so many people in my suitcase heart

I've been told -- and it makes sense -- that your 30s are so much better your 20s; you're more settled, more stable, you have a clearer idea of what you want even if you're not sure exactly how to go about getting it. You're more grounded. You know how to deal with yourself better. I'm not sure if any of that is true yet, but it makes sense, and it holds true for my early 20s vs. my late 20s. And at the risk of tempting fate: So far, 30 is so, so good.

I spent the last hour trying to figure out how to express how wonderful my 30th birthday has been. Fancy brunch and a musical with my family; a weekend trip to Charleston with J.; an incredible and thoughtful and amazing surprise party; another surprise trip still to come next weekend. Words aren't cutting it.

A birthday's not a birthday without a goat.

Or hanging moss.

Or parasailing (photo by J.)

Or sunsets on Folly Beach.

Or giant Dora balloons.

But without being able to show you the faces of the people who made everything this way, I can't even begin to explain what they mean to me and how loved they've made me feel in the last few weeks. So I apologize: These limp words fall so far short of what I want to say.

This pig wants you to know he's happy too, and also thankful for the corn and stuff.

it's a great big universe...

... and we're all really puny, in the immortal words of the Animaniacs, but donating to this actually made me feel like I was part of something pretty huge and pretty great. And this kind of brought tears to my eyes. And the list of prizes kind of made me drool. (Have you seen the Embittermints? Ha.)

fall stories

Pretty lake in New York, near where J. and I went camping this weekend. It was fun and lovely and cold, but not too cold.

Pre-camping, we went to Storm King, which is an amazing outdoor sculpture museum. For scale, I am sitting at the base of that sculpture. Big, yes?

Post-camping, we went to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. Also amazing. For scale, that is a tiny plane very far up in the sky. Small, no?

And, for the opening 30 for 30 goal, we have the first entry for #18. Behold, rust:

how to fix an american quilt

My bed, with new Ikea bedspread. Not pictured: the quilt in question.

Slowly, apparently. I took my favorite quilt -- the one Angie's grandmother made -- to a cute little quilt shop staffed by cute little women. Some of the squares need to be replaced, but the binding and backing are OK, so shouldn't be a big deal.

Like all the other idiots in the world, though, I stuck the quilt in my closet in April, when it got warm, and left it there until the first cold night last week. All the other idiots and I think, "Hey, time to fix the quilts!"

End result: I'm waiting two weeks just for an estimate, and then probably until Christmas to get my repaired quilt back. I will be a cold, cold idiot until then.

In the spirit of... something to do with that story, I'm thinking about a little "30 for 30" plan -- 30 goals for my 30th year. (Technically my 31st year, but the year after my 30th birthday, whatever.) So far I have stuff like "knit one item that is not a blanket, hat or scarf" and "go for a 15-mile bike ride." I'm looking for self-contained, definitively achievable things, like items you can put a date on and say you've completed, not big things like "set more goals" (ha) or "don't be an idiot." Suggestions?

why god invented the internet

Blogs and online dating and all the Doonesbury comics you want... great, fine. But the Internet's one real true purpose is to share things like this and this.

the farms that made it through the last days of the century

So, my visit to the New York State Fair really, really, really made me want a goat or two or seventeen. Did you know goats don't really eat tin cans, contrary to my very extensive previous knowledge of goats? It consisted of a children's book I had when I was little, and I thought it was a reliable source, but apparently not. Goats are actually very particular eaters; they might LICK tin cans for the salt and what have you, but they would never actually eat one.

I would like a goat, please and thank you. But they are social animals and do not thrive alone, so I actually need two. Or, you know, seventeen.

OK, that's all.

(Speaking of the end of the summer, did this photo ever give me a lump in my throat. I just saw her yesterday, and we drew pictures and played games and read books and it was just like it usually is... but already with that backpack she looks so grown up, and I remember her when she was a tiny newborn, and oh my gosh.)

medium rare, with a side of condescension and some idiot sauce on top

"I mean, a woman who is really enjoying life, who doesn't withhold anything from herself, a woman who recognizes what she wants and takes it? To quote Posh, that's major. But the assumption that women are only trading one feeble attempt at attracting men (deprivation in order to be or stay thin) for another one (circumventing former vegetarianism in order to get a date) is just fucking sexist bullshit."

