Feeling unrequited, and also maimed

Question of the Day: Is it possible to break one's calf?

And, if so, what's up with the three day delay on eliptical machine injuries?


Also, M. and I have two separate packages full of wedding registry goodness waiting for us, which we are presently, unpleasantly, unable to obtain. One is from FedEx and is currently locked inside the evil mailroom at M.'s work until Monday morning. The other is from UPS and is currently stuck on the evil UPS delivery truck for the rest of the night, but really until Monday morning, because then it will be locked inside the evil UPS pick-up center which is closed over the weekend. Pardon my French, but can anyone say blue balls?

I had a dream

Last night I had a dream that I was Katharine McPhee from American Idol -- only blonde, and with shorter hair -- and that I somehow got into Keven Federline's wedding gift registry closet, which was lined with stacks and stacks of drinking glasses, which I proceeded to demolish and shatter and destroy. Then I got into my mother's car (my real mother, not Mrs. McPhee) and we sped away.

I don't know what any of this means. But it felt really good to break all those glasses. Also, I hated my (Katharine's) hair.

Mitt Romney can &^%$ my *@#$

Booooooooo............

New leaf

On Sunday, I took out my new lease on life and went to the gym with M..

And now, almost 72 hours later, I can just about straighten my arms again. Which begs the question, what good are big strong arms if I cannot use them to feed myself, or defend myself against oncoming attackers, or type this sentence without grimacing, or catch myself when I fall and trip on my taffeta in June?

Also, having not participated in this so-called "cardio" fad in well over four years, I was alarmed to find that my aging body responds to unpleasant cardio stress by producing an enormous amount of saliva, which -- trapped on the eliptical machine, scared to stop running lest I fall off and hang myself on my iPod headphone cord -- I did not know what to do with, and which only added to my general sense of shock and alarm.

I'm going to try to go back again this evening, but if this weblog remains inactive for seven days henceforth, one can reasonably assume that my arms have fallen off or that I have drowned in my own mucosa.

Pray for me.

And make sure the wedding invitations still get out on time.

Tips for Grooms #398

Groomzilla's Gay Wedding Planning Tip #398: The Do-It-Yourself Invitation

If you've gottten the idea in your head that you'd like to save a buck or two by designing, printing and assembling your own wedding invites, the first two things on your checklist should always be to first slap yourself forcefully upside the head, and to then locate the nearest black market for self-harvested vital organs. Selling one or both kidneys to the highest bidder should garner a nice nest egg that can then be easily wired to the closest available second party willing to design, print and assemble your invitations for you -- with just enough left over for those adorable Jordan almonds!

For those grooms-to-be who are even more intent on keeping their pennies (and organs) for themselves, another easy way to save time and money is to find the closest store selling pokers at a reasonable price. These pokers can be held over an open flame until hot -- red-hot works best -- and then driven forcefully into one or both eyes. Voila! The same satisfaction of self-made invitations at a fraction of the price.




Seriously, though? Despite the time and mental anguish? They're pretty awesome.

cafe cockroach

When I woke up this morning, I almost forgot I was living in the middle of the concrete jungle. The soft morning light was glowing through our curtains, while a cool March breeze bathed my face in its fresh crispness. I stretched down the length of our warm, pillowy mattress. I ground fresh coffee beans in our new coffee grinder, and set them to brew. I paused to gaze out the window.

And then an enormous cockroach climbed up from the back of our coffee maker, hesitated as if to consider where she might be most effectively sullifying, and then squeezed her chitinous little body right into the coffee filter holder.

M. killed her for me, but certainly not before she had a chance to add a certain je ne sais quoi cockroach essence to our freshly brewed morning ablution.

Which is why, ten years from now, a wandering schoolgirl will find me and my children living in a refrigerator box in the woods 300 miles north of Manhattan, surrounded by various indulgent and unused cast-iron kitchen implements, chronically ill from cockroach egg blood fever, poor and homeless but -- most importantly -- out of this occasionally Godforsaken city.

