My Amainezing Weekend!

Doug and I recently spent a weekend in Maine, and as you have probably deduced from the title of this post, it was pretty great.

Maine? In December? Some of you might ask. Yes! Maine! In December! Because while Maine is very cold in the winter it is also very cheap.

Traveling in the off-season is amazing. None of the restaurants are crowded, room rates, are low, and everything is decorated for Christmas. Who needs swimming in the ocean and tanning on the beach when you can get an Irish coffee in the middle of the day then hole up in your room and watch cable access shows about kittens up for adoption at the local ASPCA and cars for sale at the lot down the street?

Here is a rundown of what we did:

2 hour naps taken -2

Lobsters eaten - 4

Oysters eaten - 29

Dishes containing lobster eaten - 3

Drinks consumed before 5pm - 5

Christmas lights seen - millions

Stories told by cab drivers about drunk female fares getting out and peeing in

strangers' driveways - 1

I Only Disappeared For A Month Because I Love You

It's December! And you know what that means. It's the time of year for attending holiday parties, shopping for presents, and listening to me promise once again that I really am going to start updating my blog on a somewhat regular basis.

Devoted readers, I know you probably feel like you are in an abusive relationship with my blog. It draws you back in with vows that there will again be weekly posts, only to disappoint you by remaining unchanged for months. This time though, things will be different. I swear! The holidays have turned me into a new person. One who isn't so overwhelmed by life that the thought of writing a couple of paragraphs every week about something stupid her cat did for the amusement of four people makes her want to build a fort under her desk and never come out.

On that note, here is a recap of my Thanksgiving:

I took a train to Pennsylvania on Thursday morning. Because my grandmother recently moved into a retirement community and hasn't managed to organize her things enough to allow for guests, my father and I had to stay in a hotel by the airport. After checking in, we met my aunt and uncle at my grandmother's apartment, then went to dinner at a restaurant. This might not have been so bad, except that the kind of restaurants my grandmother tends to favor are ones where at least half of the other diners are falling asleep in their wheel chairs and she can complain about the poor quality of the food as soon as we get to the parking lot. This year was made extra fun by the fact that I'm a vegetarian and the only thing on the menu that didn't contain animal stock was a pasta dish that left a fuzzy film on my tongue after I'd eaten it. We then spent the rest of the weekend trying to organize my grandmother's things.

Exchange between my grandmother and I after my dad and uncle finished bringing Christmas decorations up from storage at her request:

Grammy: Have you been in the living room?

Me: Today?

G: Come look at the living room.

Me: (standing in the living room) What?

G: (pointing at the boxes they brought up) Look at this mess. They call this helping?

Me: They're going to clean everything up after you go through it.

G: When my friend Bea moved in, her children came and organized everything in her apartment. They set it all up for her, and she didn't do a thing.

Me: That's what your kids are trying to do, but you keep yelling at them. You think it's great when your friends' kids help them, but when your own try to help you, you complain about it.

G: (looking into a box) Oh look, a snow globe! I don't remember packing that.

I already have my holiday plans for next year and they involve staying in New York, making my own food, and eating leftovers in my pajamas for three days.

I'm Alive!

Things I've Been Doing Besides Writing For This Blog:

1. Going to Chicago in September to visit my awesome high school friends.

2. Joining 3 (!) writing groups.

3. Celebrating my birthday.

4. Trying to find a new roommate and freaking out because it's not going so well.

I've been SO BUSY. Actually, I haven't been that much busier than usual. The main reason I haven't been posting is that I've been SO LAZY. When I have more than two things going on at a time I tend to want to crawl in a hole and not come out until there's been some kind of war in which Hawaii wins and somehow transforms the rest of the country into a giant tropical island with a Pina Colada for the president. Anyway, now that I've started getting more of a handle on things and have stopped feeling quite so freaked out and overwhelmed, I'm going to do a better job of posting on something of a regular basis. Hooray! I'm sure this is exciting news for the five of you who still read this, and no one will blame you if you cut out of work a little early to buy a celebratory bottle of champagne.

