I like his style

On the T ride home tonight, the train stopped between North Station and the Museum of Science and sat on the tracks for a good 5 minutes. Finally, with no oncoming trains in sight, the conductor opened the door, stepped out onto the tracks, flipped a switch on the wall, and got the train moving again. It was nice to see someone take charge.

Usually the full moon has me all in a tizzy, but this month I feel grounded and balanced. Happy. Present. I kicked up into handstand and held it in yoga. Five times. I managed a phone call with my mother without losing my patience. There's so much to do but tonight..I can handle it.

The shower was wonderful. My best friend has a new house near Groton and it's a homey house, the kind that makes me want to procreate immediately after walking in the door because it's a place where you want to have a family. And we did have family--30 people showed up with food and drink. We ate, we drank, we played only one silly game, and we opened gifts. Amazingly, everyone seemed to get along, which is always a miracle when you're mixing people from 5 different worlds. I'm always struck by the people who make an effort, the ones who are there through thick and thin, even if you don't talk to them every day. I wish I had pictures to post but the batteries in our camera died almost immediately after the party started.

I will crush your skull like a clam on my tummy

The dawn of the sea otter. Sometimes a little South Park is all that's needed to get some perspective.

I got cider doughnuts at the Copley Farmer's Market today at lunch. Lunchboy and I meant to get them on our pumpkin/apple excursion a few weeks ago but couldn't find any. Tonight there will be doughnuts and Borat.

The cats have become heat seeking missiles. They follow me around all evening until I go to bed and then they attach themselves like burrs to whatever appendage suits them best. Scully on one arm, Griffin on my feet, Cringer under the covers along my left side. Resistance is futile.

Tomorrow--shower!!!!! SO EXCITED!!!!!

What are the chances of that?

That dream I had? I told my friend J about it and he shared a piece of news:

Glenn's getting married. On February 24th.

The married part honestly doesn't bother me. But the fact that it's happening on the same day that Lunchboy and I are getting married kind of blows my mind.

All the things I've been denying and trying to ignore

My best friend is throwing us a Jack and Jill wedding shower on Saturday. Yesterday LC asked me if I was excited and for the first time I realized that guilt has replaced happiness, a realization that made me feel even more guilty. In the best of circumstances, I hate being in the spotlight and parties like this are all about focusing on the couple at hand. I don’t feel like I deserve the attention. After all, this is the second time I’m doing this, the second shower. The happiness I felt the first time around didn’t exactly bode well, so maybe it’s a good thing that I feel more scared and guilty than ecstatic. My friends and family are doing this for the second time, too, and I worry that I’ve put them through too much. Too many ups and downs, too many parties and gifts, too much hope that got dashed. I wonder if they resent this second round of festivities, if they wonder whether this one will stick, if they think I’m defective or demanding.

Lunchboy is the best man I know, the best I may have ever known. He is on a different plane than Glenn was and there is no comparison between the two of them. In my brain, I know that Lunchboy is not the leaving kind. When he says he’s here for the long haul, I know he means it. I trust him implicitly. But in my heart, which still bears scars that pop up in dreams I cannot control, I am scared that getting too excited about the wedding will end in more heartbreak. I’m scared that it will happen again. And I have to find a way past the fear because I can’t let the past color the present. I can’t let it affect Lunchboy’s experience of the engagement because this is his first time and it’s not fair. This is our time. So when I wake up in tears from a dream that came out of the blue, I am glad that he’s on the road and can’t see the fear in me. I want to put it aside for his sake, for our sake. And I’m hoping that writing this all down will help.

Monster mash

Until last night, I’d forgotten how great it is to live in a neighbourhood with excellent trick or treating. I haven’ t been trick or treating in 16 years, the dressing up and hunting for candy being one of the first childhood pleasures to get dropped in the name of adolescent holier-than-thou angst. Then came college and the dressing up to attract boys (but no candy—not a great trade), and the lean post-college apartment years in neighborhoods where sane adults didn’t let their kids out of the house at night, much less let them ask strangers for candy. Last year I lived in an apartment building filled with grad students and couples who didn’t have kids. Needless to say, no one rang the doorbell.

Last night I walked home from Kendall and my street was filled with kids and parents going from house to house. Three of the houses on our street had huge, inflatable Halloween decorations on their lawns and one of our neighbors threw a Halloween pizza party for parents on their lawn. Everyone was out, even the extremely private neighbors whom we suspect are the owners of Dali but aren’t really sure. Wearing my Wonder Woman T-shirt (my grown up replacement for my old Underoos), I manned the door, wishing we’d done more decorating so parents knew it was ok to try our house. Best costume: a 3-year old Curious George who roared like a lion. Worst costume: a 10-year old gypsy who ran around the neighbourhood screaming, “I’ll dance for money!” God, I hope someone told her to stop saying that.

Watching the kids go parading down the sidewalk, I had a moment of nostalgia for being young enough to think that people will mistake you for whatever you dressed up as—a pirate, a princess, Lemon Meringue, Spiderman. It’s the only time you can really get away with pretending to be someone else and that’s still cool.

A new leaf

Things that make me happy:
1. Quiet time on the couch with Lunchboy and the cats
2. Clean sheets, a down comforter and cool fall nights (read: good sleeping weather)
3. The end of baseball season—no more packed Green Line trains at rush hour
4. The little dances that wide receivers do after they get a touchdown
5. New issues of Vanity Fair, US Weekly and the New Yorker on my nightstand
6. The walk home from the Hancock tower to Union Square
7. Harvest pumpkin soup and any sandwich from ABP. I eat there 3-4 times a week—it’s getting out of hand.
8. When Scully falls asleep on my arm
9. When Cringer catches a milk bottle tab and sings so that we’ll know she’s killed her prey
10. Griffin curled up on my chest purring so hard that it’s a miracle she doesn’t have smoke coming out her ears
11. 200 pages left in a book I can’t put down
12. The clean calmness that comes after a good yoga practice
13. Coming home after the cleaning crew has been there
14. The ability to let go
15. When Lunchboy walks through the door on Thursday nights.

Not done baking--warm, delicious cookie me only months away

I feel like I blink and the week is over. There is no time and when there is time there is no energy. Work is good but very busy, which means no time to blog. I’m not complaining—I’d rather be busy than bored. By the time I get home at night, the last thing I want to do is look at the computer. Hence the lack of posts. Also, I can’t think of anything to write about. Every time an idea comes to mind, I feel like it sounds complainy and since my New Years resolution for 2006 was to think positively, I am trying finish up the year strong.

I could write about our weekend at Lunchboy’s company retreat in Pennsylvania this past weekend, but that was definitely not a positive experience.

Last night I dreamed that the Armstrongs lived around the corner. I kept going by to hang out with Heather, Jon and Leta, but I was doing something wrong—I don’t know what it was, but I just had a feeling that I was behaving inappropriately even though I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing that was inappropriate, so they politely but firmly asked me not to come back.

The dream had more to do with the fact that I feel like I’m not being a very good friend right now than with the excessive number of blogs that I read (although who knows—I only realized my celebrity gossip habit was out of hand when I got a pedicure in LA and recognized 4-year-old Ava Witherspoon-Phillipe before I recognized her mother, so maybe dreaming about people I have only ever read about online is not a good sign). No time and no energy make Moxie a less empathic person. Now that daylight savings is in effect, I feel extra hibernatory. I don’t feel like I’m being very genuine or present in my friendships, and I’m certainly not putting as much effort into them as usual. I’m sorry—I will try to do better. My parents complained about this and all I could give them was that analogy from Buffy—right now my life is cookie dough. Once it’s cookies I’ll be back in the game. That should happen right around the beginning of March. My shrink says I have to stop trying to make everyone in my life happy, and while that’s easier said than done I am giving it my best shot.

Two point conversion

I’m sick from dinner last night and also from the fact that thank you cards at Paper Source cost $24 for a box of 8. That’s highway robbery. Did I buy them? No. I know crafty people who make their own stationery and I admire them but I’m a bit too lazy for that. It could also be the bad chicken/shrimp that’s making me want to go back to bed.

We have a cake and a menu, but still no honeymoon. The honeymoon is proving to be surprisingly challenging, mostly due to the scarcity of travel agents. Mark that—the scarcity of good travel agents. We’ve found a couple that were more than willing to book us into hotels with terrible reviews or onto cruises that we didn’t want to take, but we’re still looking for someone who can help us find what we’re looking for. It would help if we really knew what we wanted, but that’s the fun of spontaneity. Hawaii? Sure! The Caribbean? Me likey the sun. But please, no open-air hotel rooms where the likelihood of spiders on my face at 2am is incredibly high.

Last night I dreamed that I was Deuce McAllister’s high school girlfriend, and I’d come back from the future to tell him what college football program he should pick to jumpstart his NFL career. This probably means that I need to cut way back on my Sunday football watching, but hey—it’s such a lovely way to zone out.

Asclepias syriaca

On Sunday, we took advantage of the Patriots bye week and went apple picking. Which is to say, when the concept of a Sunday without mandatory football was broached, I latched onto it like a leech on those kids in Stand by Me and decided it was time to do something involving fresh air and seasonal fun. Don’t get me wrong—I am enjoying the football this year. But it’s good to mix things up a bit.