Zen and the Art of Mental Health Maintenance; or, Caviar: the new Pistachio?

I had a minor breakthrough in therapy tonight, a breakthrough which would seem like more of a "Duh" to anyone who has ever come within fifty feet of me, but a breakthrough nonetheless.

Namely: I think too much.

As in, I can't stop thinking. Got no off-switch. And therefore tend to be thinking, and stressing, and worrying, rather than doing, or enjoying, or living.

So Therapist suggested that I try to practice Mindfulness as a way of staying present and thinking less.

So on my walk down 23rd Street on the way to the subway, I practiced. First, I concentrated on the word "white" and tried to just blank out and picture nothing but a white screen.

Then I found myself halfway through the list of ingredients for the Veal Meat Ball and Broccoli Rabe soup I thought I might try making again this weekend, only I'd double it this time so that I could store some in the freezer and reheat it through the week like I did with my baked ziti last weekend.

Then I caught myself.

So I tried just breathing in and out, and thinking "breathe in" as I breathed in and "breathe out" as I breathed out.

Then a guy walked by who seemed like he might be cute, but I couldn't tell because I was trying to just breathe in and out, but it seemed like he might have looked at me like he recognized me, but really to look back at him might be against my still-in-development Mindfulness Rules.

I breathed in, breathed out.

In, out. In, out. Past Home Depot, which made me wonder whether there was anything we needed to buy there, or even maybe whether we should have registered there, or if that was even possible.

And I totally forgot to tell my team at the hospital about a very important case, and now it was 8:30pm and I had more than likely ruined this particular family's day because I was too busy watching the Tyra Banks Show to remember to email my team about this case.

And I wondered if the ziti I'd stuck in the refrigerator earlier had defrosted by now.

Or if I would forget to charge my iPod again when I got home.

And whether, in the absence of a charged iPod tomorrow morning, I would read the Metro paper, or instead the David Leavitt book I'm re-reading because a) I love it and b) I want to find a meaningful passage that someone can read at the wedding.

Then I chastised myself for being an utter failure at mindfulness.

Then I thought maybe this would be a good thing to write about in my blog.

Then I wondered whether I'd remember to try to decrease my anxiety and be mindful tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.

Anyways...no answer yet, but...drumroll...something to think about.



Also, I saw two men at separate times today carrying man-purses, which made me envious, and made me wonder whether this is a fad on its way in or on its way out, and also made me desperately want one for myself. Because I am decidedly anti-mandal, but I dig the murse. I covet the murse.


And **NEWS ALERT**, after careful consideration by M. - - whose sense of proper taste is sometimes preferable to and often more refined than and usually more appropriate than my mix-and-match (mindful?) approach to home decorating - - the KitchenAid Mixer in Pistachio has officially been changed to the KitchenAid Mixer in Caviar on the Bed Bath & Beyond registry. The chicken pot is still filed under Caramel, but only because she's my own personal pet project.

Flu Tyra Daddy

I spent the better part of last night having an extended nightmare about being sick with this horrible fever and sore throat and having to take the day off from work and feeling terribly guilty about it.

Then I woke up this morning with a fever and sore throat and had to take the day off from work and I feel terribly guilty about it....plus, I'm watching the Tyra Banks Show.

Which begs the question: which is worse, dream or reality?
Better yet: when does the nightmare end?

Also, two nights ago I sat down at my computer and birthed out a very cathartic, three-page letter to my father, re: the wedding. M. helped me edit out the rough edges, and then I kissed it up to God and dropped it in the mailbox yesterday morning. I almost climbed inside the mailbox to get it back out, but was impeded from doing so by this pesky impulsiveness which seems to have developed on the back of my head. I would consider posting it on here, but maybe it should stay between me and Dad for now. Unless he responds poorly, in which case it's public domain.

Yin Trumps Yang

Every yin must have its yang, and this weekend was no exception.

M. and I left for Northampton at 3pm yesterday, brimming with the excitement of meeting our Potential Goth Partially-Shaved-Headed DJ.

