The Palatial Quarters

What better motivation than mortification?

2007-10-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Way back in the fall of 2002, I decided at the last moment that I would apply for the Marshall Scholarship so that I could study literature in England for a year or two. Like so many goals I had that year, this one was hazy at best, and my application essay was fueled by the usual heady blend of caffeine and sheer panic. Nonetheless, I got called for an on-campus interview with a panel of five professors.

My preparation for the interview consisted of taking a nap, wearing eyeshadow, and making sure I didn't tuck my skirt into my underwear. In some ways, I'm glad I didn't spend too much time getting ready for what turned out to be THE WORST INTERVIEW OF MY LIFE.

Sometimes, situations are so overwhelming or horrifying that your instincts kick in, leading you to fight or flee. Sadly, my instincts are defunct, and I opted for giving the most inane, nonsensical, and borderline offensive answers to each of the friendly, yet penetrating questions asked by the panel. It's all a blur now, but as I think about it, I still feel queasy with shame.

The only part I remember clearly is being asked if I thought learning a foreign language was an important part of a liberal arts education. And I said, "No," which was perhaps the worst answer I've ever given. Regret instantly set in as I watched every professor scribble madly on his or her notepad (probably something along the lines of: "This girl is a waste of financial aid."). Needless to say, I was not a Marshall Scholar that year.

The silver lining of this story is that guilt and shame are tremendously motivating, as is that old desire to be at the top of my class. Which means that I have started to take my weekly Spanish class way too seriously, and am worried beyond reason about the fact that I cannot understand the grammar of indirect objects. Sadly, this is pretty much all I can think about, when I'm not thinking about food, sex, work, or that elusive five-year plan. I'm starting to feel a little conspicuous among my coworker classmates, all of whom are attorneys and/or engaged, and therefore too busy to think too much about their Spanish skills. So I find myself raising my hand too stridently, leaping a little too fast to answer the question, as though by getting it right, I could erase the mortification of THE WORST INTERVIEW EVER five years after the fact.

Or maybe I am just an incurable brown-noser. Hard to tell.

Listening to: "Poor Aim: Love Songs," The Blow.

Reading: The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz; The Book of Disquiet (albeit very slowly), Fernando Pessoa (as Bernardo Soares); and Windflower, Nick Bantock.

Recently cooking: bean and cheese quesadillas on corn tortillas.

Tristeza

2007-09-23T23:27:00.000-05:00

Update: No more tristeza! My friend eventually got in touch with me and we met up two nights later. Two bottles of wine and three pounds of Thai food later, our friendship was back on its feet.

I spent a few hours by myself this afternoon, walking around various Smithsonians in Washington, DC. Traveling by myself always makes me reflective in a way that I almost never am, even when I'm alone at home or traveling with someone. I feel kind of dreamy and melancholy; I walk slowly, thoughtfully. I wander into walls.

Around 5:30, after the Museum of the American Indian closed, I decided to walk down (or up?) 7th Street to the Gallery Place Metro Station. The sun was setting, and all the buildings seemed limned with hazy gold, like the "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" interlude in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's the kind of light that makes you ache for a reason to be sentimental, because the sun is asking you to remember that last hour of light from every summer day since you were a kid.

Today, I was feeling down because an old lost friend had stood me up for lunch. I don't know if I would have been more upset if we were still good friends. I guess that somehow I expected a better effort because we had so much time to make up for. And when I walked out onto the National Mall, into a burning beautiful evening, I wanted to cry for the loveliness of it and for my own pathetic self.

The Putting Edge

2007-08-27T12:23:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, my cousin and her husband drove from Michigan with my sister so that we could go black-light mini-golfing at the Putting Edge, which is surely the venue of choice for birthday parties among the hip 11-year-olds of Norridge, Illinois. Black light murals of psychedelic mushrooms were complemented by the latest tunes from Fall Out Boy and the overwhelming fug of stale popcorn and adolescent flop sweat. In a word, AWESOME.

I shot one over par and beat my nearest competitor by two strokes. Manfriend, sadly, shot about twenty-seven over par, losing by about fifteen strokes. He redeemed himself in a hard-fought air hockey match against my cousin's husband, so I didn't break up with him.

My sister decided to stick around for a few days, so Sunday consisted of sleeping in, going to the library, and discussing her future over coffee. She's making some big decisions today, so keep your fingers crossed for her!

Reading: Sex Wars, Marge Piercy (intriguing so far).
Just finished: Unbowed, Wangari Maathai (really good memoir); Money Changes Everything, edited by Jenny Offill and Elisa Schappell (a mix of mostly thoughtful and occasionally tiresome essays).

Listening to: Let My People Go, Darondo; Naturally, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings; Coal Miner's Daughter, Loretta Lynn.

(Image credit: www.cliftonhill.com, which looks like a much nicer place than The Putting Edge)

...they pull me back in

2007-08-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, Manfriend and I Amtrak'd ourselves back to my homeland, the southwest corner of the Mitten State, to attend a wedding reception for my uncle and his girlfriend of four years, who tied the knot last month in Colorado. The usual suspects attended: my family; various aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins' spouses, and second cousins; my late grandfather's half-siblings; and my grandmother's two living brothers. These three are the oldest members of our family, and it was great to see them together. One brother, the youngest of the six kids, has been living in a nursing home for three years, and hadn't left in the past eighteen months.

When he saw my grandma, tears began streaming down his face. Pushing her walker, she moved slowly over to his wheelchair and bent to hug him. We all wiped our eyes as they held each other for several minutes, talking and enjoying the sight of each other. I don't know if they'll meet again in this life.

When I left for college eight years ago, I was trying to carve out my own path in the world, far from the influence of my parents and the small communities in which I had been raised. I'm beginning to find, however, that I gravitate toward my family like a moon held in orbit by a planet's mass. I know some of my friends better than I will ever know some family members, but taken as a whole, the history and the ongoing bonds and traditions of family exert a powerful force. I imagine that this will always be true for me, and I'm glad to share these connections, while also being able to live a life of my choosing.

