“Aslan is not on the move.”
– Gretel
I feel as if I should point at out that until just about an hour ago the skies were a gorgeous blue, the clouds were fluffly and white and moving along at a brisk pace as a cool breeze meandered through the sky, and the sun was out.
And now?
THIS.
“Thereby hangs a tale.”
– William Shakespeare
Long ago, when J. was still a bachelor (side note, we’ve been officially together for two years now…weird) he lived with Scotticus, Cakes, Bear, Jaime, and Jazz. They’re still very much around in our lives. I affectionately refer to them as the Other Women when J. goes off to play basketball, get hamburgers, and generally boy about.
One of my favorite memories of Jazz was one day hanging out at their flat. I had glanced around and discovered that they had made a home entertainment system supported almost entirely by books. I was remarking on a tome of Shakespeare upholding a television speaker when Jazz explained the reasoning.
“Girls will come over, see all these thick books everywhere, and think we’re all really intellectual.”
“Not if you’re using them as furniture, dear,” I replied laughingly.
However, while making a V-day present craft for Marie (sidenote the second: Marie, beloved, would you send me a picture so I can brag shamelessly about it?) I noticed that the canvas had bowed annoyingly in the middle. And the only thing I could think of that would be heavy enough to fix it, were Shakespeare and a dictionary.
Apologies, Jazz. I now suspect you of secret genius.
“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”
– Aristotle
How can you tell that you have a good friend in your life? Well, first of all you are able to have a complete conversation with them wearing just a towel (this is a crucial test that all of my closest friends have passed, I shall spare you the details). Second you are able to pique the interest of everyone around you just from hearing your half of a phone conversation. Again, all of my friends have crossed this threshold, but today here is what my office got to listen to when Venice called to brighten my day.
“No one’s making fun of you. This is a judgement free zone.”
“I don’t really wear them.”
“Was the steamer necessary?”
“Holy mother of pain!”
“I will need my dress back at some point.”
“Oh, honey! Do you need to come over and shower?”
I take particular delight in refraining from elaboration when co-workers, classmates, or random strangers look to me for further explanation. A good friend doesn’t lessen her pal’s mystique!
Extemporized conversation with Margot post-Nosferatu viewing:
(Editor’s Note: I stand by it. Vampires ≠ sexy!)
C: I really liked the part when he comes into Lucy’s room and says, “Love me like you do your husband,” and she basically comes back with a quick, “Nope!” only classier and in German. He actually looked confused that he wasn’t very persuasive!
M: Oh…I…I really thought that would work… I was really hoping you’d say ‘yes,’ this whole thing would be much less awkward. Having just broken in your room and everything.
C: I, um, don’t have a plan after this. Ok…well look, I’ve stalked you all the way from Transylvania-“
M: Actually moved in next door, after almost killing your husband-
C: And wiping any memory of you he has.
M: Did I mention I’m a harbringer of the Black Death?
C: And rats follow me everywhere in the countless millions. I also seem to spark insanity in the masses.
M: And I also drink people’s blood. Yes, suck them absolutely dry, poor devils.
C: ……….Why don’t you like me?
“Children of the night, SHUT UP!”
-Love at First Bite
I cannot escape them! They’re every, everywhere! Cute campus couples as Bella and Edward (my opinion of the literary drivel that is Twilight can be found here) and teachers/staff dressing the part. The new stupid looking vampire kids movie the name of which I can’t recall, The Vampire Diaries on TV…even my weekly dose of Sherlock Holmes on PBS was a mystery about a supposed vampire this week! Yes, I get that crushing on the undead is trendy, but honestly! Way to beat a dead horse.
Now, I liked the Interview With the Vampire movie when I saw it, I was delightfully creeped out by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (I borrowed it from the library and it had such a chilling cover that I had to turn it face down and shove it under my bureau at night), and I am going to see Nosferatu with Margot tonight…but the obsession some people feel for vampires is bizarre.
Mostly I find it funny (from a historian’s viewpoint) that the sex-crazed, hauntingly beautiful, interestingly pale and tragic, romantic figures that most people associate with the term are only a product of the Victorians (actually…the above description fits those Victorians themselves pretty well too…). Originally vampires were the spirits of suicide victims, witches, heretics, etc. and resembled blood drenched bloated corpses. Sexy!
