dj glowstick

weddings. are. so. freaking. gendered.

all i really wanted was someone to make eye contact with across the room during the particularly painful moments.

there were glow sticks at the reception. at least there was that. and an open bar. can't forget the open bar that made reuniting with high school friends at least a tad more bearable...

i bonded with the ring bearer. he was about four years old and told me stories about chickens and trees and golf carts.

on the way home we passed a farm with a zebra grazing in the field. honestly.

after a phat nap, my mom made me baked spaghetti with fake ground beef in it. they had friends over. friends with children. lots of conversation about where i go to church and who they should set me up with. *nervous laughter* but the five-year-old boy loved me. he said, and i quote, "can i see your moves again?", "i want to cuddle with you and watch cartoons," "can i spend the night here?", and "can i have more hugs and kisses before i leave?"

well, at least i'm a hit with the young men.

time warp.

here i am. i don't have energy to write about how i feel (shame, for a cancer...), so i'm just going to share some nuggets of midwest/fugate household culture.

straight from the airport we drove an hour and a half to a chain restaurant called noodles & co. in some depressing-as-hell suburb of columbus because this kid i graduated with who is both creepy and weird works there and my dad is obsessed with creepy/weird kid and wishes he was his son. he was way more excited to see this guy than he was to see me. so an hour and a half fresh off the plane i'm sitting in an overly air-conditioned fast food noodle restaurant, holding hands with shane and my sister while my dad prays over our penne (may it nourish our bodies and our souls).

the way home was flat flat flat...field after field, amish buggy after amish buggy. it's kind of beautiful, actually. the wide open spaces. you can see it raining miles away, which is amazing if you've never seen that. we didn't talk much. my dad just fussed over his damn gps and muttered at the woman in that little box giving him directions. he was mad because he knewn a better way. gps should know the best way. (why do you need gps if you already know the best way?). every once in a while we'd drive past a farm and someone would say: "oh becca, you remember joe-bob. you know, mary-anne's brother? he graduated a year after you? he moved to that house right there with his new wife. he's working at the bank now, but he's joining the army soon."



and that's pretty much all i've done. aside from eating at this fantastic all-you-can-eat buffet with mediocre/low quality food. mostly meat dishes. but i love me a salad bar.

there are some good things. i've gone to the giant salvation army thrift store. and to the drive in. my mom's been pretty nice. and my little sister is so grown up and funny and smart. as long as i can tune out my dad's assholishness, it's not so bad.



the nativity collection in my house:



jesus is everywhere.



the mannequin, sheila.



and finally, a gem from salvation army.

i made bill cosby laugh

in my dream last night. he was standing behind me in line at the post office and i said something funny. something very funny.

today is the 1 year anniversary of my blog! happy birthday, blog! which means i should probably be writing something spectacular and profound.

...

um...

...

the usual struggle between fear and love

last night i was so happy to be a smoker, just so i could give this woman a cigarette in exchange for some wisdom and perspective.

when she asked me to bum one, she said she hadn't smoked in a year. she had her son three months ago and this was her first time going out since. i don't know what it was that struck me. maybe because she was so aware of how insane and miraculous it is to grow, birth, and raise a miniature human being. or because she was such an odd combination of amazed and terrified and exhausted and determined to maintain a sense of self at the same time. maybe it was just the honesty of the situation. or that our lives are so drastically different because of one factor, but there we were standing together at this strange intersection of our lives, made possible by bali shag and the crescent's sunday night karaoke.

i certainly don't want to have a baby. it just felt strangely moving to hear about such genuine, chaotic love. it made me want give her my number and offer to babysit anytime, so she could keep going out and drinking beer and dancing with her friends occasionally, but i didn't want to be a creeper. maybe i should have been.

i don't think i'm doing a very good job saying what i'm trying to say. that's okay.

my cat's new food is giving him diarrhea.

someday i would like to give tours of caves. i think i would be an excellent cave tour guide.

ohio countdown: 8 days.

hairnets, hairnets everywhere

"my life is surreal" highlights for week of may 10:

1. 25 adults running loose after hours in a chocolate factory. climbing up ladders, crossing the yellow and black line, catching fresh chocolate flake in their hands. it falls like snow from the refiner in big, fluffy flakes. a chocolate blizzard.



