egg in spoon

guitar hero

2007-12-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

Me: I want to get the kids Guitar Hero for Christmas.

Corinne: No, no… I don't want you doing that. It's too expensive.

Me: It isn't! I found it online for like $89. Of course, we'll see what we get. This version of Guitar Hero will only come with half a guitar or something.

Corinne: Yeah, not so much Guitar Hero. More like Guitar Not-A-Bad-Guy.

do you have cheeken?

2007-11-28T15:23:00.000-05:00

Hola Peeple of the World!

Eet is I! Fred! (Or as you say in your country, Fred!) My girl (her's name ees Jeel) ees no good for the writing thees days so I am here on the blogger to tell you about my advaintures. For I have them many and they will to interest you very much I theenk.

So anyway. Do you know about thees thing called the bath? Eet is horrible. Eet no make my tail to wag. Eet is unpredictable like the cheeken, but in the no bueno way.

Eet is so bad I am having the difficulty to write about it.* Entiendo? But I must purge. Like the Romans. Eet is the only way and the reason I eat the grass. (I like the grass very much. Do you like the grass? Tell me.)

So anyway, one day I am asleeping on the beeg bed, dreaming of my luffer Dante and how him and me chase our balls. How we run and run and run to the bedroom and then to the leaving room and then to the bedroom and then to the leaving room and how him bites at me's balls and me bites at him's balls and how we bark and then we sleep. I am dreaming thees wonderful dream and then I am waked up! I am taked to the place weeth the water! Oh, how I hate the water and eets wetness! And my girl she puts the water on me and makes eet to go all over my body! And eet is mas terrible! (Eet ees terrible for anyway, but more because I theenk she love me and yet...thees. Am I fool?, I theenk.)

And then for worse, she rubs my body with the wetness! There ees much rubbing of all my places. And I no like. For normal, I like the rubbing. But the wetness makes me to forget. The wetness makes me to forget everything! I forget my luffer! I forget hims balls! I forget the cheeken, even! ...

...

...

Noooo! I tells you joke! You are fooled! I can never to forget the cheeken! Seely blogger person.

Anyway.

...

Oh, but me's dignity! Me's pride! Ees forgot. I am shames to tells you, but I shake. With muy fuerte, I shake. Like the time I come face to face with my nemesis, the fearsome Baloo. Him ees cat. But him ees not normal cat. Him ees ninja cat. (I save that story for another day.) But like that, I shake.

Then there ees a beeg rubbing weeth the towel. This ees not so bad. And then in a sudden... I am free! I am free! And I run!

And I rub my belly on the carpet!

And I run!

And I rub my back on the couch!

And I hear "NO FRED!" But I am no care!

I run!

And I make the beeg leap onto the beeg bed and I rub!

I am an ecstasy of the rubbing!

And I hear "FRED, NO!!"

But I am steel no care! For I am free! And the wetness, eet is destroyed!

So anyway. That ees all.

Hasta luego!

* Also because I have only the paws and no thumbs. You no appreciate your thumbs enough. Try to blogger weethout them. Just to try.

p.s. You send cheeken now?

watermelons and lingerie

2007-02-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

"It's cold here," I tell my aunt, living in Albany, NY, who's been racing the snow to the ground, armed with nothing more than a shovel and an indefatigable determination, for about a week now.

"Is it eight degrees?" she asks.

"No, not quite," I laugh.

"Then it's not cold," she says.

But it is cold here, for here. And I'm sitting now in the chilly showroom of Discount Tires, the same showroom I've dallied in on three separate occasions over the past month and a half. A nail here, a curb there, another curb.

And as if that isn't enough to get my attention, last week, I thought for a few days that all my possessions -- everything but some pictures, my clothes and bedroom furniture -- abandoned to storage for the past several months had been auctioned. Defaulted payment they said. A glitch in the system it turns out, and not my (de)fault, but regardless. . . stuff gone. And then, to make a long story short, it wasn't. Thankfully. But still. Something is off.

As I wait for the change, acrid smell of new rubber wrinkling my nose, I'm reading E.B. White's "Here is New York." My boss gave it to me for Christmas with a card that read, "To my writer friend." And when I thanked him, he said, "That book will turn you into a writer."

I like the book. I love the card. I love the sentiment and faith behind it. The feeling of being welcomed into the fold. My boss is a writer and one I admire greatly, but if I told him how much his gift means to me, his nose would wrinkle as if stung with sour smells. But still, one day, I might.

The book is one Mr. White wrote one sweltering summer in New York after he'd relinquished his residency and returned for a season as a "transient," a "vagabond," staying at The Lafayette Hotel. His account so specific. Attentive. Rich. ("In the candid light from unshaded bulbs gleam watermelons and lingerie.") Reading it reminded me that being aware is key. And I haven't been.

When I thought my books and tables and glassware were all gone, I kept saying (and for the record, truly believing), "It's only stuff." And then, "Well, I guess now I'm free."

But it didn't feel free. It felt cold. And irresponsible. I don't want to lose what I've spent a decade and more gathering close. And even with all intact -- no love, no life, no stuff lost -- how much richer would I be today, if I'd been attending more carefully to the details?

please don't call the a.s.p.c.a

2007-02-01T17:35:00.000-05:00

I walk out of the coffee shop and over to the bench where I've tethered Fred -- for no more than five minutes and with enough slack on the leash so he can't pretend to hang himself in protest at being left outside and within plain site through floor to ceiling windows so I can see if he tries anyway -- and find him huddled in the lap of a woman I don't know. This complete stranger is shivering in the cold, arms goose-bumped and blue as it seems she's wearing only a short-sleeved shirt despite the forty degree cold. And then I see she does, in fact, have a leather jacket. Only, she's taken it off. And wrapped it around Fred.

leap of logic

2007-02-01T09:02:00.000-05:00

She said, Freud said there are no such things as accidents. Or something like that. But that we'd save that discussion for another day. (We only ever have 45 minutes at a time, and so we must stay on task.)

Regardless, I didn't know we didn't think Freud was a kook. But then I'm always sort of walking into walls in these conversations. Tripping along happily when I'm stopped up short.

I say, "Uhhh. . . " a lot.

And, "I guess?"

And, defensive, defeated, "I don't know." The frustrating part of which is that I think she does know and just isn't telling.

Usually, though, I'm down with that. Not the not telling, but rather the idea of an intentional universe. I can point to specific examples in friendships, in relationships, in jobs, in travel and in blogging even, that feel so wonderfully, specifically un-accidental. Moments and stretches that feel guided, orchestrated in a perfect symphony of synchronicity. Even if Freud agrees.

But what about when I want off the hook? It's only spilled milk, right? No latent anger there. No hidden sadness. No frustration made manifest. Just milk on the ground.

Can't we leave it at that?

And then this.

Lately, my most concrete acts of good-citizenry are met with bizarro karma.

I help a stranger at the bookstore jump her car.

A few days later, I get a flat tire.

I help a friend jump his car.

A few days later, I get another flat tire.

Yesterday, another friend calls, stranded with a dead battery and could I swing by to help. Of course I oblige, because what am I going to say? The universe says I'm not allowed?

Tires fat with air, I worry them and the meaning of this circle. Am I creating something? Do I mitigate healthy pride with misery? Or can it just be spilled milk?

You know, I just don't know.

once again, into the breach

2007-01-30T16:38:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me why I've been gone, because I don't really know. But I am, I'll say, trying to figure it out. Paying good money (you'd gasp if I told you the sum), to discover why it is I haven't been:

Writing or sleeping or journaling or playing.

Yoga-ing or reading or traveling or praying.

Competing or painting or dating or styling.

Crying or loving or falling or flying.

Or. . . or . . . or . . . or . . .

The ings that aren't are infinite.

But what's money for, if not to invest? And so I consider it a down payment on life. Independent study. A graduate degree in me that -- who knows? -- might lead to the kind that's made of ink and sheep. And better goodness done in the world. And even more bank to bank when I finally learn to ask for what I'm supposedly worth and not settle for the tuppence I think I am today.

You follow?

I barely do, but I've never been so happily confused in my life. Having been miserably confused, I know the difference.

It's called hope.

I've started praying again. And that's a step. There's been a fair share of crying. Which I hate and love and love and hate and hate and love and love and hate . . . . And now, defacto, here I write.

So I suppose there's some progress already. It's not money flushed.

And then today the good doctor said, "If I were you, I'd be writing every day."

And I thought, if you were me, you very obviously wouldn't, because that's not what me does.

So I can only guess that what she really meant is that if I were her being me I'd be writing every day.

In other words, I should be writing every day.

It was more of a quiet dare than I concrete assignment. Or maybe it wasn't even that. I do tend to read unnecessarily vast volumes between other people's lines.

But still. . . I'm going to give it a whirl and we'll just see who wins.

fred out of the box

2006-12-04T07:50:00.000-05:00

Cheeken?

¿Qué? What mean you, "No cheeken?"

I spell eet out for you, "I WANT THE CHEEKEN!!!!"

My lawyer say, "No cheeken, no peectures."

Aind right now? I deeslike being made to wear thees sweater. Eentensly.

in absentia

2006-10-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

The writing assignments call for moths, limbs and blood and I think I should join the fray, but, today, I have no story. Neither today nor in recent memory. In fact, I'm vaguely surprised by the words deeper in and down below, curious about the person who wrote them, because it certainly isn't the me of the here and the now. I can barely fathom an interest in creating language and am formulating a grand plan wherein I co-opt someone else's words for mine very own.

You see, I've got carpal tunnel and in the meantime find my feet itch to tread boards and hit marks again. To let trip words not of my making and better. To surf tsunamis of emotion under lights, minus the post-mood-pangs and apologies that come with kitchen table rages.

So I'm imagining it into being -- you feel me?

A reformed realist, my glass overflows.

But, alas, not so much my blog.

Still, Amazon just sent me a camera and there will be pictures of mostly Fred (I'm sure) to amuse you soon.

So hang in until after Monday. I'm off to Colorado tomorrow and will be back refreshed and hopefully with stories.

Much love chickidees. . .

branch management

2006-09-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

My cousin Corinne and her husband have worked for the same company for some time now, she as a designer and he as a branch manager. Due to a recent promotion, however, (yay!!) Corinne is now a branch manager, too.

"Does that mean you're on the same level now?"

"Well, yes and no. He manages a big showroom with several designers and a whole warehouse full of burly guys and I'll be managing a small boutique store that his branch helps stock. So while we both oversee our own branches, it's like I have one little leaf he has. . . a tire swing."

netflix are the devil

2006-09-02T18:23:00.001-05:00

The man who makes my eggs in the morning came from around the counter yesterday, snuck up behind me and whispered in my ear that I wasn't the only one concerned about the high price of bacon. It wasn't the inappropriate act of intimacy that shocked me, so much as the realization in the moment that it had been so very long since a man had whispered anything to me at all.

I Must.

Absolutely.

Get out.

More often.

smile

2006-08-29T06:52:00.000-05:00

A father and his eight-year-old daughter -- both bespectacled and be-helmeted, with kneepads and elbow pads and backpacks -- out for a Sunday afternoon ride, wait at the corner for the light to change as they balance effortlessly on their unicycles.

the whore moans, y'all

2006-08-25T06:33:00.000-05:00

Monday. A delicious paraffin wax hand dip with parking karma you wouldn't believe.

Tuesday. The nap you can't have.

Wednesday. The hot, sick and headache of the nap too long indulged.

Thursday. A violent scribble in black ballpoint, the paper DESTROYED!

Thursday Night. The purple sore jaw and swagger of Fight Club.

Right now. Just the bruise.

* * *

I'll be the one this weekend buried to my neck in down and eating ice cream for breakfast.

Pray for rain.

And that the Netflix arrive -- please God -- on time.

Hola, Peeple of the World!

2006-08-10T06:21:00.000-05:00

Jeel, she ees taking nop now and so I write you on the blogger. She no let me write when she awake and I want to tell you 'bout an advainture I have weeth my luffer Pichu-Pichu. Pichu, he ees of the Jock Russell type, so he ees. . . how you say? Craysees? He ees very loco. Especialmente weeth the balls. He luffs him balls. He want to visit Machu-Piccu cause him name ees close to same, but I no like hammocks with the back and the forth and the back and the forth. Theenk about it.

So, now I tell you. I was weeth my Pichu and we were nopping on the beeg bed, and there was, how you say? A beeg noise! Muy alto! The thunder! I think maybe. Or maybe the front door, Eet opens! Or maybe the garbage man, He there! Or maybe the gun, Eet shoots! Or maybe the vacuum cleaner, Eet attacks! Oh, how we hate the beeg noises, my luffer Pichu and me! Whatever they are! I tell you, eet no matters us. We bark.

We bark so to destroy the beeg noise!

And we bark! And we bark! And we bark! And we bark! And we bark! And we bark! (No human peeple to say us, "NO!" and "STOP!") And so we bark! And we bark! And we bark! And then I lose my luffer Pichu! In my barking, I run to attack the beeg noise from under the beeg bed and my Pichu, I no know where he goes! And the beeg noise, it goes away and Pichu ees nowhere I can see from under the bed. And so I sleep, because you know barking at the beeg noises makes a chi-chi to sleep much. And then I wake and Pichu, he ees there! On top of the bed! He is very brave, my luffer Pichu. And I am happy he is live and so I dance!

So anyway, that ees all.

Eet has been nice talking you.

Besos de lingua,
Fred

P.S. Do you have cheecken? Send me, (but no tell Jeel):

Fred
Under Beeg Bed
Atlanta

Photo of me and my luffer Pichu taken by Audra.

do i dare to eat a peach?

2006-07-03T20:17:00.000-05:00

In the months after the tape popped from the seams of her already poorly patched and clumsily reassembled heart, she lost ten pounds from sorrow.

"You're so thin," she heard like a mantra. Manna she couldn't quite choke down.

"Yeah, well, you know what they say about fat and happy, right?" A smirk-smile. "I'm not."

She could never work out why no one laughed. But then, she always liked the sound of nails on a chalkboard, too.

And when she'd call home to cry of Man's Great Imperfections, her mother would only sigh, "Oh, honey, we all have feet of clay."

She mm-hmmed in agreement, yet feared her own were, more likely, made of lead. And though every night she'd fall asleep with prayers for the gift of alchemy on her lips, each morning upon turning back the covers, she'd still find the same heavy grey lumps sinking resolutely into the mattress.

It made her cranky.

What man wants a lead-footed girl, she'd wonder. What job for a woman with immovable feet? How could God curse her with the desire for flight and at the same time such clearly effective anchors? All her hot air was ever for naught.

Her sleep marred by dreams of sharks and sandbags, sometimes she'd lie awake on her bed, cumbersome feet flopped outward, painfully twisting the tendons attached to her knees, and watch the ceiling fan spin, her eye never able to catch up with the whirl for more than a second.

And months begot years and she grew thinner and thinner.

. . . an egg under a heat lamp, albumen in clear relief . . .

. . . a tobacco leaf drying in the sun . . .

. . . a tooth or a white plastic spork . . .

. . . a jellyfish . . .

. . . Depression Glass in amber . . .

. . . a toenail . . .

. . . a smear of Vaseline . . .

And then one day all that was left were the feet, planted where she left them in the corner of my room. They make excellent doorstops.

I don't know her name and Fred, who knew her, can't remember it. But he says her epitaph read something like: She was remarkably well-grounded.

* * *

With Amy Hempel and Kate Atkinson in the back of my mind.
Title from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

friendly neighbor

2006-06-28T20:33:00.000-05:00

Some inappropriate-for-work entertainment for you via YouTube courtesy of your Friendly Neighbor and mine. But don't let that stop you. Just close your door. Turn down your speakers. And prepare to experience the wonder that is Chris Cox. And HAY the laughter. And oh yes, the horror, the wonderful horror that is the Redneck Vampire. They are who they are. And I love these people more than I can express in words. Truth.

The write-up: Award winning Atlanta based filmmakers exploit mankind for the sake of a hearty laugh on FNTV.

The love: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FriendlyNeighbor

This score of films past will keep you busy for a bit. I've been told new ones will arrive shortly.

Enjoy!

no effing wonder

2006-06-25T11:07:00.000-05:00

A friend tells me she's reading a book that after weeks and weeks and months and months she still can't quite finish and she can't quite figure out why.

"Really? What's it called?"

"Oh, it's this book called Boredom."

"Hm. And that's not a page-turner? Shocker."

on the wax

2006-06-11T19:15:00.000-05:00

It's a play in an outdoor amphitheatre, reminiscent of Shakespeare, but older. Twelfth century tragedy. Cuckolded and eventually murdered husband. Star-crossed lover/killers tortured by their crime. Comic fools who posture, growl and arrrrgh like pirates. Minimalist set: two chairs, shared props, red scarves to indicate blood, some Christmas lights and the dinner plate moon for illumination. Community theatre, a little loose around the edges, but endearingly entertaining. Fred doesn't suffer fools and so snaps at their ankles as they pass through the aisles. One arrrrghs at him and he barks in protest. The audience laughs. The troupe passes a basket during intermission, like church, and the small crowd pulls crumpled bills from pockets and purses in solidarity with the players. This night we play Medicis to their thespian gypsies. Their art is ours.

After, we go to a local bar and sit down with a friend and two strangers, girls our friend met by happenstance. Sometimes beer just tastes better in company. Shots less sad when shared.

One of the stranger-girls has a knee brace and announces her name is Shannon, or Tristan or Trouble or Crazy or Crazy Trouble. Crazy Trouble would leave her exes in peace if she could, but they keep taking her to court. She was humiliated on the Judge Joe Brown show, she says. He ruled against her, but gave her three hundred dollars to appear, put her up in a swank L.A. hotel and even paid the penalty to the ex who won the "suit." But she was still humiliated and drank a half bottle of Jäger (from a pump bottle no less) to dull the sting. Passed out on the rooftop of that swank hotel. You can still see her episode in syndication if you want. The most popular episode of the last half-year. But she doesn't want to brag.

The knee brace she says, is just for security. She doesn't really need it for drinking. Usually, she's got on thigh-high boots so you can't see it. I think of the comic-fool-pirates from an hour ago. She would make a good addition to the cast just playing herself. She enumerates the series of accidents that make the brace a must and then says she wraps herself around a pole. I wonder at the present tense, imagining her having crashed a motorcycle or maybe even a hot air balloon. But then she adds, two times a week. She's the Pride of the South Side, she says. A dancer at the Crazy Horse. Trouble, indeed. But I bet you can hear her laugh all the way from Texas.

It's tough for the stranger-girls to leave. There's confusion about the bill. We don't mind, we say. We'll happily cover you if you're short. You were good company, at least worth a drink or two. Go enjoy your night. No worries. But Rhianna (stranger-girl two) is distraught and can't let go. Trouble, outside the fence by now, balances on the lower beam of the railing and leans in toward us smiling and rolling her eyes at her friend's distress. Her keys, tied to a shoestring, swing from her neck -- a latchkey stripper. Pippi Longstocking grown up and gone awry. After many, many minutes they go. They're walking home and I think I hadn't given them enough credit.

The friend is really a friend of a friend and he's glad to see us. He's soaring on life, only weighed down by the anchor of a broken heart. Life is rarely perfect. Often a disappointment. But he has dreams of bigger things and smaller things and ultimately richer things, so even in this very real and present sadness, his confidence is palpable, even if he's selling it to sell it to himself. Still, one doesn't need tarot cards or tea leaves to scry his future success. He's just one of those guys who will be. Whose will, will be.

By now, my eyes scratchy with pollen, are too itchy for me to sit longer or go anywhere else but home. But I'm going home to my new bower bedroom, saturated with bigmoonlight, airy and clean and high above the street. A perfect vantage for Fred to bark at passing fools. A place where I can rest easy. So I don't mind going home tonight. A day full behind me and life, in this wee hour of tomorrow, waxing bright. I don't mind at all.

* * *
Hat tip to Chuck Palahniuk for style.

next top bottle

2006-05-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

The security guards at my office are lovely -- really -- even if they're a bit forward at times. Even if they do tend to work lines I wouldn't sign after three dirty martinis on a night I was actually, erm, buying, if you get my drift. So certainly not while flashing my badge, head down, quick smile thanks, into work. But then this morning, from one of the guards, this:

"You look like a bottle."

Which slowed, if didn't stop me. Odd of him to point it out, I'm thinking. A bit inappropriate perhaps. But, I do. I do look like a bottle. A little thrill of recognition. I am seen for what I am! I am accurately defined! I am a 5'1", brown-haired, bottle-shaped girl in desperate need of an eyebrow waxing and it is good.

It made my day, I'm not ashamed to say.

And then it struck me that the guard had a cold.

oh.

what. ever.

And then it struck me that I was on the elevator and ten floors up before I'd figured it out.

oi.

No bottle, I. Though apparently, to my dismay, just as clever.

dig it

2006-05-23T07:06:00.000-05:00

During a walk on the beach, I pass a young Chinese family. The mother is making lunch under the shade of an umbrella. The father, plastic shovel in hand, is working on a hole as his barely-toddler son watches intently from the edge, feet dangling.

A burst of joy stops me in my tracks: They made it!!

And then waiting a moment longer to see if anyone else emerges, when no one does, I continue on.

avoiding the quibble

2006-05-20T14:56:00.002-05:00

What a disaster this place is.

Do I really pack the feather boa? My other sleeping bag -- perfectly serviceable but bulky compared to the new one? The perpetually tarnished penguin-shaped coffee urn? (I mean where will I find a penguin-shaped coffee urn again? Nevermind that I've never used it. I might.) The sketch a stranger in a bar drew me on a napkin? Sweet, yes, but the memory of its creation hanging by a pinky on the edge of some atrophied synapse.

Do I care?

Will I care? In a week? In a year? Ten? Will some imaginary daughter one day miss that which I'm giving away (throwing away) willy-nilly?

I don't think so, but one never knows. Regardless, right now, I'm half tempted to turn the key on this place with nothing under my arm but a box of pictures. I'm that over it.

While I quibble with myself, I'm avoiding myself by trolling blogs while I should be building boxes and making runs to donate shoes and sheets. And I came upon (came upon, as if I don't check her site seventeen times a day) this. Which reminded me. . .

Walking out of work the other day, I hunched my shoulders against the light rain that was falling. And then I remembered being a kid at camp, when rain meant mud and mud meant field game fun. When I not only held my head high despite the rain, but turned my face up into it and laughed for the sheer joy/life/mud of it. And as I tip-toed through the parking lot avoiding puddles, I realized I was going home, so who cared if I got a little wet? I straightened my shoulders and looked to the sky, reveling (thankfulling) in the small fact that I could feel it on my skin. Only sad that there wasn't mud to stomp, tromp, scoop and throw. No lake to jump into afterward, a big soapy bathtub. Bad for the environment maybe, but great for the soul.

Who needs thotchkes when there's rain as a reminder? Right?

Yeah, yeah, but what about that lamp I used to love so and now miss the point of? I mean, I do need light. Right? Right?

*sigh*

the best destination

2006-05-19T06:43:00.000-05:00

Fingers clasped in a fist under my chin, elbows opening and closing, faux handles for the bellows of my lungs, breath in for a count of six and then out and in again and out again and in again and out again. Seemingly forever until we can finally move on to something even more grueling. The breath should focus the mind. The quiet mind should sooth the restless spirit. But all I can think is that I smell like pastrami. Do you know how disturbing it is to breath in your own pastrami smell? And compelling? I'm suddenly hungry.

Now I'm thinking about my hunger. That and that I'm mad, downright angry at Shonda Rhimes, Exec Producer of Grey's Anatomy. Standing on one leg, the other straight out in front of me, looking over my shoulder at the back of the room, chin and bottom of foot facing in absolute and opposite directions. Impossible and I don't care. How dare she let Izzie cut that wire?! What is she thinking? That's completely completely inexcusable. How am I to forgive her?! How is she going to fix this? How is she going to make it right, dammit?

Mmm. . . with a little sauerkraut.

And then the giggles start. Like the time my mom and I were visiting a new church and the soloist's voice bore a distinct resemblance to that of Big Bird. It starts as a grin and ultimately explodes through the nose. No grace. No composure. Body ragdoll weak under the force of the hilarity and that i-just-can't-stop-god-help-me-but-i-can't shake of the head. Toe pointed behind me to the ceiling, reaching to the mirror with my opposite hand, body dropping to perpendicular with the floor. Don't look at your cohort. Breath. Don't think about how oh-my-god-how-funny-it-is. My mother and I had to leave the church, running up the aisle, still in a fit of giggles, never to return. And yet they say God loves laughter. And I can't help but agree. Why else would he have given Big Bird a solo?

On rye.

I'm SNORT-laughing by now. It's all Audra's fault. In her funny boyshorts with the incongruously bulky fly. Her intense commitment to not falling out of the posture. Arms waving. Face straining. It's not funny at all. But it is. And she's trying not to laugh too which makes it worse. And I smell like a hot sandwich. And I keep wondering if the instructor is going to offer me a schmeer of spicy mustard with my position adjustment. I'm on my knees and gasping for breath. Not from the yoga. From trying -- oh-god-i'm-trying-so-very-hard -- not to laugh. And failing miserably. Tears streaming.

I'm mortified and that too makes it worse. All those silent, stoic yogi's staring as they stand on singular legs like so many disgruntled storks.

Have you reached a state of enlightenment maybe? the instructor wants to know. She doesn't mind the laughing. She really is a fabulous teacher.

Enlightement? Doubtful. Still, I like the idea. Laughter as evidence of such. Not just a medicine for the pain, but the destination as well.

And man, does it feel good.