“Happy is the man with a wife to tell him what to do, and a secretary to do it.”
-Lord Mancroft
8:45 – Susie comes to my desk and says, “Chief would like to meet with you and Hennessy at 10, is that ok?” C. blanches in panic and promptly dives deep into a pit of the horrors (I’m getting sacked, Hennessy’s getting sacked, We’re both getting sacked, NO!!!!, They can’t do this, Don’t they know what I’ve done for them, I’m too important, right…No, I’m expendable…AH!, Angst Angst Angst, etc.) Susie assures her that nothing is wrong, but as you may imagine, this does little to help matters.
9:00 – Hennessy comes into work and receives the same message. Panic escalates. Circumstances are dissected during morning walk to turn in checks and cash to the accounting office.
9:30 – C. alternately tries cajoling and blackmailing anyone in the office for information.
9:45 – Bleak. All is bleak.
10:00 – Chief is nowhere to be found. C. is “defibbed” as her heart succumbs to the stress and anxiety of worrying.
10:15 – Chief, Lt. Figaro, and Susie convene with Hennessy and C. in conference room. Hennessy and C. sit at the far end of the table to give them more reaction time to the blow that is coming. They are sternly asked to move closer. They grudgingly comply.
10:20 – Chief reveals that the department has new needs, and needs to go in a new direction, so they need to shake up the ranks a little.
10:21 – C. and Hennessy clutch their chairs as the vortex of doom swirls around them.
10:22 – “So,” continues Chief, “we’re going to take you out from Figaro’s supervision and make you both subordinate to Susie instead. Fun, huh?”
10:23 – “Vortex of doom” evaporates instantly leaving C. stuck with the amassed fear and anxiety that has plagued her for hours. She feel oddly cheated.
Anyway, this so-called shake up just means that Hennessy and I are now reporting…to the person I, at least, have been reporting to for months now. Susie is pretty much queen of the secretaries: Joan without being social-climbing, manipulative, or sexually adventurous, just an all around decent person. She’s also the administrative brains of the office and actually managed to pound it through our supervisors’ heads that we’d be much more effective as a secretarial pool rather than as scattered puddles. Within ten minutes of us being under her command, I’d been given a list of both long and short term projects and assignments.
Unfortunately, since I’m a fast worker (or just possibly have nothing else to do) I’ve already crossed about half of them off. No change there, I suppose.
This dialog went on regularly until once when the queen was having a bad hair day and was desperately in need of support, she asked the usual question and the mirror answered,
“Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.”
– Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner
Like unto the wicked step-mother of yore, I too have a magic mirror. But as opposed to telling me the truth, or even just what I want to hear, this mirror actively lies to me. And it’s great!
I have a love/hate relationship with mirrors, but it’s a relatively recent thing because I was never a mirror gazer growing up. I heroically resisted lots of “girlifying” attempts on the part of well meaning friends and family, and had only the usual amount of angst about my looks. Gradually I first succumbed, then became addicted to mascara, developed a late blooming but fierce love of fashion, and realized that I was a pretty decent looking girl…
Until! Kiri took me home with her for the Thanksgiving break our junior year of university! This act of kindness towards my semi-orphaned-in-a-strange-land state hid a crippling dagger which would be thrust deep by her cousin.
“I like your mirror face,” she said one day as we put on on various coats, hats, and lip gloss, preparing to head out into the cold.
“What do you mean?” I asked, pausing mid-act in swinging a scarf I’d bought in Paris around my neck. I sensed the approaching danger.
“We all do it. When you look in a mirror your face automatically shifts a bit. Because the mirror’s a two dimensional surface, it reflects your three dimensional face back a little skewed, so you don’t actually look the same in the mirror as you do in real life. We make mirror faces because we’re trying to show off our best features, it’s all psychological–”
I tuned out at that point because I was deep in the horrors. I’d just come to terms with what I saw in the mirror! My previous adolescent nonchalance had taken an abrupt nosedive when I came to university and saw the assorted Quirky Chic Girls, Effortlessly Stylish Girls, Not Exactly Stylish But Rich Enough To Fake It Girls, and other types you invariably bump into in a crowd of forty thousand people (I learned quick, but the lingering air of shame scuppered my aplomb). In a matter of moments, my recently rebuilt sense of confidence had crumbled. Parisian scarf, English hat, and new leather gloves notwithstanding, I spent the day torturing myself over my buck teeth, asymmetrical face, Hapsburg Lip, and sallow skin.
