A Swift Kick In The Ass

When I woke up this morning I knew I had to move a little more quickly than usual thanks to the knowledge that I had to be somewhere at the crack of dawn, noon. A little daunted by the prospect of getting in a workout, getting dressed and actually blowdrying my hair and applying make up in time to get out the door for my lunch date, I moved more quickly than I have been in recent days. After forcing myself to finish my workout, I made the mistake of getting on the scale at the gym. What followed was a BBM to my husband that read, "I am fat, unemployed and lazy, do you want an annulment?" Taking his non-response as an indicator that he was considering my offer, I sulked home and began wallowing in the fact that after three weeks of real unemployment (I don't count the period between losing my job and the wedding) I had become everything I swore I wouldn't when I wrote a bit of sunshine in October called, "That's What Unemployement's For.

Realizing I'd let my writing slack off and that I'd become complacent in calling a day where I hit the gym, cooked dinner and sent out some resumes a success I decided it was time for a swift kick in the ass. I'm not one to respond well to prodding (the truth is I'm so stubborn that even if I want or planned to do a chore/task/whatever, the minute someone tells me I HAVE to do it, consider it NEVER HAPPENING). Combine that with the fact that, as my husband announced across the dinner table during one of my first meetings with his entire family, "she's a total narcissist," I knew that I needed to find some other way to motivate myself. As such, I decided that you, my readers, are the biggest motivation I have. The more hits I see on that statcounter, the more I'm convinced like Sally Field that, "you like me! you really really like me!", and the more I want to keep going.

And so as my motivation to not let the two Essay Collections I'm working on fall by the wayside like so many projects before, I've decided that once weekly I must finish an essay and publish an excerpt on UnPlain Jane. And so today I give you an excerpt from the first essay in the collection Wedding.Honeymoon.Disaster. : A Collection of Essays from a Calamity Bride.

So without further ado, here is a little taste from Chapter 1:

The Dress: My Sordid Tale of Buying off The Rack

....my fabulous fucking dress from Saks.

The dress was perhaps the single most important element of “MY wedding” (aside from the groom). There is something about a dress, any dress, even a work-dress, that lights a little fire in the pit of my belly. The glorious dress. The most revered element of my wardrobe. With just this single, solitary garment, the dress, any woman can turn herself into a myriad of things. With the right bounce and a pretty frill, a dress can turn you back into an innocent again and with the right hemline and cleavage, a dress can turn you into the raging slut you always wanted to be (or were in college). With the right dress, and only the right dress, you can marry the man of your dreams and for just one day be the princess/diva/Mormon you always envisioned yourself as.

I learned the importance of the dress at the ripe old age of six when my mother purchased and subsequently hung in my closet, what I referred to as my “speech dress” (mainly because it was the dress I would put on when I would stand on top of my bed, giving speeches on topics of great important, like Strawberry Shortcake, to the audience of stuffed animals I had carefully arranged on the floor below me.) My speech dress had that perfect amount of swing that a six year old needs to do that endearing chin-down, hold on to the bottom of the hem with both hands and sway back and forth move indicating we either have to pee or want a new toy. Incidentally, I still use this move whenever I try to get my new Husband to perform some sort of emasculating act of for me, because if he really loved me, yes, he would allow me to put mascara on his incredibly long eyelashes.

The very first time I wore my speech dress was when I played the illustrious role of the “The Capital Letter I” in Ms. Zangy’s First Grade Class production of “The Alphabet”. Through the magic of poster board and the fact that, still in her early thirties, my mother was inclined to be crafty, I waltzed onto stage wearing my speech dress and a Letter I slung over both shoulders, looking like the guy on 7^th Avenue wearing a cardboard sign advertising nails, waxing and/or threading. The same guy that I tell to “Fuck Off” every day when he shoves a flyer in my face. But on that day, even though I was wearing what could’ve just as easily been an advertisement for Mexican food and even if I was the overweight Capital Letter I with a bowl cut, standing next to Jennie DelMont who starred as the adorably dimpled and pig-tailed Lower Case Letter i, I was unstoppable. I was unstoppable because I was wearing my speech dress and that made me the star of the show.

I wore that dress as often as humanly possible until my mother finally threw it out when, in the fourth grade, I tried to shove my “80 pound whale” self (as my gentle older sister dubbed me at gym class weigh-ins) into my “speech dress” and nearly took our dog Curly’s eye out when the zipper popped off and went flying. My dress obsession was born and since that formative time as a burgeoning, first-grade fashionista, I have dubbed myself an expert in dresses, especially white ones, which is why I placed the absolute utmost importance on finding the wedding dress of my dreams. Thus, on a chilly fall night, with print-outs in hand and my best friend, A, in tow, I daintily pressed the number “3” on the elevator at Saks Fifth Avenue and sashayed past Contemporary Sportswear into their Bridal Salon for my 6pm appointment with a bridal consultant...

