"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

Do you ever think about how terrible it would be not to know how to read? I mean, maybe you don't think about it all. Maybe you're one of those people who only reads magazines IF THAT and you don't understand why a person would check out 15 books from the library when she knows there's no way she can read that many books in two weeks or why she'd go to a used book sale and buy two giant paper bags worth of books even though she has absolutely no more bookshelves in her house NOT THAT I'M SPEAKING FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OR ANYTHING THIS IS ALL HYPOTHETICAL.

What was I talking about? Oh, right, reading. What if you didn't know how to read? You wouldn't be reading this, for one thing. You probably wouldn't even be on the internet, because the internet is so full of words.

(Oh wait, never mind, the internet is also full of porn and cat pictures. Go about your business, you non-reader, you.)

Say you couldn't read and I typed something like this: Hector the pink elephant was tightrope-walking with Kurt Vonnegut's ghost (who was wearing a tutu because he discovered in his afterlife that he really wanted to be a ballerina) when a 200 pound bee flew in and stung them FIVE TIMES and they both fell off the tightrope but it didn't matter because Hector landed on a giant trampoline and Kurt Vonnegut is a ghost REMEMBER and falling really far doesn't hurt ghosts, no, in fact, THEY LOVE IT and they do it for fun all the time. It's true. Ask any ghost. I'll wait.

YOU WOULD HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT. Aren't you glad you can read? Yes, obviously, you are, OMG do I have to do all the thinking around here?

My grandma used to read all the time before she started having memory problems and then she mostly stopped because she couldn't remember anything she'd read the time before. A lot of things about my grandma's situation made me really sad, on a daily basis, but that was a total gut-punch because who would anticipate that? I'm not trying to get all dark and depressing, not at all, but it was something I'd never considered before it happened to my grandma. That you'd lose that ability. No more flying around with Harry Potter, no daily walks with Elizabeth Bennet or cocktails with Bridget Jones or saving books with Guy Montag, just NOTHING BUT REAL LIFE. And real life is the worst, even if you aren't suffering from dementia, able to remember events from twenty years ago but unable to figure out what happened in the last twenty minutes.

My grandma has been on my mind a lot lately, probably because of all the Christmas music, but I often think of her when I'm reading, about how I might not love books as much as I do if she and my parents hadn't encouraged me to read, hadn't gotten me all the books I wanted, hadn't so often left me alone to just BE with my books. Most days, when I get home from work, I change into pajamas and plop down in what's become my favorite room of the house. We call it the library (because it's where the books live) but my sister calls it The Quiet Room because there's no TV in there, which she thinks is weird. But it is quiet and the afternoon sunlight streams in and I can stretch out on the couch, facing the window, with a book in my hands and a dog in my lap and, once Joe gets home, it's the happiest part of my day. 

So, anyway. Have you hugged your books today?

to boldly go

A few weeks ago, Joe and I took a quick trip to Toledo to see Mike Birbiglia perform. We dropped Max off with my parents on Friday and left earlyish on Saturday to begin the drive. We had plenty of time, since we didn't really need to be anywhere until the show started at 8 that night, but we wanted to leave time to do fun stuff we might run across on the way. To say nothing of the MANDATORY scheduled stop at Bowling Green, so Joe could eat his beloved stuffed breadsticks at Pollyeyes. It sounds like I'm making fun, but I'm really not. Those breadsticks are delicious.

The extra time turned out to be precious, PRECIOUS I TELL YOU, because we randomly decided to stop at the Neil Armstrong museum in Wapokaneta. I think, in the back of my mind, I knew that Neil Armstrong was from Ohio and we've driven by this museum about a million times, but never stopped. We almost didn't stop this time. According to Joe, our decision went something like this:

Joe: Hey, do you want to stop at the Neil Armstrong museum?
Me: UGH BORING.
Joe: It could be fun.
Me: FINE.
[five minutes later, pulling into the parking lot]
Me: OMG I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WOULD BE ALL THIS SPACE STUFF HERE! THIS IS AWESOME.
Joe: You...didn't realize there'd be space stuff...at the Neil Armstrong Air & SPACE Museum.

