Friday night, after getting my husband settled into the hotel room, instructing him to keep his foot elevated and order a hamburger from room service, I went to the rehearsal dinner, at an Italian restaurant in the quaint neighborhood of Walnut Creek.

I met a lot of my (now) cousins-in-law, and got a chance to talk with my uncle-by-marriage, the father of the groom. He's the one who taught me to ski when I was seven years old. A nice guy—and still good-looking, even in his 70s.

The wedding was lovely, too. We all met yesterday in a beautiful Presbyterian church constructed of unpainted wood in Lafayette. The preliminary seating seemed to take about an hour: usually there's this moment when the mother of the bride is seated, but this time there were so many stepparents involved that I couldn't keep track of them all (our parents' generation got awfully good at weddings, if you know what I mean). Also, the close relationship my mother has with our cousins meant that she was seated as part of the pre-ceremonial ceremony right before the mother of the groom came down the aisle.

And then we all adjourned to the Lindsey Wildlife Museum, where the reception was accompanied by the occasional squealing of a red-tailed hawk, and the owls sat immobile above the fray, turning their heads every now and then so we wouldn't think they were the products of taxidermy.

My husband and I sat in front of the snakes and lizards on display, so all the kids at the reception kept gathering behind our table and tapping on the glass in an attempt to rouse the reptiles.

And it was all wonderful, though I was so tired at the end of it all I wondered how exhausted those who had worked to put the thing together must have felt.

This is the second time within a year I've seen two schoolteachers marry each other. Strictly speaking, should they breed? Discuss.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:17 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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. . . a sucker.

I just signed up for a month-to-month T-Mobile HotSpot subscription, so I can connect to the web from my local Starbucks. The new employer doesn't like people checking their e-mail from company machines—even during lunch or after work. It's quirky, but certainly their perogative.

But there's something about paying for internet access that sticks in my craw. What's next? Will I have to pay for drinking water? (Oh, wait: I suppose that small case of half-liters in the pantry wasn't free.)

I'm a rugged individualist, I tell you! A pioneer. Did my great-great grandfather pay for internet access when he ferried people along the Oregon Trail? No! He just took it when he needed it.

Did my ancestors pay for the wireless access when they travelled here on the Mayflower? Of course not; they were tough people, willing to use an ethernet cable when times were hard.

My bloodline has clearly diminished: paid internet access. Hotels in the Bay Area. We are sunk.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:33 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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My mother has let me know that it's okay if I stay in a hotel this weekend in the Bay Area. She doesn't like it, but she "sort of" understands.

I thought I'd escaped the silliness, but when I called my aunt, the "sane" one in the family, I got more of this "but, why?" At my older cousin's second wedding, we were allowed to stay in a hotel without all this strangeness. Perhaps it's because it was that cousin's second wedding: the one this weekend is his younger brother's very first wedding. I like the girl, and I think it might even be his only wedding. (And here I am ruining it with this hotel business.)

Look, people: I'm married. My husband's a private, self-sufficient person. When he's crippled with a huge cast on his foot, he gets even more so. He's from Illinois: guys up there don't like to hobble around on crutches around their in-laws—or anyone else, for that matter.

I swear if I could get the cells in my body surgically altered so none of these people's genes were represented therein, I'd do it in a second.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Someone put some tonic water in my fucking gin. Fucking commies.

Translation: my mother just called, at 9:20 p.m., to tell me she'll be simply devastated if, when my husband and I drive up this Friday to the Bay Area for my cousin's wedding on Saturday, we stay at a hotel.

Approved places to stay: at my aunt's house; at my other cousin's condo.

Has she asked any of them if it's important to them that they put us up? No. She's getting around the imputation that she's "people pleasing" by telling me that it's her feelings, personally, that will be hurt if I "remove myself from the family." (This removal process is normally done by taking time off from work on Thursday to get one of the cars tuned up, and then taking another day off on Friday and loading the husband, his crutches, and his cast into his car, driving 400 miles, attending a wedding [both of us], plus a rehearsal dinner [me], and then turning around on Sunday to drive back to L.A.)

Of course, what she's asking is crazy. I want to check my husband into a hotel on Friday evening, make sure he has a nice pay-per-view to watch, and then attend the rehearsal dinner (which I found out about mere days ago).

But from my point of view, it's not just this craziness: it's every other crazy thing she's made an issue of since I was . . . well, since I was born.

"What do you want to do about it?" asks Attila the Hub.

"I want to sleep on it," I tell him. "I want to have a discussion with you tomorrow, and get your take on it. And then I want to tell her to . . ."

