Bring it on

Last night I bumped into an old crew acquaintance while I was walking down Mass Ave. It was appropriate, considering that this weekend is the Head of the Charles. This guy used to coach at BC. He made a special effort to mention that a mutual friend, a man I happened to have a one-night stand with a million years ago--had gotten married. It was so calculated, the way he dropped it into conversation and waited to see if I’d have a reaction. I didn’t. I haven't thought about that incident in years. All I could think to say was, “That’s really wonderful for him. I hope he’ll stop screwing his underage rowers now.” Then I grabbed a burger and walked away. For the first time in my life, I actually came up with a comeback BEFORE it was too late.

Free Buffy

Doesn't Fox have better things to do?

Where's the fishbulb?

For Bligh and Curt and Rob. And Megan & JD. And Dave. OK, this is getting scary. Anyway, a list of all the made up words from the Simpsons.

Five by five

I got my hair cut on Saturday. I never remember until it’s too late that I can't be chatty with my hairdresser. She works miracles with the highlighting foils, but if you get her talking while she’s wielding scissors, you end up with hair that’s a lot shorter than what you’d hoped for. She’s sort of like my college roommate, who can’t talk and drive at the same time or else she slows way down and weaves between lanes. Matilda’s been doing my hair for 4 years but every time I visit her I have to shut up and listen to all the other good conversations going on around us, or risk looking like a soccer mom at 30.

The upside was that I got to hear all about the party my flamboyantly gay eyebrow guy is throwing for some close friends at the Versace mansion in South Beach. He always makes my day. But I wonder what the hell he’s doing at a salon in Arlington, MA, a town that doesn’t allow liquor stores and prides itself on its bedroom community-esque atmosphere. Because something tells me that no one else in Arlington is dishing about Carmen Marc Valvo dresses or the black-and-gold mosaic tile near the pool at the Versace mansion.

Lunchboy and I went to see “March of the Penguins” later that afternoon. Yes, we’re months behind everyone else but by god we were not going to miss those penguins. Is it humanly possible to not coo over the incredible cuteness of the penguin babies? Or the silly belly flops the adult penguins do when they’re too tired to walk? I have a bad history of crying at nature movies and, predictably, I lost it during the scene when the mother penguin finds her baby frozen like a feathery popsicle on the ice after the last big storm. It wasn’t pretty. Somehow Morgan Freeman’s voice made it all better, though.

Oh, the irony

My mother is unreasonably excited about the fact that the dress shop in LA named my dress after me. It should come with a tagline: the dress for women who get out in the nick of time.

The Friday animal fix

Hooray for cats on a string:



Just hanging out:



OK, it doesn't get cuter than this:

It's not just us

It’s nice to know that Boston isn’t the only city suffering from this kind of thing. The new Franz Ferdinand CD just came out and already the first single is driving me batty. Why can’t they just leave it alone??

In addition to the staples of our “Call It” radio game, Lunchboy and I have added the following bands to our list of cutting-edge groups that Boston radio stations are spinning into the ground:

Nirvana
Smashing Pumpkins
Van Halen
Aerosmith

When exactly did WAAF become a 70s station?

Isn't that good?

The New Yorker is serializing Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (again) before Capote comes out later this month. Being a derelict reader who hadn’t read the book before, I was unaware that it isn't the kind of thing you can read in chunks, at least not without losing your mind. I read the first section online yesterday and got so sucked in that my evening plans got rearranged just so I could go to the bookstore and get my fix.

I hit three different bookstores before finding it at the Coop, all the while feeling lame because I was asking for a book that was about to come out as a movie. That's like going to a concert and wearing the T-shirt of the band you're about to see. In the immortal words of Dross, "Don't be that guy." Except I was.

There's also the sad fact that, as a former journalist, I should have read In Cold Blood years ago.

*thwack* *thwack* *thwack*
(that's the sound of my mental self-flagellation)

The other day, my officemate and I were talking about how rare it is to find a book so compelling that you can't stop reading at night. For some reason I feel like that happened a lot more when I was young, but these days not so much. So finding a book like that is satisfying on a level I can't even find a good analogy for. It's better than biting into food you know is going to be delicious. It's almost as good as hopping into bed with someone you know is going to rock. But really it's on a level all its own.

In the moment

One of my favorite yoga teachers in LA liked to end his classes by reciting the Buddha’s five daily remembrances. They've been on my mind lately.

When I first started taking his class, I thought the remembrances were kind of weird. Why spend mental energy reinforcing what seemed like overt negativity? But the more he recited the remembrances, the more they started to make sense. One of these days, I'll learn how to start a real mindfulness meditation practice--really, I swear.

The Buddha’s Five Daily Remembrances:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Reading envy

Due to the complete lack of space in my apartment, my book gluttony has gone underground and is now manifesting itself in my ginormous Amazon.com wish list. It's big and getting bigger, and sometimes I wonder how big the biggest Amazon.com wish list really is. But then the question must be asked: is there really such a thing as a wish list that’s too big? I’m acquisitive when it comes to books. Libraries are fabulous, especially when the bank account and the shelf space are constricted, but generally I like to own what I read. I love finding room on the shelf for a book I just finished. Also, I have a memory like a sieve, so having books on hand helps me remember what I’ve read versus what I’d like to read.

The weight of books, the texture of their covers and pages, the way they populate a room—it’s one of the most soothing things in the world. Someone once asked me to define what makes a home and three things immediately popped to mind: books, cats and love. Cheesy but true.

Lately I’ve been missing my books. I brought one box of them to my apartment when I moved in last year, the rationale being that I wanted to travel light and there is nothing light about multiple boxes of books. But I miss having bookshelves that actually hold more than pictures. It’s a sort of rootless feeling, like being adrift without a reference point. Yesterday Renate and I were emailing about Sylvia Plath and I instinctually started looking for my copy of Ariel before remembering that it’s in a box in my parent’s basement, along with every other book I own. Grrr. I hate walking around a bookstore and hesitating about buying a book because I don’t know if I already own it. I tried to explain the book envy to Lunchboy and he said, “What books are you talking about? You don’t have that many.” I was like, “Oh, you have no idea.”

My life, like the life of any other habitual reader, can be traced in books. The ones my parents read to me when I was little, the ones I grew up reading, the ones my mother had to take away from me because I read them to tatters. The high school angst books, the summer reading, the college English references, the required course books, the books I dreaded that turned out to be revelations. I took a contemporary American lit class at Yale where we read 16 books and it was like Christmas every week. Everyone has their milestone books, the ones that were thought-shapers, defining every step you took after you finished the last page.

After college, I went on a book spree. The remainders room in the Harvard Book Store should have just garnished my wages and formalized the arrangement. The result: a mountain of boxes that my mother can’t wait for me to get out of her house. Somewhere in my future is a renovated Victorian house stacked to the ceilings with built-in bookshelves. Until then, or at least until I get to a living space with storage, my Amazon list will have to stay virtual. My boxes will stay in Sudbury and I’ll just have to go visit them.

In the words of Cher, I felt impotent and I hated feeling impotent

Today is one of those days. I get paralyzed by the number of things that I want to do, and so I end up accomplishing nothing. What I did do was leave my ATM card in the ATM machine, so now I'm praying that the machine ate it and I can get it from the bank tomorrow. I didn't realize I'd lost the card until I was standing in line at CVS trying to get my prescription for my happy pills, and arguing with the pharmacist because my doctor forgot to call in prior authorization (fucking HMOs) leaving me without happy pills for 3 days. I signed up to do the Tufts 10K for Women, but it poured and my running buddy bagged on me, so I lost my motivation and stayed in. Now I'm hesitant to go food shopping because the supermarket will probably be out of what I need or I'll get hit by a car in the schizo Porter parking lot or something. So I think I'll lie low until yoga tonight. So much for being productive on my day off.

Cats cats cats!

In honor of Blogacatmas Day.


And then, just because she's my awesome girl...

Only in Springfield

So classy.

Another reason to believe

I never win things. Like, ever. If there’s a lottery or a contest of some sort, odds are excellent that my name will not be drawn. I can say this with confidence because that’s the way it’s gone down for the past 30 years---until today. We had an office lottery for Red Sox tickets and my name got picked. So if our boys make the World Series, I’ll be there on October 22nd. GO SOX!

