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.

Watch Out NJ

Beach! Considering how excited I am, one would assume I was going somewhere a little more exotic than the New Jersey Shore. Whatever. The beach is the beach, and this is probably the only time I'll get to go this year not counting Coney Island, which I don't. I know people who have gone swimming there and claim it's fine, but I'm still convinced I would end up with multiple rashes and a mysterious respiratory disease.

In any case, I'm off! I have packed both a one-piece and a two-piece. While the bikini is much cuter, I tried it on last week and freaked out because the bottoms dug into my side fat a little, and I became convinced that everyone on the beach would mistake me for some sort of prehistoric sea blob. My backup is a black one-piece that features a cableknit pattern that I'm pretty sure wasn't even in style when I bought it five years ago. In either case, the forecast on the beach this weekend calls for scorching HOTNESS.

Mermaids Belong at the Beach

Monday night I did a show at a punk/metal bar in Park Slope. Seeing that all of my acts involve me trying to look adorable while wearing a big blond wig, I was a little worried about seeming totally out of place. I ended up doing a mermaid act to a surf rock song, which is the closest thing to metal I could manage. I'm not sure how well I fit in, but I had fun. Then Doug and I ended up going back to my apartment which we haven't done in months. The good thing about this: It's only one stop away from the bar, and we managed to get home before 1am. The bad thing: The apartment was sweltering.

We turned on the air conditioner in my room, but it takes a while to cool the place down. In the meantime I hadn't eaten anything since lunch, and the only food in my apartment was a can of chili. The thought of eating that in my 500 degree apartment made me want to jump out the window, so I decided to just go to sleep. Doug and I settled into my twin bed trying our best not to touch because we both felt so hot and disgusting. This was not easy as Doug is 6'3. I walked into work yesterday a cranky, hungry zombie.

Burlesque: I love you. You are so sparkly and fun! I'm glad I do not have to think about you at all for the next couple of weeks.

Countdown to the beach: 2 DAYS.

If It Ain't Broke . . .

Last night Doug and I went to a little French place in Soho and had moules frites. It was so amazing I had a new understanding of people who go out to eat and take pictures of their food. Then I started to think about what it would be like if I decided to turn this into a food blog. I quickly realized there would be two major problems with this.

1) The only meat I eat is fish. I feel like these days to be considered a serious foodie you have to be willing to eat bacon ice cream covered with whipped bacon and hot bacon sauce.

2) An attempt to keep a food diary would look something like this: Salad, banana, chili from a can, fake chicken patty, pasta, frozen macaroni and cheese, wine, Lean Cuisine, hummus, lollipop, salad, pasta, chili from a can, wine, banana, hummus.

On the one hand, this would probably make most people feel better about their diets. On the other hand it would be boring, and depress me. I think I'll just stick to my current format of blogging about whatever random bullshit pops into my head for the reading pleasure of five people.

Always Look on the Bright Side

Places I Would Like to Go This Summer:

1. Nantucket, Massachusetts

2. Cape Cod, Massachusetts

3. San Diego, California

4. Anywhere in Europe

Places I Am Actually Going This Summer:

1. Alexandria, Virginia

2. Ventnor, New Jersey

3. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

4. Stamford, Connecticut

These might seem like poor substitutes, but I'm trying to work on being more positive. The Jersey Shore might not be as picturesque as Nantucket, but there is a guy who walks down the beach selling Chipwiches out of a cooler. And while Alexandria doesn't have too many adorable outdoor cafes where I can drink red wine and chain smoke all day, I will get to sit in Doug's mom's backyard and eat crab legs from Costco (which btw are fucking amazing). Now I just have to figure out how Philadelphia is better than San Diego and I will be all set to have the second best summer ever.

Russian Novels are Hilarious

Jokes told at Anna K. meeting last night:

Q: How many librarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Let me look that up for you.

Knock, knock

Who's there?

Feminist.

Feminist wh-

That's not funny.

A pirate walks into a bar with a large wheel attached to the front of his pants. He goes to the bar and orders a drink. The bartender looks at him and says, "Did you know there's a wheel stuck to your crotch?"

The pirate grimaces and says, "Aaaar! It's driving me nuts!"

