I just got home from work and the work holiday party. My feet hurt terribly because I wore heels today and I haven’t worn heels for a full day in many many months. I’ve had them on since 8 a.m. - so for 14 hours. That’s a fun kind of sore.

My fuzzy turquoise slippers are making them feel cozy and nice, though.

All my anxiety about work passed. Lunch was fine and I was OK with the whole SHEGP reveal. It seems that the recipient of my gift really liked at least HALF of his items, so that was good. After lunch, we all basically did NOTHING until it was time to leave for the restaurant/party. A bunch of us left together and went over to Cipriani. It’s really gorgeous inside. Good use of dim/atmospheric lighting. Art deco style decor.

I had a cosmopolitan (probably the best one I’ve ever had) and tried to drink a gin and tonic (probably the worst I’ve ever had.) They were made by two different bartenders, so I learned a lesson - if the one bartender made you a kick-ass drink, continue to go to THAT bartender. What made the gin and tonic so bad? Um… it didn’t taste like one - it tasted bitter… more like quinine or gin alone than the sweeter combo that the right proportions of gin and tonic provide.

There was also lots of tasty food - some spinach canneloni that were delicious, wonderful filet mignon and potatoes gratin, and lovely petit fours that they were beginning to pass out when I decided I had to go in order to catch my train. There was a live band and a dance floor and the musical selection was rather eclectic. They went from performing a medley of Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, Earth Wind & Fire’s “September” and several other songs of that era, then moved back to some Christmas music and 40s standards, THEN did “Another Night” by Real McCoy, THEN Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” and THEN, the coup de grace, “Yeah” by Usher and Lil’ Jon, complete with Ludacris’ rap (which I Googled… I don’t have it memorized):

Watch out!
My outfit’s ridiculous, in the club lookin’ so conspicuous.
And Rowl! These women all on the prowl,
if you hold the head steady I’m a milk the cow.
Forget about the game, I’m a spit the truth,
I won’t stop till I get ‘em in they birthday suits.
So gimmie the rhythm and it’ll be off with their clothes,
then bend over to the front and touch your toes.
I left the Jag and I took the Rolls,
if they aint cutting then I put em on foot patrol.
How you like me now,
when my pinky’s valued over three hundred thousand,
Let’s drank you the one to please,
Ludacris fill cups like double D’s.
Me and Ursh once more and we leave ‘em dead,
we want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed to say

And yes, it also included the “take that and rewind it back, Lil’ Jon got the beat to make ya booty go [clap]“, but the singer went, “UGH” instead of clapping.

YES. This was a corporate holiday party. No, I don’t think anyone in attendance over the age of 35 had any idea what the lyrics actually were or cared to listen and discern them. “Milk the cow?” “Freak in the bed?” Not exactly work appropriate in any way, shape or form, so it was terribly funny and my work friend Melinda and I sat there cracking up. Singing along, true, but cracking up.

Then I left and realized just how much my feet hurt as I was walking down Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street and then down the stairs to the PATH train. I took off my shoes in the NJ Transit train once I got to Hoboken, but didn’t think it would be appropriate to massage them in public aboard a train. I had pantyhose on, so I wasn’t barefoot. Still… I wanted to maintain a sense of public propriety.

Have I mentioned that I can’t wait until I get these wisdom teeth yanked? Perhaps the pain they’re causing is “heightened” in some psychosomatic sense after having seen the X-rays and hearing that they are impacted and that I have a legitimate reason to feel this pain. They didn’t hurt as much before… freakin’ mind over matter nonsense.

On the train this morning and the train home, I was reading one of my book purchases from yesterday - “Inkspell” by Cornelia Funke. It’s the sequel to “Inkheart.” Her other titles - “Dragon Rider” and “The Thief Lord” are some of my recommended childrens’ reads for grown-ups on the books page. This book is no exception. HIGHLY recommended after only 7 chapters. I was telling a girl at work about it and she actually seemed genuinely interested.

Tomorrow morning I am going into NYC again to meet up with my boss so we can go meet with the gentleman who is recording and producing an audio project for us. It’s pretty cool. I get to do cool things. I love this job. Yay!

Foot soak. Epsom salts. Sleep.