Since my luck isn’t great, I have to wonder whether being picked means that the Sox won’t get that far, but no! I will not give into that kind of negative thinking. Must focus full attention on willing team to win….

October

Things that rock my world:

--the first night of sleeping under flannel sheets and my down comforter.
--buying new fall clothes that I can't wear yet because it's still in the 70s.
--contemplating two containers of harvest pumpkin soup: one for lunch and one for dinner.
--being part of Red Sox Nation, whether or not I watch all the games.

Bite me

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hates her.

Happy new year

The Jewish holidays are always sort of strange for me, like there’s something important going on that I need to remember but forgot about. I guess that’s what I get for being raised in a melting pot of religions—I’m never sure which traditions I have any allegiance to. Is there such a thing as a genetic predisposition for matzoh balls? Or kugel? That would explain a lot. Not that I grew up with any kind of model for good Jewish cooking, or for consistent tradition for that matter. But Jewish food is comfort food and I guess I like that I can dabble in the parts of the culture that actually strike a chord.

My mother converted to Judaism when she married my father. It wasn’t a popular match. My mother’s parents, staunch French Canadian Catholics, almost didn’t attend the ceremony, especially when they found out that my mother was leaving the faith. My father’s parents were equally unthrilled that their precious first son was marrying a shiksa. Her conversion went a little way toward assuaging their shock, but not much. My parents were not religious and my mother’s conversion lasted a few years at best. When they had me, my collective grandparents saw a great opportunity to get their progeny back on the good road, like if they got me board my parents would follow. Every time my mother’s parents babysat, they took me to Mass and made it clear that Catholicism ran in my blood. Likewise, my father’s mother would whisk me to temple and whisper, “You’re Jewish, darling” anytime the issue came up. It was very strange. Going to the Unitarian church helped with the identity issues, but made me wonder why my grandparents cared so much about what I was.

My mother never cooked Jewish food. In fact, I remember her making a lot of pork chops and shellfish. My grandmother cooked but she did it badly. There was a lot of salty soup and underdone gefilte fish. Then, in middle school, I met the ex-best friend. She came from a family of Superjews and they knew from food. To this day, H’s matzoh ball soup is still the best I’ve ever had. They had me over for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur (the part where they broke the fast), and every other holiday they could possibly celebrate. I babysat with H at her temple, attended services with her and my other Jewish friends, and generally enjoyed the side benefits of being half-Jewish without any of the religious obligations. But it never felt totally comfortable to me. Maybe it was the way H’s friend refused to date me because I wasn’t fully Jewish. Or the fact that I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do or how to eat. In the end, religion just wasn’t my thing.

So now, with the Jewish holidays here, I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, but I’m not quite sure what or how. Maybe tonight I’ll go to Zaftig’s and have some kugel.

Look at tihs

Oops.

Always take the weather with you

I could see my breath in the air when I left for work this morning. Everything was crisp and the dry leaves on the ground smelled so good. In honor of the cool weather, I broke out real shoes. Something tells me flip flop season is over, though by god I will keep wearing them until the snow arrives.

On a different topic, yerba mate tea tastes and smells like hay.

It was a weird morning. There were lots of men being obnoxious in different ways. The garbage truck kept blocking my car and I would have racked it up to garbage day and parking in the wrong direction, but the garbage guy who jumped off the truck sneered at me like I’d done something wrong. On the way to work, a guy in a minivan cut me off and then tried to pick me up by blowing kisses in the side mirror, waving out the window, wiggling his eyebrows and then honking when I finally passed him. Then I got glared at by some guy in the hallway when I bought breakfast in my building, as if my buying yogurt had somehow inconvenienced him in some way. Maybe I didn’t look uptight enough carrying the yogurt back to my desk. Who knows.

I tried the Manduka mat in class last night. It intimidated me—I just haven’t been practicing long enough to do the black mat yet. Somehow it feels like the domain of the hardcore Mysore ashtangis, and my three practices a week are not hardcore.

The vile commercialization of weddings continues apace

First there were Bridezillas. Now there are Groomzillas.

Who spends $30,000 on a bachelor party??? And why is Time glorifying them with editorial coverage??

Elope, people. Just elope.

Cranky

8am meetings are no fun. But 8am meetings are even less fun when the coordinator, who is absolutely necessary for the meeting to take place, forgets about the meeting entirely. Now today’s 8am meeting has been rescheduled for bright and early on Monday morning.

Grrr.

I am so not a morning person.

Done gone to mat heaven

My yoga mat has jumped the shark. Bit the dust. Stick a fork in it, ‘cause it’s done. That thing has had it. Every time I leave class, the mat sheds little bits of purple stickiness all over the place. The spot where my feet hit in down dog looks like it’s about to rip, and there’s a big chunk missing at the bottom. Despite lots of cleaning, the thing is now so sticky and gross that I get stuck every time I try to jump through. And then I fall over and look ridiculous. It’s not a good situation. So now the hunt for a new mat is ON.

Mats and journals—I am the pickiest shopper ever. I wish I were one of those people who can just use a basic 1/8th inch thick mat because that would make shopping so much easier. But no. I have wimpy wrists, so it's got to be ¼ thick. It's got to have a certain texture and not be too sticky or too slick. It can’t be an awful color, or have cheesy designs on it. It can’t have mommy issues or be into drugs or alcohol.

If only there were more places in Boston that sold yoga mats. There are nine million web sites but buying a mat over the Internet feels….weird. Like buying shoes—I’ve got to try them on first.

It's not what it sounds like

During spring break my senior year in college, I ducked into a piercing shop in Philadelphia and got my belly button pierced. Since then, my belly button has sported a variety of smallish silver rings, some cuter than others. But lately I’ve been obsessed with the belly barbell, that curved silver prong with a small ball on each end, one of which hangs down in the middle of the belly button. It’s tres Britney but oh so flirty and fun. I had to have one. Besides, I reasoned, my belly rings have been catching on my yoga clothes and creating unsightly bumps. A barbell is ever so much more aesthetically pleasing.

After combing through racks of tacky, rhinestone-studded crap at every jewelry place in the mall, I finally found it: a simple silver belly barbell. No bells or charms, no sparklies or tiny Red Sox insignia--just plain. I bought it home, cleaned it with alcohol, removed my belly ring and tried to slide the barbell into, well, my hole.

And tried. And tried. And tried. Until finally I grasped the truth of the situation: my hole was too small.

I felt like a belly button virgin. My hole was too small and no amount of poking or prodding with the barbell would make the new stud go through. The shaft of my belly button ring is about 5 times thinner than the shaft of the barbell and, unlike what’s possible in a real virginal situation, stretching the hole was not only impractical but pretty much impossible without getting the spot re-pierced.

In the words of Animal from the Muppet Show, “FRUSTRATED!”

With belly red and throbbing, I declared defeat and put the belly ring back in. The barbell’s in a cup in the kitchen, and every time I go in the room I glare at it, daring it to shrink so it'll fit.

That time of year

Somehow I missed that the fall equinox was last week. Where was my head?

Autumn is pretty. It smells nice, what with the leaves falling down and getting crunched underfoot, and people starting to get their woodstoves going. Fall also means *yummy food* I might have missed the equinox but I won’t miss what the turn of the seasons means in Moxie World: harvest pumpkin soup at Au Bon Pain.

Also, candy corn pumpkins. For some reason, regular candy corn is yucky to me, but the pumpkins are just so delicious. I allow myself two bags a year, and they must be eaten before Halloween.

But really, it’s all about the pumpkin soup. It’s an addiction. As in a daily indulgence. Just. Can't. Get. Enough.

The other day I walked down to Porter from my apartment and made a startling discovery. Rosie's Bakery is opening a satellite store on Mass Ave between Porter and Harvard. Resistance is futile. Cupcakes, come to me.