We went to an orchard in Groton because it’s late in the apple season and most of the orchards we found online were closed for picking. On the way out on 119, we passed a pumpkin patch. Not one of those roadside stalls piled high with pumpkins, but a real pick-your-own pumpkin patch. Neither of us had ever been to one of those before, so we pulled over and walked down to where the pumpkin vines covered a ten-acre field like old, gnarled knuckles. As we walked, the patch’s owner passed us on his tractor and roared out an extremely loud greeting. We giggled. Everyone was happy at the patch. Among the misshapen, the rotted, the still mostly green, and the way too big for our needs pumpkins, we found one that was just right, as well as a couple of brightly colored gourds. Carrying our finds back up the hill, the jocular farmer passed us again and roared out something else to the group he had on his hay-covered flatbed. If Santa Claus was real, he’d sound like this guy. We are so going back next year.

The orchard, once we found it, was perfect. Though we were late enough in the season that most of the trees only had apples on the top branches, this meant that we almost had the place to ourselves and that was better than picking at the height of the season. No jockeying for ladders with 6-year olds, no getting clocked on the head by apples that someone high in the tree shakes down by accident. We filled our two bags leisurely, climbing trees when we wanted to and walking between the rows in whichever direction seemed best. Along the way, I rediscovered a childhood obsession that I’d completely forgotten about---milkweed pods. They were everywhere, sprouting big white tufts of silky seed pods just begging to be flung in the air. So I flung—and flung and flung and flung. At some point in life I want milkweed in my back yard so that I can regress to age 5 whenever fall rolls around.

Then, tired and jonesing for apple cider doughnuts, we went home and watched football.

Strange Celebrity Dreams p.2

Last night I dreamed that Lunchboy and I had a threesome with Kristen Bell, who plays Veronica Mars. She was an active closet lesbian and snuck up on me in the shower.

No Colbert this time--sorry.

Now, let it be known that while Ms. Bell is certainly pretty, she is not on my "women don't do it for me but she would be an exception" list. Nor is she on Lunchboy's list (he says), though I'm sure he wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers. His response to me telling him about the dream went something like this:

"Ewww. She's not very hot. But YAY for the concept!!!"

Right. That'll happen as soon as I can hop in the sack with McSteamy and Clive Owen.

Been there

Cats + road trip = chaos. Hysterical.

Random NFL thought

Is it me or does Jerious Norwood sound like a Sith lord's name?

Driven

Last week on Grey's Anatomy, Meredith had a great line in the middle of one of her great rants. "You have no idea how much effort this takes!" she yells at McVet and McSteamy. "I am plucked and waxed and shaved, and I have a clean shirt on. And all you can do is look at each other!"

It's no secret that upkeep is a bitch. In relationships, it can get easy to let things slide because really--what are they going to do if you aren't as polished as usual? In the past, with other men, I let things go a bit because I felt strongly that the men should love me no matter what I was wearing or how smooth my legs were, an argument that still rings true but only to a point. Lunchboy WOULD love me no matter what, but I choose not to walk that line.

That said, I had a moment of reflection last night while on the aesthetician's table. "Why do you do this?" she asked, after watching me flinch and bite my lip in pain. "I don't understand why this is all the rage." She's Indian and salt of the earth, and is clearly befuddled by all the women she sees who dislike their body hair. I didn't know what to tell her. Everyone has their reasons for the things they do. I know what mine are, but I wasn't going to say them out loud.

Morning sugar

Jelly Belly jelly beans are by far the best beans out there, but they have one downside: you have to eat them one by one. Otherwise, instead of getting a pleasant mouthful of generically yummy sweetness, you get a mishmash of flavors that, separately, taste delicious but together taste like cough syrup.

Pick up this week’s issue of the Improper Bostonian. C-love has a kickass article about eating solo. There’s a lot to be said for eating alone and she does a really good job at explaining why it’s fun, even for people who avoid eating by themselves at all costs.

Tastes like sugar

Last night I went to Cambridge Naturals to get a refill of my daily multi-vitamin. After prying my way through the safety seal and the wad of cotton before breakfast this morning, I discovered an object with which I once had a very close acquaintance: the silica gel pack.

When I was about six, I somehow got ahold of a bottle of vitamins—or maybe it was something else, I don’t remember but whatever it was had one of the silica packs. Anyway, I thought the silica pack looked like a single serving piece of candy, so I ate the whole thing. Down the hatch. Noticing that I was chewing on something, my mother figured out what I’d done, promptly had a small coronary and called poison control, who told her to feed me lots of oatmeal. Not feeling sick in the slightest, I had no clue why she was so upset. I was only disappointed that the silica hadn’t tasted like candy. It turned out fine. But now I smile whenever I see a silica gel pack.

I don't keep going and going and going

My batteries are running low—literally. Last week the battery on my Mac laptop gave out, leading to a series of frustrating and disillusioning interactions with the people at my local Apple store. Then last night, the water bottle in my yoga bag spilled all over my cell phone and the battery did a little vibrating jig before it kicked the bucket. Apple is sending me a new battery but I have to head over to the Cingular store at lunch to see what I can do about the phone. What’s next—my watch? My car? It’s been an anti-Midas week, where everything I touch breaks. I won’t get into the mishap with Lunchboy’s Gamecube on Saturday, except to say that it was totally accidental.

After three blissful months of local projects that kept him home, Lunchboy is back on the road again for the foreseeable future. We are back to weeks measured by the time between when he leaves on Monday and gets back on Thursday. I get lonely and miss him when he’s away, but he’s the one stuck at Logan for 4 hours after getting up for a 6am flight. He’s the one who won’t get home until 11pm on Thursday. The cats don’t know what’s going on. They keep giving me these looks like, “WTF? Where IS he?”

Last night was the first night in months that I’ve slept alone, and I kept having extremely vivid dreams that there was someone else in the house, or that there was an intruder in the condo upstairs (I’m catsitting for our neighbors while they’re on their honeymoon). Usually I feel very safe in the house but without a working phone I felt vulnerable and powerless. In the dreams, I’d scream “Get out! Get out!” at the intruder, but then realize that I couldn’t call for help. Today, very tired.

Chicken or fish?

Was it me or did last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy suck big donkey balls? The Office, however? SO GOOD.

Today was my first windy day at work. Until now, I’d forgotten that the Hancock tower is in a wind tunnel but I’ll never forget again. I was sitting in my boss’ office and the room filled with a very loud creaking sound, like a porch swing on crack. Judging from the noise, the building was moving several feet back and forth. The swaying was so marked that our design director’s office door kept swinging open and closed of its own accord. It’s kind of freaky being this far up in the air and knowing that the building is moving underneath your feet, even if the building is constructed to respond to wind pressure. I hear it’s even worse being in the elevators because they SWAY as they zip up and down.

Must think about something else now.

The weatherman on the evening news last night said the F-word. Luckily there was no frost on the ground this morning. But when I woke up, all three cats were huddled on the bed, seeking as much warmth as possible. The formal countdown to the first fur-pile begins…now.

Too punchy for paragraphs

1. Photographer—check. I agonized over this decision but it is made. Moving on.

2. Seeing florist this weekend

3. Seeing mother this weekend, as we are going with my matron of honor to have her dress fitted. I am actually somewhat annoyed that we have to do this on a Sunday because it means that I will miss football. And football is much more relaxing that being with my mother. Also, I did not win last weekend. I blame the Patriots defense. They let me down. Am on pins and needles until Steve Smith plays again.

4. For the record, I argued long and loudly in favor of eloping. And was overruled.

5. We are being stalked by our neighbour, who’s a wedding planner. She zeroed in on my ring about 24 hours after we got engaged and does not allow either of us to walk by her house, stand on the porch or, sometimes, stand in our kitchen without her asking how things are going and if we need her help with anything. For a while we weren’t sure whether she was being neighbourly or trying to drum up business, but then she quoted me a price a few weeks ago and even though I tactfully told her that we didn’t have the wherewithal to cover her services, she’s being very persistent. We used to chat over the porch railing all the time but now Lunchboy and I keep conversations with her as short as possible.

6. All this will be put aside at 9pm tonight, when the new season of Grey’s Anatomy begins. My drama is nothing compared with Meredith’s. No drama is comparable to Meredith’s.

Little G and Ms. Puss understand

The evolution of the cats’ nicknames is an ongoing source of amusement in our house. I’ve written before about the litany of names that Scully has born, but now that our brood has grown to three, the nicknames have developed a tendency to snowball. For instance, Lunchboy sometimes calls Cringer “sweetmeat.” Somehow sweetmeat has been truncated to “meat.” As in, “Hey, meat! Are you a fluffy girl?” It always catches me off guard, probably in the same way it would if I actually knew the Veals.

Not a record I'd want to set

OUCH

Warning: wedding rant ahead

This weekend, my fantasy football team is playing Lunchboy's fantasy football team. Inter-house tension will ensue. But seeing as my quarterback is Donovan McNabb and his is Eli Manning, I think we know what's gonna happen. That said, I have a feeling that bets will be placed and rewards of a slinky nature will be placed on the table. We shall see what Sunday night brings.

On the wedding front, things are moving along nicely. Place--check. Date--check. Officiant--check. This weekend we are interviewing a couple of photographers. After doing some online research, I discovered that I am a total photography snob, the result of spending almost four years with a former photojournalist/sports photographer/narcissist/sometime wedding photographer. What can I say? I got spoiled by watching Voldemort shoot friends' weddings for $1000 and then hand over the proofs and negatives without getting testy. Most wedding photographers, I discovered, do not do this. Instead, they charge phenomenal amounts of money to take pictures and then hold the negatives hostage unless you drop even MORE money on a wedding album. It's a total racket.

