Best Party in World

Ok so this happened:

And I'm not talking about the towels. (Though don't you love how she takes the opportunity to critique my towel description?) I'm talking abt the "K!" If you are a parent, you know that when one half of the team sits in a hammock for even six seconds it is time to call the authorities and sue for child abandonment. And my beautiful wife just said "K!" Is she a hero, or what? But, for your information, these towels are so freaking white. I've never seen more white-ass towels than these. Look:

And! Does she forget I am a Bad Ass? Do I seem like someone you'd wanna pick a fight about towels with? Answer: no. Please--somebody, tell my wife what a Bad Ass I am. Tell her to look the fuck out.

This party is all about my falling in love with the North Fork of Long Island. My kind of party: Perfect day. Unfathomable quantities of Appropriately Chilled Veuve Clicquot. Plenty of five-year-olds to entertain my son. Queer tenth wedding anniversary. Private beach. A Hammock Of My Own. And the best part of all, which I can't show you: 70s disco funk-->Madonna-->dance-->hip-hop-->wonderful I don't know what because have had too much champagne.

Also! I have completed a photo essay, which is the perfect introvert/exhibitionist activity at a large party. (Introvert/exhibitionists represent!)

Hello.

Silly. (1/2 silly, to be precise.)

Emo. (Both halves.)

Happy love. 

Arghh! No light! Wir sind vampires!

The view.

Obvs, Ari is a way, way better actor than I am. And no, I do not know why I slipped into German there for a sec. Just seemed to fit.

Also: my first live blog. Happy anniversary, dudes.

Thanks for a fantastic day.

The end.

Adorable/annoying (aka marriage)

From my friend Ev, who is way funnier than I am.

This seems like a good time to share B's many simultaneously adorable and annoying qualities. Here is a list:

1) She sleeps rough. As in--she takes the fitted sheet off the bed when she sleeps. Sometimes she removes the pillow cases from the pillows. In her sleep! Further adorable/annoyingness is shown when she does not notice the bed has no sheet on her side. I mean, how does a person not notice a naked mattress? It is blue!

2) She does not take kindly to suggestions. Never ever. At. All. I have learned the fine art of suggesting without suggesting, and I credit her for teaching me, with tough love, this Highly Useful social skill.

3) She makes piles. Big ones. Of all sorts of shit.

4) She usually thinks she has a deadly disease for some reason or other, but is capable of remaining extremely calm when Ari is sick, even when he is puking in the double digits or having a fever of 105.

5) She is an excellent speller. (Ok, you caught me--this one is only adorable and not annoying at all.)

6) When she is grumpy, there is no ungrumping her. Just leave and come back later, if you dare.

7) She is the biggest Myriad of Contradiction I have ever met. 

       a) She seems all logical and cerebral, but she understands my feelings better than anyone. 

       b) She walks like a badass, talks like a badass, and dresses like a badass. But she is the most authentically humble person I know, and has taught me how hot that can be.

      c) She's totes funny, but only rarely, and is never silly. 

      d) She cares about other people more than any of us, but she doesn't show it, or, more precisely, she doesn't show it off.

      e) She's a super introvert, and she's totally under the radar at social events, but by the end of them she's charmed everyone by taking an interest in them. If you poll a hundred people leaving a party, they will all say they enjoyed talking to B the most, but it would seem to you that she wasn't even there.

8) When she has to get up early, she sets her alarm for an hour before she needs to get up and then snoozes many times, so that I'm woken every ten minutes. If I tell her to stop, she turns off the alarm but doesn't get up, of course necessitating me to lie awake and worry that she'll miss her run or whatever. (Caught again: this is only annoying, not adorable.)

9) She demands I leave her alone so she can work and then pouts because I haven't spent enough time talking to her.

Happy gay marriage, people. But mine is still queer, thank you very much. 

"You don't love me: please confirm!"

