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2001-03-24 | 07:50 p.m.

Diaryland has gotten so interesting lately that I come here and poke around so long that I neglect to update my own diary. Which is why I came.

Saw a bumper sticker the other day that I just have to remember:

Fat people are harder to kidnap.

It's probably been around forever but I'd never seen it before. I really don't get out much anymore.

We just got back from Michigan, where we went for Duff's brother's wedding. The girls were flower girls and Jasper was ring bearer. Jasper made it up the aisle just fine, but I could tell he'd never make it through 40 minutes of Lutheran droning, so we escaped to the church nursery, where there were millions of toy trucks to play with. Even there I could still hear the ceremony, which was being piped into all the anterior rooms. Actually, I couldn't hear the bride and groom say their vows, only the pastor (I keep wanting to call him the "parson," or else "the prick" because he definitely was one), who was miked. At least I escaped taking Communion, or rather not taking Communion in a highly visible way. I'm so off religion I'm becoming a true curmudgeon about it. Still, I don't need to out myself at a family wedding.

Pointless to go through the tacky parts because I am on a new non-judgmental kick. It's boring and childish to try to be fastidious about good taste when I don't live tastefully myself. Good taste is like Latin: fun to know, but if nobody else can speak it, it's of limited usefulness. There will always be more people who speak Pig Latin.

Besides, it really wasn't bad. It was a very straightforward wedding and reception. They were planning to do the Chicken Dance (the bride made the groom choose between the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey, because she absolutely was not going to have both), but the DJ forgot. So no Chicken Dance. The Chicken Dance is rarely seen in California, so I was a little disappointed, to be honest.

The most original thing about the wedding was that it had a hockey theme and the wedding favors were hockey pucks. And to make the bride and groom kiss, guests had to sing a few bars of a KISS song. I was the second one to sing. I had to do it early, because I really only know one KISS song ("Beth") and I figured somebody else would sing it if I didn't do it first. My voice sounded terrible.

Also got mad at Duff and refused to dance with him. I knew I ought to be more forgiving, but somehow I just didn't want to be. First of all, it's a big wedding, and I'm surrounded by lots of people who know who I am, though I don't know them. I feel ugly and enormously fat because I'm wearing a stupid column dress, a style I despise, but I'm wearing it because I couldn't find anything else to wear. So basically I'm in full-blown hysteria mode.

When it's time for the first dance, I settle into my chair, which is front and center in front of the dance floor, visible from every seat in the room, and I look around for Duff (who's been eating at the head table), because I want him to come sit with me. I do think the first dance is romantic. But he's standing in the doorway, backlit, talking to his ex-girlfriend. The one he was with before me. I can't get his attention.

So I watch the couple dance (to some dreadful Shania Twain song, yikes) and she starts to cry, so I start to cry, and I turn around and look at Duff's parents, and his mother is crying, and they are holding hands, and I look around the room and it seems as if the entire room is full of couples who are holding hands and looking sweet and maybe they are actually swaying in unison and I am sitting there, fatly, shushing my children like some kind of evil welfare mother and Duff is standing in the doorway, yukking it up with this tall, skinny blonde chick, and I'm waiting for him to look over, but he's never ever ever going to look over at me. He's going to stand there through this song and the next song and it's never even going to occur to him that I might want him there. Because he's completely oblivious to me.

Walked right by them with shoulders up and head down but they didn't even notice me. How could they not notice me, thudding by in my two-inch heels like a barrel of meat with angry bouncing sausage curls? (Did I mention that I took magazine photo of Heather Locklear to hairdresser and walked out looking like Loretta Lynn circa 1975? Or maybe a big ol' drag queen doing Loretta Lynn.) Then when I finally got to the bathroom, there was somebody else in there, so I didn't feel like I could get away with a good cry. Totally anti-climactic. All dressed up and nowhere to cry.

Well, I'll have to stop now, because Jasper is having a meltdown.

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