I have long had a blog-crush on Weetabix, and this post from her paid gig at Elastic Waist made me love her even more. It's based on a stupid, stupid, stupid article from the New York Times that I'd seen on my own last week and quietly fumed about, because it's all about women overthinking everything and contorting themselves in yet another way to make themselves attractive to men, and men judging women on some ridiculous crap that means nothing, and women doing a right-back-atcha move on the men. (The walkaway quote in this story made me want to stab myself in the eye. I was thisclose to getting away with feeling all superior about how no self-respecting woman would ever judge a man that way, and then... yeah. Thanks, Brice, freelance design writer.)

The way the article was written infuriated me too. And the Internet dating angle. And that weird undertone about sex that's in there also, about what women want and how they get it, and aarghghgh I'm so irritated. This has totally, like, harshed my Wednesday-night post-yoga buzz, man. Read this.

remember when he burned his hand?

I just finished reading Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. The author embarks on a project to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year; she's funny and likeable and a bit of a disaster, and reminds me enough of Elizabeth Gilbert (whom Julie apparently knows and thanks in the acknowledgements) that I wonder if they've started a new genre: self-deprecating memoirs of entirely relatable people taking on some kind of structured project to help them through a rough time.

She's probably someone I would like in real life anyway, and then I found her Powell's interview. When asked which fictional character she would like to date, she comes up with... Johnny Tremain. Ha. What a great answer. I think my sixth-grade self would have totally backed her up on that one.

count the verbs: an interactive text adventure*

I rue the day I accepted this project. I rue, I ruefully rue.

I'm rueing and rueing, and I'm waiting for the next episode of Top Chef to download from my iTunes account (more procrastinating! see, still looking at the screen! it counts!). I'm thinking about what to have for dinner. I'm feeling chilly and over-air-conditioned. I'm wishing two weeks would go by faster and I'm liking this quote:

Grace is when something is more beautiful than we deserve, more elegant and lovely than it should be.

-Ayelet Waldman

*You can count "rue" as many times as you want. Like, 45 billion times. There aren't enough numbers in the world to truly express all the rueing I'm doing.

hiatus from the hiatus

Suddenly, I sort of miss blogging. I believe this attack has been brought on by a massive freelance project I have stupidly undertaken... it is so truly massive, so overwhelmingly time-consuming, that I am desperately casting about for something that lets me tell myself I'm working (i.e., facing a computer) but can use to sneak furtive breaks in the actual work. Plus maybe I missed you.

I will add the link list soon, I know you are waiting with bated breath. Be back in a flash.

a story, by the fruit of the genius tree

The scene: J.'s backyard, during his going-away party. Gaby, Shannon, Ernie and I are sitting lined up in a row, and Gaby (age 4 1/2) is dishing on the latest from school.

Gaby: Bobby is my boyfriend. I am his girlfriend. I love him best and he loves me best.

[a few minutes later]

Shannon: Tell us what happened in school.
Gaby: Well, Bobby and I were playing kitty. And then he didn't want to play kitty no more, but I really wanted him to play kitty. I tried everything. I tried giving him a sticker. Didn't work. I tried giving him a hug. Didn't work. I tried telling him the truth. Didn't work. I tried everything! Didn't work. Then Nathan came and he didn't want to play kitty either. Bobby wanted to play Dragonball [I thought she was saying "Dragon Mom," which sounds better] and I did not want to play that. Nathan wanted to play ice cream store and I did not want to play that. It was very hard.

[some sort of tangent about heart-shaped leaves]

Me: So what happened with Nathan and Bobby?
Gaby: We played kitty.

And... scene.

How great is that. I love that kid so, so much, and I really needed some nice distraction from answering the 43rd person who asked me why I wasn't moving to Ith*ca with J. I am so not who I want to be in this situation... I want to be cool and calm and collected. Or, I'd settle for brittle and funny. (At various points during the day, Shannon and Alissa and I came up with quite a few good suggestions for what I COULD say, such as “I wanted to go to Ith*ca, but J says he needs me here to continue prostituting myself, to pay for his Ph.D.” Better, right?)

Anyway. Am not calm, cool or collected. Although I never really am any of those things, so I guess it's unreasonable to expect myself to be them now, under duress. Damn it. I need a sticker.

meme-ory, all alone in the moooooonlight

Aw, Angie tagged me! Hm, six weird things about me...

1. I have webbed toes. Just a little webby web between the second and third toes, higher up on my right side than my left. Tante used to sing, "This little piggie went to market, these two little piggies stayed home together and ate roast beef..." when I was a baby. I*n R*ppke was the only other person I've met with the same thing (besides my father, hence the genetic connection, although none of my first cousins have it).

