One Setence Week!

"This is a clusterfuck," I said to the traffic jam of hay-riders and trick-or-treaters in the middle of my neighborhood, to which my nephew replied, "No, it's a Snickers."

Phone It In Friday: Happy Halloween!

Hiya, canards! So what are you gonna be for Halloween this year, huh? What's your favorite Halloween candy? What's your scariest trick-or-treating memory? Can we see your punkins?

Go!

workin' on my night cheese

Last year, Heidi and I invited friends over for Halloween. We decorated with dollar store Halloween decorations and ghosts made from paper plates. I made a crock pot full of cheese dip, another crock pot full of apple cider, and we played Rock Band until we all got tired really early because we're old now. Joe and I dressed as Scooby Doo and Velma and had occasion to wear the costumes at least twice, which was good since Joe put a lot of work into his Scooby mask. I put in far less effort since I already had the Velma glasses/hair/face/height and all I had to do was buy an orange sweater.

The year before, Joe and I dressed up as Lucy and Charlie Brown and went to the Oregon District with Heidi (Rainbow Brite) and Steve (Steve Holt!). We ended up at a party with funfetti cupcakes and a woman dressed as Sarah Palin who had glued creepy baby dolls to her costume. Before we left our apartment, I made everyone drink scary Kool-aid that I'd mixed with lots of sugar and all vodka, no water. It was...kind of gross and very strong and we didn't even finish half of it.

The year before that, Heidi and Steve and I dressed up as Three's Company. We went to the Oregon District with Wancy and it was freezing so we didn't stay long. This was relatively sane compared to the year before, when we went on a party bus bar crawl. Heidi and I waited too long to come up with costumes, so she ended up as some sort of scary person in a black cape and I borrowed her slutty devil costume. That Halloween marks the one and only time I dressed as a slutty anything (on purpose, anyway) and I think it (and the tequila) definitely affected me because I ended up making out with Heidi's friend's cousin, Farmer Joe. So. Yeah. We talked on the phone a few times afterward but he was very quiet and I soon ran out of questions to ask about farming once I found out he didn't even have chickens on his farm. WTF is that? Anyway.

I say all this to illustrate how CAPTAIN INSANO it is that I'm not doing anything for Halloween this year. I haven't bought any Halloween candy because I'm not sure we get trick-or-treaters where we live. I have no costume, or thoughts of what costume I might try and throw together. It's possible that someone might think I'm dressed as Liz Lemon (with no effort at all on my part), given my glasses, air-dried-wavy!hair, and tendency to fall down. I'd better go pick up some night cheese, just in cases.

I suppose this year, instead of dressing up and cavorting around some party-type-location with a beer in each hand, we'll just stay home. Maybe watch some scary movies. And, hopefully, dress Max up in a hot dog costume because OMG YOU GUYS:

If you try and hold my hand I'll slug you.

The Halloween episodes of Roseanne are some of the best television ever made, and in my head I do the holiday just like she does, complete with over-the-top parties, costumes, and shenanigans. In my head, I prepare for Halloween the way most people prepare for Christmas, with decorations and cookies and pies galore. Then again, in my head I’m witty and pretty and bright.

In real life, or “IRL”, I’m kind of a mess. I have no concept of time. Like, none. If you were to ask me when Halloween was this year, I’d be all, “This weekend!” but my brain would be all, “In three weeks or something!” Add to that the fact that I cannot multi-task, AT ALL, and... well... sometimes we carve pumpkins:







and sometimes we don’t. Like this year, for example! Halloween is this weekend, but between dinner plans, and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and drinking with the horse people (don’t ask), and just drinking in general, I DON’T KNOW WHEN WE’LL HAVE TIME. And then there’s the costume sitch. THIS YEAR was going to be the year I wore a totally funny and awesome costume. I even went online weeks ago and picked one out. But then I got distracted by something shiny, and did I ever order said funny and awesome costume? NO I DID NOT! So once again it looks like I’ll be donning my Groucho glasses or my tiny pirate hat and hoping for the best.

So, in summary, my Halloween traditions include maybe or maybe not decorating, maybe or maybe not carving pumpkins, maybe or maybe not baking, and maybe or maybe not dressing up in a totally funny and awesome costume. And public drunkenness. Lots and lots of public drunkenness.

See you at the rally!

My Halloween go-tos are pretty basic:

1. Candy is delicious and should be celebrated.

2. Don't be a whore.

3. Go to the parties you get invited to, even if it's a million in one weekend. Because if you don't, you'll stop getting invited. (Wah. Wah.)