Even just the idea.

limbo on the train

2006-05-16T06:35:00.000-05:00

My direction on the periphery, I feel in the right space, on the right square, in the most appropriate conversation as long as I don't turn my head. Because when I do, it all evaporates and the ground, so seemingly solid a moment before when the mantra, it will all work out, held firm, drops out. A surprise trap door in the boards, deus ex machina in reverse. A mean trick. So much fairy dust. The rainbow of promise lost, refraction misaligned for color when both eyes gaze.

So many words. Too many. But I can't choose or eliminate. The problem ever and always, perennially, recurrent and perpetual. The constant constant. The unvariable. Decisions never my thing.

Thankfully, by default and Divine interference, I'm surrounded by doers and deciders. The only reason I've been anywhere or done anything are the uber motivated individuals with whom I've fallen, by some greater grace, into favor. Come with, they say. Go here, they urge (ticket proffered, itinerary filled out, anxieties soothed before I've stressed). Left to myself, I'd nap a lot, I think. I'd eat even more canned olives than I already do. My hair would grow to my feet, the only motivation to cut it, the frustration and trouble of tripping.

"No decision, is a decision," my Auntie Mame always says.

"Just start," advises Audra. "The more you say you're bad at it, the truer it will be."

"I hate making decisions," Steph types as we chat online.

"Me too," I tap back, "but I just don't know how."

"We should practice!!" she suggests.

"Totally! But, um, again. . .how?"

Truthfully, important decisions get made, I tell myself. Or so I've always thought. But here I am, without a place of my own to call my own. My old apartment half-disassembled, a quarter boxed and completely unlivable. My bed in an unsleepable Siberia, next door to the wackos with whom I simply cannot share a roof, let alone a wall.

Lease broken, I'm up and out May 31.

Momentary panic: WHERE AM I GOING TO LIVE!?!?

And then I look away. Out of the corner of my eye, I feel more than see the glint of a signal beacon. If I don't strain, I can hear the faint gong of a bell across the water, muffled by the fog, but distinct. And for realsies (to steal from Jill Twiss for a moment), and not simply for effect or in metaphor, I saw a rainbow the other day. And it was at the exact same moment that the guy on NPR began talking about the hidden symbolism in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." And that's not the least bit relevant, except that it made me think.

Sometimes what's on the surface isn't the whole story. Perhaps the where of where I'm not isn't entirely because I can't decide. Perhaps it's merely a moment on the way, a blink on the train. I'm still en route and there's nothing wrong with that. So. I'm deciding to wait and see what that surprise is, confident in the knowledge that it will, indeed, all work out.

* * *

When I wrote this on Saturday, I didn't have a place to stay come June. The happy middle -- end not yet in sight -- is that I now do. I'm moving in with a friend next month for an indefinite period of time while she's selling her house, while I'm getting ducks sorted and labeled. So limbo continues. Still, I can't express clearly enough how each stepping stone, appearing as they do right as it seems I'm about to drop into the water, reaffirms my faith, my joy in the knowledge that everything is happening just as it should. Pretty cool, huh?

the weight of regret

2006-04-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

Having seriously considered a new and potentially appealing circumstance, the original one, even if good, will never be quite the same. The shade of the question, "What if?" ever lurking in the corner. -- Rikki Gensheer

limbo

2006-04-22T00:13:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know, I'm writing from limbo. I'm homeless -- the situation with the door-banging neighbors (I'm sorry, referenced posts removed) having become untenable -- but certainly not friendless. Not friendless by far. In fact, I've got a surfeit of friends who without discussion have offered the same line over and over, "I have a spare room. Come stay with me. As long as you like." It's overwhelming and wonderful, all this love directed at me. So much so, I whistled today on my way into work, much I might add, to the amusement of my boss.

"What's wrong with you?" he wanted to know.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm happy?"

And all day long. "Did you hear Jill whistling this morning? I think there's something wrong with her."

What he doesn't know, what I didn't know, is that I may have been lonely. Not sad lonely, but isolated in my own thing a bit lonely, leaving cabinets perennially open, shoes in the middle of the hall and the bed always unmade. Because who cares, right? A dinner of cereal from the box is a fine meal. Or so I thought.

But right now I'm living with two good friends who have dinner ready when I get home, space for Fred on their couch, post work conversation to spare and room in their Sunday wash for a few of my whites. My life has improved drastically in limbo and I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to leave.

But here's what I know: I'm open. In this uncertain space, I feel the freedom to wait. The right situation will present itself. The most-best decision will be an easy one. And I will land on my feet in a better place than I could have ever fathomed for myself. It's all in God's hands and that has ever been the most comfortable spot of all.

In the meantime, Rikki is making her grandmother's soup for dinner. Audra and Satchel have a bed to spare. Esther's promised a weekend of wine and laughter. Molly and Cara and Monica can't say enough about their extra rooms while Betsy ups the ante with a pool and Pamela keeps stressing that her fish needs a sitter.

If you haven't ever been to limbo, I highly recommend it. No passport required. Traveling companions, a must. Itinerary? Pleasantly undetermined.

Night, y'all!

bug snappers

2006-04-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

The bees behind my house are big and fat and perfect. Harmless buzzers buzzing busily (if sluggishly) about until I notice that they're chewing holes in the poles that hold the roof up over the porch.

But whatever.

I rent.

Yesterday, one hovered, drunk on wood, needle to nose (or whatever sniffs on one of those) with Fred, and it took all the pup's willpower not to SNAP that brave and foolishly curious bee. Fred's great joy in life is chasing bugs and SNAPping them and this bug was just begging to be bagged.

"Nooooo Fred," I said low and though he vibrated visibly with bug snapping fervor, he sat super still, only his big, bug eyes growing a bit bigger, a bit buggier. If you can't bite them, be(e) them.

"I said 'No,' Fred."

Thing is, if he could manage not to mangle the wee monster (and the bee, in a last act of good would agree not to attack its assassin), I'd let him get one. Because I want one. I want me a big, fat, perfect bee to die a perfectly natural death, leaving a perfectly preserved bee body, so I can gift it to my and Fred's friend Audra, because she loves snapping bugs, too.

Who? Me?

2006-04-03T16:32:00.000-05:00

The Grup Career, or Take This Job and Allow Me to Do It From Home, With Occasional Snowboarding Trips

If being a Grup means being 35, and having a job, and using a messenger bag instead of a briefcase, and staying out too late too often, and owning more pairs of sneakers (eleven) than suits (one), and downloading a Hot Hot Heat song from iTunes because it was on a playlist titled "Saturday Errands," and generally being uneasy and slightly confused about just what it means to be an adult in these modern times -- in short, if it means living your life in fundamentally the same way that you did when you were, say, 22 -- then, let's face it, I'm a Grup.

Oi.

flowers of apology & dogged lies

2006-04-01T16:08:00.000-05:00

Thank you all for your concern. It's nice to know that in a pinch I could email any of you to call 911.

Which is a good thing to know, because the saga continues. . . .

The next night Robin and JD knocked on my door bearing flowers, apologies and excuses: Robin is on medication and really shouldn't have been drinking, but it was his birthday and so, you know. . . .

Yes, I do. And Fred does. And so do the police, the neighborhood and now, the blogosphere. We all know.

The flowers are pretty, but as predicted, they have outlived the peace, because the very next Monday there was a repeat of the yellingbangingslammingscreaming, though this time at 2 a.m. and thankfully, not on my door, which is the only reason I didn't repeat my call the police.

When I saw JD the next night, I asked if Robin had celebrated another birthday.

What?

The yellingbangingslammingscreaming?

Huh? Oh! No, that was me and my friends.

Mm-hmm. (Me, purse-lipped and eyebrow raised.) As it turned out -- Can you believe it? -- dogs chased JD and his friends down the street as they were coming home from the bar. Dogs! Big, mean, dogs, with snarly mouths and wicked teeth and generally unpleasant dispositions. Robin wasn't even with them.

A few hours later, I saw Robin, beaten and scabbed up like he'd run into a brick wall with his face, which is precisely what he said he'd done (highly possible, possibly doubtful), and he apologized again -- not for the ruckus after the run from the dogs (because, of course, the dogs don't exist anywhere but in JD's convoluted fabric of lies which he thinks I actually believe, not that Robin was there anyway), but for the demons that haunt him and cause him to drink and then subsequently stumble face-first into walls thereafter to be followed by the yellingbangingslamingscreaming -- a feeble exercise in exorcism. He just can't help it. But this last bout was a sign from God, he said. He can't drink, he said. He knows that now.

Apparently, everyday is a birthday for Robin.

And apparently, God's being free and easy with the signs, but as with all things God, the meaning is left wide open to interpretation.

I see the signs, too. And my signs say to meet with a real estate agent. This week.

\Ope\, v. t & i.

To open.

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know What rainbows teach and sunsets show? [Poetic] -- Emerson.

Jill! Jill! Ope! Ope the door! [Inebriated] -- Robin.

(dictionary.com)

a knock, knock, knocking on my chamber door

2006-03-21T05:17:00.000-05:00

The house is a wreck and I've just called the cops.

crapcrapcrap.

I knew I should have cleaned this weekend, but there were those two parties and all that napping to get done and now I have less than three minutes to sweep through the entire house, kick my clothes into the closet and stuff them into drawers, shove the mail and assorted stacks of papers blown by some unknown wind to the four corners of my house into some semblance of a stack, toss dishes (neatly) into the sink and move the bathroom cabinet back into the bathroom where it belongs instead of where it's been (in the hallway) since the last time I mopped the bathroom floor.

Fred's duck, a huge stuffed toy the size of a three year old child, is lying face down on the living room floor, bits of fluff strewn around him like a bizarro CSI shooting victim and it just somehow seems wrong. So I throw him (the duck) over the couch feeling criminal in the process (evidence tampering) and as I do, catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that my bangs are doing a better than fair impression of Cameron Diaz's coiffeur from There's Something About Mary. Crap. Is it an inappropriate reaction to reach for hair gel in a crisis? Do I have time for a quick blow dry?

The cop is ridiculously attractive. Of course. The gel didn't take. Of course. And Fred is barking his head off. Of course. My feet are freezing in flip flops and I've got that nervous dry mouth thing from trying to keep my facts straight, clear and simple while unsuccessfully navigating the zipper on my sweater (silently cursing myself for not sleeping in a bra. . .think ahead Jill!) and managing a maniacal Chihuahua mix who really doesn't like people in hats - even nice, good-looking police officers in hats. He doesn't like hats like he doesn't like doors that bang in the night (or at any hour, really) and so Fred's having a bad go of it, because it was the repeated and very loud banging of a door that woke us. Which is just what I was telling Officer Adorable.

He just kept saying, "Jill, Jill! We need to ope. Ope!"

And I said, "I'm not opening the door, Robin! (Robin, in a nutshell, is my new duplex mate -- who may or may not have once been a woman -- who lives with this big burly dude named J.D. who owns his own carpet cleaning company. Maybe. Upon meeting me, J.D., in practically the same breath, a) asked if I knew anyone with a truck to help him move his bed from his old place and b) generously offered me a gig cleaning carpets over the weekends if I ever needed extra cash. To which, because I'm a nice person, I didn't suggest that he clean an extra carpet or two himself so he could afford to rent his own truck, and instead declined with a thank you on both counts.)

And he kept saying,"Jill, ope!"

So I said, "Do I need to call someone?"

And he said. . . I think he said yes. And I said, "Do I need to call the cops?" and I . . . I'm not sure what he said, but I said, "I'm calling the cops." And all the while I'm talking, my sweater still won't zip and I think there's a coffee stain on the shirt underneath and Fred is barking barking barking at the very cute cop and I'm thinking, please don't come into my house.

He doesn't.

But then I feel cheated. I mean, I did all that cleaning. Also, it seems somehow not very thorough. Aren't they supposed to take a look around? Bear witness to the thinness of my walls and the sturdiness of my doors and write it up in a report that gets filed and ultimately ignored? Are my feelings of no importance here?

Anyway, as it turns out, Robin was just very drunk and just very badly needed my attention at four in the morning and thought the best way to get it was to slam my screen door over and over and over again until I woke up to come have a chat. That's the story I'm telling myself, anyway. Either that or he was having a stroke. (We aren't, at this time fielding any contradictory scenarios for this early morning incident that might suggest a lover's spat or some real psychological difficulties on the part of my new neighbors, thank you for your concern. I have to live here and denial is my friend.)

In the end, Officer Adorable banged on Robin's door to tell him to stop banging on my door. Robin stuttered, mumbled and slurred that hadn't done anything. Officer Adorable told him that he should stop doing nothing then and then he left. Cute, but not so helpful. And that is that.

Anyway, if only for the sake of Fred's nerves, it really may be time to move.

But then that would mean I'd really have to clean. So I'm weighing my options.

gobi begone

2006-03-15T01:29:00.000-05:00

Would you believe me if I said I've got too much to write about? If I said that I have been writing, cross my heart, pages and pages of mostly aborted paragraphs, stilted prose and weak imagery that feel to me like a desert I'll never cross? The words eddying around me like so much dry sand with no moisture to give them form and life? If I could only write with pithy brilliance, I'd be here more often. But my sentences just won't abbreviate themselves. My paragraphs prefer to breeeeath. And I just . . . can't.

What up, drama? Dude, I'm just tarred. I've been doing an hour and a half of yoga, five times a week in 100 degree plus temperatures, (sometimes getting up at 5:30 in the morning when only the military and the misbegotten have any call to be awake, let alone active) for the past seven weeks and while my body is coming along, my body of work suffers. There are just so many plates I can spin and still take Fred to the park for his daily romps. (For the record, the rest of you writing out there with kids in the background and fulltime jobs and chemical dependencies are studs. I can barely find time to bathe.) But the yoga challenge I've been doing is over after this week and I'm dosing myself with pedialyte and buckwheat pancakes, so I should be back in writing shape soon.

In the meantime, thanks for your continued visitation. The three of you who click on this site eighty-seven times a day are more important to me than you know.

overheard: nemo

2006-03-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

- Have you seen Nemo yet?
- Nope.
- Seriously, Veronica, what are you waiting for?
- Seriously, Betty? Children.

i like the dave matthews bland

2006-02-17T07:13:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me recently: As mainstream as I am, it's a surprise I have any friends at all.

february 11

2006-02-11T09:02:00.000-05:00

On the upside:
Thomas Edison
Didier Lockwood (I just really like his name)
Sheryl Crow
Jennifer Aniston
And among many, many others. . .
Me

On the downside:
Jeb Bush

And that's as much of a political statement as I ever intend to make here.

powder

2006-02-01T23:43:00.000-05:00

My keyboard seems too small for my hands right now, my house too tiny, my body too compact to hold everything that's swirling inside. And all in the best of ways. Vacation is so, so good and right after coming back I can never remember what's stopped me from taking the time to just go in those stretches when I feel trapped by work and life and the responsibilities I routinely blow out of proportion just to hear the boom.

Because it's only when I'm outside of all that, the routine of mornings when it's a struggle to even brush my teeth and of evening-time, sense-deadening television schedules that I remember how remarkably capable I am. Moving in the world and interacting with strangers on planes and in faraway cafes in climates so different from the familiar that I remember that I really, really like myself and the planet on which we live.

I like myself in the world where there are no expectations and deadlines, and yet adventure lies in wait over the shallow horizon of the next minute. When I get up earlier than I'd expect even though I don't have to and go to bed at reasonable hours because, the marrow of the day drained, there's no reason to stretch it beyond its natural borders. When food and sleep are well-earned and all the more precious. Beer and coffee nectars, not medicants.

I learned to snowboard and Jessica, let me tell you, it's amazing. Once you get past the falling and the part where you lose momentum on the flats and have to sit down (again) and take your board off (again) to walk to the next incline (again) it's not so bad. If you can get to the part where even when you're sitting (again) and unstrapping (again) and walking (again), that you take a moment to look around at the 14,000 foot peaks you've only seen as movie backdrops or as postcards on other people's refrigerators and at the sky in between that's just as impossibly bigly blue and realize that the air you're breathing is so clean you can feel your molecules expanding to drink it in . . . . It makes "purple mountain's majesty" seems like an understatement. I kept thinking, kept thinking, kept thinking, God I am so lucky. And thank you.

The first day I fell a lot and thereafter fell less and less as I learned to drift like a falling leaf and then to connect my points and navigate down accidental moguls and grades intended for upperclassmen without killing myself. I finally made turns and had the pleasure of floating through powder. I never knew what powder was. Not viscerally. And it's a joy no one in life shouldn't not experience. My vocabulary for snow has expanded exponentially and I want to learn more like I love Fred. (March maybe, please!)

And now I'm home, but I'm still slipping over the snow, maintaining the momentum through yoga and vicarious association. Through my friend Monica, just back from Spain, and through Marta, Paloma and Kelly who live there. Through my friends Chris and Criss in Shanghai. And finally, through my friend Steph and her husband Grady, home finally from Paris who are now on their way to holiday in Africa. In my mind I'm traveling with them. To go to Africa, it would only be three thousand dollars, another two weeks of time off, a few uncomfortable immunizations and one even more uncomfortable conversation with my boss. "I know I just got back, but. . . ." The bigger part of me knows I'm not going along -- though I can't help but add, this time. I will one day. In the meantime dinner and brunch with them and with another dear friend, Allyson, in itself was an adventure of improbable synchronicity and specific connection built (I'm convinced) before we ever met or were even born. And the laughter like powder, a gift from heaven and better than any I've ever been able to hold in my hands.

So I'm back, and yet all weekend long and into this I keep thinking, keep thinking, keep thinking God I am so lucky. And thank you.

yoga loooooove

2006-01-23T17:37:00.000-05:00

The yoga I'm used to doing is of the sinew-twisting, bucket-sweating, birth-cursing variety. It's 26 postures over the course of 90 minutes in 106 degree heat. Add humidity. The instructor might kneel on your back or "help" you contort your leg into a more uncomfortably impossible position and will often, yell, (yell mind you) "Change!" to signal a posture's end, usually accompanying the order with an authoritative clap.

And I love it.

Loved it.

Once upon a time I loved it.

And then life got in the way and I quit and I missed being all lithe (well. . . ) and strong and good-sleep/good-eat/good-attitude Jill. In the end, however, I haven't been miserable enough without it to brave the ten classes it would take to get past the place where death camps out in the back picking off the newcomers with his rancid breath. (Occasionally, I'll admit, the place does smell like feet. Another reason I'm less than inclined.)

Anyway, this weekend, I took a class called Yoga Love. (Yoga Looooove.) Candles. Soothing music. Incense. A little light stretching, some deep breathing and then toward the end Hila invited us to put on our warm clothes or perhaps cover ourselves with a blanket (WTF??) and "Oh, does anybody need an eye pillow?" (Eye pillow?!) and we took a nap! I got out of bed on a Sunday morning after a nine hour travel day to take a nap?

I'm still having a hard time reconciling that: napping as exercise.

I should be thrilled, I know, but I feel cheated. I'm already a black belt in napping.

So tonight: Bikram.

Pray for me.

* * *

Snowboarding update later this week. Just to ease your mind, however, I'll say this: I'm not dead and I love it like air.

an egg in motion

2006-01-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

I'm loath to even sit here, unsure of what words lie in wait. If there are even any words worth typing, let alone posting. But I feel the urge to claim this sense of concrete expectation. Forward-moving, positive, living expectation. As often as I've come here to whine, there is reason today to celebrate.

I took a risk. I produced. The outcome, out of my hands, isn't my worry. I did my part and in that there is deep satisfaction. The design, if I do say so myself, is beautiful. Clean. Clean like my house will never be. Clear like I'd like my mind and heart to be. (Here, before I digress, I must remind myself: baby steps.) I'm given to chaos and color, so that I could create something so crisp. . . it's a mystery that's beyond me. And like all my best artistic endeavors, it feels not of my own hand.

I like when I remember that I am only the egg.

There have been times when I've let the channel take me where it will. Existed, briefly, in that state of hyper aware release, comfortably traveling in the dip of my spoon. Obstacles, another's responsibility. My only responsibility, to trust. It's a choice to live there. And one I allow my penchant for and frankly, my enjoyment of misery to prevent.

This year, however, has begun with two bold and positive choices. Opportunities weren't so much offered, but I asked for them anyway. Trusted the Hand when it pointed the way. I actually made the decisions and to my great surprise, followed through with the requests. (And not just by shout-wishing in my head. The words formed out loud. Audible even to other people.) And all the while I forgot, for some strange reason, to tick off a list of negatives. To allow my fear of the no to prevail. The word fail briefly lost its meaning.

On Saturday, I leave to go snowboarding. I can't think of a better way to begin the year than with this bit of adventure in the company of good-hearted and fun-loving people who don't mind that I invited myself to their party. When I get back, someone may have judged the very clean hat I tossed unsolicited into the ring. But the beauty of it is, it's none of my concern. A body in motion stays in motion and I'm telling you, my friends, that this will be a good year.

the universal hat

2006-01-02T00:18:00.000-05:00

Thursday night, nothin' goin'. Sadie called.

"We're at Audra's. Bring wine and Fred." (click)

Grabbing coat, Fred, sweater for Fred, keys and phone I can't remember what time the market down the street closes. It's 9:30 now.

Call Sadie back.

"What ti. . ."

"10:00."

Ten words have never made me feel so wonderfully known and loved.

* * *

When I've got ~~time~~ motivation, I'll recount the rest of the evening which involved organic sangria, grecco-canine roman "wrestling," (Fred so hearts Satchel), wine as a paint medium, Russian mail-order brides and the Universal Hat. Among other things.

Happy New Year!

one in five

2005-12-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

My ego's white blood count is dangerously low and I've been radiating myself with words, words, words both written and spoken and now feel the weaker for it. Skinless. Vulnerable. Generally nauseated. (Or is it nauseous? I can never remember, and right now I'm too spent to suss it out.)

I'm sick of the sound of my own voice, but can't help, still, wanting someone to FIX me. Make it better. Kiss it away. Just hold me while I sleep. My surgeon friends can only look at me with grave, honest eyes and say it sucks. If you want, here are some needles. Try a scalpel. Doctor yourself.

Why must healing make me think of blood? I'm intrigued by the grotesque allure of leeches and therapy.

It helps to read good writing. I dream about running. I'm inspired by great art. And when I need stimulating conversation, I have places to go. These are all blessings. I'm trying to remember that blessings are good things, but they're almost too many to count and I have begun to push them before me like bricks in a wheel barrow. Ridiculous, I know. I really must learn to build stairs. In 2006, I will build stairs.

I call my cousin, Allyson, who is sorry for my downer day, though certainly not for me. She advises that I pick myself up, brush off my skirt and keep going. My dark prognosis swept aside -- four out of five dentists aren't always right -- the sound of her smile gives me back my breath.

momentary reversal. please ignore.

2005-12-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

Ignore what she said. She loves the ladder. Loves being ranked and filed with Dewey Decimal precision, measured and ordered (category: unremarkable chicken), if for no other reason than in a pinch, it'll give her something to rail against. The injustice of it. The mistake of it. The joke of it.

Hardee.

Har.

Har.

Har.

"I said," she said, "NO cheese and NO sauce pizzas for EVERYONE!"

She would make a strict, but benevolent god.

As it is she doesn't even warrant a title. Not even a little one. Not that she wants one. But if everyone else is wearing one this season. . . . Titles, the new black.

It's all nonsense, really. Laughable. And she's just not original enough to appreciate it fully.

Her Buddhist friends are all about detachment. But they rank swank or jibber jobless. So there.

Did I tell you she met Bono?

Shouldn't that mean something?

Time!

29 hours. 47 minutes. 11 seconds.

Two cha-chas forward. One cha back. Two cha-chas forward. One cha back. Toes taped and shoes filled with blood, "Dancing is fun," she tells herself, gritting teeth, breathless. "Dancing is fun. Dancing is fun. Dancing is fun. Dancing is fun. Dancing is fun. . . . "

a discourse most dramatic

2005-11-27T16:58:00.000-05:00

It's most difficult to feel sorry for oneself when one continues to receive missives from India about the legions of one-armed beggars who inhabit villages built of nothing but reclaimed tin and recycled tires. But, then again, I'm nothing if not persistent. -- me, November, 23 2005.

* * *
[Lights up on Jill in full formal dress circa turn of the century (not this one, the last one) complete with white gloves and hair piled on top of head and falling around her face in ringlets, backstage at a hole-in-the-wall theatre. Jill sits at a vanity. . . being vain. Lipstick applied in bright strokes, cheeks rouged in harsh circles on pale skin -- addressing the audience through the mirror.]

I could recount for you all the disappointments of my life, tick off each little prick of sadness and loss, but even I know they wouldn't fill a teaspoon. [Grand sigh.] Yet there are days that those lead droplets are the very air I breath. Fetid. Suffocating. And rotting my flesh, starting in the very marrow of my bones and working outward to my skin. And I must say that I'm thoroughly exhausted by the environment. Simply, tired. So tired of carrying these heavy molecules and letting them define my being. Of allowing them to direct the nature of my path, to command the tread of my foot on the way.

[Turning in chair to face out.]

Yes, everyone has a story. And mine, my story, if it had a title, would be called. . .

[Standing.]

"Days of Disappointment, a Disenchanted Memoir!"

[Single spot on Jill as she falls into a deep and ever-so-tragic curtsy.]

[Fade to black.]

[A moment later, lights up, Jill paces the room.]

I can blame genetics, of course. J for Joy not necessarily a letter common in the familial DNA. [All anachronisms intentional thankyouverymuch.]

Also, if I wish, I may claim only-child-dissatisfaction.

[Wrist to furrowed brow, full front to audience.]

I was once the only one, the one and only! The sun never did rise, but at my whim! Nor did it set, but for my permission!

[Dropping posture.]

But that would be a lie. [stage whisper aside] Though my cousins, normally delightful people that they are, might disagree.

Ah, I can always blame Texas. Which as many of you know, is my wont, because living in Lubbock, Texas was a tragedy from which I may well never recover.

[Carefully plucked eyebrow arched expertly.]

