I talked to Rainbow today, somehow we talked for 45 minutes about abso-frickin-lutely nothing. Usually our convos are quite amusing, plenty of quiet laughter (can't guffaw too loud on the phone at work), but today we were both so boring. I don't know, it was awkward or something. Maybe I'm a one bff girl. I've been hanging out with JW so much lately that it's like I only speak her language now. I haven't chilled with Rainbow in so long. Plus, my life has been pretty quiet recently. Which is bad, because I should not be bored. And I'm getting bored again. How the crap will I possibly be able to handle being a stay-at-home mom someday????? I secretly thrive off the drama. I need a steady, but not overwhelming stream of it.
This just reminded me of Nancy. Dh was telling me something about her, and I realized she is kind of like me re drama. Complains about it, professes to abhor it, but secretly thrives on it, talks about it constantly. That's Nancy, and that's me. I don't usually like to start drama, because that means someone's pissed at me, but I think it's rather exciting when other people start drama.
The evil part of me wants to flirt with Golden Eagle on purpose just to piss JW off and make her stop judging, judging, judging. Though obviously that course of action would be spectacularly ineffective at getting JW to stop judging the world (and me) by her standards. She was telling me this story a few weeks ago about some friend from her high school days, and she said that in HS she was the judgmental one. And then she said, "I know, you're like, what?!" when actually I was thinking, "Not much has changed, eh, J." Sometimes she is phenomenally insightful and wonderful and hilarious. And then sometimes she busts out one of her closeminded judgments and I just want to shake sense into her. Or at least a slightly broader worldview.
I watched the Mrs. World pageant tonight. Apparently you have to have big chachis to win. That would rule me out. But actually the girl who won was truly gorgeous and very charming. Sister B and I looked into entering the Mrs. Oregon pageant a while ago, but you have to front a bunch of dough and we are both poor. Ok that's a lie. I really shouldn't even claim to be poor. That's like David brainwashing his children to think they're poor. The real reason I won't be entering the Mrs. Oregon pageant is I cannot prioritize it over all the clothes I could buy with two grand. Ha ha We tossed around the idea of getting sponsors, but that sounded suspiciously like work. Plus, I was thinking about it tonight as I walked around my neighborhood - if I became Mrs. Oregon, I would be embarrassed and wouldn't want anyone to know. I feel like people wouldn't take me seriously. Better to let some chick who will cry and be thrilled spend her money there. I have a hard enough time being taken seriously as it is. David, whose opinion doesn't really count, tried to label me a trophy wife. What a retard. If I was a trophy wife, wouldn't I have snagged myself a doctor? Seriously.
Speaking of David, I've basically decided to only go over to their house when he is out of town. Which is part of the reason I haven't been over there in a while. I will just feel more comfortable this way, and I think Rainbow will too.

Flirting?!?

JW said I flirted with Golden Eagle yesterday. Which is absurd. Why is it that if you tease someone of the opposite sex, it is labeled flirting? Well, labeled flirting by JW? What the heck. Our old law clerks, Doug & Swen were great. We loved them. We being everyone in the entire office!!! Come 3 o'clock, Doug would make the rounds of the office about once an hour. He would heckle/BS with me, steal my Goldfish, then move on to heckle/BS with Rachel, take some of her candy, and then stop to BS with Kevin. It was a little loop of heckling/BS. And Swen was always up for chatting about whatever; he was really fun. So Rachel and I expressed to Kevin and Golden Eagle our dissatisfaction with the current level of entertainment by the law clerks. We argued that one of the important duties of law clerks is to entertain whoever is noble enough to stick around after 4 pm (fewer people than you'd think). He pledged to try harder to be entertaining. As a show of his earnestness, he discussed with Rachel, JW & I about how creepy it is that Tom Cruise is dating Katie Holmes. I have to say, he was not that entertaining, because his taste in actresses is crap. Who on this planet thinks Julia Ormond is hot???
And then JW tells me today that I was flirting. She was like, He was totally eating it up. It really kind of bugs me, because it's like, Oh because I'm married, I'm supposed to like, start wearing the veil and speak to men with downcast eyes. Whatever. Jen is on my side, she understands that there is a difference between flirting and teasing. I can't help but think that this is because 1) JW has a crush on Golden Eagle and 2) She reads into everything. Because she totally does. And she said, If Dh had been here, he would have been so mad. And I responded, No he wouldn't because his definition of flirting is even more strict than mine. He would not even give a crap. And he would have agreed that Julia Ormond is not hot! Guys flirt with me right in freaking front of him, and he only finds it mildly annoying. (Whereas if some chick flirted with Dh in front of me, I would be peeved.)
It's sometimes a little tricky, especially with people like me, and Dh, and even Golden Eagle I think, people who love teasing, and that's how they interact with others. I guess some people would interpret that teasing as flirting, but it's not. They would be misinterpreting it!

Operation Golden Eagle

There’s a new guy at work. A cute, single guy. JW is ecstatic. She started referring to him as Golden Eagle so that she could talk to me about him and “no one would know who we’re talking about.” (Right.) We (we being JW, myself, Annalisa, and Princess) have begun a covert operation we dubbed Operation Golden Eagle. The goal is hooking JW up with the new guy. There’s another new guy, but he’s short & married, so eh. No interest there. Annalisa, Princess and I are supposed to find everything out about him that we can and then report back to JW. We also coach her on chilling out, and what she should say, etc. It is like the high school experience I never had. JW, bless her heart, is not a particularly smooth or chill flirt.
When Keith introduced Golden Eagle to me he really obviously did a ring check! It was so obvious. I was thinking about this later. About what it would be like if I was single and a cute single guy started working at my office. My primary response: relief. Which surprised me. I was relieved that I’m not in that anymore. It’s so nice to have my husband there for me, to come home to, to chill with, and be completely dorky with, and get down with. I mean, sure being single is exciting, and usually very fun. But I think about being single, and it makes me tired. This response pleased me. It means that I now view the advantages of being married as better, more numerous, etc. than the advantages of being single. When I got married it was about 50-50. Ha ha I had to get used to being married. Now I am in the thick of it, and loving it.

