What Do You Want? Candy?

Humph. Two moderately well-researched, long posts in three days and nobody cares. Nobody sticks around to read. Fine. Breaking out a pointless list ostentatiously written in the royal we-person.

Our favorite late-night snack while reading in bed: was Pringle's until last night, when we noticed Pringle's are considerably thinner and more fragile than they used to be. Look at the damn chip cross-eyed and it crumbles. The lids also are much looser-fitting on the cans than they used to be. Question: how do people with large hands get them out of the can surreptitiously? They must have to pour them out. And then, given the obvious recent lapse in quality control, they'll have the very handful of pieces those painfully bad, then-cutting-edge hip-hop-derived commercials of 15 or so years ago constantly decried.

Personal Pringle's note: The worst cut we ever had on the bottom of our foot came from the old razor-edged, metal pop-top Pringle's used before public health standards forced them into paper. Naturally, this was incurred at the age of three while we were walking around in the back of our parents' Jeep whilst barrelling down the highway. Seat belts? It's a wonder any of us survived.

Our hopes for the early evening: We are going to watch the U of A women's soccer team (young, up-and-coming) play the U of Portland (veteran-heavy, and, oh yeah, defending national champs). Shannon Boxx will be doing color commentary for Fox Sports; we are taking our camera and hope to get close enough to wave. We were shameless enough to send our son to school with a note promising the play-by-play guy's daughter to be her Best! Friend! Forever! if she could get her dad to score us Boxxy's autograph.

Our hopes for the later evening: Heh. Yeah. Well, okay, our realistic hopes involve the backyard mosquito population suffering a quick die-off, and perhaps a run to Dairy Queen. Livin' large.

Tomorrow shall be devoted to: Power tools and beer.

Mystery Visit

Okay, I confess to checking the ol' Site Meter pretty regularly. It's interesting to see how people end up here; lately I've had a mad rush from Majikthise and Ezra Klein (hi, guys!). But the other day I found that someone in Sri Lanka had Googled

wedding preparation marriage night virgin shy bride

and landed here. My initial thought was that it was, well, a "shy bride" looking for advice. I was about 30 seconds into my bonding with this imagined quaking woman across the seas when I realized the visitor might well have been a prospective bridegroom instead, looking for tips on how to overcome his new wife's reticence. Hoping to find out, I googled the search terms myself (using google.lk).

I found a page recounting some woman bitching about getting married in the Dominican Republic, and this much more interesting page about (I assume) traditional Sri Lankan weddings. Good lord, it's very complicated and involves mats. Lots and lots of mats. With strict etiquette about color, and plaiting, and the order in which they're presented and what offerings are spread on which ones and how many get tied onto the bride and groom in layers. It sounds exhausting. Lots of food too, and tea towels, and mosquito netting. I don't know that the bride should be too worried about the wedding night since there would seem to be a high likelihood that both bride and groom will crash out for a good twelve hours after this endurance event of pre-nup preparations, the mat-laden ceremony itself, and the mongo feast afterwards. Night two is undoubtably a different story, though.

Let's see, what else... the search terms will also lead you to a compendium of marriage-relevant Quran verses, as well as to a Christian blog titled "Modestly Yours," offering this bon mot about a 31-year-old virgin bride:

She also notes that while most brides and grooms today boogie the night away at their wedding reception, she and her groom were outta there in record time, they couldn't wait to begin their honeymoon.

There you have it. I have no idea if any of these pages gave the Googler what she/he was looking for. She/he did spend a couple of minutes here, with two page views, so if nothing else maybe I managed to provide some amusement.

The Perils of Journaling

Thought I'd read through an old journal tonight, to see if there was anything lurking in there that I could tighten up and post here in a bit of gratuitous ego-stroking (is there any other kind). Having done so, I want nothing so much as to find the nearest large rock and drop it on my head. I'm apparently a very patterned individual, the same mistakes and neuroses coming round again and again no matter the relationship.

I did find this little tidbit that might explain one of my stylistic quirks:

It must be my latent Catholicism that makes me consider things in threes, or maybe it's the structure of the language with its comparatives of good, better, best. The trinity, the states of matter, the measure of time, the three little pigs, the bowls of porridge in front of Goldilocks...

Apparently plasma wasn't around when I learned the states of matter in grade school, or it wasn't discussed in polite company.

I'm sure I've been saving this journal so I could read it one day and see how far I've come. Unfortunately, that progress must be measured more in laps completed around the same damn track than distance in a marathon. I still need more from others than they can possibly give. I still miss my family the way we used to be, before Grandpa died, before we all scattered from Illinois. Before I came out and my dad went nuts.

So many episodes I wish I could get a do-over for, both the innocuous one-timers and the excruciatingly drawn out hopeless entanglements I read about on those pages and scream at myself to GET OVER IT ALREADY and start behaving like a functioning adult.

Remind me, someone, to burn this fucking thing before I get too much older and run the risk of the book falling into my effects, for horrified descendants to read about the absolute nutjob great-grandma Boltgirl was.