Or rather, we tried to leave, only to be impeded by the fact that a certain unnamed car rental company with whom we will never do business again



had closed at 12 noon, a full three hours before our agreed-upon 3pm scheduled pick-up time. Much moaning and gnashing of teeth ensued, but forty minutes, 120 bucks, five Avenue Blocks and one right-sided shin splint later, we were happily ensconced in our Pontiac G6 - - the very same car with which Oprah saddled her unsuspecting audience, according to M. - - courtesy of our new car rental company of choice.



We got to Northampton right on schedule, dropped our bags off at the Best Western - - cue ominous organ music, more on this later - - and ran over to meet our Potential DJ at the prearranged crunchy granola coffee house. Where we soon discovered that Potential Goth Partially-Shaved-Headed DJ is actually Potential Goth Nine Foot Tall Multiple-Ear -Lip-and-Perhaps-Elsewhere-Piercings Spiky Bleached Blond Hair DJ. If John Malkovich and the Albino twins from the Matrix movies had a baby and then let it grow up in the liberal enclave of Northampton, that baby might look like Potential Goth DJ, and if that baby grew up to be a DJ and I drove three hours to meet him, I might, upon first seeing him, feel a strange mixture of squareness as well as gastric unease.

So we sat down at a table with Potential DJ and his Quiet Goth Girlfriend - - M. agreed, later in the evening, that it was indeed prudent on my part to not, in an attempt at finding some common ground, volunteer that I had worn those identical false eyelashes last Halloween - - and began the beguine. I, as is typical of myself in new situations, was intensely intense and fidgety and high-pitched. Thankfully, M. held down the emotional fort and managed to keep the conversation on track. It was not long before we discovered that we are, indeed, in love with Potential Goth DJ, whom I will now refer to simply as Goth DJ. Seriously, he’s the best. And the nicest. And 100% on the same page as we are when it comes to music. And he and M. even had a conversation about urban planning. Really, he is an artist. You can give him a song and he thinks of three others that he could blend seamlessly together with that one song. He is to DJing what an interior designer is to home decorating, as opposed to Suzy Smith in Window Dressings at Home Depot. I am a little giddy about him, as is M.. He even hugged us goodbye, which made me even more giddy and prompted me to, perhaps ill-advisedly, hug Quiet Goth Girlfriend, although she did kind of hug back.

Then M. and I, because we are absolutely incapable of not spending the money we don’t have - - treated ourselves to a ginormous and, apart from the meatball lasagna, delicious meal.

Then we headed back to (recue organ music) the Best Western, where we did what came naturally - - namely, lounged around in our underwear on our enormous King size bed and drank Diet Coke and ate Whatchamacallits and made changes to our gift registries and talked about the nuances of the ceremony and reconfigured our guest sleeping accommodation schema and then went to sleep.

Then I woke up and discovered that, at some point during the evening, we’d been joined by a friend, who gamely posed for a photo.



Which I can’t help but notice, looks amazingly like this photo.



Which, oddly enough, Google files under the word bedbug.

I originally misfiled it under tick and rushed into the bathroom screaming that we had ticks in the room and we’d better check our scalps, but M. knew better, so then we panicked and went through all our stuff, and I turned up another (dead) friend inside my nightstand, and we made plans for where we might possibly live now that we would surely be quarantined from returning to our village, and then we looked in the plastic bedbug cup and were dismayed to find that the original bedbug was now copulating with or eating his dead friend. Before he could eat all the evidence, we rushed out to the lobby and I presented the cup to the poor little gay boy behind the counter, who I think almost fainted or vomited but was able to hold it together long enough to direct us to the manager at the other end of the desk, who promptly and discretely refunded our room. Which just about exactly made up for the cost of the ill-advisedly expensive dinner from the night before and/or our rental car, and I swear I felt my seventh chakra *ding* at the cosmic karmic sensibility of it all.

Then, because we are financially sound in unpredictable ways, we sat down and ate our free Continental Breakfast waffles.

