domino's delivers

Monday, aug. 11, 2008   |   0 comments

Our local Domino’s Pizza used to have the most beautifully depressing table set up on the sidewalk out front, a tipsy, dirty, sunburned table with a breathtaking view of of the gas station. And plumly located just inches away from four-lane exhaust jamboree that is Grand Avenue! There was also a moldy umbrella, which I never ever saw unfurled, and a rusty metal folding chair. One chair.

Marco and I liked to entertain ourselves with talk of going there for our anniversary (four years of dating this September!), how first we’d get into position: Marco in a suit, teetering in the rotten chair, with me hovering at full attention beside him, my gown blowing in the wake of all the cars whizzing past. And then we’d cellphone in our order, giving the address of Domino’s Pizza itself as our delivery destination. As confusion ensued, we’d tell the pizza people inside to look out their front door. And there we’d be, smiling and waving and pointing at our hungry, pizza-shaped mouths.

But all our plans were dashed the day Domino’s ad hoc pizza patio suddenly up and disappeared. Gone! Nevermore!

Marco and I were very glummed by the loss, and would always sigh woefully whenever we walked past. But then one day our love of the insane local Domino’s was renewed anew when we caught sight of this magic in the making:

This kind of beautiful does not come from Corporate. Clearly this is the ambition-child of a power-hungry Branch Manager who spotted his pizzamen lounging during a lull in business and, in a fit of got-time-to-lean-got-time-to-clean-liness, sicced them on this little project.

While the lettering may look like it was done freehand, I can attest that many painstaking manhours (three different pizzamen were painting on it as we passed!) were spent taping off the outline for each letter, “oinch” by “oinch,” and then painting in the negative space. However they opted not to paint in the logo, which if you look close is constructed out of nothing but teeth-torn tape, a testament to the glory of restraint. For, more than anything, our Domino boys in blue know the sublimity of the sub-standard.

breathe, breathe in the hair

Friday, aug. 8, 2008   |   0 comments

Just over a month ago, I read a post over at Angry Chicken that mentioned the benefits, both financial- and scalp-happiness-wise, of washing your hair using nothing but baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Not at the same time, of course—since that would cause your head to turn into a volcano of a science fair—but staggered, with the baking soda as the shampoo and the apple cider as the conditioning rinse.

My love of home remedies being slightly stronger than my since-childhoood-in-Marin distaste for hippie schemes, I decided to give it a try. And for the past month, I have indeed been washing my hair with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of baking soda (double the usual amount, but I have troubling amounts of hair) and rinsing with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar—it’s all how-to-ed in satisfying detail over at Babyslime.

And I am here to say that I’m very happy with the results! My hair feels good—when it gets wet, gone is that American squeakiness, where your fingers sort of stutter down your head. Instead, my hair feels…supple? Elastic? Childlike? And there’s a lot less tangling. Best of all is the smell, which I for some reason keep describing as “lake-like,” a description that I know sounds boggish and silty and generally unappetizing. But I’m talking about that fresh, comforting, elemental smell of an exhausting childhood day spent sunning and diving into non-chlorinated waters. That smell. And all the people I’ve forced to “smell my head” this past month seem to agree, or at least are not repulsed!

Also, my hair actually looks better, or at least less puffy. And not at all dirty-hippie lank, as I feared.

All in all, a very successful home remedy experiment! Unlike the clove of garlic the internet once convinced me to try as a cure for a yeast infection, an experiment which was…not quite as successful. Suffice it to say that if you’re not single when you start stuffing your infected parts full of garlic,
chicken-style, you very soon will be. But you’ll still have that yeast infection to keep you company.

oh, baby

Tuesday, aug. 5, 2008   |   0 comments

Sometimes I think having a baby might be nice, but neither Marco nor I seem to have developed the all-import Baby Fever, nor has the even-more-compelling Accident of Fate seems to have occurred. Without Fever or Accident, the baby-thinking seems to keep getting back-burnered. And now that I’m 38, it seems the decision may have already been made through lack of deciding, what with my eggs being mostly rotten by now?

Sometimes I think about adoption, though given my luck with picking out mealy, tasteless produce, and non-functioning used automobiles, and bathtub-peeing, fireplace-shitting cats, I’m pretty much guaranteed to choose a lemon…like a kid who wears patchouli or a burning man. Really it’s the whole responsibility of of choosing (versus having it genealogically beyond my control) that scares me. Maybe if the choice weren’t up to me and my Black Hand of Bad Picks, like if the child was just magically left on my doorstep? (Though after that “adoptive child as lemon” analogy, I’m guessing no one’s going to trust their kid to me now.)

