Rebecca

Consolidating

2009-02-07T10:14:00.001-05:00

Just moved a bunch of posts over to this page. Feb 06 - present

Popcorn

2008-05-18T10:19:00.000-05:00

We had a going away party before leaving Denver for Philly. Mainly the group of friends/coworkers that moved out to Denver together from Boston. It was a fun night, lots of good wine and good music. Toward the end of the night I got the (drunken) idea to pop popcorn, so I pulled out a large stewpot, dropped some olive oil in, poured a thin layer of popcorn kernels on top, and covered the pot. When it began to pop, one of the younger guests came over and asked, astonished, "What are you doing?"

"Making popcorn", I said. "Want some?"

"You can make popcorn on the stove?? In a pot??", he said. He was truly shocked.

"Uh, yeah.", I said, and I took him through the steps.

I could not believe it, but the few people in their early 20s had never, I mean never ever, popped popcorn outside of a microwave. Others had used a specific popcorn popper, but not on the stove. I don't know if popping microwave on the stove is "old timey" or just ghetto, but it tastes better and it's fun. Plus you don't die of popcorn lung.

My kitchen in Denver had a nice new microwave mounted over the stove, but I must say, I hardly ever used it. I had the same set up in Florida, too, so when I moved to Boston, I didn't have a microwave because I couldn't take it with me. I never bought one either and quickly found out I didn't really miss it. If I needed to heat something up I put it in the oven or on the stove. Other than some frozen entrees for work, I didn't buy anything that was specifically microwavable and I try not to purchase things in such bulk that I need to freeze them before I use them. I know this sounds very Bridget Jones of me, but the typical contents of my freezer are: ice, gin, and a few Lean Cuisines.

In any event, people, you don't need a microwave or even a popcorn popper to make popcorn; a pan with a lid will do just fine. Try it sometime.

APMPPE

2008-01-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

The other day I started seeing something weird in my right eye - a little wavy shimmery spot every now and then. I thought I was staring at the computer screen too much, but having just had my annual eye exam the week before, I decided to call and ask about it when I followed up on if my new glasses came in.

It's not a good sign when every person you speak with says "oh no" after you describe your symptoms.

The concern was that I might have a detached retina, which apparently has to be surgically reattached in a day or two or else you could go blind. Nice. This was day three. So, off to the eye doctor I go.

The eye doctor dialates my eye and spends forever shining a bright light into it to the point where I can't see anymore and when he instructs me to look up and to the right, I just hope my muscles are responding correctly because I can't see to tell.

The good news is that I don't have a detached retina. However, my body, which can never decide to be normal (low temp, low BP, low iron - I swear I have the metabolism of a lizard) has decided to once again do something unusual: the doctor tells me he believes I have AMPPE (pron. "amp-y") otherwise known as Acute Posterior Multifocal Placoid Pigment Epitheliopathy. Basically, this means I have lesions on my retina. It's a very rare disorder (Mass Eye and Ear saw 5 cases in 10 years). It fucks up your vision, then goes away - most of the time. It's a vascular inflammation, cause unknown, though sometimes it's preceeded by the flu (not in my case).

The internet is evil as all the message boards related to this (like two) are all full of people (like two) where it hasn't gone away and they have, like, actual holes in their vision. Fabulous.

So I'm seeing a retinal specialist tomorrow to verify that this is actually AMPPE. The flashes I'm seeing now don't bother me, really, but from what I read it typically gets worse before it gets better (weeks/months) and usually hops to the other eye too.

Even as bad as my vision is without glasses or contacts, I've taken for granted that it wouldn't get any worse until I was in my old age. If anyone has heard of this condition or knows of someone that has had it, I'd love to hear more about it. Wish me luck.

ink

2007-11-23T10:25:00.000-05:00

It's the missing sentences that say the most.
All color reflected in those small white spaces.
People live their lives in between the ink.

Things to do in Denver when you're dead

2007-07-31T10:27:00.000-05:00

When I am completely freaked out by something, I often, at the same time, get a wave of zen-like "whatever" wafting over me. In one second of contemplating an upcoming life change of major proportion, my brain will scream "aaagh!" and at the same time shrug "eh" or calmly say "hush now." I very rarely freak out. Well, I should say, I very rarely go into a prolonged tailspin of freakedoutedness. I'm not someone to break out in hives or hyperventilate at the thought of something unknown, nor do I go into days of panic. I just go "AAAAGH! [pause] OK done." Then I make a decision of some kind. It's like I have a pacemaker for my panic - panic goes off the charts and I get an electric shock of apathy or maternal hugs, or deal with it practicality, depending on the need. In a way I'm jealous of the tailspin people. Do I just not care as much? Should I be freaking out more? Am I repressing something if I just deal with things evenly instead of all bi-polar like?

If you don't know what I mean by OMG!/whatever. thought pattern, try likening it to how most people deal with the concept of death. I read a magazine article years ago about death and this young woman's comment has stuck with me. She said something like when she really thinks about death, it completely freaks her out and she wonders why everyone else isn't screaming and panicking and generally freaking out about it too. But they aren't, so she doesn't either. Sound a bit crazy-girl, but a lot of people must have had that moment: you freak out for a split second, and then you think "what are you going to do about it?" and move on to the next thought.

"What if I don't find someone?" "What if I can't get it up?" "What if I get cancer?" "What if I can't have kids?" "What if I don't get that job?" "What if I DO find someone but then he can't get it up and it's like that Charlotte and Troy on Sex and the City, finding out the goods don't work the day before the wedding but you're in the Vera Wang and that dude from Twin Peaks is in a kilt and there's no way you're going to stop it, you'll just have to paste your face over all his porno and make out with the hot gardener for kicks. And what if I can't have kids like the subsequent Charlotte-Harry storyline? Do I have to get a Cavalier King Charles spaniel and name it Elizabeth Taylor while my husband surfs Chinese adoption agencies? But then what if he does get it up and we do have kids and things are "normal" but then I get punished with cancer for having a perfectly normal life and die? Who's going to feed Elizabeth Taylor and how am I going to finish that video to my kids on how to bake a lasagna and put on makeup? Where's the Martha Stewart book on that? I mean who the hell really does that? I can't get it together to organize my photos when I'm healthy let alone create some self-absorbed time capsule out of hand made paper and creepy from the grave mother guilt while going through chemo. Why does Hollywood have to make me feel bad even in my final days because I didn't finish my death lasagna video?"

So the whatever is a survival mechanism. Without it, your mind explodes or you become terribly depressed or you pull an embarassing "This world is bullshit" Fiona Apple moment.

I'm moving to Denver and it will be OK. AAAGH! whatever.

Other than being felt up by a flower-wielding Filipino, Paris was great

2007-07-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

It was Saturday and I was in Paris. You'd think that would be special enough, but no, without knowing it I had picked the coolest Saturday possible to be in Paris. First reason: twice a year, and only twice a year, every fashion shop in Paris slashes prices to clear out inventory for the new season, and this was the first weekend of Les Soldes. Second reason: as if in direct reaction to the fashion steals, that Saturday was also the day of the Pride parade. Purely coincidential, I'm sure, but half off LaCroix certainly makes me want to dance in the street.

I found out about Les Soldes and Les Gays from a CL poster who was an American looking for someone to attend Pride with her. It being the only sane post, I took a chance and emailed her. It turned out to be a great connection and we became instant friends. She was relieved to have an English-speaking pal to walk with her since her gf was out of town, and I was pleased to have someone show me around some of the less touristy parts of Paris. We poked in and out of the shops in the Marais, went to a cafe, and then caught up with the parade, which, apparently, was a lot mellower than the year before but still a blast. Every kind of person was out in the street, marching or watching; this was not a gay parade so much as it was a parade celebrating choice. Every kind of Parisian was there: gay couples, straight couples, children, eldery. I was impressed with the complete diversity of the population that came out that day, whether to march or watch, it was an amazingly inclusive and positive experience.

And what a party! Each float had a DJ and everyone danced alongside, and when the DJ built up the music and finally dropped the beat, the entire parade stopped and exploded in dance before moving on. The parade finished in the gigantic roundabout at the Bastille and the monument was covered in people as well as every other available inch of the square. The local gay radio station hosted more prominent DJs that played into the night.

So the day was a success. I had made a new friend, found a gorgeous bag at half off, got some great photos of the quirky French, and tromped down Saint Germain with ten thousand Parisians dancing and celebrating life.

Then on my way back to my hotel, a Filipino flower seller felt me up. I never thought I'd have to kick the ass of a drunk man smaller than myself but it almost came to that. He got an elbow and me shouting in two languages and I got groped. Paris is a relatively safe city, but it is a big city with plenty of crazies. And while some stodgy people might think the pervs were at the Bastille waving rainbow flags and dancing to the mixes of Boy George, I can affirm that, actually, the pervs were on the other side of the Seine posing as meager flower sellers.

Deal Breakers and Warning Signs

2007-05-26T10:15:00.000-05:00

Everyone has their list of deal breakers and warning signs when it comes to dating. For some it's the CD collection. A sense of humor. Proper table manners. There's the ongoing one about a single woman with a cat. That's so worn out, it should be followed with a cymbal shot and a take my wife, please chaser.

Well, I have my version of the cat lady, and that is guy with fishtank. There's something about a person trolling P.J.'s Pets on a Saturday afternoon to fill his 150 gallon fishtank with a bunch of cool as shit tetra fish that just puts me off. I question the psychological makeup of that person. Maybe this goes along with my earlier blog on how certain people build their lives around all things "badass". Giant fishtanks fall into the badass realm, I think. Regardless, they scare the shit out of me.

Maybe it's a matter of taste, or more likely, of smell. I think they fall in the same category as dusty dreamcatchers and molester vans. Like, if you see one of these babies sitting on a dresser or a TV console, there will definitely be collectible plates of American Indians and "them babies with the big eyes" on the other wall.

Sometimes they fall into another category containing guys who walk down the beach with their pet snake wrapped around their neck, and people who buy license plate holders that mimic chain link.

However you classify it, giant fish tank guy is someone to avoid. Don't say nobody every told you.

New trend: bedazzling your car!

2007-05-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

Today while walking in Somerville, I came across these two cars within a few blocks of each other:

What I did this weekend

2007-05-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

This weekend I drove 1,200 miles and saw virtually all of Scotland.

Reading, England, to Glasgow, Scotland

Glasgow Scotland to Isle of Skye in the Western Highlands

From Isle of Skye across the Highlands to Edinburgh, Scotland

And back down.

This is some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen.

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

2007-05-01T10:34:00.000-05:00

I am shocked. The music on the radio here is godawful. Why is it, when England has such an amazing musical history, can no rock n roll be found on the radio? I kid you not. The chat radio is really good. I'm loving BBC London. But every time I search for music, I am hit with either the worst example of bubblegum techno - so awful it should only be used in a Bratz Dolls commercial - or 1970s disco and easy listening. No rock. None. There are shitloads of mod asymmetrical haircuts and skinny jeans walking around. I see ipods in people's ears. Is the music scene so underground that it's not even on the radio? I'm tempted to ask the chick in my office with the pink tips in her otherwise jet black hair. Every time I walk by she's minimizing Myspace on her desktop. She should know, right?

I'm very disappointed. I thought I could listen to some cool London radio station and come back referencing the new it band. So far there's been hours of conversation regarding Barbara Streisand's outrageous 500 GBP (that's $1,000!) concert tickets that go on sale soon, Kate Moss's new fashion line, which premiered yesterday, and something about Take That. Take That?? C'mon.

I've given up scanning the dial. There is no music here. This morning I turned the car on and Cher was in full wail on Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves and it was the best song I heard all week.

roundabout

2007-04-20T10:35:00.000-05:00

The other day I went to pick up my rental car. After the lady took me on a walk around the car pointing out the dents and dings, she handed me the key and left me to it. I think this is what new parents feel like when the nurse hands them their baby as they are about to leave the hospital: you're actually going to let me leave with this thing? I don't need to take a test or something? Are you sure?

I opened the right hand door and got in, thinking about how I probably should have studied up on road signs or something before this moment. Funny, the key still goes in on the right. I thought it would be completely mirror opposite and the ignition would be on the left of the steering wheel. I put on my seatbelt, checked my mirrors and headed out, chanting "Left, left, left. Stay to the left."

A quarter mile down the road I thought "This isn't too bad." Then I thought, "Man, this car is awfully squeaky." Then I thought, "Crap, the emergency brake is still on."

At the first left, I put on my turn signal and the front and back wipers went on, complete with spray. I managed to stop the front ones but not the back. At subsequent red lights I tried to figure out how to stop the back wipers. Move the thingy up. Down. Twist the thingy. Twist the thingy the other way. Flip the switch on the thingy. Why are there so many moving parts on this thingy? It's a Ford Focus for crissakes. Finally, almost home, I figured out that the thingy moves forward and backward too, and that is what controls the back wipers. I sighed with relief just as my left wheels nicked the curb for the third time. I imagine the rental car lady will spend an extra few minutes pointing out existing dents and dings to the next renter.

Why do the Brits drive on the left anyway? It seems purposely contrary. It seems like something the French would do. Ah, but it didn't start with cars. It started with wagons, apparently. And horses before that. And pedestrians before that. If all the wagons are driving on the left, one can't start driving cars on the right. But why did horsemen stay to the left? Why, in self-defense, of course. Staying to the left protected the weaker side and put your fighting arm closest to the passer-by. Says the all-knowing Wiki: "…the need to be ready for self-defence on rural roads inclined most horse-riders to keep to their left when encountering oncoming wayfarers, so as to be able to deploy a sword or other hand-weapon more swiftly and effectively should the need arise."

So now I know if I ever need to "deploy a sword" inside a car, it's best to do it in the UK, where my fighting arm will be closest to the oncoming wayfarer. Oh wait, I'm left handed.

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks here

2007-04-18T10:36:00.000-05:00

I arrived in London on Monday night. The driver and I chatted about Florida. Everybody in Britian has been to Florida, I think. It's become the item I chat about most with strangers, besides the weather and the traffic. Everyone has a story about Florida.

This gentleman got roped into replacing another relative on a family reunion trip to Orlando. He and his girlfriend eventually skipped out and drove to Clearwater beach and took the second B&B they found "after the roundabout." It was immaculately clean to the point of it being threadbare due to the patron's OCD with the vacuum cleaner. He had been to Frenchy's and walked out on the pier at Clearwater Beach, and the sunset and the extra starch in the sheets improved his opinion of Florida immensely.

We spoke about all the different sorts of accents there are in the UK. How intresting it is that such a relatively small country should have so many. It tells such a story. The British Library has a great website on the study of this: Sounds Familiar? I know there is a similar project in the US to document regional dialects before they die. With the advent of mass media and even the most remote places losing their remoteness, everybody is beginnig to sound like everybody else.

There is a Starbucks on virtually every corner in London. As prevalent, if not moreso, than Boston. There was a time where the sight of a McDonalds or a bottle of Coca-Cola would be an unexpected comfort after spending days, weeks, months, in a place where nothing reminded you of home and everything smelled and tasted different. I can imagine trekking your way out of the Amazon and, like an oasis, a cherry red ice box filled with green glass bottles of Coke being the best thing you've ever seen. (Yes, I've seen Romancing the Stone one too many times.) Or, after days of eating the local fare, a visit to the McDonalds would be just the right thing, even if you don't eat it at home, even if it costs you $30. To experience something familiar while you're away can be a memorable experience in itself.

I remember being in Rome in 1989, and seeing someone walking down the street with a Dunkin Donuts bag. Where in the world did you find a Dunkin Donuts? we all asked incredulously. McDonalds had become ubiquitious, but anything else was a shock. And Dunkin Donuts of all places? Even now, you can't find a Dunkin Donuts in parts of the U.S. But back in 1989, seeing someone walk by the Trevi fountain with a "coffee regulah" was absolutely shocking. And of course we decended on that Dunkies like wild dogs and bought our $5 donuts and ate them in a sugared haze and laughed at all the other Americans who, walking by, took a double take and stopped and said Where in the hell did you find a Dunkin Donuts around here??

Now, everything has become global, and those welcome little surprises of turning a corner and seeing something familiar in an unfamiliar place have become so prevalent that they do not provide that same sense of comfort that one might seek after weeks away from home. Now, it's almost embarassing how invasive it is. How every city looks the same. Am I in London or New York? Now, here I am outside of London, and there's a mall down the street that has a Chili's, a T.G.I. Friday's, a McDonalds, a Domino's, a Bennigan's and a Gap.

So, that day, I bypassed the Starbucks on that corner in Covent Garden, to go across the street to a more authentic coffee house. It was bigger and had nice tables and a few leather chairs and was populated by locals. I crossed the threshhold and was greeted with a lungful of cigarette smoke. I always forget how un-used-to second hand smoke I have become. I sat at a table with a view of the street and sipped equal parts awful cappuccino and second hand smoke and had a debate in my head about the real value of insisting upon an "authentic experience" while I watched hoardes of Englishmen and Englishwomen walk in and out of Starbucks with smiles on their faces, greedily gulping their venti mochafrappacchinos.

Note to self

2007-04-07T10:39:00.000-05:00

Note to self: next time you feel the need to get bangs. Don't.

