Hello, Tech Rehearsal!

Meriwether—my severely parted old-timey coiffure is named Meriwether—and I have on our Sunday clothes and we’re ready for our 12-hour Hello, Dolly! tech rehearsal. But it’s the last gasping hours of the Victorian Era and even though the Second Industrial Revolution is in full swing, WHAT IN ALL UNHOLY TARNATION IS THIS RECTANGULAR CONTRAPTION IN MY HANDS?

Also: Mega Plaid Tweed will one day make a most excellent band name once “punk” is invented. And “bands.”

Also: Yes, there is a purportedly heterosexual Jake growing out of my shoulder. He will be surgically excised at the tonsorial parlor forthwith.

LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:

• The city of Marion was clearly and cruelly platted by M.C. Escher because the entire 5K route was uphill and yet it mysteriously finished in the same place it started.
• Every hot man at the race was accompanied by a woman and/or child.
• Many of those children totally lapped me in the last mile.
• Which, I remind you, was totally uphill.
• That one guy in the black shorts and yellow shirt would have especially looked handsome with me in our wedding photos.
• He can reach me here if you know him.
• I’d forgotten that this race had clydesdale (meaning big ol’ heavy runners) and masters (meaning just ol’ runners) divisions. Which usually means less competition for us big and ol’ folks who should get trophies just for showing up in matching shoes. But even though I qualified for both divisions and did indeed manage to show up in matching shoes and therefore mathematically should have won in those big and ol’ divisions, I came in 15th.
• I placed 248th overall, but I didn’t register a place ranking for my gender.
• Seriously. After “G Plc” on the finisher listings, I have a big fat NOTHING.
• That’s not a metaphor for anything.
• Uphill.
• The whole way.
• Hot guys lugging around the accoutrements of heterosexuality.
• I couldn’t decide between that last bullet and “Hot guys albatrossed with the accoutrements of heterosexuality.”
• So I included both.
• Cleverly.
• I really stink right now.
• Because the whole damn race was uphill.

Gah!

I just accidentally saw clips of The Bachelor’s totally-real-not-at-all-manufactured-seeds-of-a-healthy-straight-white-people-only-marriage-scandal-SCANDAL-SCANDAL! finale.

Now I’m afraid I’m going to catch stupid. Or heterosexual. Or droopy St. Bernard face.

The outsides of my shoes match my socks and my shaker bottle

The insides of my shoes match my stalwart heterosexuality.