The hand of God smites down the sinners

Pithy

Seen on a T-shirt today worn by a girl having brunch at the S&S Deli:

"Attractive yet Functional"

Off the hook

Lately I've been getting random phone calls from someone in the 402 area code. They call and call but never leave a message and I've been loathe to answer the phone since I don't know who's calling. At first I thought 402 was Rhode Island but then I found out it's Omaha, Nebraska. I know people in Providence but not Omaha. Now that I think about it, I don't even think I've met someone from Nebraska before. Next time they call I'll pick it up and see who they're looking for.

Earth to Tara

Yes.

Change of venue

Last night Lunchboy and I took advantage of the fact that he's on a local project. Oh, the illicitness of it all. After work I hopped in the car and buzzed out to Western Mass, where he's ensconced at a Sheraton that's full of people attending an enormous fair nearby.

This week's moment of total and unnecessary humiliation: buying condoms at a truck stop convenience store. Oh, yeah.

I'm not a hooker, really I'm not.

Visting him was like being a guest in a world I couldn't really envision until now. It's one thing to hear about what it's like to be a consultant and it's another thing entirely to see it in person. On the outside it seems glamorous, but when I walked into his room I could see how lonely that life could be. He knows every hotel chain inside and out--which ones have decent room service, who has the good gyms, who has cookies in the lobby after 8pm, who will triple his hotel points.

We lay on the enormous king-sized bed and shopped online for all the things he could buy using his AmEx reward points, imagined all the places we could go on his frequent flyer miles.

"You just love me for the side benefits, don't you?"
"You know it :)"

When we first started dating, I looked at his travel time as enforced alone time that let me lead my own life during the week. Now, I still make the most of the time to myself while he's away, but it made me feel good to be introduced to the life he leads on the road. Like I'm a part of more than his weekends. And it feels good that things are happening gradually, in their own time.

Pret a porter

Today a friend asked me what she should wear to a sort-of interview at a hip internet news site, where the dress is casual but hip casual in that funky San Francisco bowling shoe kind of way.

"Umm. Cute pants with a twin set, funky jewelry and a denim jacket," I said, knowing that I was pulling the whole thing out of my preppy New England ass.

She smiled.

I have no idea how to dress. The editors at In Style would sneer at me if they could. Those women know how to dress for everything and I mean EVERYTHING. Every time I pick up that magazine, I want to tear out the pages that give ideas for outfits to wear to every conceivable event. A bris? No problem. A third wedding? A lawn party at your gay boss' house? There you go. It's an ability that I will never have.

My friend E is a flagrant clotheshorse, with an income to match her spending habits. Once, when I met her years ago, I complimented her on a dress she was wearing from some swanky store. "Thanks," she said. "But you couldn't afford it." She was right--I couldn't. But at least I had taste, right?

If I had my way, I'd wear tank tops and yoga pants to work every day. I appreciate style when I see other people who have it, but I'm way too conservative for my own good. One of the good things that living in LA did for me was it forced me to acknowledge the existence of colors other than black, navy blue, green and khaki. Pink?!?! What a concept. Now I own more pink than I know what to do with. But I still can't put together an outfit in Jasmine/Sola to save my life.

A few happy faces

One of the Noah's Wish volunteers took some pictures at the Slidell, LA animal shelter, showing what it's like there for both humans and their furry friends. It's nice to see some smiles after reading so many sad stories of animals in need of help.

Bush's War on Porn

The joke possibilities are ENDLESS.

The death of romance

"Partly, a model of shopping has overtaken our experience of romance. Love, historically, has been associated with a sensation of destiny. It's very difficult for us to attain a sensation of destiny where love is concerned anymore, because we think we can always look for something better, which is essentially a shopper's mentality. There's no destiny when it comes to buying pants or shirts or a dress. There'll be the nicest thing you can afford this season. But then a new season will [bring] more attractive styles and you'll actually be able to afford something better. I think that tremendous passion that we feel other generations had and that we missed was attached to a sense of destiny, and of permanent love that would survive changes in station and opportunity and fortune." --Benjamin Kunkel

Why you should avoid the 5 after a Raiders game

Is it a football game or a bunch of Skeletor fans at a He-Man convention?

Weiner dogs!

Just because.

And now, a few words from my womb

This article caught my eye today. At the family reunion on Sunday, there was a lot of talk about balancing family and career. The parents in attendance had very strong opinions on the subject, and the non-parents tended to get judgmental, as if they knew better. Frankly, I think it’s a deeply personal choice, just like whether to have kids in the first place. It’s kind of amusing, however, to watch my mother’s generation freak out when women my age and younger announce that they don’t even want to try and balance the family/career thing:

“For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.”

As the daughter of a career woman who continued to work full time after having me and my brother, I can say that I’ll approach things differently if and when I have a family (yes, I’m 30 but my clock is not ringing off the hook).

“For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time….Similarly, students who are committed to full-time careers, without breaks, also cited their mothers as influences.”

It's totally true. Kindercare, you forever scarred me and I will commit hari kari before carting my progeny off to your torture cave. I hated the fact that my mom was never there when I got home from school. She couldn’t chaperone field trips and she didn’t have the energy to help plan costumes, cupcakes, or big projects. Part of it was that we couldn’t afford for her not to work, but she also wanted to stick with her career. Once I was old enough, I appreciated her example, her dedication. I saw the value in her choice. But I’ll still do it differently. I’ve watched my friends slowly go insane staying home with their kids full time, and watched other friends resent their job because it kept them from being present for their child’s formative months. If at all financially possible, I plan on working part time when I’m a mother. I’ll never forget how uncomfortable my mom was on the one field trip she came on (she had to take a vacation day to do it), and what it was like to go home with my friends after school and have their moms there to open the door.

Captain excitement

My weekend:

--cooking a pot of Galician chickpea and sausage soup
--anxiety
--meeting cousins from Arizona who I didn't know existed until this weekend. I wish I'd known about them when I lived on the west coast
--suffering through three hours of bad football playing by the Patriots
--more anxiety
--eating crow
--20 strong sets of stairs
--Family Guy

And the topper: listening to a break on FNX saying, "We play new music so the other guy doesn't have to," and then hearing a Live song that's 7 years old.

Statements of truth

"Santa Monica is the chaturanga capital of the world."

Puella Anxia

There are times when I think that broken hearts are like the ghosts of Christmas past, but without the happy holiday connotations or piles of gifts. Broken hearts scare the shit out of you and teach you life lessons, but they haunt you without any hint of how long their odious presence will stick around. No one ever talks about the ghosts--they just ask if you're in therapy (hell yes). As always, the dirty work must be done alone, with no map of how to get out of the dungeon and back to the great outdoors.

I see myself get bogged down with the emotional detritus of last year and I hate it: the insecurity, the trust issues, the constant fear of being hurt and the anxiety that rears its head at the most inconvenient times.

I hate that when he says, "I need a night to myself," I hear "I'm sick of being with you." I hate that I tense up every time he gets a text message, or stays up IMing with a friend who happens to be female. It's an instinctual fear of being the last to know something that's blatantly obvious to everyone but me. I hate that I notice him noticing other women when we go out to dinner. I hate that it bothers me that he's still friends with most of his exes. I hate that I alternate between being empowered by and terrified of physical expressiveness.

It's oh so irrational and, often, hypocritical.

As always, there are no easy fixes. He can't do anything but be patient--I'm responsible for getting my shit together. Every day is another day in which I balance new happiness with countering the fear of getting hurt again. It's just that there are no guarantees, no absolutes. And just once, it would be nice to know that love is really a sure thing.

Better than Twister

I set a goal for myself of getting in three yoga practices this week and somehow I managed to pull it off. Today my shoulders are incredibly sore but it was so worth it. Last night I went to the primary series class at O2 for the second time. It’s refreshing to have some discipline to the poses, to pay attention to alignment and get some direction. Most of last night’s class was devoted to second series, which was a first for me. A lot of the poses were familiar but I’d never done them in sequence before and it about kicked my ass. In a moment that surprised both me and the instructor, I worked through pincha mayurasana into vrisikasana and then back out again without falling flat on my face or crashing into the wall (or herniating a disc). I’m excited about this class and hopefully I can get myself there once a week at minimum. After being burnt out on yoga for most of the summer, it feels really good to get back into the studio.

Stupidest. Thing. Ever

The perfect addition to your Hummer lifestyle.

A word from the peanut gallery

Scully says hello!

