Caterwauling

Subtitle: Sweating like a whore in church

Instead of wishing folks a happy bunny day, I much prefer to wish them a festive apocalypse — read: I went to church.

Not just any church, of course, but the Washington National Cathedral. Like, the kind you have to get tickets to in advance (props to Shawn there — I would’ve said fuck it if it took that much effort!).

The place was so packed that people were standing, just to see the services. The sermon was good, actually (did I say that?), mostly because it was about how politics and religion really shouldn’t mix. They also wanted us to bless the president, the veep, the house, the senate and everyone in power to make the right decisions and do the right things. I didn’t really feel like giving Dubya a blessing, but in the context of hoping he won’t always do dumbass things, I suppose I could get with that program.

He also mentioned crazy drivers in the D.C. area and us otherwise godless creatures. Did he KNOW I had shown up? That was pretty scary! I was waiting for my picture to show up on the dozens of Plasma TV screens situated all around the building!

In any event, I was sweating my ASS off at church, and I had to keep reminding myself, “Inner monologue!” every time I would drop something and go, “Oh for Christ’s sake!” I leaned over to Bryan and said, “God damn, I’m sweating like a whore in church!” and I’m lucky he didn’t smack me. 🙂

I had gone into the bathroom prior to the services, and someone had shat up a storm in my stall prior to me — the funk was wretched. I had asked the boys if it were a sacrelige to shit in church, and they thought I was nutz. Of course, when Shawn felt the “urge” an hour later, he declared that church just scares the shit out of some people. LOL. Case in point, don’t we all look miserable? …

We didn’t stay for the whole production — we’d seen enough of the future molested altar boys of America, in any regard, and besides, we were hungry and Shawn had to poop. We had a lovely lunch at Popeye’s and went to Shawn’s, where he made us a fabulous 14-pound turkey. Bryan and the late-arriving Paul made us some awesome side dishes, and we killed the strawberry shortcake I provided. All in all, it was a holiday of new traditions with new and old friends, and at least this year (I did go to church last Easter, dragged by Shan and her husband), I didn’t twitch like Linda Blair when holy water was thrown on her during the whole service. 😉

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*kicks IE 5.2 to the curb*

In my next life, when I get my party planning business together, I am starting a store that caters to gay weddings. And, at Shan’s request, I will open up a preemie store right next to a hospital. It’s all about the underserved populations here — my background in philanthropy and meeting unmet concerns is speaking wonders to me tonight!

I swear, I was just looking for stuff for Bryan and Paul’s union ceremony next month. I picked up a few dozen bottles of wedding bubbles, but I also wanted to get champagne flutes for the grooms. I stopped at a party store, and I found out I would have to buy two sets of glasses to get a pair of “groom” glasses. On the upside, if ever I attend a girl-girl wedding, I would always have a pair of “bride” glasses in the junk closet. Naturally, I didn’t buy anything, but I was mildly annoyed nonetheless. I also went out looking for “bachelorette” wear for our party for Bryan on May 7, but unless he wants to walk around the dick bar with a veil, I can safely say that I struck out on that account, too. Bah.

And because we’re in dreamland here, I want a store that makes flattering formal dresses for those of us who wouldn’t be caught dead in strapless, clingy dresses. In my maid of honor role, I would like to look the part, not as some just-shy-of-30 overgrown harlot in a prom dress. Only the mother-of-the-bride dresses have sleeves, and of course that means they come with cow prints or other floral disasters to make your ass look wider than the Beltway.

I stopped at the ever-hellacious David’s Bridal to try on some dresses that were on sale, but I wasn’t allowed to enter the fitting room without a “bridal consultant.” Jeebus Crisp. It took me five minutes to decide that the cheap taffeta wonders made me look like a wedding cake, although I couldn’t tell because they don’t put mirrors in the fitting rooms — you have to go out and be herded with the rest of the customers to share one huge mirror. I didn’t bother leaving the room — I could tell that I looked freakish. I did find one dress I liked, but it was $208, and I ain’t spending that on a single-wear beaded extravaganza. You know, I’ve been making my own jewelry lately, but I think I need to start learning how to sew so I can make a decent dress without the side of humiliation found in the dress shops. Gaah.

All in all, another (un)productive day here at the ranch.