Reading: Unbowed, by Wangari Maathai (fascinating!); A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn (amazing!).

Just finished: Drinking Coffee Elsewher, ZZ Packer (great!); Chambermaid, Sarai Rao (terrible!); and The Keep, Jennifer Egan (so-so!).

Scenes from the Farm

2007-08-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

My sister is leaving to teach in South Korea in October, and so of course my dad had some advice for her:

Dad: Make sure you don't give your passport to anybody. Ever.
Sister: Uh, whatever.
Dad: I'm serious. Have you ever heard of white slavery?

Yes, the perils of international human trafficking are my dad's main concerns for my globe-trotting sister. I'm more concerned that she won't be able to find shoes that fit her giant feet for an entire year.

Just say NO to Stranger Danger, Seestur!

The French Press

2007-08-01T09:42:00.000-05:00

Lucky for you, the title of this post refers to my coffee maker and not a randy new sexual position, a la Cosmopolitan's infamous sex tip articles: "28 Moves to Make Him Totally Have a Big Orgasm," or "13 New Manly Moan Zones You Should Know About!" Reading Cosmo in my teens meant I was ever-so-prematurely in the know about how best to use scrunchie as a cock ring and how exactly the Reverse Cowgirl in the Pike Position with a Triple Salchow and a Twist will Blow My Man's Mind.

Not that a lonely nerd in the middle of nowhere needed such advice.

No, my post today is really about my lovely old Bodum French press, which has just come out of retirement. When Manfriend and I implemented our new Frugality Plan, I worried that I would have to wean myself from the caffeinated teat. Que lastima!

Fortunately, frugality is relative, so purchasing good beans and making my own coffee, while a little costly, will still be cheaper than buying a fresh cup every morning. Viva el cafe!

Charles in Charge...of Love

2007-07-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

Since I read a few celebrity gossip blogs and have the regrettable habit of watching Good Morning America while I get ready for work, it has come to my attention that a book called The Manny has recently been published. Truth be told, it sounds like Charles in Charge crossed with a Danielle Steele novel:

Jamie Whitfield, 36, lives on Park Avenue with her three children and her mostly absent high-powered attorney husband, Phillip, and works part-time as a producer for a prime-time news program. She hires Peter Bailey—29 and biding his time until he get funding for his software business—to plug the household's gaps and be a father figure to nine-year-old Dylan. The two, of course, are attracted to each other, and when Peter's money comes through, he doesn't tell Jamie. Phillip's temper tantrums when lacking pulpless orange juice or a wooden-handled umbrella are surprisingly funny, and a subplot where Jamie chases a trashy but potentially career-making story is strong. Jamie's co-workers are more realistically portrayed than her shallow friends, but even Jamie's children come alive when they root for mom's success. (Publishers Weekly, via Amazon)

If this were a Danielle Steele novel, though, Peter would have a twin brother named Jean-Paul, a darkly handsome world traveler who appears mid-novel and sweeps Jamie away on his jet as Peter yearns in the distance, finally realizing what he's lost. Jamie will enjoy the life of a pampered expatriate until she realizes that in the world of international glamor, everything is not as it seems!

Maybe I have a future writing copy on the back of paperback novels.

Anyway, I have to wonder if the mainstream media obsession with this manny nonsense is an expression of amazement at 1) a man debasing himself by performing caretaking work traditionally held by women (especially low-paid women of color), and 2) the fact that a man might be good at such work. I might consider the latter to be a small sign of progress, if it weren't treated like a colossal joke at every other turn in this culture.

Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Booze

2007-07-30T13:28:00.001-05:00

So, if J.K. Rowling were to write a story about the evening on which we bought the latest Harry Potter meganovel, it would probably share a title with this here post. Although, in the spirit of Spanish-language acquisition, I suppose the title should be something more like: Harry Potter y la Gran Copa de Tequila.

Or, Harry Potter y la Cabeza que Le Duele Mucha en la Manana.

It all began when Alisa came over to celebrate the new book and finish off a bag of limes her mom bought her at Costco a couple weeks ago. These were the saddest limes in all the world, mi amiga. Fortunately, Alisa is good at squeezing things, and we soon had almost a cup of beautiful lime juice. In went a good pour of triple sec, and then several cups of tequila. Dios mio. These margaritas were delicious!

Several glasses later, Alisa stumbled off to the Book Cellar, while Manfriend and I lurched off toward Women and Children First, a fine bookseller in Andersonville. (Buy lots of books from them! They're great!) All along the way, we saw loads of happy people carrying their new copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We were buoyed up on the shared excitement of the night. Or maybe it was the tequila. In any event, it was great fun. We each bought a copy (after making several new friends while waiting in line) and made our way home, only to fall asleep immediately.

The next day, we sequestered ourselves in opposite ends of the apartment and read like ones possessed. I finished the book first (because I am smarter) and then Manfriend polished it off while I was out and about with a friend.

My opinion: overall, I really liked the book. The epilogue was a disappointment of sorts, since it seemed to hew to a conservative line that Rowling seemed to be working against in the rest of the book. See, they're married and have babies now! It's a happy ending!

Despite my criticisms, though, I can't really wish more death and destruction upon Harry, et al. And I suppose a Return to Normalcy is what people might desire after upheaval (see: America in the 1950s).

For more stimulating discussion of HP7, check out my favorite feminist blog, Pandagon.

Lunch of Champions

2007-07-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie a la Palatial Quarters

1) Find a tupperware-type container
2) Dump in some frozen mixed vegetables
3) Toss a couple frozen veggie sausage links on top
4) Add about 8 tater tots
5) Sprinkle in various herbs and spices
6) Microwave and mush together
7) EAT

If Deborah Madison ever needs some help, she knows where to find me. Let's do lunch, Debs!

Incompetente

2007-07-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

Today, I woke up feeling great, ready to face the day. I made my train on time, guzzled a giant iced coffee from Intelligentsia, and got to work. Sometimes I amaze myself with my productivity and my pseudo-lawyerly skillz.

