The wedding planning is coming right along. The customized shot glasses arrived today, so it’s all coming together nicely.
I showed my boob to some random bicyclist on the way to Costco tonight. TBU and I were recreating a “Want Bitty” skit and I pulled my boob out. TBU didn’t notice but the guy on the bike was like “did I just see what I think I saw?” Yes, you did kind sir.
Skip to about 1:20 for the gold. If you’re interested in mom boobs.
I played hooky (hookey? hookie?) from work today. I know, it’s only my third full week (well almost full) but I was so tired when I woke up this morning I almost couldn’t move. I haven’t been sleeping well since the transition. Speaking of transition. In Costco tonight I tugged on TBU’s arm and said, “You know you’re in so-cal when your local Costco in peddling acid wash and ed hardy inspired yoga leggings in a non-ironic, non-Halloween manner.” Ugh, the people in the lower half of this state, I am telling you.
That’s not to say they aren’t infesting more Northern regions, but this, this is where the hive is. The ones up there are just scouts. We visited TBU’s mom this weekend, or rather her house. You know, the one with the lake and the guards? We went out for a casual lunch on Saturday and there was this woman who I literally could not stop staring at. Her lips were an injury that she was parading around as a pout. And the boobs. I just really felt bad for her daughter. That poor girl. That poor flat chested little girl who is undoubtedly going to develop, if she hasn’t already, an unhealthy dislike of her body. Or not, because who am I to say? Just a girl with healthy C cups observing at a lunch counter.
Speaking of bodies or my body in particular, I have been having a thing with it. For pretty much all of my adolescent and adult life I have been trying to change it. See! That’s who I am to say! I wanted smaller boobs until I realized how awesome they were/are. Then I wanted smaller everything else. Smaller thighs, smaller stomach, smaller wrists, arms, hips, neck. I pretty much decided that everything about my body was just wrong. And I’m not saying I’m over all that, because I don’t think I’ll ever be. It has become such a normal part of my thought process, to dislike what I see in the mirror, that I don’t think the nueral passageways that connect those thoughts with my emotions will ever disappear. I don’t think I’ll ever see my thighs as they are, as beautiful. But I’ve decided that they just are, and that’s all I can do. I am tired of all the energy I spend on thinking about my body, how I can change it, how many calories I’ve consumed and burned. I am tired of wondering why I have the kind of luck to not have the kind of beautiful body I don’t have to work at. I am just tired of it.
This was all brought on because of the wedding. Of course, I am unoriginal and thought trying to lose weight for the wedding was a good idea. But the thing is, is that I was never trying to lose weight for the wedding I was trying to lose weight for the pictures of the wedding. I feared looking back at them and thinking how I could have done it, but I was just lazy. But then I realized I was probably the only one so focused on my flaws, the only one who noticed my double chin or the fact that my shoulder blades or collar bones aren’t readily apparent. And I was like fuck it.
But not like fuck it entirely, I am still working out five days a week and watching my portions and hoping beyond hope that something will budge. But I guess now I am just like, “It it what it is.” There is a hint of a sense of peace about it all but I am still predicting my future self being disappointed with my current self. But maybe my future self will be more awesome than I give her credit for. I don’t know.
I just read Mimi Smartypants’ latest post and I was like ugh, it’s true, to break a blogging break you just have to plow through a post and get it over with. It took me ten minutes to get this far, I was all emo and unable to remember any grammar and punctuation rules. I’ll give you all the dirty dish on the wedding, but first, more real time tales of getting these words to your eyes.
TBU was asleep taking his night nap and I wanted him to wake up but I didn’t want to actually wake him up. So I figured I’d write a post. Because what inevitably happens is that I try to write a post and just when I’m all into it he wakes up and demands attention, like a child or a cat or something else that aggressively vies for your attention. Have I told you how I mostly write posts while the teebs sleeps? It’s the easiest time to get thoughts out and whip my fingers into a frenzy of flow. But before I started writing I thought, hey you know what self? Yes self? I think I should have some ice cream! Some really delicious, full fat, creamy ice cream. That sounds like a great idea self. It’s Friday, it’s ok to not have your usual dessert of frozen berries in a glass of soy milk. I rationalized that I started a bootcamp class and I was sufficiently sore, indicating that I had worked out at a pretty severe level and therefore deserved ice cream. So up I got to get my reward when guess who woke up? Yup that’s right, the cat. Who then woke TBU up. Now I’m typing this and he is all, whatchoo doin? He’s fixing his sound system so he can play his XBox and one of the cables isn’t working and he is narrating every thought to me. Knowing fulling well that I don’t give a shit about his game playing experience. Maybe it’s this cable. Oh. Wait. Now it’s working. No it’s not. Oh! It WAS this cable! I don’t care!
ANYWAY!
So there has been major wedding planning drama. It all started about 16 years ago when TBU’s parents divorced. Fast forward to last Monday when we met with the wedding planner that TBU’s dad wanted us to meet with. We went knowing full well that she is a crazy ass rich person’s wedding planner and that we could never afford her. But we were playing his game. The game he plays when he is dangling money in front of your face. After looking at the planner’s portfolio and drooling over these amazing weddings we found out that it was juuuuust out of reach. It turned out to be a much more reasonable number we were looking at.