I got my new G5 at work yesterday. I spent the day trying to break it. Well, not break it, as it will be long to the Veggie Patch editor’s office for at least the next 14 years, but I was multitasking and having way too much fun with it. I have officially turned into a geek, as I believe my seat was a little bit wet when I decided to leave for the day. iChat, iTMS, Photoshop CS and Quark 6 and all the cool features they offer are enough to get me off now. And yes, it’s been a full year since I’ve had real stomach-slapping, hair-pulling, ravage-me-till-I’m-raw sex, so I have to take my kicks where I can get ’em. 😉

Mine are up! Mine are up! *squeal*

Ahem.

1. What do you do for a living?

Monthly newspaper editor-in-chief extraordinaire. Part-time entrepreneur who always has ideas but never the energy to act on them. I also lick my wounds after I offer my employers great ideas that they, well, treat like a bird treats a windshield.

2. What do you like most about your job?

I imagine the day I resign will stand out in my “best moments of Dawn’s lifetime” collection.

I love my colleagues to death. Insert the standard shout-out to Scot, Angie and Shan for keeping me motivated to give my best once in awhile. 🙂 And, of course, for keeping me sane and smiling, albeit deliriously sometimes.

3. What do you like least about your job?

MicroMcManagement. People who clearly have nothing left to give to the organization but who are promoted and kept above us to squelch any ideas/initiative/desire to live, breathe and grow.

And today, I fucking HATE the mailman, who sent me a ripping memo because I needed for him to do his job of mailing something for me. He copied it all over creation. God forbid I ask him to find a box to mail something in — you have to e-mail the office manager to get a box, she gives you the box, you have to stuff and tape and label the box, and only THEN can you give it to the Mailroom Director. What the bloody fuck? Is that under “other duties as assigned”? And the H.R. person fucking loves him and refuses to hear criticism over him. I was ready to fucking punch him today. I still might, if he hadn’t jetted out because of the furlough afternoon. 😉

4. When you have a bad day at work it’s usually because _____…

Pussy Demure!TM needed to meet with me at least once. That would kill anybody’s will to live.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?

Public relations, philanthropy and being Simon Cowell on “American Idol.”

So I was sittin’ on Duke Street, waiting for the light to turn so I could make a left turn. I was yawning and in mid-stretch when the light turned. Immediately, the asshole behind me laid on his horn. As my arms were already in the air, I flipped him off in the rearview mirror and slammed on the gas. Wouldn’t you know that son of a bitch FOLLOWED my ass around half of Alexandria?

I pulled into a 7-11, next to an empty police car, but I didn’t turn the car off. Asshole pulled in next to me, wound down his window and started cussing me out. I backed out in a hurry and jetted the fuck out of there. He followed. I did manage to lose him in traffic awhile later (I drive like a nutcase, so I am rather difficult to keep up with, even though you can see my big stuffed Garfield clinging to the window from a mile away), and I went to another 7-11 for coffee and a carton of Camel Lights. I guess by that point I had lost him, although I wasn’t sure but I thought he might have been in the lot of the second 7-11, but being that he hadn’t thrown a bomb into my open sunroof, I assume I am safe. 🙂

It sucks that some dumbass would follow a fucking GIRL around town because she flipped him off. Christ. What did he want to do, beat the shit out of me for reacting to his impatience? Did he think I would actually get out of the car for him to assault me, whether verbally or physically?

Oh, and it’s a furlough day. Remind me why I got out of bed for this shit?

OK, so I have been forgetting to post it, but I went to see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” on Tuesday. I had gone out and bought a bunch of jewelry-making shit (which so far has only yielded a pink-and-black necklace) and decided to see a movie (as I was dead tired and that was all I could manage that day).

I have to say thumbs up. It’s dark — much more so than the previews would lead you to believe. I just can’t stand Jim Carrey, or I probably would have loved it. Maybe give us an Orlando Bloom type to look at, and it would have been much more enjoyable. 😉

But it gives you a lot to think about — for as much as someone hurt you, do you want to eradicate them from your memory bank entirely? I mean, I shudder and snarf when I remember certain folks from my past, but really, even for as much as they broke my heart, they are a part of me (even if it’s the part that turned to gangrene and had to be surgically removed).

I ran into an old friend today. I still have a lot of unresolved hurt from that friendship, but I’ve been feeling like we were going to cross paths (it’s literally been years and hundreds of miles since we were close). Turns out that we live down the street from each other and work in similar fields. She seemed thrilled to see me (she approached me) and wanted my number. For a moment, I was taken back in time to a place where we were inseparable. And I wondered whether we could ever be close again — whether I should say, “You know, it really frosted my flakes when. …” or if I should just feel, “Hey, in a city of half a million people, we must’ve been destined to run into each other.” I don’t expect to be best friends, but particularly as Shan is preparing to make the move to Oregon, maybe I need as many allies as I can secure, even though nobody in this world can replace her.