Truly.

Though, I suppose, in my most honest moments, even I must admit, without Texas there would not have been a Mrs. Garrett (only the greatest English teacher ever to wield chalk in defense of the Bard) and . . .

[Holding up a sheaf of papers.]

. . . without Mrs. Garrett, there would not have been these words on these pages from which I speak!

And for this, this outlet. . .

[Dramatic pause to wring white-gloved hands.]

. . . I am ever so grateful, even if I, if I am the only one!

[Head bowed dramatically. Quick look to see if anyone's noticed. No one has.]

Please, please. . . no protestations!

[Nervous, self-conscious smile hidden behind an artfully unfurled fan.]

No! I write because I must and though I am nothing if not eternally grateful for the adoration, I write not for the cheer of my most beloved admirers, but only because I am compelled to do so unto death. I will write until the Reaper takes me in his gentle grasp and gives me to the worms that they may eat my flesh, hungry substitutes for the disappointment which nibbles my most tender parts in life.

[Deep bow, once again. Lights to black.]

* * *
Okay, this exercise has become almost as exhausting as the alluded to disappointment. Have we got the point yet?

When I was little, in my more monstrous moments my grandfather would call me Sarah Bernhardt. At the time, I had no idea who this woman was, but I didn't like the name or the lack of sympathy it bespoke. But, as I mentioned, I'm nothing if not persistent. I'm still a dramatic baby, just not quite so vocally as before. My theatrics, these days, are mostly for an audience of one, and even Fred tires of them quickly.

Therefore, I'm determined that 2006 -- for my purposes, beginning right . . . now -- will be different. My disappointments, what there are, have been allowed to grow in my imagination in extreme disproportion to reality. And on those vast fields, I've planted seeds that will die before they even see the light of da. . . .

Oops. Sorry. Having a hard time changing stylistic gears.

Here it is. Lately, my tendency has been to imagine myself a grand flop, who by life's end has managed to achieve nothing. No career success. No relationship success. No financial success. No social success. Forget success. The phrase I'm looking for is utter catastrophe. I am old, childless, dogless -- abjectly alone in a nursing home that I can't pay for and so they toss me out to live under a bridge, but the bridge is occupied and so I take to the gutter where even the rats dislike me. My nails are dirty. My hair is dank. My teeth have all fallen out. And I tell fresh-faced social workers my tale of woe. . . I could have been great, but I went to the wrong college. . . had my heart broken. . . lost my dental plan. . . missed my calling . . . .

It's the calling part that always gets me. All this talk of purpose and goals and drive. You know what? I don't have it. That indecipherable It. And is that so bad? I've hung everything on the hook of that ephemeral noun and watched It fail me time and time again. Some things we're born with and this Thing is something with which I simply wasn't.

And then today I woke up and had a thought. What if none of It matters? What if I don't have to have a purpose? What if I don't need a specific reason for being? What if I don't need a five-, ten-, fifteen-year-plan to be at peace with the world? What if what and who I am at this very moment is enough? And if it is, then why in heaven's name am I not having more fun? What if, maybe, just maybe, instead of purpose leading satisfaction, it's satisfaction that leads purpose?

As my Aunt Patricia tends to say, I liiiike it.

So 2006 is about having a good time and letting the future take care of itself. Planned and spontaneous vacations. At least one philanthropic trip. Exploring something new just for the sake of trying something new. And doing things I know I enjoy already -- writing, painting, yoga and (God help me) acting even -- because I enjoy them, not because I should be doing them. Not because I think that they'll read well as blips on some imagined resume that will lead to some ring of gold (the book deal, the Oscar, the husband) that I have only ever been able to see in my peripheral vision anyway. The ring of gold that disappears the minute I turn my head. The ring of gold that will be worthless as lead if I don't enjoy the ride in the first place.

Jill and Disappointment exeunt in opposite directions.

details

2005-11-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

All I need are approximately 17 immunizations to ward off dark-age like diseases, an expedited visa from the state department, reservations on a flight to India that leaves no later than six p.m. tomorrow, three thousand-ish dollars converted to rupees, a dog sitter and four measly weeks off from work and I can join my friend Cherie with whom I walked in Spain on her Road to Kathmandu adventure that leaves Nov. 20. Unfortunately, some guy in California got my lottery ticket (and the $315 million that went with it) or else I think I could have made this happen. My assistant is so fired.

gut-level contradiction

2005-11-14T08:05:00.000-05:00

The HUMMER, an oil crisis on spinny wheels, an environmental f*ck you, so-huge-as-to-block-the-sun and at least two lanes of traffic, squats at the stoplight in front of me. The license plate, eye level for lesser mortals in smaller cars, reads: OBEYGOD.

Thoughts?

small white dishes

2005-11-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

1. tasting
four bites of spiced chicken,
sliced juicy squares
placed just so in a melt
of smoothwhitecheddarjacklove.

I refrain from licking the plate,
but only because you take it away.

2o minutes later, 2.
sou'west stirfry:
normally offensive zuccini:
isn't.

I tip the bowl.

suprised by 3.
your mama's homemade
strawberry jam yin-yanged
into fresh yogurt, pale.
big, nutty granola punctuation.

wine. delish.

the best not-meal ever,
since the last time,
when your wife cooked salmon
so citrus clean i forgot it was fish
before I fainted from delight.

i'm 31 and a half.
gently used.
housetrained.
good with pets & plants.

francie, stephano. . .
adopt me?

don't need jack

2005-11-03T08:30:00.000-05:00

The t-shirt reads: DON'T NEED JACK. A joke. A gift. A joke-gift, thwarted by my over-critical thinking skillz, yo.

I mean, I get it. (My name is Jill.) And it's a cool shirt, cap sleeved and my favorite shade of green. But it seems a tad off-putting, don't you think? Who's-that-angry-girl-in-the-green-t-shirt antagonistic, you know?

Is that what my friends think of me? I need a new outlook. I should smile more and learn to snowboard. Get laid and donate those old shoes to the homeless.

And a lie.

I do want a jack eventually. Eventually, inevitably drawing closer by the day. One hopes. Or rather, one hopes without hoping, because as we all know, hope is like roach spray to the men we meet.

Man spray.

Man Ray.

Life surreal.

And I most certainly want more jack-in-the-bank so I can buy a new television that doesn't go bzzipfft and switch itself off in the middle of a compelling meltdown on Trading Spouses. (I only watched it that once, I swear.)

Plus, I've had a jack or two in my life, some more important than others. And while I don't know that I need(ed) them -- I'm still here, aren't I? At least whole of body. -- some of them I wouldn't mind having back.

Want. Want. Want.

Want the subtext that no one would read. But I would and that. . . well that just seems desperate. Unless, of course, I wear it ironically.

How do you accessorize for irony?

And now I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't wear the shirt. Thing is, it's really cute. And it is funny. But tell me, do you think the universe would get the joke?

perfect day

2005-10-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

I know my perfect day and it usually, historically, starts with a phone call, a phone call telling me that there's work to be done. I'm needed, if I want to be. And though I'm tired, I'm ready, knowing there's coffee to be had to prologue an adventure unknown. I'm tired from the night before that blinked single digits on the clock before ebbing. A night that ended long after decent folk have already turned off porch lights, let out the dog for one last run, taken their Ambien, their Paxil, their Zoloft with warm glasses of spiked milk and are fast asleep. Fast asleep while my compatriots and I are still pursuing other, more traditional soporifics and medicants before we too fall wearily into our beds, smelling of bar and ears ringing. Well, maybe I don't like that last part so much. Not anymore. Really, not ever. Even though it's part of what makes me feel I'm living. Logic never my strong suit, proven by the GRE.

But the day ahead. Coffee with cream and cinnamon and honey. Empty pages aching to be full up with my illegible scribble, with patterns I'll swear until I creak that I had no hand in crafting. Even if my hand directs the color, it comes from elsewhere and I can't claim the credit. See the store owner. I just work here. Today I work here. I love this day. Working here. Tips, bless you, are warmly accepted.

Pay me by the hour and preferably in cash and I'm happiest. Never happier than when counting my take. Concrete wealth. Neat stacks faced and folded. Two plus two equals four. The alphabet of corporate benefits no part of the equation to muddy the satisfaction of cold, hard cash. Coins in a jar. I once bought a ticket to Belgium with the accumulated, never-accounted-for change from my waitress days. A fraction's worth of my IRA and ever so much sweeter.

Digression. This isn't a tirade against the ills of corporate America. I am a fool and I know it for wanting more than it gives steady, safe and real. But despite myself I'm a dreamer. And a coward. And conversely, I do so enjoy watching those numbers creep up under the smart direction of the corporate genius money people. 401K = hot food when I'm old. I worry that 50 years from now my arthritic hands will cramp while opening my cat food dinner. 401k = an automatic can opener and maybe a small countertop microwave. These things are important.

My perfect day is brave and foolish and takes place on a Thursday and not the Sunday I had of late. There's the phone call. The coffee. The journal. The delight of paid creativity. Lunch with friends by the warmth of a found fireplace. Later, a nap. Then a movie about a boy who sucks his thumb. Fred scooped into a backpack and off we go in the jump seat of a pickup truck. A Bluegrass festival, plus. Mindy Smith. A band like the Dead, the Beatles and the Muppets all at once. A legendary band of whom I've never heard fronted by a woman who is a dead ringer for Gilda Radner. I scan the audience for Andy Kauffman and find, instead, a festival companion with poor teeth and a gentleman's demeanor circa 1880. His name is Tree and I doubt I'll ever see him again. He tells me he sells honey to support his music habit and he offers me his arm as we walk to an art show held in a nearby hair salon. Totally high end. Great lighting. Lots of lesbians who love Fred, so cute zipped in his bag and hungrily gobbling the bits of sesame chicken they offer from their plates.

I know the artist from the restaurant where I most often enjoy Sunday brunch. She serves. I eat and tip. Most of the time I don't envy her. And today I don't either. Because, today, we're equals.

the adventures of amuk: rocky run

2005-10-26T14:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Jill,

So, here is a story for you. We found a tick on Rocky and summarily and quite professionally, I might add, removed it. We then checked him over for more ticks and found what we thought were three more small ticks. We then spent the next hour and a half trying unsuccessfully to remove these tiny ticks. We called the emergency vet and they told us what to do. It involved Vaseline, alcohol, and tweezers. (Sounds obscene doesn't it?) Anyway, after further exploratory attempts at tickectomies, we gave up knowing that the following day we had a vet appointment anyway. Imagine our surprise and embarrassment when the Vet informed us that the tiny ticks which we had so assiduously tried to remove were, in fact, Rocky's nipples. Beware of us bearing tweezers!!!!!!! Needless to say, we slinked out of the animal hospital with our heads down, our tails between our legs and Rocky's tail covering his nipples. For some reason, he won't let me pet him. Hopefully his memory is as short as his tic/nipples are tiny.

Tick to you soon. Oops, I mean, talk to you soon.

Love,
Auntie Mame and Uncle Ken, a.k.a. Tweezer Man

self-absorption to a "t"

2005-10-22T13:15:00.000-05:00

"You look like you want a latte," the barista guy said as he pulled a pot of freshly frothed milk from the cappuccino maker.

"Um. . . a. . .only if you've already made it and it's free." He hesitated. He was just being cute. I was just being cheap. So I backpedaled, "No, thanks, just regular coffee. Thanks anyway."

"Okay, then. . . light or dark roast?"

"Uh, um. . . I guess. . .light?" I stuttered.

"Having commitment issues this morning?"

"Always," I said.

* * *

Always with the commitment issues. It's becoming a theme in a manner of speaking. The small decisions of life more and more difficult in light of the big decisions I've made -- or not made -- and have had to live with for years on end.

The commitment to a living space. A job. An education. A dog. A social circle. A couch. A belief system. A paradigm. A skirt. An unrequited love. This blog. Not that any of these things are intrinsically good or bad. Just big even when not. And I often wonder what if. . . what if. . . .

But then again, who doesn't.

That said, logic dictates that what I don't like I can feasibly change. Sell it off. Move on. Quit. But therein lies the rub. As difficult as it is for me to actually make a decision -- it takes no less than the convening of a Senate subcommittee, the blessing from the religious heads of at least three legitimate faiths (and by that I mean those whose most committed followers regularly don anachronistic headgear and culturally obsolete costumes), the sealed assurance from a notary public that Fred will continue to enjoy the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallop Poll, not to mention my mom's say-so -- it's even harder for me to let it go once it's been made.

* * *

At a wedding recently, I reconnected with friends I haven't seen in more than ten years. It's funny, how we don't change. Stephanie is still the avant-garde writer/artist in flowing clothes and intellectual glasses. Scott is still the charming seeker, the thoughtful adventurer. And after one long-winded assessment on my part of the relationship between two other wedding guests I haven't seen in ages, there was a beat and then Scott turned to Stephanie and said, "Jill's a thinker. To which Steph responded, "She always was."

* * *

On the Myers-Briggs scale, which I've never taken, I suppose I'd be a T. (Is that right? T for thinker?) But for all my thinking, I don't trust my deductions. They're supremely unsatisfying. They're "right" for all practical intents and purposes. And for the record, I don't use the word "practical" by chance. Perfect in so many ways and from so many angles. But so often wrong. So often very, very wrong in terms of feel-good factor. I am my mother's daughter and we are nothing if not practical creatures. Whatever's best for the cheapest price. Whatever's stable with the least risk. Whatever's comfortable, with the longest shelf life. That's the choice to be made.

And after the head, comes the heart. I won't speak for my mother, but mine is an extremely poor decision-maker. Very black or white. Yes or no. Block of butter or block of ice. No going back and no in between.

You see how I've thought myself into an impasse? Pretty good, huh?

But if I were on Dr. Phil's show, he'd lean forward in his chair, put his hand on the arm of mine and say, "So how's all that workin' for ya?"

And I'd have to say, "Not very well."

If I left it there, at the "Not very well" I'd enjoy the bitter finality of this essay, the "so there" factor, the I'll-be-miserable-if-I-want-to element. I must admit, it has a vague appeal. I fight the lure of luxurious self-pity. But I really have nothing to moan about. Not really. Not actually. In the end, I'm not without resources. Because where the head fails and the heart disappoints, the gut comes to the fore.

I do trust my gut.

It's never failed me.

I just need to learn to listen.

Yeah. Something to think about. . . .

By the by, Katrina at Notes on a Napkin has a way better take on (i.e. attitude about) a topic very close to, if not exactly like this one that in the long run makes me feel pretty good about the world in general. Thank you Katrina, you magnificently delightful, marshmellow-roasting, poetry-writing, puddle-jumper, you. I don't remember who made the decision to sit next to whom on that big yellow bus, but it's one of the best decisions of which I was ever the benefitee. xoxojill

dispatch from dallas: unleashed

2005-10-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Gentle Neighbor Lady,

I'm writing on behalf of my cousin Allyson's friend Rebekah. She lives next door to you and recently had the opportunity to make the make the acquaintance of your lovely canines. As she wasn't formally introduced and as she happened to be running for her life at the time, she didn't catch their given names so if you don't mind, for the sake of this missive we'll refer to them as "Pitt" and "Bull" herein.

Rebekah is concerned about her budding relationship with "Pitt" and "Bull," who she met today as they were on what was obviously their morning constitutional. She is worried that they got off on the wrong foot, that she inadvertently might have done something to offend them. Her only thought, now that she considers the incident, er. . . meeting is that perhaps "Pitt" and "Bull" had some interest in the trash she was placing in her outdoor trash receptacle, trash that contained the remains of last night's dinner. So you understand, last night's meal was a delicious rack of lamb (you know, the kind with the little white hats), bite-sized red potatoes seasoned with rosemary and a delightful side of asparagus. Rebekah and her husband Chad had very much enjoyed the meal themselves and so she understands that "Pitt" and "Bull" with their superior canine sense of smell, would also have discerned what a delectation it was and might simply have been requesting, in their pittish and bullish way, a share of the remnants.

If this is the case, she'd like to apologize in advance for any lack of generosity resulting from misunderstanding on her part. But given "Pitt"'s barking and growling, "Bull"'s teeth gnashing and slobbering, and her own panicked sweating, screaming and sudden, uncontrollable, fear-driven urge to poo she hopes you (and they) will forgive her.

Considering the awkwardness of their first meeting, she has asked me to tell you that she would like to try again. It is important to her that she establish a better rapport with your dogs (after all, it's the neighborly thing to do) and thinks that perhaps if they met under more, shall we say, controlled circumstances, they might get along a bit better. With this in mind, she'd be happy to bring over the leftovers from tonight's dinner, a gorgeous veal parmesan (but only, of course, under the condition that dear "Pitt" and sweet "Bull" aren't lactose intolerant) if you'd only promise to keep your RABID F*CKING DOGS ON A F*CKING LEASH!

Thank you kindly for your time.

Sincerely,
Jill (Rebekah's friend Allyson's cousin)

the origin of a dream

2005-10-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

Someone was trying to break into my house. Seriously. I heard the tentative knock, the explorative jiggle of the knob. (Or at least Fred did. Hackles up, he looked like a puffer fish, only louder.) Doing my best to stave off the horror movie-panic, I crept out of bed and into some pants -- they never wear pants in horror movies -- before making my way into the living room just in time to see the shadow disappear from the door only to reappear a moment later at the window. As I moved further into the room, I imagined every neighborhood vagrant I'd ever denied my extra change coming for revenge, fancied every mug shot I've ever seen come to life. Then as the intruder moved into the light from the street . . . something about the shape of the burglar's head seemed familiar.

"Jesus! Francie?"

"Jill! Are you up?" Her voice muffled by the glass between us.

"Yeah, I'm up," I said, casual-like, like it wasn't actually the middle of the night. "No Francie, it's two in the morning! Of course, I wasn't up."

"Well. . . um, I'm sorry? You're up now though. So let me in," she said, tapping the window, but I was already unlocking it, dragging it open.

"I almost called the cops," I said moving out of the way as Francie threw her leg over the sill. "You scared the crap out of me. What are you doing here?"

"I came over to write," Francie said, reaching back outside to grab her bag and yank it back through the window before closing it behind her.

"Write what? A ransom note? I know you love Fred, but. . . ."

"No, just to write. It was the only place I could think of at this hour."

"What's wrong with your living room?"

"It's too crowded."

"Why, who's over?"

"No one," she said sitting down on the couch and pulling out notebook and pencil, setting them on the coffee table.

"Oh," I said.

"Oh," I said again as I watched her arrange her makeshift desk. "Um. . . so I haven't been to the store in a while. I don't really have anything to offer . . . ."

"That's okay. I brought port." And she produced a bottle of port from her bag, holding it up for me to see. "You want some?"

"Thanks, no. . . you know where the glasses are?" But France was already on her way to the kitchen.

"Go to bed," she yelled from the other room. "I'm really sorry about scaring you. I should have called. But I didn't want to wake you up."

"Breaking into my house is a lesser discourtesy?" I yelled back.

"It would have been if you weren't such a light sleeper," she said, now back in the room.

"Or if you were a better burglar. What are you writing about?"

She leaned on the wall and shook the cubes in her glass. "Ice," she said.

And that's what I dreamed about last night. Huge house-high icicles that kept me in, but kept the burglars out, too. Go figure.

only 33

2005-10-10T17:37:00.000-05:00

A bellyful of chicken noodle soup, a supposed mendicant, the panacea to heal all ills. . . it does nothing to relieve the knowledge that he's gone.

It seems so unreal. A TV drama. The proverbial bad joke. The night terror from which I can't wake. (I despise these clichés.) Except I am awake. I'm even breathing.

And the clock says that I have to brush my teeth and go to work.

And the dog needs his pill.

And the color orange still is.

Doesn't it know?

Sudden trite imperatives reel through my mind like tickertape: . . . the laundry in my hamper three weeks clean needs folding the bathroom as always wants cleaning i must get my car washed organize papers record passwords tell my mother I love her just in case . . .

We're left with artifacts:
a number in a phone
a piece of art
the email correspondences, too few
the [now precious, starkly archival] photographs
the conversations that live in our memories, ephemeral

The conversations. I want to record them in stone, to give them form and texture, before I forget the bright scraps I remember. (I just didn't know to take better notes.) But how do you capture the tone of a hello? The way he stretched in thought. The shape of his mouth. The inaudible kindnesses. The expansive generosity. A chisel can't describe the careful pauses in his speech. Marble insults his warmth.

In the hierarchy of relationships, I am the least of those who mourn. But there was always tomorrow. (More the fool, I.) I mourn the lack of tomorrows. I mourn for my betters who now hold their yesterdays so close, who gasp for breath in their grief.

For his mother.

Oh, God. His mother.

I can't help but think that when she got the call, she must have wanted to hear it from him, improbably. And in that instant understood -- the finality of it, unwavering, Jupiter's gravity more forgiving.

No more ands.

I hate this.

tequilacon '05

2005-09-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

Dude. They were going to kill me. Really. Tear-me-to-shreds kill me. But I was high above them (Them, who? I don't know. Maybe my co-workers? They didn't have faces.) on this platform, a platform with a grate in it and I could see them looking up at me but I knew that I was okay. I knew they couldn't touch me. I think I actually yelled the word, "HA!" as I swung off the grate via this chain and then. . . and then I started walking the walls and swinging about ala the aerial acrobats of Cirque du Soleil or Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider. It was ridiculous fun. And then before I knew it all my faceless didn't-get-around-to-killing-me-co-workers were swinging on the chains ala Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider too and I was crowded out. Back on the ground, I saw a door. So I left.

"Well, yeah," Sadie said after I finished telling her the dream.

"Well, yeah, what?"

"That's what you do."

"What's what I do?"

"You find something you enjoy doing and then you find out that you're not the only one on the planet to have ever done it, or that others also enjoy what you enjoy and then you quit."

"I do not."

"You do to."

"That's a crazy-person thing to do."

"Oh, sweetie," she replied, "you thought you weren't?"

* * *
I make it a habit to avoid other people who write. I don't join discussion groups and writers' circles. I don't go for the open mic readings or poetry slams. When someone wants to introduce me to this writer guy with a book or that other friend with a freelance career, I tend to do the uh-huh thing. The uh-huh thing that says, whatever. The whatever that means, forget it. Because he's published, so he's automatically better. And when you say she's a really good writer, do you mean better than I am? Because I'm a really good writer, right? Different? Different how? Forget it. I don't want to know. Okay, yes, I do. But only if she's a poet (for hire?) or, you know, writes instructional manuals. And regardless, I don't want to meet them -- him or her. Ever. Because a little of me maybe hates them for being better. And yes, I'm that small.

* * *Note retro-fitted to last week:

Hey. You. You reading this. You, who I've never met. I have a secret for you. You're not real. You think you are, but I know better. I'm sorry to tell you like this and I don't mean anything untoward by it, but it's important that you know this, so you'll understand. You'll understand why going to Chicago to meet unreal people very much like yourselves seems the fool's errand.

* * *I go to Chicago.

Jenny and Brandon are real.

And so are the Romanians.

Crap.

* * *
I could recount for you our adventures together, but the benefit of posting late and slow is that Jenny and Brandon have already done all the heavy lifting. The narrative of the weekend you can read here or here. And they've done such a fine job that it would be difficult for me to add more physical detail.

So I'll skip all that and tell you this:

Brandon gave us each a box of candy -- chocolate covered cherries for Jenny, dark chocolate covered almonds for me and he pegged our likes perfectly. Brandon, you should know that slowly consuming the entire box in one sitting upon returning home to Atlanta was a decadent treat for me and the perfect way to end the weekend. The rest of you should know that he's just as sweet and perfect as that candy. With just the right touch of salt.

Jenny's apartment (even down to the contents of her fridge), reminded me of my grandmother's place in Rego Park where I spent a great deal of my childhood. Walking in the door was a little bit like going home, but happily, without the ghosts. Jenny, you should know that I'm inspired by the way you live life, with your care for the small details and the lovely touches. That one of my favorite moments of the weekend was when you suggested, "Let's go buy some books, get a cup of coffee and read." Were we separated at birth?

The three of us could have met in a café in Kabul, in a tent in Tanzania for all I cared. On Pluto, even, as long as we had air. Because as we sat around the little table in Millennium Park and watched a wedding walk buy, imagined a monkey in diapers, dreamed up a history for an elderly couple in comic glasses and yes, discussed several of you -- you invisible people -- it was nice to get and be gotten. It was fun to share the adventure. Compare notes and anxieties and secrets and tricks. And I'd forgotten how delightful it is to be adored by your peers. To adore right on back.

I didn't think I'd be much for writing after this trip. It's what I do. Or rather what I don't. Typically. But I think they may have helped me turn a corner, my two new friends. My two new friends as real as you.

May I just say thanks? Thanks to Jenny and Brando, for being SO SUPER FECKING COOL?! (Sorry, you had to be there.)

* * *And then this.

In high school, Katrina and Stephanie and I, we were "the writers," and it occurs to me that these girls are the only writer-friendships that before now I ever truly fostered. And until recently I'd neither seen nor heard from either of then in more than ten years.

A month ago, I saw Stephanie at another friend's bridal shower. A shock, a surprise, a surreal delight. She's teaching theatre and English. She's moved back to the South. She's writing a book.

And when I came home from Chicago, I found this, a comment left last Thursday:

You know, in high school, a bunch of good friends got together for Christmas and gave each other gifts of poetry. One girl, gave us each a bottle of rain. Do you still have yours? I do, but half of it has evaporated and I'm pretty sure I see something growing in the other half.

Katrina

* * *

Sometimes, I really love the way life works.

