finding faith and common ground

(Having now seen D*r and G*rlyman twice in as many months, I've decided that all song lyrics in my head belong to them.)

We fed 45 or 50 people in our house this weekend's pre-Thanksgiving festivities. At once. Really.

There was food as you have never seen food.

There was wine as you have never seen wine. Seriously, there are 24 empty bottles of wine in our recycling bin. We like wine here.

There was a red jello mold in the shape of the United States as you have never seen a red jello mold in the shape of the United States. People ate off the blue states first, so a big red glob of midwest and Florida was all that was left for a while. By the time we cleaned up, there was just a silver-dollar-sized chunk melting somewhere around Wyoming.

There were awesome friends as you have never seen awesome friends. They were all talking to other awesome friends, and it was really quite something.

There was cleaning up afterward as you have... well, you probably have seen cleaning up afterward like that after small-scale industrial disasters such as TMI.

But there was happy as you have never seen happy. You all had better come next year.

look, ma...

... no cavities! It's sad that this has to be so exciting, but maybe if I didn't have cavities every single time I go to the damn dentist, it wouldn't have to be. But! Not this time! I saw for the first time my new W*tergate dentist next door to my office. He is very sweet and solicitous and also the dentist to some famous-for-DC celebrities; moreover, he told me I have no cavities, and therefore I love him. When he said he'd see me in six months, I almost kissed him.

This:

is on first Google image search page that comes up when you type in "no cavities." Hallelujah and pass the spinach, Olive Oyl.

the paper they were signing said they'd never fight again

A Saturday morning moment of cosmic dissonance: I'm in the science and engineering library at the U of M*ryland, where J. goes to school, and I'm listening to his "Very Early Joan" (as in B*ez) CD, and all around me are SCIENTISTS who are WORKING on SCIENCE and ENGINEERING. The guy across from me looks like he hasn't seen the sun since the Reagan administration, and all around him are books with names like, and I am not making these up, "Levy Processes and Circumstantial Applications," "Service Design for Six Sigma" and something that literally has squiggly little symbols in the *title*. They should give tests before they let anyone in this place, and turn people like me away at the door.

I am very obviously goggling at this poor guy and should probably stop. But my library task for today is to read one book (with words, not symbols) I have to review this week and work on another one that I'm supposed to be editing, still, again, still still again still still still. Oof. I'm feeling somewhat fat and happy, as they say, as well as cosmically dissonant, and am not too inclined to start working on either of those things right now.

Ms. B*ez is giving me a bit of a headache.

These editorial cartoons about R*sa P*rks are really lovely. Interesting how many of them depict her in heaven... if there is a heaven or whatever, I sincerely hope no one has to take the bus there...

W*nkette posted the most brilliant of brilliant SCOTUS ideas yesterday: The baby panda for the next justice. Non-DCers, I have no idea if this has made national news, but the panda our zoo gave birth to a really cute cute cute tiny panda who just got its name last week. But up until then, many people (my coworkers included) were calling him "Butterstick," because when he was first born there were all these stories about how he was the size of a stick of butter. Anyway. This is a great idea.

And with that, I read. Or nap, maybe. Don't tell the scientists.

brown paper packages tied up with strings

It is fall, and that is my favorite thing.

I am now going to spend the rest of the evening unpacking all my junk and reading the new J*nnifer W*iner book with the ridiculous cover that I spent a ridiculous amount of money on this weekend. I can't remember the last time I bought a new hardcover book, but between this and Sunday's ticket to "In Her Shoes," I might as well start mailing my paycheck directly to Ms. W*iner. But I would, if she wanted, because I love her.

route 80 was snowed under..

... and the roads to the canyon were closed
for our safety, I suppose...

Before I forget: Girlym*n, people. They are amazing. H. and I saw them open for Dar last weekend and I've never loved a band so much or so instantly. I now go into Girlywithdrawal if I don't hear the CD at least once every two hours.

For a couple weeks, almost every day, I keep being reminded of Angie's mom's question: How good can you let things get? It's a really profound question in its way, a way I can't communicate right now, but... the things, they are good. He's good. We're good. Better than good, good in a way I didn't know things could be.

It's also kicking the crap out of my vocabulary, apparently. And, as most of you know, my natural superstition about jinxing myself (now joining forces with my paranoia about revealing things to the whole world wide web) doesn't approve of me saying much more -- in fact, it thinks even this has gone a little too far.