We've all been depressed, right? Even if not clinically, we all have gloom and despair, pms and annoying relatives, or dead relatives, or something. My wife's BFF, Cindy, said once that when you're depressed you wait for your spouse to come home so that you can tell him/her, "you don't love me: please confirm!" I thought that was pretty funny, but then I realized it was true. Only the object changes. Sometimes it is B, or sometimes it is some long-suffering friend of mine, or a house-guest, new or old. Recently I have been trying to self-soothe in these moments, rather than engage with my loved one. It's pretty hard. For some reason, when I'm down, I just want to call every one I know and accuse them of never having liked me at all ever in their entire lives and try to make them admit it because that sure would cheer me up!

Anyway, so one of the things I do when tempted to engage my loved one in a "you don't love me: please confirm!" conversation is start a project. This distracts me until the YDLMPC moment passes and I feel normal again. For one recent project, I built a square foot garden. This is because I want to grow lettuces. I have lettuce envy. This friend (semi-houseguest?) of mine is an organic landscaper. We had dinner at her place, which is on five acres, and she grows most of her food. I wouldn't normally care to eat things that grow in the ground because they aren't steak or donuts or Twinkies, but she made this salad, see. She went outside and plucked some lettuces out of the ground, tossed them in a bowl with some tomatoes and salt and oil and vinegar, and created, in approximately eight seconds, The Most Delicious Salad I Have Ever Eaten. Let me explain: this salad contained neither meat nor ice cream. I do not like things that contain no meat or ice cream. And yet! These salad-making people lately are confusing me.

Exhibit B: my friend Mara, who may be the best cook I know (Further data required to confirm.) went to the Alabama Shakes concert with me, and when I picked her up she had lunch for us. It was some kind of salad with lettuce and cabbage (yuck, right?) and other stuff I didn't think I liked and peanut sauce, which I know I don't like. However! Mara put some very lovely, rare steak in it. To get to the meat, I had to eat some salad. It was delicious -- would have been yummy even without the meat! So now I have lettuce envy and peanut sauce envy. And then! Mara told me all about how to get my lettuces to thrive. I forgot already, but you get the idea. These people know everything--my friends/house guests. Am lucky to have them.

Especially since my square foot gardening project has been so fraught with challenges. First, I am allergic to Homo Depot. No, I mean literally. As in: it makes me sneeze and sneeze. Eyes water. The whole bit. Further, I do not understand The Rules Of Homo Depot. Did you know that before you take a cart that has been sitting empty and alone for 20 minutes, you have to ask every single person in the store? Insanity. If you don't ask, then you risk the Homo Depot lumber crew's anger. They may even try to refuse to cut your lumber. (Of course this did not happen to me because I am far too mannerly to steal somebody's cart. Just I wanted to warn you people.)

Then there was an incident with the local wild life. As in: a crow came and cawed so loudly I heard him over the blaring, macho heavy metal I was playing to encourage my drilling prowess. I leapt up in fright, nearly plummeting over the edge of my balcony, but luckily landed on a spade instead, which injured my shin, causing me to spill my beer. In all this ruckus, my phone somehow forgot its device (speaker), so I didn't even have a soundtrack to my pain gesticulations. (Which I prefer to think of as an interpretive dance, thank you very much.) The crow would not leave, was completely unintimidated by anything I did, including the hurling of projectiles, wild swinging of long objects, shouting and cursing, spraying water from Ari's super soaker, and pretending to call the police and/or my (imaginary) flying pit bull, Butch. My interpretive dancing didn't scare him either. Finally he left because a neighbor three flights below the balcony where he was harassing me shut the door, and it made a little noise. That terrified the stupid bird. Who hadn't been afraid of deafening ACDC, my pain yowls, being hit with a wall of water, etc. I suppose expecting a bird to make sense about as rational as having a YDLMPC conversation.

      Framing, looking tough. (Pre-crow)

Here is my finished garden:

Here are some things I learned making it:

-manure stinks!

-drill slowly, or you will break your bit

-screw hard and slow, or you will strip your screw

-size is irrelevant, but leverage matters

-crows are assholes

-the neighbors love ACDC

-want a four minute workout? Build something!

The end.

