a cat and twenty.

it's time.

2009-05-17T13:13:00.002-04:00

it just is.

this blog has been a great thing for me, served a really useful role as i flailed my way through my mid-20s. (this is not to say that i'm not still flailing my way through my late 20s, but i digress.) i have really enjoyed doing it.

but.

i think i'm done. i haven't written in over two months - i don't really have a strong inclination to do so. this could just be a big lull, or this could be a tectonic shift in who i am and what i do. this is not to be dramatic - i just don't know. but i have the strong sense that i should hang it up here. maybe i'll pick up some place again somewhere down the line, in some different way. or maybe by then, we'll all just be directly plugged into one another's brains and there will be no need. oh, and hover cars. there will be hover cars.

so anyway. thank you to everyone who took the time to read what i wrote here. i really appreciate it. if we're not connected on facebook and you'd like to be, drop me a line.

bye.

update.

2009-03-08T22:19:00.002-04:00

i haven't posted in a while. i know. i haven't quit. yet. but i'm just going to write when i have something i want to say...or i guess, more specifically, something i want to write, because i say stuff all the time.

you know.

anyway we are under contract for a place, which is one of a few reasons my brain is generally elsewhere. it's a co-op. co-op financing makes my head hurt a little bit. actually, all aspects of homebuying make my head hurt a little bit. it's good, though. (the homebuying, not the headaches.)

i'm calling the home inspector tomorrow. he's known as "the deal-killer." but when it comes to home inspections, i'd rather have him on my side than the guy known as "ehh, it'll be fine."

more later.

things i have been doing lately.

2009-02-11T21:53:00.003-05:00

deciding to buy a house.*

freaking out about buying a house.

mixing white wine and champagne.

getting yelled at.

having trouble sleeping.

moisturizing.

almost falling down the metro escalator.

paying vet bills.

rubbing weird medicated stuff on my cat's face.

trying not to think about how much cat surgery next month will cost.

thanking the baby jesus that we got a tax return to cover it, at least.

pondering a run for the border.

freaking out about buying a house.

*when i say house, you all realize i don't really mean "house," right? i mean condo. 600-700 sq feet of glorious urban living. actual single family houses in the district are either a) in a neighborhood where gunshots are not out of the ordinary or b) prohibitively expensive. hell, most condos are bordering on prohibitive. do you know how much it costs to live in an east cost city these days??

/freaking out. for now.

48 things meme.

2009-02-01T15:09:00.002-05:00

more meme time, as i'm running a little dry on blog fodder lately....

1.WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
my first name is just one my parents liked, though my dad always tried to convince me it was after katharine hepburn. my middle name is the name of the virgin mary’s mother, saint anne. except i don’t get the ‘e’.

2.WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
i came very close on January 20th.

3.DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
oh no, it’s pretty bad. i have to translate for jason all the time.

4.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
i don’t eat lunch meat anymore, but when i did it was ham.

5.DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
noooooooooo.

6.IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
i’d like to think so, but i guess it depends on the type of person i’d be if i were another person. you know? right.

7.DO YOU USE SARCASM?
sparingly.

8.DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
yes.

9.WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
not a chance in hell.

10.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
cinnamon toast crunch.

11.DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
most of my shoes don’t actually tie, they slip on or zip. i don’t tie my gym shoes when i take them off, i untie them to put them on. does that seem backwards? probably. oh well.

12.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
cookie dough.

13.WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
their facial symmetry, on an unconscious level. isn’t that true for everyone? consciously, i notice how loud they are, relatively speaking.
14.RED OR PINK?
red.

15.WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
i have a tendency to be judgmental.

16.WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
the guy who cooked the waffle fries at Our House. alistair cookie.

17.DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
no, I refuse to be a meme bully!

18.WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
black yoga pants, no shoes.

19.WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
the sound of mythbusters on the tv in the other room.

20.IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
cerulean blue.

21.FAVORITE SMELLS?
lilac. roasting garlic. clean cotton sheets.

22.WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
jason, as we tried to coordinate happy hour meet-up locale.

23.DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
i took it from toast’s blog, and yes i like toast.

24.FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
pro football and march madness.

25.HAIR COLOR?
that’s classified.

26.EYE COLOR?
blue.

27. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
omg don’t get me started. i did. But now i can’t. because my eyeballs went crazy and decided they hated them. wtf, stupid body.

28.FAVORITE FOOD?
this is really hard – but I’d say mexican, as a category.

29.SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
both, but the each have their drawbacks.

30.LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
iron man. it was pretty good.

31.WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
black tank top - it's 50 degrees here today and our heat is still on!

32.SUMMER OR WINTER?
winter, if these are my only options! you can always put on more layers but you can only take so many off, you know? (cue some dirty joke about taking off clothes, yeah yeah i know. but you see my point here people.)

33.HUGS OR KISSES?
hugs.

34.MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
i dunno, anyone looking to kill some time who hasn’t done this already!

35.LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
your mom.

36.WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson

37.WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
i don’t have a mousepad.

38.WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
nothing, see #30 above.

39.FAVORITE SOUND(S).
a carillon. the ocean. dottie purring.

40.ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
stones.

41.WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
dublin.

42.DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
no, not really. i mean, nothing i could take on the road or anything.

43.WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
lawrence, massachusetts.

44.WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
oh enough of these other people questions, we’re talking about me here!

45.HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER?
we were in the same graduate program at boston college.

46.DO YOU BELIEVE IN EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENT LIFE?
without question.

47.HOW OFTEN DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS?
fairly regularly. i just had a dream the other night about a person i haven’t seen or thought about in years, and then the next day he friended me on facebook. weeee-oooooo weirdness!

48.HOW MANY MORE YEARS DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE ON THIS EARTH?
according to the mayans, just under four. i'm hoping their calculations are incorrect.

the evening's activity.

2009-01-27T20:12:00.002-05:00

i just took the jeopardy online test. you know, for kicks.

i now feel really, really dumb.

man fifteen seconds go by fast.

air and simple gifts.

2009-01-21T19:45:00.006-05:00

like most of the other two million people that joined me on the national mall yesterday, i'm having a hard time figuring out a way to talk about being at the inauguration, the entirety, experience of it all.

so i will start with the temperature. people, it was fucking cold.

now, i'm a new englander who spent a few years in chicago, so i am not exactly new to this whole winter weather business. however, i also don't usually make a habit of standing outside in it for five hours straight. however layered-up you are, in that amount of time, you will get cold. you will get freezing. you will begin to assert the impossibility of the existence of god. you will curse the existence of government in the first place, because without it goddammit we wouldn't all be out here in the first place. damn you founding fathers, damn you!

then your fingers actually go numb.

we started the day earlier than anticipated - my parents had set out for their silver ticketed area destination around 6:15, and we were going to leave around 7:30 or 8:00. however, cnn helpfully showed us the waves of people descending on the mall before the sun had even come up, and we decided we better move it. out the door at 7:15, we made our labyrinthine way along the sound side of the mall (or a few blocks south of it to be precise, as we didn't actually have a death wish) to 14th street and the washington monument. lots of open grass! a slope to aid jumbotron viewing! the capitol dome in view! score. we put our blanket down and settled in to wait.

did i mention the part about my fingers going numb? oh right i did. around 9:30, my ill-fated venture to the port-a-potties (didn't even make it halfway there, crowd was too thick) made me nearly lose jason in the throng - sheer luck and a memorable tree saved me from lost kid hysteria. and around ten, the cold having seeped through every layer i had on, the involuntary muscle spasms started. those were fun! but just when i was started to contemplate weeping quietly into my ratty old fleece gloves, there was a sound! music! from the stage! it was starting.

it seemed to take forever to get all the VIP attendees announced and into their seats. did you know there are a lot of members of congress? and joint chiefs of things? and former vice-presidents and presidents that have the nerve not to be dead already?? but at least it gave us something to cheer about when our partisan heroes appeared - lots of love for teddy, and for bubba too. but then, eventually, bush came out.

the booing, it was epic. i think you could probably hear it in new jersey. and i know - i know - he heard it. before he emerged, i considered for a moment what i should do - i questioned whether it was right to boo any standing president, to disrespect the office of the president in that way. but then i thought, you know what? he disrespected the office of the president far more than i ever could - and so i booed. loudly.

the inauguration itself was mercifully brief - compared to the hours of waiting that preceded it - and brimmed with an energy and intensity that is hard to describe. with that many people in a shared space, with a common feeling, it is impossible not to have that consensus become something almost palpable right before it is realized - like it might actually coalesce into something you could grab, touch, hold onto at any moment. we hung onto each other, i think, because we knew it was right there at our fingertips.

before the oath and president obama's speech, there was a classical piece called "air and simple gifts" performed by itzhak perlman, yo yo ma, gabriela montero and anthony mcgill. it was perfectly appropriate to the moment - pieces of nostalgia and alchemy and comfort and comprehension - and it simultaneously seemed to bring everything back down to earth and lift it onto a different plane all together. a woman standing in front of me turned to her right, tilted her face toward the sun, closed her eyes. smiled.

then, the oath of office. it didn't matter than we were on about a three second delay between the video on the jumbotron and the audio from the speakers, and it didn't matter that i couldn't entirely see between the hats and tall heads in front of me. i left my camera in my pocket - i wanted to be completely present at that moment. and i was. and i'll never forget it.

his speech, as you all heard, was very good - not lofty rhetoric, but tailored to the moment, and i thought it worked. and still, even in its pragmatism, it had its moments of high ideals and inspiration - calls to renewal, to service, to the barricades. to be honest, the cynic in me should have been rolling my eyes at points - it all got a little man in the mirror, you know? but guess what - on my more optimistic days, i kinda like man in the mirror. and i do want to make that change. so there, take that, pessimism and doubt! score one for obama - at least for today.

our trek home was nothing short of spectacular, and not necessarily in a good way. i think i was on the verge of being trampled once or twice, there were numerous inexplicable points of human gridlock, and we had to engage in much re-routing and cursing of families that had the audacity to hold hands and try to stay together. i may have kicked an old woman or two, i'm not sure.

kidding. i'm kidding. i think.

i don't even know how long it took us to get back to the apartment. time had ceased to have any meaning by that point. we were a city of momentary refugees, all just trying to get back to where we were from - trudging down side streets in packs, helping each other over concrete barriers, wandering aimlessly down an empty blockaded highway. i have never been so happy to see my building - jason ran, flapping and giddy, down the last half of the back alley, me too tired to do anything but cheer him on. "go, go, you're almost there!" and then we were. home.

all in all, it was one of those crazy once-in-a-lifetime experiences that kicked the crap out of you but was completely worth it. i'm hoping to be able to hold on to this feeling somehow, this real sense of possibility, of re-invigoration. because it only comes along so often, and when it does, boy you've got to grab hold.

be the change. yes we can. let's get back to work.

relapse.

2009-01-15T20:28:00.007-05:00

i know better than this. i really do.

and yet how many different news sites did i click on this afternoon? half a dozen, easily - wide-eyed, hand instinctively pressed against the center of my collarbone, taking in the pictures of an airplane slowly sinking into the hudson.

holy. shit.

i am not a good flyer. it was a gradual, somewhat inexplicable devolution from care-free college student who happily flew out of logan in a blinding blizzard to, a few short years later, a white-knuckled 20-something trying to remind herself to breathe during take-off. xanax is the only thing that stopped the downward spiral, and now i don't leave home (ok, don't leave home for the airport!) without it. and i had just - just - gotten to a place where i can open a crossword puzzle and not need to focus on every dip and shift of our ascent to 10,000 feet, or who can continue reading my book while the landing gear comes down and the pools and rooftops come into focus.

then i saw masses of people standing on the wings of a plane. which would be cool, you know, if it were on land instead of partially submerged in a frigid river.

it's a really good thing i'm not flying for another two months. perhaps i should try hypnosis?

hinterland

2009-01-09T20:21:00.002-05:00

i am in that nebulous space between sick and not-sick. my body cannot decide which it wants to be. i'm over here all, "team not-sick! team not-sick!" and trying to ply it with copious amounts of tea, cough drops, and vitamin c. i'm headed to a family birthday event tomorrow which will include more than one virginia winery - on any normal day this would fall squarely into awesomeness territory. but at the moment, i just hope that drinking the equivalent of multiple bottles of wine in one day won't put me on the body's bad side. because who are we kidding - i will be drinking it.

mind over matter, right?

we two.

2009-01-02T14:36:00.004-05:00

i am purple; she is pink.

i am the lime; she is the salt.

i am the concealer; she is the eyeliner.

i am opal; she is pearl.

i am the toe; she is the heel.

i am the breakwater; she is the wave.

i am the first page; she is the last.

i am structure; she is style.

i am the backbeat; she is the bridge.

i miss her.

their current form.

2009-01-02T14:03:00.005-05:00

11:00 pm, christmas eve

i am upstairs in my bedroom at my parents' house. everyone else is downstairs, having already changed out of their clothes and into their pajamas. i am the last one still dressed, as it was my year to put the silver star on top of the tree - a process which gets captured on film, for posterity, each and every year. the wooden stairs creak as usual on my way up, and i snap on the bedside lamp. standing in the center of the room, a small pool of light - i go to take off my earrings.

and then i stop.

i turn and sit, very slowly, on the edge of the bed. i look out the window, ink black and reflective of the room. for some reason, i look at my wrist, my grandmother's bracelet that hangs there - i unclasp it, lower it into my palm. my fingers close around the chain, press against the gold oval that reads

Helen Moore
40 East 61st St.
N.Y. City

i sit. and breathe. and the grandfather clock downstairs patiently chimes out the time.

***

11:00 am, new year's day

i sit at the wooden dining table, the remnants of breakfast cooling on the kitchen island behind me: cinnamon rolls, hash browns, bacon and sausage. coffee, orange juice, tea. on the tv in the living room is a muted football game, feet propped up on couches.

brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, scattered about.

i have an eighteen-month old in my lap, and she is creating her own surreal masterpiece with a blank sheet of paper and a 24-count box of crayons. jason oversees an impromtu countertop bowling session with two of the kids. lazy, easy conversation. second helpings.

no rush.

