Stop the madness

Okay, I have a bone to pick with American Apparel. Their clothes may be sweatshop free, but their ads are full of barely legal jailbait in homemade porn poses, and they are EVERYWHERE. Okay, they may sell really cute shorts and tank tops, but still. I shouldn't have to worry about reading a news site at work, not because the content is inappropriate, but because their ads could get me fired. I'm sure they score tons of clickthroughs so technically their ad strategy is a success, but it's pretty vile. I'm more likely to avoid the sites that host the ads than I am to read them and cross my fingers that my boss doesn't walk behind me to get to the printer while I'm madly scrolling to get past the stupid video ad loop. Clothe your models, people!

Like ducks not in a row

Nothing ever quite turns out they way you think it will. When I moved into my apartment at the end of December, I really, honestly thought that I would be moving to San Francisco when the lease ended in June. Because the whole thing seemed so transitional, I didn't bring much with me when a moved--just a few pieces of furniture and some boxes. But I didn't end up finding a way out to the Bay Area, and my lease is ending in a month and so now I'm looking for a new roommate, as my current one is moving to SF herself to do some post-graduate fieldwork.

I've posted the place a few times on Craigslist and there are a couple of people coming to take a look at me and the apartment this weekend. Craigslist can be a great source but it is also a total crapshoot. Who knows who these people are, whether they would make decent roommates, whether they would secretly kick Scully or leave fingernail clippings on the floor or ignore the dishes in the sink. Will they forget to pay the rent? Are they trustworthy? They could also be completely great. I need to think more positively about the whole process. All I know is that I really don't want to move again, even if it's just into a studio in the same building.

At the same time, the girl I replaced here is coming for her living room furniture this weekend, which means that we will have no couch, coffee table, TV or bookshelves after Saturday. Now I need to either find a roommate who comes with furniture, sort of like a special edition Barbie but with a couch instead of a pink leather clutch, or commit to bringing my own stuff in here.

Things are still happening with lunch boy, but not for much longer. For two people who are very clear about the fact that we are not in a relationship, we talk a lot more than friends who just hook up every so often. As in, emailing all day and IMing until the wee hours at night. I don't understand why I am having such a hard time drawing boundaries and sticking to them. If anyone had asked me if I thought I'd get involved with a guy who has a girlfriend a few months ago, I would have laughed in their face. But here I am. One thing I learned last year is that you can't always control what happens in your life. Things will unfold in the way they're supposed to. I know I want this guy in my life, even though I can't really put my finger on how that happened or why I'm allowing it. Maybe I just need to have a little more faith in the universe in regard to the boy and the roommate. Things will work themselves out.

Something to sing about

There is a god.

Next month, the Coolidge Corner Theater is doing a Rocky Horror-style midnight showing of "Once More With Feeling," complete with a dumb show and fake vampire teeth. A whole theaterful of Buffy fans who know the words to every song!!!!!

I thought I was a dork for knowing the whole soundtrack by heart, but clearly I am not alone in the Buffyverse. And really, what can't we face when we're together?

LArchitecture

It's SoCal time again at Archidose. He takes a look at the Solar Umbrella house in Venice, and at Reyner Banham's book, Los Angeles--The Architecture of Four Ecologies.

A lot of modern LA architecture is stuff that's interesting to contemplate, but I wouldn't want to live in most of it. To me, cement just doesn't scream "home."

Joga Time

In jail, the drug addicts get yoga lessons from Michael Bolton wannabes.

Least complicated

So it happened again. I am full of shit. Moxie = hypocrite. Moxie = trollop.

This afternoon, I had the interesting experience of being told, "If we lived in a society without rules or responsibilities, I would want you to have SO MANY of my babies. If I were the alpha male, you would be my alpha female."

Except that we don't live in that society, so I was flattered, but seeing as the girlfriend exists and he's made it clear she's not going away, I wasn't that flattered. He doesn't love her. He knows I'm a better fit, no pun intended. And yet...

"You shouldn't have to work this hard," he said. I know. But when I asked him why he was fighting it so hard, he couldn't answer.

So I'm walking away. No one should have to try and convince someone to be with them. And I'm worth more than that. His loss. Then again, I seem to be really good at making proclamations about my intentions and self worth, and really bad at actually following up on them (at least with him).

