boo, hiss, suck

I did not have a red-letter day yesterday (until the end).

I woke up, I went to the studio. One student came, a woman I’ve mentioned who had had surgery years ago to remove lymph nodes in her arm and hence could not put any weight on it. (Sidebar: ever? I don’t know very much about medicine, I admit, but it seems unlikely that she would be incapable of putting weight on her arm for the rest of her life, more that she would have to work up to it. Seems fishy to me.) She had come to class on a Thursday a fortnight prior, and I felt helpless about modifying my class for her. You cannot do many of the the pieces of the sun salutation without putting weight on both arms, unless you’re a bodybuilder who frequently does one-armed pushups. I couldn’t just ask her to sit out during the sun salutes; I teach vinyasa, so sun salutes are the foundation of my teaching. And yet she returned for my Sunday class.

By 8:30 she was the only person there, so I threw out my class plan and decided to teach a class completely free of sun salutes. (Another student came in 10 minutes late, but she was late, so it’s her problem that the class was tailored to the student who was on time.) I thought I would be struggling, but I was wrong; aside from one point where I asked her to hang out in child’s pose for another half-minute while I figured out what to do next, I taught the class without major hiccups. I thought it would be much more difficult, but it was actually kind of freeing, not to feel bound by the blueprint that I usually use to build a class. I’ve been teaching for long enough now that I need my cheat sheets a lot less often and am much more capable of going with the flow, and that’s certainly what I did in this class. It was good to have a student teach me something again. Thing is, I don’t know what I’ll do if she keeps coming to class. I can’t continue to accommodate only her, and I like teaching sun salutations (and I’m good at it).

Unfortunately, I had the same problem as last week – a woman who was attending the class after mine, which is much more popular, came right on into the studio and started taking her shoes off before we were done with savasana. SO. RUDE. Nothing pisses me off so quickly as lack of respect, and I definitely did not feel the breeziness that I put into my voice to wake up my students from savasana when it was time. Next class I’m bringing in a sign: I WILL OPEN THE DOOR WHEN CLASS IS OVER. Well, maybe not so abrupt. Either way, it put me in a bad mood, and then I went home and BF and I went to the grocery store.

I felt guilty that grocery shopping took so long, because BF had to go to work, but I’m tired of going on Sunday night and getting the left over vegetables or sometimes none at all, and having 2 flavors of yogurt to choose from. What we really should do is get in the habit of going on Saturday morning, but that unequivocally sucks.

Then we came home and BF left for work. I read my email and found an exchange between my mother and MM, one which told me that my mother had contacted not just two photographers in Florida, but a photographer in Chautauqua, without telling me. I thought it had been pretty clear that I was captaining the vessel of the wedding planning, but I believe that going on all the appointments with me two weeks ago went to my mother’s head and she presumed that we were all doing it together. I guess I should have been clearer that them tagging along was strictly a courtesy on my part, a gesture of magnanimousness, but that’s kind of an asshole thing to imply or state. I wrote back very firmly that I did not want her making any calls to any vendors without asking me first, because I wanted to be the first point of contact for all vendors. My reasoning (which I did not share) is that both mothers have an idea of what they think I want, and they are both dead wrong, and I don’t want the vendors’ first impression to be of the weddings in their heads rather than the one in mine. I said I appreciated that she was trying to help, but that I’d tell her how she could do so.

Her email in reply was very short and saying that she’d butt out. I don’t really care if I hurt her feelings. I’m the captain, dammit.

I chatted with BF, forwarding him the emails, to ask him if I was being Bridezilla-y. (He said no.) That is my worst fear, and I’m constantly asking myself and occasionally asking him for confirmation that I’m not doing it. I want to compromise, but I want it to be my wedding, but I want to be reasonable. Thankfully about half of the planning is behind me, and I hope I can get most of the rest done before the holidays. I still want someone to have written a book about this specific thing, the problem of being a ping-pong ball between mothers and potentially other family during the wedding process.

I was so furious at my mother. She actually claimed in the same email that she was writing in the spirit of helping and not interfering. How is that possible, when she independently asked Paula if Paula would meet with a photographer that I’ve never even spoken to, whose work I’d never seen? God, it pissed me off.

I was still angry as I drove to my second class of the day. Something happened to make me even angrier: about 10 motorcyclists, the ones with the little lawnmower Japanese motorcycles, sped by, weaving around and through cars, going 90-100 mph easily. I fucking hate those guys. They petrify me, because as they rush by, I am immediately convinced that their lives will not end well. Also because if they scare me enough to jerk the wheel accidentally, causing a crash, it’ll be my fault and my jail time, despite their recklessness.

Even knowing this, I nearly committed murder.

I saw one of them coming up behind me, and knew he would swerve between me and the car in the lane to my left. I realized that if I did make a sudden move with my car, even six inches or a foot to the left, he would either be bumped or have to turn or brake so severely that he would crash, and probably be transformed into human hamburger. I was so angry at him suddenly, him and his buddies, for terrifying citizens driving innocently on 50 East on a Sunday afternoon. He thought he was going to live forever, and he’d decided it would be a great idea to bet his life on a few inches between two several-ton vehicles moving 70 miles an hour. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to prove him wrong, to make him see how it felt to lose that bet.

