Thank God the Rapture didn’t happen…because I really wanted to attend the Renaissance Faire on the Sunday following.  Although, a zombie-apocalypse might make the Faire more realistic (I imagine that everyone in medieval times was caked in dirt and possibly blood and/or other bodily fluids at all times).

I’d never been to any renaissance faire prior to this one, but I’d secretly always wanted to go.  Scratch that, not even secretly.  However, I think waiting until now may have been fate.  Had I gone earlier, I wouldn’t have done it right.  Before now, I may not have dressed up.  Or at least not well.  ”Faire,” as it’s known to the regulars, is one of those things where you go big, or go home.  Like Vegas.  Or shoe shopping.

For reasons completely unknown to the modern woman, the corset has gone out of style.*  Honestly though, who isn’t on board with the greatest pushup bra ever made that also gives you better posture and a smaller waist?  Genius.  They’re surprisingly comfortable as well—no jabbing underwire.  Unless you’re going for a run, in which case, I would recommend a garment that promotes breathing.

But, breathing at the Renaissance Faire is overrated.  As long as you can walk, look fabulous, and are able drink a beer, you’re golden.  In fact, you’re winning RenFaire (yeah, I’m all down with the lingo. Jealous?). 

A friend of mine invited me to go, as I expressed frighteningly intense enthusiasm when she mentioned she had gone to “Faire” for about a decade. Then she offered me something that made me damn near shit my pants—her friend is a costume designer and would let me borrow something from her collection. DONE. It was on. Like a thong.****

As you enter the gates into the Renaissance Faire (and yes, there are literally gates), it is unclear whether the giant smile across your face is from giddiness or sheer confusion. 

You ask yourself, “Why is this magical lady telling me about her basket of several different types of eggs?…Wait, I don’t care, whatever is happening right now is incredible.” 

Faire, if you’ve never been, looks basically like the Robin Hood themed portion of Six Flags (minus the rides) except it’s everywhere.  And cool.** 

This amalgamation of trinket and jewelry selling, musical acts, beer drinking, enactments with the queen,*** archery, swings, beer drinking, sword fights, turkey leg eating, parades, and beer drinking attracts an amazingly diverse group of people.

There are your loners, seasoned regulars, musicians with no reservations about drunkenly showing their private parts during a rowdy drinking song, vendors, crafties, groups of good-looking young people who were clearly the late bloomers in high school who have now blossomed, but in the way of medieval rebirthing beauty with some residual oddball-ness, furries, sluts, those with a complete lack of fashion sense, families, those people who got dragged there by a curious friend, the non-dressed up, men who like to wield swords, men who wield large (cough::stuffed::cough) what can only be described as ‘crotch-pockets’. 

But they all come together for one glorious need—to be part of a Renaissance. To be vulgar, rude, obnoxious, drink heavily, sing, dress like a fairy tale character, and to experience the feeling of not being judged by anyone and just love everything.

Like a family reunion—but fun and jovial. 

*CUT TO all of the hippies rolling their eyes.

**Yes, cool.  Or awesome.  Either is fine.

***Yes, there is a Faire queen.  Someone gave her a butter sculpture. Yes, a sculpture made out of butter. It was AMAZING.

****No, that is not an actual saying. What of it?

I am living in a giant nerd-boy dorm room. 45 hours a week. For work.

Never did I ever* imagine myself being in a situation where I felt like Snow White. Much less everyday. Everyday.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself the girliest girl in the world.  But being at work makes me feel like a freakin’ fairy princess who escaped to the forest only to find herself managing the lives of a bunch of anti-social coal miners.  The VFX world in essence, is a dark cave, which inhabits the palest of the species.

My role as Head Girl cannot be taken lightly. These men (of sorts) need me. It’s clear. A glimpse into the world sans women is an unbecoming, dark, smelly, unorganized, and unsightly place.

Although, recycling still exists. Exciting.

But it’s a place I return to every morning to bring my cheer, brightness, and womanly touch.  My womanly touch has increased 10 fold since entering the man cave. 

This is a true man cave.  And it’s terrifying.  Men should not live together in caves. It’s unnatural. 

