i hate kit kats

Baby I got a plan: run away fast as you can.

2010-12-28T13:13:00.000-05:00

After many many weeks of banging away this year is finally whimpering to a close. Back when I used to write--and you used to read--we probably would have shared these highs and lows together; but as it was, I could only hint and you could only guess. We’ll have to content ourselves with noting that this was a year of milestones even more than of miles, and the miles were many indeed.

We had a sprinkling of snow on Christmas morning and an inch delivered sideways next day, but nothing remotely resembling how this calendar started, let alone how it’s leaving just about everyone else. There are few things I love more than snow, and though I know the nuisance it causes I can’t help but crave the kindness that blankets everything with it. People are just nicer when you and they both are trudging through snowbanks and sliding along sidewalks. Frankly I could use some nicening up myself; these days no matter how gracious I try to be my gracelessness is noticed instead. “You need to watch your face,” I was told this weekend, a task easier said than done.

I booked a room on the beach, the hotel one I once passed often and wondered whomsoever could afford such a place. The trip is not one to which I’m looking forward but it must be made, the first of the new year yet too many weeks late according to some I suspect. But I’ve worked hard to carve out my little square and in consequence I am not good at all at doing what I do not want to do, an ugly habit to match my ugly face I guess. Were I one to make New Year’s resolutions that is one right there in obvious need of tackling, but I’m not so I won’t. Or maybe I will, though I know not wherever to begin.

I’m not entirely sure when negotiations started but we’ve come to an easy if precarious truce, the “two with the Cheshire grins” I think someone called us. There’s not too much else I can or want to write about the matter, except for one last thing: we are at a precipice, a crossroads. From here on out I fear it’s either all or nothing.

A handful of strangers, all friends of mine.

2010-11-16T16:25:00.000-05:00

A “week” into this project and I’ve made a decision which will surprise exactly none of you. It’s not the truth with which I have a problem; it’s that no truth can come from such questions. And questions are king. If I learned anything in law school it’s that asking the wrong questions will without fail give you the wrong answers, so instead of Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit, why not, OMG people, JUST BE FUCKING NICE TO EACH OTHER? It really is that simple.

I’ve been treading water in a sea of torpor, finally resorting last night to the one-two punch of NyQuil and tears. Around 4 a.m. I whispered “something’s not right,” but what that something is I can’t quite grasp. Whatever the problem, it is beyond ill timed and the pressure to fix it fix it fix it does not help at all. I’ve moved the Christmas music onto Mitch’s iPod; maybe that will help. Maybe I just need to get out of DC for a few days. Oh wait, I am.

I’d actually like to leave the blame there. As I was telling MG! the other day for someone who travels so often I sure have become an anxious traveler, but since we’re talking truth this trip will be a breeze. I will not be golfing. I will not be gambling. I will not be going to the spa. But I may have a glass of wine by the pool. A rum punch at the beach. You know, whatever will get my boat afloat. (Answer: cabana boys.)

(jk)

"Day" Seven

2010-11-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

Let’s see now, where were we? Ah, yes. What they thought was a perforated bowel was in fact a bleeding liver, and for three days it barely did its thing while doing the other. Dearest dad, of course, spent those three days sickbed-side talking of nothing but deathbeds and why isn’t anyone taking pity on him life is so hard oy. Ask her how she’d answer this and I’m sure she’d laugh until her stitches popped.

As for me it’s highly probable I’d do the same, the very nature of the question beyond a waste of my time. And so I won’t waste any more time on it.

"Day" Six

2010-11-03T11:56:00.000-04:00

Alternatively titled, “Fighting Fire with Firewood.”

My mother right this second is in surgery, again, overachieving at being unwell I suppose. And the way I feel about all this from so far away reminds me of a conversation we had a couple years ago, if by “conversation” you mean... well I don’t know what you mean. The details now are unimportant but at the time I dismissed the details, as if the details were the important part. As if dismissing the details was tantamount to denial. Ha.

I’ve always joked that she’s my Miss Havisham, my mother, though I suppose it’s not a very funny joke when you think about it. And I suppose it would be true save for one thing, that I do an awfully good job of pretending otherwise. Why do I do it? I couldn’t say, really. I guess it makes it easier to fit in. It certainly gives me something to write about. For example. I once wrote a bald-faced lie, and poorly too, that prompted an email from someone who had never once emailed me before. (Hi, you!) I’m a little embarrassed to think about it now, to be honest, but can anyone regret the lie that brings the best people ever round? And then there was the time I called myself frigid and suddenly the truth was dismissed as a lie, so really, there are no winners here.

And there are no losers either, excepting maybe myself, and in the purely pejorative sense only. Because I don’t feel I’ve really lost anything. I just don’t. So I hope there never comes a day when I have to say “I never loved you, either,” even though I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

My mother would, though.

"Day" Five

2010-11-01T13:36:00.001-04:00

Alternatively titled, "Can You Hear the Road from This Place?"

My mother right this second is in surgery, my grandfather is not. Strange how medicine can help one but not the other, the subtle differences between one collection of molecules and another too subtle for science it seems. Speaking of science, have you ever thought about mitochondria? I mean really thought about them? Some time back I read the theory that mitochondria are not of this Earth, that we exist thanks to an intergalactic truck stop egg salad sandwich. “Ever wonder what makes special sauce so special? Yo.”

My sister, the nurse, is of course a bundle of panicked misinformation. Liver! Lung! Frightened Rabbit! But I suppose it’s times like these when one is supposed to assess one’s own mortality, to survey the distance covered and the unknowable road ahead. And that’s where I would turn, I think, to maps and atlases. My Bucket List is an endless itinerary, places to go, people to see. And with a surprising amount of forethought on my part it seems I’ve already begun the journey.

Hic sunt dracones.