***

some connections are faint but strong - a spider web stretched across the back of your mind. others become clearer every day, like a radio station emerging through the static as you turn the dial. some are monet - some are pollock - some you can only see in outline through the half-light. but if they are important, no matter their current form, they are always, always there.

and they are the whole point.

if you think that i could be forgiven, i wish you would.

2008-12-29T19:07:00.003-05:00

it's that time of year.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

ha, that's easy - i got married.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

hmmm, let's see. i did mildly to moderately well on my resolutions from last year:

- start approaching life as something to be experienced, not just survived: not there yet, but goddammit i'm working on it.
- cook more: yes, i did - i bring leftovers for lunch all the time.
- run a five-mile race: nope. i abandoned this one purposefully, because i really wasn't into it. i do go to the gym on 5-6 times a week, but life's too short to force yourself onto the treadmill, you know?
- get over myself, in general: again, a work in progress.

for this year, i haven't formulated any concrete resolutions yet. but i think i will.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

nope, i don't think so.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

yes, my grandmother died of cancer in april and my uncle einar died of cancer in july.

5. What places did you visit?

i logged a lot of airline and highway miles in 2008! in chronological order, we hit: chicago for a wedding, vegas for our wedding, downstate illinois for a wedding, home for a funeral, great barrington for a wake, home for a party, downstate illinois for another wedding, and home for christmas. next year we're taking a proper vacation that doesn't involve someone getting married, i swear!

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

more money would always be great, but i'm not holding my breath on that front. a little less static. a little more peace of mind.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

friday, may second, in the year of our lord two thousand and eight, as they say on the fancy wedding invites that we definitely did not have :) i know i'm not a big proponent of weddings and what not, and i'll always kind of consider january 17th our "actual" anniversary, it was no doubt a major step for jason and me to bind ourselves together in the legal sense :)

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?

i'd say asking for new title and a raise, and getting them both. that always feels good.

9. What was your biggest failure?

waiting so long to kickstart a process that needed to happen in order to improve my sanity and quality of life. but hey, better late than never.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

i got the flu from HELL back in february. i'm hoping to avoid a similar fate this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

plane tickets to vegas! twice actually, as i just booked our flight for next year too, yessssss.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

the person who turned my new ipod nano - which i couldn't have had for over a month - in to lost and found at the gym. amazing.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

everyone who voted for Prop 8 in california. what a step backwards.

14. Where did most of your money go?

rent. and savings. and plane tickets. and hotel rooms. and new ipods.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

i know i sound like a broken record here but vegas vegas vegas. the whole trip was so much fun, and i can't wait to go back next year. mcdonald's breakfast, and blackjack, and fontana bar, and free drinks, and cabanas, and gonzales y gonzales, and....

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

viva la vida by coldplay. it came out during the height of a lot of emotional stuff, and i heard it often during the summer. i remember driving home on 295 from einar's wake, exhausted on so many levels, and it came on the radio - something about the insistent violins and the rolling drums as i made my way home at sunset - i just cried and cried. sad/beautiful, as they say.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? hmmm. probably a bit sadder. but i'm hoping for a really good 2009 to return the equilibrium.
b) thinner or fatter? i'd say just about the same.
c) richer or poorer? richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

reading. smiling. cleaning. happy hour-ing.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year?

same as every year, back home at my parents' house. and this year we got to meet the newest addition to the family, the little rotund kitten clarice. jason wanted to steal her.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

stayed solidly in the "love" camp, yes.

22. How many one-night stands?

zero.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

mad men. wow i was a little obsessed with that show. can you believe elisabeth moss didn't get a golden globe nomination?? scandalous.

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2008?

escaped the DC august heat and headed home - went to a lovely lake party thrown by my family, and also spent much time by the pool. and golfed. yes - i can golf!

25. What was the best book you read?

the brief wondrous life of oscar wao, by junot diaz. though the title drives me crazy - a comma or an "and" pleeeeeease, you're killing me here! also, i became completely enamored with the kenzie/gennaro mysteries by dennis lehane - they are such page turners, i've read each one within 48 hours at most. can't put them down.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

beyonce! preachin' it! "if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it" - god i could listen to that damn song 500 times.

27. What did you want and get?

a vacation with jason. a raise. a new phone. stronger muscles. tickets to the dark knight. a new president.

28. What did you want and not get?

a new tv (just have to keep banging on the top of the old one for now). a cat without chronic health issues (awww poor dottie).

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

the dark knight, definitely. that reminds me, i want to put it on my netflix queue to watch again.

30. Did you make some new friends this year?

i did! though i'd like to step up my efforts to get out and see people more - it can be so easy to get into hermit mode. so hey, if you ever want to hang out, let me know! and remind me i'm trying to avoid hermit-tude.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

pretty pretty ponies.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

basic. key to this year's wardrobe upgrading - more color. my closet is like a sea of black, brown, gray, and white, with a little bit of green and blue thrown in. would it kill me to purchase something red??

33. What kept you sane?

jason. my family. books. naps. booze.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

obama. c'mon now.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

if you didn't cry on election night, then you have no soul. and if you cried on election night because mccain lost, well...you have no soul ;)

36. Who did you miss?

all my massachusetts darlings, as usual. the absolute biggest drawback to living in DC.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

clarice. oh wait, she's not a person. but whatev, she's a fat kitten and i looooove her.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

"there are years that ask questions and years that answer." this one felt, in many ways, like one big question mark, so i'm hoping - and working - on getting some answers in 2009.

oh, and i tag toast, because he gets mad at me when i don't! but all you other meme-lovers, consider yourself tagged as well.

trade-offs.

2008-12-20T14:26:00.004-05:00

did you know that when you buy a southwest business select ticket, you get a free drink? neither did i! until yesterday, when i needed to employ some travel ninja skills (which mainly consisted of picking up the phone and dialing) to change my flight home from tomorrow to today. trying to sneak myself back into new england between part one and part two of this weekend snowpocalypse. and while it cost me a little more coin, i can't lie - i'm pretty excited about the drink coupon tucked away in my wallet, waiting to transform itself into a glass of white wine.

so, send us some good travel karma and cross your fingers for our on-time departure - i hope you all end up where you want to be this week, too! merry christmas!

note to self.

2008-12-13T17:26:00.004-05:00

do not venture out of the house carrying only a small purse, and then proceed to purchase and/or procure:

-four christmas gifts
-eight apples
-one quart of apply cider
-five library books
-four pieces of dry cleaning

and do not - i repeat, DO NOT - forget to bring gloves along for the trip. because your fingers, your forearms, your elbows, and your shoulders? none of them will be very happy with you during the cold, windy six-block walk home.

a declaration.

2008-12-11T18:32:00.003-05:00

this happened a few days ago, but i still can't get over it.

these two women are getting on the metro escalator ahead of me in the morning - they are probably late 20s, early 30s. i infer that they're talking about some kind of office holiday party. and one says to the other, "they're only gonna have beer and wine. and you know, i don't drink that shit."

um...what?

so many things about this statement cracked me up, i don't even know where to start. but i think the biggest thing, the thing that has me shaking my head in bewildered amusement days later, was the actual disdain in her voice when she said it. like this was a position that many other people must obviously share with her. i told jason about it pretty much as soon as they were out of earshot, then we were making up other very commonplace things of which to be irrationally disdainful: "water? i don't drink that shit." "food? i don't eat that shit."

but somehow - and i'm just guessing here - i bet her standards for refined imbibing experiences are just flexible enough to allow for the sneaking in of half a dozen nips inside her imitation coach bag.

you've missed her. admit it.

2008-12-09T20:35:00.004-05:00

dottie has that peculiar cat habit of desiring to sit on any article of clothing left on the bed. and if there's four loads of clean laundry available, well...

she's into that, too.

perplexing.

2008-12-06T16:33:00.002-05:00

yesterday, i was riding home on the metro when i noticed something interesting. i was sitting on a pretty crowded train, and there was a woman standing a few feet in front of me and slightly to my left. she was young-ish - early 20s? - normally dressed in jeans and a gray pea coat, and carrying some type of fat textbook under her arm. on her left wrist was one thick black plastic bracelet, and one thin white plastic...hoop earring.

she was wearing a big white hoop earring like a bracelet. and it wasn't even one of those full hoop types - there was a good inch between the end of the hoop and the metal backing, which was of course still attached. and then.

and then!

i noticed that she was wearing the other earring in her left ear.

a genuine commuting "wtf" moment. i was pissed that i couldn't get a good look at her right ear as i was getting off the train - i would've looked like a crazy person, craning my neck to get a glimpse of this woman's accessories as other riders shoved me out onto the platform. but who knows what i might have found there!

things that are true.

2008-12-04T21:14:00.004-05:00

i will wake up...

plan a whole outfit...

febreze the hanger stretch marks out of the shirt's shoulders...

blowdry the spot where i sprayed too much febreze...

get the outfit half on...

and realize the weather forecast for showers means that i probably shouldn't wear the brown suede flats i was planning on wearing. then i will put everything away...

stand in front of my closet for five minutes composing a new outfit...

throw it on and run out the door...

and it definitely -

definitely -

will not rain a drop all day.

i would just like to report...

2008-12-02T20:13:00.002-05:00

..that i am 64 pages from the end of The Brothers Karamazov. this is one long-ass book. but the second half? much better than the first. just in case you decide to ever pick it up, you know - soldier through those first 350. it's worth it.

i also need to go to the library soon for some fresh reading material. any suggestions?

paper.

2008-11-30T19:04:00.003-05:00

the other night, while lolling about with the family out in virginia, we got talking about the weird things you encounter in college. and i remembered this.

it is the very end of my senior year, late on a may night- 2:00, maybe 3:00 am - and we are walking through southwest on our way back to one of the dorms. we are, unsurprisingly, very drunk.

southwest, for those unfamiliar with umass, is sometimes referred to as the concrete jungle - it is brick and stone and pavement everywhere. five high-rise dorms and a dozen or so smaller ones. we're walking by one of these high-rises when a piece of paper falls at my feet. i look down. and suddenly, there's another. and another. and another. i look up.

paper is raining from the sky. big, white sheets of notebook paper, cascading from somewhere above us, fluttering and diving and sliding to the ground all around us. i bend down to pick one up. it is blank.

they are all blank.

at the time, i just laughed and laughed - the alcohol helped with that, no doubt - but the memory of it still makes me smile today. i think it's because it was so nonsensical - there was absolutely no way to answer the "why?" of it. i mean, who takes the time to cut the screen out of a window twenty stories up, just to toss sheaves of blank paper out of it? who knows. it meant nothing. so, of course, it could mean anything.

i think that's where i'm going to start.

it's that time.

2008-11-16T17:08:00.002-05:00

so i haven't posted in like a month. that's bad. but if anything can induce me to log back into blogger, it is that advent of that glorious day - you know the one - my sister's birthday.

it's today, people. today.

i sadly could not be in boston to celebrate with her highness, which i have been lamenting the entire weekend as i hear about the fun that's been had - dinners, parties, drinks, cheap dollar store tiaras, seafood at brown's - i'm missing it all! goddamn jetblue and their lack of reasonable last-minute fares. the facebook pictures are a lame substitute for actually being there. so sister dearest, sorry i couldn't make it, and i hope you've had an amazing birthday weekend.

maybe i'll tag myself in all the pics and note "there in spirit" in parantheticals....that wouldn't be annoying at all, would it?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

i can see down this road.

2008-10-28T18:38:00.002-04:00

i've been having a hard time with boundaries lately. literal boundaries. not really with setting them - people aren't actually walking around drawing lines in the sand that often, i suppose - but more with, i don't know, perceiving them correctly. putting them in their proper context. i am troubled by the concept, and by the inevitable breakdowns, a lot more than i should be.

two weeks ago, roaches and mice started appearing in our kitchen. seemingly out of nowhere. we've lived here for a year and a half, and never had a problem. and then bam - vermin. for someone who hunts down all the holes in a new place and stuffs them with steel wool the minute she moves in, this was a problem. i'll keep what has felt like a saga to my anxiety-ridden brain to this brief summation: we kept finding small spaces to plug up in the kitchen, they kept coming, then we found a big hole behind the fridge to plug up, then a mouse died somewhere in the fridge. so at the moment, we have a (knock wood) well-fortified apartment and a decomposing mouse somewhere in the kitchen apparatus.

this is not, of course, the end of the world. but it came on the heels of a lot of other odd boundary-related issues that kept cropping up for me. for months, anxieties about that inside/outside divide, and all the ways that it is and can be breached, had been pressing themselves into my consciousness. i worried about bug bites that took too long to go away; i lay awake at night scaring myself with house fire scenarios; i obsessed over whether the hallway smelled like gas; the tip of my tongue went numb. yes, numb. it was either a jalapeno injury or a psychosomatic thing. and honestly, i wouldn't be surprised at the latter. everything, it felt, was encroaching.

encroaching on what, right? the anxiety over the physical piercing of boundaries is, so my pysch major sister informs me, about control. i am not surprised by this, as this is certainly not the first time i've dealt with this particular problem, this irrational and impossible desire to control the uncontrollable. but this is the first time it has manifested itself with this consistent theme. my reactions have not been at all proportional to the situations at hand, and at the very least, i need to try to change that. because i can see down this road and i don't like where it leads. at all.

there's lots to be done. lots of slippery and distorted thinking to wrestle to the ground, expose, interrogate. lots of behaviors to put in check. lots of ghosts to get in line. because really, it's their doing - and while i've lived with them long enough to know that they're not going away, they are going to have to start listening to authority. because i've had enough of this acting up. i've had enough of feeling like i'm being forced to run along a cliff edge with my eyes closed. i've had enough of being held hostage by all the people i used to be.

and i need a decent night's sleep.

other people's lives.

