father figure

I freaking love my dad.

Sure, sure, there were tough times back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, when he was variously employed as a less-than-enthusiastic-father-of-three, and then an embarassingly-enthusiastic-divorcé-about-town, and my two brothers and I were forced to spend every second and fourth weekend with him in some tiny little house across town that didn’t have a proper lawn, never mind any neighbor kids our age, and NO NOT EVEN A TV SET GOOD GOD CALL DSS THIS IS CHILD ABUSE.

I mean, really — it was the late ’70s!  There were vitally important Evel Knievel specials to be watched!  And… and… very special episodes of Good Times!!!

But then I had a minor epiphany when I was about 17 years old, and realized that he did the right thing by divorcing my mom and living his life the way he really wanted to — or at least, one of the Right Things that were possible in that situation.  The other ones involving grinding away and suppressing his own personality in a life of increasing misery “for the sake of the children” or submitting my mother to electro-shock therapy so that her personality changed to the kind of person my father enjoyed spending time with.  At all.

Add to their basic incompatibility the fact that Dad doesn’t really like children, and he was basically in a tight spot.

I told my Dad, that day that I had my epiphany, that I thought he did the right thing after all, and we’ve been pretty tight ever since.

Now I live in that very tiny house across town, and can enjoy the sound of a house unsullied by the sounds of sitcoms and siblings, and occasionally I spend Saturday mornings on the phone with Dad, catching him up on my life.

Dad is the parent with whom I can occasionally use swear words, or refer casually to my days of casual co-habitation with various romantic partners.

Dad tries really hard to keep up with my changing interests, and pays attention when I talk about stuff I like, so he has some idea of what to buy me for my birthday.

This is in contrast to members of my family who can only seem to recall that I was once obsessed with Snoopy, and restrict their purchases to Snoopy-themed cards and novelty items.

Because, you know, I’m still 12.

So today I’m on the phone with Dad, relating all my tales of Derring Do, and he is ooohing and aaaahing most gratifyingly, and the conversation veers into the difficulty of finding furniture that is suitably dollhouse-sized to fit into this tiny little house on Cape Cod.

I mention a catalog company that my dear friend Saucy has recently brought to my attention, one that produces clean, modern organizationally-enhanced home and office furniture to gladden my little OCD heart.

Dad waits an appropriate period of time — a few minutes, maybe — and sort of coughs and says What was the name of that catalog?  …because, uh, because I might want something like that…

Elfa, Dad.  E-L-F-A.  And God bless your awesome heart, I know as sure as I know my name that you are writing that down on piece of scrap paper that you will keep in your wallet until my birthday in July, at which time you will present me with a $50 gift certificate to Elfa over lunch at the Squire, with a shy little smile and a modesty that continues to charm the socks off of me.

Thanks, Dad, in advance.  I love my hypothetical new shelving system from Elfa, because it reminds me of how you listen, and remember, and care.

love

me

let the learning begin

So I’ve been jetting up to Boston a lot lately, trying to get accepted to my school of choice for that elusive graduate degree.  (This effort would be greatly assisted if those who have been asked for recommendations would send them in.  Just sayin’.)

Most recently, I was back in the Back Bay for my admission interview, which was really low-key and more about me asking them questions than anything else.  Since I have, of course, already researched the hell out of the school, the program, and all of the faculty, I didn’t really have any questions to ask.

(Honestly, wouldn’t you be embarrassed to go into an interview and ask a question, the answer to which could be found just by reading the damn website? I know I would.  So of course I committed their website to memory months ago. It’s a sickness.)

So, lacking any truly cogent questions (I opted out of asking the silly ones, i.e., What’s your favorite color? Thai or Chinese?  Brontë or Austen?), I just told funny stories and made my interviewer wipe the tears from her eyes at least five times.  Which I think is a record for me in an interview.

I interview well.

But before any of this happened, I had to wait in the charming foyer of the renovated brownstone that houses the admissions office of the School of Management (wood paneling, chandeliers, recessed statuary alcoves, sweeping curved stairway with stunning wrought-iron railing, etc. etc.), idly checking my email and thinking I could so totally get used to this  when it occurred to me that I could probably stand a little freshening up after the arduous drive up from the Cape of Cod to the urbane streets of Boston.

So I flounced over to the ladies’ room (also charming, in a little nook under the dramatic staircase,with adorable little ivory pull-knobs on everything, which made me mutter can I live here?) and splashed my face with water, scrubbed behind my ears a bit, and did all those little tweaks and prods that we don’t even know we do when we’re in the bathroom.

