100th post!

Today is a day of milestones! Not only is this my 100th post, but Prince William and Kate Middleton got married; it's finally sunny again in Chicago after 2 weeks of dreary rain; and I went to the tailor for the first time. That last one is what this 100th post will be about, even though I did wake up at 3am to watch the Royal Wedding on CNN. (Tyler has rather seriously threatened me if I try to rehash the wedding to him, and I'm guessing some of you share that sentiment, so I shan't subject you to my pathetic royalist fandom.)

On to my tailoring adventure.

So I'm going to be a bridesmaid for Anna's wedding in July, which I'm pretty excited about. Anna picked a lovely navy silk cocktail dress from BR for us back in November, and some of the girls even managed to get on sale. I got my bridesmaid shoes in an impromptu after-Christmas shopping trip with my family. As many of you know, I'm an OCD-planner, so having everything ready 7 months before the actual wedding was really awesome.

But ah, having everything picked out so far in advance created an unforeseen problem. I joined a gym in January, and all those Zumba classes must've really paid off because when I tried on the dress last month, it looked rather different than it did when I got it in November. My mom would be pleased to note that my arms no longer look hammy. But while thin arms are nice, they don't matter too much if the rest of the dress looks somewhat lacking, particularly in the chest area.

One of my Evanston friends recommended a great tailor who happened to be quite close to my apartment, so today I dropped in to see what could be done about my dress. The tailor was a tiny, middle-aged Korean woman, as nice as could be. Our exchange went something like this:

Tailor: Hello! What can I help you with?
Me: Hi, I need to get this dress tailored.
Tailor: What do you need done?
Me: I have no idea.
Tailor: Well, okay, go try it on and let me see.
[I go to the back room to change. I marvel at how incredibly clean her store is. Seriously. And it smelled really good, too. But I digress.]
Me: Okay.
Tailor: [pinches fabric here and there, examines the fit, etc] Okay, we do this and we do this, we make you a waist. I take it in here and here, you see? Now you have a waist! Looks good, right?
Me: Wow. Yeah, that looks good. Can you do anything about the top?
Tailor: [skeptically] You are very small on top. This dress needs more there to look good.
Me: Yes, I know.
Tailor: So there is nothing I can do for you.
Me: Oh. We can't just take it in or something, make it less baggy...?
Tailor: No, I don't think so. [encouragingly] What you need is a really big push-up bra!!!
Me: Ah. Okay...
Tailor: Get a big one! You can even use tissues, push it together, make sexy. Big bra!!! Push-up!!! You need big push-up!!!

After the receipt was written out and she had impressed upon me several more times of the necessity of a bra + tissue combo for my non-chest, she added, quite kindly, "But you are so cute!" The American half of me wanted to accept and say "Thank you," but the Asian side wanted to deflect and say "No, not at all." So what came out was a weak, strangled, "Oh." (This happens to me almost every time I am complimented. Does this happen to anyone else? Responding half a beat too late, usually with some sort of unintelligible guttural noise?)

So if anyone can recommend a good, gigantic push-up bra, that would be greatly appreciated! I already have the tissues.

queen of the conversation stopper

I was a pretty shy kid growing up, so I've always felt a bit awkward around people. I especially hate networking and all the BS small-talk chit-chat nice-nice convos you have to do with people you don't know. So I guess it's sort of masochistic to choose to do journalism, as so much of it is going up to strangers and trying to nice-nice them into answering probing questions.

This dislike of superficial schmoozing is augmented by my tendency to word-vomit when I get nervous. My discretion goes entirely out the window, and I am no longer able to judge what is funny and what is inappropriate. I once told a VP at our company that he looked as fresh as a peppermint in his pink-striped shirt, after which he said he was going to report me for harassment. (Haven't heard from HR, so can only assume he changed his mind.)

Also, my grasp on discretion is a bit on the weak side as it is, so...fun times ahead in life, I'm sure.

So this post is dedicated to the conversation stoppers of 2011, thus far, that haunt me when I'm trying to fall asleep at night.

Convo stopper #1:
It was during a Lenten Friday, and we were at Sheil's weekly fish fry. Tons of fried fish and shrimp and coleslaw at suggested donation of $3? YES PLEASE. The only thing is, after everyone's gotten their food (and Tyler has destroyed a small community of shrimp), they do these little reflection times and people come up and talk, and sometimes there is music and so forth. Well, on this particular Friday, it was the birthday of one of the NU students, so we all sang happy birthday to her. I've never spoken to her before, but I recognized her as one of the regular readers.

As we were leaving, she was entering through the door that we were exiting out of. Since it was her birthday, I blurted out, very brightly, "Happy birthday!!!!!"

She gave me a startled look and said, and I quote, "Uhhh," before hurriedly rushing past us with this look on her face like I had just propositioned her or something. It was incredibly awkward, but Tyler managed to keep his laughter in until after we'd gone outside.

And since she's a church regular, I keep seeing her at Mass and consequent fish fries. Ughgghghg avoidance strategies are a go!