My morning triumph today was finding out that a really good photographer is willing to drop his astronomical prices by almost half because he doesn't get a lot of business in February. Go winter weddings!

If your eyes haven't glazed over by now, you deserve a medal.

I put some thought into starting a blog for all my wedding-related rantings, mostly so that I could rave about my mother, who is proving to be the main obstacle in most of the planning, primarily because she is insane. She was like this last time, but I racked up her obstinate behavior to the fact that she didn't like the fact that I was 3,000 miles away. No. No no no. Her obstinacy is no illusion and it is trumped only by her desire to make this entire event all about her.

It doesn't help that my brother has moved back into my parent's house for the umpteenth time, and so now my mother can indulge her inability to cut the apron strings. She can also channel her time, money and energy into my brother, who is 27, employed, and just doesn't like paying rent. Translation: when I ask her to help with small tasks, I get answers like, "I can't--I have more pressing things on my mind. I'm too busy taking care of your brother and father to think about this right now."

Those "things" become less pressing if she's given the opportunity to make planning as complicated as possible, usually by exercising guilt and passive-aggressive tendencies the likes of which neither Lunchboy nor I has ever seen before. She will help, but only on her terms and only if we acquiesce to her Nutcracker-like vision of a winter wonderland wedding, complete with theatrical lighting, white frosted branches, a mysterious fabric tent-thing for the ceremony that bears a distinct resemblance to several BAD costumes on the original Star Trek, and the spending of much money, which she assumes we will front because "I just don't have a lot of disposable income right now." It doesn't matter that we're aiming for simplicity and elegance--her ideas are BETTER but not so good that she will pay for them.

I'm not being nice, I know. But if you'd been exposed to the full force of her guilt-tripping passive aggression, you'd be keeping her at arm's length, too. The wedding is 6 months away and she's already driven me into two sleep- and appetite-vaporizing anxiety attacks. Hence the wine and Ativan.

OK, done now.

Did you know you brought me home

Early last year while standing in a bar, my friend M made the astute observation that Boston men are, as a group, very short. M is one of those blonde Nordic goddesses and short she is not. But really--are all Boston men shorter than average? I poo-poohed making that kind of generalization until last night, when Lunchboy and I hit the Zero 7 show at Avalon. Lunchboy, who's a respectable 6', towered over most of the men there. As we stood to one side of the room, I looked out over a wide swath of male pattern shortness. Tom Cruise would love this city--he could throw out his expensive shoes with the not-so-hidden lifts and walk with his head held high. Why are there so many short men in Boston? And why was the short guy who insisted on standing RIGHT in front of me wearing so much cologne? My god, the cologne. I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him that too much Drakkar does not compensate for lack of height.

The concert itself was fun. They did Destiny and Somersault, but not In the Waiting Line. Sia bounced around the stage like a coked-up sprite and flung her voice to the sky in the most breathtaking way. It's a testament to my naivete that I had to ask whether she was high or just relentlessly happy. I think we were literally the only sober people there (where's Nancy Botwin when you need her?). At least being stoned would have kept me from realizing that I was ready for bed at 10pm and that I might be getting too old for Tuesday night shows.

All made out of ticky-tacky

Yesterday the basement flooded again, this time for no apparent reason. It turns out our neighbor's water heater exploded. Now our plumbing is making very angry noises whenever we try to use the water. I am sore in strange places from mopping. Also from sprinting to our seats at the game yesterday. Everything is moving swiftly these days and my body hasn't quite caught up.

The Metrowest Daily news printed our engagement announcement last week and they got some crucial facts wrong. According to them, Lunchboy and I share a father and our parents both live in Somerville. Neither of these things is true. Another thing to set straight--getting married in February does not mean that I'm knocked up. Like 6 people have asked us this. So: 1, I'm not, and 2, if I were, why would I schedule the wedding to coincide with me reaching maximum density?

Scully is becoming more and more of an outdoor cat. Her latest favorite thing is taking dirt naps in the garden, an activity that leaves her extremely messy and a distinct shade of gray. Her new nickname is Pigpen. She has also taken to climbing the rhododendron bush/tree and we keep finding her perched in the bushes about 4 feet in the air.

Things are fine and yet they are slightly off kilter. Then again, could this day be normal. So much raw emotion in the air. I spent this morning reading the portraits of grief section of the New York Times and feeling as if I were standing on the edge of all the pain and loss that still rules so many people's lives. Horrible.

Special teams

I'm not sure why fall decided to arrive in the middle of August, but I remain in denial about the fact that summer is over. The spring was so rainy and gross that it feels as if summer only lasted a few weeks. Bring on the Indian summer, I say. Although the dry chill in the morning air is actually pleasant. So is the fact that ABP has started serving harvest pumpkin soup--the best part of fall (ok the apples are nice, too).

The Miami-Pittsburgh game is on TV right now. Lunchboy is not home. I am actually watching football by myself. Assimilation is complete. Last weekend I drafted my very first fantasy football team--and it was FUN! I don't have anyone playing tonight but now I'm excited about the season. I'll be more excited if Steve Smith's hamstrings heal nicely in time for Sunday's game.

Lunchboy's boss gave us two tickets to Sunday's Patriots season opener. WOO!

I know how weird it is

: Last night, once I fell asleep, I dreamed that Brad Pitt wanted to have anal sex with me. But I wasn't into it, so he had anal sex with Steven Colbert instead.

Today I was in NY for work. Concept--work travel. I love business travel and my last job never let me do it. When I got to the NY office this morning, one of my coworkers had fresh bialys from Kossar's on her desk. It was a true hallelujah moment.

We are watching the first season of Weeds on DVD. Nancy Botwin may be my new hero.

Going through the motions

When I was at my last job, I was perpetually tired and perplexed by that tiredness because the job required so little of me that I had no idea where my energy was going. I needed naps and late mornings on weekends. I slept as late as I could during the week and left as early as possible in the evenings. I wondered how I'd ever function in a job that actually needed me to DO things because where would the energy come from to get it done.

The new job is intense and challenging and good. I actually have to think about my work and I LIKE what I'm doing. Do I know anything about economics? No, but it's fun to learn. Suddenly 7am rolls around and I'm awake. No naps, no late mornings. And my energy is boundless.

Today was one of those days when I was rushing around from place to place, and every five feet a cab would pull out in front of me and drive 20 miles per hour. I was moving fast but everyone else was ssslllllooowwwww. But I'm still excited to go to work tomorrow.

Discovery--if you hurt your back runnning, the doctor gets free with the muscle relaxants. This makes sitting on a heating pad for hours almost worth it.

Respecting the delicate ecology of my delusions

4am--bolt upright in bed. Anxiety. I don't know anything about what my company does--how can I possibly write about it? Do they expect me to know the style guide after only a week? My eyes glaze over when I read about economics--what if I really can't write about it because I'll never understand it?

So much to do for the wedding. And only 6 months to do it in. I want to get it all done *tomorrow* so that I can get back to sleep and not spend the next 6 months having anxiety attacks. I remember this feeling. I remember lying on my old couch, zoned on two Ativans, watching "Angels in America" on HBO and thinking, "Oh my god, I'm turning into Harper."

Scully sat on my feet and somehow I fell back to sleep.

Armani don't make polyester

I want to know exactly when tapered pants came back into vogue. I mean really--whose bright idea was that? It must have been the same person who's behind the whole skinny jeans phenomenon, ie someone with long, thin legs and no hips. "Let's make everybody look pear-shaped!" they said with glee. Yesterday I went to the Gap at lunch to try and find some new work pants. Lo and behold, all I found were skinny jeans and pants with tapered legs. I have issues enough with my lower body--I don't need to be buying clothes (or even being in the position of unknowingly trying on clothes) that exacerbate my hips and thighs any more than necessary. It's totally unfair.

On the wedding front (speaking of things that make me pay attention to my hips), we officially have a place and a date. Mark your calendars: February 24th, here we come. That means we also have...6 months. As Franck said in Father of the Bride, that is not very much time. I need Franck right now. Xanax? MeanG?

Scenes

"Watch out for the 15," she said, smiling as if she was sharing a vital piece of information.

"The what?" I asked.

"The XXXX 15. We're very food oriented here and if you're not careful, you'll gain a good 10 or 15 pounds."

I'm lucky, I thought. My willpower is hanging in the downstairs closet, shrouded in plastic. March isn't that far away.

She wasn't kidding, though. Our group is very food oriented. Today the entire department went to Chinatown for dim sum at lunch. Three of the women are from Hong Kong and their presence made the dim sum experience entirely new. To them, dim sum was a way to visit home. In lovely sing-song accents, they got us seated, chose dishes from the carts with extreme care, making sure everything we ate was traditional Chinese food. Accordingly, the staff brought out dishes that I'd never seen at dim sum before--for example, a brownish concoction that turned out to be tripe. No, I did not have it. But I wasn't grossed out with it on the table. New is good.

Tonight, all I could think of in savasana was "Open Water," that movie from a few years ago about the couple who got left behind on a diving trip and ended up drowning/getting eaten by sharks. I never saw the movie but the trailers still haunt me.

Walking back to my car, I passed the two men who sit on their porch every night listening to Italian opera and 40s boogie woogie. They seem jovial, of a different time. Tongight they waved.

The laundry marauder

...strikes again. She wormed her way in there all on her own.

