It's not a secret if you post it on your blog.

Some time ago I returned from work to find the following note:

"I found your mail from this week. It is under this note. I will be back at seven. Don't spoil your dinner. -Mom"

I rifled through the mail, and then responded:

"Off buying ice cream cone. Back soon."

Feeling that might be deliberately inflammatory, I felt compelled to add a short vignette about the tragedy of the alligator lizard. You see, the alligator lizard lives in environments that are only tolerable if one has ice cream, but the lizard lacks both the ability to purchase ice cream and the ability to leave said environment. It is very sad. I drew a short comic on the backs of various envelopes and cards, detailing the quest for ice cream of a disturbingly anthropomorphosized alligator lizard. I believe at the end, sated by ice cream, he walks into the light- here represented by the gullet of an eagle- able to face his fate with equanimity. Then I bought and ate ice cream. Then I sent back RSVP cards for two weddings.

The next day I realized that parts of the alligator lizard saga were on the back of the RSVP cards.

But I seem to have gotten away with it- I've since talked to the brides in question, and there was no comment about my artwork. Ha ha! Awkward explanation avoided! Illusion of sanity maintained!

Unless they read this post.

The elephant is striking down the dwarf.

Last night I dreamed that that one of my oldest friends- the one who can't seem to remember Señor C's actual name- kidnapped C and threw him a bachelor party. Unfortunately, the bachelor party was after the wedding, and during the reception. I stood there, surrounded by friends, family, and seven thousand Chileans- waiting.

My paranoia is slightly justified as this friend has offered to have such a party. He really likes strippers.

So to preclude such an occurrence, I'd like to propose an alternative event- Señor C gets an entire cheesecake, people sign up on a rota, and we take two hours shifts playing Descent of the Rings in SPACE with him. Sixteen solid hours of one of his obscenely long and complex strategy games. It'll be like Boatmurdered!

If you get that reference, you've just signed up for two shifts.

Me too, me too!

C's screed against Everyman reminded me of wedding planning. Everything does now, apparently.

We were having a guts and grime talk: what's important to us (cake and ribs), what's important to our families (not spending money and being insane), and what we can afford to spend (bupkiss). C, who has obviously been getting tips for grooms who don't want to get slaughtered before the Day, asked me if there was anything special and romantic that I really wanted.

I started tracing patterns on the floor with my toe and not making eye contact.

"Well," I said in a low voice "If you wanted to... If it seems like a good idea..."

"Go on", said Señor C in encouraging tones.

"We could maybe... possibly... go to a lawyer and get joint durable power of attorney."

"..."

"Oh, and living wills!"

"I thought you were going to suggest something romantic!"

"There's nothing more romantic than durable power of attorney."

I stand by that statement. I'm not good at being conventionally romantic- as far as I can see, it's all about blackmailing my partner into buying me things and getting him to stare at me like the creepy dudes at a bar- but I get all gooshy about legal commitments (I did just have a freakout about wedding invitations, but that's because they were horrifically botanically inaccurate. C's future includes a ten minute sit down with the first six pages of the Peterson.)

But Roth. While fidelity is an essential part of my relationships, I don't see it as essential to all relationships. In theory, there are times where cheating is necessary for the survival of a good marriage- but I read Everyman and found it so loathsome that I temporarily believed exactly the inverse of whatever the author professed. It's like the opposite of hearing Bill Clinton speak. C may be biased by the unpleasant.

Oh, and who else hates dinner parties with your parents? It's like an exhibit of all your unpleasant conversational quirks. (Oh please, don't talk about how your job has wronged you. Please don't cut an anecdote about marriage short because you recalled the person we're talking to divorced three years ago. Did you just snub someone for a slight from the '90s?)

Hey, C has a blog now. Its about slowly going insane while living with your parents. Fun for all!

I don't want your pity, I want to be mocked.

It got all warm outside. I've been drinking a lot of water: six liters every day. I was going to write a humorous post about how to drink so much water- the key is to work outside in Redding in recently burned areas and to have lots of water with you- but that's not the best way to achieve this goal.

Right, do you know those little fizzy packets of electrolytes- Emergen-C? My boss is encinte, and thus is not using chemicals. (No TechNu. No Gum. No Sunscreen.) The approved Gatorade substitute is that good old hippie hangover cure.

So the best way to drink six liters of water every day (1.5 gallons) is to also consume 3-4 grams of effervescent ascorbic acid. That's Vitamin C, folks- 50 times the RDA every work day. And while it's very difficult to harm yourself with Vitamin C, it does have side effects. I have them all, I just thought I was allergic to hot chocolate. And had food poisoning. And was weak.

I'm so dumb.

Special thanks to C, who thought to look up the symptoms of too much Vitamin C, even though I told him that I was sure you couldn't take too much. Positive.