The sound of your voice is like longing feels
When you whispered my name in the dark.
And the thick yellow Brooklyn
Night sky through the window
Burned itself into me,
Deep as my history.

sixteen, going on sixty-four

Isn't it funny when something happens that you've wanted for a long time -- a thought like a rough stone that's been rubbed smooth -- and it's both nothing and exactly like you expected? And you feel like you're in a new place you never quite imagined, but also a totally familiar place that isn't really any different at all?

Quite apart from the above, someone at a dinner party last weekend brought up the subject of natural age, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I love the idea that internally, we all sort of settle at some age that expresses ourselves perfectly -- one of my roommates' natural ages is about 52, for example, because he's kind of a middle-aged soul, somehow. Another roommate's natural age is 13; he plays practical jokes that involve pantsing people and displays fanatical devotion to cartoons with scatalogical humor, but those are more symptoms of his natural age than the real reason he is just intrinsically 13. It's not the fact that he likes that stuff that makes him 13, it's being 13 that makes him like it.

But it works for some people and not for others. H. and I couldn't really figure out our own, and some of my coworkers were totally obvious and others not at all. I might be developing a theory that the people who don't really have a clear natural age are actually currently AT their natural ages, but I'm not sure if that really holds true.

Does this make sense to any of you? Several readers of this blog have natural ages that seem blindingly apparent to me, but I don't know, maybe it's less clear when you're looking at yourself. What are your natural ages? Thoughts? Feelings? Just want to share a self-indulgent metaphor about stones? Like sands through the hourglass... :)

katrina

No idea who this blogger is, but he or she has it exactly, exactly right.

close my eyes, make the pies all day

I set my alarm for 8 this morning, ambitiously planning to bake and clean and iron and yoga today. Instead, I finished the last of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and can't bring myself to leave my room and drag my laundry basket down the stairs. I need to make some sort of fancy dessert for a dinner party tonight and figure out just what exactly to do with the huge quantities of peaches and apples and blackberries Shannon and Gaby and I picked yesterday. Twenty-six pounds of peaches, three and a half pounds of blackberries and what, maybe eight pounds of apples between us? It's quite a haul, in any case.

Great Gaby moment: We're walking back to the car with all the fruit, and Shannon points out the ripening pumpkins in the field next to us.

Shannon: The pumpkins aren't ready yet, but soon they'll be nice and big.

Gwen: And orange.

Gaby: And delicious!

Delicious! Here is one of Shannon's photos, because I do not have my digital camera yet, but I swear I will someday:

makes you think all the world's a sunny day

Rrrrrrrrrroad trip photos are up in one of those fancy-pants Kodak Galleries -- go to the slideshow to start your exciting journey through our trip. Don't expect too many pictures of landmarks or anything, but do expect pictures of ducks, dogs and racist signs. Woo!

I was f-i-n-e fine

Tomorrow begins the glorious, glorious period at work known as the "dark" or "nonpublishing" weeks, in we do not put "new content" on the "site" so we have time to catch up on old projects and start new ones. Dark weeks are the most wonderful time of the year.

And I'm going to do an off-the-job dark-week project as well: Fix my damn room. For those of you who don't know, I have a gigantic room. Literally, five of my junior-year dorm rooms could fit in this room -- it has a sort of office-y desk area, a sitting area with a couch and a recliner, a bed area, an area where only things I don't use live.

But that whole thing about how you expand or contract to fill a space? True. I'm tired of the gigantic yellow room being a gigantic yellow mess. What's stopped me from dealing with this before, aside from abject laziness, is that it's not unliveable... the mess is sort of underground, in the structural organization. Like, I can see the top of my desk, but my phone bill from 2002 is cohabitating with my vacation photos from last summer, and the big zip drive I haven't used in three years is within easy reach but I can't find my favorite t-shirt.

Do any of you have organizational solutions you think I should implement? I'm thinking about going to the Container Store today just to look around and get ideas (read: I'm thinking about going to the Container Store today to wind up spending $50 on random things that probably won't help me but look pretty) but I'm pretty open to things. I would move furniture around, or acquire another piece of mass-produced Swedish yuppiedom if it would help.

Main problems:

1. Clothes.

  1a. Exposed clothes. Why, when I have all this furniture, do I need these plastic bins for my socks and tanktops sitting out on the top of my stuff?

  1b. Overcrowding. Must get rid of things. Must.