Smile like you mean it

Great yoga class today--and I got in three classes this week! I'm binding all over the place and hitting all the variations I know about. Baptiste isn't great at telling students how to take poses to the next level, so I'm relying on my Wednesday lunch class for that. I just started grabbing my ankles in boat, and now I'm working on jumping into crow. It would be great to work on handstands, but I really think the Baptiste teachers get annoyed by handstands because they want you in shoulder stand, and they aren't trained in how to assist handstands.

One thing that always gets me is when people show up to class 10-15 minutes late, are visibly annoyed that there are no spaces left, and then expect you to interrupt your practice to move your mat so they can set up. Punctuality, people. The world does not revolve around you.

So sleepy today. I ODed on sushi with L last night, and then stayed up past my bedtime on IM with C. Friday night feels like a dream, as it it happened on another planet or in another dimension. I don't know if I want it to happen again, and it's so nice not to be tied up in all kinds of emotional knots over it--to have the presence and clarity of mind necessary to make a decision based on my gut rather than any sense of neediness.

Hot flashes

"I've been a bad, bad girl."--Fiona Apple

Few experiences in life compare to that first zing between two people, when an unspoken connection is made and you know that something unbelievable is going to happen between you. It's electric, it's chemical, it's intoxicating and unbalancing, and there's no walking away from it. Well, maybe there is walking away from it, but you'd have to leave the country, cut off all contact and wait for the pull of attraction to fade. I remember the first time an old boyfriend kissed me on our second date, and how my brain was so thrown by it that I could barely stand up straight. All ability to concentrate goes flying out the door. Forget being productive in meetings---it's all you can do to pretend like your mind isn't mired in fantasyland, imagination running wild and your body thrumming as it keeps pace. You space out at red lights, in the line at the grocery store, in the middle of phone conversations. It feels like you're giving off an aura, as if everyone you talk to or interact with has to see the flush in your cheeks, the spring in your step, the glassy look in your eyes. How can it not be obvious, at least on an energetic level?

And then there's the calm after the storm, when the zing has done its work and the hormones have relinquished their hold. You can taste the experience on your tongue, in your food, smell it on your clothes, your sheets, your skin. Lips swollen from kisses, hips tender, eyelids heavy with sleep not had. Limbs weighted, catlike and sated, your body holds the memory of the experience in your muscles. The itch is scratched and you wonder how you could ever have considered resisting it in the first place. It was as inevitable as rain, taxes, sleep, sun. The future doesn't exist, only the moment. No expectations, no attachments, no demands or dependency. You have to savor the time before complication sets in.

Generation A

A is for Ambien. It's good enough for me. And apparently almost everyone else. I don't remember the end of my IM conversation last night, though, which may not be a good thing.

Coming back to life

Forget spring—summer is in the air. The thermometer on my computer says it’s 85 degrees outside. There’s a pale green haze around the trees as the leaves hit the budding phase and prepare to emerge, and all the daffodils are in full bloom. I’ve broken out the flipflops (actually, that happened about three weeks ago. It only needs to get above 50 degrees for it to be flipflop season in my book) and the tank tops are next on the list. If it snows anytime between now and November, I will go batshit insane.

Someone invented a brilliant device for people who want to make their subconscious known. Thanks to Collision Detection for the link.

It’s so sad when the celebrity crushes of my youth end up aging badly. Not just badly, REALLY badly. When I was 13, I was an avid reader of such high quality publications as Teen Beat, Bop and 16, and Corey Haim was my fave. There must have been 5-6 head shots of him on my wall and I used to kiss them until the paper puckered. But not now.

Changing of the guard

Far be it for me to comment on the cycling world, but this is pretty major.

It's in the air

Ok, now I get why my brain is all fuzzy and I can't concentrate at work (and why lunch boy remains attractive despite all the red flags.).

With spring comes spring fever. On the Esplanade yesterday, it was a giant game of see and be seen. If we were peacocks, we'd be flaunting feathers right now. As it is, we're flaunting other parts.

Last night TNT ran one of my all-time favorite movies. Nothing like a little Matt Damon to end a gorgeous spring day. I think they ran this one earlier, and I have to say that Brendan Fraser is not so bad himself. Really, what it comes down to is that competent, manly men who know how to make their adventurous women feel safe are the way to go. In this way, Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser are only following in the footsteps of the incomparable Harrison Ford. The Princess Leia bikini scene in Empire Strikes Back may have been a seminal adolescent moment for a whole generation of men, but Han Solo was the same for my generation of women.

Not a target-rich environment

There's nothing like going to a hip, happening bar on a Saturday night and realizing that there is not a single person in the entire room that you're interested in talking to.

