(shh) This is not a blog post

Three years of radio silence. You'll have to deal with in medias res, since recounting one, two, three jobs, a six-month relocation to China, several major hair changes, a very long engagement and very recent marriage would scare me off the habit for good.

Dinner tonight at J's former manager + husband's new house in the sweet enclave of Redwood City. He's slaving over a hot stove making espresso coconut flan on my excellent suggestion; I'm doing what I can (i.e., not very much) to help a friend make a dent in his Sisyphean effort to run two full-time jobs simultaneously, as has been my custom every Saturday since June. It usually involves several pots of hot tea and tentative political arguments. Tentative because he was J's friend first, and thought we've known each other 4 years, it's been a hi-how-are-things-oh-they're-great-let's-order-dumplings sort of relationship. He's now taking a nap, which freed me up to do things like, oh, cheerily stalk people I used to know - oh, wow, three nieces now? Come on, I'm sure everybody checks up on their exes - ex-BF, ex-BFFs, ex-colleagues - it's good clean fun, requiring only an internet connection and some clever searching. Facebook does make things a lot easier...I hope there's no application for tracking who's looking at your profile when - I'd have a lot of splaining to do.

J is now sweet husband J. Like being engaged, except with more jewelry. The name change is the only thing that's a big change - I have to go to the DMV? For reals? I've put it off for almost a month, with plausible excuse - my passport needed to match the purchased-in-advance plane ticket - but it's time to switch to the more aerodynamic surname before people get confused.

What's the statute of limitations on a friendship, by the way?

Ad nauseum

If updating this old thing is that important to my two faithful readers, I suppose I can comply. Just remember that most of what I'd like to say is between the lines if not elided altogether. My mother has the link and is not afraid to use it. I suppose I could just start a new one...contact me if you're interested.

Yawn

Yawn, indeed. Having no weekend is officially old.

So I've been catching up with old high school guy friends lately: N, the blond, tan surfer guy in San Diego making a million bucks with mortgages who studied international business and spent a term at Cambridge (I visited him there in February 2003, very cold but very nice); and J, the only Asian guy at the private high school I attended (except for maybe his older brother and sister), who just started at Loma Linda, who double-majored in both business and pre-med to pacify his parents, who took a year off during undergrad to go to Africa to work in a low-income clinic. Both are going to former friend R's wedding and are willing to leave early so they can hang out with me that night - if I can get the day off. N now qualifies as my oldest friend - we used to ride the bus together for our 45 minute commute to school and survived hours of incessant country music and the occasional freeze-outs (idiot seniors running down the aisle and opening all the windows on a 32 degree winter morning to the shrieking but flirty protestations of all females aboard). Both of them came to visit me the summer I had the job from hell in the prettiest place on earth (and I'm on the right, second pic down, if you want to know what I look like when I was 17). Both of them were part of the massive posse that went stag to the junior/senior prom our senior year. Curiously, both are always dateless.

Oh. I have over $10,000 in sales for the month of August. :) My predecessor A would be proud.

That's Funny

I once had a completely aristocratic sense of humor. When I had outgrown watching America's Funniest Home Videos with my family, anything short of a barrage of barbed witticisms, well-timed and impeccably delivered (see: Professor Henry Higgins), elicited nary a chuckle.

Somewhere in the year 2000, I watched 'Life is Beautiful' (La Vita E Bella for the sticklers). Something in me shifted just a bit...I actually laughed out loud at physical humor. Granted it was in a foreign language ("navel" sounds so much more classy in Italian), and I immediately felt stupid, but it was start.

