Girl Anachronicles

Well, since I spent my Sunday afternoon aimlessly ambling around the aisles at Walgreens (all the while cursing the dratted place for not selling packaging tape on Sundays), I decided to lift my spirits a bit by purchasing makeup replacements.

I was all out of pressed powder (I was dragging around small crumbs of face cake with the little sponge) and it was time to replace my mascara. Also, it’s been a week or more since I last shaved my legs. After a lot of thinking, I decided to give up the razor in favor of a more “glamorous” way of getting rid of my leg hair. What got into me? Beats me! I just know I wanted a change in that sense, and after a lot of thinking, I decided in favor of waxing. At least you have to do it less often.

So I start looking for a wax that looks trustworthy and not too lethal. The variety of wax brands in here is fascinatingly sparse! My eye kept getting drawn to the tub of Nads, and in spite of the price tag ($20!!!) I ended up buying it.

In favor of Nads, I have to say that in spite of the bad rep, the thing does work. Most probably, a great deal of the people that have reviewed the product negatively have simply failed to note one detail in the instructions: when it says to spread a thin layer of the product over the area to be depilated, they mean thin. My first trial was with what i understood was a thin layer, and the strip took barely any hair at all. I was flabbergasted (and bummed out, since I thought it was $20 down the drain). But at the second try, Voilá! (and OUCHIEWAWA!) Lotsa hair off the skin! Yeah!

It will take a few days, since I don’t want to overwork my skin (and I have tons of hair), but I will finish what I started.

When I got to my mom’s home, I got handed this little particular tube:

It’s a ‘plumper’, and the fucking thing works! It works at setting my lips on fire and making me look (and feel) like some superhero with spicy saliva gave me one fury-packed smacker! Haha! Thanks, Tatts!

This morning I tried the new mascara I decided to buy:

Maybelline’s Define-A-Lash Lengthening Washable Mascara (fucking long name!)
I wasn’t wowed, but I wasn’t disappointed either. And the little rubber brush is pretty funny to look at. Fun in the morning routine, yay!

Eze has been working nights and weekends during these past few weeks. It’s his second jobs, @ Border’s. He took it up so we could have extra income, specially since he still has a few credit debts to clear. I’ve tried to be understanding and supportive of him and this new situation, but unlike last time he held a second job, this time is a little rougher on me.

Why? Well…

[rant mode] For one, last time he held a job the hours weren’t as long. It wasn’t retail, so the latest he was out was at 10 o’clock at night. In the new job, that’s the earliest he arrives home the days he has to work.

However, he was miserable back then. Most of the time he was assigned to work the booth at a famous, money-wrapped church building (the one with the dinosaur posted outside. Yes, that one). Now he works around some of the things he loves (books, movies, music? his LIFE!), and it’s just like an extension of his Saturday hobby. He’s happy there.

But I miss him…

Back when he worked at the dinosaur church there was also a buffer around the situation. At least during half of that time I received a long-ish visit from my dad and his wife. They kept me company, I didn’t feel so lonely. I could go home and just chill with dad, it was fun! My mind was elsewhere (i.e. Dad’s problems, which were bigger than mine), and my responsibilities were not that many.

Today my life is led to a different pace. Things at home are far from being the same they were back then. I don’t leave the room anymore except to get some water. I quit the kitchen a few weeks ago. Communal areas have been abandoned for a while. “Estrangement” is this home’s middle name. Dust has been gathering at the corners for a while, it’s just waiting for us to leave.

So I have my breakfast, lunch and dinner out of the house. I’ve gotten incredibly fed up with fast food junk. You have no idea how cranky fast food will get you if it’s the only component in your daily nutrition. I’m fucking missing salads. The summer heat is on the rise and it doesn’t help either. I have taken Eze’s advice and I’ve spent more time at Mom’s. It make me feel less lonely, more at home. But it’s not easy feeling at home when you’ve arrived all drenched in sweat in the 100-degree furnace you call a car… and you can’t get a bath. (Well, I could, but I’d feel I was imposing. Water is not coming by cheap these days. Nothing is.)

… And moving day is at hand, and until now, I’ve felt a little on the lonely side dealing with the idea (and with the boxes, and with the dust). Yesterday I got mad at a commercial institution (a convenience-pharmacy with a name starting with ‘W’ and ending with ‘algreens’) because on Sundays they cannot sell (by law) certain items, among which was included the one item I had been needing for the past few days to start dealing with boxes: packaging tape. When you get mad at an inanimate entity, something’s really up with you. It’s the same “something” that causes road rage and distasteful graffiti.