I promise it's a joke!

I've decided to run with my joke from two years ago. C just got a truly truly truly crazy e-mail about wording in invitations. I threatened to call off the wedding if he didn't include a comma. I swear it's a joke. Mostly.

Spent some time looking for a particular blog- there's a fear, and it's either great or secret or hidden or the worst, and it belongs to this guy. (Who is nice, if forgetful.)

Yeah, there's a blog for each of those, and they all use the same blog format. All of them.

The cheapest kitty litter here is made from toasted wheat grains. It works fine, save for the guilt of using grain as a repository for cat poop. I had to switch to the second cheapest brand instead.

It IS nice, actually.

I floated C some money soes he could eat until his mom came back from vacation or he got paid. (We are still nineteen financially.) He just sent me a check- he wrote "sometimes payback is nice" in the memo line.

It's sweet- but it's sweeter because I usually write something like "LARPing Competition: third place" or "Western Boa Competition" in the memo line. I also give him nicknames like "Cuddles" and "Bubble Butt". I feel only moderate guilt!

So talented!

I found another barrel of industrial waste in the forest today.

It's clearly been there for a while, and it doesn't have the MSDS conveniently displayed like the last one.

I told my boss, and he laughed and said, "Stop finding those. We've surveyed the area four times thus far- you're making everyone else look bad." I told him everyone else should walk as close to the road as possible without actually being on the road.

I think the sock zombie lady is right: "When certain things happen often, people privately wonder what it is you're doing so horribly wrong."

Oh, and my former "unpleasant grinding irritation" coworker got hired in my old position. (No bitterness, I was offered and graciously declined. Someone has to find these barrels.) While he was irksomely blithe and competent as a second in command, I'm now noting an increasingly restive and neurotic tone in his ever more frequent e-mails. Possibly because he has to resample sites marked with nothing but biodegradable flagging. (Oops.) Or because no one sent follow-up information to the federal and state agencies that allowed sampling, and future permits are being denied. Or because neither of us could key grasses worth a damn.

I'm torn between pleasant validation that my old job was hard, and fear that I've made someone else's job difficult. Oh, and pleasure that when I'm confused or find something cool, I'm encouraged to call my current boss and chatter. Prevent at least some of the preventable mistakes listed above. Hurrah!

The baby was very fine.

Important information for following anecdote: we call C's room "the Cage", short for Faraday cage.

On the drive back from the old west, I was attempting phone conversation with my beau. He said something which sounds ripped from the lyrics of a third rate emo band:

"You're in a shadow, I'm in my cage. There's no way we can even begin to talk to each other."

soon it will get its own tag.

It's a second post on country music!

There are a couple of songs out- in the pop country theme of "My wife, she is extremely hot". Did you know that on data night- after your wife has carefully groomed herself into socially accepted attractiveness- the ultimate compliment is to cancel your reservations and have lots of sex instead? Don't you understand ladies? Tonight, (as opposed to the other date nights) your physical artifice is so successful that there's no need to anesthetize your husband with a steak and some jack on the rocks before he'll consent to sleep with you.

I hate your face, ENTP: Wow. Just wow.

I hold that there are three kinds of 'gadget dudes'. There's the type who will spend a long weekend assembling a computer to their exact specifications from parts they obsessively purchased online. They'll also throw out a little bit of code to solve irksome little quirks in their lives. I'm not expected to be impressed, because what do I know about ones and zeros? I think of this as the INTJ version- but sometimes C will channel this, and it is hot.

There's the ISTJ version, which involves welding. Welding and trips to the dump. I'm expecting a laptop stand as a wedding present- one with a distinct steampunk sensibility, the ability to adjust to any height, and a coffee cup holder that keeps my beverage at my preferred temperature. Here, no one can comprehend what's going on, so asking how many office chairs gave their lives is a good conversation starter.

But then there's the ENTP. The Gadget Dude. The first person you know to own an ipad. (Idiosyncratic capitalization conventions can DIAF. Unless it's pH.) The one who has the best car. No, the best car. You couldn't possibly know more about [chosen subject] because ENTP is an expert on [chosen subject]. This implies the ENTP has spent 10,000 hours researching conspicuous consumerism and standing in lines.

C has a cousin- who is largely delightful- who asked us to smuggle an iphone out of the country for him. As I wasn't aware that such things were illegal I told the Apple store guy the truth, and this am no longer allowed in that Apple store. Also, when his sister tried on four days before her wedding and found that it would not fit, he offered to sell her some of the Amway style diet pills he pushes. Unasked. Because everyone should celebrate their love with a belly full of psyllium husks and speed. Why tailor when you can crash diet?

Today I found an empty Plan B pill package in an abandoned homestead site. An abandoned Chinese homestead site.