Of course, there is always the hope that the old friend and I can just say fuck it, we’re here now. Let’s start over from the new places in our lives. And I don’t expect to be really close again, but it’s a lonely city and friendly, familiar faces are hard to come by.

Related, I keep getting calls from someone else who disappointed me. And I guess I can’t expect people to know when they’ve failed to meet my expectations (which were pretty minimal, but still), but another part of me is like, “How fucking clueless are you? I haven’t returned your calls for 10 months — get the goddamned hint!” It’s like I’ve really tried to make a clean break from everyone and everything that entered my life during that particular time — mostly because it was a conflicting series of heartbreak and numbness that did nothing but sap my energy and other things. It’s like I took the big eraser to those years — to those people — just like in the movie.

I was talking to my desiger today, and he was talking about someone who would have said, “Erase this!” in response to a particularly crazy story I told him about someone who asked me out recently (whom he can’t stand; nor can I).

I thought that statement was really eerie — I have always, always used as my coping mechanism the visual of a huge blackboard with a huge-ass eraser. Whenever I would be haunted by images of something hurtful or annoying or some other piece of mental clutter, I would envision myself writing it on the chalkboard, and I would slowly, deliberately erase the entire board until not a speck of dust remained. And the crazy part is that the nightmares would vanish — I don’t remember anything I “wrote” on the blackboard, and maybe it’s just that I entered some form of denial, but I really did wipe out some really traumatic memories. Between the conversation and the movie, it kind of unnerved yet comforted me that other people do — and want to do — the same damn thing.

In any event, insofar as making you think till your brain hurts, the movie’s an 8. Kate Winslet was hotter than Jim Carrey (and she’s so cute with her American accent and tangerine-colored hair), so I’ll go 6 on eye candy.

Erica discussed how we come across in person after people have known us only through our blogs. It’s worthy of a lot more discussion, so I’m reviving the subject over here.

I like to think that what you get on the blog is what you get in person, but a lot of you can speak better to that than I can. I’ve been told that I am either just as crazy or that I am more reserved (read: pleasant) than I come across. I don’t know — I say things as I see them, and I don’t know that I hide all that much (other than some of my innermost feelings, and yes, I do have feelings sometimes! LOL).

Like today, for instance, I couldn’t resist insulting someone when the opportunity arose. Town Crier (a pain in my arse at work) must’ve thought she was looking pretty and well-rested today, and well, bitch is a hag any day you look at her. So I found a way to slip it into our conversation that, “Boy, we all look like hell today! None of us looks like we should be interacting with other humans after that conference!” And she looked so stunned, that how dare I say she looks like hell. I disappeared into Angie’s office after that because I wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation. I really don’t think I’m a mean person, but when someone has yelled at me so hard that she backed me into a bathroom stall (about a year ago), well, I get my kicks whenever I can.

But am I always combative? Not really. In fact, I am actually pretty helpful and reserved most of the time. Sure, I get my snark in when I’m blogging or when I’m behind closed doors with my friends, but it’s just no fun to talk about all the “nice” shit I do in a day — who would read that kind of blog?

Some of Erica’s commenters bring up the fact that we get an idea of what other bloggers not only look, but also act, like, whether we’ve seen a photo of them or not. I think we all like to put a face with a name or a webpage, but when we don’t see the person, we kind of look at how their pages are designed (i.e., if they’re cool or if they’re a mess) and kind of base some assumptions on that. Another commenter said she finds intelligent people to be attractive, so she gets the sense that we’re all good-looking, if that’s the case. And of course we are — who could argue with that? 😉

I have several photos of myself available on this site, which show my moods pretty well, but that isn’t even one-tenth of it. I hate how I appear in photos, but maybe that’s just because I’ve never been happy with how I look. I mean, it’s clearly me on film, and I guess I just have to become comfortable with that.

I once dated a guy who said I come across as an airhead in person. We didn’t last more than three dates, by which time he finally realized I could think circles around him. 😉 I’ll admit I’m flighty and indecisive at times, but that’s but one facet of my personality. I’d rather think I just go with the flow and am not overly picky about too many things. And I can be very quiet when I first meet someone, not that I am judging them, but I am really trying to learn as much as I can about them before I decide how much of myself to reveal.