My Spanish class starts in half an hour, so I suppose I should be writing this en espanol para practicar antes de la clase. Yes, only thirty minutes stands between me and awesome fluency! I wish. It's great to be in this class with my coworkers, though, because we present our cases to each other in Spanish, to the occasional befuddlement of our instructor, Felix (not his real nombre!). Take for instance, this exchange regarding a domestic violence case:

Coworker:"Okay, so yo tengo un caso en que el esposo de mi cliente...um...?como se dice 'hit her with a wrench?'"
Felix: "No se. ?Que es un 'wrench'?"
Class: Spends 15 minutes explaining the concept of "wrench" until someone has the genius idea of drawing a picture.

Similarly, legal phrases and concepts that are common in the U.S. are not necessarily common in Felix's homeland of Mexico. Sometimes I pity poor Felix, who must be alternately fascinated and bored by our legal tales. Although, thanks to me, he now has a rudimentary understanding of the U.S. pension system, such as it is. Public service, hurrah!

I feel about 50% incompetent in Spanish class. Sometimes, I'm rattling away con fluidez, and then things are suddenly blanco en la cabeza. Como se dice, "durr" en espanol? My clients don't seem to mind my occasional difficulties with their language, and I've even laughed about the language barrier with a few of them who don't speak English at all. Others, however, end up speaking more English than they initially let on. I've had people call and ask if I speak Spanish, only to launch into elaborate stories en ingles. It works so far, amigo.

"The Whitsun Weddings," and my thoughts

2007-01-31T21:13:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, as I ride the train home at the end of the day, I pass homes and backyards and streets and see strangers going about their business, oblivious to my passing. Here in the city, we share these lost moments with strangers every time we step outdoors. (Or, if you leave your blinds open, perhaps you share moments you didn't intend to.) But if like me you've ever felt a vague melancholy as you pass by people living their lives as you live yours, Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings" will really hit the spot:

"The Whitsun Weddings" by Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And
someone running up to bowl - and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

2007 Book List

2007-01-31T17:04:00.000-06:00

I'm going to try to keep a running tally of books I read this year:

Passionate Minds - David Bodanis
From the Folks Who Brought you the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States - Priscilla Murolo, A. B. Chitty, and Joe Sacco
The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin - ed. Anthony Thwaite
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Currently reading Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. Manfriend--god help me--is reading a book about corn.

Indie boys through the years and why I hate them

2007-01-31T16:35:00.000-06:00

I was listening to Sufjan Stevens's Seven Swans a moment ago, when his twee little voice just started to piss me off. Just sing, man! Possibly, the Jesus-heavy content of his songs was also to blame for my insta-hatred. I'm getting tired of soft-voiced dudes and their sweet little songs--do you hear me, Sam Beam?! We're supposed to swoon for the humorless "poetic" imagery in these goons' songs, when in fact they're just tapping into the same hipster/yuppie collective unconscious that makes everyone name their kid Emma, Jack, Jacob, or Madeline. Ride the zeitgeist, fellas!

Anyway, my mood has improved with a heaping helping of Odetta. Hot damn, I love that woman. Give me a woman with a big voice and awesome songwriting/interpreting skills any damn day of the week.

Dork alert: Think of these indie white boyz as Wordsworth--popular and occasionally interesting, but ultimately irritating and unfulfilling. Eventually, you're tempted to smack him about the chops a bit just to make his pain real.

You're much better off finding yourself some Marvell or, to fast-forward to the 20th century, some Philip Larkin. Not only was Larkin a librarian (shout out to the Manfriend!), but he was a loner who wrote scathingly brilliant, sad, and funny poems. His earlier poems kind of rub me the wrong way, but once he gets going, watch out. I'll post my two favorite Larkin poems soon: "The Whitsun Weddings" and "Aubade." Melancholy and reflective, these have both affected me greatly over the past few weeks.

"Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" by Philip Larkin

2007-01-17T12:01:00.000-06:00

At last you yielded up the album, which,
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose –
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) –
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows the cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

18 September 1953

The Fantasy Poets No 21 (1954)
The Less Deceived (1955)

© The estate of Philip Larkin

At long last

2007-01-08T17:39:00.000-06:00

Oh, so many things have changed since August. For one, I got that job I was crossing my fingers for! And...that's about it.

Let's face it: drastic changes are few and far between in the life of a typical job-having adult in a steady relationship. Maybe too few and far between for my liking, but there you have it. I wonder sometimes what sort of adventures I ought to be pursuing in foreign lands, and if my ages 21-26 will simply be summed up in future years with a shrug and a, "Well, I guess I was spinning my wheels for half a decade."

So, a minor change for 2007 will be the reacquisition of semi-fluency in Spanish. De verdad.

And in the long term, it looks like grad school is on the horizon. Very exciting. Look for me in a Master's of Public Policy program, Class of 2010.

As far as Manfriend is concerned, well, he's a constant in the ever-changing equation of my future. So I've got that going for me.

Which is nice.

Overheard in Evanston

2006-08-24T15:52:00.000-05:00

Scene: Davis stop on the Purple Line. About 100 commuters throng the platform, wondering why the train is so goddamn late. Suddenly, a conversation begins between two homely twentysomethings in front of me, and the sheer earnestness of their discussion nearly makes my head explode:

Polo Shirt Guy: So, yeah, all my friends got tickets to the Hootie show, but I had to work.
Nasally Girl: Really?
Polo Shirt Guy: Yeah, and then my boss got VIP tickets to the after party.
Nasally Girl: Wow!
Polo Shirt Guy: And they all came into work the next day with all these pictures they took with Hootie, and I'm like, "Thanks for rubbing it in, guys!"
Nasally Girl: Wow, that sucks!

In other news, I think my ass has permanently fused to this chair.

Tears of a Clown

2006-08-22T15:46:00.000-05:00

So, I was recently transferred to the provincial offices of my agency. Folks from the central office don't make it out here very often, so it feels very much like a fiefdom, lorded over by Bewigged Betty, office manager of miserly supply distribution and wild dashikis.