I had to grip the steering wheel with all my might, and stare straight ahead, and close my ears to the whine of his engine, not to do it.

After I got over the major part of my rage, I felt awful for that urge. The motorcyclist was still a human being (presumably with child support to pay to his five baby mamas), and it’s not my call whether he deserved to die or lose a leg for his recklessness. I called BF to tell him about this on my way home, and he asked me how fast he was going. I said at least 90. He asked me how I knew, and I said I was going 75 and he blew past me. His response: “So you were speeding, ma’am?” I got frustrated and said that the guy was an ass and needed to learn his lesson. He pointed out that killing him wouldn’t teach him anything. Yeah, okay, but I said that it might make his buddies think twice. BF shrugged over the phone. “Maybe,” he said. I felt bad. Not horrible – because it’s the asshat on the bike who’s putting his life on the line, and some other person could be innocently reaching for the radio, swerve, and end his life just as effectively – but bad.

I got to the studio without causing any death or mayhem. The owner of the studio was there, and so was her young daughter, who is a sore point with me for reasons too petty and lengthy to go into. I waited for the half-hour before class started, and at 3:59 I was getting ready to be elated.

Then he pulled up.

That guy.

The one who seems to be my personal cross to bear as a yoga teacher.

No one else came, so I taught him. Thankfully the class went relatively well; he didn’t answer back like he has in the past, he listened to my directions, I threw out my class and taught one that he could actually do, and he said at the end that the time passed quickly.

I drove home, annoyed at all the small things that had gone wrong that day. I hadn’t done my chores. I had taught two financially unsatisfying classes (even if one had made me learn something). I had had cause to be extremely angry at my mother and to have to tell her off. I had almost willfully killed someone. I was not feeling particularly chipper.

When I got home, BF and I decided that our game plan for the evening was grilling the marinated beef skewers we’d picked up on impulse at the grocery store and then go to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. (I’m concerned it will be out of theaters by next weekend, and BF HAD TO SEE IT.) About then was when things turned around: dinner was delicious, no motorcyclists came to ruin our evening, and the movie was equally awesome the second time around – well worth staying out past our bedtime.

But today? Today I have to clean up very worrisome work messes left from Friday, I still haven’t written the second half of my Chautauqua adventure, and I’m sensing ominous happenings at both my day job and my yoga job, ones that make me want to seriously reevaluate my situation. Everything I’ve written here is a rich-kid problem, nothing like living hand to mouth, but I’m still frustrated, and it’s still not a brilliantly wonderful life I’m living right now.

August movies, part the second

Altered States – Weird, and talky. There was some 2001 in it, and it sometimes resembled Scanners, but more Mamet than Cronenberg. The film debut of both Drew Barrymore and William Hurt, and the latter was wonderful – he is such a secure, thoughtful actor, and doesn’t seem to have changed his technique or ability in 30 years. I was pretty glad to reach the end of the film; it was kind of punishing in its coffeeshop philosophy and constant arguing. If you like ‘em bizarre, check it out, but don’t expect it to hang together at the end – I still don’t really know what happened during the last two minutes or so.

U.S. Marshals – Balanced differently than The Fugitive, possibly to its detriment; this one was more ordinary, even if the script was almost as good. Snipes just isn’t Ford, is the thing, and his story was less interesting to me. Good, though, with really fine stunts and solid work from all involved. Downey especially wowed me at one point in the long middle, with three or four different things passing over his face when looking at a woman; a nice little glimpse of the psychopath within. Oops, did I give something away?

Lisa Gerrard: Sanctuary – A poor excuse for a documentary, from one perspective, and a glorious and poetic portrait, from another perspective. Virtually zero hard facts about Gerrard, and SO ARTY that I thought my eyes were going to roll right out of my head. If you are already a worshipper of Gerrard, this will be 90 minutes of heaven; if you know nothing about her, it’s unlikely that you’ll become interested in her from watching this. (She is a vocalist and composer with one of the most unique voices ever given to a human. She’s best known as the female contingent of Dead Can Dance.) I know something about her, not very much, and I was irritated and bored, because I Netflixed the documentary so I could learn something I didn’t already know and couldn’t get from Wikipedia. Which did not happen.

To Have and Have Not – From Hemingway’s novel, co-scripted by William Faulkner, you’d think this script would be less clunky and repetitive. It’s too bad. Of course, a good deal (if not most) of the novel went out the window so as to make it to Hollywood, but that’s no excuse. However, this is the first pairing of Bogart and Bacall onscreen, the film on which they almost certainly fell in love, and the celluloid sizzles and snaps when the two of them are together. It’s well worth watching for that…if for few other reasons. BF liked it more than I did, so maybe a second go-round would change my opinion, but I doubt it.

