Caterwauling

Wedding Belles

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

Photo: Me and the beautiful bride

Now, there was never any doubt that Tiff and Tom’s wedding today would be a class act. However, this is quite odd for me, because I normally just LOVE coming back from a wedding and dishing about how I would NEVER do whatever crazy thing(s) they did. But in this case? You ain’t hearin’ nothin’ but praises from anyone who attended. In fact, a lot of us are going, “You know, I would like for mine to be like that.”

Tiff was, how do you say it? Oh, yeah. Gorgeous. And Tom? Dashing.

The other male guests weren’t half-bad either. 😉

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Sent to me via text message tonight:

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That’s my name for my neighbor two doors over. She’s foul, she’s loud and she stinks. She’s got a daughter, probably 7 or 8 years old, who either misbehaves or rebels against The Foul One.

In any event, twice in the past two weeks, Ghettolicious has locked her daughter out. Locked. Her. Out. Of the apartment. And the kid? Pounds and screams for her mom to let her in. When she gets to the point where she’s hoarse, the door opens. I know because I hear the bitch throw it open.

I was outside talking on my cell phone a few moments ago, and she was out there with a stinky entourage. She was yelling at her daughter and passing around a cell phone like it were some space oddity. I mentioned rather loudly on my own phone that you wouldn’t BELIEVE the body odor that people in this uppity apartment building have. I thought she was going to sit on me. And you know what? She would win. *shudder*

She just had an eviction notice on her door the other morning. And while I would never wish that on anyone, I wouldn’t exactly cry myself to sleep if she and her litter were gone from my world. But I just saw two guys (one of them rather hot. Damn.) moving exercise equipment into her place. Damn — and here I was planning the moving-out party!

So I needed a dress today. That’s all. That was my only goal to achieve. Well, that and overcoming a lack of sleep due to what feels like heartburn and the formation of an ulcer, but in any event, let’s focus on the thing I CAN control: the shopping.

As always, I’m on a budget. And finding something appropriate for my body type is always an adventure, not to mention that if it fits properly too, well that’s utopia.

So against my better judgment, I found a Fashion Bug. And god damn, I have hated that store since I was a wee lass. I have hated the styles, the cheap quality of the clothes and the just overall crappy shopping experience. I swear, I haven’t been in a store in 20 years, but I found one recenly when my mom gave me a gift from there and I wanted to exchange it for, oh, anything else.

Anyway, I figured I’d been striking out at all my usual haunts, and this was literally the last resort. And miracle of all miracles, I found something. It’s not wonderful, by any standards, but for $40, if I get two wearings out of it (before it falls apart in the washing machine, which it WILL), I’ll be overjoyed.

There was also a sale going on, to buy something and get a lesser-value item for $1. And in some weird burst of karma, I found a pair of black dress pants in a petite size. Which, holy crap wow! I never buy pants because I refuse to pay out the wazoo for them and then have to go deal with getting them altered. Remind me to tell you sometime about my adventures with tailors. Seriously, how they had the audacity to make me pay them to fuck up my dresses is beyond me.

In any event, I found a dress, the pants, a slip and a necklace. The way I calculated it, the pants and the necklace would be a buck each.

A BUG (EMPLOYEE) UP MY ASS

When I got up to the checkout, the cashier threw a fit that I hadn’t properly taken advantage of the sale. And god help me, whatever language she was speaking (perhaps Russian) was lost on me. All I got out of it was that she thought my dress was way too expensive and she felt like I should go get something cheaper. There was something else said but it was lost on me.

I stared at her as she took all of my clothes and curled them up in a ball and threw them on the other side of the register. She ordered me to go find something different. I was like “What is your problem, lady? I want what I chose.”

She argued with me some more, to go find another dress. I said, “The rest of the dresses are fug. I don’t love it but GOD, it’s the best you have!”

I asked her to hand me back my crap so I could go put it back where I found it. She started yelling after me that when I found something better, I could cut to the front of the line. Yeah, the 12 women with 47 kids each really loved hearing THAT.

Luckily, my best friend called exactly at that moment, so she was my cheerleader when I told her how I was planning to impale Olga the Overlord with a plastic hanger. We talked for an hour, during which time I wandered the store and still didn’t find shit else that I would in my right mind want. But as always, my friend talked me off the ledge and injected some sanity into my life, as it’s been pretty scarce lately. When we hung up, I went back to the counter and guess who waited on me?

*sigh*

I asked her what the hell was wrong with the dress, anyway. And that she’d said I hadn’t taken advantage of the sale, the sign above the dress said buy one, get one for $1. I didn’t need two. And then she said I must have misunderstood her, because it was the pants that weren’t applicable for the sale. To which, I said of course I want them — Kee-rist, if they fit somewhat well, why wouldn’t I want them? I’m not made of money but there’s a lot to be said about a basic wardrobe staple that was only $30 in the first fucking place.

NOT SO MUCH IMAGINARY FRIENDS AS MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES

So she decided to be really nice to me and told me how pretty she thinks I’ll look in the dress. (Apparently she missed me in the dressing room mooing at myself. You always know when you’re in the dressing room with me when you hear two voices going, “Who’s a fatass?” and replying, “You’re a fatass!” And in the first voice, “Fatass fatass fatass” and the other voice laughing demonically. You later learn the voices were coming form the same person — moi. Ha!)

In any event, if I’d wanted a salesperson’s opinion, I would have asked them to unlock a dressing room for me instead of just crawling under a door and letting myself in that way. So I laughed and said, “Fatass!” and she was all, “WHAT?!?” And I said, “Exactly.”