Whenever I wash my hands I always want to immediately put moisturizer on them.   So I looked around the bathroom for the cabinet or hideyhole that women always find to stash such things in.

I knew I would find something, because

1. This is a women’s college, so if there’s one thing I know it’s that you will always be able to find little stashes of moisturizer, tampons, and advil if you are willing to look hard enough; and
2. This building houses several faculty offices; I have seen these women, and they look good.  No way is there not random toiletries around here someplace.

So I found a teeny tiny cabinet, opened the door and found:

1. Moisturizer (my favorite brand, no less); and
2. Some rather expensive hair spray.

I don’t usually use hairspray, but I figure these ladies clearly know more about looking good than I do, so I spray myself but good with the pricey aerosol, fluff myself up a few times, apply more moisturizer, and head back on out to the foyer.

Shortly thereafter, I was called in for my interview.  Which went well (c.f. above discussion re: wiped eyes).

All told, I was only there for about an hour. Then it was time to drive way too fast listening to music way too loud and on towards home.

When I got home, I realized that I had been molesting my hair the whole ride home, because it felt all silky and awesome.  I went into the bathroom to check myself out, and Lo! I looked GOOD!

This is totally bizarre because I am in the process of growing my hair out, and so it is all in-betweeny and weird-looking these days.   BUT with the help of the hair-styling savvy of the Management faculty at 409 Commonwealth Avenue, I was able to achieve temporary hair awesomeness.

This morning, the magic was gone.

This afternoon, I went to the store and spent way too much money on a bottle of the very same brand of hairspray.  Not sure it’ll work without the little ivory pull-knobs, though.

not dead yet

I took today off from work, as I was weak and frail like a kitten from the flu. Also, my head was pounding its way out of the tops and sides of my skull, which made it difficult to think.

Fortunately, it turns out that a rigorous schedule of sleeping, moaning, drinking licorice tea, and moaning myself back to sleep is pretty effective in getting me back into fighting trim. So I feel almost mostly better now that it is almost mostly time to fall back into bed, and I can hope to feel pretty tolerable by morning.

Or I’ll have a complete reversal and lose my voice by morning. Which also sometimes happens.

During my sojourn at home, I was reminded of what life was like when I did this every day, when I was a poor, wretched freelance editor, eking a wage out of inserting the serial commas and deleting the rampant, unnecessary apostrophes that sadly litter today’s romance novel manuscripts.

I didn’t do much but drive to the post office and grocery store every day, drive back home, and turn the blinding white pages of the latest missive from Pern with my trusty red pencil by my side.

Some days, I would take a walk around the neighborhood, taking very bad photographs of leaves and things, muttering insensibly to myself about all the great things I was gonna do someday, and how much I loved this “lifestyle.”

This crippling isolation, my friends, is what led me to blog in the first place. Please don’t make me go back there again. It is a dark, dark place.

So yes, I puttered about the house for most of today, when I wasn’t sleeping, or moaning — no wait, I think I did manage some simultaneous moan-walking — watched a little PBS, realized that my tearing up at the intro music and montage for American Experience was probably a sign of mental decay, or at least a high fever, but something about it is all so reminiscent of my early teenage years, which were all mixed up with swelling, surging John Williams soundtracks, Indiana Jones fantasies, the music from Epcot Center (I owned the album) and more re-readings of Jane Eyre and Little Women that I could possibly make you understand…

So I love PBS, right? We all know this. And they’re in the midst of a mostly awful but highly watchable series of Jane Austen-based flicks this month (Northanger Abbey, Good; Persuasion, Not Bad; Mansfield Park, Perfectly Atrocious; Miss Austen Regrets, Don’t Even Get Me Started…) And I’m in a bit of a feeble mental state just now, right? Maybe just a little emotionally vulnerable, perhaps a tad excessively open to sentiment.

But tell me you don’t clap your hands with joy at the last part of this final scene from Northanger Abbey.

Should I go back to moaning? I think I’ll just go back to moaning.

words to live by

So I’m at some lousy store, spending the $50 gift card that somebody who does NOT know me very well gave me for Christmas.  I actually loathe this store, as it gives me awful, vivid flashbacks to my childhood of penury, but hey, $50 is $50, and I have needs.

Today my needs are focussed on my breasts, as they so often are.