The Public Enemy – The second 1931 film this month, and just as good as Platinum Blonde, although very different. It’s violent and sinful, and although there are weak title cards slapped on the beginning and end to make the viewer believe it’s a morality tale, I think it’s about sex and guns more than it is about teaching us a lesson. This is actually the first film of Cagney’s I’ve ever seen, and, in 1931 at least, he’s a strange actor – ultra-natural one minute, with terrific expressions, and stiff and cliched the next minute. His character is indelible, captivating (without ever consuming him the way that Scarface did Paul Muni), even if the over-loving ethnic mamma and the inevitable bad deaths are less than creative. More pre-Code work, including what may be the screen’s first obvious homosexual, the implication of a blowjob, and more. I’ve now seen this, Scarface, and Little Caesar, which are the triumverate of 30′s gangster movies, and I think this one is the best. The camera work is certainly above and beyond, and there are subtleties here which Scarface painted on good and thick and which Little Caesar ignored entirely (probably because Robinson was such a firecracker). Also, this is the film wherein Cagney pushes a grapefruit into a dame’s face, one of the great iconic moments in cinema. Really good stuff.

All That Jazz – If I’m not mistaken, Fosse‘s continued purpose was to show that singing and dancing need not happen only when one is happy and excited, but when one is miserable, lonely, frightened, or otherwise not bound by MGM and Technicolor. One of his themes was the exploration of life lived on the edge of disaster – the Cell Block Tango, the cabaret in Berlin. I think he was captivated by the spectre of life through the lens of show business, and it’s possible that he was personally incapable of seeing life any other way. This film is his conversation with himself about mortality, dance, women, and work. It is totally brilliant, but it’s deliberately unpolished, and that makes it sometimes difficult to interpret with precision. I watched it twice, and I still don’t think I absorbed it altogether. I took great pleasure in its 70′s-era self-seriousness, in the frankness with which it moved relentlessly into people’s lives, in its dispensation with traditional narrative. I walked away convinced that Fosse is a significant artist, whose work should be studied, not merely mentioned in passing. Also – now I know where Aronofsky’s montage technique in Requiem for a Dream came from, and the homage that Mendes was paying in the “Dancing Spartanettes” scene in American Beauty.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – Thoroughly awesome. Totally fresh, hilarious, fun, poking fun at hipsters even as it behaved hipsterly. Stylistically, this is what Ang Lee was trying to do with his Hulk, and what he unfortunately failed to do; he was unwilling to take as big a leap as Wright did. It’s too bad, because the leap really paid off. Flawed only in that it never stops moving, but that’s not necessarily bad when the movement is fun and happy instead of dire and murky a la Dark Knight. A love letter to 8-bit video games, it’s an absolute crime that I saw this before BF did. See it in the theater before it’s gone. Go now!

the price of vanity: $25 per year

Well, I was all set to be in a foul mood.

Although by and large, things went okay for me at work this week, there were a number of small incidents that sucked – for instance, a woman not calling me when she said she would; for instance, spending 7.5 hours on reviewing hideous emails between feuding spouses; for instance, having nothing to do for most of Friday and then having three emergency calls after all the lawyers had gone to the county bar association’s crab feast. Etc.

I was looking forward to teaching tonight. The summer’s almost over, so I guessed that a lot of my ladies would come back tonight and be ready to relax. There was a concert scheduled in the studio for 7:00, and since my class ended at 6:30, I think whoever planned this assumed that the space would be equally available for class and concert. When I arrived at 5:00, all the people performing in the concert were already there, practicing (well, mostly gossiping, some practicing, you know theater people) (I’m allowed to say that because I was one once) in the studio. I rolled out my mat and started to get set up.

The front desk person came in and said that she hadn’t realized the performers would need to warm up and practice before the concert, and after much hemming and hawing, asked if it would be okay with me if class was just called off. It pretty much wasn’t okay with me. If they had given me (and my potential students) some notice – this concert has been promoted by the studio for well over a month now - I couldn’t have cared less if they’d cancelled, but doing so 25 minutes before class was pretty crappy. I didn’t have a choice, of course, so I rolled up my mat and left.

This arose from poor planning. Someone didn’t ask the performers somewhere along the line what they needed of the space before the concert, i.e. whether they could come prepared or if they needed to be in the room for, oh, I don’t know, two full hours before the concert began.

As I drove home, I was not only annoyed about this particular instance, but very worried about something else coming up. A local teacher has, via some flyers I found in the studio, partnered with the studio to do her one-woman teacher training program one weekend a month there. I like this teacher and think it’s great that she’s working with the studio, but all three of my weekly classes take place during her time slots for her training. I asked the front desk person how they had planned to work this out, if perhaps training was going to take place in the aesthetics room behind the counter (some smaller programs have been there in the past), and the front desk person didn’t know. I had presumed that the owner had thought about this problem already and found a solution, and I put it out of my mind. Until now. If similar lack of arrangements were made for the space, I will be really pissed off, because that’s all of my classes once a month that will just be booted.

So all that sucked, and it’s Friday and my shoulders are still up around my ears, and I got home and thought I would probably just have a Klondike bar for dinner and drink white zin until I pass out. And then I checked the mail, and my entire bad mood fell away.

My vanity plates came!

I’ve wanted vanity plates probably since I could read, and at least since I was 8 or 9 years old. I even considered, as a child, moving to California for vanity plate reasons only, because their license plates have 8 characters to play with instead of most of the other states’ 7. I’ve had a clear idea of the plate that I want for two or three years now, and when my renewal came up this year I was finally able to plan ahead enough to order them. I still got them on the STUPID 1812 plate that’s replacing all the regular Maryland plates for the next several years, but I don’t care, I got them and put them on my car and I’m so happy!

