Juxtapose

Today was my day for random errands. I hiked up to The Nash early this morn to get my social security stuff changed to my new name because until then, I can't change anything else. I walked right in, got seen within 15 minutes (which was, oh.. four hours shorter than the wait at the Lowell office) and got my name changed. That was easy. In fact, incredibly easy. Like, you'd think that changing your social security stuff would be this complicated thing, but it wasn't. I was all ready with about fifteen forms of ID - passport, license, nursing license, school ID, all this stuff - and they didn't use a darn one besides my license and my marriage certificate. So, hallelujah.

So the thing is, it's easy to change your name with social security, with the feds, the Big Guys, you know, Big Brother and all that, but then I went down to the RMV to change my drivers' license over, and they won't accept my old social security card plus the receipt (FROM THE SS OFFICE!) that says that my name is legally changed. So now I'm waiting for my card to come in the mail, because, you know, there's no way ANYONE could ever print out a fake SS card that we're not allowed to laminate or whatever. But someone is totally going to go up to the social security office in New Hampshire and print out a fake name change receipt on their letterhead. But.. whatever.

It all goes back to the old caveat about how Devil Patrick, our wonderful governor here, wants to have free this and free that and universal for all of every resource available to taxpayers, and how you can be from anywhere and come here to Massachusetts, illegally, and you can get a near free ride because people decide to feel badly for you, but I pay m'darn taxes and have lived in Massachusetts my whole life and I have to sacrifice my first born to keep my license legal.

Anyways. I went to the registry and got the paperwork and read it in the car. Of course, I need the seventeen forms of ID for real this time, as well as a utility bill or bank statement. All our bills are in Mark's name, and I know from Mark's experience trying to change his license from VA to MA that they won't accept credit card bills as proof of residency, so I drove down to the bank, determined to figure this out.

Well, the bank needs a utility bill. I said, "But everything is in my husband's name... is it so bizarre that people get married these days? Do husbands and wives pay separate bills now?" The guy said, "I don't know. I'm sorry. I need your license with the new address or a bill from utilities."

So I went home and sat, crabby, for a few minutes. But then i went on the RMV website to check for some loopholes, and there, bright as day - change your address ONLINE. Ha! So I need a utility bill to prove I live where I am if I go into the RMV physically, but if I sit on my butt in my apartment and log on from there, I can change my residential address with no proof. I am so confused.

I am turning the world upside down on it's head.

And Sarah Jo is really far away.

/complaints

It's terribly snowy and grey here today and lots of people keep riding their ATVs on the street what sounds like two inches away from the house. People are skittering and sliding all over our street today and everyone sounds like they're trying out for the local drag race track.

I'm chilly and Emvee is at work. I don't want to shovel anymore.

/complaints

Some mornings (most, these days) I am far too tired to do anything but drive to wherever it is my car in taking me. I gradually wake up over the course of the drive but I am not cognizant enough to truly take anything in besides the very necessary things like the brake pedal, the gas, and maybe the windshield wipers, if the car has warmed up enough by then.

This morning I was more awake and when I am awake and driving and sitting in stop and go traffic for 45 minutes, I like to look around at other people in their cars. A lot of times I like to watch their lips move while they're singing along with their music, and try to assign them something good to listen to. Sometimes this little old Asian lady in a black Lexus will be next to me. She's listening to George Thorogood. Or the guy wearing a camouflage boonie hat and sunglasses in the green Kia Sportage who is listening to The Beatles.

But today I looked in my rearview to see a black Honda CR-V, the woman inside in a standard peacoat-type jacket, her hair perfectly done, her face a lot of chiseled and sharpened lines that looked to be honed more by plastic surgery than flawless aging and exercise, and her eyes covered with dark and enormous bug-eye sunglasses. She was talking, not really singing, to herself inside her cavernous SUV, her mouth moving bit by bit. And there, slipping out from beneath her behemoth sunglasses, were torrents and lines of quiet tears. I couldn't see sobbing, or rending of clothes, or gnashing of teeth. Just two big long silvery lines of saline running down the artificially-rendered crevices of her face. She looked like an attempt at being pulled-together and unaffected, with the inability to actually do so. My heart is still a little sad for her.

On the news yesterday driving home, I heard that Anna Nicole Smith died. My own eyes welled up a little for some reason. I don't really know much about her, really, except for the stuff everyone knows, the blondeness, the topless dancing, the Playboy modeling, marrying of tycoons and reality shows and the like, but I felt distinctly human at that moment and I felt her very nondescript, ordinary humanness at that moment as well. I let myself imagine a little bit (I am doing so now) the vast and meaningless vapidity that seemed to characterize this woman's entire life, and I truly, genuinely, deeply feel sorry for this... that... poor woman. Sometimes I think we (I) spend so much time lampooning people that we (I) forget that they are really people, with a beating heart and maybe an empty soul. I felt, and feel, very ashamed of myself at times like this.

I've now developed an indefatigable love and, I daresay, passion for Scrubs. I watched Garden State what seems like a million years ago now and I was totally unimpressed the first time, mostly because I was tired and completely, utterly fixated on the fact that Mark had his arm around me (it was early on in the dating days, what can I say). I didn't want to watch it the second time, but when I did, I couldn't take my eyes off of it, I was so absorbed in the complexities of the characters, the way they all seemed so simple at first glance but were so very mixed up underneath. I wanted to take them home with me. I cried when she cried, I cried even more at the very end. I loved that movie, man.

We went to see The Last Kiss, the movie that was supposed to be some sort of late-twenty-something version of the early-twenty-something movie that was Garden State. It wasn't very good, mostly consisting of lots of awkward scenes and semi-boring ennui, which despite my love of a good cloud of grey ennui, wasn't very thrilling.

For this reason, I resisted watching Scrubs. I try not to get into teevee because it just takes up too much of your life in terms of staring at a box all day. A brain melt, if you will, of hours and hours a week where you have to watch this or that show to stay up to date on progress and stuff, and I just don't have the time (or brain) to waste these days. Finally, one fateful night, at Nick and Christine's, we watched about five episodes of Scrubs in quick succession over plates of Stine's incredible chicken and rice, and I have been utterly unsalvagable ever since. I have to have it. We can't help but download the episodes when we miss them (which is every week now that Mark works Thursday nights), we watch them almost as religiously as I did the X-Files, which in Catholic terms would render me the Patron Saint of Piety, Our Blessed Lady of The Black Oil, Usted Senora del Dracut del Scully. That's how religiously I watched the X-Files.

I LOVE YOU ZACH BRAFF!!!