The sort of thing my mom makes up on the spur of the moment:

Ritz cracker with homemade horseradish-and-srirachi sauce mayonnaise, homemade horseradish, olive-oil-and-vinegar-soaked garbanzo beans, and raw red onion. So delicious.

About the weekend:

Kelly and I drove up to Bethlehem, Pa (by which of course I mean, Kelly drove and I rode up to Pa) Friday afternoon, shortly after I lost my drivers' license and didn't realize it. We finally got to Susannah's house around 9 or so I think, just before Susannah got back from the airport with Sara and Brian. (Yay!) We all hung around for a little while, I made everyone look at my new boots, we ate at McDonald's (since all non-fast-food places were closed at that point), we came back and started planning wedding things. Sara, being the ridiculously in-control person that she is, has made Susannah a wedding folder with sections for each category that needs to be planned, and has also made an enormous all-inclusive time line of everything that needs to be done before the wedding. This is, of course, in addition to buying wedding-planning books and wedding magazines. (Also, we watch "Bridezilla," "Say Yes To The Dress," and other wedding planning and cake decorating shows. For research purposes, of course.) So Sara and Susannah went through parts of Sara's list, talking about things to be done and making decisions where possible, which occasional interjections from Kelly, Brian, and myself. Most of Brian's interjections were groggy confusedness, though, when we tried to talk to him--he was jet lagged and had been awake for a very long time.

Another main feature of this weekend was everyone teasing me about my upcoming marriage to David. We are not engaged, by the way. There was some teasing directed at Kelly, regarding the extent to which she and Jr are meant for each other, but she seems to have adopted the "go along with it" approach. That cut down on the teasing quite a bit, I'd say. Anything directed at Sara couldn't really qualify as teasing, since she and Brian really do plan on getting hitched as soon as they can afford it. That pretty much left me. It wasn't bad, though. I think the scariest part was the extent to which wedding planning seems to make girls go wedding crazy. Or maybe just me. Or me, Kelly, and Sara, since Susannah's other two college-friend bridesmaids didn't seem to be very much affected. Still, at the moment, I think that's what I'll chalk it up to.

Saturday we slept in, then ate out at a microbrewery, where I realized that I didn't have my license. It was good times. Then we went grocery shopping and ran back to Susannah's house to meet Betsy and Jen, her other two bridesmaids. Sara (and Kelly and I, some) worked on more planning and Betsy and Jen worked on the guest list, and Susannah tried to split her attention between both groups. Wal-Mart was briefly visited. Beauty and the Beast was watched. Wedding shows are liberally scattered throughout the weekend. Beef and chicken tacos were had by all.

Sunday we again slept in, though less so (much to Susannah's and my chagrin, as we were sharing a room and had talked until 4:30 am). We brunched on delicious sandwiches which were, as was most of the cooking, compliments of Sara, and then piled into two cars to go try on bridesmaid dresses. The stipulations were: satin, cornflower blue, length somewhere around the knees. Also, they all ended up being strapless. Kelly and Betsy both picked a pretty a-line that fell below the knees enough that they will need hemming, Jen picked a shorter a-line dress, and Sara and I picked separates that I can't describe well because I suck at this sort of thing. There are pictures, but they're on Kelly's camera. I'm a little sad that mine will be blue when they ship it to me instead of the red I tried on, but I should still be able to wear the top and skirt again separately, so that's nice. (I have heard that brides always claim that bridesmaid dresses can be shortened and worn again, but I think and hope that this time, it's actually true.)

After dress shopping came shoe shopping, despite the fact that it is currently fall, and we needed spring shoes. Sale rack to the rescue. I found three pairs--one of which was hot pink. Go figure. (The pair for the wedding was white though, of course.) We went to the Lehigh Valley mall for lunch/early dinner, which doesn't have a food court. Instead it has restaurants scattered around the mall. What?

Susannah's accessories had come in to David's Bridal, so back at her house we got to see her all decked out in her beautiful dress, sash, veil, and tiara-thing. She looked amazing. Betsy had to head home shortly thereafter, and Sara, Brian, and I all turned in relatively early, since we were all planning to leave before noon the next day. Kelly, Susannah, and Jen stayed up and watched the game.

Monday morning we all finished off the sandwich fixings and headed out--Kelly and I first. As I mentioned, I had been hoping to go stay with David for the week, but apparently that wasn't meant to be. We visited Kelly's paternal grandmother, whom I had not seen since early childhood, hung out for a few hours, and came home.

Here lies the end of another whirlwind adventure.

Progress.