All of which leaves me sitting here on a couch which a trip to IKEA on the drive home this afternoon reminded us once again that we can’t afford to replace, every minor itch and tickle driving me to the certain realization that I am slowly being devoured by necrophiliac bloodsucking aphids, my stomach still recovering from its downward plunge through my toes yesterday at 3pm courtesy of Enterprise Car Rentals, my bank account diminished by a couple hundred dollars…but all of this occurring in a general state of contentment, because the motel room was free, the mozzarella en carozza was good, the wedding plans are gelling, the DJ is hired, the invitation paper is purchased, and I got to spend some time with the boy I love away from the city that never lets me sleep, and other than a general state of exhaustion and an excessive amount of sugar coursing through my veins from the Sesame Honey Cashews my boyfriend brought me from his maiden voyage to the Union Square Trader Joe’s, I am feeling a little bit on top of the world, and for right now anyway, the yin has beat the yang.

Taking a Stand; or, Jumping the Shark; or, What Would Jesus Do?

I know this is supposed to be a footloose and fancy-free blog about gay weddings and Kelly Clarkson and chicken pots, and not a serious and ruminating blog about my personal struggle towards self-actualization and personal redemption, but in the end it's my blog, so...

Last night I went to hear Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop from New Hampshire; Sharon Kleinbaum, the head of the NYC-based "largest GLBT synagogue in the world"; and Dr. Traci West, a radical black feminist theologian from Drew University, speak at a "Faith and Fairness" symposium put on by the Human Rights Campaign.

And it was very much one of those things where you sit there all inspired and have all these YES and A-HA ideas flying through your head and you can't wait to get home to tell everyone about your new lease on life....and then somewhere between Union Theological Seminary and the 1/9 train, all those things fall out your ear and fly down Broadway stuck to the wheel of a garbage truck, and you get home and try to talk about it and all you have to show is a few halting thoughts, and an urgent furrow in your brow, and a few punch lines that are missing their set-ups.

So my honest word will have to suffice when I say that these speakers were all amazing. They talked about how religion has become this dirty word, in the world at large but particularly in the gay world, and how being a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim - - but, mostly, Christian - - has become something to be embarrassed about, because all the Christians and Jews and Muslims who Hate the Gays have somehow absconded with the whole thing.

And how it's tempting to just throw in the towel and wait for a better day to come, but really that's not a useful approach because it's not going to get better unless people make it better, and then they got into all this stuff about needing GLBT (I prefer the blanket "gay", but GayLesbianBisexualTransgendered-and-Sometimes-I-For-Intersex is more politically conscious) people of faith to get involved and respond to all these crazies on their turf and using their own language and etc. etc., and how gay people need to stop throwing in the towel and giving up, because God Loves Us and God Made Us Who We Are and we have as much right to participate (or not) in our faith as anyone else does.

And Rabbi Kleinbaum showed a photo of six of the biggest world religion leaders standing together last spring, and she commented on how none of these men would ever be caught dead standing anywhere together, let alone coming together for a common cause, but that the thing that had brought them all together last spring in Israel was the fact that they all Hate the Gays and are united in Keeping the Gays Out. Which is pathetic, really, but mostly scary.

And Traci West got into all this deep and crazy and fascinating stuff about the connections between misogyny and racism and homophobia, and how these things are all inextricably linked and mostly somehow come back to misogyny - - "homophobia is just one room in the larger hotel of misogyny" - - and how marriage is being defined mainly as a heterosexual bond between a man and a woman, rather than as a bond between two people that is based on love and equality and respect and fairness, and how this is tied into why it's okay for men to beat their wives, and how gay people should be jumping at this chance to "be revolutionary" and redefine what marriage and faith and etc. etc. really mean.

And Gene Robinson was just really inspiring, and told us we were all going to Heaven, and even as I write this I think Holy shit, stop, Groomzilla, this is dangerous territory, you're going to come off as some kind of religious zealot, quick, try to think of something interesting to write about muffin tins..., but the truth of the matter is, believe it or not, I am a spiritual person. A religious person. I grew up Catholic, and my faith and all the customs and trappings that went along with it have played a very central role in my life.

