lists

Things I do:

• hang the shower mat every other day to keep the floor of the tub from getting scummy
• feel like life is chaotic when my bed isn't made in the morning
• listen to a song on repeat when I get really hooked on it
• delete music from my computer I don't like anymore and am ashamed someone might find
• splurge on nice toilet paper
• sweep
• make continual promises to myself to pick up my violin again
• drink beer or wine when I'm home alone
• try on four outfits for every one I actually settle on
• curse aloud when something bad like slamming my finger in a door happens

Things I don't do:

• make wishes on eyelashes or clocks
• check my bank balance when I have a panicky suspicion it is low
• eat beans, unless they're green or in some nacho/nine-layer-dip sort of situation
• sing in the shower
• splurge on nice paper towels
• mop
• crave ice cream
• watch tv
• mail things like birthday presents or Christmas cards on time
• think things happen for a reason

Things I like:

• running fast down a long escalator
• that when I give my father a book, he reads and reviews it by the end of the day
• spiced hot chocolate
• remembering something I expected to forget
• sleeping in on purpose
• Jude Law
• business cards
• ear muffs
• learning
• being done with college

Things I don't like:

• that when I blow my nose it gets very red
• when a bathroom doesn't have soap or towels
• Averil Lavigne's music
• waking up late by accident
• poor wireless service
• black licorice or anything licorice-flavored
• the way I look in hats
• fighting with siblings out of habit
• forgetting things
• starting to say something, losing the wording I'd worked out internally, and having to improvise an inadequate paraphrase

shitty night in

I'm a big proponent of Nights In when I can get 'em, mainly because going days at a time without one has the same feeling as carrying a large unwieldly duffel around the city for hours, and finally getting to have one is like setting the bag down at long last.

However, there's a rogue strain of Nights In that isn't so pleasant, the kind that has you stumbling into your apartment with the unforgiving knowledge that you're going to be using laundry change for your next three days' commuting instead of for badly-need laundry-doing and that the pantry is sparse and the contents of the refrigerator wholly unappealing. The kind that finds your apartment unusually frigid, your dishes conspicuously unwashed, and everything in cluttered disarray. It's the Shitty Night In. It blows.

I'm having one of those evenings, and even though I had a great long lunch with Jen and a relaxing afternoon and a cheery post-work mini-gathering, I feel as stressed and irritable as I did when I left the apartment this morning. I almost wonder if I've let this place acquire an atmosphere of turmoil with all the clutter. It certainly doesn't feel like a haven anymore (then again, what 50 degree room would?).

If I were in San Diego, I'd call Jolene or Molly or someone and go to Nunu's for strong inexpensive drinks and make fun of all the girls in ponchos and talk up a storm about everything in the world that pisses us off and then go to a 24 hour mexican place for a huge cheesy meal that costs $2 and then go back to someone's apartment and maybe turn on Wet Hot American Summer and watch, eat, drink, and quote for a drunken hour or two before passing out with the comforting knowledge that friends who get annoyed on your behalf, and then distract you from your annoyance with alcohol, quesadillas and esoteric humor, are worth their weight in cheese and beer, which is saying a lot considering how much I like cheese and beer.

I can't do any of those things, which is fine, because I would trade ten San Diegos for a single NYC neighborhood, and because if I wanted to I could talk off Molly's or Jolene's ear over the phone and they'd be great company even from 3000 miles and three time zones away, and because I could make a quesadilla myself if I substituted stale chips for a tortilla and used either moldy cheese or grated parmesan. And I can't really have anyone over here because the place isn't big enough to be guest-friendly, but that's fine too because it's honestly just as well I spend the evening stewing in my own hostile juices and troubling no one but myself, the fools (seriously, I don't know why you insist) who read my blog, and my landlord when I go downstairs to tell him I'm so cold my extremities are numb and punctuate my point by hitting him in the face with a bag of rocks. Mean rocks.

So for now I'll just be a very ill-tempered eskimo, and huddle under the comforter eating Wheat Thins and watching a The West Wing and thinking to myself how very, very selfish a girl am I, to feel unfortunate with my little concerns and my little complaints and my little spiteful thoughts. And to provide the other half of this internal monologue: Oh, go fuck yourself.

butt cold

The air is getting close to that sort of biting cold that makes the kind of underwear I choose in the morning matter. Like if I wear a thong, my ass actually will freeze and chip off.