Argh.

yet another blog on cabbies

2007-04-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

Today I learned the inner workings/dirty politics of cabbie-life in Cambridge from an insider (read: cabbie).

Conclusions:

1) Cabbies are still a-holes for refusing to answer any job other than a "good job", meaning, going to the airport or, say, Rhode Island. If you have boxes to transport from point A to point B and point A is within two miles of point B, you're not a "good job" and therefore screwed. Try it. I cannot get a cab to my house unless I'm going to the airport. I have waited over an hour. Nobody comes. My dissertation on public service, the fact that people who need short rides also need long rides, and good/considerate tipping for short rides, fell on deaf ears.

2) Ambassador-Brattle Taxi is as corrupt as expected, giving these "good jobs" only to friends of the dispatcher and issuing checks on empty bank accounts to the poor immigrants (read: non-friends of the dispatcher) who work for them and who don't know how to or don't want to complain. These checks are reimbursement for voucher rides - prepaid by companies. So, basically the companies are reimbursing Ambassador-Brattle for the submitted vouchers. Ambassador-Brattle is writing checks to cabbies. And cabbies are decorating their sunvisors with the checks because the money is "lost" somewhere in between this transaction. An after-effect to this: cabbies are now not taking voucher rides either, which will be an excellent impression when that company is trying to send the candidate for the super hard to fill VP job back to the airport and she misses her flight after having to hear a half hour bitch-fest about taking a voucher. (Yes, it's only 15 mins to the airport, but not if you look clueless and have a voucher.). Soon, the only way to get a cab to come to you will be to say you need to go to the airport and you're paying cash. Otherwise, grab one on the street and make them drive off before you say where you're going, but be prepared to hear major whining if you ask to go anywhere in the greater Boston area because that's not a good enough fare.

I empathize with the cabbies, I do. Nobody is living la dolce vita on taxicab income. But they make it awfully hard when they are pissed off that you're "only a $10 fare" and get on the radio to bitch about it to the dispatcher who said you were going somewhere farther. Empathy is wearing a little thin at that point. At that point, I don't care how much your taxi medallion costs ($2,200) or want to see and hold your worthless check ($625) as proof of Ambassador-Brattle as the Evil Empire. I'm with you. But why, pray tell, are we in the Ted Williams Tunnel? Answer me that, Mr. Cabbie. I'm trying to get to Harvard Square. From Kendall Square.

And no, I don't want extra blank receipts. Some of us aren't corrupt and trying to get what they can get. And if I were, I'd be a little more pleasant along the way. I swear, every cabbie around here is flat out miserable. There is one exception: West African cabbies. I don't know what it is, but they are so nice and friendly. I get where I'm going in a fairly straight line and a decent price. I get called "mama" or "princess" and where I'd typically be a little annoyed at this, somehow it sounds endearing. I think the West Africans should ban together and start their own taxi company - Mama Princess Cab Company. As for now, I've limited my use of taxis to a bare minimum. I can't contribute to this dysfunction anymore. I am withdrawing my dollars from this corrupt system. I will pack lighter. Plan ahead. Wear more sensible shoes.

Or more likely, I will be pinch-toed and late for work, but I will have justice. OK, blisters. I will have blisters. And justice.

Driving in the UK?

2007-03-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

So, I'm going to be traveling a lot this year for work. Mainly to the UK, but also to Europe. It's all very exciting, especially given the fact that my office is being relocated from properly normal sized office to office the size of closet. I will be happy not to spend too much time in it. Much more pleasant to spend time at normal size guest office and comfy hotel in the likes of Madrid and Firenze.

Given that I will be in the UK often for weeks at a time, I think I'm going to have to learn to drive on the other side of the road. Maybe being a lefty will give me an advantage? Does having driven a Mini zipcar count as preparation? Who here reading this, has driven in a English style car on English style streets and survived? Details, please.

I think the hardest thing will be having to constantly think. By now most of my car driving moves are muscle memory. Why, some times I get to where I'm going and I don't even remember the drive. My catlike reflexes had be working on autopilot, I knew where every car in front of an behind me was, yet at the same time I was able to mentally redecorate my apartment.

I won't be able to parallel park anywhere. Not on the left. Here's hoping for lots of "car parks" and valets or for sure I shall wind up in Traffic Court a la Edina Monsoon.

Advice, anyone?

Maptastic!

2007-02-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

Does anybody else think Geographic Information Science is cool? Oh my goodness, I just figured out that this is an entire thing. Like people have jobs doing it and stuff.

GIS takes maps and overlays it with attribute information. Probably the first and most famous use of this was by John Snow who figured out the source of the cholera outbreak in 1854 London by mapping cholera cases and water pumps. By doing this, it became instantly obvious that the source of the contamination was the Broad Street pump.

How cool is that? I was reading about this recently and then I hear this piece on NPR about a map by Amy Hiller of the Univerty of Pennsylvania School of Design indicating availability of well-stocked grocery stores and cases of food related diseases in Philiadelphia.

That got me thinking about the Salem Witch Trials and how there's a theory that it really was a battle for property, as many of the accused were women of property with no male heirs. Hey look! There's a map of that and it's even time based. In fact, there's a whole GIS of the Salem Witchtrials going on at the University of Virginia. And oh my oh my, it's all part of the Geospatial and Statistical Data Center. I totally want to go to the Geospatial and Statistical Data Center!

But here's the catch: I only want to do cool stuff like find the cholera pump and help poor people not have to take five busses to get a fresh vegetable and create cluster maps of losers based on hacked IP addresses from CL.

I don't want to create maps for the government or for market research. I don't want to use this newfound awesomeness for evil purposes. No I'm the Lloyd Dobler of GIS. But how does one make a living out of mapping supercool stuff?

Maybe I can make it a hobby of mapping supercool stuff. Maybe I can be the maptastic female Steven Levitt!

Stolen

2007-01-20T10:48:00.000-05:00

I turned the key in the heavy old door but it wouldn't open. I tried again. And one more just for sure. The deadbolt was on but I didn't have a key to that.

The cat began to cry on the other side. I had just brought her home that week from Florida. She was still getting used to the place. Why was the deadbolt on?

I called the property manager. "Hi. Did anyone come over today to do something in the apartment?" It seemed lately they were over all the time. Perhaps the maintenance guy had a key to the deadbolt and thought I did too.

While I was on hold a rush of cold wet air came from under the door, circling my ankles. Shit! I ran down the half flight of stairs and through the basement hallway to the back door - the service entrance in another life when the brownstone was an elegant home and not ten apartments. I had the dining room and the back service rooms. My floormate, a handsome gay Asian doctor had the library in the front of the building.

I didn't meet the downstairs neighbors, a young Eastern European couple, until this day. They heard me panicking on the phone and came out of their apartment just as I was running down the stairs.

I opened the back door and ran up the five steps to the ground level. I stood amongst the garbage cans and looked up at my broken window. The rusty grate had been pulled back and the old window pushed out of its tracks.

I called the police and stayed in the alley way afraid the cat would get out the window. I was even more afraid that a person, not a cat, would come out the window and I'd be the only road block between him and his next fix, but I stayed there anyway.

It was raining and windy and by the time the police came I was soaked. I had come home early in order to have time to shop for an outfit for Kenny's mass. The family had been on edge for weeks. Waiting. Searching. Working with the police. My mother would call with the smallest bit of news. I was at an ATM in St. Petersburg when she called and said "They've found bone. Burned remains."

She had lured him to her farm. Gave him a place to stay and played house. Then pumped him full of tranquilizers and tourtured him for weeks. Then she incinerated him.

Allegedly.

The thief took my laptop, camera, jewelry, even the liquor out of my freezer, even the quarters for my laundry. How could I care? At the luncheon the next day after the service, my cousins, aunts, and uncles, exclaimed over the break-in with genuine concern. "Are you OK?" "Do you feel safe being all alone in the city?" And I replied with my "How can I even care about stuff like cameras and rings at a time like this?" I didn't like this talk. The whole conversation. I felt like I sounded smug; like I was looking for credit in taking a high-road of non-materialism. I didn't like the words. Every conversation was a cliche. Twinges of guilt with every laugh.

What do you do in situations like this? You support the parents. You make coffee. You look at baby pictures pulled out of wallets. You ignore the fact that the mother is heavily medicated because you would be too if that were your son. You exchange email addresses. You note how everyone has aged and think they're probably thinking the same about you. You think, how could this have happened? Because there are bad people out there, that's why.

The Russian girl tells me my place has been broken into before. She wants me to come in and have some soup. She's good people.

The family members who can, drive all the way up there to sit in the courtroom and give their support. They are angry and silent and profoundly sad. There are no outbursts. My family has formed a circle around the parents; all emotional energy - every drop - is focused inside this circle, supporting them. She will see nothing but a cohesive unit, - a properly dressed, properly stone-faced family that won't offer her the satisfaction of an outburst. They hold small photos and keep silent. There's no way she will get off.

I yell at the building owner's daughter for not securing the window in the first place and for not letting me know of prior break-ins. The window is fixed in an hour. That window always made me nervous. I should have listened to my gut. Always listen to your gut.

OHMIGOD! NO WAY!!

2007-01-20T10:47:00.000-05:00

NO, for godsake, NO, I don't want to guess which celebrity that obviously is. It's Lindsay Loahn. Because she's in rehab this week and therefore her stock is up. Well, that and Tara Reid hasn't shown a nipple lately. Way to go Tara. You must have invested in double sided tape or some self esteem or something. Back when Britney was sleep-deprived and taking national TV interviews in dirty hair and chipped purple nail polish and driving around with her kid in the front like a dashboard baby Jesus, the answer was Britney Spears. And Paris Hilton looks like a chicken, so unless the answer is "the love child of Frank Perdue and Marie Antoinette" I don't want to guess who that is either.

Eminem, quit staring out at us like some strung out male hooker at the back of the bar in Industrial Waste, Michigan. I swear, all he needs is a pool stick and a hickey on his chest. Put on a shirt, man.

And Brad, however appealing duck hunting you sounds since you left your wife because she wouldn't have a baby on your timetable, I think I'll pass.

My lord, these banner ads remind me of when the Training Department discovered PowerPoint ten years ago. Everything was swooshing and swiping and pinging and TA-DA!!!-ing.

Can we please get rid of the animations all together. Please? I find myself scrolling just so I can't see them. They are that visually annoying to me. And if that friggin yellow emoticon says "OHMIGOD! NOWAY! one more time when I mistakenly scroll over it, I'm going to lose it.

No, I don't want a free pair of UGGs.

No, I don't want to press the "fart button." Zero desire.

Who are these people who keep these guys in business? Someone must be clicking on them, right? What are they thinking when they do?

MMMMmmmmm....spam and cookies! Yum! Clickety click click click.

Assholes.

Random Thoughts

2006-12-25T10:49:00.000-05:00

I think in the very near future, there will be a subset of historians that work exclusively with electronic data. Trolling online archives and digging through discarded hard drives, they will attempt to reconstruct the past. Imagine if stumbling across the long lost archives of Craigslist is viewed akin to unearthing Pompeii.

I just realized that Van Halen must have based their entire musical existence on the piece of guitar work in Crazy Train that comes right after the intro.

Bizarre Bizarre

2006-12-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

I went to the Bizarre Bizarre with my friend, Mike. We so hip. I didn't make it to last year's BB but I have been to Ladies Night, and whereas my reaction to Ladies Night was "whoa chickie, step AWAY from the glue gun" there was a lot less glue gunning and a lot more knitting. Make Magazine has inspired a whole shitload of hipsters into putting down ipods and picking up balls of yarn.

Now the knitting phemon has been going on for quite a while. There's the Stitch n Bitches or Knitting Bitches. Magazines. Parties. All sorts of yarny shit. But at the BB, I overheard the latest. Plain old knitting is not cutting it anymore. Now you must spin your own yarn. There was only one table selling unspun wool but the buzz was around if you listened to the cool(er) people behind the tables.

"Yeah, I've been spinning for like a year now."

I'm looking forward to next year when actual sheep will be shorn and flocks will roam Davis Square.

I know, my sarcasm is so much more GenX than GenY. I'm probably just jealous that my slightly younger counterparts have all this motivation to make shit out of construction paper. Actually, I think I'm annoyed that everyone thinks this is a new idea that they created and that it's become superhip. I used to get teased as a kid over that stuff. The 80's were not about being different in a home-made way unless you were truly punk and I wasn't old enough for that. Punk was a halloween costume, it's primary purpose getting away with wearing loads of makeup.

My sister and I made (bad) clothes for our Barbies out of papertowels and tinfoil. I spent months on hook and yarning a rug. I made a bag out of an old pair of jeans, using the leg to make the strap. I saw it on an episode of Rhoda and thought it was the coolest thing. My friends just thought I couldn't afford a Jordache bag.

My favorite pasttime as a little girl - one of my first memories - was sewing a boxful of buttons onto a pillow case. I would do that for hours. Recently when exploring that memory, I realized that at the time I lived in a place that we moved out of when I was five. I realized that my mother left me alone for hours with a sharp needle at like age 3. When I confronted her on her parenting skills she just looked at me and said, "Well, you never stuck yourself, did you?"

Same thing with yoga and vegitarianism. It's cool, but it's not new. I'm a flower child. Or a child of flower children or whatever. I grew up with lotus position and making bread and potting plants and recycling stuff and walking everywhere.

That stuff is majorly fun as a kid and as a college student and into adulthood, so I see the current appeal. As a teenager who grew up with it, that shit was BORING, hence the ennui of my generation. Alice in Chains did not knit on the road between shows. I don't know of any fans sewing I heart Billy Corgan sofa pillows.

In the 80s and 90s various versions of coolness included a tear somewhere in the clothing. Whether it was shredded and held together with safety pins or hair-band acid washed and pre-ripped bullshit, or the Flashdance sweatshirt or some ratty flannel from a thrift shop. Maybe that's the difference. We rummaged through thrift shops and said "that'll work" and kept things in their original state or destroyed them on purpose. Now its all, "I can FIX this. I'll just cut this and sew this and darn the shit out of it and it will be super cool." It's the hipster version of your mom telling you to "just put on a little lipstick". Optimism. Weird.

Anyway, the Bizarre Bizarre was fun. And there were some really cool things, like the decoupaged suitcases and men's ties with phrases like "gender fucker" and "hussy" on them amid the sea of poorly knit hats and overpriced T-shirts.

The best part of the Bizarre Bizarre was the line to get in. There was this older balding guy wearing one of those too narrow scratchy polyester sweatshirts with the big waistband - the kind normally seen in 1985 with ironed on kittens on it. His awesome sweatshirt was covered in primary color Wu-Tang symbols.

I bet he made it himself.

explosive journalism

2006-11-22T10:55:00.000-05:00

explosive journalism
Category: News and Politics

I turn on the TV this morning to see what the temperature will be and I find that there's been a massive explosion in Danvers. No deaths or major injuries, though many people displaced from their homes, lots and lots of damage and a home for the deaf and blind evacuated.

During the press conference the fire chief conveyed the information calmly, with a thick Boston accent and lots of ahs and uhs - as is expected for someone who doesn't speak in public every day. That, I can deal with.

Then came the questions. The stupidest, most leading, loaded, sniffing for a sensation type questions reporters could ask:

Sir, we've heard that there is broken glass in quite a wide area, including the shopping district, has there been any signs of MAJOR UNCONTROLLED LOOTING?

Excue me, but isn't this a RACE AGAINST TIME, because, I mean, we've got a big Nor'easter coming in a few days. What are you going to do about that?

Chief, really, how MIRACULOUS is it that nobody is dead. Would you call it a miracle or what?

Gah! What ever happened to asking relevant news-worthy questions and then letting the man get on with his job? They're all such hacks - only asking questions that will garner a quotable headline-grabbing answer. If I were the chief, I would have told them, yeah, there's terrible widespread looting in DANVERS and then let them trample each other on their way to their vans. Assholes.

Persnickity - 7 letters, begins with R

2006-11-16T10:55:00.000-05:00

I am a crossword puzzle fiend. Sift through the debris covering my coffee table and you'll find at least three weeks' worth of New York Times Sunday Magazines turned to the second to last page, smudged ink filling in the blanks in various amounts of completion. A dog-eared tome of a NY Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus sits in the stack of "coffee table books", U2's "Show", The Photo Book.

When picking up, I stack them together with the other parts of the newspaper and miscellaneous junk mail and catalogues and reluctantly put them aside for recycling. This last week as I was heaving a heavy sigh over those unfilled boxes, I realized that I have a surprisingly strong opinion about the right way to complete crosswords. It's a firm conviction. You might be able to sway me on some things, but not with this. I think I've channeled all my OCD tendencies into "puzzlin'" (that's what all the cool kids call it.)

Whatcha doin'?

Puzzlin'.

Word.

So, here's my philosophy on crossword puzzles:

Crossword puzzles are not the time to "learn", meaning you are not allowed to google, wiki, or pull out a reference book in order to get the answer. If you don't know it, you don't get to fill it in. Tough shit. Deal with it. Crossword puzzles are a guage of your knowledge. The fun is in seeing how much you can get filled in through recall and deduction. You can maybe ask a person in the room for help on one, but that's more out of politeness in that someone else is in the room and your nose is in a crossword. Plus, if it's your boyfriend and he knows one that you don't, that's kinda hot and deserves a kiss. Besides that, you're on your own, baby.

