Okay.

I think this is the first time I made a title before I wrote my post.
Hey you guys. Want this Diet Dr. Pepper I have in my purse?
So how is everyone?

You must all come to Chicago sometime just to see the merry hilarious spectacle this wind makes of us silly walkers. Actual gusts that bluster you into the side of a building. I find this very amusing and giggle while I stagger. I've told Eric to be on the lookout for sales on skiing goggles at Burton so I can wear a pair to keep my eyes free of debris. Like newspapers and dirt. And Walgreenses.
Need my eyes.
Though this morning I discovered a pustule pulsing on the right lower rim of my right eye. Or is it my left eye, cause I was looking in the mirror.
This news will prompt memories in most everyone of the story about Mickey and his sty upon sty upon sty and Robyn saying "Cor stymie!" And reducing everyone to fits. Such an effective story.
I like that you have a dog, The Debra. I especially like that he makes all sorts of mischief and you love him still. This I cannot say for myself and Suprise. Though I still love him still, there are huge swaths of time cut through my nights when I feel shocked by the amount of hatred I can feel for him. Hatred. He enjoys leaving strips of the shower curtain in various locations throughout the house. Also Riley can most always, if she is missing some produce (garlic, leeks, scissors), find it all under the couch.
And he KNOWS. Knows what he is doing. He has learned that it is not my favorite for him to hook his claws into my dresses and yank them off their hangers to the floor. He has learned this so well in fact, that now, whenever he feels the first ticklings of hunger, he immediately jumps off the bed, strides into the closet, takes a seat directly beneath my sundress section and then turns slowly and fixes me with a meaningful gaze. We stare at each other, knowing exactly what the other is thinking. I reach slowly for the green plastic squirt bottle. Suprise, unblinking, reaches slowly up with his front feet to the hems of my dresses. Maintaining eye contact, he SUDDENLYSTARTSSCRATCHINGANDPULLINGMYDRESSESSASHARDASHECAN.
This prompts me, like a starter pistol, to leap from the bed and crash into the closet, shouting "NO!" and squirting him way many more times than necessary. But it bothers me so because he is doing it ON PURPOSE. Just because he is hungry. And I know this would be solved by my taking his sitting beneath my skirts as a signal, and feeding him right away. But this is not something I can bring myself to give in to. I will not be controlled by that pygmie crossbreed bat that I raised myself. I mean- I probably will- but I'm going to put up a nice loud fight for at least a few months more.
My brother bought my a stuffed pillow that is a penguin for my birthday. And it has changed my life. I now sleep at least 5 hours more a night. And practically fall into a coma. Many times I have awoken to find the lower quadrants of the penguin seeping with drool.
Tonight was Halloween. Except it wasn't. But I can tell, in Chicago Halloween starts the 28th of October. Don't know how long it'll carry on.
My new darling friend Nicole was throwing a bash tonight at her ridiculously expansive nooked and crannied apartment off the fancy twitching Belmont stop. Jake and Eric and I knew about this well in advance, and have been muttering occassionally about what our costumes should be for about 2 weeks. The boys decided to go as each other. Which is dear. Cause they are pretty much Daisy and Violet. Or Beavis and Butthead. You know, I've never seen that show. What awful names. Also I shouldn't draw comparisons when I don't know what I'm talking about.
Anyway.
I didn't know what to go as, and had almost decided to throw in the costume towel entirely once I realized I could not, in fact, get the Triceratops costume for babies I saw in an adult medium, when a stroke of brilliance hit me during game 1 of the World Series (this is for the baseball, for those of you who don't know). I could USE my shoddy riduculous haircut for good! I can be my current crush (I guess it's a crush. Having crushes makes me feel silly), Tim Lincecum.
Tim is starting pitcher (though after Wednesday, he may be demoted to water boy) for the San Francisco Giants. And he looks a little like a starved Dickensian orphan who is dying of polio. But something about him....
Jake says he's the ugliest man he's ever seen. Eric I'm sure would have had something to say, except he WASN'T AT THE BASEBALL GAME. And none of us know why....
Anyway, Jake has all the baseball and football suits of all the necessary players, so costume design wasn't going to be a problem.
Well, today, after work, I trotted over to the Hancock Observatory, where they sell cheesecake and offensively large televisions, to get some cash out of the ATM. I do my thing. I receive a receipt. I do not receive cash. I think: groan. But at least, I think, this is good cause the branch is right upstairs and they will correct the problem.
So I stride responsibly inside, receipt clenched- no not clenched, but held neatly so as not to ruin it- in my hand. (Tom says when he needs receipts from me they are most likely scrumpled up in the bottom of my shoe. He's near right.)
So this receipt, being important, was held responsibly flat.
I present it to the teller and explain my problem. I am passed immediately off to a swarthy sticky looking man named Brett Lourdeveaux or something stupid. (Not the Brett part.)
Swarthy Sticky sits me down and says, "Well, that's too bad. I guess you can file a complaint with the bank branch in Skokie and after a long process they might be able to get you your money. But really you should switch to our bank." I tell him that is not why I'm there. He gets in about three more jabs as to why I'm a fool for using Wells Fargo. I decide I hate him. I leave. And they did not give me my money.
So I decide to go home and watch Disc 1 of Season 3 of The Tudors and take a walk down to Great China where I hope to pick up a Chinese Food menu to tack to my wall. I've always thought they were pretty.