Which...yeah, is probably accurate. I don't know what I thought would be at the Neil Armstrong museum if NOT space stuff but such is the wonder and non-logic of my mind. Honestly, I would have been happy not even going inside the museum, since this was outside:

I'm in the window...BECAUSE I'M AN ASTRONAUT

The museum itself was interesting, though. Along with learning about Neil Armstrong and becoming super best friends with him (that comes with the ticket price), we discovered that Joe is too tall to be an astronaut and, thanks to a capsule docking video game, we discovered that neither of us is patient or coordinated enough to fly spacecraft. Which. Duh.

The museum went in a giant circle (LIKE THE MOON) and eventually led to a movie theater, where we watched a movie that I'm pretty sure was from the 80s but guess what STILL INTERESTING. I know I take the fact that we walked on the moon (well, not like, we as in you and I, but we as in THE HUMAN RACE) because it happened so long ago and now we're on Mars (sort of) and junk but YOU GUYS it's pretty fantastic that an actual human person has stepped foot on the moon, right? Someone ran around on that giant cheese-filled ball and lived through it. THAT IS SO AWESOME. When can we move there?

Anyway, the movie was great and all, sort of like time traveling back to a time we thought we'd have some sort of space station on the moon by now, but the best part was the hallway leading into the theater. IT WAS FULL OF STARS.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I know it was just all Christmas lights and mirrors, but I didn't care. For a minute or two, it felt like I was walking through space, no suit, no ship, just me. So thanks, Neil. BFF 4EVA!!!

Joey had reasons. They were threefold.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, YES EVEN MORE FAVORITE THAN CHRISTMAS. Thanksgiving is an excuse for sloth and gluttony, which are two of my favorite vices, and, yeah, you can eat a lot and sleep a lot on Christmas but there's so much PRESSURE at Christmastime. You have to buy the right gifts and make sure you spend time with all of your friends and family, and there's usually some work-related holiday function you have to attend and when, WHEN I ASK YOU, is the free time at Christmas? There's no such thing.

Not Thanksgiving, though. Sure, you might have to make several stops on your Thanksgiving journey, but there's delicious food at all of them. It's what the Pilgrims always dreamed of. I think. Right? Wasn't that was the point of the first Thanksgiving? Eating and drinking a lot? And being really smelly?

And so, in honor of America's laziest holiday, I present...A LIST. My top five Thanksgivings, in no particular order:

1. The Shrinking Table

Back when I was in high school, I think, we went to Thanksgiving at my Grandma's, because TRADITION. My cousins were all very wee and I spent most of my time chasing them around my Grandma's house until one or all of us got tired. In a brief moment of rest, I was sitting at a large folding table with my dad when my cousin Josh, then four or so, came in. He walked out of the room, and I don't know how this came about, but my dad and I decided to fold up the table we were sitting at and set up a slightly smaller one. When Josh came back in, he was amazed! The table had shrunk! What sorcery was this?!

He left again, we folded up that table, and replaced it with a slightly smaller one. Josh came back in and was all, "wtf," but, you know, in four-year-old-speak, and I told him Casper had come in and was sprinkling shrinking powder on everything. Which maybe traumatized him for life but we're not sure yet. Josh left again, we replaced that table with a TV tray, Josh came in and saw it, left to look for Casper, and when he came back in, we'd put the TV tray away and told Josh that the table finally got so small that we couldn't see it anymore. It was awesome.

Also, I just remembered that this might have also happened on Christmas, not Thanksgiving. THIS LIST IS RUINED ALREADY.

2. The First Thanksgiving (with Joe)

I'm not talking about actual Thanksgiving, when our schedule was thus: I went to my family's Thanksgiving, he went to his family's, I went over to his family's for dessert, we both went back to MY family's for dessert...I mean, wtf, that is crazy, which is why now we alternate Thanksgiving holidays with our families. Last year, we spent Thanksgiving with my family, this year we spend it with his family, and so on and so on forever and ever.

I'm talking about the next day, when we consolidated all of the Thanksgiving leftovers our parents had given us, with a trip to the grocery store for extra mashed potatoes (probably), and rewarmed everything so we could eat another Thanksgiving dinner, in our pajamas, while watching It's Always Sunny or some other such nonsense. Perfect day, yes?