I hope you enjoyed your first taste of "Wedding. Honeymoon. Disasater." Look for a short excerpt each week from this project or my other baby, "Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Other Great Disappointments.

Life After Wedding

Married life is one thing, as I described recently in this post, with its ups, downs and perks. Life After Wedding is something entirely different with it's own unique set of tasks, trials and tribulations.

The first few days after returning from our honeymoon, my husband, T, and I were on a total high. We could eat whatever we wanted, we could lay around all day not worrying about place cards or candy buffets or just how many pairs of underwear we would need to bring on the honeymoon. We would sit on the couch those first few days and every once a while glance over at each other to see our new husband/wife with one finger up his/her nose, one hand scratching some body part and his/her mouth chewing whatever "forbidden food" s/he wanted. These moments were truly magical and every now and then they'd be topped off with some sort of emission of gas. That's when we would look at each other, our eyes brimming over with love and say, "Married life is amazing. I love you so much."

One week later, Life After Wedding set in and brought with it the following:

Bed, Bath and Beyond

I have made more trips to Bed, Bath & Beyond in the past three weeks than I care to make in any given year. Contrary to my husband who practically creams himself at the thought of going into any store that sells kitchen/bathroom/organizing equipment, I hate it (which really doesn't make sense being that I'm the only one who actually uses any of the stuff). Life After Wedding forced us to take a full inventory of all of the gifts we had received and make one too many trips to BB&B for returns.

Excited at the prospect of BB&B's Cash Back Policy, I grabbed as much as I could carry and waited in the freezing cold, one shopping cart short of looking homeless and finally caught the M15 headed uptown to my favorite BB&B. Now, generally, I RAVE about their customer service. They're so nice, friendly, helpful and quick. Not so much this time. After using my chin to open the door since my arms were loaded down and the store's doorman thought it would be more fun to watch, rather than help me I was pumped to see that there was only one other person at the Customer Service desk. Little did I know that the only other person formed one half of the lethal Tiny Asian Woman/Slowest Employee On Earth combination that would result in me standing there sighing loudly whenever another employee strolled over, looked at me and then strolled away to text his baby mama, deciding I would be too much work to help.

When it finally was my turn, I was "greeted" by the most unfortunate mug any Customer Service desk has ever seen. Little did this lady know that I not only will I tell off a store clerk, I ENJOY it and so I made it my business to wait until she walked all the way to the end of the counter only to yell out "just one more question" so she had to walk her slow, rude ass all the way back over to me. I was only slightly frightened by the person behind me in line, who after closer inspection, turned out to be a woman and not a small man. It was hard to tell initially given the butch hair cut and sleeveless flannel shirt. I thought quick and bonded with the possibly-just-released-from-the-State Pen woman waiting for me to finish over cell phones and hating the Customer Service lady. Finally, I was walking out of BB&B with 300 bones, the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with pissing someone off and the comfort that if I ever ended up in the clink, I knew whose bitch I would be.

Thank You Cards

When I walked into our building yesterday afternoon, in a rush to make it upstairs since I didn't have the DVR set up to record Oprah, my doorman called after me, "Uh Jane, I have a package for you." I always get excited at the sight of a pair of tight brown UPS man shorts and I get a little rush whenever a package arrives even if I know it's just a box of contact lenses I ordered. I bolted from the elevator over to the closet where the doormen keep our packages and all but closed my eyes and held out my hands as my parents instructed me to do the Christmas morning they had bought us "black market" Cabbage Patch Dolls.

When I looked down at the box that the doorman placed in my hand after awkwardly waiting for the elevator with me, I saw the return address was from my favorite online stationery store. Realizing instantly that I was holding in my hand the cards that I had ordered to use as thank you cards for the wedding, I immediately instant messaged T saying, "pick up some wine on your way home, the Thank You Cards arrived." Now, thank you cards aren't just a post-wedding task. There are Engagement thank you cards, Shower thank you cards, Rehearsal dinner thank you cards, Thank you for slapping me across the face when I was freaking out over seating arrangement thank you cards; The difference is that those thank you cards are exciting, they are fun, they are all part of the "wedding planning process."

Once the wedding is over there is nothing a newlywed bride and groom want less than anything to do with the "wedding planning process" and while, we truly couldn't be more grateful for the gifts we've received and the people that celebrated with us, that stack of blank cards acts as a time machine set to transport you right back to the Xanax-popping days that made up the two or so weeks just before the wedding.

Not one to slack off, I ripped open the box ,right away and started writing and wrote until bed-time. This morning, after cooking T his usual breakfast of an omelet, English Muffin, oatmeal and tea, I got back to work and as I sat at the kitchen table, writing away, commented to him, "Ya know, I'm really trying to be original and personal with all of the thank you notes, it's really hard to not write the same thing over and over." From the living room, over the sound of SportsCenter (which he watches at unnecessarily loud volume every morning) he replied, "Yeah, I totally know."