"Day" Four

2010-10-29T12:17:00.002-04:00

Now we’re cooking with gas. Well, I’m not; my range is electric. But maybe you are. What are you doing, anyhow? I have the vaguest of ideas, but neither the curiosity nor the wherewithal to inquire further. Not that you’d answer anyway, “communication” not being what best recommends you. Of course, this isn’t precisely true, it being a conscious decision on your part, but wouldn’t it have been better to have just said I never loved you when that’s what you meant anyway? Not that I’m dwelling, not now anyway. But man, I can hold a grudge with the best of them--no, better than the best of them--and this particular grudge, well, let’s just say it’s empowering this high horse I’m prettily perched upon. I feel so damn smug when I thing of you it’s laughable. Ha. Ha ha.

So let’s turn back to you for a minute, not that I know you, at all, but I once knew people like you, or a person at least, all witty and pretty and bright. You know, it took me a long time to figure out why you so vehemently placed the blame on me, why you felt the need to fabricate transgressions some plausible but most disturbing and just plain hurtful. Truth is, I still haven’t figured it out, but I did eventually realize that it’s not my problem, it’s yours, and it’s especially not my problem you’re an asshole. Is that what you are? Have you even figured that out yet? Because I think you have, and though you may not like what you’ve discovered you are what you are. You can choose to do or not do, say or not say, but it’s still there, eating away at your insides, reminding you what’s what. What the hell am I even talking about? I DON’T KNOW.

It’s been a long week.

"Day" Three

2010-10-27T11:47:00.000-04:00

Alternatively titled, “You Said It Should Tear a Kid Apart; It Does.”

You say I should forgive myself but I’ve done nothing wrong. Or have I? It’s a bit of a haze at this point. The other night I walked living room to kitchen, and at some point the word “oops” was used, and then there he was, chugging my merlot while I spun around in circles with a box of kosher salt in my hand. Oops.

My days are filled with trifles, and beyond these daily oopsies I wonder what grudges I’ve been holding against myself. There have been mistakes, certainly, and rather large, glaring ones at that, but what are mistakes than learning experiences? How do I begrudge myself lessons learned, when it’s great to learn because knowledge is power! and might makes right! and all that jazz! Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. Or not.

So I think it’s pretty clear that perhaps I should have actually looked at the list before embarking on this journey of days. Damn my short-sightedness. I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.

"Day" Two

2010-10-21T09:38:00.000-04:00

Alternatively titled, “I Have Lost My Eyesight Like I Said I Would, But I Still Know”

Perhaps the most difficult assignment yet, the word love being conspicuously absent from my vocabulary of late. What is it that I love? Icy cold martinis certainly, but that is not the question. What is there to love? With all my imperfections an interesting way to start. Hmm.

My faults are many, and like Ben Franklin was it? I could tackle one a day until I’m Mary Poppins. But here’s the thing: I like my faults. I’m perfectly imperfect in every way. I suppose I could elaborate on this further, but truth is (the idea, anyway) I’m bored with myself. Onward.

"Day" One.

2010-10-13T12:33:00.000-04:00

Alternately titled, “It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right.”

My memory is becoming nonexistent, the result I think of a steady diet of IGNORE and DISTRACT. But the one moment I shall likely remember always is how we felt, you and I both, riding the elevator first floor to fourth, the silence, the chill, the budding hatred that would end up separating and tying us together for just about ever. I know you thought about me last weekend, that you couldn’t help it really, but did you know that I didn’t think about you once? Like, at all? It’s something I’ve gotten inordinately adept at, striking the match and utterly obliterating everything preceding this right here, this one second. From this vantage the horizon is infinite; scorched earth seems the way to go, and all these tiny heartbreaks from that elevator ride on are nothing but dust. And yeah, I suppose there’s something infinitely sad about losing all those memories I so painfully earned, about losing the capacity to be sad really, because what is joy uncontrasted? I don’t know. And if I ever work that out, it will quickly be forgotten.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.

2010-09-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

This summer has been one of packing and unpacking, of quart-sized Ziploc bags and tiny plastic cups. This has been a summer of restlessness. My career, obviously, has been the major culprit, but I blame the weather as well, this summer’s ridiculous, ridiculously oppressive heat. I’m still not sure how any of us survived. Seriously.

I spent the summer both sticky and cranky, the one by no means helping the other. I spent the summer raging against machines (most notably the air conditioner, which also spent the summer both sticky and cranky), raging against globalization, raging against the dying of the light. This summer there was not a shadow I did not fight, and though I am painfully aware of the futility of throwing punches at butterflies, sometimes I can’t help but come out swinging, blindly, with malice aforethought.

Actually, that’s not true at all; I just like the way it sounds.

This summer I traveled, sipped cocktails, spent leisurely hours with friends both near and far. This summer I counted the days until just one remained, this one right here in fact, the one that will find me packing once more. And truth be told (for once), I can’t wait to get from here to there.

You were the one-two punch.

2010-09-13T09:59:00.000-04:00

Daily things are lost through no fault of my own believe it or not; it’s just the way it happens to happen to me. Were I to tell you the story of my life it would be one of loss, and in no way as satisfying as this here cup of coffee, purchased from the lovely Italian woman downstairs for two dollars even. But here’s the thing about losing stuff: it ain’t always a bad thing. Especially when the thing that got lost wasn’t really all that good for you anyway.

I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere, but storytelling isn’t in my particular bag of tricks.

Back-to-back babies are being followed by back-to-back weddings, and lo have my thoughts on both matters been mixed. There’s a certain amount of patronization that enters the conversation, a you’re not invited to the clubhouse insinuation that creeps up, especially in those already desperate to prove they’re better than me.

I think you know who I’m talking about.

But anyway, the first baby was unremarkable, except as Seth said, its head wasn’t misshapen or squashed in or anything. Small miracles, I guess. Mostly I’m just sad that the babies I’m actually knitting for don’t live closer. Then there are the weddings to look forward to, a pair that I’m actually looking forward to very much indeed. I’ve been promised fake mustaches at both, not to mention the board games and Backstreet Boys songs and, oh yeah, the booze. Truth be told I think my interest in alcohol is waning, for no good reason I think than I need a change of pace. I don’t know why, though; yesterday at a bar I met a man who had a positively encyclopedic knowledge of both professional and college football. And thanks to the powers of alcohol, I got to have a 30-minute conversation about the undefeated 1998 Tulane University football squad. How often can one say that?