See the Citrus magic and candles on the table? That's my not-so-subtle arsenal.

Another one off the market

Heart in little pieces...

Play that funky music

Boston radio sucks. There’s no two ways around it. We’re a town ruled by Infinity Broadcasting and Clear Channel, and populated by loudmouthed DJs, a few of whom honestly try their best to mix things up a bit but are rarely allowed to get away with it.

After a summer spent channel surfing in the car, one thing has become painfully obvious. No matter what station I try—FNX, BCN, AAF, etc—there’s a pretty short list of artists that are being played and almost none of them are what I’d call cutting edge. It’s gotten to the point where Lunchboy and I have made a game of it. Whenever we turn on the radio or switch channels, we guess which of the following groups will have a song in rotation:

Pearl Jam
Beastie Boys
Stone Temple Pilots
U2
Live

Call the group before turning the dial and get a point every time you’re right. If it’s a song by Velvet Revolver or Temple of the Dog, you get half a point.

Just try it--the points add up fast.

Even good, classic music stops being good when it’s overplayed.

Double take

Headlines I thought we'd never see.

Good enough, smart enough and doggone it...

Are self-help books a crock or can they actually help people improve themselves? Either way, if you thought SciFi conventions were a little weird, it looks like self-help author's conferences are not quite the norm, either.

PF Chang's can bite me

On Friday night, a bunch of us went to see Lewis Black in a comedy show at the Majestic downtown. The show didn’t start until 8:30, so we hit the PF Chang’s in the Theater District for dinner. After a ridiculously long wait, we ordered drinks and a plate of shrimp wontons because I was so hungry that I was incapable of being social. Lunchboy and his friend S eyed me warily when the waitress brought the wontons, afraid that I’d snatch the plate away from her and eat the whole thing before the plate even hit the table.

Mmmm, tasty wontons.

As I bit into the second wonton, however, my teeth hit something that was definitely not wonton material. At first I thought I'd gotten a bit of shell in my mouth or something, because it is not the nature of wontons to contain things that are hard. But after sticking my fingers in my mouth and rooting around in an oh-so-ladylike way, out came a 1.5" piece of metal.

Now, everyone has occasionally gotten a hair in their food. I've seen bugs in food and I saw pictures of that fingertip someone "found" at Wendy's. But never metal.

We were all pretty shocked. I mean, food-related dinner dramatics weren't exactly on the menu. I sat there sort of stunned. Luckily, Lunchboy and his best friend were there and they managed to keep their brains in their heads long enough to point out that it was a good thing the piece of metal didn't puncture the top of my mouth. All I could think about was if I'd swallowed more of the metal and whether vomiting was considered an acceptable happy hour activity in the Theater District.

We called the manager over and he shared in our shock--it took about .5 seconds before his eyes started getting that panicked "Holy shit, we might get sued" look. He took the piece of metal (we were all too surprised to think of taking a camera phone picture of the thing before he whisked it away) and went to talk to the cook, assuring us as he went that he was "very sorry" and that he'd look at our check before we paid. He gave me his business card. No one, including the chef, could figure out what the piece of metal was.

So I was taken aback when our waitress appeared with the bill and announced, “The manager comped your drinks and the appetizer. Have a good night!” I honestly thought the restaurant would want to do the right thing. After I found the piece of metal I didn’t even want to eat dinner there anymore, but we’d already placed our orders and I’m not one of those people who tends toward restaurant histrionics. I certainly wasn’t expecting PF Chang’s to comp the entire meal, but covering my entrée would have been a classy gesture.

Getting in touch with my inner Eva

Magpie, queen of all quizzes, sent me the Desperate Housewives personality quiz. I don't even watch the show but I couldn't resist. And apparently I'm a Gabrielle:

"You could say that life's just about pretty dresses and expensive gifts for you, but you're looking for something more. You'll find it someday, as long as you can stay away from hot young gardeners."

No, really--this has to be the last of it

Yesterday, after a crappy day at work, I came home and almost tripped over a fat package sitting in the entryway of my building. It’s always fun to check and see if a brown box has my name on it, though that’s pretty rare. The first thing that jumped out at me, though, was the name on the return address label. The box was from Glenn’s parents. In my post-work burnt-out haze, I stood there wondering why they would send a package to someone in my building. Then, of course, I looked to see who it was addressed to—duh.

The box was big and heavy, and I knew immediately what it contained. Before Glenn and I moved to LA, we stored our winter jackets and other stuff like scarves, gloves and long underwear at his parent’s vacation house in Vermont. At the time, the decision seemed logical because we figured that his parents could bring it down with them when we came out for holiday visits. Cut to last fall, when I sent a few polite emails to Glenn’s mother, asking her if she could ship me my winter things so that I wouldn’t freeze my ass off when the seriously cold weather arrived. She hemmed and hawed in what I now recognize as the classic XXXXXX way—Glenn was a champion procrastinator, too—and then she stopped responding to my emails. Until the box arrived yesterday, I hadn’t heard from them in almost a year.

I lugged the thing up to my apartment, dumped it on my kitchen table and then sat down on the couch, unsure of what to do next. Should I open it? I didn’t even really want to touch it. But that was silly. It was just a box, even though it felt more like a big, brown emotional bomb. I busted out a kitchen knife and opened the thing up. Out fell a small, white envelope. Mary Jane had sent a note.

I called my mother.

“She sent my winter things, but there’s a note and I don’t want to open it.”

“So don’t open it. Stick it in a corner and ignore it until you feel ready to open it.”

“Am I 12? Why does this bother me so much?”

“Because she was terrible to you, and you had no closure on your relationship with her.”

I could hear my mother seething quietly on the other end of the phone. Her protective mother bear instincts were coming to the fore. She hated that Mary Jane could still make me feel badly.

In the end, I sacked up and opened the note. How one little white envelope can feel more dangerous than a loaded trap is beyond me, but that’s how it felt. On a simple Cape Cod notecard embossed with a blue scallop shell, she wrote:

Dear Moxie,

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to send you your winter things. As always, I find that my job interferes with every aspect of my personal life. I hope this finds you well. Glenn tells us that you might move to San Francisco. It’s a wonderful city and if you get out there, I wish you all the best. We see a lot of baby granddaughter B and I think of you every time we see her because she will only sleep with the quilt you made for her.

Warm, best regard to you and your family.

Mary Jane


I cried then, curled up on the couch with the note in my hands. For some reason the image of baby B sleeping with the quilt that I stitched by hand just killed me. Apparently B was the only member of the XXXXXX family that still held on to anything connected to my presence in their lives.

As I tried to explain to Lunchboy over IM last night, the sadness had almost nothing to do with Glenn. I think I let go of him a while ago, but losing my relationship with his mother was a cut that hadn’t healed yet, and getting the package and her note caught me off guard. I’d thought that the soft place inside of me that used to be raw was impervious to further interaction with that family, but I suppose it’s good that I’m not made of stone.

Flat-out acceptance

When you're used to being in crisis, or even in constant transition, stability is sort of jarring. Suddenly, the horizon is clear of major goings-on: No moves, no job changes, no complete re-evaluations of life in general. And for some weird, screwed up reason, it can feel kind of boring. Then again, it's autumn and, like everyone else, I have that ingrained "it's time to go to school" instinct that falls flat when there's no more school to attend. Autumn always feels like a time of change and I keep having to remind myself that no change is a positive thing right now.

Last night I had coffee with an old college friend who I bumped into on Mass Ave randomly a few weeks ago. He was my cotillion date back in the day, someone I smooched briefly while on a "break" from my college boyfriend. Nice guy. We sat at one of Au Bon Pain's sidewalk tables and dished about everything that'd happened since we graduated and hit 30.

"I'm constantly daydreaming about places I want to go, or cities I'd like to live in," he said. "But then I realize that it's kind of nice to have money in the bank."

"Yeah," I replied. "I love the thrill of moving but the truth is that I don't have it in me anymore, or at least right now. The idea of having to make a new life AGAIN, or search for ANOTHER job--it just exhausts me."

"We're getting old."

"Maybe, but is it a bad thing? Aren't we supposed to nest now and then have another go at the wanderlust thing after retirement?"

