Date Archives April 2007

A vision in flannel.

This year, Amy’s birthday fell on Valloween. I’d already RSVP’d to the Valloween party, but I told Amy I’d spend a few hours doing whatever it was she wanted to do–she wanted to go to the Missing Players show at Waldo’s. So she got very dressed up–5 inch heels, skirt, boob shirt–while I put on my flannels, sweater, and wiped off my makeup ala Annie Wilkes.

A few months ago, Amy and I went out to dinner, and since we both ordered different things, and BOTH proclaimed that it was the most delicious thing to ever hit a plate, we fed each other bites. I saw a couple nearby watching us very intently, and the female half, with sweatpants tucked up underneath her voluminous bosom, mouthed the word ‘lesbians’, while the male half, watching with his mouth open, just nodded.

The above is merely context for this sentence: I never felt more like the butch half of a lesbian couple with her than when we went out on Saturday. She towered over me, the 8th and as-of-yet-unspoken-of dwarf, Flannel.

After two hours of feeling like the most conspicuously dressed person there, I said my farewells and drove to safetymonkey’s place. Valloween was in full swing, though it seems like most people didn’t put a lot of thought into their costumes–not that some of them weren’t still cool, but they didn’t fit well into the ‘love and murder’ theme.

This was evidenced by the vacuous blond gazelle chick that World of Warcraft Guy is now banging out running up to me squealing “I’m TINKERBELL! *world’s most annoying giggle*”.

I had a number of thoughts hit me simultaneously, and while I’m not happy that this sort of thing happens to me often as it makes it difficult to spout withering comebacks when you’re sputtering words from multiple thoughts at once, but for once it saved me the social awkwardness that comes with immediately saying something nasty to someone in front of her 6’3″ boyfriend. These thoughts involved “Wow, I guess the Burning Crusade isn’t as good as everyone says it is”, “Since when is a fairy with a missing chromosome a character class?”, “Squeal in my ear again and I’ll send you back to never-never land, and all the clapping in the world isn’t going to bring you back”, and “GOD DAMN IT why did I not bring a sledgehammer?”

Now before you comment with “See? It WAS an appropriate costume choice!” I would like to mention that all I wanted to do was hobble her, not murder her. So there.

Not many people ‘got’ my costume; I expected to do a lot of explaining but was completely unprepared for how many people would be entirely unfamiliar with the source material, aka the greatest mangled-love book/movie ever. “The rain. Sometimes it gives me the blues. When you first came here, I only loved the writer part of Paul Sheldon. Now I know I love the rest of him, too. I know you don’t love me, don’t say you do. You’re beautiful, brilliant, a famous man of the world and I’m… not a movie star type. You’ll never know the fear of losing someone like you if you’re someone like me. I have this gun. Sometimes I think about using it. I’d better go now. I might put bullets in it. “

AMAZING. Too bad for most people I was just the girl not wearing a costume, with a flannel shirt and bobby pins in her hair.

Monkey and Justin are starting up their Sunday BBQs again soon, when it starts to look like the weather might hold. I’m definitely looking forward to it–sitting out under the stars in the warm summer air while talking with my friends is one of my favorite parts of the season.

Next post: A scintillating girls’ day out!

Remarkable Stupidity

I had a fight with my pants yesterday.

Yes, pants.

I was at work, throwing away things that get shipped with games up to our office that we don’t use/can’t ship back because they don’t have a high enough dollar value. Most of these things have to toss in with my arms WAY up above my head, as dumpsters are highly discriminatory against the short. (See what I did there? Highly? Short? Har har!)

One of the items tossed yesterday was a coin hopper, which is a bucket with various metal mechanisms along the bottom, and a rather long metal arm coming out of the top with coin verification on it. I grabbed it by its long metal arm, and in a show of remarkable stupidity, lifted it above my head, with the bottom part behind me. I leaned back to get the maximum thrust to toss this thing up and into the dumpster, and while the hopper ended up where it was supposed to, something on the bottom also managed to scrape my leg. I didn’t think much of it as I’m pretty much the Queen of Unintentional Self-Injury until I noticed a breeze only hitting one thigh. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had managed to slice my pants up the back of my thigh. My favorite jeans, no less!

I promptly scuttled back to my office and plopped down in my chair, and refused to move until everyone else was gone. “Melissa, want to come outside and stand in the sunshine with me for a few minutes?” “Oh, not today, I think I’m good here!” “Melissa, do you want to get some lunch with me?” “I’m not hungry today, thanks!”

Luckily for me, they’ve recently opened up a Kohl’s store in my area, so I was able to grab another pair of the exact same jeans, which is not only good because that means I don’t have to try anything on and can be in and out of the store in five minutes, but great because Gloria Vanderbilt jeans do wonderful things for my lower half and I’d be sad to have to try and find another brand/style that does the same things.

Gloria Vanderbilt, you love my rear end. And I love you. Let’s never fight again.