Answer: not very.

Estival.

2010-08-17T15:07:00.000-04:00

If there is shame in neglecting one’s craft, I have likely felt it. Felt it and ignored it, as I do most everything that’s not sparkly already. Diamonds-in-the-rough no longer interest me; I need immediate gratification straight from the packaging, and lordy help you if I can’t get that open, like, yesterday. I want what I want but I am a fickle, fickle girl.

But, oh, the wanting. Once it was Desperately Wanting, a smoldering fire that consumed me leaf by leaf. Once I yearned. But the problem with that, as you might have guessed, is that eventually one runs out of foliage. And there one stands, barren, and alone. Nope, yearning’s not for me.

Couple weeks back I told Pete the secret to my success, that in fact I’d simply stopped wanting things. To which of course he shook his head skeptically and then let pass, so little did it resemble the girl he once loved. I was a peach back then, soft to the touch with a heart of stone, but I wasn’t what he wanted. I am so rarely what anyone wants that I wonder sometimes why anyone ever bothered. Did they even bother? But such is the secret to our successes, that we rarely have a handle on what it is, exactly, we do want. Desperately or just plain regular.

The regular wanting I can handle. Behold, a list of my immediate wants: (1) to be at the Shore today not Wednesday; (2) a basket of clam strips; (3) followed by a scoop of cardamom gelato; (4) a weekend in New Orleans on my calendar; (5) more NewsRadio reruns; (6) the end of this infernal summer. The end.

For now, anyway.

Threnody.

2010-07-02T14:58:00.001-04:00

I knew I was in trouble the second everything started smelling like Fruit Loops. Which was on a Friday night if we're being specific. He asked me to pick the bar and I did, a hip new tapas place just a handful of blocks from my old apartment, but as soon as I sat down I realized my mistake.

Him?

His wide mouth parted awkwardly, revealing broad rows of yellowing teeth beneath a long, sloping nose.

"Um, hi?"

I should have just walked away after the inauspiciousness of our introduction, but all bad decisions have a beginning, and that beginning is usually in not knowing when to quit. And on this particular night, I was just getting started.

*****

There's a ghost sifting through these pages. I like to imagine it winnowing the wheat from the chaff, but the truth is I have no idea whether it is friend or foe. More often than not this space feels like reading shadows on the wall; am I watching rabbits run or peregrines soar? Hunted or hunter, if you can't tell, is there any difference?

Well, whomever you may be, if you're on my side this story is not for you. But maybe I'll write you one some day.

Roborant.

2010-06-16T15:02:00.001-04:00

This year I'm spending Father's Day with the grown-up versions of those kids who used to throw rocks at me on the playground and tell me to go back to China. Never mind that not a single member of my family has ever even been to China, but there's just no reasoning with people like that. Although it is my thirty-first Father's Day this will be only the second I've ever acknowledged, fathers of my acquaintance being of the kind not generally celebrated. Rotters, the lot of them. But when the past offers no solace one must look to the future, as depressing as it looms from my vantage: sludge-covered, impossibly warm. I've met a lot of babies in 2010 thus far, each with a father of whom I am especially fond, so at least there's that. A silver lining, my silver ballet flats, the children are our future and all that.

When I was a kid our neighbor around the corner had an iguana that used to eat the hibiscus flowers that were so ubiquitous in my small town. My best friend used to live on Azalea Lane but I never once saw an azalea until I moved to New Orleans. Year after year my mother planted roses in our front yard that never seemed to thrive. The scent of jasmine and gardenia mingled in the heavy air as the smell of rotting seaweed wafted ashore.

These are the things that worry me in the night.

Antipodal.

2010-05-14T00:13:00.000-04:00

All day it's oil, oil, oil, lab fraud, oil, oil, Atlas, oil, Shaw, oil, LAWRENCE!, oil, oil, OH MY GOD THE OIL, Vietnam, Logan Circle, oil, curb cut, oil. Pretty much in that order. I'd expand as I used to but for two things: (1) My curiosity is killed, and (2) I forget what (2) was. Fact is, meh, who cares.

I've taken an unexpected mini-vacation, unexpected because I promised I'd have no less than three VERY IMPORTANT documents sent to my boss for final review this very day. And there is no reason why this couldn't have played out as anticipated; I woke up just as usual and fed the kid just as usual, and six-in-the-a.m. rolled around and I remembered the glowing praise I'd received not fourteen hours before and decided to throw it all to hell. Because fuck that. I care about nothing. And I really don't.

Were I me three years ago I'd worry. But me now knows it's not worth it. And though everything is me, me, me, that's the last person I've thought of in a very long time. Which kinda sucks, but then again, were I you, I wouldn't want to think of me either.

Cheers.

Byronic.

2010-05-10T11:18:00.000-04:00

Never one to do things the regular way, my mother called me Sunday morning. "So let me get this straight," said my boyfriend, eyes rolling as though he weren't well used to the quirks of tiny women. And quirky though I am, our Sundays now that I am home have fallen into a bit of a routine, one of wends and probable dead ends and afternoon beers. It's sort of lovely and sort of the exact opposite, the plus and minus canceling each other out so that I guess I'm pretty neutral. I'm Switzerland.

My job is exceedingly stressful but somewhat rewarding; I hear some recent work of mine has been mentioned to the VP of these states united (I also heard a lovely story about his desk that will have to wait for another day). In vain I tried to convince my boyfriend that I need a treehouse from whence to launch my arrows of truth and justice; "I'll cover the exposed ductwork with branches," I said from atop the ladder. "I'll use it everyday." But he did that thing he does when he's ignoring me, or worse, dismissing me, so down I climbed to heart-of-pine floors, original (as was the mantlepiece).