3. The Turkey Trot

Back in 2007, Heidi and I decided that the best way to start our Thanksgiving would obviously be to run five miles, because then there would be zero guilt about the 50 pounds of mashed potatoes we planned on eating later in the day. We "trained" for it and were at the starting line at 8am that frigid, rainy morning and, though we felt like dying several times during the race, we finished it. I wanted to wear my number for the rest of the day but eventually showered so I could spend Thanksgiving with my family, drinking wine and playing games and talking about my upcoming trip to DC because that was also the same year as:

4. Collective Thanksgiving!

This was not the first time I'd ever met anyone IRL after getting to know them online, and it wasn't the last time, but it was the most memorable. I don't even remember how exactly The Collective as a group came to be. Kat and I had been reading each other's blogs for quite a while, and I vaguely remember somehow stumbling across Heather Anne and Abigail's blogs, but I don't remember when we all stopped being Heather Anne and Kat and Abigail and Jennie and instead became a complete set.

I also can't remember whose idea it was to get together for Thanksgiving, but that person is a genius. I got up in the wee small hours of the morning on Black Friday, but it wasn't to go shopping, it was to drive to DC and meet some of the best people I've ever had the honor of knowing. There was something magical about that trip. We got to skip the "getting to know you" portion of IRL friendships because we already knew each other. We knew each other for years without ever having met. But, you know, I'm so glad we finally did meet, obviously. I mean, otherwise I would have missed Abigail and Heather Anne's version of the OK Go treadmill dance, and who other than Kat would ever make me a balloon animal and then tie it to a firecracker? THEY ARE THE GREETEST.

5. The One With Chandler in a Box

Yeah, I know I wasn't technically AT this Thanksgiving celebration but I watched it on TV and isn't that almost the same thing? YES.

once upon a time

This is the final week of the writing class I've been taking for the past month or so. I got a bit off track last week, something I'm blaming on wedding-weekend recovery but really it was just because I was tired and a bit sick and I gave myself some time to just...be. (See also: I'm lazy.)

The class provides prompts each day and, though I haven't done all of them yet, it's comforting to know they're there when I need them. Because, you see, the point of this class was not to write a masterpiece in five weeks, but to get into a habit of writing every day. And I'm almost there. I don't know if anyone has noticed (or, you know, cared), but I've been posting here more often, and between that and working on the writing class prompts, I believe I've written something almost every day WHICH IS CRAZY. I don't remember the last time I did that.

I've always loved writing and telling stories, from the time I learned how to write more than a sentence, but somewhere between The Evil Summer and now, I turned it into a chore. And that's ridiculous because I actually really love to write! But I stopped doing it because I felt like I HAD to. WHICH IS ALSO RIDICULOUS. No one is holding a gun to my head. Where was all this pressure coming from? Oh, right, from myself, because I kept coming up with new projects and blogs and I started like five novels but never finished any of them, which all obviously means that I SUCK AND AM TERRIBLE AND DON'T EVEN DESERVE TO HAVE THESE TYPING FINGERS.

Anyway. One good thing about this class is that it's reminded me how much fun writing can be. It's probably the most fun I've had writing since the 4th grade, when our teacher gave us free time to not only write stories, but to illustrate them and make actual books out of them. I found one of these books a few months ago, when I took home an old scrapbook of mine from my parents' house.

It's called Benny the Bored Bunny and, though I didn't remember the story I'd written until I recently reread it, I remember the act of making it. Sitting quietly at my desk in Mrs. Castrejon's class, my head resting on my arm as I wrote the story, taking my story into the small room that served as the book-making factory, painstakingly putting the book together, and holding it proudly in my hands once it was finished.

Alliteration is fun!

I remember how excited I was to show it to my parents, as if I'd written and published a New York Times bestseller, not that I knew what the New York Times was at that point but shut up this is my story. And, really, that's how you should feel after you write something. After you've put that much work into it, you should want to show it to everyone, until they get sick of it and tell you to go away and find something else to do OMG WHY DON'T YOU EVER GO OUTSIDE.

Ahem.

So, once I finish this writing class, my goal isn't to immediately write some bestseller. I mean, OBVIOUSLY, right? Instead, it's to write something I'm proud of. Something I've worked hard on. Something I'm excited to show to anyone who might be paying attention. That's all, really, and right now it seems like just enough.

that's so monday

If I really wanted to figure out why I was in an absolutely shitty-ass mood today, I could do it pretty easily, but who wants to dwell on the negative OH WAIT I DO.