That said, with one exception there really haven't been any bone-chillingly cold days yet this winter, and the cold weather started pretty late in the year, all of which is good, because while I have eighteen freezing winters under my belt, I have only so much tolerance for numb little toes, for brain freeze that doesn't come from ice cream, for cold seeping in through my ears, for being be-coated and unwieldy, for having to cover my face walking into the murderous wind, and other things I associate with the unforgiving depths of January and February.

For a few years beginning when I was about nine, my dad, in a bizarre fit of wellness concern, decided the whole family should go running every evening. Since my five-year-old brother's run was more like a light jog for me (and a barely brisk walk for my parents), the outings didn't feel much like exercise, and since they tended to lapse during the busier, hotter and more-active-anyway summers, they came to mean only one thing to me: being frozen between my ears. After about a mile jogging in the snow, I'd start to feel the tips of my ears get really cold. The chill would pool in the contours of my ears and eventually seep into my head, and soon it felt as though an arctic gale were whistling in one ear, through, and out the other side. For half an hour every winter eve, back inside, my hands given feeling again under a stream of lukewarm tap water, I'd hold my palms in misery on each side of my head, willing the iceberg in between to melt.

The last time I spent all of winter in a cold climate was five years ago. If memory serves, I spent most of it in the Gap, loading up on employee discount sweaters, learning against my will the *NSYNC Christmas number on the rotating store music, and loudly calling my manager an insensitive prick in front of a large number of co-workers (and free from disciplinary action thanks to his ass-grabbing habit). I have few outdoor memories, though, aside from walking from my house to the car, from the car to school, from school to work. I remember riding (with three friends) an upside-down picnic table down the sledding hill and that's about it.

One nice thing about wintertime is that you can drink copious amounts of this. Anyway, I think I'll let this post peter out now.

wish list

It's real easy to come up with a wish list in December, with all the shopping and gifting, and the talk of shopping and gifting, reminding you of the world's DVDs and albums and scarves and chocolates and cameras and earrings all just waiting to be freed by the swipe of your credit card. During the holiday season, though, unlike most other times of year, you can't speak of the mental shopping cart you're swiftly filling, lest your comments be taken as hints. It's a rare case when "I wish I had..." isn't replied to with "Well, maybe Santa can arrange something" or one of its equivalents.

But now that most of us are done with the gifty holidays for the year, I can wax materialistic with impunity. I want I want I want:

• A classic alarm clock with the Pricess Leia ears (you know what I mean, right?) and the true RINGRINGRING! sound. But hopefully with the modern addition of wonderful, wonderful snooze.
• America the Book on CD. I bought it, but I gave it to my sister. Mistake. Should've re-gifted some old journal or something.
• Alexandria and The Morning Star by Nick Bantok. Ideally I'd get the whole second trilogy including The Gryphon, but since I gave that as a gift (why! why! with the giving away of things I want!) and got to leaf through it pre-wrap, I'll settle. I'd prefer, however, not to settle for reading the final two by sneaking them into the corner of a bookstore which, as things stand, is my plan.
• Two fitted sheets and a duvet cover. Mine are sex-stained After three years on the same sheet and under the same cover, I need something new. I thought briefly about red satin, but the bed is really, really not the place for irony.
• The Leonard Cohen tribute album, I'm Your Fan.
• A haircut and dye job.
• Pants that fit. None of this big flappy pant leg business. (Aside, speaking of fit: Brief minor flare-up of insecurity this weekend when my mother gave me a lovely classic black coat for Christmas in a size far too big for me. Now. My mom's a really small woman - 5'3", 110 pounds, and generally sort of shrimpy.* I can kind of see why she'd buy a size or two up for me. I'm not Twiggy. I'm like three Twiggys. But when I opened the box and the size tag stared up at me with its bold declaration, This is what you look like, I bugged a little. Oh well; I don't like being the only woman in my immediate family who isn't a stick figure, but with my dad's metabolism and my appetite for meat, cheese, salt, liquor and decadence generally, I live with it. Plus I'm prettier than them so it's ok.**)
• Steak.
• Glorious on DVD so that I can memorize it and annoy more people than I have ever annoyed before.
• My own copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Also some other stuff, but I'm spent.

