Not exactly how I pictured my day off, but then, my pictures of my day off are always unrealistic.

Today I got up at the crack of one (in the afternoon), which is usually when I'm scheduled to work. It gets slightly less disgusting when you consider that I went to sleep at two-thirty in the morning, but only slightly. This is good: if it wasn't decadent I wouldn't have enjoyed doing it so much.

Today Daddy and I went grocery shopping after I put my shoes on. You probably didn't know that "putting your shoes on" involves an hour of chatting with a friend on the internet. This is why my parents sent me to college. Before I even got dressed, though, let alone put my shoes on, we checked the ads. Kiki (Suzy's mom) had given us just about every grocery store circular in town. We wound up getting the turkey from pretty much the only place whose ads we didn't have, but this is fine. It let us comparison-price-shop without actually having to go to these various stores, which is nice.

I do not believe in driving all the firetruck over town to save 10 cents on toilet paper. And as long as we're talking about toilet paper, I don't even believe in buying it more than once or twice a year: either someone else buys it or I go to Costco and get two 52-roll packs of it. (As, really: I don't like buying toilet paper, but I like running out of it even less. Having to build a fort out of toilet paper in the closet is worth it to me not to buy it more than once a year.)

So I have my shoes on, and we're in the car, and my father turns it on and starts to drive. He turns on the radio.

...I had never imagined before that my father would groove out to the Black Eyed Peas' "My Hump" before. It was... surreal.

We went to the cheap market, and it was good. Except for the part where I had pretzels for breakfast (allergic to gluten, remember?) and no lunch. And the part where today is payday for most of town. And the part where I'm not too clear on locations in this store and my father, who thinks linearly in every other aspect of his life, navigates a grocery store like Billy in a Family Circus cartoon. Or a three-legged squirrel with attention deficit disorder. An ADD squirrel where all three legs are on the same side. That the other shoppers felt the need to stop in random places (always blocking access or egress from an aisle) and contemplate the state of their souls merely made the expedition more charming.

We spent over an hour in the market. Then we had to go to the other market. And I am tired and haven't eaten. My friend Shonelle got a call from me, which cheered us both up, and I called Ericka twice: once to chat, the second time because I forgot which kind of white wine is the driest and guess who's trained as a sommalier? Hint: it isn't me. Hint: it definitely isn't my father. He was trying to get Riesling. And then he was looking for a sauvingion blanc in the merlot section.

Protip: Riesling does not go well with a family where nobody likes sweet wine.
By the way: upon putting away the four bottles of wine? Holy crap we have a lot of booze. We don't even drink more than once a month or two. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why we have so much booze. "Vintage" booze, even. I think the bottle of Kahlua may be older than I am. S'good, though. Or maybe it's really not and I've just developed a taste for 15-20 year old Kahlua.

Came home, unpacked the provisions, and then cleaned out the refrigerator. I am a jewel among women: not only did the corpse of Birdzilla (Daddy wanted the 26-pound turkey... granted we are feeding 7 people and he and my grandparents want leftovers, but... Jesus Christ.) fit, along with everything else, there is room left over.

And I didn't snap at anyone today, and managed to smile at the grocery clerks. I am a jewel among women.

This jewel is going to figure out who's making what when, because we all work... probably I will make pie tomorrow (I work Sunday through Wednesday), bake the sweet potatoes for sweet potato fries tomorrow, my brother can make the mashed potatoes (the day of or ahead of time, I don't care), Mom can do the Jello salad and whatever pies I don't get to on Wednesday, and Turkey Day itself we just steam the asparagus and roast Birdzilla. And I like cooking everything myself (control issues, what?), but I like sanity even more.

So. Now we just have to clean out the freezer and I have to wash my sheets. My trusty sidekick (the cat) has been industriously shedding in my bed for the last several days. Good to know that whenever I want to be in my bed she's already there, sleeping in my spot for me.

...bitch.

Superiority, Irony, and Ridicule: the human condition

Beaverton has more Starbucks than any other place I have ever personally seen. Not coffee shops, in total: Ellensburg and Seattle have a lot- heck, Ellensburg has more coffee shops per capita than Seattle, but they are different kinds of coffee shops: Tully's, Seattle's Best, yes, Starbucks, and many and varied independents. Not only Starbucks.