2008-10-07T21:04:00.002-04:00

do you ever have the feeling that other people’s lives are so much richer and interesting than your own? even with all rational evidence to the contrary - we are, after all, surrounded by the pedestrian at every moment - do you find yourself imagining that other people are experiencing things in a thoroughly more fulfilling way than you are?

i find myself thinking this way sometimes. it’s such a subtle thought process that i have to catch myself at it red-handed. like the other day, i was reading a novel, and one of the main characters was home alone in his apartment while his wife was away. he got up, wrapped up in a robe, and made a pot of coffee and toast with butter and jam. totally boring, right? and yet, i felt like somehow he was getting more out of coffee and toast than i ever would, or ever do. the mere act of putting together breakfast somehow seemed enviable to me - like it was imbued with some type of pleasure that i’ve never been able to access. this is not restricted to fictional characters either. sometimes i’ll read a blogger’s account of an evening out or see a facebook friend’s photo album, and i’ll feel - loosely and faintly and with this vague, existential incomprehension - that i am missing some critical faculty, some way of living right.

it’s a strange thing, this impulse to overly romanticize other people’s lives and day-to-day experiences. i mean, on a rational level i am aware that the way they experience making a pot of coffee is probably, by and large, the same way that i experience it. so why do i give them more credit? why do i think they have access to some secret, some effortless method for infusing the mundane with meaning that i don’t?

when i see this in other people and not myself, what am i really looking at - what am i looking for? i do wonder about this.

it's settled, then.

2008-10-03T18:42:00.001-04:00

i've found the best thing ever, courtesy of yvonne.

i just thought you might like to know.

things i am doing. right now.

2008-10-01T22:59:00.003-04:00

i'm watching the baseball game.

i'm drinking chai tea.

i'm refreshing toast's haloscan comments.

i'm talking to chemist about the mitten-shaped state.

i'm feeling remarkably cool air seeping in through the window unit by the couch.

i'm trying to stretch my shins, because they hurt.

i'm also noticing that my head hurts a bit too.

i'm pondering aspirin.

i'm hating this futon cover.

i'm hating the fact that i'm going on 30 and i still technically own a futon.

i'm hearing the downstairs neighbor's tv along with my own.

i'm wishing these fricking bug bites would heal.

i'm cursing, silently, because jason is sleeping.

i'm reminding myself to take out the trash and dust tomorrow.

i'm almost, i think, through with the day.

a funny thing.

2008-09-27T17:10:00.005-04:00

this might be kind of a juvenile thing to admit, but.

remember when the west wing came out? remember how great it was? it was a great show. and i would watch, religiously, as i wended my way through college and graduate school. cross-legged on the twin bed in my tiny dorm room in mackimmie hall, stretched out on the couch in the apartment i shared with my sister senior year, folded up into the papasan chair squeezed into my comm ave apartment. i watched, week in and week out, and i thought - maybe. maybe i could do that.

not be president, of course. but that - that life seemed like something i might be able to fit into, or at least try on for size. a life of policy and law, of thick-carpeted hallways and backrooms, of suits and cabs and wide avenues and the capitol coming into view. it was a feeling that i filed aware somewhere in my brain - put away in that recessed space reserved for everything that seems, somehow, too daunting. i thought it, but i never really considered it. it was too - too juvenile, really, and was best left in the realm of vague sensation.

but then, a funny thing - i kind of went ahead and did it anyway.

i didn't come here to DC to try to live out some aaron sorkin fantasy - i actually didn't even come here to get into politics or law. hell, i didn't even come here with a job. but looking back, i can see how the move here made sense - how it gave me a chance to slide sidelong into a place that had, to be honest, captured a bit of my imagination. i came here to do this. and while i'm no amy gardner and never will be, i go to lunch with the women who are. i've heard my heels echo as i walked down the marble-floored halls of the capitol building. my boss has the ear of the obama campaign. our reports are referenced in committee hearings. we are doing this work, and i'm part of it.

a while back, the speaker of the house threw a luncheon in our honor at her offices. i stood out on her massive private balcony overlooking the national mall - i pressed my palms into the cool stone of the massive railing and looked around. the sky, blindingly blue in the early spring, museums stacked up to the left and pennsylvania avenue reaching off to the right. i realized, at that moment, that i really had done it. wherever i went from there, whatever city i moved to or job i took or house i settled into - i had done DC.

and it felt really good. no - it feels really good. it feels good to have achieved a goal that you thought was too lofty, too hazy, too ridiculous to even set. a life like the west wing. really, who gets anything like that?

turns out, i do.

a thought.

2008-09-20T10:02:00.002-04:00

"you say i choose sadness,
that it never once has chosen me.
maybe you're right."

in which i actually utilize microsoft paint to make a point.

2008-08-29T19:25:00.002-04:00

something tells me this wouldn't be a headline on yahoo this evening if tim pawlenty had been mccain's vp pick.

that's some hard-hitting political reporting within the first 12 hours of her candidacy, wall street journal. kudos.

top three.

2008-08-24T17:24:00.002-04:00

things i am looking forward to tonight:

1) wine
2) pesto pasta
3) mad men

food, drink, and good tv. sometimes, i am truly easy to please.

(and ok, any bets on when birdie's really going to crack up? we've had a shooting gallery on the front lawn, the return of the hand afflictions, and last week, a shoving match in the bedroom. it is imminent, non?)

true or false?

2008-08-17T10:17:00.002-04:00

kate got a little overexcited while watching michael phelps win his eighth gold medal last night, resulting in a broken light sconce and the need of her sister's expert medical assistance to dress a small flesh wound.

yup.

that one is true.

summer.

2008-08-05T21:20:00.005-04:00

it's so...hot.

everywhere, it's hot. it's either you're in the midst of the hot or you're near an a/c, in a respite from the hot. the hot dictates everything. august is here, and everyone who is smart in this city is somewhere else. the train cars are half full. dupont circle is deserted.

you walk up the escalators and feel the grime under your finger tips, touching the rubber handrail only intermittently, for balance. you sit at happy hour in the breezeway and feel your legs sticking to the leather stool, and you fan yourself with the bar bill. you kick the sheets off at night, trying to conserve energy (and money), the old air conditioner working hard even at half blast. you embrace it, at the beach, with the sun at high noon, and the sting of sunscreen in the corner of your closed eyes, with the screeches of children and tinny salsa music on someone's radio.

it's just hot. there is nothing to do but ride it out. sweat, wince, cry, purify. wait. because it will all be over soon.

right? right.

who's in your five?

2008-07-25T17:57:00.010-04:00

the tagging continues unabated!

so, the "celebrity free pass" list. got one? you know you do. here's my five:

george clooney

so he's like 85 years old. who fucking cares. look at the man.

tom brady

my tommy is not the brightest bulb on the circuit, i know. but really? intellectual prowess is not what this exercise is about.

matt damon

the thinking woman's brad pitt. who said that...i think it was....um.......hmmm? i'm sorry what were we talking about again?

freddy rodriguez

gio from ugly betty. i had a serious "is it hot in here??" moment after the end of the penultimate episode last season.

matt iseman

ok this is out of left field, i know. but my love for clean house's "go-to guy" is well-documented. at least in my apartment. where jason is pretty sick of hearing about it.

honorable mentions - disqualified from actual list for being fictional characters or residing in a previous decade:

dean cain, circa 1996

i don't care what you say. this man was HOT back then. and a superhero on the tv. yes please.

daniel craig as james bond in casino royale

it's not so much daniel craig, actually, as it is him playing this character in this movie. i nearly passed out in the theater.

they are always the same thing.

2008-07-20T16:52:00.002-04:00

it was just past one in the afternoon, and i had conquered most of Maryland, a small slice of Delaware, the entirety of New Jersey, and the upper reaches of Manhattan. i merged onto the Taconic State Parkway and reset the trip odometer – i could cruise for 80 more miles before thinking about where to turn next.

the journey through Westchester, Dutchess, and Columbia counties, out of the city and into the midsection of New York state, has little in the way of landmark or distraction. nothing but shades of green in the height of summer – everything at full flush, a blinding monochrome of grass and weeds and leaves. i had never driven it before, but i knew it – it might sound strange, but even with no distinguishing characteristics for miles, i still could have told you where i was. i could have told you where I was headed.

i rolled up and over hills, around wide curving turns flickering in deep shade, past the exits signs for town names: Yorktown, Cold Spring, Peekskill, Fishkill.

Pawling.

***

we all have our origin stories. each of us, on our own little odyssey, each of us always racing forwards and tracing backwards simultaneously. there is no logic, no continuity in life without it, the origin story. they are at once vastly complex and stunningly simple – beginnings usually are that way. i suppose that’s because beginnings are rarely ever just a moment, but an unfolding series of moments and parts and contexts – a thing, constructed, and then set in motion.

***

my grandparents lived in Pawling when i was born until i was five or six – then they moved across the Massachusetts border to Great Barrington, where they lived for the next ten years until their deaths. Pawling and Great Barrington are, in a way, of the same place – the Berkshire mountains, the great stretch of hills and woods and valleys between New England and the mid-Atlantic. since i was so young, the two are largely entwined in my mind – both generative spaces, full of so many things that pierced my mind clearly, twenty years later, as i drove past the exit for Route 55.

this origin story has so many moving parts, so many slippery images – i kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye as i sped along, northward, towards the Massachusetts border. long gravel driveways, low stone walls, saint statues. stray cats. foxes in the night, shotguns. sheds. barns. carved wooden mirrors, carved wooden signs: Mostly View. snow-laden pine trees, acres of lawn and forest dulled to shimmering yellow by the setting sun. oriental rugs, basement doors, birdseed kept in big metal tins. cereal with sugar in white and blue plastic bowls. wading pools, motorized trainsets, sandboxes, back decks. bedrooms behind bathrooms, steep wooden stairs painted blue. tv carts, china cabinets, rolltop desks with metal keyholes. canvas gardening gloves, tire swings, tennis balls. creaking wooden doors, windows scraped by tree branches. mahogany. silver. ceramic. wood. alberta spruce. green, green grass.

***

sometimes, it seems to me, we look in the wrong direction for answers. the future, though it holds many things, usually does not reveal solutions. it just creates more questions. why is it, then, that we don’t turn around, that we don’t reach back into the past? why do we so rarely even consider it? perhaps it is too frightening to acknowledge just how much is contained there. perhaps we would rather be without knowledge than be overwhelmed by it.

***

and so i was moving in two directions as i passed under the sign that said “Great Barrington – 10 miles.” forwards and backwards, ahead and behind, towards both what has past and what is to come.

when i reached downtown – the intersection of route 23 and route 7 – for a moment i was disoriented. i should have known where i was, but i didn’t recognize the surroundings. i felt, to be honest, a moment of rising panic – if i’m in a place that i know, but i don’t know this place, well…where am i?

the light changed, and i turned left, where a large white house loomed on the hill. a carved wooden sign: Finnerty and Stevens funeral home. one building, but it was all i needed to gain my bearings – the town spread out in front of me in my mind’s eye, and the reality of my arrival – my re-entry – punched me in the chest as i drove down main street. the wake would start in an hour.

***

in the high heat of summer, the mid-afternoon light in the Berkshires has a sharp quality about it – it clarifies the edges, brings the foreground into relief. in a few hours time, the opposite effect will take hold, a golden hour blurring of the scene, but in these moments, everything is clear and present. i begin to remember it even before i stop seeing it.

which doesn’t matter, really, because here – for me – they are always the same thing.

more meme-time.

2008-07-18T18:27:00.003-04:00

i knew this day would come. sooner or later, someone would tag me with the book meme. and i am nothing if not honorable when it comes to being meme-tagged! so, without further ado - my completion of the book meme.

(oh wait, one moment of ado - does anyone else wonder how exactly they came up with this list of "the top 100 books they've printed"? i mean, "top" in what sense? and who exactly are "they," anyway? the Big Read website does not make it easy to track down the origin of this meme's statistical claim - the whole thing seems like a front for some kind of shadowy literature syndicate to me. bent upon world domination via internet propagation. anyway. end of ado.)

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

food for thought.

2008-07-15T21:35:00.003-04:00

i'm off to massachusetts for two days - the circumstances of the trip are essentially the opposite of ideal, but the faintest of silver linings means i'll get to spend time with some family that i haven't seen in a while. before i go, though, i wanted to share a Susan Bordo quote i stumbled across today in the comments section over at Shapely Prose. what can i say - when i read something that actually makes me say "yes!" out loud, in my office, in the middle of the day, i have the impulse to pass it along.

in my view, feminist cultural criticism is not a blueprint for the conduct of personal life (or political action, for that matter) and does not empower (or require) individuals to ‘rise above’ their culture or to become martyrs to feminist ideals. It does not tell us what to do [...] — whether to lose weight or not, wear makeup or not, lift weights or not. Its goal is edification and understanding, enhanced consciousness of the power, complexity, and systemic nature of culture, the interconnected webs of its functioning. It is up to the reader to decide how, when, and where (or whether) to put that understanding to further use, in the particular, complicated, and ever-changing context that is his or her life and no one else’s.

i love this idea. i love this kind of critical ethos. and it mirrors what a lot of other feminist bloggers that i admire have said, which is essentially that they refuse to condemn women for the choices they make in a patriarchal culture in order to survive and try to thrive. they'll condemn the culture that circumscribes those choices, the hierarchal system that bullies and intimidates and coerces and cajoles women into acting in its best interest and not their own - but women, when it comes down to it, are always just doing the best they can with what they've got. and that means different things to different people. but i'd like to think, regardless of those differences, we can all agree that MORE knowledge about the contexts in which we live, breath, think, and interact is always better than less.

anyway. that's all. now to go put that book on my DC library hold list...

you know what my problem is?

2008-07-07T19:09:00.002-04:00

(part one of a 4,327,896 part series...)

i see ugliness everywhere. forget about seeing the beauty in all things - my inner eye often finds itself trained upon the down side, the dark side, the heartbreaking side of random arrangements, of totally inconsequential moments. and this is not surface-level ugliness - this is existential ugliness, the deep-down ugliness of life that you can only bear in short increments. that, so often, is what registers with me.

i see it on a perfectly normal day, at 4:15 in the afternoon, while standing in line at cvs to buy gum, altoids, and lollipops.

i see it where no one else is even really looking.

your comfort is my silence.

