I’m hit on more when I look a little frayed around the edges.  I suppose this  is rather common – getting more attention when you’re just tromping around in jeans, an old sweater, and no makeup than when you’re decked out in a pretty sun dress with cute earrings.   On a related note, my favorite new dress seems particularly gendered:  It’s getting raves from other girls (women?  At what point do I have to start calling my peers women?) but it is not going over well with the opposite sex.  At all.  “No!  You look like you’re wearing a jellyfish!” said one male who shall not be named.

Anyway, last week I was wearing one of my 5-hours-of-sleep ensembles (glazed-over eyes, jeans, various layered Target t-shirts) and trying to pep myself up with some bulk sour gummy fruit (green apple rings, mon amour!) from the store in my student union.  I was reaching down to get them when:

Dude: “Yo!”

I look up and into the face of what is surely a nineteen year old

Dude:  “You got the good stuff there”

Me:  “Mfhm”

Dude:  “You gettin’ any of the peaches?”

Me:  “Nah, I don’t really like those”

Dude:  “Oh no?  Why not — you’re a peach yourself!”

Cute, huh?  He kind of ruined the moment, resisting my gentle (rather stunned) rebuff by trying to follow me out of the store, but overall I give him points for contextually-appropriate-food-based-pick-up creativity.  So much more charming than “negging,” isn’t it?

Cannot sleep, but not cognizant enough to do actual work.

I didn’t grow up with Playmobil but it was on the parentally-sanctioned toy list.  When I was little my parents were part of a neighborhood “good toys” co-op type thing that involved Tupperware style parties except with Swiss-made puzzles and solid wood train sets.  Once my sister came around, they seemed to relax their standards a bit, because we both amassed sizable collections of My Little Ponies.

Playmobil was also one of the highlights of the locally owned toy store that we would frequent for birthday presents.  I used to marvel at all the little sets and characters neatly entombed in clear plastic boxes.

The brand is still kicking evidently, and has come out with an airport security checkpoint set.  “Non-compliant nipple ring sold separately” the Reason headline blares gleefully. Reason also steers readers towards the customer reviews on Amazon.  I cannot pick an indignant, hilarious favorite from the bunch, but it appears that the Playmobil customer base has not changed much.

]]> http://unepetitemer.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/from-the-vault/feed/ 0 M 41g9wa5nrdl_ss400_ http://unepetitemer.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/departmental-clusterfuck-gate-2009/ http://unepetitemer.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/departmental-clusterfuck-gate-2009/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:17:18 +0000 M http://unepetitemer.wordpress.com/?p=209 ]]> I cannot elaborate on DCFG 2009, but I will note that this semester has been especially trying.

This summer perhaps I will be able to resume periodic blogging, along with:

Sleeping

Personal maintenance (hair cut; eyebrows; general cuteness quotient)

Wedding planning

Socializing

One can hope.

Further:  There’s a motherfucking rat in our motherfucking house.  “Well,” says B, “at least those sounds we’ve been hearing aren’t from a ghost.”  At the moment, I’m not sure which is worse.

Which led me to this:

“…trying to search for the literal in literature inevitably kills the object of affection, murders the fiction stone-dead.”

From here. Much more interesting than ANOVA and chi squares.

Family

Friends

B

Obama

“Basic Circumstances”

Dogs

Grad School (sometimes)

Student Loans (always)

Thanksgiving was packed but lovely.  Lunch at B’s sister’s, dinner at my parents’ with South African family friends – 1 mother, 3 daughters (grown) 2 daughters of daughters, one son of daughter, me, my mother, my sister and B and my dad who handled being the 1/6 male representation at the party very well.  Watched the entirely inappropriate movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the behest of my sister who seems to think that full frontal male nudity and constant graphic sex references are good cinematic family fare.  I never want to think about this movie again.  Clearly I am the family prude.  My father (my father!  Plus explicit sex references!  Plus my little sister and B!  Oh Hell!) laughingly recounted how during one of my childhood birthday sleepovers (we’re guessing it was my 9th birthday), he had rented “Eating Raul” – a great movie, may I attest – “and that has cannibalism and swingers in it,” he said sheepishly, “all I remembered about it was that it was funny and had great, stylized 60s furniture…”

I cannot reveal what ” ‘em” are, but it was a charming interaction.  Who says all postal employees are homicidal?

So: A catch up must commence.

Since June, I have gone to the beach with my entire family, my parents’ dogs, my sister’s kitten, and B and we all survived despite the inevitable M-family throw down (this time, my father was to blame). B and I made the trip to the cape in one day, which is a shit ton of driving, to put it nicely. On the way up we were both rather cheerfully delirious, but returning home, we spent the last fourth of the trip driving in a massive thunderstorm and screaming, “fuck you!” at each other. I provide this glimpse to set up a punchline…

On August 24th, the day before my classes started, B cajoled me into going on a woods walk and proposed! It was completely surprising, utterly romantic, and I cannot describe it with any kind of justice so I’ll offer up a picture at the end of this post.