(I apologize, but I decided that actually putting a picture of my license plate on this blog would be too much of an anonymity breach. Just trust that I’m really pleased about the plates and that they are totally awesome.)

Although I still think I might have that Klondike bar. Before dinner. Mmm.

the two-sock thing is just a fad

Since I have a more-than-slight interest in Marilyn – am planning to write a novel about her, own a dozen books about her, etc. – I find these results pretty ironic. And, actually, they’re more accurate than not about my personality.

Y’all, I’m sorry for not finishing the story of last week’s wedding trip, but you have no idea what’s going down here in my life. I am dealing with major work stress. What I told BF the other night is that when I work really hard all day long, and then look at my billables before I go home, I feel like I’m losing, like I’m losing, like there are dozens of backs jogging away from me and I’m panting, bent over with my hands on my thighs. On top of the usual billable stress, I’m also dealing with some more unusual work stress that ultimately is not my business so I can’t talk about it, but it’s really goddamned frustrating and I want a conclusion, soon.

Instead of spending more time that I don’t have writing a real post, I want to memorialize something funny that happened between me and BF some weeks back. We went outside late one afternoon to take a picture of me in pigeon pose so that I’d have a bio picture for my yoga studio’s website, and during the approximately three or four minutes we were out there, I received two mosquito bites: one on my calf and one on the top of my foot. BF found this unbelievable, but it’s just how I am; I have sweet blood or something, they zero in on me no matter what.

The following day, BF came home from work to find me upstairs, working on a story so furiously that I sounded asleep when I acknowledged him, and he went downstairs to play games and otherwise amuse himself until I was ready to surface. When I was, I came downstairs and announced, “I dress myself!”

He looked at me. I was wearing the button-down shirt I’d worn to work, no pants, and one sock. He cracked up, and so did I. We chatted a little bit about our respective days, and then I started again. “There’s a very good explanation for why I’m dressed like this,” I began to say, but laughter got the better of me before I’d finished. The explanation was that the pants and the missing sock were whispering against the mosquito bites on my leg and foot, and had been driving me nuts all day, so the first thing I did when I got home was to remove them. Because I was eager to get to work on my story, I did not think to remove the other sock, or to put on shorts of some kind.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not a full-time writer as of yet. I might be so deep into the work that I’d end up with eight cats (that I’m allergic to) and an additional boyfriend without even realizing it.

angel hair

This week, I’ve had occasion to think over my mom more than usual. I remembered something that happened between us years ago, something that was not unique at the time but has become so in the years since.

I was not yet 20. I was in Louisiana, visiting her for the summer. I had recently become engaged to a man who was all wrong for me, someone I would discover as wrong before too much (but not zero) damage had been done. My friend Boomer was aware of the engagement, because he was also acquainted with the gentleman; I had decided not to tell my mother yet, because she did not like my chosen man and had no qualms about telling me so. Boomer and my mother may have either still been dating or had only recently decided to call it off (on relatively friendly terms).

All that background to say that the fiance, Boomer, my mother and I were having lunch together at Semolina, a pasta restaurant similar to the Macaroni Grill, but a little more casual and slightly more obsessed with pasta. There was a strange vibe at the table, a kind of unpredictable hostility, because we all knew that my mother did not like the fiance. Also, something that I see now was that she could no longer ignore the adult I was becoming. Things were being very badly shaken up in the little universe inside her head, things it would take me thousands of words to explain.

I ordered angel hair. What follows is a reconstruction, as my memory of the incident is not at all perfect. At some point after our food had arrived, my mother leaned over and said to me, “You know that’s not the way to eat angel hair, right, sweetie?”

I looked at her and said “What?”

She said “It’s okay, if you know, but I just wanted to let you know, in case you didn’t, that eating angel hair is different from regular pasta.”

I became childish and petulant, and claimed that I did not believe there was a difference, and if there was, I did not care, or want to know about it. The fiance, for once, was intelligent enough not to start a fight. My mother responded to my immaturity by acting amused and backing off, thereby winning via not losing her composure. Boomer expressed neutral curiosity as to the correct way to eat angel hair, but by then I had been so unpleasant that my mother declared the discussion closed, because, as she noted, obviously not everyone at the table wanted to know the answer.

Later, the fiance told me that the way she’d treated me was utter bullshit. Her intention was to embarrass me, and show her better breeding and wider knowledge. He didn’t think there was a different way to eat angel hair, he thought she’d just invented it to show me up. I said that there could well have been, because she knew things about etiquette so obscure that no one bothered printing them in books anymore. But it took him pointing it out for me to see: her intent was not to teach me, but to embarrass me in front of others. This same little farce had been playing out at dinner tables, in living rooms, at parties for years upon years, and I had been playing the idiot child in every encounter, angry and lashing out at her interference without really understanding why.

With the fiance’s observation, I suddenly did understand why. She was infantilizing me. On purpose. In front of people I respected. To make herself feel superior. The difference this time was that the people also respected me. I will never know for sure if Boomer had a similar talk with her that the fiance had with me after that incident, and pointed out that all she was doing was deliberately humiliating her own flesh and blood for no reason but to pat herself on the back for knowing more than me, but I deeply suspect that he did. Because she has never done anything like that since.