Betty takes full advantage of the office's isolation by decorating it entirely to suit the whims of her questionable taste. A brief inventory of Betty's wall decorations:

1973 art show print of geishas mincing through a garden
Woodblock-style print of a Nubian princess, in profile
Relief print of trout leaping from a stream--it's in 3D!
Mirror painted with a scene involving two clown angels greeting a sad and newly-deceased clown into heaven
Read that last one again. Why on earth would you buy such a thing? And hang it on a wall? In a professional office?

Seriously, someone find a line in the budget for a $5 dorm poster of Starry Night or something.

Oh yeah, we have mice. And the attorney next to me listens to his voicemail on speaker with his door open. HULK SMASH!

...and I can't walk out

2006-08-12T23:08:00.000-05:00

Last night, Manfriend brought out his guitar and together, we learned how to play Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds." It sounds very Von Trapp Family Singers, but it was definitely the best evening I've had in weeks. Manfriend strumming, me singing, both of us no doubt annoying the shit out of our neighbors. I never really listen to music closely, but later, we sat and really paid attention to a disc of Elvis's early recordings and I was stunned. You hear the first few bars of "Jailhouse Rock" and all the cheap parodies you've seen flash across your mind--how can you even think of listening to this seriously?--but then you realize how good, how amazingly good, this song really is. A lot of these Elvis songs were like that. It'll wipe those commercials where "Are you lonesome tonight?" is used to sell cough syrup, or whatever, right out of your head.

Oh, let our love survive,
I'll wipe the tears from your eyes,
Let's don't let a good thing die, when honey
You know I've never lied to you...mmmmm...yeah...yeah

Truer words were never sung. Except maybe, "Innagaddadavida baby, can't you see that I want you, baby?"

Anyway, tonight I saw Talladega Nights with Gurl, an old college friend currently in the depths of unemployment. She seems in good spirits, though, which is no easy feat when those empty days are weighing you down. As for the movie, it was actually pretty funny, in the tradition of stoopid movies like Anchorman and Zoolander, both of which I own.

I applied for another job at my agency last week, and I've got my fingers crossed hard. I'd appreciate any crossed appendages you can spare. Thanks.

Things I like

2006-08-10T11:26:00.000-05:00

Kashi cereals
bars of soap (vs. liquid body wash)
tuna curry
books about 19th-century sexuality
music venues with seats
rural Michigan
my grandma's 1950s Woman's Day magazines
foggy mornings
Grinnell, IA
picking scabs
fizzy water
wasting time at work

The computer is drunk.

2006-08-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

Yesterday after work, Manfriend came by my office and we hied ourselves to a nice dinner with his friend, Le Critic, before the two of them saw Tom Waits at the Auditorium Theatre. Being the nice girlfriend that I am, I offered to switch backpacks with Manfriend so that he wouldn't have to deal with getting his laptop, etc. past venue security. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my keys out of my bag. Durr. That's right, locked out of me own apartment for oh, the next four hours. Sigh. So, I walked over to a friend's apartment and drank the sangria that was leftover from her party last weekend and fell asleep while she wrote a paper. This morning, I wrote to her about the rest of my evening:

after we left your place last night, i was all "let's get a cab," but manfriend, like a slavedriver, made me walk home. trail of tears 2006, i tell you. when we got home, i managed to brush my teeth and remove my mascara before passing out. i think our alarm clocks got switched, because now mine has a 4-minute snooze, which sucks! my old clock had an 8-minute snooze, which was just right. r doesn't even use the snooze, so i'm switching them back. 4-minute snooze makes me feel like i'm hallucinating.

Surprisingly, I'm not in bad shape today. I thank Pellegrino (posh!) and Kashi cereals for my miraculous recovery. Fizzy water is the wave of the future.

that old toilet flusher

2006-06-13T16:28:00.000-05:00

It's a funny, funny world.

I've been vaguely nostalgic lately for the late-high-school period of my life. It seems so sunny and naively carefree in the bowdlerized annals of my memory!

I found out recently that my best guy friend/frequent crush object/first kiss is engaged. I think I last saw him a couple summers after we had graduated from high school. I was working at a godforsaken cutesy chocolate shop in a touristy town near my parents' house, and I ran into him as he was chaperoning a group of summercamp kids. I don't remember what we talked about, but it was nice to see him. And now! Soon to be married!

I'm truly happy for all the affianced folks in my life, but this marriage stuff has reached epic proportions of late: One friend suddenly wed for insurance purposes. One became engaged to his English girlfriend. And then my high school friend's announcement. All in one week. Not to mention my two lady pals at work, who are getting married in September and April (tho not to each other). Sweet sassy molassey. Thankfully, no one is becoming crazed with bridal angst yet, but there is still time.

In the meantime, I'll stay happily non-married and cohabitational. Sex is so much hotter when it's immoral.

It's been a long, long, long, long time

2006-05-30T21:49:00.000-05:00

How could I ever forget you?

Things have been up and down in the real-life-o-sphere of late. I've been avoiding this blog like a true procrastinator, until it became a BIG FUCKING DEAL and god help a procrastinator when things loom large.

Tonight, I cat-napped through the gym-going window, so we made a pizza (with goat cheese!) and drank some wine. "Some" = 4 glasses. I am la trashed, as they say in France. In a very pleasant way that I will no doubt vaguely regret come morning. Why is it that once it has been established that we are not going to the gym, all bets are off and the booze and cheese comes out?? Slippery slope, indeed.

I've tried to care more than I do about such things, but anyone who's ever trespassed on the discussion boards of such weight-loss sites as Weight Watchers know that there's an equally slippery slope in the other direction: "So, I mixed fat-free Cool Whip with Splenda and fat-free peanut butter and froze it! And it's JUST LIKE ice cream!" Um, no. I admire people who can keep off hundreds of pounds for years and years, but surely there's a place in the equation for milk-fat. And, oh, I don't know...FLAVOR.