Here’s today’s quote from my Wisdom of the East page-a-day calendar:

Time is a created thing.
To say, “I don’t have time,” is like saying, “I don’t want to.”
Lao-tzu

This afternoon, after I’d taken care of a trip to Barnes and Noble at noon to take advantage of my sister’s employee appreciation discount, I went to the movies with Vin and saw “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

It was actually OK. I don’t know that I’d pay to see it again in the theatres, but it might be a DVD purchase. The children they have playing the Pevensey children (Peter, Edmund, Lucy and Susan) are not nearly as annoying as they could’ve been. As a matter of fact, they’re all quite endearing and delightfully British. The girls playing Lucy and Susan really do look like they’re sisters and Edmund is just different enough from his siblings - with his dark hair and his brooding expression - to convey his “outsider” role without beating us over the head with it.

It was a little weird that the youngster playing Lucy was the only one with that particular British dialect/accent wherein one says, “bruvah” instead of “brother” and “fink” instead of “think” - but not consistently. So either she was doing it on purpose or covering up her cockney (I lack the energy to look up the proper term - my apologies) and letting it slip sometimes. Either way, she is an adorable little girl. She’s not exactly what you’d call china doll pretty… not some delicate little English rose… but her face had a certain openness that was very effective in that role. All the kids were very well cast, so BRAVO, casting director!

Also, the actor who played Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy) was pretty great, too. I knew he looked familiar and a quick trip to imdb.com confirmed that he is familiar since he was in the Sci Fi Channel mini-series, “Children of Dune.” It’s odd - the two times I’ve seen him playing someone on film, he’s been shirtless. Fighting bare-chested in “Children of Dune” and walking around shirtless on goat legs in “Narnia.”

Now to today’s heading: “It’s a Jesus thing.”

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for your entire life, you are aware - whether due to previous reading or awareness or due to recent media publicity - that “The Chronicles of Narnia” have some pretty strong Christian imagery/metaphor/references going on. C.S. Lewis was a staunch Christian, so it stands to reason and, even beyond that, most Western literature written in the past two centuries is laden with Christian religious imagery, whether in a reverent or irreverent way. It’s neither new nor amazing - IF you’ve bothered to be involved in anything cultural at any point in your life. For me, this is non-negotiable. Having some cultural literacy, to use E.B. Hirsch’s term, is absolutely necessary.

Sooo… while we were watching the movie, there was a couple sitting behind us in the theatre. They were probably in their late 30s or early 40s. The male half of the couple was a loud laugher and very easily amused. This isn’t terribly annoying, but the fact is that the movie isn’t exactly “pratfall central” and that the little asides the children make aren’t meant to have the audience ROTFLMAO (ha - didn’t expect THAT, did you!?) but rather to lighten the mood of an otherwise fairly serious movie. Anytime the children good-naturedly chided each other - even saying something like, “I thought we were too old to believe in Santa”, this man was LAUGHING like it was the first time he’d ever heard a joke.

Perhaps he doesn’t get out much. His partner, the woman in this couple, was a good deal more annoying because she apparently considered herself to be quite the theological scholar - or something - and would point out each and every tenuous Biblical reference, but not even in a smart way.

For example, when Aslan the lion sacrifices himself, the woman behind me said to Mr. Laughey, “Do you see? How it’s like Jesus?” and then when the lion was resurrected and the stone tablet upon which he was killed cracked in half, she said quite loudly, “See? It’s a Jesus thing.” At this point, because of her volume and the use of the phrase “Jesus thing,” I turned around and glared at her. Then I turned back to the screen and shook my head so she could see that I was shaking my head over her commentary. She made a little noise to indicate that I was being bitchy, but the moron did manage to keep her mouth shut for the remainder of the movie. Then again, after Aslan is resurrected, it’s all battle-scene and denouement, so she didn’t have much else to discuss.

Before the end, though, I turned to Vin and said, “I bet people are going to applaud at the end.” He disagreed and said, “Nah. I don’t think so.” Lo and behold, there were applause aplenty because people don’t seem to get that the SCREEN is not a STAGE and that the actors, director, (or CGI beavers and cheetahs in this case), etc. CANNOT HEAR YOU. Applause are meant for the performers to hear that you appreciate them. The very nature of the modern motion picture makes applause irrelevant in that environ. If you’re at a premiere and - oooh! there’s the director! there’s the lead actor! - then sure. Applaud away. Otherwise, you’re just being silly.

