I'm having some Greek honey yogurt with some almonds, and every time I eat Greek yogurt I feel like I'm eating just a teensy piece of Faithful Greek Reader Fay.
Look how this blog has affected my life.
When we last left off, what had I done? ...Oh, walked. Right. Fucking walked. I was Walker, Texas Ranger. I was Karen Walker.
Bah.
Well, Saturday night, I decided to try a new restaurant. The woman who sits next to me, The Alex Who Sits Next To Me (TAWSNTM) is very hep. You can imagine how it delights her to be next to my cool self. "No, June, I ...haven't read the Twilight books."
Anyway, she likes this one restaurant over by the one college, so I tried it. Dragged a date. An interminable date. At this point, I'm like Mary Richards on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. If you're 70, you'll recall the show, and she always had sort of mannequin good-looking men come get her for dates, then you'd never see them again.
I wonder what Mary Richards did wrong? Like, did she ghost on everyone after the way I do? Was she still hung up on her fiance? Remember she had a fiance, a doctor, and that's how that whole show started? We were supposed to be excited for her that she did that, and that love was all around with Murray Slaughter and a studio apartment with Phyllis as your landlord, but the whole time I was all, You scored a DOCTOR, you maroon.
My mother is shooing herself with a gun from her Phyllis Schlafly Your Daughter Didn't Turn Out Liberated Ha Ha End It Now gun collection.
Oh my god anyway. So, it looks just like a little corner bar, the restaurant does. It's a cool old building, with original glass double doors on the front. And it IS just a tiny corner bar, technically, but everything in there is adorbs.
Yes, I said adorbs.
They have mismatched bar stools ("Honey, honey, honey, you don't like my BAR STOOLS?") that are all vintage. There'll be a green tufted backed one next to a sunny orange backless. Oh, it's marvelous.
Sixties curtains.
And delicious pretentious food.
They infuse their alcohol right there, so I had a margarita made with tequila infused with strawberry and jalapeno. I also had brisket and smashed red potato and salted caramel bread pudding.
I wanted to keep eating after I was wafer-thin-mint full. I wanted to barf so I could order something else and see how THAT tasted. It was so good I can't even begin to tell you, although it looks like I have. I LOVE that place. I will go to that place all the time. And no, I will not tell you the name because I don't want it to get like Hops. Local people will know what I mean. Fucking Hops. "Oh, it's a 26-hour wait."
Then yesterday I dragged Ned to Sully. That was his punishment for making me walk to the folk festival: He had to go to a mainstream movie. And it was even at the shitty basic theater, where they, like, fly in their popcorn rather than make it on site. Ned hates that place.
I always get the nachos with the orange cheese that they pump out of something, perhaps the bowels of hell, and Ned always has 48 fits that I eat that stuff. Yesterday the theater has added a charming thing: They tell you how many calories are in their snacks.
Turns out? My nacho chips and "cheese"? 800 calories!!!
Who knew?
Ned got a small bag of popcorn and a bottle of water. Calories? 350. Fuck Ned.
It was a good movie, although we were both seriously annoyed at the 20 minutes of previews. TWENTY MINUTES. In which I managed to pretty much finish my 800 calories. But I liked the movie, because who doesn't like Tom Hanks, and also I wish to never fly again oh my god.
Do you know what I'd be good at? Air traffic control. Welcome to my cool head and composed nature.
Speaking of work, after that I had some freelance stuff to do for this place I used to work at back in the '90s. They still use me for their proofreading, and I had to proof a magnetic calendar that they send out to all their clients. Not that it has charisma, but rather that it sticks to your file cabinet or whatever.
On the back is a perpetual calendar, and I was your Lady of Perpetual Calendars yesterday, making sure when they said 1910 was the same calendar as 2007, it was true.
It was fun to proofread again. It's so soothing. You look up and three hours have passed and all you've thought of is, "Was 1997 a leap year?"
Anyway, I was done with that, and was just sitting down to watch a Fred Astaire movie when my doorbell rang. It was already dark, and I wasn't expecting anyone. For the first time in his goddamn life, Edsel didn't bark.
"Who is it?" I asked.
Pause. "It's me." A male voice.
I deadbolted the door. "Uh-uh, you don't say 'It's me' like that. Who is this?" The voice sounded like a teenager, but still.
'It's...Sean, I guess," he said.
"I have a mean dog, I can't answer the door," I said, and the kid left.
I mean, I guess he was a kid. Guess who forgot she had a peephole?
Then after I got scared. Did you ever listen to that awful 911 tape where the woman calls 911 (hence that I called it a 911 tape) and says a strange man had just come to her door claiming to be looking for someone "and I'm an old woman, I live alone," she says BEFORE HER PHONE CLUNKS AND SHE STARTS SCREAMING?
That is what I thought of all night. I called Ned, because calling the police to say, "Someone came to my door" seemed over the top.
"You wanna stay over here?" Ned asked. So then I had the choice between staying here and letting Sean I Guess break in and kill me, or go to Ned's and try not to have sex with him, when I already resisted once and COME ON, god. Because Ned and I fought like demons when we were a couple, but then we were the world's most sexually compatible people. Sex was what we did best. It was our joint.
We were award-winning. We got the Screwlitzer.
We won the Nobel Piece Price.
We got the Good Housekeeping Squeal of Approval.
So, stay here and get murdered, or go to Ned's and have a thousand tiny deaths?
I stayed here. With Mute Fang. Who, fortunately, at least spooned me all night and for once I was glad to grab his clawed feet of Lottie gouging and wrap them closer to me. And here I am, still alive. Maybe Sean I Guess was casing the joint and he'll be back tonight.
I did bring a sledgehammer and put it next to my bed. It's like Peter Gabriel spent the night.
So that's my weekend, and I guess I'd better shower and hope that Sean I Guess doesn't Norman Bates me in there.
Relaxedly,
June
Datedly,
June
Gabrielly,
June
Okay, I'll stop