I'm not entirely sure what happened with whomever you are--or were--last week, but I've got a sneaking suspicion. I thought about feeling sorry for you or myself or the kind citizens of Nashville but I couldn't muster the energy. In old age I find I'm more likely to pick up a cough, to read rather than write, to hang with my kid or have a drink with my friends than with futility attempt to remember memories long forgotten. I said something stupid about moving away from home yesterday and made everything worse, but I've never thought about love when I thought about home.

It's just not in my nature.

Suspire.

2010-04-07T12:44:00.000-04:00

April showers arrived three days early, the better to get that jump on May flowers I suppose, but who really knows for sure. One day you wake up and suddenly everything is green, everything is fresh and new and the birds are singing and there you are, walking city sidewalks just like you did yesterday, but different. It's all different.

This time round the separation anxiety was acute, but anxiety is old-hat round my parts these days; it seems the things that go bump have no regard for time of day anymore. Which is funny (no it's not), because neither does my circadian rhythm. Instead of tulips! and ducklings! and sunlight! I've become nocturnal, hooting the night away from my perch, wondering how the hell I ended up so high and so very alone. The things that pass for normalcy these days, I tell ya.

But now that I've fluttered home finally I'll let things sit for a while, let them wait with breath bated (and then let them fester and rot in all likelihood) before picking up my next itinerary. I think perhaps this year I'll watch for the longest day of the year. Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it.

She said.

Lacuna.

2010-03-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

My wellspring of whimsy has run dry, and would that I could draw inspiration from some other source perhaps these pages would not have cracked dry from my drought of words. I don't know; perhaps a divining rod would help the water witching.

Much indeed is happening but I have neither time nor inclination to elaborate on my wonder over the way this life ebbs and flows. I turned down a job offer in Seattle and not a month later my BFF accepted one. I found a house and lost a house. My grandmother had a stroke. I started baking my own bread. Trifles, all, but perhaps my tendency to trivialize all that absorbs my attention is to blame for this thing that separates me from you. Maybe it's not you who doesn't care, but me.

Yesterday I heard from a friend I thought I'd long lost, and though I cannot say with any certainty that the relationship can be mended, still it's a sign that all that is lost may one day be found. Of course this unsettles more than comforts me; what bubbles hidden beneath the surface may erupt catastrophically at any time at all. Not everyone is as reliable as Old Faithful. And if there is one thing I've learned in thirty-one years it's that. That maybe some things were meant to evaporate into the ether forever.

God, I am going to miss you, Potsy.

Moirologist.

2010-01-29T13:21:00.003-05:00

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. Never. I'm a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished - I think only poor Soren K. will get asked that. I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions. If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won't even underline that. It's too important to be underlined. Oh, dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

J.D. Salinger, "Seymour - An Introduction"

Lachrymose.

2009-10-02T07:53:00.001-04:00

What do you do when your One True Love up and marries someone else? If you're me you cry (I DID NOT!). If you're you, you do whatever it is you do. The bride, of course, has posted a particularly lovely photo of their wedding day on Facebook, but I prefer the one from their engagement announcement. And by "prefer," I mean, "it makes me want to stab these here pens into my eyeballs." I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm taking it rather hard.

Now that October is here and my One True Love has married someone else (but I'm prettier! and a better writer! and I have my own farm!) and 2009 is three-fourths done I am going on record to say that 2009 sucks. Perhaps not as much as oh-seven, but much nevertheless. I suppose we could have some drastic about-face with these last three months but I, for one, am not holding my breath, and I suggest you (don't) do likewise. Because then you would suffocate and then you would die and I happen to like you. Oh la, we've got a lot to learn from each other we have got to stick together.

So. Now we have three items up for business. (1) The position of my One True Love, having been very ceremoniously vacated, is now available. I will be accepting applications forthwith. (2) I am completely out of ideas. Period. A little help? (3) There isn't really a third item; I just like things in threes. So I'll make two predictions: (a) I will contract H1N1 before the year is out, and (b) my odds of picking up a bot fly larva or three in Belize are 50-50. It's a coin toss.

Termagant.

2009-09-21T14:07:00.001-04:00

My conversion to Buddhism is imminent for the karmic retribution I've endured this week past has been epic. Frankly I'm sick of thinking about it, but in passing I'll report that last weekend was pretty miserable, insofar as I was informed that I am detestable, despised, that eleven grown ass women got together as a group and collectively decided to be mean to me. On purpose. And then someone walked off with my camera.

Yesterday my FarmVille went to hell, and good God did this piss me off, because do you know how hard it is to watch your rice crop wither and die before your eyes AND NOT BE ABLE TO DO A DAMN THING ABOUT IT? Plus I lost about a billion gifts that my kind neighbors kindly gave me. I don't even want to talk about all the cash and XP I missed out on, all because I couldn't harvest and harvesting is kind of important when you're running a farm.

AND THEN. Last night I pulled out my copy of Where the Wild Things Are 'cause I wanted to show my boyfriend Max's kick-ass outfit, and ugh, I don't even want to talk about it but I will: MOLD. Practically every book that was ever gifted to me had turned into a petri dish of disgusting, including a 25-year-old copy of The Secret Garden (incidentally THE first book ever gifted to me), a 20-year-old copy of The Lorax, the book that made me into this person everyone apparently hates, and a gift from Heather Anne I received shortly after telling a particularly disturbing story about the Washington Redskins. I cried and cried and repeated "it's just stuff" over and again, but I didn't and I don't believe it. I mean, my God, my books.

So in an effort to be kinder and gentler and more pleasant to have around I semi-rooted for the Bills yesterday, which prompted my boyfriend to ask, "What is up with that?" So maybe I've made myself slightly less hateable, but now I kind of hate myself.

So hey, some good things: My friend had a baby! Not only do we know everyone at the Irish Channel, but you can add the bartenders at Jaleo and Momiji to the list. Tonight is the first hockey game of the season, and I get to bring Mysterygirl! to the game on Wednesday. I'm seeing The Walkmen tomorrow night. Abigail and Cate are coming to visit. Whiskey is delicious.

So yeah, everything is fine.

Austral.