Postus Interruptus

Pros of the new job: my boss took the whole department to see the 1:15pm showing of "Snakes on a Plane" today. The field trip came complete with plastic snakes, free cab rides and brown paper bags full of nips so people could spike their sodas. Mfn snakes!!

Cons of the new job: the company monitors email and web use, so posts will definitely be fewer and further between.

I am now boycotting the wedding planning. Too many people want too many things and until there's consensus, I prefer to focus on being happy with Lunchboy rather than stressing about things like menu cards.

In between

The theme of the day for me is calm. I feel calm about...everything. Except maybe the new job, which starts on Thursday. I'm a little anxious that I'll get there and they'll discover that I really don't know what I'm talking about and see that hiring me was a huge mistake. That's totally my confidence issues coming to the fore, but in general new jobs are a bit nerve wracking.

We might have found a location. There's one more place we're going to check out tomorrow, but if it doesn't pan out then there's a place that we like a lot and I feel confident in choosing. Plus, the people there totally have their shit together and I have a feeling they'd make sure we have a bang-up wedding.

But yes, other than the fact that Griffin totally scratched my boob on Saturday (my fault for picking her up when I wasn't wearing a shirt), things are very calm. I feel content and grounded and good. I'm a little mystified at feeling this good after the dream I had last night, in which Lunchboy and I were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit and we were trying to get out before the towers collapsed. This is totally rooted in my fear that a plane will hit the Hancock tower (where I will be working as of Thursday), hence the news hiatus I imposed last week after that terror plot was uncovered.

I am running a million errands today and getting shit done. Off to Whole Foods and then to catch up with Bligh and Hendrik, who are in town for the week...

No skeletons, I swear

So the new job requires all incoming employees to go through a background check conducted by Kroll. I used to cover Kroll occasionally when I reported on security issues back in the day. They are big and serious and kind of scary in a silent, stealthy, Men in Black kind of way. Today I got a call from one of the Kroll people saying that they couldn’t get in touch with any of the HR people at one of my old jobs (ironically, the one where I covered security), and did I happen to have my W-2s from 5 years ago on hand? Because, you know, I carry all my W-2s around in my bag for just such an occasion. In fact, I do not have my tax returns from 5 years ago. I’m of the “keep your birthday cards but not your old bank statements” school of thought, so my records only go back 3-4 years. Also, I was not under the impression that I was going through the checking process for government security clearance, which is what this suddenly felt like.

I called the woman back and gave her my old boss’s email address because he’s still with the company. She seemed satisfied with that, but I still got the distinct feeling that she thought I’d done something very, very wrong and was trying to cover it up. Do people really lie on their resumes that often? I’m scrupulously honest about that kind of thing because that’s how I was brought up (and also because I get nauseous just thinking at the kind of humiliation that such lies would cause), so I wasn’t worried going into the background check. But I kind of felt like she expected me to fess up about my pot use in college or something. It’s just a job, lady.

Redundant TMI

Last night in yoga, this semi-heavy woman fell over while working on her handstand. She hit the floor really hard and she was okay, but the first thing she said after everyone rushed over to make sure she was all right was, "Well, that got the flatulence out."

You think?

"Use of prescription sleeping pills is up nearly 50% since 2001, and a report released Monday by Consumers Union of United States Inc., publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, attributes at least part of the increase to a surge in direct-to-consumer advertising of such anti-insomnia medications as Ambien and Lunesta."

I tend to think people aren't sleeping as well because the general anxiety level has skyrocketed since 2001, and there's only so much you can do about anxiety when it's really, really bad.

I say this with confidence today because I'm still groggy from the Rozerem I took last night. Ambien made me forget things, Sonata didn't work, and my doctor refused to give me a trial prescription of Lunesta, so my dad was nice enough to pass along some new stuff. My father, the walking pharmacy.

For the record, Rozerem works like a charm. After weeks of sleeping lightly, intermittently, or not at all, I crashed at 10pm and I slept so hard that I *I didn't wake up* when Lunchboy moved me over to my side of the bed after he turned in. The grogginess I attribute to the fact that I took some Tylenol PM and an Ativan before I saw a Rozerem commercial on TV and remembered that I had some.

Yes, job changes and wedding planning are stressful. Don't judge me.

Recap

The California trip was a complete blast. The weather was spectacular. We saw lots of good friends. Also, lots of mountains, lots of ocean and lots of sea creatures.

SEALS!



OTTERS!



RANDOM FURRY CREATURES!



For some reason, the HBO Family channel in Monterey only showed a picture of Katie Holmes for two days straight. It was a little weird.

Now we’re home and the questions are flying left and right. Here are the only answers I have so far:

1. small
2. March-ish
3. in the Boston area

I will say that several spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides have already been created. The Team Love project has officially begun :)

Celebrity magnet

After I moved to LA in 2003, it took a good three months for me to see a celebrity on the street. Considering how everyone else seemed to see celebrities in the mirror when they got up to brush their teeth in the morning, it was frustrating that I appeared to repel celebrities like a magnet turned the wrong way around. Where I went, the celebrities were not.

Lunchboy, on the other hand, attracted the celebrities like flies. After lunch last Friday, we went to the Santa Monica stairs so I could fulfill my stairs fetish. As we stood at the base of the stairs, I looked up at the people on their way down and recognized a face.

"Look! It's Luke Wilson!!"

In fact, it was Owen Wilson. Hansel in the flesh. And he totally heard me get his name wrong. We managed to get some distant, sweaty pictures of him on the stairs with his trainer (maybe training for Zoolander 2? Wishful thinking?) That's him in the blue shirt, shielding his face from my extremely inconspicuous picture taking.

I can smell the ocean salt in the air

Off to California tomorrow morning. We are boarding Scully for the week that we’re gone and my heart is breaking for her, although she’ll be in a nice, air conditioned space during what’s supposed to be a very, very hot week, so she might actually be better off than the other two cats. Still, I feel like a terrible cat mom for leaving her somewhere that isn’t home.

Craziness—at this time tomorrow, we’ll be having lunch at Poquito Mas with Vance and his chica. I wonder if I’ll get there and feel like I never left. Will I remember how to get around? Will I hate it? Will it be extremely weird? No matter what it’s like, I can’t wait to share it with the man.

Lunchboy is bringing his laptop so I’ll try and post at least a few pictures during the trip. I guarantee we’ll be swilling wine in at least a few of them :)

At the same time...

The interviews from the other week? Well, they panned out. The company made an offer on Tuesday and I gave notice at my job today. I start at the new place on or around August 16th. My head is spinning a bit from all the (positive) change. The new job is downtown, so I have to come up with a completely new workday routine. I'm scared and nervous but it feels like that time between high school and college, when you hate leaving what's safe and known, but you know it's time to move on.

C-love just laughed at me because she said I wrote more about cat pee than about getting engaged or taking a new job. Bear with me :) Once my feet are back on the ground, I’ll write more.

Promoted

Lunchboy, from boyfriend to fiance.

QT

Big things afoot on both the personal and professional fronts. I can't talk about them quite yet, but it's all good. More soon.

Attack of the glove snatcher

This is funny because Griffin is also an unapologetic glove thief. During the winter, she waits for me to take my gloves off and then she steals them—out of my purse, off the table, from the laundry—to chew on and mangle. If I try to take them away from her, she stands on her hind legs and tries to snag them with her claws. What’s up with the gloves?? Were she an outdoor cat, I’m sure she’d been burgling garden gloves from the neighbors, too.

Got to get us to the shore

I keep dreaming about our trip to California. The dreams are mostly about us driving around LA and being unable to do all the things we want to do because we’re too busy doing what other people want us to do. All I want to do is see the ocean, take some pictures (because I have none), do the stairs and do some yoga. We’ll see friends and explore a bit, but I don’t want to try and fit a week-long trip into three days before we head up the coast. Maybe the anxiety over wanting to do too much is what’s causing the dreams. Ativan, you are my savior.

Overthinking

The interview went really well. I was there for 3 hours, so I think they liked me. By the end, I was brain fried and starving, and wandering around Back Bay in the heat trying to get my car out of the parking garage left me spaced out and shaky. They want me back next week and I have no idea how I’m going to swing another 3-hour interview during work hours. There are only so many bogus doctor’s appointments I can manufacture, especially when I have actual doctor’s appointments coming up. My boss is probably wondering how a healthy person such as myself has so many medical issues, and I feel like I’m calling down bad karma on myself by lying about my health.

Now I’m grappling with the concept of leaving my job and whether it’s really a good idea. I’ve never been one of those people who can stay at one job for more than a few years. My resume reflects this and I’m sensitive about having moved around so much. Maybe I should suck it up and stay where I am so I can BE at a job for more than 2 years. My job isn’t perfect but I’m in a groove here and I feel like I know what I’m doing. Do I really want to make a change for the sake of change? Am I a commitmentphobe when it comes to jobs? Part of me thinks I should stick it out—through the weeks when I have nothing to do and the times when the office politics are lethal—just to challenge the part of myself that always wants a change.

Really, if they make me an offer, the salary would be the deciding factor. The job would be very similar to what I’m doing now, except it has an actual career path and the possibility of travel. And it’s in the Hancock building, so I’d be downtown instead of in the burbs. Everything has pros and cons.

Act of contrition

You know that tired old saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his XXX(stomach, head, chest)?” Well, I don’t know about the heart but last night I learned that the way to a man’s libido is through his Nintendo Gamecube. How? Well, if you happen to, say, accidentally trip over the controller cord and pull the whole game system away from the power source right after he finishes a really hard section in Resident Evil 4 but before he has a chance to save, you can pretty much guarantee that you’re not getting any that night.