Convo stopper #2:
Seeing a number of people in ties rushing up and down the stairs at work. Very peculiar. In the coffee room, I ask one of the HR ladies what was going on, if there was a big meeting today or something that I had forgotten about.

HR Lady: Big meeting? No, I think they're just here to do inspections.
Me: Oh, okay. Well, I guess I better be on my best behavior then! Ha ha!
HR Lady: ...Okay! [quickly leaves]

I work with her a lot, and we take yoga class together. No avoidance possible with this one.

Convo stopper #3:
Me: [pulls up pant leg, genuinely thinking he'd be intrigued] Tyler, check out my bruise.
Tyler: Ew, what's wrong with your leg? What did you do?
Me: I think it's from the top of my sock. I had to wear sort of tight socks today b/c it was raining and I was wearing my galoshes. So then I got these marks from it, and I guess it bruised.
Tyler: ...I don't want you to carry my children anymore.
Me: Wait, what?
Tyler: Uhhh do you think I want to tell people "My girlfriend gets bruises from the elastic band on her sock"?? What's wrong with you???

holy week reflections

I've been thinking a bit about this past Lenten season as we enter Holy Week. I had decided to fast for this go-around, which seemed to me to be a progressive step after giving cookies (junior year, high school) and cursing (freshman year, college). I wish I had a "this is what I learned" story or some sort of inspirational religious moment to share with you, but mostly I was grumpy a lot and ate far too much when I got the chance.

Once I ate a giant carrot cake cupcake from Bennison's instead of a real meal. Another morning, I had a whole tub of leftover curried noodles from Dozika and a homemade muffin. One week, I ate through an entire package of bacon by myself, much to Tyler's chagrin (b/c I didn't share, not b/c he thought I was fat) (at least, that better not be the case). This might not sound remarkable, except that Tyler and I eat together every day except Thursday dinner (he has his sports) and Saturday breakfast (I like to do household-y things on Saturday, like laundry, so we usually don't meet up til evening) so...I covered a lot of bacon in just two meals. I'm holding off my annual check-up until some of that gets worked out of my arteries. So you see, I am not exactly what you'd call a model faster.

In fact, I discovered very quickly that I'm absolutely terrible at fasting. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I broke down the very first day when my cubicle neighbor offered me a box of Girl Scout cookies. I think I fasted for a grand total of 3 hours that day, which is probably slightly less than what a normal person does regularly. I developed this routine where I basically ate breakfast as slowly as possible, stretching out a bag of Quaker Oatmeal squares for 6 hours. So really, it's not so much as fasting, as it is just...eating really slowly...which probably isn't the purpose of fasting, as it is an extension of my natural inclenations.

So over the past week or so, I've tried to be better. (I say this as I eat an apple, which I've been doing for the last hour and a half.) Whenever I get hungry in the afternoons, I've tried very hard to think of why I'm fasting in the first place, to mull over spirituality vs a Snickers bar. Sometimes it works; sometimes I find myself covered in croissant crumbs (snack-blackout is similar to a rage-blackout in that way). But there is a certain sort of lightness and cleanliness and clarity I feel in the late afternoons when I do manage to resist the temptations, which is a nice feeling to strive for. This is the last week of fasting, but I'm actually wondering if I might not do it for a little longer. See what happens.

On an unrelated note, I woke up to a wintry mess falling from the sky. Snow adorned grass and car tops and most of my El stop. Slushy ice grossness covered everything else. All I want to know is: WHY. WHY CHICAGO. WHYYYYYY.

bacon makes everything better

You know what pot smells like to me? Wet socks and cooked cabbage. Like a kind of stanky musky smell that's also a little bit green and sweet. I despise wet socks. And I don't particularly care for cooked cabbage.

And I hate, hate, HATE it when my entire freaking building smells like gross wet socks and cooked cabbage and gross disgusting weed. And because it's been grey and raining outside for the last two days, opening a window is not an option so everything is just like...sitting around, stagnant and mixing with the normal gross old-building smell awkwardly like hormones at a middle-school dance.

I hate pot! I hate middle schools! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!

Ahem. Sorry for the juvenile temper-tantrum, but I don't think it's too much to ask to live in an apartment that doesn't smell Satan's armpit in Detroit during a maple syrup festival near a dog-food factory.

This is where bacon comes in.

Bacon is amazing. It is a wonder-food. It makes everything taste like awesome. To make myself feel better (and b/c I was working from home today), I decided to cook up a few slices of bacon to nibble on while I made inroads into the fascinating world of warehouse accident prevention (our warehouses are super safe! Yay!).

Turns out, when you make bacon in a poorly-ventilated building, everything will then smell like bacon. My entire apartment smells like bacon. The hallway smells like bacon. My coat smells like bacon. My bedsheets smell like bacon, which I actually find kind of disturbing, but hey, at least it doesn't smell like pot.

Bacon. It's the answer to all the world's ills.