Or they did up until a year or two ago, anyways, when the church that had always sheltered and protected and calmed me, suddenly dumped me out onto the streets, betrayed me, told me that not only was I not good enough to be a Catholic, but that I was not good enough to be a human being. Or rather, it had always been saying these things, but suddenly it was saying them Out Loud, and printing it in the newspapers. And the truth of the matter is that I live in the great big bubble of New York City, and there is a Catholic church down the street which is gayer than the gayest of all things gay, but the truth still stands that the church as a whole is decidedly anti-Me, and that's something I have had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around.

So I stopped going to church. Stopped talking about anything related to my faith. Stopped defending my religion. How could I, when it was populated by so many indefensible people?

And I've suffered for it. As M. tells me - - and this is significant, because M. is M., but also because M. is not a fan of organized religion - - I've "been different". I'm the first to admit that I do not buy into a lot of the Catholic religion - - the misogyny, the birth control, the abortion, the pedophilic scapegoating - - but the Real Stuff, the faith, the connection to Something Greater, the security and love and hope that my faith has always given me, are things I suffer without. And, true, they're mostly things I can do at home, do on my own. Yoga is also something I can do at home, and I've even bought the tapes to try. But like yoga, religion is something I do much better when I'm part of a crowd, part of something structured, organized. I do better with someone else leading the exercises, better when I'm part of a collective.

I'm not sure where all of this leaves me. Part of me is scared that the inspiration I felt last night is slowly draining out my toes and will soon be once again replaced by hurt and cynicism and fear and anger. Part of me is scared, as I have always been, to get "too involved" in organized religion, to lose my sense of self, my independence, to buy into a lot of things I don't really buy into. Mostly, last night reminded me that I do believe in God, and that God does love me, and that if going to church is something that makes me feel good, it's something I should be doing - - should be able to do, should feel comfortable doing, should feel comfortable admitting to doing.

So maybe I'll try to go to Mass again soon. More likely, I'll try out the Episcopal church down the street, something I've waffled over for the better part of the past 12 months. (Really, growing up Catholic - - and probably other religions as well - - makes it hard to consider going to any other kind of church without also being wracked by guilt and shame and fear).

And there will still be crazy Christians - - and crazy Everyone Elses as well - - who make it hard to cop to being a Christian, and make me want to run away. There will also be lots of gays - - and lots of Everyone Elses - - who wrinkle their noses and furrow their brows when they talk about organized religion, and make the Second-Grader in me feel like I need to run and hide.

But for me -- Groomzilla, coveter of chicken pots -- religion and faith and spirituality and God and - - stomach churn - - yes, Jesus (let's not forget what a happening guy Jesus was, before the crazies took hold of him and simultaneously turned him into a dirty word as well as a poster child for lunacy), are things that make me feel good, make my life better, my days brighter, my future a little less intimidating. And God does love me. And that's a good thing.

Weekly Update: Better than no weekly update

There's an awful lot of wedding planning going on right now -- trying to find the perfect simple-and-elegant-but-nonintrusive-and-not-too-cutesy graphic for our invitations, emailing customer service at Williams-Sonoma to please fix the glitch in their computer system which has been preventing onling gift registration of their new limited edition Emile Henry Flame-Top Claypot Cookware for over a week now, continuing to debate between the shaved-headed Goth DJ and the more subdued iPod mini -- too much, in fact, to describe.

So instead, we'll just skip ahead to something someone else wrote, which M. forwarded me today. Not necessarily marriage-related, but almost as thought-provoking as anchors-versus-seashells. Click and be provoked.

I also witnessed my first code today -- meaning someone went into cardiac arrest and got the whole rigamarole of chest compressions and injections and paddles -- and, needless to say, I am having a Do-Not-Resuscitate order tattooed on my butt as soon as we pay off the Goth DJ.