Oh dear, there's a girl having a tearful conversation on the phone out on the sidewalk...all I can hear is "...and then you have a baby with someone else!" Damn. "You told me to get out! Fucker!" The traffic is drowning her out now...

I do love living in Chicago. You really get a sense of how many people there are in the world, and your place in it--for better, or for worse. I find it comforting to know that 6 billion other folks are out there, limited to their subjective point of view, fearing, loving, and hoping that they've got it right about this life.

grand pianos crash together

2006-05-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

I've been gone for a month, and can no longer write a decent sentence. This is consistent with my current claim that I am losing smartness with each passing day. Manfriend of course disputes this, but then again, he is probably losing his smartness, too.

It's only a matter of time before I start tanning and voting Republican.

Durrr.

Sweet and Sour

2006-04-05T23:52:00.000-05:00

So, the GRE, it hath come and gone. I think I did pretty well.

My life is entirely consumed by union matters, collective bargaining, strike preparation, etc., etc. Several times today, I realized, "Hey, my heart is racing." I also feel sick with worry about 90% of my waking hours. Stay tuned for further developments.

I made cookies on Monday night, my first day off from union stuff in a week. My mom used to make these chocolate no-bake delights, and they were always my favorite: brown, glossy, oatmeal-y. And you don't even have to bake them; baking is always the most tedious aspect of cookie making.

Chocolate No-Bake Cookies

1 stick butter
2 c. sugar
0.5 c. milk
5 T. cocoa powder

Bring to a boil, then boil rapidly for 1.5 minutes. Remove from heat. Add:

0.5 c. peanut butter
1 t. vanilla
3.5 c. quick-cooking oats (stir in slowly to coat all the oats)

Let the mix cool for a minute, and then drop by spoonfuls onto wax or parchment paper. Cool. When it looks like dried poo, you'll know it's eatin' time!

I ate about a frillion of these, which helped my heart palpitations a little bit. Also helping: sex and red wine. I am a fucking chicklit novel come to life.

spring has sprang

2006-03-31T18:43:00.000-06:00

Every year around this time I just want to hop a flight to some far-off land and revel in my own foreignness.

I will have to settle for drinking French wine and pretending to speak German with my friend, Diversey Stinks.

Ja, dis iss das gut vine! I am gettink sooo droonk! Du bist ein beetch!

One less burr under my saddle

2006-03-27T11:18:00.000-06:00

So, I took a full-length practice Lit GRE yesterday: 230 questions in 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Sweet sassy molassey, that's a load o' literature. Somewhere around #150, weariness crept into my resolve, a feeling similar to that of driving from Colorado to Iowa and suddenly realizing that you've got all of Nebraska yet ahead. I made that journey by car approximately a zillion times during college, and I knew that when that feeling came upon me, it was time for a giant fountain Diet Coke. Ahhh...

Crisp refreshment 'twas not to be mine yesterday. So I soldiered on, and did much, much better than I had expected. So much better, in fact, that I feel unburdened and confident for the exam on Saturday. It's not an impossibility! Although I did misidentify passages by Donne and Whitman, two of the most distinctive writers EVER. Seriously. I figured, hey, those answers are too easy; surely the correct answers are Walter Pater and H.D., respectively. I told Manfriend (also an English nerd) about this, and he just laffed and laffed. I guess you had to be there.

Things I still don't know very well:
- Greek and Roman mythology
- any grammatic definitions beyond your basic verb, noun, adjective, adverb
- what the fuck a "lamia" is (I'd like to think it's what the popular labia call the uncool labia, but that's probably wrong)

Let me bring you back to the subject

2006-03-24T09:08:00.000-06:00

You're packed in your stack,
Especially in the back,
Brother, wanna thank your mother
For a butt like that.
Can I get some fries with that shake-shake booty?
If looks could kill,
You would be an Uzi.
You're a shotgun: bang!
What's up with that thang?
I wanna know, how does it hang?
-Salt-N-Pepa, "Shoop," 1993

The above lyrics will not be on the Literature GRE. Too bad, since they are forever lodged in my memory. Ditto many, many mediocre pop songs circa 1995-1999, my high school years. Judge not, hipsters: I grew up in rural splendor, nestled in the Rocky Mountains. We didn't get the Internet at home until maybe 1997, and even then, my parents weren't about to let me bandy their credit card about the 'net, purchasing the cool music I had read about in Seventeen. That meant that I bought CDs at Wal-Mart and through BMG. Ah, BMG, how I loved your "Overlooked Masterpieces" section, with its recommendations of The Boy with the Arab Strap and Gram Parson's GP/Grievous Angel, possibly my first musical purchases that don't embarrass me today, aside from Beatles albums.

I listened to the Belle & Sebastian album over and over, yearning to be the sort of person who bought a Belle & Sebastian album, a person totally unlike everyone I knew in my wee corner of the world. I wonder what I thought I would be like at this age. I couldn't have conceived of it as a teenager, but I think my life now fulfills all those dreams I had of being savvy and well-read, engaged in interesting work, and surrounded by interesting people, places, food, art, music. A smart kid among smart kids. I know it's the story of a million urban transplants, but that doesn't make it any less satisfying. So, rock on, younger self, rock on.

Speaking of acceptable nerdery: I'm working on the late Victorians now, specifically, Thomas Hardy. I have to say, the 19th century has been pretty great, aside from the fact that many of these writers were so prolific that I can't fit all their important works onto an index card. Hello, Tennyson. It's been a relief to delve into a century whose culture/politics/social concerns are so familiar. Ruskin didn't like the effects of industrialization? Me neither! J.S. Mill arguing against the subjection of women? I'm right there with you, John!

Best of all, while the classical and Biblical references persist in the poetry of the 1800s, the days of Absalom and Achitophel are far behind us. That means you don't have to know the entire Bible and the intricacies of early-17th-century English politics in order to understand the poems. I applaud this truly shoop-worthy literary development.

My Secret?

2006-03-15T22:18:00.000-06:00

I read The Economist before union meetings.

Curse you, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and your sprung rhythm, too.