Baby on Board

This morning I was walking to kickboxing, and I saw a man (grown) with a baby (infant) on a bike. What I mean by this is that this crazy, bananas man was RIDING!!! his bicycle with a BABY INFANT in his arms. WHILE HE WAS RIDING THE BIKE! Neither of them was wearing a helmet. (Obvs the bike helmet manufacturers don't make helmets to fit BABY INFANTS, not because they hope to increase head injuries among babies, but because BABY INFANTS DO NOT BELONG ON BIKES!) I know you're thinking this must have been right outside 17 crack houses, where crimes are going on all over the place and people use machine guns to unclog the toilet, but it was in my upper-crustich neighborhood. Here is an illustration to assist in your understanding. 

What else goes on in my wild and crazy neighborhood? Well! I'll tell you what: at my son's school's Family Fun Day on Friday afternoon, two different men (married, from the looks of it) tried to pick me up. Because! That's what you do at Family Fun Day at a sodding PRESCHOOL, for heaven's sake! You try to pick up random mommies. Before I go any further, let me pause to tell everyone I know from my son's school that no, it was not your husband. And no, I don't know the men's names (There were two.) or remember what they looked like. They were both strangers. So one guy came up and said, "what's going on over there?" He pointed at the tent across the parking lot. I told him there was food and drinks and tattoos and face painting. I'm fairly certain the parents of the preschool set know that when I say "tattoos" I mean the temporary kind. But not this dude. "Oooh," he said, "wanna watch me get a tattoo?" I managed to avoid saying "yuck" loudly by clamping my hand over my mouth. Then dude said (not noticing my muffled discomfort), "is it worth the walk? I was gonna get my face painted, but I'm afraid. Will you comfort me?" And so on. I left him still babbling, and when he noticed I wasn't there anymore, he simply turned to his right to the next female and continued. The second guy to try to chat me up was similar. Only he wasn't as easily escaped. Finally B showed up (She had a conference call and was late.) and I made a big show of being all over her and tried not to let her leave my side. 

Now: I am sure you people know I am in favor of picking up random women whenever possible. I try not to judge. People should be happy blah, blah, blah. And you know I love my house guests. But this was neither the time nor the place. That's not the kind of "Family Fun Day" the preschool is having, bitches. Stop hitting on mommies!

Baby infants do not belong on bikes. Fun does not belong at Family Fun Day. Can I get an amen?

The end.

The Prosecco Store

When B and I talk in Ari's presence about going out to buy things, we say we are going to the thing store. Example: "oh, we are out of milk! Let's go to the milk store." Example number two: "whoops! No light bulbs! Can you go to the light bulb store, sweetie?"

The thing is--it's not really much of a stretch. We live in the Supreme Land of Yuppies. Part of the whole thing is super-specialization. And I fall right into the trap. The other night I came downstairs after an extraordinarily difficult Ari bedtime and looked in the fridge for some prosecco. Horrors! There was none. 

"Hey," I called to B, who was immersed in the J Crew summer sale, "is there any prosecco?" 

"How do I know?" she said, "I don't drink that shit." Then she went back to her screen. So helpful!

I poked around some more in the fridge. I didn't want to bother B again, but I was beginning to panic. "Well, is there cava??" By now, my voice was becoming unnaturally shrill.

"Mimosas. Gone. Sunday." She's not very talkative when she's shopping. 

I couldn't believe this was happening. I searched the wine rack. I can't drink warm prosecco, but that's why God invented freezers! And there is this other excellent chilling method of water in bucket with ice. 15 minutes, people. I promise you. But there was no bubbly anything on the rack. 

"This cannot be!" I exclaimed, to self. I collapsed on the kitchen floor and tried to breathe slowly.

"What? What!?" B said, looking around. "What's going on?"

"There! Is! Nothing! Withbubblestodrinkinthishouse!!!!"

Technically, it is a condo/townhome. But I had no attention to spare for such details. The important fact was the lack of bubbly. Screw slow breathing. I was freaking out. At this point B got up from her summer sale and came over, clearly concerned that if she didn't give me some emotional support, I would Wake The Baby in my hysteria. But I managed to regain my composure all on my own, though I admit it was not easy. 

"I wish," I said softly to B, who had come to the kitchen floor and taken my hand. "I wish there were a prosecco store." I closed my eyes and pictured it, all sideways bottles in cooled racks, and lots and lots of translucent yellow. It was a soothing image. "Why, why," I wondered, wiping my tears away, "do they have to put all the wine in the same store like cattle? It's barbaric! The bubbly shit should be isolated. Pristine."