I wrapped the bulk of my Christmas gifts tonight. The only remaining things are the packages arriving this week and then cash for my brother since he bought himself a 3 year subscription to XM satellite radio for his new car and just wants us to pay for that since he didn’t want to wait until Christmas to get it. That blows and sort of disrupts my entire take on Christmas, but fine - OK. I got him a little something additional so I don’t feel like he’s getting cold hard cash. Not that I’d mind cash, but I enjoy owning stuff and never have a problem coming up with a movie or candle or book or tea or yarn or t-shirt that I’d like to own.

Crap. It’s almost 11. I got very little sleep last night/this morning since I didn’t fall asleep until 5 a.m. and then awoke at 8:30 of my own volition. I realized that it was 8:30 in the morning and went right back to sleep until 10. Then I got up, showered, went to B&N, went to the movies, came back home, finished knitting Christmas scarf #2 (which I need to wrap up) while watching the “Law and Order: SVU” viewer’s choice marathon and am now doing this.

But I must sleep. Work holiday party tomorrow. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to participate in all this holiday happiness at work. Not that I mind anyone at work or that I mind the holiday, but I just feel drained and do NOT want to be social. It’s going to be a LONG day, emotionally and actually. Crap. Must pull clothes from dryer. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

LJ and I went to a diner around 1:00 and each had a slice of cherry pie. That’s not some sort of slang for sexual encounters, by the way. We are friends who went to a Jersey diner and each ordered pie from the waitress. The pie was eaten. When I was leaving LJ’s apartment, my stomach was grumbling quite loudly. It was the subject of laughter. When I got in the car and was driving home, cramps started. I got home and the pie caused me some decent pain and suffering.

Lesson learned. No more cherry pie this late in the evening, or at all, really.

Without sounding schmaltzy or sentimental or mildly obsessive, I have to state that this was one of those evenings that will probably carry me through a solid few days in a good mood since there was just good conversation and laughter and happy friendship vibes going. It’s always pretty awesome to spend some time just talking with a friend and not have other plans for an activity or errand. Catching up, sharing stories and offering advice, joking, hopping out to a diner halfway through the evening to quell a sudden pie-craving and then talking some more.

Today was a productive day indeed. I woke up at 7:30 and then let myself sleep until 10. Went to the bank, took out my pre-budgeted Christmas shopping funds and went to a few stores.

Stop #1 was Church Street in lovely downtown Montclair, NJ, to pick up some things I had put on hold at Copabananas when I was there on Wednesday. Of course, I found some new things today and added on another $10 to my purchases.

Stop #2 was my great new discovery. Well, not that new. I knew it was coming since there were signs up a few months ago, but I hadn’t had a chance to actually enter the store - Modern Yarn, a few doors down from Copabananas.

OH MY GOODNESS. I love this place!! I walked in and just kept wandering back and forth along the wall, absorbing the beautiful colors and varieties of yarn that they have neatly arranged in square grid shelves along the wall. There were gorgeous silk yarns and amazing handmade wool ones from Uruguay. HEAVENLY. I couldn’t spend too much, but I bought two really nice soft wool skeins in turquoise and orange (for a gift I’m making) and then another skein of a pale pink wool/silk blend yarn, shot through with tiny strands of silver. It was made in Japan and is just so delicate looking and gorgeous. I didn’t know what I’d make from it, but I got it just because it was so lovely. I brought it home and showed it to Amanda, my brother’s girlfriend. She liked it a lot, so I decided to add that to her Christmas gift and am making her (to her knowledge and with her input and approval) a really long, really thin scarf of sorts. It’s about 2 inches wide and will be about 4 feet long when it’s done, so she can wear it as a belt or wrapped around her neck several times with long ends hanging down as a fashionable and sort of practical accessory.

I will be going back - if not simply to buy more yarn, then to take some classes since they offer those as well. What was super-impressive was listening in to some of the other customer interactions (I was self-service, really) and hearing that the proprietress of the shop who was working there today was willing to print them some free patterns for projects in the store so they could try something new. When I went to pay for my yarn, she struck up a conversation about the Japanese silk yarn with me, told me how much I would love knitting with it (and she’s right, I do!) and showed me a sweater she’d knit herself using that yarn which was on display in the window. I’m excited to visit there again and again. Wowie. Just gorgeous and fun. NOT frumpy in the least - no afghans or toilet paper cozies making an appearance there.