Not a pretty sight

There are tiny, black spiders dropping down onto my desk from the lighting fixture above my cube. I saw two of them out of the corner of my eye and now I’m wondering how many I didn’t see. Suddenly my head is very, very itchy.

I feel like this is the first scene in a bad horror movie. Any moment now, the mack daddy spider is going to fall down on my head and suck me dry. It is Monday after all.

Brought to you by Haagen Dazs

Today we went to the mall to escape the heat and also to look for some "professional" clothing for me to wear to a job interview on Tuesday. It's predictable, really. Every time I decide to look for a new job, I realize that I need a suit to wear to interviews and so I go on a frantic, stressed out shopping trip that inevitably ends with me throwing up my hands in defeat, going home and picking a non-suit outfit from my closet. I'm terrible with clothes, just like I'm terrible with decorating. In high school, my friends used to quote that line from Heathers where Shannen Doherty says to Winona Ryder, "You can't accessorize for shit." They weren't being mean, they were laughing with me because it's completely true.

After I decided against buying a beautiful black skirt suit from BR (because I honestly can't afford the $300 right now, even though I can hear that evil Shopaholic girl in my head saying, "It's an investment in your career!" I NEVER should have read those books), I went home and tried on my old standby, a lovely pants suit that I always forget about. I love that suit because it's always a surprise and it's always flattering. Except this time it didn't fit. The pants were too tight everywhere.

Horror. Shame. Self loathing.

Overwhelmed with mortification, I fled to the basement with the half pint of Haagen-Dazs light cookies n' cream that's been hiding in the freezer for the past two weeks, intending to drown my sorrows. What is it with ice cream and self pity? It never makes anything better, especially if the issue is weight-related. Lunchboy sat with me, patiently listening to me moan about the fact that I'm 31 and I don't have any decent clothing, and the clothing I do have doesn't fit, and I don't own any pumps and really I should just be shot for being a failure as a modern woman. Alas, alack, woe is me. Then he told me I was beautiful, brought me back upstairs, fed me Haagen Dazs and helped me pick an outfit. It's not a suit but hopefully the company won't toss me out on my behind for dressing too casually. Really, who needs suits for writing positions anyway? Aren't we supposed to be all arty and creative and shit?

It's too hot. I need a drink and then it will all be better.

It's a compliment, really

This made me laugh. It also reminded me of why I read this yesterday and realized how lucky I am to have Lunchboy.

One of the joys of dating a management consultant is that I rest easy at night knowing that Lunchboy is happily optimizing our weekend errands to ensure maximum performance and efficiency. He’d deny it if I asked him, but I’m convinced he has the day broken down into one-hour increments. I think his addiction to Excel and Powerpoint would drive some people nuts but it makes me smile. I know that if and when children enter the picture, he will consult the hell out of fatherhood until it’s no longer an unknown quantity. He’ll analyze the nuts and bolts of parenting until he’s successfully created a value proposition outlining best practices, systems and processes for raising kids. There will be spreadsheets calculating the increments of sleep training, Powerpoint presentations outlining the benefits of cotton versus disposable diapers, and Outlook reminders listing the proper contents of a well-packed diaper bag. When I’m not looking, he’ll duct tape a roles and responsibilities document to the stroller, the fridge and in the car underneath the driver’s side visor. And inevitably, I'll find spelling and grammatical errors in his content, and shriek about his misuse of "myriad" in a slide.

When I shared this with him, he laughed--because he knows it's true.

Jody Sawyer had it good

The downside of having watched Center Stage about 50 times is that now, every time I read an article about ABT, I automatically scan for Ethan Stiefel and Gillian Murphy’s names. Their story makes my heart melt.

A few years ago, ABT performed Giselle at the Wang Theater in Boston. Both Ethan and Sascha Radetsky were performing. MeanG and I seriously considered dropping $75 a pop for good seats but in the end we opted not to mess up our Center Stage crushes with reality. That and the fact that we were broke.

Aim for the flat top!

The apocalypse is truly nigh. It’s 3:30pm and it’s pitch black outside. The thunderstorms will break the humidity, I hope, but right now it looks like there’s a strong probability that the Eastern seaboard is alive with incidents of paranormal activity. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria. From my office window, I can see lines of cars with their headlights on. I love bad, strong weather but this is a little freaky. The rain is so loud that it sounds as if there’s highway traffic on the roof of my building. Lightning is coming down all over the place. I'm seriously waiting for the power to go out.

Auf wiedersehen

Why pretty much no one I know will be accepting phone calls between 9pm and 10pm on Wednesday night.

Tactical extraction

Target is a wondrous place in that it makes me wonder how I’m so incapable of entering a Target store and spending less than $80. Usually that amount is closer to $150, so really $80 is a step in the right direction. Target may be an evil corporation, but it’s still the closest and most convenient place to buy things that Scully will eventually pee on.

This weekend's Target mission? Clean up the downstairs bathroom enough so that it’s usable when J and K come to town tomorrow night. The imminent arrival of houseguests has made the cat pee eradication situation more urgent, but of course Scully is not cooperating. The bathmats in the upstairs bathroom are now her favorite places to misbehave. So we bought new bathmats and put the old ones downstairs under her box. Then we bought gallons of Nature’s Miracle enzyme cleanser and poured it on the bathroom floor to let it soak into the grout. The idea of forcing guests to live in a space that smells like cat just makes me cringe. I’m not that mean of a host.

Lunchboy turned 30 on Friday. We took him to Ginza and force fed him sushi. I tell him every day how old he is because he’s spent the past year and a half harping on the fact that I’m no longer in my 20s and payback, it’s a bitch. I’m not too worried, though. Work is sending him to India next week for 6 days and he has to take malaria pills. And worry about cobras. Ha. When the trip first came up, we tried to see if I could go along. I mean, it's India! But then we found out that he’ll be spending roughly 3 of those 6 days traveling to and from Hyderabad. Since tickets are about $3,000, it wasn’t worth it. We’ll go back sometime and do a proper visit, hopefully once they’ve eliminated malaria from the planet.

Bits

*I am in love with peonies. Most. Beautiful. Flower. Ever. I want to plant them everywhere and look at them for hours. Love them.

*If I hear that "Hips Don't Lie" song one more time, I will reach into my head and yank out my eardrums as a form of preventative medicine.

*Since it's the summer and my attention span is nil unless I'm reading something fluffy, I picked up "The Devil Wears Prada" at the airport last week. Surprise--it was actually good. Then I borrowed the first two installments of the Shopaholic series from ElleCharlie. I wanted to throttle the main character after the first chapter. Lunchboy almost took the book away from me because I came very close to hurling it off the porch while screaming, "Get your life together, you twit!"

*There is nothing better than retreating to the nice, cool basement after hosting what felt like a never-ending BBQ for people who either didn't RSVP or showed up 4 hours late. I left the boys upstairs doing battle in Resident Evil 4 and fled to the the guest room, a frosty beverage in hand. Cats, book, Nilla wafers, first season of Veronica Mars on DVD---ah, blessed retreat.

Don't Cha

New York was GREAT. I loved every minute of it, up to and including the torrential downpour on Thursday night that stranded us in an endless cab line and left us hunting for umbrellas in order to make a dinner reservation for which we were already late. I loved every thing that made NYC different from Boston. My first morning there, I woke up to an overwhelming anxiety attack over being in a city that big. But then I forced myself to remember that I’ve lived in cities that were bigger and lived to tell the tale, so I got myself out of the hotel room and realized that all I wanted to do was walk. I wanted to get lost and discover all the wacky things that pop up when you round a corner, to lose myself in the crowds and remember that there is an enormous power in anonymity. I tried to count the number of Starbucks and Ann Taylors in Midtown but got too distracted to keep an accurate list.

Gimp came into town on Friday and we spent most of the day lounging around a table in Bryant Park, soaking up the sun and people watching. If you ever find yourself near Bryant Park and you have to pee, they have gorgeous, $20 million public bathrooms there that are actually pleasant AND clean. Megan suggested I go stalk Tim at the Parsons School, but after having way too much wine the night before, Bryant Park was all I could muster the energy for.

Friday morning we went for a walk up Madison and found….the Pussycat Dolls. No, they weren’t hooking in Central Park—they were performing in front of the Apple store, surrounded by a very small crowd of people who had to be persuaded to scream, even when the Dolls gyrated so hard that I thought their hair extensions were going to fly off their heads.

Birds beware

Lunchboy's mother lives in Florida. Her house is in a quiet spot, and it abuts several acres of uncleared land where local wildlife likes to congregate. She occasionally sends us pictures of the creatures that venture into her yard. For the past month or so, she's had one particular visitor who swings by to drink from her bird bath in the mornings:



She says it's fearless and very beautiful. The bird bath hasn't attracted as many birds as it used to--what a surprise. Now if bobcats ate fire ants, that would solve a bigger problem for his mom.

Self doubt

Hello, my name is Moxie. I like the new Christina Aguilera song.

I'm not a bad person. Really, I'm not.

Yet another cat post

Many are the days when I make the comparison between having a human child and having three squawking, demanding, needy, inscrutable cats. I’m sure the real parents out there will set me straight in no time but before the voice of true parental authority comes down upon me, let me just say that at least you can train a human child to use the toilet. Cats? Not so much.