2008-06-30T19:10:00.002-04:00

LaVena Johnson.

i just want to say her name, out loud, here on my little blog, and hopefully add one tiny little internet voice to the movement for justice on her behalf. if you haven't already heard her story, hear it now, and join the movement to compel the army to formally investigate her death. speak up for her, spread the word, carry a little piece of the torch.

the first step is refusing to be silent.

h/t to the tireless Waveflux - see his site and the petition page for ongoing updates.

a letter.

2008-06-20T18:32:00.012-04:00

"Four years ago, when I was still at Ms. but had just learned about Bust, the editors of that zine asked me to interview Björk, the Smurfy Icelandic pop star, for their issue on motherhood... Trapped in my own earnestness about Third Wave feminism, I found myself asking a lot of goody-two-shoes questions about being a single mother. I wanted to know what had led Björk to divorce the father of her son after only a year of marriage. 'Why suffer?' she said, and picked her nose." --Jennifer Baumgardner

dear 2008:

you have been, by all accounts, a bitch of a year. i don't really believe in the cosmos (not in the fatalistic, sun sign-moon sign alignment sort of way), but if i did, it would seem that they asked you to wreak some havoc pretty much anywhere that you could. big ways, little ways, in-between ways - any kind of havoc was preferable to none. in just under six months you've brought me and mine, in no particular order: weddings, tumors, power outages, deaths, eye afflictions, heat waves, elopements, arguments, retirements, broken refrigerators, falling outs, denied medical treatments, tornadoes, the flu from hell, hospices, turbulence, ended friendships, surgeries, and one disintegrating pair of favorite jeans. just to name a few.

and honestly? it's been great. i mean, it's been god awful, a lot of it, but it's also been great. it feels like a year of forging, in a way - or maybe, more aptly, a year of being forged. of being both the sledgehammer and the red-hot metal underneath. a year of total upheaval, of these shifting tectonic plates that still have not quite decided where to settle. and i am learning so much.

after one particular decision i made recently - one that had to do with cutting off communication with someone that had once been very important to me - my sister made a very good point. she said, essentially, that we accept too much unnecessary negativity in our lives. if someone or something is bringing nothing positive to our table, why tolerate it? why not just cut it out, toss it aside, and move on?

why suffer, indeed?

i've been thinking a lot about this, this idea of excising undue suffering from life when you can. of embracing the positive, even if you're not the most positive person - because lord knows i'm not. but i think there's a way, even for the most committed of cynics, to refuse to engage with things that are not improving your life or helping you grow in some way. because, as far as life goes, there's good negativity and bad negativity. for instance, my work can be really depressing sometimes - the dogged societal persistence of inequality for nearly half the world's population will have that effect. but the reality of that negativity - as much as it sometimes makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and stay that way - ultimately fuels me, motivates me to take some action. whereas so many other kinds of negativity - pettiness, manipulation, fear, self-doubt - just wither you on the vine. they make you smaller, less engaged, less alive. and here's the thing - you don't need them. they are infinitely and continually disposable.

so, 2008, i'm rolling with your punches. i'm using everything that i experience as a filter, a lesson, a discovery, a new context. i refuse to be pulled under. i am more thankful, i am more mindful - i am easier on myself, much more gentle with myself. i admire shoes more. i worry about my hips less. i send facebook gifts more. i online stalk ex-friends less. i eat fruit more. i hurry through dinner less. i read more. i watch tv news less. i sleep more. i dwell less.

honestly, i have no idea what else is in store for us before new year's eve finally rolls around. maybe it will be harmony, maybe it will be catastrophe. who knows. but last week, i was home in massachusetts looking through some pictures, and i found one of my dad standing in the place where, thirty years earlier, my parent's wedding reception had been held - a big, warm, wood and stone-filled building which i'm certain has seen many a good party. on a wooden beam above his head, a carved inscription read: "enjoy yourself - it is later than you think."

and so i will.

push and pull.

2008-06-15T17:37:00.005-04:00

isn't it always a balancing act, living in the neighborhood? the good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly. always shifting slightly, so you never quite know - on the day you leave the place - what your ultimate verdict about it will be. big things, and little ones, happen every day, and your mood has to keep recalibrating. like, for instance, this weekend.

the good: walking down the street that bisects the park just outside our apartment, jason and i notice something. the parking signs, which had just been changed out a few months ago to reflect the new "pay to park" nature of this tiny through block, had changed again. gone were the fury-inducing signs instructing people to locate the few new-fangled, credit-card-accepting parking meters along the block and pony up for the privilege of parking there - a by-product of the new nationals stadium nearby, and a circumstance that seriously cut into our ability to park within a block of our apartment. in their place were new signs, ones with a blessed green background and white lettering lower third that reads, "zone six permits excepted." i am not kidding you when i say i did a dance of joy on the sidewalk - heel kicking and elbow swinging included. us, one, DDOT, zero! take that, bitches, your stupid idea failed and we can park here again!

the bad: as we returned from running our errands that afternoon, we got the last spot right on our block. walking over the curb, i noticed that the fire hydrant 500 feet from our apartment now bore that ominous plastic ring around its metal snount: "maintenance required." dammit. i would rather not die in a house fire, DCFD, so please do get on that.

the ugly: we are still playing the game called "hmmmm, how much will our rent go up after the landlord signs on the dotted line to sell our building?" this will happen, we assume, any day now, since the 45 day period all the tenants had to band together and buy the building instead (ha. hahahaha.) is just about over, if not over already. my wallet feels lighter already.

thought for the day.

2008-06-11T20:13:00.002-04:00

sometimes, i feel like a jumble of loose ends. and none of them seem to have a beginning.

which makes it hard, you know, to tie things together.

a wee retrospective.

2008-05-28T20:54:00.002-04:00

things that i have discovered (or re-discovered) during the month of may:

the midwest is flat. no, like, really flat. flatter than a native new englander can instinctively comprehend.
falling down drunk in a hotel hallway can be comedic gold. especially if you are drunk on magic wine that does not give you a hangover in the morning.
i have an enormous capacity to misread a situation.
big plastic bangle bracelets.
my man looks really good in a tux.
horse tracks have limited culinary options, and a distinct inability to accurately assess supply and demand needs for soft pretzel consumption.
if i get my hands on a little bit of resentment, i often have a really hard time letting it go.
what a tornado siren sounds like.
crispy leeks and lemon-butter sauce over linguini.
seeing someone walking barefoot on the vegas strip at 11:00 pm will kinda make me want to hurl.
100 calorie packs (while they are still, generally, the devil) make remarkable convenient airplane snacks.
the little black dress still fits.
free breakfast is good. hot free breakfast is even better.
when i am off of anti-depressants, certain things can make me incredibly sad for no good reason. on the other hand, certain things can make me incredibly happy for no good reason. it is, in essence, a trade-off.
the drivers of the BWI airport parking shuttles can be assholes. especially at 1:00 am.
it is nearly impossible to find a $5, 3-2 blackjack table on the vegas strip after dark. or during the day, come to think of it.
american gladiators.
travel-induced exhaustion.

a (little) longer story.

2008-05-12T14:04:00.004-04:00

i kept finding it hard to start this post, mainly because i didn't know where to start, period. but now that i'm here, i think it's best for me to just keep the story simple. because really, if i wanted, i could type until i pass out from hunger and exhaustion about my ongoing ambivalence regarding the institution of marriage and the role it plays in our lives. plus, you've heard me blah-blah about most of all that here already! so the main question is, i think, what pushed jason and i past the brink of indecision and into a mindset where we decided that marriage was something we wanted to do?

well, about six months ago, as i pondered the topic for some reason or another, i found myself viewing it from kind of a different angle. i remained (and remain, unsurprisingly!) very uncomfortable with the cultural institution and all its attendant stereotypes, hegemonies, paradigms, etc etc and so on. but as a legal matter, i realized that i wasn't against marriage so much in principle as i was troubled by how tied up the legal side of marriage is with the cultural side. i realized that i would never begrudge anyone the ability to petition the government to recognize their relationship with another person as primary (in fact, i wish there were far fewer restrictions on who is allowed to make that request). i started seeing civil marriage as a service the government provides for you - like a birth certificate, or a social security card - that offers you certain protections. and i'm actually all for that! (except in the sense that all societal institutions, government or no, are generally corrosive things built and dependent on systems of domination and oppression buuuuuuut anyway that's another story. and a far more depressing and intractable one.) so once jason and i started talking about it in that light, it just made sense to take that step and get that legal recognition for ourselves. we certainly didn't want a wedding per se, and vegas is the perfect place to do a marriage with no fuss, no muss, and no waiting. plus, vegas is fun! there are free cocktails! and up until that point, jason and i had only ever taken one vacation that was just the two of us, and that was an overnight in iowa - it seemed high time for a more substantial getaway.

so there you have it - desire for legal recognition plus desire for a true twosome vacation equals eloping to vegas. we wanted to "make it legal." and we have. and we're happy.

the end. (again. for now.)

memetime.

2008-05-10T16:56:00.002-04:00

i know i know i know. i promised more details on the whole eloping to vegas thing. and i will deliver them, i swear. but for now, there are only memes. because toast tagged me. so yes, blame him!

anyway. without further ado. meme-aliciousness.

1) Ten years ago I was...

living in my hometown in massachusetts, and just a few weeks away from graduating high school. putting the finishing touches on planning the prom (yes dudes i planned our senior prom, just one more thing you probably wouldn't have suspected about moi.) wearing jeans and henleys a lot. listening to fiona apple's "tidal" to help me fall asleep at night. signing yearbooks. writing poems. watching this ridiculous new show called dawson's creek. musing. complaining. deliberating. hoping. kicking the stalls for college to start.

2) Five things on today's to-do list:

go to the gym.
go to our friends' yard sale.
drink cheap beer at a penn ave bar.
pick up a package at the post office.
deposit two checks at the bank.

3) Things I'd do if I were a billionaire:

invest.
start up and run a foundation to fund programs that help women.
set up my family for life.
real estate! get a place in boston, nyc, the dominican republic, and dublin.
send jason into orbit as a space tourist.

4) Three bad habits:

a judgmental mindset.
frugality that can border on, um, cheapness.
a deep-seated weakness for salty food.

5) Five places I've lived:

my hometown.
amherst, ma.
boston, ma.
chicago, il.
washington, dc.

6) Six jobs I've had in my life:

GAP worker.
landscaper.
campus mailroom staff.
development associate.
grants and communications coordinator.
manager of foundation relations.

a short story.

2008-05-06T18:52:00.002-04:00

so hey, get this.

jason and i eloped to vegas this weekend.

more later, most definitely, when my body clock is no longer spinning backwards and i can string a few coherent sentences together.

vegas is fun.

the end.

programming note

2008-04-25T17:36:00.003-04:00

i've decided to quit using the Cat monikers here. i'm not really digging them anymore, in this new(ish) incarnation of the blog - i don't want to ditch the anonymity completely, but i also think that the Cat motif has pretty well run its course.

so:

BoyCat's name is jason. you probably already knew that.
CatCat's name is dottie. her namesake is dorothy parker, but we mostly call her dottie. unless she is being bad. then we tend to break out the four syllables...in high decibels. and sometimes, when i am in a strange mood, i decide to call her "dorrr-fie," in a sing-song voice, like 15 times in a row. ahem. anyway.

and as for the family:

MomCat's name is...mom. she doesn't like it when i call her by her first name in life, so i won't do it here on the blog. you're welcome mom.
DadCat's name is...dad. i'm just going to run with it.
SisterCat's name is..."my sister." i might substitute "j." if i i'm feeling wild and crazy. or just can't make the two-world alternative fit in the damn sentence. i can - surprisingly, i know! - get finicky like that.

it's been fun, Cat pseudonyms. see you in the archives.

the edge.

2008-04-22T19:13:00.003-04:00

there’s a perfume that i wore when i was 14 years old. you can still get it today. that particular scent – that smell – you can still buy it in a store.

i am actually wearing it right now.

***

during my freshman year of high school, we spent a few weeks learning archery. it was the fall semester. leisurely, low-slung afternoons in gym glass, out along the soccer fields behind the school, learning how to fit a bow into an arrow – how to aim – how to shoot.

no, maybe it was the spring.

i enjoyed archery. the first lesson taught the basic mechanics of the enterprise, which were so simple and so difficult all at once – to balance the tip of the arrow in the notch of the bow, to pull the surprisingly resistant string taut and load it for bear. but i got the hang of it. i stared down the length of the arrows to the fat canvas targets beyond – the red, yellow, and blue rings – and tried not to second guess my aim. or not to second guess it that much, because, of course, there are always adjustments to be made. and i could usually, at least, hit the thick wheel of foam and fabric, elicit the satisfying thud that meant a mark had been found. it felt good – good to do this, even absent any real reason why.

just hit the mark. just don’t miss.

the next day, i woke up in the morning to find a huge bruise on my right arm – a darkening, oblong welt the size of an oyster shell on the inside of my elbow. to the inside of the inside, really – next to the crook, just to the left of where the nurse stretches your skin to look for a vein, eases the needle in, pulls the blood clean out.

it had gotten in the way. the edge of my elbow, the edge of myself. and i had kept hitting it - again and again and again - without knowing.

while it was grotesque, i have to admit that i was proud of it, in a perverse kind of way. proud in that odd way that we can be about traumas – like they signify something bigger just by happening. something went wrong, but at least there was evidence that something had happened at all. undeniable – the marking of me, the mistake made tangible. i watched it turn purple, then fade into yellow and grey over days and weeks. i kept it out of the way of the arrow’s snap from then on, and eventually, it went away.

***

when i walked out of the store earlier today – after i had sprayed my wrists and the nape of my neck with a perfume i haven’t worn in fifteen years – i found myself thinking suddenly of those afternoons, of the sound of the arrows piercing the canvas, of the first startled moment of discovering that manifest consequence, that oval bruise. i thought about time, and how i can’t get a handle on the way it moves through me – its movement not just through years, and through space, but through flesh and bone. how? how does it do that?

it must have been spring.

a question.