"I think I'll feel better about that prospect after I have the whole 20s gotta-try-it all thing out of my blood," he told me. "I guess it's a stage of life."

He's right--it is. There are days when I fight it and days when I remind myself to relax and accept it, everything we learn in yoga. Maybe that's the change. And there's more of the same down the road.

A big IF

If you can foster an animal that was orphaned or abandoned during Katrina, here’s how. These furry friends need help, too!

My uncle and aunt, who live near Slidell, LA, managed to get back to their house, though it took them 3 hours to cut their way onto the property because their farm is surrounded by downed trees. Their house and barn sustained minimal damage, though. They're lucky.

Donating money is great but quiet stories like this make me all warm and fuzzy.

Without words

I just don't even know how to address Katrina and her aftermath. Adjectives seem pointless, and many, many other writers have described the situation better than I ever could. Giving money and donating supplies is good but they feel ineffectual in relation to the desperate need for help that exists in New Orleans right now. Blah blah blah. I don't want to be writing about this--I want to be down there helping out.

My uncle and aunt live on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain and they fled to Memphis before the storm, so I know they're okay. But who knows whether they'll have anything to go back to?

Sherlock I'm not

After a short, relatively peaceful interlude, the roommate saga continues. She went away for a week (woooo!) but left a sinkful of dirty dishes behind (booo). She's been back now for 3 days and the dirty dishes are *still there*. In case anyone wonders why I don't do much cooking at my house anymore, they need only look as far as the sink. Or the counters, which she didn't clean after our landlords did a mandatory building-wide round of rodent prevention, a process that involved them putting something toxic in the vicinity of our cooking surfaces. Will I clean it? Yes, only because I don't fancy the idea of dying an early death due to intractable stubborness.

Tonight I came home after having dinner with my best friend and found a path of kitty paw prints leading from my room into my roommate's room. Sure enough, stinky bully Clyde had been in Scully's box once again. Never the cleanest of cats, Clyde didn't manage to keep his rear feet out of the way when he took a whiz, resulting in a trail of nasty litter and incriminating paw prints all over my room and the hallway. I love the felines in general but this cat is just foul.

I cleaned up the kitty mess but I didn't touch the paw prints in my roommate's room. Maybe if she cleaned out his box once in a while, her room wouldn't reek and her fat, slovenly cat wouldn't have an excuse to avail himself of Scully's facilities.

Grrrrrrrr.

It's a walk-off

Watching Zoolander is an extremely dangerous activity, not just because of all the poor brain cells that commit suicide after being exposed to the depths of Derek Zoolander’s mental ineptitude, but because the movie coaxes forth certain aspects of my personality that I prefer to keep hidden. I’ve confronted my inner child but not my inner Wham! fan. There's no point to fighting the inner Wham! fan. Turn on “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and suddenly I'm dancing on the couch and calling up the lyrics from whatever deep, dark part of my brain they were hiding in (along with everything I learned in high school algebra).

Blue steel, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. Add some jelly beans or vanilla ice cream with caramel and you’d have the deadliest combination known to man.

In case you always wanted John Irving to be your tight end

007's take on Fantasy Publishing versus Fantasy Football:

"Pick your list of books for the upcoming season and score points based on how many weeks they spend on various regional and national bestseller lists.

I can hear you now…

But everyone would pick Bill Maher’s NEW RULES and John Irving’s UNTIL I FIND YOU. Where’s the challenge?

Ah, but anyone who had ever been on the New York Times List—the actual list, not the extended—would be ineligible. And there would be extra points for first-time authors."

My wallet heaves a sigh of relief

Premium denim is on its way out. It's about time.

Just because

I don’t know where she finds these things but they are so freaking cute.

Maybe now Hilary Duff will shut up about the damned rain already

BoingBoing has amazing pictures of Katrina as it wreaks havoc down south.

Bow to your partner

The LA Times looks at how we choose the people we date.

Apparently most people make a decision about a potential partner within 30 seconds of meeting them. If you've read Blink, this actually makes sense.

Thoughts on grief while high on allergy drugs

For some reason, this year’s allergy season is kicking my ass. Yesterday Lunchboy and I hibernated in his house, sprawled on the couch with an ever-growing mountain of used tissues accumulating around us. All my faith in Claritin is GONE. While I was staring at the television, hoping for a reprieve from the sneezing and the itchy throat, I caught Top Gun on one of the movie channels. How does a movie classic like that get so much worse over time? Kelly McGillis wears way too much lipstick and Tom Cruise is just....ew. He used to be semi-attractive but after his recent Katie Holmes-based Scientology ranting, I can’t even watch his chipmunk-cheeked former self without wincing. Not even the volleyball scene. And that’s saying a lot.

Anyway, after watching Top Gun 60-70 times in middle school, I can now get through Goose’s death without tearing up. Oh, the melodrama. But in my allergy haze, it struck me that at no point is Maverick ever allowed to mourn Goose and that this is a serious oversight. Charlotte, Viper, Carole--they all kept telling Maverick not to stop flying just because Goose is dead, that he has to let go and move on. Hello?!?!?!? His best friend just died in a really traumatic way and no one will let Maverick cry, process, or deal with the loss at all. Which got me to thinking about how grief is such a taboo topic in general (and this is how hopped up I was, that Top Gun got me thinking about anything serious whatsoever).

I want to know why it’s not okay to be weak when it comes to grief. Because if there’s one experience that should make weakness okay, it’s dealing with loss. No one can be strong all the time and no one should have to be. Grief is an ugly, messy, undefinable experience. As anyone who’s ever lost someone (or something) knows, grief can take you down at the knees and dog you for years, twisting your insides around when you least expect it. Loss affects everyone differently and the only universal truth about grief is that you’re not supposed to show it in public. Grief is for when you close the door, when you pull your covers over your head, when you hide your face in your hands so no one can see the tears.

Maybe if Maverick had actually cried when he gave Goose’s personal effects to Meg Ryan, a generation or two of men wouldn’t feel like they had to be pillars of stone during emotional times.

And maybe I should get myself some Allegra so I don’t let bad 1980s movies launch me into tangents.

Why I will never be mistaken for someone from my parent's generation

Every time I hear the first few bars of "Son of a Preacher Man" on the radio, I immediately assume the song is Cypress Hill, "Hits from the Bong."

Crouch no more

Is it me or is this just brilliant? Not that I need to write my name in the snow or anything, but still.

Four seasons in one day

Fall is on its way. On my way home yesterday, I passed a maple tree whose upper leaves were starting to turn a faint shade of orange. After months of heat and humidity, the air is dry and the temp is hovering in the 70s. It's lovely--I wish it could be this way all the time. There's something about fall weather that touches the soul. All those sparklingly clear days, when the sun is so bright and golden that it really does look like the world is glowing.

That said, I'm in complete seasonal denial, mostly about the fact that fall leads to winter. For a long time I honestly thought I'd be back on the west coast before winter arrived, but Boston is looking more and more permanent. As much as I love the change of seasons--something I missed terribly in CA--the thought of biting cold and endless darkness makes me recoil. When we're little, we're encouraged to explore our future vocations. But I'm 30 and when I grow up I want to be a snow bird.

Found out

Apparently my word is CRAP. I come across as sweet and innocent, yet underneath it all I have a quite nasty streak. Gossiping and being critical of others comes a bit too naturally to me. And people will begin to see through the sickly sweet exterior soon.

Interesting. I kinda thought the nasty streak was public knowledge (not unlike my addiction to celebrity gossip), but okay. Thanks to The Insider for the link.

I'm so buying stock in 3M

Today I gave up on Victoria’s Secret entirely and just went with a sweater over a lined camisole. This is a pretty bold move, since my office is kept at roughly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In my opinion, ditching the bra for a camisole is one of the benefits of being small-breasted (although I like to think of my girls as perky and athletic rather than small per se). However, there are few benefits (fashion-wise, that is) to having slutty nipples. I have to admit that I really envy women whose nipples don’t stand at attention because of a slight breeze, a 2-degree change in temperature or because, you know, there’s air in the air. When it comes to getting dressed on the weekends, I give myself permission to damn the torpedoes and take a break from trying to hide the headlights, but work is different. Work requires creativity when wearing a camisole.

