The Grad Schoolyard Diarrhea Song

Mr. Awesome has the McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes checked out from the library right now, which contains "The Grad Schoolyard Diarrhea Song." He read me the first verse out loud:

When you're analyzing Joyce
And your butthole has no choice
Diarrhea!
Diarrhea!

I laughed at that so hard I cried. I see McSweeney's has also been kind enough to put the whole thing online so you can sing it at home.


p.s. I know, I know! More wedding, less buttholes. I'll get to that post soon, I promise.

Wedding, Part I

Okay, there have been requests for wedding stories. Why have I not shared any wedding stories? I don't know. For one thing, I don't want to go all mushy on you. But even more than that, everything went so swimmingly that there were no hilarious/horrible tales of the florist not showing up, or Uncle Phillip collapsing drunkenly into the cake. (Or the tower of doughnuts, as the case may be).



It was just fun. At least for me.


I'll tell you my secret of wedding success: my friends did everything. EVERYTHING. I did nothing. Of course, the wedding coordinator helped a lot. Ha! Just kidding. No wedding coordinator.

Actually, can I just take a moment to talk about how redonkalus it is that wedding planners even exist? I mean yes, planning a wedding can be stressful--even a redneck, doughnut-invested hoedown such as ours. But still. Wedding planners are not the answer.

Case in point: There is a wedding planner working on my brother's wedding (taking place late this summer at the Montgomery Country Club). That wedding will involve eight specially-created topiaries, several ice sculptures, and full floral service for the rehearsal dinner. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, baby! It's an extravaganza of extravagance! Don't worry, I'll take pictures. I just count my blessings that I managed to avert being a bridesmaid.

But anyway! Back to me! I had placed an order for flowers from a farmer at Pike Place Market (total cost for 20+ bouquets, about $300), and my friends A and P picked them up at the crack of dawn on the day of the wedding. Tulips were still in season, so that's what we got.


The set-up crew (12 of our friends + my parents) spent an hour or so arranging them and putting them in the vases I'd thrifted for a quarter apiece. It wasn't too fancy, but I thought the end result looked nice enough.

We didn't want to do too much anyway because we liked the place where we got married. It's a Native American cultural center that sits on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. This is the inside.

This is the view.

Can you picture the magics? Good! Keep on picturing them and I'll be back soon with a thrilling play-by-play of How It All Went Down.

Advice for Criminals

Those who know me best know that I can be sort of, well--not exactly slow, but, you know . . . special. Like, I usually can't locate at least one of the following: keys, work ID, wallet, sunglasses, drivers license, or phone. And I regularly walk into a room and forget why I'm there. And sometimes conversations fade from my mind the second they are over.

But I've been worse than usual lately. I think the two days of unaccustomed warmth and sunshine earlier this week boiled my brain.

Monday was the first day of nice weather, and since I was working the evening shift, I had the genius idea to sit out on the porch and enjoy my morning coffee and newspaper in the sunshine. And it was all very nice and relaxing and wonderful--until I tried to get back inside the house. And realized that I'd locked myself out. Barefoot. In my pajamas.

Now, I wasn't indecent or anything--I had on a hoodie and t-shirt and pajama pants. Still, there is something kind of undignified about standing around stupidly in the yard wearing bright floral paperweight pants, tugging pointlessly on the front door.

After about 45 minutes of wandering around the house climbing on things, banging on other things, and pushing on still other things, I did finally find a way inside that did minimal damage to our home. I won't share my incredible McGyver-type solution with you, lest you be a burglar casing my joint. (Just know, criminals, that my house is now 100% secure, and also we have two ravenous attack cats. With rabies.)

If you are thinking of beginning a brand new career in burglary, allow me to recommend floral-print pants as your preferred attire. According to my scientific research, they make you approximately 437 times more invisible than camouflage, a cat suit, or ordinary street clothes. Probably fifty people walked by while I was desperately trying to break into my own home and not a single one of them so much as glanced in my direction.

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Incidentally, I must direct you to the Pop Culture One, who is currently featuring a heart-warming story of shoe worship that took place at my wedding.