My bad mood most likely stemmed from one or all of the following:

1. It's Monday.
2. It's raining.
3. It's cold.
4. It's Monday.
5. I didn't have time for lunch today so instead I ate: some carrots, celery and peanut butter, pepperoni slices, almonds.
6. This weekend was too good which made the fact that it's Monday EVEN MORE MONDAY.
7. Today I realized that Thanksgiving is next week and I haven't gotten anyone any Thanksgiving gifts yet! I assume I'm supposed to be buying gifts because once Halloween was over, commercials started telling me to buy stuff for people other than myself and since Thanksgiving is the next holiday, THE GIFTS MUST BE FOR THANKSGIVING.
8. It's Monday.

All of those reasons led me to where I sat at about 2:30 today, which was at my desk, eating peanut butter out of a jar while listening to these two songs over and over:



and



I'm in a much better mood now but I'm not sure if it's from the song therapy or just because I'm now at home. Either way, I DON'T CARE BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT? LIFE IS A HAPPY SONG SO SHUT UP YOU STUPID WHINY JERK*.


*JENNIE

maybe you're the same as me, we see things they'll never see

You know, the biggest different I noticed between this election and past elections was how big a part the internet played. Not, like, in who won or anything (OR DID IT) but how much I relied on it to tell me things. I found out on Twitter that Obama had won Ohio before I found out on TV. WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THAT? I don't even know. All I know is that I love it, because four years ago I had to talk to actual PEOPLE IN PERSON on election night and that's super stressful, you guys.

Sometimes I think I'm maybe too reliant on the internet (um, maybe?) or that I have way too much of myself invested in it, but then I think I DON'T CARE I LOVE YOU INTERNET.

My love affair with the internet started in high school, or whenever we got our first magical AOL disc in the mail and I discovered there were other nerds out there who loved The X-Files as much as I did. Hell, even now the internet connects me to other nerds who love the same TV shows/movies/books that I do (see: Tumblr). I've met friends through the internet, hell, I met JOE through the internet, and I don't remember the last time I set foot in a mall because I do all of my shopping through the internet.

Right now, I'm reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking and it's like peeking into MY VERY OWN SOUL. The book begins with a helpful true/false quiz that you can take in case you're not sure whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, AS IF YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW. I've known I was an introvert from the time I was old enough to vert at all but I took the quiz anyway. And, duh, it's all "Introvert City, population: ME" over here.

In the section I'm currently reading, the author talks a bit about how introverts love the internet. About how introverts, in fact, will share things on the internet that they'd never share with those they know in real life. And suddenly all of my years of blogging, of spewing verbal diarrhea all over your brains (sorry for that image), finally made sense.

I've often thought about giving up this little corner of the internet, but have never been able to make it stick. I've been blogging here for nine years now. NINE YEARS. I could be a doctor by now. But not THE Doctor (probably). I don't usually go back and read my archives, not unless I want to link to something or cringe so hard my face falls off, but there's a lot of my life in there. Almost a third of it! I love that it's a record of who I was, where I've been, who I've lost and loved and met along the way. I can't imagine it all disappearing. It's why I still have my childhood journals and stories.

I've always been a packrat, hanging on to stuff "just in case I ever need it," but when I was a kid, I'd go through phases where I'd try and purge my life of anything extraneous. I'd go through my room, which was always a hellish mess anyway, and, as I cleaned, I'd throw all sorts of things away. Letters. Cards. Homework assignments. Who knows what else. And I almost always regretted it later, when I was looking for something in particular, usually something silly, like a note my friend had given me in 3rd period.

So I don't do that anymore. I mean, it's not like our house is an episode of Hoarders or anything, but I'm more careful about what I get rid of. Which is why I love the internet. It's easier to delete stuff but it's also easier to protect it from fire, flood, or zombies. And even if you delete it, it's never really gone forever. It'll always be there, even if you can't get to it anymore, floating through interspace or even just someone's mind, someone who read your blog once and took something away from it, who knows what exactly, maybe something silly, something profound, but SOMETHING, and you'll live in that person's brain for as long as they remember that something.

So who knows. Maybe you and I are gonna live forever.

obligatory post-election post

Me: I've had an awful lot of wine for a Tuesday night.
Joe: I noticed.
Me: Whatever, it's a special occasion.