Let me clarify something right here. I don’t need a crazy ass rich person’s wedding. I don’t need lighting effects, to be paraded in on an elephant or for doves to be released. I was, and still am, mostly concerned with everyone having a great time. What I found most appealing in a wedding planner was that someone else would deal with all the shit that goes into putting a wedding together. You know, someone to decorate, to clean up and to generally make sure everything goes as it should. That’s all I wanted. Really.
Ok, so now we’re looking at a much more manageable number with a planner but we’re still short just a bit. And we’re thinking, hey maybe throwing this party doesn’t have to be a huge chore, maybe we can hire someone to do the hard parts for us, leaving us more time to drink and get ready. So we go back to his dad and tell him the planner told us the bill would be no more than $1. And his dad is like, great! I am comfortable with that. He does some math and, in addition to what we’re going to contribute, he decides that he will give us $0.35 if AND ONLY IF, TBU’s mom will also contribute $0.35. He mentions the alimony he had to pay her for 15 years and how his resources are not unlimited but that she has resources and money money money. Then he asks how much my family is contributing (a far larger percentage of their annual salary than you are, thankyouverymuch). Mind you this is a man of means, significant means.
So, we take this news back to TBU’s mom, we haven’t even asked her for more money (she has already commited to about $0.25 at this point, a generous and appreciated sum). We just get to the part in the story about how we liked the wedding planner’s portfolio and how, if it were possible, we’d like to have her do the wedding. THAT’S ALL WE’VE SAID when she starts bawling and screaming that from this point forward she is no longer involved in the wedding at all and that she will absolutely not give any money to a wedding planner. She said she would go to the wedding and support us and whatever but she would remove herself from any pre-wedding activities. And we are like WHAT. THE. FUCK. just happened?
She’s crying and telling us that her ex-husband is trying to control her (it’s probably true) and that he’s dicking everyone around with his moeny (again, true). Her current husband starts yelling at us, asking why we would even want a fucking wedding planner. Uuuuummm I dunno, how about not having to do any manual labor before my fucking wedding day? And then he drops the bomb (it was a bomb for me at least, others were far less affected). He says that it’s ridiculous that a groom’s mom should have to pay any money for the wedding. I immediately feel ashamed (that’s not accurate, but I don’t know how to accurately describe the exact feeling I had, however, it was terrible). So I start crying. I’m upset because the underlying theme of both of these conversations is that these people are giving money for a wedding they shouldn’t even have to pay for because my family doesn’t have the money to do it themselves. So here I am, this poor kid sitting on the patio of an extremely large house that resides on a man-made lake, where you have to pass through security gates to even get on the man made island. And not just a security gate where you enter a password, no, you have to talk to guards and they have to check your name on a list, like it’s the fucking Warner Bros lot or something. Now I’m crying and TBU’s mom thinks I’m crying because she won’t give us anymore of her money. Which is not the case. Truly, not the case. I am crying for two reasons 1. she is crying and I have a difficult time dealing with my and other people’s emotions and 2. I am being yelled at by a rich New York Jew about how my family should be paying for this and how I have to make a decision to settle things.
Oh yeah, did I mention that? That TBU’s step-dad started yelling at me to make a decision? No? Because he did. And that didn’t help me regain composure, not even a little. So I sit there silently, with tears rolling down my face, my lips quivering and trying desperately to regulate my breathing while TBU and his mom are screaming at each other and step dad is berating us for even thinking about getting a wedding planner and how I have to make a decision. Well it was pretty obvious that the decision had been made when TBU’s mom started screaming that she wasn’t giving any money if there was a wedding planner involved. They get up and walk to the end of their yard that meets with their dock, where their boat is waiting for them, bobbing up and down in the man-made lake they live on, so they can go on their nightly boat ride. We leave on our trip back to San Diego.
TBU calls his dad and says his mom won’t match his dad’s $0.35. Dad says that’s too bad and that is that. Now, I’m not upset with TBU’s dad because he won’t give us as much money as we’d need to hire the wedding planner. No, it’s his money, he worked for it and I see no reason that he should just give it away. But I am upset with him because he used our wedding as a way to control a situation with his money. He used our wedding to piss TBU’s mom off. He was being an asshole when I thought he would be excited for us. It’s complete bullshit that we know he could afford the whole cost of the wedding and has in fact offered to pay for a significant portion of it, only if TBU’s mom matched him. The only thing he was ever excited about was the opportunity to wield his bank account, probably because that’s the only thing he could wield that would cause a reaction. Fuck him. I guess (obviously) I was being naive when I thought he could rally and just be happy that his son was marrying the person he loved and who loved him back. Nope, this man is as creepy* in his head as he is on the outside. I never really liked him, but now I’m just going to avoid him. At this point I really don’t want his money, it would just make things mucky and gross. Like really, he won’t give a measly $0.35 when he was comfortable with $2 beforehand? You’ve played your cards dude now the only thing you’re doing is confirming that you’re an asshole. Congratulations! No one fucking likes you! There are more infuriating details but that is enough for now.