Stop #3 was Target so I could get some DVDs that various family members requested on their Christmas lists, photo albums for a gift for my dad, and some stocking stuffers. I couldn’t resist buying “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” on DVD since it was $7.90 (odd price, I know) and then also got some eyeshadow. I’ve been wanting to get a golden shimmery eyeshadow since it sort of makes my eye color “pop,” so I spent the $4 and got that. I was still under budget since the DVDs I got were on sale.

Stop #4 was Marshall’s where I failed to find the pajama sets my mother had mentioned. Oh, well.

I returned home and started knitting the scarf for Amanda after conversing with my brothers to plan something for our parents since they are impossible to shop for. I’m sure that everyone reading has some family member for whom it is impossible to select gifts. Whether you’re shopping for Hanukkah/Chanukah or Christmas or something else, there’s always someone who already has everything he/she could ever want or need and who poo-poos any other ideas you might present. This is the “impossible to please” gift recipient. Unless you have the money or other such resources to provide them with a costly gift or use psychic powers to divine their heart’s desire, you’re pretty much screwed and scrambling for something completely off-the-wall and creative or thoughtful.

Alternately, they might be the kind of person who doesn’t really have any clear-cut interests that you could use to select an appropriate gift: no hobbies, no quirks, no favorite anything. They might be the family member who is “all work and no play” or the family member who is simply boring and lacks distinct personality traits. This is the aunt or uncle or in-law who watches “Oprah”, but only because that’s what’s on when they get home from work. They wouldn’t want the boxed set of Oprah’s favorite moments. This is the cousin who listens to top 40 radio, but doesn’t want any CDs since they think they might not like all the songs on a CD enough. New clothes? Nah - what they have now is fine. Gift certificate to their favorite store? Nope. “Gift certificates are impersonal.” Ugh.

Selecting a gift for either individual requires some creative thought. We have some ideas now and might have something good in place before the parents return from their cruise on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning, knitting and brainstorming/coordinating with siblings on Christmas gift ideas and such.

Anyway - geez. It’s 4 a.m. BED. I can sleep in this morning, but within reason! I don’t want to be unable to sleep tomorrow night.

…as to avoid an “empty” date on the calendar. I’ve been so good lately, I couldn’t stand having a date without something written on it/in it.

I will write something when I get home later… but I’m heading out to watch a movie with LJ and show him the progress I’ve made on his Christmas scarf… there’s a story there.

Tonight I had my friends Brenda, Elizabeth and Janice over to catch up and commiserate and LAUGH. Over assorted cookies and warm puff pastry hors d’oeuvres (which I bought and just heated up in the oven) and lots of Earl Grey tea, they told me the newest batch of stories from my last place of employment. I am sort of sorry I’m not there to experience it all, but, as I told Elizabeth, I would only like to experience them in a sort of “Christmas Carol” way - visiting them with the Ghost of Employment Past. That way, I could see and hear but not actually be involved in any of it.

I told them about my love for my new job and they were just so supportive and happy about MY happiness. There were hugs and lots of laughing and the kind of laughing that keeps you from talking and the kind of laughing that makes you choke on your water/tea and the kind of conversation that spawns numerous inside jokes… like “she’s a gong-banger”, “to fix his BRAIN!”, “see money, think money, make money”, “you’re on a warning!” and “my children have more self control!!!!”

Trust me. If you had been witness to the whole conversation, these choice phrases would send you into hysterics.

Also, work was so good AGAIN. My walking tour was pretty darn good and I am greatly pleased with it… and my boss told me I did a great job with it and is going to include my name in the credits as the person who adapted/created the audio version. That’s pretty sweet.

It’s almost midnight and I should get to sleep since I have to be up early to get cash money from the bank and doing some more Christmas shopping. I have to find something for my father (I’m thinking perhaps a nice photo album and I’ll get some of his digital photos from his travels around the world printed up at the Kodak photo center thingie and create an album of his pictures) and get my little brother his present which I couldn’t find at the one store I went to today. I also have a couple of things on hold at Copabananas, so I have to go there, too. There’s another trip to A.C. Moore in my plans as well, so that’s all stuff I can do first thing in the morning.