I Need Your Help

Okay guys (yes you four), I need your help. I was just presented with an amazing opportunity and need advice on how to take advantage of it. Here's the story:

Two years ago my aunt somehow managed to win tickets to the Dr. Phil Show at a silent auction. (She later claimed she was just trying to bring up the bidding and had no intention of actually winning, but I think the fact that she chose to put her name down for them at all instead of I don't know, a trip to the Bahamas or a karaoke machine, tells you a little bit about her personality. This is a woman whose apartment occasionally resembles a QVC warehouse, and who will relate episodes of The King of Queens as though they involved people in her actual life.) What Susan didn't know was that show tapes on L.A. which is roughly 6 million miles away from where she lives in Philadelphia. Instead of doing what a normal person would and selling the tickets on Craigslist, Susan decided that it would make far more sense to fly across the country and stay in a hotel for four days rather than let them go to waste. Naturally she invited me.

The trip was insane. We stayed in a fancy hotel, hired a private driver to take us on one of those "tours of the stars" where you drive around the Hollywood hills like a stalker trying to peer through the hedges surrounding celebrities houses, and took a VIP tour of Universal Studios that we ducked out on early because we thought it was boring. By the time the Dr. Phil taping rolled around on the last day it was kind of anticlimactic. The studio was about 5 degrees and the guests were a slutty Miss USA contestant who was disqualified because someone found pictures of her drunkenly licking her friend's ass and a woman whose husband kept cheating on her. I have absolutely no recollection of the advice Dr. Phil gave them, but I do remember that it made no sense and that the Miss USA contestant was wearing an obscenely short/tight dress that quite clearly couldn't accommodate underwear and that when she wobbled off the stage in her stilettos the people in the front row got a very good view of her junk.

What is the point of all this you might ask? WELL, somehow my name must have ended up on a Dr. Phil contact list, because I just got an email saying that they're going to be taping the show in New York. Not only did they ask if I would like to be in the audience, they also presented me with the opportunity to actually be on the show. All I have to do is detail what my problem is and send in a picture.

!!! Never mind that I could probably get better life advice off the back of a cereal box. I HAVE to have a crisis only Dr. Phil can solve. What could it be? Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Preferably ones that have something to do with my actual life, but I'm not picky. Help!

Confession

Since I spent all of last week writing about Sex and the Single Girl, I think I might as well confess that a couple of months ago I actually bought and read He's Just Not That Into You. It was insanely depressing and I didn't add it to the list of books I've read because it's not so much a book as a very long Cosmo article written with the aim of convincing you that no one you've ever dated as ever been into you. Or at least that's what I took away from it. Reading it did, however, inspire me to come up with some criteria of my own compiled from personal experience.

He's Just Not That Into You If . . .

He cancels a date because it's raining.

He misspells your name on your birthday card.

He sends you an email telling you he's way too busy to spend time with you, then goes on to say that he's been sleeping until noon every day and going to tons of awesome shows.

He shows up 30 minutes late for your first date without apologizing, then asks you to pay for everything because he lost his credit card.

He cuts you then steals your stash. (This last example might be from The Wire. It and the movie adaptation of HJNTIY were both set in Baltimore so I sometimes get them mixed-up.)

SATSG Part 3

I SWEAR this is going to be my last post about Sex and the Single Girl. It really is one of the greatest things I've read in a long time, but this blog is starting turn into the Cliffs Notes for it and that was not quite my intention. So, I'm going to close off SATSG week with a few quotes from Helen Gurley Brown that aren't batshit crazy. Contrary to what my two other posts might have you think, my love for her is not entirely ironic. By the end of the book I actually found her really endearing and kind of wanted to be her friend.

So maybe she has a teensy bit of an eating disorder and has a less than progressive attitude towards the gays. She's also funny, self-deprecating, and frequently offers advice which she admits she doesn't follow herself. It's also the only dating book I've encountered that doesn't spend 100 pages telling you what it means when a guy doesn't call you back in two days or whether it's okay for you to approach him or whatever. Sure all of her advice about decorating your apartment, developing a personal style, and even getting ahead in your career is ultimately in the service of meeting a man, but at least it's in there. It was refreshing to read a dating book that actually acknowledged the reader's life outside the nonsensical hell that is the dating world.