But wait, you say. Cats have a natural instinct when it comes to using a litter box. They are neat, clean creatures who take pains to cover their waste, unlike dogs, who are allowed and even encouraged to walk away from their mess without even a pang of responsibility. To you I say, meet Scully.

The reasons that I love Scully are numerous and deep. I have lugged her furriness around the country with me. She is my constant companion and we have been through a lot together. But when I got her from the MSPCA, she was depressed and that depression must have interfered with her natural litter box training, because in none of the places we have lived has she adhered to proper litter box etiquette.

In addition to her other quirks, Scully can’t stand sharing a box with other cats. This is a major problem, as we live with two other cats, one of whom insists on using Scully’s box because it’s THERE. To combat the inevitable accidents, I’ve bought every non-ammonia based cleaner I can find. Last month I finally bought a pack of those puppy training pads to try and keep the accidents under control. But after several weeks of repeated incidents, I finally broke out the big guns and declared a War on Cat Pee.

My strategy entails the following:

1. a clear vinyl shower curtain, doubled over and duct taped to the floor and the wall
2. a layer of absorbent Arm & Hammer dog training pads
3. an easy to clean jute rug to keep the boxes in place and prevent scratching of the other layers
4. two cat boxes, cleaned and liberally dosed with Arm & Hammer cat litter deodorizer

We’ll see how the opposing forces react to my tactics.

"Loin" is a really fun word to say

This weekend I let something back into my life that I’d cast out almost 16 years ago: pork. And it was all due to Lunchboy’s amazing culinary skills.

My aversion to pig products wasn’t based on religious or moral grounds. With the exception of a brief vegetarian phase in college, I’ve eaten meat my entire life. Ever since my sophomore year in high school, however, I’ve avoided all things porcine. That was the year my biology class dissected fetal pigs, a 10-day undertaking that was both repulsive and fascinating. Did I learn? Yes. Did I have fun taunting the boys in class when I cut the pig’s tiny vas deferens? Yes. But the smell. Oh, the smell. From the first day of the pig project, the classroom and whatever I wore to class that day stank of pig and formaldehyde (or whatever sanitized version of formaldehyde they let into schools back then). *shudder* That odor lingered in the back of my throat for years. Whenever I ate—or tried to eat—pig-related foods, all I could taste was that smell. All I could think about was that baby pig splayed open in the pan, its entrails pulled out so that I could poke a dull Xacto knife at its vena cava.

Then yesterday, Lunchboy made pork tenderloin in an effort to cure me of my pig repulsion. He cooks dinner on Sunday nights and last night he outdid himself. Though I still couldn’t look at or touch the meat when it was still raw and wrapped in supermarket plastic, he cooked it up with apples, cranberries and a orange juice/brown sugar sauce that made me want to lick the plate. There was no pig smell or taste, only sweet, juicy goodness. It’s official—I am converted.

Why dry cleaning day is popular at our house

No fight left or so it seems

Lunchboy is on a project in NYC right now, which means a free hotel room in NYC, so next week I’m going down for a few days to hang with him and enjoy a change of scenery.

Unexpectedly, I am also having dinner with H, my ex-best friend of 18 years. Friendships present some strange and unfamiliar territory, particularly when they end or fade away without warning. H fell out of my life two years ago, right when my life was falling apart. Until then, I’d never tested the whole, “crises show you who your friends are and who they aren’t” hypothesis, but it’s a very true statement. When things got bad, she vanished completely, without a warning or an apology. To be honest, I didn’t miss her at all, not even when she popped up in dreams or when I saw something that reminded me of her. All I felt for the first year or so after our friendship ended was relief. There were times when I felt like a horrible person for letting go of her so thoroughly, but then I’d remember how good she was at making everything about her and how much effort it was to be myself in her ultra-competitive eyes. Last week, I picked up a book that had been moldering on my Amazon wish list for a long time and it helped me get some perspective.

H and I will never be best friends again. Under no circumstances will I ever rely on her or open up to her in a real way, and I doubt that she’d want that kind of relationship with me, either. In all likelihood, we will never be more than email acquaintances from here on out and I’m ok with that. But for some strange reason I’m excited to see her next week, even though I’m already wondering what the hell to wear to dinner here, a place I’ve been dying to eat for years. Awkward, uncomfortable, overly optimistic or exhausting—dinner could be any one or all of these, but I still need to do it.

X and Y

This amused me. “Maneissance?” Who knew? I mean, how many male viewers of “24” DON’T love Jack Bauer? Personally, I’m always amazed that Jack never eats, sleeps or goes to the bathroom. This is a man who can’t stomach terrorists but he’s let Chloe, the single most annoying character on television, live for five seasons. Go figure.

Speaking of masculine topics, I must come up with a name for my fantasy football team. This is no small task. I am neither witty nor funny, so trying to be both in the space of 2-3 words is excruciating. Above all, I must not give away the fact that I have no clue what to do in the draft come September. Lunchboy is managing the league and the smack, it hath come down.

Analysis paralysis

My job is extremely boring right now. Not enough work means that I have way too much time to think—never a good thing—and lately I’ve been thinking about happiness. At one point last week, I was flipping channels and bumped into that horrible Renee Zellweger/Meryl Streep movie One True Thing.

At one point Meryl Streep is trying to explain to Renee Zellweger why she isn’t bitter or angry about her husband’s flighty approach to family time and fidelity. “Happiness is a decision,” she says. “It’s so much easier to be happy.” If only things were that easy. Or are they? Is having a positive outlook an issue of attitude or disposition, or both? When I get stuck in a negative frame of mind, I beat myself up about it and try to talk myself into being more upbeat. Sometimes it works. No one can be happy ALL the time.

I feel like I am always looking for more, but the more isn’t anything I can ask for. The things that mean the most are the things that are given freely, without prompting. They are gifts in the truest sense of the word, the kind you can’t go looking for beforehand. I think happiness lies in the ability to not look for more than what you have.

Out and about

I spent the past two days at a copywriting seminar in downtown Boston. Two days of getting lunch at ABP. Two days of riding the T rather than being stuck in my car on my way to the suburbs. I miss working in town. Also, I miss proximity to good shopping. After the seminar ended yesterday, I met Renate at Park St. and we hit DSW before getting some food at Faneuil Hall. Shoes aren’t usually my weakness but I fell in love with these and couldn’t leave the store without them. I’ve always wanted cute red shoes.

Before I met Lunchboy, the catty women in my department at work wondered how anyone could deal with being a consulting widow. The prevailing theory was that the consultant’s wives were too busy spending the consulting moneys to notice that their husbands were out of town. I laughed along with them but it’s kind of true. I'm spending my money, not his, but shopping does fill the time.

Social drinking

Got milk?

Mee-yow

All I can say is that our girls would kick ass all over this thing.

Chicken soup for the ???

It’s been an incongruous day. Everyone in my office is buzzing around in a strange mood, maybe because the finance department failed to refill their Candy Dish from Hell. When my 3pm sugar craving reared its head, I wandered into the kitchen, hoping for leftovers from someone’s catered lunch (this happens a lot on Friday). Instead of cookies, though, someone left the following on the kitchen counter for others to enjoy:

1. L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology: A New Slant on Life
2. an instructional video on Swedish massage
3. an instructional video on belly dancing
4. Strictly Spirituality’s How To Read Tarot Cards

Like I said, incongruous.

Home alone

It rained so hard yesterday that the windows near my office were shaking and the windows themselves were leaking. All I could think about was how wet the basement probably was. We finally put the stupid sump pump away about ten days ago and promptly received the most astronomically high energy bill I’ve ever seen. Sump pumps apparently eat up a lot of energy, especially when they’re running 24/7. Who knew? But now, the specter of fishing the pump out of the utility closet, duct taping hoses together and snaking them out the window, all by myself. If the water was really high, I’d have to mop and towel and sweep it away alone. For some reason this thought totally overwhelmed me and so I avoided the situation entirely by heading to yoga class straight from work. Afterward I was too relaxed to care about flooding—or maybe I just inhaled too much incense. When I finally got home, the cats were hungry but dry-pawed and there was a bit of water in the basement but not nearly as much as I’d feared. No pumping necessary. I almost opened a bottle of wine just to celebrate out of relief, but held off when I realized that wine plus yoga dehydration probably wasn’t a good combination.

Laundry night

Helping or hindering?

What it's like

On mornings when I have a hard time getting up with the alarm clock (which is almost every morning), one or all of the cats shifts into Moxie wakeup mode. They are a tag team, a little cat pack, and when they get fixated on a goal, be it catching a fly or waking us up, they do not stop until the goal is reached. If I hit snooze twice, Griffin suddenly appears on the bed, her nose in my ear and her soft little body perched on my chest. She purrs so hard that she sounds like an outboard motor. Then she nudges me with her face and meows her scratchy little meow, telling me to get up NOW, mom, NOW. Some days, though, she’s just as lazy as I am and she climbs up my arm only to worm her way under the covers and flop on my feet, her warm, slight weight vibrating with contentment. Those are the days when it’s Cringer or Scully’s turn to get things started. Scully sits just out of arm’s reach and squawks until I move a body part and then she runs for either the food bowl or the back door. Cringer jumps up onto the bed and then back down to the floor, the thuds getting progressively louder the more determined she gets. She is Rubenesque and she knows how to throw her weight around. I am incapable of resisting their cuteness.

Random thoughts

Today feels like it should be Thursday. Strangely, I’m glad it’s not. But my brain doesn’t know that—I cannot concentrate on anything.