I'm trying my best to gear up and observe my Halloween traditions complete with costume, candy, and non-whoring. But I don't have a costume idea yet. So far the best idea I've heard is "a joke." I mean, it's so weird and funny! I don't know what that would look like, but I love imagining someone asking me what I am and saying, "I'm being a joke!"

On account of that doesn't make sense and is only funny to me I'm open to other suggestions. I'd love to go as someone from one of my favorite million TV shows but those usually require me buying Dwight Shrute glasses and/or no one ever recognizes me. Maybe I should just rock a Buy More polo and call it a day.

That stupid blockhead of a brother of mine is out in the pumpkin patch making his yearly fool of himself.

I've told these two stories before, but I'm going to tell them again because: a) I'm redundant. I repeat myself. I say the same things over and over. And b) The stories are the reason I am the way I am (the way I am is: coward), and so it's important information if you ever find yourself wanting to protect or torture me.

Here's the first story: Despite my shivers and held tears and ardent pleas, my kindergarten teacher made me go into a haunted house put on by the fifth graders at my elementary school. The first thing I saw when she dragged me inside was a vampire popping his evil head up out of a coffin. And so I peed my pants.

Here's the second story: When I was in fourth grade, I followed my sister onto the school bus on Halloween morning. Streamers were hanging down from the door -- orange and black ones -- and when I pulled them back, my regular driver was not in her seat. No, Dracula was driving the bus. And so I jumped off the bus, ran back across the road and through my yard screaming all the way, "JENN, GET OFF THE BUS! IT'S A TRICK! IT'S A TRICK!"

Some other things happened to me, too, on Halloween. Like this one time, a guy jumped out from behind a bush brandishing a chainsaw. And another guy answered his door for trick-or-treating covered in blood, and he grabbed me. So the thing is: I don't really like Halloween very much. I mean, I like candy. And I like costumes. And I like Great Pumpkins and Charlie Brown. But I'm genetically predispositioned to be a gutless, yellow, pie-slinger.

When we were kids, I made my sister walk to front doors and ring doorbells all by herself. If no one was dressed up in a scary way, she'd motion me to come get some candy. If someone was dressed up in a scary way, she'd point to me at the end of the driveway and ask for extra candy. If the scary costume assholes wouldn't give her any extra, she just split her loot with me.

Now that I'm a grownup, I make Amy answer the door for trick-or-treaters just in case any of them are scary. Sometimes we peer through the windows when trick-or-treaters are walking up the driveway and if we're sure there are only friendly things, I'll answer the door by myself and give out delicious treats.

What I am saying is my only real Halloween tradition is being terrified.

And carving pumpkins. I'm really good at carving pumpkins.



H

Phone It In Friday: Remember This?

It's your turn to tell those dear (ha!) old loves what's what.

You know what to do. We think.

Dear Old Love,

You matter so little to me now that I'm amazed you ever mattered at all.

Dear Old Love,

I came up with something totally awesome for this, but I totally forget what it was now. Which is fitting, I guess, since I can barely even remember you anymore. Oh well, whatever, etc.

English 101

The thing about loving someone for their words is that with enough hard drive space you can just keep on loving. Forever.

Dear Old Love,

Blitzing by you on the mountain bike trail last weekend filled me with a sense of perverse pleasure I have scarcely ever known.

No! Sleep! Til Brooklyn!

I'm finding it just as hard as everyone else to recap The Great Journey To Ohio, pretty much the same amount of trouble I had recapping my actual wedding, but whatever, here goes. I have a much different perspective of DaytonCollectiveCon 2010, as I was busy with wedding preparations while they were out drinking bowls of rum and planning golf-cart-stealing-missions NOT THAT I'M BITTER OR ANYTHING (heh), but I did get a chance to have some quality time with all of them and THANK GOODNESS, otherwise I would have stabbed a baby or something.

On the Thursday before the wedding, Joe and I dropped off all of our junk at the reception hall, and when we got home, we found Heather and Abigail throwing rocks in a pond. Naturally. Abigail ran to the car and explained that Heather Anne was getting in trouble with some old lady but it turns out she was just becoming BFF with one of our neighbors BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE WAS.

Then we went to Hoover (Huber) Heights and made pottery. Abigail got stressed, Joe and Heather calmly made awesomeness, and I just did what Abigail told me to do. Here are the results:



We were pretty hungry after pottery, so we got some food and some drinks and some more drinks and I might have stolen a VC Andrews book from the bar. Before you ask why anyone would steal a VC Andrews book from anywhere, please let us wonder WHY there was a VC Andrews book in a bar. MORE THAN ONE, actually. But no Flowers in the Attic, unfortunately.