Sometimes I think I’ll be fine without ever reproducing, that my wide circle of active and child-free friends, plus my wide circle of friends with awesome kids, together we will fill that need for family.

And sometimes I worry that ten-years-from-now-Evany is going to be very sad that she procrastinated her way out of motherhood, and twenty-years-from-now-Evany is going to be sort of disconnected from the world, without a pair of young eyes to see everything through?

Hm.

what not to wear, the reunion episode

Monday, aug. 4, 2008   |   4 comments

In just over three weeks, I will be attending my 20th high school reunion, an event that fills me with a yucky hot-stomach feeling that I’m guessing (though can’t really be sure…it’s so dark in there) is part social anxiety, part career uncertainty, and part wrinkle sadness, stirred with an unhealthy splash of “oh my god, my life is half over.”

Like a birthday or New Years Eve, a reunion is the kind of milestone that invites painful reflection and personal meter-reading. Blowing out the candles, counting down those last ten seconds of the year, these are times when the small, regret-weakened voice inside really likes to pity-party, fixating on the failures, belittling the achievements, and generally taking dim stock of the previous year. And a high school reunion is all those things, only ten times worse, what with the event rearing its ugly head only once a decade, meaning there’s ten times the annual should-haves and could-haves to look back on. Hurray!

Who should I be for my 20-year reunion: The Mead-Soaked PTA Mom?

So August 30th would be a hard day for me even if it weren’t for the fact that the last time I saw everyone was at my profoundly regrettable ten-year reunion, an event at which I accidentally got myself very, very drunk. As in red wine splashed across the chest of my shirt, mascara down to my chin, holding for dear life onto the railings in the handicap stall, confrontational “Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you’d for sure be serving time by now what with you being such a sick fuck!” and “Remember in eighth grade when you touched my nipples?” drunk.

The Demure Tea Partier?

I’m convinced that the reason I got so heinously plastered that fateful night, apart from the buckets of vodka I mean, was my outfit. It just was not right! For me, the wrong outfit makes me feel tongue-tied and boring and misunderstood, while the right outfit makes me feel attractive and smart and comfortable with the person I turned out to be. And on the night of my tenth high school reunion, I was wearing the wrong outfit.

The Bendable, Posable Cha-Cha-Charming Action Figure?

I had spent the afternoon trying on shirts after pants after skirts after dresses in a terrible fit of outfit indecision. When it came time to head over to my friend Megan’s house—where our circle of still-friends had planned to gather beforehand for drinks—I still wasn’t dressed. So I threw on sweats and grabbed pretty much all the clothes I owned and took them with me, and while we sipped pre-reunion libations, I modeled outfit after outfit, trying to find the perfect combination of fabric and color and texture and not-too-snugness to forge the protective coating of confidence and body-comfort I needed to face the next four hours. But before I could find the Right Outfit, we were late and everyone was yelling at me to Come on! And Let’s go! So I just went out the door in what I was wearing at that moment: a weird cropped neon green shirt, a black-and-white stripped belly-gripping angle-length skirt, and towering maroon platforms. It was a very late-90s look, which was okay since it was 1998. The problem was, it just did not capture my me of that moment. For not only does the right outfit have to look cute, but it also has to make me feel like my outsides match my insides. And clearly, on that night of nights, my insides were begging for vintage postal pants, black webbed belt with metal “E” slider buckle, Rebel sneakers, and a black tee with heart-shaped neckline. Which I firmly believe is why, when we arrived at the reunion, I started pouring myself one bad idea after another. I think I was just trying to drink my insides into matching my outsides!

The Dry Wine-Whitened Gallery Sophisticate?

But this time, it’s going to be different. For my 20th reunion, I’m going to make sure I’m wearing the right outfit. Because you’re going to help me, maybe! Here’s what I’m hoping you’ll do: Take a look at the survey of all my outfits, and if you see one that you think makes me look ultra pinchable (important!) but also embodies the Essence of Evany (absolutely key!), then add a comment for that photo that says, “I totally think you should wear this to reunion!” A reunion, by the way, that will be staged here in the Bay Area (i.e., too cold for short-shorts), in the evening-time (so no brunch-style clam diggers), and we’ll be charmed by the musical stylings of the very same high school band that played at Prom (i.e., actually sweatpants would probably be just fine).

The Cheerfully Swedish Exchange Student? Or some other me entirely? Type your vote at me today!

With your wisdom to guide me into the Right Outfit, clearly there’s no way I can fail! Now the only remaining question is: Do I stay sober to demonstrate how most improved I am? Or do I keep with tradition and get even more loaded and tell all those pieces of dried and tanned fruit leather what I really think…again?

Or maybe this dark night calls something in between…a toast! To temperance!

one is silver, the other gold: part done!

