It's not you, it's me.

I love you, I just have very little time for you right now.

I think of life lived and life blogged as one whole that can be split up in different ways. Usually, the blogged portion is a small fraction of the whole, and hopefully an interesting one, given that the vast majority of the whole is made up of the lived bit, implying a rich source of blog-fodder. (Of course, there are times things are skewed otherwise, generally making for a LOT of blogging and none of it interesting.)

Right now, life lived is filled nearly to capacity and there's scarcely room for this internet thing. So pardon my occasional absence, and please go elsewhere for better entertainment.

In the meantime, a few people I can't say enough good about: Patricia, for SENDING ME A HANDMADE CHRISTMAS CARD (find a more amazing web hostess, I DARE you); my new darling friends Stephanie and Jackie (blog coming soon!), for reasons too numerous to name in my tiny slot for blogging at the moment; and my original NYC darlings Krissa and Shivery for providing Steph and I with such high recommendations that we could describe one another as "the best friend I have that I've never met".

**Update: I am so completely NOT stopping blogging. I could have just said "I'm in London and I'm really busy so don't expect many posts," but I like words too much to be that succinct, for better or for worse.

You eating that?

I don't like it when people accuse me of being wasteful when I throw unwanted food away. It would be just as much of a waste in my reluctant stomach, and at least if I throw it out you won't have to hear me complaining later about how fat the trash can is getting and how it's never going to fit into its sexy clothes anymore.

20 hours of airports and airplanes later (and by the way, BA and LAX, I DO hate you)...

I hope I'm never one of those girls who looks permanently indignant.

Oh yeah, in other news, I'm in London. Totally forgot to tell you!

My blog imploded today.

me: "HOW DOES ONE LIVE WITHOUT BLOG?!"

Shiv: "With pain and suffering. And dignity. Like the pilgrims."

Depressing times call for depressing measures

This is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to gather all the invoices and bills, all the perforated slips, all the carbon copy forms. I'm going to grab a handful of envelopes and a sheet of stamps. I'm going to take my checkbook and a pen and I'm going to settle down at a cafe with a Very Large Cup of Coffee and I'm going to write check after check after check, everything due before, everything due now, everything due later, check after check after check. And then, because if you're going to wade through this sort of thing you might as well dive in headfirst, I'm going to run my errands at the post office, the bank, and you guessed it, that pinnacle of bureaucratic efficiency, the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

This is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to be a big girl about it. Because I may kiss my friends on the weekends, but goddamnit, I go breadwinnin' on the weekdays.

Also, I am tired of hiding from the law. No seriously, I think there's a warrant out for my arrest. I hope I'm okay to leave the country on Friday, I really do...

Life's illusions that I recall: 16

There are always going to be things you know without having to be told, whether it's that it's sunny outside even though you can't see through the curtains, or that someone isn't going to call despite having your number scrawled across the back of his hand beside your name, or that those hushed voices are talking about you. I never had to be told that my parents were cheaters.

There were nights I dreamt of my father chasing my mother around the house while the children slept upstairs, and nights I heard the clanging and crashing of pots and pans doing things they weren't designed for in the kitchen. There was that chill in the air as I treaded eggshells around the house, and there was the lovely harmony when all was well, harmony that only in retrospect did I realize was heavily tinged with relief.

There was the night I sat at my dad's desk, in the dark wooden serene study at the back of the house, and opened one of the drawers to find a stack of letters to and from a female friend in Berkeley. I still remember the one sentence I read before gulping down the uncertainty and guilt and stuffing the letter back into its envelope, but I still don't know what it means.

There was the summer night my mom picked me up from one of the first nights on my first job, playing in the orchestra for a musical, and we stayed up in the dimly lit kitchen drinking from tall water glasses with the air coming through the screen doors, still warm. I was so angry at my mother when she said my father had still been married when they got together, as though their infidelity broke down irreparably the walls bordering the institution of marriage. As though it made what was to come even more inevitable.

