I thought wedding gown retailers were terrible salesmen, but they’ve got nothing on jewelers.

I found the wedding ring I want. I actually found it, the exact ring I’ve been concocting in my head, in one of those dopey bridal magazines, the picture is right there on the page with the website of the designer and everything. So I go to the website, which is, let me tell you, the worst website I’ve ever seen. Forget “from victory to victory”; at least those people actually want you to buy their tulle. This website is all flash, all the time: to find the ring I wanted, I had to click continuously through a series of lines of faux-poetry and images of every piece of jewelry in the collection, no simple catalog page with all the wares laid out. Sauron could have forged me a ring faster than this website was selling me one. Then when I finally got to my ring, there was no way to find a price or even a name. All I could do was find authorized retailers, many without websites, many with crappy websites, none of whom list the price of this goddamn ring.

And this ring. Cannot. Be found. Anywhere else on the goddamn internet.

It’s clear to me now that they simply don’t want me to have this ring. Anyone who is unwilling to sell to me in the comfort of my own home is obviously not interested in my money. I did buy my dress in a wedding dress store, David’s Bridal, but they would have been perfectly happy to tell me the price online AND ship it to me. I need the David’s Bridal equivalent of jewelers to sell me the polyester equivalent of this ring. Anyone out there looking for an entrepreneur opportunity? Here is a need. Fill it.

A new neighbor moved in recently and it’s becoming a real problem for me, because the “neighbor” is actually a spider the size of my finger and I am not a petite-handed woman.

It lives on the landing outside our back door and initially built its web across the entire stairwell so I had to destroy its house in order to get downstairs to the washing machine. Ugh. I don’t like spiders at the best of times and this was not the best of times. This spider is the size of my fist. I’m afraid it’s going to come after my home if I bug it again.

Case in point, today it has rebuilt its web and now it’s closer to my door. It’s not blocking my laundry path anymore but I do have to walk right next to it and have it sitting there in its web watching me, a spider the size of my head, ready at any moment to pounce and crawl on me. I managed to pass it the first time with my load of laundry but I almost couldn’t make myself pass it again to get back inside. I mean, the thing is the size of my torso. I would have just spent the rest of the day in the basement except it occurred to me there might be more of them around.

So now I am just waiting for Gene to come home, because this spider is bigger than I am and as the largest person in our household I think it’s his job to deal with it. Or we can just forget about the clothes in the washing machine. I didn’t like those clothes anyway. I like new clothes. The spider can have those old ones, if they’re even big enough to fit it.

If anyone’s feeling brave in the Castro area before 6 today, feel free to come kill my spider. But I warn you, it’s the size of a studio apartment.

Eventually, every bride has to come face to face with one grim fact: party planning blows. When that happens, there is tulle. Is it a fabric? Is it a trim? Is it the perfect blindfold for your guests so they can’t see that none of your flowers match? Who cares? Just wrap the whole damn event up in yards and yards of it and hope for the best.

Which brings me to my wedding find of the week: cheaptulle.com

My favorite part of this website is the tagline: “From now on, we’ll go from victory to victory.” I’ve been staring at this for about thirty minutes. I don’t even care what their products are now. I don’t understand why every bridal magazine fails to put this in huge letters on the cover, the wedding industry equivalent of Douglas Adams’ DON’T PANIC.

From victory, friends. To victory.

Okay, back to my staring.

This is the first time I’ve cooked meat that looked like what it used to be, pre-kitchen. I refuse to cook turkey — don’t like eating it — so I decided to roast a chicken for our little Thanksgiving here. But it turns out that a chicken feels like a baby. I’ve mentioned the baby/poultry visual similarity before, but there’s also a weight issue. The chicken sits solid and heavy in your hands, placid and sturdy, like a sleepy baby. So that’s a little disturbing,

Also, my mom said the giblets would probably be wrapped in plastic inside the cavity, but there was no plastic. I mean, I don’t even like scooping out a pumpkin.

However, it’s all cleaned and stuffed now, safe in the oven and smelling pretty good. So I’m more or less over my trauma. But still.

As Thanksgiving waxes and New Moon excitement wanes, I am here to share with you a few things for which I am fangful this year.

I don’t ever have to go back to high school. Much less repeat it over and over for the rest of my undead life. What price immortality, eh, Cullen?

I am not solely responsible for my lover’s happiness and willingness to live. While it is true that I give Gene everything just by breathing, that’s because my breath is full of nutritious CO2, and “Gene” is what I named my cactus.

I would not endlessly moan and complain if people wanted to buy me designer clothes and fancy cars. You hear that? No complaints.

I have the imagination to properly exploit super-strength, godlike beauty, limitless wealth and eternal youth. I don’t have those other tools yet. But the imagination is there.

No matter how old I get, Gene continues to be older. Happy late birthday, old man. And happy Fangsgiving to Twilight fans everywhere.

“Men feel perfectly comfortable slathering their chests in greasepaint and screaming like half-naked ninnies at football games, but women too often over-explain their passions, apologizing for being too girly or liking something too trashy.” –Washington Post

I forget, why don’t I read newspapers?