Lily also told one that began with "Two whales walk into a bar . . ." and ended with a punchline so amazing putting it in print would never do it justice. Sorry folks. If you want more hilarious jokes like these you're just going to have to start your own Russian literature book club. Or buy some Laffy Taffy.

More Unicorns

This week I have gotten two story rejections, and a rejection from the NY Burlesque Festival. Rejections suck. They suck even more than waiting. Also, I haven't been able to run this week because it has been approximately 1,000,000 degrees here in New York. My only consolation is that a video of me being Leigh's assistant unicorn at Poets and Puppets has been posted on the Poetry Foundation blog:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/07/brooklyn-ny/

I'm in the first video. If anyone out there is in the market for a unicorn that is "ineffectual at arriving on cue" please let me know. I apparently have nothing else going on right now.

We All Know How This Ends

Tomorrow is the second meeting of my Anna Karenina book club. I have never been in a book club before this one, and am discovering the things that are good and bad about them.

Good: Eating snacks, drinking wine, and having others confirm my suspicion that Vronsky is the 19th Century Russian version of every douchy hipster I have ever dated.

Bad: Having a date I need to finish different parts of the book by compels me to treat this like a school assignment, meaning I don't open the book for weeks then have to cram before our meeting and read 100 pages in two days. I thought being in a book club would encourage me to read more, but there is a good chance this will be the only thing I get through this summer.

Anna Karenina has been on my list of "books I should read" for the past five years though, so I guess I can live with that. It also helps that Anna Karenina is basically a soap opera. I'm not even halfway through and already there have been two affairs, an unplanned pregnancy, a rejected marriage proposal, and two characters predicting their own deaths. The only things keeping the novel from really kicking into high gear are the lack of evil twins and all those chapters about farming. I can only assume that those issues will work themselves out in the next 450 pages. Otherwise it wouldn't be a classic, right?

America! Fuck Yeah.

Last night Doug and I were supposed to go to a concert in Gowanus. Tuscadero was performing. They're this amazing 90s pop/punk girl band from D.C., and this was going to be the second time they've performed since they broke up eleven years ago. As you've probably guessed, we didn't make the show. Our train from Amherst didn't get in until 7, and considering that the band went on around 10, buying the tickets in the first place was stupidly ambitious of us. Instead, we went home, ate frozen macaroni, and watched The Bachelorette (yes, Doug gets rewarded for sitting through this with me.)

Tally for our weekend:
4th of July Parties Attended: 1
Drinks Consumed: Many
Grilled Things Eaten: 2
Pellet Guns Shot: 1
Targets Hit: None
Games of Badminton Played: 1
Fireworks Seen: None (Unless I count the ones we saw a family setting off when we took a walk around the neighborhood. I think they were supposed to go up in the air, but as soon as they were lit they fell over and started spewing sparks into the driveway.)
Bug Bites Gotten: 10,000,000
Bruce Springsteen Songs Heard: 100 (Estimate)

Even though I didn't see any "real" fireworks, I think I celebrated the birth of our nation in a way that would make our founding fathers proud; Guns, Booze, and Bruce.

Eye of the Something

Doug and I went running together yesterday in Prospect Park. On our way back I started singing "Eye of the Tiger," replacing all of the lyrics with his name.

Me: Doug. Doug, Doug Doug. Doug, Doug, Doouuuuuug.
Him: If you keep doing that I'm running away from you.

I stopped.

Then, because we are now officially one of those couples, we came home and made recovery smoothies using homemade almond milk and strawberries from the farmer's market. Or maybe we ordered a pizza, and drank beer . . .

Happy Summer!

It's July 2nd! That means it's almost July 4th! Which means it's almost time for Doug and I to visit our awesome and amazing recently engaged friends in Amherst! Yay! Here are some other things I have going on this month:

Not Being Poor: You know what will make you poor so fast it will make your head spin? Piecing together costumes for three new burlesque acts, getting your hair dyed blonde, and buying round trip Amtrak tickets that's what. Last month I did all these things and was moths flying out of my wallet broke by the middle of the month. I sold books to the Strand twice, took my loose change to the bank, did a low-paying side project for my boss, and "borrowed" an uncomfortably large chunk of money from my savings account just so I wouldn't be completely destitute by the end of the month i.e. unable to afford a bottle of wine to bring to my Anna Karenina book club. July is all about BUDGETING.