But thank god for Texas.

I'll repeat that because I don't expect to ever say that again in my lifetime.

Thank god for Texas.

Last night at Jury's, M and I sat next to a tableful of Southwestern police officers in town for a convention. One of them, a gregarious, friendly type from Texas, adopted us for the evening and bought us drinks. After showing us pictures of his wife and three daughters (and telling us that his wife is a hot piece of ass; he occasionally tells his daughters to go out and get laid because it's good for them), he sat with us and scoped out the crowd.

"What is wrong with these boys that they won't come up and talk to a couple of beautiful women such as yourselves?" he wanted to know. "Men these days need to remember their job in life, which is to take care of the women in their life. Or at least the women in the room."

M sort of liked a bald guy sitting in the corner until she realized that what she'd thought was a shadow on his neck was actually the lower half of a beard that the guy had carefully cultivated. Except that it made him look as if he'd grown a bush on his neck. Disgusting and hysterical at the same time.

Given the preponderance of hair gel, attitude, cologne and bad clothing in the room, the only guy I was even vaguely interested in was one of the waiters, who was very cute and very well mannered. The Texan guy thought this was great. "Want me to get him over here, hon?" he kept asking. A gallant offer, but brute force has never been my flirting method of choice.

Before the bar, I went out for handbags and sushi with 10 or so friends to celebrate my 30th birthday. The handbags were at a little boutique on Mass Ave that lets you design your own bag and then they sew it for you. The sushi was at a great place up the street that had private rooms where the table is sunken and you sit on the floor. Both the bags and the sushi were a great time. I love my friends. As we left the sushi place, I found myself feeling grateful that things with Glenn didn't work out because if I'd stayed in LA with him, I wouldn't be able to have these people in my life as much. And I wouldn't be friends with the ones I met after I moved back. The universe works in interesting ways.

A Tired Girl

Finally, someone's written about what it's like for those of us who are tired all the time. And I don't mean our generation as a whole.

A day of predictions

As my 30th birthday approaches, I thought it only fitting that I take a look at this whole Popstrology phenomenon and see what my birth song has to say about my life curve. Being an Aries born on the cusp of Taurus, I am not surprised to find that the number one songs on and after my birthday are….interesting.

April 6-19: Elton John, “Philadelphia Freedom”
April 20-26: B.J. Thomas, “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song

For the record, I have never been much of an Elton John fan. As for my birth year, here’s what the Popstrology gods have to say:

1975—The Year of Elton John
It was a year of wild diversity -- a year in which nonconformity was the official popstrological credo, as evidenced by the significant activity in the constellation Sui Generis. Elton John was not the only one-of-a-kind star from that constellation of incomparables to work his magic in the pop universe of 1975, for under his benevolent and nonjudgmental rule two more icons of individuality emerged: the unstoppable John Denver and the inexplicable Barry Manilow. When you consider that they were born at a time when millions of Americans who had never been within fifty miles of a working farm were walking around humming about haystacks and flapjacks under the influence of John Denver's Thank God I'm A Country Boy, it should be no mystery why the children of the Elton John generation are such enemies of traditional boundaries and barriers and such non-sticklers for plausibility in matters of identity construction.

On the spiritual side of things, Osho had a mouthful for me and my evil, coworker-entangling ways:

Letting Go:
In this image of lotus leaves in the early morning, we can see in the rippling of the water that one drop has just fallen. It is a precious moment, and one that is full of poignancy. In surrendering to gravity and slipping off the leaf, the drop loses its previous identity and joins the vastness of the water below. We can imagine that it must have trembled before it fell, just on the edge between the known and the unknowable. To choose this card is a recognition that something is finished, something is completing. Whatever it is--a job, a relationship, a home you have loved, anything that might have helped you to define who you are--it is time to let go of it, allowing any sadness but not trying to hold on. Something greater is awaiting you, new dimensions are there to be discovered. You are past the point of no return now, and gravity is doing its work. Go with it--it represents liberation.

Don't go for second best

Today's conversation with lunch boy:

"I don't date men with girlfriends."
"So does that mean lunch at the Japanese place up the road is out of the question?"
"Yes."
"Do you mean yes, it's out of the question? Or yes, it's a bad idea?"
"Both. I'm all about the respect."
"That's fair. But what if it's not a date? What if we're just two work friends having lunch?"
"We are work friends, but not work friends who have flirty lunches even though they have girlfriends. As for a non-date, who are you trying to kid?"
"I guess no one. It's too bad. It would have been nice to have a work friend."
"We are work friends. Don't change the subject."
"So no lunch?"