So looking stuff up is cheating. Yeah, it's on the tip of your tongue. Yeah, if only you could google the complete works of Anais Nin, then you'd remember the answer. Wah wah wah. It's not going to happen. Put the pen down. Go back to it in a day. You'll remember it then. Or figure it out the hard way but getting the answers from the down hints. That's the only true way to play.

Oh and p.s. - word searches are for losers. They're the Soap Opera Digest of puzzledom. You might as well be on Wheel of Fortune post 199- when they started giving you RSTLN E as a gimme and Vanna began tapping the letters instead of turning them.

Nobody works for things anymore.

D'Orsay to Darcy

2006-10-29T10:56:00.000-05:00

I finished my time is Paris with a visit to the Musee D'Orsay, which I must say, is probably my favorite museum. It was a train station in prior life and has these wonderfully tall ornate walls and lots of light and a beautiful giant clock at one end and the bones of the station are still in tact. Many of my favorite artists are here and the sculptures are amazing. These two were my favorite (the photo doesn't do them justice):

I decided to leave Paris a few hours early as everything is closed on Sunday and I was growing a little weary and lonely in that city. I took the Eurostar through the Chunnel to London and got to see (at high speed) the northern French countryside.

I was making my way to Hampshire, which I hadn't realized was so far from London. I was planning to take a taxi from the Waterloo stations, but I was told to take another train for an hour in order to get there. Lugging my two cumbersome suitcases up and down, bumping people as well as myself, and trying to catch the train before it departed, I was exhausted and at my wit's end when I finally sat down in the first avaliable seat. It took me about three minutes to realize that I was facing a young couple, about age 19 or 20, in full Anime costume. That made my day. The boy was a hot nerd type dressed like that popular Anime character that wears that banada thing on his forehead (no, I don't know the names or the shows, but I do recognize the characters) and the girl was that little kitty animal thing with the big gold balls on her ears. She was too cute. They chatted on and on about the two day convention they were just at and I scored come Poky off of them.

An hour later, I arrived at the station, found a taxi and in fifteen more minutes I was at the hotel. Oh my goodness - the hotel. It's the Four Seasons Hampshire and you can google it if you want. It's a former manor house in the Hampshire countryside where the future King Henry VIII met Catherine of Aragon for the very first time. The rooms are lovely, as one would expect, but the land! I'm kicking myself for not coming here earlier.

Then to top it all off, it just occurred to me that this is Jane Austen territory and my heart went pitter pat, as my dog-eared Pride and Prejudice, which I take with me on all trips due to it's compact size and security blanket like qualities, can attest. As soon as it is light out I'm going for a walk. I will not have time to explore the UK while I'm here, but I'm definitely going to explore these grounds as much as I can and nerdily imagine myself to be Elizabeth Bennett as I walk through the countryside.

People, don't just see the movies and think you know the story. Although most are very well done, you miss so much of the humor that way. Jane Austen, besides writing these classic stories that everyone copycats or reproduces for modern day (Bridget Jones Diary = Pride and Prejudice, Clueless = Emma), she is hilarous and her characters are just as applicable today as then.

Winged Victory

2006-10-27T10:58:00.000-05:00

Winged Victory stands alone in a classically stark marble rotunda. It's energy is aerodynamic - following the wet windswept folds of her dress, over her strong legs and shoulders, off her wings and feet and circling around the walls in a full circuit.

There are many sculptures from the Greeks, Romans and Etruscans, and onward to Michelangelo and Rodin that make marble appear so lifelike one would swear blood was rushing through veins, or folds of cloth to be so delicate as to imagine a breeze stirring them. But that is amateurish compared to this. Look here at her stomach, how it is distinct from the wet veil of cloth covering her. Utterly distinct. One piece of solid marble begets wet over sheer over skin over muscle over feeling. Yes, feeling. You feel it. Her pride and determination and strength - her core and everything that goes into her stance. And you know how the cloth feels - how it sticks and pulls, how the water pools in her navel and trickles over her thigh and collects at her feet. How her stomach tightens against the cold fabric and supports her in the wind on the prow of the boat on which she stands. Her wings are magestic. Her stance is powerful and feminine. But to me it is all about her stomach; that is where her energy comes.

Tucked in a corner of the rotunda, a good ten feet away, is a twelve inch glass box sitting on a pedastal at eye level. It contains her right hand, which originally was cupped around her mouth as she announced her victory. Now it sits on its back, palm up, in more of a position of welcome or abundance. Often overlooked, it is the second most expressive thing about her.

This sculpture was created to commemorate an important Rhodian naval victory. It was placed in a rock niche in the side of a cliff and wasn't unearthed until 1863.

To me, this sculpture is a better representation of "woman" than all the round-bellied fertility fetishes and beautifully serene Venuses and beatific Madonnas combined, because those sculptures capture only a facet of womanhood. Too often, they are one-dimensional. Winged Victory in her anonyminity and masterful lines is trancendent.

Paris: Day 3

2006-10-26T11:03:00.000-05:00

had an excellent day today. I saw the sun rise over Paris and spent time exploring Les Halles. After working through the majority of the day, I stepped out in search of a late lunch and while crossing the street bumped right into none other than Thom Yorke.

THOM YORKE!

p.s. I'm reading "Plainsong" by Kent Haruf. A great book so far, and a perfect earthy counterbalance to this trip. I highly recommend it.

Paris: Day 2

2006-10-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

I don't know what time zone I'm on but it's not Boston and it's not Paris. I think I'm on Tokyo time. I slept three hours last night, got up at 6 a.m. worked from 7 until 2, then fell asleep. The room is so quiet, I didn't wake up until 6.

I strolled around and took some night photos and grabbed a bite to eat. I was stopped in the street two times and asked directions in broken French. Perhaps I'm not as obviously American as I thought. I replied back in broken French that I had no clue as to where Rue _____ is.

I may have avoided being instantly labeled American by two people - most others did peg me for English speaking - but I can spot the Americans here from a mile away. Shoes tell all. As does sitting spread eagle in the courtyard of the Louvre with your buttcrack peeking out of your jeans and the darker streaks of the tanning lamps marking your back from laying in the tanning bed too long as you rummage through your North Face backpack for a stick of gum. God give me strenth until this buttcrack phenom blows over.

For some reason the MTV in the hotel is German MTV. While I was getting ready I caught that dating game where one person has five dates to choose from who all sit on a bus and wait for their turn. It was the American version with German subtitles. Besides being totally horrified with the stupidity and shallowness of it all (this from a girl who watched Studs religiously) the subtitles cracked me up. While I don't read German, I still tried to figure out how they would possibly translate all the slang and cheeseball sex metaphors being tossed around. I think they took some creative liberties because when one girl said "my body's at tight as a Jay-Z bootleg" the German subtitles said, "Ich ben ein Beyonce" or something like that.

Paris: Day One

2006-10-24T11:07:00.000-05:00

Has any other woman felt that they were missing out on experiencing the moment because their feet were killing them?

I'm here on business. I wore a new suit and a new pair of pants with fairly comfortable, pretty chunky 3" heels. Fine for wearing all day. Fine for a stroll. Not fine for walking at breakneck speed over cobblestones and wooden bridges for 30 minutes or more. By the way - Parisian cobblestones beat Boston cobblestones in the ankle twisting category anyday.

Yes, I brought sensible shoes. No I'm not one of those women who can't wear sensible shoes. I know Carrie Bradshaw is a fraud. I'm a true city chick - I wear sensible shoes when walking around town and I plan on wearing them all weekend while I'm here. But my pants are tailored for high heels so I can't trade heels for sneakers or flats without changing clothes, etc., etc., so I was stuck walking to dinner in them.

At first it was nice. Ah, Le Louvre at night. What a quaint rickety wooden bridge crossing the lovely Seine. Ah here we are at the restaurant unscathed. These new shoes held up. Sweet.

Dinner was a very French affair at a place called Les Bouquinistes "restaurant avec Guy Savoy". I do not know who Guy Savoy is, but I hear he's a big deal.

I am always anxious at dinners like these. I was the pickiest kid - living off of peanutbutter sandwiches through most of my childhood. I was brought up vegetarian for the first ten or so years of my life, so I also don't have an affinity for a lot of meat. And I don't like seafood. I've expanded the things I like over the years, of course, but meat and seafood are still issues. Today though, I told myself to grow up and try everything - I mean how much meat and seafood can one be served in one meal?

Ha. Ha.

First, there was champagne and an "amuse bouche" - a tiny, tiny appetizer to "amuse the mouth". It was a shotglass of cold pureed soup of an unknown seafood origin, from what I overheard. I tasted it. It was delicious. Phew.

Second, there was pate with toast and a white wine. It was also good, though I only had a bit of the pate.

Third, there was a small casserole dish with a ravioli stuffed with fish covered in a buttery sauce and a small de-shelled lobster like thing on top and another glass of another white wine. I couldn't do the lobster (yes, I don't deserve the title New Englander) but the ravioli was wonderful too.

Fouth came three long slices of very rare duck, with a bit of more cooked chopped duck served with a '98 Bordeaux. I like duck. The cooked duck was great. The rare duck was still quacking. The Bordeaux was delicious.

Fifth came a long slice of fish, skin-on, cooked to a crisp, served over a creamy risotto. And I think a different glass of wine. The fish was good - I think I might like fish now - and the risotto was out of this world.

Lastly came the dessert - it was cold cappuccino with bananas and coconut and cream. It was very tropical tasting. Eh. And a chocolate mousse thingy and some sweet dessert wine.

It was a feast in the moveable feast that is Paris and I'm glad I got over my fear of trying new foods in such a fabulous setting. Merci Guy Savoy, whoever you are.

But my feet are killing me! After we left, a little less sure on my feet, we took the long way back, walking to Notre Dame to see it at night. I haven't been there for fifteen years and it made me reflect on my life then and now.

Apparently I haven't improved on appropriate fashion for the moment front. Last time I was at Notre Dame I was wearing some outfit from Tello's, a scrunchi, and a pair of Keds. Though my taste level might have improved since then, the practicality of it all has not. I resolved to wear comfy shoes only for the remainder of my trip.

I began to lag a bit behind and the balls of my feet were screaming in pain when suddenly everyone stopped on another rickety bridge (or maybe the same one) to see the light show that the Eiffel Tower puts on these days. Stopping actually makes foot pain worse in my opinion so I was leaning from one foot to the next in my personal hell and that is when I realized that I am a very stupid woman who is missing the beauty of the twinkly lights and the sparkling Seine because of a footwear malfunction. I forced myself to appreciate the view and just barely stopped myself from ripping off the offensive shoes and walking back to the hotel barefoot.

Thank goodness I get to spend the weekend here. If I'm not crippled permanently, I'll write more through the week.

Employee of the Month

2006-10-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

I kid you not, this is a true photo from one of the insane workplaces in town. Can you guess who the employee of the month is?

No Exit

2006-10-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

ARGGGGHHH!! I am so fucking frustrated right now. Let me ask you this: have you ever met a city or county or state or government clerk type person who handled his or her job with thorough knowledge and efficiency and a smile? NO? Me neither. If you do, please give the person a hug. Write a letter. Have a parade.

I feel like I just spent my afternoon in a Satre play with the waiting room of hell reinvented as the county clerk's office. Seriously, if you ever wondered where sadistic Ines went, head down here. She's wearing bad polyester and an serious attitude. I think Edvard Munch must have been here when he painted his famous Scream. That's no bridge; that's a counter with little windows that are as useless as a broken fucking vending machine. You stick you paper through and it shoots right back out at you.

I should have known when I went to the "check in here" counter and told the 90-year old lady what I needed to do and she handed me a red square of plastic with a number on it. Thinking I'd be proactive, I asked if there was a form I needed to fill out that I could do while I was waiting. She looked at me as if I asked her to explain string theory. Whatever, I thought, fully prepared to get to a window and be given a form and told to take another number after that was done. That, I would have been ready for. That would be my normal assumption of bureaucratic incompetence taking place in my life. I have time. I will win. I will take your germ-covered piece of plastic and wait for another. I will get this thing resolved before I leave, I swear to god.

The woman at the window tells me, "I don't know what you have to do." What? What do you mean? This is a transaction that happens every day here. I'm not trying something new that nobody has ever head of. What the hell? "Maybe you can get a blue number and wait for someone over there to answer your question." Maybe? Whatever. Give me a blue number. I'm not going down so easily.

The woman at the blue window tells me she can't help me. "We can't provide legal advice." What? I don't want legal advice. I just want whatever form I need to fill out so I can staple this shit to it and hand it over to you. "Well, I can't tell you what form you need because if I do and I'm wrong that would be giving you the wrong advice." What? "You need to talk to a lawyer or a realtor or something." Why? I'm not selling my place. OK, so maybe I'm missing something here. Just tell me what I need to do. "We can't tell you." You can't even tell me what I'm not doing right? "Nope." Look, ALL I WANT IS THE FORM. The form you showed me two months ago and that now I'm ready to fill out. Can't a regular person come in here and fill out a form without a laywer for chrissakes? "Well, if you told me what form you needed..." What? I'm asking YOU what form I need. You're the people who MAKE the forms! I don't care about the forms. I'll just give you this piece of paper and you can figure it out for all I care. I'm trying to help YOU. "I can't give you that information."

I swear to god she smirked. That's when I imagined myself jumping over the counter.

This went on for a while. I became so frustrated, I began to cry with frustration, so I left. Some nice lady slipped me the number to her friend who might be able to help. She renewed my faith in the kindness of strangers. As for that incompetent, lazy, bitch of a clerk - fuck her for making me cry.

not a confederacy, a television of dunces

2006-09-18T11:15:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here in another hotel on another business trip watching episodes of Wife Swap and Supernanny. Why does it always seem these shows are on when I'm in a hotel room? I rarely watch these shows at home, yet put me in a Marriott and I'm all about schlocky family reality shows. I rationalize that they are interesting social experiments on parenting styles and the shockingly common fearful reaction to change. I mean, one would expect panic from a child, but an adult? Why Mrs. A, are you in tears that Family B is going to make you do things differently for two weeks? Will the sky fall if they take away your mop or send your maladjusted kids to public school for a minute? Good grief! Quote Betty Freidan: "The only thing you have to lose is your vacuum cleaner." So, yeah, it's totally an extension of that Soc 101 class I took fifteen years ago. Yeah, that's why I'm watching it. Not because the teaser promised that the uptight professional organizer is going to live with a self-professed "family of pirates." Arrrrgh!

So now I'm sitting here observing and judging these people who are under extremely unnatural circumstances and video tape and thinking what I'd do differently and how stupid, or crazy, or shallow, or stupidly shallow, or crazily stupid these people are and then it hits me: I'm sitting here alone in another hotel room on another business trip watching episodes of Wife Swap and Supernanny. I haven't even gotten it together enough to have a dysfunctional family. Who am I to judge? To some people, I probably look pretty sad right now. Christ, to me I look pretty sad right now. "Shall I rent a movie? Nah, I'm probably too tired to watch the whole thing and besides, I have an early day tomorrow. Should probably do some more work before I go to bed so I don't have a pile of work when I get back in the office." Yeah, I'm super glamorous I know.

Which life is better? Which one is for me? It's a professional thirty-something woman's quandary, isn't it? Something I ought to be pondering deeply instead of while halfass watching a deranged "pirate princess" add "a goodly dose of chaos and sass" to the Stepford family. Interestingly enough, I'm siding with the wench based wholly on the fact that she's reintroduced the word "sass" into the vernacular. (Side note: RIP Sassy magazine. Does anyone else remember that one?)

Oh. My. God. Forget everything I just said. This mom on Supernanny has a seven year old son who refuses to wipe his own bum. One hour later the mom says "His behavior has improved so much now that I'm giving him attention and boundaries." Uh, gee…did you not notice that he needed it before, Mrs, Owner of a Daycare? A daycare? You own a daycare? And you didn't know he was looking for attention from you and was maybe, just maybe, jealous of his younger brother, the other daycare kids, and your distracted persona? No? I mean he was screaming "wipe my ass!" from the bathroom. That didn't tip you off? And you thought there was no permanently scarring issue in doing it for him? Oh, it was just easier because otherwise he would sit in there for an hour? Oh OK then. Way to link "female attention" with "bathroom." I'm sure his future girlfriend will be super thankful. OK, the TV is off, but glad you figured that one out with the help of Supernanny, genius.

Now that my brain has been sufficiently mushed, I think I shall take a nice hot bath in a clean, seven-year-old-Freudian-case-study-free-bathroom for as long as I want and finish rereading A Confederacy of Dunces and drinking a glass of wine. In a curious moment of coincidence, at this point in my reading, Ignatius J. Reilly is also dressed as a pirate, organizing chaos in the French Quarter. If you haven't read this book, you totally should. And we'll keep all this Wife Swap Supernanny watching business to ourselves cuz, you know - what happens at the Marriott, stays in the Marriott.

An open letter to Marty's Wine

2006-08-31T11:17:00.000-05:00

In the month of August, I have received 18 emails from Marty's Wine of Allston with such subject titles as:

*--!!MOUTON MADNESS!!--*
*--Aussie Sticky Blow Out--*
** More Shiraz Bargains **

and later that day...