Waiting: I have one story out on submission, and I sent in an application for the New York Burlesque Festival a couple weeks ago. I should hear back from the NYBF in a couple weeks, and the journals I submitted to in about five years. I am bad at this. On the one hand I like having a few things out there because it leaves open the possibility for something magical to happen. Until I get a rejection letter it is theoretically possible that I could be sitting at my desk one day and suddenly get a letter from Tin House saying I am amazing and they would be honored to publish me. On the other hand, that is probably not going to happen, and I am a very impatient person

Performing: I have two shows coming up! One on July 10th at an undetermined location and one on the 19th at Lucky 13 in Park Slope. Yay! This means putting together two new acts in the next two weeks. Eep!

Running: Why did I decide that July would be the perfect time to start running again for the first time in over a year? Why is the sky blue? Why is a raven like a writing desk? Some questions have no answers.

Beaching: My aunt and uncle have a house half an hour outside of Atlantic City, and Doug and I will be staying with them for a weekend at the end of the month. It will probably be the only time I go to the beach this summer, so I'd better tan overtime. Kidding! I don't tan. My trips to the beach tend to involve slathering on half a bottle of SPF 30, eating an ice cream sandwich, and going home after an hour because I'm hot/bored. Summer!

Blonde!

Last Thursday I went to a salon on the Lower East Side and had my hair dyed blonde. I've been wearing a lot of big blonde wigs in my burlesque acts, so it was only a matter of time before I started thinking "What if this was my real hair?!?"

The whole thing took almost three hours, and my hair now feels like straw, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. It was also nice to have a makeover that wasn't motivated by a traumatic break-up. "Wouldn't that be fun!?" is a much better reason to dramatically change your appearance, than "Maybe cutting all my hair off will make me look less dumpable." Many people have asked me if I'm having more fun yet. I'm not really sure if that side effect has kicked in. Tonight my plans involve going home, practicing a new act, eating chili from a can, and reading 50 pages of Anna Karenina to catch up for my book club tomorrow night. That's pretty fun, right?

Poets and Puppets

Tonight I will be attending the Poets and Puppets reading at Pete's Candy Store, organized by the lovely and talented Leigh Stein. The premise is simple: Poetry + Puppets = Awesomeness. The reading is going to be extra exciting this year because I have just learned that I will be assisting Leigh in one of her readings by way of a unicorn puppet. !!!

You can check out more poets reading with puppets here:

http://poetsandpuppets.blogspot.com/

For a very small donation, Leigh even made a puppet in my likeness. Just look for the most adorable one. KIDDING. They are all adorable. Although I could argue that mine is the most glamorous because she is the only one with a faux fur stole.

Night of 1,000 Stevies

Last Friday I attended the twentieth annual Night of 1,000 Stevies. Stevie being Stevie Nicks, and 1,000 being the number of people who buy tickets to the show at the Highline Ballroom which involves impersonators either singing her songs or dancing around on stage to them.

I am admittedly not the biggest Stevie Nicks fan. I've never quite understood her whole gypsy/witch-woman persona, and listening to anything by Fleetwood Mac just reminds me of childhood car trips with my mother where I would plead with her to let me put in my Ace of Base tape and she would pretend she didn't hear me and turn the volume up on Rumors.

All the same, I thought the show was pretty great. It was refreshing to go to an event like this in New York that was pretty much irony free. It started to get insanely crowded around 11, to the point where you couldn't dance around to "Stand Back" without someone sloshing their drink on you, but the first hour or so was lovely. The audience consisted mostly of drag queens and thirty something women wearing top hat and capes. Everyone swayed with their drinks while four impersonators danced around to Stevie's greatest hits in front of a giant screen that had images of her face projected onto it. It was weirdly heartwarming and for a while there I really did feel like one of the "Sisters of the Moon."

Going to the show also gave me the opportunity to dust off the velvet, bell-sleeved dress my aunt got me for Christmas from QVC, and to wear a headband I purchased from Forever 21 that involved both netting and feathers sticking off of it. I think I got five compliments on that thing and can see it making its way into my regular wardrobe.

Book List!