On that note, here are some of my favorite bits:

On sexual difficulties: One of the things a single woman can have is a good sex life, and the disturbed boy is doing you out of it. A married woman has every reason to help a semi-potent man get back to normal, but you have no more incentive than a short-term tenant has in rebuilding his apartment. Not all of your beaux need to be he-males . . . just the one you sleep with.

On married men: As the eligibles become fewer, it becomes increasingly tempting to take a married lover; but it is best to know what you're in for. A friend who had a long-term affair with a married man had this to say: "It's a real education in human suffering and makes all past and future relationships less painful by comparison."

On whether to tell a man you're a virgin: I can't imagine why, if you aren't. Is he? Is there anything particularly attractive about a thirty-four-year-old virgin?

On being productive: It's my opinion that people writing "onward and upward" books (like this one) get carried away because as long as they're giving advice they don't have to do anything. There are acres of days when you don't feel like doing a bloody thing, but sitting stolidly on your fanny. That's okay. You can also start lots of things you don't finish.

Brilliant, right? But for every nugget of Amen to that I want to be your best friend advice, we also get paragraphs like the next one which make me wonder if the two of us could ever truly have been.

Suppose You Like Girls: You've already worked out a way of life for yourself to which I could contribute no helpful advice. I'm sure your problems are many. I don't know about your pleasures. At any rate, it's your business and I think it's a shame you have to be so surreptitious about your choice of a way of life.

Surreptitious? Is that really the word she meant to use? Whatever HGB, even if you don't approve of all my choices, I still love you.

SATSG The Sequel

I know that me writing posts about this book will probably get old if it hasn't already, but the three of you who read this blog are just going to have to deal with it because I am completely obsessed with SATSG. Okay, so the twenty pages devoted to styling your apartment with the help of a decorator and the twelve pages of recipes for things with names like Chocolate Angel Pie, and ingredients that include canned mushrooms and vanilla pudding mix aren't the most fascinating read, but I promise the rest of it is priceless.

In a chapter called "The Shape You're In," Helen Gurley Brown outlines her dieting tips as well as her opinion on "fatties." After reading this chapter, methinks HGB might have something of an eating disorder.

On Crash Dieting: If you'd like to crash away six pounds in two days, here is a diet men like. Invite one to join you.

Breakfast: 1 egg any style, no butter, One glass white wine

Lunch: 2 eggs any style, Two glasses white wine

Dinner: 1 steak, Finish the bottle of white wine

I'd suggest the weekend for the crash. Sufficient nutrition in here, but you get fuzzy.

(I think I know people who are on this diet, they're called alcoholics. I would also like to see a copy of her food pyramid. Moving on . . .)

On What Constitutes a Full Meal: A jar of yogurt or wedge of cheese could be lunch. Of course, you'll have to find something else to do during lunch hour. What about a juicy novel, or a nap?

On Eating on the Cheap: It's silly to say you can't afford protein! A cup of cottage cheese is 25 cents. Add some fresh peaches, and that's dinner.

On Cookieholism: Fatties never give skinnies credit for any will power. They prefer to assume you're one of the freaks. Well, I diet every day of my life by willfully selecting health foods. Cookieholics, like alcoholics, are only arrested, never cured.

She also goes on to say that she weighs 109 lbs and has a 23 inch waist. I have no idea what a 23 inch waist even looks like, but I would imagine that having one would also require you to shop at Baby Gap, which doesn't sound very chic to me. As I've decided to adopt HGB as my new life coach, however, I'm going to have to take her word for it. Now where did I put my glass of breakfast wine?

Cosmo Girl

On Wednesday I started reading Sex and the Single Girl. It is a dating guide written in 1962 by Helen Gurley Brown, the founder of Cosmo. It is also one of the most insane and amusing things ever written. When I started reading it I thought the antiquated advice would make me angry, but it's just so over the top ridiculous it's hard to get worked up about it. Also, HGB is HILARIOUS. Sometimes intentionally so. A few choice gems (trust me, there will be more to come. I'm not even half way through):

On where to meet men:

Work - The quality of the men you meet at work is usually pretty satisfactory. At least they are not chaps who go to movies all day in hopes of sitting next to a nine-year-old girl.

Alcoholics Anonymous - I don't know her personally but a friend tells me a friend of hers plucked herself a steady beau and subsequent husband from A.A. If you are going to try this approach to men, I suggest a wealthy chapter of A.A. Might as well start with a solvent problem child, like say someone with liquid assets.