I have been in desperate need of a new bra or three for about 6 months.  I’m not crazy about the bra selection here, in this lousy crap-ass store, but I am desperate and the idea of free undergarments charms my black soul.

I am also in need — OK, “want” — of a cheap-ass webcam, because, well, because I’vebeen getting started on Seesmic and although I LOVE my new Flip camcorder, the translation from Flip to Seesmic is still a little buggy.  Seesmic is really built for people with built-in webcams on their laptops (i.e., mac people), so until I get my savings back up to the right levels after the holidays and can buy me a MacBook, I am still stuck using this crappy old desktop PC that has sucked air ever since we bought it over a year ago.

So I figured I would use some of my free money at the lousy store to buy a lousy webcam, and Hey! Whaddya know?  It is lousy.

So far it does the trick, it’s getting around all those buggy bits I was encountering because I wasn’t recording directly into Seesmic, but the video quality is FAR below that of the Flip, which is depressing.

So I don’t know.  I know I don’t want to spend any of my MacBook savings on another, better webcam, since once I have a MacBook I will no longer have this problem.

I’m afraid this is another case where the best move is Suck It Up and Save Money Faster.

legal mumbo-jumbo

What do you think? Do you think that of the two parties in an argument about money, in which one party disputed the wisdom of saving versus spending, and the other party — the pro-saving party — was HERSELF accused of being a poor saver, and was thereby provoked and incited to apply the term “jackass” to her chosen life partner…

In a case such as this, who do you think owes whom an apology?

Party the First, who asserts that putting money in an interest-bearing account in an established financial institution, such as a bank, is an unproven scheme of debatable, if not scurrilous returns?

or Party the Second, whose assertion of the basic jackassery of Party the First remains visibly supported by all present evidence?

now with inexorable consequences!

Today I amused myself by spending all my holiday gift cards and gift certificates. It almost ended in astonishing tragedy! because I couldn’t find one of the best ones: a gift certificate to my favorite yarn shop, Adventures in Knitting!

C’mon. Yarn shops have to have totally queer names. It’s the law. Just like haircutting shops (Sheer Magic!). You know this is true.

Of course it was one of those totally quaint gift certificates, all written out in beautiful cursive by the charming Irish grandmother of dozens who runs the place. I seriously think her name is, like, Maeve, or something.

God bless her, she has little patience for me ever since I dissed her favorite method for knitting socks, the infamous “Magic Loop” method. She thinks I’m nuts because I prefer the old fashioned, five-needle method. It may someday come to blows.

So of course when I go to grab the gift certificate (for fifty bucks!) and run over to the yarn shop to spend my lucre, I cannot find it. I turn the house upside-down. No dice.

So I call, and somebody who is NOT Maeve answers, and is distinctly less than helpful. (She asks me if I have the receipt. For a GIFT. Awesome.)

So I go hightailing it over there (see that? how I am now talking like my mother? hightailing it, indeed…) and just pray that Maeve is there. She is.

She gives me many disapproving glances over the tops of her reading glasses, but finally digs up the evidence of my mother’s purchase of the gift certificate lo these many weeks ago. In beautiful, looping cursive, she writes me out a new certificate.

I spend it. On this:

The Knitter’s Purse. It is wonderful beyond imagining. Also, it is black, not red. In it, I can fit all the complicated socks I am currently knitting. PLUS all my needles. PLUS all my little folded up patterns. *sigh*

NEXT I had a little gift card from Barnes and Noble to spend.

I went online for this, because Barnes and Noble is in Hyannis and we don’t go to Hyannis on Saturdays. Our people.  It simply isn’t done.

I knew I wanted the new biography of Edith Wharton. I was then inspired by this post to buy a little paperback of Middlemarch, because it’s been too long. That got me thinking about all the classic literature I gave away at Christmas (everybody got classic literature this year - all expertly matched to your personality! well-traveled grandfather? Kipling’s Kim! Social climbing aunt? House of Mirth! Slutty sister-in-law? Moll Flanders!).

I had given my mystery-novel-loving mother-in-law Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, and it had been painful to part with it, since I had given away my copy years ago. So that went in my BarnesandNoble.com shopping cart as well.

Then I thought how about how much I love Wilkie Collins, all that fabulously concocted gothic wonderfulness: fainting women, shrieking men, innocent heiresses, mysterious foreigners, nefarious baronets…

So I went looking for some more Collins fun. When I found this review of Blind Love, I knew:

Unjustly neglected tale of Victorian master storyteller’s later period. Blind love of Iris Henley for notorious Lord Harry Norland has inexorable consequences leading to fiendish crime. Based on a real-life case, enlivened by Collins’ intricate plotting and colorful characters. 16 full-page illustrations by A. Forestier. Preface by Walter Besant.