2006-03-10T16:25:00.000-06:00

A refrain of "Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?" has been lodged firmly in my brain for about seven hours now.

I've never particularly loved Hopkins, or this poem, but something about it captures my mood right now. I'm leaving Chicago by train tonight, going east to Kalamazoo, Michigan. My parents have bought my paternal grandparents' farmhouse, and they're in the process of moving there from Colorado. We used to live right down the road, and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents until we moved away when I was six.

Slowly, we've unearthed a century's-worth of my grandmother's collections, opening the boxes I found so mysterious as a child. Secrets revealed: great-grandma's rubber girdles, enough white gloves to outfit a ladies' auxiliary, tiny handbag mirrors, leather wallets from the Chicago World's Fair, scrapbooks of greeting cards, Native American arts traded to my great-grandfather, steamer trunks with unfamiliar monograms. The force of these everyday items accumulates until the modern world begins to look strange to me. We drink the metallic, earthy water drawn from the well that stains the sinks brown; the smell is so familiar.

So, I'm going back, back, back. I think I might get lost somewhere in 1963...if I don't post again by Tuesday, send a search party.

"Spring and Fall, to a Young Child"

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Yoko, oh no, oh no-o

2006-03-08T10:04:00.000-06:00

So, having plowed through vast tracts of medieval and Restoration literature, I thought, hey! why not do some practice sections of the Lit GRE? So, I timed myself for two 20-minute sections of about 35 questions each. I got about 67% of the questions right.

I made two discoveries, though:
1) Swinburne referred to Chapman as the "high priest of Homer." Keats wrote another poem about Chapman before he died--like nearly every other Romantic poet--at a ridiculously young age.
2) I am smrt.

To study:
- Greek mythology
- the Romantics, and who wrote about whom
- 20th-century Afro-American lit
- Donne
- transitive vs. intransitive verbs
- Samuel Johnson
- 18th-century novels (esp. Richardson, Fielding)

I have to wonder how germane this whole exercise is to the identification of suitable grad school applicants by admissions committees. Surely, after this exam is done, a good half of what I've memorized will drift away like so much dandelion fluff. Or, it will all be superceded by "margaritas = good" and the romantic plots of "Grey's Anatomy" in my pile of mental index cards, unless I someday read all these works in full, thereby settling them firmly into memory.

But I still want to do well. Of course.

In other news, Manfriend bought tickets to this summer's Pitchfork Music Festival! And Neko Case's new album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood! Damn, it's good. Really, really, really good. Thanks, Manfriend!

Unleashing my word-hoard

2006-03-02T22:04:00.000-06:00

Today's reading was the uber-classic, Beowulf, which I have not quite finished. I first read this in an English Lit survey class the fall semester of my sophomore year, and didn't really take my time with it. Sixty pages of Danes and Geats gets shuffled to the bottom of the pile when you've got a lab report and a history paper due the next day and your English professor is never going to test you on your knowledge of Beowulf's martial prowess.

Other projects: A tasty dinner of "Arabian Spinach," featuring my favorite legume, the garbanzo.

Head 'em up, move 'em out

2006-02-28T11:28:00.000-06:00

I have spent the last few months figuring out how to wrangle the monthly volunteer reports into shape for data entry and accounting purposes. And I think I've finally got the whole thing down pat.

I deserve a cookie.

I wish I were really ropin' dogies up on the high meadows. Sadly, such things now exist for me only in metaphor and memory.

Vegetable Love

2006-02-26T17:58:00.000-06:00

Ah, more studying today. Hitting the "A List" from the Princeton Review's recommended readings. I feel as though I have forgotten everything I have studied so far, and my exhaustion from a busy weekend isn't helping matters. Even a hard workout this morning and a Diet Pepsi by my side can't keep me running strong.

I'm not sure that I really like Wordsworth. Those damn Lucy poems seem like weak cousins to some of the other poems I've been reading: Herrick's Julia poems, Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," the Marlowe and Marvell I wrote about yesterday. Wordsworth has no sense of humor.

Next up: Tennyson's Ulysses & a return to John Donne.

Today's Reading, Vol. 2

2006-02-25T23:37:00.000-06:00

1) Scads of bargaining-related documents. I feel more than ready to purchase a used car. Or negotiate a a frillion-dollar raise.

2) My union's new blog. Not much reading involved here, but please note my bold taming of technology in the name of labor solidarity.

3) "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," Christopher Marlowe. I memorized this on my own in sixth grade. Yes, I was an unpopular nerd who read her grandmother's college English textbooks. But look where I am now: writing about it on a semi-anonymous blog. That no-one reads.

4) "To His Coy Mistress," Andrew Marvell. If you don't like this poem, you don't deserve to live. The last six lines alone should make you weep for the inadequacy of every lusty proposition you've ever delivered, or received:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Other projects: Greek-Style Potatoes with Lemon and Thyme, from A New Way to Cook, by Sally Schneider (Artisan, 2001); Honey-Glazed Carrots with Lemon and Thyme, from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (2005).

Mother, May I Drive with Danger?

2006-02-25T23:22:00.000-06:00

I've become so nonchalant lately about Legy, Ye Olde Subaru. About six months ago, the right front tire started leaking very slowly, so that I had to put air in every two weeks. Two trips to the Sears Auto Center confirmed that the tire was fine, all was well, please pay $35 and leave quietly. I was not to be deterred.

"So," I asked the mechanic, "why is the tire leaking?" Note my keen investigative skills. He seemed surprised by the question, but set off to find the answer.

"Your rim is corroded," he replied, ten minutes later. The rim? Corroded? "Yeah, it's made of real cheap aluminum. The seal won't hold when the metal's pitted." I drove away in a panic over how much I would have to fork over to repair yet another of Legy's aging parts.

Silly me. Hear I am, months later, and my only expense is a couple quarters every 14 days to put a few pounds of pressure in the tire. Problem solved. Of course, one day, the rim will crack in half and sparks will fly as I careen down the Dan Ryan!

