In retrospect, starting a very strict diet during the week when my ovaries are screaming “EAAAAAAAAAT BECAUSE YOU COULD BE HAVING A BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABY SOON!!!” was an unwise decision.
I would also like to take a moment to announce that if any of my friends were hoping to have me as a bridesmaid at their wedding, you are pre-emptively DENIED. Life is too short to spend three-month stints at a time eating cabbage soup. DENIED!
Friday was like a Carnival of Suckitude. And by Carnival of Suckitude, I mean that it was like a traveling circus came to town, and after you excitedly give the person at the ticket booth all of your money, you are struck on the head with a club and awake bound and gagged on the dusty ground of the big top, and a clown car pulls up and clown after clown pour out of it, all with horrifying clown rape on their minds. And they all have herpes. It was just like that.
Firstly, I checked my email to see that three new comments had been made on my video, all of them debating exactly which display I belonged in at the large mammals section of the zoo. These people are lucky they can be so brave on the internet. If they said something like that to my face, I would kick them apart.
Secondly, I spent 45 minutes styling my hair and getting ready to go out, immediately after which Napoleon demanded that he needed to go outside RIGHT NOW, and I ran out with him only to have it start pouring while he was sniffing the ground disinterestedly, ruining the hairstyle and the makeup, and soaking my clothes.
I then went back inside to start the process over, and when I took my glasses off, they broke. I’m not eligible for another pair through my vision insurance for another four months. I’ve been wearing glasses for going on 19 years now, and this is the first pair I’ve broken, so it’s not as if I don’t know how to treat eyewear properly. I’ve since managed to superglue them back together, but I doubt they’ll hold for four months. Special.
While out and about, the guy who stood me up a few months ago decided he was going to try to make up with me by repeatedly asking if he could come home with me. I have no interest in being someone’s quick fix for a desperate need to get laid, and all of his pathetic “I’m so sorry, let me make it up to you” whining repeated OVER AND OVER AND OVER just irritated me and added another reason to the mental ledger to trust my instincts when it comes to people who approach me. The new golden rule may have to be “Freaky until proved normal”.
At that point, it had just been a sort of crappy day. I should’ve known that it was building up to something spectacular and just stayed home, because the best part was yet to come.
As I was trying to merge on the freeway to drive home, there was a car in the lane I needed to merge into, pointedly blocking my way. I sped up to merge ahead of it, and it sped up. I slowed down to try and merge behind it, and it slowed down. This car had a completely empty lane to the left and could have moved over to allow me to merge, but chose not to. So I did what I felt I had to, and sped up as quickly as I could, as much as I dared, to merge ahead of it, as the road was open ahead and quite crowded behind me, so even if I slammed on my brakes, I couldn’t have gotten onto the highway.
Less than a minute later, I was being pulled over. I mentally tallied the reasons I could have been getting pulled over—my license plates were current, my brake lights were fixed, and my carpool lane mannequin, Captain Magnifico, was safely stored in the trunk, so I was baffled. I rolled down the window, and the police officer scolded me for essentially cutting the guy behind me off. When I tried to explain what happened, the officer asked if I had been drinking. I told him I hadn’t, and he replied “Well, I sure smell something, are you sure you haven’t been drinking or someone hasn’t spilled alcohol on you?” He repeated this line of questioning over and over again, and my answer didn’t change—No, I hadn’t been drinking, and no, I didn’t know what he smelled. I bit back the suggestion that perhaps he should go get his nose checked out, and the follow-up question as to whether he believed he had been a bloodhound in a previous life, because even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I didn’t want to go to jail because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
He then asked me to step out of the car. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there was no doubt. I was participating in my very first field sobriety test. Now, I figured that if I ever had to participate in one of those humiliating displays, I’d at the very least have had the decency to do my part earlier and actually been drinking. As I stepped out into the slow drizzle with flashlights shining on me and cars blasting by on my left side, I had a moment of surreal “This is not happening right now. This is not happening. I must be dreaming this” but the flashlights in my eyes and the rain splattering on my face proved it all too real. The cop then asked me if I needed my glasses to see, and once again, I swallowed my sarcastic responses. “No, I wear them for decoration,” “I like the sexy librarian look,” “Actually all I need is my bat radar,” and, of course, the ever popular “fuck off, I haven’t been drinking and don’t deserve to be treated this way because you want to feel like a big man.” I said none of these, because I didn’t want to have to find out that part of the sobriety test involved flinging myself down a muddy embankment.