I guess, then, what I want to know is how we come across online as compared to in-person. Do you get what you think you see, or are we only showing a little bit of our true selves? Would you ever stop reading a blog because you didn’t much care for the wizard behind the curtain? Or do you meet people in-person and suddenly develop an even more intense addiction to their words? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂

We had some transgendered/transsexual folks at our conference, and, well, the question has been burning:

What kind of underwear do these individuals wear? Trannie panties?

You know that when four cows are grazing on the runway that you’re about to land on at Kansas City International, you’re not exactly entering a booming metropolis. You know that when you’re leaving and a whole herd starts approaching the airport, that will blow any last bit of sentimentality you might have felt about leaving.

You also wonder why the awesome burger joint Streetcar Named Desire only offers chili “in season,” but you theorize that maybe no planes hit a cow that day to get the ground beef for the mix.

I would attempt to be witty, but I’ve been sleeping for 20 hours, and I still feel like, “What the hell just happened?”

The people in Kansas City are wonderful. Lots of mullets and ponytails on the boys, but you know I’ve always had a soft spot for the long-hairs anyway. Angie and I had a wonderful little harem of men who provided much adoration and flirting to keep us happy (and she thinks she even got picked up by a chick, but it wasn’t the trannie who was in some of our meetings).

Suffice it to say that we were drunk for most of the trip — you can tell by the photos we took. People start to miss their eyebrows, feet, arms, ears, etc. as the number of drinks start to increase. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, and a few people got hold of smokey treats (I wasn’t in this group — I had to retire because my days started at 6 a.m. and I was hella trashed at 1 a.m. off of a case of wine and no food), and all I have to say is that Angie and crew put the “high” in the Hyatt. 😉

That was the night of our opening party. Let’s just say that the next morning, as I was dragging my ass around the lobby in search of my newspapers, I got stopped by about a dozen staffers who said, “Boy, can YOU party! You get FRIENDLY when you’re drinking!” This, of course, is opposed to the usual scowl I have on my face to keep the masses at a distance. 🙂

Oh, the stories I can tell — including how Angie and I get drunk and talk about grammar as well as host “I Love You, Man!” speeches. I just want to give a shout-out to Kelly’s Westport Inn, where the jello shots and cider were superb and the service was amazing. But the real highlight to Kelly’s is the pizza joint attached to it — we got us some Joe’s Pizza on Sunday night to offset the metric ton of alcohol we had just consumed (and our flights were in eight hours), and it was the best damn pizza we’d ever had (while drunk, of course!).

Also want to give a shout-out to our regular cabbie Bob, who took us to and from the print shop and the bars and let us smoke in the car. Woo hoo! More props to Soli Printing and to Chad, who made sure our daily newsletter was pretty and who let us decompress and bitch to high heaven about all the crap we were dealing with. Chad invited us to go out drinking with him and his friends several times, but we had to pass because we had staff meetings and other nightly activities to cover.

If you ever get to K.C., I pity you eat at Jack Stack’s. Seriously. Best. Barbecue. Ever. Get the cheesy potatoes and the pot of baked beans as your sides. Or, hell, as your entree, but you just don’t want to miss the burnt ends and the hot BBQ sauce. Or, for that matter, the fried mushroom caps with horseradish sauce. Mmmmmm. After days of eating $14 sandwiches as we raced multiple times between the Hyatt and the Westin, it was incredible to have a real sit-down dinner with table service and drinks that didn’t have lids (ooh, Jack’s spicy bloody mary with seasoning salt around the edges is to die for!).

I did lots of networking in our “Living Room,” which was a couch/chairs/coffee table set up with ashtrays in the lobby. It was the big staff hangout, and tons of people came over to smoke and chat with us. I even sat in on a session where people starting talking about how valuable the Veggie Patch Gazette is to their professional work, and I was thrilled when the speakers said, well, the editor of it is sitting in the front row, hearing the great feedback. 🙂 It’s always great to hear compliments and not because somebody is trying to impress you!

Anyway, we’re home. Safe and sound and bloody fucking exhausted, bruised, swollen and about 10 pounds heavier from the side of beef we ate at Jack’s. I actually yelped in joy when my plane flew over Shan’s condo complex, and I knew I was home. Viva Washington, D.C.! But Kansas City will always have a special place in my heart and in my toilet. 😉