2. Bills and papers. Right now, they're in gray file folders that look nice and neat, but I don't want to pull them out and file things every time I get another piece of paper from the bank, so I pile everything on top of them, both obscuring their function and design.

3. Plants. Too many, most not thriving on sunless window sill (how am I slowly killing an aloe plant? Aren't they supposed to be unkillable?)

4. Weird bad area. The place near the couch where old things live.

5. Old laptop and printer. I need to sell these things on craigslist.

6. CDs. Except for the occasional new one, I haven't listened to a real live CD in like 2 years, since the birth of iTunes. Do you sell them to a second-hand place? Put them in a box in the basement?

So! I know many of you are organizationally inclined, so please feel free to offer any suggestions that have worked for you, especially in the bill-filing and clothes categories. Also, if you'd like to come over and magically complete this project for me, I would not complain.

a sad, sad limerick

There once was a girl from Lancaster
Whose book could be one huge disaster.
But she said with a grin, to her slight chagrin,
At least it is done, really actually done, and she, I mean I, won't be working on it any more because really it's actually done this time at least until an editor gets his or her hands on it which I hope happens someday because that would mean maybe I had an agent who maybe maybe please might be trying to sell -- sell? sell! -- the book and that would be so crazy that I'm almost scared to even imagine it so let's just concentrate on the fact that it's really actually done and shipped off to someone who's going to read it and comment which is scary but I'm not thinking about that either so let's just concentrate on the fact that it is really actually done. Which I already said. The end. Good thing I'm not trying to convince anyone to read my limericks, right?

why you think the 'net was born?

You guys, how great was the to-Minnesota-and-home-again road trip. I'm back. It was great. There was too much funny (Anne) and awesome (Anne) and revealing (the Minnesota farmland) and weird (Nan the Innkeeper) and scary (Mall of America! oh my god) stuff to even try to describe here.

Photos will follow -- photos from the borrowed digital camera that revealed what a truly crap photographer I am. I take badly lit pictures of, like, pretty patterns on the sidewalk and funny ducks near Lake Michigan. I take a LOT of badly lit pictures other people's pets and random signs. I do not take pictures of the stuff you're supposed to take pictures of on vacation, like your traveling friend or the stuff you're actually seeing, so please do not expect them.

Off to the beach with Angie and co. on Thursday, and then I will be back for good until Labor Day. I came back from this vacation feeling like I never ever ever wanted to come back, like I wanted to stay in Ann Arbor and go to coffeeshops and live in Anne's apartment with her forever, but maybe the mini-vacation will be easier to leave. Doubting that, but let's hope.

solitude standing

Things I thought I would never say, v. 1.0:

1. It's actually a little lonely living by yourself, even just for a weekend. Part of the time it was the solitary paradise I anticipated, but for about an hour or so, I really wanted someone there to talk to.

2. I just ended that sentence with a preposition and I don't care. Notify the grammar police.

3. Due to No. 1, however, I am finished with the editing of the book. FINISHED. EDITING. FINISHED. Imagine how much I would get done if I lived by myself, lonely or no.

4. I now own a two-piece bathing suit. Be not afraid, though, it covers just as much as a one-piece.

a double-kick drum by the river in the summer

(In the manner of Cindy, big bonus points for anyone who's been paying attention to trendy alterna-pop well enough to get that song reference...)

Remember how I said a little while ago that it's hot here? Well, it's still hot here. Shocker, right, since it's July and all. But even though the Turkey Hill mint cookies and cream was on sale for $1.99 at the new Giant -- an amazaing, beautiful monstrosity of a suburban grocery store that magically materialized about a mile from my house, thank you to all the gods in heaven! -- I don't like the weather any better.

I feel the way about summer that I think other people feel about winter, like reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder or whatever. It's 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity? I don't want to go outside. I want to stay in the airconditioning, hang out with my fan and sulk. But it's socially acceptable to feel that way when it's cold out; in the summer, people are like, "it's so beautiful out! let's go have a picnic! let's go walk the whole way across town! let's go hiking!" So there's this sort of lingering guilt about hating summer. I am here to say: no more. It's gross out. I have to get on the bus in an hour and I'm not excited.

I just read something in some random blog about fall, and I thought, "fall? fall doesn't even exist." I can't even imagine the weather being different and leaving hellish evil summer, even though I've obviously seen 26 summers turn to fall in my life. It always feels like this huge relief when it's time to dig out the sweaters, because I didn't really believe that time would ever come again.