**...and 2 More Shirazes (96+97 Points)**

_________________________________

Dear Marty's Wine,

I attended the Boston Wine Expo and had a great experience at the your table in the Grand Cru room. You guys were down to earth and friendly and I signed up for your mailing list because of it. I hesitate to remove myself from your mailing list now because I am interested in your wines and events and think you're a great business with a wonderful selection.

But seriously, an email every other day? That's not advertising, that's spamming. I can't imagine anything so urgent that it can't wait until the end of the week. I mean, if you have a rare gem of a wine come in unexpectedly and there are only 10 bottles to be had, maybe send me that one mid-week, but otherwise, can it wait until Monday? Nobody besides the obsessive collector and the alcoholic should have that much contact with their wine shop, however wonderful you are. At the moment, besides my boyfriend and my best friend, I think you send me the most email.

Now, I am not someone who hates emails from advertisers. Nordstrom's sends me an email or two a month. I am happy to check out this season's strappy sandals, and oooh free shipping, yippie skippy. AP sends a monthly newsletter that I eagerly anticipate and they just recently sent me a "secret sale" email that had me doing a dance. So, you see, I like emails from the places where I shop. I buy things from those emails sometimes. However, I tend to boycott places that annoy me with a bombardment of advertising. Right now I am contemplating boycotting Dunkin Donuts because their new commercials annoy the hell out of me: swimming. soccer. ballet. oboe. and last but not least.. ka-rah-tayyyyyyy! Please don't be like that. Don't annoy your customers. Long gone are the days where a deluge of ads is the only way to sell. Be smart. If your customers pop by about once a week, pop into their email once a week. Don't be the desperate boyfriend, Marty. Don't be that guy.

I would assume that some sort of planning goes into the ordering and pricing and events. Can you not plan your emails as well? If you know you're going to feature a few wines, a sale, and a weekend event, wouldn't it make sense to send out a notice at the beginning of the week about all things of interest? I know I would appreciate an email like that. At the moment I'm just annoyed. And if it is annoying to me, I'm sure it's annoying to many of your other customers as well. You might want to do some research on how many people opt out of your emails. I would bet you it is comparatively high and if you contacted a sample of those people it would be because you've sent excessive emails. Might I suggest a consolidated weekly email/newsletter? That is something I would appreciate.

Thank you,

Rebecca

Lover of wine; hater of spam

Badass

2006-08-12T11:18:00.000-05:00

The other day I walked by a pickup truck. It was a work truck for a local electrician or plumber or something. These crazy stickers all over the back of the truck, skulls or flames or flaming skulls or something, caught my eye. I thought, here's an adult male, owns his own business, yet he's got stickers all over the back of his truck. Why? I was stumped for about half a second, then this voice popped into my head. It said: "Because it's badass."

Thus a theory: there is a population of people out there whose life choices, from purchasing decisions to their dogs' names to their personal style have one single criterion: It must be BADASS. For example:

"Hey man, nice tattoo. What is that, a bulldog with overdeveloped biceps?"

"Yep"

"So, are you an ex-Marine?"

"No. Why?"

"Oh, uh, was that a school mascot or something?"

"Nope."

"So you must really like bulldogs."

"Not really."

"Then why, dude?"

"I just thought it was a pretty badass tattoo."

I'm thinking of creating an online collection of all things badass. Feel free to provide comment and photo links to examples of all things badass.

1,000 Guns

2006-07-21T11:18:00.000-05:00

Yay. They've taken 1,000 guns off the streets of Boston. How absolutely lovely a round number that is! How very nice and round and PR-rific is that number! There's something crooked in such an even number. But I'm sure it's better than "993!" or "Well, we really got 1,012 guns, but we only had 1,000 gift cards."

The Boston Globe wrote: The 1,000 guns, Menino said, represented ``1,000 potential lives that were saved. The firearms we received were exactly the type of firearms we wanted. They can no longer cause harm to any of Boston's residents."

What the hell does "exactly the type of firearms we wanted" mean? Are they glad the Minutemen weren't handing in their muskets? I'm reading it more like "The guns came from exactly the people we wanted," read: Dorchester and Roxbury residents. Violence is so out of control there, I am glad something, anything - however PR-stuntish and questionably impactful it is - is being done. However, what else is being done? Things are at a tipping point and the city doesn't seem to care. I mean, when the local minister decides after much thought and years of living in the community he serves to move to the suburbs because he'd rather keep his teenage son alive than make a point, there is a problem.

So, after all this, the police have run the serial numbers and identified a few of the 1,000 guns with minor crimes but no homicides. One thousand guns and not a major crime. Does that give any else a chilly feeling in their spine? I'm probably just being cynical but I can't help but think that these gun buy-back programs are like canned food drives where people reach into the back of their cabinet, skipping over the Le Sueur Early June Peas and the Chunky Chicken Corn Chowder and throw a few dented cans of chick peas toward the fight. Or any "drive" for that matter. Seems to me Menino collected a bunch of acid-washed jeans and B. U. M. equipment sweatshirts. The good stuff is still out there.

Raised on the Radio

2006-07-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

So the day before I leave Florida, Sara calls me from an after work happy hour thing.

-Guess what?!

-What?

-I just won tickets to JOURNEY and DEF LEPPARD!

After much laughing...

-They're in town?

-Yep! And we're so going!

-Well, how can we not? I mean it's JOURNEY and DEF LEPPARD!! Didn't you and Jess just see Journey with NotStevePerry recently?

-Totally and NonStevePerry rocked! I LOVE NotStevePerry! He looks and sings just like RegularStevePerry except he's in the band!

-Awesome. Isn't that weird how I was just telling you how I heard that "now it's your turn girl to cry! nah nah nah nah nah" song and we were trying to remember the lyrics?

-Yeah. Do you think OneArmDrummer is still in Def Leppard?

-We'll he better be!

We had dinner plans with friends so we arrived late, figuring we'd miss most of Def Leppard and be there right in time for NotStevePerry. We parked at the Hard Rock Hotel and took the shuttle over to the amphitheatre and chatted with the driver.

-Has Journey come on yet?

-I think they're done. Def Leppard should be coming up now.

-Wait. What? Journey with NotStevePerry is OPENING for Def Leppard??

-Yep. They've got a new singer too.

-Different from last year?

-Yep.

-NotStevePerry Two? StevePerry 3.0? WTF?

Sara and I were really thrown over the line up. Maybe they just flipped coins or something but we thought Journey would be the headliner. But now that I think about it, there was that whole Def Leppard Summer. Maybe they are a bigger draw. Hmmm. This reminded me of the time I went to a concert where Bad Religion was OPENING for Blink 182. COME ON. I'm still mad about that.

So we missed Journey and saw all of Def Leppard. They still had OneArmDrummer and other than the singer not being able to hit the high notes anymore, they rocked the house. Much better than I expected. They had even aged well.

Sadly, I cannot say the same for the fans.

Independent

2006-07-10T11:21:00.000-05:00

So, here I am in sunny Florida. Staying at my friend Sara's, driving around in her VW while she's at work, sodomy bunny guiding the way

What? I didn't name the bunny.

Anyway, things are good. Weather is good. Etc. Etc.

Last night after dinner we stopped by our favorite pub, The Independent. The Independent is cool in that it has all these crazy yummy beers from Belgium and the like, the place doesn't get too crowded, has a fun style and the bartenders are really nice. We drank a beer called Triple Carmeliet, made by the nuns of that order I believe as there was a picture of chicks in habits reaping in the barley or something on the front.

It's a fun place because it's pretty much populated and bartended by a bunch of locals. Put this bar in any other city and it would be beersnobby, but here in St. Pete the bartenders offer suggestions without describing the beer down to every element, you can bring your dog in with you, you can smoke if you want to. It's hip without being hipster, special without being snobby. Here are some photos from a few months ago when I was there

and check out what the beer fridge looks like

and the people. My friend Sara and some librarian chick. We know she's a librarian because, get this: People talk to each other here! I love her pose.

I don't know the dude on the left.

John K. Colleen the bartender called him and told him to come down just to tell us the story about why he cannot drink wine or champagne (don't mix John K with a $75 steak, a wine tasting, and the Sri Lankan embassy).

Some nice dude originally from Egypt.

Ralphie (some nice dude originally from New Jersey.)

Other random people

So now you get the vibe of the bar.

Last night it was not crowded and Sara and I were chatting with Kyle the bartender about sea kyaking, the Florida Keys, and him getting robbed in the Bahamas when two chicks of the South Tampa ilk come walking in. Most of you don't know what that means, but I kid you not, most women in South Tampa look, talk, and dress like Tara Reid.

Yes I can hear the collective "HOT" from my readership but when you go to an event there and there are 500 Tara Reids and all the guys look like extras from The O.C. and everyone is talking about American Idol it's rather disturbing.

Anyway, the two girls come in and the following conversation ensures:

Kyle the nice bartender: What can I get you ladies?

Chick #1: Um...I'll have a wine.

Kyle: Well, we have just a few but they're pretty good, what kind do you like?

Chick #1: Um..maybe I'll get some beer. Do you have Miller Lite?

(Sara snorts beer, I pull out my blackberry to get this down for future reference. Yes, we're snickering but I said the bartenders were snicker-free not us. heh.)

Kyle: No, I'm sorry. We mostly have specialty beers. What kind of beers do you like and I can recommend one for you?

Chick #2: Are you the owner?? (big smiles)

Kyle: No, he just left.

Chick #2: (disappointed, stops sticking out her chest so much) Hi, I'm Kaitlin.

Chick #1: Hi I'm Krissy.

Kaitlin: We just had sushi next door.

Kyle: Oh yeah?

Kaitlin: Yeah, normally we don't go drinking on a Sunday night (gives me and Sara THE EYE. We smirk and take big gulps of our non-Miller Lite) but we didn't go out last night cuz we were soooo hungover from Friday.

Kyle: Heh (hands them their beers)

Krissy: OMG, this glass is so cute!

Radio Shack

2006-07-05T11:24:00.000-05:00

RadioShack confuses me. It's like the man nipple of the mall. Why is it there? How can they stay profitable on sales of speaker wire and 9 volt batteries? Sure, before the age of the mega electronic/entertainment/computer store it was the place to go. But not many people need to install a pair of wood-paneled shelf speakers in their airbrushed van nowadays. That place is so useless, yet somehow totally necessary.

Yeah, they've segued to mobile phones, but I'm not buying it. Either they are a mob front or one of these days all that coaxial cable is going to start sending signals from the mother ship.

Boston Pops Psychology

2006-07-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

What's up with Dr. Phil and his wife Robin hosting the 4th of July Celebrations here? Totally random.

I don't know how I feel about Dr. Phil. His ego (or his PR machine) seems to grow exponentially by the year and his methodology is such boiled-down behaviorism the show should just be called "Hey genius, how 'bout ya just don't do that and we'll call it a day?" but I guess he does help some people.

Personally, for me it's all about ROBIN. ROBIN is the X-factor. ROBIN is all supportive wife and sideline cheerleader at the moment but you can see she resents having to double-time it down the aisle at the end of the show because her Texas-sized husband won't slow down his pace for his little wife and her manolos. I'm just waiting for her to lose it one day and pull a Kitty Dukakis.

You know, Grandma...

2006-07-01T11:24:00.001-05:00

When I was living in Florida my sister called me upset.

"I took Grandma to her doctor's visit today."

"Was everything OK?"

"Oh yeah, shels healthy as a horse," she says.

My grandmother is 78 and other than arthritis has had no health problems. Occasionally she suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, something that runs in our family, and thankfully something I have managed to avoid. In my opinion it's more nurture than nature with the women in my family. There might be a genetic component, but really I think its about how they have learned to handle stress, which is basically to not handle it. Exercise? Do some Yoga? Talk about it in a constructive and non-bitchy way? Perhaps not marry an alcoholic? Nah. Let it fester. Eat a bowl of pasta and yap on the phone for two hours with your cousin in the same situation.

My sister was the high-strung one, the kid throwing the temper tantrums, unable to calm down, then the high-pitched teenage screaming and then the twenty-something stress. There's definitely a chemical component there -sometimes she can't calm herself down - but it's also that her tantrums were so ear-splitting that my parents backed away like she was a grenade and didn't teach her how to deal. My sister has been on a mild anti-anxiety medication every now and then but has the healthy understanding that it's something thats needed for a period of time but not forever. She's learned to deal with her stress instead of medicate it and she's learned it the hard way and on her own and is now a pretty healthy and very successful adult. I give her a lot of credit for it.

Why do so many people think stress or anxiety is wrong? Yes, there's the kind of anxiety/panic attack disorder that doesn't let you get out of bed or out of your house or take a shower, affects your life negatively in all sorts of ways and comes on for no reason. That's the kind that might take you to a doctor for a solution. But you know, I've had plenty of anxiety and stress and it's a good, natural reaction. It's helped me change bad things in my life. For example, if you can't pay your bills it's natural to have anxiety. You SHOULD have anxiety. Hopefully that anxiety will get you to fix that situation. Create a budget. Get a better-paying job, or a second job. DO SOMETHING. That's what your body is telling you: Fix the problem. Why is that seen as wrong and something to be medicated? Oh, finals are stressing me out, I need a Prozac? What the hell? Finals have been stressing people out for eons. How dare you attempt to avoid that universal experience?

So, months prior to this doctor's visit, my grandmother had had a panic attack, a bad panic attack. Probably to do with some severe illnesses in the family and her worry over it. At the time she was prescribed a light daily medication maybe Celexa or something, I can't remember, and an emergency Rx of Klonopin to be taken if another severe attack came on.

Well, apparently grandma liked the Klonopin.

"Rebecca, she took two Klonopin before we left for the doctor's! She's 4'8"! Ive never seen her like this. She was walking into the bushes!"

"What did you do?"

"Well, I had to talk to the doctor, of course."

"You narced on Grandma??"

I know this is not really funny, but cmon, how many times can one say that?

"Yes! I narced on Grandma! She lied to the doctor about how many she took and he gave her a lecture and wouldn't give her another prescription. She was pissed! And pissed at me for saying something."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. That's not a medication you're supposed to be taking every day. So I looked her right in the eye and said:

You know, Grandma, we'd all like to take a Klonopin every day..."

Toot Toot Tootsie?

2006-06-15T11:28:00.000-05:00

God knows I love me my gay men. and of course my gay women. and everyone in between. but especially my gay men. and definitely the drag queens. like that's a surprise. look at my profile photo. sometimes i think i am a drag queen.

i have very fond memories of certain drag queens. like the 6'6" (well, 6" plus platform heels) drag queen who stopped me cold in the ladies room of the nightclub from yanking the chopsticks out of my hair by saying "oh no, honey. leave them in. i have that same mandarin-style dress, and when i wear it i always wear chopsticks."

Why can't one acquire girl scout badges for things like that?? has-the-same-dress-as-the-drag-queen-go-go-dancer-badge. I mean, that's a badge I'd like to check out. That's probably the only badge I actually would have earned. Someone go play with photoshop and mock one up for me, k?

I've also met my share of cross dressers, the less glamorous and apparently less homosexual of the genderbending spectrum as many are straight and just have a thing for the clothes. I get it. Lady clothes rock. What I don't get is the eyeglasses fetish. I swear, like half of the cross dressers I've met who are over the age of 35 have those gigantic octagonal tortise shell Tootsie glasses. I was reminded of it when I saw this dude who is in jail for murdering his wife in a fit of domestic violence and who is asking the state for surgery to complete his transformation:

Now, this blog is not about the debate around whether he should be allowed to have the surgery. I can't get to exploring that conundrum until I figure out the glasses thing. What do you think? Is it all due to Dustin Hoffman?

Discuss amongst yourself. I'll tumble for ya.

The Baltic Times

2006-05-06T11:32:00.000-05:00

Not to knock my gender, but I am pretty insane one day every month. Not like "Hi Wayne here's this gun rack I made for you. Will you sign my neckbrace?" insane or Anne Heche worthy of national news coverage and a book reading insane, but just sorta crazy. It comes one day after the Exhausted Day. "My goodness, why am I so exhausted?" I ask myself every time. You'd think I'd remember by now that thats just the way it is.

So there's the tired day and the crazy day and I typically dont realize either one until it has passed. It leads to conversations like, "Oh gee, I was pretty nuts yesterday. Really, I dont need two week's written notice if you want to make plans with me. No, I dont have narcolepsy. Why do you ask?"

But thanks to the wonders of technology I now know when I'm crazy in real time. My email service only provides related ads in some "totally safe and secure" way - it scans key words in your email and provides ads that are relevant. They haven't worked out the kinks yet though. When I first signed up I remember writing an email to a friend about a visit to San Francisco and seeing Social Distortion at the Warfield. The opening act was a band called Tiger Army and I didn't like them at all. I wrote something like "Tiger Army sucked" and got a related ad for the Tiger Army fan club.

But besides that glitch I've found it a pretty cool email provider. And now that I know to read the related ads to identify my crazy, the world's a better place. My crazy day was yesterday. Some email I sent caused me to get this related ad from none other than The Baltic Times sponsored by Kazbalt "The first and only consulting company of Kazakhstan and Baltic States." I didnt write about anything Baltic so I can only assume the content of my email made me sound like a pissed off Latvian woman.