I would classify myself as nerdy.  On the scale of nerdy to cool-dom, I am definitely pushing pocket protector.   

But it’s becoming more and more apparent, that I am culturally nerdy, not practically nerdy.  I’m a dorky nerd with some geek sprinkled in there.  Not a geeky nerd.  I’m okay with this.  I bring something different to the table. 

Perks to being the only girl:

1.     No interoffice cattiness.

2.     I am the only girl.

3.     Having a bathroom all to myself.

4.     The feeling that I am the cleanest person in sight.

5.     Alone time.

6.     Being the hottest girl in the office.

7.     I am extremely fun and awesome always. (More of a perk for everyone else).

I think the most interesting thing that has come out of this is my desire to be more girly.  Perhaps this is to compensate for the lack of femininity going on here, or perhaps I’m just more aware of my powerful womanliness and exercising it.  Either way, it rocks.

Other things Snow White and I have in common:

• We are both female.
• We are both literally the fairest of them all (pale as the dickens skin)
• We enjoy romps through the forest
• We trust too easily
• We like to bake
• We both enjoy apples
• We dig enormous popped collars

*No, we’re not playing the game. Unless you want to, then I’m in.  And yes, I also know that it’s actually “have.”

I grew up Catholic. That’s how I describe my “religious” offiliations. Mostly to me, that means something equivalent to growing up in the Midwest or being the middle child or being unemployed—in other words, it’s a descriptor, tradition, reason for understanding why a person is the way they are, etc. 

Though I was confirmed, I’m not really sure I’d even say that I am Catholic. I’m not especially religious. In fact, I would say I’m hardly, if at all, religious.  That said, never say never. Who knows, later in my life maybe I’ll go back to that, even though at this point I could never imagine it.  Religious institutions aren’t my thing.  

In my paralyzing bout of employment, I try to find things that interest me to take my mind off of it for even a couple of minutes.  And having Catholic roots does intrigue one to certain things from time to time.  

This was one of those things and one of those times.

For the last few years I’ve been intrigued by the sign for St. James Gift Shop. Yes, a Catholic church gift shop. It is impossible to ignore as the sign is on PCH (yes, I realize that I may be the only person to ever have noticed it). Sooner or later, you know you’ll go, too. 

“Who knows what kinds of goodies they’ll have?” I thought, even though I already had a decent idea considering I’ve been to at least three other church gift shops in my life.  And who can forget the Catholic supply stores? If you are a Catholic in heat, that’s the place for you.  

Not looking for anything religious, I found only a few things that could elevate an unemployed person’s mood—both being books dealing with self-esteem. The exact titles have escaped me, but they were along the lines of, “Chin Up” and “The Damaged Psyche.”  Neither of which seemed intriguing, especially when I browsed through them and they ended up being sort of religious-y.  However, there was one thing that stood out amongst the books, cross necklaces, and one incredibly giant rosary. 

That find was a book called, “Paul’s Social Network.”  Clearly only because it made me laugh. 

St. Paul: the original creator of Facebook.  Now, we can finally close the chapter on who started it. 

Was Bing Crosby on acid or just a lush during his Christmas album recording?

This is a legitimate question if you listen closely to Bing Crosby’s That Christmas Feeling album (as well you should because it is a Christmas staple!  What is wrong with you?).

EXHIBIT A)  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Rudolph has a cameo. Rudolph SINGS. ABOUT HIMSELF. It’s creepy and high pitched. It’s quite possibly one of the creepiest voices I’ve ever heard. (I like to believe the voice is Bing’s.)

At the end of the song when Bing names off “On Dasher, on Dancer…” and so forth, he ends it with “on Donner, on SOMETHIN’.”  He downright forgets Blitzen’s name.  ”On somethin’” is right. Ludicrous.

EXHIBIT B)  He has a song entitled, “Is Christmas Only A Tree?”.  This sounds like drunken-philosophical talk, Bing…or perhaps stoned philosophical talk.  Either way, it’s flat out the lamest topic ever.   

EXHIBIT C)  O Fir Tree Dark.

I feel as though I’m walking through a psychedelic forest of madness and unstoppable melancholy. 

