It turns out that if you liked Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife, you will not necessarily like Her Fearful Symmetry. I didn’t like the title, first off: it’s awkward and hard to say. Every time I said it, I added a question mark at the end to imply that I didn’t understand it either. I’m reading Her Fearful Symmetry? I also hated the spindly font on the cover.

Edited to add: ohhhh, it’s a reference to Blake’s “The Tyger.” Whatevs.

There are ghosts in it, but Niffenegger handles the ghosty elements pretty rationally: they do NOT SEND EMAIL or throw buckets of water on people or try to make out with their nephews with one rotting eyeball hanging out of their skulls like in some books.

However, if you like rationally ghosty books involving characters you don’t really like because there’s nothing to like about them, go read this book!

In related reading news, have you read Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard? Holy balls, these poems are fantastic.

In closing, here are two vanity tags I saw recently that totally fail:
PEECE
MYBABBE

The sporty car in front of me had a vanity tag, so I sped up a little to read it. WOOOF, it said. It was a Miata. It changed lanes, and as I passed it I was able to see the driver: an older man, happily sucking his thumb. Not biting the nail, but sucking his thumb, 3-year old style.

ILLKYOU
HOLESUM
VAMPYRE

Discuss, especially #1.

I CANDIE
U CRAZY

It took me typing out I CANDIE to understand it’s supposed to be “eye candy.” It was on some red sporty car, which makes sense. At first I thought it was a super religious person who felt that they can die because they will unite with Jesus, etc.

U CRAZY = #2 favorite tag in town. The #1 spot still goes to OHH YEAH.

TWINKAL
GIRLS

1. PTRYNPK

2. My birthday was Monday and I stayed home with Spike, and then yesterday I ditched him at daycare and went shopping. I had a gift card from Anthropologie (thanks, in laws!) and no time constraints. This, friends, is a great combo. So I dug around in the sale area and had a pile of stuff to try on, including this really cute dress that was marked down to $19.95! Hello! At Anthropologie! So I tried it on, and ohmygod it fit. It’s a leetle low cut (and uh, not in a cute way), but a tank top underneath will do the trick. I also got a super cute skirt.

So last night I was hanging the dress up and heard some crinkling. I went hunting for the crinkly tag and found, instead, a Payday candy bar wrapper in the pocket.

I figured the dress had been returned, as it was marked down so much, but people, it is pristine. There is nary a mark on it, nary a stray string. I have decided that these are the only possible scenarios:

a. the person wore the dress and ate a Payday
b. the person tried the dress on at home and ate a Payday
c. the person tried the dress on at home, heard her roommate’s key in the lock, and stuffed the Payday wrapper into the pocket to prevent the roommate from knowing she ate her last Payday
d. an Anthropologie employee was eating a Payday in the sale area and slipped the wrapper in the pocket when she heard her supervisor coming

While I do not understand who eats Paydays — hello, there is no chocolate — I am grateful that there is no smeary chocolate residue in the pocket. In related news, I am going to start stuffing candy bar wrappers into garments and then demanding a discount upon check out.

3. Last night I accidentally watched Somewhere in Time. All 103 minutes of it (I know there are 103 minutes because at 90 minutes, I looked on imdb to see how much more I had to live through). I last saw this when I was in high school and thought it was sooooo romaaaaantic. Y’all. While I love romance + time travel, Christopher Reeve, bless him, is the WORST ACTOR EVER. It’s like watching an orangutan trying to act. He clutches his head to indicate despair. It is unbearable. It would be 10 times more enjoyable as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. If you have seen this movie lately, perhaps you can answer two questions for me:

1. So she gives the watch to him when she’s old, and then he leaves it in 1912 when he disappears. But where did it come from to begin with?
2. So the penny screws him and he flies back to 1979. Why doesn’t he just try to go back to 1912 again instead of crying and taking long walks on the beach?

If you have a chance, please watch this movie, take some notes, and get back to me.

Vanity tag spotted in Kroger parking lot:

GODDTIT

I tried to make it about God (God did it= God dit it?) but I can’t. It’s totally go double-D tit. I’m sticking with that unless someone can come up with a better explanation.

RDY2ROC
FASTANG

Yesterday I was wearing a pair of black socks but a few hours into the workday decided they looked stupid, so I took them off and tossed them aside, where they looked as if an elderly gentleman had evaporated under my desk. Today it is raining and my sockless feet got soaked coming in from lunch and now I am wearing yesterday’s abandoned socks and I am a slovenly GENIUS.