Active Sports - Never mind you were voted the kid most likely to drown when all the kids on your block took off for the old swimming hole. Men like sports, can you afford not to?

On homosexuals:

How do you tell when a man isn't a man? Suppose he's over thirty and lives with another man. The situation bears watching. If he has a male roommate and he's over forty, there's very little doubt about his sex. He's a girl.

On being sexy:

Your figure can't harbor an ounce of baby fat. It never looked good on anyone, but babies.

Being able to sit very still is sexy.
Not sexy: flesh not secured firmly to the bone.

Clean hair is sexy. Lots of hair is sexy too.

Talking all the time about anything is unsexy. Sphinxes and Mona Lisas knew what they were doing!

Another way to be "genuinely" sexy, though not recommended, is to be an actress.

The Rules has NOTHING on this.

Something I Have Discovered

You make a lot of new friends when you are reading Kurt Vonnegut. Since I started Breakfast of Champions on Friday, two people have felt compelled to talk to me about it. The first one was a guy at sitting at the table next to me when I went out to dinner on Friday. I had been reading it while I was waiting for my friend to show up and when he got up to go to the bathroom, the guy next to us asked me how it was. Because I have lived in New York for too long and am skeptical of any kind of spontaneous interactions, I assumed he was going to hit on me. I said something moronic about it having lots of pictures, and he smiled politely and left me alone.

The second guy was on the C train. He was a middle aged man with glasses and a beard and was clearly on his way to Penn Station. The exchange went something like this:

Him: How are you liking that?

Me (trying to be neither rude nor friendly): It's pretty good. I hadn't read anything by Vonnegut yet.

Him: Yep, he's a pretty great writer.

Me: Uh-huh

Him: I mean, I haven't read anything by him, but that's what they say.

Me: ??!?!?

As a consequence, I am now trying to come up with jackets I can make for my books that will guarantee no one will talk to me. So far I've come up with, Venereal Shmemereal and Role Playing With Cats.

I Have An Exciting Life

What I Did This Weekend:

Friday night - My friend Dan and I went out to dinner, then to a lesbian bar in the West Village called Cubbyhole. As the name indicates, it is awesome. It is tiny, crowded, and they have a lot of stupid crap hanging from the ceiling a la T.G.I Fridays. Dan and I have met many fantastic people there. Something must have been off last week, however because not only did neither of us get hit on, but when Dan was waiting for the bathroom a group of girls "jokingly" told him that they hate men, and later someone pointedly (and confusingly) asked him why straight people went to gay bars. At that point it was already 10:30 and because I am an old woman I was ready to call it a night.

Saturday - I went to see Funny People with Leigh. In addition to making no sense, it was also two and a half hours long. This kind of running time is appropriate for Harry Potter and the French version of Lady Chatterly's Lover, not an Adam Sandler movie. If you decide to go bring lots of snacks. And maybe a book.

Sunday - One of my roommate's work friends came over for dinner and we all ate vegan sushi, drank wine, and smoked while she explained how even though she feels uncomfortable around men and only makes out with girls she is NOT a lesbian. By the end of the night I was so out of it that this started making sense.

Things Could Always Be Worse

We still don't have the internet, and I'm still reading a lot. The wonderful thing about books is that when you're feeling sad and off-kilter you can always read about people who are 20,000 times more fucked up than you'll ever be. I just finished Blood Meridian and am halfway through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and while I might still be smoking occasionally and eating too much chili from a can, at least I'm not scalping Indians and wearing their severed ears as a necklace or washing down 50 hits of acid with 2 quarts of alcohol every day. Right? I'm FINE.

I Have Too Much Time

We no longer have the internet in my apartment. For some reason the two people we were stealing it from decided to secure their connections. I know I have no right to be mad about this, but I am. Especially since we do not have a TV. As a result I have been reading a lot and thinking too much.

Last weekend I read Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill. It was amazing and I finished it in a day and a half. For those of you who aren't familiar, Mary Gaitskill writes a lot of stories about fucked up women, many of whom are prostitutes and/or into S&M. Finishing it inspired me to read Venus in Furs by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch. It was published in 1870 and is about a guy who asks the woman he loves to make him her slave. It is also where the term sadomasochism comes from. Needless to say, it's weird.