NEWS

10 things not to say to a Latvian woman

May 03, 2006

1) "You are very beautiful." She will only think youre a stupid foreigner if you do.
2) "Your voice is like a plaintive nocturne." She will think youre making fun of her.
3) "Your melons are very juicy." She will confusedly insist that Latvia doesnt grow melons.
4) Dont ask her for her views on post-feminism. Latvia isn't past Simone deBeauvoir yet. (yeah, I'm still trying to get through The Second Sex myself, and really if he's commenting on her melons, I doubt post-feminism is in his vocabulary.)
5) Don't try to impress her with the fact that you're a foreigner. Latvian women are extremely smart, pragmatic and proud, and they don't need your passport anymore.
6) Don't be gaudy. One stereotype that is largely true is that Russian women love gold, Latvian women silver. Gaudiness is a no-no.
7) "You Russian girls are really sexy." That one speaks for itself.
8) "You kind of remind me of that girl in t.A.T.u". See point (7)
9) "Oh man, you still live with your parents!" Yes, just like half the country.
10) Dont bullshit her. Latvian women are extremely skilled in the art of sniffing out bullshit.

End NEWS STORY

Maybe this is why all those Russians keep stopping me and asking me directions to buildings at MIT. Maybe they're really Latvians who think I'm non-gaudy and won't comment on their melons or try to impress them with my passport and knowledge of fake-russolesbian schoolgirl pop music.

Just Shoot M-ow

2006-05-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

I was in San Francisco recently and while I was there I saw Ryan Adams at the Palace of Fine Arts. The stage was candlelit, a grand piano stage right, a single microphone stand stage left, a bohemian living room at center, complete with a glass of red wine, a framed photograph of Jerry Garcia, and a velvet loveseat in front of which his three guitars sat like wallflowers waiting to be picked up and taken for a spin.

Pretentious, sort of, but it did set an intimate mood and sort of matched the venue. Ryan came out and sat at the piano, fumbling to light his cigarette, wincing in the low light and asking for it to be set to red, same as the place he just left, mumbling always mumbling about the perils of being left alone in San Francisco all afternoon.

Im always torn when I see someone brilliant, possibly at a creative peak, so in love with getting high. Some fans revel in it, whooping and cheering the artist on, looking forward to saying I saw him when, hoping it will be like saying you saw Janis with her bottle of Southern Comfort. They buy their tickets like greedy speculative investors, hoping theyre buying Apple and its 1980 all over again.

Me, I just feel sort of singed by the white heat of it all. Art and addiction: its pretty to look at for a time, before you start seeing spots in your eyes.

And then he started mumbling again, charming everyone including me, smoking cigarettes, forgetting them, shuffling over to his wallflowers and making them sing. All amazing talent and self-deprecation, joking this is a song about god Im so lame wah wah my life sucks, another relationship I couldnt make work, oh man I want to kill myself.

He was funny and petulant and pissy and rockstarish and real all together. And he played (and talked) for hours. And then went back stage and got high and brought out Phil Lesh and that Dead drummer whose name I always forget and jammed in a purple haze for another half an hour at least. I guess the tortured songwriter lasts only so long and then you need to go all fuzzy electric. Besides being exhausted because I was still on east coast time, and the fact that all of a sudden goofyass Dead fans came out of the woodwork and assaulted my vision by wiggling their squishy t-shirt clad bodies around like gummy worms as only the whitest Cali college boys can, it was a pretty good show.

That is besides the opening act, Jamie Mallon.

-You saw Bryan Adams and Jimmy Fallon???!!!!

-No, Ryan Adams and Jamie Mallon.

-Oh. Who the hell are they?

Let me tell you about Jamie Mallon. Jamie is this slightly funny Italian guy from Queens with a Keith Richards circa 1969 haircut thats all wrong for his face (Look, Jamie I know its a cool indy rocker haircut right now but you have a Mediterranean nose just like me. I got over the fact that I cant pull off Bettie Page bangs, now its your turn to face reality and let your forehead show. Make the world a prettier place.), a leather jacket, and an acoustic guitar. Formerly in some minorly famous punk rock band back in the day (you google it, I dont have the time), hes gone all indy singer/songwriter and is best buddies with Mr. Adams.

He also sorta sucks.

The songs themselves are semi-tolerable, but his voice: not good. He has this really affected way of singing like if The Boss sang Counting Crows songs. Fake raspy semi-southern thing. It gave me THE SHIVERS. And I didnt think it could get much worse I mean the audience was tittering with laughter - until he started to channel Jack McFarlane of Will & Grace channeling Cher when he ended the night with a cover of The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

Imagine if you will someone singing in an exaggerated Bruce Springsteen style and changing the last syllable of each line to OW.

Her name is Yoshim-OW

Shes a black belt in karat-OW
Working for the cit-OW

She has to discipline her bod-OW

Oh Yoshim-OW
They don't believe m-OW

Ow, indeed.

Dog Years

2006-04-19T11:37:00.002-05:00

I was at dinner with some colleagues last week and one woman just a few years older than I, whom I like very much, was discussing how she met her husband. Apparently they dated for a few years at which point she became impatient for a marriage proposal. Finally she said to him, You know, I'm in my dog years now, so that means we've been together for like 21 years. Wheres my ring? That comment set back the proposal a few months but things worked out. I thought it was a funny story until she turned her attention to me: Well, you're in your dog years now she says to me at one point in the conversation.

I suppose there are two ways to take this comment. On the positive side it might mean that women in their thirties typically don't waste their time with men who are obviously not right for them, that we have a better bullshit detector, make better decisions more quickly, and can weed out the losers faster than when we were in our twenties. Standards are higher, so someone that a 30-something woman dates for more than a few weeks has passed a lot more hurdles. I can see how a woman in her early twenties might take years to figure out a man she finds complicated and intriguing whereas a thirty-something woman could have him pinned in a few days: hes not complicated hes a mess. Or hes not complicated hes a liar. Or he is complicated too complicated. Or he is complicated man that's hot.

There are a lot of different types of complicated.

And hopefully a 30-something woman knows herself a little bit better too, so maybe dating for 6 months is equal to dating for a longer time in your early twenties because you're not trying to figure yourself out as well as the man.

On the negative side, one can equate the dog years comment to the ticking clock. I imagine some woman, desperate for attention, marriage, and babies, tongue lolling, willing to take it from whoever crosses her path. Dogs are indiscriminate beasts. They love everyone, will take affection from anyone. If they don't you're probably a serial killer or something. So dog years could be negatively read as: Hurry up and snag some man so you can have lots of babies and live that perfect suburban life. God forbid you're still single in your forties. I know there are many women (and men) who still think like that. Its normal to feel that pressure to establish a committed relationship and have children sometime in your twenties or thirties. The trick is to not let the pressure override your common sense as to the long-term compatibility of the person.

I've pretty much decided that any sort of baby or marriage pressure is not good for a relationship. Relationships don't necessarily grow at the same rate as a female's urge for children and they have a lot better chance of long-term success if these stressers aren't constantly on the table. A lot of people find the right match at age 50. Usually that is after a few bad matches and a few kids. Id rather keep the baggage to a minimum. If my clock started ticking louder, I'd rather pull an Angelina and hit the root cause than force some man into fatherhood before he feels ready or live with the fact that I've pressured someone into a lifelong decision. It may not be the ideal situation, but really what is? Having kids with the wrong person because he was around and willing to sleep with me sometime between 2006 and 2010? Forcing the right person into moving faster than he wants to and having him resent me? No thanks.

I'm realistic. Even given modern science, I have about ten years if I want to have a baby the old fashioned way, probably five years if I don't want to have to defy the odds or spend every week in a doctors office. But I always thought that on top of biological children I'd adopt if I could. There are so many kids out there that need a good family. So maybe I'd do that first instead of second. Or maybe I'd just take myself into a sperm bank and purchase some gametes. It would be funny to pay for it what with so many men out there giving it away for free, but there is something to say about avoiding some knucklehead babydadday in the process. Or maybe I'd just wait and see and enjoy the company of my friend's children.

In any event, I've got choices. I'm not worried. I don't need a baby right now. And I feel like I'm in the best years of my life and not my dog years. But that analogy does make me chuckle when I think about it.

Maybe I'm in my cat years.

Building 17? Nyet.

2006-03-16T11:41:00.001-05:00

In the past two days I have been stopped three times by people looking for directions to various buildings at MIT. The curious thing is that they were all Russian. Which leads me to wonder why of all people on crowded Mass Ave, are they approaching me? I'm obviously older than the undergrads, no backpack, etc. I don't appear to be a student. Yet they make a bee-line for me, ignoring the stodgy old professor and the young Asian guy with the new wave haircut locking up his bike, and the girl jogging by with an MIT sweatshirt, and ask me where building 17 is.

I so don't know where building 17 is.

Dereck and Joelle totally know where building 17 is, I'm sure. Jo has a map. I know, because we poured over it at lunch last week and drew a little star on my work location so she can always find me. Her building has a number too, but my brain doesn't remember that stuff. All I know is that I go down that street where that hotel is that used to be a fire station or something.

Dereck totally knows where building 17 is, because 1) he pretty much knows everything to begin with, 2) has a tendency to "explore" (ok, trespass) around MIT at all hours of the night, and 3) he's totally an honorary member of the Asian breakdancing posse at MIT. Yep. The boy just jumped right in one day after passing by so many times and showed some skillz and was accepted immediately. At least he thinks so. He's not quite sure because nobody talks at the breakdancing posse. Not one peep. It's just music and poplocking every afternoon. It's all interpretive dancelike and such. In reality they could have been majorly resentful that he was stepping into the circle, but apparently he interpreted their body language as welcoming - something about a lot of nods and the leader stepping in and doing some dance-off type thing with him. I imagine it looked like a scene out of Electric Boogaloo except with a bunch of Asian molecular biologists and one 6'2" whiteboy from corn country.

My God, I love that man.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know, all the MIT buildings are numbered. But not in any consecutive way that anyone can figure out. They're probably numbered by when they were built. And I've yet to see an actual sign on a building displaying its number. Half the buildings in this neighborhood are part of MIT, yet the only thing I've noticed (and I'm so going to take a photo of it next time I have my camera) is that there's a parking spot on Mass Ave specifically reserved for the Falafel Truck.

This is how I've categorized some of the MIT buildings in my head:

-The big domey building

-The building where I can make a deposit and get some lunch

-The Stata Center (this building is so cool. Check it out!)

-The Dr. Frankenstein building (High Voltage Research Lab)

So it makes me wonder: do I look like an approachable person who might happen to speak Russian, or are Russians, though brilliant (they are attending MIT after all), bad with directions?

I think it is the latter, because in two instances they took off in the wrong direction.

A great man has passed away

2006-03-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/arts/music/08toure.html

Ali Farka Toure. If you haven't heard his music, you should. Get Talking Timbuktu and understand the connection - Mali to Memphis. You won't be disappointed.

Chocolate Covered Twinkies???

2006-03-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

The assistant here in the office has a sweet tooth. One day at lunch a discussion began about all the desserts everyone loved as kids: Hostess Cup Cakes, Devil Dogs, Watchamacallit bars, Chips Ahoy!, Twinkies, et cetera.

The assistant's eyes glazed over as she recalled one of her favorites that was only on the market for a short time: Twinkies with a chocolate coating. Not having a sweet tooth and not being allowed to have most of that stuff in my house growing up, I had never heard of it. In fact, most of us hadn't, but the assistant insisted they existed and was willing to prove it.

Moral of the story: never google "chocolate covered twinkies" while on a work computer.

Cory Burnell is a hypocrite

2006-03-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

I admit: when it comes to politics and American History, I don't in any way claim to be an expert. Like most Americans, I'm lacking. Chalk it up to my preference for reading fiction and some crappy schooling - it was extra credit in third grade to memorize all the states; only Chris Kelly actually did it. Give me a few minutes and a piece of paper and I'd get them all but, I don't have that rote memorization or that silly Fifty Nifty United States song down. I can't name all the presidents either and I'm terrible with dates. Shoot me. I've read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and understand the checks and balances of the federal government, but I don't remember how many departments there are and I can't name every "Secretary of." I'm left handed. I learn better when things are put into context and connected. I'm not one of those people who feels all smug in her ability to list off this or that or the other thing.

OK, maybe I'm jealous.

Anyway, that's my preamble on my sad level of Civics knowledge. But I bet you, even if you asked the most inbred, insulated, dingaling why America was founded, you'd get the answer "Freedom." And if you talked to his cousin who once drove into the city by himself, you might hear "freedom from religious persecution" or "separation of church and state." OK maybe not. But for crying out loud, if I learned that it is one of the basic foundations of our country, why is it that so many people seem to have forgotten?

Can't one infer the importance of this idea? I mean, it's the FIRST Amendment. Which is why I find that specific American breed of crazy Christianity so appalling when they become politically active. Hasn't anyone realized how hypocritical they are? The right-wing Christians are the first people to be anti-anything Middle Eastern and "support our troops" etc. etc. because those people over there are nuts and hate America and all of that. Well, those people over there are living under a THEOCRACY (ok, not necessarily, but kinda - I told you I'm not up on these things) and the majority of their problems stem from it and that's why there's no reasoning going on and people are blowing themselves up. So why do these same Americans want to move toward that type of politics? Don't they see the connection? For all the flag-waving and claims they make of being red-blooded American, they are the MOST un-American people around. Truly.

Like this guy.

Cory Burnell wants to move all of his like-minded Christians to South Carolina to form a voting block because he feels his and his like-minded religious conservatives' votes are being diluted. He himself lives in California and hasn't moved to S.C. yet because, well, he's "been busy." Way to set the example Cory. At least you're hypocritical in all aspects of your thinking.

Ithaki

2006-02-18T11:47:00.001-05:00

News from lunch with my parents and my grandmother:

Item returned to me: the lens cap to my camera (after 3 years)

Gerry's husband Buster is turning 92.

Dad: Remember my mother's old landlord? She just died and she was 104!

Grandma: 104! Was she the one with the retarded daughter?

Mom: No, Ma, not that one. The one from Marlborough Street. And she wasn't retarded, she was schitzophrenic!

Grandma: Oh. Well, I knew it was something mental. I see her all the time.

Mom: And you didn't realize she wasn't retarded?

Me: Has Jimmy moved to Denver yet?

Dad: No, he's still trying to sell his acupuncture practice and his condo.
Me: Why's he going there anyway?

Dad: His cartographic astrologer told him Denver was the place for him.

Dad: You know, in those glasses you look like Nana Mouskouri

Grandma: Uncle Kenny got in another accident. During the blizzard, he went right off the road.

Mom: He's the worst driver.

Grandma: Yes, and he's getting worse every day.

Mom: He still thinks he's a cop, cruising right down the middle of the road. He pays no attention.

Grandma: He scares me to death. I've been in the car a few times when he's gotten into fender benders. And he doesn't want to hear it from me. I'm just his little sister. Like if the light turns and he doesn't notice and I say something. He's all over me about it.

Mom: Ma, you shouldn't get in a car with him any more.

Me: Uh, has anyone thought that maybe the family should think about taking his keys away.

All: Huh?

Word of the day: Zicam.

Palmolive

2006-02-15T11:50:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Is Palmolive the smelliest dishwashing liquid ever? It's like perfume. And why does every company I work for stock it? Who wants to smell that before they have a sip of coffee? I don't even see Palmolive around any more besides in offices. Reminds me of twenty years ago when I was watching "my stories" with my grandma and the commercials would be for Palmolive, Cross Your Heart bras, and L'Eggs panty hose. That's the holy trinity of itchiness right there, folks.

Fifty-five years!

2006-02-02T19:00:00.000-05:00

The other day I had my first appointment with my primary care physician. Afterwards, I head downstairs to the lab to get blood drawn and there's this cute little woman at the reception desk who looks like Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez with the bangs and the high ponytail and she's just as pleasant as can be to everyone and has the cutest little voice and she's just making me smile as she's handling this line of mainly quirky and elderly folk. She tells me I'm Number 24 and that it will be about a 20 minute wait. I forgot to bring reading material and my iPod is toast at the moment (wah) so I just sit and watch the people.

In Left Eye's line is an elderly black man, blind and in a wheelchair being pushed by his son. His voice is very loud, but honeyed - a storytelling type voice; it commands your attention. And oh, is he full of piss and vinegar, a definite handful for his son. As a counterbalance, the son's voice is low and calming, a deep buzzy whisper. The son looks resigned; he knows he can't control his dad. The old man spends equal time flirting with and harassing Left Eye.

The son mumbles, "My father here needs some tests."

Left Eye asks, "Will you fill out this yellow card, sir?"

The dad booms, "What'd she say?! She needs my patient number?! Boy, she needs my patient number!!"

Left Eye says, "That's OK, sir, just give me your name and I can look up your number."

Dad yells, "I dont think we got the number!"

Left Eye smiles and says louder, "Don't worry about it, sir, I can look it up."

The son just fills out the yellow card and murmurs to his dad that it is under control.

"Don't tell me it's under control, boy! The lady needs my number!"

The son waves hello to a woman he recognizes in the waiting area.

"Who you saying hello to?!!" Dad lets nothing slide.

"That's Teresa over there. You know, Juanitas daughter."

"Juanita??!! Man, I havent heard that name in twenty years!!"