Inexorable consequences? I love inexorable consequences!

prithee, more badinage

In honor of the upcoming Jane Austen-fest promised to me by PBS this fortnight…

You just have to watch this parody of all I hold dear.

I… I weep. With joy.

good night irene

Today was a busy day!

I had a lot to do, and not many hours to sleep before I did it, so I set my alarm to get up at a reasonable time that would allow me to arrive at my work-related destination AND allow me to purchase a large steaming cup of coffee at my Nearby Locally-Owned Coffeeshop©.

But, curses!  I was foiled! As my alarm failed to go off, and I was instead awokened (see! I am tired! and ungrammatical! how charming!) by the boss-type-person, calling me on my phone!

I was of course grateful to have been awokened not too tragically long after my alarm was supposed to have gone off, but my lateness meant forgoing (a) a shower (b) my coffee and (c) more sleep, dammitt.

Fortunately, I had been in the midst of one of those totally vivid dreams that I have sometimes.  This one was a dream in my highly popular going back to school in a gorgeous location with lots of fascinating people and kicking ass genre.  It usually involves me setting up my new living quarters in some awesome Hogwartsian tower-room dorm, and wandering my new campus and meeting new friends and going to classes and drinking coffee.

YES. I drink coffee and GO TO SCHOOL in my dreams.  In my GOOD dreams.

YES. I have a total of THREE kinds of dreams.  Sex dreams, Chase Dreams, and Oh-Dear-God-Please-Let-Me-Go-Back-to-School-and-BE-GRADED dreams.  I am teh geekness.  Get used to it.

So the dream, it was great; the dream, it was vivid; the dream, it stayed within me all day, like the taste of really good pistachio ice cream that you can still taste in your mouth for hours after your cone has been consumed and tossed into the trash cans outside Sundae School.

All day, at times of stress, I would reach inside to the back of my mind and taste my dream again.  And Lo, it was Good.

So lots of things happened today, pretty much all of them good, and as I stumbled drowsily back into my house, feeling satiated with accomplishment and praise, I noticed my dream pushing outward on the membranes of my wakefulness and making its presence known.

dream me again

it is saying

and I am good at doing that

I can re-enter really good, vivid dreams if I want to

and I want to so I will

I think this time I will major in English

or British History

and try for that scholarship to study a year in Oxford this time

and

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

transparency is the new black

So we’re off to Syracuse for Christmas tomorrow.  Not that I want to, but I have to.  You know how it is.  In-laws, and all that. 

Well, at least going to Syracuse and being only mildly uncomfortable will relieve me of the obligation of staying here and being truly uncomfortable with my family.  I just wish I didn’t have to drive 7 hours each way to do so.

I’ll be back Tuesday night…

I know, I know.  I really hardly ever post here anymore.  I’m sorry.  I, uh, you see…

There’s someone else.

Now, the last thing I want to do is hurt you.  But I can’t help how I feel. 

If you need me, or just want to talk, I’ll be on Twitter.

If you know my name, do please find me there.  If you don’t, well, ask me. 

I’m still writing - quite a lot, in fact! - but more and more of it is happening on Twitter. 

I would LOVE to see you there. (Really.  Ask me for my username - I’ll probably tell you.  Just leave your email in the comments.  I’m kind of over being mysterious.)

i miss you too

So I blew off an evening with my dear friend Saucy due to extreme emotional exhaustion.  We had a date to watch a some Hugh Grant or Colin Firth movie or something, but I called it on account of Fucking Tired. 

And although I am sorry to have to postpone an evening’s debauch of watching emotionally stunted yet physically compelling British men (my Kryptonite) undergo unprecedented growth and maturation during a handy hour-and-a-half romantic comedy, you are all just going to have to take my word for it that we are all better off with me sitting at home with my cats and catching up on the blogs.

Alone.

I know, I’ll prove I’m not antisocial!  I’ll let you join in on the fun!

OK.  Here is how to detox like a (semi-retired) rockstar (THAT’S ME) after a long, wretched week of fighting off skeksis and nasssssty, tricksy hobbitses:

Start off at the grocery store on your way home from work.  Blow off your diet. Again.  Don’t backtalk me, just do it.  You can eat air-popped popcorn later and feel all virtuous and shit. In the meantime, doesn’t that ribeye steak look good?