2009-09-09T08:39:00.000-04:00

As much as I willed my body to succumb, unwillingly I fought sleep hard. Whether I'm taking a stand against further victimization by dreams too vivid and unexpected for comfort, or whether I'm preparing myself to relive the glory days of college ultimately do not matter; I am damned tired.

This was one of the best Labor Day weekends on record, ranking right up there with Alex's wedding, but this time I got to pass out in the comforts of my own bed and the discomforts of a kitten who has taken to practicing his MMA moves just as I'm drifting off to sleep. Boys will be boys, I guess, and boys will stay up until dawn drinking Sparks and playing Mario Kart on the Wii and THEN boys will dust off the Nintendo 64 to play Mario Kart on that as well.

This city has changed a lot over the last six years since graduation, but how much we had not realized until our friends found themselves lost in their own backyard, until they decided maybe it is time for them to move back. It drives me crazy when people say they do not like this town, because CLEARLY they have no idea where they are going.

I, for one, do. I'm packing my bags once more and heading to my favorite city on Planet Earth, where I will eat and drink and haunt old haunts and decide maybe it is time to move back.

It's gonna be awesome.

Abnegate.

2009-09-07T14:09:00.000-04:00

The last time I saw him he had settled on a bench nestled in the bushes beneath a dozen birdhouses hanging from the boughs of a great oak. He had kicked off his shoes and with bare feet planted firmly in the grass he scribbled steadily in the composition notebook in his lap. I turned away.

I sat back seat, pulled over to the side of the road, and slumping down to avoid detection while I waited for my driver flipped through the pages of my book. And that's when he knocked on my window. When I saw who it was I rolled my eyes oh-so-dramatically, and as I rolled down the window he squatted down so that he could look up at me, beseechingly.

It was a compromising situation, to be sure, and my first instinct was towards flippancy, but I saw indignant tears in his eyes and my heart broke when his voice cracked: "What I don't understand;" he said, What I don't understand. "What I don't understand," he said, "is how you can hate me so much, and yet you can't seem to leave me alone." And I jumped from flippant to indignant myself, sputtering out "YOU'RE the one," before quietly shutting down. Because how could I ever hate him?

But this part I kept silent, out of kindness or fear or, I don't know really, but this ended it. Ended. Like so many endings before, this changed us, and who we are to each other, if we're anything to each other at all.

And then I woke up.

Menticide.

2009-08-31T09:10:00.001-04:00

In the shower the scrapes sting anew, the fibrin dissolved in the heat of water bearing down upon the bruises. I’d like to believe that I haven’t been thrashing about more than usual, that the booze has weakened my cell walls so much that everything within is finally making its great escape without, but this, I know, is an unlikely scenario.

I only barely dress the wound beneath my slacks, infection of some concern but ignored. The pain is my penance, I think, a reminder that instead of the coveting and the vanity and the false idols, I should be practicing patience, temperance, grace. But it is easier to write with it, the tapping of keys synced with the throbbing ache a perfect backbeat to the rhythm of run-on sentences. I have become the queen of run-on sentences.

I gave myself a week to booze and booze hard, and try as hard as I might a part of me still believes I could have done more. I'm still breathing, after all. But these thoughts are fleeting, though fleeting is the wrong word; they're more translucent, there always but just barely so that sometimes I think I'm perfectly satisfied with this kingdom I have constructed. And that is when words fail me.

Are things really so complex? If this sounds sad, it's not, but still it is whatever it is, whatever I and you and we make of it, together. It's everything and nothing at once, and who knows which way the coin will flip. It's 50-50. But still.

Seeing is believing but I feel blind; mostly I think I need to stop listening to songs about recreational drug use. But still. I used to believe in singularity, in defining moments with gravitational pulls so strong anything before or after gets lost along the event horizon. Not like the desperation implicit in the first kiss, but the connection forged shortly after as his fingertips slid beneath the lacy neckline of that shirt I haven’t worn since. I believed everything before and after that moment is changed. Now? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I want to believe in things I’ll never know for sure.

Senescent.

2009-08-20T23:30:00.001-04:00

Thirty years later and I'm exactly where I was when I first started.

Only now I'm dressing just like my mother:

Dissimulate.

2009-08-17T14:42:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I have entirely too much time on my hands and were I to count the extra minutes like pennies from heaven a billionaire I would be. And so it was this morning when I decided to learn everything there is to learn about the NBA, until I realized two very important things: (1) It isn't basketball season, and (2) I am actually a pauper.

The weekend found me in environs unfamiliar, and were I a better person I'd be able to report that I rose to the challenge and triumphed. But the sad truth is I didn't even play the game; instead of tossing my hat into the ring I cowered on the sidelines in silence. I didn't even get drunk effectively.

I don't know what the deal with me is lately; perhaps my impending move has shaken whatever foundation it is upon which I've built myself. Maybe too late I've waited to thin out the seedlings I've sown, and the roots of all that I wish to shed are too entangled to rid. Probably I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. And truth be told I kind of like it like that, reminds me of when I was a kid and rarely said a word. I've defaulted back into silence in my thirties, not because I don't have anything nice to say, rather the surfeit of panegyrics is certain to make one wonder who exactly inhabits this tiny body of mine.

But yes, a busy bee am I, and though I know this refrain gets bandied about these parts with such frequency as to lose all meaning, sitting here, right now, I feel too much the force of these words' import. 593 miles I'll be driving soon, blown hither and there by the whims of an impersonal government (though with some luck I'll find myself in New Orleans twice in six weeks; perhaps I'll re-find myself there). People and cases are demanding my attention when I must admit my attention isn't worth having, and how do you tell someone to give up, it's not worth it, when that's the very lesson you find impossible to learn yourself? Life is a mystery, and mysterious.

So listen, I lost this pretty big case recently, and though no one's really faulting me I can't help but feel completely pissed off and disillusioned. I mean, I'm busy, you know? And all I seem to be doing in 2009 is wasting my time and spinning my wheels and running, running, running on treadmills (literally) and never getting anywhere (literally). I'm pissed off and I'm not sure how much I want to be doing this any longer. And a whole host of nouns can sub in for that pronoun, nouns like life and law and writing and wishing. And also whining. All's well, never you fear.