"Yes," B whispered, "I agree." She knew better than to say anything else. "Would you like me to go and fetch you some prosecco?" she offered.

Poor prosecco is trapped in the back of the store!

So she went to fetch at the cattle ranch wine store. I eventually decided to get up from the floor. I was thinking of all the super specialty stores that have ever existed (Penzy's Spice House, The Pop Shoppe, Wool Winders) and the ones that haven't but should (Shampoo Is Us, Prosecco Paradise, Things with Marshmallows In) and the ones that haven't and shouldn't, but probably will (Jeepers' Riding Crops, Explosives and More, Mooey Milk). Then B got back with my hooch, and we went out on the porch and drank some and bought some stuff from the J Crew summer sale, which we agreed to share. Because when somebody fetches you prosecco at 9:30 on a Tuesday, you let her borrow your damn shirt.

The end.

WWF

Oh, my god. Every time I look at my Words with Friends app, I get completely overwhelmed. In spite of the fact that I have 749 pending moves, and in spite or my having made 8 (a perfectly respectable number) moves in the past day, I am somehow last, out of ALL OF MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS! in whatever competition I do not understand. In other words, since that was quite impossible to follow, I suck, and nobody even bothers to notice my suckage because I suck too much to matter.

Is this a fun game? Answer: no, thank you. The end.

whatever
competition

Amanda has "mojo."
I have none.

Power Out, School In

I've complained enough about the last week of school, but I'm not finished. There was some sort of natural disaster. I forget which kind. Honestly, I cannot be bothered this time of year. Every day I walk willingly into a place that contains 1200 humans between the ages of 11 and 14, and I try to get them to write. Oh, and in my spare time, I grade like a kajillion papers a second. You try it. Then see if you care about which disaster has befallen you. Plague, tornado, whatever. All the same to me -- I'm busy! On the plus side: never! Boring!

At the end of the year, we show movies a lot. Except! This morning! Because of this natural disaster, there was no power. No power, no movies. No woman, no cry. (I haven't learned that one yet, either.)

I was required, at some point during this power outage, to remember something. So I went to put it on my calendar. Only there was no calendar. So I tried to find a piece of paper. In my classroom. In a school. And what do you think happened? Do you think I found a piece of paper? How many of you people think yes? Fools!

Oh, ok, technically I did find paper, but it was paper that, for some reason or another, couldn't be written on. Either it was some student's brilliant creation, or it was dripping in coffee or battery acid (don't ask), or it had been lit on fire.

Finally, I dug a bunch of crumpled post it notes out of the paper recycling bin. I don't know who put them there. I think the glue part makes them not recyclable, but I didn't have time for a lesson on what post it notes are made of -- especially since I don't know. Also, a recycling error seemed a minor infraction for a class that was lighting fires.

Having acquired a piece of paper, I next went in search of a writing implement. Like, you know, a pen or a pencil. In my classroom. In a school. Where a pen or a pencil should be! But: no. At the end of the year, we have none. We've run out. It's a budget thing. So I begged my students, and they had none either, having expected to watch movies all day, and therefore begun lighting all the school things on fire.

They had no writing things, but they had many, many chocolates. Prettily wrapped, with cards. I ate some, but it didn't help. I still needed to write something down. Eventually I got the genius idea to write with chalk, on the chalkboard. Crazy notions come upon one when one is desperate. It actually worked quite well. When I was finished, I erased it all and had a clean board again. If we did this chalkboard thing up right, we might be able to get rid of the Promethean board, and then we wouldn't be disturbed by power outages. Also, there would be more money in the budget to buy pencils. Somebody do this thing. It's the wave of the future, I tell you.

Summer Wine Groove #4

Song: "Be Mine," Alabama Shakes

Wine: Crush 2009, The Dreaming Tree

I'm going to get wild and crazy all up in this place and drink some red wine in the summer, bitches. And I'm gonna listen to some Alabama Shakes on the damn porch.

