Wednesday, July 27, 2005

but I LIKE my pigeonhole!

Ah, quizzes, quizzes, how would I know who I am without you?

Unlike many of my friends, who hate the idea that someone could take their answers to a few questions and put them in a box, I am thrilled by classification. I want to get into as many boxes as possible. (Er, that came out kind of wrong. Move along now.) Maybe it's having a dad who worked too long in human resources, so that Myers-Briggs personality typing was what passed for a fun father-daughter activity. Maybe it's having a mom with a Queen-Virgo desire for order. Maybe I acquired some kind of brain damage from early exposure to those teen magazine quizzes. ("Are You Too Bossy? Take our quiz and find out!" Newsflash: no one needed a quiz to answer this question about me. Next!) Maybe I don't care why. The internet and its loads of esoteric surveys have turned up a bunch of different faces for me, some less flattering than others. Anyone remember the Pomeranian fiasco? or the time I got told that the lady band I resembled most was the Indigo Girls? I'll never live that down. This, on the other hand, is kinda nice:

You Are a Chick Rocker!

You're living proof that chicks can rock
You're inspired by Joan Jett and the Donnas
And when you rock, you rock hard

Apparently even a retired alt-pop chick can still be cool. At least, I play cool on tv.

Friday, July 22, 2005


Kim from work was telling me that her whole freezer was full of wedding cake, that she knew you were supposed to eat a piece on your first anniversary, but she wasn't quite sure what to do with the rest. She couldn't figure out what was a special enough occasion to get it out for. "Breakfast?" I suggested. One of the things I hope for myself, and I hope it for all y'all too, is that every day can be a wedding-cake-for-breakfast day. And the hell with getting married first; I mean that for everyone, even the people who are quite happy in their solitude, thank you very much.

I'm still, apparently, way too overwhelmed to write about it, but I do want to say thank you. I can't believe what we were given, all the help and love and support and food and decorating and thoughtfulness, and if I can give it back on any occasion (wedding, birthday, third Thursday of the month--you pick) I would love to be a part of that.

You guys rock.

Friday, July 08, 2005

a year ago your car went off a cliff / and you saw an angel in midair who said you'd live / that's a story you can give

Here's a thing about relationships: I have spent so very much of my life trying not to care too much, get too attached, need another person, that I feel microchipped. It's like there's a program in my head that plays this loop of stupid Rules-esque cautions at me when I try to think about it. So it's hard for me to say what exactly it is that's the scary part about committment, or more specifically, the committment I'm having a big party about in a week.

It's not the boy. spook is like a living repudiation of all those times someone said to me "You expect too much from people. You're always going to be disappointed." He's everything I wanted, and a bunch of things I didn't know I wanted, and some things I didn't want that have turned out to be a gift in spite of me. Which is why the hot dogs and the frisbee and the photographer. And see, there, there's another bit of it: we are an ironic people, and passion is a foreign territory.

I wanted this party because I wanted the ritual of it, and now that I'm part way in, I wonder if some of the point of the ritual isn't just to carry you past the terror. To stand in front of another person and say "I believe in you, and I love you, and you are where I want to live my life; you are the country I call home," that's one of the most frightening things I can imagine. To declare my heart knowing that love and dedication don't always carry the day, to be willing to be wrong because I believe deeply that this is right--I'm frightened. We aren't having a wedding like other people's weddings, and so I don't have to try and say those things in front of other people, which is good because I think I'd be crying so hard no one would understand my for better and for worses.

I could never be this brave if it weren't for my friends, the people who hold up the sky. I feel small in the face of their generosity. They have taken my not-a-wedding and treated it exactly like something more traditional, not to dismiss or paper over my difference, but to celebrate it with the same care they would take for anyone else. And though everyone has been lovely, let me name some names: Adam, Sarah, Michelle, Paul, I do not know what I would do without you.

Eight days left till Harry Potter.