Dear Can of Baby Corn,

The hell? How do you keep ending up in my pantry? I never purchase you. I’ve donated you to the food bank at least three times. And yet here you are, again — stony, steadfast, utterly useless. Baby Corn, you are beginning to stress me out.

Even if I wanted to use you, I wouldn’t know how. Grill you and take little, tiny nibbles? Blend you up in a hideous baby-vegetable smoothie? I am at a loss.

Baby Corn, your persistence is unsettling. The can of Haggis, I married into that. Bryan keeps it in the cupboard as an uproarious pantry joke. The twelve cans of aging garbanzo beans? Those are leftover from the overambitious homemade-hummus fiasco of 2006. But you? You are mute and inexplicable.

Go away, Baby Corn. You’re making everyone uncomfortable.

Sincerely,
Maggie Mason

P.S. Take the can of Mandarin oranges with you.

, originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

Me: I got Hank a new outfit!
Bryan: (rasies eyebrows)
Me: It’s cute! There’s a very limited amount of time where we can dress him all Chauncy.
Bryan: That outfit makes me want to kick his ass.
Me: … Shut up.

Reader tip! Don’t wrap an evening of drinking by spiking your champagne with Limoncello.

Buuuuuut, as long as 32-percent alcohol is coursing through your veins, you may as well send a few dozen text messages. You can send them all to different people by simply thinking of a new person you’d like to talk to. Don’t be all anal about whether you’ve actually entered their phone number or just the one you last dialed. Hit on the following key points:

Everything south of my waist is wet, and not in a hot way.

o never has anyone been drunk enough

Sara could fix my car, love. We are so very drunk.

Just so. Sara Brown is wasted. She won’t have anything theft, monsieur. How’s france treatin’ ya?

Around 2 a.m., compose incoherent messages on the postcards you’ve been acquiring since college. For example:

Dallas has the worst airport in the continental U.S. and you’re always on that thing with the guys who golf.

What?
OK.
I’m going to lay down.
My nose, even my nose hurts.

-It’s 2:32 a.m. I mean seriously, go to the bathroom.
-OK, I’m going to.
-OK.

Every once in awhile I am so afraid of ghosts, I can’t sleep. Which is bullshit, because ghosts don’t have muscles.

True enough.

When you wake up unsure of whether you may still be drunk, call a cab instead of driving to breakfast. Of course, the taxi driver will be drunk, but he will still take you to the place where they melt the cheese over the potatoes and give you plate after plate of andouille sausage.

Thanks, wasted cab driver. We needed that.

On my wedding day, I was blindsided by jitters. After my flower girl freaked about all those strangers watching her, I realized they’d be watching me too. Monitoring me, really. Attentive to my every motion, examining each fleeting facial expression, taking bets on whether I’d fall on my face and tangle myself in a profusion of tulle.*

My stage fright was so extreme that it was not eased by the bottle of champagne in the bridal suite. One of my bridesmaids finally sent for the groom’s bourbon. Two shots later, I was unattractively flushed and on my way to get hitched.

A few weeks ago, Liv had a similar case of stage fright on her wedding day. Sara and I entered Liv’s hotel room to find her pale and still, listening to a recording of the wedding recessional. Sara gasped and plugged in a Johnny Cash CD, while I arranged for room service to supply us with Maker’s on the rocks. Twenty minutes later, Liv was upbeat and ready to wed.

Incidentally, Biz and Liv eloped, which meant I got to make a wedding bouquet (this is getting to be a hobby for me). I’d never seen Liv’s dress, so I made her two bouquets, and she chose. Oddly, the one that incorporated weeds I’d picked last-minute from nearby fields looked awesome with her ensemble.

I’m in favor of any wedding where I get to be in a hot tub an hour before the ceremony. The wedding was so laid back and fun that I’ve decided everyone should elope from now on. I’ll make your bouquet.

*My fears in this area were not unfounded — falling dramatically at weddings is a personal tradition. I’ve fallen while descending church stairs in my bridesmaid’s gown, I’ve fallen while jitterbugging with the bride’s sister during our attendant’s dance, and I’ve been dropped on my head by drunken, dancing uncles too many times to count (drunk people like to dip). I did eventually take a nosedive on the dance floor at my own wedding, but I made it down the aisle just fine.

We arrived in Vegas fresh, hydrated, and well stocked with penis-shaped party supplies and outfits too slutty to wear at home. The Las Vegas airport greeted us with an enormous banner featuring Carrot Top in pancake makeup, surrounded by women in bikinis. The text read, “Carrot Top Fantasy.” I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that prhase somewhere before.

ox·y·mo·ron [ok-si-mawr-on, -mohr-]
–noun, plural -mo·ra
Rhetoric.
a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “deafening silence,” “poor little rich girl,” or “Carrot Top fantasy.”

Every square inch of Vegas is decorative. There’s fabric on the ceiling, crystals on the tabletops, tassels on women’s nipples. In the evening, as I removed my tassels to pump breast milk in the private massage room of our suite at the Wynne, I thought to myself, I need more agate doves in my life. Where can a girl get her hands on some agate doves?

The answer of course, was the lobby. So we swiped a few on our way out to see KA, which was magical. Seriously, people, if you haven’t seen any Cirque du Soleil, you must. Those shows will make you dream better.

I’m joking about the doves, of course. They were glued down.