Beaverton has more Starbucks locations than anywhere else I have been. And it's amazing, because Beaverton is topped to the gills up on Portland superiority, being green, being family-friendly, being gung-ho independent retailer and organic food and up with the small business and down with big box stores (except Target, they like Target) and save the environment, piled heaping high with upper-middle-class superiority, all of them feeling secure in how much better and kinder and more enlightened a people they are than anyone anywhere else (especially Seattle)...

...in a Starbucks. Somehow, I think very little else could so accurately sum up modern mainstream altruism.

Welcome to the beginning

The beginning of this month I went to a childhood friend's wedding, where I remet someone I once knew, and hadn't seen in many years.  He's someone smart and kind, and whom I respect very much, and he told me I should blog.  "I think you'd be good at it," he said.  "You're very funny and you've got the kind of wit that could have a following."

I don't know about that.  I do know that whenever I try to be witty it falls flat, and that I am quite often funny when I don't mean to be, or if I do, much funnier than I thought I was.  I also know that I love to write, enjoy writing regularly, and have a somewhat... peculiar view of the world.  It's not excessively odd.  In fact, it's downright mundane, but I seem to notice the oddest things in a sort of visual priority that just doesn't register with other people, and I never know when or why or how- frankly, because I don't live in anyone's head but my own, and I've lived with me all my life.

There are burned-out LEDs in the green light of a particular intersection facing a particular direction, for example.  They form a smiley face. :)  "It's okay, Mom," I told her, talking about my father.  "The light's green, and it's happy to see you."

Anyway, I'm not going to try to be funny, or witty, or excessively thoughtful.  I am going to make a passing attempt at being interesting, and I am going to be honest, and it is my goal to update this blog once a week, every week, for an entire year.  I don't know what day, and I think it'll be hard.  My shift keeps changing.  We'll see.

Periodically I am going to repost something from one of my other blogs online.  This is a blatant cop-out to meet my goals, but I do promise that anything I repost is, at the very least, of interest to me.

As for the title, I style myself a princess.  My father calls me "princess," and, on rare occasions, my mother.  (What my mother calls me will be a different entry.)  All of my uncles, both of my grandparents, both of my aunts, and one family friend all call me "princess" as well, and have very nearly all my life.  It's my name, and what's funny is that it actually is my name: my given name is derived from the Greek for "crown," and can be translated literally as "queen" or "princess."

Princesses are kept women in every sense.  There isn't a one who isn't, and they are not, taken alone, all that important.  They're pretty and people like to have them around the holidays, but stuff a brace of princes into any royal family and the princess suddenly becomes superfluous.  They're not Queens, they don't rule, they have no power and influence of their own, instead using connections, friendships, and privy knowledge to their advantage (and intelligence, assuming she has any).  Princesses are not sought for in and of themselves: they are sought for their connections to bigger and better things.  Nobody wants the princess, really.  They want the King's ear, the Queen's favor, to be the King, to have access to the Kingdom and the keys.  A princess as heir waits in the wings to take over as an insurance policy.  They're bargained and barter, pieces to move politics with.  They're rewards to the worthy, cement to unions, marital anchors in political takeover, sacrifices to the gods, treasures to be kept in reserve, in the tower, in the family.  Princesses are deferred to, watched over, cared for, displayed on special occasions and used for the pretty tools and political pets they are.  Any power a princess has is not hers: it is given to her to use on someone else's behalf, her father's, her brother's, her husband's.  They manage and guide, they charm and care for, they bow their heads in obedience, they accept the grace of their due.  They are chatelaines and chattel, masters of men and slaves to their positions.  They are spoiled.  They are kept.

It can be argued both ways regarding me and "spoiled."  I am certainly female, definitely honored, and absolutely a lady... on alternate Thursdays.  I am gracious and kind and I pick my nose in public.  I can weld, change a tire, make a pot, knit a mitten (but not a sweater), and lately I've been contemplating trapping rabbits in my neighbor's lawn and eating them... just because I miss French food.  A good woman can do whatever she has to, and I am a good woman.  I'm practical, I'm capable, and while there's a lot I'm not good at and can't do for myself, I am not helpless.  I don't need to be taken care of.

And yet I am owned.  Not by my family, a group of people who alternately make demands on my time and fight the rest of themselves off from impinging on me, but by the contents of my head.  I am arguably my own keeper, which is depressing, because as sugar mommas go I have very shallow pockets.  One of those contents, the stories who keep me, is a dragon.  Dragons keep princesses, and by definition anything living kept by a dragon is a princess.  I am a princess, and I am kept.

Every princess is a kept woman.