I follow four cats and a parrot on Twitter. There is something seriously fucked up about that.

Tope.

2009-07-27T11:48:00.000-04:00

Oh summer, my summer, what a summer you've been. July Rock City is nearly over and despite the misleading moniker I've not once been to a show. Shocker, I know. But the horizon looms as it ever does, and tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon. Or something.

FACT IS after nearly nine years together my boyfriend finally discovered the source of my charm and wit, and after a week on the wagon he decided enough was certainly enough and handed me a Tecate with lime and a pinch of salt everywhere. FACT IS I am far more interesting on the sauce than off, and far more likely to troublemake and rabblerouse and sing karaoke. It's not a matter of liquid courage, but more a matter of interest or attention span or whatever it is that makes me squirm and fidget and spontaneously combust whenever I sit on the couch and stare at that expensive 46-inch monstrosity in my living room for longer than 47 seconds. So this week past I read 48 books and put Chuck Klosterman in all sorts of compromising positions in my mind's apparently dirty eye. Or something.

So much is afoot my pretties, and must be with the remnants of my shattered ego (thanks Jake) and shattered plans (sorry Shari) scattered about my well soled heels. But I'm picking up the pieces and refashioning them into a mosaic of my choosing, neither sunset nor sunrise but Venus from the foam. (Oh the lies, they burn! They burn!) FACT IS I'm a failure through and through. I am okay with this.

What I am not okay with would fill the VAB to overflowing, and Florida has enough to worry about, don't you think? So I've opted to pack my bags once more, and this time I'm not stopping until I hit the coast. What my ridiculous little life will offer up next is anyone's guess.

Nostrum.

2009-07-10T14:44:00.001-04:00

Ask me no questions I'll tell you no lies. Ask me a question who knows what you'll get. Are you feeling lucky? Swing away.

My plans keep shifting and days I thought were set in stone have eroded away imperceptibly under the Potomac's persistent onslaught. It starts at Great Falls, higher up and farther away actually, but in my mind it starts at the first tumble over crag's edge, bouncing rock to rock until it's swept through the budding canyon walls chugging faster and faster my way. Chain Bridge, Key Bridge, Roosevelt Bridge (of which there are many in my past), Memorial Bridge, the river is wide and fast and the current is strong. We have bridges, not dams; best we can do is make the crossing and hope for the best, only we're navigating by lampposts now that the stars have faded away in obsolescence. For better and worse it is what it is. Except for when it's something else entirely.

I met his wife finally and though she was not at all what I had expected the meeting itself was awkward and tense and exactly what I had feared. She knows, I think. Or rather suspects, because it's not at all what it seems, at least not from where I'm standing. But perception is nine-tenths of the law, and since I'm damned no matter what it's best to, I don't know, commit him to his commitments. Keep calm and carry on.

Which I'm sad to see is exactly what you've done.

Aestival.

2009-07-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

And quietly the last tether snapped and the cicada flew free to fly about its business of fucking and dying. I'm sure there was some brooding in there as well.

This summer has been lazy thus far, not that I'm complaining, it's just that dipping our toes into July is usually a blistering undertaking, yet once one morning I think I almost needed a cardigan. I didn't of course. My needs are not left wanting, and my wants are simply a matter of passing days and miles. I'm running nine a week, which is enough for now, for these long, lazy days. The drinks are tall and cool and that's all I need or want any longer, and life is good accordingly; my cup and liquor cabinet overfloweth.

Not that there aren't plans. There are skylines and breaking waves on the horizon, marching ever closer with each passing day. And there are friends as well, and toasts and meals to share, and memories to be made that can never be unmade, and that's the damnedest thing about memories, how stubbornly they remain with us.

But the booze, it helps.

Perendinate.

2009-06-23T10:18:00.000-04:00

I should try to write today, each day I say this in fact, yet each day passes in turbulent silence nevertheless. I can't quite tell what is going on, whether I am SO BUSY I cannot find the time, or SO BORING I have no stories to tell, or SO SKINNY I need to save every last alcoholic calorie for the effort of being so busy and boring. It certainly can't be that I've no one left to write for, what with the number of lovely emails from you lovely people (imaginary all, notwithstanding the fact that I've actually, you know, met and had drinks and threatened to punch several of you in the neck) that have fluttered into my inbox to be adored and unanswered each busy and boring day. And it certainly can't be for lack of cardigans, because boy, does my closet overfloweth.

Last week I imported every important date into Google Calendar, which is only fair I think considering the love affair some misguided Googlebot seems to have with this site. To be indexed and re-indexed with such frequency when really, I only muster a post a month at best, is pretty damn flattering, my intense fear of -bots aside. So I'm Google Calendaring it up, and who knows, maybe one day I'll own a phone smart enough to take control of my life for me. I am the dreamer of dreams, after all. I am also the musicmaker.

Other things I have not been doing include NOT cooing over babies in both bodily and photographic form, NOT having fun goofing off with Mysterygirl!, NOT drinking gin, NOT running, NOT listening to Whiskeytown, NOT eating delicious meals with good friends, and heading up to Montreal with the boys for poutine and booze.

That last one will be rectified shortly.

Satiety.

2009-05-26T16:58:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a person will crumble into a pile of dust under the weight of hotel room blankets, and there's not much to do about it but wait until the pieces scatter in the wind. Sometimes my heart grows heavy for no particular reason at all, excepting of course for the pressure of unfamiliar lips against mine, the far too rapid passage of time. These days drift one into the other, blurring at the edges until suddenly it's nearly June and not one but two brand new human beings are set to cause me worry, not to mention the two that are taking the long and winding path.

