The Chronicles Of Jessica

So much for the holidays! Not that I want to kick of 2007 as a cranky-pants, but I always find January to be the biggest downer of all the months. It never starts out on the right foot in the first place, because I hate New Year's Eve with the white-hot fire of a thousand burning suns. Everyone is trying way too hard to have a good time, which usually translates to everyone getting way too loaded. If you're in the city, you don't want to leave the house because you'll never be able to find a cab and you'll stand around half the night freezing your ass off (in high heels, more often than not, which makes it that much worse) and if you're not in the city there's nothing to do anyway. You wind up hanging out at someone's house watching Ryan Seacrest count down to midnight and drinking tepid Asti Spumante out of a coffee mug with a faded picture of that Shoebox greeting card lady on it.

But Christmas was fun, even though Paul had to stay in town to work. Also there was no snow in Maine this year because of global warming. For most of the time I was there I didn't even need a jacket, which freaked me out. How long before I have to invest in a UV-resistant super suit? Probably a matter of months. It's scary, but at least I'll finally be able to call of the lifelong retail search for a parka that slims the hips.

There were some exciting occurrences over the holidays this year, though; for one thing, I bought a wedding dress. Wasn't expecting to buy a wedding dress; I hadn't even shaved under my arms 'cause I was thinking we were just hitting some of the after-Christmas sales. I generally don't like to try things on when I go shopping unless I've been mentally prepared in advance. And by mentally prepared, I mean zoned out on a couple of Valium.

But there was this new wedding shop in town, and my cousin Jill (who's one of my bridesmaids) was with us. She's a size four so it's fun to make her try stuff on and speculate about the origins of her freak metabolism. So we figured we could get her to model some of the bridesmaid's dresses. I wanted to make Babs try on some "mother-of-the-bride" couture, too, but she rebelled. That stuff was all a little too Golden Girls, I have to admit.

Anyway, we didn't find a bridesmaid dress that we liked, but I picked out a couple of wedding dresses to look at, really expecting to hate them, but ended up loving one of them, so there you are. I figured it would be a lot harder than that. I had picked up a few of those magazines, you know, the bridal ones, but then I didn't buy any again because they made me nuts - for one thing, none of the models smile. Who are these girls marrying that they look so depressed? And why do they have such severely crimped hair? And none of the dresses have sleeves - NONE. Since when are sleeves out of fashion? Forget long sleeves, I mean any kind of sleeve whatsoever. I guess bare arms are the new black.

No, I know that doesn't make any sense.

Even more exciting than that, I got to go see my cousin Paul play basketball! (Yes, I do think it's going to be confusing having more than one Paul in the family; one of them is almost certainly going to be forced to take a nickname, which will almost certainly be kind of dorky, because how do you shorten the name Paul? Can't do it. Of course my Paul is older but cousin Paul has been in the family his whole life, so it's not going to be an easy adjustment for anyone, right? Moving on.)

So Paul had a game against South Portland and he scored quite a few goals. Baskets. Whatever. He's athletic! Again with the mutant genes! Maybe he and Jill were adopted. Fiancee-Paul and I have already decided that we're probably going to have to hire some of athle-consultant to get our kids through gym class, since they stand no decent chance of inheriting any sort of sports ability whatsoever. Though if they take after him they'll be able to wield a Mac track pad like nobody's business.

Happy New Year, kids! One of my resolutions is to post more entries, so here's hoping that more stuff happens to me.

Stay tuned for my next post: Life in DC - We haven't been shot yet!