If Venus in Furs was a dating guide this is what it would sound like:

"Woman, as Nature created her and as she is currently reared by man, is his enemy and can be only his slave or his despot."

"Man and woman are natural-born enemies . . . the person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of their neck."

"The more devoted the woman is, the more quickly the man sobers up and becomes domineering. But the crueler and more faithless she is, the more she mistreats him . . . the less pity she shows him, the more she arouses the man's yearning to be loved and worshipped by the woman."

"A woman's character is her lack of character. The best woman sinks momentarily into filth, the worst woman unexpectedly rises to great good deeds."

If The Rules could sell 80 billion copies or whatever, I could totally repackage this and make it a bestseller. He's Just Not That Into You Having Free Will? Men Are From Mars, Women Are The Devil?

Bugs Are Gross

(I was going to post a picture of a cockroach, but just looking at them gave me horrifying flashbacks so instead I posted this picture of a puppy.)

Yesterday there was a giant bug in my office. It was terrifying and I'm still recovering.

This is the second time that this has happened and each time the people I work with act like I'm overreacting and say things like, "How long have you lived in New York again?" and "Oh, that's not a roach, it's just a WATER BUG."

I fail to see the logic behind either of these points.

a) I have lived in New York for 7 years, and while I can handle stepping around streams of urine on the sidewalk and watching rats play tag on the subway rails, the experience has yet to warp my mind so much that I am prepared to do battle with prehistoric sized insects.

b) I don't care if you call it a unicorn. It's still a bug and it's still disgusting.

The real kicker is that there are not one, but two men in my office. I'm all for feminism or whatever, but as long as we're getting paid 70 cents on the dollar I am not touching a goddamn bug. Theoretically the men I work with will have made millions of dollars more than me over their lifetimes. The least they can do is kill a roach. Earn your fucking keep.

Phew. I would keep going, but standing up for women's rights is exhausting and I'm pretty sure I hear Gloria Steinem calling to give me a medal or something.

I Am Not Crazy

Evidence that my horoscope is accurate and that I am therefore not insane for checking it religiously every day:

Monthly forecast for July: Get away from it all. Take a vacation or spend time with people you love or take on a project that will enhance your body, mind and spirit. You need to be pampered and nows the time to implement a little ME time. Dont feel guilty.

The absent apostrophes are their mistake, not mine. I guess when you're clairvoyant you don't have time to concern yourself with such petty things as correct punctuation. Anyway . . .

!!!! This is so accurate my head just spun around. I AM going away a lot in July! By the time the month is over I will have been to Chicago, D.C., the New Jersey shore, and Philadelphia. If more than one of these places was far enough away for me to fly or if I could afford more plane tickets I would be quite the jetsetter. As it is, I'm just going to be spending a lot of time on buses and trains. NOT feeling guilty.

Tales From the Dating Crypt

Dating in New York is like living in a war zone; it's every man for himself and years later you emerge with lots scars and horror stories. I always assume this is unique to the city, but that's only because I've lived here for the past seven years and have never dated people anywhere else. I'm sure it's not though. I'm sure dating is awful everywhere because people are awful everywhere. And on that note, here's a story:

A few years a go I went out for drinks with a guy I met at a party. We were getting along and he seemed fine enough. Then we got on the subject of books.

Me: So what is your favorite book?
Him: Oh man, I don't know. That's a hard one.
Me (clutching my chest because I am drunk and excited that we have something in common): Oh my God, I know! It's so hard to pick just one. Okay, okay, how about your top three.
Him: Um, I meant it's hard to pick because I think I've only read, like 10.

Keep in mind that this person was 30. My head almost exploded. Then, as I was making stupid small talk to kill time until I could politely run away and pretend the last hour had never happened, he stopped me to tell me he liked my annerisms. I had no idea what he meant. Annerisms is not a word and I was too exhausted and frustrated to attempt to figure out what he was trying to say. I must have given him a look that communicated this because he smiled and explained that he liked the way I talked and moved my hands. At this point my heart dropped.

Me: Oh, you mean my mannerisms?
Him: Yeah! Yeah, that's the word. Annerism is that brain thing, right?