I am world-weary, not so much irate over injustices big and small as I am indifferent, not so much indifferent as cautious. He knows exactly how tall I am, to the half inch, and part of me wonders why on earth would this piece of irrelevant information be filed away in his half-empty mind. But part of me remembers that he thinks of me daily, and, well, there's not so much I can do about it. And so with my dying sense of compassion guiding me by the all too prominent nose, I'm stepping delicately, dreading the coming of June and his return to breathing distance. This is so not about what you think it's about.

Once I wrote this:

I ate all the pepperoni from the top of the pizza while he was in the shower, a decadent glass of last night's champagne whetting my appetite more than sating it. And so it has been this far too short long week, when each time we've attended to our hungers we've merely aroused them further, when each night finds us falling into a deeper and deeper sleep.

And this is something so unfamiliar that it's hard to believe I could ever think such a thing, let alone put words to print, but there it is, not laughing so much as questioning. And in answer I've booked two trips in two weeks, because I'm pretty sure June can't catch me if I keep flying the fuck out of town.

Maudlin.

2009-04-24T10:22:00.001-04:00

He offered his arm and willingly I took it, probably leaned upon him more than I should have. But the bright lights and the bright cocktails with the little umbrellas in them swirled together within the orbs of my eyes like eddies glinting mischievously in a maelstrom. "You know you didn't have to," I told him, because I could and can take care of myself. And quietly he patted the hand gripped tightly around his bicep, untangled a strand of long black hair that had settled in with my eyelashes, and led me on.

His steps were slow, not deliberate but shuffling as though they too were wrestling with some invisible opponent. "What if I say something I shouldn't?" he asked, a fair enough question as any I suppose, but here he stopped, pressed my back against the side of a building and stood before me plaintively. His eyebrows pursed anxiously as he searched for an answer, studying intently in hopes that if he looked carefully enough, it would be written somewhere on my face. But I am nothing if not inscrutable, and before he spoke his peace I answered.

We finished the walk to my hotel in silence. A chill wind had stirred up the night air and instead of offering his arm he offered his shoulder. But now my feet were shuffling, my body nestled warmly against his, his ribs steadily expanding and contracting against my breast. And miles and miles we walked together thus, and years and years later we reached my room. And here he stopped, pressed my back against the door and stood before me thoughtfully. When his lips parted I knew exactly what he meant and answered in kind. But we're not kind, neither of us and especially not to each other.

"I'm not ready to see you this happy."

"Don't worry; none of it is true."

Cadmean victory.

2009-04-19T02:06:00.001-04:00

What is it we're looking for? The we being a complete cop-out of course, as if any of us ever can be on the same page of the same book at the same time. I read something today that had me thinking once more Is this for true? and whether it is or not FOR ONCE has nothing whatever to do with me. And so few things do, that really it's comical to look for hints where there are no hints, to see messages where there are no messages, to read hope when hopelessness abounds.

EXCEPT.

There is this thing that hangs, that shades and shadows and, ha, colors everything before me, and that thing is a thing that's been thung before. And I can't talk about it here. But I can remember what it was like to look into your eyes and without words you'd know what that thing was, you'd ask me the questions that needed to be asked and look into my eyes and make me feel like the damn fool that I am. There was a time when you were here, and though it is that I am the absent one for whatever reason it is, of course, all your fault.

So stop it already.

Contretemps.

2009-04-07T09:46:00.001-04:00

The good news is that, well, I don't know what the good news is. But I know that I didn't expect any more than what was there, and what was there was obviously enough for him to press and press and press again until I said enough, and then it was different and it was still enough, but press on he did until I pushed him hand in chest and hit the button and he was up or down but gone. And I'm not wrong and he knew it. He thought this meant something innocuous but his silence was telling indeed.

He's all surface this guy, no depth whatsoever, which I guess is part of the draw but really it's not that at all. I'd say he's shallow but for the connotations; I'd say a whole lot more but for the implications. What I will say is what I've learned, and that is this: San Francisco is for converting one's per diem entirely into alcohol. San Francisco is for dancing like everyone is watching. San Francisco is for making out with married co-workers.

San Francisco is, and I am not.

Deracinate.

2009-03-31T18:19:00.003-04:00

Now that my boyfriend has left I am all stimulus package, all the time, and after a brief bout with a computer virus (thanks, boyfriend!) I am once again out and about, climbing up and down this city from bar stool to bar stool with impunity. Whatchoo readin'? the (Irish of course) barkeep asked; You know, I think I've heard of that author before (Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up). And it's sort of perfect that I'm reading what I'm reading, not because I'm cracking up or nuffink, but because I'm holding it together remarkably well.

I flew West in a techno-loaded iPod, sandwiched between two cute boys with a bar menu at my beck and call. And that's what last night was like too, a bevy of cute boys waiting for me at the bar downstairs while I handled my infection. I think you're gonna have to send up some beers I told room service, and beers they sent up. And then as late as it was I settled in with my beers and my book to a night full of wicked-vivid dreams.

A week it's been and the miles logged are many and, I don't know, I'm not homesick or nuffink. Travel is such a different beast to me these days than once it was not so long ago. It's just that the overriding question has been Why are you here? and the overriding answer is I do not know. Which, again, perfect.

Subintelligitur.

2009-03-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

(In which half of the writing is done by someone else. In which half of the writing is lies.)

Sometimes I burst out laughing with all the remembering I do, like the time your cold fingertips tickled the inside of my arm as you traced the vein towards my heart, or the time you wiped the river of tears from my cheeks with the palm of your hand, wrapped me bear-like in both arms and whispered corny joke after corny joke into my ear until my tears transformed to those of laughter. Sometimes looking at memories of you is like looking at a fire and wondering whence the spark. "Or do I?" you asked, and oh yes you do. And now I want to know just how much you've forgotten me.

Pour a little salt, we were never here.

I have this thing sometimes where I want to kiss you, and not just chastely, either. I want to grab you in the middle of the street, pull your face to mine and breathe you in. I have this thing where it doesn't matter, any of it, any of this or what has passed. It's just too bad that doesn't matter either.

The shape of your mouth . . . I could draw it by heart.