"So then we'll address it tomorrow, after we aren't so tired," he concludes.

"Good plan," I tell him. "Did you think of this yourself?"

Mom. How can such a sweet, wonderful whip-smart woman be such a twisted loon? Do you have to get special credentials?

Readers: you know how it is, right? If you give in on some of these crazier ideas, life turns into the "maximum security prison" experience: you're bringing them cigarettes. You're doing their laundry. (Wait . . . I already do her laundry.)

Time to set limits, I suppose.

Though I've certainly been given to understand that all mothers are somewhat crazy, and it's simply a question of degree.

I also understand that it's important to avoid matricide, because one is often judged by a jury of one's peers—all of whom somehow managed to avoid that same temptation.

I'll be 44 this summer. You'd think I'd have a handle on this by now.

I do not. What I do have is more Tanqueray to dump into my drink, thereby refreshing it and restoring to it the equilibrium I desire in my own psyche.

Policy recommendations: don't answer the phone after 9:00. It is either some friend who wants you to play psychotherapist to him/her, or a parent, who would like you to do something truly self-destructive to prove your love.

Just let the machine pick it up.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:51 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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It's impossible not to feel overprotective at certain moments. One tends to get carried away with a role it's impossible not to associate with men. There's a sense of power, of being the one who visits in the middle of the night.

I felt like a 20th-century highwayman. But the good kind, you know—the guy from the poem.

There's a desire to protect her, to put her on a pedestal. To make her precious above all else in the world.

I kind of dug it; what a shame I turned out to be straight.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:57 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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It was almost perfect: we got up early and went to mass. Father Shea preached beautifully—I mean, delivered a beautiful homily. I mean it: people broke out into applause.

I made bacon and eggs for breakfast, straightened the house up just a little and took a nap. I woke up in time to take a second nap with my husband, after which I grilled steaks for dinner, and we watched The Sopranos, squabbling only briefly about the degree of its left-wing and anti-Christian bias.

Then we went to bed.

The only imperfection: I missed Goldstein's ground-breaking Scenic Easter Painting in Pixels.

But that's fixed now, and life just about couldn't be better. (Okay: except for the furniture thing. I do need furniture.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:51 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Attila the Hub and I need newer cars, but I'd like him to go first, since I'm far too flakey to want the same thing more than two weeks in a row. So if he were to get a late-model sedan I could simply adopt his 1999 siverplum Saturn and enjoy the V-6 engine and CD player for another year or two or three.

Therefore, we've decided that we must win a car at the raffle for our local church in late June.

We've started referring to "when we win the car." We wonder how long the paperwork will take, how much the taxes on it will cost, and whether we'll have our choice of colors.

We are terribly serious about this. It is our plan for upgrading our transportation situation at the minimum possible cost. We remind ourselves that we're lucky people, and that we are perfectly likely, therefore, to win the raffle.

All the people we take to the event will be types to enjoy our good fortune, and take pleasure in checking out our new sedan with us. Maybe we'll give them the first rides in it after we take delivery.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:20 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Hipnerd is confused. It's not a "Marie Callender's" he works near: it's Callender's. Most Marie Callender's restaurants are glorified coffee shops: the one near the Los Angeles Museum of Art is high-end. The only thing it has in common with the pie shops it dominates is, well—its fabulous selection of pies.

Mmmm, pie: I can dish it out, and I can take it.

Since this incredible, luxurious restaurant is near Publisher's Row, I've eaten there about a million billion times. With, like, every single person on the planet.

I met UBL there for lunch one in 1999: he had way too many glasses of Pino Grigio. The man cannot hold his booze. Though, you know—he did put the fear of God into the Western World, so one has to give him credit for that.

Gin and tonics at Callender's: officially, they contain about an ounce of gin. In practice, it's more like an ounce and a quarter. Do let the bartender know if you weigh little more than a hundred pounds: it's critical information. Especially if you like to have three of 'em. Do the math.

There's a grand piano there, and—as at Nordstrom—sometimes someone plays it to lull you into a sense that you aren't spending too much money. Of course, you are.

Take a stand, though: either get the salad with pear slices and gorgonzola cheese, or have yourself the kind of chicken pot pie they eat in heaven. 'Cause with any luck, that's a few years away.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:47 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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if I had a small convertible leather loveseat, and a package of roasted, salted soy nuts.

Really: it takes so little. I'm a simple person.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:25 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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. . . who bought a almost two liters of Tanqueray and 750 milliliters of Hendrick's on the same day?

Would you say that this person was given to excess? Would you say that he/she should go back to more healthful habits, such as smoking cigars, maxing out his/her credit cards, and taking long baths?