I don't know why this screenshot is blurry. The whole point of a screenshot is to not be affected by regular photo issues like blur. Sigh. Only in my life.

I bought this wine because I liked the name, and I wanted a summer cab. And, no, traditionalist snobs, that's not an oxymoron. This ain't your grandma's Wine Groove.

Don't you love how I'm obsessed with drinking wine at the appropriate temperature, decanting, and so on, but I toss that shit out when it doesn't serve me? Heh. That is called Power, mother-fuckers. Take it, and it's yours.

Crush is a blend, but it's mostly cab, and it starts smooth and bold, but ends up airy. What I mean by that is it's a backwards wine--its earthiness is in front, right when you sip it, and about 60 seconds later, you'll notice the back is sweeter, but light and swift--not lingering. I kept thinking I'd just eaten a banana because it had a. . .well, banana flavor, but none of that cloying stickiness a real banana has. I know that sounds both disgusting and nuts, but it's not. It's delicious and true. And the whole backwardness of the time the tastes hit is so unique I was floored. It never occurred to me that a wine could be bold, then light, and I feel a bit brainwashed by The International Meaningless Wine Rules for never having thought of it. I'm glad Crush did.

I'm late to the party on the song because I'm not cool enough to watch SNL. Everybody and their mother already thinks Brittany Howard is a Rock Star Superhero. I'm no different. Just in case you somehow missed it, she's a combination of Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger, only with more sex appeal. (I know, right?)  She does this crazy hot mouth thing when she performs, and she sounds so good I do not know what to do. So basically for the past two weeks I've been wandering through my life playing Alabama Shakes on repeat and hoping Brittany would call. And, yes, I realize I don't know her and am married with child, plus a few house-guests, and she seems straight and famous and busy and probably too young or too old for me. (Honestly, it's hard to tell which!) But! Details. She needs to call me. The song I like is "Be Mine," but there isn't a bad song on the album. Everybody has known this for a year but me. Oh, well. This isn't a "you heard it here first" kind of blog.

I may be slow, but I have tickets! To! See! Brittany! Howard! (oh, and the rest of the band, too.) I understand you may have to look away from the screen while you deal with your envy, and I shan't hold it against you. I paid double (because late to the party), but they were pretty cheap to start. 

The wine app I'm plugging in the screenshot is called Vivino, and if you take a pic of the label it finds the wine. It's pretty awesome, but it seems a bit off with the whole nearby wines function. I don't think the Shell station has 78 wines or that Starbucks has 98. Still, for the price (nothing), you can't beat Vivino, and it told me during our first encounter that it would never post to my FB wall, even if I logged in there. Sweet talker. Other apps need to get on board there, don't you think? "I won't post to your wall" is what every grrl wants to hear. Except of course, when she wants you to. Then, by all means, post.

Last Week of School: A Photo Essay

Who sits here?

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Maybe I'll feel better if I eat this pencil.

Or this:

Lunch.

Student work on display.

Is this a double negative? I can't tell anymore.

Classroom, classroom, falling-down teacher bio.

Box Spread

Insano kid faces, promising hours of fun.

There is a phenomenon in places children frequent which I think of as Box Spread. I know that sounds dirty (I wish.), but it's actually only messy, and I hate hate hate it. Here is how it goes down:

How it is

1) Child decides to play a game, as children are wont to do.
2) He/she gets the box out and starts hounding parents to play with him. "Mommies! Play with me." etc.
3) Mommy or mommies agree to play because even though we'd both rather have the bubonic goddamn plague than play Chutes and Ladders again, we feel enormous guilt if we don't do it and act like it is THE FUNNEST FUCKING THING WE HAVE EVER DONE IN OUR ENTIRE LIVES. So we swallow our Feelings Of Deep Dread and get into it.

4) Mommy(ies) and child play game, with mommy(ies) working the joy so hard that Ari is like, "Geez, mommies! If I'd known you loved this game so much, I'd have played with you more often!" So now we all feel guilty together, like a family.
5) Game ends, approximately ten hours later, and nobody knows who won, and usually at least one of us is screaming, the other is crying, and the third has (lucky, lucky) fallen asleep.