*One of many, many creepy things (including repeatedly commenting on my looks and staring at me like a pedophile) he’s done happened the day before this all went down. He came in from the pool in his speedo and sat down on the arm of a chair so that I was eye level with his geriatric junk. Then after a series of unfortunate inquiries on TBU’s part he went out to the street STILL IN HIS SPEEDO and put on a helmet, wrist guards and a fanny pack (we still don’t know why the fanny pack) and proceeded to demonstrate this device for us:
So please imagine a 70-ish man, in a speedo, a helmet, wristguards and a fucking fanny pack doing that in a rather upscale neighborhood. I could not make this stuff up I am not nearly creative or high enough. This man is a fucking loon.
Oh yeah and the wedding theme is Dirty Dancing. No joke, the best movie ever is the theme of my wedding, we have invites and shot glasses and everything. It’s going to be awesome, a little low budget, but awesome.
First dance to this? Or this? I love the chola clowns in the second one. You don’t really think this one do you? You fucking purist, although it is a good one. If Swayze dies before the wedding I swear I’ll include this one
The Millionizer and TBU aren’t going to elope no matter how tempting it is
It’s been a bit hectic over here. Not for any real reason other than the fact that I’ve been keeping abreast of the news. What the fuck, man? At this point I’m just waiting for martial* law. Or a new world order. It’s not just the domestic election. I’m mostly fascinated with what’s going down in Mexico concerning the drug cartels and border towns, specifically Tijuana.
*Why can’t the internet agree on one spelling of martial when concerning marshall law? I’m going with the single “l” because double consonants with no difference in pronunciation are so colonial. (If it sounds like I just made that up, it’s because I did, but it feels like I’m on to something.)
Tijuana is a study in world politics in itself. Yes, it’s ghetto, dirty, corrupt and the birthplace of the donkey show. But it also has wealth, world class culture, education and is an incredibly important border town, it is one of a few major US/Mexico border cities. Also, it was the first foreign city I ever visited. What happens in Tijuana happens in the US, environmentally and politically. More importantly, it happens where my mom lives. When I was growing up, late at night we would periodically hear a flock of helicopters circling a mansion close by. Inevitably the morning news told of the latest drug bust and the now incarcerated ring leader with helicopter footage of the carefully kept grounds. Once, a body was found a half mile from our house. That was the closest it ever got, but there have been many, many within a 5 mile radius.
Tijuana gets dismissed as a dusty, drunken party to be left before the buzz wears off. TJ though, is special in ways I can’t even explain. I’m no expert but it is a dialectic between so many things: Anglo/Latin worlds, poverty/wealth, depravity/culture the list is endless. When all these things get mashed together, and the fact that it’s the last stop between Colombia and the huge cocaine market of the “wealthy” Americans, you get Tijuana. It couldn’t exist in its current form under any other circumstances. There is a reason it’s world famous.
As best I can understand it, the deal is this: there are two major drug cartels (Arellano-Felix Cartel and the Jaurez Cartel) a leader of Juarez died, now the AFC is trying to overtake them and their territory. This is what the movie Traffic was about, and shit has only gotten worse since then. At first the bodies were dumped behind buildings in the middle of the night. Now full blown shoot outs happen in the middle of the day on crowded streets. Innocent people die because they were in the line of fire. They aren’t small crime scenes either, these battles leave 10-30 bodies in the street at a time. What’s more, the cartels spend over $1 million a week in police bribes and they have sophisticated military grade weapons. They’re no joke.
TJ isn’t the only Mexican city to deal with violent drug cartels, cocaine has to travel up from Colombia somehow. Unfortunately, the news of all this gives people the impression that traveling to Mexico will get you killed. And that may be true of a visit to Tijuana but overall, that couldn’t be further from the truth. So when people joke about the shit hole that is Mexico, on the surface it’s true. But on a deeper level it bothers me because its been colonized several times over and each colonizer has taken what they wanted and left the aftermath to work itself out. And what we’re seeing now is still the aftermath. I think that’s a point people miss sometimes. The gold and silver mined from Mexican soil created rich economies in Europe especially Spain. Those cathedrals drenched in gold? Yeah that’s from some Latin country, most likely Mexico (or what used to be Mexico).
Consider the violent parallels of the colonial oppressors and the native drug cartels. I mean the country has been almost completely stripped of its mineral wealth so it’s only natural that people make money off the land in other ways. If cocaine weren’t regulated by the United States, we wouldn’t see these drug wars. So in a way there is still a colonial presence, except it’s not involved in violence directly but it’s complicit in it.
In an effort to keep my mind off my UCSF application I’ve become more and more obsessed with Mexican goings on. But I’ve just replaced one stressor with another. I mean, faaahck, it’s a bloody soap opera and my mom is like right there giving me a play by play. She even sees victims of the fallout in the ER where she works.