* * *

"HA!"

dispatch from dallas: this is what happens when you run out of holy water

2005-09-14T01:40:00.000-05:00

My cousin Allyson emailed me this morning:
Just know that last night the holy water my friend gave me that I didn't know what to do with finally evaporated, which was great because the little bottle sat on my counter all summer long and I was obsessed with checking it. But then this morning my car wouldn't start. Now, we have two cars and Matt's state truck (thank GOD) so I took the other, but there was no gas. I drove to the gas station, but the pump didn't work. I went to another pump and it worked, but bees were EVERYWHERE. So there I am pumping gas and trying not to get stung. I hit every light (of course) and then a Pepsi truck was sitting, not moving, and blocking traffic. Needless to say, I was late for work.

I wrote back:
So you'll be asking for more holy water?

And she responded:
Yes, and this time, I'm going to request a keg of it. (Is that sacrilegious?)

Me:
Only if you drink it with pretzels.

stripping it down & working it out

2005-09-12T01:32:00.000-05:00

My friend Sellers may be only twenty-five years old, but she's still the smartest girl I know. And not only is she the smartest, but she's also the best kind of smart too -- subversive smart, so you don't see her coming with her smart smartness as it's wrapped up all pretty-like in great shoes and that unstyled style you only ever see in movies or magazines. I'm telling you, she's got her act together in a way that takes most people several lifetimes to achieve. (For instance, I've been born a relatively directionless, middle class, American of Irish Catholic descent for at least the past three go-rounds or so. Last cycle, Sellers was a very clever mollusk. 'Nuff said.)

Delightful catch that she is, Sellers is getting married sometime next year. The date has yet to be decided, but she and her fiance figured the pre-wedding celebrations (also known as the bachelor and bachelorette parties) needn't hinge on such a pesky detail, so a couple of weekends ago, we had a party. And by party, I mean week-long, all-out, out-of-town beach event, complete with two houses (one for the boys and one for the girls), food, drink and much frivolity. Not to mention bocce ball and strippers.

Let me say, I was in for the beach. I was down with the frivolity. A nice, chilled beverage while swinging on a hammock, rocked by a cool ocean breeze is always welcome. I can take or leave the bocce ball, but I was adamantly, stridently even, anti-stripper.

"Do you think we should get a strip.. . "

Me: No.

"But, it will be. . . "

Me: No.

"It'll only cost us. . . "

Me: No.

No, no and no. I practically posted signs and hired lobbyists to state my case for NO. See, I've been at parties where they've been hired before. It's always awkward. The room always seems somehow too small, the lights too bright and the aforementioned frivolity, free-flowing before, becomes suddenly forced when a man in a police or fireman's get-up enters the room. Plus, I'm sorry, but handcuffs are not a toy.

[Aside: Once on a date, this guy named Yuri handcuffed me and then couldn't find the key. It was horrible. There were tears. . . some minor hysterics. Eventually, he had to call his dad who had to use bolt cutters to free me. Of course, we were only four and it was a play date. They were the plastic so-called toy handcuffs he'd gotten for his birthday and so it was Yuri who was in hysterics because he didn't want his gift ruined, my liberty be damned. If it were up to Yuri, I'd still be shackled to his bunk bed. I'm telling you, it left a deep and as-yet-unresolved emotional scar. I ask you, am I the one getting married next year? Again, 'nuff said.]

But I was out-yesed (by everyone) and "Kyle" showed up, complete with cop costume and handcuffs. And I would have been mortified, except that I'd forgotten one, important fact: Sellers.

Sellers, the smartest girl I know. Advanced. Evolved. And more than capable of handling a nineteen-year-old in a teal g-string. (He said he was twenty-three, but the blush wasn't off his pride in his high school state championship wrestling title. If he was twenty-three, than I'm America's Next Top Model.)

So rather than the completely mortifying experience, past experience suggested it would be once again, it was wonderfully laughable and incredibly entertaining with Sellers playing the role of Gracie Allen to Ocifer Teal's George Burns. Seriously, it's a bizarrely apt analogy. She bumbled and obfuscated, acquiesced and assisted in such an hysterically funny way that poor Kyle's nudity was almost (almost, mind you) an afterthought. And all the while, she oh-so-carefully tucked dollar bills wherever she could. Needless to say the options were limited. When she attempted unsuccessfully to fold some of them under his necklace (the one he very probably got as a confirmation gift from his grandmother not so long ago), she suggested helpfully that perhaps he should invest in a studded collar -- the better to hold his tip money.

It wasn't until all was said and done, however, until the poor boy, completely upstaged by Sellers, was mostly dressed again, ("No, not the pants!"), that someone noticed his tongue ring.

"Yeah?" Sellers said, "I've never been with anyone who had a tongue ring."

"You should," Kate said.

"Really? Oh. Okay. I guess. . . " she demured and turned to Kyle, offering gamely, "You want to lick my forearm?"

But Ocifer Teal had had enough of being George Burns. "How about your neck," he suggested.

"Oh, okay," Sellers said and cooperatively turned her back, tilted her head and lifted her hair out of the way.

"Hmm. . . okay. . . alright. . . yeah?" She pondered, unaffected. "Try the other side," she proposed. "Right. . . I get it . . . uh-huh. . . ." she said thoughtfully before she abruptly jumped away, struck by a thought. "Ocifer Teal," she asked, suddenly serious and with obvious concern, "is this okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," he said, confused by the sudden change.

"Okay, good," said Sellers, visibly relieved, "It's just, I wouldn't want to make you feel uncomfortable or anything."

Only Sellers.

But you see, that's what makes her so smart. So special. She never forgets the people behind the costumes, the make-up, the masks we all wear. She always responds to the mollusk in us all, vulnerable to the elements, struggling to survive and not nearly, by far, as clever as she.

pin the what? on the who?

2005-08-23T23:07:00.000-05:00

Are we not women?

Did we not attend colleges and universities of higher learning, step-by-step and shot-after-shot with our more hirsute brethren, oft times achieving higher GPA's, more advanced degrees and better paying jobs -- nay! -- careers?

Have we not traveled to foreign lands and gamely purchased truckloads of chiclets from urchin children while generously doling out hard candy and miniscule denominations cautiously fetched from our wisely "hidden" moneybelts.

Can we not say "thank you," "please," and "beer," in more languages than we have fingers on our hands?

Do we not help heal the enfeebled, teach the befuddled and defend the benighted in courts of law with savvy and professionalism? Or at the very least, keep words like "like" and "totally" and "dude" out of our marketing presentations and pitch meetings?

Do we not -- on our very own -- purchase expensive cars and homes and shoes?

Do we not do our own taxes? Or at least know a good accountant who can do them for us?

Do we not contribute to our 401ks?

Have we not massaged and managed and yay, when needed, manipulated men into marrying us -- without the indignity of a prenup?!

Are we not, I ask you, capable of setting our minds to accomplish any and all goals personal and professional?

(Actually, in the spirit of full-disclosure, I've accomplished somewhat less than that mentioned above, but I'm kind of an under-achiever, so don't use me as an example.)

Are we not women?!

I say we are!

And to that end, women of the world, I propose the following: that we hereby abolish the playing of the games at bridal events and baby showers, at engagement parties and bachelorette soirees.

LET US BE DONE, SISTERS!!

LET US BE DONE with the guessing games and the quirky quizzes!

LET US BE DONE with the adornment of condoms, of assorted phallic jewelry, of obscene head gear!

LET US BE DONE with the tasting of melted chocolate nestled in baby diapers, in the smelling of baby food disguised as baby poo!

LET US BE DONE with Pin the Penis on the life-sized cut out of Orlando Bloom!

LET US BE DONE with tackling dear Aunt Gertie who, for the cardinal crime of merely uttering the word "baby," must sacrifice her safety pins to our greedy lapels.

LET US BE DONE with ridiculous blindfolds and oh-my-god-who-picked-out-this-piece-of-crap door prizes!

(Okay, again, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I've either participated in or actually planned parties in which each of the above games was played. My favorite is the baby food in the diaper game. If you have someone with a sensitive gag reflex, it can be really hysterical. And yet still, I say. . . )

LET US BE DONE with forcing ourselves to be naughty.

Are we not naughty enough on our own? More so, even, when left to our own devices?!

Do we not, under less eventful circumstances, still manage to hold forth with intelligent, witty and oftentimes delightfully salacious conversation?

Must we debase ourselves with these trifling games? Must we embarrass ourselves with these contrived amusements?

Would we not cringe if men stood witness to our inanity? Would we not sit on our funny hats, hide our cutsie drawings, eat our silly words?

Let us be done, sisters.

I beg you.

Let us be done.

After all, are we not women?

my new best friend, the yogi judge

2005-08-17T06:37:00.000-05:00

So last week I'm walking in the park when out of the blue I become rather keenly aware of the fat on the back of my arms. Just like that. Just there, where my triceps should be. Triceps missing. Uncomfortable amount of arm fat in full effect.

I don't look. I try to ignore it -- as I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior -- to focus on how cute Fred is with his tail held high, bobbing ahead of me up the path, on the gorgeous weather, on the beauty of my inner self, but all I can think about is the fat. The fat on the back of my arms. It's so pervasive that even my inner beautiful self is complaining about it.

"For God's sake," she's saying, "go back to yoga."

* * *

I recognize the woman on the mat next to mine from before my "hiatus" two years ago. She's about fifty, but she's got the body of a hot twenty-year-old. A hot twenty-year-old or, you know, Madonna. Actually more Madonna than hot twenty-year old. Which is worse. Or better, depending on your perspective. In the mirror next to her long-longness and lean-leanness I am the puffy "before" picture with slumped shoulders and sallow skin. I try to be inspired instead of depressed as I pull my shorts a little higher over my belly fat. (Matches arm fat!)

It's hard though, because in addition to having a body many a Hollywood ingénue would eat Kleenex for, she's a judge, which seems not only incongruous to our shared environment but also supremely unfair. They should have special classes for the exceptional so the rest of us poor directionless slobs don't have to deal with our inferiority in our off-work hours, too.

That said, I have a difficult time picturing the woman stretching next to me in the black robes of her office. It's hard to imagine her giving thoughtful, distinguished rulings when I've seen her naked in the locker room. It feels somehow inappropriate to have seen a judge naked, I think. Almost every time I see her my first thought is, You're a judge and I've seen you naked! I wonder if I ever got a ticket, if she could fix it for me. I think I shouldn't have quit yoga when I did, if for no other reason than ensuring for myself a high-powered friend in the judicial system should I ever inexplicably turn to a life of crime. What kind of crime would I commit, I wonder. Nothing violent, I hope. Maybe some sort of inadvertant theft. I worry that one day I'll commit an accidental crime. I really should be more careful, I think. You know, in general.

I think I am so not focused. I decide it's a good thing that I'm back in yoga.

"Do you know who's teaching tonight," I ask the judge, establishing the groundwork for my future criminal trial. She shifts from doing pre-class push-ups to pre-class sit-ups before she answers. (I want to do push-ups and sit-ups, too, but I'm afraid she'll think I'm copying her. Which I would be. So I don't.)

She sighs a bit at my question. "It's Lena," she says, her tone not quite neutral.

I don't quite grimace.

She doesn't quite laugh.

And I feel justified in detesting Lena. I mean, if a judge dislikes her. . . .

* * *

As Lena begins class, I find myself slacking off in small ways. I don't feel like tightening my abdominal muscles. I'll look anywhere in the room I darn well please, rather than in the mirror, into our own eyes as we're instructed. I'm half a second behind her count. I exhale when I should be inhaling. I don't quite point my toe. I drop the poses just a second early. Somehow in my mind, this all hurts Lena.

I watch the judge out of the corner of my eye. She dislikes Lena, too. And like me, she's kind of doing her own thing. But unlike me, she's working harder -- the first into the pose, the last one out and always holding a breath or so past Lena's uneven count.

And it occurs to me that even given the promising scores on that pre-LSAT diagnostic test I took in college, this is why I'm not on my way to becoming a judge.

Or Madonna.

And why my portfolio is thin, while my arm fat most decidedly isn't.

fail to plan & plan to fail

2005-08-15T07:15:00.000-05:00

Herein follows a list of things I didn't accomplish this weekend:

Go to yoga
Go to the grocery store
Go to the eye doctor
Finish my book
Go to Italy
Do laundry
Return my Netflix
Return my email
Reconcile the conflict over the Gaza Strip
Make my bed
Paint a masterpiece
Buy a new cell phone
Buy a new house
Clean my car
Get a facial
Tweeze my eyebrows
Shower

In fact, I barely left the house. Which is a shame really, because I looked good this weekend -- skin clear and bangs bangin'. Also, since I've been back to yoga, I'm feeling all svelte now. Sure I've only been once, but it like flushes out your chakras or something which I hear helps with, um, bloat or something. (Whatever. I felt good. Shut uup.)

I did, however, spend an obscene amount of time on the telephone. Just ask my friend Genevieve. Or Vanessa. Or Monica. Or Laurie. Or Stephanie. Or Rich. Or Dean. Or Ann. Or Cathy. Or Margie. Or John. Or Pamela. Or Neda. Or Martha. Or Caroline. (If you called me, I'm sorry I didn't answer. I was on the other line. If you didn't call me and feel bad about it -- as you normally should -- you're forgiven because I was talking to other people who obviously love me more than you do.)

Truly, I love the phone. I think I almost like the phone better than face-to-face communication. It's more streamlined. More conducive to multi-tasking. I mean, if we're conversing at the coffee shop down the street, I can't also be washing the dishes or shaving my legs. If we're at your house, I can't be sweeping my floors, or throwing in a load of laundry or de-fleaing Fred. If we're on the phone I can make faces at what you've just said without offending you or at myself in the mirror to entertain myself or I can do wiggle-dancing down the hallway (only because you'd hear if I were tap dancing). This is why I believe video phones will never really take off. The truth is, I don't think we want people to see what we're doing when we're on the phone. Admit it, you don't want to have to put on pants to answer a call, do you? Isn't it bad enough that we have to remove our fingers from our noses when the doorbell rings?

Seriously, I spent a full work day and a half (at least) on the phone this weekend. A good twelve hours. When I did the math, I must admit I was shocked. But I also felt rather fulfilled. I'd conversed with people. Connected with family and friends. Shared moments. Solidified rapports. Which leads me to believe that being on the phone is my avocation, my passion. Not to mention my true talent. I've been searching for it for so long and there it's been, right there, on my shoulder and under my chin, all along.

So I've figured it out and here it is: I want to be a phone sex operator without the sex. A crisis-line counselor without the crisis. Because the first would creep me out and the latter would stress me out. I want to be a professional phone-a-friender. Callers phone to tell me about the goings-on in their lives -- their problems, their successes, their worries, their new flings, and I'll give general friend-type responses like, "Hey, have you seen the new Being Bobby Brown show on Bravo? Watch that. It'll without a doubt make you feel better about your life." Or "Oh my gosh, he's so totally in to you. He totally wouldn't have told you that your zipper was down unless he'd been looking you know, there." And then, I'll tell them about my problems, successes, worries and flings, because then they'll get the true "friend" experience and they'll feel better about themselves for having contributed to my well being, as well. And then they'll pay me.

List schmist. This was one productive weekend.

special

2005-08-12T14:16:00.000-05:00

"Sadie is like a gold medalist in the Emotional X-treme Sports All-Star World Championships," I tell my friend Stefan the other day. "Watching her navigate moguls. . . Get it? Moguls? Like on mountains but you know, like business-types, too?. . . "

"I get it," he says rolling his eyes.

". . . my heart is totally in my throat. I mean, I worry about her. Still, I can't help but admire her nerve. Her savvy. She's really good at the game. And it's just that I'm like at the other end of the spectrum. Always tripping over my own feet. Tongue-tied. Just vaguely baffled by it all."

"So that makes you, what," Stefan says, "in the emotional Special Olympics?"

"Seriously. I'm just interested in competing."

Stefan stands up as he begins to applaud with slow deliberation, "Good effort, Jill," he says. "Good effort."

i totally love you, man!

2005-08-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

I spent too much time imbibing this weekend to write. For this, I feel vaguely remorseful and quasi-irresponsible. Just on principle, mind you. It's purely guilt for guilt's sake. I mean, plausibly, I should have been out buying a house and feeding the poor and cleaning my car, too. But I didn't do any of those things either and I have no sense of regret over them.

But I should have written.

Something.

And I didn't.

Having said that, I will take a lesson. In my excess I have learned once and for all that I am not of that fashionable ilk of brilliant writer-drinkers à la Faulkner, Poe, O'Neill, Rogers, etc. . . . Knowing one's limitations is a good thing. So I will not consider my weekend a complete failure.

Besides, it was fun.

Above and beyond that, I experienced that lovely moment wherein everyone around me and in my life and that I've ever met is just so loveable and wonderful and I'm just so grateful, you know? I'm just so damn lucky, you feel me? And while I was remembering how generally loveable and wonderful everyone is, I thought of my blog, because I love my blog -- not a person I realize, but hang with me a minute, because -- then I thought of everyone who reads my blog and I decided that I loved them (i.e. you), too. And I kind of wished some of you were there. I won't mention names, of course. Mostly because I can't remember who I was thinking about exactly and besides, it was a very vague sense of all-encompassing affection anyway.

But I believe that inebriation (at least in the early stages) like PMS, tends to bring out the truth. And as I stood at my sink at 3 in the a.m. attempting to allay the inevitable hangover with a few ibuprophen and several glasses of water, I wished I had the energy to open my laptop so that I could peck out the simple thought that you guys are loved. We don't say it enough. And it shouldn't be said only when we're altered. So as I sit here at the bakery at 8:00 on a rainy Monday morning, drinking a cup of coffee and as in my right mind as I ever am, I'm saying it now: you are loved.

Unless, of course, you're Jake Gyllenhaal. Then I don't love you at all.

Thanks for occasionally stopping by to hang out here, you guys. I hope you have an absolutely fantastic week.

Cheers!

hamster head - 1998

2005-07-28T22:45:00.000-05:00

She dreamed last night of riding elephants through an ocean Crayola Blue and this morning she wonders what it means. If it even means anything. She's sure there must be some significance. Or at least she hopes. Because the hamster in her head, away for a while is back and running his wheel incessantly. She wants him to stop and sleep and dream hamster dreams and leave her some silence for productive production. As it is, she runs with him, counting her steps. She truly hates the running, the tedious jogging. Cages, too.

The same song flusters, dissonant through her, through her day. All day. And the next. And for countless following weeks. She's fearful of the years it could play, that the hamster will run Everready steady. (Is this how people go insane?) She'd prefer apathy and has attempted aromatherapy most recently to assuage the rodent. To sooth him. But it doesn't seem to work.

She likes the word, "sooth" rolling smooth through the mouth, aloe gel on sun-scorched skin. Remembers her mother's small hands sliding slick across her back to cool the burn after a day at the beach. She'd fogotten the SPF. Left it back on land next to the lemonade. Even after being reminded. Her own folly, but waves waved and she was scared she'd miss the big one. She's always been a bit single-minded.

The constant screech and click tip her off that something's amiss and so she searches, swimming through wax-drawn seas and in big bowls of alphabet soup, makes love to vice-presidents and has tea with her dead grandmothers. Sometimes she can't remember with whom she did exactly what and then she worries, because she's sure there's a point. Or at least she hopes.

and i don't even have to walk to the mailbox

2005-07-27T22:37:00.000-05:00

If my great-grandmother, at the tender age of 16, could find the gumption to board a boat from Ireland for the new world, why can't I, a full-grown adult with all the advantages she never had, find the initiative to drive myself the ten minutes it would take to get my steadily expanding backside to yoga?

With all the energy and kvetching I put into moaning about getting there, you'd think the studio was, in fact, located on the other side of an ocean.

An ocean that I had to swim.

Through oil-slick waters.

In a sand paper bathing suit.

On a Monday.

And before I've had my coffee even.

Perhaps, if like her, I didn't have ready access to food, I'd feel more of an incentive to work toward achieving my goal of better health and wellness. Starting probably, with the purchase of a much-needed potato for dinner.

Then again, if I had less access to food (and certainly potatoes), my backside wouldn't be a problem and the whole yoga thing would be moot.

How horribly elitist is it of me, that I occasionally wish I lived in a time when life itself was difficult enough that one couldn't fathom actually manufacturing challenges to make it fulfilling?

How wrong is it, that one of the greatest trials in my day is remembering to mail in my latest Netflix?

Yeah.

Think about it.

Though seriously? I've got to remember tomorrow.

Because, dude, I can't wait.

Arrested Development is totally on its way.

And I so wish I were kidding.

have blog, will travel

2005-07-26T23:29:00.000-05:00

When I started this site almost a year ago, most blogs I knew of were travel blogs, the narratives of friends abroad sharing stories with those of us handcuffed and hogtied to desks and domesticity. In response, I thought about subtitling my blog, Travelogues from Home. Because who says you can't have adventures in your own neighborhood, right? Well, I didn't. (Didn't name it that. Did have homegrown adventures : see archives.) I never, however, expected that blogging would actually lead to travel! But it has.

Well, kind of.

It's sort of a chain of events thing, really.

I start a blog. I meet the delightful and wicked talented, not to mention funny writer Jenny Amadeo. We become fast friends. She mentions she lives in Chicago (or so I gather from her site). I have friends who are going to Chicago in September. They say, "Hey, you should come with us to Chicago in September." I say, "Totally! Then I can meet my new best blog friend Jenny!" (Which was really not on their agenda, but they'd already invited me and couldn't take it back.) And then it turns out that the brilliant Brandon -- he of complexity, pathos and quiet humor -- has family there, or at least his wife Countess Chocula does and so we're having a mini-blog cum tequila symposium. Ta-daaa! Travel and tequila and I don't even need a passport. Blogging is so much more fabulous than I could ever have imagined.

Okay. Business, business.

Go have a giggle with Jenny.
Now. Heartstrings primed? Go check out Brando. (By the by, thanks for the traffic, boyo. First round is on me!)

over the lookout, can't get down

2005-07-24T22:34:00.000-05:00

Fred is curled up like a cat in my lap, his body vibrating with nervous energy at the exact frequency of my guilt. I haven't been very good about getting either of us out of the house lately, to walk, to play, to interact with other living creatures. (The fleas that occasionally hitch a ride in the nap of his fur when he runs out too poop -- that I hunt like a vengeful god and quash mercilessly between my fingernails -- don't count.) But my brand of misery just doesn't like company. And while I take a certain pride in operating against the common logic, or at least the cliche, it does tend to leave one to dwell in an ever-deepening pool of self-propagating filth and swill.

Everytime I think I've turned a corner.

My father is a mess. Or at least he was for most of my childhood and young adult life. For years, the man made a habit of setting sail on an ocean of clear spirits, while the women-folk in his life (mother, sister, wife and daughter) strained on tip toes, bodies pressed against the rails of the widow's walk waiting for the barest glimpse of his return. And he would come back eventually, a briney mess. Or sometimes inexplicably jaunty on his own two feet. While other times, of course, it was by gurney or police boat. And then there were the occasions in which we received notice to go retrieve the pieces of him we recognized: at the hospital, at the motel, from the jail. Thankfully, never the morgue. Luckily for him, my thumb is the exact shape of his and we could always use it as an identifier.

And then, of course, the ritual clean up. The gathering up of vodka bottles and pornography cleverly stashed under couch cushions and in the basement behind the water heater, the tossing of maggot inhabited cookware, the sweeping of broken glass and the unquestioning acceptance of eloquently penned, though shakily written, apologies. Exhausting, all of it. Even during the good. Maybe especially during the good, necks perennially sore from watching for shoe clouds. At least after the rain, you can bow your head.

Eventually my mother, for her own sanity, and our general safety, gave up the watch, (though never I think the love that kept her there as long as she was). She was the first off the platform and two of us couldn't blame her. (I'll let you guess who could.) If we're speaking technically, however, my aunt tried earlier. But even the convent's walls couldn't shield her from the patterns of duty imprinted on her psyche by her own mother, her mother who in her last hour still desperately grasped at wrist and shirtfront to pull her daughter close to demand, "Take care of my boy." The next morning we pried those self-same cold, dead hands from the metal of the watchtower.

My aunt and I walked down the rickety steps to solid earth together, I think. I don't remember when exactly, or how. We never mention it, but I think if you asked, she'd agree.

Free of her mother, her brother and the convent, she went on to marry a man who already had three children of his own when they met and so they compromised on Bichons and later it became evident that his grandchildren are most certainly and quite definitively, hers as well.

So all is.

Well.

And good.

And that has always made me happy.

And then, at some point, I went back up. Again, I'm not sure when or why. On some level, I feel it's where I am now.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting. For Godot.

For God.

Forgotten.

But I'm not sure for what.

No father for sure. For life, perhaps. For love. Though I'm not convinced I'd know the shape of either on the horizon, let alone in my hands.

And meanwhile, my father is better. Or so I hear. (Grand marshall in this parade. Best man in that wedding. VIP guest at the hockey game, the regatta.) "Kind of guy who can fall backwards into a pile of shit and come up with ham sandwich," my uncle, my aunt's husband, always says. And he is. And we laugh, though mostly from relief.

Now that he's better, sometimes I think I should write him. (He's written me. Letters in bottles from the island on which we all used to live. Hallmark, speaking for him, thinks highly of me, but I'm not sure where they're getting their information.) On the other hand, I feel the ghost daughter without a pen. And he without an email account. I know that in his mind I am still five-years-old, perfect and full of potential and I would hate for my vestigial, flawed handwriting to give anything away.

a tribe for all times

2005-07-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of urban tribes. You know the idea that we city dwellers, far from the ones who birthed and raised us, form familial bonds with those we meet along the way. We adopt little sisters and big brothers, mother and father figures who oftentimes after a time know us better than the ones we call "real." We create languages all our own, share insights and understandings that anyone not of our tribe can't possibly comprehend. We laugh and fight and cry and help each other move from one tiny apartment to another for no payment greater than pizza and beer. We complain, but we also defend. We love.