"Yes, its been a long time."

After Left Eye gives them their number, the son wheels his dad over to the end of one of the rows of chairs and get him settled. Only then does he turn his attention to Teresa. He walks over and gives her a hug and sits down next to her a few chairs away from his dad. They catch up, he murmuring in his low voice, Teresa speaking in a normal overly-animated voice. I wonder what their relationship was way back when. He's a handsome man and she's beaming at him as he speaks to her in his low tone.

Dad gets annoyed quickly that he cannot hear what is going on and has been put aside for the attentions of this woman.

"What's that I heard you say?!! YOU did everything you could?! YOU did nothing, boy! Don't believe a word that boy tells you, girl! He's full of lies. He sits around doing nothing. Got nothing going on. Don't you listen, girl. Dont you listen!"

The son realizes that until the dad gets some attention, he'll get no peace, so he wheels him over to Teresa and murmurs to him to behave.

"Behave?! Lord, I dont give a shit about these people! I cant seem them, so what do I care?!"

"Dad, you remember, Teresa, don't you?"

"I'm Juanita's daughter."

"Of course! I've know Juanita for years. What you doing here girl?"

"Mom's getting some tests."

"What'd you say? What'd she say, boy?! Where you at?"

"I'm right here, sir."

"Pull me closer boy! I need to hear Teresa! That's right. And I knew your daddy too, Teresa. He's been gone for a while."

"Yes he has. Yes he has. A few years now."

"Do you go to church, Teresa? Are you one of those church-going women?"

"Yes I am, sir. It is what gets me through the day. Jesus helps me."

"Aw. That's too bad."

"It's been a great strength for me. He gives me peace."

"Well, that's good for you, I guess, but I never believed in all that Jesus stuff and just because I'm old and blind don't mean I'm going to believe in it now! I'm not going to start praying just in case!! No way. Just be a good man, that's all I can do. I'm SATISFIED with the life I had. I have had a WONDERFUL life! Do you know that? I could drop dead tomorrow and I would be happy, I tell you! It was a lovely life! With a wonderful wife. Married fifty-five years we were!"

Now I understand his voice and his manner of questioning. You can see all this man wants to do is talk about his wife. The other patients are smiling and pretending not to listen. The son knows whats coming and settles more comfortably in his chair knowing dad will be talking for a while. Teresa smiles and says, "oh yeah?" in encouragement.

"Fifty-five years! Can you believe it?! Not many people can say that nowadays! Now, I'm not saying it was all good all the time, we had our disagreements! Yes we did. She was a handful, my wife - a mind of her own! - and I was hotheaded to be sure! But overall it was wonderful. I loved that woman with all my heart. And I did right by her. For the last fifteen years I took care of her, did you know that?!"

"No, I didn't. But I know what it must be like. My mother had a stroke last year and I've been caring for her."

"I knew I liked you, Teresa!!" he nodded and looked past her. "Everybody said to me, "what a burden," they wanted me to put her in a nursing home! The kids said, Dad, it's too much. It's too hard. Bah! Its a commitment! In sickness and in health! They don't know about commitment these days! For fifteen years I cooked for her. Bathed her. Dressed her. Brushed her hair! She did not want for anything, my wife. Not if I could help it! She was precious to me, so I treated her that way. She was content. She was loved! And I'd do it again. I would. That woman was my world and she deserved nothing less. Nobody else was going to take care of my wife as good as I could! Please! And I don't care if it cost me my leg and my sight! Do you know, she died and the next week I was declared legally blind?! The very next week! But that doesn't matter so long as I could see while she needed me to see. Fifty-five years!"

Sara has the coolest stuff

2006-01-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

Faith Losing It

2006-01-05T01:56:00.000-05:00

I call my mother on Friday and mention that I am having a few friends over for New Year’s Eve and that I plan to cook a big dinner, so I ask to borrow a folding table and a chair or two just to make sure I have enough room. I tell her that I’m getting a Peapod grocery delivery between 9 and 11 on Saturday morning, so I’ll definitely be home for that and probably afterwards. She says she’ll talk to my dad (he’s the driver in the family) and she’ll call me on Saturday.

This guy I’ve begun seeing stays over on Friday night. Ah yes. I really like this boy. This man. He is so sweet to me. Plus, the sex is amazing. A-maz-ing. We make love all night long. In the morning, Peapod shows up a little past 9:00 a.m. I find some pajamas and let the nice delivery man in. The boy and I put the food away then go back to the bedroom for round two. Around noon, in the midst of the afterglow, our naked bodies, sweaty and tangled together, our hearts still beating away, we hear this terrible noise that jars us from our bliss. It is the buzzer to my apartment. Someone is at the front door. The buzzer is going crazy. Whoever is down there is buzzing in a panic - the doorbell version of banging your fist against the door. I scramble for my pajamas. I’m in sixteen year old mode. Fuck! It’s my parents. I just know it. They’re coming to bring the table for New Year’s. Why didn’t they call? They always call. They are the complete opposite of spontaneous, my parents. They call me to tell me they are leaving the house and they call me to tell me they’re on Route 1 and they call me to tell me they are on Storrow Drive. You get the picture. Fuck! I can’t find my pajamas. The boy gets up because I’ve gotten up and says, bewildered, “What should I do?” I look at him, tall and broad shouldered, naked with such a look of concern for me, fucking adorable, and I chuckle. A fleeting thought occurs to me to tell him to hurry and hide in the closet, but I don’t know if he’ll get my sense of humor at the moment. It brings me back to reality just a bit. “Nothing,” I say, “It’s OK.” I grab a towel and wrap it around me.

I go to the intercom in my apartment, approaching the crazy buzzing noise with trepidation and push the Talk button.

“Hello?”

I hear a garbled voice.

“Who is this?”

“It’s your mother,” says Faith in a strained voice.

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“Let me in.”

“Hold on. I‘m not dressed.”

“Let me in.” She buzzes again.

“WAIT a sec!” I yell impatiently into the intercom.

I scramble back into the bedroom and find my pajamas on the floor and throw them on.

Instead of buzzing her in, I open my apartment door and look down the half flight of stairs to the glassed entryway. She looks up at me, all bundled up as usual, ridiculously so, with a big black wool coat, sturdy ankle boots, and a thick red scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders like a babushka. Her eyeglasses poking out, her dark features frowning.

She looks like she should be waiting in a bread line or something.

To add to that image, she gives me this crazy gesture, throwing her arms up in a way that can only say “what the fuck?” She looks very upset. Angry and worried. I take a deep breath wondering what’s this all about, head down the stairs and open the door. I stand in the doorway, holding the door with my hip , and trying to cover myself a little with my arms as I’m only wearing a tiny tank top and pajama pants.

“What are you doing here?” I look past her and see no Dad and no table and chairs, so I assume he is idling outside.

“I’ve been calling you all morning. I left five messages. We were very worried. You said you’d be home.”

“What? My phone didn’t ring.” Really, it didn’t. I was beginning to wonder why not when she showed up, but it was only noon, so I figured I’d call them once I managed to disentangle myself from the boy for a few minutes. My Florida cell phone has more issues. Sometimes it delays voice mails. This time, it didn’t even indicate a call even though I had a full signal. Later, I had to shut the phone off and turn it back on and when I did, it told me I had 5 voice mails.

“Well, I called. We were very, very worried, Rebecca. You said you would be home. You said you had a Peapod delivery between 9 and 11.”

Ugh. I was too damn specific. Vague, Rebecca. Remember to be vague. She grills me about my schedule whenever we are on the phone. “And then tomorrow you’re working? And you’re coming over on Saturday? Dad will pick you up. Got any plans for Sunday?” It’s just her way of small talk, but it drives me crazy and she remembers everything. One time she called me and I told her I was in the Newark airport because I was jetting back and forth that day for work and she freaked out a little bit that I didn’t mention it to her. See, my life is foreign to them. When my parents travel it is a production. Usually they go to Europe once a year, often with some of my mother’s students or with a group of adults, so there is mega-planning involved a year out. They need the planning. They need schedules and itineraries. Flying to Jersey City for the day and not letting them know is a bit too “willy-nilly” for their comfort level.

“Peapod came at 9 and I went back to bed. What’s going on, mom? Where are the table and chairs?”

“We didn’t bring them,” she says to me as if that would be obvious.

“You didn’t bring the table and chairs?”

“No.”

“Why? Then why are you here?”

“Because you didn’t answer your phone and we were very, very worried Rebecca, so we just drove down here.”

“What?”

“We got in the car and came here to see if you were OK. We couldn’t imagine why you wouldn’t answer the phone.”

“Are you serious?” I’m beginning to crack up.

“Yes.” She’s beginning to look slightly sheepish.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. We don’t have the table.”

“No table?”

“No.”

“No chairs?”

“No chairs.”

“And you drove all the way down to Boston to buzz my apartment to make sure I wasn’t dead because I didn’t answer the phone and Peapod was coming between nine and eleven?”

“Yes.”

“But it‘s only noon.”

“I know. You said you‘d be home between nine and eleven.”

“Which means you hopped in the car at 11:30.”

“Where are you going with this, Rebecca?”

“Forget it. Are you coming back with the table?”

“Well, it’s awfully out of our way and we have stuff to do. Can’t you just do buffet style? Kerry and April are like family. They won’t care. Do buffet style.”

I just look at her incredulously for a minute. She blinks at me like this is a totally normal thing for her to say. Like this whole conversation and her appearing at my door would be expected.

“OK, Mom, I really can’t deal with this now,” I say giggling hysterically. I have been giggling since I realized she really didn’t bring the table. I knew she wanted to say, “Well, Rebecca, we thought you were being raped and murdered in the big city or you were passed out in your apartment from a gas leak or something and we jumped in the car and flew down here to save you. Do you really think we would pause to load the car up with a table and a few chairs before we took off to save our oldest daughter from peril?” but of course, she didn’t say that, because THAT would have been ridiculous.

“Go home, mom. I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Give me a hug,” she says, giving me a look.

I know her look. She doesn’t want to hug me. She wants to smell me. My mother has the olfactory senses of a hound. I used to get the sniff test as a teenager, to see if I were smoking or drinking. She’s not even subtle about it. She’s get you in her clutches in the ruse of a good night kiss and then you’d hear this giant sniff.

I think she thinks I’m on drugs or something because I’m cracking up like a crazy person. The whole scenario is so ridiculous. My naked scramble. My crazy parents. No table. Fucking hilarious. Of course, she only knows the half of it, so now she thinks I’m insane or stoned or something. I manage to get away without a big sniff/hug - I knew I had his scent all over me - but then she gives me another look, a darker curious, raised eyebrow look, and I wonder if she’s figured out that I have a man in my bed. I just raise my eyebrow back and run up the stairs.

I get back upstairs and the boy is standing there, fully clothed and presentable. He’s so sweet. I just want to chew on him.

I served chicken parmesan buffet style that night, but I had an excellent story to tell, so I didn’t mind.

Kerry brought these pastries to New Year's

2006-01-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

My Santaland Diaries

2005-12-13T18:24:00.000-05:00

Every Christmas I’ll buy somebody Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. I’m a big fan. I especially like his Santaland Diaries about his time working as a holiday elf at Macy’s Herald Square. I even saw the play last year in St. Petersburg, Florida, though I was wholly disappointed and extremely offended that they changed the character from gay to straight. I mean, really. It’s not even referenced until the end and only by the use of “he” instead of “she.” I hope that was just some southern chickenshit behavior and not the way the play was really written.

Besides being a big Sedaris fan, the other reason why I like Santaland Diaries is because it reminds me of a million years ago when I was a regional human resources manager at Macy’s here in New England. My first beefy HR job. So exciting! Ah, yes. Retail. Mmmm. Never having a job in retail as a teen, I had no idea. What I learned is that in retail, people work so damn hard.

Also, they are all out of their everloving minds, each and every one of them.

I present to you my own Santaland Diaries of a sort.

My job combined Employee Relations and Recruiting, which is a terrible combination, especially in retail. With recruiting it was more on a strategic level, planning recruitment events, managing the advertising, monitoring the process, coaching the managers on interviewing and selecting candidates. The ER side of things was more hands-on, in that I got the phone calls when the shit really hit the fan – discrimination, workplace violence, union issues, bitch slapping, smelly employees, sexual harassers, nervous breakdowns, oh-no-you-didn’t-come-to-work-in-a-tubetop. Call Rebecca.

At one point or another I covered all the stores in New England but once they hired a few more people, I finally ended up with three stores, probably about 800 or more people to cover. All fucking nuts. These could not be more different stores and I could not have received more different phone calls from them. A typical list for the week might include:

Store #1: Big urban issues. Someone’s shooting heroin in the bathroom. The union is up in arms about such and such and threatening to strike, and there’s a catfight between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.

Store #2: Typical suburban issues. Attendance, dress code, claims of discrimination by both customers and employees, and even bitchier catfights between the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls.

Store #3: A tiny little store where the average age of the employee was like 63 because all the retirees would move to the area and get part time jobs. “Gertrude is going senile, but I don’t want to fire her because if I do, I’m afraid she’ll have no reason to get up in the morning and she’ll die. Oh, and FYI, the Clinique girls and the Lancome girls hate each other again.”

Then Christmas came and everyone went even more batshit. One employee complained that the Dancing Santa’s swinging hips were too sexual and she couldn’t think so she had to go home. The managers, blind with exhaustion and desperate to fill all the temporary jobs, began hiring anyone. This one obviously mentally ill woman would call me almost every day and leave me long, bizarre voice mails on why working at Macy’s was her lifetime goal. When she finally got it together to come in for an interview, a manager actually hired her. When the manager told me I just shook my head and went to the ladies room for a break where I found said new hire sitting on the pot taking a shit with the door to the handicap stall wide open, swinging her legs and chatting with me like we were old pals.

Another new hire had great potential but then started changing the dosage to whatever meds she was taking. I received a phone call a week into her holiday employment with the Domestics department that a customer had found her asleep on a Ralph Lauren bed display and couldn’t be woken up.

Oh, and it’s always great when a job teaches you something new. One time two girls got into an all out hair pulling, face scratching brawl just outside work and my HR assistant took statements which she handed to me with a smirk the next day. I will never forget reading that piece of paper. Man, I wish I had kept a copy. It read like a Jerry Springer episode written in juvenile loopdeloop writing, complete with big circles to dot the “I”s. “Kitty and I were friends…or so I thought!” And it went on to explain how Kitty and the other girl became friends at work. Then the girls realized that Kitty was dating the other’s ex boyfriend who also worked at the store. Well, Kitty told the ex “guess who my new friend is?” So the ex started telling Kitty about all the things he and the girl used to do together and Kitty told the whole store. Thus, the fight. I remember just looking up at my assistant and saying in all innocence to her, “what does ‘tossed his salad’ mean?”

Oh those crazy crazy people. I did love them so. Maybe I’ll pop in and visit while doing my holiday shopping and convince the Clinique girls to fork over the good samples because the chicks over at Lancome gave me an extra free gift.

Punk Rock Poet

2005-11-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

So I make plans with a guy friend to go see a band last night. I stop by his place and we're chatting and catching up and he starts telling me how completely in love he is with this girl he's been long-distance dating. It's hitting him hard and he's not really happy about it. It's adorable really, because he's this rather scary-looking punk rock boy who claims to be rotten to the core: 6'2", violet hair, piercings, tattoos, leather jacket, the whole nine yards. But as you might know, these are the guys who fall the hardest, and he's fallen for this lovely, vivacious woman. I'm teasing him and cheering him on and, OK, occasionally making kissy noises at him, and telling him it's going to be OK and he's growling and pacing like a caged animal dragging on a cigarette and scowling. But it's like he can't help himself, his heart is so full he has to talk about it, has to unburden himself, and since I'm probably the only one of his friends who will listen to this for any length of time without laughing in his face or punching him in his face, I get the privilege of seeing her photos and hearing about their amazing time together and all of this makes me happy for him because he really deserves a nice girlfriend and it makes me smile because it reminds me how young he is at 25 and sometimes I forget that.

He cracks open a beer, takes a swig and stares into his closet for several minutes even though most of his clothes are in various piles around his room - a sea of black cotton and black denim and various lethal-looking belts and other accessories.

-What are you doing?

-Figuring out what shirt to wear.

-How about the black one?

-Har. Har.

He picks one out then goes to his computer and shows me a few more photos of the girl. Then he switches the music from The Clash to a moody, achy Radiohead and opens a word document and says:

-I hate myself for this, but... read this poem I wrote.

-No! You didn't!

-Yes I did.

-Oh. My. God. You dork. You are in love.

-I know. I told you. Fuck. Stop making those kissy noises.

-You didn't send it to her did you?

-Yup.

-No!

-Go ahead. Read it.

-Aw man! I draw the line at reading bad poetry.

-No. It's good. Read it. You know I can write, Becca. Just read it.

-OK, but if there are any rain metaphors I'm kicking your ass. I can't take a rain metaphor right now. It will send me over the edge.

So, I read it and it was good. And there weren't any rain metaphors. And apparently the poem went over well with the girlfriend.

-I don't want this right now, Becca. It's so inconvenient.

-I bet after you see her next weekend you'll graduate from poetry to musicals. I can see it now: you twirling around streetlamps singing On The Street Where You Live.