I had lunch with him, but I bought my own sandwich at the cafe downstairs and we sat outside, which is something work friends do. One has to set boundaries. I am not the trollop.

Life, the universe and everything

Last night I went to the 7:30 class at Baptiste and had the world’s most annoying instructor. As a rule, I don’t like to hear about the Baptiste teachers' personal take on life, the universe and everything, mostly because while many of them have experienced a real opening from yoga, Baron Baptiste has trained them all to say the same things and so it comes across as manufactured pap. This is especially true with the teacher I has last night. Not only did she spout the same Baptiste lines, she also said, “Mmmm, hmmm” after each sentence, as if the class was a Baptist congregation in need of lifting up. She put us through Sun A and Sun B so fast that we didn’t have a chance to actually hit each pose before she had us moving into the next one. I'd like to know how we're expected to link movement and breath if we can't actually go through the correct series of movements? I'm not concentrating on my breathing if I'm rushing from updog to downdog to warrior one, without ever really hitting downdog.

Another thing that irked me: this teacher says the names of poses in a really annoying way. She says Warrior One allinonewordandsofastthatitsoundslike Wrrroooooooooooone. Then Downwardfaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. She'd get going on some cheesy Baptise theme and lose count while the whole class was holding a pose, so we'd end up being in a bind for like 5 minutes. I wanted to kick her.

Example: while we were in half pigeon, she shared this deep insight from Baron: “If you can put your forehead down to your hands or to the floor,” she said, “it’s like your forehead becomes a movie screen. And the movie screen is blank.”

Yes.

So lunch boy emailed today and asked me to go for an afternoon walk. It’s a gorgeous day outside and I had remarkably little work to do, so I said yes. We watched the ducks in the duck pond and talked about lots of things—the Boston real estate market, the nature of parents, the merits of online dating. Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. “If I saw a 30-year old woman at a bar, I’d wonder about it,” he said.

“You’d wonder about what?” I asked.
“Well, why she was 30 and single and at a bar.”
“Because she’s young and single and likes beer?”
“Okay, but why is she still single? What’s wrong there?”
“Um, why does something have to be wrong? Maybe she just hasn’t met the right guy. And why is 30 the magic number?”

Reason #4527988453 why younger men can be problematic.

I told him that I was 30 and there was nothing wrong with me if I wanted to go to a bar. Then I told him that I was supposed to get married but that I called it off. And he said, “Well, okay. That explains it.” Explains what exactly? What needs explaining? And to whom?

He then revealed that he has an on again/off again girlfriend with whom he is currently on again.

“So if you have a girlfriend, why are you out walking with me?” I asked.
“Because you’re fun,” he said. “Why are you out walking with me?”
“Because you asked. And because I’m single, so it’s not going to weird anyone out.”

I'm probably being overly picky as a defense mechanism, but that seems icky to me.

Workety work work

Today I am thankful for my job because working here means that I am not working at the job I had two jobs ago, or at the first job I had out of college. I am grateful for this fact because last night I had a dream about someone I worked with at both of those former places of employment, and the humiliation I'd suffer if I had to face him today would be off the charts. Hasn't everyone had dreams about coworkers? It's not a voluntary thing so it's not like it can be controlled, but even though the person doesn't know you had the dream, it still feels like they must. Because there they were, in your dream, doing things that would definitely get them fired in real life. So I am relieved that I don't have to face this guy because my face would be very, very red.

In other work weirdness-related news, I had a lunch pseudo-date with one of the consultants at my company today and I am now understanding the wisdom against dating coworkers. I say it was a pseudo-date because he brought a girl to the Christmas party and for all I know he is still attached, but he did ask me out for Thai. And the conversation definitely had that "I'm running down a mental checklist of potential partner attributes" feel to it. And it was fun. He is cute and nice and funny. He likes Star Wars (this is a plus for someone who dressed up as Princess Leia for eight Halloweens, including my senior year in college), he does yoga and he's a gentleman.

But now I am wary of walking by his desk. Thank god it was just lunch. I can't imagine how people carry on inter-office affairs without one of them having to leave the company.

Decisions made

Where I will be for a week in August. For a weekend in June. For Memorial Day.

Maybe I'll do Maui and the Azores next year.

Missing home

Via the wonders of Google Maps.