I've been part of several different tribes over the years. And I'm part of one now. I think I thought, when I'd really given it any thought at all, that the past ones were no more than trial tribes. I'd been an itinerant loner, looking for her tribe, wandering in search of just the right fit. Just passing through, thanks, no need to inscribe my name in the family bible yet.

But then last weekend, I enjoyed a four-hour brunch with some friends from high school/college and it was as if no time had passed. The comfortably understanding looks shared over our iced teas, the familiar teasing, the same eyerolls of annoyance at the same irritants. The word delightful comes to mind and the rush of affection for these girls, if possible, more intense than when we shared our lives and living quarters on a daily basis.

And then that same night, I had dinner with my friends Pamela and Bill and their little girl to whom I'm allowed to play the adoring aunt. And it felt like home. Because it is.

And then after, I met with some others, others that I'd call my current tribe. And we laughed and drank and in a thousand non-verbal ways communicated our connection and I felt sorry for the couple at the table visiting from out of town. I'm sure they have a tribe of their own, but it wasn't ours. And ours would never be theirs. You see, he didn't get the joke about the coffee-maker. And she, she made her infant son wear a helmet to bed, so that his head would only ever be perfectly round.

Three tribes in one day. Not so bad.

And then it occured to me, that for all my complaining in years past and if I'm honest, the year present, I've got a tribe at work, too. Such smart, motivated, interesting people, who forgive my lack of corporate ambition and believe in my talent despite myself. I've got a few brothers, more sisters than I can count (truly exceptional women who've been confidants and mentors more objective than most) and even someone I'd call Uncle if he'd let me. We spend too much time together, and in truly stressful situations not to form the tightest of bonds. Sure it's all business, except when it isn't.

Which brings me to my friend Jen, one of those truly exceptional women from work, who only a few years older than I, has made an enviable career in PR. She's one of those people who makes miracles happen behind the scenes, who helps create a brand for a network or business, government or charitable organization and gets very little glory in the process. And she's truly great at what she does, which is why I sought her out for advice one day and was rather pleased to learn that inequibility in title aside, we spoke the same language and became fast friends.

When she moved to Sacramento a few years ago, to go experience a different sort of life, a life in which she's tackling the role of supportive wife and amazing mother to her little girl, she remained a touchstone for me. And I hope, at times, I for her. She's still part of my tribe. And so a few weeks ago, I was thrilled when she called to tell me she was pregnant again, this time with a little boy. She is, after all, the sort of woman who should have several children. She's just so very good at it.

And now, if I might digress a moment, I come to you, my bloggy friends. You are part of my tribe. Sure we don't know each other face to face, but over time we've gotten to know significantly more than each other's writing style. We've become for each other, I like to think, an invisible tribe. We support each other through the thick and thin of it, applauding successes and offering words of wisdom and comfort when they're needed most. After all, words, in our community are all we have.

Though, now that I've written that, I'm hoping that's not completely true. Because today, or tonight, or whenever you're reading this, I need more from you. I need your good thoughts and if you've got them your prayers for my friend Jen and her little boy. I leave it at that for now and when all is well, I'll share more. But please, send those good thoughts and prayers toward Sacramento. Think them, pray them, write them with all you've got. And know that in return, that you've got mine for you and your tribe now and for whenever you need them most.

notes on the next life

2005-07-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

This week, in my next life, I want to be the girl at the coffee shop with the boy's name. In this life -- because I'm working on attainable goals -- I'd at least like her verve.

The part of me that's always been an old woman thinks that she may one day regret the cave drawing tattoo that runs the length of her left arm, though perhaps not the more delicate star on her upper right. The star that sits a few inches under a scab on her shoulder, the one she acquired after flying heels over handlebars a couple weeks ago, the one that matches the oval on her chin from the same flight. Or rather, the same crash landing. My inner poorly-permed and chubby thirteen-year-old thinks she's the most fearsome thing she's ever seen and yet can't stop looking. The now-me admires the bear hug she has on the moment, and then immediately regrets the use of the term "bear hug" because it's so grotesquely not the right image.

Last year, her hair was dreaded and blonde. Last week, it was as if a band of meth-crazed fairies had attacked it with pinking shears. Today, it's tucked away under a hat my grandmother would have worn, but she's now acquired a silver grill across the front of her lower teeth and when she smiles a pirate's tooth winks from one of her upper bicuspids.

Something old, something new. And just for the hell of it.

It seems to be all about balance.

Regularly, she takes to the park with a troupe of acrobatic poets who protest the war in Iraq by stacking themselves precariously on the fingertips, shoulders and kneecaps of their compatriots while reciting verse. I've never had the heart to tell them that their tights distract from their message. Color me callow.

She's been to West Africa to help the sick and shares the story without even the faintest breath of a whiff of self-congratulation.

She confesses to a dairy allergy and yet states, "But, you know, I don't have a need to be lactose intolerant."

She's given away the dress she wore to meet the Dali Lama and and admits regret, but sees it as a lesson in detachment.

She tells me that she thinks a group of us once met up at a show, but I don't remember the music she says we saw and I feel plainer for the experience I never banked. (Then again, maybe she's mistaken. And that would be unfortunate, too.)

Conversations with her, over the counter at the coffee shop, feel like really fabulous, but itchy clothes and sometimes, I can't quite hear her and I wonder if she's just a slice off from this physical dimension. A dimension in which I, too, have a nose piercing.

So I'll take her verve. And her seeming fearlessness. Her need to be no one but herself.

But, really, in my next life, I'd also like to be Latin.

deep like linoleum

2005-07-01T00:07:00.000-05:00

I think:
I live my life in the heightened anticipation of a kiss that never comes . . . and without the chutzpah to so much as tilt my head and lean in.

And then, I think:
Wow, do I suck.

And finally, I think:
Eh, at least I've got all my limbs. And you know, cheese is good, too.

And I feel ever so much better.

dispatches from dallas: flying objects may be closer than they appear

2005-06-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

My cousin Allyson was driving down the highway this afternoon, taking her infant son to his swim class -- it's never too early you know -- when a piece of pipe flew off a truck and struck her windshield. She watched as it tumbled through the air and toward her car, almost as if in slow motion.

"It's coming right at me," she thought. And, indeed it did.

It hit her windshield, right at eye level on the driver's side, shattering at least part of the window and sending glass flying all over her, all over the car.

"Never mind," she called to tell me hours later, "that I'm never without my sunglasses, but today I wasn't wearing them. I'm surprised glass didn't get in my eyes."

"I'm surprised," I said, "that you're alive."

"Yeah, that's what the guy at the Volvo dealership said, too."

When it happened, she didn't swerve.

"You didn't swerve?!"

"Are you kidding? At 70 m.p.h, if you swerve, you die." And then with a hero's modesty, "If you were in my position, you would have done the same."

She didn't even slow down. She just checked to make sure she hadn't been impaled. "Because you know, I saw that Oprah where that woman fell on a microphone stand from her balcony and didn't even feel it at first." And then she calmly reached over, picked up her cell phone to call her husband and kept on driving.

"Pull over," Matt told her.

"Why," she wanted to know, exhibiting the detached awareness only ever displayed by the protagonists in Anne Tyler novels, "so I can sit by the side of the road? If I'm going to sit anywhere, it might as well be by the side of a pool." And so she continued on to her son's swim lesson, as if nothing more than an exceedingly large and disgusting bug had sullied her windshield.

Perfect composure.

Matt, on the other hand, broke laws to reach her side. He burned rubber, as it were. Ran stop lights, stop signs, cared not one whit for the rules around pedestrian crosswalks or the niceties of the right-of-way. I'm sure he never so much as gave the wave to any number of unnamed Samaritans he cut off in his single-minded goal to reach his wife and son.

When he arrived, only then did Allyson allow herself the much deserved hysterical sob fest.

I have three thoughts about this:

First, it absolutely melts my heart that Matt risked life, limb and the wrath of the Dallas Highway Patrol for his family. I know. That's what husbands do. But still. It reminds me of why I should perhaps look into finding one myself. A good one, of course. None of those second-hand models with a fishing channel addiction and erectile dysfunction. No, I'd like the kind that shows up -- and in record time, mind you -- when I need to break down. (I wonder, do they sell those on Ebay?)

Second, God is good. (Now, God. . . about that husband on Ebay. . . ?)

Third, people will do absolutely ANYTHING to get mentioned in this blog. Ally, really, a flushed fish or a rogue vacuum would have more than sufficed.

a banner day

2005-06-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

The previous one was just so loooooom-y.

It was making me feel all sorts of trapped beneath a large rock, hunched over and ducked under. Seriously, it was bumming me out. This one is much more Under the Tuscan Sun I think. Not that it was intended to be. Because if I had gone for Italian romance, without a doubt I would have ended up in another region and genre entirely. Asian horror or Icelandic tragedy maybe. Caribbean suspense perhaps. But certainly not Italian romance.

For the life of me, if I'd know where it was going I probably would have screwed it up -- such is my wont. But I didn't. So I didn't. Let go and let God as they say. And though that might be a bit over-the-top for a blog banner, you know, it'a metaphor. A little reminder. There are such things as happy accidents. And I just need to remember to let them happen more often.

- - -

Oops. . . sorry all. The old banner, here.

wherein jane must needs tell her mother

2005-06-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

So, so much for brevity. Forgive me, but there's just not a good stopping place in the middle. Subsequent sections will be shorter, I'm sure. For those of you new to this, you might want to start with Jane Revisited, a.k.a. the beginning.

Jane could hear the phone ringing inside her apartment from the hall outside, and thought for the briefest of moments of letting it go. But then she remembered that the answering machine was on the fritz and that she hadn't gotten around to buying a caller ID-ready phone for the caller ID that she was paying too much for and that something about *69 was just creepy. So she dropped her bag, the mail she'd picked up from downstairs and her raincoat and dove for the door, unlocking as she shoved. Or rather, trying to unlock. But the door was stuck. Stuck stuck. As in not coming unstuck stuck.

"Crap."

Typical, she thought as she threw her shoulder into it. A small aggravation really, it only truly bothered her when footsteps on the stairs suggested a mass murdering rapist was on his way up or like now, when the phone was ringing.

"I must," she muttered to herself as she shoved, "get this," she gritted out, "fixed."

The sticky door was an unfortunate side effect of her unsuccessful bid for some Fung Shui-inspired good luck. She'd painted it red like they said, but all she'd gotten was a semi-permanent bruise on her shoulder from continued ramming into said red door when it was stuck stuck on humid days such as this and a note from her landlady saying she'd have to repaint before she left or lose her deposit.

"Open," she commanded one last time as it finally gave, causing her to practically fall inside as she tripped over the stuff she'd dropped at her feet. Leaving the door open, so she could see if someone tried to snatch her bag, she dashed to the couch where she'd left the phone.

It was her mother. She shouldn't have rushed.

"I was just about to call you," Jane lied.

"I know," her mother answered.

"Actually," Jane admitted in a sudden about face. "I wasn't. I wasn't going to call." Something in her mother's smug, I know striking her as uncomfortably presumptuous.

"Mm-hmm," her mother demurred.

"I wasn't. Really. I'm not in the mood to talk." Jane swung back to the door and picked up her belongings.

"Yes, dear. Now where were you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You had a doctor's appointment this morning. And then I never heard from you."

"So?" Jane threw her stuff on the couch and then bent to retrieve the mail, all of which had slipped to the floor.

"So, that appointment was hours ago."

"And?"

"And you always call after your doctor's appointments."

"I do?"

"You do."

"Why," Jane asked, not really expecting an answer. She sifted through the mail: a Chinese takeout menu, a flyer for a missing guinea pig named "Lloyd," a postcard with a lone American Indian in full war paint and three catalogues one called "Jellies & Soups," one advertising art supplies to stimulate your pet's inner artist and the last showcasing the weaponry of indigenous peoples.

"Why?" her mother said, "Oh, I don't know. I guess it's because I trained you to when you were little. Now you don't walk in your door without picking up the phone to call me. When you get back from the doctors office, you call. The movies? You call. The grocery store, the gym, a date. . . not that that happens very often."

"Mother, don't. . . "

"It's ingrained in you."

"Wait," said Jane, finally tuning into what her mother had just said. "You knowingly trained me to be co-dependent with you? Why would you do that?"

"Because I had to work when you were growing up and I wanted to make sure you hadn't been absconded with by some drunken child molester on your way home from school."

"Not that you could have done anything about it at that point," Jane said.

"You were very good about calling, so I never had to worry."

"Oh."

"And remember? I gave you that whistle to blow, if anyone should approach you."

"That makes me feel much better. I had a whistle as a surrogate parent. I'm surprised I didn't grow up to be a bird."

"Oh, stop it. No need to be so dramatic. It was different when you were growing up. It wasn't so scary."

"I guess."

"So?"

"So what?

"So why didn't you call?"

"I don't know that I want to tell you now. I'm kind of weirded out by my newfound co-dependency. And now that I've officially acknowledged the problem I feel the need to work towards breaking the habit."

"Don't be silly," her mother chided her dismissively.

"Seriously."

"Seriously. Where were you?"

"Seriously, nowhere. I just got back."

"But, I thought your appointment was this morning."

"It was."

"And you just got back."

"Uh huh." Jane dumped the mail on the coffee table.

"Well. . . ?"

"Well, what?"

"Well, where have you been?"

Jane walked over to the alcove off her living room and opened the window. It was a like letting in molasses, the air was so thick. She shut the window.

"They had to run some extra tests. That's all."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing much." Jane walked back through the living room flipping on the window unit air conditioner. And then she continued on, wandering through the arched doorway into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. Half a container of leftover coconut soup, an egg, a shrinking bell pepper. She closed the door, meandered back into the living room and threw herself on the couch.

"Nothing much doesn't take all day."

"Literally, it's nothing. They found nothing."

Her mother sighed. "What does that mean, you exasperating girl," she stated more than asked.

Jane took a deep breath. "I really, really don't want to tell you."

"You don't have an STD do you?"

"Mother!"

"Of course you don't. How could you? You haven't been on a date since what's his name."

"You know his name. And yes, I have.

"What with your friend Stephanie's cousin? He was twelve!"

"A very mature twelve!"

"It was their family reunion!"

"Must we do this?"

"No. If you'd just spit it out, then. . . "

"Theycouldn'tfindmyheart," Jane blurted. There.

"What do you mean they couldn't find your heartbeat."

"No, mother, you aren't listening. Not my heartbeat. They couldn't find my heart."

"Your heart."

"Yeah, I think I must have lost it," said Jane covering her head with a pillow.

"You lost it."

"I guess."

"You guess? You guess! Jane, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! How do you lose a heart?!"

"I don't know, I just. . . "

"How could you be so careless? I've never understood it. I can never get you anything nice."

Jane sighed, got up and went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. "What are you talking about?"

"That nice angora sweater I got you last Christmas? Ruined in the laundry."

"It said you could wash it with like colors."

"It said no such thing." Jane leaned on the counter and toyed with the magnet poetry on her refrigerator.

frazzled frustrated

"Well, one of my sweaters did and I thought it was just the same."

"The car you got when you graduated from high school?"

un relent ing ballyhoo

"Can we not do this now?"

"Totaled!"

psycho

"Mother."

"After less than a month!"

help less

"Mom," Jane sighed.

"I'm just making my point."

"Yes, well, I'm not . . . for the 187th time there was a cat!"

hope less

"What did the doctors say?"

"Not much."

"Not much?"

"They said I was an astonishingly original specimen, never before encountered in modern medical science and they want to write a paper about me."

"That's it?"

it

"They said if they can figure out how I live without a heart it will open the door to recovery for a lot of patients with heart disease and all that research money could be siphoned to the kidney people."

The silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes. "Mom?"

"What," her mother asked slowly, evenly, "did they say about you?"

"They said I shouldn't leave the hospital."

"And you did anyway? I can't believe you."

"I didn't want. . . "

"Anything to get your way. You always have to get your way."

not always

- - - -

After promising her mother she'd call if she felt even the littlest bit ill, she went back into the living room and resumed her position on the couch, pillow on head. After a while, desperate for air, she turned her head. The postcard of the warrior Indian edging out over the lip of the coffee table caught her eye. She reached out, picked it up and turned it over.

Dear Jane, Sorry I've been out of touch. It's been a rough twenty years and I couldn't find a stamp. I hope you've been well. Drop a line if you get a chance.

Love,
Daddy

jane and the doc tease

2005-06-17T06:34:00.000-05:00

So I have to apologize. After optimistically posting the first page of Jane I went home, re-read the rest and remembered why I didn't continue. I actually threw the pages across the room and then crawled under the bed with Fred to hide from my own mediocrity. But as my mother has always encouraged me to finish what I start, I'm going to try to press on. Truly, it's not something I've ever taken to heart, but it sounds good doesn't it? (Translation: don't hold your breath. All I'm saying is that I'm going to try.) My hope is that you won't hate it so much because you don't live in my head with my good friend self-loathing. Of course, there's got to be some re-writing, so the process may be a little slower and the posts a tad more brief than I first hoped, but that's okay because no one reads the really long blog entries anyway. Right? Right then. Here we go. Without any further ado, Jane and the Doc Tease:

Jane left the hospital AMA, against medical advice, signing her name at the bottom of the form with a flourish, enjoying the look of abject disappointment on the faces of the doctors.

"But you'll call if anything happens, right?" they asked, almost desperate.

"We're here if you need us."

"Please, come back immediately -- to this hospital -- if anything changes."

"Or if nothing changes."

"You should just come back. "

"You shouldn't leave."

"Can we have your phone number?" This last question asked in what could only be described as a whimper.

Jane had never felt so popular, so she graciously left her contact information, juxtaposing numbers here and there, just for fun.

The truth was, she was sick... sick of their poking and prodding, the smell of illness that seemed to cling to the white coats and stethoscopes, the rich color of her own blood that really didn't flow, so much as ooze from her arm without a heart to pump it, the whine of the heart monitor they insisted she wear in ridiculous compliance with habit and form. Really, what was the point? But she wasn't sick sick.

She was getting angry by the time she signed the form. "Where's my heart," she wanted to say, "Doctor, where's your hair?"

It was such a personal question: where's your heart? Not so much because of the object lost, but because of the act of losing. She hated losing things, almost as much as she hated being late. Both qualities belonged to people with flaky, flighty personalities. Jane, however, liked to think of herself as grounded and practical, so the question embarrassed her, forcing her to rethink her own picture of herself.

She wasn't a person who normally lost track of her possessions. Primarily because she never threw anything away. Her house was full of the detritus of years' worth of pack-ratting. The usual clutter, out-of-date magazines and solitary socks joined by old gas bills (some never opened), the toilet seat behind the bathroom door she'd replaced last year and the broken phone that she'd dropped in said toilet while describing the new seat to her mom.

Even broken, this stuff had to have value and she had a hard time letting go.

To be continued. . .

alec baldwin, three dates and a nubbin

2005-06-15T06:40:00.000-05:00

About a year or so ago I was set up on a blind date with an artisan furniture maker named John, whose great claim to fame was that Alec Baldwin had recently commissioned a coffee table from him. Or rather, Alec Baldwin's designer had commissioned it. Alec Baldwin, I assume, paid for it -- indirectly, I'm sure -- but still. Somewhere in the world, Alec Baldwin's feet are kicked up on a coffee table designed and built by a guy with whom I shared too few, tiny plates of Spanish tapas and pretty decent conversation.

It is such a small world.

Anyway, a work friend set us up because we are the only two "arty" people she knows. (Her word not mine.) I don't consider myself arty. And frankly, I don't really go for arty when it comes to men. But John wasn't so much arty as unstarched, and unstarched is okay by me. Plus he worked with his hands and specifically with wood, which I think is very cool. Very masculine. Practical and sexy all in one. Also his name is John, like every one of my blood male relations and I don't like change. So things were looking good.

Of course appearances can be deceiving.

Yes, sadly, despite his woodworking ways, intrinsic John-ishness and two degrees of separation from Alec Baldwin, we only lasted a couple of dates beyond the first and I have to say that I use the word "date" loosely. In the junior high school sense of the word. In the group date sense of the word. Because, on our two subsequent so-called dates I spent more time with his friends than I did with him. Which was fine really, except that I have friends already and wasn't really looking for more, especially friends of the second-hand variety, even if they'd only been gently used. Second-hand friends have a way of wearing thin and tearing away easily when/if the relationship goes sour. I speak with no bitterness, but from hard-won experience. A little tip: foster those friendships after the ring is on the finger.

Be pleasant before.

Be friends after.

That said, I was being pleasant as I proceeded to devour an entire serving tray of Swedish meatballs while one female friend of John's cornered me to enumerate his many, varied and wonderful attributes. An expressive little thing, she was given to wild hand gesticulation, which in her case was particularly captivating because the ring finger of her married hand was no more than a vestigial finger nubbin, lopped off at the second knuckle. Now, I dare say an unacknowledged and unexplained finger nubbin is enough to distract anyone, but to make matters worse, this girl was wearing her wedding ring on the nubbin. And what with all the waving and the lack of a knuckle-stop (Wasn't she worried about it losing it?), I half expected the ring to fly off and hit me in the eye. I kept fighting the urge to flinch and duck.

Needless to say, it was very distracting, especially since the word "nubbin" kept repeating itself in my head, drowning out whatever she happened to be saying. I was desperate to know how the nubbin came about, but aside from it being horribly rude to ask such things, she wouldn't shut up long enough for me to get a word in edgewise.

But the brain is an amazing machine, as I've been learning due to my recent obsession with Scientific American Mind. And as it repeated the word nubbin over and over again, it was, of it's own accord, creating associations for the nubbin, cobbling together meaning, creating for the nubbin a raison d'etre. It was doing with the nubbin what it typically does with dreams. It was attempting to make logical sense of a disparate set of facts.

And this is what my brain deduced:

This girl was a friend of John the carpenter. Carpenters use sharp whirly-bladed tools. Those whirly bladed tools have been known in the past to sever carelessly placed fingers. This girl with her spastic hand-waving had certainly carelessly involved her finger in a carpentry accident. Perhaps while with John in his shop. And somehow my brain decided that she'd bravely taken his severing. Somehow. Somehow, she was nubbin'd by proxy. Her finger was the sacrificial Sydney Carton with no real purpose in life to John's finger's Charles Darnay. And John needed his Darnay so that he could complete the worthy task of creating a coffee table for Alec Baldwin.

I have to admit that the intimacy of that connection, signaled by the nubbin, made me a little uncomfortable. Suddenly I was the third wheel on my own date, which was confirmed when nubbin girl, too drunk to drive, her own husband long-gone from the party, asked John of all the many people she knew at the party for a ride home.

And suddenly I understood why she'd been so damn friendly all along. And why she'd stuck so close. And why John, for most of the evening, was nowhere to be found. And why all night she'd been waving that hand in the air, like she just didn't care if it flew into the crock pot of beef stew and was lost to her forever. And I wondered if her husband knew, too.

jane revisited

2005-06-02T06:23:00.000-05:00

Some of you who know me in three dimensions have read this already, so to you some I apologize for being redundant. For the rest of you, it's the beginning of a story I abandoned when the chick-lit craze hit, because I didn't want to be a hack copycat writer. I'm older, wiser and less scrupled now, with no such compunctions. So I'm thinking of resurrecting Jane and helping her find that which she's lost. Maybe when I do, I'll finally figure out what I'm in search of myself. If you likey, I'll post subsequent "chapters" and maybe even write a few more. I make no promises, but we'll see. . .

Jane sat on the edge of the bed looking hard at the x-ray of her torso clipped to the light box three feet away. It was difficult for her to discern the tangle of organs, the edges of bone soft and shadowy, the wispy outline of her derma. It looked ephemeral and other worldly, a quick exhale and -- poof! -- it would all disperse like smoke. To her untrained eye, nothing appeared at all awry. In fact, she thought it was the best picture anyone had ever taken of her.

The doctors, however, had a different opinion. Apparently, her heart was missing. Missing. Not deformed, shrunken, clogged, strained, swollen, upside down or backwards, just. . . missing. Oh, they were quick to assure her that her other organs were in wonderfully present condition -- lovely lungs, a gorgeous spleen and the most perfectly matched pair of kidney's they'd ever seen. They even labeled her appendix, "cute," as if to make up for her prodigal organ.

Jane was grateful, she supposed, for their concern, though she had a sneaking suspicion they were less interested in her as a person than they were in the sum of her parts. She was, to them, a mathematical equation and her heart was the x. Still, they seemed to go through the motions well enough, which was as much as she ever really expected from anyone. At least they asked all the right questions, even if they didn't seem particularly interested in the answers.

"How are you feeling," they wanted to know.

"Fine," she answered.

"You aren't in any pain," they asked.

"Nope," she answered.

"You should know that you are very, very ill," they responded, slightly malicious, resentful of her blithe good health, despite her obvious infirmity.

"But I feel okay," she maintained. And then seeing their annoyance she added, "Maybe a little cold, though."

"Ahhh. . ." they nodded knowingly to each other, "That would be from loss of circulation to the extremities."

She could practically hear their sighs of relief at her admission, but Jane disagreed. It seemed to her that the drafty paper "gown" they'd forced her to wear provided little protection from the hospital's air conditioning. She wondered if the chilly environment was meant to stem the progress of disease through people's bodies and preserve what healthy tissue was left: Cryogenics-light, for the not-quite dead. She'd taken a breath to ask the question, but they were already leaving, muttering amongst themselves.

". . . Journal of Modern Medicine. . ."

". . . history-making case. . ."

". . . article I wrote, published last year. . ."

The bastards. They would be attaching their names to her condition before she could say patent law. The Drucker-Feingold Syndrome. The Feingold-Asner-Krikey Condition. If it were her anomaly, you'd think she'd get to put her name on it. After all, she thought indignantly, one should not have to copyright one's own heart.

