You know what I hope heaven is like?

An episode of So You Think You Dance, where every day is choreographed by Wade Robson, and everything is dramatic and jazz handsy, and everyone knows how to arabesque, and wearing short-shorts and bustiers is de rigour, and you can always dance with a beautiful Russian.

Bad stewardship.

There's this story I wrote once, I don't remember when, that I really liked. It was about a boy and girl who are falling out of love, and they go on a trip with some friends. It won an honorable mention in a flash fiction contest, then I used to enter things like that. I've never really cared for my fiction, but, in my mind, this story was different.

I can't find it anywhere. It's lost. Like Hemingway's suitcase of stories on a French train, except I have no one to blame but myself. And also, not that good.

I never took good care of my stories, and so they've flitted away from me like dry leaves.

Kitten heels + cuffed pants = bad idea.

If you wear heeled shoes with cuffed pants, you will trip. You will catch your heel in the cuff and fall forward in slow-motion, as if you're sliding into home base. Except home base is someone's cubicle in the desktop publishing department. And you'll try to play it off with a a friendly "Hi!" Like this is the kind of entrance you make all the time. But instead of laughing with you, she'll look at you like you're Urkel, and she'll ask you in a voice that parents use with kids who are constantly getting into mischief if you are OK. She won't laugh with you.

Redfaced, all you'll have in your defense is a skinned knee.

Welsh whore.

You know me, you know the story: my first name is the Romanized name for Wales, my last name means, well, "woman of ill repute." Thus, Welsh whore. Which has been quite the label to live up to, I'll tell you what. But it also means always having to convince cashiers and the like that yes, that's my actual name there on my checkcard. It's quite an elaborate hoax otherwise. Or possibly identity theft. Oh, okay, you got me! Here's my real card...and if you look over my shoulder, there's the camera! Gotcha!

Here's an exchange I had recently:

Me: [hands my checkcard]
Him: Woah! Lovelady! Is that, like, your real name?
Me: [slits own wrists over having to hear this question for the 9 billionth time] Yep.
Him: Lovelady! I want to party with your parents!

Which is weird, because when I talked to my mom tonight, she asked if next time she and my dad come to Austin, was there someone possibly high, possibly working in the service industry, they could party with?

Weekend round-up

I had a lovely weekend. It's been a while since I haven't had a weekend that was mind-numbingly boring, so this was a welcome change. And many more....[jazz hands].

Friday night: met Kathy for dinner at Home Slice, which, despite being full of hipsters and people who look deceptively like other people ("I think I know that guy, but I have no idea how"), was quite enjoyable. Except for having bird poo splash on our jeans while we sat under a tree, waiting for a table. That part was gross.

Saturday morning: met Beth for a walk. I tell you what: you need to figure something out or think out loud, go on a walk with a girl friend. All problems solved. We went for Mediterranean food for lunch. God bless the chickpea.

Saturday afternoon: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I already wrote about that. But it encouraged me to try to re-read HPatHBP before the next book comes this week. Since I have the reading retention skills of a goldfish, this is a good refresher for me. What? Who's Hermione? What's a Death Eater? Huh?

Saturday night: mourned missing out on RA concert.

Sunday afternoon: took the Little Sis to the Children's Museum, which was fun. We played giant-size game of mancala, and she beat me at it so fast I didn't know we were actually even playing. That brings my game-playing skills to like -80. I don't know what that means, either.

The kindness of strangers.

Whereas a dog never forgets a kindness, a cat never remembers them; instead, he will tip your glass of water into your bath and pretend it's a plugged-in hairdryer.

Whereas a dog will take up all the room in your bed, a cat will wait until you are vulnerably sleeping and then suddenly pounce on your face with all the fury of hell, fangs and claws first.

Sometimes I think I should get GM his own pet cat to bully. But mostly I am afraid they will form a rogue gang and straight-up murder me.

Someone: Will I ever get the life I thought I was going to get?
Someone else: No one gets the life they think they were going to get.

Dirty Muggle.

Is it inappropriate that I teared up at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? Is it inappropriate that I want one of those countdown clocks for Daniel Radcliffe like they had for the Olsen twins before they turned 18?