So much of a genius, in fact, that on my watch, Spike managed to fall out of his crib this week. I could say he climbed out, but I suspect falling is more along the lines of what happened. I might have forgotten to raise the crib rail, and even though the mattress is as low as it can go, if you are a small, wily person whose crib rail only even comes up to the top of your chest, I am sure there is a way to topple out. I heard a thump over the monitor while I was making dinner, then a pause, then wild banshee shrieking. But he was fine! And approximately 8 minutes later, even though I could’ve SWORN he was giving me eat shit looks, he was jumping up and down in my lap and crawling and attempting to murder himself in various other ways, as the pre-toddling-yet-omg-so-mobile baby likes to do.

So many vanity tags to report:
DVASTYL
CJSWIFE (no doubt CJ got this tag for her)
FOTOS4U
YOU GOD
ILVMIKE (Mike + CJ = bffs)
U L IT
SZMTRS (on giant truck, naturally)

I fear it’s happened: I am officially old, as Top Model is boring. Oh, I’m still watching it and all, but I tend to fast forward through the parts where the models are actually, like, talking to each other or pouring beer on each other’s weaves. I just want to see the photo shoots and the results. On the other hand, Make Me a Supermodel is just so much better. Their shoots are better, their judges are better, and the contestants’ names are better (I present to you: Sandhurst and Mountaha [prounounced moon-ta-ha]).

I mentioned my deep and abiding love for American Idol this season, and said I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I cannot resist. I will be forever fascinated by the fact that a gorgeous, yet solidly untalented bird-call enthusiast like Megan Joy Corkrey can make it through. Same goes for the meathead country/Nickelback hybrid Michael Sarver. America: what is wrong with your ears? Lend them to me, as Mark Antony* once requested, and I will clean them out with a q-tip.

*Not to be confused with Mark Anthony, who wants you to lend him YOUR BLOOD.

1. I am already experiencing party anxiety over Spike’s first birthday party…which is over two months away. After looking at some photos of some recent first-birthday parties online, I am already feeling sorry for Spike and his homemade, not-covered-in-fondant, lopsided, crumbs-all-in-the-frosting cake. With his name spelled wrong on it. And maybe some dog hair thrown in for good measure.

2. Today at lunch, some ladies and I shared a dessert that had a warm peach sauce on it. Afterwards, one lady said, “Wow, those apples were delicious!” Another said, “No, that was pineapple.” There was still a tiny UFO* floating in the bowl, so I took it and cut it in half with a knife, and because the chef was apparently milling about the dining room and this looked so ridiculous, he brought us a piece of the most delicious chocolately cream cheesey pie ever. So, score one for being UNABLE TO IDENTIFY FRUIT.
*unidentified fruit object

3. I bought a book on Sunday almost 100% because of the cover. It’s a photograph of some English schoolboys from the 70s, and the main one, who has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looks like Hugh Grant. You should take my book recommendations seriously, as they are based on intellectual criteria.

4. Speaking of, I recently did one of those Facebook notes where you mark all the books you’ve read, etc, only I was unprepared for the comments people left, such as YOU HAVEN’T READ SHERLOCK HOLMES? WHAT ARE YOU, DUMB? and sad messages that will look even sadder if I italicize them, like this one: You are really missing out by not reading The Kite Runner. I felt my list was pretty solid, and personally did not feel the need to berate anyone for not having read things, but hey, what are judgmental acquaintances for? While we’re on the subject, I should tell you that I will never read the following books:
–A Confederacy of Dunces
–anything by Tolkien
–anything involving hobbits, goblins, or hoblins

5. Vanity tags:
2UNWIND
4U MOM

6. I am trying to post more. Bear with me. There may be lots more posts like this one.

• I have a question. If someone says, referring to a lady, “Hubba hubba,” what do you imagine that lady looking like? (I think of a cartoon lady in a red dress with big boobs and a fur stole.)

• I kind of said I wasn’t going to collect vanity tags anymore, and lo, the world opened up to me, and yea, there were many tags:
MRSOLO
HIDDEN
ICEEY
IWKHAIR
MIRACL2
RCK STR

Dude. Those are awesome.