There’s also the matter of something additional for my mother, but I have no clue. At all. Don’t know. I have one thing arriving early next week, but it’s not really something personal - just something she mentioned would be “good to have.” Utilitarian, really. Normally, she’s very easy to shop for, but this year she loudly poo-pooed anything my siblings and I mentioned. That sucks, yo.

Blargh. I am muchly tired. And I have a blister on my heel since my socks slid down today and my Doc Martens (which I wore since I expected to be trudging through puddles this morning and then the rain stopped) rubbed against my ankle. Ouchie. It will be a weekend of soft Saucony sneakers for me.

Well. That’s that. Yawning makes my impacted wisdom tooth jaw hurt. Time for bed.

I did my first bit of Christmas shopping tonight. I’m done with my little sister’s gifts as a result - with one exception, but that’s OK. Tomorrow I hope to get one of my friends done and this weekend will allow me to finish up my family and give me time to knit for my friends. It’s going to be sort of busy, but not hectic. I hope.

There are one or two things I want to get as stocking stuffers for the family, so that will require another trip to Copabananas and one to Target. But I know what I’m getting already, so it’s all good. I made a list. I don’t usually make shopping lists, but this year it’s a good thing because it will keep me in check.

As for me, I allowed myself to get a skim chai latte from the Chock Full o’Nuts next to work and then got a lip gloss at Harmon’s. My chosen color (also on a list - I saw it on someone in InStyle magazine and liked the shade) was Neutrogena MoistureShine gloss in “Flirt.” It’s a nice berry shade and it looks pretty good on me.

Tomorrow morning, I am meeting my boss in NYC (taking the PATH, thank goodness, since the NY Transit strike seems imminent and might cause problems for all the people I work with who live in NYC) to walk the walking tour I’ve written/edited so that we can be sure the directions are accurate and clear. Then I’ll be back in the office for lunch. And then heading home so I can pick up some tasties for my friends who are coming over. I would have done that tonight, but the roads were getting increasingly bad when I was driving home from the train station - beginning to ice over and the like - and I didn’t want to risk my safety for the sake of hors d’oeuvres. I can get them tomorrow. Some nice miniature quiches? Perhaps a cheese platter? There are options - things I can throw in the oven for 20 minutes or so and serve warm and tasty-like in moments.

I had a tremendous headache at work today. I think it was partially due to the wisdom tooth and partially because of the weather and barometric pressure. My sinuses felt all flattened like pancakes. It’s lessened a great deal, but I am still feeling some pressure.

I’m going to sleep.

Good news: I did a really nice job on the work I sent home to myself. I cross-checked and proofread everything so there are no inconsistencies or errors. They are also quite esthetically pleasing and I was going to make them into PDFs, but decided against it since I don’t have a full version of Acrobat at work - just the Reader. If I wanted to make any changes, I’d have to make them at home. So, the work remains in a spreadsheet format with pretty pictures and charts pasted in. So primitive - ugh! (kidding)

Bad news: I am wicked tired now (mental anal retentive exhaustion) and just realized that it’s 9:00. I am going to go downstairs and tidy up the kitchen and the dining room. While I’d LOVE to clean my room in preparation for guests so I can show off my books, we are going to be hanging out downstairs so it’s a bit more important for that area to be neat and clean and presentable.

If I’m fired up tomorrow night - as is known to happen when I have the need to be in that state - I might perform one of my feverish workout-level cleaning frenzy routines. Seriously, I get everything clean within 2 or 3 hours, but I am a sweaty dusty pig afterwards. I don’t dawdle and don’t debate over what should stay and what should go. I am ruthless, like an invading Viking! If there’s a hint of doubt, I trash it. Done, gone, boom. I might start a little tonight. Just a little - putting away my craft supplies that are still sitting in the middle of my floor from various half-started projects.

Yeah. I’ll do that, then take care of the kitchen and call it a night. I’m yawning and tired and still in a bit of a funk - it’s going to be a struggle to get up in the morning. Getting some sunshine today helped since I was out and about during the daylight hours, and talking to my sister and LJ also helped.

Off I go.

Traffic was pretty nasty this morning. I didn’t get to work until almost 10 a.m. after leaving at 8 a.m. to get there early. Then I had to leave at 12:30. I brought some work home with me so I could make up for the additional lost time instead of staying crazy late tomorrow and Friday.