The truth is, Legy is holding it together like a real trouper. She's an aging showgirl with great gams whose first facelift is just starting to crinkle, but hot damn! she's still got it. I wonder: should I get her the tummy tuck and laser hair removal she really wants, or should I let the old girl age gracefully?

I suppose that this is all rather sexist, but having chosen a feminine persona for my car, I'm stuck. If it bothers you, picture me as Catherine Zeta Jones, and Legy as Michael Douglas, and we can all sleep easily tonight.

The gold medal in assholery goes to...

2006-02-23T21:31:00.000-06:00

...Dick Button, ladies' figure skating commentator. Seriously, someone needs to take this old horse behind the barn and put him out of his misery.

Dick sez (of an OLYMPIC ATHLETE): "Well she's a nice-looking girl, with a lovely figure, and nice costumes." Is this supposed to be some consolation? "Sorry you fell three times, but at least you gave some eighty-year old a hard-on!"

Take 2: "Take a look at her; you'll understand why she's done some modeling in her home country of Finland." Uh...

Take 3: "You'll find with female athletes who are young prodigies that when they mature, their bodies just don't work." Yeah, you big Japanese fatty. Go stomping back to Tokyo.

The hills are alive...with my self-indulgent whining

2006-02-22T14:58:00.000-06:00

These are a few of my least favorite things:

1) People who feed pigeons. This defies the laws of logic and sanitation. You are not the Bird Lady in Mary Poppins, nor are you a charming oldster on a Central Park bench tossing popcorn to docile birdies. You are dumping a loaf of bread onto the sidewalk, causing an unholy swarm of overfed winged rats in front of my building. I will hunt you down and make you lick the be-shatted sidewalk under the 90/94 overpass on Western if I catch you at it again.

2) People who read newspapers while standing on crowded trains. Yes, I understand that snapping the paper before you fold the page back is very satisfying. Balance that pleasure against my surprise as your fist whizzes past my face in the packed aisles of our morning commute. Shitting my pants in fear really detracts from the intense pleasure I derive each morning from stewing in my own sweat and the fetid breath of the seven people currently sharing six vertical inches of germ-covered pole.

Today's Reading

2006-02-21T20:26:00.000-06:00

Intro to the Restoration and Early 18th Century: Norton Anthology of English Literature
Author bios: John Locke; Samuel Butler; Samuel Pepys
Works: "Hudibras," Samuel Butler; "The Epistle to the Reader," from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," John Locke; a little bit of the diary of Samuel Pepys

The Economist - Just flipped through this one. The aging workforce cover story is somewhat applicable to my job.

Works I avoided: "Absalom & Achitophel," John Dryden. It's one of my longstanding nemeses, though none is greater than Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Back in the saddle, with relish.

2006-02-21T16:50:00.000-06:00

So, all those "how to be a blogger" pieces go on and on about how you shouldn't let your blog lie fallow for too long so that your readers don't lose interest...not much of a concern to me, as I don't have readers. Well, maybe two or three. I'm doing this for you, lonely readers!

This blog isn't an entirely altruistic endeavor, though: I don't have enough creative outlets in my life right now, unless you count cooking--which I don't, at least not these days, when dinner consists of foods from cans and boxes. But I am insanely busy, and perhaps overcommitted. I'm spending tons of time as a union officer trying to prepare for collective bargaining (fair contract by March 31, or we walk!), and, as the treasurer, I'm preparing various financial reports for those government bastards. It's all very interesting still, and quite cool to see how everything happens here at my agency.

I'm also studying for the Literature GRE, which is unfortunately scheduled for the very day upon which we may call a strike: April 1st. I cannot discuss this happy coincidence without a hysterical waver in my voice, though a rueful laugh and a glass of wine usually calms me back down. Studying for this test has been unexpectedly pleasurable, actually, which I take as a good omen. Surely it will be no worse than the LSAT. Strange thing: the LSAT studying actually held my interest for a good two months, due mostly, I think, to the weird satisfaction of learning how to game the system of standardized testing: Y'know, the trick is knowing how to take the test, not actually knowing an iota anything useful or beautiful.

With the GRE, however, I get to read Milton, Eliot, Poe, Marvell, Woolf--not necessarily as deeply as I would prefer, but enough to keep me in mind of what is good about this decision to go to grad school.

Squeak!

2006-01-11T16:50:00.000-06:00

We finally caught the mice who have been terrorizing our apartment for the past few weeks.

They died, side by side, on a big ol' sticky trap under the bed. So, were they moseying along on their way to poop on my pillow again, when they took a wrong turn? Did they stick simultaneously, or did one get stuck first? Did Mouse #2 try to rescue him, thereby dooming himself? Or was Mouse #2 lured to his dead comrade by mousey cannibalistic urges--thinking to himself, "Squeak, squeak!" (translation: "I'd love a nice mouse steak. Screw those Triscuits in the pantry!") before pouncing on the carcass of his colleague--inadvertently signing his own rodential death warrant?

So many mysteries. So many ways to express the idea of accidentally getting your paws stuck in glue that smells like peanut butter and dying of dehydration.

I'm just glad they were already dead so I didn't have to come up with a humane way to kill them. The labor agreement at the Palatial Quarters demands that I deal with the live vermin, and Manfriend, the dead. Usually we catch 'em still squeaking, which usually means putting the mouse, avec sticky trap, in a shopping bag, and delivering death in one fell swoop of a cast-iron skillet. On the porch. In my pink bathrobe.

Maybe I should make an executioner's mask to match.

The 5 Habits of Highly Successful Indie Rockers

2005-12-12T12:07:00.000-06:00

Thumbs up on last night's Calexico/Iron & Wine show. I've come to the conclusion, though, that unless you are really going to rock so hard that people are dancing--OR I love you and your music so much that nothing else matters--three hours is a long time to stand in one place, vaguely bobbing my head and shifting from foot to foot.