(HINT: YES IT DOES)

Consider buying cookies for later.  For apres-steak. but pre-popcorn.  Suffer fit of indecision when faced with the bizarre choices presented to you by the boutique grocery store you shop at despite its elevated prices.  (You like it because you are lazy, and there is less distance to cover from the freezer section to the register.  Also, because they have better cheese.)

Forget the cookies.  It is too complicated.  If they had some nice, normal, Mint Milanos, that would be one thing.  But all they have are freakish, oddly shaped, bizarrely-named, Pretending-To-Be-Imported-But-Really-From-Milwaukee “tea” cookies.

OK fuck it buy the cookies.  You will need them later.  Now Flee.  Flee the public eye.

Go home and char up that steak but good.  Mmmmmm, fat-laden goodness…..

Now plant your butt in  front of your home computer and fire up some delicious bloggy love.  

We shall now embark on a tour of WHAT I DO WHEN I GET HOME AND READ MY STORIES.

Also known as: HOW I STAY SANE.

i.  Introduction

1.  I always start with a daily dose of Schadenfreude.  First stop: see whose life got seriously fucked up today.  I mean, it’s much, MUCH worse than whatever happened to you today. 

Today, were you:

• arrested?
• smashed in a car wreck?
• arrested for driving drunk?
• almost suffocated in your bed by carbon monoxide?
• arrested for driving drunk on a bicycle?
• burned down along with your house and all your possessions?
• arrested for driving drunk on a bicycle with many many drugs?

Then you are, in fact, doing OK.  In spite of the reports.

You will ALWAYS feel better after reading this blog.

It’s a start.

PART I:  THE FUNNY WORDS

2.  Quality counts.  The cream rises to the crop.  Tried and true.  The funny.  The mommy.  The ex-Mormon.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Dooce.  Go ahead, click around.  (Click  around! Click up! Click up! and Click down! Pack it up! Pack it in! Let me begin!  ahem.  pardon me.)

3.  The guy who once sent me a mix-cd of funny songs, just because I asked.  We are strangers.  Also funny.

4.  The Superbly Dressed Lady Who Has Better Taste Than You Do.   Not Martha Stewart.  Martha just thinks she does, and only really appeals to masochists.  Mighty Girl is awesome, and she is actually here to help.  Also, her baby Hank is wicked cute.  Click here for her store, where you will find everything you will  need for your holiday shopping needs, thoughtfully hand-selected.   OH!  She also does this store for babies.  Goddamn motherfucking overachiever.

5.  The Blogger Who Inspired Me To Blog In The First Place.  Still smartypants, after all these years.

INTERLUDE

Maybe you feel calm enough now to make yourself some tea.  Why don’t you just go do that.  Perhaps some nice Lemon Ginger!  Then come back, when you’re ready.

PART II:  THE FUNNY PICTURES

6.  A Web-Comic, Set in my Old College Town, Charming and Increasingly Well-Drawn.

7.  Unbelievably Erudite Dinosaurs. Who Also Sometimes Argue With God.  And the Devil.  And the Creepy Cephalopods Next Door.

8.  Comics Orgy.   This is where you start laughing so hard that you are suddenly making bodily noises that cause the cats to cringe with the indelicate shame of it all.  (They cover their eyes with their adorable freakin’ paws, they are so ashamed of the noises you are making.  With all the laughing. And the farting.)  If you never bothered to read Mary Worth or Mark Trail before, you will now.  In a whole, whole new way.

9.  And we conclude our tour of snarky web-comix with the math geeks.  They are smart.  And so are you, because you get it.

Now you are sitting in front of your computer, reeking of farts, thinking about Mary Worth, binary code, and boobies all at the same time.

HOORAY THEN IT MUST BE FRIDAY

PART III.  THE PEOPLE I MAY OR MAY NOT KNOW IN REAL LIFE

10.  My Girl.

11.  My Homeslice.

12.  My Imaginary Best Friends.

INTERLUDE

Go get yourself a goddamn cookie.

Ready?  We’re almost done.

THE GRAND FINALE

13.  CATZ

14.  SNARKY

15.  HOMESTARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUNNNNNNERRRRRRRRR

IT’S DOT COM!

Now take a deep breath.  Don’t you feel better? Somewhat decompressed?  Thinner, smarter, and more better in bed?

No?  Almost, but not quite?

Go get yourself another goddamn cookie.