Double digits

"If you have no wounds how can you know if you're alive? If you have no scar, how do you know who you are?"--Edward Albee, The Play About the Baby

10 months this past Wednesday.

I’ve been feeling great—really positive and clearheaded and focused on the future. For me, it’s a huge accomplishment that I’ve allowed myself to feel content in my life. I’m not fooling myself by thinking that I’d be happier if only I had a boyfriend or I lived in San Francisco or I had more money. Things are good the way they are.

Last night I went for a run by the river. The sky was overcast as the sun crawled below the horizon. Even the water was quiet, with only a few singles and eights going by. It was a good run but when I got home, I saw Scully snoozing on my bed and I realized that I missed Glenn terribly.

The missing him comes randomly now, out of the blue and for no particular reason. Suddenly I’ll just feel the emptiness of the house when I come home, or I'll realize that Scully is now being raised by a single cat parent and I'll want our little family back.

The grief strikes fast and the tears come, hot and quick, and then it’s gone. Standing in my room, I felt the tears build and I just let them fall. It’s so easy to judge myself for still feeling the grief, even after 10 months, because at some level it feels like a waste of energy, time and emotional elasticity. He doesn’t deserve my tears, and how much of a loser am I for grieving the loss of someone who probably never felt the depth of love that I felt for him? I want to be the strong and resilient, like the lead characters in those terrible chick-lit books, the ones who always manage to bounce back and find the right guy all while holding a martini and wearing kickass shoes. But I’m not. I’m just me and I’m not a Wonder Woman with a heart of steel (although a set of those wrist cuffs would be nice).

These flashes of sadness are specific and they cut to the bone. I don’t miss having a live-in boyfriend, I miss Glenn. I’ll be sitting on the couch, reading the New Yorker and suddenly I’ll see one of his silly facial expressions in my head. Or then I’ll miss the way he used to run out of the bedroom and do a quick little dance just to make me laugh. Or how we used to spend lazy Sundays lying around the house or reading up at Tigertail. I miss the sound of his voice, the smell of his clothes, the way he’d get cycling grease on his hands when he worked on his bikes. I miss the way we had found the perfect couch cuddling position, and how I used to prop my left leg on his hip when we were falling asleep. He’d put his hand on the inside of my thigh and we were two peas in a pod.

These random moments, like the dreams, feel like the last stage of processing the relationship and its end. Hitting the double digits is an accomplishment—just surviving last summer was a feat in itself—but it’s a landmark that comes with baggage. I’m amazed at how far I’ve come, but I’m still shocked at how completely my world has changed in less than a year. In some ways I still feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. As the year mark approaches, I feel a degree of pressure to get over it completely. As if I want to be holding on any longer than I have to. Is there a statute of limitations on this kind of thing?

I am fine on my own. My world is rich and full. I know I have to have faith that at some point I’ll find another great partner, but it’s hard to see. I just can’t see—why isn’t my brain a cerebral crystal ball? Glenn was far from perfect, especially at the end, but when you’ve had that pure deep connection with someone, even if it didn’t work out, it’s impossible to settle for something less. I wonder if I’ll find that again, or if I’ll be able to DO that again.

Not in Kansas anymore

What’s it like to be transplanted from your home town into a big, new city? An article in today’s New York Observer looks at how one Southern woman has adapted to the Big Apple, an experience that can be applied to pretty much anyone who’s moved away from home.

One particular paragraph in Kathryn Williams’ article struck home because this is how I felt coming back to Boston, and why I’m still so torn about leaving it again:

"But for me, the most palpable question of the night—one that hovered at the edge of conversation—was how and when can we go back? With every visit, Richmond gets smaller. Like a dress I bought in high school, even if I could manage to squeeze into it, I wouldn’t really want to. But just because I’ve outgrown it doesn’t mean I want to throw it out. "

If you've met Homer Simpson, you've really landed

John King, the San Francisco Chronicle's design critic, gave a fabulous lecture on contemporary California architecture at the Boston Public Library in February. Today he writes about how the culture of celebrity is embracing pop-star architects.

What's love got to do with it

Straight from the minds of Lindsayism and TMFTML comes the Cruddy Award, given out to the person with the worst ex ever.

If only I had known...

I won't get into the similarity between Cruddy and Glenn's last name. It would be too funny. But Glenn's behavior, bad though it was, doesn't even come close to what Billy Crudup did to Mary Louise Parker.

Also, Ms. Klein takes a look at why pain and pleasure are not always what we expect (or want) them to be.

