640
Christopher, giving his confirmation number to a telemarketer: "... as in six drummers drumming, four maids a milking and nobody doing anything."
« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
Christopher, giving his confirmation number to a telemarketer: "... as in six drummers drumming, four maids a milking and nobody doing anything."
We’re buying a new car. Last weekend we test drove a couple.
Christopher is thinking about all this very logically, like financing and gas mileage and size (he is six-five and can’t fit into a lot of cars). I am thinking of my father saying, repeatedly, “The three worst possible investments are cars, kids and pets.”
INVESTMENT is a word I’ve been chewing on lately, because getting married involves all sorts of financial discussions involving the word MERGE and also we’re gearing up to buy a place (re: build equity, because every time I write a rent check I want to puke a little bit in my mouth). As if on cue, my dog (one of the two worst possible investments I’ve alreadly made) starts to snore, which he does when he sleeps on his back. Christopher looks at him and says, “Do you think he knows we took away his testicles?” I don’t answer this question, hoping that perhaps if I ignore a conversation about testicles it will go away, but Christopher just got home from dinner with his dad, and they like their margaritas, yes they do, so he gets on the internet and plugs TESTICLES FOR PETS into google and discovers Neuticles, so, of course, he has to read aloud from the testimonials for a while.
“I've put off neutering Crooked Joe for months and when I found out about Neuticles and spoke to them it made me feel better about neutering. Joe not only looks the same now—but doesn't know he's missing anything.”
“Frodo never knew he lost anything and is just a happier little dog since he's been neutered with Neuticles.”
“Neuticles were the absolute least I could do.”
I interrupt: “Hey, is it okay if I blog about this? About you being all drunk and reading to me about dog testicles?”
He comes and reads over my shoulder. “Margaritas?” he says, his voice full or reproach. “We didn’t drink margaritas! We drank MOJITOS! C’mon, get it RIGHT!” Then he says, “What you should really talk about is how we were test driving those Rav 4’s at the Toyota Dealership and you were all tense and upset—” he imitates me being tense and upset, his shoulders hunched over and his mouth set in a straight line— “and I said, ‘I’m not going to test drive anymore cars with you unless you have FUN! Have a ninja fight with me right now!’ and then I did all those ninja moves and kicked you in the butt, and then you kicked me back and said ‘Hee-YA!’ and we fought in the parking lot until you weren’t thinking about investments anymore!” at which point I start thinking about that word again—investment—and how, though I understand how putting money into cars, kids and pets can be viewed as bad investments insofar as FINANCES go (ie your money doesn’t make money back, etc.) they’re still totally not bad investments insofar as Making Life Worth Living. My snoring, non-testicle-having dog is a great example of this. He eats money as fast as we can make it (“When does he get big enough where we don’t have to feed him anymore?” Christopher asked last week at PetSmart, heaving the thirty pound bag of Science Diet over his shoulder) but then he sighs really loud, and snuggles up against me, and I cry, “YOU, Marc Jacobs! Design more argyle doggy jackets for me to put on layaway at Barker and Meowski! I don’t CARE that Mojo ATE the last one! Nary an OFF-THE-RACK jacket for my little guy!”
What I’m really thinking about, as I think about investments, is the whole wedding industry. Because I just spent the past ten days in Michigan with my parents (Dear Everyone Who Sent Emails Asking Why I Wasn’t Updating My Blog: I was in Michigan visiting my parents. Neither of whom has internet. And when I got back, late last night, and opened my computer, I had eighty new messages. Eighty. Let us all ponder that. Let us consider the influence of technology over our daily life and the consequences of unplugging. Let us attend numerous conferences about this issue, and read about it in Wired or Nesweek, and imagine all those Sci-Fi books we read in our teens coming true by the time we have our own children) and we talked a great deal about weddings, i.e. I told them we were eloping/the reasons why we were eloping/how excited I was to be eloping, after which my dad and I drank beer and took the dogs for a spin in the canoe and my mom and I drank wine and shopped for a dress.
SHOPPING FOR A DRESS
By Megan Stielstra
Megan and her mother enter an upscale bridal salon in Birmingham, Michigan. Upscale as in you have to have an APPOINTMENT. As in, they offer you TEA. As in, they tell you NOT what YOU want your dress to be, but what Monique LHUILLIER wants your dress to be. You want to ask if they can SPELL Lhuillier. The salon itself is pink and white, its walls lined with great big dresses. In the center of the store are plushy pink and white ottomans where, presumably, Ruth is supposed to sit while Megan disappears into dressing rooms and helpful pink attendants bring her gown after gown. Soon she’ll emerge from said dressing room looking like a live-action version of Cinderella post-pumpkin, in puffy, heavy layers of tulle covered with beaded, embroidered lace not unlike icing on a cake, her torso laced into some Turn-of-the-Century whalebone business that sends her bosom right up to her chin. She will stand in front of three-way mirrors, and everyone will go, “Awwww,” and then someone will yell, “WAIT!” and will rush over and put a tiara on her head. Ruth will cry, and get out her checkbook, and lay down next month’s mortgage payment. Megan will smile between clenched teeth, because if she opens her teeth all her breath will escape and she’ll pop out of this precarious balance of wire and net.
Don’t worry, people. None of this happened. What happened was we stood in the doorway, gave it the once-over, and looked at each other. I mouthed NOOOOOO at my mom, and when the lightning-fast salesgirl approached and said, ‘Are you Megan? We’ve pulled out TONS of dresses for you to try!” my totally awesome mother lied in her face. “Oh no, we don’t have an appointment or anything. We just stopped in for fun!” and then we turned around and hightailed it out of there. To the nearest bottle of pinot noir.
So. Did I get a dress? YES. Do I love it? Does it make me feel really beautiful and perfect and happy? YES. Am I going to tell you anything else about it? NO—because in all the happily non-traditional details of my upcoming nuptials, there is one standard tradition I’m holding tight to: Christopher doesn’t get to see my dress before the wedding. And he reads this blog, and is very internet savvy, and if I say where I got it or who designed it or what it looks like, he’ll find it within the hour. There are some things, people, that don’t go up on a live journal. Wedding dresses are one of those things.
I will say that, as far as my finances go, my dress was not in any way an investment (i.e. I have shoes that cost me more than this dress). However, it is very much a Making Life Worth Living thing, because I now have very wonderful memories of a wonderful time with my mom, finding this dress. We had a ball that day, not only lying to that one salesgirl, but lying to all of them, ‘cause we blew not just one but SEVERAL bridal appointments that day. And now, there’s money left over for shoes.
And a new car.
But not Neuticals.