john, who left her in this world three years ago. she’s a tough bird, our catherine, not given to tracing lines in the faces of loved ones. but she gives herself this, and stares at his once-young face and says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, in front of a convenience store. a young boy, golden locks framing his round face, brown eyes peering out from under his wooly cap, is being dragged along the sidewalk by a mother furious that she forgot to buy enough eggs. little ryan chooses this moment, in front of the sleeping derelict, to use the powers of a four-year-old’s body weight to stop the forward projectory of his harried mother. he stares at the sleeping man. looks at his mother. looks at the man. and says studiously, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a twenty two year old soldier from kentucky looks into the unfeeling void of a CNN camera lens and talks, pretending it’s his family’s eyes and smiles, “merry christmas!”
****
here, a grown daughter spends christmas with two parents, in two houses, for the first time. she then gets drunk with her best friend and cries, wailing with hiccups, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a pastor looks out over his congregation and thinks their lives might feel just a little bit better because the choir sounds so angelic today. to the flock he wishes, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a woman kisses her pudgy husband and means it, even though yesterday she yelled at him about the plumbing in the basement. she says, “merry christmas.”
****
here, a man usually too busy and important to talk to the harried, drawn woman at his deli, remembers as he’s leaving, and yells back, “merry christmas!”
****
here, there’s always a little bit of magic and a little bit of sorrow. here, it’s christmas.

merry christmas baby

gave:
desktop waterfall, edith piaf cd, and fujifilm I-O advantix P&S for mom
tom petty and the heartbreakers “playback” box set for brother
strait-line laser level for dad
recieved:
DVD player and picture frames from dad
trivial pursuit 20th edition and zippo candle lighter (engraved!) from mom and dad
cashmere sweater, animal toe-socks, aromatherapy candles from mom
carton of kamel red lights and target gift card from luiz
did:
ate delicious christmas-eve greek chicken and drank shiraz
went next door to lovely neighbors house to borrow flour (just call me june cleaver!)
made sweet-potato casserole with brother
made biscuit‘s cranberry sauce
love:
christmas
family
home

candy canes for all the good little kidlets
help! we’re changing our knickers! don’t look, naughty children.
welcome to the briefly redesigned but infinitely more colorful pH. grab a candy cane, stay and chat a while. notice how the sidebar is no longer pixel-defined by percentages. those of you with safari should have told me a long time ago that you had massive gigantor sidebar issues, i would have bowed and scraped to fix it.
i’d like to thank the academy matt-hieu for not only designing my cheery banner, but also sitting on the phone and talking me through the TD changes.
and for being a great shag friend.
merry fucking christmas y’all.

pub chat
it’s about 9:30 and the pub’s just starting to get loud, with some football going on in the background and whiskey flowing carelessly. shivery just got trounced at pool, but since the teams switched round so much, no one has any idea who won. kate and shivery and i are discussing my attempt at a date on saturday night, then i chat with mark about the viable possibility of him actually having an evil, egotistical twin. stuart and i discuss snarky ways to get out of work, but wicked D thinks it best to discuss how the troika could really pull off some tasteful pornography. now mark, bring me round another pint, would you, dear?
alas, wouldn’t it be nice if i’d really been there, as opposed to simply being chatted around the table on my mobile?

locker room love
let me tell you about a place. a place with a thousand shades of blue tiles on the walls, giving the place a oceanic sense of calm. with long seamless mirrors, lit carefully with quiet strong lighting. granite countertops, with beautiful porcelain basins to wash your face. use the complimentary washcloth. feeling tired? try the H20 evian mist. need hair products? will that be gel, hairspray, or mousse? or you could shave your legs – there’s the disposable razor and shaving cream. and your hair? hey, they’ve got eighteen-hundred-watt hair dryers, about a dozen of them.
the showers are individual smoke-glass stalls with lovely shoulder-massaging showerheads. forgot your shampoo? no problem. elegant dispensers in each shower offer you shampoo, conditioner, and body-wash. need a towel? need four? no problem. unlimited towels, generous and fluffy and perfectly folded, await you at the entrance.
yes, you guessed it – i’ve fallen in love with my new gym new gym’s locker room. it’s the perfect antidote for the screetching wailing stress that is midtown holiday fever. i can go there, strip, wrap myself in several towels, partake of the steam room and then a refreshing warm shower. and i can do all this on the ground floor of my office building.
oh, while i’m there, i’ll probably work out, too.

a thinking place to quiet
i’ve come down with what feels like a two-ton weight in my brain, and i’m currently attributing it to exhaustion. i realized just now, while tapping my restless feet to get out of the office, that in the past twenty eight days, i’ve spent a whopping total of four nights by myself, keeping quiet. not that i’m complaining – since thanksgiving, then kate’s visit, then a weekend home, then this week’s festivities, i’ve been busy and happy. i have.
only, as i gear up for six days with the family next week, followed immediately by Best Friend in Whole World visiting over new year’s… i need the weekend. i need the entire weekend of quiet and working and cleaning and relaxing.
so to kick things off, i’m going home. right now. i’m going to sit in the bathtub with a tumbler of bailey’s on ice and sing along loudly to the record player. after that, i’m going to wrap myself in warm robes and cashmere lounge pants, drag the TV into my bedroom, and watch a movie in bed.
and then i’m going to sleep. for twelve hours. at the very least.

Fiction, continued
this is the beginning to the short story i excerpted here. maybe eventually the whole thing will be posted in confusing non-sequitors. wouldn’t that be fun?
“Heat warps memory and reality as it does photographs, and vinyl records, and credit cards. It has an unforgiving presence, seeping into all the places you hold sacred – into your bath, between your fingers and toes, your churning and dying air conditioners. It is the heat, this summer, that is the constant to my memories. And it is on the heat that I now blame any transgressions of character or departures from sane behavior.
Houston’s heat is singular and infamous. The city has thrown an invisible plastic sheath around itself, blocking out the breeze and the relief. It has turned inwards and begun to fester, reveling in it’s own accomplishments: 95 degrees in the shade, the hottest two-month stretch in recorded history. In July, the days don’t drop below 98 for two weeks. We are a national state of emergency. Old people without loved ones or pets are dying unnoticed, like the June bugs that collapse and wither on the very leaves they chew. There are air conditioning shelters in the local elementary schools, and I sneak away to the one near my house to watch the homeless people file in. They look like oil paintings, shiny and ridged with grime and sweat. Mothers leaving their children there all day. These children are baffled by their abandonment, and the parents seem jealous to leave them in such cool decadence.
The heat does not seem to affect those of us without the clutches and trappings of the real world – for us, it means our mothers and fathers will grudgingly turn on the lawn sprinkler each afternoon for us to play in. We alternately run towards and dash away from its mechanical attacks, chig-chig-chig, as it arcs its cooling path over the piles of sweaty little bodies. Parents watch from the window, clucking at our carefree attitude towards yet another burden of circumstance that they must face.
Our house doesn’t have air conditioning. We have financial worries, my mother tells us, and so we must make do, which is nothing new, since we make do in winter as well. My mother puts our sheets in the deep freezer every night for twenty minutes before bed time, which leaves me rashy and rubbed raw in the morning. We are allowed to eat as much ice as we want, and we are supposed to mark down our eight glasses of water a day on the fridge door. I am fourteen and have no interest in water. My mother also allows us, my sister Addy and I, to remain in various states of undress since we are all girls in the house, and we often lounge around eating popsicles in old mens’ undershirts that are dingy and grey from so many bleaching runs in the washing machine. They are irreversibly stained, at the end of the summer, with the drippings of our lazy afternoons – orange, pink sherbert, and grape are our favorites.”