(Is there a difference in how angel hair is eaten? I Googled it and didn’t find anything.)

you down?

Earlier this week I bought a CD from Target titled, simply, “Hip Hop.” It was a collection of all the best between 1989 and 1994. These were the songs played at my middle school dances, but that my parents would NEVER EVER EVER have allowed me to listen to at home. I thought it was about time I was allowed to listen to them at home, at full volume if I so desired, now that I’m paying the mortgage. So I made a white-girl fool of myself while I cooked dinner. A few tracks passed, and then this one came on:

I haven’t heard that opening riff in probably 12 years. It was instantly familiar. I think the groove is still damn good, and the song is still a little dirty, but the video is downright quaint. They’re all so fully dressed! See if you can spot Queen Latifah.

A few tracks later was this one:

which I will hold up against ANYTHING ELSE that Will Smith has ever done, including Ali. (The song, anyway; not necessarily the video.) Totally, perfectly successful at what it’s trying to do, and no less enjoyable for being 19 years old.

How’s that for a Monday Music?

regarding 8/17/10, or wedding stuff, part 104 of 875

BF works somewhat near the airport, so we just got up extra-early and he drove me there before he went to work. We hugged and told ourselves that we’d be apart for less than 48 hours. But we still hate being apart at all.

I went through BWI, same old same old, slightly worried about missing my plane, but I made it through security with time enough to get out my book before boarding started. Once we were all settled, takeoff was delayed for about a half hour because one of the systems wouldn’t respond the right way. I am perfectly happy to wait until all systems have been checked fully before I am sitting in a tube in the sky with 100 other people going 500 miles an hour.

I landed in Buffalo, called MM to say I was going to be a little late, and picked up my rental car. It was a Kia, fairly fun to drive, with all kinds of bells and whistles that my own bottom-of-the-line car does not have. I plugged in my iPod and hit the Thruway. Erie got closer and the minutes ticked by. I had a loose appointment with someone at 11 or 11:30, but I was not terribly worried about it, and my next appointment wasn’t until 1:00.

The first appointment was with MO, who lives in Chautauqua across the street from MM. She and her husband are close friends with MP. Unusually, they are year-round residents there. Although I didn’t know this at the time I was speaking with her, she has a master’s in divinity from Harvard, and does a lot of work on world religions – not just stuck in one thing or another. MM wanted her to be our officiant. She said that she wanted us to choose someone who actually knew BF and me, not just a stranger. As far as I’m concerned, she is a stranger; I’ve met her in passing, but I scarcely remembered what she looked like. Who we are through MP’s conversations with their friends about us is distinctly different from who we actually are, and the notions that MO might have had about our identities from MP were ones I didn’t want her going into our ceremony with. Frankly, I was uncomfortable with any officiant MP might choose. They would be more religiously oriented, and more likely to listen to what MP wanted our ceremony to be than to what we wanted it to be. They might agree if MP whispered something that they wanted to go in, without telling us it was going in. I could not trust that it was a pure business relationship, where I would pay for delivery of services, rather than a friendship/favor relationship, where I would have to be flexible for the sake of getting along. However, compromise is the Word of the Day for this entire wedding experience – more on that later - so that’s what I was doing in agreeing to meet with MO, with no understanding that we would go forward with her as our officiant. Indeed, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t select her.

However, the conversation we had changed my mind. She read what BF and I had written, teared up a little at one point and laughed at another, and made suggestions that I thought were fine and probably correct. Her main suggestion was to introduce each section of the ceremony – this is the sonnet, this is the ring exchange, etc. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I for one have seen so many dozens of weddings in movies that I don’t need someone guiding me through what happens. Nevertheless, I have had the problem since tenth grade of jumping the reader too quickly from point to point, assuming (incorrectly) that she is following me, rather than leading her carefully along the path of my piece of writing. So overall she was almost definitely right, and I’ll make those changes. I explained how important it was that we put in NOTHING religious, and although she seemed a little concerned that we didn’t even want a blessing, her reaction was eventually the equivalent of “do what you want.” I liked her, and I felt confident in her – confident enough to cancel my appointment the following day with the officiant I’d picked out from the internet, after I’d slept on it. I think MO will charge us less, and I think she will be well worth hiring, and I think it will make MD happy if we use her. I am still a little concerned that she will take it upon herself to do more than what we have written for her, but we didn’t set anything at all in stone about her doing the ceremony, so there will be time later to define absolutely what she will do.

After meeting with MO, I came back to the house and ate lunch with my mother and MM. My mother was very, very excited to see me, and although she was slightly paler than usual, her hair brittle, she otherwise appeared no worse the wear from a bout of extreme illness while overseas this summer. Over lunch I asked her about the sonnet I plan to use in the ceremony. BF thinks it’s too long, and I asked her where I could cut pieces of it. We went over it line by line, because poetry is sort of her entire job, and we both agreed that cutting any of it would probably be a mistake. Sonnets are self-contained, very carefully structured, without a word wasted. Mom pointed out that sonnets are also a short enough poetic form in their full state. Compared to the fifteenth-century poetry that she generally studies, this is true, but as BF said, it’s no “Red Wheelbarrow”.

