Vampire Forest Fire

So, this is going to sound ridiculous, but right now, I’m reading The Historian, and this thing, it is like … like … an EFFING HAIRSHIRT, and it’s sort of taking over my life. It just sits there, glaring at me, all 600-something pages of it, waiting for me to pick it up and figure out a goddamn way to get through it before the end of the next DECADE.

It’s so up my alley! Dracula! Vampires! Travelogue-like writing style and lots of interesting European places visited and described! Except, OH YOU GUYS, it is like a loaf of canned Boston brown bread soaking in Guinness, THAT’S HOW DENSE IT IS. There are entire chapters devoted to describing a MOUNTAINTOP — yes, whole CHAPTERS! But no no, you cannot skim those chapters, because hidden in all this flowery mountain talk is one sentence — ONE! — that is integral to the entire story. DOUBLEYOU TEE EFF.

And yet, I will not — nay, I CANNOT — stop, because again with the vampires and Dracula and the supernatural, and as I keep saying to everyone who will listen, oh my HELL, look for my review on Goodreads sometime around 2012, when the goddamn WORLD IS ENDING ANYWAY.

(Random aside that I am embarrassed to be adding, but look, my love for vampires goes way back to … middle school, I think, when I became creepily obsessed with Elizabeth Bathory, and sometimes I think, oh my God, my poor mother. What the hell was she thinking? Was she WORRIED about me, this little 12-year-old trying to take books out of the library on a woman who BATHED IN THE BLOOD OF VIRGINS?)

(Random OTHER aside is that if we are not friends on Goodreads, we should be, because Goodreads and me, we are BFF, and I want to be yours, too.)

So! A few things:

– Adam and I are not romantic, gift-y people. Sometimes this makes me sad, but usually it makes me happy and relaxed, because the truth is, we are both the exact same way about it, which could also be interpreted that we are both equally lazy, who knows. We observe birthdays, and we usually get each other something biggish, but anniversaries are celebrated with some together time and … that’s about it. And we’ve skipped Christmas/Hannukah for each other for I think the last three years. Last year, we decided to get each other a baby and all baby-related accoutrements, and this year, our gift to each other is a … a … well, look, it’s a new vacuum, there’s no other way to put it. We’re buying each other a new vacuum, which is sad and pathetic, but also VERY EXCITING and we are both VERY EXCITED and have been drooling over new vacuums online and doing all this research with the knowledge that shortly a new vacuum will be OURS, and we’ve actually had CONVERSATIONS about how fun it will be to use a new vacuum. (We both vacuum the house, and in fact, if I’m being honest, he probably does it more than I do. We might not be romantics, but if you think a man who cleans isn’t romantic, who are you?)

But still, a vacuum for Christmas is the saddest thing ever, right? Sad. I know. SAD.

– I can’t quite get it through my head that I’m supposed to be brushing my kid’s teeth. I mean, they’re NUBS, and there are only TWO OF THEM. I’m sure some supermoms have been out there swabbing their kids’ gums with gauze since birth, like all the baby books say to, but my kid will barely let me get a Nuby SPOON in there, so color me skeptical about the prospects for oral hygiene in the under-one set around these parts. I have the baby-friendly toothbrush and the toothpaste, but that is the extent of my efforts thus far and I’m not looking forward to the next step. (NUBS)

– Twice now, I’ve seen the strangest commercial that I’m just not sure what to do with and I … well, it suggests a PAP SMEAR as an appropriate holiday gift and I don’t even know where to go from here. A PAP SMEAR. Adam and I don’t DO gifts for each other, but I’ll tell you if he scheduled my pap smear and pawned it off as an actual GIFT, I would be less than pleased.

Oh, and a quick discussion on Twitter tells me that they had a Hanukkah version as well. In which a man compares a pap smear to a … schmear of cream cheese? Yes, really. A schmear. Oh, and a prostate exam is kosher and I can’t help but feel like there’s something less than kosher about the language here. And thanks to Metalia, here’s the link. Hello, I am dead.

Or, you know, UNDEAD, or soon-to-be, as I’m off to tackle The Historian. Tonight’s goal is a lofty FIVE WHOLE PAGES of fountain talk. See you in 2012! I’ll be the woman with the BLOODIED THIGH.

*Arcade Fire

45 comments December 6th, 2009