She jumped off the bed, intent on venting her perfectly gorgeous spleen at them, but a sudden, surprising waft of cold air told her that the back tie of her gown had come undone.

To be continued: Jane and the Doc Tease

composting

2005-05-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

Things are breaking down. My telephone crackles, even though it's brand new. Lately, my television has been blinking off without pattern or discrimination, and then popping on again moments later -- though never, of course, during the commercials. My car's battery (or maybe it's the alternator) is on the fritz and so needless to say, it doesn't go vroom like it's supposed to do. I had to duck tape the antenna to my cell phone. My gums are in need of some doctorly attention. And even some friendships seem to be fracturing a bit, wearing thin at the edges, uncomfortably taught at the seams. Or perhaps it's just that my social skillz are in the tiznoillet.

But I find I'm not really upset about any of it.

Because, it doesn't feel all that bad.

In fact, it feels a very much like mulch.

i don't really believe in fairy tales, but still. . .

2005-05-19T16:36:00.000-05:00

"But you don't want to be famous," my mother finally admonished me last night, after once again listening to me bemoan my lack of direction, passion, discipline, accomplishment, etc. And then, hypothesis posited, she went on to enumerate the multitude of practical reasons why such a goal would be foolhardy. I have to admit that I agree with her, the practicalities of fame must be burdensome, but still. . . I think she's wrong. I think I do. I do want to be famous.

Why else would I have pursued acting in my early twenties? Why else would I continue to write? Why else would I be so miserable in my plebian existence? It's an admittedly lovely existence, but not very glamorous. Not very exciting. Lacking a distinct pizzazz that in my mind can only come with owning one's own island or being invited to be a U.N. goodwill ambassador as is de rigueur among the do-good celebrity set these days.

"Well, if you want those things you've got to apply yourself," she explained, "and you don't apply yourself."'

She's got me there. I'm not very good at sticking with things. In high school, I tried every sport and club they offered, but stuck with none for more than two seasons. (Except for Latin. Inexplicably, I was in the Latin club for all four years and all I remember is Semper ubi sub ubi* -- so incredibly not useful in improving my SAT scores.) In my adult life I've toyed with painting, engaged briefly in yoga, taught with an after school theatre program for a couple of years, tried my hand at the aforementioned acting, dabbled in graphic design, attempted freelance writing with an initiative that could only be described as tepid, and these days I blog. . . sporadically.

What no one understands is that I shouldn't have to apply myself. Because, you see, I'm special. Of course, it's something no one else has thought to acknowledge yet. It's just some sort of clerical oversight I'm sure. But still. . .

Seriously, I wasn't even supposed to be here this long. According to every book I read as a kid, we special few would have found our way out, for lack of a better term, sometime in our adolescence (usually), though sometimes as late as our early twenties. I don't know if I just missed the window, the wardrobe, the rabbit hole, the rift in time along the way or if . . . . Well, I'll explain the "or if" in a second.

I blame Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, Homer, Christopher Stasheff, Piers Anthony, Lloyd Alexander and countless others whose characters kept me company through my childhood, who gave me hope that there was something more interesting to look forward to once the stresses and doldrums of childhood were done.

But they lied. There is no "out." This is it. Except, I didn't really figure that out until I was about twenty-six. I was driving down the street in my little white Stanza and it occurred to me that I hadn't gone anywhere. Hadn't crossed over to a place where my special, undiscovered gifts would be the key to saving that world from some horrific evil. A place where I would be revered as some sort of heroine-savior with, of course, the ability to fly, or commune with fantastical creatures through the wonders of telepathy. A place where I discovered an innate skill for leadership, tactical savvy and curiously insightful wisdom. A place in which I was venerated for my genuine beneficence and you know, was taller.

It was a heartbreaking realization that shocked me to the core. Buried deep in my subconscious had been the idea that all this, this life, these everyday trials, this world, were no more than a staging area for something greater and more romantic. I felt silly. I felt betrayed. I'd been gypped.

And then the "or if" occurred to me. As a kid, imagining the scenario in which I slipped through the fissure in time and space, I was worried that my mom and my Aunt Patricia would miss me. So I created a clone Jill, one that would stay behind, stay here and live out this life with no knowledge that the real me had stepped across some cosmic divide. I always felt sorry for the double, sad for her that she wouldn't experience the grand adventures, the great love, the glory that I would. But in the name of practicality, it had to be done.

So sitting at the stoplight, car in idle, it hit me, "I'm the double. I'm the stupid left-behind, decoy double!" I let the thought sink in. "This sucks!"

And you know, it really does.

But I'm nothing if not practical, so I told myself that I had best get on getting on with this life after all. And honestly, I've tried. I've gotten the steady job, the fantastic dog, the good friends, blah, blah, blah, but the whole thing is, I must confess, much less appealing without even the hope of meeting a talking dragon or having an entire world view me through a filter of grateful awe.

Which brings us back to fame. Fame on this side, well. . . it would be perhaps the next best thing. A pale facsimile, sure, but something to comfort me on those cold evenings when I'm dealing with the truth of my own mediocrity. At least I'd have the paparazzi to distract me.

*

Addendum

Recently, I was walking in the park with Fred and as we rounded a bend in the path, I saw what looked to be a free-standing doorway at the top of a hill. Now, we walk through this park everyday, sometimes twice and there had never been a doorway before. This one had seemingly appeared there overnight.

I don't have to tell you, I was a little more than excited. As we approached the doorway, I could see that it was more of a portal really, wide and futuristic in design, but rusted out as if it had spent time in the elements, a lot of time in the elements. This doorway had traveled through time and now it was here for me!

I had to try it. But as excited as I was at the prospect of finally escaping my fluorescent-lit cubicled existence for always and forever, Fred was freaked out. This, I took as a really good sign since animals KNOW things, can smell and see things on other planes. It's a fact. But I wouldn't be deterred. Danger be damned, I scooped his squirming little body up in my arms, took a deep breath and stepped inside. And then I waited, taking a moment to notice our shadow, framed by that of the portal stretching twenty feet along the ground in front of us, and then I stepped through to the other side.

I looked around.

I looked down at myself.

I took another deep breath.

Nothing.

Fred, relieved, ran back to sniff the portal and then peed on it.

I, as you might expect, was vaguely disappointed. I didn't really expect anything to happen, but still. . . .

It turns out that the doorway is no more than an art installation, one of several in a summer exhibit the park is hosting. Around another bend is a big, metal Escher-esque sculpture painted yellow and near it, a ditch someone dug that's called "Heal."

*Always wear your underwear.

that one

2005-04-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

My Aunt Patricia's granddaughter, Carli calls my aunt, "Nanny."

She calls my aunt's three Bisons*, "The Guys."

And for the first year or so that she could speak, she called her grandfather, my Uncle Ken, "That one."

"Who lives here?" my aunt would ask whenever my uncle walked in the room.

"Nanny," Carli would say very seriously, "The Guys." And then waving vaguely in my uncle's direction, "That one."

And then everyone would laugh. And by everyone I mean my Aunt Patricia and Carli.

Recently, Carli has started calling her grandfather "Papi."

"Ken was so happy," my aunt laughed, "when he finally got a name!" And then as an aside, "But between you and me, I think it's really selfish of him to insist on it. We were having so much fun before."

*See comments for spelling explanation/correction.

my toes are harlots

2005-04-19T19:24:00.000-05:00

Seriously? I have no problem going braless. And when I'm feeling confident in my body, I'll wear the skin-tight pants, the plunging necklines, the short skirts, and think nothing of it. But somehow, I find that the very red nailpolish I painted on my toes last night makes me feel squirmily immodest.

(I didn't look at the color name, but given my discomfort, I wouldn't be suprised if it's called something like Whore of Babylon in Ruby Shoes Your Mama Taught You All Wrong Now Go Hide Your Feet.)

but where would you recycle her?

2005-04-18T16:36:00.000-05:00

Esther, on reading the tabloids and star rags:
They should sell these magazines with a friend. They're not half as much fun to read by yourself.

Preach it, sister.

singlets are funny

2005-04-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

Click for larger image.

Believe it or not, these people are going to be famous. And I'm just counting the minutes until they are because then I can sue them for all the pre-fame abuse they inflicted upon my fragile body, my delicate ego. Seriously, I was beaten. (And see that headgear Annie's wearing? That's new. I had no such protections.) Sure the bruises have faded, but I've still got the emotional scars and cauliflower ear to prove it. I've got photographic evidence should the judge ask. I've got tear-smudged journal entries.

It's funny, though. I still love most of them and have deep affection for the others -- yes, I know, it's all very Patty Hearst -- except Rob, that is. Because I don't know him very well and back in the day he was too cool to go out with me. And as I inferred above, I scar(e) easily. But he's still funny. And a lot can be forgiven in the name of funny.

So, Rob, it's official. . . I forgive you. Do you feel mysteriously better? Do you feel suddenly free and weightless now that the pall of my resentment has lifted? Did I ever mention, that I don't even LIKE blonds? So, there.

Dude. This stalker stuff is coming way too easily, so I'll stop now. Watch "The Lance Krall Show" -- Monday, April 18 at 11 p.m. on Spike TV.

You'll laugh. I promise.

Here's a little taste: Clock Trouble

Oh, and by the way, that's Sarah (Hi Sarah!) with the chair.

notes from orlando: golfing is not a sport

2005-04-10T11:58:00.000-05:00

"My friend Monica told me that I need to post something new," I called to tell my cousin Corinne. "And nothing's going on in my world. Tell me a story."

"Well, the kids are on Spring Break," she said.

"And. . . ?"

"And I told them that we could do anything they wanted to do. Anything in the world."

"So did you go to Disney?"

"No, we're over Disney. We're Disney'd out. They wanted to go golfing."

"Golfing? Like Putt-Putt?"

"No. Real golfing."

"All five of you?"

"Yup. Ryan took off work."

"You don't golf, do you?"

"Oh no, not me. I drive the cart and drink Bloody Mary's. It's really great. You're out there on the green and little cars come by to deliver you drinks."

"So your idea of golfing is drinking and driving."

"I only had one. And the carts only go four miles an hour."

"Whatever lets you sleep at night. So how did the kids [Cody, 11; Kendall, 10; Bailey, 7] do?

"The boys are really great golfers."

"And Kendall?"

"Kendall's very good at soccer."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, Cody gets up and whales on the ball."

"Uh-huh?"

"And then Bailey gets up and whales on the ball."

"Uh-huh?"

"And then Kendall gets up. . . and the ball sort of just falls off the tee."

"Oh."

"And then she tries again and it only dribbles about two feet."

"I hate golf," I say.

"Well, she must get it from you, then."

"How long did she last?"

"About three holes. After the third hole she was like, 'That's it. I'm driving the cart.'"

"Poor kid. Did you get her a Bloody Mary, too?"

"No! Who do you think we are. . .the Barrymores? I told her 'Honey, it's okay. Golf just isn't your sport.'

"Very good parenting."

"Thanks. But she just gripped the wheel a little tighter and gritted out, "Golf. Is not. A sport."

"I couldn't agree more," I said.

"Seriously. This from the girl who runs home from school during the off-season, so she can stay conditioned for soccer.

"No kidding?"

"No kidding. She had me cut her hair to above her chin last night because her ponytail kept smacking her in the eye during games."

"She's hard core. So did she try again?"

"Yeah, at around the seventh hole she thought she'd give it another shot."

"And?"

"Suprisingly, she hit it really well. She got it to the green."

"Oh, good for her!"

"And then she's on the green and doing her little putt and it's going right for the hole. She was jumping up and down she was so excited and then just as it's about to fall in, all of a sudden this little dachshund streaks onto the green from across the street, snatches up her ball and runs away with it!"

"You're kidding."

"No, it was running in circles around us and around the hole and Kendall was screaming at it to give her back the ball. And the more she screams the more the dog runs. I've never seen her so mad. She was swinging her club up over her head and I really think that if she could have gotten close enough, she really would have clubbed that dog."

"Oh my gosh."

"Seriously. Ryan was yelling at her, 'KENDALL, DO NOT HIT THAT DOG!'"

"So what happened?"

"Cody just squatted down and said, 'C'mere dog.' The dog ran right over to him, dropped the ball and rolled over on its back to have its belly rubbed. Cody rubbed its belly. Kendall grabbed her ball, stomped over to the hole and finished her putt. And then Cody picked up the dog and took it back to it's house."

"And she's always been so sweet to Fred."

"Fred's never come between her and a golf ball."

"This is true. So will you all be golfing together again?"

"Oh probably. It was actually really fun."

"Except for the rage and frustration part, of course."

"Well, the rest of us found it amusing. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team."

"Yeah, well, someone should explain that to the dog."

a good word about beginning's end

2005-04-03T22:12:00.001-05:00

A little more than a year ago, my Grandpa Jack died. Last month, my great aunt Peggy -- my Grandma Kay's sister and Jack's wife -- passed. Yesterday, the Pope died.

Now, I'm not comparing my relatives to the Pope, but. . . . Well, maybe I am. Certainly, they weren't the world figures, the leaders of social and spiritual change that the Pope was, but they were Christians, and Catholics to be specific. They were faithful and devout in their belief. They were kind and loving people, whose generosity of spirit knew no bounds. They faced the ends of their lives with pragmatism and a real peace. And my understanding is that the Pope had a similar experience.

Of course, I can't speak to the Pope's passing, though the reports of his serenity, of his visible participation in the prayers his closest advisors and friends said over him were broadcast across the world. I think I briefly overheard someone say that toward the end, as he passed in and out of consciousness he saw the white light. And I was thankful for those reports, just as I was horrified by the simultaneous analysis of his failing organs. The man was the POPE. The leader of the Catholic Church whose message was all about the greatness of the love of God. And you're discussing his kidneys?! I was completely disgusted at the grotesqueness of it all. But then, you know, I couldn't help but think, the human body is grotesque.

Grotesque in all it's fluids and secretions and need, need, needs. Beautiful, too, in it's perfect mechanization, it's order and symmetry. In our youth -- those us blessed with good health -- are given the joy of it. In our dotage however, I think, it can become a burden.

My grandfather, like the Pope, was such an amazingly physical man in his youth that age and his body's failing, was agony for him. A few months before he died, he and I went on a walk. He was so weak that we got only as far as the next-door neighbor's driveway before we had to turn around. "If only I could walk again," he said. It broke my heart in the same way it saddened me to observe the enfeebled Pope, bereft of his power of speech, robbed of his ability to pray out loud.

My grandfather died with his three children and two of his grandchildren around him. And it was an amazing time for us all. Despite the sadness, we were incredibly grateful for the legacy of love that he and my grandmother had given us. There was even a moment of profound and comic relief in the form of the Irish priest who'd come to offer him last rites. The man just simply refused to accept the solemnity of the situation. "ARE YA STILL WITH US JOHN?," he shouted at my grandfather's inert form, startling him I dare say, back from the very doorstep of death. My grandfather blinked blearily. "YER'RE A BLESSED MAN," he continued, "TO HAVE ALL YER CHILDREN HERE -- ANN, JOHN AND CATHY! YER GRANDCHILDREN, JOHN AND JILL! YOU'LL BE PUTTING IN A GOOD WORD FOR US WITH THE FATHER, NO DOUBT!"

No doubt.

Later that night, in a moment of solitude, as we all lay sleeping, Grandpa Jack took his leave.

I like to think that at the instant of his passing, he found himself in the body of his youth -- only better. That he found himself running -- running -- toward the gates of heaven and into the loving, waiting arms of those who'd gone before him. I see him lifting my grandmother high in the air and spinning her around and around, the sheer joy of the reunion greater than any he's ever known. His parents and grandparents standing around their fair-haired, blue-eyed boy with smiles in their hearts and tears of love in their eyes, just as they were at his birth, his baptism, his wedding. I see every dog he's ever loved -- and he had many -- barking in happy excitement at their master's return. (I do believe our pets go to heaven and I've already told Fred that when he goes, he should find my Grandma Nora, because she's a sucker with the treats.)

When Peggy died, she did so on her own terms. Diagnosed last year with breast cancer, she chose not to undergo all the radical "life-saving" measures that increase the quantity, if not the quality, of time left. She was old, she said. She'd lived a long life and was at was at peace with her God. Let it be. And then one day, about a month ago, she said to her daughter, "I think it's time." She asked to be taken to the hospital so that her daughter's last memory of her wouldn't be of her mother's death in her home. Until the very last minute, she was a mother to her baby girl.

She was never even admitted. She died before they could check her in, with three of her four children around her. (Her oldest, Mary, lived the furthest away and couldn't make it in time.) The thing is, Peggy never truly lost consciousness and as she moved from this world to the next, she narrated the experience for her children. She saw the white light. She cried out at the vision of Jesus. And moments before she was gone, she saw my Grandma Kay.

When Mary arrived, she wasn't surprised, as were the others, that their father hadn't been at heaven's door to greet their mother. "I was talking to Daddy the whole way here," she told her siblings. "He couldn't greet Mommy, because he was with me."

The Pope, I believe had no living relatives, but his children of the Church were by his window, at his side, with him in prayer by the millions, just as my grandfather's children and grandchildren were with him. Just as Peggy's kids were with her. And I can only imagine the host waiting to greet John Paul II in the afterlife. I can only imagine his euphoria at finally being with God to whom he'd so completely given his life. To be able to prostrate himself before the Lord, in praise, the way he'd done in his youth. To dance in the temple of God, as David did. To dance as my grandparents did in the living room when they were young.

It's kind of nice to think about.

I don't wonder that my grandfather, Peggy and the Pope died with such peace because they knew that this corporeal ending was no more than the beginning of something greater. Perhaps, in the end, it's just that our bodies, beautiful and grotesque, are no more than cocoons, providing nourishment and residence for our nascent souls and if we're lucky enough -- blessed enough -- to reach old age, they grow brittle and frail just in time for our gorgeous emergence into a greater incarnation. An incarnation without the frailty of the human form to slow us. An incarnation where dancing is a happy imperative.

And that's kind of nice to think about, too. Especially knowing that those happy, dancing people are putting in a good word for me and mine, every chance they get.

when sandal season just isn't reason enough

2005-03-31T08:03:00.000-05:00

"Think about it," my friend Sadie explained over drinks last night, "Your body follows where your feet lead. So if you're smart about the colors you choose for your pedicure, if you choose them with intention, you can sort of nudge yourself in the right direction."

"Oh my GOSH," Caroline, our resident fashionista and seriously the smartest girl I know, drawled, "Totally!"

"What are you talking about?" say I, ever dubious.

"O.P.I. has these really great names for their polish colors," Sadie said. "I've decided that whatever I want my life to be like for the season of the pedicure, my polish should reflect that. In January I painted my toes Can't-a-Berry Have Some Fun and it was perfect!"

January, I should tell, you was the month Sadie was dating a completely inappropriate but smokin' hot Matthew McConaughey-type lawyer after a six month self-imposed stint of celibacy.

"This month I'm wearing Most Honorable Red," she continued with what I can only describe as a giggle.

I should now tell you that recently she's rekindled a romance with another -- only this time completely appropriate and yet still smokin' hot -- lawyer type.

"You think that really works, huh," Jess asked, celibate lately too, though like me (sadly), not so much by choice.

"I know it does," Sadie said.

"Totally," Caroline, seriously the smartest girl I know, confirmed.

"Well, then I want a color," Jess said, popping an olive in her mouth and swigging down the last sip of her Martini, "called Blushing Spring F*ck."

And that, my friends, is why one gets a pedicure.

read to me, paulie-boy

2005-03-30T17:12:00.000-05:00

I can't explain it, but my brain speaks with an Irish brogue when reading anything about Ireland. It doesn't happen with any other country or culture. Just Ireland. But it happens every time. I'm reading along and all of a sudden I realize that my "ofs" are "oovs" and my "r's" have all been chewed, swallowed and washed down with a pint of Guiness. Lately, specifically, I hear my friend Paulie narrating. He's off-the-boat-Irish and just a lovely man with an even lovelier speaking voice. So lovely, in fact, that I'm sorry he only reads to me about Ireland.

for see-roo ba-nee-nor because she stalks so good

2005-03-15T17:52:00.000-05:00

I really like the rule of threes, so after this no more bangs talk. Unless, you know, I'm discovered by some fame-making maven, Matt Damon suddenly finds -- mysteriously -- that he's in love with me or I win the lottery. If those things happen, I can only assume it's the bangs and I'll have to share.

Speaking of fame and money, my friend-stalker Sarah is going to be rich and famous soon and then I will stalk her! Only I'll do it for real-real. None of this cyber-stalking, full-transparency silliness. I'll dig through her trash and watch her with binoculars and wear a blonde wig so I can sleep with her boyfriend -- because that's all that it takes to fool a man, you know -- a wig. And then I'll go to her mom's house and make her mom teach me how to bake birthday cake the way Sarah always does. (No. 1 Rule of Stalking: Go to the source.) And then I'll have my name formally changed to Sarah's name -- though maybe I'll leave off the "h" so know one knows, but in the private pages of my journal I'll "h" it up all over the place as I practice her signature over and over and over again. And I'll show up on the set of her new television show -- The Lance Krall Show -- and they won't know I'm not her either, because I'll wear the blonde wig again. And I will sign autographs with my practiced signature and everyone will fawn all over me until I open my mouth because Sarah is gut-wrenchingly funny on the fly and can sing really well and can be funny at the same time while singing really well.

And I can't. (Even my mom says so. But she means it as a compliment, so don't not love her.)

I'll have to figure out how to make it so that Sarah becomes mute before I start stalking her.

(No. 2 Rule of Stalking: Prep the subject.)

So this post is for Sarah, because she asked to see the bangs and I want to make her happy so that when I start stalking her she won't realize it for a while. She'll just think we're hanging out like regular friends and stuff. But she'll be wrong. She'll be so very, very wrong. But she can't say I didn't warn her.

raison d'etre

2005-03-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

So. I'm going to make this quick and easy. My bangs and I have decided -- at rather long last -- what we're going to do with our life.

We're going to be -- now, please. . . contain yourselves. . . -- a LIFE COACH!

Sweet knee-collapsing, bowel-releasing, run-into-the-stands to kiss your mama relief!

*Confetti raining*

It's a decision!

*Ticker tape streaming*

And we've MADE IT!

*High School Marching Band swaying and bobbing and high-stepping*

All by ourselves!

*Zoom in close on shifty eyes and shady bangs for honesty shot.*

Okay, well. . . not really. Actually. . .

Actually, it isn't even our idea. But, hey, we're embracing it as our own. And that's almost the same thing.

We were told by a somewhat young, very kind, slightly tipsy acquaintance-friend we've only met three or four times, (who's apparently never read this or this or this or this or she might have thought better), that she would pay good money to have access to our counsel.

"I don't mean to cheapen it," she said earnestly, "but I'd pay you."

She'd PAY us!

US!

To coach her. (Because between you and me, sister's already got a lot on the ball.)

In life.

Seriously. Can you believe it?

We can't either.

But my bangs and I have always been service-minded individuals and humbly believe that to answer the call of those in need -- while sometimes time-consuming, emotionally draining and often annoying -- is the greatest gift we can give humanity.

For a price, of course.

So. Consider the shingle up. The door open. The tea steeped. The couch pillows fluffed.

We've lined up a yoga consultant and an incense vendor. We're having the sweat lodge installed next week and our "Know Yourself, Love Yourself" diagnostic test will soon be available online.

We've practiced our thoughtful, "Mmm-hmms," our careful, "Mmm-hmms?," our encouraging, "Mmm-HMMS!"

And we think we're ready.

After all, how hard can it be? Those who can't do yada yada yada.

To get the ball rolling, we're offering an introductory special -- FREE advice to the first twenty-five people seeking well-thought-out and grounded guidance in their lives. Just email us at egginspoon@hotmail.com and we'll post your questions (anonymously of course) along with our sagacious answers in subsequent posts.

It's okay.

Don't be nervous.

We're here for you. My bangs and I, we're listening.

bang on

2005-03-09T23:51:00.000-05:00

The hairdresser totally lied to me. All these years and I've been living with this untruth. Believing it. Apologizing for it and feeling vaguely "less than" due to it.

I'm not usually so gullible, but it's just one of those things.

And it seemed so plausible.

I mean, I could see it, right there, a couple inches above my nose.

A little indentation. A small imperfection in my hairline. A genetic hiccup, if you will. A cowlick. I have a cowlick.

I have my mother's cowlick. The one she acquired as a little girl the time she rebelliously pushed gum into her hair after having been told to place it on her forehead as punishment for rebelliously chewing it in the first place. Of course, I don't think the nun intended for the punishment -- and the resulting deformity -- to cross generational lines. I can't believe that the good sister's ire over something so trivial could have burned so bright as to imagine me, the innocent daughter, suffering still under the weight of her reprimand all these years later. But there you have it. The sins of the mother and all that.

I forgive dear mummy, of course. She was young, foolish, bored and probably hungry. While I'm at it, I also forgive her for not painting my childhood bedroom purple and for never taking me to Great Adventure. (These are the things that she feels badly about. Though, frankly, they've never bothered me much. I am, however, still struggling with the scars from the five years we spent in Lubbock; my almost pathologic inability to create boundaries for my dog; my abysmally poor eyesight. All her fault.)

But here's the real tragedy. Because of the cowlick, I was told, I could not have bangs. Bangs and cowlicks, I was told, just can't co-exist peacefully together. She could cut them, I was told, but there would be strife, tears and bloodshed to follow. There would be blow drying to do, the use of product to perfect. Did I want that? Did I? Did I?

No. I didn't.

