Single female colleague (whose hyphenated last name is 29 characters long): Just read your blog post.
Me: Yes?
SFC: You’re not changing your name [once married] are you?
Me: Actually, yes.

<crickets>

We could talk name-changing convention until the end of time. But at the end of the day, it’s a personal choice and I think it’s odd to give someone grief about it.

Besides…she never asked what I’m changing it to.

UPDATED 9/16/2009: Includes video from weekend protests referenced below. Regardless of where you stand on national healthcare, it’s a bit troubling. Especially when you live here.

I remember when I moved into my first apartment in Colorado. It was a spacious two bedroom, two bathroom apartment, that I moved into alone and with no furniture outside of a televison, DVD player and a stool I saved from garbage truck peril.

As an already hyper-paranoid person, sleeping alone in a new apartment, in a city where I knew no one put me on edge. I remember crawling into a makeshift bed in the living room right in front of the TV to distract me from completely morose questions concerning who would find my decomposing body five days after some lunatic had followed me home from Blockbuster, waited until dark and shimmied up the tree outside my living room, climbed onto my balcony and broke in through the sliding glass door to attack me.

Xanax, much?

All together, I’ve lived three other places alone since then  and have always gone through an initial period of anxiety where I assume falling asleep will be the death of me, and thus I lie…awake.

Combine this paranoia with some of the awful stuff in the news lately, D’s robbery and his departure to Minnesota for a fishing trip and you have a situation with meltdown written all over it.

I mentioned this stress today when somecolleagues noted anxiety over the increasingly hateful behavior going on in the city. For example, some two million tea baggers gathered here over the weekend where they lined the streets and told participants running a 5k for the National Press Club to “go kill themselves” and that “Obamacare should be “buried with [Ted] Kennedy” (in regard to national healthcare).

Another colleague has been a target of road rage while walking to work—twice in one week, drivers have told him to go f*ck himself while walking legally through a crosswalk.

The director of operations for my shop, who lives eight blocks away from me (and says he calls 911 once a week to report drug activity near his house), said that they invited two city police officers to last night’s neighborhood community meeting and when two young women asked for tips on staying safe on the street, they responded: “Get a dog. No one with a dog seems to get mugged.”

Get a dog? Is this what we’ve all been missing? And moreover, are these the people who are supposed to be keeping us safe?

I know crazy things happen everywhere, but somehow the angry, negative crap seems to have landed here. Think about how the pink slime in Ghostbusters II turns everyone in New York City into disgusting, violent assholes, and you’ve pretty much got the picture.  Unfortunately, I am unaware of any positively-charged slime with the capability to rig the Statue of Liberty to a joystick and walk it through the city blaring Jackie Wilson* to shake people from the funk.

Bottom line is it’s two hours past my bedtime and I’ll be awake playing a word scramble game on my iPhone until sleep becomes involuntary. Bottom line is the rose-colored glasses are still off. The DC honeymoon seems over. I am so excited to be leaving tomorrow for a few days in sweet, sweet Iowa.

*This song does put one in a fantastic mood. Maybe we should get it on some loudspeakers.

Remember all that talk on the night of our engagement about how I really liked DC and will always have fond memories of living here?

That’s mostly true, although the luster has rapidly faded as of late—or more specifically, late last night, as I fretted about D’s whereabouts.

Fill your head with all the predictable cliches and scary scenarios. Your love is late. You check the time stamp on his “walking home” email and confirm that he is, indeed, way past due. Call his cell; get voicemail. Send to emails to Blackberry; messages unanswered.

Pace apartment thinking about:

• How your love makes fun of your paranoia and maybe you should calm down
• How cranky you were around him that morning because you didn’t want to go to work
• How your life might be about to change for the worse

Say the f-word, pray, check messages, pick up phone to call the police. Rehearse what to say in your head so the police take you seriously.

I never made the 911 call. As soon as I slid my iPhone into action, it rang with an unknown number. It was D, with noise in the background, asking me to let him into our front gate.