Book list! These are all of the books I read from May '09 to May '10. This year's list totals 29 which is four less than last year. This can be attributed partly to the fact that I've been super busy this year and partly to the fact that I tackled a few more classics this year that took me for fucking ever to get through. I'm looking at you Out of Africa and Sons and Lovers.

Looking over my list, I have a few thoughts. The first one being that Anagrams is amazing and what happened to Lorrie Moore? Lorrie Moore is one of my favorite writers ever, and Anagrams is firmly in my top ten favorite books of all time. That said, A Gate at the Stairs is one of the most overrated books I have ever read. It is seriously, objectively, awful, yet somehow I was only able to find one review that said it was anything less than amazing. I wanted to make-out with Stephanie Zacherek after reading this:

"This is a case of a writer's working too hard. She doesn't allow enough air around her sentences -- there's no space for the gags to breathe, and her brainy contemplations continue to stack up until they resemble piles of clutter . . . there's so much tap-dancing, sky-diving, bungee-jumping and unicycling in "A Gate at the Stairs" that Moore's greater goal just seems like an afterthought."

YES Stephanie Zacherek. YES. The book also features characters that are completely unbelievable and plot twists that make no sense. At one point I actually put the book down and shouted "Oh come on!" So why then were all of the other reviews I read glowing? And why is Lorrie Moore now nominated for the Orange Prize? I don't know, but I do have a few theories.

After twenty years of writing short stories and short, weirdly structured novels, Lorrie Moore probably felt pressure to deliver something heftier, both physically and thematically. At 336 pages, A Gate at the Stairs is one hundred pages longer than her last novel, and isn't split up into different sections the way Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams are. Whereas Moore's other work largely centers around the complicated emotional lives of her eccentric female characters, A Gate at the Stairs struggles for a more timely and weighty social relevance. The novel tackles everything from Terrorism to Racism to the War In Iraq in a way that feels clumsy and unnatural.

It's not like Moore hasn't written about difficult topics before. "People Like That Are the Only People Here," is a story about a first time mother discovering her baby has cancer and "Terrific Mother" is about a woman who has an accident that kills her friend's infant. Both of these stories, like much of Moore's work, are heartbreaking. Both stories are also infinitely better crafted and more moving than the best parts of A Gate at the Stairs. I guess this doesn't matter though. Because while writing about the personal struggles of individual women, whether they are facing the loss of a child or suffering through an affair with a married man, is important, writing about the crisis facing our nation after September 11th is Important. The good reviews and prize nominations are Moore's reward, not for writing a good book, but for writing an Important one. One that involves hand puppets instead of characters, and Plot Twists instead of believable conflicts.

In summary, if you want to read something by Lorrie Moore pick up Anagrams. Or Self-Help. Or Like Life. Or really anything other than A Gate at the stupid Stairs.

Now that I've finished ranting, here is my book list for 2009-2010. Favorites are in pink. Super favorites also get a smiley face.

• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• Two Women Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill
• Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
• Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• Drown by Junot Diaz
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Conner
• Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
• Homicide by David Simon
• Anne Frank by Francine Prose
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
• Notable American Women by Ben Marcus
• Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
• Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurly Brown :)
  
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• Nekropolis by Maureen McHugh
• Anagrams by Lorrie Moore :)
  
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson :)
  
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Venus in Furs by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
• Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill :)
• Delicate Edible Birds by Laura Groff
• Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
• Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
• Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
• Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

This Model Will Do Fine

I took a break from posting last week because I felt like my life turned into a page from Job. I'm pretty sure when he was being tested with a series of punishing trials he didn't take time out to do anything but complain and eat sugar, which is exactly what I did.

The week started out fine enough, but then Tuesday night I started to feel sick. I told myself I'd just eaten some bad broccoli or something and continued on with life. This was apparently the wrong call because Wednesday night I actually got sick. In the middle of a burlesque show. That I was go-going at. Yeah. Thankfully it didn't happen until I was off the stage. It did, however, mean that the majority of my tip collecting time was spent hiding in the bathroom.

For the most part the weekend was great. Doug and I went to a wedding in Richmond of one of his friends from college. It was so much fun! Everyone looked like they'd stepped out of a J.Crew catalog, and the ceremony was held at the plantation where Thomas Jefferson was born. It was beautiful and all of Doug's friends were great. Then IT happened.