She’s lucky I was only calling myself a name. Lord knows I was tempted to blurt out c u next tuesday but it’s pointless to play with an unworthy (and, yes Sabre, unarmed) opponent!

I use a lot of Web sites in an average day in my work. Anyone eavesdropping on my Internet usage would think I’m fucking around most of the day, because I have a lot of bizarro searches and get led into the weird abyss of all the juicy goodness that is out there for people in my field. And don’t ask, but I had to look up freaking Jennifer Lopez today for an honest-to-goodness professional reason!

But the fun part is when I couldn’t find something I needed on a dictionary site. I knew the definition of the word I was looking up but I often misspell it on first attempt. So I wrote in to the site and said my god, why on earth do you not define what I think is an oft-used phrase in my world? They wrote back and said, hey, we agree. We’ll define it for ya. Thanks for playing.

I figured it was a very nice response and that would be the end of it. But today, I was drafting up something for Monday, and I briefly wondered about that damn word. And I thought, enh, I want to check and see if it’s added. And HOLY SHIT, it was! I was responsible for the addition of something to a Web site about stuff I didn’t even understand just a year and a half ago. My boss would be so proud. Or maybe not as impressed with me as I happen to be right now. Whichever. 😉 In any event, that’s how little it actually takes to make my day!

Today’s horoscope from Astrocenter.com rang true not just for me as a Gemini, but for anyone:

Remember that those who matter would rather have you enjoying life than tiring yourself out for their sake.

I spent yesterday feeling sick. It was emotionally based but it manifested itself into physical symptoms. I woke up today, still with a residual dull headache, and said “No More.”

Today I made up songs and danced with my cats as a chapter of my existence drew to a close. Today I made up my mind to just roll with the punches right now. Today I looked at vacation packages to places I could never afford or even consider because I need something more to aspire toward.

Today I realized that I’m not in this forever — not any situation, and especially not this life. I get mad that the days don’t seem to count. When they slip away, they evaporate. You don’t get this energy, this health, this time back. I’ve got to take it back in any way I can, or at least reclaim the territory wherever possible.

Today I decided that I’m not going to sparkle and shine *for* them or maybe even once in awhile *because* of them; rather, I’m going to shine *despite* them.

Who’s this mysterious “them”? The things that I use as an excuse for giving up what I want. For me, it’s never been a matter of not knowing what I want — instead, it’s been a situation of putting things on the proverbial back burner until they boil over and evaporate till they no longer exist.

I’d trade everything I have for what I really want. So why the hell haven’t I, and why not start now?

And I still don’t know what I’m going to wear!

As I don’t even know where to find a newspaper in my new neighborhood, my friends have to tell me when they make the top billing in the Post Express. Thank goodness for the Internet:

Awwww. ….

Congratulations! See, there *are* good guys to be found on the Internet. There’s hope for the rest of us yet, seeing as though Newsweek has amended its earlier assertion and discovered that women of a certain age actually have a better chance of getting married than being killed by a terrorist, not the other way around as we were led to believe. One can only hope to be counted into the revised “good” percentage someday. 😉

You never know what’s going to happen when actors/actresses suddenly decide they want to, like, make a record or something. Given that their acting talents are usually nothing about which to brag, you wouldn’t mind for them to find another career, preferably one that doesn’t include them speaking or, for that matter, continuing to breathe. But some of them go into a record studio and actually turn out something quite good.

Brittany Murphy is the featured singer on Paul Oakenfold’s “Faster Kill Pussycat.” I have four remixes of it (I’m not sure which one I love most, but that’s not a bad problem to have). I was pleasantly surprised, but even if she didn’t do well, it’s hard to fuck up an Oakenfold song. Anyway, here’s the Club Mix:

And shock of all shocks, Paris Hilton’s single doesn’t suck. That’s about the nicest compliment you can pay her, sadly. I heard this on the radio the other day and couldn’t get the melody out of my head. Although you don’t have to think too hard to wonder what she’s referring to when she says, “I’ll show you mine.” Heh. Here’s “Stars are Blind”:

First I’m going to burn down their building. Then I’m going to light myself on fire. But even before all that, I want what I paid for.

OK, five times they’ve shipped my order to the wrong place because they didn’t use all the information I gave them. This week? They lost the whole damned order. But they sure as hell didn’t forget to CHARGE me for it.

This is a product I run out of and need to replenish regularly. And god damn, do I spend the money on it. I’ve tried every available substitute and from places with better customer service (from which I just ordered one of the sub-par items for the low, low additional cost (ha) of next-day air shipping), but the stupid company’s product is better. Fuckers, talking me on the phone like I’m the crazy one when I tick off now SIX instances in which they have fucked me over. HATE.

What I also hate? My cat threw up all over my bedroom carpet AND living room carpet. Not just kitty chunks, mind you. Split-pea soup, acrid, pure liquid, bad-ass dark brown puddles. So now that I’ve been scrubbing the hell out of my carpets, I ran into the kitchen to dispose of the cat vomit-infused sponge. And guess whose wet feet slid and knocked their owner straight into a row of cabinets?

I need to go back to bed. I so very much miss the days when I could call off work and not have to stress out so much over formulating a game plan that it’s not even worth doing. Forget Amazon wishlist donations — can’t anyone just throw a girl a Valium dispenser?

A picture of my future?

I *~*heart*~* it!!!

Via God Awful Wedding Crap, via Tiff.