None of which I actually had, of course, but since my faith in mirrors was shattered, could I actually trust what any of them showed me?!
Years later I’ve made peace with the Mirror People (my own reflection in particular), but I’d be lying if I said my current mirror didn’t help the process a bit. By some magic trick of the light, a flaw in the glass itself, or some other miracle, anyone who looks in that shiny surface has slightly longer and thinner legs, fuller hair, and a waist that just maybe an inch or two smaller. Not huge changes, just enough to make you feel like a fox when you walk out the door.
Until you catch sight of yourself in a those sadistic fun-house jokes they stock GAP changing rooms with. Hiss….
“Dispatch, from 81.”
“Go ahead, C.”
“Um…just checking to see if we were on the right channel. Er…thanks.”
WOOOOOOP!! (Police Car Siren)
“Hennessy!”
“Sorry!”
“What did you push?!”
“I don’t know!”
-C., Dispatch, and Hennessy
So, Hennessy and I got to play with the radio and sirens again today. As you can see from the above quote, it went over very well.
See, about three weeks ago, Lt. Citrus came to me and told me, “In a couple of weeks I’m going to give you an assignment to get some jackets done up for security at the games. New patches and such, I’ll let you know more about it later.”
And after that? Silence until last friday when he stomped up to my desk and barked, “Have you done anything with that project I gave you? I need those jackets done right now, what have you done?”
“You didn’t give me the go-ahead, or tell me exactly what you needed,” I said, confused.
“Yes I did!” he snapped. “This patch with this logo across the back. Fix it!”
So Hennessy and I drove to (and through!) the stadium to pick up over one hundred jackets, get them sorted out, and today had to go pick them up so they could be used in upcoming football games. With a variety of police equipment technical…incidents…along the way.
However, we got to use the radio for some fun, which made it all better. Pulling up to the station, I called Dispatch again (in a much more composed manner).
“Dispatch from 81.”
“Go ahead.”
“We’ve got a rather large order here. Can you dispatch some strapping men to us for heavy lifting and slave labor? Over.”
Two minutes later, five or six chuckling officers put in an appearance, a couple of them flexing.
It made my day. Or it could be that I’m getting out early on a friday…yeah…that could be it too…
“Come on, you heifer! What does not kill us makes us hotter!”
-Legally Blonde, The Musical
After two months out of commission, I am back at the gym with Venice. And I mean it this time. Why? Because Ven has imposed the mother of all weight loss incentives: no shopping until we hit our target weights.
This means no new cardies, boots, hats, tights, trousers, jackets, NOTHING. And Fall is upon us, THE season for the best and cutest of clothes. You want to see a pair of wannabe recessionistas whip it into shape? Dangle their credit cards in front of them while they huff and puff on a treadmill.
“Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take off their shirts in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.”
-Dave Barry
Having grown up in places where “football” meant something very different from it does here, as well as having parents that never really followed sports, meant I was unprepared for American Football when I came to the western United States for university. Jane, my first roommate in the dorms, convinced me to by a student all season ticket so that I could go to the games with her, but I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect.
“It’s the stupidest concept,” I whined, “a bunch of guys get into lines and run into each other on purpose! What’s the point?”
Nevertheless Jane painted my face, made me buy the appropriately colored tee shirt, and on game day we hiked to the university stadium. Half an hour later I was screaming just as loudly as anyone else.
I’ll never be converted to the NFL (although I’ve developed a taste for Superbowl parties…or maybe just the snacks…) because I think that people who get paid obscene amounts of money to get a ball from Point A to Point B, the methods vary, have a severely warped sense of reality. But I have grown to love collegiate sports for the rivalries, the solidarity, and the love of the game.
The only problem I have with my university’s football games is that my favorite coat is the color of our fiercest rivals. So I do the logical thing. Freeze. I’m officially one of the faithful.
Small Dog Syndrome 