I tried to post this last night from Tre and it didn’t go up. Anyway:

Not
to get all free­gan or any­thing, but I am feel­ing a lit­tle more
waste-weary than usual. That’s part of the rea­son I’ve decided to wear
my mom’s wed­ding dress. Why con­tribute to the myth that you can only be
beau­ti­ful in a dress you only wear once? In stark con­trast, Ryan and I went
to look for suits for him and in my next life, I am com­ing back
as a dude. They include alter­ations in the price–wtf?

We haven’t been so into the show-going lately, mostly because all musi­cal dis­cus­sions end on a “Why can’t Yo La Tengo play our wed­ding?” note, but also because I have a com­fort level these days. If I have to be some­where early the next day and the show’s in Lawrence, I’m not going. Unless it’s some­one I really really like. And then I’ll still need some con­vinc­ing to get my ass out the door. Because I am an old and crotch­ety lady.

But I digress.

Any­way, I saw this old post on John Sell­ers’ blog (has any­one read his book? Should I? I think I would like it based on title alone, but I am an easy mark that way) and found myself nod­ding along. I would prob­a­bly change the reorder­ing a bit, and–sorry rockers–I am not a huge GBVer, but any and all reunions of Unrest, Galaxie 500, Pavement…wait, can I put dead peo­ple on this list? Well, I have a few things I’d pay some absurd sums for. But not super-absurd. I mean, I’ve got a dog to feed.

Hey, if you’re read­ing this and you know a sweet-ass band in the Kansas City area, please tell me.

The tem­ple we attended when I was grow­ing up had a really fan­tas­tic crazy-modern vibe; I keep mean­ing to drive Ryan by some Sat­ur­day when we’re out run­ning errands and I always for­get about it. Today I was in hot pur­suit of a place to read another chap­ter in my psy­chol­ogy book (they are get­ting longer, I swear) and I hap­pened to drive by.

THE WHOLE DAMN THING IS GONE.

I knew there was some fuss about the build­ing itself and preser­va­tion types were argu­ing for its impor­tance and oth­ers said it was hideous and then there’s the fact that the con­gre­ga­tion up and moved itself 10 miles south. But still. OK, it hasn’t been razed; there’s a school in its place. But you’d never know what the old build­ing looked like and I can only think that this is so “they paved par­adise and put up a park­ing lot.”

Here’s a link to a photo–isn’t it awesome?

I am, to put it mildly, a picky bitch.

So, once upon a time, I worked in the home depart­ment of a bridal mag­a­zine. This instilled in me a deep love and appre­ci­a­tion for china and fine crys­tal. As I was 21 at the time, I did not do much with this knowl­edge except think, “Some day, this will be use­ful.” Now, upon the dis­cov­ery that Mottahedeh’s Tobacco Leaf pat­tern is a whop­ping $500 per place set­ting, I have been issued an aes­thetic chal­lenge of sorts. I am not going to ask any­one to buy us some­thing that costs $500. And there are plenty more awfully lovely china pat­terns out there. How­ever, here in the some­times style-depleted city in which I reside, there is nowhere to gather all of these pat­terns side by side and choose among them. Or to decide to get a salad plate in one pat­tern and a din­ner plate in another. You get the idea.

If I had chinapatterndatabase.com, though, think of the fun!

Also, in search­ing for poten­tial flat­ware, I think I have real­ized that the only one I like thus far is the same one my par­ents use, Dansk’s slim and util­i­tar­ian Vari­a­tion V. I had a brief flir­ta­tion with Torun, but Ryan says “no” on rounded ends.

For proof that I was once inter­ested in things besides my big fat half-Jewish wed­ding, feel free to peruse the old days of me here.

So we’re engaged! I have had my taste of wed­ding plan­ning for, let’s see, about a week now, and I have been through the seven stages of grief already. None of it had any­thing to do with Ryan (thank God) or my fam­ily (hur­rah) or even his fam­ily (whew) but still, my crazy is bub­bling up to the sur­face and it is wholly self-generated.

We want a venue where we can have both the cer­e­mony and the recep­tion, prefer­ably down­town with a sky­line view, and some place with a full kitchen that will let us pro­vide our own caterer. Already that knocks a lot of poten­tial spaces off of the list. We went to see Poten­tial Space #1 on Fri­day and fell for it hard and fast. It’s unfor­tu­nately booked through the end of the year on Sat­ur­days. So we thought, “No prob­lem. We’ll get mar­ried on a Fri­day night.”

Then I started look­ing at Jew­ish cal­en­dars, to make sure that we wouldn’t be get­ting mar­ried on, say, Yom Kip­pur, and learned (duh!) that rab­bis don’t marry cou­ples on Shab­bat. Well, crap. This sent me into a spir­i­tual tail­spin of sorts. Fine, I’m a half-assed Jew, but I still want a rabbi to marry us.

Which brings me to another matter–no one else really cares about the rabbi. Ryan: an athe­ist. My par­ents: would hire an Elvis imper­son­ator if need be. Ryan’s fam­ily: are just happy he’s mar­ry­ing. So maybe the solu­tion is to have a pri­vate, parents-and-anyone-else-who-cares cer­e­mony on a week­day evening, and then have the party/reception as planned on a Fri­day night. Would you care if you didn’t see your friend get mar­ried, or does it really matter?

Who didn’t buy tick­ets the day they went on sale for the pair of Shins’ shows tonight and tomor­row? Who thought to her­self, “Two shows? That’s crazy!”? Who tried to buy tick­ets online a few weeks ago, found both shows sold out, fig­ured she could buy tick­ets on craigslist and then real­ized she was being priced out of a concert?

Who will spare you the whole old-person-who-likes-indie-rock-and-wants-a-band-she-likes-to-be-able-to-eat-but-would-like-to-see them-without-a-big-hassle whine and moan?

Some­one linked to this arti­cle some­where about South­ern Indian cui­sine and read­ing it took me back imme­di­ately to morn­ings spent drink­ing Dixie cups of per­fect sweet cof­fee and evenings eat­ing off of banana leaves. I think I need to start scan­ning my India photos.

Tell peo­ple your only mar­ketable skill is writ­ing, they tell you to write a book.

No.

You tell one of those insane peo­ple who sug­gests you write a book that the only book you’re going to write is going to be about not writing.

He says, “I’d read that.”

Oth­ers agree.

You think back over your non-illustrious career, how oth­ers have not asked your advice, and you think…

Step 1: Begin your day giv­ing into any whim that strikes you, as long as it’s not writ­ing. You want to scrub your floors, tell off tele­mar­keters, watch a season’s worth of “Dr. Phil”? As long as it doesn’t involve pen touch­ing paper, go on with your bad self.