2008-04-17T07:48:00.002-04:00

at 6:30 am, a small band of religious pilgrims walked past my bedroom window. i know this because they were singing - a strange, unfamiliar version of Ave Maria. i separated the window blinds with two fingers and peered out, bleary-eyed. i saw a few dozen people, shuffling along down the street in rows of two or three. kids in backpacks. old ladies with walking sticks. men that looked like monks, in their robes and sandals and corded waist-ties. someone was carrying a vatican city flag. they walked south, towards the stadium, singing.

pilgrims. outside my apartment.

and i thought, "i wonder if the pope exercises."

the word.

2008-04-13T16:54:00.001-04:00

well, ok.

so i just woke up from a nap. and this isn't the beginning of some obnoxiously metaphorical post, either - i literally just crawled off the couch after dozing for a few hours in front of the white sox game. it was a good nap. very relaxing.

and that is what i'm going for lately. relaxing. all this Getting Things Done and whatnot? wonderfully useful for a lot of people, but for me, right now? all i can think about when i hear the word "productivity" is.....eh. i need a fucking break from productivity, actually - i need a break from pushing myself. i need this breathing room. i need to keep working on learning how to cool it with the mental to-do lists and the worry and the anxiety and the self-propelled guilt trips.

(all right, who am i kidding, i'll never give up my mental to-do lists. but really - they need far fewer items.)

however, i have also learned over the past three months, i can really benefit from having this little outlet for putting down thoughts and opinions, for sorting it out, for connecting with people. i love how this blog has put me in touch with people that i never would have otherwise known, and how it makes me feel tapped into so many different streams and types of thought. i think that is an incredibly enriching thing. the trick, for me, is to learn how to enjoy that without feeling weirdly beholden to it - without again finding myself in a place where i'm posting because i feel like i "have to" - because really, that is some dumbass bullshit nonsense. right? right.

so, my plan is this: blog. when i want to.

(i wish i could fully explain why such a simple, self-evident idea proves to be such a challenge for me. but it would take hours of our lives that none of us could then get back, so i'm gonna refrain from even trying!)

if you've got rss, well, keep me on your feeds - i'll be popping up every now and again. if you don't, well - i hope you don't forget about me, because i'll be around. maybe once a week, maybe once a month, maybe three times in one day - i have no idea, and i'm doing my damnedest to learn to like it that way.

long story short.

2008-01-14T20:12:00.000-05:00

i'm not sure how to explain this.

for starters, can i just say? therapy? is a good thing. do you have a therapist? well, go get one. because everyone - and i mean everyone, yes even you - could benefit from some quality time with an impartial observer. i've done therapy before, and right now i'm doing it again - this time i'm trying to get a handle on some aspects of my life that make me feel, at best, out of whack and at worst, out of control.

in the course of trying to get a handle on said w(h)ackiness, i've come to some interesting realizations about how i'm actually living life. i know, imagine that - how you live can affect how you feel! rocket science. and yet sometimes, the brain, it wants to avoid these these little life truths - probably because it thinks it's living just fine, thank you, as long as enabling your own neuroses, hang ups, and bad habits is the goal.

but you know, i've gone against a bit of my brain grain and said hey, that's not my goal! i don't want to feel like this anymore!

and my therapist kinda said, well, what're you going to do about it?

she said this in a nice way, of course.

so, long (and somewhat more private) story short, i've decided that one of the things that i really need to do is gain some perspective on what role writing plays in my life and why. i've always been pretty good at writing, and it seems like i've always been writing in some capacity - in school, at work, in my free time. in my life thus far, writing has served as that "thing that i do" -and more to the point, that thing that i'm good at. but underneath all the good grades and good jobs and validation and approval that writing has gotten me, i think i've lost track of the real question: do i really like to write? if this whole enterprise wasn't providing a sort of order and method of achievement for me, if it wasn't providing a space for me to prove that i can keep grabbing brass rings and "doing well," would i want to keep doing it?

in order to find out, i've got to quit. for a while. three months is the rough time frame i've decided on for now - a sabbatical from blogging, from pitching articles, from thinking about where my writing should be taking me or what it should be doing for me. of course, it's a somewhat imperfect plan, because i still spend eight hours a day writing at work, but it's something - and i think it will help.

so, my merry little band of loyal readers, i appreciate the fact that you've read what i've had to say here, whether it's been over the last two weeks or the last two years. if i were a betting woman, i'd say that i'll be back eventually - i have a sneaking suspicion that there is something more to all this, and that it's just buried under a pile of accumulated, um, issues. and i will definitely check back in three months time regardless and let you know how this little life experiment is going.

ok. that's it. thanks again, friends, and see you around blogland.

edited to add: wow. i hit publish thirty seconds ago and i already feel guilty. seems like i'm getting my money's worth from my weekly co-pay, that's for sure...

do you hate chris matthews?

2008-01-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

does the sound of his voice on the television make you want to run screaming from the room?

me too!

so check it, and do your civic duty. or something approximately like it.

if only asshole pundits like matthews actually had to face the electorate every two to four years, right...

friday cat blogging, the adorableness edition.

2008-01-11T20:04:00.001-05:00

CatCat, taking a nap with her friend mr. hippo.

this is sad.

2008-01-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

so wednesday, i went to the gym and lifted weights in the first time since forever. ok, for the first time since last april.

when i walked out of the gym around 7:30 am, i thought "hey, that wasn't so bad."

today, when i got up at 6:30 and attempted to pull a shirt on over my head, i thought "oh my god did someone beat my arms and chest with a meat mallet while i slept??"

you'd think i would've noticed an occurance like that; however, the deep denial over severity of my muscular atrophy led me to consider such possibilities.

and for the record, they still hurt. ow.

so i've been thinking.

2008-01-08T20:40:00.000-05:00

what a surprise.

i overthink a lot of things. i think about a lot, a lot, a lot of things. i rarely underthink things (but that is something else all together). i am also fairly tired, so this attempt at putting various elements of my recent thinking/overthinking onto the proverbial page might be somewhat scattered. another surprise, i know.

so, this blog. as we've all noticed, it's kind of...blah lately. i've pointed this out before, and talked about how i'm not going to force myself to write, and said i should just use this space as an opportunity to write when i'd like to write, blah blah blah. but the truth? i do feel an obligation to posting somewhat regularly on here, regardless of how many readers i have or how irrational that sense of obligation may seem. whereas early on in my blogging life, that obligation tended to function in a more positive way, spurring me to read more widely around the blogosphere and try to add something to the discussion - enterprises which were both enriching in their own way, of course. but now that obligation is starting to seem both more futile and more tedious. there are fewer and fewer days when i am writing on here because i want to; there are more and more days when i am writing on here because i feel i have to. (and no need for reassurances about expectations - i know that ultimately there are none - i know i'm the only one putting this weirdo pressure on myself.)

i am thinking about this particular situation in a broader context - one in which i'm trying to consider a number of ideas and questions about my life and how i'm living it. what motivates me, really? what do i like to do? what do i want to do? what are my goals really all about?

these questions, at this point, aren't being met with any shiny happy answers - lately i've started coming into some interesting mental territory regarding my own personal hang-ups, weaknesses, and confusions and begun trying to really examine what might be at the heart of a lot of these shortcomings. i could say more about this - and maybe i will. i feel like if this blog is going to be useful, interesting, and beneficial to me (and really, to be honest, to anyone else) in the near future, i'm going to have to decide if i'm brave enough to start writing through a lot of this stuff instead of just thinking through it. because (in an obnoxious, confusing, meta kind of way) these questions and how i investigate/answer them will be central to how i decide to keep being a writer. or if i decide to keep being a writer.

so anyway. i just wanted to do a little direct audience address here to my little readership and let you in on a bit of where my head is at. i know the blog hasn't really been its usual self lately, and i wish i could say it'll be back to its usual self shortly. but i'm not sure. thanks for hanging in with me, though, while i haphazardly shuffle around, destinationless, trying to figure it out.

friday cat blogging, guest kitty edition.

2008-01-04T17:23:00.001-05:00

just because this lolcat shit still makes me laugh...

a good first friday cat blogging of the year, for all my lovely readers who perhaps did not have the best 2007. onward and upward.

silly rabbit...

2008-01-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

...there's no such thing as a "rape culture."

Of course not.

thanks to TMZ, one of the most popular gossip sites in the world, for that little reminder.

a thought.

2008-01-03T20:06:00.001-05:00

i am going to be so sick of wolf blitzer's voice by the end of the night, i might just die from the psychic pain.

then again, as i have caught BoyCat's monster cold, "the end of the night" could be about 45 minutes from now. less than an hour i just might be able to handle.

honestly, i'm just so relieved that we're starting this thing. for real. people are casting ballots! (well, republican people are casting little slips of paper than function as secret ballots. democrats are just milling around. but whatever.) it seems like this campaign season has been going on for 17 years already, so i kinda can't believe something's actually happening. of course, given the country's collective hunger for something other than stump speeches and talking head pontificiations, i'm certain we will make far too much out of whatever the results of the caucuses are. barack wins! he's got the nomination sewn up! hillary wins! she's got the nomination sewn up! let's just have the general tomorrow! etc etc and so on.

but whatever. i'll watch with bated breath tonight anyway. until i pass out from the cold meds and/or tim russert's inanity, that is.

mama pajama, et al.

2008-01-02T19:24:00.000-05:00

so, in his generous propagation of the 2007 meme, toast noted that the song of 2007 for him is "Here It Goes Again" by Ok Go. he says it's the

Greatest video ever made and just a kick-ass tune. The kind of song I put on when I absolutely need to be happy Right Now.

this got me thinking, and during my commute today i pondered the question. what song would i put on if i needed to get happy right now? this seemed like the kind of information that could come in handy some day.

after hours (ok, numerous minutes) of deliberation, i have decided that that song for me is "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon.

(i have no idea what's up with the 30-second rap intro here - or the video in general, to be honest. but it's the only one of the original recording on youtube, and beggars can't be choosers.)

deep down, i think i really just want to be rosie, queen of corona. because whatever the hell that means, it sounds like it'd be a lot of fun.

so what's yours?

let's recap, shall we?

2007-12-31T09:56:00.000-05:00

now i know i said i would be back after the new year, but this little year-end meme from ejshea has brought me out a little early. let's just say i've been in a reflective mood lately.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before? taken an entire week off of work for a vacation. and it very well might have been the best vacation of all time.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? i didn’t really make a resolution for 2007, as i claim to not be in the habit of doing such things. but my moods, they are mercurial. so, my resolutions for 2008 are as follows:

- start approaching life as something to be experienced, not just survived
- cook more
- run a five-mile race
- get over myself, in general

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? um…no? my cousin had a baby, and my other cousin’s wife had her third baby - but that might have been in 2006. i’ve been out of new england a long time…

4. Did anyone close to you die? no.

5. What places did you visit? i went to the eastern shore – see aforementioned “best vacation ever” mention. i went home, twice – once to escape the heat of august and celebrate our birthdays, and then for christmas. i went to shenandoah national park for the first time, and it was even more enjoyable than i thought it would be.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? some more perspective. or, to put a finer point on it, some mo’ better perspective.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? there are no dates, in particular, actually. and i consider that a good thing. usually, if you can remember the date, it’s because something traumatic happened.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year? landing my job. probably one of the most exciting moments of my life thus far was answering the phone that day and hearing them make the offer.

9. What was your biggest failure? i don’t think i set any goals that i then failed to achieve. i mean, major things – if i had to count the number of times i should’ve done laundry/cleaned the living room/gone to the gym/written the great american novel and didn’t, well…

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? again, nothing major. i did puke that one time, two days before my 5K – that really sucked. i never puke.

11. What was the best thing you bought? a grey sweater with a huge cowlneck from H&M. i am sort of in love with it. “1234” by Feist from iTunes. i am really in love with it.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? MomCat. she is not celebrated nearly enough.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? someone get me a staff directory for the department of justice – that should cover it.

14. Where did most of your money go? rent. goddamn east coast. and then savings, student loans, and food. we buy lots and lots of food.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? again, my job. the whole process was long and draining – six weeks! four interviews! – and when it finally fell into place, the combination of relief and sheer elation is hard to describe. and then when BoyCat got a new job in October, i got to vicariously experience it all over again! so it was a good year on the career front, for sure.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007? “1234.” namely because i’m fucking obsessed with it.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? happier.
b) thinner or fatter? i’ll choose door number three, “treading water.”
c) richer or poorer? richer. two raises between the two of us helped in that regard.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? the first thing that comes into my head is writing. i always seem to wish i’d done more writing. i think i could crank out the seven harry potter novels in 12 months and still have the same answer to this question. of course, this points to my own unrealistic goals/mental problems more than anything else.

[ed. note - i just realized there's no question number 19. how odd.]

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? in MA, with the fam. wouldn't be anywhere else.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007? fall in love? no. wake up every day still in love? yes.

22. How many one-night stands? zero. naturally.

23. What was your favorite TV program? Ugly Betty! got hooked during a marathon on january 1, 2007, actually.

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2007? fled DC. drank copious amounts of “mr. pibb” (don’t ask). floated in the pool.

25. What was the best book you read? The Secret Life of Bees.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? please refer to every musical mention in this meme so far.

27. What did you want and get? a job. a raise. a haircut. new glasses.

28. What did you want and not get? a friend making the time. a burrito from bueno. a flat-screen tv, because who am I kidding, we don’t fucking need one.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? i have to say, The Bourne Ultimatum was a lot of fun to watch in the theater. that Matt Damon – well.

30. Did you make some new friends this year? yes, definitely. which is a great thing, and is one of the reasons i’d say that i was happier this year than the one before.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? “immeasurably”? winning the lottery. not much else could fall into that category!

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? ha. absent. but i’m working on it. it’s part of my whole “get some fucking perspective, woman” plan for 2008!

33. What kept you sane? BoyCat. CatCat. my family. box of wine. the gym.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? CatCat. wait, she’s not technically a public figure? ok, then i have to admit that i find the Seal/Heidi Klum family to be freaking adorable. don’t you just want to hug them all?