It made me see the larger pattern, too: I take things too permanently. If my hip hurts from hyperextending it in yoga a few days ago, I think it's never going to get better. If the link to my favorite ambient music radio station isn't working, I worry it's broken forever. If someone I'm expecting to hear from hasn't written, I assume s/he never will. If someone is annoyed at me, I think we'll never get along again. I waste all this energy trying to adjust my reality to these really temporary situations that won't be around in a few months, or a few days or hours. My hip stopped hurting yesterday. The radio station played an hour later. The non-writer wrote back. The annoyed person, who may or may not have actually been annoyed in the first place, returned to acting normal in half an hour. And summer will end, right? Just not before I have to get on the bus. Damn.

what I learned is that grass really grows slow

I'm having a patience problem recently, and today I found myself gritting my teeth, literally. I always thought that was just an expression. I don't remember ever doing that in my life, actually thinking, "why does my jaw hurt? oh. guess that's why."

Gritting your teeth. The words even sound unpleasant, gritty grit in your mouth. Ugh. Shouldn't the 6 million yoga classes be teaching me to relax my shoulder blades down my back and breathe from the belly and let go of my thoughts and live in the moment? Isn't teeth gritting the wrong direction?

Sing it, C*tie C*rtis:

I spent all day yesterday sitting at a red light
'cause she told me to give it just a little more time.
And I lost my car in a parking lot.
Bought a newspaper and I decided to walk...

hot time, summer in the city

It is so freaking hot here. Every summer, EVERY summer, this happens -- it sneaks up all quietly somehow, until it's June 13 (happy day-before-your-birthday, Annie!) and you have everyone making the requisite comments about how DC is a swamp blah blah, and the Metro station seems to exhale hot breath all over you, and just the air out the window looks likes it's melting, and you need more ice cream than should ever be consumed by one person just to make it through the afternoon. Not to mention early and late evening.

Which is why I say bravo to this advice to deli-owners everywhere:

Don't waste valuable freezer-case real estate on Bomb Pops that you could devote instead to the Flying Sicle Brothers: Pop, Fudge, and Cream. I love Creamsicles. Love them! If the deli stocked Creamsicles, the deli owner could build a new wing on his house in about a month, because I would buy them, daily, frequently, early and often, even in the winter, because of the very deep, very real love. I would buy Fudgsicles, too, even though it annoys me that it is spelled "Fudgsicle" and not "Fudgesicle," and I would even now and then on a very hot day buy a Popsicle, even though eh.

Hear hear. I would also like to append to Sars' brilliant essay a note to my own corner deli: Please, please, get the Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches back. I know they cost $6.99 for 6, which is obscene; I know they frequently were smushed beyond recognition; I know you never had the really good mint ones they sometimes have at Safeway. I didn't realize how good I had it.

I broke down last night and walked the WHOLE WAY to the Soviet Safeway in the sticky heat after the first store (unnamed, as far as I know, although in my head I call it Pseudo Safeway because it only sort of sells Safeway-brand but isn't called Safeway, I don't know)didn't have any Skinny Cows. The only package they had was so damaged, so beaten and bruised, that it looked like it had fallen off the back of the truck and been run over 15 times in the middle of 17th Street. I wound up with a half-gallon of Edy's mint chocolate chip, and in my panicky no-ice-cream-in-two-hours withdrawal, I wound up buying some kind of no sugar added version when I thought I was buying the lowfat version. It has Splenda in it instead of sugar. And if I cannot be trusted not to eat a whole half-gallon of not-that-great-but-it'll-do-as-a-substitute lowfat ice cream, what am I supposed to do with something that has the addictive powers of Splenda AND lots of nice delicious fat? What, I ask you?

Eighteen hours later, it is three-quarters gone. I am not the sole perpetrator of the eating of the ice cream, but I am for sure the main one. I was eating it when I came home from an eventful day of work at 2:30 p.m. today. I am eating it now, at 6:32 p.m. I am helpless in its many-Splenda'ed grip.