* This last bit is a lie
** I'm really not, but you can't check, ha

not actually "in demand," i know, but apparently worth complaining about in its absence

Email from Heather, last week:
If you don't blog, I will just stare at the blank white screen and then my eyes will burn out of their sockets and then I will be blind and then you will be sorry.

Voice message from Jolene, this weekend:
Just wanted to catch up - I usually can get an idea of what you're up to from reading your blog, but it's all empty so I don't know what's going on in your life."

Nagging comment from Conrad, this morning:
Update, Kate!

Email from Stan, just now, in response to the my asking, "I'm not used to having time to kill at work. What should I do?":
You could always write a blog post or two.

So uh ... happy holidays, everyone. Incidentally, the honest-to-goodness nicest person I've never met is Dani, hands down. The best able to crack me up at work is Nikita. Extra special holiday e-wishes for you guys. I'd give you chocolate, if you were, like, right here next to me and my chocolate.

best subway story of the year

And it's not in NYC.

Here's to BART.

i think i should let my mom take over the blog

She's funnier than me. She's probably funnier than you, too, but I don't know because I'm a far from impartial judge. I'll let you decide.

(That was her email to my siblings and me today. It is not typical of her to write an email in that way, but it is typical of her to be that silly.)

ok now it's just funny

Unless the Nutcracker Suite is six hours long, it's been on repeat in the next cube.

cubicle etiquette, vol. 142

I know that everyone has nightmare co-workers, so it is not lightly that I say the woman next to me has balls. Really, I know it's not an accusation to throw around. But the thing is, she's playing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite for the second day in a row.

sometimes i love people

Look here.

Then look here.

i can't get no

Nothing satisfies a major jones to see Closer quite like, well, seeing it. Now if only the rest of life's joneses could get worked out so expeditiously.

just like that

It took half a second for my day to go entirely to shit. Less than that - an instant, the time it took for Lemony Snicket's real name to flash onto the computer screen and burn itself into my brain. Damn you, internet, I didn't want to know!

At least it isn't Brad something.

topical

Last night I found myself at a loss to explain why I almost never really talk on this site about things I do and things that happen to me. It was pointed out over the phone that my slightly esoteric bulleted list yesterday (apologies to everyone who doesn't know Into the Woods by heart) was possibly the most topical entry I've written in quite awhile. I covered up my inability to explain this by inventing a lot of reasons that seemed sensible and that I'd still say aren't invalid, but just ... not very relevant, because if I don't talk about one thing or another on my blog, chances are it's because I've tried, composed something totally shitty in my head, and abandoned the effort. (Plus, I was tipsy, and perhaps not engaging in the conversation so much as, say, stumbling through it.)

I'm very lucky, in that my shortage of conversational prowess hasn't put off Seastreet yet. It's a feat, I'd say, since he is discerning enough to note my hesitancy to write, as he said, topical entries, and willing enough to poke fun at me a tiny bit for it - qualities that, among others, have led me to abandon my usual disdain for telephone conversations of any length. I keep it to email, where I can pretend to be All Off The Cuff, All The Time! without having to prove that I am, or to talking in person, where invariably there's some liquor, and thus, some aural equivalent to beer goggles (beer muffs, anyone? get it?) to keep anyone from noticing that the witty repartee isn't coming from my corner of the table.

What was I saying.

I think I was driving at something like commendation for someone who will put up with my chattering nonsense. I'm certainly grateful.

The point is (I so hate beginning a paragraph with "the point is," like a red flag to my inability to tie two ideas together in a more seamless way, but oh well), I'm just plain bad at writing about my personal life, but it's not because I mind it being a topic. All my best friends here are bloggers, and I love reading about places we go and people we know and things we talk about on their blogs. I just haven't gotten down the art of doing it myself, I guess. But - and if you know me at all, you know I usually despise the practice of issuing statements like this on blogs, so believe me when I say I do mean this, even though I make absolutely no promises on results - I will try.

Now - how 'bout some non-posting for, like, four days? I'm great at that.