He meant aneurysm. I knew this because I was having one.

I can't even imagine diving back into this.

I Am Having A Bad Week

My boyfriend and I broke up this week. It is depressing and I am a mess. I have been subsisting off of alcohol, cigarettes, and over the counter sleeping pills for the past few days and have decided to go to Chicago this weekend with a friend because I can’t handle being in the city.

When I booked my ticket on Wednesday I did not have the right credit card with me. The person at the airline was very nice about it and said that they would put my ticket on hold for 24 hours until I could make the payment.

Well, I called yesterday to pay for it and the price had gone up $250. Apparently everyone on earth besides me knows that airlines do this. While they will hold your ticket for 24 hours, they will not hold how much it costs. Because I am a fragile mess, instead of just looking for a cheaper flight, I decided to turn into a psychopath and take out all of my misery and frustration on the woman on the phone. I stood on the sidewalk for ten minutes yelling at her and crying, at one point sobbing, “You can’t do this to people!” and “I’m sorry I’m being such a crazy person, but I just broke up with my boyfriend and I really can’t deal with this right now.”

I’m sure this woman deals with dozens of nutjobs every day because she stayed calm and collected through the whole conversation. After I had finally given in and paid the extra money she said, “I’m sorry you’re going through such a hard time right now. I know it’s tough girl, but things will be okay.” I really must be a wreck, because for ten seconds hearing this from a stranger in a call center who I’d just been screaming at was actually a little bit comforting.

I'm Too Sad To Be Cute

I'm having a depressing week, so instead of writing anything I'm just going to post a sad poem.

Sister
by Stephen Dunn

The sister I never had
enters my wife when I am
sleeping next to her.
So many times
I've watched my sister
come from her separate room,
the room that long ago
in a house of brothers
was an extra room
down the hall from where
I would dream her alive.
She climbs into bed
on my wife's side
and I touch my wife awake
for now my sister and she
are the woman I must talk to
about incompleteness and love.
Awake, she doesn't know
my sister is in her,
she doesn't know why my embrace
has so much gratefulness in it,
why my questions are all
whispered as if
a father could overhear us.
She thinks I want to
make love but I remove
her hand and hold it,
ask another question
about high school and loss,
the kind of loss
that repeats itself every day
like being born
without a leg.
I watch my sister leave
as my wife takes me
in her arms, says hush
you've been talking again,
sleep now,
and I curl into her
as if it were possible
she could be everything to me,
alone like this,
just ourselves.

Best. Story. Ever.

So for the two of you who are reading this and have not met my boyfriend, here is some backstory: He has muttonchops. They are also AWESOME.

Apparently this is quite the phenomena in Flatbush. On the way to the subway this morning he was walking by a group of fourth graders and heard one of them whisper to another, "It's Wolverine!" They both looked at him, then got bold and began chanting "Wolverine! Wolverine!" When he looked back and smiled they both shouted "Yeah!!" like it was the coolest thing in the world.

It's possible that you have to know him to appreciate this, but I thought this was pretty much the greatest story I'd ever heard. This is partially because it's adorable, and partially because it feels like some kind of redemption from the time freshman year when a bus driver in Times Square told me I looked like Kathy Bates.

Wolverine would NEVER date Kathy Bates. He would save her from a cyclops or something then go and make out with a hot girl in a shiny bodysuit who could turn people into plants by looking at them funny. (Confession: I have never actually seen, read, or had a conversation with anyone who has seen or read X-men. But I am much much happier with the thought of being compared to sexy plant girl. Even if it is in my head/by default.)

I Am Going to Look Like This

Last night I took my first burlesque class. This sounds very sexy, and when I told my boyfriend about it I'm pretty sure he was picturing a bunch of hot girls in fishnets and heels helping each other apply tassels. He would have been very disappointed. It was basically an aerobics class with lots of shimmying and an instructor who lifted up her shirt a lot and encouraged us to "grab our tits." It was also awesome.

