Accepts with pleasure

Here's a fun game - go ahead and Google these terms for me:

1. Wedding planning
2. Preparing for marriage

Just play along. Google them. I can wait.

OK, you're back? Good. I'm sure you noticed that your efforts were rewarded with roughly 7 million hits on search 1...and 300,000 results on search 2. This seems backwards to me. In wedding reception language, it's almost like serving the five-layer buttercreme-frosted cake before the demi-glazed duck. Putting the tulle-covered carriage before the white horse, even.

Where did we get the idea that Choosing a Dress That Will Flatter All Seven of Your Bridesmaids and Still Guarantee That You Will Look Better Than They Will! is more important than preparing for and maintaining what will surely be more important than Your Big Day - namely, the next 50 years of your lives?

This "big-day" mindset perpetuates the idea that is probably at the root of America's divorce statistics. I'm sure you're familiar with the numbers, but just in case - they're sitting right around 50%. Now, those surely don't apply across the board, but let's say (for the sake of argument) that they do. In that case, I hope you didn't engrave anything too couple-y on the toaster you gave Amy and Chad* last weekend, because odds are they're going to be in court disputes over who gets the good kitchen stuff sometime within the next seven years.

Could these divorce statistics stem from the fact that from the time we're little, we're fed a "happily ever after" mindset?

As women, we must sit around and wait for a man on a white horse (or at least driving a white Honda) to sweep us off our feet and away to a life of 2.3 children, a home with a white picket fence, and a perfectly housebroken Labrador. Gentlemen, I certainly hope you are both sensitive and manly, but not too much of either, and only in the appropriate situations. (Sensitivity is never appropriate while watching football. Manly behavior is banned while shopping for throw pillows at IKEA.)

Perhaps, as the Tom Robbins says, "we waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." Maybe we should stop thinking that the ultimate display of love is a $125 bouquet of roses and a box of chocolate. Or let go of the delusion that when love ceases to be "exciting," it certainly must be boring. Perhaps we should learn to accept that the perfection of love lies in its ability to grow, adapt and evolve. Perhaps we need to remember -

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”

*Names are hypothetical and are not intended to imply misery or doom for any couple named Amy and Chad or variations thereof who may or may not have recently received an engraved toaster.

Celebratory weasels

This is a shallow blog. I'm just warning you - if you're expecting deep or insightful, click onward.

I am having my hair put up for our wedding. I'd debated doing it myself, and then remembered several key points -

1. I have semi-long, extremely thick, naturally curly hair.

2. It is August.

3. I live in Kansas.

4. Kansas + August + long, thick, curly hair = one potential giant ball of uncooperative frizz.

Thus, I have an appointment at a local salon in order to get the mass tamed, pinned, and otherwise coerced into submitting for the better part of eight hours.

I have my hair trial next Friday. I'd debated canceling said trial, and then remembered the last two times I had updos done by unknown stylists:

Stylist 1: I wound up with a French twist. I haaaaaaate French twists. (Disclaimer: this statement only applies to a French twist on me. Go ahead and twist away - I think they're gorgeous on everyone else.)

Stylist 2: I had what appeared to be an angry, lopsided weasel (ALW) living on top of my head.

In the hopes of avoiding an angry, lopsided weasel, I went ahead and kept the hair trial. In the event that I DO end up with an ALW, I'm hoping that between Lorenia, Atoosa, Brooke, and a big ol' pile of bobby pins the ALW can at least be turned into a weasel who's there to party.

Dear God: Thank You.

Whenever I start to be slightly nervous about moving to Los Angeles (which is directly related to my super-paranoid fear that I'm not good at maintaining friendships, which is directly tied to the fact that a friend of almost ten years decided this year that our friendship wasn't working for her [for the second time]) something happens to reassure me that all is love and light in the world.

Today it was a delightful blog comment from Atoosa, and the appearance of my friend Dara at The Cheese. The appearance of Dara at Cheese may not seem too monumental, until you consider that she's spent the last few years in the Peace Corps in Africa and was then off to Italy for Montessori training, and is now in the midst of a move to Toronto. Walking around the corner at work and seeing Dara's sweet face did good, good things for my heart.

What I Did Last Week

The ol' What I Did Last Summer post is a little too overwhelming, so here's a sample of last week:

-Worked National Cheesecake Day at My Favorite Corporate Restaurant on Wednesday. The Cheese Higher-Ups decided it would be a fabulous idea to celebrate by selling slices for $1.50 each. It was a fabulous marketing idea. Until The View and Sprint got ahold of it and informed the entire country. People were showing up in droves (I actually never thought I'd have a chance to use that word in this blog - yippee!) on Wednesday. They waited for an hour in the lobby, and then sat down only to wait for another hour to get a slice of cheesecake for $5 less than normal. I will confess that when a table decided, at 11 p.m., that they wanted to order cheesecake, thus guaranteeing that we would be there at least another hour, I offered them $5 each to just come back and get it the following day at normal price.

-Cleaned up the small swimming pool that formed in the basement, kitchen, and living room after the water hose detached from the fridge and began spewing water at the rate of 3 gallons/minute.

-Was really glad that wedding dress was not hanging in basement.

-Realized that Certain Events involving Certain People this summer have made me super-paranoid and really suspicious.

-To-dos: remember that people are inherently good. Forgive people who have made life rough. Pray more. Start noting blog-worthy items in Moleskine, because a heckuva lot more fun stuff happened last week that I am unfortunately unable to remember at this point.

Back!

I haven't been able to access Blogger for, like, ever.

It appears to be cooperating again, and now I find that I have nothing to say.

I'll work on coming up with some witty observation tonight if you'll reassure me that you're still out there after such a long hiatus.

I stole this from Sarah.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Italicize and bold the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them. (If you have not read The Handmaid's Tale or A Prayer for Owen Meany, please go to your local library right away.)



1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - God
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984- George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Not sleeping

It is almost 3:30 a.m. and I am awake.

Again.

I can sleep - during the day.

For now, I will content myself with watching a documentary on bears (thanks Hulu!) and waiting until dawn, at which point I'll probably drift off. Again.

Any tips on removing myself from the land of nocturnal creatures would be appreciated.