So this is a long way of telling the nice people at V*rginia Market on the corner, who will never read this: If you can't get the Skinny Cows, if you insist on only carrying the same three flavors of Ben and Jerrys that just don't hit the spot in the summer, at least get a small freezer case for the Flying Sicle Brothers and let me help you put a new wing on your house.

spent so many nights thinkin' how you did me wrong

Wedding two of six down, and I just realized with a start that the remaining four don't pick back up again until Labor Day. Crazy! Wedding season hiatus. (And yes, at last night's festivities, they did play the aforementioned song, the ultimate inappropriate wedding song, about how Gl*ria G*ynor should have changed that stupid lock. It always is shocking to me that it's on so many wedding playlists -- is it that the wedding couple is thoughtfully putting others' interests ahead of their own, just because they know people like dancing to it? Is it that they are just totally not superstitious about potential implications of a song about a terrible breakup being played on their Very Special Day?)

Apologies for the stereotyping, but I was reminded just how much fun it is to be at an event like this with the right kind of gay guy. The one I was with last night, another friend of the bride who hadn't been invited with a date and didn't know most of the other people there, was just the right kind: funny, charming, wonderful dancer, brings you drinks, willing to be catty at all the right moments, way more considerate and good date-ish than any straight guy (maybe one exception, but just one) with whom I've ever gone to a fancy party. And this was FANcy -- at the D.C. R*tz C*rlton, black tie, incredibly beautiful with candles and red tulips everywhere, etc. I did see a bunch of college people I never was really close to there, and they were lovely and cool and more fun than I remembered. One of them lives a five-minute walk from me, and we will start hanging out, I think. I am starting to think that part of the reason weddings exist in their present form is so people can act way outside their normative social sphere, whether it's friendlier or sluttier or funnier than they usually are, and that's why weddings can be so good or so not-good, depending on... how they are. This one was good, though.

Very profound. I need some breakfast.

But, and this is the real reason I started posting -- for all the Narnia fans in the last comments, you can watch the trailer online here. Go, watch, win.

with wookie good relationship have I

Yes, I saw it, and was sadly disappointed in the lack of dressed-up Star Wars nerds seeing it with me. No stormtroopers, no guys with light sabers, no Patalie Nortmans with big prosthetic fake bellies, nothing. I guess I would have had to go opening night or something for that, huh. But as someone who had not seen either of the first two prequels -- or really paid much attention to the originals, thereby requiring visiting guest G. (of G. and C., of Lanky and college fame respectively) to provide a preliminary briefing on the way over -- I was still able to appreciate the story and the horrendously bad acting from formerly good actors. (The guy playing Anakin is also the guy who played Stephen Glass in "Shattered Glass," which was incredibly distracting because I LOVED that movie in an "oh my god this is so painful I feel like I'm going to lose my mind" sort of way.) And don't forget the insanely political overtones. Anyone who believes Leorge Gucas really wrote these movies 20 years ago and didn't intend any blatant reference to Beorge Gush and his administration has been brainwashed by the dark force.

Anyhow. I'm not sure I get the big debate over the whole thing, and in my mind the Lord of the Rings stuff is 80 million times better and deeper and more meaningful. If you are wearing a Bewchaka costume right now because you love it so much, I apologize for my blasphemy. But it was fun.

Also fun: Going to the American History museum Saturday and standing behind a kid who, upon viewing the display of first ladies' dresses, says (as quoted by C., somehow I missed this display of awesomeness), "Mom, this is just like a really boring trip to Old Navy." Yay for the youth of America!

from storypeople

My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy.

Love that, and love the let us pick one for you feature on that site. Perfect.

the power of three

Ickle was captain,
And Pickle was crew,
And Tickle served coffee and mulligan stew.
-- Shel Silverstein, "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too"

If, in my whole life, I can ever write anything half as good as Shel Silverstein's worst poem, I will have succeeded. His website has recordings of him reading some of them (I also had a tape of him reading from Where the Sidewalk Ends when I was little, and I used to play it on my red Panasonic tape player in the backseat of my parents' station wagon) and they're gorgeous. If it's still in circulation, I think I need to get that recording for my favorite two-year-old ASAP.

You -- well, I, at least -- don't just love these poems in that I-liked-it-when-I-was-a-kid-and-so-I-like-it-for-how-I-used-to-feel-about-it way, either. They're amazing to adults, just clever and skillful and actually really deep in their own ways.

That is all for now. Life continues unabated. I'm a little afraid of May, how busy it will be and how I will not be home for more than 4 days at a time for several weeks, and how the book will languish during that time. Ah well. I wish I had a flying shoe like Ickle's, but don't we all. Over the sun and beyond the blue.