I was getting ready to go to the airport on Sunday when I managed to somehow rip off a very large percentage of my big toenail. I will not go into details because I am just as squeamish about this stuff as everyone else, but the morning ended with one visit to an emergency clinic, 20 Vicodins, and zero big toenails on my left foot.

I have a bandage wrapped around my toe and, because I am the only woman under forty who does not own a pair of flip-flops, a new pair of squishy pink sandals. I'm pretty much off the pain pills, but am continuing to treat myself with steady doses of junk food which I'm sure any good doctor would recommend. At this point the only way I'll be willing to call it even with the universe is if next week comes with a unicorn and a spontaneous ten pound weight loss.

iBaby

I had a three day weekend because I called in sick on Friday. You'd think this would make coming to work on Monday less painful, but you would be wrong. My life would be so much more manageable if I could figure out how to have a three day work week.

Not only was my weekend long, it was also very eventful.

Thursday night I performed my act at Hank's Saloon which I would argue is the awesomest bar in Brooklyn. I had tons of fun, but somehow didn't end up getting home until 2am. While this might be normal for some 25 year olds in New York, I cannot remember the last time I was out that late. On a weeknight no less! I apparently prefer to spend my evenings in a bathrobe with my cat drinking tea and watching the Lawrence Welk show.

One of the benefits of being sick on Friday was that I could spend the day working on my story. Of course instead of doing this, I spent most of the day reading things online and watching TV. My biggest accomplishments were going to the Whole Foods on the Bowery and catching up on The Realhousewives of New York. I did feel guilty enough about this to work on my story from 12-7 on Saturday, so maybe being lazy is good for me.

Sunday was filled with small children. Leigh performed an interactive show for a bunch of little kids at BAX that was ridiculously cute. Imagine a bunch of 3 year olds wearing sparkly scarves and singing Tomorrow while sitting in a misshapen circle. ADORABLE. Then Doug and I had drinks with our married friends and their 20 month old baby. True Story: The baby knows how to use an iPhone. This completely blew my mind and also made me feel very old/want a baby. I just have to keep reminding myself that babies turn into 10 year olds who eventually turn into teenagers, and I am so not interested in dealing with a teenager.

Why Yes I Would Like Some Cheese With My Whine

I posted a picture of a crab because I am feeling crabby. I thought about posting a picture of a machete but it freaked me out too much.

I'm doing that thing I always do which is spend 10 minutes being depressed because I don't feel like I have enough going on, then immediately overbook myself for a month and become depressed because I have way too much going on. Last week was good. I went to the gym for the first time in over a year and actually had some time to breathe. Doug went out of town for the weekend and I didn't even freak out like I normally do and wake up thirty times in the night convinced that a crazy person is about to break in and hack me up with a machete. Things were good.

Now though, it's only Wednesday and I'm already breaking down and contemplating calling in sick on Friday because I don't know how I'll make it through the week. I'm performing at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn tomorrow which is awesome, but I also have a story due for my writing group on Monday which is not. Or maybe it is because without these deadlines I'm pretty sure I would never get any writing done. Sigh. I really shouldn't complain and just be grateful that I made it through the weekend in one piece instead of fifty.

If You Post It . . .

I started writing this post last week, but work was crazy and I got distracted so I'm posting it now even though it's out of date. If you don't like it well, tough.

Last weekend Doug and I went to Philadelphia to visit my family for Easter. As predicted, it was much easier to deal with them with him there. Highlights included:

Stumbling into a petting zoo being set up in the street near my aunt and uncle's condo where we were staying. Apparently I turn into a five year old when confronted with baby animals. Every other adult was there with a small child and I had to strategically make my way over to the animal pens without knocking over four toddlers in the process.

Finding a pair of boots that look EXACTLY like the ones pictured in my post last week. They are horribly uncomfortable and bend my toes in weird directions, but I'll get used to that right? They were only $18! Maybe if I post a picture of a million dollar check and a book contract I'll find those too . . .

Watching the Butler vs. Michigan game at my grandmother's retirement home. My grandmother actually went to Butler a gajillion years ago when hardly any women attended college. She majored in home ec., but whatever. It's still pretty cool. She always watches Butler in the NCAA championships, and even though I almost never watch sports, it was a great game and I actually got into it. This was apparently a problem because no one else in the home watches basketball and any time one of my family members cheered or got excited, my grandmother would yell at us for making too much noise

Happy Easter!