Another one on the chin

From an East Coaster who I doubt ever looked back once when he left LA.

As Higgypiggy would say--in this case very accurately--LMFAO.

Why pantyhose and Moxie just don’t mix

Today it is approaching 60 degrees, and so I judged it to be warm enough to brave baring my legs to the elements by wearing a skirt. Skirts are my uniform in summer, but I only own one winter skirt and it requires the wearing of heavy-duty tights, so it only came out of the closet 2-3 times this past winter. This being a work environment and all, pantyhose seemed to be an appropriate choice of garment, especially since it’s not THAT warm outside yet. Usually, however, I am of the opinion that legs should breathe free.

God, I can just hear my mother screaming at me right now. Her two pet peeves with me: makeup and bare legs. In addition to eschewing all makeup, I used to waltz around during the winters in high school wearing black ballet flats and bare legs when it was in the single digits outside. Did I catch pneumonia and die? Clearly not.

Let it be said that I despise pantyhose almost as much as makeup, which makes sense seeing as pantyhose are pretty much just makeup for your legs. But being the responsible young woman I am, I went to Marshalls and bought some nice pantyhose for cheap. I struggled into them this morning and promptly walked out the door without thinking about the concept of a slip. In the fifty feet between the parking lot and the elevator in my building, I must have tugged my skirt down from around my hips about 15 times, all the while thinking “I FRIGGING HATE PANTYHOSE!” So I did not cry when I accidentally (seriously, it was an accident) poked my thumb through the damned things when I was pulling them back up in the bathroom. Into the trash they went. This series of events was made more interesting by the fact that I went commando today in the interest of removing all pantylines (all three of my thongs are in the laundry) Now I am bare-legged--bare everything, please god don't let me fall down the stairs--and much happier, and since I end up sitting in front of a computer for most of the day anyway, no one will be the wiser.

Short and sweet

From an IM conversation earlier this morning:

Friend: I'd really like to find a more current a capella group of some sort, eventually, but this is interesting, difficult enough and fun. But I have to remember how to sing -- haven't really done it formally for a while.

Me: That is exactly how I'm going to feel the next time I meet a potential boyfriend.

Time is not on my side

Last night I dreamed that I was in LA with Glenn. We were having a conversation and at the end he told me that he didn't need me anymore. Then he got up and walked away. And it still stung.

The time change is playing havoc with my biorhythms. So much for my lovely happy pills--my head is all swimmy and either I can't sleep at all or I sleep for 13 hours (which I did last night). Tonight I went for a long run just to get outside and get some fresh air because it's a whopping 60 degrees outside. Finally, the temperature reaches a hospitable level! Now I am feeling vaguely more normal but still a little out of it.

Suddenly I am the queen of indecision. I cannot make up my mind between the yoga retreat in Maui, an Ashtanga intensive in Costa Rica or another Ashtanga intensive in the Azores. None of these are bad choices, but the feeling in my gut that normally guides me in one direction or another has been resoundingly silent lately. It goes beyond a lack of motivation or even an overall sense of ambivalence, and it's quickly approaching apathy. I just don't care about pretty much anything right now. Existential crisis? Yet I find happiness in something stupid, like walking through Harvard Square and not wanting to go right back home and crawl under the covers. I lack a sense of direction but I suddenly feel at home in the world. Someone call Joyce Carol Oates.

Linktastic

I’ve been too lazy to post cool linky stuff lately (and also my wireless connection at home won’t let me link to anything), so here’s a whole bunch of things that grabbed my eye this week:

Design Within Reach cracks me up because unless you’re in a high-income profession, nothing in that store is reachable for anyone my age (and we are their target demographic). There’s one in Santa Monica and I only ever looked in the window because it felt like one of those stores where the salesperson would take one look at my shorts and flipflops and KNOW that I couldn’t afford anything on the floor. So this made me smile. Design for those of us without disposable income.

The lifelong Buffy addict in me thinks that Geese Aplenty’s and the Yeti’s theories on pope replacement make total sense.

Apparently I’m years late on the whole Lebowski Fest phenomenon, but what isn’t there to say about a celebration of the Dude? My inner Maude wants to attend in nothing but a short red wig and a faux mink coat. But only if I can walk around saying, “He’s a good man—and thoura” over and over again.

Where I went to school, Nalgene bottles were beyond de rigeur. They were almost required of incoming freshmen. So I hope that the school is issuing a public service announcement of the sad and disturbing discovery that Nalgene bottles can cause brain damage.

