28 March 2001

My parents got home from the rebel Lutheran conference last night late. Mom said that everybody was greeting them as "Marissa's parents." But then she got elected to the board that runs this whole thing, so I don't think that was their entire image. It's good that they've got my mom in charge. She'll try to keep them from getting too much like the people they're fighting. She said, "Who am I, that they should elect me to do this?" and my dad said, "Who's better than us?" (This is one of Daddy's favorite lines. He uses it a lot. It usually applies when Mom and I have surprised ourselves with something cool. This comes up more often than you'd think.)

They came home with three moose jokes. The moose jokes actually made me laugh. I would not have said that there were three funny moose jokes in the world. Live and learn.

Yesterday we went to the mall. Our mall has a Target in it. I feel like I'm back in St. Pete, driving to the Kato mall. Mall and Target do not go together. But this time it was fortuitous that they did. Because I got all sorts of things that are more fun than Target.

Most importantly: a Blizzard. Have you heard this? It's the sixteenth anniversary of Blizzards, and so they're buy-one-get-one-for-sixteen cents. I remember when Blizzards came out, actually. They were a very cool big deal. My mom was cooler than everybody else's mom, because she knew how to make Blizzards at home. And she'd do it, too.

My favorite kind of Blizzard is banana Heath bar. Everybody turns their nose up at it at first. But just eat it. It's good.

It makes me feel kind of old that they've had Blizzards for long enough to have any kind of anniversary celebration of them. Because I was pretty little when they came out with them. Then I just look at the people around me, except for Timprov, and I don't feel old any more. Because they're all ancient. Especially the ones whose birthday it is today. Ahem. Anyway.

So Timprov and I were wandering around the mall, and I saw a blue dress in the window of Express. Went in to try it on. He found two purple ones that he thought were the same dress, for me to look at. They weren't the same dress. Turns out one of them was a better dress. So I have a new purple dress. Yay! I really like the wrap dress styles they've been making, because I can get them to fit me. This is important, and harder than you'd think, if you haven't already heard me whine endlessly about getting clothes that fit.

It surprises me who's been good to dress shop with. Timprov was pretty cool. Mark is good, but I wasn't surprised at that. But my surprise dress-shopping buddy so far was Twig. Very strange. He only went with me because he had nothing else to do, but he could say whether a dress was flattering and what message it sent. That's really useful. I'd like to go shopping with Jen again, just for fun, but I doubt that we'll have time to do that soon. I miss Jen. Sarah promises that we'll go shopping next time we have the chance, so maybe that'll be good, too. Especially now that Sarah is wearing crazy clothes. Crazy clothes are essential for a good shopping experience.

The sales clerk upset me a little, though. I had written "please check ID" on my credit card instead of signing it, and she did check my ID. The problem was, the name on my ID and the name on my credit card were not the same name. I realized this after I did the ID thing, and I'm used to having to pull out old and new ID with my married and maiden names on them, just to prove that I'm the same person. (Marissa Gritter is my legal name, in case you didn't know.) But I'm not sure she even read either piece of plastic. It might just be that there aren't a lot of Marissa K. anythings running around. But it still makes me nervous how easily someone else could buy stuff with my credit card.

And I didn't even have to feel bitter at Lane Bryant. Looks like they've changed their motto from, "Large ladies get better colors than you, ha ha" to "Hey, large ladies can look ugly, too!" I am not a spiteful enough person to feel happy about that. That's the problem with Lane Bryant. I walk past them and glance in their windows and see pretty-colored clothes when all of the stuff in my (approximate) size in other stores is chartreuse or pink, and I can't even get mad at them. Because people who do not fit narrow and silly standards deserve good clothes, too. But, darn it, I deserve good clothes! At least I think I do. But now I have some. So it's okay.

I'm going to start feeling like Columbine, going on about clothes and shopping. But I'm just really happy with this dress, because it's not like anything I already have. And it's soft. Not just in fabric, but in lines, the way the material falls. I don't have enough soft stuff. It's nice.

Timprov thinks that "Helping" is really about the Communist revolution. He says, "Josef S., he took out the press, and Vladimir I. helped shake it. Vladimir I. gave Marx a try, and Josef S. helped break it." (He doesn't sound much like Tom Smothers, though.) Also, he just asked me what kind of a bathing suit Ranma wears. This is disturbing me more than it should. Or maybe exactly as much as it should.

The event of the day: run on up to the college library to see if they have any of the really specialized stuff for my Chinese Americans project. I'm going to try to get a lot of work done today, but Mark should be coming home from his conference fairly early, so I'd like to spend some time with him, too, before we both have to dive back into work. And laundry, and novel work, and maybe catching up on some correspondence. The glamour. Oh, the bright lights of the paparazzi, they hurt my eyes.