He growls at me and throws on Elvis. You know he's really happy when he puts on Elvis. He does his best impersonation and dedicates the next song to me - Devil In Disguise - and twirls me around the room.

Prenatal vitamins scare the shit out of dates

2005-10-31T19:42:00.000-05:00

I'm so not one of those baby-crazed thirty-something women. Yes, I have a maternal instinct and want kids some day, but no, I'm not trying to steal some random dude's sperm. Don't worry. I mean, I just found a pretty apartment with lots of sharp edges and electrical outlets and I'm working on losing weight, not gaining it, especially the 7 to 8 pounds that you can never get rid of and have to like feed and burp and stuff.

But my iron levels tend to be low (I'm weird with that kind of stuff. My temperature is lower than 98.6, my blood pressure is like 95 over 70; basically, I think I'm part lizard or something) and I was freaked out about someone I know who had a baby with spina bifida which is preventable so long as you have enough folic acid in your system or something, so a while ago I bought a gigantic bottle of over the counter prenatal vitamins because it seemed to have everything I needed anyway as far as multi-vitamins go.

Yeah, but I wasn't really dating people at that time either.

Yeah, and I tend to leave my vitamins out, oh say, on the coffee table or the microwave so I don't forget to take them. There they are, lined up in a row: giant, zillion-pill bottle of prenatal vitamins, calcium, flax seed oil, B complex.

There is a very distinct tone of uhm....Rebeccaaaaa? that comes out of a guy when he sees prenatal vitamins on your coffee table. And no matter the explanation of low iron or folic acid or whatever, all that poor boy is hearing is his own interal voice screaming in horror, mapping escape routes out of the apartment, or sometimes weighing the odds. heh.

This has happened to me twice, because....well, because I forget. I'm thinking of taking some masking tape with the words "So Not" and putting it above the "Prenatal" on the bottle with the whole low-iron, spina bifida explanation and map of an escape route on the back, just in case I forget to put them away again.

And as if that's not enough of putting myself in an awkward situation, apparently I have to create an awkward situation when one doesn't exist. I was on a date recently, completely outside of my apartment, no prenatal vitamins in the vicinity, with a very interesting, handsome, and charming young man , when for some reason I feel compelled to tell my date this story because I think it is funny, even when in my head I'm screaming "Shut up! Shut up! You're the only one who finds this funny! Your 27 year old date will not. He will run to the hills. No man wants to hear a story that starts with 'OK, so, I'm so not baby-crazy or anything, but...' " Interestingly enough, he didn't bolt. Nerves of steel, that one, nerves of steel.

So ladies, take a lesson and add prenatal vitamins to the list of phrases not to use on a date. If you've forgotten the others, my friend Sara and I compiled a list recently. Here are a few:

Hummels
Herstory
Granny Panties
"There's this wedding coming up..."
"My cats did the funniest thing..."
"It's a promise ring to Jesus."
"My nickname at college was Bitchy McFrigid"

etc.

Friendly Neighbor or Creepy Neighbor?

2005-10-11T22:09:00.000-05:00

Met my neighbor the other week in the elevator as I was leaving for the airport. A middle-aged man also in temp housing. He mentioned getting together for a drink and helping me get oriented to the area (although I thought I was clear that I'm from this area). I said, "Yeah, sure," and went on my way. Yesterday there was a note on my door. Something to the effect of "Rebecca, Feel free to stop by and visit anytime after 7 p.m." I wrote back on the other side of the note that I had plans that night and actually through the rest of the week, which is true. Today there is a new note on my door saying that next Tuesday is fine and that he could "also do the weekend."

So, tell me...is this creepy dirty old man or friendly neighbor? Would you invite a single female to your apartment "after 7 p.m." that day and not include a plan i.e. "knock on my door and we'll go grab a drink," or "come over for dinner," but instead just ask her to show up no other plans mentioned? Wouldn't you include a phone number and say let's make plans or reference going out to a neighborhood bar/restaurant instead of hanging at his apartment?

Am I over-thinking this, or is it weird?

I'm a thief

2005-10-03T16:53:00.000-05:00

I stole this sign because it was awesome and I couldn't help myself. I found it on Cambridge Street. Sorry Jimmy #4, I'm hoping you're not too upset. I took my chances, as your friend wrote that you're a nice guy and you seem to have a sense of humor and you're all like literate and up on current events and stuff. I'm sure you can make another one, which I promise not to take. If anybody knows Jimmy #4, tell him his sign is in good hands.

I did leave the Globe though.

Next stop...North Station

2005-09-28T16:52:00.000-05:00

My taxi pulls up across the street from North Station. Something is different. I sling my back pack over my shoulder and look around. I can’t put my finger on it. “The entrance is over there, hun,” the taxi driver says to me out the window pointing across the street, “where that white truck is. Just go in through there.” He thinks my pause is because I’m lost. “Oh, I know. Thanks.” I slam the door and wave to him and head down the street. A guy leaning up against the wall of a convenience store smiles at me and nods as he takes his cigarette break. I pass by the Harp and look in. Guys in Red Sox jerseys drinking pints on a Saturday afternoon. Posters on the door advertising this weekend‘s events sponsored by Budweiser. Nothing different there. In a few hours this place will be packed with college kids dancing to Top 40 hip hop spun by DJ Jazzy Trevor. Downstairs: drama in the ladies room with the flooded out stall and the overflowing trash bin. Upstairs: guys from Malden and Quincy and Waltham wearing their lucky hats with the lids that took them a year to get to just the right curve keep one eye on the game and the other on the low rise jeans doing the circuit around the bar.

I cross the street and look up. Ah! They finally took down the elevated T tracks! And further down, the Central Artery, that ugly steel monstrosity looming above the street is gone! It even sounds ugly, “Central Artery“: “There’s a problem with the Central Artery.“ “The Central Aht-ah-ree is backed all the way to the tanks,” so says Joe in the BZ copter. It was always unnatural and cancerous and problematic. Down here, near the former Boston Garden, these elevated structures made everything dark and dirty and claustrophobic and generally sketchy no matter the time of day. It was almost subterranean. They cast weird shadows and everything echoed and rattled. People skitted like sewer rats across the street, navigating the steel beams and the constant construction, trying not to breathe in the smog. Truly, it looked like a bad set from one of those low-budget action films - you know, the urban version of the dock scene or the warehouse scene - where the bad guys come around the corner out of the steam coming up from the manhole and from behind the steel beam of some random structure that is there just so some bad guy can come out from behind it, and everything is a little wet and a lot grimy and the lighting is harsh and streaky, cutting slices through the dark, and the movie critic in you says, “Where the hell is there a place like this? I mean come on!” But now, the sun! The sun is hitting the ground, hitting my face, hitting the Harp for Chrissakes! The air is no longer stagnant, smelling of dirty metal and exhaust. Man oh man. A scab has been removed.

I walk into North Station and spend $4.50 on a one-way ticket on the Rockport line. I love that name: Rockport. That and Stockbridge are my two favorites. Something about the K sound, I think, and they sound so New Englandy or something. I have a half hour to kill so I head over to the Dunkin Donuts counter. Nothing appeals to me but I order a medium French Vanilla regular out of nostalgia or old habit. “Regular” in Dunkin Donuts language means cream and sugar. I don’t really drink flavored coffees now, and I don’t usually use sugar anymore, but “French Vanilla Regular” is sort of all one word and you really can’t order it any other way - it‘s like illegal or something - so I order my frenchvanillaregulah.

My first full time job was as a secretary in the Human Resources department of a bank. That’s when I first started drinking coffee, and of course, as is required by Massachusetts Zoning Law, there was a Dunkin Donuts half a block away. It was a decent job and they certainly never made me fetch coffee, but I liked getting out so I would do a coffee run most mornings. I can still remember the orders. Most were frenchvanillaregulahs but Cathy the payroll person got a large French Vanilla extra light with four sugars. Easy enough to remember. Hard to understand why she couldn‘t figure out why she couldn‘t lose weight. And Virgina the little old lady in benefits always ordered a small half-French Vanilla, half-Hazelnut with just the tiniest splash - yes she wrote down “splash” on the post-it - of milk and one sugar. Virginia was a pain in the ass with stuff like that, but she was this ex-nun with major men-issues and an always-interesting if somewhat whacked way of looking at things, and I genuinely liked her, so I made sure they got her order right.

The Eastern European woman behind the counter is fast and efficient and never once looks at me. I imagine after a few hours in this place, people just become a blur. I take my coffee and leave her a dollar tip. The lid is new. Pretty cool actually. Quite a good design, the way the tab pulls back and actually secures itself. I take a sip. God, it’s like diabetes in a cup! And so weak compared to the rocket fuel French-pressed to within an inch of its life that I enjoy nowadays. I go back and order a bottle of water, knowing I’m not going to drink much of the coffee.

All the benches are taken. People are sitting on the ground, talking to each other, chatting on their cell phones, reading books. Locals who have taken the kids into the city for the day to kick around Fanuiel Hall and the Museum of Science with a promise to stop at McDonalds if they are good. Tired service workers from Chelsea and Lynn still in their uniforms, closing their eyes and trying to find that little bit of peace amongst the hyper children with butterflies and cat whiskers painted on their faces. College freshman from the small seaside towns on the North Shore going home for the weekend, feeling grown up and giddy but trying to look bored and blasé with their noses in a Lit 101 book.

I pick my spot up against the wall between a college girl on her cell phone, a paperback Candide abandoned on her lap, and two other girls chatting about music, bags from the Garment District packed around them. I smile and slide down the wall settling myself onto the floor, taking off the hat I just bought at the Garment District, shutting off my iPod and pulling Lolita out of my back pack. And I wonder why I’m often mistaken for an undergrad.

So here I am, living in Cambridge, single again, minorly giddy, genuinely bored and blasé, heading to Beverly for my friend April’s bachelorette party. Later in the night, we will wind up back in town, but we’re starting off at Kerry’s place in Beverly and having drinks and dinner there first, and like most things in my life, for me this is a circuitous route but will wind up worthwhile in the end.

Embarrassing

2005-09-19T16:50:00.000-05:00

Apparently September is The Cosmos Align to Embarrass Rebecca Month.

Week One:

First day at work: spill coffee all over the sleeve of my white dress shirt while trying to get in a taxi in the morning. Solution: roll up sleeves and look like a dork.

Second day at work: spill coffee all over the front of another white dress shirt in front of the nice HR person giving me a tour when the elevator decides to jerk like a carnival ride. Solution: luckily this one washed out with copious amounts of water, however…

Had a meeting with the VP of whoosamawhatit looking like a contestant in a corporate chick wet t-shirt contest. Solution: explain the situation first thing and then maintain aggressive eye contact.

Week Two:

Tuesday morning 5 a.m. I walk up to a cab where I see the cabbie laying down in the front seat pleasuring himself. (see "cabbies" blog)

Wednesday night, walking to Kendall Square T stop, feeling kind of sassy, meeting a girlfriend for drinks, kinda dressed up in black dress pants and a fancy black tank and high heels. Yeah, I’m working it…Yeah, I’m a cool city chick, check me out… Yeah, I’m...

…. flat on my face in front of two MIT boys.

Damn those four inch heels.

Later Wednesday night… I am hit on by

-A 60 year old man (I smiled politely)

-A drunk Texan (I turned down the offer to go to his hotel with him, but pointed him in the right direction since he was too drunk to find it)

-A guy on a date with another guy (I pretended not to notice the daggers the other guy was shooting at me after he came back from the men’s room and found him chatting me up.)

-A guy who struck out with my friend four seconds prior (By then I had had it, so I decided to kind of torture this one and right there on the velvety sofa of the club, pulled out my dog-eared copy of Lolita that I’m reading and made him read the first paragraph and discuss it with me.)

Later, later Wednesday night…I have to somehow delicately reveal the following information to my friend about the guy that she met recently and made us meet up with:

- He’s a cokehead.

-The tattoo that he reveals to us on his forearm so proudly makes me realize that I’ve seen his CL personals posting, which states:

NAUGHTY BOY -------------->> WANTS A REAL ------------ >> NAUGHTY GIRL

I just moved here from NYC and since I am the bad boy type, most woman in Boston want me for one reason and one reason only. To be a part time bad girl. That sucks for me.

They call me at 1:00am. Come over for 2-3hrs and leave. What happened to spending the night? I am not your normal bad boy, I have a soft side as well.

Since Boston woman are good girls to there friends and family and bad girls with no one watching, I get screwed.

I want a naughty, bad, wild, mature girl that is not ashamed to be naughty. One that has is free spirited.

Since Boston woman are all closet casses to there friends and family and become bad girls with no one watching, I get screwed.

If you feel that you are a chill, no judgementle, relax girl/woman ... Please let email me.

please ... no closet casses ... only true naughty girls!

Thanks.

PS ... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ... NAUGHTY GIRLS ONLY!

No Shyness
No Inhibitions
No worries
No drama
... ONLY ... FUN FUN FUN

p.s. This is also the night that my taxi home smashes into a pole. (See “Cabbies” blog)

Thursday after work: After the night before and getting maximum 4 hours sleep, I sleepwalk through the day and finally come home to relax. I open the door to my (corporate housing) apartment, and realize that housekeeping has been there. They never told me when housekeeping was going to come. I realize that one of my greatests fears (see "Peanuts, anyone?" blog) has come true only worse. My house wasn't really a mess, per se, BUT!

-I had just washed a ton of my most delicate lingere and hung it up on every available surface, making my bathroom and even my dining room table appear to be the dressing room of a bordello

-The clothes I had worn out the night before - you know my sassy cool black clubby outfit - along with the accompanying underthings were trailed from apartment door to bed.

-The nightstands in my bedroom not having any drawers had led me to improvise and keep my ... ahem ... things under the extra pillow. And there they were, nice and neat under freshly changed linens.

Saturday night...I take a taxi to the North End. This driver is HOT. He's some IT guy named Walid who just started this as a part time job and doesn't know Boston at all. Awww... that's OK Walid, you are hot, and I shall flirt with/show you how to get there.

Flirt flirt...take this left...flirt...make a right...flirt...ok, Walid, stop here. Good! See? Now you know how to get to the North End. He throws me a dazzling smile and tells me I look really good in my new favorite newspaper boy/old man hat, and I step out of the cab. Yeah...I'm cool...Yeah, check me out in my superfly hat waving to Walid as I cross the street..Bye, Walid!...Yeah, look at me.....

...flat on my face on Hanover Street.

There was a ladybug in my room this morning

2005-09-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

I caught it and let it outside.

It was a good day.

And I completed the NY Times Sunday Crossword!

Stellllaaaa!!!!!

2005-08-07T16:44:00.000-05:00

Some women have bad judgment in men. We all do at one point or another. Certainly I have. But, like most women, after fifteen-odd years of experience, I have learned a few things, or at least I hope. And those of us who have do try to warn our friends when we see those warning signs. We try to impart wisdom, those who can see further down the road, pointing out potential pitfalls that we have fallen into ourselves. I mean, I know I come off cynical as shit sometimes, but really, I'm not. It's just my sense of humor. Really, I think that there are so many great guys out there, and once you have the ability to weed out the duds, life gets a lot easier. I think most women want this for their friends. They try to help when they can, even in the most unusual places - like ladies bathrooms, the location of many, many Girl, you have got to wake up! type conversations.

One of the most unusual and recent places I have seen this sense of sisterhood was while reading the Rants and Raves section of Boston Craigslist. This woman posted a rant about her boyfriend. Apparently she was having some minor female issues and had seen a gynecologist in order to rectify the situation. Her boyfriend went crazy when he found out the doctor was male. He said that having a male gynecologist examine her was "cheating" and it turned into a giant argument. This woman actually tried rationalizing with this guy by using the argument that women go to gynecologists when their female parts are not in their most attractive and ideal condition and that surely after looking at them all day, the doctor would not be having lascivious thoughts as her boyfriend accused. But the boyfriend kept up his rant, so much so that she cancelled her regularly scheduled exam in order to maintain the harmony because she "loves him so much." Apparently in this young woman's application of Order Theory, dysfunctional love > potential cervical cancer. Am I crazy? she asked the Boston Craigslisters.

Oh you silly, silly girl. Asking Am I crazy? on Boston R and R is like Matt Lauer asking Tom Cruise about the reasonableness of taking anti-depressants for postpartum depression. Imagine Dennis Leary as a sexually frustrated and disgruntled techie with too much time on his hands and you'll kind of get a sense of the typical voice of Boston R and R. I mean, don't get me wrong, most of the time it is funny as hell, but a place where the word assclown is used on a regular basis is typically not a place that is conducive to actual advice and help.

But, what do you know? Gyno-Girl's post struck a chord with the slightly older female crowd reading that day; they rallied to her aid, warning signs flashing in their eyes. A collective groan went out from these chicks. Dump him! was the general consensus. What was interesting is how much further down the road these women could see into her relationship than Gyno-Girl herself. Run away, fast, Gyno-Girl, they said, it will only get worse from here. Just like your smelly vagina indicates a non-ideal situation, so does your boyfriend's reaction one post bluntly put it. That type of irrational jealousy and controlling behavior will lead to more irrational jealousy and controlling behavior, believe us, said the posters. We know. He'll accuse you of wanting to sleep with his friends. He'll watch your expression like a hawk as a cute boy walks by. He'll get pissed that the cashier is staring at your ass. The Boston Craigslist women had this guy pinned and foreseeable future of their relationship predicted, all based on a one paragraph post.