How it should be

6) Somehow, and this is the important part, in spite of both mommies using every brain cell in a single-minded determination to NOT LET THIS HAPPEN, the box gets strewn about the damn house.

Those of you who are parents know exactly what I mean. How many pieces of a game box are there, people? Two? Ha! Rookies! There are three. The top, the bottom, and the insert. The insert has no purpose other than to create more Box Spread, which is some sort of sick plot Milton Bradley contrived to make us all so miserable we get stupid enough to buy their games. Every child I have ever met is an expert at getting these boxes separated and upside-down on the floor, with not a single piece of the game inside any of the three box parts and the board . . . the board! Is always upside down and bent backwards, usually in the rafters, even though my home has no rafters. This whole spread takes up, somehow, every square inch of the house. In fact it feels like it takes up all the floor space on the planet Earth. Why does this bother me so much? Because I want to live and not crack my freaking head open on the kitchen floor trying to spare a sodding box top. But it is the human instinct to contort oneself into whatever dangerous position one has to to avoid harming cardboard. We all do it. I challenge you to go stomp on some box tops and see how wrong it feels. Make sure you rip the corners! Anyone who can do it without cringing is a sociopath, I tell you.

Certain death.

Sloppy! Won't stay closed!

At 3:00 in the morning when I come to the kitchen for ice cream I slip on the box top and injure myself. This happens about once a week. Oh, and by the way I fuck up the damn box, too. But not so much that we can throw it away. Because then where would we aspire to put all the pieces? I just mess it up enough so that it looks sloppy and won't stay closed and shit. I can get Ari to put things away, but that takes about 12 hours, and I don't feel right cleaning it up for him. Also, of course, there is no point. Because if he sees me touch any of the game pieces or any portion of the box, he will suggest another game. And clearly, neither mommy can handle that. The end.

Goals

This week we had the last faculty meeting of the school year. This got me thinking. There was cake. These things are obvs related.

Here is what I think. I should have some summer goals, so I don't spend my entire eight weeks or whatever going to the dry cleaner, getting mani/pedis, and lying around trying to motivate to do something ambitious like oh, say: watch an episode of House Hunters all in one sitting and remember it well enough to not spend 20 minutes watching it again the next day before realizing I've already seen it. 

I have this chronic, semi-catatonia, see. It conflicts with the Doing of Things. Plus Ari is home with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I spend all of those days trying to get out of playing Chutes and Ladders, chasing him around pretending to be a legit parent, and trying to keep him from throwing fits. Why does he throw fits? Oh, you know. His friends are claiming he's "it" in tag, which is basically like being a leper. I refuse to take him to a restaurant for every single meal, including snack. When he does get to go he can't scream as much as he would prefer. His shoe fell off. His wormy died. I threw out his moldy leaf from the winter of 2010. The usual.

I also spend a great deal of mental energy attempting to remain in a prone or seated position for as much of this as possible. Then, I go running. All of this takes time.

The days Ari is in camp seem like they'd be long, but they aren't. I don't know what happens to them. I always mean to relax or read a book or go to the pool without child, but then I see a stain on the carpet, and I dither about whether or not to clean it. Or I check my email and decide the best use of my time is to read every word of the Gap promo because when you're tired enough, that seems sensible. By the time I've finished reading that there's a new Banana Republic promo in my inbox to read, and that takes so long (because am distracted from reading by all the pretty links) that in the end I decide to unsubscribe. Then I get started unsubscribing from all the lists, so I spend some crazy long time doing that, digging around in my gmail trash for things to unsubscribe to, and then it's time for pick up, and I'm exhausted.

Does this sound like a good or productive or memorable summer? Answer: no. Clearly, it should not happen again. So! Here are my summer goals:

1) archive smut

2) give shit away so all family is not forever tripping over useless things, nearly killing selves

3) learn to cook something (just kidding)

4) write book (should be like all other humans and believe self to be writing genius)

5) sleep (instead of just lying around complaining of being tired, but idiotically NOT SLEEPING, when I totes could)

6) do drugs (um. That's a metaphor. Right.)