In two hours I'm leaving my office to catch a bus to Philadelphia with Doug so that we can visit my family for Easter. My family is weird. It's weird for many reasons, far too many to list here, but one of the reasons it's weird is that even though we are not very religious we make a big thing about celebrating Easter every year. I never understood this was strange until I graduated from college and discovered I'm the only one who still goes home for it.

As much as my family drives me crazy I really like going home for Easter. Why? Because Easter is awesome. You get candy (or at least I do because my family still thinks I'm 12)! It's nice out! Peeps! Have you ever put a Peep in the microwave? It is the definition of joy. The holiday has also become infinitely easier to stomach since Doug has started coming with me. Most people get stressed out by the idea of bringing their boyfriend home to hang out with their family, but having Doug there actually takes pressure off of me. He and my dad can hang out and talk about sports and cars or whatever while I escape to the kitchen and happily nuke marshmallow bunnies.

Burlesque Debut

Boots LaMae made her debut on Friday night. It was amazing! I had so much fun and being in front of a (drunk, rowdy) audience was surprisingly a lot easier than practicing for Doug and my cat. I think the shot of tequila I took before I went on also helped.

Highlights from the evening included:

• The attendance of my 85 year old boss. The first couple times she asked about coming I was too confused to answer and awkwardly dodged the question. In her defense, my boss is awesome. When I am old I want to be just like her. In fact, I kind of want to be like her now. I just wasn't sure if having her there would be totally great or totally weird. After consulting my friends they assured me it would be great so I sucked it up and told her she could come. My teacher reserved a table for her and after I'd performed she asked her if I still had a job and my boss said "She's getting a raise!" and everyone cheered. My boss is not in the office today, but I plan to follow up on this raise business tomorrow.

• After I'd performed a guy asked to take a picture with me. Given how I was dressed he probably thought I was a Dollywood employee who'd somehow become confused and wandered into a burlesque show. Whatever. It made my night.

• How great all the other performances were and how many of my friends showed up.

IMPORTANT UPDATE

Some of you may have noticed that I have changed the name on my profile from Sophie to Sarah. That is because Sarah is my real name, and after using an alias for two years now I have decided I don't write anything here that's salacious enough to require me to be totally anonymous. I also decided that it's weird and a potentially scary window into my future to have an alter ego with the same name as my cat. Now the two of you who read this and don't know who I am can go ahead and google stalk me. Just type in the words "Sarah" and "publishing" and see what comes up. Good luck!

* Note: That is not a picture of my cat. It is a stock image I found that looks very much like her. Some day I will grace you all with a real picture of Sophers, but until then you will just have to use your imagination and picture a cat that looks similar to the one above only ten times cuter.

Empty Carbohydrates Make Everything Better

As some of you might have heard via me, tonight is the night of my show. I am scared. Excited, but also scared. I am sitting at my desk right now feeling like there is a small furry animal doing laps in my stomach and fighting the urge to stress eat one of the bagels that my boss brought into the office yesterday. Normally I would just give into the urge, but being that I'm going to be prancing around without any clothes on in a few hours that might not be a good idea. Oh who am I kidding? That bagel doesn't stand a chance.

Remember Me When I'm Gone

Last night we had a dress rehearsal for our show on Friday. It went well. I fucked up, but so did everyone and nothing too terrible went wrong. Which basically means that all the things that were supposed to come of came off, all the things that were supposed to stay on did, and I didn't have some kind of embarrassing meltdown ala Jujubee from this season of RuPaul's Drag Race.

Everyone in the class got to perform on stage and when we were all done we went down to a secret alcove in the basement of the Slipper Room so our teacher could give us each a few minutes of feedback. My little workshop session started out with the teacher telling me she wanted to murder me. After noticing the look of horror/confusion on my face she explained that I repeated one choreographed movement so many times during my routine that it made her want to kill me. Then she added with a smile that I looked so adorable doing it that it didn't matter.

She must have said this in a very charming way because at the time it registered as a compliment. It took until I got home to start freaking out about it. I want to be great tomorrow! Not incredibly annoying but attractive enough to avoid being slaughtered by a roomful of drunks because of it. I'm just going to have to practice a lot tonight and put extra sparkles on my costume in the hopes that the audience will be too dazzled to notice how many times I bop my hips back and forth in time to the music . . .