EXHIBIT D)  The album starts off light and fun, but slowly melts into a dark, depressing almost demonic shell of a holiday album (much like a trip gone awry or a long night o’ drinkin’?). 

I harbor an intense love for Folgers Coffee commercials.  It’s a love that began early in my childhood, and has grown into a very bizarre joy…or perhaps just a disturbing character trait. 

Whenever I see a Folgers commercial I stop everything to watch it.  I could be performing open heart surgery, and if I heard that little ditty “the best part of waking up…” well, my patient would just bite the dust.  (I think it’s for the best I’ve chosen an artistic career path).  

There is nothing more comforting in my opinion, than a Folgers commercial.  And an old Folgers commercial at that.  Preferably one from the 80s or very early 90s (have they even made any new Folgers commercials since then?).  All is right in the world for 30 blissful seconds when a you see that coffee being brewed, poured, and the family waking up to the comforting aroma of those instant coffee crystals…it’s simply heaven. 

I’m fairly certain my memories of these delicious coffee moments stem from the days when we taped The Wizard of Oz and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer off the TV.  Those VHS tapes are a gold mine for old school commercials (Campbell’s comms are an incredibly close second in favorites).  

 Cheers, holiday season!  I look forward to more of your nostalgic gifts. 

Macys?  Target?  Kohls?  No thanks.  On the day after Thanksgiving, most obedient and intrepid consumers give thanks by camping under the twinkle of Bestbuy’s sign only to be followed by fending off frantic-shopper mobs in order to snag the one iPad that is $50 cheaper than at the Apple store.  My family has a different, but equally stressful and agitating tradition—Christmas tree shopping.  

Admittedly, this act does constitute as shopping, but doesn’t even begin to touch the madness of Black Friday.  It is far less crowded, and brutal. The tradition began the first year my older sister went away to college, it being the only time before Christmas break that the whole family would be together.  Since my mom had an opposition to Black Friday shopping from years past, we didn’t have anything going on that day anyway.

The day always starts out great. Waking up on the day after Thanksgiving to a non-shopper is quite the leisurely activity.  Why not read the newspaper? Crossword? Gorge on some leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast? This is usually followed by guilty “I should run on the treadmill” thoughts that never actually come to fruition. The day has hit its peak.

At lunchtime the family finally decides they are ready enough to leave the house and start this tree hunting expedition.  Once in the car, a serious discussion begins about whether to try the place we went last year for a tree, or the new one somebody saw last week that might in fact, contain Christmas’ most perfect fir.  It’s clear we would be fools to not try the new place.

Upon arriving at the supposedly superior tree lot, is it clear that the bunch won’t make the cut. But that doesn’t stop us from humoring the suggester by exiting the car, perusing the trees, and mocking everything in sight to prove to the suggester that they were, well, mistaken. It’s about this time when everyone realizes they haven’t eaten in hours and their gnawing hunger is feeding their crabbiness.  Well, I realize it and everyone else is just crabby.  Tensions rise as we pull into the second Christmas tree lot, Home Depot.  

Now, Christmas tree lots scare me in the same way that fireworks on July 4th scare me—it’s loud and there are objects about with high limb-destroying potential.  I steer clear from having to prop up the trees for viewing as well as the fenced off trunk chainsawing area.  My usefulness while tree searching is amazingly low.  I do have an great eye for tree symmetry and crookedness, but what I bring best to the table during these outings is facetious comments.  By this point, however, my judgements are not met with laughter as my family’s hunger has now turned into near starvation.  

Over the years, the tree selection process has sped up remarkably.  Which is impressive considering we used to pick out trees at night during December in the Midwest.  Age and time of day are clearly the two contributing factors.  This year was no exception.  Our patience waned and after looking at a measly four trees, two of which were miniature Charlie Brown-esque joke suggestions, we chose one.  The decision was more anticlimactic than ever.        

After lugging the tree to the car and attaching it to the trunk using a single piece of twine, we drove home to stuff our faces with leftover turkey.  Though finding the tree could be checked off the list, the real fun was still in store—the inevitable arguments over the degree to which how gaudy the tree should be decorated.

I hope that people from Nashville refer to themselves as Nashvillans.