I stopped dead in my tracks and thought for a moment making a mental catalog of all of the Thank You and, not to mention Holiday cards we have sent out since the very beginning of our relationship. Double checking in my head, I confirmed silently to myself that T had not so much as signed his name, let alone had he written a thoughtful note on a single solitary greeting over the past five years. I must have been silent a little too long, because he felt the need to walk into the kitchen and remind me, "Ya know. I did have a BAR MITZVAH. And I wrote thank you cards. And I wrote the same thing over and over. So I get it."

Was I supposed to respond positively to this? I honestly don't know. Is he justified in comparing the 60 or so Bar Mitzvah Thank You Cards he "wrote" (aka: transposed whatever note his mother kindly composed for him" to the 300 or so Thank You cards I'd written on behalf of the two of us over the past year? Did I not have a Sweet Sixteen in which I wrote my own thank you cards? Does one instance of writing Thank Yous 15 years ago excuse him for life just because he bought a ring?

Again, I must have been silent, deep in thought, for too long after his comment, because he continued on citing, "I've offered to help." Unprepared to deal with this conversation at 8am, I just changed the subject until it was time to kiss him goodbye and send him off to work. Men, sometimes it's better to stay silent.

KIDS

Many married couples will tell you that the minute you get back from your honeymoon, people start asking, "So, are you thinking about kids?" "Can we expect a honeymoon baby?" Luckily for T and I, we've been spared this Life After Wedding phenomenon and people aren't really bugging us about this. Perhaps it's because I'm unemployed; Perhaps it's because we are two of the laziest human beings on the planet; or Perhaps its because everyone is aware that the plant we bought three years ago lasted only about three months because we didn't always "feel like" watering it. Whatever the reason, people have (thankfully) left us alone on this topic. Even my mother who swears I'm a "natural" whenever she sees me awkwardly holding a baby leaves us alone when it comes to this topic, which incidentally will be the basis for an upcoming blog. Something along the lines of "What on Earth will T and I Spawn Should We Decide to Procreate?

In a nutshell, this is Life After Wedding. Forgive me for leaving out things like Gown Preserving, Arguments like "We Can't Put That Picture in the Album because I Have Fat Arm", and Let's-Throw-A-Honeymoon-Themed-Party-So-We-Can-Use-All-Our-New-Stuff Syndrome, but I wanted to keep this post under 2000 words.

Lunch With An Ex

How long are you supposed to wait before seeing an "ex" after a painful break-up?  A month? Two? I'm not sure what protocol is, but when I got a text message from an ex late last week asking me to lunch, I was somewhat tentative, but also intrigued so I said yes.  Besides, I never turn down a free meal.

Before you start calling "T" and telling him I'm running around town having liquid lunches with a man who may or may not have seen my breasts before, let me tell you that I'm talking about about an ex-coworker, not an ex-boyfriend (and no, he hasn't seen my breasts - unless he was at Key West Fantasy Fest in 1998-2000).  Our breakup was somewhat painful, I didn't want to leave, he didn't want me to go, but due to circumstances beyond our control (the massive layoff my previous employer went through), things just weren't going to work out.  So about a month ago, we hugged goodbye, went our separate ways and promised we'd stay friends.  It's not you, it's me. 

As I bussed-it across town wearing a cute-but-casual outfit, the kind you always wanted your co-workers to see you in, but just couldn't get away with at the office, I wondered to myself what we would talk about.  Would we keep our distance and keep it all business?  Would the conversation revolve around the co-workers we used to share but he now has custody of?  Or we would "go there" and talk about the stuff we could never talk about when we were "together", entwined as professionals.

I got my answer about 10 minutes after we hugged hello.  As soon as "The Ex" said, "UnPlain Jane, let's have wine," I knew where it was going and within five minutes the conversation turned from "How's Business?" to "Tell me every last dirty detail of your trip to Vegas and I'll tell you how I was no different from you 8 years ago."  I guess some things never change.  All it takes is an expensive meal and a $16 glass of wine (which is better than the $1 pitcher of beer and plate of hot wings it took in college) to seal the deal.  By the end of the meal we were both fully aware of a) how funny we each think we are and b) how awesome his wife and my future husband are for putting up with each of us.  

As sad as it is saying goodbye to the people you spent at least 40 hours of every week with, there's something especially fun about getting together, after you've split, and getting to hang out without the looming threat of "Monday Morning" and revealing just a little more than you ever would've in the office over a muted conference call. 

I would love to have the opportunity to get to know all of my "EXes" is this way, but I think it's best kept to those I've always had the sneaking suspicion are "just like me."   I have a reputation to maintain and I wouldn't want to ruin the image of the sweet-nice-class act-UnPlain Jane.  After all, if I wanted them to know who I really was, I would've owned up to spreading the funniest-but-most-vulgar-joke XYZ Company has ever heard. Instead, I gave credit to a man, because that kind of joke couldn't have come from the mouth of a woman and certainly not UnPlain Jane.  Not the one my ex-co-workers know anyway.