losing face in formalwear

it was december 2004. i was in a hotel room with friends, getting ready for a best friend's wedding (sans dermot mulroney). i loved the gown i had to wear that day -- it had a heavy, flowing, dried-blood-red skirt (note to self: rethink the use of "flowing" and "blood" in same adjective chain) with enough cloth to make three smaller dresses. i wore my (very) high-heeled slip-ons and marched out the door.

i had to go down a flight of stairs to get to the lobby, which was then occupied by a considerable number of hotel guests and staff. as someone who has dealt with many other flights of stairs in many other high-heeled slip-ons (but, admittedly, not many floor-length skirts), i felt quite confident with each step, making sure that the big-top tent (aka gown) was clearly out of the way. truth be told, i slightly enjoyed the fact that the lobby people were looking at us, the entourage, as we inched our way down.

the problem with graceful, accident-free events is that they are practically fiction. give me an inch of confidence, i'll give you a light-year of disaster.

true to form, as i was taking my third to the last step, my right shoe -- obviously pissed that we were running late but still moving in slow motion -- flew out from under the gown and landed squarely on the lobby floor.

in retrospect, i should've followed suit and leaped to my death of humiliation (although the parachute aka gown would've probably saved me). in reality, i merely let out a signature belly laugh, avoided eye contact with my amused audience, and hobbled the rest of the way down to where the cursed slip-on awaited.

next time (and let there be no "next time"), i should just leave the evil shoe. it worked for cinderella, i hear.

oh and another thing . . .

aside from these items, here's something else that disturbs me:

when i create a message, my phone automatically capitalizes the words "they're" and "we're".

i don't know why it does that but i do know that it irritates the living heck out of me. i text the way i blog: complete words/sentences with proper punctuation and no capitalization. i CANNOT send a message that looks like "yes, They're already there but We're still at home" (although in haste, i've probably let a few similar messages slide).

when i meet God (capitalized, take note), i will ask Him about the amount of time i wasted replacing capital Ts and Ws with their lowercase versions.

please, for the love of all that is predictable, don't say it

a few weeks ago, in a startling display of analogy-making and prolonged-adolescence frustration, younger-sister-gross asked me:

"you know how you hate it when people ask you 'where's apple/red?' after they find out your name is orange? well i hate it when people see the mole on my upper lip and say 'AY! you have a mole on your lip! just like lorna t!'"

fighting the urge to pretend that i was sleeping, i replied, "you just need good comebacks."

and being the wise older sister that i was (am), i gave her around 5 retorts she can save for future use (unfortunately, most of them lose their edge when translated into english or are just downright cruel so i refuse to document them here).

this one is my favorite:

"AY! you have a mole on your lip! just like lorna t!"
"i have a mole??? WHAT MOLE!?!"

my advice to people compelled to react to strange names/lip moles: we've heard it all. zip it.

of course, if you think your wisecrack is really REALLY original, then by all means, go ahead and let 'er rip. if i find your attempt genuinely, tearjerkingly funny -- or if you just happen to be kevin bacon* -- i will marry you.

--------------------
*pre-kyra

flawless logic

last thursday, dr niceguy, dr niceguy's girl, dr seuss and i watched dr singer (am in a pseudonym mood) star in the opera Orpheus and Eurydice.

the plot (obviously from the net, not from actually listening to the opera):

Orpheus was the son of Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. When his wife, Eurydice, was bitten by a serpent and died, Orpheus was overwhelmed with grief. Orpheus then followed her to the kingdom of death, and managed to soften Hades heart with his beautiful music. Hades agreed to let Eurydice go, if Orpheus promised not to look at her until they had reached daylight. When they were almost there, Orpheus thought he could no longer hear his wife's footsteps, and looked back, only to see the screaming Eurydice being pulled back into the underworld.

so for most of the time his dead wife was on stage with him, the singing protagonist (aka orpheus aka dr singer) was not looking at her -- which of course prompted me to turn to dr seuss and whisper:

"what if that were you? if you had a wife and she died and you could bring her back but only under the condition that you couldn't look at her (inhale), would you?"

dr seuss, without missing a beat, replied, "in the first place, i don't speak by singing."

i should've known better than to ask the man who refuses to watch "babe" because pigs don't talk in real life.

wise cracks

i think my facial skin has officially resigned from being a body part.

my face has so many dry patches right now, i'm practically waiting for the day little bits of my face fall off, exposing my oral cavity and nasal sinuses.

the second biggest problem with dry facial skin (the biggest problem: having to throw my modeling career out the window) is having severely cracked lips. these days, i can't eat a burger properly because each pre-bite makes me cry from the pain of having to open wide. i don't sneeze too loud, and my laugh sounds like "BWAHA . . . OOOOUCH!!! HU HU HUUUU . . . HEE HEE HEE." (so that's why the prim and proper folk laugh with a "hee hee" -- you can make this sound when your lips are puckered tight. you can also make a "hng hng" sound, but it makes you sound like a suffocating donkey.)

OF COURSE i've tried to solve my woes -- am just waiting for all the moisturizers to kick in. for my lips, i've tried everything : lip balm, petroleum jelly, baby oil, garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil, the black stuff that leaks from under the car . . . to no avail.

one evening, as i was thoughtfully applying petroleum jelly on the cracked corners of my mouth, i saw youngersistermia watching me. she then asked,

"aren't you disturbed that you're using the same jar of petroleum jelly that we use for our feet?"

"aren't your feet clean when you moisturize them???" i asked incredulously.

"yes, but they're still FEET."

i've been asking my lips if they're sure they want to share a moisturizing regimen with feet (mine and my sister's), but all i'm getting is a "hng hng."

my name is orange and i'm addicted to enumeration

things that never fail to disturb me:

1. nine out of 10 times, national book store salesladies use a 1-km stretch of scotch tape to attach a receipt (usually shorter than 1 km) to the plastic bag with your purchased items inside.

when i was younger, i used to think they used obscene amounts of tape because they wanted to show the world that they COULD; they were working in a STORE that sold TAPE. now that i'm old and wise, i know they do it because the sound of tape whizzing out of the dispenser is riveting.

2. some drivers headed towards a major one-way street -- for instance, when there's no other way to go but right -- still feel compelled to use their signal lights.

is there a law that we should do that? if the signal lights of the car in front of me do not blink, i will not say to myself, "oh no!!! he's NOT turning right! he is going to brave the onslaught of unhelmeted cyclists, SUVs and 10-wheelers and go straight into the island!"

what's even more disturbing to me is that *i* always have the moral dilemma at every such corner. should i signal that i'm turning right so the driver behind me will breathe a sigh of relief that i have no suicidal tendences?