We eventually left the bar, went to the park nearby, took pictures on a dinosaur, ran through a drive-through for beers, and played Rock Band until 3 in the morning even though I knew I had to be up at 7:30 the next morning. I don't make good decisions when I'm drinking OR when I'm having fun, because I want the fun to go on forever. NO ONE GETS TO SLEEP UNTIL I SAY. Also, I'm always the last to go to bed. ALWAYS. Anyway. Here are some pictures:




Kat and Seth got in on Friday and, after they all learned about Prohibition, they came over and hung out for a while. Max fell in love with Kat but I don't have any pictures of that.

Saturday was the wedding. I already talked lots about that. But here are some fun surprises The Collective left in our guest book:



And what Abigail said was true...after the after-party, The Collective drove Joe and I home and when we got there, I was all, "COME INSIDE AND PLAY ROCK BAND," and they were all, "Jennie, it's 3 AM, go to bed," and I was all, "BUT I LOVE YOU GUYS AND I WANT TO PLAY ROCK BAND." They are all smarter than I am, however, so they did not come inside and play Rock Band. Instead they reminded me that I'd be seeing them again in three weeks, so finally, I was like, "OK, fine, I'll get out of your car now." But now it's three weeks later and we're headed to DC TOMORROW and after that WHO KNOWS how long it will be until we're all together again so my point is that I don't know how they're going to make me go to bed this time.

Also, here is a picture of something awesome* for no raisin:



*courtesy of Joe, obvs

Famous angels never come to England.

Like Abigail and Heather Anne before me I've found it hard to write this week's post (but I find it hard to write every week's post, so that should come as no surprise). What makes my task particularly difficult is that you've already heard so many of our stories before. You heard about the time Joe attempted to navigate the Jukebox of Doom, and he was all:



And you've heard about our Flaming Tiki Drink of Doom, and it was all:



And of course, you've heard about the Battle of Hogwarts of Doom, where we were all:



But what you might not have heard about was the time we went to lunch at this cute little place Jennie and Joe suggested, and Heather Anne used her engineering prowess to construct the Coffee Creamer Temple of Doom:



And for her troubles she had the worst chicken pot pie in all of recorded history. And you know what? It was ALL MY FAULT. I said I was gonna get it and she was all, that sounds delicious! But then I have this thing where I am physically incapable of ordering the same thing as anyone else at the table so I got something else and she got stuck with inedible chicken pot pie when she could have had PANCAKES. She got the Chicken Pot Pie of Doom. So then she went to the wedding on an empty stomach and the rest is (hazy) history:



Of Doom.

I never thought about love when I thought about home

I feel the same way as Heather--that this is impossible to distill into words. This trip was magic and it reminded me of that magic the first time we met for Thanksgiving before this blog even existed. Moment by moment I felt in love with all six of us, that days started and ended with a glowy haze of champagne buzz. And we weren’t even drinking champagne. I was there five perfect days and there are so many of those moments I want to scribe down forever that I could write pages and pages. And this seems the place to write it since... this is our space. But I don’t want to ruin the magic, and also I have a million things to do before leaving for my next trip.

There is this wrinkle in the universe, or the time space continuum or a fluke of karma that allows me to hang out with Kat and Seth on a nearly regularly basis. Hanging out with Kat and Seth is amazing, mostly because they consider bars to be travel destinations. (Well, Seth likes to know that there are historical “fountains” to be seen between bars. But bars are the still the destination.) So while Jennie and Joe were rehearsal dinnering, we were crawling up the Dayton bar scene. There was the Irish pub where I had my first fried pickles (delicious!), the bar where the lady tried to steal my phone and/or kiss me, my favorite place where Heather took a beer break and had some ice cream before discovering Purple Haze. We ran out of that place when a metal band turned off our jukebox (and thereby stealing AT LEAST two jukebox songs from us) and then played there loud music. Instead of calling it a night even though we were all far gone, we ended at a tiki bar. Tiki bars are another thing that Kat and Seth excel at so they ordered up a giant flaming bowl of booze. The bartender judged us, but he was the one tending at the tiki bar.

There are other bullet points: getting to really know Joe thanks to 40 minutes of marry/do/die. I mean, when you hear a man say he wants to “totally bang Sarah Walker” the day before his wedding, you know a man. (There was also a time at the after party at Jennie’s parents when Joe loudly proclaimed that we were his favorites. Our eyes widened as we gestured to the ENTIRE wedding party surrounding us, to which he amended “these guys are alright, but you guys are my FAVORITES.”) There were drive through liquor stores where we’d buy beer and ice for emergencies and for tailgating before the reception. Heather repeatedly stealing my phone so she could drunkenly check the Twitter and then curse at it. Us telling the same stories to each other that we’ve been telling for years and cracking ourselves up. It feels impossible to explain, to say nice things about the nice time we had without devolving into inside jokes (the prohibition was a 13-year-span) or a list of boring drunken shenanigans. Well, boring to you. Not to us. We had John Barleycorn’s aluminum siding.