Gyno-Girl posted an update saying she was giving her boyfriend the cold shoulder, not speaking to him and not returning his many groveling phone calls, because he had upset her so and just wished he could change. OMG, he just sent me another email saying he loves me. Why do I do this to myself??? she lamented, reveling in the melodrama. This statement perhaps meant to garner sympathy just incensed the Boston CL women who had dealt with plenty of men like this in their day and were oh-so over it. One poster summed it up with a thick tone of disgust, Ugh! Next thing you know, he'll start crying... Gyno-Girl's boyfriend had been further classified. Not only was he a jealous, controlling, irrational fuckwad, he was also part of the subclass Drama Dude.

Any woman past the age of 25 knows a Drama Dude. Continually captured on screen, from the animalistic and violent, Stellllllaaaaaa!!!, to the emo-before-emo-existed tortured soul of Nicholas Cage pitching a tent on the Valley Girl's front lawn, to John Cusack's sweet and romantic version holding that boom box overhead, we've all been there; we've all dated That Guy. And while it's a huge ego-boost for like the first fifteen minutes - How great must I be, how incomparable my beauty, how magical my pussy, to deserve a reaction like this?!! - these guys are a real pain in the ass when you come down to it, or so say the women of Boston CL.

Controlling Drama Dudes usually follow up the crying with flowers, inevitably the ubiquitous dozen red roses. This not only screams a big I'm sorry! but also marks their territory, especially when it is sent to work. Because of this, many women I know cringe at the sight of the flower delivery guy. It's Pavlovian. The guy in the dog house thinks, I'll send flowers. Women like flowers. But the flowers serve as a glaring-red, baby's breath dotted, week-long reminder of the argument, doomed to slowly wilt and die just like the relationship. If it's not flowers, it's something else. My friend Sara has a stuffed teddy bear that she calls the Sorry I Fucked Up Bear. Probably the grandest example of this behavior is the now infamous Kobe diamond. I mean, when you get to the Sorry I Fucked Up Bling, you know the relationship is doomed.

The Controlling Drama Dude is only one of the types of guys we women try to make sure our friends steer clear of. It's amazing how good our radar is when it comes to our friends but not for ourselves. Some of the funniest moments are based in trying to get a girlfriend to wake up and smell the rat.

He got a lesbian pregnant? ... That's not a very good lesbian.

Are you positive there was no tape in the video camera?

Your date just attempted to shank me with his spoon when I went for the last dinner roll. I think I figured out why he's unwilling to explain where he's been for the past three years.

So, tell me again why you can only see him for a half hour on Wednesdays at three in the afternoon?

Cheating guys are always good for a few laughs, unless of course it's you they are cheating on. But even then, hindsight can be hilarious. I remember being like 20 years old and finding out my boyfriend was cheating. His friends told me because they liked me better. I knew the girl's name, everything. I had irrefutable evidence from multiple sources. He denied it all with a completely straight face. Instead of dumping him and walking away, I in my own Drama Queen phase felt it imperative that after dumping him I get my mix tapes back immediately.

At midnight. On a Saturday night. Yeah, mix tapes are that important, OK? Don't question the logic of a devastated twenty year old.

They acted like they weren't in the apartment even thought my two friends (yeah, you always need two friends as Charlie's Angels-type backup to get the mix tapes at midnight) and I could hear them inside. So after a while - ok 45 minutes - we finally decided to stop trying to jimmy the lock with my library card and head home sans cassettes. But before we could get in the car, around the corner he comes with a giant look of pleasant surprise plastered on his face and hugs all around.

Oh hi!! What a surprise! What are you doing here? I just walked home form Brian's house. We went to a hockey game together.

Besides the fact that I bumped into Brian earlier and he told me he going out of town for the weekend with his girlfriend, the fact that my ex had toasty warm face and hands despite allegedly walking two miles in ten degree weather in February in Massachusetts, led me to suspect he was lying - just a little bit. Hilariously, he stuck to his story. Even after the girl he cheated on me with peeked out of his bedroom window to survey the scene. This caused the backup Angels to shout disparaging remarks in her general direction and pound on the window. I will never forget the image of Tina and Sandy angrily pointing to this girl's pissed-off face in the window and my ex actually saying, What? I don't see anything.

Now that's commitment.

That officially ended my Drama Queen phase. I mean, how can you top that?

But some of us don't get that much evidence. Some of us need our friends to sniff out clues. It's an unwritten law of sisterhood: we will try to see the signs you cannot in your new-love, testosterone-induced haze.

You know, I know he says he's a cop and all, but don't cops have good dental insurance?

Love that dirty water

2005-08-05T23:15:00.000-05:00

Oh my. It appears I will be moving back to Boston.

Adventures in laser hair removal

2005-07-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

It started exactly a year after 9/11. I had to travel from Boston to Toronto on business that day and was a little nervous. On my return flight out of Toronto the security guy pulled me and my carry on over and started digging in my make up bag.

"There's something in here," he says, giving me a suspicious look.

He digs and finally pulls out a pair of tweezers. He glares at me as if I were planning to singlehandedly shank my way into the cockpit using only a pair of eyebrow tweezers and my cat-like reflexes.

"Oh yeah," I say, "Those are my tweezers. In my makeup bag. Cuz I sometimes tweeze my eyesbrows around the same time that I put on my makeup. Which is also in the bag. Hence me calling it a 'makeup bag.'"

Sometimes I ramble when I'm nervous.

He didn't find me funny. "There's something else," he says, continuing to dig. He fumbles his paws all over my Viva Glam to my chagrin and finally pulls out another set of tweezers.

"Oh. Yeah, those are the ones that I keep in my bathroom at home. I must have thrown them in when I was packing."

He gives me a gimlet eye as if to ask whyever would a girl need two sets of tweezers.

I just look him in the eye, shrug and say, "I'm Greek."

He lets me and my tweezers go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, I'm really not a particularly hairy person, but I have dark hair so I am vigilant. My friend Jen is blonde and says things like, "My hair is so light that I don't even shave my thighs."

Jen is a bitch.

So now here I find myself in Florida where hair removal is practially offered as a college-level course. I decide to investigate, not wanting another grubby security guy mauling my M.A.C.

I make an appointment for a 'consultation' for laser hair removal. The place looks like a dentist's office staffed by girls from the Clinique counter - squeaky clean women with glossy pulled back hair in white lab coats. They give me more papers to fill out than my doctor.

The last form has line drawings of a female body and a male body. "Indicate the areas you are interested in" it says. Hmmm...interested in? I'm tempted to draw circles around the male body, but I decide to behave myself and focus on the female drawing. Part of me wants to just put a big circle around everything but the head, but I just do the right thing and place my circles in the correct areas. Everywhere.

This young lady takes me into an office and talks me off the ledge. "You don't even have hair there, the laser is never going to get that!" etc.

We decide on two major areas: underarms and bikini.

This is the point where all illusions of a doctor's office go right out the window.

"OK," she says, "Do you want the bikini or the full brazilian?"

"Uh...well...uh...I mean, if I'm going to have the procedure, let's have the procedure, you know? But I don't want to be like bald or anything, if that's what you mean."

"OK then!," she says, and whips out a piece of paper with several more line drawings on it.

I blink. No. It can't...what? What am I looking at?

"Do you want the landing strip? The heart? The circle? The natural vee? The smaller vee? The diamond? Or the square?"

"Are you actually showing me hairstyles?"

"Yeah. So what'll it be?"

"Do people actually get the heart?"

"Oh yeah. All the time."

"This is permanent, right?"

"Uh huh."

"So, like there are women out there..right now..who will be like 90 year old women...with a heart shaped box?"

"Well, I never thought of it that way," she giggles, "but yeah."

I am fascinated.

"Do people ask for custom shapes?"

"Oh yeah! Not so much here, but in South Beach the lightning bolt and the chili pepper are both very popular. Especially with the gay men"

This information alone is worth the price of the procedure.

"So, what are you going to get?"

"Um..."

"Well, it doesn't really matter, because you just shave in the shape you want and the technician will go around that area."

"Then why are you sexually harassing me with these line drawings?"

Is it bad that through the entire conversation I wanted to use finger quotes like Doctor Evil every time I said the word "laser"?

Female's translation of M4W photos

2005-07-11T23:03:00.000-05:00

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. What you think your photo says and what we ladies think it says can be two totally different things. Who's to say who is correct? Probably a little of both. I wrote this quite a while ago, but was just reminded of it, so here it is.

1) Photo of you with no shirt on, flexing your muscles

Translation: Will cheat on me with some whore from Gold’s Gym.

2) Photo of you in military uniform with references to you having been a civilian for 4 years now.

Translation: Has gained 50 lbs since this photo

3) Photo of you in any type of uniform, especially your National Guard, part-time volunteer EMT, volunteer firefighter, security guard, or StarTrek uniform

Translation: Is insecure and has a deep need for affiliation

4) Photo of you leaning on a car

Translation: Probably lives in parent's basement and has latent homosexual feelings toward David Hasslehoff.

5) Photo of you in over-the-top sports apparel (more than one item, painted face, etc.)

Translation: I will be a Sunday/Monday-night widow, and be competing with [insert team] for attention.

6) Photo of you sitting at your computer

Translation: Get used to this vision of me because I hardly ever leave this chair. ‘I can’t shut down now because there’s a raid tonight and if I leave everyone will die because I’m like only one of 3 healers in my guild.’

7) Photo of you in your bedroom

Translation: Lives with Mommy

8) Photo(s) of you past age 21 where beer has a predominant role

Translation: Alcoholic

9) Photo of you in poor lighting

Translation: He doesn’t want a date. He wants my kidney.

10) Photo of a wide landscape with you somewhere in it

Translation: Oh, that third dot to the left? Hot. Let me email him immediately.

11) Photo of you with a bunch of drunken friends

Translation: I’m going to have to hang around with these bozos?

12) Photo of you with someone else cut out of it

Translation: Very tacky. Who is the blonde anyway? But from the small patch of forehead that I can see, she looks like a skank with premature wrinkles.

13) No photo

Translation: The three M’s: Married, Mongoloid, or Moron

Peanuts, anyone?

2005-07-08T23:01:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm seriously already over hurricane season. Rebecca is not good when it comes to hurricanes. In most situations, I am cool as a cucumber. I handle things. But when I hear the term "evacuate low-lying areas" I get all sorts of freaked out.

Being from New England, I'll take blizzards any day. You don't have to evacuate for a blizzard, unless you're like 105 years old or something. You stay put in a blizzard, put your nose up against the freezing window and gauge how fast the snow is coming down by watching it in the triangular patch of light coming from the street lamp. Then, maybe you groan, thinking about all the shoveling you'll have to do. But you stay put, you get out the candles, you play a game of Trivial Pursuit, you keep the TV tuned to Dick Albert the weatherman, and you chill. It's fun and a little special. Mother Nature is blanketing you with a gorgeous, glittery, swathe of snow, not kicking your ass with wind gusts and throwing trees at you like it were the caber toss at the Highland Games.

My version of freaked out is not like girly, shirvel up and cry freaked out. I don't shudder at every thunder clap. I say to myself, "OK, Rebecca, let's prepare. Let's get some shit done." Then I do things that in hindsight make absolutely no sense. Paranoia also sents in.

For example, last year, when I was told to evacuate and had about an hour to do so before they closed the bridge, I ran home to get some stuff together and realized that the spare room which my now ex was using as the shrine to Evercrack (seriously, I am one dark elf away from having no faith in the male species) and the downstairs bathroom that he used were complete pig sties. I had a vision of those newscasts where the wall to a house is ripped off but everything else is intact and everyone watching the five o'clock news can see all your stuff like they were looking in a doll house.

I freaked.

So I cleaned. I scrubbed the bathroom, picked up all the shit in the spare room. Folded clothes. Dusted (?) This is what my brain focused on while awaiting Hurricane Charley: possible public embarassment due to a messy house.

Then I packed a bag and high-tailed it by myself (long story) to my safe little hotel room in.....Orlando. Um, yeah. You guys remember the hurricane took a sharp right and guess what? Went RIGHT OVER my hotel room.

But before that I packed. And when I got to the hotel and unpacked, this is what I found in the suitcase:

My most expensive pair of four-inch heels
Two Corona t-shirts from my "beer girl" days
A bottle of Shiraz
A brand new roll of Bounty paper towels
A giant bottle of rubbing alcohol
My important documents
A flashlight
A 12-snack pack box of planters peantus

So this season, if you see me walking around in four inch heels and a beer girl t-shirt, gripping a bottle of shiraz by the neck, just know that I'm not a drunk hooker. Drunk hookers don't have peanuts and rubbing alcohol. I'm just a freaked out northerner who doesn't yet know how to properly prepare.

This year, I think my hurricane shopping will consist of purchasing a plane ticket to Boston.

Maury Povitch has three shows

2005-07-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

OK, in all fairness, Maury has 5 shows, but there are three main ones:

1) Lie Detector Tests
2) Paternity Tests
3) Fat Babies

If Maury ever has an episode that is “My fat baby may not be yours, you lying sonofabitch” I will orgasm before the theme song is over.

No kernel left behind

2005-07-01T22:51:00.000-05:00

There is something very disturbing about the first floor ladies bathroom: every afternoon there is one kernel of popcorn in the right hand sink. Just one. Never two. One. It is not the same kernel. It's not there in the morning. It's a brand new kernel every day. What does this mean? I can tell you that I've pondered this much longer than I would like to admit.

Logic tells me that there is someone – hopefully female - on the first floor who has a snack of microwave popcorn every afternoon and that after she is done, she washes out the bowl in the right hand ladies sink, leaving one kernel to sit on top of the drain after which, she exits with her bowl from the right hand door.

But, what is freaking me out is why one? Why not two or three kernels? Or, even better, why not ZERO? Why every day? Is there no variety in this woman's snacking habits? Why is she washing out a bowl in a shallow bathroom sink when the kitchen is only a few steps away? Why have I never seen this person? In summary, what the dilly, yo?

At first glance, one would assume this is a clean person, someone who takes the time to get up from her desk and go wash out the bowl before putting it away in a drawer or on a shelf or some other designated popcorn bowl spot. You might think, Rebecca, give the girl a break. I mean, we've all seen some nasty office habits, not to mention nasty silverware and nasty coffee mugs, so a washing out of anything should be a relief, right? Wrong! Don't let the water fool you: this mysterious female is a dirty, dirty girl!

First of all, when given a choice of bathroom or kitchen in which to wash out dishware, I will take the kitchen. It has things like dishwashing liquid and sponges for example that can be of use during the popcorn bowl washing out process. Now, I've worked in offices that did not have the luxury of a kitchen, so washing things out in the bathroom sink is not new to me nor is it totally unacceptable. I am not a germ-phobe. OK, sometimes I am, like when the Clorox people decide to use a marketing ploy that can only be labeled as "skeeve the audience into purchasing our products." But when one has the option of a well-lit kitchen right next door with proper kitchen-type cleaning stuff in it or a shallow ladies bathroom sink that has been used for the past six hours, however clean looking, that boasts no dishwashing accoutrements, one would think that the logical choice would be clear: go toward the stainless steel. But this mysterious woman has eschewed logic and chosen wrong. Dirty, dirty girl.

Secondly, if you feel I am being too kosher in my belief that bathroom sink equals hands and kitchen sink equals dishes, you must agree with me that a single wet popcorn kernel sitting in the middle of a bathroom sink drain is a nasty thing. You know if you had to, you would use a paper towel or some other barrier to pick it up and throw it away. You're not going to pick up some random person's kernel with your bare fingers, are you? Especially after its been marinating in bathroom sink water. More specifically, if it were your kernel – if you felt ownership of the kernel – would you leave it in the sink in the first place? Wouldn't you wipe your bowl with the rough paper towel from the dispenser on the wall and then pick up the stray kernel with it before you tossed the lot? Wouldn't you? Don't most of us have a 'no kernel left behind' policy? I know I do. "The DG" doesn't though; she doesn't give a flying fuck, and that's just unamerican, leaving a kernel behind to drown.

So now, what to do? I feel I must find this person, see what she looks like. Do I know her? Is she in my department? But how, you ask? Ohhh, don't you worry. No, no, no, don't you worry. I am a Master Sleuth – ok, stalker. I didn't read every Nancy Drew book for nothing. I was pressing "redial" before *69 even existed. I know how to find my white whale, believe me. Some of you might think: well, of course, stake out the first floor ladies bathroom. Amateurs! I will not waste additional time lurking around in a bathroom. What is this, the second floor men's room at Macy's? Oh no. I will not need to put additional time into this. I will take my trips to the bathroom as needed. The kernel will be there. Believe me. BUT! I feel I will find my nemesis only with the absence of the kernel. When the kernel is no more, then I will strike!

If I had a mustache, I would twirl it right now.

Mmm...I love blog. Bloggy blog blog.

2005-06-30T21:31:00.000-05:00

Gee...I've never blogged before. This could be interesting.

I think 'blog' could become a word like 'smurf'. Let's just use it for anything, I mean, why the blog not?