Does Going Home Count as a Vacation?

Doug and I are going home to Virginia tonight. I'm going to spend the first three nights at my dad's and the last two with Doug's mom and stepdad. On Saturday Doug and his friends are having their fantasy football draft. I'm not allowed to call him while this is going on or else he will be forced to take ten shots and all of his friends will punch him in the face. Or something. I don't really understand sports.

Things I plan on doing while home:

• Eating a lot of food paid for by other people.

• Reading my novel, an article about the oil spill, and a manuscript.

• Sleeping.

• Worrying that our cat has found a way to kill herself while we're away.

• Playing with the world's cutest baby aka Doug's niece. Not only is she adorable, she also KNOWS SIGN LANGUAGE. I am not kidding. At 12 months she is already smarter than I am.

I've Been Busy

It's been a while. Things I have going on:

I had a show last Friday. I won't go into details other than to say eleven people were in the audience, and Doug was the only one who knew he was supposed to cheer. Instead of following his lead, they gave him dirty looks like it was a staging of Hamlet. If that happens again I'm going to start putting articles of clothing back on.

We had our last Anna Karenina meeting last week, and I immediately plowed through two of the shortest books I could find so that I could say I'd read more than one book this summer. One of the girls in the group also lent me My Life Starring Dara Falcon by Ann Beattie. I'm very excited about this, as I love Ann Beattie and thought I'd already read all of her good books.

Over the weekend Doug and I watched the movie Heartbreakers. It stars Jeniffer Love Hewitt, Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, Gene Hackman, Sarah Silverman, Ann Bancroft, Jason Lee, and Shaw Colvin who sang that song "Sunny Came Home" in the 90s. It is amazing, and is essentially The Client List of the early 2000s as the whole plot revolves around J. Love wearing tiny dresses and being so irresistably hot that she can have the world's worst personality and everyone will still fall in love with her. Update your Nexflix queue stat.

After Heartbreakers, I decided to lighten things up on Sunday night by watching a Dateline special about Hurricane Katrina. I sobbed for an hour, then went into work on Monday and decided to make myself even more depressed by finishing up an 18 page article in the Times about a team of doctors and nurses who were accused of euthanizing patients during the storm. It won a Pulitzer this year, and reading it led me to another article that won for best feature writing. It's about parents who accidentally left their babies in their cars for hours until the babies eventually died. The article is unimaginably heart wrenching, but it is also one of the most incredible things I've ever read. It made me decide to read every article that won a Pulitzer this year. I'm on my third which is about how a shocking number of day care centers are run by felons who manage to get funding from the state that they then use to help them launder drug money. Apparently in order to win a Pulitzer you have to write about something that will convince your readers that humanity is doomed.

Soon It Will Be Christmas

This morning I realized that between vacation time and Labor Day, I will only have one full work week in the next month. This Friday Doug and I are going to a wedding in Connecticut, and in two weeks we're going to Virginia for a few days. I have no idea how the summer is going by so fast.

Other things I have going on:

Getting my hair touched up two weeks ahead of schedule because there is a chance that Doug's ex-girlfriend will be at the wedding on Friday and I am convinced that dark roots are the only things standing between me and intimidating hotness.

I have a show next Friday here: http://www.genefrankel.com/presentation_content.html, where I will once again be performing my mermaid act. Do you have $15 burning a hole in your pocket? Come out!

I just finished Anna Karenina. Like half an hour ago. I have to figure out what to read now that I will no longer be toting an 800 page brick around in my purse.

Will You Accept This Rose?

Do you know what Monday night was was? If you don't, I'm sorry, that means we're not that close.

Monday night was the season finale of the Bachelorette. To celebrate this momentus event, I hosted an intimate gathering for two of my friends at Doug's apartment, as mine has no air conditioning in the living room (yes I am aware that I am going to owe him for this for a very very long time).

I love the Bachelorette, and the Bachelor. And not in an ironic way. Yes, I realize the show is sexist, and stupid, and fake. I don't care. It is the most entertaining thing on television, and often while I am watching it I will sit back and think, I love this show I'm so happy I am watching it. Last night's finale did not disappoint. Well, it did in the sense that the bachelorette quite clearly picked her finance based on who she wanted to sleep with most, rather than who she would be most compatable with for the rest of her life, but whatever. They all do that. I made lots of cheese based snacks, we played a drinking game involving the word "journey," and by the end of the episode the three of us were crying like we were the ones who had just gotten dumped on national TV. In other words, the night was a success. Only 5 months until the next season . . .

I'm Pretty

My roots have started growing out, and I had one too many at our Anna Karenina cocktail club last night, which means I woke up looking like this:

Thought

I was listening to a lot of Bright Eyes last week, and came to the sad realization that for about two years I was the girl in a Conor Oberst song. In case you don't know what that means, here are some sample lyrics:

"I'll call you eventually when I have the time, til then you're invisible."

"Me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split."

"The love I sell you in the evening, by the morning won't exist."

"I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt, but it won't be me
I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free..."

"I want a lover I don't have to love . I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck."

Oh Conor, you charmer. No wonder I spent so long chasing after disaffected hipsters. Thankfully I've moved on to modeling my life after a Tegan and Sara video. That is to say, confusing, Canadian, and awesome.

Beach Bum

We were only at the beach for two days, but that was long enough to put me in a post-vacation slump as soon as we got back. Fun things Doug and I did that make me want to escape from the city every weekend:

1) Went to the beach. Even at the shore it was 1,000 degrees, but that didn't stop us from running around in the ocean for an hour. I wanted to go out far enough that I could jump over the waves like I used to do when I was a little kid, but I'm apparently not as brave as I was when I was ten and only made it about twenty feet from shore. I guess when you get older you're more conscious of boring grown-up things, like the fact that you never so much learned "how to swim" as you learned "how to tread water, and not drown in a pool."

2) Ate a 5lb lobster. Okay, Doug split it with me. STILL. Its claw was the size of a baseball mitt.

3) Lost $20 at a slot machine. Okay, $40, but only $20 of it was mine.

4) Read the 170 pages of Anna K. I had left before our book club meeting tomorrow. KIDDING. I actually read six trashy magazines. DID YOU KNOW that according to Star Jenniffer Lopez wore an ugly expensive dress better than Blake Lively did, but according to US Weekly Blake wore it better? I did.

To make myself feel better I just bought a dress I don't need and can't afford to wear to a wedding in three weeks. Now it's time for me to go home and read 100 pages of a giant Russian novel.