Sometime around the third Iron & Wine song, it also occurred to me that you could be Sam Beam in just a few easy steps:

1) Grow chest-length beard.
2) Write gorgeous (and sort of boring) songs that rely heavily on images of the following: dogs (dirty, drinking from cups, etc.); birds, particularly crows; and sad people. I had a better list last night, but time is cruel to my memory.
3) Perform these songs in a soft lulling voice that gets a bit louder when you get worked up during your more rockin' songs. Fans will eat it up when you enter vocal territory that is more "rousing mid-tempo" than "art professor on a 4-track in his bedroom."
4) Totally get shown up by artist/singer Salvador Duran, who busts out some operatic range and wicked mouth percussion and flamenco guitar and coyote yips. Top that!
5) Don't forget to wear a striped scarf.

Confidential to Anonymous

2005-12-08T16:38:00.001-06:00

Hey, if all your jokes depend on the listener being aware of the subtle differences between various left-wing political movements, you may want to keep that in mind when you lament the fact that you can't get laid.

Piss and Moan

2005-12-08T12:32:00.000-06:00

To recap my last 18 hours:

I went to a great meeting of young feminists, came home, ate a salad, drank some wine, argued with the Manfriend about canon-making and the ways in which we talk about art, argued with the Manfriend for real about stupid stuff, made up, went to bed way too late, woke up to another FREEZING day of ass-chapping temperatures, came to work on a packed train of chronic flatulators, then sat at my desk for four hours getting up the energy to get a cup of coffee.

And now I'm writing an email to tell our student workers how to use our stupid new database. The email's full of marvy sentences like: "Under the 'Time' section, check the box marked 'Completed,' which will cause a little date box to open. Type the date in that box." Yeah, that's right, the date! In the date box!

It could be worse, though! My office could be under renovation and paint fumes could be wafting in my door even as we speak!

Oh wait.

Yes, as Month Two of the Great Leap Forward continues here at the People's Republic of DoGooding, my wee workspace reeks of Benjamin Moore in an antiseptic shade of white that makes my face hurt. Such is life, though, when progress is on the line.

Currently reading: No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again, by Edgardo Vega Yunque. I love the way he piles on the words and images, then twists them just a bit to make unexpected connections. I'll reread some of his sentences, thinking, did he really just do that? I wish I had the book here so I could pull out one of his more astounding sentences. It's not just facile writerliness, though, but (I think) an attempt to get at the multitudes contained by the characters in a novel concerned with identity (on many levels), race, jazz, and politics. I'm only on page 18, but he seems to be pulling off the neat tricks better in this work than in The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Loisada Jungle.

The Longest Day That Has Ever Been

2005-12-02T17:00:00.000-06:00

Whenever I confess to my boss that I am bone tired, like I am today, she always asks, in a tone worthy of an interrobang, "Are you pregnant?!"

The answer, unless my sweet NuvaRing has let me down, is a resounding, "NO." Knock on wood.

But the fact remains that I have achieved a state of profound lethargy and mental dullness that began its onset 'round lunchtime, when I began sorting three years' worth of my union's financial paperwork into some semblance of chronological order. I followed that up with even more tedious crap that I can't bring myself to describe, lest my brain actually shrivel up and fall out of my ear. I can only hope that the evening will bring with it a raft of hedonistic pleasures.

Sadly, my plans so far seem to be the gym and a delicious dish called "Arabian Spinach," that I will whip up for myself and the Manfriend in a frenzy of domestic bliss. Later, we'll wild out with a bottle of wine and a game of Scrabble, followed by a nightcap of Ensure and prunes, and the mutual plucking of gray pubes. Old age has never looked so good!

To your health!
No, to our health!

Two worrisome habits and a new hope

2005-11-28T14:03:00.000-06:00

New habits for an old year:

1) My newfound intense love of the world's bazillionth hospital drama, Gray's Anatomy. I thought that doctors couldn't get any cuter than Noah Wyle. I was wrong. Hello, Patrick Dempsey.

2) My frequent and earnest use of "dang." That, and "holy moley." I didn't even realize I was doing this until Thanksgiving, when my grandma was telling me about the latest nursing home drama and my conversational interjections consisted of the above and "Oh, jeez." At first I thought that I was just cleaning up my act for grandma's sake, but then I realized that I am saying these all the time.

My last hope for redemption:

On the upside of my new swear-free lifestyle: as soon as I master the vagaries of cooking with cream soups and Jell-o, I'm ready to be married off to an upstanding young man of faith, preferably of midwestern origin.

One caveat, buck-o: the birth control's coming with.

In which I explain myself. Sort of.

2005-11-28T13:07:00.000-06:00

I do a lot of my best thinking in cars. So, when I found myself in traffic a few weeks ago as I returned to my Chicago home from some far-flung suburb, I did my best to quell the swelling hatred I inevitably feel toward my fellow drivers, and focus instead on the pleasant hum of my own thoughts and the incipient death-rattle of my 1991 Subaru Legacy.

Ah, yes, the Subaru: affectionately nicknamed "Legy," when I noticed that the "a" and "c" had fallen off her jaunty silver nameplate, probably sometime during the second Clinton administration. When I bought her, Legy was 13 years old and bravely fending off the ravages of Street and San's brutal winter street-salting policy, which ensures not only that ice doesn't stand a chance, but that ice's children and children's children will be sent to an early, and watery, grave. I paid $900 for Legy and have put about twice as much back in to repair the brakes, gas line, a couple valves, and other random doodads. Not a great investment, and truth be told, I bought a car only because I needed one for my current job, on which more later. But Legy's got a lot of vim and vigor despite her age, and her sporty engine accelerates like a dream. Sadly, she's rusting out bit by bit, spewing smoke when I turn the key, and her shocks are completely shot, hence the rattle mentioned above.

So, there I was, ensconced in my ersatz chariot, somewhere between suburban Countryside and my neighborhood, Logan Square, when I thought to myself, "Gee, wouldn't it be neat to write about myself and the things I like and put it on the Internet?"

Ah, the revelation that launched a thousand dubious entries.

But, alas, here I am--not quite ready or willing for Xtreme Confessionz, but hoping at least to be interesting. It's such a fine line between stupid and clever, after all.