That said, being that it was similar to an aerobics class, I was not all that good at it. I can smack my ass with the best of them, but when it comes to things like doing squats, crunches, or being coordinated, I'm a little bit challenged. Even though I ran a marathon two years ago, I have a hard time considering myself athletic. At 24, I still cannot do a cartwheel, ride a bike, or swim more than a lap. I was terrible at tap and ballet and when all my friends started rowing crew in 9th grade, I decided to take fencing lessons at a gym two towns over so I could say I was involved in some kind of sport without anyone being able to see how bad I was at it. I eventually got into running because the only skill required was not stopping.

But I'm nothing if not stubborn. The last time I went to a burlesque show was in September for my boyfriend's birthday, and it was one of the sexiest things I'd ever seen. It was just so refreshing to see a performance where having an ass and hips is considered an asset and not a liability. I might not have the strongest muscles or the most technical skills, but I like fishnets and have big boobs, and I think that's a pretty solid start.

I Have Many Skills

Because I have nothing better to do, like say, write, go running, or do my job, I have started contributing to this amazing blog started by my boyfriend and his friend. Each week they pick a different theme, then post videos for songs that go along with that theme. You would think it would take me 10 seconds to come up with a song that includes a girl's name, but the whole thing is shockingly time consuming. And obsession inducing.

Behold the awesomeness: http://emume.clintbalcom.com/

I Might Have to Settle For Lukewarm

A few weeks ago in a fit of insanity I decided to join the NYU gym. I'm not sure why I did this. It's possible all of those hours of sitting on my boyfriend's couch watching commercials for low-fat yogurt and The Cookie Diet finally got the best of me and the concept of having a bikini ready beach body actually started to resonate. Never mind that I will probably be going to the beach for a total of 3 days this summer and the only people likely to see me are my boyfriend, my family, and a handful of Jersey shore retirees. According to my television, I need to look HOT.

So far the experience has been mixed. On the positive side the NYU gym is conveniently located a few blocks from my office, and it's nice to know that I won't have to be outside running in the middle of August when it's 500 degrees. On the negative side, working out in a fluorescent lit room that has 20 TVs mounted to the walls and is filled with 100 undergrads trying to burn off the beer bong or carrot stick or whatever it is they had the night before, can be a little depressing. Not to mention seizure inducing. There's also the sad fact that I'm horribly, horribly out of shape and am convinced that everyone in the weight room is staring at me and laughing inside when I struggle to lift the lowest weight on each machine.

We'll see how long I last. It's already June though which means that in about 10 minutes it will be August which is practically fall, and who really needs to have a smoking hot bikini bod when you're just going to be covering it up with a sweater?

I Have Talented Friends

Look! My friend Leigh was just published in Issue 5 of Combatives, a bimonthly e-journal dedicated to the work of a single author. That means the entire issue is composed of her work. Wow! Who do you know that's that awesome?

Read it here: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/combatives/

Also check out her blog: http://leighstein.blogspot.com/

If you think my blog is amazing and adorable, your head will explode when you read hers.

Lists Are Fun Part II

Things I Need to Do to Get My Life in Order:

1) Start writing more. Blog entries only half count. Okay, maybe they only a quarter count.

2) Join a gym. (I have already looked into this. The only gym I can afford is the NYU one which kind of scares me. Although it is very convenient to my office, and is so fancy that I will be able to watch stupid TV shows while working out, I am a little scared of suffering from traumatic college flashbacks. I also find the thought of exercising next to anorexic freshmen wearing full faces of makeup and shorts that wouldn't fit over my ankle slightly terrifying.)

3) Stop eating things like chips and beer for dinner. That is not a meal. It is a snack for an overweight frat boy.

4) Start running in the morning at least twice a week without getting lost in Prospect Park and making myself late for work.

5) Buy a pair of expensive jeans that I can't afford, but make my ass look amazing.

There you go. It's like I'm my own life coach.

Sometimes I Scare Myself

Wasn't this weekend amazing?! It was so warm out! It felt like Summer! It was the perfect weather to sit in the park, go to the beach, or . . . lose your boyfriend's keys when he is out of town, pay $200 to get the locks changed, and spend two days trapped indoors because the only way to get a new key to the front door of the building is to ask the landlord who won't be around until Monday and you don't feel like being creepy and sneaking in behind someone every time you want to get in.

Anyone who knows me will be shocked to learn that this is the first time in the 7 years I've lived in New York that I've lost my (or anyone else's) keys. This is the person who once managed to misplace her favorite gold belt while she was wearing it. They will not, however, be shocked to hear that when I finally did manage to do this, it was at the most inconvenient possible time.