2. I can't procrastinate. Not on big things, anyway -- they hang over my head and make me crazy, and it's easier just to do them than to worry about them. If I were in graduate school, I would be insane.

3. I am unable to walk down the street without petting every pettable dog in my path. It's a little bit of a compulsion, actually, and something that will probably get a hand bitten off some day.

4. I don't like James Bond movies. They are boring. Sorry.

5. I love vegetarian hot dogs. And I do not know another soul who finds them acceptable as food.

6. I'm unable to throw away books. I have trouble even giving them away, actually... I just saw the stack of 14 gigantic boxes full of them in my parents' basement this weekend and was terrified anew at someday having to figure out where to put them all.

postcards from new mexico

Last weekend, J. and I went to New Mexico for some of his family stuff. We went for a hike near his cousin's house. Look, it is the desert!

But there were more deciduous trees and fewer giant cacti wearing sombreros than I anticipated. It is definitely spring there.

A fence. Not pictured: The Rio Grande river, because it was really glarey. But we saw it.

Black and white = I M R-tistic.

These are the Dr. Seuss guys, no?

The next day, we visited Santa Fe, where we went into a store with this amusing barbeque sauce. The sauce helped me feel less bad about the delicious pork-filled tamales we ate on the street a few minutes later. I am not a vegetarian when the spirit of "cultural exploration" strikes, no sir.

We went to St. Francis Cathedral, right in the center of town. Outside it is a statue of the first Native American woman to become a saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.

Pretty votive candles in the church.

Santa Fe was really lovely. For all you "Rent" lovers: We did not open up a restaurant there, but the song was in my head all day.

missed connections

There's a sign in the locker room at the gym threatening to punish people who don't pay a monthly fee for a locker and then leave a lock on one anyway. Or something like that, I'm not sure; living across the street from your gym allows you not to need a locker and therefore exempts you from paying attention to signs like that.

But anyway, the sign:

Clean out your locker blah blah something WE WILL CUT LOCKS.

Why do I always, every single time I see it, think it's talking about hair?

pretty pictures

Photos from Europe are here -- in under a month, this time! A low bar, but I have cleared it. Low expectations, baby.

I wish I were still in Europe. If that were the case, I wouldn't be going to work, which would mean I wouldn't have been trying to merge onto Rock Creek Parkway at 6:50 this morning, which would mean some woman wouldn't have whacked into me with her car and cracked my fender. No one was hurt, no big deal, but inconvenient and annoying. Only one reason to want to be across the ocean right now, but a pretty decent one.

up in the air, junior birdmen

(Five pretend bucks to anyone who can explain that song to me... who are the junior birdmen? Why are they up in the air, upside down?)

I am leaving for Europe in one (1) week. That is seven (7) days from now, but really not even that, because my flight leaves mid-afternoon, so it is actually less time than I thought. I had the urgent need to touch my passport today to prove that it still existed, because I didn't really remember bringing it back from Canadia. It still exists, and is good until Oct. 17, 2010, in case you were concerned.

We will be going to four (4) (is that annoying yet?) (it is annoying to me) cities in less than two (ha! not doing it anymore! i am free from its clutches) weeks. I don't really know anything about these cities, which seems like something I should correct. Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, in that order. Ideas welcome.

re-upping

It was fun last year, so let's have a re-meme...

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?

Watched the world's highest tides come in at the Bay of Fundy. Cared about tides at all. Learned to like pretty much all seafood. Took a lot more work-related responsibility. Rode a bike.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Yeah... I always make them, and I always sort of keep them. Emphasis on the "sort of" part of that sentence -- I need some new ones now.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, and more people close to me are on the list (and the list of potential adoptive parents) for 2007.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, unless you count James Brown and Gerald Ford. Which I do not.

5. What countries did you visit?

Canadia.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?

More time for everything. More writing. More self-discipline (that's the same as 2005's wish, sadly). Some sort of coherent life plan.

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Er, hm. Is it bad that I already am not remembering any?

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learning to ride a bike. At last, my friends.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not riding said bike a little more, and not keeping some of my health-related resolutions from last year.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Not except for my DAMN TEETH, the evil bastards.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Bike!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Are we avoiding political topics? We are, right. Um, non-political: Margaret Atwood, for writing the most amazing book for 2006. Also Mark Haddon and several other authors, and the good folks of Bookslut for telling me about them.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

No politics, la la. Maybe some of those non-underwear-wearing celebrities, although I can't pretend I really truly care about that.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The verbatim answer from last year: If only I knew. To Amtrak, to car repairs, to various yarn stores, to my overpriced gym, to eating out way too much. [Plus: DAMN DENTIST. --ed.]