35. What political issue stirred you the most? i was so stirred by so many goddamn political issues, i may as well be a soup. and while i am chomping at the bit for a democratic nominee and i welcome the 2008 fight with the republicans, i just can’t wait for someone to cast a vote already. i'm sick of this primary bullshit.

36. Who did you miss? my family. i know, broken record, but seriously – i did. and i do, a lot.

37. Who was the best new person you met? the best?? whoa. i will say the person who makes the fried plantains at the banana café brunch. ok, we haven’t actually met, but he or she is high on my list of Totally Awesome People.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. get to the crux of it. or at least, start trying to.

peace out, freak out.

2007-12-20T20:49:00.000-05:00

i need to go to bed in like, four minutes. because our plane back to massachusetts leaves ridiculously early tomorrow. i've been running around like a crazy person getting ready to go for the last, oh, five hours, and now i'm drinking wine like it's my job in an effort to help my body crash out.

because, you know, my brain isn't so into the whole "let's crash out" idea in these situations. it'd rather stay up all night playing the "what if?" and "did i forget?" games.

so, BoyCat and i will be back home spending some q.t. with my family over the holiday - i hope you all have enjoyable plans that involve good people, good food, good booze, or a combination of all three. while we will be back in town before new year's eve, i've decided to take a little self-imposed miniature blog break til after the turn of the year. try to start fresh and stuff. you know, cliches!

anyway. thanks for reading this past year, internet friends. see you when we ring in a new one.

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-12-19T20:52:00.000-05:00

a somewhat enigmatic threat, courtesy of Overheard in New York. am i supposed to be, um, frightened at this proposition?

Lesbian: Bitch, you better shut the fuck up before I go Park Slope on your ass!

--1 train

i feel like this means you'll treat me to a latte, but somehow, i think i'm misreading your intent.

santa? baby?

2007-12-18T20:42:00.000-05:00

ok, so my family? they are kind of crazy. you know, like your family. and this craziness results in me sitting here at quarter of nine at night, not really having the energy to hop onto blogger and typey-type, but feeling as if certain members of my family will start harassing me if i do not.

let me explain.

MomCat and SisterCat both got a kick out of my Seasame Street related linkage last month. much discussion of alistair cookie and pipe chomping ensued. then, this past weekend, they were down in the New York area hanging out with some extended Cat family. On the wall of AuntCat's house was the following holiday decoration:

you might notice a particular piece of smoking apparatus in the clutches of an alleged children's character, which evokes shades of our dear alistair cookie himself. this similarity apparently prompted what can only be labeled a very strange (and most likely wine-induced) brainstorming session of all the ways in which santa claus himself is, in fact, not suitable for toddlers. my family was so amused by themselves that they felt the need to call me immediately, dictate the following list of offending qualities, and instruct me to post it to my blog. as i am but a humble servant, here - as requested - is a list of all the reasons santa is a poor role model:

the pipe-smoking (obviously)

morbid obesity (again, evident)

poor work ethic (one night a year? seriously?)

human rights abuser (he runs a sweatshop for midgets in the arctic)

animal abuser (PETA would stage a rescue for those reindeer, for sure)

misogynist (calling 'em "hos" won't get you anywhere with the ladies)

threat to national security (violates airspace regulations all the time)

fire hazard (fat men in chimneys = not very safety conscious)

criminally negligent (no helmet? no seat belt? no service)

peeping tom (he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake)

and last but not least, a convict (that is, if they ever brought him up on breaking and entering charges)

so there you have it. why santa is a bad, bad man, or, how my family spent their saturday night! i've gotta say - they have a point. or eleven.

i've cracked.

2007-12-16T20:15:00.000-05:00

help me, internets!

i have chapped lips.

this is not, i recognize, the most shocking revelation, given that it's a week and a half before christmas and all. but i am at a loss as to how to fix it. i have been hydrating like it's my job (5-6 glasses of water per day! for real!), and i'm only using either straight vaseline or aquaphor - none of the chapstick or bonne bell or whatever that just dries them out more.

and yet, they just get worse and worse. they crack, they bleed, i chew at the dry skin and then they get all puffy and painful...

nice, i know. see why i need a solution?

give me your ideas and remedies and magic spells, post haste! or i might not have any lips left by the time spring rolls around...

friday cat blogging, stop hating on lolcats edition.

2007-12-14T22:49:00.000-05:00

well whatever, you can hate on them if you want. your prerogative.

but honestly?

they still crack me up sometimes.

ah hahahaha.

ok i'm going to bed now.

meme-ity meme.

2007-12-13T20:01:00.000-05:00

via brandy's, this meme strikes me as something you might fill out during a psychological evaluation, but i'm gonna go with it. why not?

I Never...
wear velvet - get tan - fall asleep right away - write it all down - use hairspray - want to feel the way i did when i was 15 ever again - eat sour cream - drive without my seat belt on - think about visiting missouri - look for hidden christmas presents - have enough money on my metro card - leave the house after 9:00 pm anymore - tip less than 15% - settled - forgot what it was like.

I Rarely...
buy nice enough bras or shoes - drink whiskey - witness things that restore my faith in humanity - wear bracelets - yell - get the grande instead of the tall - choose red wine - find exactly the right thing to say - think conservatives have a good point - wake up refreshed - go a day without cooing sweet nothings at my cat - regret decisions - forget to say "thank you" to cashiers and bartenders - just go with the flow.

I Cry...
when i am not on anti-depressants - in private - over the injustices that suffocate women every day - at the end of Field of Dreams - when i hear "Raining in Baltimore" at the wrong time - for so many things that i can't even quite say - when the patriots win the superbowl in 2002 - when the red sox lose game seven in 2003 - at how it turned out, sometimes.

I Am Not Always...
able to explain it - immune to just tipping over - on top of things - in possession of my emergency corkscrew (which sort of defeats the "emergency" purpose) - comfortable in heels - confident enough to say what i really think - able to resist an episode of Bridezillas - in the mood for shenanigans - in the mood for serious conversation - in the mood, period - the person who shows up five minutes early (but usually i am) - aware of how what i say affects others - right.

I Lose...
friends - addresses - contact lenses - my composure when someone implies that my politics are easily dismissed - all sense of time if i'm reading a really good book - the thread of my life sometimes, and it freaks me out - money at the blackjack table - hair in the shower like it's nobody's business - cough drops - knee-highs - a little more each day.

I'm Confused...
by life - by crocs - by my cat's desire to play with catnip mice at 4:00 am - by Baudrillard - by the way some particular people have treated me in my life - by french feminist theory - by my ability to be both compassionate and judgmental at the same time - by the idea of marriage - by edible underwear (not via experience, mind you) - by why, no matter how much water i drink or aquaphor i use, my lips stay chapped.

I Miss...
my family - the coast - being 22 - bueno y sano in downtown amherst - my mudd jeans from college with the giant hole in the knee - PJ - brubakers and curly fries at our house - drinking coffee on the stoop on commonwealth avenue in the spring - ecce cafe in boystown - john - getting coffee drinks at bart's with mike - roller skating in the driveway in great barrington - how easy it was sometimes - jayne's giant whiteboard - my blue turtleneck sweater that shrunk in the wash - all the million other things i just couldn't quite hold on to.

I Need...
a new pair of brown boots - a raise - another glass of wine - a trip home for christmas - a better handle on my own irrational fears - a new hairdryer - some really good coping mechanisms - a DC driver's license - five minutes in the morning to lay there and do nothing - to send a few more holiday cards - plane tickets to chicago in february - a nice winter hat - a center - a change - a minute to think.

I Should...
pitch more articles - go to the gym on saturday - quit worrying about money so much - kiss my boyfriend more - vacuum the living room rug - bring a few of the 327 tupperware containers in my office home - floss - send more handwritten letters - breathe deeper - try to figure out how to stop biting my nails - eat more fruit - buy some argyle tights - just fucking relax.

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-12-12T20:38:00.000-05:00

kidz, man. via overheard in new york. they are good for amusement sometimes, i'll give 'em that.

Little boy shaking his hips: Tryin' make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no! [Later, to woman behind register] Do you have Rugrats Gone Wild?

--Blockbuster, 10th & Wanamaker Pl

news alert: i obsess over things.

2007-12-11T21:18:00.000-05:00

i know, i know, this comes as a shock. but let me tell you about it.

i have this new pair of boots. i got them on clearance (woot) at DSW. they are black, with about a...hmmm....i'd say two-inch heel. maybe two and a half. they are kenneth cole reaction (not bad, not bad) and they're all synthetic, which is a negative for most people but a positive for a vegetarian like myself who is attempting to avoid hypocrisy at most turns. finally, they are knee-high.

the last part is where the obsessing comes in. because "knee-high" boots are a bit of a misnomer, right? they come to somewhere just below your knee, usually. and of course, there's a bit of variance even in that generality - some pairs come a little closer to your kneecap than others. and a few weeks and couple wears after purchasing my boots, i became convinced that they were - gasp - too short.

now mind you, this was not an evident problem when i purchased them (read: it is a virtual guarantee that this is not an actual problem at all). however, slowly but surely, the doubt crept in. are these things like, just maybe half an inch too short? i would study my calves while sitting at my desk, swinging my legs out to one side of the chair, then the other. did they look to short this way? how about that way? what if i stand up? what if i cross my legs like this?

i wish i were kidding about this internal monologue. i am not.

despite repeated assurances by (a very patient) BoyCat that no, they are certainly not too short, and yes, they look like everyone else's boots, i still harbor misgivings. i found myself at the dupont circle station the other day, waiting to meet up with someone, and mentally cataloging the kneecap to boot-top ratio of nearly every woman who walked by in knee-highs. i felt like some kind of addict.

i guess there is no real moral to this story. (unless, of course, the moral is that i am crazy, but that is a implicit - not to mention redundant - moral around here.) i will keep wearing the boots. i will probably continue to allow some sick little corner of my brain to gnaw away on the issue of their reverse inseam. hopefully i can just avoid acknowledging said gnawing by focusing on something else. like how i desperately need some brown knee-high boots.

i think we should be quarantining the serial rapists, but that's just me.

2007-12-09T10:26:00.000-05:00

wow.

mike huckabee, ladies and gentleman. currently ~~running second~~ the frontrunner in the iowa polls, according to the newest McClatchy-MSNBC numbers.

canada honestly looks more and more attractive by the day.

city karma?

2007-12-08T04:39:00.000-05:00

perhaps i made someone's life difficult in some big city in a past life. because right now, it's 4:30 in the morning, and i am wide awake because my downstairs neighbor's television is blaring. you can almost hear the dialogue clearly through the floor. somehow we managed to fall asleep (with the help of our little white noise machine) earlier tonight, but i woke up about an hour ago and have been up ever since.

the guy is either a) not there or b) completely, freakishly passed out in there, because i went down about half an hour ago and knocked - or pounded, if you will - on the door four or five times. nothing. and the volume is ridiculous - it was like the tv was in the hallway and going full blast, it was so loud. i left a nice little note (really - i restrained my overtired bitchiness for two minutes while i wrote it) imploring him to, um, kindly turn that thing down in the middle of the night in the future.

ok, now it's quarter of five in the morning. awesome. i wonder how long my body will stay awake on annoyance alone. i'd guess at least another hour. maybe two.

score one for rural living, i guess.

friday cat blogging, mindset edition.

2007-12-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

hi.

so i know i've been a bad blogger lately.

there are numerous reasons for this, the boring navel-gazing details of which i won't go into here - especially since i am currently running only on gin and exhaustion. however, some of it has to do with me actually starting to get something resembling a life (hey, i take what i can get!) and some of it has to do with me not being able to find the motivation to blog with two hands and a flashlight. i'm not writing much at all really (except for those eight hours a day that i write for my job, which might have something to do with that, huh??), and i'm trying not to go into my normal reactionary mode about a situation like this. that mode is usually a) feel guilty about it for some nebulous and almost certainly irrational reason, and then b) force myself to do it anyway, thus sucking any bit of joy or intrinsic pleasure out of the entire enterprise.

and that, as you smart people instantly surmised, is incredibly stupid.

but i'm still here. i'll still be blogging. and i'm betting (and hoping) that by attempting to go with the flow of my inclinations rather than ceaselessly beat them in to (arbitrary) line, i'll come back to writing regularly on my own in relatively short time.

in the meantime, keep coming by for random observations, petulant whining, and an occasional flash of ~~vain preoccupation~~ brilliance.

weeknight update.

2007-12-04T20:52:00.001-05:00

- my lips are very, very dry.

- my jeans have a small hole in the seam - right at the hip - that i need to sew, like, yesterday.

- work got unexpectedly insane this week.

- i actually have post-work plans for the next three nights.

- my eyes are very, very dry.

- my credit score went up today.

- my credit card balance still scares me.

- there is laundry hanging all over our bedroom - doorknobs, hamper, cd tower, wardrobe doors - and its kinda like a cotton-poly jungle.

- my cat enjoys attacking toy hedgehogs at four in the morning.

- my brain does not enjoy falling asleep at a reasonable hour.

- i'm sort of over keith olbermann.

- my iPod is almost full.

- the bathroom door doesn't stick from the humidity anymore.

- the DC library hates me.

- the holidays cannot come soon enough.

last call.

2007-12-02T09:35:00.001-05:00

in your sunday (or monday morning, as it may be) perusing of the interweb, be sure to check out this great article from today's Globe:

Last Call: Why the gay bars of Boston are disappearing, and what it says about the future of city life

when i lived in the area, i always bemoaned boston's lack of a centralized gay area of town - everything seemed so scattershot and marooned on its own little city-block island. (and the south end, without decent public transit access and skyrocketing prices, just does not count.) so, imagine my dismay to hear that things were going from bad to worse in my big gay liberal home state. this article does a great job of laying out the problem and connecting it to bigger economic trends that threaten not only gay city life, but city life in general. a snippet:

The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place."

In New York, the Jewish deli - a staple of the city's identity - has all but vanished. In the Boston area, many of Harvard Square's bookstores, Kenmore Square's student eateries, and myriad other places that guaranteed a diverse urban experience have closed their doors, replaced by a far more uniform lineup of bank branches, chain stores, and upscale restaurants.