Small Fried Fish

First of all, many many thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes and good vibes to Mr. Awesome and me over the interwebs. I will get around to thanking everyone individually, but in the meantime just know that it means a lot.

I'm pretty behind on my blog reading. (Frankly, I'm a little bit despairing that I will ever catch up over at Go Fug Yourself. There were simply too many fashion travesties while I was away, and I am haunted by the fear that deep in the May archives is the Most Hilarious Fashion Mistake Ever. ) But anyway, I was catching up with Myra-Lee the other day and her recent post about The Amazing Race really got me thinking.

What I've been thinking is, it's now or never for Mr. Awesome and me on the Amazing Race. Don't you think? I mean, Newlywed Librarians? That is TELEVISION GOLD. We'd have to play it up, of course--go on and on about how our incredible research skills would give us the competitive edge over the competition. We've got lots of cardigan sweaters covered in cat hair, we're nerds in just about every imaginable way. We're all set to be stereotyped in a competitive television reality show!

The only problem is, I don't wear glasses. I'd have to get some fake ones, for sure. And could we take Myra-Lee and her sister? That I don't know. I am pretty sure that America would fall in love with Mr. Awesome, and feel sorry him that he is stuck with my dead weight.

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On the other hand, maybe we would do better on Fear Factor.

During our trip, we discovered that you can get two kinds of food in Croatia: 1.) Italian food that's not nearly as good as the Italian food in Italy, and 2.) seafood bordering on the "what IS that?". It was all fine--pizza was quite tasty, really, and so was the gelato--but it did get a little repetitive.

So when we walked past a restaurant one night and saw some patrons eating french fries, we got all excited. Delicious fried food! Hooray! Then when we saw "Small Fried Fish" on the menu, we thought we'd hit the jackpot. Fish and chips! Awesome!

Or, not quite:

As you can see, this dish was prepared by scooping some minnows out of the bait tank and scooping them directly into the fryer. I ate one and got so many scales in my teeth that I had to give it up.

Mr. Awesome? The vegetarian who only very recently started eating seafood? Ate about twenty of them, strictly out of guilt. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for the waiter, who came back and said in perfect English, "You did not like these?"

"Oh no," said Mr. Awesome. "They were delicious. We just REALLY filled up on the bread."

wicked awesome cannibals

Today I talked about books with some very enthusiastic middle schoolers at a local private school. Sometimes visiting the private schools is like visiting Bizarro World: the 6th and 7th graders were so beside themselves with excitement at the prospect of reading books this summer that I was worried they would pee their little pants. It just made me love all of them to death, and also made me think about the fact that if I ever have a kid it will inevitably only be interested in sports.

The 8th graders were funny, though. They were willing to talk books, too, but they wanted me to be aware that they only read Very Serious Leet-trah-choor: Jane Austen (all the girls) and Cormac McCarthy (all the boys). But their analysis of these books was still endearingly middle schoolish. Here, for instance, was the commentary offered by one young man of McCarthy's The Road: "And then like, there are these cannibals! And they eat babies! It's wicked awesome!!"

And speaking of awesome, Mr. Awesome himself started a new job today. There are a lot of cool things about his new job, but most impressive to me is the panoramic view of Puget Sound he'll have from his reference desk. His old office was in a windowless basement. These things always matter, but in Seattle the amount of light you get each day is a serious freaking business. If I worked in a windowless office there is no way I could make it through the winter without heavy medication. And probably some "corrected"* coffee each morning.

Incidentally, I love the word "sound" to refer to a body of water. In conversation I probably refer to "The Sound" more often than necessary because I just think it has a nice ring to it. I'm not sure why. I also like "archipelago." I think they both sound like geographical features that should only exist inside children's fantasy books, and I still think it's neat that are real and very close by.

*The Italian term for "spiking with booze." The idea that coffee is all screwed up until you fix it with liquor cracks me up for some reason.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

• Getting married wasn’t so scary. It was pretty awesome.
• The honeymoon was also aces.
• Being back at work isn’t so bad.
• Pictures forthcoming.
• Obama! Obama! Obama!