I ring up Eric to tell him to have a great show tonight and break a leg. He-being perceptive- realizes this means I'm not coming to the show, and secures me a comp. I think, oh good. I'll go. Then I realize the show starts in 45 minutes and I am a 45 minute train ride, a walk to the train station, and a costume away from being there.
I know what to do first. I strap on as many bras as I have clean. This is standard procedure. Takes only seconds. I yank on the Lincecum shirt Jake has loaned me. I am now in a shirt. And underwear. I cannot go out like this. I decide if I cannot wear a full baseball uniform, I will do the next most logical thing. I apply black tights, black and white striped leggings, Maggie's golden glitter bubble skirt I found in the discard pile at Theatre IV, Maggie's enormous silver hoop earrings with stars attached to the bottoms and my zesty white go-go boots. Also a newsie cap and a houndstooth coat and the thick thick woolen mittens Brett's mom gave me two Christmases ago that are extremely effective and keep your hands as warm as they would be if you were giving two tiny buffalo pelvic exams.
Also raspberry shine lip gloss. So I look astonishing.
I pretend to be Carrie Bradshaw running through traffic in her high heels as I clomp gracelessly down to the train station at an unhealthy clip.
I am, of course, late to the show, but get there in time to see most of Eric's business. He does a great job, and is the most professional one up there, we think.
Then he decides he wants burritos, and lo and behold, there is a Chipotle on the first floor of Second City. Of course.
So I admire my ensemble in the window while the boys eat burritos. Then one of the guys that was in the show with Eric walks in. He sits down with us and proceeds to take everything that we say completely seriously for the next 20 minutes. So that was no fun.
Then Eric leaves to go to 4 or 5 parties he has lined up before the 1 measly party Jake and I have been invited to. We agree to all meet up at Nicole's.
We take the train. Jake does the Sudoku. He does Sudoku, I do crosswords. We are going to crosstrain each other so we can have races. I must keep my wits sharp so I can continue wiping the floor with Adam in this arena when I get home.
The party.
We are near to the first people there. I have no idea who ANYONE is supposed to be except the man who was dressed as Morning Wood. And I did not figure that out by reading his t-shirt.
It is almost completely dark.
I go in the bathroom and look under the sink. I also use the bathroom. I'm not that creepy.
Though as a child I had a family that lived under the sink in my Nana's house. The Lysols. There are details. I will not go into now.
I come out of the bathroom.
Nicole erupts from her bedroom wearing a suit jacket, fishnets, panties and lots of old age makeup. You can always tell those VCU kids. She proceeds to interview me with a microphone she has fashioned ingeniously out of a toilet paper roll and a gutted tennis ball. I allow myself to be interviewed and then ask Jake who she is supposed to be. He says Harry Caray? I don't know how to spell that. I only know he has Xed and is Will Ferrell talking about cheese.
There are also lots of girls apparently going as their own breasts. And a Newsie. And one of the girls who lives there is a costume designer, I remembered that, and she is costumed as what appears to be a transvestite model jockey. Turns out she is David Bowie from Labyrinth.
Nobody knows what I am, but also nobody knows WHO I am, so all is well. I settle in on the couch with a cup of spiced cider to do what I do at parties and watch.
Then a person comes in as Santa Claus. There is no way to know if this is a man or a woman. Also Mulan? And a princess Jasmine who immediately sat down next to me on the couch with her boyfriend who was costumed as Wolverine and began to eat an enormous piece of deep dish pizza she has pulled out of her purse. For this she removed her veil.
Frodo comes in, and removes his Chucks to make things more authentic. Then another roommate bursts out of her room as Lara Croft and does awkwardly low squats for an awkwardly long amount of time in the foyer while she fires her toy light-up guns. This is something she repeats (for just as long) anytime she is addressed by anyone.
Someone else is dressed as the freeway.
Then a very darling boy enters from what is either the walk in freezer or another door to the outside I didn't know about. He is wearing all gray, and looks to be costumed as a successful downtown New York actor. Jake leans over and explains that he is wearing all gray, and has a "T" printed on his t-shirt. So he is......Great. Is clever.
Other featured ensemble members include the blue-haired girl from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a Swedish milkmaid on whom you could practically SEE the gangrene forming, and an extremely drunk fairy whose dress was so tight it was performing a double masectomy on her while she lurched and staggered around the room swilling Vitamin Water and whiskey and narrowly avoiding putting people's eyes out with her wing tips.
Also this fairy had a whip. Which was handed to me at one point by a Robin Hood who did not know that Merry Men probably did not get their pantyhose in the women's department, and which I passed off at once to the gender ambiguous Santa Claus. I felt that best.
After that I decided to go home and write it all down.
In the years since I graduated college, I've wished sometimes for the opportunity to do all those college things that people do when they are that age. You know- have wild parties, drink on the porch, sing, dance, mingle. Chat, laugh uncontrollably. (Well that one I do most of the time.)
Cause when I was in college I spoke to no one, looked at no one, and attended as infrequently as possible. So I feel like I want those experiences I was just too shy to attend to. I thought maybe I had missed something I would have loved.
But you know- I think that parties like that are certainly a great experience- so much to see and listen to and so many interesting people doing so many interesting things. And that's great. And I don't know why I just feel useless at parties, unless I'm playing a game, or helping in the kitchen, or having some activity. I don't do well at all with idle chatter. And I thought, while I sat on the couch between Jasmine and the Morning Wood, maybe this just isn't something I'm cut out to revel in. Shy or not. Cause I have tried. And that is ok.