7) cuddle more with child who is surely seven seconds away from NEVER CUDDLING AGAIN, according to sodding parents of older children, all of whom I hate

8) go to actual beach, instead of just dying to go

9) Water. Park. 

10) run more, faster

11) attend kick-boxing class in which I do not almost puke from how freaking hard it is (i.e. get in shape)

12) Attend to all of the things. 

13) make two art objects (Self does not count, no matter how fabulous my pose.)

14) stop flirting with every human being for no goddamn reason (srsly--it's so childish!)

15) keep all household plants (There's only one, so it shouldn't be that hard) alive 

16) grow own salad, though technically, that is additional plants and may require adjustment to #15

The end.

Chai

Of course I hate chai. The tea. You people all probably love it. But I loathe it on principle. I swear I do. The other night, Casey took me to this Indian place where all the waiters were hot. What is it with beautiful men lately? Have you noticed? They're all over the place. It really makes me question my queer-mo-ness, and that is not ok. Dear Beautiful Men, Please stay away so that I cannot see your girly faces and become confused. Love, Me.

After dinner, Casey ordered a cup of chai from our hot waiter who (further confusion!) smelled really fucking good. Since Casey is not aware of my distaste for all quirky-cool things (food trucks, knitting, etc.), she asked if I wanted a sip. Poor Casey. She was trying to please the part of me that always wants to drink other people's drinks, not realizing she'd offend the anti-quirky-cool part of me. But! Offended, I was. I was so opposed to the idea of drinking chai that I almost stood up from my chair! And if I am averse to anything more than quirky-coolness, it is standing up from one's chair. Because I spend all day saying, in a variety of tones and volumes, "sit in your chair, Alexander." "Sit in your chair, Michael." (Usually boys need telling. Girls are much better at staying in their chairs.) "Yes, I will pass back your papers, Matthew, but I will do nothing of the sort until you sit in your sodding chair." "Sit in your chair, Ari." (Five year-old son, twelve-year-old student--what's the difference? They all need to sit in their chairs. Children!) "Sit in your chair, Joseph." I always say "sit in your chair", never "sit down" or some other variation. I like the way it ascribes ownership. I like that it takes longer to say. Plus of course, if you tell a twelve-year-old to "sit down" he will choose the most ridiculous place possible to sit--like on the top of the bush out the damn window, for Christ's sake. "Sit in your chair, Edward. Christopher, you, too. Sit. in. your. goddamn. chair!" I actually don't curse at them, but this is my blog, and I'll say what I want, bitches.

The new thing in naming is to not use nicknames. I find it very stilted, but what can I do? Joseph wants to be called Joseph. Edward wants to be Edward. Jonathan wants to be Jonathan, and Samuel wants to be Samuel. Meanwhile, Elizabeth wants to be Elizabeth, and Madeline wants to be known as Madeline, Nathaniel is under no circumstances to be called Nate, and Ezekial is certainly not Zeke, and so on. Crazy, right? Kids today.

Back to the chai. I told Casey "no, thank you." Then she said, "oh, but you must. It's really good here." I said to her, "I do not like chai." This is the part where I almost stood up. I was beginning to feel threatened, and I didn't want to get into a Green Eggs and Ham Situation -- running all over a train in the rain and hanging with mouses in houses and foxes in boxes and crap. I am too tired for all of that mess. Furthermore, that Sam-I-am obvs needs to come to grips with wanting to be called Samuel. That's clearly his real problem. It is so not about the damn eggs. 

So I was about to stand up from my chair, but then Casey grabbed my arm and said, "don't go!" I didn't want to make a scene over a cup of tea, for Heaven's sake. So I sat in my chair. Then she said, "oh, please" or something like that, and I didn't want it to become A Thing, especially after the "don't go!" so I drank the stupid stuff. Peer pressure. Imagine my surprise when it was good enough to warrant a second sip. Then a third, and then! A declaration: "this is good," I said. "Is it always like this?" Evidently it is. Hmm. I may have to drink chai and lie about what it is to keep my street cred as a hater. Anyway, as I told Casey, "it's like drinking meat -- all earthy and gamey." Have you people noticed? It is! I drank all of Casey's chai, but she was a good sport about it. I mean: it was all her fault.
The end.