So weekends like this come and go without pain or glory, and then a week like this one starts (week #3? #4? of eating crap 24-7) and I start misfiring at my boss on the job. It’s not his fault, it’s purely mine, because god knows how the system fails here, it does! But that doesn’t give me the right to talk back to a fellow worker.

So I need a vacation. I need to move and I need a vacation … [/end of rant]

… and a salad.

Like I hinted at in my June 5 post, I will be taking off in July. To be more exact, on July 24, with return date: July 30.

Where am I going?

San Diego ComicCon, here I come!!!
Yes, my friends: joined by Ezequiel, Pepe and Maricarmen, we will take San Diego, CA by storm. We will see tha Pacific Ocean and pee on it. We will dishonorably not give up our seats to old women in the trolley. We will go to that convention and sell our collective asses to Kevin Smith in exchange for a single autograph. We will beat a path of drool for the Battlestar Galactica cast. We will look incredibly dumb shouting “YATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” in unison to greet Masi Oka. Hopefully we will come back in one piece. Hopefully, the temperature in San Diego will not go upwards of 80 Farenheit (we like acting stupid in comfortable weather).

So there: it’s all out. I’m happy. I’ll bring back pictures, stories, merchandise and maybe more …

Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have to go make this tongue ready to start licking Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff on first sight.

I just finished watching the 1950 version of Father of the Bride. I’ve always been a Steve Martin fan, and quite liked the 1991 version he starred in, so I had to see the original version, see how the most recent one pitted up against it.

Apart from the glaringly obvious changes and updates in style (from the fact that the original movie is in black and white, down to the old-fashioned model of Osterizer we get to see in a scene in the kitchen), there are also other changes that have more to do with politics, something I found to be quite interesting to watch.

To begin with, in the original version, the Banks family has a black maid. This in itself would cause a ruckus nowaday, given the political correctness that is demanded of the media (even if events of more violent nature due to racism occur on a daily basis). Even more interesting was the fact that it is implied that the Dunsts (the groom’s family) are of a higher station, not only because of their bigger house, but because they have a white maid. I think I don’t even need to say that no maids are to be found in the 1991 version.

In the 1950 version you never see the characters get messy, unruly or dirty. The movie is carried with the glamour that characterized the 50s: mother, daughter, father, beau … not a hair out of place in their carefully lacquered coifs. The 1991 version shows most characters suffering the ups and downs of a wedding planning down to the dark circles under their eyes.

The 1950 version portrays what I would guess would be a typical 1950 family: father and mother, obviously the mother is a housewife (even though the cleaning and cooking is left to the maid). This is the kind of couple that, when he gets home, she’s up and ready in her pumps and pearls to take the suitcase off her tired husband’s hands. Both sons have leeway to leave the house whenever they please without so much as the bat of an eyelash, they’re both in school, and no one worries about them. It is never clear wether the daughter is going to college (but apparently not, she’s just being “kept”), and the father goes into a tizzy as soon as she announces that she’s leaving for a date. She’s the whole of his worries, to the point of keeping him awake at night. I think the 1991 version made the brother-sister contrast easier to deal with by making the only brother much younger than her. However, they updated the bride character by making her a young career woman who has just come back home from her solo trip to Europe (where she met her beau). Obviously, feminism has had a big hand on how we portray female characters in the media. By the way: mom and dad? Total busy wrecks, but it’s cool! They look to be a co-op couple.

The details and small stories around the wedding planning are pretty much timeless, however. Obviously, the price tag has inflated from 1950 to 1951 (pretty much! I mean … a $400 wedding cake nowadays is a steal!). But problems with the flowers, dresses, boudoir, fittings, bridesmaids, wedding rehearsals and so on will exist as long as weddings exist. However, the 1991 version tinges the situations with more than a little humor, while the 1950 version’s humor is more subduded.

One character, the caterer, was taken advantage of and exploded in the latter film, though, and I think this is what made the movie a fine candidate for a sequel. Martin Short in the character of Franck is simply fascinating, very funny, and totally un-PC! Forget the black maid, now, this guy is outrageously gay! And I think most fans of the movie totally loved him. He’s the reason Father of the Bride II exists.

There is but one very redeeming point in the 1950 version, one thing that won me over: the night before the wedding, Stanley Banks (the father) has a nightmare. A sequence fit for any 1950s horror movie, it was excellently made, I loved every second of it, and relished the fact that they found a way to fit in something so dreary in a picture that was later remade to glorify one of the scariest moments in a person’s life. I wonder why they left it out…

Steve Martin made Stanley Banks his own characteer. The hysteria and the mushy-dad moments are all his, all made in his own particular style. In comparison, Spencer Tracy’s Stanley Banks is perfectly … glum. Sorry … I’ll keep Steve Martin as a dad any day over Mr. Tracy.