Mom pestered us about potentially being late – this is one of her obsessions, lateness - until we left for the place where I had an appointment with a pastry chef. He had been recommended to me by the general manager of our chosen venue, but I started to worry when we pulled up. The place was a sort of food/general store, understaffed, housed in an old barn with poor layout and rustic decor, and it simply did not look like the kind of place that could churn out wedding-quality pastries. We waited a few minutes for the gentleman I had an appointment with, and I noticed a small display case in the corner with some very fancy wedding cakes, covered in beautifully shaped fondant. I began to feel better; that kind of pastry is not my bag, baby, but it reassured me of this place’s capabilities.

The meeting went swimmingly. The pastry chef was a young guy, smart and friendly, with great ideas (better than mine), who was willing to accommodate and work with whatever we were looking for. We settled on what we wanted, he quoted a thoroughly reasonable price, and I signed the contract. Boom. Done. We also ordered a pie from him, to be picked up the next day, so as to taste the goods.

After some errands, we came back to the house. MM had something else to do that afternoon, so Mom and I took her car and went to my appointment at the florist’s.

Previously, the florist and I had exchanged emails and I had had a long phone conversation with her to discuss what I wanted. I sent her pictures and quite a lot of information. After the phone call, she had said she’d get back to me with some pictures and price quotes via email, which she hadn’t, but I had assumed that because I gave her so much, she would be well-prepared for our meeting, with the pictures and price quotes, and hopefully a good deal of other information besides. Instead, she had switched shifts with another florist at the same place, and this other florist had only a half-filled out information sheet and a printout of my email to go on, neither of which she had read before I came to my appointment. So I had to go over everything again, during which she kept me and my not-well mother standing at the front counter for about 20 minutes. She was also pretty chilly and unfriendly, asking questions clinically instead of warming up to me.

Finally I asked if we could go back to the little bridal corner I had seen from the door, which we did, and we sat and looked at some books. The florist made no suggestions about what we were looking at, she just sat there silently. I asked questions about the kinds of flowers I could get, and was mostly told that they were out of season and they couldn’t get them. I was told the same four or five flowers again and again that I could get. The price I was finally quoted was so small that I was suspicious, and needless to say, I left that place without signing a contract. Mom had not noticed the poor customer service, but she said essentially that this was a shitty florist, that flowers not being in season is what greenhouses are for, and that I should definitely not go with these people. So I didn’t. (A note: I definitely don’t expect to be treated like a queen by every staffperson on the planet. Most of the time I couldn’t care less if staff people are chilly and professional. But it has been explained to me that as a bride, I should expect to be treated better than the average customer, in part because I could potentially be spending so much money with any given vendor. So I was pretty appalled at the way they apparently treated brides in this shop.)

We went out to dinner and Mom spun me the whole tale about her lengthy trip overseas this summer, and the troubles with her long-term boyfriend stemming from said trip, and so on and so forth. This guy is so rotten for her, and I realize that she’s terribly picky and will likely never find a man who is right for her, and even if she doesn’t want to admit it she needs companionship, but I urged her to have some self-respect and ditch his ass. She said she would think about it, but I know she won’t. This is the latest in a long line of last straws.

We returned home, and MM was just finishing up a dinner party with a gaggle of ladies. I wanted to be virtually anywhere else than with these women, especially because I was a bride and seemingly doomed to be the center of attention (they said they wanted to hear all about the wedding when Mom and I arrived), but they were too tipsy and egotistical to really pay much attention to me, talking instead about their own daughters’ weddings. Finally they left. Mom started cleaning up and moving chairs back where they were while the women were still saying their goodbyes to MM. I urged her to sit down and rest; what she didn’t know, and I did, was that even though it was approaching Mom’s bedtime, the evening was far from over for MM, and Mom should have rested when she had the opportunity. But she is too obsessed with being a good guest, and pulling her share of the load, from dish-doing to furniture-rearranging, to listen to me. I got irritated and sat down.

After ushering out her guests, MM opened a bottle of dry champagne and poured for us. I love champagne, but I like crappy champagne, like spumante and the finest sparkling wines of Idaho. The drier it is the less I enjoy it, and if I’ve learned anything about wine, I’ve learned that the drier it is the nicer it is. Mom started talking about champagne for the wedding, but the bulk of that conversation and conflict happened the next day so I’ll save it for later.

We stayed up late chatting. MM took the opportunity to rhapsodize about her wonderful sons. Mom took the opportunity to tell the story about the time the car hit our house, but she told the story extremely differently from the way I’ve heard it every time before. I can understand that when I was a kid, she was smoothing the icky edges of the story for a child’s ears, but I’ve heard her tell it as an adult, and this time it was…really, really different. So either she lied all the other times or she lied for MM’s sake. BF played devil’s advocate with me and said she wasn’t really lying, she was just exaggerating, a little, to make the story more interesting, and to get across how terrifying the moment was, and to explain things the way they felt to her, even if it’s not strictly how it happened. (From experience confronting her, I know these would be her excuses as well.) To me, lying is when you do not tell the truth of what happened, and at one point or another, she plainly lied about this event in our lives.

I’ll never really know. Dad was deployed, and I slept through the whole thing, so it was just Mom and the guys who drove into our house who were there. I’ll have to assume that something between the story Mom told last Tuesday and the story she’s told for years is the truth. It’s painful and vexing not to know, and even more painful and vexing that my mother is such a liar.