It wasn’t until I read Dooce today that I realized it’s 6-6-06. That’s supposed to be bad, right? Like fake Y2K bad or astrology bad? All I’ve seen is everyone being in a touchy mood and they’re not driving particularly well, which could translate to potential traffic badness.

Last night I fell on my face in yoga. Hard. We were doing a standing preparation for bhujapindasana and over I went, my cheek hitting the floor so loudly that the two people next to me looked up and then fell over, too. My face hurt in down dog for the rest of class. Another day, another down dog.

I am in love with salad right now. Not like Richard Simmons loves salad, but then his salad was designed by Jay McCarroll, so it's trendy. If I could eat salad every day for lunch and dinner I would. But when Lunchboy is home we tend to eat larger, heavier meals. He doesn’t understand my addiction to baby spinach. We went to a BBQ over Memorial Day weekend and he looked at my quizzically when I cut up my chicken sausage and ate it on salad with some yummy sesame miso dressing from Whole Foods. Maybe it was weird but it was GOOD.

Last night a fly got into the house. Bugs of any kind (unless they’re ants—for some reason they aren’t into ants) cause Griffin and Cringer to go into full hunting mode. They jumped in the air and tried to catch the fly. They sprinted from one end of the house to the other, skidding on the hardwood floors, their tails waving through the air. They hunt as a pair—it’s indescribably adorable. Scully watches from the couch, with a look on her face that says, “No bug is interesting enough to get up for.”

Lightweight

My head is still fuzzy from being drunk on Saturday night. That's how old I am--vodka hangs on for a lot longer than it used to. We went to the ICA closing party with some friends. It was one of those events that boston.com talked up for days beforehand, which meant it wasn’t something I’d normally attend, but we have a friend who works at the ICA and he asked us to come.

Cleared of art, the space was perfect for a party. It’s a crowd I don’t usually spend time around, so the people-watching was spectacular. So was the food and booze. The nice thing about nonprofit parties, it seems, is that good restaurants donate lots of munchies. My favorite part was the Formaggio Kitchen cheese bar (best concept ever). Because the booze was donated, the bartenders weren’t shy about dispensing mindbendingly strong drinks. The vodka and cheese combination probably explains why I found myself on the bathroom floor at 3:30am, pressing my cheek to the blessedly cold tile and wondering if the nausea would ever stop. I’ll stick to wine and cheese from now on.

A peek in the life

From Jason, the impact of information addiction on the life of couples.

Right back where we started from

We’re going to California!

**excitement, excitement, excitement**

Yes, after much procrastination and hesitancy and laziness over the course of many weekends, we finally pulled the trigger and booked our vacation to the west coast for late July/early August. I can’t wait. Poor Lunchboy has sat patiently through all my California romanticizing. He’s listened to me wax poetic about the weather, the scenery, the yoga and the sushi, and somehow managed not to bludgeon me over the head about my constant search for a set of stairs that rival my beloved Santa Monica stairs. Ah, the stairs. I want to get off the plane in LA and go straight to 4th and Adelaide because I’m that insane.

This trip is important to me on a lot of levels. California is where I figured out who I am, and so it has a special place in my heart. I want to share that with Lunchboy because at some level I feel like he won’t fully know or understand me until he’s been there, too. And I want him to fall in love with the place like I did, to see its beauty and ugliness and totally unique personality. By showing him the life I built there, it opens the door to creating new memories. I made sure to make California my own after the breakup, but I haven’t been back to LA since it happened and going there with Lunchboy kind of makes the place ours.

Also, I’m super antsy. Must travel soon or brain will explode. Boston is a great town. It’s home but it’s small and I’m itching to see the Pacific again.

Too hott

After a hot day full of too much sugar, we watched the Tears of a Clooney episode of American Dad last night and somehow my dreams got all turned around. I dreamed that I befriended Paris Hilton. I got to tag along for all her nightclub hijinks and she bought me slinky/trashy clothes. The really weird part is that she turned out to be scary smart, like a math genius. I kept telling her to quit doing coke and go work for NASA.

I blame it on the heat. Time to install the AC, pronto.

Through the looking glass

There are few things as sobering as seeing what you think you want and realizing that you’re not ready for it yet. We went to a BBQ at Magpie’s house yesterday. The food was great, the people were nice and the kids—many, many kids, it seemed-- were on their best behavior. At one point the sun got too strong and we migrated back into the air conditioning, away from the epicenter of kid activity. I admit I was a little shellshocked by the energy of the under-8 set, but it had more to do with me than with the kids. I did, however, fall in love with a little girl whose tiny black pigtails and big eyes made her look like a baby panda.Today another friend told me that shellshocked is a normal reaction for someone who’s not a parent, but it still made me wonder if I’m suited for the job.

Lunchboy wasn’t shellshocked at all. He was in a mood but if anything, being around kids made his mood better. He’s not ready, either, but he seems less intimidated by the idea than I am.

The other day he suggested that we get on a single insurance policy when our company does open enrollment in the fall. Every week, every day, our lives become more intertwined. But I still can’t give in to the momentum, not really. We take steps toward a larger commitment—putting all three cats’ records under one name at the vet’s office, linking our bank accounts, making serious, joint decisions about job-related issues. Encouraging? Yes. In the back of my mind, though, there’s still the voice that says, “How hard will it be to untangle these connections if it comes down to it?” It’s a simple difference in approach, one that’s been apparent from the very beginning, when he was more comfortable making the forward-looking statements than I was. Again, he’s comfortable taking the slow, deliberate steps and I’m uncomfortable skipping ahead past where we are. I’m unwilling to get too entangled before we’ve taken the larger step, to put that much on the line yet even though I’ve invested so much already. It has nothing to do with ultimatums or pressure to move forward. It’s just that once you’ve been through the untangling, you don’t ever want to do it again, not if you can help it. LC understood. Chick lit doesn’t hold a candle to real friends.

Attack of the creepy crawlies

I can see why this would be alarming, what the T being in motion and all. But I totally understand the conductor’s reaction. Rodents and snakes don’t bother me. Blood doesn’t make me heave. I can even handle those weird little millipede things that scamper up the walls and seem to be ubiquitous in Boston. But spiders inspire the kind of screaming, hair-tearing, arm-waving, jump on the furniture “kill it before it eats me” freakout that makes people wonder if I’m insane. What can I say? Spiders may be ecological necessity but they are also ooky, scary, ferocious little deathmonsters and I want nothing to do with them. Ticks are the only things that make my skin crawl more. *shudder*

This is where I used to live

Today my brother came by and took a vanload of furniture from my old apartment in Cambridge. It marked the last time that I'll be in that apartment--I'm dropping my keys off at the realtor this week. My roommate moved out a few days ago. Even without furniture or decoration, the place looked warm and friendly and inviting. After the last armful of things went down to the car, I stood in the apartment by myself and said goodbye. Call me crazy, but I had mixed emotions about leaving. I'm extremely happy and settled with Lunchboy, but the Cambridge apartment represented all the good aspects of single life. It was where I healed and came into myself as an adult. So when I left, it was with gratitude, fondness and a sense of completion that I closed and locked the door.

Getting it done

Despite the rain, my week has been pleasant, due primarily to the fact that both of my bosses are out of the office visiting our European contingent for a few days. They took their drama with them and in their absence I’ve been more productive than I have in months. It’s amazing how much work I can do when I don’t have unnecessary personal drama (and the stress it creates) to deal with. If it weren’t for the fact that I need them to come back so I can complete a few projects, I’d wish for them to stretch their visit out for a few more days (months). If only work could be like this all the time!

The other morning my commute came to a halt as a police officer on detail stopped traffic to let a family of geese cross the road. Mother goose, 5 goslings and then daddy goose at the end, all supervised by the cop. So endearing. This is what I get for reading too much Robert McCloskey as a child.

Check up on it

Playboy posted their list of the 25 sexiest novels ever written. I wish I could have been on the research team for that one. I wouldn't have voted for some of them--pretty much everything by Philip Roth turns me OFF.

In the cave

My mother always used to tell me, “Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it.” At the time, I didn’t understand why getting what you want could be anything other than a good thing, but as an adult it’s easy to see what she meant. The grass will always be greener and once you’re standing on what looked like fresh, new green grass, you notice that there are weeds and goose poop and that the ground is damp. Nothing is ever perfect and there are always challenges in every situation, no matter how rosy your glasses are.

When I moved in with Lunchboy, I was too happy to think much about his travel and whether it would affect me. I was so glad to get away from my smelly roommate that loneliness didn’t factor into my thought process. I mean, when you move in with someone you don’t think of it in terms of loneliness because, you know, you’re living with another person who’s around a lot. But Lunchboy travels 4 days a week, so I have the place to myself until he gets home on Thursday nights. I have my life and I keep busy but there are plenty of days when it gets lonely and isolating all the same.

Historically, I’m bad at living alone. My hermit tendencies emerge and I become a lazy, antisocial couch potato who leaves the house only for work and exercise. Take a class or get together with friends? Too much effort--much easier to stay home with the cats and watch reruns of Scrubs on TiVo. Then comes the depression and the mass consumption of those Whole Foods vegetable crisps and the next thing you know, I don’t remember how to interact with people anymore. It’s a slippery slope and one I can feel myself going down right now. The rain didn’t help—all I wanted to do was be home with the cats, reading a book and drinking tea. But now the sun is out and I feel the same way. Want to hear about the cats? I can tell you all about them because when Lunchboy is away and I have a quiet day at work, the cats are the only living creatures that I speak to directly, outside of random phone calls and that doesn’t count. I’m turning into a 31-year old cat lady.