Work requires Scotch tape.

I bow to the Scotch tape. It's better than sticky pseudo-bra cups, or what my ex-best friend and I called Foozbas. It’s simple, painless and cost-effective. And it frequently saves the day. Like at Lunchboy’s friend’s wedding last week, when the temperature dropped below 75 and my summer dress just didn’t insulate the way it was supposed to. He looked mystified when I asked him to get some Scotch tape from the front desk of the hotel.

“What’s it for?” he asked. “What should I tell them if they ask?” But he went down to the desk and got it. Then he stood there with a startled but fascinated look on his face as I pulled down my dress and applied a few pieces.

Of course, because I was doing it in front of him, I bungled the whole thing and ended up looking like my chest was covered in little bits of cardboard. Failure. As. A. Woman. Not only can I not prevent myself from spilling all over every piece of clothing I own, I can’t even tape my own nipples effectively.

So he redid it for me. I’m not sure he’ll ever look at Scotch tape the same way. And now my secret's out.

The things we do for love

A look at closet withdrawal and other fashion-related strategies dreamed up by women who spend many nights away from home:

L: “I can't imagine simply picking out what I want to wear in the moment - it's an exciting dream for me!”

Moxie: “Like in the morning, standing in front of the closet with a towel wrapped around your head, deciding what to wear to work?? What a concept. ”

L: “Right.”

Moxie: “And not trying to put together an outfit but realizing that half of it is in the apartment where you are not.”

L: “Exactly! And not having to only choose “safe” outfits that you already know will work because you can’t experiment when you don’t have readily available backup. One thing I hate about bag-packing is that I can’t take risks.”

Moxie: “I’ve taken to wearing my PJs to Lunchboy’s house so I don’t have to pack another outfit. And then he looks in the laundry basket and wants to know how I go through so many clothes.”

L: “The boys don’t get that packing work clothes is awful because they get all wrinkled and smashed.”

Moxie: “And carrying around a bunch of hangers is a pain.”

L: “I think it's funny that most likely women are the most concerned about this stuff, yet we're the ones doing most of the shuttling back and forth.”

L aptly calls it Bag Lady Syndrome--the weird, limbo-like state that we, as women who stay at our boyfriends’ houses a LOT, navigate on a daily basis. It isn’t an issue of inequity, and we’re not really complaining about it because that would be snotty. When the boys have apartments all to themselves, it just makes more sense to be there rather than share real estate with a roommate. Not only does it mean that we live out of bags and spend a lot of time staring at our wardrobes trying to plan outfits days in advance, though, it also means that “home” becomes a relative term. Is home where you spend most of your time, or is it where you store your things and collect your mail? There’s no real answer, especially when you’re nowhere near ready to shift residences and move in together. Instead, there’s this vague feeling of displacement that persists no matter where I end up sleeping. My apartment is still cozy and comfortable, despite my roommate’s best efforts to make it otherwise, but it no longer feels like I belong there. L says she feels the same way. We’ve decided the boys have it easy. They may come stay at our places every so often, but they sometimes have to be reminded of what we do in order to spend time with them.

Sometimes I really get what Ms. Klein is saying.

Go jump in the lake

The Morning News has a database of swimming holes in the U.S. So handy for those random weekend swimming urges.

There must be some Toros in the atmosphere

Victoria's Secret has yet to manufacture a bra that can stand up to the rigors of office air conditioning. I don't care about high tech, I care about not flashing my headlights at everyone in the building. Summer is wonderful, but at least winter means you can dress for cold inside and outside. Right now going from home to office is like stepping from the African tundra into the Arctic ice circle, and whose body knows how to handle that in a professional capacity?

Narm RIP

I am haunted by the end of last night's series finale of Six Feet Under. The image of Claire driving off down the 10, on her way to a new life in NYC, the future that she can't see or anticipate unfolding as she goes. I like the sense of the unforeseen, the idea of a full, rich life's worth of happiness and experience just waiting for us to get there, even if we can't see it coming. The idea of possibility, of renewal and fulfillment hidden behind a curtain of difficulty, was beautifully played out. Even when things are seriously fucked up, they will come aright again.

It's disarming how things come full circle in ways you don't expect. I watched the very first episode of SFU with Glenn in our first apartment in Arlington a million years ago. It became our Sunday night ritual, and his interpretive dance to the opening theme was our in joke. I stopped watching during the fourth season, when the show got too negative and macabre for me, and I struggled through this season, supplementing the actual show with reading recaps online. But I'm glad I watched last night. When a show that's been a part of your life wraps for good, that ending can be unexpectedly powerful (which is why I cried like a baby through the last episode of Sex and the City, and why I did NOT cry during the long horror that was the end of Voyager). Curled up on Lunchboy's couch, I alternated between being horrified and touched by the show's final montage. Did we really need to know how all the major characters died? Yes and no. But despite the sadness of seeing Keith get shot and Rico keeling over on a cruise ship, I felt glad to know that they all moved on after Nate died. He really was the evil seed.

I'm not sure if Lunchboy understood why I was on the verge of tears, and I didn't want to get into it. Suffice it to say that the world is a happier place now that Alan Ball has moved on to other projects.

Another reason why my apartment building rocks

At 12:45pm last night, my first floor neighbor was watching a back episode of Buffy in his PJs with the window wide open.

Scottie doesn't know

There's nothing like a violently stormy Sunday for indulging one's taste in lowbrow humor. Eurotrip AND Wedding Crashers--woohoo. While I was on the aethetician's table today, waiting for my pre-vacation waxing hell to begin, I read a great profile of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson that quotes the NYT on the new comedy mafia cabal comprising Vaughn, Wilson, Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Will Ferrell. So all during Wedding Crashers, I was waiting for the other mafiosi to show up. At least Ferrell didn't disappoint.

It took three tries for me to figure out who Matt Damon was in Eurotrip. His cameo is right up there with Brad Pitt's role in True Romance as one of the all-time best under-the-radar performances, at least in my little biased book.

The thunderstorms today were so loud that we could hear the thunder over the movie and over the muzak playing in the supermarket. Why no one thought that I was hopped up on drugs in the supermarket is a miracle because I was jumping like a scared rabbit every time the booming shook the building. The strange weather colored the entire day, making Boston feel like a tropical outpost in an atmospheric war. And that doesn't happen too often. Every movement felt heavy and damp. Silent in their misery, the cats elongated themselves on the hardwood floor, perhaps under the misinformed but understandable notion that horizontality = coolness. It was a weird day.

Off to RI tomorrow.

En vacances

Next week Lunchboy and I are off to attend a wedding in Rhode Island and then spend a few days in Newport, before heading out to Tanglewood for the weekend. I’m really looking forward to some R&R by the ocean and in the mountains (the East Coast version of mountains). Roof decks and whirlpools won’t hurt, either.

One of the women in my Wednesday afternoon yoga class acted surprised when I told her I was taking a vacation with the boyfriend.

“I’m seeing someone but it’s only been like 4 months, so we’re not taking trips together or anything,” she told me.

OK, are we insane for taking a trip together after 4 months?

Carmen soothed my fears. “The trip is a test, but 4 months is a good time for a test like that. Plus, it’s summer. And it’s not like you’re leaving the country.”

True.

Okay, deep breath. I’m ready for fun.

Not always a girl's best friend

Ok., this really bothers me:

ALI LANDRY GETS ENGAGED
Sexy actress Ali Landry is hoping for better marriage luck the second time around, after getting engaged to director Alejandro Monteverde. Landry dumped her first husband, former "Saved by the Bell" star Mario Lopez, last year, after just two weeks of marriage. Landry has decided to give love another try after recently accepting Monteverde's marriage proposal in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after 10 months of dating. She says of her 1920s Edwardian-style round-cut diamond, "It's huge! I'm so happy!" The pair plan to walk down the aisle in the spring.

Ali Landry did not have a good time last summer. She married Mario and then found out he’d cheated on her with a stripper at his bachelor party.

I read way too much US Weekly and People. There it is.