OK, yes to that second one.

I've got the fever, and the cure is not more cowbell: it's Book 7. I'm not going to a midnight release, and I'm not (ever) going to write fan fiction (though I could go for a spin-off starring the Weasley family), but my goodness do I love HP and J. K. Rowling.

Goes bump

I woke up this morning wearing a different shirt than the one I wore to bed. And I have no idea why. Which is weird. But not unusual.

I've never injured myself sleepwalking, but I did once (allegedly) reach under my roommate's covers, grab her feet, and yell "gotcha!" I locked myself out of my freshman dorm room twice. I've answered the phone and had conversations. I've gone downstairs and accused a group of people of leaving a snake in my room. I've woken up crouched on my couch in a fighting position. I've woken up on the floor in my closet. I think I talk every night, still; it's a wonder I haven't given away all my secrets. I'm sure I'll make short-order of that on this blog, though. My vault door isn't so much a door as a rice-paper screen.

"You will admit that if it wasn't life it was magnificent."

While I'm waiting to learn of Harry Potter's fate, I've picked up Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise again. I read it years ago and am enjoying it in the second read-through. It's not quite as clean and deliberate as Gatsby, but it's engaging and sparkling and intelligent and playful, just as you want your Fitzgerald to be.

One of the reasons I enjoy Fitzgerald's work is wholly removed from his actual writing. He and Zelda--you cannot forget Zelda, an integral part of the image and the reality and everything that came after--were, and I suppose still are, the very personification of promise, of decadence and frivolity, of levity in a world trying to find its feet: the drowning out of reality with champagne and rides in open cars and splashing in big-city fountains while wearing furs and diamonds.

They circled the flame in a way that left their fates certain. Yet it's a beautiful dance until then. And so we watch.

Fitzgerald was America when everything was still possible: "They wandered on, mixing in the Broadway crowd, dreaming on the music that eddied out of the cafes. New faces flashed on and off like myriad lights, pale or rouged faces, tired, yet sustained by a wearied excitement."

Fitzgerald is like the moment before the fall.

Kafkaesque

There's a cricket armageddon going down in my office building. They are everywhere, blending into the corporate-patterned carpet just enough so that you're constantly almost stepping on them. In the break room, in the bathroom, in the cubes. My main concern is that one will jump on me (you know how wily insects are) or crawl up my pant leg, whereupon I will absolutely freak.

But there have been worse things. I once had a run-in with cockroach that made me get religion.

About two and half years ago, when I was living in my one-bedroom apartment on S. Lamar, I woke up in the middle of the night with a distinct feeling that something was on my bed. (I had this feeling once before, and clicked on the light to find a cave cricket cozied up on my pillow. I had no idea what it was--I thought it was some unholy union of cricket and roach, and I was torn between wanting to faint, wanting to take a scalding shower and never get out, and capturing this creature for science to discover.)

Anyway, call is sixth sense. I turned on the light to find a giant cockroach perched on the edge of my bed. And yes it's cliche, but that thing was Texas size: four inches if it was a centimeter. Not even being hyperbolic. I knew I had to stop it before it crawled under my covers (no one should ever have to make that contingency), so I batted it with my bare hand (blech!) off the bed. And I lost it: I didn't see where it landed or where it went. I stalked it for 20 minutes, wearing tennis shoes and with my finger poised on the Raid can. But it was gone. For sanity's sake, I told myself it shimmied back out the door, and went back to sleep.

The next morning I opened my medicine cabinet and found it perched on the my toothbrush.

You know those scenes in the movies where a bomb goes off, and for a moment everything is silence and slow motion? It was like that. My toothbrush! Is there anything more sacred or personal than someone's toothbrush? I really can't think of anywhere I would have preferred to find a roach less. It seriously makes me want to throw up in my mouth just thinking about it.

I wish I could tell you how this was resolved, but I think I blocked it from memory to protect my mental health. I'm sure there was weeping and gnashing of teeth and "why, God, why?" and the brushing of teeth with a finger that morning and the immediate purchase of new everything that was in the cabinet.