Lots of cool architecture stuff going on. The Build Boston event is going on this week, and Sarah Susanka, author of “The Not So Big House” is giving a keynote on the future of the American home. She’s a pioneer of the “small is the new big” concept, of which I am a big fan. Also, Architectural Digest is launching its three-city Architecture Days tour in LA later this month. I so wish I could be there.

Last but definitely not least, HBO's biggest tough guys are battling it out over whose cat is cuter. I’m still not sure if this site is for real, but if it is, it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Forward movement

Progress!! In class today, I got onto my elbows in virasana. Until now, I've only been able to sit on a block with my hands on my heels. And my knees didn't shriek in protest. I also took the variation in arti chandrasana.

And today meant I got in three classes this week. Yay!

It's a mystery

M and I went to First Friday last night and had a blast. It was very crowded again, and there was a good mix of people. M is really friendly and outgoing, but also tall and she commented on the lack of young, tall men in Boston. This is something I never notice because I am short and therefore everyone is taller than me. But once she made the observation, I looked around and saw that she was pretty much right. There were a lot of younger people there but most of them were sub-6'. Suddenly I am glad to be short. In college, T and I had a sign in our room that proclaimed, "Short is Beautiful." Apparently, short is now also advantageous.

We caught sight of three young, attractive guys a little later in the evening, and M dug in her heels so we could stop and talk nearby in the hopes that they'd come talk to us. I am of the mind that men have to make the first move. They also have to ask for the phone number and make the call. In the past, I prided myself on doing those things and paying no attention to social norms. I wanted to show that I wasn't conventional, I guess. Maybe that's how I ended up with a string of boyfriends who let me do all the work in the relationship. Patterns get established early. So now I am mindful of that. If the guy isn't confident or interested enough to ask for the number, then I won't waste my time. There are lots of perfectly nice, shy men out there, I know, and I don't mean to exclude them, but you know what? I'm shy sometimes and I'm tired of feeling like I have to make it easy for the other person all the time. Anything worth having is worth working for.

Eventually, the three guys came over to talk. All three were cute, confident, well dressed and articulate. I was pretty convinced that all three were into M, because M is Dutch and blonde and beautiful, so I talked and laughed and kept my distance, waiting to see what happened. All three of them stuck around, even after M made a dash to the ladies room, and when the lights came down and the docents kicked everyone out for the night, the guys asked us if we wanted to meet up for drinks in the South End. We were heading in that direction anyway, and we said yes. We dished in the car on the way over. M said she was really into Monty, a stocky, Vin Diesel lookalike who's a cardiac consultant. I said I was into Ryan, an art-loving, articulate blond Irishman. The third guy was someone M could go either way on, but I wasn't into at all. So we met up with them at the Butcher Shop in the South End, and Monty had ditched and gone home, so it was Ryan and the third guy. They were hungry and it was late, so we went to the Franklin Cafe on Shawmut, where they serve food until midnight or so. We got drinks and talked and laughed. All of us were tired and I wouldn't have been surprised if the guys bowed out after a drink, but they were really into getting dinner, so we sat down and ordered food. Ryan sat next to me and the other guy sat with M. I felt like Ryan and I totally hit it off. We talked easily, which is a commodity in the dating world, and a good sign for me. We both hate skiing but love snowshoeing, we both love to travel, we both love art and museums. He quoted Thoreau about finding beauty in the world. And he was not gay. Nice shoulders, nice Brooks Brothers suit, very chivalrous. Totally up my alley.

After dinner, we walked back to Ryan's car and he offered us a ride to M's place because it had gotten chilly outside. We took him up on it--I don't get to ride in a cute Mercedes that often, and I was freezing. When we got there, we thanked them for a lovely evening. They didn't ask for numbers. They let us out and then peeled out and took off down Tremont, like the devil himself was chasing them.

I don't get it. If they weren't that into us, why did they ask us out for drinks and make the evening go longer instead of just cutting out? Totally mixed signals. Men are a mystery.

Unexpected adventure

I wish I could say that what happened today was an April Fool's joke but it wasn't--it was just me getting completely turned around and feeling foolish.