This change is a serious challenge to the city, which has historically been defined by the breadth and variety of its street-level experience - and the wide diversity of people it threw together. "City air makes free," a saying that dates to medieval times, was a favorite of urban-studies pioneer Jane Jacobs. But as a wide range of gay bars dwindles to a handful of survivors - and the city's diners, indie bookstores, and dive bars yield to high rents and shifting patterns of commerce - that air is becoming the province of an increasingly narrow set of people.

i think anyone who lives in a big city can attest to this. while sections of largely non-homogenized city can certainly be found, the encroachment is everywhere and prices rise commensurately. here in DC, the insane pace of development in "hip" neighborhoods (because what self-respecting investment banker by day/hipster by night wants to move into a million dollar condo in an "unhip" neighborhood? the horror!) had led to almost untenably rapid rates of gentrification. that's how you end up with black kids in columbia heights throwing stones at white yuppies in columbia heights, and a "revival" of the historically black u street that involves 1-beds renting for over $2,000 in a massive new building called "the ellington."

sometimes i honestly stop and just think, "what the fuck is going on?"

of course, i really don't know. and i have no idea what will happen in the future, whether some other proverbial forces of nature will put a check on this kind of development, or whether this is really the city of the foreseeable future. i'll just keep fighting with the tide, trying to buy local on eighth street and at eastern market instead of from amazon.com, and hoping they don't raise my rent next year.

friday cat blogging, camo edition.

2007-11-30T19:57:00.001-05:00

CatCat tries out her incognito skillz. on a clean pile of laundry.

a strong first attempt, i'd say. the outstretched paw and unflattened ear give her away, though - she'll have to work on that.

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-11-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

amen for honesty, courtesy of Overheard of New York:

Hoochie on cell: Look, I love you -- you're my best friend -- but if I don't hang up this phone, I'm going to tell you what I really think, and you'll be pissed.

--Penn Station

hoochies: they know what's up.

don't get me started about the crayon factory, really.

2007-11-27T22:09:00.001-05:00

i was reading jezebel the other day when i came across this post about how different seasame street was back in the day. now, i haven't watched seasame street in over ten years (i went through the obligatory retro-nostalgia phase in high school where my friends and i would amuse ourselves in the afternoon by watching seasame street on pbs - i also wore ring pops then, but that's another story altogether), but i am not surprised to hear that it's turned into a sanitized elmo-land of happy muppets and the distinct aroma of stifling safeness. now, the stuff that ruled about seasame street back then is the stuff that's considered somehow "too risky" for preschool minds to try to process. for instance,

The producers cite an array of reasons [for vintage seasame street episodes being deemed potentially unsuitable for today's toddlers] including but not nearly limited to Cookie Monster, who was not only a pathological binge eater but also the Muppet who played the character Alistair Cookie, who, explains the New York Times Magazine "used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, 'That modeled the wrong behavior' -- smoking, eating pipes -- 'so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.'"

remember alistair cookie? monsterpiece theater?? the minute i read about the pipe, i could clearly picture him eating it - and i laughed out loud. because that shit is funny. it was funny then to my pint-sized self, and it's funny now twenty years later - how often can you say that about something?

sigh. kids these days - they really don't know what they're missing.

for your own retro-nostalgia moment, here's a classic monsterpiece theater, including the offending pipe-eating finale:

and here's an amazing one that my sister found for me, monsterpiece theater: twin beaks:

scenery, changed.

2007-11-26T18:10:00.001-05:00

pass mountain overlook, shenandoah national park

from the peak of stony man mountain, shenandoah national park

honestly, i have never been that high up, with my feet on the ground, in my whole life. when you can see that it's cloudy in one town and sunny in another, you know you've found something different. it was a nice antidote to the claustrophobia of city life.

that, some crab cakes and caesar salad for thanksgiving dinner (first vegetarian t-day, a delicious success!), and a seat next to the fire watching a mountain sunset have definitely done me some good. now the christmas tree is up, i'm in my flannel pajama pants, and i've got a glass of wine and CatCat curled up on the couch with me - if that doesn't help me keep the good going for the next month, then hell, nothing will.

change of scenery.

2007-11-20T17:56:00.000-05:00

thanksgiving, here again - all sudden bluster and orange leaves and god, how did this year begin to die already - and i am utterly worn out. i don't quite know whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing. all i know is that i am tired. i see the reflection of my eyelids in the metro windows and i am a bit shocked, really, at the obvious weight. the evident drag around the edges. my body screams at me for more sleep - it wants more, no matter how much i give it, sleeping in until almost noon on the weekends like i haven't done (regularly, at least) since grad school. it's like my blood is thick, slow moving, and ultimately unable to keep up with the basic, day-to-day things that i demand of it.

will this pass? i hope so. for a generally high-strung person like me, this level of lethargy shifts from soporifically enjoyable into gratingly discordant in a very short amount of time, and then trying to force the square pegs of my type-a impulses into these little round holes of apathetic behavior is akin to repeatedly attempting to use a moving turntable for a pillow.

in other words, i am not quite myself.

i'm hoping this coming holiday offers a bit of a respite and a chance for me to figure out what needs adjusting. we'll be off in the blue ridge mountains with BoyCat's family for awhile - i think the change of scenery can only help things. i'm going to put on a fleece and a winter hat, hike up a trail, read a book, drink some wine, and try to kick start this mysterious little motor that is my head. see you next week.

you know what's frustrating?

2007-11-18T22:03:00.001-05:00

that i can't tell the difference between ridiculous allergies and a head cold. especially in late november. there's sneezing, and a stuffy - then runny - then itchy nose (lather rinse repeat), and a headache.

i guess if it's still here in the morning, it's probably a head cold, right?

given the number of deadlines i have in the next two weeks compared to the number of days i have in which to meet them, i'm really hoping it's not. here in the morning, that is. either way.

sniffle.

friday cat blogging, SisterCat edition.

2007-11-16T18:57:00.000-05:00

as i'm sure you all know, since you've undoubtedly had this date marked on your calendars for weeks, today is SisterCat's birthday. regular readers of this blog know that i must take this opportunity to catalogue the imposing and wondrous greatness that is SisterCat. the problem is, i'm so exhausted from the insanity of this week that i'm a little fuzzy on the details of SisterCat's myriad accomplishments of the past year.

so, here is a list of things i think that SisterCat may have done in the past 365 days:

- brokered a nuclear disarmament agreement with north korea
- invaded north korea
- bought a pair of red, patent leather, four-inch peep-toe heels
- had a full-on conversation, including voiceovers, with her cat
- brought the stock market to its knees
- bravely pursued a new career
- bravely ditched a lot of other things that weren't working
- drank an entire bottle of wine herself
- convinced britney that performing at the VMAs was a great idea
- insulted someone who deserved it
- overextended herself for someone who deserved it
- purchased the Boston Celtics
- won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting
- broke glass
- laughed til she nearly choked
- coordinated a hostile takeover of a Fortune 500 company
- wrote Hillary's health care plan
- made someone miserable
- made someone's day
- made tough decisions
- made me proud

i think that about covers it. happy birthday, SisterCat!

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-11-14T20:37:00.000-05:00

courtesy of Overheard in New York, one question and one follow-up:

Woman: Okay, should we start a Facebook group for people with great cleavage? Or is that déclassé?

--Bedford & 7th, Williamsburg

in sum - no, and yes. but points for using "déclassé" in a sentence, and extra points for using it self-referentially. that's truly impressive.

if i were a typewriter.

2007-11-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

i'd type in the morning. i'd type in evening. all over this land.

or something.

as you can see, i'm heavily involved in a) typing, and b) being delusional. i just thought i'd let you know.

also, chai tea is delicious and good editing fuel.

along the potomac.

2007-11-11T21:33:00.001-05:00

lately i've been having these dreams about old friends. the friends you just don't see anymore. they are surprisingly languid dreams - hemingway dreams where nothing really happens - we are just, suddenly, there. together. one invites me to a party at a log cabin in the town where we went to college. another gives me a necklace that starts out as the clockface from a pocketwatch and turns into a carving of a saint.

in these dreams, i am always conscious of the passage of time - that somehow, we are not supposed to be interacting in the present, but in the past, where we really belong.

***

i am driving down 395 south, away from virginia and into the district. it is dusk. the sun is sinking to the west, the sunset beyond the sprawling angles of the pentagon a dull, diffuse rose - the east is all deep gray and the winking lights of the pentagon city office buildings and hotels.

there is thick traffic. not quite enough to impede me - just enough to surround me on all sides. i move continuously into the stream of red tail lights ahead of me. the negative image, blurred and blurring headlights, wheel past on my left, moving, slowing, moving again. everywhere there are these small bits of light, traveling in concert without any need of one another - i notice it, how we move like this - being funneled, funneling ourselves.

a plane approaches national airport, sideways across my view, descending into the darkness that keeps feeling its way along the potomac. the whole city, spread out in front of me from this vantage point, is sanguine. low-slung. waiting, and unperturbed.

***

usually, i don't remember my dreams. my subconscious, like my conscious, is not very clear with itself. my dreams are often at best half-remembered things - a sense of what the dream was like, but not what it was. details elude me. meaning escapes me. i am usually only left, at best, with feelings - unreliable things that they are.

***

i am struck, in my little oasis of a car, with an overwhelming sense of trepidation. i don't grip the wheel any harder, i don't veer out of my lane - i am simply struck. i am afraid that there is nothing to me.

i am afraid that, deep down, i am not good person or a bad person or an enviable person or a pitiable person. i am afraid that there is no essential truth about myself, no center that will right me if i could just learn to balance on it. maybe - maybe there is nothing there.

maybe i am like a baseball, and if you managed to hit me hard enough to knock the covering off, i would simply unravel.

***

last year, i had one of those dreams where you dream that you've woken up, but you really haven't. i'm dreaming that i'm in our bedroom, awake, but that something is not right. i lay still. after a few moments, i realize that i hear sounds from the bathroom. i lift myself up on one elbow and peer through the darkness towards the bathroom door. it is a stark black space, surrounded cleanly on all four sides by the light streaming out from behind it.

someone is in there.

i creep around the bed and towards the door, adrenaline starting to seep into my chest. i am afraid only in that dream-like way - not acutely, as in the face of danger, but absolutely, as in the face of the unknown. i push open the door, and the light tumbles forward, half-blinding me.

the man inside, who had been looking in the mirror, turns to look at me. he smiles. "oh," he says, "it's me. don't be afraid - it's just me."

it is my uncle, my father's brother. he has been dead for twelve years. i try desperately to focus. i realize, as i tip backwards inside myself while standing perfectly still, that i am dreaming.

don't be afraid - it's just me.

i wake up in an instant, and i am really awake. but the darkness - that all seems the same.

two quick questions.

2007-11-10T20:17:00.001-05:00

over the past week, i have noticed a spike in people finding my blog by searching on two particular subjects. i am hoping that you, the internets, can figure out why there is a sudden interest in googling these two topics. so tell me if you've heard anything, or seen anything, or even have a vague sense of what the hell is going on. because i don't, and dammit i'm curious.

Search #1 is around the tori amos lyric i used as the title of my post about insomnia - "you're just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird." i've had more people find my blog by searching on some component of that line in the last week than in all my previous time blogging combined. was it featured somewhere? i don't watch enough tv anymore - i don't know these things.

Search #2 is regarding the wearing black with brown issue. now, i'm not going to complain about people finding my post about this unfortunate fashion phenomenon (i don't care what ~~macy's~~ marshall field's or anyone else thinks about it, it's wrong,wrong i say!), but it must've been brought up somewhere in the media ether. given that one search also threw the phrase "stacy london" into the mix, i have a sneaking suspicion this is something the what not to wear mavens addressed on a recent episode. and now i'd love to know what she said about it.

because if she endorsed it, seriously, i will cut her.

a singular enmity, reinflamed.

2007-11-08T21:30:00.000-05:00

i hate pantyhose. i hate them so much. i had to wear them for a big work thing this week, and it is only on the rare occasions in which i am forced, by the combination of my choice of outfit, social convention, and plunging temperatures to wear them that i am reminded how much i loathe them. truly. more than most nearly anything that i can think of at the moment.

for instance, i hate pantyhose more than:

1. tracksuits

2. ruthless dictators

3. that gillette commercial where the european tennis guy says, "i never zink about yestaday"

4. french country decor

5. chris matthews

6. people who microwave fish dishes for lunch

7. my car payment

8. anita shreve

9. jumpers

10. jumpers with jelly shoes

11. the state of indiana

12. my sinuses

13. jello with the little bits of fruit inside

14. white wicker furniture

15. global warming, poverty, and every pandemic that ever happened all rolled into one

really, human kind is overrated. pantyhose, however, remain the unacknowledged work of the devil. in which case, you can see there really is no contest.

i mean, god, what kind of company name is "Leggs" anyway?

and we turn him into an anecdote.

2007-11-06T22:17:00.001-05:00

something that i read today reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Six Degrees of Separation. i really fucking love that movie - it's actually kind of a crime that i don't own it on dvd.

so then i went looking for a very brief scene from the movie on youtube, which they didn't have, but i did find a clip of the final scene, which is amazing. stockard channing has been great in many things, and this is no exception. if you haven't seen the movie, for god's sake don't watch this because you'll ruin it! put the movie on the top of your netflix queue and see the whole thing.

however, if you have seen the movie and loved it like i did, by all means take five minutes to revisit this little dual tour de force from channing and donald sutherland. (the french subtitles? - i have no idea what they're about, and they are slightly distracting. but oh well i still kinda want to hug the person who posted it anyway.)

DC art this fall: there's more.

2007-11-05T20:01:00.000-05:00

ok, DC peoples.

there is this really cool-sounding museum exhibit that you should go see. yes, on top of all of these.

i just read about it today, and it's called Kate: A Centennial Celebration, and it runs from now through June 1, 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery. which kate, you ask? well, the kate, of course.

katharine hepburn.

seriously, no woman has ever been able to rock the trousers like she did. not one.