In the year 2002, I was back living with my parents and going to community college. (If that makes me a loser, at least I'm a loser that has just graduated from Berkeley - as have most of the rest of my friends.) Since I had never really cultivated any relationships with the locals in my age group, I did what any other self-respecting loner would do; I watched television. Every weekday night, starting at 7PM, KMPH Fox 26 offered me deliverance - first Friends, then Frasier. (Years before the initiation of this nightly ritual, I had read an article explaining that when people watch a TV show enough, their subconscious begins registering the actors's faces as loved ones because the mind has created a vicarious relationship. That's why gushing fans go running up to Jennifer Aniston and feel like they know her. This article - and my mother's avid disapproval - scared me away from Friends for quite some time. So, except for the season finale, I've only seen the show in syndication. End of tangent.) First several weeks, I barely cracked a smile. Monica has a turkey on her head. Frasier and Niles are trying to get concert tickets without looking like they're getting concert tickets. Chandler really should start smoking again. But once I had clocked in a solid year or so, something shifted again. I'd see a red shirt in the Abercrombie window (hell no I never go in there) that reminded me of the red shirt belonging to Rachel's baby's daddy. And I'd laugh to myself. Turns out most people do this, too - I started paying attention and realized that most conversations I overheard during the day were a conglomeration of quotes from the Simpsons, Friends, and the latest action movie. That moment of clarity felt exactly like watching Casablanca for the first time - oh my god I GET it. All those references...oh my god I GET it.

So I shot my moral high horse. Not that I don't enjoy my musicals and highbrow jokes anymore. Let's just say that I actively decided that I needed to finally watch American Pie, since I missed out on it the first time around. Euro Trip was lame. I saw Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle the weekend it came out. Yesterday it was The 40 Year Old Virgin (which is highly recommended for everybody but my mother) and Robert Schimmel's "Unprotected" DVD. ("Take it out of the box first!" makes me and J fall on our asses - don't ask, just watch.)

And NOTHING makes me laugh harder than a good sex joke. My man whore ex-boyfriend would be proud.

E

As in the old roommate, not the mood-enhancer...So she's kicking it in Oakland with two jobs now...she lives by the ghetto Pizza Hut that I passed all the time coming back from Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/South Bay in general. Though apparently the denizens are not ghetto. :) And it seems that AM/PM is better than 7-11 - and if E downgrades 7-11-the-most-magical-place-on-earth, it must be for a reason - maybe I should go. Do they have Slurpees? Icees? The equivalent? So I should go visit seeing how she doesn't have a car - maybe next week we can go get junk food and ignore bums, like old times. Whee!

Motivation

If I am a very, very good girl, and my bank account has at least $5000 in it, and I haven't sold this gorgeous piece of artwork to somebody who can better afford it, this baby is going to be mine at the end of the year. Glory be.

3:30 AM

Gracious. I'm an old woman, waking up naturally in the middle of the night and so not able to go back to sleep. Have a feeling this will adversely affect my week. Will redeem the time by blogging and going through my Pottery Barn catalog looking for an end table for J rather than staring at the dark and listening to the fan.

Now that we're not completely in the heat of the moment, I guess I'm at libery to discuss things that I previously left purposefully vague. Anyone who has been keeping score knows that: 1.) J is the most eligible bachelor of the decade, regardless of locale, ethnicity, and age group; 2.) I am damn lucky to be with him and therefore strive to keep my current privileged position; and 3.) we've been going out for over a year and are quite serious.

Apparently my parents missed all that. Maybe they stopped reading my blog after the "naked" photo several months back (since removed, don't waste your time looking - I thought my hair looked good, it seems the bare shoulders were too distracting); fine by me - that means I don't get shocked & dismayed phone calls about my wayward postings. Maybe I didn't adequately convey the depth of our relationship (I believe the exact words were "you never complain about him"). Maybe they were just in denial because J happens to be Asian (neither a mutable quality nor a character flaw), when they've always pictured me ending up with someone who happens to be white. Maybe they (meaning mostly my mom) assumed I am just going through a temporary rebellion-against-my-roots phase because J happens to non-religious. And by non-religious I mean non-evangelical Christian. (It'd still be a problem if he were Muslim or Buddhist - or even Catholic. You should have heard my mother's take on the Eastern Orthodox church service I took her to 4 years ago, geeze Louise.)

It's been a week now since J called up my dad for the maybe-too-traditional but undeniably very thoughtful "I've been dating your daughter for a long time now...I love her very much...we've been discussing our future together a lot and I believe we're ready to take our relationship to the next level...are there any questions or concerns you'd like to address before I propose to her?" conversation. (My dad actually said, "Can I get back to you on that?" J was a little on edge til he called back - while we were at The House of Prime Rib.)

