Upon signing a contract to sell their house, Susan, the director of the trapeze studio where I practice and teach, and her husband, Don, threw a party to celebrate the home they've loved for the last seven years, a beautiful old place with lots of windows across from The Tree That Owns Itself. It was a gorgeous party, with kids and old ladies and townies and the mayor and bucketloads of fun. My three favorite moments:

• Chatting with Cameron, one of my trapeze students, and his father, I ask what he'd like to do when he grows up. His response: be a geologist or work at Taco Stand.

• Susan, showing us some of the many nude photos Don, a photographer, has done of her in various parts of the American wilderness, we look at one of Susan perched in a cleft between two giant redwood trees. Someone says, "oh, you're just right there in the crotch of the tree," and Susan says, "Yes, I'm the little clitoris."

• Slightly tipsy, Julia and I mount two of the trapezes rigged in Susan's living room. Julia is wearing a dress. Presently she decides to get down off the trapeze by flipping backwards off of it.  As she does, her dress flies up over her head, revealing her thong to the crowd of people standing only few feet away. Susan expresses concern over which of us will be teaching the kids class the following morning at 10 a.m. Um, not the one who just flashed her butt at the mayor.

Saturday night brought highs and lows. I was scheduled to perform with Julia in a long-awaited trapeze performance at Tasty World. There were three sets, two performances per set, to go on between the bands playing that night. The first set began quietly, with Kelly S. doing a sweet, slow piece in the innocent way that only she can. Then Kelly W. began her piece, a display of strength and grace and control that was absolutely captivating. Kelly W. is a gymnastics coach, but she's taller than most gymnasts and doesn't have the characteristic wide shoulders. She looks more like a dancer, but her strength allows her to move in ways that seems completely ethereal. She was going along perfectly, and had every eye in the bar on her when, for her coup de grace, she reached up high on the ropes above her, lifted her hips above her head, and released her grip for a breathtaking drop.

The trapeze snapped in two.

It was several seconds before anyone in the bar said anything and Kelly lifted herself off the ground. A crowd of other performers and Susan crowded around her, then promptly whisked her into the bathroom. It was much longer before I breathed, my eyes fixed on the spot where Kelly had fallen, face-first into the dirt and the sweat and the beer on the wooden floor of the bar.  

Susan's husband pulled the trapeze up into the rafters and the crowd slowly filled in the empty space where she had been dancing. I sat on the bench beside Conrad, and held his hand and waited. For something. For someone to tell me she was alright, for the show to be cancelled, for my stomach to untie itself, for someone to explain how, even though you did everything right, your equipment, without warning, can fail. It was not a good time.

Later, after Kelly was taken to the ER, the performers and Susan convened to make a decision about whether or not to continue. Carlynn, ever the cheerleader, said it would be best to go on with it, to let all the people know we assume the risks and continue anyway. I agreed too, but my stomach still wasn't on board. Julia still hadn't shown up, it was getting quite late, I wasn't feeling very confident in the trapeze's ability to hold our combined weights if she did get there, and the lead singer of the hippie band onstage would not stop shaking her Shakira hips, mocking my fear with her jiggly ass.

But Julia did get there, and when it was time, I changed into my fishnets and panties and bra and mesh shirt and walked out into the middle of the packed bar and climbed on the trapeze and crossed my legs in the way that we had planned. And then the music started. And my fear was gone. And it was all Motley Crue, and we were the Girls, Girls, Girls, and I didn't spend one second worrying about how safe I was and only worried was I shaking my hair enough? and winking? and selling it? And I was. The crowd loved us, and like Shakira's hips, I won't lie: I love the attention.

I heard today that Kelly is fine except for a black eye and some mild whiplash, and that she was happy we had continued with the show. She said, "Wasn't that what the show was all about? Strong women?" It made me feel so proud to know those ladies. And be one of them. 

On Saturday I have to attend two weddings. At 11:30 a.m., my former roommate of three years, Courtney, will be getting married. Then at 6 p.m., one of my best friends from high school, Crystal, is getting married.

I always thought that Jerry Seinfeld bit about weddings was very funny. If you're not familiar, Jerry points out that no one likes going to weddings. Because when we get the invitation, it's like "Oh, GOD. Another Saturday ruined." And it's totally true. Innocent citizens, by way of social guilting, are obligated to spend one of their hard-earned days off sweating outside in the noonday sun in church clothes and talking to the people they spent most of high school trying to avoid. What did I ever do to you?

Don't get me wrong. I wish you every happiness and I have great respect and reverence for the institution of marriage. But your wedding day? Not interesting. Unless of course you happen to be the benevolent Maleys, who were kind enough to provide champagne for the attendees during their ceremony. I had my own private drinking game: every time we bow in prayer, knock back a flute of bubbly. Amen!

I know you guys have better things to do on Saturdays. I know you prefer jeans to dress pants. I know there's nothing more painful for you than watching old people do the electric slide. I know you don't have the extra money to buy me a blender. I know there's no one you'd like to see less than that one guy who played on the baseball team with you who always gave you noogies and boasted about the size of his penis. That's why you'll never be put through any of this on my watch. Some call it eloping. I call it charity.