I'm just wondering. I have, you know: I have a friend . . .

UPDATE: He'll just get more popular as the gin craze grows: people are tired of tasteless cocktails made with vodka, and for good reason. I mean, if you want to drink stuff that harsh, why not just pour rubbing alcohol into Kool-Aid? I say that with love, by the way.

Another sign that gin is overtaking vodka: every time I go to the local hoity-toity "wine shop," the vodka section has shrunk by one brand—and has been replaced with another premium gin. The buyer there is moving so fast, it might be difficult for a competitive person to keep up with her.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:57 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Hog Beatty calls me up to explain that tomorrow night is Passover, and that this holiday celebrates the liberation of Jewish slaves from Ramses Whosits.

The message, he explains, is that "you're fucking with the wrong Jew." I laugh, and try to remember whether I'm mad at him lately. If I'm not, I should call him back and tell him it was funny. But if I am mad, I ought to snub him.

I decide it's safer to snub him until I can figure it out. Anyway, it was a long day at work, and someone ought to pay for it. Might as well be him.

There's a doohickey on my dishwasher that tells me when the dishes are dirty, and when they're clean. I should have one for each of my friends that I can dial to "mad at them," "think they're funny," "they're tiresome," and "this person needs an intervention."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Don't you miss me just a little?

Or did I mean so little to you?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:25 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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. . . Mazel Tov! How cool is that? Would someone get me a literal translation, please?—my copy of The Joys of Yiddish is in the other room, and I can't move.

I don't know how insightful I'll be for the next month or two; obviously, blogging here will be light until I learn the ropes at the new job.

I believe the cliche is "tired but happy." I'm getting a crash-course on office procedures and stylistic preferences. All very well and good, but after a while one begins to feel exhausted from the strain of listening and trying to remember it all.

And it isn't like you can even say to yourself, "well, I've been working hard," because getting trained is such a passive act. One doesn't necessary have a story to show for it at the end of the day (though tomorrow I should rack up some more conventional accomplishments).

Here's a cool perk, though: I work across from a mall, which means I can pick up anything I need on my lunch hour or after work. As I understand the municipal code, however, I won't be permitted to move in, because chain stores are picky about vagrancy laws and such.

* * *

It turns out that the foot we thought my husband had sprained is broken. This means he won't be able to run his marathon this summer, which is terrible for him, but better than some of his coaches have suffered through in the injury arena: he's only losing several weeks, yet they are weeks he couldn't afford to lose if he was going to finish the stupid thing—much less achieve a decent time.

Of course, Attila the Hub is way too thoughtful to call during the week and let me know bad news like that, but I find out on my way home. I'm horrified, so I come home and bring him grapes as an appetizer, followed by a steak omelet, a tonic and lime and blueberries with creme fraiche on top for dessert. It's not co-dependent if he's injured, ya know.

Then I pour a real gin and tonic for myself.

Sleep won't come easily tonight, but I'll need to make it happen.

* * *

I really don't know what the correct imagery is to describe what I'm feeling right now: it's like that moment when you've been climbing a trail up a mountain, enduring switchbacks for miles, and suddenly glimpse the sky through the trees up ahead.

You realize you're within a quarter mile of camp, and you climb on.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:16 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I can sense what's about to happen. My mood will continue to lift for 12-24 hours until I get stricken with horrible cramps. (Dad? Are you reading this? I'm out of codeine, and I know where you live.) I'll put up with that for another 12-24 hours before I get to be a human being for, oh, a week.

In exchange for enduring this nonsense, members of my sex are permitted to go through even more excruciating pain in order to produce children, which they are then allowed to raise.

And our dry-cleaning costs more. Plus, we always get stuck with the dishes.

I'm really ready to make someone pay for all this.

In order to protect my marriage/friendships, I've locked myself out of the house and am blogging from my mom's place in Westchester. (She's safe in the Bay Area right now.) I bundled up all her knives and dropped them off at Goodwill, just to be sure. I'll be disconnecting the phone soon, and then disabling the internet connection.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

When I was a teenager, I used to be willing to wait a few minutes to see the time change to either 11:11 or 12:34 on my digital clock.

Of course, I was a strange girl.

You know: strange back then in the 70s/early 80s. Thank goodness that's all over with.

UPDATE: Let's see: we've dealt with 24-hour time, the issue of future centuries, and now . . . Europe's date notation, which I hadn't even though about!

Does anyone know what the larger Commonwealth countries (other than the UK) do in their date notations . . . ? I'd assume that they use the British/European system, but this is the internet, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and others should let me know.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:20 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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