I got to my oral surgery consultation in time, however, and I am feeling pretty relaxed about this whole wisdom tooth extraction. The doctor has a good chair-side manner, so to speak, and he answered my questions confidently and clearly. I mean, he’s been in practice since the 1960s or 70s, so it should be rote - but he didn’t sound hackneyed or rehearsed and had a sense of humor. He was writing on my X-ray with a pencil to show me where my nerves and mandible were in relation to my teeth, so that was cool and informative. He told me my wisdom teeth, though impacted, were in a good normal line and wouldn’t pose any problems and wouldn’t require cutting through bone. At this point, I let out a little yelp and said, “Yippee! I’m normal!” I’d been behaving like an adult up until this point, so it was a departure from the norm.

He chuckled and replied, “This is why we like to do this when patients are young.”

Then I got a pamphlet called “Wisdom Teeth Removal: Your Condition and Treatment.” It was published in 2004, but has the feel of a “birds and bees” brochure from the 1980s. The illustrations and drawings are updated and feature ergonomic keyboards and LCD monitors in the drawings of the offices, and the “characters” in the pamphlet are a diverse mix of ages, races and genders. Truly inspirational
Here’s one of my favorite illustrations:

I’ve made an appointment for Friday the 13th. Clearly, I’m not a superstitious person. I didn’t even realize it until the receptionist made a comment. It’s fine and dandy by me - the only earlier appointment they had was next week and there was no way I was going to be laid up and doped up on painkillers, unable to eat during our lovely Polish Christmas. That’s not the time of year for me to subsist on a lukewarm soup-only diet.

Once I left the doctor, I made some calls. First, I called my sister to see if she was going to be available that day to drive me there, wait for me and then drive me home. She said sure - unless she’s going to California. Apparently, she has tentative plans to fly out with a friend and while she doesn’t know if it’s definite, if she goes, that’s the week she’s going. She was my first choice since I took her to her extraction and nursed her for a few days afterwards - chances are she’ll be here… but I called my friend LJ to see if he’d be willing to be my backup.

It’s a lot to ask from a friend. There’s getting up early to drive me there for a 10 a.m. appointment, then the prospect of sitting in a waiting room for 1-2 hours (hopefully with a good book or a laptop in tow so it’s not wasted time) while I get the extractions, then dealing with a very groggy post-surgery Eva, who will probably look really gross and swollen, and driving this Eva home - and possibly making sure she makes it into the right house and up the stairs without falling. So, yeah. It’s a lot to ask. But he said he’d be fine with that. I am a lucky girl to have friends who would do that for me.

Why not other members of my family, you ask? Well, little brother is back in school on Jan 12th - not much of a winter break. Other brother works too far away and won’t take a day off for my sake. My parents will have been back from their two-week cruise vacation for three weeks and taking another day off would be frowned upon. That’s the deal.

I won’t be horribly groggy, though. The doctor and I discussed my anesthesia choices and since there won’t be bone-sawing involved and they won’t be tough to remove, I’m ok with a local shot (or seven), and nitrous oxide. I don’t think I need the full IV sedation treatment. Insurance would cover it either way, but I don’t see a need to risk the additional process of IV sedation… I’ll be fine as/is.

After that lovely visit, I went to Copabananas in Montclair and bought gifts for my Secret Holiday Exchange Gift Pal. I got a variety of fun things - a pack of Bad Ass Chewing Gum, a wind-up walking SPARKING MOUTH Nunzilla, one of those insulated beercan holder thingies that says, “Nice Guys Keep Cool” and features nifty 50s retro graphics on it and finally a cool “Choose Your Fantasy” magnet. It’s a pretty big magnet and looks like a week from a wall calendar. Each day space has a fantasy for the day - everything from “Free Love” to “Rule the World.” There’s a smaller magnet shaped like a little guy that you place on the appropriate day’s fantasy.

Since I don’t know the guy all that well, I opted against the Communist Breath Spray (”comes in one color only - RED!”) and the drug dealer magnets. They were pretty funny, but basically would’ve exhausted the entire budget for this gift (our limit is $15). So… I just went with a few little things. I did set aside a few other things until I come back tomorrow or Saturday. I only brought $20 with me to keep myself in check and I succeeded. The things I saw will take the place of other gift ideas I had for friends and family.