DCist - where I learned about the exhibit today - give the overview:

Katharine Hepburn, one of the most iconic actresses of the 20th century, is the latest person to be featured in the National Portrait Gallery’s “One Life” gallery. Kate: A Centennial Celebration, which opened today, presents a multi-media approach to Hepburn’s life — photographs, video clips, her four Best Actress Oscar statuettes, a Brooks Brothers red turtleneck sweater, and a studio contract are all on display.

The four statuettes, which Hepburn won for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond, were never displayed before, and here they’re a testament to an acting career that spanned decades. Nine film clips are available to watch in the video kiosk, with scenes from Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, and The African Queen, among others. Also on display is a portrait of Hepburn wearing a straw hat, painted by Everett Raymond Kinstler in 1982, which Hepburn called her “favorite.”

so, go check it. i know that i will.

little relationship truth #2,347.

2007-11-03T15:03:00.000-04:00

after a really long stretch of of togetherness, you might start to think that you know most everything there is to know about your partner. the good, the bad, the ugly - all that and more. i know i kinda did. but every now and again, a little something happens to remind you that it's never even close to possible.

for instance, at the end of a random phone conversation the other day, i discovered that BoyCat does a very serviceable jimmy stewart. so good and so ridiculous of a caricature that it actually made me laugh out loud when i heard it.

i love that i spent a grand total of 61 months not knowing that about him, and now i do. i love that he's been making me laugh in so many ways for over five years, and all that time there was another one hidden up his sleeve.

i love that i have the chance to keep learning more.

friday cat blogging, go cry emo kid edition.

2007-11-02T21:12:00.000-04:00

poor CatCat. she's had a tough month. first a surgical procedure that left her with half of her teeth, and then a mysterious lip-related ailment that took two trips to the vet and a multitude of pill-down-the-throat episodes in order to even diagnose the actual problem.

which is rodent ulcer.

that's right! my cat has an ailment named after a rat. (my vet informed me yesterday that it has this colloquial name because people used to think that cats got it by...you guessed it...eating rodents. but, luckily for us, this is not the case.) so now there's another week long pill-shoving regimen, at the end of which her lip should be back to normal for an unspecified amount of time. we apparently then just wait to see when, if ever, it flares up again.

CatCat says, great. just great.

poor kitteh.

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-10-31T21:18:00.001-04:00

appealing to the higher-ups, courtesy of Overheard in New York:

Father to three-year-old son: The ruler of the universe says to stop chattering.

--7th Ave, Park Slope

and this girl says amen! also, i wish the ruler of the universe's wishes could be so clearly delineated for me on a regular basis.

poor tommy.

2007-10-30T19:46:00.000-04:00

oh, mayor menino. is it sad that this is the kind of thing we have come to expect of you? a little.

but it's still pretty damn amusing, too.

in case you were wondering.

2007-10-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

rampant misogyny? still alive and kicking. how else do you explain this men's bathroom motif?

i have to send you over to feministing for it because i think my computer was just too disgusted to post the photo file correctly. seriously. i tried twice, with no luck, and repeated exposure to the picture is kinda making me want to puke. so that's enough.

from the feministing post, please also take a second to read shakes on this general matter, who sadly has to point out in her post title that in addition to women not actually being toilets, they are also not mountable prey.

i suppose a remedial course in humanity might do well to start there.

this just in.

2007-10-27T21:07:00.000-04:00

The Ninth Gate is a horrible movie. laughably so. when it was over, BoyCat said, "i can't believe that actually got two stars."

however, spending a late saturday afternoon on halloween weekend watching a bad movie about the devil is actually pretty damn enjoyable. there is something pleasantly hedonistic about spending most of the day in yoga pants, half-horizontal on the couch, and killing time with something completely unproductive.

however, as a classifiable (certifiable?) "type a" person, relaxing is not something that comes easily to me. it's something with which i struggle: how to balance out the satisfying productivity - the kind that comes from working, running, getting errands done and things organized, moving forward with writing on this blog and elsewhere - with the satisfying unproductivity that comes from listening to the little voice saying, "it's ok to lay here on the couch for another hour. really." i'm always afraid that if i give in to that little voice too often, that it will get louder and more demanding, that my intellectual drive and curiosity will atrophy, and that eventually i'll spend all my time watching sportscenter, vh1, and lifetime movies. of course, this - like most of my fears and dubious prophetic predictions - is highly unlikely to happen. and yet i still have a hard time shaking the guilt of a day spent doing almost nothing, even though in reality i need those days every so often.

like so many other things in my life, i find this comes back to balance and figuring out how the hell to get some. because i feel perpetually off-balance. i mean this literally as well as metaphorically - those who know me can attest to my predisposition to nearly tipping over, apropo of nothing. i look constantly for some way to smooth things out, to quiet the keeling of the boat. and even the things that i know, rationally, will help - an afternoon of johnny depp and pajama pants, for instance - still manage to fill me with ambivalence and vague anxiety.

isn't it probably the case that if i can't figure out a way to stop feeling anxious about relaxing, there's little hope for me and my desired balanced life? probably. i should work on that.

oh wait...or i shouldn't. and just relax.

i don't know.

fatigue.

2007-10-25T20:13:00.000-04:00

via feministing comes this piece at Tapped - an article by Courtney Martin taking on Thomas Friedman's labeling of us "twentysomethings" as Generation Q, for Quiet.

i was having coffee with a friend after work today, and i mentioned the article - which argues, i think rather convincingly, that we aren't so much underengaged as totally overwhelmed - and how i felt it really nailed the context of my own life. i told her i felt too tired. i'm 27 years old, i shouldn't be this tired - i shouldn't be living every day getting hit by these waves of powerlessness every time i open up cnn.com. but with the depth and breadth of information to which we have constant access - and the ensuing understanding of the scope of the problems and their staggering interconnectedness - its difficult for it not to result in a sense that whatever we do (and are doing, for sure - i get up and go to work every day to make women's lives better) is, in the broader sense, woefully insufficient.

so yeah, i'm tired. and i'm sick of boomers like friedman implying that because we're not doing it like they did, we're not doing it right. because we're doing what we can - we just have the dubious benefit of realizing how little of a difference it makes.

your wednesday one-liner.

2007-10-24T20:02:00.000-04:00

for kim-soo, wherever i may find her, courtesy of Overheard in New York:

Old lady: I am very much looking forward to introducing you to my chicken.

--8th & 5th

Overheard by: I am too

(well, "I am too," first you better figure out where the hell you are, because it seems like you were at the intersection of nowhere and nowhere. or plug in a missing numeral. just sayin'.)

your thought-provoking, um, thought of the day.

2007-10-23T21:49:00.000-04:00

it's everyone's favorite rabble-rouser and sacred cow-tipper, laura kipnis. in her new (relatively, i've been meaning to get my hands on it for awhile) book The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability she takes on the female psyche within this alleged "post"-feminist culture. in other words, in this age of advancement, why are we all - and especially why are women - still so effed up?

the following is a long quote from her Sex chapter, coming on the heels of animated discussions of the clitoris, the elusive g-spot, frigidity, vibrators, and dr. phil. these two pages contain some serious rain on the cultural parade, and i like how she clearly and concisely lays out what seems to me a glaring blind spot in what we think of as our understanding of women:

"...maternal instinct is also a concept that arises at a particular point in history - namely, when there was a social necessity for a new story. With the industrial revolution, children's economic value declined: they weren't necessary additions to the household labor force, and once children started costing more to raise than they contributed economically to the household, there had to be some justification for having them. Ironically, it was only when children lost economic worth that they became the priceless little treasures we know them as today. On the emotional side, it also took a decline in infant-mortality rates for parents to start treating their offspring with much affection - when infant deaths were high (in England prior to 1800 they ran between 15 and 30 percent for a child's first year), maternal attachment ran low...With smaller family size - birthrates declined steeply in the nineteenth century - the emotional value of each child also increased; so did sentimentality about children and the deeply felt emotional need to acquire them.

Human maternity has had a checkered history over the ages, it must be said, including such maternal traditions as infanticide and child abandonment, sending children to wet nurses following birth and to foundling hospitals or workhouses when economic circumstances were dire. In other words, what we now like to call an 'instinct' is a culturally specific development, also an economic luxury. Which isn't to say that an invented instinct feels any less real; it can feel entirely profound. But it does mean there's no reason it can't be invented differently - or invented in men as well - when social priorities dictate." [Emphasis in the original.]

an invented instinct. yes! and she critically points out that while many women certainly experience it as an 'instinct,' when you account for all the evidence, such a simple explanation falls far short of the mark.

how many of our other 'instincts' can be assessed in this way? how many of our other sacred cows are largely artful stories? and to what extent, and how, does it matter when we try to think about social change?

i had a simple plan.

2007-10-22T20:02:00.000-04:00

and it was simply this:

write something coherent on this blog tonight.

but then - then! i left work late. and then i got stuck on the metro because of a track fire, in a crowded train, without a seat, for half an hour. as in, we did not move an inch in that tunnel for half an hour. did i mention it was crowded?

so. then i got home, opened the mail, put on yoga pants, cooked some dinner (because i needed leftovers for tomorrow, because hello there's no more frozen lunches in the freezer, trader joe's why have i forsaken you?? i miss you, vegan pad thai bowl!!) and, um, ate it. and now it is now.

and this is all the coherence you are getting from me tonight.

(i will admit, this is also caused in part by the book on my nightstand - The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability by laura kipnis - and how fricking good it is. i want to keep reading it. and i can't read and type at the same time. pity, that.)

friday cat blogging, i'm a medical money pit edition.

2007-10-19T21:11:00.000-04:00

we still have no idea why her lip is like that. god damn cat - she's cute even when she's all jacked up (i wish you could see where her leg is still growning in fur from where she had the IV, in order to get the full sad-sack picture).

next stop, antihistamines and antibiotics...wish CatCat and her deformed lip luck!

oh wait, i almost forgot...

2007-10-18T20:53:00.000-04:00

i went to this great panel discussion last night, "Editrix of the Trade: How to Keep Your Job and Your Sanity as a Female Journalist in Washington, DC." there was a really good turn out - i'd guess a good 40-50 people, plus a panel of seven women in various writing and editing jobs in the city. they had great ideas, observations, and advice to offer, and some thoughtful answers for the Q&A session. at one point, one of the panelists referenced an op-ed about that infernal question, "where are all the women??" you know, that one you can apply almost anywhere - academia, the op-ed pages, college sports, paleontology, whatever - but it has most recently created a brou-ha-ha in journalism circles when the dearth of female bylines was pointed out, and the op-ed being referenced was part of that whole discussion.

i thought i'd like to it - a washington post piece by zofia smardz - here, because i found it both insightful and thought-provoking. and you know i like to share things with those two qualities!

meditations on a theme.

2007-10-18T19:59:00.000-04:00

that theme? randomness. it is all i am capable of at the moment. i hope to return to something resembling coherence, oh, sometime next week? by 2008? i don't know.

wait, sooner than 2008. that much i can promise. i think.

but for now, MomCat and DadCat are on their way to DC for their first visit since we've moved - there are monument plans, and brunch plans, and let's sit around and enjoy the beautiful weather plans. which i could really use, as this week at work has been particularly crazy and today was, in particular, particularly...[expletive deleted].

so. yes. not much from me this weekend, except hopefully a picture of the prizefighter, CatCat, who still has a fucking fat lip! we've adopted a medical enigma...

i'll take potpourri for $200, alex.

2007-10-16T19:49:00.000-04:00

ben affleck, out and about saying yes to unions. who knew? not me. and am i the only one who thinks that gone baby gone actually looks kinda good?

CatCat has a fat lip. we don't know why. as of this afternoon, our vet doesn't know why. the devil we know (that damn kitty gingivitis) has been vanquished, but for the moment has been replaced with the devil we don't. however, it doesn't seem to be bothering her much, so we're trying a variety of cockamamie avenues (as recommended by our vet, so they must be decent ideas, right?) to cure her of this perpetually pouty countenance.

anne enright won the booker prize - the book looks great, and i really enjoyed what are you like?, so i can only hope it doesn't take me a year and half to get the new one from the DC library.

my eyes don't get enough oxygen. i paid $60 for an eye exam to acquire this knowledge. and then $35 for a one-inch tall bottle of eye drops to get rid of irritation from said lack of oxygen. and, next week, i get really lucky, having the chance to spend who knows how much on all new contacts, since the four boxes that i still have in the medicine cabinet are now no good! can you sense my excitement??

my parents are coming this weekend.

the sox game is on in two minutes.

and so on.

i'm taking a poll.

2007-10-14T11:44:00.000-04:00

so, cara has planted this little idea in my head: moving this blog over to wordpress. this notion both excites and terrifies me - as most interesting things in life should, i guess! - for myriad reasons.

i'd have to back up my blog! (yes shut up i'm totally negligent and totally lazy)

i'd have to import my blog!

i'd have to learn a whole new program thingee!

i would be confused!

and stressed!

and ahhh!!

ok, you get the point. but a) of all, i'm obviously just type-a overreacting to the whole endeavor, and b) of all, change is good.

so, my few dear and loyal readers, i'd love your vote - stay with this tried and true (but relatively boring and often ornery) little blog format, or make the leap and possibly drive BoyCat crazy with my whinging and hand-wringing in the process?

decisions, decisions.

this would probably also be a good time to acknowledge that yes, i have not been posting much more than one-liners, cats, and public transit observations for the last few weeks. this is mainly because i am actually busy and doing things. which i consider a good thing. except that i don't get to write as much. which is a bad thing. what i need to figure out, a la cinnamon, is how to function on four hours of sleep a night instead of, oh, eight or nine. then i'd be onto something! but i'll figure it all out eventually and be back with more coherent things to say.

friday cat blogging, baseball fever edition.

2007-10-12T19:05:00.000-04:00

CatCat says, GO SOX!

don't be fooled by her disinterested look - inside, she's psyched. it looks like she even coordinated her pillows for the event.