Needless to say, it’s not a great pattern to get in. I remember living with Glenn in LA when he was never home and I got very resentful. I was unhappy because he wasn’t around much, but when he was in the house I was even more unhappy because he couldn’t understand why his absence affected me so much. Clearly it didn’t bother him at all. But what’s the point of being in a relationship if you end up doing everything by yourself?

It’s different this time but it’s still an adjustment. Maybe this is the time when I learn to be more socially active or get involved in a volunteer group or something. Renate once told me that you feel the most alone when you’re in a relationship with someone and there’s a lot of truth in that. Then again, an old shrink told me that if you feel alone in your relationship that something is wrong, so what the hell do I know.

It'll come again another day

Why does it feel so strange to see the sun shining? All that rain made me retreat into winter mode again and now I feel like a wizened old hermit eyeing the sky warily and with disgust. I don’t trust the sun anymore. It could start raining again at any moment—better to stay indoors just in case.

Last night I shut the sump pump off and then sat on the basement floor watching the water level in the French drain creep up and up. “If it reaches that line of dirt, I’ll turn the pump back on again,” I rationalized. But the water stopped short of the line and for the first time in days I fell asleep without the steady sound of water hissing out of the jury-rigged hose below the window.

Stupid rain.

The fun part of home ownership

Everything is wet. Shoes, car, clothes, house—all wet. The rain won’t stop, which is a good thing because it means there won’t be draught conditions this summer, but right now it’s a very, very bad thing, particularly for our basement. Yesterday the basement was WET, or rather FLOODED or, even better, UNDER SIEGE. Usually our basement problems are minor and can be fixed with the strategic placement of towels in a particularly leaky corner. But yesterday morning Lunchboy went to check on the towels and I thought the basement had eaten him alive because he went completely silent, or as silent as you can be when you’re sloshing through an inch or so of water.

“Why didn’t you come get me to help?” I asked when I saw the extent of the water on the floor.
“I was trying to protect you from the badness,” he said.

We concluded that God hates us and is punishing us with water torture because we’re living in sin.

For three hours, we battled the badness—opening the French drain, getting the sump pump going, sweeping water into the drain and rescuing boxes from the deluge. The sump pump hose wasn’t long enough to reach into the downstairs bathroom, so Lunchboy came up with the brilliant idea of duct taping the pump hose to a garden hose and then we snaked the whole thing out the basement window and down the sidewalk about 9 feet away. Eventually we got ahead of the water and things started to dry out a bit. I’m praying that the duct tape on the hoses holds because Lunchboy’s in NYC now and if that thing blows, I’m on my own. And the forecast says we’re getting another few inches of rain before the weather clears up. Oh joy.

Classic

Last night I dreamed that I was taking the GMATs but I hadn’t listened during class and I hadn’t studied at all, so I knew none of the answers. Vince from Entourage was taking the exam, too, and he gave me his cheat sheet (as if Vince would ever take an exam straight-up) but I still couldn’t match up the questions and answers, and time was running out. Everyone else was finishing their tests without a problem but I couldn’t even read the text on the page because it kept swimming around in front of me.

Ah, anxiety.

Cojones

This past weekend was the Somerville Open Studios and artists all over town threw open the doors to their studios, complete with big signs and bunches of orange balloons. We decided to go check it out and discovered that one of our neighbors is a very talented and accomplished artist. She does amazing sketches of botanical images and balls-—the testicular variety, not the bouncy plastic kind. The sequence of images on her studio wall went from garden to peony to balls. At first I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a very large lady slipper or what, but no, it was an 8’ high set of testicles. That’s a lot of balls.

They weren't cheap, either. You really have to like testicles to shell out $3000 for one of these. I really like peonies and I fell in love with one of her peony sketches, but I don’t have that kind of money to throw around right now.

We spent the rest of the weekend sitting on the porch watching people go in and out of her studio. “Think they bought a penis picture?” I’d ask.

“They weren’t penises, they were testicles.”

“There was a penis in one of them.”

“Yeah, but that was just collateral penis. It was all about the sack.”

It's a good point

Bligh's boyfriend got right to the heart of things when he was looking at a wedding invitation she got in the mail. "How come there are only 2 choices: accept with pleasure and decline with regret? What if we want to accept with regret or decline with pleasure?"

Want to know why Bligh is a total rock star? Read this.

Closets!

I finally got around to taking pictures... Unfortunately, we didn't think to take "before" shots, so these aren't as dramatic.

The hall closet:


The bedroom closet:


The basement closet:

Getting closer

They're friends--they just won't admit it.

The downside of landing a catch

I kind of love the “Sexy Son Hypothesis,” but apparently it’s a load of crap. I’m not sure who would be more disappointed—my mother or Lunchboy.

Red rover

My office is pretty open. Not in an accepting kind of way—we don’t even have casual Fridays. What I mean is that everyone’s computer screen faces outward, so if you go for a walk around the office, you can see what people are working on (or not, as the case may be). Needless to say, when I blog at work I write in Word. I think most people surf the web at work and I really couldn’t care less if I go in to talk to a coworker and see that they’re reading ESPN.com. More power to them. But today I went in for a meeting and came across my very married-with-child coworker surfing the personal/casual encounters section of Craigslist. It was awkward. He blushed. I pretended I hadn’t seen anything. My heart sank, though, and nine million questions ran through my head. Was he unhappy? Was he just looking for a 5-minute distraction from work? Or was he scanning to see what’s out there? The answer is none of my business. But it’s moments like those when I realize how naïve I am. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Ginger cat cookie monster

It’s official—I am no longer allowed to shop at Trader Joe’s by myself. I don’t know what it is about that place, but I am incapable of tuning out its siren song. The food is so yummy looking, so aesthetically pleasing, so inexpensive and tempting. I can’t resist picking up a bag of this or a sack of that just because it’s new and it looks fun to try. There’s no other way to explain how I go in there with a list of five things to buy and end up walking out with $80 worth of groceries. Our freezer is now stuffed with the fruits of my weakness, with frozen cioppino and orange chicken and mushroom risotto and, of course, three boxes of my beloved baked chicken tenders. They’re all dishes I’d love to cook in theory but I’m too lazy to attempt in reality. Why bother when I can buy them ready made? Maybe that’s the hook, then. Somehow Trader Joe’s knows that I love good food but I’m disinclined to get my hands dirty. They market to my laziness and oh, they do it so well.

Not for the faint of heart

Thank god. Someone had to say it, and I’m glad that it was her because she says it well.

Chicken rabbit dead

Men living longer means women are less likely to suffer the fate that Miranda from "Sex and the City" so feared: dying alone with only the cat to rake over her rotting bones. With the existing gap, women are more likely than men to be widowed — 71 percent of people over the age of 85 are women, and the majority of them will have been married. And being alone increases their risk of dying or getting sick. No one is there to help when they fall; they eat less, and poorly.

I’m all for men living longer but, according to this article, most women aren’t thrilled to have their husbands around after age 65. Am I a freak for wanting my significant other to be around for retirement, after we’ve spent 30 years working our asses off to earn our leisure time? And the whole “you’ll have to take care of them” thing doesn’t have any weight--he does all the cooking anyway.

It’s a timely issue, though. We just had to make a very difficult work-related decision, prompted mostly by the realization that there’s no point in betting on the future if you can’t enjoy the present. All the money in the world can’t squeeze extra hours out of the day and at some point you just have to decide what’s most important.

It stuck

This movie was terrible and it made me very sad because this one was so freaking awesome.

Shelves and storage and space, oh my

Everything was a mess on Friday morning. The wonderful, blessed people from California Closets were scheduled to arrive before noon, so Lunchboy and I had spent a chunk of Thursday evening cleaning out all of our collective crap from the bedroom and coat closets. It’s amazing how stuff just accumulates, even when you’re making a concerted effort to banish its presence from the house. There was not a single surface in the living room or kitchen that wasn’t covered with piles of clothes, umbrellas, shoes, luggage, various bags and backpacks, board games and yoga mats. We also found a sizeable stash of the plastic milk bottle tabs that Cringer loves to hunt and, apparently, shove under closet doors. It was chaotic, not in the least because the empty closets threw me off my normal morning routine of standing naked in front of the closet with a towel wrapped around my head while I try to decide what to wear to work.

The California Closets van pulled up around 10:30am and—fully dressed—I left to accomplish one of the many minor miracles of the day: scoring my Somerville parking sticker from the Dept. of Traffic and Parking. No more $40 tickets for abusing the guest pass, no more jockeying for spots on the non-permit street in time for street cleaning. My car now sports the most beautiful purple and white adhesive decoration known to man. When I got home, I pulled up right in time to see the parking officer making her rounds and I had to fight with myself over whether to call her over and tell her to kiss my sticker-bearing ass. In the end, I opted to avoid the drama and go inside to see what the closet man had done to solve our storage problems.

It was as if the heavens had opened up and beamed down light on our house. There were shelves and double hang space as far as the eye could see. I can hang up my clothes without them getting crushed by the mosh pit that was our closet! Even before I entered into an orgy of clothes hanging and shelf stuffing, I couldn’t imagine how we had lived without the new closets. It was, by far, the best money spent on home improvement EVER. Now we have so much storage space that we can’t fill all the new shelves. I will try to post pictures at some point, just so you can see that my domestic blathering isn’t totally baseless.