It was truly too much to bear, the thought of all that maintenance. Let me be clear. I'm not good with hair. Plus, the associations are just too painful. The memories of all those hours spent under the cruel hand of my Aunt Ann's hairbrush back in Lubbock -- the pulling of those teensy, tinesy hairs at the base of my neck, the eye-watering, the brutally tight ponytails and the resulting headaches, the inadvertent ear-burns from the curling iron, the nausea-inducing heat generated by the hair dryer. (I just threw up a little in the back of my throat just thinking about it.) So now, whatever it looks like after a vigorous towel dry and a perfunctory brush, it is what it is. Ergo, I've had the same long, straightish, no-style style since I was about 16.

But I'm now 31.

And the hairstyles in the "before" pictures in the Oprah make-over shows have, of late, been looking a little too much like my own fluffy and overgrown tresses.

And my boss recently introduced me as "that hippie girl over there."

So this year, I decided on some drama. Some much-needed hair drama.

"Just a trim?" my stylist wanted to know.

"No, I want drama."

"Drama. How much drama?"

"I don't know," I said petulantly. You're the stylist, I thought. "Drama."

She pondered a moment, before turning away to pick up her scissors. When she turned back, she stood behind me, tapped the scissors to her chin and said carefully, testing the waters, "Shall we try bangs?"

I believe time actually stopped as our eyes met in the mirror. Could it really be? Could I really. . . ? But, no. . . .

"I have I cowlick," I said sadly, a regretful sinner in confession.

"That's no big deal. I'll just cut them higher. If you want them, we can do bangs."

"We can?!"

"We can."

And we did! Oh, how we did!

All those years. All those bangless years. And as it turns out, I look FABULOUS in bangs. Not to brag, but it was as if bangs were invented for the sole purpose of sitting on my head. Or perhaps my head was created for the sole purpose of displaying bangs. Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe. Nee-ther, Nigh-ther.

Who really cares?!

I HAVE BANGS!

And just in time too, as the furrows in my brow have officially become etched beyond all moisturizing hope of Oil of Olay.

Bangs are the poor girl's botox, as my friend Laurie says.

Oh, the power of the bang! Apparently, I not only look younger, but I'm also funnier, more intelligent and a better conversationalist, to judge by the critiques I've gotten from the male set in the wider circle of my friends. These are men, I might add, who couldn't even remember my name the first eight times we met. But now? Now, everyone remembers my name! Even people I've never met before think they know me from the past. They're wrong of course. They just know the bangs. Bangs that once graced the head of some other girl and now belong to me. I pity the girl who lost hers, but she's not getting them back. I'll move to another state first. I'll enter the bangness protection program, if I have to. I'll create a foundation for the benefit of the bangless, but I won't surrender mine. Just try and make me.

You know, once, right after college, my friend Molly mentioned to her mother that she was going to get her hair cut. And in that cut-to-the-chase, cut-to-the-bone insight that mothers often exhibit, hers replied, "Sure, go ahead, that'll fix your life."

We were both sort of abashed at the time. Disheartened and shaken to our cores. But the irony -- minus the sarcasm -- is that she was more right than she knew. A haircut can change your life. I'm living proof.

Check back soon and you'll see. Me and my bangs? We're going places, baby.

And the cowlick? It and that lying hairdresser can schmow my lick!

des memos from des moines: the dangers of dust bunnies

2005-03-03T22:03:00.000-05:00

My cousin Pamela who falls a lot in Iowa was vacuuming yesterday and in a fete of amazing absurdity, somehow allowed her head to get close enough to the whirling, sucking part of her vacuum that it vacuumed up her hair -- the part of her hair at the very crown of her head.

Can't you see her? Practically standing on her head, derriere in the air, arms flailing wildly in a vain attempt to grasp the elusive neck of the vacuum cleaner whereupon lives the off switch? But she can't find it blind and bent over and so it keeps sucking more and more of her hair? Can't you practically hear the whining of the vacuum's motor screaming in your ears, working, straining, struggling to suck into its gullet a full grown woman?

What's worse, Pamela's five-year-old daughter Emma was the only one there to help. But Emma, too, has struggled with this beast of a cleaning device in the past. Last year -- at just about this same time -- it was she who was caught in the sucky beast's brushey clenches. It was she who'd wrestled with it and watched in fearful confusion as it attempted to inhale the fingers right off her hand. And though she survived physically unscathed, to come upon the horrifying site of her own until-this-moment impervious mother being eaten by the very same vacuum creature -- a Shel Silverstein illustration come to life -- she could do nothing more than cradle her hand, now throbbing in memory of the original attack and scream, "BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I DON'T. KNOW WHAT. TO DO!"

So distraught was the child in fact, that she almost threw herself into the vacuum as well, for fear of being left behind. Better to go by choice -- and in company -- than to face a world alone in which vacuum cleaners attack. And except for her mother's swinging arms, she might have done just that.

And then luckily for Emma, who was in full voice and on her fourteenth, "BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!" -- frozen in place (except for her mouth) by the site of her mother battling mightily with the carnivorous vacuum -- the phone rang.

You see, Emma loves the phone. Emma love the phone so much that she likes to sleep with it -- just in case someone calls in the wee hours to chat. She loves it so much that she's demanded phones for all her dolls, so she can converse with them telephonically, as well. So being Emma, even in the midst of a crisis, she answered the phone. And frankly, is it not completely understandable? Don't we all in times of turmoil try to go to our happy places? For Emma, that place is the telephone. Of course, the call wasn't for her, it was for her mother. So Emma explained somewhat sadly -- because she really, truly in the moment needed this outlet, this escape, you know? -- that her mother wasn't available to talk, because she was vacuuming and then she promptly hung up. Thereupon, she returned to her mother's side to resume her role. Deep breath now. Release. Annnnd. . . "BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!"

**No actual Pamelas were harmed -- in anything but pride -- during the making of this blog. The subject in question was, after some time, able to extricate herself from her cleaning device with her scalp miraculously intact. Emma, who is now under the care of a licensed therapist, has requested that she may be allowed to go live with her Aunt Jill, who reportedly never vacuums. **

dr. strange gum

2005-03-02T00:36:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what I expected. I'd been told that my new periodontist, the woman I was going to let slice into my gums, was also the on-call emergency dentist for the animals at the Atlanta zoo. A funny blip on her resume, to be sure, but also a tad bewildering at the same time. I'm not sure why, frankly, but it is.

Anyway, she's a spitfire, this one. A tiny, blonde woman in blue scrubs -- no comfortingly authoritative white lab coat here -- attractive in that sort of freshly scrubbed outdoorsy way and an earthiness about her that I associate with those who work among animals. You know, horsy people. Salt of the earth. Straight-forward. Unpretentious. Brook no disagreement type of brutal honesty.

She barely glanced at me as she introduced herself, took a look at my chart, a quick peek at the panoramic x-ray of my jaw, did a double-take and then gasped, "What a gorgeous picture that is! Look at those roots!"

"Thanks," I said, "I'm very photogenic." (And for the record, I actually said that. And that quickly. Right then. No creative license taken these many hours later. See, Corinne, I'm not always a stuttering, blithering idiot.)

That got her attention and she sort of laughed. Sort of, but not quite, before pointing out, "Well, it's a really good camera and a well-trained technician."

"Well. . . yeah." Back to blithering.

"I'm recommending a bite plate," she said next, madly scribbling in my chart, glancing at the films, scribbling, glancing, scribbling. I had yet to open my mouth.

"Wha. . . ? Why?"

"A lot of the people at your company have them."

"But I don't. . . I mean, Dentist Dr. A said I was fine. I don't have any jaw soreness in the morning."

"Are you married," she demanded.

"No."

"Well the next time you sleep with somebody. . . "

"What, ask him if I grind my teeth?!"

(Hey, you. . . *kiss**kiss**kiss* . . . before you doze off. . . *kiss**kiss**kiss*. . . I need you to tell me something. . . )

"Yes."

She wasn't joking.

"See here," she asked pointing to the film, "the back molars are flattening a little."

"But those are teeth. I get that a bite plate will help teeth, but they'll stop recessing gums how?"

Ignoring my question, "I used to not believe it myself. But now I do."

"But why?"

And then she talked in unintelligible terms about the flexibility and density of teeth and microscopic fractures and I still don't understand really why I need a bite plate and how it resolves the issue of gum recession.

"Okay, let's take a look. I'm going to do a full examination."

Well, I would certainly hope so! I thought and might actually have said, but the back of my chair had suddenly disappeared from behind me, pulling me back by a clump of hair that was caught under the head rest and it took the dentist, the dental assistant and me more than a moment to sufficiently resolve the issue to everyone's comfort.

And then the fasted exam I've ever undergone ensued during which she poked a sharp pointy thing around the gums of every single tooth and barked numbers to the assistant signifying levels of um. . . attachment? depth? attractiveness? Anyway, numbers.

"You have a LOT of teeth," she declared after the count around.

"Well, my wisdom teeth came in straight, so. . . "

"But they're hard to keep clean. I think this one has some decay. It looks like there's a little decay."

For the record, Dr. A gave me a complete bill of clean tooth health, so a part of me takes umbrage at her findings.

"We could fill it I suppose," she continued without taking a breath, "but it would cost the same to have it pulled. We could pull it right out of there. I mean we could fill it or seal it, but pulling it would be just as easy."

Me, screaming in my head: PULL IT?!?!?

But she just wheeled her chair around to look at my award-winning x-ray and kept talking without pause, "But those roots! And you're so small. And the root is really close to the nerve. It could break your jaw." She wheeled back to loom over me, "We have to tell everybody that for liability purposes. That an extracted tooth could potentially break a jaw. But you're so small, I think on you it actually would. So, I've changed my mind," she said and I could tell she wanted to clap her hands in jubilant decisiveness. "We won't do that. Let's just keep an eye on it for now. Sissy, write that down." And Sissy wrote it down.

After that it was a lot of blah blah blah. . .

". . . commend you on your home care. . . "

". . . really deep pits. . . "

". . . daughter works for Fox News. . . "

". . . remove the tissue from the roof of your mouth. . . "

". . . know anything about developing Web sites?"

". . . insurance company charges per tooth, but it's just as easy for me to do three at once. . . "

AND THEN:

". . . do you want valium or vicodin. . . "

Now? Right now? I want both. To go!

I won't be able to talk for 24 hours and I shouldn't "jump around" for 48. It's supposedly going to cost me more than any one of my international travels -- and that's after dental insurance kicks in.

Actually, though. . . oddly, I feel really good about it. Anyone who literally sticks their hands into the mouths of wild animals has got to know the value of the careful touch.

"If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call. I give all my patients my number so they can reach me at any time. Don't worry if I sound a little out of it, though. My boyfriend lives in Hawaii, so I visit him a lot and most of my patients end up calling me at three in the morning. I'm used to it by now. And really, what does it matter? I'm just hanging out on the boat, fishing."

And then she was out the door.

Dude. Gotta love her.

I'll let you know how it goes. I'm anticipating positive results, because I think she just may be the brand of brilliant that doesn't have to hide behind stereotype for professional legitimacy. She can be wacky because she's good. At least, I hope so. Because where else am I going to find a dentist that will take both me and my dog on as clients?! I do have my priorities, you know.

And P.S., she's right. I do grind my teeth. Or at least clench them. Regularly. All day long. I'd just never noticed before.

napping the life out of me

2005-02-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

It's not that my friends are all so amazing, beautiful, talented, well-traveled and accomplished that makes me absolutely crazy with self-loathing. It's that they're so friggin' motivated on top of all that. They get shit done, you know? Done. No questions. No kvetching. Just done. D-Over easy-N-E. Done. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how they do it.

I mean, it seems we all sort of started out in the same place, but even with some vagaries in education and upbringing accounted for, I should still be further up the food chain of life than I am right now. And let me tell you, I had FOUR internships in college! FOUR. I had promise! I had potential! I had a resume!

And rereading that paragraph, it seems to me that at some point in time I had motivation, too.

Apparently, it's fizzled.

I think it's the napping. I think the napping has been the doom of me. I really, really love the napping.

I have a fabulous idea to write about or the kernel of a vision for a painting or for once I'm motivated to clean my house and inevitably the siren song of the nap beckons, trumping the life out of all other activities. I LIVE for the nap.

I'd go so far to say that it's a passion.

Which suhcks. The fact that napping is the one concrete passion I can pinpoint at this point in my life irks the hell out of me. No one ever became famous or built a multimillion dollar portfolio while taking part in sleep studies, for goodness sake! And frankly, having wracked my brain, that's the only "profession" I can think of to satisfy the cravings of an inveterate napper like myself. (Though on the upside, I do meet the man of my dreams on a regular basis. Of course, on the downside, he stays there and sadly he's as likely to manifest himself as a 74-year-old postal worker with eczema as he is Brad Pitt. More likely, actually.)

But I digress.

In search of the answer to wild success and fulfilling achievement, I've done some informal surveys of my amazingly beautiful, well-traveled and talented friends who have fashioned themselves into vice presidents, successful entrepreneurs, up-and-coming actors, published authors, government movers, scientific shakers, happy mothers and thriving wives and there is one glaring difference that that sets these motivationistas apart from me -- lack of sleep.

I actually have one friend who throws up if she sleeps too much. I have others who crawl out of their beds at three and four in the morning to fondle their computers or throw paint at walls or vacuum their living rooms. People are writing dissertations and knocking the kinks out of business plans while I accomplish nothing more productive than finding the cool side of the pillow.

I know you're thinking it: Which came first? The chicken or the depression?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sleep equals depression. She must be depressed. Go get yourself some Zoloft and perk the hell up. Blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, I'm not depressed. I've been depressed. This ain't depression. This is a joy for sleeping. This is an ease of life. This is a lack of anxiety. A peace, if you will, of mind and spirit. And a simultaneous fear of rocking the boat.

But having written that, I know for a fact that I kind of like boat rocking. You meet the best people when treading water post swamping and truthfully I haven't gotten my ears wet in a while.

. . .

My bed's just too comfortable. My pillows too soft. My dog too snuggle-able. And trading all that in for a sleep number bed of nails seems a fool's errand. A fool's errand and yet. . . .

And yet.

des memos from des moines: they fall down in iowa

2005-02-14T23:32:00.000-05:00

My cousin Pamela called the other day to ask why I don't write about her in this space. This space that I emailed her about months ago. This space that we've never discussed because apparently she deleted the link when I sent it to her because she didn't know what it was and didn't bother exploring. This site, the one you're reading right now that she hasn't seen fit to read in all. this. time.

"I've fallen! I've fallen on the ice at least twice this year. Why don't you write about me?!" she wanted to know after she finally read the site last week and saw that I'd recounted her sister's fall in the grocery store.

Well, I didn't write about it because I didn't know about it. The truth is, I suppose I could have assumed her fall because A) she lives in Iowa where there's nothing but snow and ice for like three-quarters of the year and so regular falling should be expected and B) because she's Pammy and of all us kids, she spent the most of her childhood in various casts. As a kid she had a hard time keeping her footing and this despite the fact that she spent most of her childhood in the South where there wasn't even anything so slippery as ice with which to contend. Add the ice and she's doomed. So I should have known, but this is a factual site from my perspective and I only take poetic license with the details. Generally, I don't imagine storylines or dialogue. Generally, I sort of, I guess . . . um. . . report. Whatever.

But honestly I wasn't aware of the fact that she'd fallen, because she'd never mentioned it. Lately -- I'd say over the past few months and maybe even couple of years -- Pammy's dramas have been rather more dramatic. Dramatic in the real life, not to be made-light-of real life sort of way.

Here's the thing. Every time I talk to Pamela lately someone else she knows has. . . well. . . died. Seriously. She's had a rather bad and tragic run of sudden deaths in her general vicinity -- friends' parents, acquaintances from church, in-laws. It's horribly, awfully horrible. I'm afraid to pick up the phone to call her these days. I have to mentally prepare myself to face death every time I ring up Iowa. It's practically a mitzvah to do so. And it's not like we haven't had our own share of deaths in our own respective families over the past couple of years, too. But I'm not writing about those either right now. Because it isn't funny. It's kind of raw. I mean there are some stories there, stories worth telling even. Stories that with time I might be able to recount with sensitivity, wit and yes, even humor. But I'm just not ready yet.

And if I'm not going to write about my own personal tragedies, I'm certainly not going to write about the out-of-the-blue tragic tragedies of people I know of only because Pamela happens to live near them. And just because Pamela's sad and feels free to bum me out by sharing her latest so-and-so has died stories (which for the record I'm glad to hear in that I want to be supportive and because I care about her and her well-being and the well-being of those she cares about very much), doesn't mean I have to depress you, too. You, who are sitting at your job which very probably depresses you enough as it is. You don't want to read about people dying this early in the morning, do you? Do you? You don't. So I won't. (On the other hand, I'm not completely discriminatory. I have no problem whatsoever writing about the death of fish. Cori's stories are just pseudo tragic. Not tragic-tragic. And much more appropriate to this site of pseudo tragic-comedy.)

To be fair, Pammy does have a very funny story about her young son pulling the emergency alarm at the airport at like three o'clock in the morning, in the middle of what was arguably the most arduous series of ridiculously delayed and re-routed flights in the history of travel, but it happened a really long time ago and I don't remember the details and this post is already too long and so I'm going to stop.

But not before I say this: Pammy, perhaps you should purchase yourself some cramp-ons for your shoes. Now that I know, I'm concerned about how much you're apparently falling these days. And just so the third sister, Allyson, doesn't call to ask why I have not also written about her, I'll say this: She's very tall, thin and quite beautiful, but she has an out-of-perspective concern about the onset back fat -- invisible to the naked eye, but which is vaguely evident if she happens to contort herself into a backbend which she will do, just to prove she's got it. Oh, that and she's probably pumping breast milk while reading this. Now that's dedication.

baby shower blues

2005-02-02T16:41:00.000-05:00

Saturday was one of those perfectly grey and bitterly cold days that are so grey and so cold that they inspire a luxuriant and guiltless sloth. The kind of sloth that involves endless movies and take-out Chinese and the decadent three-hour long nap that upon waking leaves you with the non-too-vague sense that you've been hit over the head with a frying pan. (Hit over the head with a frying pan, but in a good way, of course.) It's the kind of day that might include a hot bubble bath, but more likely involves staying in your pajamas all day long, only rousing yourself to pick at your face in the bathroom mirror for countless minutes after your bladder forces you from your comfortable nest of blankets on the couch. The kind of day that even Fred prefers to spend under covers, only occasionally breaching from their depths for food or to gnaw on the foot of his favorite stuffed duck in a state of peri-catatonia.

It was that kind of day and I was SO excited. I was so excited for about three seconds, as I stretched and yawned, happy in the knowledge that I would be able to spend the day as a weather-dictated recluse. And then on the fourth I remembered. I had a baby shower to attend.

And not just any baby shower. A baby shower that happened to be Outside the Perimeter. For those of you not from Atlanta, people who live OTP are the equivalent of New York's Bridge and Tunnel crowd. Those of us who live inside the perimeter prefer not to cross the boundary that takes us outside of the perimeter lest we catch something itchy -- like Republicanism. Unless that is we're leaving the state via airplane. But even the airport is inside that line. Get it?

And this wasn't just on the other side of the Outside. This was like an HOUR on the Outside.

So rather than luxuriate in glorious lethargy, I was going to have to drag myself out of bed -- BATHE! -- DRESS! -- buy a gift and drive an hour each way in order to spend three hours in between drinking weirdly slimy, chunky punch*, playing ridiculously childish and yet often somewhat dangerous or disgusting games**, (devised, oh I don't know, say, circa 1806), before popping in my earplugs for the requisite high-pitched dolphin-squeal screams that accompany the unwrapping of very tiny clothes and the endless discussion of the perfect roundness of bellies and their comparative sizes to other bellies -- present bellies, bellies from generations past and occasionally even the immortalized bellies***. Anyway, there is never just one belly at the party, ergo they sort of dominate the conversation, much the same way they dominate the female figure at 8+ months.

Mein Gott im Himmel! Save me!

Truth be told, there's never a good day for a baby shower. Even if it's gorgeous out, spring-like and balmy. Even if it's next door or God forbid, in your very own house, it's a chunk of your Saturday spent participating in an event that can only be met with a certain grim determination. That is, if you're single and childless. If you're married and/or a parent it's an event at which you can spend time with people like yourself. So less grim determination. More oh-thank-god-people-who-speak-real-sentences-and-only- drool-when-drunk.

The older I get, the clearer that line becomes. The us and the them. The singletons and the married. The parents and the childless. The gap in conversation gets wider and wider. The common topics ever more narrow.

"What did we used to talk about," my college roommate (recently pregnant) asked the group of us after a prolonged conversation about the relative merits of different breast pumps, whether to rent or buy said breast pumps and the apparent act of abomination known as the "Pump-and-Dump" -- an occasionally necessary evil.

"I can't remember," someone else said.

"Sex and boys," I said, to a chorus of "Oh yeahs!" (Because, since I'm not married and have no children, that's what my girlfriends and I still talk about.)

"Well, if it makes anyone feel any better, I'm hung-over," a new mother declared with a note of pride.

"Me too!" said another, before adding, "Of course, I'm a total light weight now. One glass of wine. . . "

And I had to tune out. Because I'm not married and I don't have children. And I can go out whenever I want. And my body is still my own and pretty much looks like it did in college -- less a little turgidity, plus a few more wrinkles. And as much as I care about my friends and my friends' kids -- genuinely, truly love them even -- I really don't care-care about the details. The same way I don't care-care about the melting of the ice-caps, because it's something of which I have no real concrete grasp. It's important to me that my friends are happy. It's important to me that the ice caps stop melting. But just as I'm not going to measure oceanic water levels the next time I'm at the beach, I don't need the differential measurement of pre- and post-pregnancy nipple circumference. Thanks, anyway.

In the end, I guess it's not the baby shower. It's what the baby shower represents. And as a single girl in her 30s, with each passing shower****, it becomes increasingly clear that finally I'm the one who's OTP -- Outside the Pregnancy -- and there's just no true understanding across the line.

And given that, if you don't mind, I'd really much rather sleep in. *****

* Okay, what is UP with the punch the penchant for punch? It's gross. Pastel colored with chunks of slimy, mystery fruit or jello and a skim of froth that typically looks as if it was transplanted from the frog pond out back. And nothing, nothing is worse than an unexpected chunk of bloated banana sliding down the back of your throat. Gack. Listen, punch was designed to distract from the flavor of cheap-ass liquor and without the alcohol, it's just as disgusting, but pointlessly so. Whatever happened to the nice mimosa? The comfort of a Bloody Mary? Heck, the common cup of coffee! I'm coming to your shower. . . at least give me a drinkable drink!

**For example, accidentally let the word "baby" slip from your lips and some ancient auntie is liable to make a screaming dive at you from across the room, practically ripping your shirt from your body with her age-spotted claws in an attempt to unhinge the diaper pin the hostess poked into your collar when you walked though the door. "YOU SAID 'BABY'! SHE SAID 'BABY'! I GET YOUR PIN! I GOT HER PIN!" she'll crow to the room, somehow making you feel suddenly very naked and very stupid and very much like cursing a blue streak at this blue hair whose demeanor is less the genteel old lady and more the street-thug in fake pearls.

It's a GD pin, woman, dial it back a notch!

Or then there's the game in which a blindfolded "volunteer" is forced to sniff a Hershey bar melted into a diaper. Oh. so. not. really. funny.

***A trend -- making a plaster cast of the pregnant belly for artistic display or even practical function. Turn it upside down and it makes a rather nice, if somewhat bizarre, bowl for chips and salsa.

****And honestly, it's been like 35 of them in the past 6 years. Really.

*****I know, if you're a mother or a father of a young child, you'd KILL to sleep in on a Saturday and you've got no sympathy. I know I'm lucky. I feel your pain. But comfort yourself with the knowledge that when you're old you've got a built-in someone to change YOUR diapers. And I'll be hiring strangers. So let me sleep!

notes from orlando: diving for lettuce

2005-01-26T15:18:00.000-05:00

My cousin Corinne fell in the grocery store yesterday when going back for the right kind of lettuce. If only she'd gotten the right kind in the first place. . .

Me: (joking) Are you going to sue? (We really aren't litigious people.)

C: No! I can't! I slipped on nothing. There was nothing there. We looked. Bailey said he thought it was a berry, but there was no evidence of such. It's so embarrassing. . .

Me: Did anyone see you?

C: No, which was a-maze-ing, because there were tons of people around. This one woman came up to me and said that she didn't see me, but that she HEARD me fall. She actually heard me hit the ground.

Me: Ouch.

C: It was my knee that made the loudest thud and then the SPLAT-SPLAT when my hands hit and nobody came to rescue me. I'm lying there splayed on the ground clutching the wrong kind of lettuce and even my son, he just stands there in horror with his mouth open. In complete shock. I had to toss my bottled water in his face to snap him out of it.

Me: You okay?

C: No! My knee hurts, my hands hurt, my entire body is aching. I can't believe I slipped on nothing.

Me: Are you sure you won't be suing.

C: No. I think I'm just wearing ultra slippery shoes today. We were speed skating this afternoon at work, so I know they're slick.

Me: You were speed skating? In the store?

C: Oh yeah! The showroom floors are super polished and there were no customers and so we had a speed skating tournament. We went back into the warehouse to announce it and everything, "At 2:30 we will be holding a speed skating competition!"

Me: Did anyone show up?

C: No, so it was just two of us, skate-skate-skating around the store.

Me: Sounds like. . .

C: STOP EATING PAPER! That's just weird.

Me: Wha-?

C: Bailey has taken a huge bite out of a piece of paper. I just won't have that sort of person living in my house!

Me: You gotta draw the line somewhere. Did you get the right lettuce at least?

C: No! So now I have the wrong lettuce, a huge knee and I've scuffed my favorite skating shoes.

Me: And you've driven your son to paper-eating.

C: No, no that he did before.

i heart my teeth

2005-01-25T19:21:00.000-05:00

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've been to the dentist. There. I've said it. It's out. You may revile me, but your revulsion is no less than I deserve and is better than the hate I've born within myself.