Last night, sometime around an-hour-past-my-bedtime and my third glass of wine, I wondered if I should maybe just go to bed. I knew I'd be tired today, but I eventually decided that was Future!Jennie's problem and Future!Jennie could suck it because: HISTORY. Now that I am Future!Jennie? I'm regretting it a teeny tiny bit only not really because WHOO OBAMA WHOO!

This is the second election in a row that I've voted for the winner, which is a nice feeling, yes? (Yes.) Still, I stayed away from gloating on Facebook because I remember how shitty it feels to be on the losing side. OH DO I. The first election I ever voted in was 2000 and BOY DIDN'T THAT GO WELL. I'm surprised it didn't turn me off of voting forever but no, I was even more fired up by 2004, despite the lackluster candidate (poor Kerry), and I remember trying to live-blog the entire thing until I got too depressed and then I just watched the returns on mute until I fell asleep around dawn. My friend called me from DC and we sat in silence on the phone for a while, until I asked where she was and she said, "In front of the White House. Just sitting." SUPER DEPRESSING.

So, yeah, it feels good when your candidate wins, especially when you didn't have to stay up until dawn to KNOW that he won, so the last two elections have been fine for me, other than the stomach-knotting-stress I felt the entire day.

It was kind of like...OK, so I had to give a matron-of-honor toast/speech at Heidi's wedding this past weekend. And for most of the day, I felt like I was fine. I was able to relax and have fun with my friends and, before the wedding ceremony, didn't feel like it was MY time to be nervous so I tried to make sure Heidi wasn't too nervous but, you know, duh she was. Who isn't? But once we got to the reception, I knew my speech was close at hand and I babbled nervously to Joe and had trouble sitting in my seat and choked down some dinner, though my stomach was full of butterflies, and somehow distracted myself enough that I almost forgot about the speech until they called for me and I had to go stand on stage and then I gave my speech and it was fine and people laughed when they were supposed to and I didn't break down in tears or throw up and when I was done, I sat back down beside Joe and I have never, EVER in my life experienced that kind of relief. I didn't even know how nervous I was until it was over and it felt like someone had injected my body with...um...I don't know, something relaxy. Or Felix Felicis, because the rest of the night was awesome.

Wait. What was my point? Oh, yes. I was super nervous before my speech but didn't know HOW nervous until after it was over, which is exactly how I felt about this election. I never actually thought Romney might win until yesterday, when the thought of President Romney became very, very real and I was TERRIFIED. It wasn't until well after they announced Obama had won that I felt myself relax.

And no, I don't think the wine had anything to do with it. Shut up.

"There's a 30% chance that it's already raining!"

Hey, I'm not sure if you realize this, but it's election day! Don't forget. No one is really talking about it on Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter or their blogs or even in real life, though who gets their news from real life anymore, amirite? Nothing ever happens in real life before it happens on the internet. It's true facts! I hardly ever get spoiled for TV shows in real life, it always happens when I innocently check Facebook after watching Dexter but before having watched Walking Dead and getting VICIOUSLY HORRIBLY SPOILED ABOUT SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND BRUTAL AND WHYYYYYYYYYY SHOW WHYYYYYYYY?

Still. I wasn't really mad, though this was a big, giant spoiler. I'm pretty meh about most spoilers. My thinking is, if the show has aired or the movie's been released, it's my responsibility to avoid all spoilers, which I can usually pretty easily do by staying off of the internet. Since I find staying off the internet to be an impossible task, however, I get spoiled a lot. But I'm fine with it.

This is not to say that everyone has to share my view about spoilers. I don't expect them to! I would never automatically start talking about something crazy that happened on Dexter last night without having asked if you've seen it first. That is a total dick move. (Sidebar: ask Joe sometime how he got spoiled for The Avengers at TCAF because he is still bitter about that.) I try not to post anything spoilery on Twitter or Facebook in case someone might accidentally see it. But if it happens, I'm sorry, you're going to be fine. Scientists say so.