So let me clarify that I am glad to hear she’s found new happiness and love. But it bothers me that her ring is the focal point of that happiness. If huge diamond rings are all it takes to make her happy, then she should have bought one for herself instead of waiting for a guy. I guess I’m just tired of how ring-focused our culture has become. Whenever people get engaged, especially celebrities, it’s all about the ring. Symbols are an important part of major life transitions like marriage, but it’s sad to see all the emphasis placed on the external stuff. Maybe if people paid more attention to the relationship instead of the ring and the wedding, there would be fewer divorces.

First and ten

The Patriots’ pre-season starts tomorrow night and, as I suspected, the way to Lunchboy's heart lies not through his zipper or his stomach but through his TiVo.

Do I care about football? Historically, no. But the beginning of football season matters because, for the first time in my life, I’m dating a football fan.

Part of being a good girlfriend or boyfriend is learning to like (or at least appreciate) the things that your significant other finds interesting. Sometimes this process is easier than others. Over the years, I’ve dated a Pink Floyd-loving music major, an acapella singer with a running fetish, a photographer obsessed with cycling, and a manic Red Sox fan. Not all of my exes’ interests grabbed me--I never thought The Wall was a seminal work of cinematography—but the point was that being open to their interests broadened my horizons and hopefully it went both ways. Football, however, might be a different story.

Now, let it be known that I’m a good Boston native—I love me some home team action. Loyalty to the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins and the Patriots runs in my blood. I've watched the past few Super Bowls to see our boys kick some butt.

Part of it is that football games take FOREVER to be played. Lots of really big men in tight pants crowd onto the field and throw the ball. They stop every two minutes to reconsider their strategy. Then they play for another 30 seconds and then they stop again. Every so often there’s some excitement when someone scores a touchdown or runs the whole length of the field.

Maybe my trepidation stems from the fact that I just don’t understand the finer points of the game. Will I learn them? Yes. Will I like it? I’ll certainly give it my best. After all, Lunchboy does yoga and runs stairs with me. He's into Entourage and, if I asked him to, he'd TiVo Anne of Green Gables for me while keeping the snarky comments to a minimum.

Not only do pro football games go on for hours, they are on TV ALL THE TIME--Sunday afternoons, Monday nights, and the occasional Thursday evening. Pre-season is Friday night lights, baby. If you're a fan, it's a given that you sew your ass into the couch at game time, but if it's a beautiful day outside I have a hard time stomaching the idea of watching TV rather than going for a hike or something.

OK, maybe I’m being a girl about this.

But give me a break. If you’re not a team sports kind of person, games like football are an acquired taste, sort of like learning to enjoy strong cheeses, hot yoga or graphic novels. Or the color orange. Growing up, I was athletic but always into sports that had a more independent edge—gymnastics, diving, running, crew, yoga. Soccer and softball and field hockey, which were the sports of choice in my happy little suburb, were just not my thing.

Some people have really strong feelings about fantasy football. I just think it’s sort of amusing. What I really hate is the trend toward pink sports paraphernalia. Because women can only get into sports if the hats and T-shirts are pink, right? *retch* You’ll catch me wearing a pink Patriots hat when my body is cold and dead. Then again, football is played during the winter, so I might be both anyway.

Walking down to Camelot

My idea of the perfect rainy afternoon alone.

Dr. Feelgood

It's official--cuddling and hugging are good for your health.

I still think you're using it incorrectly

To my dismay, iteratively is actually a word.

This is why I have a job.

Fever dreams

Shuttling back and forth between Lunchboy’s house and my own apartment, I sometimes lose a few things along the way. On Mondays, that thing is usually my brain. When he’s traveling, he’s out of the house at 5:15am and even though I fall back asleep, being awake briefly always plays with my head. Mondays are when I discover that I forgot to transfer my wallet from my overnight bag to my work bag, when I go looking for a piece of clothing and realize that it’s in a drawer a few miles away, when I spill coffee on my keyboard because I’m tired and in a rush.

Today is an honorary Monday in that way. The power went out at his place last night, but in dribs and drabs rather than all at once. A lamp went out in the bedroom, and then a few hours later all the lights in the kitchen and living room went dead. Lunchboy’s departure this morning was accompanied by phones ringing, lights flashing and cats crying. Then, about 20 minutes after he walked out the door, the power to the outlet running the AC went dead. Were it not a million degrees outside, this would have been less disturbing but since it was both hot and ridiculously, hair-curlingly humid outside, it was a problem. Somehow I fell back asleep and had weird, fever-like dreams in which I felt like I was being weighed down by layers of heat. Somehow my wallet found its way into my work bag and I didn’t leave my computer in the wrong house before I headed to work, but my eyelids are heavy heavy heavy.

So undignified

This is one of those things I hate myself for laughing at, but can’t prevent myself from laughing. Scully would never tolerate any of that. One year I tried to put a cat-size Santa hat on her for Christmas—pretty white cat with a Santa hat—and she had that thing on the ground in two seconds flat. She has, however, been known to get caught in paper shopping bags.

A day in the woods

Togetherness is a lovely thing, but so is alone time. It’s funny how it took me 29 years to really appreciate the whole “room of one’s own” concept, but now that I’ve picked up on it, I hold it close like my own version of Sue-Lynn’s secret in The Anything Box. It’s still hard for me to ask for alone time, but I’m better at it than I used to be. Maybe that’s because it took me a while to know who I am and recognize the need for time alone in order to stay grounded in myself. Good lord, I sound like a self-help book.

Anyway, today I spent the afternoon at Walden Pond and it was glorious. Except when exactly did the Parks Service decide to turn the pond into a police state? The main parking lot was closed and instead of letting us swimmers park near the high school and walk across Rt. 2, the park rangers were staked out near all the trailheads to keep people away from the pond. Seething, I hugged my beach bag and managed to slip past a guy on a horse. When I got to the pond, I realized why the rangers are being all militant. The water level is so high that there are virtually no beach areas outside the main bathing beach. As I picked my way down the pond path, I came across enclaves of beachgoers up in the woods, camped out on towels and folding chairs as if the loam had magically turned to sand. Luckily, I managed to find a little rocky spot that wasn’t mobbed with screaming 8-year olds. I put my stuff down and hopped in the water.

Walden’s a special spot for a lot of people. There’s something meditative and calming about the place that goes above and beyond what you normally find in a pond. Maybe all that transcendentalism leached into the ground back when Thoreau built his little cabin. Maybe it’s just one of those places that holds you in thrall for no apparent reason. I’ve been going there since I was tiny. My parents would take my brother and me down to Little Cove for the day when we were little, so we could splash around and give them ten minutes of peace to read their books. The distance between one side of the cove and the other always seemed so far, and the water seemed so deep. I used to do loopdiloops in the water and imagine I was a nyad (because I was a dork even as a small child), basking in the way the sunlight refracted in the pondy greenness. Glenn and I used to go there on the way home from work to do distance swims from shore to shore. But no matter who I shared it with, Walden always felt like my own place in a way that I’m sure a lot of people feel.

So Walden was a perfect place to go and be by myself today. I swam back and forth between the edge of Little Cove and the far side of the bank a couple of times, looking at the sky and letting the water hold me up. It’s a kettle pond, so by August the water has soaked up enough warmth that it feels like a heated pool. The last time I went swimming for real was at the public pool on Sepulveda in LA, although we did a bunch of paddling between the dock and the float up in Ossipee last month. It felt great to just let go and not have to think about anything or anyone.

After I swam, I sat on a rock with my legs dangling into the water and read for a while. The clouds came in later in the afternoon, so I drove into Concord center and got a snack at one of the cafes. Then I wandered through the Concord Bookshop and picked up the new Harry Potter and Thisbe Nissen’s latest book. My arms and legs were weighted down with that wonderful post-swim sleepiness, and I felt whole and centered. I think I needed to know that I could still have days like today. Like a good yoga practice, it renewed my faith.

Procreation does not equal superiority

When it comes to friendships and relationships, kids constitute the dividing line. I’m not just talking about the line of responsibility or the line of abrupt, complete life change that seems to (and should) accompany the creation of a family. I’m talking about the line between people who have kids and people who don’t. Sometimes it feels like a lot of women who’ve already crossed that line no longer have any interest is relating to women who have yet to reach the parental point of no return. And it’s infuriating.