 The paragraphs below were written via text messages to my email inbox while riding home in the car from a bridesmaids' weekend in Pa. I had planned to visit David, as I thought we'd be taking the route back that would take us past Front Royal, and Kelly had agreed to drop me off, but as the afternoon progressed (and I desperately held on to my hopeless hope of a visit), it finally became clear to me that for multiple reasons (Kelly didn't feel well, we were visiting her grandmother and so not going near Front Royal, David has a cold, Kelly needed to get home to take care of her dog), I wasn't going to be able to go. He and I haven't seen each other in about two weeks, and I had a little emotional crash--pulling my hood up and curling into a ball, and trying not to cry loud enough to be heard. Possibly an overreaction, but to put it mildly, I had really been looking forward to the visit. Anyway, I found myself going to that "this just isn't worth it" place. Later, in the middle of reading an essay about aging, death, and dying from Best American Essays 2006 (of which, so far, I can only say that I hope the book was misnamed), I texted this to my email address:

Writing every day doesn't seem to be an activity at which I excel. I tell myself that all these daily devotions, writings, exercises, prayers, somethings will simply come easy when I 'get on a schedule,' but when will that ever happen? Maybe by the time I die, or maybe by then I will have given in to the mental exhaustion that accompanies constant working to Be Better. Or maybe I will have finally learned to "go with the flow"--to live and love, and to genuinely enjoy life, instead of thinking of giving up whenever I slide* into this "life just isn't worth the effort" mode. Why is it so easy to suddenly find myself there? How can I build a buffer? Will time help? Habitual happiness? Is that something I can find or build? I have been working so hard at it. I have been doing so much better. But "not worth it" is, apparently, still just a state of exhaustion and a disappointment away. How could I give myself to anyone, without being able to trust myself?  Knowing that I might slip away forever at any time?

But maybe I should be grateful for and hopeful over the fact that I have been doing so well, and that I am only bored and tired ("not worth the effort"), and not flashing to ashes inside. You know, knock-on-wood.




*What I was meaning to say was that I need to stop sliding there.

Some things.

Last night I turned out my light, fell backwards onto my pillow, and my mattress collapsed. There's sort of a jury-rigged (jerry-rigged? I wonder this every time) setup going on with my bed frame--there's a cast-iron frame that was my mom's when she was a girl, and then set inside of that is a piece of the bed frame my sister used to use, which is antique and doesn't actually fit any non-antique mattresses, but is supposed to have a mattress sit inside of it rather than on top, and then on top of that (not inside) is a mattress set from my great-aunt's estate. It seemed all right when we put it there, but apparently it's a little precarious. Anyway at 2 am, in my pj's with no contacts, I had to pull out the stuff from underneath my bed, slide into the space that was left, and bench-press this ridiculously heavy mattress back into position. It was a good time.

Also: that hot pink silk jacket I was all upset about? It was still there. I got it. It is mine.


Off to Pa for a weekend of bridesmaidey things!

The Prerogative of the Essayist

Everyone, by which I mean a handful of essayists whom I have read and or had the honor of being taught by, seems to enjoy pointing out to me that, in the essay, actual facts don't actually matter. As an English major, hypocritical and spotty perfectionist, and person interested in science, this assertion really irks me. Of course facts matter. They are facts. I don't see the disconnect here.

However, in the interest of exploration, magnanimousness, and self-entertainment, I have decided that I plan to write an essay with little to no regard for actual facts. I will misuse words, misquote my sources, and prod the universe into whatever jello mold my fancy demands.

Considering my record regarding the carrying out of my grand spur-of-the-moment plans, and the fact that even writing the above paragraph makes me wince, this essay may not happen.

But then again, it might.

A Rude Reawakening.

Emily Bernard says in her essay "Teaching The N-Word" that, as a black woman living in America, even as a black woman married to a white man, she still finds herself fearing that the word "nigger" is hiding at the back of white people's throats. She writes,

"Here is a story for your [African-American Lit] students," John tells me. We are in the car, on our way to Cambridge for the weekend. "The only time I ever heard 'nigger' in my home growing up was when my father's cousin was over for a visit. It was 1988, I remember. Jesse Jackson was running for president... 'I'm going to vote for the nigger,' my father's cousin said. 'He's the only one who cares about the workingman.'"

John laughs. He often laughs when he hears something extraordinary, bad or good.

"That's fascinating," I say.

The next time class meets, I tell my students this story.

"So what do we care about in this sentence?" I say. "The fact that John's father's cousin used a racial epithet, or the fact that his voting for Jackson conveys a kind of ultimate respect for him? Isn't his voting for Jackson more important for black progress than how his father's cousin feels?"

I don't remember what the students said. What I remember is that I tried to project for them a sense that I was untroubled by saying "nigger," by my husband's saying "nigger," by his father's cousin's having said "nigger," by his parents'--my in-laws'--tolerance of "nigger" in their home, years ago, before I came along...It's an intellectual issue, I beamed at them, and then I directed it back at myself. It has nothing to do with how it makes me feel.