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Going on vacation with J. Seeing a friend I'd worried I'd lost touch with. Going back to African dance. Dumb reality TV.

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?

The Weepies' "Gotta Have You."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? both, sometimes
b) thinner or fatter? about the same
c) richer or poorer? about the same

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Bike riding. (Hello, theme.) Exercising in general. Cooking. Visiting my family.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Worrying, again. Watching stupid television shows.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Too late, but I had dinner with friends and went to Lancaster the next morning. We will be trekking out to Rockville to go to a party on New Year's.

*(now is where I started editing last year because this is getting boring and repetitive)*

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Top Chef. Or Grey's Anatomy, when I get to watch it with Shannon.

25. What was the best book you read?

Abovementioned Atwood and Haddon.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Weepies, also abovementioned. Thanks, H.

27. What did you want and get?

Love, happiness, etc., barf. And a digital camera.

28. What did you want and not get?

Nothing I'll admit to.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Little Miss Sunshine.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

29, and J. cooked a lobster. It ruled.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Second verse, same as the first: If I had gone a whole year with no cavities. This is getting really repetitive, sorry.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?

Nonexistant? But I did get really nice work-appropriate shoes.

33. What kept you sane?

All y'all. (I learned to spell "y'all" correctly this year, also -- thanks, Cindy.)


34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

McSteamy. I'm such a cliche.


38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.

Oy, again. Let's do another quote:

"As humans, after all, we become that which we seek. Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless." -- Linda Greenlaw

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Five green and speckled frogs, sitting on a speckled log, eating the most delicious bugs. Yum, yum, yum.

kept down by the Man

The Dental Man, that is. I walked in my door just now, home early from work on a beautiful sunny day, picked up the mail, leafed through it, la la happy. What is this? Oh, an envelope from my dentist. He must be writing to wish me a happy Chanukah, right? Wrong. A bill.

(I'm going to write this next part in white, because it is really scary. Highlight it if you're not afraid of the scary scary number.)

$1,061.84

I knew this bill was coming, and I knew it wouldn't be pretty. I already paid them $850 back in the middle of all the fun, but this payment was waiting on the dentist to check to see if my insurance company would waive its $1,000 per year limit.

Hey, guess what?

It wouldn't.

[Editor's retrospective note: Why did I think it was even a possibility? Why did the dentist's office? Insurance companies aren't exactly known for flexible and forgiving policies.]

This means that I've had $2,911.84 of dental fun in 2006. Here's the part where I could go into how I have a somewhat large credit card bill this month, and how I am supposed to buy plane tickets to Amsterdam, Prague and Vienna next week. But I won't. Instead, I will just say... damn it.

a statistically representative survey

Apologies for the long absence -- things have been v. busy, so I'm a little behind on my reality TV viewing... and thus have nothing to discuss on ye olde blogge. But I am in need of opinion and turning to you in supplication. Some questions, written in traditional poll-speak:

1. How do you feel about the following poem -- very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative or very negative?

2. Do you feel that the inclusion of the word "death" makes the poem appropriate or inappropriate for a festive occasion?

3. If this poem were read at your wedding, would you be pleased or not pleased?

(Please be advised that the pollster -- me -- loves this poem very much for some reason, and the lines "O, to take what we love inside/ to carry within us an orchard" bring a bit of a lump to her throat every single time she reads it. Said pollster is just not entirely sure it's appropriate for a bridesmaid-y toast.)

---

From Blossoms, by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

demanding a recount

I might take it back -- this interview makes Emily sound really terrible. The defense "I've worked in really good restaurants, so I couldn't possibly have made food that's too salty" is incredibly stupid. I hate what she says about the woman who didn't like her stupid upper-crust ice cream, and her incredibly snotty comments about Friday's and being a chef in general. All the rest of those people are chefs too, and they managed to figure out how to do this, so don't blame the show for your lack of creativity. I kind of can't stand her now. It's all sooo coooomplicated, you know?

I worked 20 hours in a row, post-election, and now I have tomorrow off. And let's just say I'm too jaded to say more than this, but I'm not sad about the outcomes of said elections.