After that was finally over, and I was tipsy from all the champagne, I collapsed into bed. I slept very poorly, because I have a TempurPedic mattress at home. Sleeping on anything else, no matter how nice the bed, is like sleeping on a board.

—

Throughout the entire day, MM and my mother were pelting me with asking me questions about the wedding. A constant stream of them, one after another. And every answer had to be checked against my internal reference system to make sure that I was answering it in a way that wouldn’t a) make either of them get defensive, b) harshly shut down some opinion that matters to one of them about the wedding, or c) lead to more questions. This was, needless to say, really challenging. I felt like I was on a very long job interview. With the CIA.

My mom asked me why I didn’t want live musicians for the ceremony, a question I have already answered for MM with difficulty, and I had to go through it in greater detail because Mom really wanted to change my mind. MM sat in silence while I explained this until interjecting that I should consider a band for the reception, if I hadn’t already, so I had to explain virtually the same thing all over again. Later, MM insisted that we should look up information for videographers, and waxed sentimental on a wedding video of a friend’s that she had watched. I am absolutely determined that I have no interest in videography. (I hate being camcorded. For a whole day? FUCK that.) I told her (blowing sunshine up her skirt, I admit, but I’ve been doing an awful lot of that with her, because she is certain that I want the wedding to be the way it is in her head, and I have to shut that down piece by piece rather than all at once) (anyway) that I hadn’t thought of it the way she explained it, and I’d have to ask BF about it, and I’d let her know. She took the initiative to put this as one of the things on her to-do list: interview videographers. My mom pulled me aside and whispered that she didn’t think I should have a videographer if I didn’t want one. And so on: MM trying to urge me to do something I didn’t want, me being as vague and kind as I could, Mom noting her disapproval of MM in one breath and then trying to persuade me about something else I didn’t want in the next breath. It was utterly infuriating.

And I have a whole second day to tell you about.

8/22

I still intend to write posts about my trip, but I wanted to get some flotsam out first.

Over the past week, I read a second Sookie Stackhouse novel and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A couple of months ago now I purchased Oxygen, a literary novel about medical malpractice, but every time I pick it up to start it, I put it back down again. It’s a subject that interests me, and the book is by all accounts quite good, but something just keeps warning me away. I am not in the mood for dramatic literary fiction, or even what gets by as such on the American bestseller list, and so I keep gravitating towards the kind of populist stuff that would make my mom ashamed of me. She is much more of a snob than I am, and the only value she sees in pop culture is anthropological. I disagree, and think that a lot of pop culture is worth enjoying for its own sake; Ke$ha’s songs are enjoyable because they are meant to be, meant to catch the ear of a wide range of humans, and I’m not going to close my ears to her just because I’m somehow better than the mass taste. That’s stupid, because I’m not.

But I’m getting sidetracked from the book thing. I used to read a couple of “serious” books, and then I’d go back and read some V.C. Andrews or some 80′s King, and I’d swap back and forth that way to keep from burning out on one style of literature or another. Lately it’s been all pop, all the time. I think this dates from reading The English Patient, which – while beautifully, poetically written – was a literary fugue state, and only served to confuse and frustrate me. What happened in that book? Was there an affair, or several? Who died, and when? Was any of it real, or just a fever dream? Interpreting poetry is my weakest point in the humanities, so I guess it makes sense that I just failed entirely to enjoy that book (or maybe I’m just not that bright). Uncertainty in film I can deal with, but I want my books to explain all, not leave the plot largely up to me to interpret. So I think that because of The English Patient I kind of lost interest in modern literary fiction altogether.

So I’m romping through vampire mysteries instead, and now I’m 60 pages into the second of Stieg Larsson’s books. Although I simply had to buy the sequel, to see what happened to Lisbeth next, I’m still…not entirely sure what I thought of Dragon Tattoo. It reminded me of Fincher’s films (appropriately, since he’s directing the American version of the film adaptation) – ugliness, especially against women, to the point where you start to wonder just what is going on inside this dude’s head. The generally accepted version is that Larsson was a feminist trying to make a point, but the violence is extremely brutal and lovingly described, so I was left uneasy and with horrible images in my mind after the book concluded.

I was still racing to get to the next page during the reading of it, though. Aside from a section in the beginning describing some of the workings of finance in Sweden, a section so boring I nearly gave up altogether, the book definitely urges the reader onward. I just wish that it had been more carefully edited. I don’t know if it was Larsson’s sudden demise that caused this problem, but man. This thing really could have used a machete-wielding editor. Larsson writes rings around Grisham and Crichton, I must say, but it’s way too long and exceedingly convoluted at parts. And jeez, does every main character have to have sex with every other one? It’s like Friends with the bed-hopping.

I don’t know if I’m stuck with mysteries and thrillers for the remainder of my reading life. I hope not. I’m not quite ashamed of myself – getting involved in books again feels better than a cool shower after a hot day, better than stretching into a backbend, better than dessert, almost better than anything I’ve felt since that evening in February when BF asked me to marry him; and I’m willing to read virtually anything that will give me that feeling – but I don’t want to give up literary fiction entirely. What I write myself is closer to literary than to genre, and I need to keep up with my field if I’m going to have any hope of publishing again.