Instead of going out to brunch, going bra shopping, and getting dinner with friends, I spent the weekend eating cheese for three meals, watching reruns of The Millionaire Matchmaker, and reading a 600 page graphic novel. Clearly, I cannot be left alone.

Lists Are Fun

Because I am a strange and obsessive creature of habit I always start the list of books I’ve read each year over in the Spring. I began doing this in college because the end of April/beginning of May was when school let out and it just seemed like an appropriate time for renewal and fresh starts or something. Anyway, here is the list of books I’ve read in the past year. I have it in my head that I should have some kind of specific objective in mind as I begin my new list, “Shoot for a book a week!” or “Try to tackle some of the classics that are always referenced in your writing workshops and that you have been too lazy to actually pick up.” At the moment I’m not feeling very creative however, so I’m going to tell myself that keeping a list at all is ambitious enough . . .

Books Read 2008-2009 (Favorites are in purple. Meaning they either made me cry or I
forced my boyfriend to listen to me read passages aloud to him.)

* Blankets by Craig Thompson (Heartbreaking graphic novel that I read in a few hours. It's amazing.)
* Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link
* Little Children by Tom Perrotta
* Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
* A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
* Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
* Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
* The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
* Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis
* The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
* Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
* White Noise by Don DeLillo
* The Girls in 3-B by Valerie Taylor
* Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
* Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas
* Tyrants by Marshall N. Klimasewiski
* You Must Be This Happy to Enter by Elizabeth Crane
* Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
* The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal by J. Patrick O'Connor
* Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
* The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich
* Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
* Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
* The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
* Vox by Nicholson Baker
* Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
* The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
* Against Love by Laura Kipnis
* AVA by Carole Maso
* Museum Pieces by Elizabeth Tallent
* So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
* The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis
* The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

I Make Good Choices

I am getting sick. I would say it is a bad time for me to get sick because I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!!, but I hate when people say that because when is it ever a good time to get sick and who in New York doesn't always have too much to do?

Instead I will just say that being sick blows. I am high as a kite on Dayquil right now which presents an unfortunate dilemma because tomorrow I have plans with my friends to go to an all you can drink brunch at some sort of cow themed Australian restaurant in the East Village. The sensible me votes that I should pass on the unlimited moo mosas as cold medicine and alcohol is not the best combination and I'm not the biggest fan of drinking before noon anyway, while the idiot me insists that I should always get the most for my money and has a serious problem turning away anything involving a pun.

We'll see who wins, although if I were a betting woman I know who I would put my money on . . .

I'm Bad at Walking

You know what's a really good way to get behind on your blog and, more importantly, on life in general? Break your foot. Yes, for the past 7 weeks I have been more or less incapacitated because I broke my foot while walking down the stairs of a bowling alley in Chicago that is for some reason on top of a hardware store.

My initial reaction after "ow!" was that this might not be so bad. I would get to miss work for a few days, people would feel sorry for me, and I would have an excuse to spend lots of time lying on the couch watching bad TV and eating cookies. This optimistic vision ended about half an hour after I left the emergency room when I realized that my little vacation was only going to last 4 days and that, in addition to not being able to go to work, I wasn't going to be able to do much of anything. For the first few weeks my boyfriend had to practically carry me up the stairs and, while a couple of days spent watching marathons of The Real Housewives and Semi-Homemade were a nice break from my typically crazy schedule, I quickly started to feel like an obese shut in. Instead of talking about things that had actually happened to me, I started relating stories about how gross the Butter Martini Sandra Lee had whipped up during cocktail time looked, and how I wasn't sure it was appropriate for 40 year old mothers of 3 to talk about their breast implants in mixed company. While I was depressed/delusional enough discuss these points with other people, I wasn't quite insane enough to think that I should be writing them down. Hence the blog break.

Also, trying to get around New York while on crutches is pure hell and by the end of each day I didn't have the energy to do much else besides complain/drink.

All that said, I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday and I'm hoping to God he'll take an X-ray, tell me I'm all better, and let me walk out of there without a cast on. Otherwise I'm seriously considering amputating and replacing my foot with some kind of awesome looking robotic device.