But I'm done. I can't take it anymore, because for the past few months I've found myself waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats and half-panicked, fearful that my teeth, untended by a dentist in said embarrassingly long time, were going to spontaneously fall out of my head.

They were going to fall out of my head and I would be like that sad woman in that low-budget, local commercial we've got. The one where she's hiding behind the Venetian blinds, lips pressed firmly together, because she's too embarrassed by her missing teeth to go dancing. And then she gets dental implants(!) and she can dance again, with some old guy, but it's okay because she has her teeth and she's wearing sequins, sequins that sparkle under the light of the cheap-ass disco ball the prop guy borrowed/stole from his daughter's bedroom. And I don't want to be that woman. I want a real disco ball. Hence the panic.

But embarrassment has outweighed panic thus far. And I don't know if you know this, but embarrassment compounds over time. So because I've been embarrassed about not going, I couldn't quite bring myself to go. And so I've been caught in this vicious cycle of panic and shame, panic and shame, panic and shame and it's been enough to seize up all the sphincters I own.

I. am. blocked. up. I tell you.

On the side of panic, are the plethora of commercials touting toothpastes, and whitening systems and high-tech, vibratory machines that sonically remove plaque and tartar, not to mention the blindingly white smiles that grimace at me from every magazine, television show and movie I see. It's as if everywhere I look teeth are shouting at me, showing off their gorgeous loveliness, looking down on my teeth with pity -- as if I were a bad mother, and my teeth, 32 sadly abused children. I'm surprised no one's called the dental DFACS people. Except that abusers know how to keep secrets. We know how.

Everywhere I look, there are beautiful smiles and gorgeous gums and here I am letting my mouth rot. How will I find a husband (that is supposing I decide I want one) with rotty teeth? How will I get another job if the one I currently have kicks me to the curb? What if, somehow, I accidentally fall through a fissure in time and find myself in some age where dental care means chewing on a stick?

I must tend to my teeth, but how can I? I just know that when I finally go to the doctor he's going to take one look at me from across the room, not even looking into my mouth, he'll just be able to tell with some super-sensory dental power that I've been remiss and he'll turn his back as he hisses over his shoulder, "You don't deserve dental care. Get out of my sight you vile woman." OR and possibly worse, midway through the exam, he'll say to the dental hygienist in that eerily quiet and calm way doctors have, "We'll need to schedule a complete extraction." And then I'll be that woman behind the Venetian blinds!

But as I said at the beginning, this cycle of panic and shame has gotten to the breaking point. So yesterday, I went to the dentist and the experience was. . . I can't believe I'm writing this. . . WONDERFUL.

Instead of derisive recriminations, the guy was fabulously, marvelously kind and understanding and really, really shiny. He kind of looked like a fake person, he was so shiny, but that was okay because his shininess not only distracted me from my toothful insecurities, but it also reflected (literally) what a good, bright, and wonderful person he was. And in his shiny face, I could see my own reflection and I felt good and shiny, too.

So I gazed into his shiny face and I confessed my sins and he just listened and nodded and smiled and shined and then said, "Well let's take a look."

So we did.

And surprise, surprise, after an embarrassingly long absence from professional dental care, I still have NO CAVITIES. Not a one.

"You've got to be kidding me!" I exclaimed around the rubber-gloved fingers poking around in my mouth. "Are you sure you don't need to remove anything?"

"Just a little tartar," he smiled. "You've done a remarkably good job with your home care."

"Really?"

"Really."

Wow.

Wow!

I am awesome! My teeth are so solid. They're so solid, they're made of rocks. MY TEETH ROCK. The relief! Oh the heavenly sphincter-relaxing relief!

And then he handed me a little slip of paper.

"What's this?"

"It's a referral to a periodontist. There's some gum recession, you might want to get checked out."

"What?"

"Not a big deal. She'll just do a little tissue grafting and. . ."

Apparently, while my teeth are made of rocks, my gums are made of tissue.

Tissue paper, that is.

So much for feeling shiny. So much for feeling good. So much for the oh-too-brief respite from panic-constricted sphincters. But God help me, I won't stand behind Venetian blinds, so I'm off and up a link in the dental chain. Embarrassment be damned.

when does lunch count?

2005-01-19T23:47:00.000-05:00

What is it called when an attractive man rings you up out of the blue and asks you to lunch? Asks you to lunch and gives you a choice of locations at which you may dine? Shares a meal with you, is complimentary and engaging and then pays at the end of said meal? When all parties familiar with the two individuals going to lunch start waggling their eyebrows and nodding their heads knowingly? What is that called? Because I would call it a date. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you call that a date? It's a date, right?

Or is it?

What is it called when the attractive man who calls to invite you to lunch has a girlfriend? A girlfriend he tells you about, whom you proceed to discuss? A girlfriend he speaks of in glowing terms? What is that called? I might venture to say that's called Wasting. My. Time. What do you think?

There was nothing inappropriate about the lunch. If it had been a woman, I would have just chalked it up to a little networking and perhaps a foray into friendship. But the whole MAN element throws me.

*sigh*

Okayokay. . . for now, let's just call it a foray into friendship, shall we? But still, it's con-FU-sing. And I don't appreciate confusing. I get crazy over confusing.

It just seems like the traditional rules don't apply any more. Gay men asking out straight women (happened to me at least three times). Married people who refuse to curtail their single habits despite vows to the contrary. Those people who juggle multiple relationships like plates on sticks. Then there's the whole open relationship thing which due to my own puritanical conservative upbringing I just don't get at all.

It all just seems so dangerous to me. And I don't mean physically dangerous -- though, that, too. It's the emotional danger that spooks me. It's like a minefield of hurt waiting to happen.

But then what are the options? Because even the ones who aren't gay or committed are playing games. And they're not sharing the directions!!

Take my friend A. She recently met this really great guy who within the first couple of dates took her hand and looked into her eyes and expounded upon the importance of respect in their relationship. Did everything he could to make her feel safe and cared for and then two weeks later -- poof! -- he's gone ghost.

I once dated a guy who would add a Mrs. to his own last name when addressing me, but then he would disappear for days and weeks at a time between phone calls.

On the other hand, my friend M. has a habit of collecting male friends who "claim" her for theirs despite the fact that she has never and will never (having explained in no uncertain terms that she won't ever) go out with them, effectively blocking all other male beings within a four mile radius whenever they're together. Of course, these guys call ALL the time, but most can barely even feed themselves.

The seemingly normal and on-paper available ones are so extremely unreliable these days, that I almost can't blame people for jumping the gun for the affluent, attractive, able and intelligent gent who just happens to be in a weak relationship. Get him while the gettin's good, right?

So back to the lunch date. I asked a male friend of mine -- a male friend who is married and who loves his wife and is a total traditionalist and honorable and thinks he scored the lottery by marrying who he did and wouldn't do anything in the world to jeopardize the relationship -- what was up with this lunch. And he said, simply, "It's on."

"But he has a girlfriend!"

And this paragon of honor, he just sort of shrugged.

I asked my friend M. and she said, simply "Well, he's not married, right?"

"But he has a girlfriend!"

And she just sort of shrugged.

So was he wasting my time? Or given the state of the world and sexual politics, should I just bide my own? Though, honestly, in the long run, I don't really see how it matters either way.

a dinner with the girls at a posh restaurant

2005-01-14T01:18:00.000-05:00

Once in a while there are those lovely nights, or days or very occasionally even weeks that are so very lovely. So very lovely, that even in the middle of them they are savorable. Yes, I just made up the word savorable. It may be the liquor talking. Though more likely it's the wine that came after the wave of dirty martini's. The wine that the waiter described as full bodied, with an essence of chocolate and like a warm blanket. And while I'd usually not drink a warm blanket or any blanket for that matter -- even a chocolate one -- oddly he was right and remarkably it was delightfully good. Worth $14 dollars good? Well, I'm cheap, so rarely is any beverage not found in the middle of a desert after my camel dies and my Sherpa flees worth $14, but as tonight wasn't about money, I'll let that one rest. And lucky me, I've apparently imbibed the blanket upon which to sleep. And it only cost me $14! (Don't you just love circular logic?)

Anyway, tonight was one of those lovely nights. It was "A Dinner with the Girls at a Posh Restaurant" as the email invite -- though not the Evite (which for the record I HATE as much for its implied demand of commitment as for its pressure to be clever with a YES) -- suggested. And it was divine.

It was divine for it's lack of drama, and the intelligent conversation and the 2005 optimism (such a stark contrast from the 2004 desperation), and the pretty people and the fabulous food and the blankety wine and the perfectly brackish martini's with three fat olives in each and the waiter (Zack!) who followed us around the restaurant with drinks and eats -- so very Sherpa --, because no one could seem to sit still for more than five minutes at a stretch, and the tower of fire and the succulent meat, and the architectural lights and flowers overhead and just simply for the feeeeeeeel of the place.

I felt like I was on vacation.

I felt like I could breath.

It was just one of those nights when the temperature of the space -- physical, emotional, spiritual, social -- choose your perfect temperature of choice -- is so right-on right-on that even in the moment you'll pull yourself out of it and above it to look down on it to reminisce over when you're old, before diving back in it to savor for all it's worth. That kind of night.

*sigh*

Thanks girlies. You divine lovelies totally out-poshed the restaurant.

have tomato will nap

2005-01-06T18:37:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in my living room. I'm sitting on the couch with my feet up on the coffee table and my laptop in my lap. Fred is sitting on the couch across from me. Staring. I can't see him, because my screen blocks his little body from view. Hold on a second. . . .

Yup. He's still there. Staring. Intently. Unblinking as the Sphinx. He's not speaking, but since we're psychically connected I know what he's thinking. I can read his thoughts and his thoughts are these:

Pay. Attention. To. Me.

Throw. The. Ball.

I. Want. A. Tomato.

He wants a tomato, because I'm eating tomatoes. I've got a bowl of those tiny sweet ones. Delish. Fred loves them, too. But you don't really care about that, do you? I don't even care about that.

I'll be honest. I'm stalling. I have about eight ideas I'd like to write about all lined up on a couch in my head. Staring at me. Intently. Unblinking as the Sphinx. Vibrating with desire for the ripe tomato of my attention.

However, one is depressing, another emotionally wrenching, three are about work and then I've got this soapbox to stand on . . . one addresses religion and politics, but I'm just way too over it, while the last is about something that is as yet rather amorphous, but has to do with pubs and parks and Luddites and fear of weddings.

So this is a piece about nothing. About the uncomfortable in between of inspiration and realized creation. This is the part where I take a nap and hate myself just a little for not pushing through. And where Fred sighs deeply in that way of long-suffering pooches everywhere that says, If you're not going to write/work/paint, you should at least be taking me for a walk.

Sorry, Fred. Have a tomato.

t.m.i.

2005-01-05T13:56:00.000-05:00

So I came across this little dialogue I wrote last year. Or rather I should say transcribed. It's just something I jotted down after a conversation I had with my very pregnant friend Nicole. It's somewhat indicative of the many horrifying and wonderful chats I've had with pregnant friends over the years. Enjoy.

Nicole: Hey, I'm not sure I feel up to dinner tonight.

Me: That's okay. Are you feeling alright?

[Pay attention to the use of correct form when talking with a pregnant friend: the immediate acquiescence to her wishes followed by concern for her health.]

Nicole: Yeah, I'm okay. I really should come. I mean, I want to. It's just that I don't know if I feel like it.

Me: That's okay. Whatever you like. It's totally an open invitation. If you show up, great. If you don't feel up to it, no hard feelings.

[Meet indecisiveness with complete acceptance. What. Ever. She. Wants.]

Nicole: Thanks.

Me: Well, okay, I gotta . . .

Nicole: Hey, did I tell you that I had a contraction yesterday?

[Probably, but there are countless people I know who are currently pregnant and after months and months of pregnancy discussion, I frankly can't care to keep track. Moreover, I've got guests coming over in twenty minutes!!!]

Me: Really? Like a labor pain?

[Note tone of interest and encouraging follow-up question.]

Nicole: No, just a little pain that . . .10 minutes of blah, blah, detailed blah, blah, blah, description of the contraction blah. . . called Braxton Hicks.

[As Nicole talks, I straighten up the bathroom bathroom, finish up with the dishes, set out the appetizers and pour myself a glass of wine. Mid sip, as I'm contemplating whether ginger-scented candles are appropriate for a spring dinner party I begin to realize that Nicole has stopped speaking. It's a silence that indicates my dear friend has stopped her blah blah blahing and is waiting for me to respond. But I really haven't been listening and now have NO IDEA what she's talking about! I grapple in panic for a response and decide to just repeat the last words I heard.]

Me: Who's Braxton Hicks?

Nicole: The contraction? Like I just said, it's called a Braxton Hicks.

Right! Of course!

Me: So, now you're naming your contractions?

Nicole: Funny.

Me: Will you name one after me?

Nicole: No, I'm naming them all after my husband.

Me: Fair enough. But you're feeling okay, right? You're just tired?

Nicole: I'm fine. [Big dramatic pregnancy sigh.] It's just that nothing fits. I feel like a house. Even my vagina is huge.

Me: Um. . .

[Her WHAT is WHAT?! If I weren't so stunned I'd be spitting Merlot, but I'm frozen in place, suddenly very aware of my own, apparently not very large, vagina.]

Nicole: It's so swollen, it doesn't even look like mine anymore.

Me: Oh. My. God.

Nicole: Yeah, you know how it usually fits in your underwear?

Me: (nervously) Uh. . .huh.

Nicole: Mine doesn't. It's so big, it's completely unrecognizable.

[All rules about being kind, solicitous, understanding, sympathetic go out the window, because now she's just saying this stuff to freak me out.]

Me: OHMYGOSH, Nicole. You must go buy bigger panties and stop talking about this. Right now! I can't help it. . . I'm picturing your vagina with one of those Nike pump attachment thingies and a big fake nose and eyeglasses and I'm just a little more than disturbed. And frankly, for the record, I don't know that even if I had to, I could pick mine out of a lineup.

Nicole: Don't be ridiculous? It's all perfectly normal. It will happen to you, too.

Me: No, no it certainly will not, because now I'll be adopting, thankyouverymuch. There are tons of needy kids out there and my vagina need not swell to care for them.

Nicole: You say that now. Just wait.

Me: Right. Enough. Whatever you say, dearie. Listen, if you and your vagina can fit out your front door and squeeze into your car, you should come over tonight. I'll put a chair in the freezer for you, just in case.

Nicole: Thanks. You're too sweet.

Me: Yes, I know. But, Nicole?

Nicole: Yes?

Me: You may not speak of this. Ever again.

you dioxin say

2004-12-13T20:24:00.000-05:00

Did you read about that a presidential candidate in the Ukraine who was poisoned? Have you seen the pictures? It's incredible. One day Viktor Yushchenko is a relatively youthful and attractive guy walking around doing his political thing and then he has dinner with the Head of the State Security Service, eats some soup and less than three months later he looks like he's caught a bizarre case of Elephantitis of the face. He's pock-marked and swollen and there's a distinct grey cast to his skin. It's horrifying. The diagnosis is poisoning by Dioxin, the active ingredient in Agent Orange, commonly used in weed-killer and pesticides.

Are you kidding me? Poisoning? Who does that these days? It's so archaic. It's so Eastern.

In the West it seems we're more forthright. We want you dead, we shoot you. As my friend Eddie said, we're more of the "You better run" school of violence. We like guns. We like big ass tanks. We're down with stabbings and of course the ever-popular character assassination. But poisoning?

Damn.

It's just so mean. The stuff of gothic romance novels, not modern day politics.

Though I guess everyone can't be as modern and civilized as we in the States are. We'll just take your entire country to war, kill 100,000 of your country's people and call it peace-making.

But we'll do it to your face.

An interesting side note: Yushchenko's opponent has publicly stated that he wishes Yushchenko no evil, but does question whether his health has been compromised enough that he could effectively serve as president.

Now that's more like it.

ugh

2004-12-02T16:52:00.000-05:00

You know, I'm a relatively smart girl. I've got a talent or two. I'm educated and healthy. I have a few dollars saved and no husband or kids to hold me back. So will someone please tell me WHY am I not doing more with my life to contribute to the betterment of humankind?

*sniff*

*sigh*

. . .

*still sighing*

I suck.

I suck I suck I suck.

Stupid Oprah.

Sorry. Gotta head. Just remembered that I'm supposed to go adopt a Chinese baby girl. But first, I need to throw my television out the window.

sickler

2004-11-22T15:51:00.000-05:00

A I may be becoming a subconscious bulimic.
B Someone's getting their kicks slipping laxatives and vomit-inducing medications into my canned olives.
C I could be having a bad run of tainted food.
D I COULD BE DYING.

D is what I thought on Saturday night, head lolling off the edge of the bed when it wasn't lolling off the edge of the toilet. And D what I was thinking the Friday night three weeks ago, when I was doing the exact same thing.

I'm not encouraged by the trend and now in light of options B and C, I'm afraid to eat. Luckily, I've been feeling a little chunky, so this works just fine if the answer is A. (It's incredible how much weight one loses if one ceases to ingest solid foods for 48 hours or so.) Though given how wrenchingly painful the process has been thus far, I think I'll give fully conscious anorexia a whirl this go 'round and see if it works as well as its more projectile prone sister. Plus, that will knock out options B and C, too. Woo Hoo!

Regardless, if the pattern continues, I'm really going to have to train Fred to open doors without the use of opposable thumbs, teach him how to drive a stick, make him memorize directions to the store, and introduce him to the parrot a few houses down who absolutely must learn the phrases Ginger Ale and Chicken Noodle Soup.

(Makes it sound like I don't have friends. But I don't really have friends that I would -- even though I could -- call at 4 o'clock in the morning. And that's when I wanted the Ginger Ale. And that's when the chihuahua-parrot-driving caper seemed to make a lot of really sane sense.)

tired for coffee

2004-11-17T18:03:00.001-05:00

There was a man standing next to Oprah last week who said that coffee was bad. According to Oprah and the man standing next to her, coffee and its insidious properties not only make us fat, but it also ages us prematurely. As I watched Oprah and listened to the man standing next to her pontificate I could feeeeel my cheeks sliding down my face to lap over the edge of my jawline. My ass actually inflated in my chair, the chair which suddenly let out a groan of protest at the excessive coffee-weight it was forced to bear.

My God, I cried aloud channeling the agony of the old testament profits as they wandered the deserts in sackcloth and ash-washed up-dos, May I not have even ONE delightful little vice with no adverse effects?!

The answer from on high -- you know, Oprah -- is no. And this is bad.

Because in addition to making us fat and making us old, coffee, if you failed to notice, ALSO MAKES US AWAKE! Apparently, however, I missed the jump wherein consciousness has become less important than youngness and thinness. As I understand it sleeping thinly went out of vogue along with the waking of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Thing is, they were fated for the eventual happy ending. I have no such knowledge about my own future. So I must be awake to find out how it all ends. I've got to be awake to chase down that prince, tackle him off his horse and to the ground, if need be. I can't just be lying around, cooling my heels in dreamland.

And then the man standing next to Oprah (whose name I believe begins with a "P") explained that it wasn't the caffeine, it was the coffee itself. Caffeine is fine he said. Drink green tea instead, he said.

So I am. But let me tell you, tea ain't no coffee. I would have to drink a bathtub full of the stuff and honestly, who has the time to clean the bathtub that well?

I don't feel thinner. I don't feel younger. But I'm so much considerably more tired than usual, I just can't care.

undustable

2004-11-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

When giving my Aunt Patricia a gift, you should always remember one thing: it should require no dusting. She doesn?t like objects that require dusting or actually, cleaning of any kind. There's too much cleaning to do already. And she would know, because she's always meticulously wiping out a soap dish or squeegee-ing the shower door or Windexing a decorative-flower vase or fastidiously brushing one of her four Bichon Frises (Rambo, Rocky, Hercules and Popcorn). Or worse, brushing their teeth. Or worse, having her husband, my exceedingly patient Uncle Ken do any of the above for her. And don't leave a glass unattended for more than a nanosecond either, because if you take too long between sips she'll clean that right out from under you, too.

"Oh," she'll exclaim innocently enough when after you've merely turned your head to look at something other than your barely-cooled cup of coffee, you find upon turning back that it's magically disappeared, "I thought you were finished with that."

It's inevitable that within moments of walking in her front door, before I've even put down my suitcase, that she'll helpfully inquire, "Do you need to do any laundry?" Which is to say, "Your laundry, even if clean, can't possibly be clean enough." Which is really to say, "You live in that rental house with that rental washer and you don't know what disgusting people have washed their verminous clothes in that very same machine. Don't you dare bring that bag of unlaundered infestation into my house."

Even her garbage is clean. I've thrown a tissue into the trash and actually seen it vanish in mid-air. Yes, she's THAT fast.

She's ruthless. Sentiment has no hold on her. If it's dustable it's trashable. No hard feelings, please. But her house sparkles in the sun and smells like spring and if cleanliness has any connection whatsoever to Godliness, one day she may very well unseat the Holy Ghost himself from his place at the left hand of the Father.

I'm sorry to say, I share no such affliction. My house generally tends toward the cluttered and the dusty. My laundry gets done when I run out of underwear. My clothes have not in fact, learned to fold themselves, despite all the wishing in the world on my part that they would, so most of the time they aren't. And as for my bathroom? Well, I'm convinced that while I'm out, Fred invites the neighborhood dogs over for group bathing parties. Because I can't possibly create the chaos that is my bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. It just isn't possible.

For this reason, my Aunt Patricia will never -- I repeat never -- come to visit my home. At least not until I move. She can come visit me then, but only within the first week of my residence, because during that time I can blame any filth on the previous tenants and after that I'm afraid my own dominant detritus gene will kick in and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing. And this saddens me. But not enough to invest the time and money on the hypnotherapy and acupuncture necessary to overcome my addiction to disorganization. Instead, I'll invest the money in plane tickets to Albany, NY and have my coffee cup surgically attached to my person.

thwarting twarted

2004-11-16T17:38:00.000-05:00

"What are you doing?" Montine called to ask Saturday afternoon.

"I'm sitting on my couch watching TV and eating sliced salami," I told her. Because that was what I was doing. Because that's the sort of thing I do when other plans have been thwarted and I feel too demoralized by the thwarting to do anything else productive with my day.

I was supposed to have gone hiking with friends of a friend, but the common friend selfishly pulled a groin muscle earlier in the week and so couldn't make it. Not a problem, because I rise above my friends' issues to pursue my own interests all the time and I still wanted to go hiking.

So I got up at seven a.m. and packed Fred a sweater, because he has no hair on his chest (Seriously. It's bizarre.) and it's chilly in the North Georgia mountains where we were to go hiking. I packed water and food and even remembered to bring cash because those hill people often haven't all heard of plastic credit and I didn't want to trade my body or Fred's pelt for lunch. But the meeting place had changed and since the only one with a comprehensive phone list was the common friend and since that friend had turned off her phone so that her groin might get a good night's sleep, I was left to wait and wait and wait in the high-rent mall parking lot with no interesting people-watching potential due to the ridiculously early hour and the fact that it was a swank shopping center where homeless people are actively discouraged. (Bastard entitled rich people ruining my wait.)

Friday night was no better. I was supposed to have met a work friend for a drink, so that I could interview her for a project she's coordinating at work that I'm coordinating another project around, but she was unavoidably detained. No big deal. And yet still. A thwarting.

And then there was Sunday morning. Sunday morning a bunch of us were supposed to go to brunch. And a bunch of us did, but it was an entirely different group than the initial crowd because half of the original crowd cancelled and while I would have happily sat on the couch and eaten a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a handful of raisins, Montine encouraged me otherwise. I should have taken the cereal and raisins, because while the food was good and company cordial, the experience could only be considered an ordeal. A THREE HOUR ordeal that consisted of a forty-five minute wait, a table that smelled of sour dish water, a server that could only have been slower had she been strapped into a straight jacket and weighted down with cinder blocks and at the end a weirdly tense moment over the check wherein our group of six adult people couldn't come to terms over the cost of two shared appetizers totaling a whopping eight bucks. Granted, like I said, the food was really good, but it left me with nothing to do after my nap later in the day as I was too full to even move, much less eat the treat of sliced liverwurst I'd bought or, God help me, make any kind of plan. A nap, I might mention, that was warranted by the ordeal of a brunch that hijacked -- i.e. thwarted -- my day.

And then Sunday NIGHT I was supposed to take an art seminar. I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear that the teacher didn't show. Thwart. Thwarty-thwart-thwart-thwart-thwarting.

So. Fred and I, Sunday night, blink blink blinking at the TV, exhausted by all our foiled plans, little question marks hovering over our heads, sharing a package of pre-sliced pepperoni. And I was a little down.

And then my mom called and she asked what I'd done this weekend and I told her, "ALL MY PLANS WERE THWARTED!"

But that makes for a really short and boring conversation. So I strained my brain and squinted my eyes and bit my lip and came up with a list of things I DID do this weekend.

And, amazingly, I did a lot! Despite the thwarting! I went on a couple long meandering walks around my neighborhood and through art galleries and novelty stores and of course, there was a romp through the park for Fred with a pack of cold-weather-happy dogs; I had a few truly fabulous shoe sightings and at least three delightful surprise encounters with friends and acquaintances whose associations stretch from the dark ages of my youth; even better, there were some delightful moments with people who may very well still be friends when this weekend is one day a dark age itself; I engaged in two full-blown naps of decadent proportion and spontaneously attended a couple perspective-generating charity events which left me feeling extravagantly over-privileged just for even owning pants; I had one really exceptional cup of coffee and an even better marshmallow at a surprise marshmallow roast! And all of it -- all of it -- unplanned.

What do they say? Life is what happens when you're making plans? In my case, it's what happens instead them.