I hung up on him without asking any questions went outside where he showed up a minute later slightly ashen and full of apologies for being late.

As you’ve probably guessed (or perhaps read on Twitter), D was robbed at gunpoint by two men, three blocks from our apartment. With large credit to D, the two men were arrested a short time later. D identified them from the safety of a detective’s car and they have since been charged with two counts of armed robbery. (It seems they robbed some other poor guy before getting to D.)

While my tears seem to have subsided, I’ve had a good deal of anger today.*  I’ve treated just about every person on the street like a grade-A a*shole, stopping short of verbal abuse and pistol-whipping (with my SIGG), and have been anti-social at work.

I never figured myself as an eye-for-an-eye kind of gal (a rational person would tell you that acts of revenge, 1. are counter to taking the high road; 2. merely perpetuate the cycle of unacceptable societal behaviors and/or 3. ) could get me in a whole heap of trouble), but I just want to light these motherf*ckers up with the power of a thousand suns for being so ignorant** and inhumane.

So, yeah. Right now? I hate DC. Right now I’ll cop to the fact that this the District is a sham for a nation’s capital, with soaring AIDS rates, some of the worst public schools in the country, a corrupt city government, and yes—an atrocious crime rate.

As one of D’s bosses said last night, “We all choose our communities.” And maybe I should have let D move me out to Virginia. I hear it’s for lovers, after all. Which I also take to mean that it’s not for thugs.

*In addition to being mad, I’m clinging to D like white on rice. D’s coworker (also a close mutual friend) watched him like a hawk all day and sent me email updates on his disposition. I required departure and arrival messages and have instituted a bit of a curfew for running/walking home. Yes, D now has a nagging, worrying, almost-wife.

**The irony is not lost on us that D was robbed the same night Obama gave his big speech on the importance of education. One of D’s assailants was a minor.

My grandpa turned 90 today; can you believe it? I’m still dumbfounded by the breadth of things he’s experienced in his life. Can you imagine getting paid a nickel to mow the cemetery (outside of which the KKK would burn crosses) and using an iPhone (which he called “a miracle”)?

Though I was much to0 immature to appreciate it at the time, I’m pretty lucky to have had him tote me to morning coffees with his retired teacher friends; legislative meetings on environmental issues at the Iowa State Capitol (how silly/cute must that have looked?) and cross-country trips to expand my wee little horizons.

I can’t wait to see him (and Grandma, here in green slacks) in two short weeks.

I just realized that yesterday marked my 1,600th blog post. Sheesh. What a bunch of gum-flapping.

On a related note, I just received my 1,965th comment. Not an even number…but still sort of pretty to look at.

Occasionally people ask me how Ella is doing…and how she is coexisting with D, who has allergies.

I think it’s fair to say that lately D’s allergies have been a touch worse lately, given that we’ve been keeping our bedroom door open at night to keep the temperature in there from rising to something Satan might enjoy.

Ella has been loving this and has recently taken to napping under the covers and popping out accordingly.

This was taken with my cell phone, but you get the idea.

I’m sure some people think this is frightening. I find it weird and entertaining. But we do have to be careful not to squash her.

In the meantime, she’s soaking up a few more nights at the foot of the bed before we boot her out and go back to sleeping comfortably with the door closed.  Some of you will be happy to know that she occasionally listens to D when he tells her “no,” and that he occasionally gives in and pets her…with his foot.

It seems appropriate that exactly one month after we got engaged (yesterday—where did the time go?), folks started lodging their complaints about our wedding.

Chief among them:

1. We have set our wedding date too close to my second cousin’s birthday (the wedding is two days after it, for anyone who can count).
2. Shopping for my wedding dress is apparently seen as a family-only event and that after the purchase, “if others want to see the dress before the wedding, that is an option.”

You can go ahead and assume that these complaints have come from my family members and not D’s. D’s family is way too laid back and concerned about our feelings to raise their worries. You can also go ahead and assume that I’m feeling the pressure; losing sleep; am annoyed and trying my best to communicate in an effective and mature manner in spite of recent events that is making this extremely challenging.