Beadazzling

One of the many reasons I have fallen off the earth lately is that I have managed to follow through with one of my New Year's resolutions and get back into doing burlesque. For the past month I have been taking a class in character development that culminates in BUM BUM BUM . . . a performance! Yes, that's right, instead of twirling my tassels with a handful of giggly hipsters in an empty studio/bar on the Lower East Side, I will actually be shaking my stuff in front of my boyfriend, friends, and a bunch of drunk strangers at The Slipper Room this Friday. I would say you're all invited, but if anyone is still reading this thing at this point I'm sure they're already coming. In the course of taking this class I have learned many things:

1) I am the only woman my age in New York who does not know how to sew. Before this class I assumed that no one under the age of 60 knew how to sew. As a skill, I thought it had gone the way of butter churning and um, fife making. Oh was I wrong. On the first day of class our teacher told us that doing burlesque is like going back to kindergarten; you get to play dress up and put sparkles on everything. Fun right? Of course! The only problem is finding a way to adhere the sparkly things to the other things without using a needle and thread.

This is where a product called Magnatac comes in. It is a fabric glue that our teacher told us about then warned us to be careful with because if it gets on your skin it will "Take your fingertips off a little bit." I have chosen only to concentrate on its awesome adhesive powers and ignore the warnings. Last night at my insistence my boyfriend glued a band of sequins around a thong while I was wearing it because I couldn't think of any other way to make sure it fit. If my life were a reality show the underwear would have stuck to my ass and Doug and I would have had to come up with creative and hilarious ways to get it off. Luckily my life is boring and it was fine.

2) No one knows what burlesque is. Three people have asked me if it involves a stripper pole, four asked if I'll be on stage alone, and one woman asked me how I'll feel about this ten years from now when my career has taken off and pictures of me in pasties start circulating. That last point is ridiculous mostly because my career is never going to take off to the extent that anyone would try to sabotage it, and also because if I cared about people seeing me in pasties I wouldn't dance around in public wearing pasties.

3) Spending a little money on a lot of little things quickly adds up to a lot of money. I have spent more than I care to admit on a costume that essentially looks like the result of a drunk hillbilly armed with a beadazzler getting in a fight with the contents of her hamper.

4) Not even the prospect of shaking my naked ass in front of a roomful of people will inspire me to workout.

So many lessons! The whole thing has been a ton of fun, but it's also been way more work than I'd imagined. Mostly because when I get excited about something I am incapable of doing it half-way and end up spending every lunch hour for a month running around Manhattan searching for the perfect rhinestones to stick on a martini shaker or some other prop that no one but me will notice.

Thanks 2010

New Year's Resolutions I Made:

Write More
Get Back into Burlesque
Work Out More Often Than Never
Read Lots

New Year's Resolutions I Should Have Made

Don't Get Sick For Two Weeks and Miss Three Days of Work in Your First Week Back From Vacation

That's right. I started thinking I was coming down with something the Monday after Christmas, and am just now starting to feel somewhat like a normal, functioning human being again. I have been battling the mother of all colds and spent the better part of last week taking Day-Quil, sleeping, and subsisting off of yogurt and bananas. I took Wednesday and Thursday off work, and when I came in on Friday feeling not so much better, but guilty for having been out for so long, everyone in my office yelled at me and told me to go home.

Although I am still super congested, and can't go more than a few hours without taking medicine, I am finally able to do things like read, watch TV, and type. I do, however, think that all of that time spent alone in my apartment might have fucked with my head a little. I found myself sobbing uncontrollably not once, but twice last the weekend over things that I'm pretty sure would not have affected me so much under normal circumstances.

The first time was on Saturday night about 30 minutes into watching Wall-E with my boyfriend when I freaked out because the robot was lonely. The second time was last night after finishing THE BLIND ASSASSIN when I lost it because the ending was sad. Now granted, even when I'm in the best of health I cry at everything from movie previews to dating shows, but I can typically get my shit together without Doug having to hold me for ten minutes while I calm down. Although I'm less than thrilled to be back at work, I think it was probably good for me to get out of the house . . .