“Unless you want me to read letters at a distance, I should be able to do whatever it is you want me to do without them just fine,” I smiled sweetly, which directly translates to “Fuck you” if you don’t have your Mellzah Body Language-to-English dictionary handy. He had me take my glasses off and set them on the hood of my car, and while his partner shined a flashlight on me, he had me follow a pen with my eyes, and then open my mouth so he could look inside. I can safely say that I’ve never been as humiliated in my life as I was at that moment. And yes, I’m posting about it on my blog for your entertainment—because what use are stories abut humiliation and degradation unless you tell others about them?
On Sunday there was a big sales event going on at the Tacoma Dome. Something about the radio ads indicated to me that I would really be missing out if I didn’t attend–and not because I believed that there was something there that I desperately needed to own, but rather, the potential for hilarity was extremely high.
These types of events, much like roadside attractions, are irresistable to me. I’m drawn to them like a moth to a flame. Like a shark to a drop of blood. Like a bee to the only person in a group who is intensely allergic to beestings. Like a cliche to a Mellzah blog post.
And I was not disappointed. Friends, it was like being in Tijuana, only with MORE trashy white people. Oh, Tacoma, how I love your aroma! The mariachi music was there. The vendors hustling you to buy leather jackets were there. The ‘designer’ handbags and sunglasses were there. If you didn’t go, and you’ve ever wanted to buy some ‘Dolce & Banana’ you missed out. Furthermore, if you’ve ever felt the need to own a t-shirt with Tupac silkscreened on it, with rhinestone accents bedazzled onto the eyes, teeth, and bling, you TOTALLY missed out.
I spent the majority of my time walking around, biting back giggles. The Scarface ‘framed art’ set me off, however, and I was very nearly temped to buy a piece of Very Serious Art depicting Jesus with the Biggest Crown of Thorns Ever, tattoos, and a river of blood to hang over my bed. However, a clearer head prevailed as I reasoned that at this stage, I cannot afford to scare away any potential suitors who may not understand my love of camp. Now, I don’t really care what gentlemen prefer, but terrifying them away from my bed is certainly not the road to happiness.
And let me make it clear, if it isn’t already: I love camp. The tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic. The Jesus TV trays and inflatable furniture. There is a gene in me that makes me love John Waters with a deep and sick sort of love. It’s the part of me that makes me giggle when I watch Uwe Boll movies. The part that makes me think you can never have too many t-shirts with witty/offensive slogans on them.
It’s exactly that part of me that made me leave the Tacoma Dome with a pair of shoes with wheels in the heels. I’ve never been more pleased to have child-size feet than I was yesterday. The fact that I will eventually crack my head open while wearing them does not concern me. What I have determined so far is that either my balance is really, really substandard, or I am doing this wrong. It’s hard to practice in the apartment, with the approximately 8 square feet of linoleum in my kitchen. It’s even harder to practice outside, with the mocking laughter of children only a faceplant away and the uneven ground to boot. Nevertheless, I am determined to glide around on my wheeled shoes if it kills me. And it may. To that effect, I went to the WinCo yesterday to observe the little rugmonkeys in their natural environment. It appears that the trick is to have one foot well out in front of the other–I’ll have to give it a shot on the warehouse floor just as soon as the boss leaves. Because yes, I wore them to work.
There’s part of me that really would like to dress nicely–to look sharp and be perceived as an adult when I leave the house, for my apartment to look sleek and modern and clutter-free. This part of me is at war with my love of kitsch and crap. How will I ever reconcile the two? As long as I own shoes with wheels in the heels, I think the kitschy crap side of me is winning.
Tonight I go to Flying Lab Software to do a usability test of Pirates of the Burning Sea AND hang out with fraxl and gehn. That’s pretty damn good for a Monday!