Paper Swans

When I was engaged a million years ago, there were two places to register in Mineral Wells -- Tru-Value Hardware and Davidson's. Davidson's was upscale -- it had china and candlestick holders and all sorts of scary things that said gracious home, Martha Stewart, loveliness. It intimidated me. So Tru-Value it was with the intoxicating smell of ant insecticide wafting through the aisles. I registered for many things, things like a Snackster, which would make grilled sandwiches almost instantly, a salad shooter (nevermind that I have never made a salad a day in my life), and a juicer (ditto for glasses of juice), a dish rack. These sad tokens of domesticity were what I clung to as I hoped for a new life. My soon-to-be betrothed and I lived in a one bedroom apartment filled with roaches that wouldn't leave no matter how many times we bombed it with Raid, an older Russian man next door that sat in his underpants and watched porno movies with his door open, and walls so thin that a person could feel the wind through them. I decorated and redecorated the space with the concentration of a rabbi studying the Torah. The dinky apartment had so much shit in it that I could have spent hours dusting if my little heart desired. I thought, no knew, that I could make it seem bigger and more beautiful by force of will, by the right things, by enough flowers and candles and troll dolls (okay, I only had one troll doll, dressed as a bride with bright yellow hair). My betrothed said, Give up, Michelle, we live in a shithole, it's always going to be this way. It's like a piece of paper -- you can fold it, but it's still the same. (He was more right than he knew, of course.) He had a bonsai tree and trimmed it every day as his contribution to the space -- at least it was small. I countered his logic by saying that something could either be a wadded up piece of paper or a beautiful paper swan. Our place was going to be the latter, right? Wrong. We picked the place because it was cheap and convenient and cost us almost nothing and no matter how many things we picked out at Tru-Value, that was the truth of our lives couldn't be changed, no matter how we folded it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"You need to sober up or get a whole lot more drunk." The Ice Harvest

Wedding Vows

1 shot of vodka
1 crushed passion fruit (use the juice only)
1 glass of gingerale

Serve over crushed ice.


Benedictions and Maledictions

For Cindy's question about my feelings about gay marriage:

I completely agree that everyone should have the right to be married, gay or straight, if only because I believe that everyone should have access to the legal rights that marriage offers. In reference to the latter post, I'm not a big fan of marriage in general, but I believe when it's good, there's nothing better. I'd have to go with Sam the Lion in Larry McMurtry's Last Picture Show when he says about eighty percent of marriages are miserable. But even misery has its uses.