Aw, shit. It’s Wednesday already. I lost track of time. I have to CLEAN tonight. RIGHT NOW. I am having company on Friday!! SO it’s today and tomorrow and that’s it. Tomorrow I have to go buy some food and cook a little, so tonight is really cleaning night. My sister said she’d help since she’s having friends over tomorrow, but I can’t leave it all on her shoulders. Oy.

That’s that. I have to do my work-work and then clean clean clean. I hate when I get all discombobulated like this.

noun:
1) familiar talk or conversation
2) a filling in of gaps in memory by fabrication

It’s funny how that one word can mean two things which have such different connotations. Familiar conversation - talking with a friend or co-workers, chatting at the water cooler - is represented by the same word as, basically, lying.

I could comment, “Oh, this language of ours” but it would be inaccurate in this case. The root of “confabulation” is the Latin word fabula which means both story AND conversation. Thus, fable, fabulous, confabulation and fabrication. The portion that means conversation doesn’t appear much, it would seem.

Well, here’s something that I heard from Krys over lunch today. I told her it was going in the rants, and so here goes:

Unfortunately, her uncle passed away a day ago and she’s been talking to her cousin about dealing with it and making funeral arrangements at the parlor their family uses. Krys’ cousin was telling her how he didn’t relish going to the casket “showroom” at the funeral home to pick out an appropriate vessel for his father’s body. He was a little put off by the sort of automotive sales approach - “here’s the Cadillac of caskets… this is just a Ford Focus…”, etc.

Having been to this funeral home herself, having had to deal with this when her father passed away, and knowing the funeral director at the home, Krys asked her cousin, “Did he make you watch the filmstrip?”

Her cousin did a sort of double-take and said, “No. Are you kidding?”

In 1980-something, when her father passed away, Krys and her mother went to the home to make the arrangements. They went down to the showroom and the director showed them an actual filmstrip - elementary school style, with the tones that sound when it’s time to ‘click’ the projector to the next frame - displaying their casket choices. It EVEN featured a Vanna White-esque “hostess” wearing a 1970s style baby blue polyester dress, gesturing and presenting the caskets on each frame of the filmstrip.

During this presentation, Krys had to excuse herself from the room so she wouldn’t burst out laughing while sitting next to her newly widowed mother.

Krys, her cousin and I (upon hearing this story) all agreed that this might be a good way to add some humor to an otherwise VERY somber life event. But only in certain cases and for certain people, so I guess it’s a hard sell.

Still - a casket presentation filmstrip.
It’s the stuff that Wes Anderson films are made of.

I stayed at work until almost 7 p.m. tonight and it was kind of nice. The office is soooo quiet at that point since even the people who stay late regularly are usually gone by 6:00. I got a lot done and won’t feel bad about leaving early tomorrow for the dentist.

In a few minutes I’m going to be watching my newest Netflix arrival, a documentary called, “Born Into Brothels.” It’s about a group of children between the ages of 10 and 14 who live in the red light district in Calcutta. A photographer goes there to teach photography classes to these children, partially to help the children find a positive way to capture their life experiences and partially to give them a sense of the rest of the world and what they might be able to accomplish. While she’s at it, she tries - or has tried in the first few minutes of this documentary - to find boarding schools that are willing to take these children and give them a fighting chance at some sort of life outside of the brothels… an education and the like.

One girl is forced into prostitution when she turns 14 and another 11 year-old has to clean houses with her grandmother starting at 4 in the morning every day since her father is a drug addict and someone needs to pay the rent and buy the food. They translate a portion of the little girl’s conversation as, “I can see why most people hate my father. But I still try to love him a little,” and behind her, he’s leaning back so he can take a deeper drag of whatever he’s smoking.

I’m not going to be able to watch this as attentively as I’d like to tonight, but I will tomorrow. I do that sometimes - watch a movie in a “skimming” fashion to get a general sense of it, and then sit down again later and watch it intently and pick up on all the details, etc. This is especially good for documentaries and foreign or art films that may require more concentration than, say, “Night at the Roxbury” (which I also own, so that’s not a disparaging remark.)

Wow. It’s past ten. I got home at eight. I need to get to sleep.

There was something else I wanted to relate, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what that is.