Yes, I am 30 and I am unmarried. Quite frankly, I’m happy about that fact because if I were married it would be to the wrong person. But just because I have not settled down into a traditional family life complete with husband, house and children does not mean that my life choices are questionable or sophomoric.

If I seem angry, it’s because I’ve attended one too many parties recently where the guest list comprised married couples with children, and where the conversation was a little too Bridget Jones for my comfort. So here’s what I have to say to the Smug Married Parents:

You may think that I don’t notice the pity in your eyes when you ask what I do with my time, but I do. Children may be the light of your life, and I’m glad for you that they are. But you know what? I don’t envy you just because you’re bonding over bad daycare stories. I don’t feel badly for you that you have whiplash because your spirited son decided to headbutt you for the fun of it. Yes, it’s cute when Junior’s T-shirt gets caught in the cooler while he’s rooting around for ice to suck on and I’ll laugh with you, but deep inside I’m thanking my lucky stars that I can go home and giggle over the Chapelle Show while drinking a vodka cranberry and I don’t have to worry about listening to a baby monitor.

The fact is, I get a good night’s sleep every night. The only unexpected disturbances I have to deal with are cat- or roommate-related. My clothes are spitup-free. My vacations don’t have to be planned and budgeted around kids, and I can go on weekend trips whenever I so desire. Nights out with my friends? No problem—no babysitter necessary. Nights in with my boyfriend? Nothing but the cats to bother us. So pardon me if, behind your pity, I sense a reservoir of envy that you can’t bring yourself to acknowledge.

Don’t treat my relationship like it’s a silly high school romance just because I’m not wearing a ring and I haven’t lost my figure yet. I may not be a member of the married mommy club, but that doesn’t mean I’m immature or that I feel like my life lacks meaning. The fact that I’m unmarried and technically still on the dating market isn’t something I bemoan every morning when I roll out of bed. Now, when I reach the point where I’m ready to get married, I’ll know that I got every ounce of independence and growth that I could out of my single life before taking the plunge. There will be no question of maturity or impulsiveness. And when I’m ready to have children, I’ll remember not to ostracize my single friends just because we’re at different points in our lives.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Ah, sleep. You are like crack to me. I cannot get enough of you, no matter what I do. You rule my days like a persnickety hobgoblin on hormone therapy—cranky, fickle, never letting me entirely out of your greedy grasp. I give you 8 or 9 hours a night and still you want more from me.

I am always tired. Every time there’s a seasonal change, I tell myself that my sleepiness is due to the weather. In the winter this is usually true. When it’s cold and awful outside, there is no better place to be than in my bed, snuggled up in world-class flannel sheets and my down comforter. But it’s August and even though it’s hot and humid, I see no reason to be this tired. Heat is enervating but seeing as it warms me to the core, it’s a cozy enervation and one that I don’t fight. Really, what is there to fight about reading on the porch and enjoying the fact that you don’t have to move AT ALL.

But it’s a different story during the week. Mornings are my personal nadir. This is why, despite my best intentions, I have never been able to be one of those morning runners or morning yoga people. There are a lot of days when I can barely keep my eyes open, no matter how much caffeine I drink or how much protein I eat. My deep, dark, guilty secret is that, on the days when the exhaustion sweeps over me and I cannot shake it off, I go down to the parking garage and take a nap in the back seat of my car during my lunch hour. I live in fear of someone I know walking by the car and finding me out.

Two months ago, Lunchboy and I went to give blood at the local blood drive across the way. They did the little finger prick test and ushered him over to a table, where they stuck a fat needle in his arm and drained a bag of blood from him in like 5 minutes. After they pricked my finger, though, they sat me down and told me they couldn’t take my blood because my blood iron levels were too low. The Red Cross, which always wants people’s blood, turned me down. Not that it was a surprise—I’ve suffered from chronic anemia for as long as I can remember, even though I stuff myself with multivitamins and try to eat lots of iron-rich foods.

Okay, jelly beans have no iron. But still.

The anemia is probably the root of all evil when it comes to my energy levels. There are days when it feels like I could sleep for 13 straight hours and still be tired when I woke up. I know this because right after I graduated from college, I came home to my parent’s house and for the three weeks before I moved into my first apartment, I slept for 13 hours a night and still needed a nap during the day. Same thing after grad school.

This past weekend, I stocked up on iron pills at Trader Joe’s and am on a mission to banish the exhaustion. Sleep is already a carefully horded commodity for me. As anyone who has lived with me, stayed with me and/or hosted me knows, I am the ultimate sleep dork. Every night at bedtime, I break out the construction-grade earplugs and my beloved black satin sleep mask, all the better to block out errant noise and light. Woe is he/her/it that wakes me up before the alarm goes off.

My hope is that the iron pills will make a difference. I am tired of being tired.

Victory!

#433234 on the list of things I never expected to happen: My mother calling me after an episode of Entourage to say,

“Oh my god, it was like my life was onscreen!”

My mother, whose only contact with the entertainment business was when she was friends with a guy who starred in a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie. My mother, who watches way, way, WAY too much cable TV. She counts on HBO and Showtime to keep her hip. It’s touching, really, because she watches this stuff in part to understand the world my brother and I inhabit. But sometimes it gets disturbing, like the time I told her about seeing Glenn last August and she asked, “Does that count as a deja-fuck?” That was when I took the remote control away from her and hid it in the basement.

Anyhoo.

The real reason she said that, of course, was ComicCon. My mom’s been attending similar conventions for years because, in her spare time, she writes science fiction. She’s pretty good at it—two of her books were published when I was about 13. For a while she let my brother and me tag along when she hit NorEasCon or Arisia and, once, WorldCon when it was in the booming metropolis of Springfield, Mass. You really have to see these conventions to understand what they’re like. Hotels full of people dressed up as their favorite book/movie/TV show characters. Lots of elf ears and Vulcan ears. Ballrooms full of vendors selling chain mail, authentic Star Trek uniforms, fantastical jewelry and things like stuffed dragons that are based on creatures in the Anne McCaffrey books. It’s pretty amazing and scary and impressive. And scary.

My father thinks the whole Con thing is nutty. He watched the Entourage episode, too. He got on the phone and asked one question: “Where are all the fat, unhappy people?”

I hung up before my mother could bring up the Pussy Patrol, or the strap-ons. Really, mom, I don't want to KNOW.

Tummy crust

The NY Daily News has created a name for that unlovely roll of flab that blooms over the top of people's jeans. The whole naming of the muffin top phenomenon is less shocking to me than the fact that, according to the article, men actually like it. Not that I'm judging anyone for what they weigh, but I'm a line freak and I just think the muffin top thing looks sloppy. Anyone can look great as long as they wear clothes that fit, and by "fit" I mean "not 2 sizes too small." This is not a Dr. Seuss story.

Review

This weekend, in addition to sleeping like a champion, watching untold hours of TiVo and avoiding my roommate’s birthday bash, I clocked a record 30 sets of stairs at the stadium, a feat for which I am proud but also for which the lower half of my body is now paying dearly. There are 37 sets in the Harvard stadium and by god I will get through the whole thing before winter if it’s the last thing I do. Being short (5’3”), I can’t run the big steps so I climb them instead. Running the little steps bugs the hell out of me. There are days when I wish I could be one of those lanky, athletic types who can lope up the steps with both elegance and strength but clearly it’s not in the cards.

I’m considering running a ½ marathon in San Francisco this November. Not only does the course look spectacular but I realize that I miss having an athletic goal—besides fitting into my clothes--to work toward. Do I like to compete? No. But the having of the goals is nice and productive.

This past week, Lunchboy finally got me to the theater to see Revenge of the Sith. At no point did I ever intend NOT to see this movie, but considering how awful the previous two installments were, I had no intention of dropping $10 to endure 2.5 hours of George Lucas-inflicted pain. But, like most people said, it wasn’t as bad as Attack of the Clones. Somehow the end tied up nicely and lead to the original series quite well. But I live in the hope that George Lucas will never again attempt to depict emotion on-screen. Watching EVERYTHING involving Padme and Anakin was like giving myself paper cuts with badly written Hallmark cards.