Because I am a very modern girl, I (we) have a little wedding website [EDIT: do you want a link? Shoot me an email] that you are welcome to visit if you are interested. Isn’t the title wonderful? I came up with it and it made me laugh (do you get the pun? I think you must!). B wasn’t quite as amused. But there it is and since I have a separate forum, mostly wedding chit chat will be confined to that space rather than here. Maybe. Probably not. Let’s break that rule right now, with a pre-engagement story, shall we?

Although I found out later that B had talked to my parents and my grandpa last March (Who knew my family could keep so mum?), for me the proposal story begins the night KCB and I saw the Sex and the City Movie (which was a little irksome, wasn’t it? I mean, I’ve seen it a couple of times now because I miss the entertainment of the TV show enough to suffer through the movie, but I think all of the characters were sold short with that one). K was leaving that week to move to VA (a fact I still have not completely accepted) and we were trying to cram in a last bit of time together. We were talking about the marriages in the movie (one more parenthetical aside: “just get me a huge closet” offers an nice summation of everything I dislike about the movie) and K noted, “you know, I’m your ring person, but we don’t even know what size you wear and I really feel that we need to have that figured out before I leave. Don’t read into this and get all freaked out!”

And so we made a date to look at rings the next day (time was of the essence). K decided that we’d just go to the big box mall stores basically to fact find.

First up: A free standing store that shall remain nameless (though you would know it by it’s grating radio ads), we walk in and are immediately welcomed by…a girl I went to high school with. Shit and hell! It’s not that I didn’t like her, it’s just that I felt like (commence magical thinking) I was being discovered counting my imaginary rings before my engagement hatched. I was pretty worried that she would tell people that I was there looking at rings, especially since she proceeded to show me all of the rings our former classmates had selected for their own. In a word: Ugh. What’s worse, my ring size is a teeny tiny 3.5 (it’s more like 3.75, but whatever). It is not a finger that can pull of a huge diamond. In fact, anything over a karat looks rather obscene on my little hand. Further, big honking obnoxious cocktail sized diamonds are not my taste. Despite my explanations, the quote of this piece of our adventure was: “We can put a big diamond in there.”

Off to an inauspicious start, we ventured inside the mall to a jewlery store that sells, along with the more usual jewlery store offerings, little crystal figurines. This may have been a sign. “I really envision an eternity band,” I told the ken doll fake tan, plastic sheen salesman, “I like the antiquity of the style and I just want a hint of sparkle.”

“Oh,” he said, “but ladies want these kinds of rings for their wedding bands, not for their engagement rings.”

“Well,” I replied, “I don’t think I necessarily have the most typical taste and I’m not especially traditional and I like eternity bands.”

“We could put a big diamond in there,” he suggested.

[Entirely misapprehended] quote of this store: “Ladies want…”

I was at once amused and demoralized when we finally made our third and final stop. Carlyle and Company. Kate knew a saleswoman here and specifically requested her (her name was either Vivian/Beverly for some reason I cannot remember). We told her what we were doing and she was immediately helpful. She showed me all sorts of rings (both engagement and non engagement), had me try on tons of styles and early in the process observed, “Yes, your hands are very petite, you wouldn’t want a ring that overpowered them.” It was delightful. I was surprised that a round solitaire turned out to be my favorite (I had initially envisioned a cushion cut, but found that they look rather clunky on me). It was such a charming experience – I really do recommend this branch if ever you need non-custom jewelry.

Quote of Carlyle and Co: “You have unique taste and you’re looking for a ring that speaks to it.”

I had no idea at the time that Kate was taking extensive mental notes to report to B. Or that our mall (mis) adventures would eventually lead to…This:

(taken by our dear friends J and C)

Or perhaps a bit of needlepoint? Some suggestions:
- If politicians were flowers, I’d pick Obama
- Obama is where the heart is
- When Obama’s not happy, nobody’s happy

* Those hipsters who aren’t moronically throwing their hundred-or-so pounds of band t-shirts, tight jeans, and neon sunglasses behind Ron Paul, that is. I used to kind of sardonically adore libertarians for the craziness their politics betray, but any reality other than the stay-the-hell-off-my-lawn white-beard-mountain-men of my imagination quickly turns the adoration to disdain. Pity.

Narcissism? Maybe. I think it’s more because I’m bad on the phone, but I like telling stories (albeit somewhat cryptically). My old host, Blogger, doesn’t allow for select posts to be private – it’s all or nothing – so here I am, dipping my blog toes into a wider readership.

Please excuse the privacy block on some posts. I’d never want to over-share. Surely you understand.

I hid in the car after that.

Humiliation, thy name is Target Gillian & O’Malley mesh.