Book Review

Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni.....................................B+
Fascinating look at everyday life in Iran, pre-“axis of evil.” I especially enjoyed her chapter on the veil and the effect it had upon women in Iran. Very incisive analysis of American vs. Iranian ideals & values. I wish that she had discussed gender relations more; she was most interested in politics, reform, the revolution.
Problems: Moaveni comes from a wealthy, secular family. This has apparently rendered her incapable of understanding how a person can truly believe in a religion, how a person’s religion can profoundly and meaningfully affect a person’s worldview. She portrays Iran as a country in the grips of a very few fundamentalist clerics, populated by closet secularists just waiting for their chance to shed pesky Islam. This I highly doubt. I noticed this same problem with religion in Carl Sagan’s Contact. He tried to write a religious character, the preacher Palmer Joss, who was totally flat and unconvincing. I feel this is because Sagan did not really believe that a person could be intelligent and religious. Moaveni has a similar issue. She cannot fathom that people would actually believe in Islam, would truly believe that Mohammed is a prophet. In Iran, she hangs out with journalists and corrupt clerics who shed their veils and grab beers as soon as they are out of the country. Perhaps if she had done something really brave, like mingle with the middle class, she would have found people devoted to Islam yet still unhappy with the anarchy of the country. People who view the veil as something other than repressive and the cause of constant bad hair days.
Now, I am just joshing when I mock Moaveni’s bravery. Some of her experiences are horrifying. I have great respect for someone who voluntarily moves from California to a third-world country to confront head-on her questions about her ethnicity and cultural history. I just think she is young and doesn’t even realize she has this religion perception issue. Someone on Amazon said she is wise beyond her years, and that makes me laugh out loud. No, sorry, she is not. Someone is confusing intelligence with maturity. Silly, silly. She is very intelligent. Her analysis is often razor-sharp and insightful. Is she mature? Not particularly. She tattles to her daddy when an auntie is mean, she hangs out with her teenaged cousin because adult Iranian women are “mean” to her.
Criticisms aside, I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. It made me think about things from a new perspective, especially America’s actions in the Middle East, and I love being made to do that.
As a postscript, towards the end of the book Moaveni complains bitterly about casual American prejudice against Islam. Which, by the way, she doesn’t even believe in. This I found incredibly hard to stomach, because earlier in the book she portrays Mormon women as cultish. She asks in the last chapter, anguish in her words, (paraphrasing) What other religion can you slander so completely and get away with it? The answer, Miss Moaveni, is apparently Mormonism. I might take you a little more seriously if you shed the religious hypocrisy.

Yesterday was the worst Monday in recent history. My co-worker MH, who happens to be my visiting teacher, attempted to stab me in the back by leaving a scathing note about my supposed inabilities on the office calendar database, knowing that not only would my boss see it, but also anyone who happened to check the calendar. Fortunately I intercepted it before Kevin even arrived yesterday. I have no idea who else saw it; I know my friend Rachel did because she commiserated with me about it later that day. Now, Kevin’s BS radar is pretty finely tuned (it has to be, for where we work), but the fact that she even tried to pull that is what really torques me. It’s kind of like some chick trying to flirt with your husband. It pisses you off - not because you think he will flirt back, but because the chick has the gall to try. Which I SO suspect she did Saturday. That doesn’t really bother me though, because dh summed up his opinion of her in one word: hoochie. I couldn’t have said it better, dh.
When I talked to her about the note in the calendar, she brushed it off, and I couldn’t really get into it because there was another girl in the room, and the phones were ringing like crazy (MH is one of the receptionists). I think I will bring it up to her again Wednesday. I hate having to do this kind of crap, because I do not like confrontations (just ask my old roommates...erm, but not my husband ha ha). I will suck up a lot of crap before I will start a fight or get in someone’s face. But I have taken enough crap from this brat. I have had it up to here. This has been going on for way too long, and frankly I am letting myself be bullied by her.
All day at work I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, because I had two emergency cases to prepare, and Kevin was just back from his week-long conference in San Diego, and then of course it was Monday so every client and his brother had to call in and interrupt me every five minutes.
Then on the way home everyone was driving like complete idiots, and I almost hit some guy because I didn’t check my blind spot while changing lanes, so I guess that would make me driving like a complete idiot as well. And the turn signal light didn’t turn green for two rounds, like it couldn’t sense my car, and by that point I was ready to cry.
When I arrived home, dh was nowhere to be found. I called the Relief Society President, who upon a brief explanation quickly agreed to assign me a different visiting teacher. Dh had gone fishing that afternoon, but upon arriving home was very sympathetic to my plight. In fact, his response was, “Do you want me to make her cry?” which was cute, if a little unrighteous. I thanked him for his offer, but declined. Then we went to see “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” which I enjoyed more than he, since I’ve read the book and am better at “getting” British humor.
Today I am home sick with a sore throat and croaky voice. And my birthday was last Thursday. Woo-hoo for me! Dh took me out for Indian Thursday, then my friends for Mexican Friday. And JW got me a shirt that reads, "Anthropologists do it in the dirt," which now that I have I am too embarrassed to actually wear anywhere. Ha ha