Thursday, jul. 31, 2008   |   0 comments

Oh dear. Where were we? Finishing this description of all the friend-packed fun I’ve been having lately is getting harder by the day, what with time continuing to pass in the meanwhile, thereby packing more also-fun events onto the pile of things I want to remember not to forget! And now somehow I’m farther behind in my round-up than when I first started? Time is the worst! Not for the first time do I find myself wishing for a time-stopping Gold Watch machine—I wouldn’t even use it to win roulette or untie ladies’ bikini tops. I’d just stop time for a day or two, long enough to get my internet timeline caught up with my actual lifetime, and maybe take a sweaty long nap. (Explanaside: I have not been sleeping at all well these days, between the biting of mosquitoes, and the howling, growling house mammals, and also french-fry poisoning, I haven’t experienced more than a handful of restful hours of the last week, and I’m the walking woozy as a result. I also have epic chin acne, and a randomly swollen left foot. There’s a party going on right here, it turns out?)

Okay: So: Saturday: Mic checks, mimosas, and handbag parties
After staying up late GoGos dancing and donut cramming the night before at the Mightyhaus party, I found it difficult indeed to peel my old self out of bed on this particular Saturday morning. But peel myself I did, for I was scheduled to appear on the What We Do: Pursuing Your Passion Never Gets Old panel at the BlogHer conference, and staying in bed was not really an option, though a bed-based panel—with breakfast burritos!—would have been interesting. (Next year!) And so I got up, dabbed some aspirin between my lips, hurtled on the best panel-worthy outfit I could muster, and Marco drove into the city with silent, brooding, stage-frightened me at his side. (I’m convinced that each time I speak publicly I’m shortening my lifespan by at least a month. I’ll have to drive over a lot of railroad tracks with my fingers crossed to gain back the lost time…typing this, it suddenly occurs to me that maybe not everyone knows about the “railroad tracks+crossed fingers=one extra day of life” recipe. Maybe this is another one of my weird only-child things?)

Things got off to a mildly rocky start, but once I made it through my sputtering self-introduction—during which Maggie had to throw me a few life-saver questions (“And you are…?”)—I managed to start swimming and stop sinking long enough to actually get to the point of enjoying myself. I have no idea what I said, stage fright for me being the equivalent of seven memory-obliterating Swedish Massages (scroll down for the recipe), but I do remember laughing a whole lot and being super interested in everything everyone else was saying (both the ladies on my panel as well as all the nice audience people). Apparently I also did a lot head flapping and perhaps even some mild seizing, because word has it my lapel microphone only caught every other word I said, like Lina Lamont in The Dueling Cavalier. Yes, yes, yes? No, no, nooooo.

After the panel, I did a quick book signing. (Yes, I’m still trotting that one out, can you believe it?) Then I went to the BFD meet-and-greet-(and-mimosas!) event, where Annie and I participated in some rapid-fire chatting with the lovely Mo, Wheetabix, and a whole circle of lovely ladies. Then we darted over to the Can You Take Back Naked Blogging? panel, which was heart-wrenching (the depths that comment ogres can sink to!) and funny (watch a crying baby turn her mother’s milk-laden breasts into Pavlovian squirt guns!) and generally great, aside from the audience person who chose to clip her nails during the show, which is possibly the grossest, most brain-curdling sounds ever and whenever I hear it I just want to punch the whole world. But sadly there was no time for world-punching, because quick like a cheetah we had to sprint over to the closing keynote, Living the Truman Show, which was a whole rainbow of interesting, wow.

Fame is a very weird thing in and of itself, but there’s something extra boggling about highly contextualized fame. Like a hotdog-eating champion, he can stroll around Cost Plus or wherever completely unmolested, without anyone noticing or even really caring who he is. But then he walks in to a hotdog-eating conference, and everyone’s face turns toward him and tracks him like a sunflower follows the sun. And all those sunflowers want their picture taken with him.

It can be a little disconcerting to witness, especially if you have no prior understanding that such a thing existed, at least not at that level. It feels like you just turned over a rock and suddenly there’s this whole world of activity going on, with its own complicated system of loyalties and betrayals and misunderstandings. It’s fascinating. But uncomfortable, too, and maybe even a little scary? Hm.

Finally, a shot of the ceiling of the antechamber of the keynote ballroom.

After the keynote I did a quick Oh Mighty Isis costume-change into my great Great Lakes dress, and Annie and I dashed over to Macy’s for the strange end-of-conference shop-and-sip party involving champagne-drinking amongst the handbags and noodle-gobbling amongst the shoes. Fun! Weird!

Oh, just sipping champagne over here by the cash register.