But I won’t have a wedding.

Although, one can always dream a bit …

Summer’s here (to my brother’s chagrin, he’s convinced that summer is jinxed for him), and there are plans around, waiting for the right time, the right moment. There’s, for example, a group trip in the plans (for which I will furnish more details later). Closer still is our moving day. The date has been set for June 16th. Thankfully we don’t own all that much shit, and we’re basically moving our room only, so it should be a pretty simple (or at least short) affair. There have also been talks of going to the beach, going kayaking, a few summer-y things to offset our shut-in natural habits (Eze’s and mine). In short, summer promises to be interesting at least.

Moving Day is at Hand (Diana & Eze Edition)

There are a few things I’ve been meaning to do as soon as we move. It’s not so much that I can’t do them at our current living space, most of them I can, but I never felt comfortable doing them. Besides, living out of a darkened room (in which only the distant, indirect rays of sun alighted dimly through the half-closed window shades) is at best a glum way to lead a Sunday afternoon.

Things I mean to do as soon as we set new camp in our own apartment:

1) Retake Yoga – it’s been more than a year since I last did yoga. I’m sorely missing it… literally. I can feel my bones misaligned (one of the main reasons why I love yoga so much: there are some positions in which my back cracks, and that feels SO good!)

2) Give myself a pedicure and a manicure – my limbs need some TLC. They’re dry, cracked and flaky. A nice Sunday afternoon spent soaking hand and feet in soapy water is just what I need.

3) Spend a Saturday morning with a huge coffee mug and a piece of warm bread with margarine in front of my laptop surfing the net, in nothing but my underwear… in the dining room ^_^ windows open to the morning breeze! YAY!

4) Take my sewing machine to be fixed. We’ll have space for it now. Maybe I’ll finally learn some sewing basics through hands-on experience. If you run into me in a misshapen dress, you’ll know it’s under way.

I probably have many more plans in my subconscious to carry out as soon as I finally feel “at home” somewhere. And I’ll probably blog about them too … or not.

It’s a Cruel Summer

It’s been years since I last went to the beach. I don’t mean the occasional, full-dressed visit in which you stand at the water’s edge and just breathe the salty breeze in, and talk about how pretty the water looks; or you just munch on a greasy fritter while contemplating pork’s immortality (“contemplando la inmortalidad del marrano” is one of my favorite pastimes). I’m talking about the all-out, bikini-clad, sunscreen-stinking, sand-in-your-underwear, insecure-in-your-cellulite kind of visit. I haven’t bathed in seawater since I got together with Eze. July 24, 2004 was the last day I went (to Playa Ballena, with Jorge Juan, to be exact). I spent all day thinking about the first kiss Eze gave me (the night before, while nursing a bad case of “drunk Diana”). A smile was permanently pasted on my face for the rest of the day. Maybe I would have dedicated a few more minutes to the water and the sand and the sun, had I known “being with Eze” would mean “you will never step toe on the beach again, missy!”. ^_^ (I’m just kidding! I like teasing him that way)

We have a friend who’s keen into internal tourism. He likes to spend weekends visiting places most Puerto Ricans take for granted. And he’s been inviting us for a long time to join him in his trips. He’s been wanting to go rappelling, something which Eze and I could marginally do given that the ropes don’t break under the stress of our weight. Another thing our friend has suggested is kayaking at the bioluminescent bay in Fajardo. That’s a night trip, that’s what Eze calls a “boring” trip (mainly ‘cuz he can’t swim)… that’s what I call “an offer I can’t refuse”. This is one thing I hope to be doing sometime this summer.

The other thing our friend has been insisting on is a trip to the beach. This vexes me a bit: my body is nowhere near “beach-ready”. And I know I’ll hear my friend’s voice protesting because basically that would be product of one of my complexes. But let’s talk truth here: my thighs are host to a valley of cellulite. Cellulite has invaded and conquered my thighs. And as much as I can hide and conceal this fact in my everyday clothes, that would be a no-can-do in a swimsuit or bikini. Which would leave me with two options:

1) Terrorize women and small children (plus gross out all those whose eyes are not tolerant of alternate realities to those sold by beer commercials)

2) Dress up in the boricua bestial makeshift beach-going attire par excellence: lycra biker shorts and a huge t-shirt. Which would make me incredibly ridiculous and would probably set a few individuals my way to ask for “el caldero de arroz con pollo” (the cauldron with rice and chicken).

I think I’ll opt for #1 if we ever get to go to the beach again. At least people will recoil in horror and get away from me (i.e. leave me alone), instead of the other way around. ^_^

Take-off in July

(More information later on)