The Seemingly Undetectable Barbed Wire of Bridesmaid Dresses … and Coffins

Interesting day. And really for no other reason than my being stuck in a bridesmaid dress for 10 minutes. The girl who was helping me was sweet and cool, very much not like your typical stuck up bridal shop employee who has somehow convinced herself that you will steal a giant, 15 pound bridal gown if she doesn’t keep an eye on you. So this cool bridal shop employee was asking me if I was okay … I said yes. I mean I didn’t want to get in trouble for the stuck zipper! But I finally managed to get out of it … after a Jedi-esque force came to me and I had to make the zipper descend down its tiny, toothy track with my mind …

And I kept mistakenly picking out maternity dresses! But they were far cuter and classic than the non-maternity dresses. To accomodate a pregnant orb they were empire waist of course … and flowy. They looked so … Shakespearean. Or at least Elizabethan. Very cool. I had a moment that I felt like Lady MacBeth and I swear if I was sure no one was around I so would have belted out the “Unsex me here” soliloquy.

And I liked the long marternity dress best … and the girl said she thought it “looked cool even though I am not preggers” (paraphrasing but “preggers” is a direct quotation) … I believed her. She was sincere. It was nice and refreshing. This was also the dress that I was stuck in and I thought since this dress and I had already had a moment … a tough moment we got through together basically unscathed is a good sign. And the chick at the shop had a great point. I said to her … do you think it is some weird sign or omen or something I am gravitating toward maternity dresses? She said no, walking away with a flow of chiffon following her saying over her shoulder: “I’d worry if you were picking out coffins.”

If YOU SUCKing is Wrong, Then I Don’t Wanna Be Right …

After finishing Christopher Moore’s You Suck: A Love Story last night, I felt the way I often feel when finishing a majorly fun and weirdly wonderful voyage through a book … sad. Sad it was over … or is it?

I shan’t give away anything about the book in case you haven’t read it, but it is truly great and its ending could morph thus: into yet another sequel, making this bloodsucking fiend / love story thing into an epic trilogy; or it will be left as is, leaving us wondering, considering … yet knowing somehow what is in store for the characters we have become so invested in.

I have never been a fan of vampire fiction, but Christopher Moore makes it real, and makes fun of that gothic over-the-topness vampire fiction so often possesses with the truly delightful and creepy teen characters of Abby Normal and her buddy Jared.

Fun stuff. Do read it. But my humble suggestion is this: start at the beginning with his first book, Practical Demonkeeping, then maybe read Bloodsucking Fiends, then BSF sequel, You Suck.

I am so excited about seeing him at the Borders Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the 15th! Happy Valentine’s Day to me!

The Outside Looks Like My Inside …

Here is a poem I want to share … so good for a day like today when the outside looks like my inside.

“Home is So Sad”
by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.