All six of us piled in the rental car together early Sunday morning after merry-making at the wedding, the reception, and the after party in Jennie’s dad’s basement with leftover reception food and more drinking. We were dutifully charged with getting them home before they took off for their honeymoon the next day. By the time this week ends, we’ll all be together again. That promise was the only thing that convinced Jennie to go to bed on her wedding night instead of inviting us in at 4 in the morning to play Rock Band until the honeymoon flight left at 10 am. And so we’ll cross countries again to be together because you guys, being together is the best. And not just because Seth can lead us all in a really good round of National karaoke.

And you thought Jennie and Joe were going to have their first anniversary before we blogged about their wedding!

Every time I sit down to write about Jennie and Joe's wedding — and Dayton CollectiveCon 2010 — I blank. I could blame it on the alcohol, I suppose; Abigail keeps reminding me of things I've forgotten: "Remember how you wouldn't stop hitting on Seth?" "Remember when the jukebox kept playing lame live versions of the songs we chose and Joe kept shouting out his apologies to the whole pub?" "Remember that badass Dayton Dragons beer glass Kat stole for you at the tikki bar?" (So that's where this glass came from!)

This post has been through seventy-four drafts in two weeks and always it turns into a list that could easily be labeled My Most Awesome Favorite Things. Like how the suite Abigail booked in Cincinnati came with a hotel manager named Darren, whose number one goal in life was to give us one million free beers and nachos. Or how Abigail almost wrecked the rental car driving up the interstate when we saw the skeleton of Touchdown Jesus. Or how I almost got Jennie and Joe kicked out of their condo because I was throwing rocks at the fountain in their pond while we were waiting on them to arrive. Or how Joe painted the most perfect Flash coaster at the pottery painting place and Jennie begged for a life-size Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar. Or how Joe has a voice like an angel, which you totally wouldn't know unless you played Rock Band with him. Which we did.

And that's not even the wedding!

The wedding was like ... the best wedding ever in the history of weddings — times infinity. And I know I'm not supposed to say that because I've been a bridesmaid in at least thirteen weddings and attended dozens more and no one wants to have their Most Special Day ranked in order, but this one was best. I'm sorry. It was. For the prelude, the pianist played Hedwig's Theme! For the processional, the theme from Love Actually! Which: If you cry during the climax of that movie with that music, imagine how hard you would bawl when you saw perfect, perfect Jennie walking down the aisle to it.

The whole wedding was so very Joe and Jennie, and so was the reception, which included games on every single table as centerpieces. GAMES ON EVERY TABLE. Our table was called Hogwarts Adventure and we had a Harry Potter game that was the envy of the entire room! There was an incident, apparently, in which Kat stormed over and explained in a rage that someone had stolen the game off our table, and Abigail and Seth begged us to let it go. But we did not. We went over to that table and took our game back and were all, "Have fun with Trivial Pursuit, LOSERS."

And then we took Hogwarts out onto the dance floor, and oh, how it shined! (Not as brightly as Joe and Jennie — but almost.) At the end of the night, after maybe guzzling a whole bottle of wine, Joe shouted out in his deep, Joe voice, "Better be GRYFFINDOR!" And it was so perfect I wanted to cry.

There was this thing, though, that happened before the wedding. We were all lounging around Jennie and Joe's, and Jennie said, "Joe, give them their batteries! You guys are going to need them for your centerpiece game tomorrow night!" Joe handed the batteries to me, and I absently handed the batteries to Abigail who absently handed them to Kat who put them in her purse. Because that's the chain of responsibility at The Collective. I would have left those batteries at Joe and Jennie's. Abigail would have left them at our house. Only Kat could be trusted to get them to the reception.

That's something you couldn't know unless you knew someone. And somehow, between Blogspot and Vox and Tumblr and Tweeter, I learned — really learned — Abigail and Kat and Jennie. They became more than words to me. Jennie's wedding was best because I love Jennie. And I love Jennie because I know Jennie.

That's the thing about the Internet: Yeah, it's full of axe-murderers. But sometimes, if you're lucky, you meet people who change the shape of your whole entire world. A flock of canards in a sea of YouTube commenters.