Perhaps I shouldn't be writing this yet, because I haven't finished reading the essay, but since I'm already writing anyway.. so far this has been hard for me to read. It's been hard for me to be reminded that this is a constant issue in people's lives. Two of my best guy friends are black (please excuse me for writing that sentence--it's isn't meant as the typical white-woman "I'm-not-racist-because" excuse), and I see it in their lives, but, like so many people I suppose, it's easy for me to forget things that I don't want to remember. Sometimes.

One of these guys gets pulled over on a regular basis. Once he was pulled at three o'clock in the afternoon, by two cops at the same time, because one of his front headlights was out. And there is no pretending that that isn't racist bullshit.

I was lucky enough to grow up until late in high school thinking that racism was a problem that had been dealt with and conquered during the civil rights movement. My parents are pretty good about judging people based on things other than their socioeconomic status or their skin color or religion, and I grew up going to a summer camp that had, if not equal parts black and white kids, more black kids than white. I never noticed until I was on staff. I have always known that there were disproportionate ratios in terms of race across the socioeconomic spectrum, but I always attributed that to the fact that it takes a little while for people to work up in the world, and assumed that the issue was on the way to correcting itself. I wish I hadn't been so wrong.

When I read of Bernard's fears, my immediate reaction, other than sadness, is to think, "That's awful! Why would she think that?" Next to question myself, but before reading this essay I'd have no more thought to call anyone "'nigger" than I'd have thought to call Andromeda a minnow. It wasn't even on my radar. It wasn't even on a list of  "things not to do." It hurts and angers and confuses me to realize that there are so many people all over the world for whom that isn't true.

A normally very sweet (to adults, anyway), respectful, well-behaved Chinese boy at the dorm last year told me that he was a little scared of black people. He got along fine with all the black kids in the dorm, of course (my observation, not his)--but he was frightened by the 'ghetto' culture. I guess it's all too easy to see any culture and think of the people that compose it as legos--all identical, all for no purpose but to comprise the culture in question--and even to see all people who look similar to those living in a certain culture as legos as well. Really though, that's like saying "I hate movies. All movies. Because theaters have bad lighting and that freaks me out." Not all movies ever show in theaters. Not all theaters show the same kinds of movies. Even in one theater, a vast array of completely different movies play. And anyway, a theater is just a venue. Usually, the movie itself doesn't have anything to do with the theater at all.

Honestly, forget worrying about who "discovered" America first and whether to teach religion or science in science class (btw, I'm Christian and I still say "science." Religion for religion class, science for science class. How is this even an issue?)--grab those kids the second they hit the school system and make sure they understand that, biologically speaking, they are no different from any other human. Yes, a lot of complicated questions arise when we start talking about differences between cultures and which cultures and dialects are preferred and whether or not that's fair or right, but let's not enter into a single one of those discussions until we understand this: we are all the same. We are all brothers and sisters.

How did I get to be so weird?

Alright, so I've been thinking of a couple of things I wanted to say since whenever it was I last posted on here, and the first is this: I like pink. I mean, I'm really starting to like pink. Anyone who doesn't know the ridiculous details of all my little eccentricities would probably be thinking at this juncture something along the lines of "Yeah? So?" And I understand that. But speaking as someone who has for the last fourteen years or so steadfastly maintained a dislike for pretty much anything strongly associated with frilliness or femininity, the fact that I'm pretty upset over missing out on this one blindingly bright pink baggy silk jacket at the thrift store is more than a little weird for me.

Second, this (not the "pink" thing, but another weirdity) has been something I've recognized as an issue for a long time, but have never (that I remember) been able to put my finger on until last night: I am embarrassed about having emotions. Obviously, logically, I know that pretty much everyone has emotions, and therefore it is safe to assume that everyone I meet, should they assume anything about me, safely and rightly assumes that I also have emotions. But still, for example, I sometimes get this twinge of embarrassment when I'm affectionate toward David in public, especially if there's someone else around that I know. And it is not even a little bit about David-- it is about me being ashamed to admit that I have romantic feelings for another human. You know what's one of the things that worries me most about being married someday? I worry about getting pregnant. Right now you're probably thinking that I don't want kids, or if you know me a little better, that I am terrified to the point of feeling ill when I think too closely about childbirth. (Despite the fact that I want to have kids, I am that terrified sometimes.) Those aren't the reasons. Here is the reason: should I become pregnant, people will know how that happened. Specifically, people would know that I was the sort of person that has sex. Ignoring the verb tense issues in that sentence... I am a freak.