Since then J and I have tried to field the issues with deference and grace. I am actually pretty pleased with myself for not crying or yelling or cursing or resorting to hostility - it's hard to have an even, positive reaction to things like "but what are you going to base your relationship ON?" Sex, mother. Lots and lots of crazy, sinful, animalistic sex; I hear it's the glue that holds a marriage together.

So Tuesday my father and younger brother D may stop by my neck of the woods on the way back from D's summer orientation at UC Davis. J will cut out of work for a two hour lunch so we can all see each other. Don't know if we are going to have a useful, serious discussion at that time (my mom won't like being left out, but then again, I don't quite understand why she doesn't make the trip, too - 3.5 hours is not as far as, say, Alaska), but we'll see. Later that evening J & I will do dinner at my paternal grandparents's house in Menlo Park. A full two minutes from my place of work. Unsurprisingly, they think J is great and treat him like a part of the family - I think they've actually exchanged more words with the man in two meetings than my mom has in a year. Hmm, guess that comment was bitchy. I'll blame it on the hour.

Never a Bridesmaid

Heck, I'm never invited. Some of you may recall the drama earlier this year when I discovered that I didn't make the guest list of my best gal pal from high school. Both of my ex-boyfriends warranted one of those fancy embossed envelopes - I just got a mass invite to the local reception. Which included one of those cards telling you where you could buy the happy couple some useless household items. (Never liked Yankee candles before, but I'm not spending more than $50 if I didn't see the ceremony, thank you very much.) That actually got sorted out a bit later - though the potluck was mediocre, the reception was pleasant. She mentioned that she had not mailed me an invitation since I had said I'd be in the middle of midterms. Fair enough - my residual bitterness is fading, and it was good to see the girl before she moved up to the Canadian border for good.

ALSO at the reception in April (I brought J with me, he looked dashing - and particularly Asian, considering the crowd) was my bestbest friend from high school. With his blond fiance S that I had never met despite the fact they'd been going out almost 3 years - and I talked to R on a monthly basis. I was under the impression that all four of us had a good time that evening - went out for a decent dinner, had a few laughs, discussed the upcoming nuptials...and R was well aware how sore I had been about not getting invited to A's shindig and made a point of saying, "I'll make sure to send out TWO, just in case one gets lost in the mail."

A-hem. Said nuptials are slated for September 17th. (Day after the amazing, awesome, only-venue-in-California Markus Pierson museum tour show at Peabody's Los Gatos gallery - hell no I'm not missing that.) Since the fateful April reception, R has failed to return my phone calls. No "congratulations on graduating from Berkeley!" No "wow, awesome, tell me about your new job!" I think that S wears the pants in this relationship, and she said "no way are you inviting your hot ex-girlfriend to my wedding." Oddly, I suppose this makes me feel good about myself - I'm perceived as a threat. (My breasts ARE bigger. My legs ARE svelter.) Although there's more chance of a Popsicle in hell than there is a chance that I'd want to revisit or resume the mangled train wreck that was my romantic relationship with R. The guy kisses like a Bassett hound. (No offense to Bassett hounds.) He refused to sit closer than two armlengths whenever his mother was within a quarter mile radius. He neglected to call me for weeks on end "soooo busy with work", whatever. This went on for TEN whole months, because, in my addled mind, I was convinced that I had to marry him (because we had been best friends and all, he was Harry to my Sally, and this must be IT), so I put up with a whole lotta shit. And then still was heartbroken when R decided that we needed to break up. On my birthday. Right after my family had taken him out for a seafood dinner. Because he thought God was calling him to join the clergy and, frankly, I was not fit to be a pastor's wife.

Asshole. It's an objective fact. However, our friendship had survived, more due to my sheer determination than to any meaningful connection - I mean, he had been my longest running friendship. And you can't underestimate the value of a person who understands your Jesus issues, who doesn't need an explanation as to why you burst into tears when you hear a certain cliched Bible verse. But...time goes on. Things change. Asshole ex-boyfriends get new girlfriends who happen to look exactly like you. You still have conversations from time to time to see how the other is doing, mostly out of respect for the memory of a great high school friendship.

But the time has come. I will not put up with my phone calls being ignored. I will not wait patiently by the mailbox in the hopes that a cheesy invite might show up. Fuck him. Best of luck in his marriage - I hope they get divorced after five years instead of three. Just kidding. Sort of. :)