—

BF and I had our first dance lesson yesterday morning. The first of what I hope will be many. We both really liked the instructor, and although our levels of enjoyment were significantly different, I think it’s something that we can eventually enjoy together. I didn’t realize that BF had to work so hard in order to do this – he has to calculate where we’re going to go next, and what the step is going to be, and then give me subtle signals to explain what we’re going to do, all in a few seconds. This is known as “leading”, which I obviously knew about, but I didn’t know it was so complicated.

I had a WONDERFUL time. Amazingly wonderful. I didn’t do everything right by a long shot, but when I was paying enough attention to BF’s signals to get the steps right, all I had to do was look in his eyes and move my feet, and we were dancing together, the two of us, moving together, looking straight at each other with nobody else in the world (although the instructor was back there somewhere, counting off “slow…slow…quick, quick” while Sinatra sang about taking it nice and easy and we fox-trotted awkwardly around the floor). It was so, so, so, so great. BF said he had an okay time, but he did have to do a lot of focusing and concentrating, more than me. From what he said, though, I think he got glimpses of the enjoyment that could be ahead.

We’re going back for our next lesson in two weeks. The learning curve is steep. Our instructor said she usually gets calls from couples a month before the wedding, and they just want to be able to get through three minutes of their song, so she’s on a timetable and rushing. I explained that about half of the music at our reception will be big band or swing or 30′s music, and I wanted to be able to dance to a lot of them with BF, so I didn’t want to just be able to get through two minutes on the floor, but to step up and dance whenever a song came on that I wanted to dance to. I wanted to make BF comfortable enough to lead me around the floor when the mood struck me or him or both of us, and not to feel like he was sweating and awkward while doing so. I explained all this, and she said that was great, and we had lots of time to do it.

The private classes are pricey, but after this first one, I have a hard time saying that they’re not worth it. I don’t think that either of us is ready for the group classes this lady also offers, me because I keep screwing up the footwork and BF because he’s shy, but eventually I hope we can get up to that – they’re significantly cheaper. Overall, oh, I had such a good time, despite hurting feet and feeling messy-uppy. I wanted to practice again this morning. (I certainly have enough fox-trot music.)

—

This morning I taught, and had two students: one of my regulars, and a woman who’d had lymph nodes removed from her right arm and could not put any significant weight on it. Sun salutations are pretty impossible to do without at least some weight on both arms at certain points. So I threw out my plan for the class partway through and did my best to teach without salutations. I wouldn’t necessarily have done this if there had been more students – she seemed to be modifying all right, although ther was definitely some weight going on the injured arm with those modifications – but she was 50% of the class and I felt bad. I really was at a loss as to how to help her modify.

Oh well. There’s only so much I can do.

—

Now it’s chore time – laundry, grocery list, etc. Probably more reading. Possibly a documentary on Lisa Gerrard. Definitely listening to a big band CD I bought at Target yesterday. Slow, slow, quick-quick…

8/20

Part of me wants to toss the notion of trying to recover my billables for this week wholly out the window – I mean, I’ve missed two days, and haven’t had much to do otherwise, so I’m not going to recover and I know it – and just write a bunch of posts about my trip, and about what’s going on with me. I vant to blooog. Another part of me looks at the clock and sees that I’ve already whiled away an hour this morning with no significant work, and tells me that I need to turn my head to my desk and see if there’s anything that can be reasonably billed for. (The answer may be no. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it anyway.)

Then there’s a third part of me, which wants to look at this hilarious image over and over until it’s seared on my brain so I can laugh at it anytime I want:

Stolen from somewhere on the net. I’ve watched “Tik Spock” five or six times and I still find it hysterical, partly because I’ve listened to the song by itself 800 times (IT’S REALLY FUCKING CATCHY, OKAY?) and the images fit the lyrics in an utterly perfect way that might not be totally noticeable if you haven’t memorized the song. (It must have been an insane labor to put it together…or the person who did so must have the entire catalog of ST: TOS memorized.) Partly also because I watched most of the first season of ST: TOS, and I don’t remember remotely this much drinking, partying, and fun. A large percentage of my amusement at it, though, is how perfect the pairing is of “Now the party don’t start till I walk in…” with Shatner doing his Shatner thing.

I cannot wait for tomorrow. I’m going to do so little. I’m going to read my book, and hang out with BF, and not worry about what’s going to happen next. Not think about either the wedding or the law. Just going to relax.

oof

The trip. Was hard. I could use another two days just to recover from the trip, from all the unbelievable emotional shit, all the running around, all the compromising, all the…aaaagghghhh.

In brief: my mom is a liar, MM is lovely but she (perhaps unconsciously) wants it to be her wedding, the people at Chautauqua are professional and I’m in good hands, the hairdo is going to be great, the florist I talked to isn’t going to work out, the pastry chef was awesome with great ideas and delicious pie, we’re probably going to end up using the officiant that MM foisted on us, and I am sick to death of a) compromising and b) thinking and talking about the wedding.

There doesn’t seem to be much going on at work yet, but I’ve only been here an hour so far. I will do my best to write a more detailed summary sometime soon, but I won’t have much down time until Saturday afternoon. TGIT.