It is a total bummer, though, in certain cases. If anyone had spoiled Lost for me, I would have probably straight up murdered them in the face. Same deal with the last Harry Potter. Or any Harry Potters, really. So I guess it's good that no one spoiled me or I'd be writing this from prison right now and if I was in prison right now I wouldn't have gotten to vote AWW YEAH FOOLS THIS POST JUST WENT FULL CIRCLE WHAAAAAAAAAT.

blah blah poopty blah

What you want before a big weekend is lots of stress and excitement, which is why I'm really glad that last night a possum decided to hang out in our backyard, on top of our fence, taunting Max until we could bribe him to come in with treats (Beggin Strips finally did the trick). IT WAS SO FUN. Only not really. Possums are freaky as shit, you guys. It just sat there, on the fence, looking at us with its creepy, beady eyes, it's long, pink rat-tail-on-steroids flicking back and forth.

Anyway. That happened. And neither dog nor possum was attacked by the other so I guess we're putting that one in the win column? It would seem so.

All of this happened after some stress over our furnace not working because did you know that right before you have a busy weekend is also the perfect time for your furnace to not work? Especially if it's like 34 degrees outside. So that gave me something to freak out about, which is nice, because if I'm not worrying about something, I just don't know what to do with myself. It was a super easy fix, though not a super CHEAP fix, which has pretty much been the trend in our year of homeownership.

Good things did happen yesterday, though. Don't get me wrong. I came home from work early and Joe worked from home, so once he was done working, we went to vote. Early! I mean WHAT. It was magical and only took about  half an hour, once we found the place we were supposed to be. When we got there, we were directed down a series of escalators into an auditorium, where we had to fill out some paperwork and listen to a guy say the same thing, over and over, and at that point I really hoped that he was getting paid.

Eventually, we were sent to pick up our ballots. Since we were voting early, we filled out absentee ballots, which meant that instead of using the electronic voting machines, we filled out paper ballots. I am psychotic, so I spent most of my time making sure the bubble next to each candidate was completely filled out. BECAUSE WHAT IF IT WASN'T FILLED OUT RIGHT AND MY VOTE WASN'T COUNTED OMG YOU GUYS I WOULD BE SO SAD FOREVER.

Anyway, the whole bubble-voting process reminded me of high school when we'd have those scantron tests. Did you guys have those? They were basically these long sheets with little bubbles (except not really because they were square?) and you had to fill them out with a #2 pencil ONLY NO OTHER NUMBERS DON'T EVEN THINK OF TRYING TO USE A #47 PENCIL OR YOU'LL BE EXPELLED and if you didn't fill them out right, your answers wouldn't get tallied by the machine and then you'd fail and probably die. It was very serious.

I guess my point is voting is fun, in general, and in the grand scheme of things, bubble voting falls somewhere between the let-down of pushing buttons on the electronic machine and the fun of poking chads with the stabby needle thing.

YAY VOTING!

I Ohio Voting? WTF does that mean?

You are more beautiful than Cinderella! You smell like pine needles, and have a face like sunshine!

Now that Halloween is over, I can put all of my energy into preparing for Heidi's wedding this weekend. Not that there's a ton of preparation. There are really only three things expected of me. 1) That I remember my dress, 2) that I make sure Heidi is at the church on time, and 3) that I give a speech at the reception without cursing like a sailor or telling any inappropriate stories.

My speech is basically ready, though I keep revising the tiniest bits of it, which I should really stop doing or I'm just going to be standing in front of everyone, reading it verbatim from a piece of paper. I mean, I don't plan on MEMORIZING it, of course, because the chances of me remembering it once I'm standing in front of a large group of people are, well, not good. I hate public speaking and always have, but at least for this I can have a glass of champagne (or three) beforehand.

Note: I will probably not have many glasses of champagne because a) I guarantee I won't have eaten much at that point and b) I don't want to be the drunk bridesmaid who throws up on the microphone as she tried to wish the bride and groom many happy years together. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Everybody pukes. But not everybody pukes all over the bride's dress, which is important to keep in mind. 

I practiced my speech last night, after trying on my dress to make sure it still fits (it does!), in front of a mirror, while Max looked up expectantly at me, like, "ooh, she's talking to someone in that thing...I wonder if that girl she's talking to is going to come in here...maybe she'll bring that dog who looks like me with her."

I feel like everything was going pretty well until I got to the last bit and then I started crying and cry-talking and muttering "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" under my breath, which is probably not going to gain me any points if I repeat that performance at the reception. Still. It WOULD be memorable and that's what matters, right?