You may also assume that I’ve considered eloping so that we don’t have to deal with any of this, but that I want to wear the dress (that I love, that I had the pleasure of trying on with loved ones that include D’s mother) and celebrate with my friends and my eager-to-share-family.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve read all the wedding etiquette rules about dealing with overbearing/unhappy family members. I am generally of the opinion that these books are for people who have no idea what they’re doing. Me? I’ll be 28 when we get married. I’ve had plenty of time to daydream about possibilities and had developed a pretty clear vision of the things I wanted and needed out of this day before D even proposed. Furthermore, D and I had discussed a few of the particulars of our wedding before we got engaged. It’s his wedding too, you know, and the man has ideas.

The only thing I can think to do for the time being is to stop offering information about our ideas/planning. I want my family to feel included in the process (everyone’s so far away; it’s difficult to communicate with everyone), but didn’t expect to feel so stressed out by their reactions. I’ll ask for help when I need it, but otherwise, I do believe we can do this by ourselves.*

I’m sure we’ll all survive in the end and that people will just be happy for us. I guess I’m just surprised by the notion that things ought to be done a certain way (e.g. shopping for the dress) or that we’d put our own scheduling needs behind other peoples’. (Believe me, there are very good reasons behind our date.)

I’m also quite confident that these issues will rear their ugly head in two weeks when I make a short trip home to look at reception spots and see my parents for the first time since their separation.**

*This is maybe totally naive. Feel free to offer suggestions.

**Multiple married friends have suggested that I sit Mom down after a couple glasses of wine and have the hard conversations. I think this is a fine idea, though I am cautious not to replicate the blowouts of my adolescence. We’re older now; my hormones have leveled out and I’m more aware of her feelings.
UPDATE 9/3/2009: I had a come-to-Jesus conference call with my mom last night, got a full night’s sleep, and have taken a full step away from the ledge this morning. I haven’t quite gotten my way in regard to the dress, but I’ve made a deal I can live with.

Let’s call a spade a spade: work isn’t going great. Today hasn’t been any more obnoxious than usual, just obnoxious in a different way.

So D sent me this video to cheer me up:

It worked.

I can’t wait to marry you, Dan.

Shocker! NMT and another Vandaveer nod!

What can I say. After being bossed around all day I decided to do what I want (outside of clubbing baby seals).

Here it is, a track from Vandaveer’s new album Divide & Conquer. It’s called “A Mighty Leviathan of Old,” and it makes me feel better just listening to it.

As most of you know, I’m getting old and crusty, and therefore don’t go out much on school nights. Last night I was a rebel. I broke rules and had a grand time doing so.

We started with an office cocktail party at a nearby bar to raise funds for a non-profit organization that gets gently used computers to young students in Guatemala. The party was sponsored by Midori (which our office manager/bartender used to concoct a most refreshing summer beverage) and was filled with photo ops for Washington Business Journal. It might be the most industry-related thing I do whilst here (which is fine by me).

Afterward, a group of us went to the new W Hotel bar  (a reservation gifted to us by office mate). Admittedly, the place is a little too Hollywood (velvet ropes, etc.), but the views, as promised, were breathtaking.

But my favorite part of the night came when D and I left the hotel and went to the album release party of Vandaveer (alias of Mark Heidinger), an incredible musician and all-around nice guy. (He often plays with These United States, whose front man is friends with D from college.)

ANYWAY, last night, he was joined by Rose Guerin at a club near our house—and the duo was an incredible sight (and sound) to behold. Pure joy. I can’t give a more emphatic recommendation, especially for those of you who like feel-good alt-folk music.

This morning I discovered this video of Vandaveer in the 20th arrondisement of Paris where he (and TUS) ended up crashing a wedding celebration and playing a couple of songs. So cool.

Also beautiful: “However Many Takes it Takes“

Of course, we had a late night, and now I’m a bit too tuckered to be out and about tonight. Tit for tat, I guess.