2. drinking free beer on the knuckles of a giant troll with a bunch of bike bros.

3. willingly allowing a madagascar hissing cockroach to crawl all over me because. i think it's neat.

right now my hair is too long, my attention span is too short, my favorite animal is a wandering albatross, and i want a lightning bug tattoo behind my left ear.

what!? i iz reading the newz!

ba-bun-dred

shall i keep adding to the MIR (merc in retro) list? okay.

-mom accidentally scheduled her vacation for the week before i come home instead of the week i actually am home
-my loan company called my whole family trying to track me down because the bill they sent me was returned from the post office with a note that said i was unlisted
-my bus was forty five minutes late the other day

cloud cult made me feel like my soul was bursting. it hurt and it felt good. i didn't cry, but i could have if i were a person who ever cried to begin with.

lately i've been daydreaming about the next big change in my life. it comes in these random pangs. i'll be walking down the street and think about all of my friends and i relocating to the caribbean, like a babysitter's club super special. or yesterday a customer came in and started talking about his non-profit in south africa and how they probably need people to work for them soon. and i just imagined. or when ben and larissa were cutting their hair i thought about how maybe now is the right time to shave my head.

last night i dreamed i got this big tree tattoo. really simple lines all down my arm. in the dream i loved it so, so much. i looked for it online today, but it doesn't exist.

a customer came up to the register and said, "i'll have a dark marshmallow big daddy. because that's what i am." um...i felt embarrassed for him.

i love my friends and birthday dinners and watching sarah haskins until we can't keep our eyes open and the $2.35 we made busking on the ave and the protest song that will inspire generations to come.

collard mercs

i have started keeping track of things i attribute to mercury being in retrograde. so far they are:

-losing my keys at work
-losing my spare bike key
-my bus being 21 minutes late
-losing my library book so severely that spl is threatening to send me to collections
-relentless automated phone calls re: my vehicle's factory warranty
-the button on my jeans actually broke. it did not pop off. it just broke in half. while i was peeing.

granted, all of these things happen to me frequently anyway. and granted, this whole retrograde business isn't supposed to start until tomorrow morning. but still. i am preparing for the worst. i imagine it's going to involve a lot of communication break downs and relationship processing and me being late for work. fuck friday the 13th. it's nothing. i'm staying in bed until may 30th.

and, as if that weren't enough planetary action to make turn me into grumpy grumpkins, there is a full moon saturday. i'm in a love/hate relationship with my blood and the lunar cycle. i think i ovulated last week, which perhaps will put me on the right track for once. or it could be all in my head. i'm growing increasingly irritable by the minute.

this calls for shitty bar food, touchy porn, and shamelessly eating my weight in pearl jasmine confections.

on the way home from aforementioned activities, liz t and i walked by the fusion ultra lounge, the swanky club that shares a wall with the divey sketch-bar blue moon. they have the dress code posted on the window that includes such things as: "clean shoes. no solid color shirts. tight fitting clothes. collard shirts." collard shirts, eh? so i and my dress code violating ass decided to pop in and inform the management of the spelling error. some server came out to investigate and just looked perplexed. says liz, "it says collard. not collared. like collard greens! which really doesn't mean a lot when it comes to shirts!"

true. it doesn't mean a lot when it comes to shirts. give me the blue moon any day.

going to bed to hide out. see you in 23 days.




p.s. eek! i just realized i will be flying on an airplane during this chaos. a terrible idea. a terrible. idea.

all nighter

the only evidence that this weekend really happened:

1. the dead raccoon we stopped to pick up on the way home


2. the nebula bruise on my bum from falling down the front porch steps


things that did not happen this weekend:

chicken coop building. *sigh* shana and i realize we have no building skillz. we did measure our yard, so that's progress...