• When you’re feeling tired and like learning the characters of a new book would be as exhausting as getting to know a group of new friends, do you reach for old books that you know inside and out? If so, then you’ll understand why I am reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the nine-hundredth time.

• Larry’s dad, who is sweet as pie, is a bit of a dunderhead. I mean that in the nicest way. He’s an adorable dunderhead! An adorable, generous dunderhead! So he was telling Larry about how you can rent movies from the grocery store.

Larry’s dad: And it’s only a dollar a day!
Larry: Well, don’t you keep them for like a week?
Larry’s dad: Well, yeah. But they have all the new releases!
Larry: So what’d you get?
Larry’s dad: Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Larry: …
Larry’s dad: They were out of everything good.
Larry: (laughing)
Larry’s dad: Hey, do you know how to turn off the 3D on a movie? Journey to the Center of the Earth is in 3D and it’s hurting my eyes.
Larry: I don’t think you can turn it off. You need 3D glasses.
Larry’s dad: I can just wear my sunglasses, right? That’s the same thing as 3D, right?
Larry: No.

• In other news, it appears that I can only write posts in nugget form now.

• Why are endocrinologists, as a whole, such dicks? I understand dickish anesthesiologists because THEY WIELD THE POWER, but the encodrine system is just so lame. I saw mine this morning after skipping my yearly visit last year since my ob/gyn was managing my thyroid during my pregnancy, and y’all, this man acted like it was 1979 again and he was in my first grade class and he didn’t get an invite to my birthday party. His nurse-esque person warned me that he was going to fuss at me. Wha? Really? Then he came in, made a big deal that I let someone else test my precious blood, and actually said, “That’s water under the bridge now” when I asked if it would be helpful to have my other doctor fax him the thyroid test results. Water under the bridge! That is what you say when you catch someone in a lie and they apologize half-assedly and you want them to think you’re over it but you’re not really over it.

• I may have seen the best vanity tag ever the other day: OHH YEA. I just don’t think that can be topped.

• Last week I was all riled up because my mother was in town and we had this conversation:

Mom: Do I need to clean your tub?
Me: I don’t know. Do you feel like cleaning my tub?
Mom: When’s the last time you cleaned it?
Me: Sunday.
(Editor’s note: this conversation happened on Thursday.)
Mom: SUNDAY?
Me: Yes.
Mom: Sunday Sunday? Sunday like 5 days ago Sunday?
Me: Yes.
Mom: So the tub the baby is going to bathe in hasn’t been cleaned since Sunday.
Me: That is correct.
Mom: I’m going to go clean the tub.

I was enraged at the time and spent the whole of Friday quizzing people on how often they clean their tubs. Then I decided my mother is insane and got over it.

• I’m trying really hard not to talk about all the funny things I see on Facebook every time I post something, but man, I find that the “Info” tab is a goldmine. Today I discovered a friend from middle school is into tequila!!! and HOT GUYS WITH GREAT ASSES!!!!!!!!!!! I think she was in my Girl Scout troop. I wonder if there is a merit badge for tequila.

• 2WITCHY
7TITHRS
SNKTFYD

I get twitchy, I get sanctified* (although it took me a minute), but 7TITHRS? The Diplomat sent me that one. My guess is “seven tithers” and his is “seven tit hours.” Any other guesses?

• I’ve been reading (slowly, I may add) Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. I aspire to write a truly silly book one day (complete with ridiculous character names) and have some blurbist write on the back that my book is “in the spirit of Waugh’s Decline and Fall; a true nonsensical masterpiece.” I have the feeling it took Waugh approximately two weeks to write and that he was drunk a lot during the process. One day, I shall give myself a drunken two weeks alone with a typewriter and see what happens. I have a feeling it would be something like this:

Onec upon a tine there was a nam maned Horace McSludgebucket and omg I’m so drunkkkk

• Do you know about Sexy People? What about Fuck You, Penguin? You’re welcome, internet.

• Jaxxonians, have you been to the downtown Keifer’s and had a burger lately? The burger with the mozzerella AND THE FETA DRESSING? Jesus. I ate one yesterday and could eat another four or so today, too.

• Also, gorjus killed John Updike.

*These sound like awesome song lyrics.

RLL TD
BYMISELF

Painted on the back window of a car:

In front of me on the highway this afternoon:

FUNLCLD