The portrait my dad put in his study was huge, at least 8 x 10 but come to think of it, more likely 12 x 16 or whatever comes next. It was a giant beautiful black and white photograph of a woman's face, framed by long, thick, flowy hair that must have been either blonde or grey. She had deep, beautiful round eyes that I couldn't picture my father gazing into after a total of more than thirty years in two marriages, both to asian women. It was all the more striking in his study, with its strictly japanese decor, all the pieces on the walls and on his desk from his Fullbright years in Japan. Other than the gluttonous bookcases, the room was clean and bare. The portrait looked like Delilah dancing through a tea ceremony, sucking all the serenity from the room, through that beautiful smile.

There were nights my mother came home with the corner of her mouth turned sinfully upward, and there were others she returned weepily. The man never let on a thing, and considering I talked to him once or twice a week at church that was a fair accomplishment. He gave the most moving talks I ever heard, and could calm my panicky teenage heart within two seconds of opening his mouth. He was a comfort just to look at, before I found out. Even afterwards it was hard to remind myself to take everything he said or did with a grain of bitterness.

There was the night my mother climbed up to my attic room and sat beside me on my bed and cried into my shoulder. "He said he loved me," she said, weeping, "but I just don't know." She wasn't talking about dad and I don't know how I stroked her hair and wrapped my arm around her without melting into sobs myself, but I do remember my face freezing into lifeless stone. I didn't say much to help but I didn't scream at her either, and I knew that emotional remnant of umbilical cord had been sliced through. My mother was a childish pile of sobs and hysterics on my bed, moaning that there was no one to talk to, and there wasn't. Only me. I was 16 and I'd never been truly kissed.

Bittersweet

Just when you start to think something is a little bit petty, a little bit annoying, a little bit too indulgent, a little bit egocentric, a little bit cliquey, and a little bit tiresome, someone comes along and validates the whole damn practice. And how? By giving it up.

It's the first blog-goodbye I've ever been sad about, because it's the only one I've ever taken seriously.

The mistletoe mafia strikes again

Shifty, them are.

If a penguin flies in a forest and a tree lands on it and no one is around to see or hear anything, does the tree fly?

If/then pt. 2: double (entendre) shift

I think it's safe to say you're pretty damn tired if you find that you have accidentally written the following:

My parents gave me a toy car for my sixteenth birthday, a toy car and a note that promised a real one to come. They paid twice its value for it, for my car, a stationwagon two years older than I. I had to double-shift every time I changed gears, up or down, and the shifter needed to be yanked pretty hard which was tricky because the knob tended to come off when jerked.

If/then

I think it's safe to say you're pretty damn tired if you spend over two minutes standing in front of the washing machine while you try to decide whether your load of laundry is Large- or Medium-Sized.

Fauxhemia pas

I'm apt to say things to people while I sleep. Especially if I'm uncomfortable or dangling in that area just north of real slumber. So, I was sleeping horribly on a commuter plane yesterday and having one of those dreams you're not sure is really a dream - it could be real life - and in the dream/real life, I was doing that thing where I say things to people while I sleep, and I told the man next to me that he was gay. When I really awoke, like, eyes open and everything, I wasn't sure whether I'd actually done that or not. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure either way. And it wasn't until we landed and the man got up to leave that I noticed he was a Navy SEAL. And then I got all paranoid because it's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and I'd just gone and TOLD him he was gay, thus violating the latter statute (this is how a sleepy mind works), and maybe now he was going to, I dunno, bat me to death with his big fat Navy SEAL bag!

I must remember to REST MYSELF while on vacation.

A bit of housecleaning prompted by Google searches

Dear Stan and any of Stan's friends looking for the clip of him busting up the Cal Tech audience at the Al Franken appearance:

I took the video offline. Sorry. It's on my computer, so if you want a copy, you'll have to let me know. Email address is to the right, there.