Because while playing Mad Libs, when asked for a 'silly word,' without missing a beat Conrad replied, 'Holocaust.'

A few weeks ago, I came down with a terrible sinus infection. I don't get sick very often, and it was really past time for catching colds, but there I was with what felt like a hardened tennis-ball-size glob of maple syrup stuck behind my right eye. So I did what most people would do: I went to the doctor.

The man, whom I later read is a "Doctor of Distinction," gave me a prescription for a cough syrup and a decongestant. Both medicines worked, in a way: the decongestant temporarily shrunk the throbbing syrup mass in my head enough to let me breathe through one nostril, but prevented me from being able to sleep, while the cough syrup was so powerful just taking a whiff of the bottle immediately paralyzed my diaphragm and knocked me right out, but caused me to have some terrifying hallucinations in which I couldn't move my arms or legs and saw my mother, in a pair of dark glasses, walking through the apartment as the matter in the room warped around her. It was very Twin Peaks.

Despite my adventures down the rabbit hole and intermittent periods of relief, the glob of maple syrup continued to grow, possibly trapping the demons that had no doubt possessed my soul during the night terrors after several dislodging sneezes. That is to say, it was a week later, and I was worse. I went back to the doctor's office, though I didn't see the distinguished doctor that so helped me on my way to wellness. This time, the nurse wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic, but only after I convinced her that what was lodged in my head probably did not require an exorcist.

Two days on the antibiotic and I was better, but ten days was the required course, and I don't want to be the person who breeds the new drug-resistant hyper-black death plague in my body, so I continued taking it to make sure all the yuckiness was dead. Turns out, taking ten days of the antibiotic was like going to do a mob hit in an apartment building and then deciding to knock off the other residents in the building just to be sure there are no witnesses, but then deciding that it might be a good idea to go ahead and get the rest of the voting district, because, you know, better safe than sorry, and then, to cover your ass, obliterating the entire human race with ten million nuclear bombs and then realizing that, HOLY SHIT YOU'RE ALONE ON THE PLANET AND A RACE OF SUPER ROBOT RAPISTS HAVE STARTED TO EMERGE FROM THE ALLEYS AND YOU'RE TRAPPED IN THE TOWN SQUARE, SURROUNDED ON EVERY SIDE BY CYBORGS, WITH NOTHING BUT A SWISS ARMY KNIFE. It's like that.

It's like that, because the delicate balance in my vagina was so upset by the annihilation of all bacteria from my body that  it went and got itself a yeast infection. Which is sooo fun. I wish I got more of those! I guess I'll just have to be content with my allotment, or maybe try wearing more soaking-wet bikini bottoms. Keep your fingers crossed! 

I went to another doctor, this time my gynecologist. If there's one thing I don't get enough of--besides yeast infections, of course--it's propping my feet up in a pair of medical stirrups and letting a virtual stranger take a look at my hoo-ha. A nurse saw me, diagnosed me, and then gave me a prescription for a pill. A single pill. Diflucan. It's magic, see? You just take one pill! See how convenient and hassle-free that is? JUST ONE PILL! Hooray for innovation! No more will I be burdened with an entire blister pack, or, god forbid, a bottle of pills. Because I just take one! And it's so easy!

Except that Diflucan doesn't fucking work. One pill is a freaking joke. I've taken it probably four or five times before and it gets a big F for my crotch still feels like you unleashed some fireants on it. I ended up buying the over-the-counter Monistat 3-day pack, which, if luck is on my side, will give me an allergic reaction that sends me to the emergency room. Total spent treating what started as a cold? About $250. Long live the health care industry.

Tonight I was laying out the front page of the (Juniper Times), as I do, and I was reading through the lead story. It was about an event at the local high school where they simulate a drunk-driving accident and carry students covered in fake blood away in body bags so that everybody cleans up and drives straight on their way home from the Prom. As I was reading, I came across the following quote, high in the story:

"One in 10 drivers on every road is drunk," said (NHS) Assistant Principal (Tony Mayfield) over a loudspeaker to the students. "There's a 200-percent chance that you or someone in your family will either cause or be the victim to a drunk-driving accident ... The prospect is more than likely — it's a virtual certainty."

First of all, nothing is a virtual certainty. More important, though, is the math here: a 200-percent chance? WTF? Is that supposed to mean it's already happened? I was like, okay, obviously this is a typo. They meant 100 percent. Or 20 percent. So I called the editor of this paper.

She said, "Yes, I talked about that quote with (Jennifer (the writer)) and she was adamant that was what the assistant principal said. And we want to be accurate in quoting people."

Right. Even when they cite statistics that are mathematically impossible. Good journalistic principle. Let's print that. 

I said, "Well, okay, so you want to leave it in then?"

She said: "Yes. I'm fairly certain he (the assistant principal) was using hyperbowl*." 

I said, "Yes, (Gail), I'm certain he was using that."

*hyperbole