And then (this is still the same Saturday?) I strapped on a conical birthday hat and went behind the bookcase and down the rabbit hole of Bourbon and Branch with a whole crew of outstanding ladies and gentleURLs (Jon, Sarah, Antonia, Carol, Alice, Eden, Melissa, Maggie, Bryan) to celebrate of the birth of the sweet baby awesome that is Heather! After a flurry of ridiculous drinks and loud bar-shouting, we broke into cabs to hit North Beach for some birthday fooding.

Our particular cab was helmed by a creepy little man who happened to overhear me say (possibly because I was yelling?) that I wasn’t wearing any underwear—not for sexy reasons but because I’d only just discovered that the underpants I’d been wearing with success all day did something new and awful and sausage-y once I made the switch to my clingy woolen dress. Me, while backing slowly out of the cab so as not to Britney my parts all over Little Italy: “Oh no! I’m not wearing any underwear!” Perv Griffin, eye-locking me in the rear view: “I thought so.” Me, to Sarah and Carol who were already halfway up the street: “DID YOU HEAR WHAT PERV GRIFFIN JUST SAID TO ME?” Perv Griffin: [Nothing but the sounds of a cab peeling out into the night.]

After a long, chatty dinner there was some muttering about hitting another bar…WHAT? Luckily everyone else was just about as exhausted as I was, and we all agreed to use the last 2% of our energy reserves to just stagger home. I cabbed to BART with Jon, Heather, and Carol, wherein we were razzled and dazzled by the driver’s (NOT Perv Griffin) selection of energizing panty jams. I asked the cab at large if anyone knew what we were listening to, because it was actually kind of glorious and perhaps just the new soundtrack my staid life is begging for? Jon whipped out his iMachine, put it up to the speakers, then started tapping on buttons and sending pings out into space or whatever. And within moments, he turned to us with a wide, proud smile and held out his computational device, which, based on sound-waves alone, had managed to produce both the name of the song and the panty jamming individual who created it. (Data which I’ve since totally forgotten. I was tired! And drunk! And not wearing any underwear.) We were all suitably impressed with the technological feat, and were in the middle of oohing and ahhing when the cab driver nonchalantly ejected the CD, upon which all the salient info was clearly printed, and handed it to me, all: Is THAT what you idiots were looking for?

And…that’s it! I hopped out of the cab, got onto the BART, and Marco kindly met me at the station and drove exhausted, silent, already-hung-over me home again, home again.

But that’s not all! (I know. I’m sorry. It’s like there was never a time when I wasn’t writing this entry.)

Sunday: Brunch with my amazing friend-since-high-school Megan and her new man, Tony, then to the Oakland Museum with Brian and Sandra for the Birth of Cool, then off to Batman II, III, IV, and V. Have you seen that movie yet? No? Well be prepared to walk out feeling like you’d just beer-bonged four entire movies all at once.

Hat shopping in the Oakland Museum gift shop.

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis with Maggie, Marco, and Sarah, during which Marco told the story of the fake “perfect for burning man” ads he’s been placing on Craigslist in an attempt to get Stephen and Jessica of Vintage Microwave to profile them, which caused Maggie to actually spit-take into her water glass, possibly the only non-elegant thing I’ve ever seen her do. Dear diary!

Wednesday: Dinner at the St. Francis again, this time with the McSweeney’s kids. Food, fun, and monkey grinder milkshakes!

Friday: Impromptu Domino Magazine watermelon margaritas at our house. Fun, fun, fun…and then drunken sadness.

Saturday: Hangover, hangover, hangover…then only at dusk managing to rally for a jaunt to Dolores Park for The Breakfast Club amongst a sea of drunks and puppies and groping hippies for Kari’s birthday!

Why was it called The Breakfast Club when they were there the whole Saturday, and the only meal they had was lunch?

When the lights, go down, on the city.

Birthday Kari and old rubber face.

Sunday: Quality time with my mom and Frank, then home for a re-screening of Lost in Translation, which is still pretty much perfect, it turns out. And how often in life do you get to put the words “still” and “perfect” together?

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis AGAIN for long, leisurely chatting about trains and time zones and midwives with some of my oldest and dearests: Heidi, Liz, back-in-town Jill, and later Sunny.

Wednesday: Orange tang booze drinks and mini hamburgers at the CB2 opening party and then mojitos and big rolls of sushi products at the Ritz with Jill, Marco, Adam, and Julia, whee!

Drinking the koolaid.

Marco is a giant among hamburgers.

Then, finally, finally TODAY! Just another day at the bank, plus the endless exhaustion of words and photos that you see before you.

And now, here I sit, internet sore and halfway hungry, my ears aching with earphone fatigue, my glasses smudged with finger juice. Ah so! THIS is what living in the now feels like.