The Double-edged Sword of a Beautiful Day

After 4 years of living in Minnesota, where the spring/summer/fall is the most beautiful 4 months the world could possibly produce, and the winters are the most oppressively endless frigid 8 months imaginable, I am loving the weather in St Louis.

Today, it's 60 degrees outside with a warm sun and a flawless blue sky. (Fine, this is admittedly not typical weather, but by this time of year in Rochester, I would have expected to start seeing freeze-dried squirrels in the growing snowbanks on the side of the road, and grocery stores having frozen meat sidewalk sales, and people wearing fleece-lined gortex-coated floor length winter jumpsuits.)

The only drawback? There's a bizarre phenomenon in healthcare in which the warmer the weather is, the more people manage to injure themselves. (No one rides a 100mph motorcycle wearing only Daisy Dukes, a bikini top, flip flops, and no helmet when it's below zero. They reform their whole life plan and stay home and read Tolstoy instead.)

Adding to that, it's New Year's Eve, which is the annual Go Get Drunkity-Drunk And Do Regrettable Stuff holiday.

Adding to that, I'm on-call tonight, so all the Drunky Shenanigans and risky Christmas gifts that lead to OhNoMyEye Emergencies will go straight to me.

Why, for just one day, couldn't the St Louis weather have been more like Minnesota?

Deep thoughts at Christmas

I hereby freely and fully admit that I listen to the all-Christmas-music-all-the-time radio station whenever I'm in the car throughout the entire month of December. I also admit that I shriek painfully and turn off the radio when that Pa-rumpa-pum-pum drummer boy song comes on. Call me a spoilsport, but I am convinced that the last thing anyone would want after giving birth in a frigid cattle barn would be to have a kid come play a snare drum relentlessly.

Likes: Going All In

Hollywood has successfully created a nightmare in my mind: Showing up to a costume party fully dressed up only to find I'm the only one there in costume. (Thanks a lot for making me neurotic about this, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Start the Revolution Without Me, Bridget Jones, Groundhog Day...)

But despite the looming threat of shame and humiliation (...maybe because of it?), I still like the feeling of committing to the theme. Sure, there's a chance that I'll be the only person there sporting bunny ears or a pirate costume, but I like going all in. I've now learned that going all in is even better when you bring along someone who's even more committed to the theme than you are. That way, as you walk toward the fateful front door of the party, wondering if you've been set up for shattered dignity, at least you know you won't be embarrassed alone.

The latest example of this starts with a guy named Jamey, who I went on one date with back in July when I first arrived to St Louis. Nothing came of it from the dating standpoint, but he writes one of my new favorite funny blogs so we've kept in touch. (At the very least, you cannot say you've fully lived until you've read this entry about the Dry Cleaning Lady, and this one about True Survival against all odds.)

Jamey hosts an annual Festivus party (a la Seinfeld), and this year he themed it Trashy or Classy, with instructions to wear either your rattiest trashy clothes, your finest gown or tuxedo, or a half-and-half combo of both.

Thanks to Goodwill (which supplied the shirts, suit pants, exclusive country club necktie, and size 8 women's jeans), my mother (who taught me to sew, but probably never envisioned that those skills would be used for evil rather than good), and Silhouette temporary tattoo paper, here's what we wore on Saturday night:

Oh Billy Ray, you mulletted hunk of man. Sadly, even the confidence instilled in me by having Billy's triumphant trailer park salute emblazoned across my back couldn't keep me from worrying that we'd be the only ones dressed up for this party.

We arrived to the door.

We knocked.

We thought about turning back. It wasn't too late to save Dave's bare thigh from public scrutiny. No one would ever have to know how close we came to ruination.

Then we opened the fateful door and went inside.

Oh, the suspense.

Inside the party, delightful levels of classiness and trashiness abounded. To my list of "Likes," I should add that going all in is even better when you meet other people who have likewise committed.

We even learned that Dave has a soul mate.

Do you ever suffer from the "What if I'm the only one in costume" syndrome? Has it ever turned out badly for you?