I went for a run during lunch and when I got to the place where I usually turn right, I took a left on a whim. I knew there was a loop going back toward work in the other direction, so I decided to try and find it. Except the roads in Lincoln make no sense. After 50 minutes, I had no idea where I was. So I stopped at an elementary school and asked one of the teachers how to get back to where I worked. A couple of other people came over to help, and when I told them where I needed to go, they laughed. "You're like miles away!" one of them told me. So the first guy gave me a ride back in his car. Not that I felt great about getting in a strange man's car, but I figured that if all the other daycare people knew where we were going (and they trusted him with small children), I was probably okay. He was nice--we chatted all the way, and when he dropped me off, I thanked him profusely. "Don't worry about it," he said. "That's what we're all here for--to be angels for one another."

So nice. And I wasn't that late getting back to work. I did feel pretty dumb, though. Next time I'll stick to my regular route.

Sleepless and searching

I haven't been sleeping well. Things just feel out of joint, out of whack. The things that have been staples of my life for a long time have faded into the background over the past few months and suddenly I'm realizing how much I need those things--reading, journal writing and regular yoga practice.

I've kept a journal ever since I was 6, but I haven't been doing much journal writing for the past four months because I've been really into writing here. But when I don't write in my journal for more than a few days, I go into information overload and I can't sleep. My brain just will not shut up. Blogging is great, but journal writing is more stream of thought and it's not edited for public consumption. I have a box full of my old journals, a box full of my personal history, including the cracked hard drive from my college computer that contains four years worth of journaling that I somehow never backed up. My journal goes with me everywhere--I only buy bags big enough to carry a journal because you never know when you'll need to sit down and write about somethng, or when you'll be stuck someplace with time to kill. But this year my journal is almost blank and I don't feel like the same person because of it. So even though I'm writing here regularly, I think I need to pick up the journal again, if only to write down the random, stupid thoughts that need to get out in words but that no one else needs to hear.

I have, however, been writing about my Glenn dreams in my journal because I'm sick of writing about them, period. They still happen regularly, but I don't wake up crying anymore. Last night I dreamed that my family and friends were helping me go through a basement's worth of stuff that belonged to me and him. They wouldn't let me get involved and by the end of the dream, the basement was neat and everything that I kept was stacked on shelves. My brother told me he'd talked to Glenn's grandparents and they had told him that Glenn was getting lots of interest from women in LA. I turned to him and said, "You know what? I really don't care. I wish I could write them all a letter warning them away from him,but that's for them to learn."

Then there's the reading. I don't know what's changed about my day, but I hardly have the time and energy to read the way I used to, which was ravenously and almost constantly. Now it's a struggle to keep up with my New Yorkers and Vanity Fair, the only two magazines I subscribe to. I've had the same pile of books next to my bed for four months. Every so often I'll get a block of time and bang through a book, but I guess I feel like there's always something more pressing that needs to get done. I don't give myself permission to sit down and read, which is sad because reading has always been my anchor. When I was little, I used to take a milk crate's worth of books home from the library every week. My boyfriends made fun of me because I always brought a book to the ballgame, and I read intently every night before bed. Harvard Book Store ought to sell me stock judging from the amount of money I've dropped there, and my parent's basement is literally stacked with boxes of my books that I don't have room for right now. I miss losing myself in a good story. I miss being able to talk about books with people. I miss exploring narrative structures and admiring other people's writing styles. I need to make time for reading again.

Then there's the yoga practice. Or what's left of it. The winter was really harsh and every week it was an effort to get a workout in, no matter what it was. I keep meaning to get to the studio 3 times a week, and every week it ends up being twice. In California, I was in the studio 3-4 times a week and I have never felt so healthy, whole and present in my body as I did then ( at least since my days as a gymnast when I was younger). Yoga kept me sane. I was lean and taut and centered in myself. And I felt like I was making progress in my practice. Each day I could stretch a little more, take my twists further, add a pose or take a new, deeper modification. My goal was to start taking some of the advanced classes at the two studios I went to. The studio that was two alleys behind me added Myesore classses in the morning right before I moved back to Boston, and so I never got a chance to start down that path. Here, my practice has been almost totally physical. The studio that is closest, most affordable and has the most convenient schedule is Baptiste. The teachers vary in their approaches, and some lead more spiritual classes than others. They do emphasize breathing, but they tell you when to breathe rather than letting you breathe at your own pace. Other than the intermediate class on Sundays, the classes are exactly the same each time and I've only had one teacher who added poses or encouraged students to take the series deeper to advance their practice. There is no opportunity to take my practice further there, and the only two studios in Boston that offer Myesore are far enough away that it's not really feasible to take up that kind of practice right now. It's very frustrating. I want to be serious about my practice, but the available opportunities are few. It's one reason why I am antsy to get back to the west coast.