They say all children save one grow up, but I know this to be untrue. I myself was too early drafted into motherhood--I am still but a child, you see--and yet here I've been these many decades darning socks, kissing boo-boos, wiping messy chins. Tedious work it is, and thankless to boot. Oh, I've been given the boot before, and sometimes still I feel adrift in a borrowed nest, no place of my own to call home. It's all a mess, you see.

My keys have gone missing with my marbles and I am locked out, or rather in, fighting my shadow up and down the wall, a bar of soap in one hand and nary a happy thought in mind. There are so many riddles to unlock, so many secret passwords to remember, that I find myself overwhelmed at the thought, tied to a sinking anchor with no way out. Gosh, if only someone would clapclapclap and believe in me. I think I need an ovation.

As it is I'm collecting thimbles instead of kisses, I'm riding these sleepless nights straight on until morning. Sometimes it's all so tiring, this being so small and insignificant.

You were cold as the ice at your front door.

"I don't love you," you said, or rather, didn't say, and it's the things we keep quiet that hurt the most. But you know that already.

I am armed with the past and the will and a brick . . . .

Well, you all know the rest.

Peripatetic.

2009-03-19T08:17:00.001-04:00

I had the most absurd dream, that I was the one ignoring you for a change, that I was laughing and carrying on with that touch of hauteur I keep in the back of my throat like a shield and a spear both. I had this dream about you and I can't even remember the last time I dreamt about you, though I can very clearly remember the last time I actually saw you, back turned, emptying your pockets as I scurried quickly away. Odd.

I travel next week and again the week after, coast to coast and back again, brackets in tow. To say it's been frustrating trying to juggle itineraries and work commitments and personal commitments and all those tiny little promises I've scattered about like breadcrumbs would be saying far too little. But I won't complain because I don't do that anymore (ha!), my daily infusion of grace a panacea for all that ails (ha!). But like I said then and like I'll say now, it would be far easier to everyday list five things that suck, yet I'm doing it this way just the same.

Did I ever tell you that I never bothered to get the new Ryan Adams album? That girl you used to know is nowhere to be found.

Nugatory.

2009-03-10T10:04:00.000-04:00

If a post has no point, and no one is around to read it, will anyone care? If a life has no point, and no one is around to share it, does it really even matter?

There is something about the time change this year that's made me unusually expectant. Maybe it's the schizophrenic weather, or the cognizant dissonance of dark mornings and sunny evenings. Maybe it's how little I care about the things I should care about. A co-worker stood in the doorway of my office, a long dribble of coffee stain running parallel to the buttons on his shirt front. I patiently told him the big secret of coffee cup lids and coffee cup seams, and his eyes widened in amazement. "My God, you know everything, don't you?" No, not everything. Just the little things.

Like I know just the right time to track you down, to send a one-line email, to inspire you to pick up and move to DC, and I know that right time is right after you've announced your engagement. "She's a great girl!" you said, and of course she is, because that is no less than you deserve. My only surprise is that it's taken you so long when mutual friend after mutual friend, well . . . . "Well, I think I was waiting for someone that was never going to happen," you said. And aren't we all?

Well maybe not all. I'm waiting for the end of hockey season, when I can return to my regularly scheduled program of apathy and hiding out in bed with a book. I'm waiting for work to stop being so much work. I'm waiting for bikini weather, when I plan on spending all my free time lounging by the pool with a refreshing alcoholic beverage. I'm waiting for three babies and one wedding and four trips west and one trip north. I waited for my second gray hair, and I finally found it. I'm waiting for everything and nothing at all. But aren't we all?

No, probably not all. Probably just me.

Fugacious.

2009-03-02T01:41:00.000-05:00

In like a lion they all say, and until Jennie said it many weeks ago I must admit I'd yet to hear it said. But isn't that just like me, willfully deaf for no good reason but laziness, or maybe it's the drunkeness or the bitterness or the who-gives-a-shitness that does it. Last night we glided about the old neighborhood, stopped here and there to do naught but marvel at how much things have changed, never once noticing how much has stayed the same. And isn't that just like us, moving on and on and on and never once appreciating or questioning or noticing where the hell we are now.

It's snowed a fair bit tonight, and earlier I was planning my plans to excuse myself from working at work, if not work itself. But even if I do not work indeed my days would pass thinking all about it, about all that I am missing by missing it, about how my time could be better spent or saved or wasted if only I'd stuck to my guns and did what needed to be done from the start. If ever in life a person could make a world of difference if only given the opportunity to KNOW WHAT I KNOW NOW, you better believe that the world would be different if only in the slightest of ways. Maybe Winston would have a baby sister. Maybe my baby sister would have a better big sister. Maybe my big sister would have a better father. Maybe my father would know how old I am now. But the thing with life as well as the snow tonight is that the best laid plans are ultimately lifted, and whatever snow emergency it was that I had hopes to rely upon has lifted as well.

Tonight I read the saddest thing I ever did read, and no, I did not cry. Instead I chuckled a bit, took a sip of my vodka soda, and moved my cursor up to the right hand corner of my screen, clicked that little X and chuckled once more. Sometimes it's simply laughable to look back upon the things that, well, you have yet to look back upon.

Tagged.

2009-03-01T10:29:00.001-05:00

By Alex, via Facebook, with the revolver. Oh, wait....

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy the list into a Note and put an 'x' after those you have read, count 'em up, compare tallies. This should be easy. Strutting and preening is optional.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)

2 The Lord of the Rings ()

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)

6 The Bible - (not the whole thing, anyway)

7 Wuthering Heights (X)

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (X)

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (X)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ()

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (X)

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (X)

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X)

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (X)

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X)

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (X)

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (X)

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X)

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()

34 Emma - Jane Austen (X)

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis ()

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ()

38 Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (X)

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)

44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (X)

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()

52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ()

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ()

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ()

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ()

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()

61 Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck (X)

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (X)

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas()

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (X)

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ()

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (X)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()

75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()

76 The Inferno – Dante (X)

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()

78 Germinal - Emile Zola ()

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()

80 Possession - AS Byat ()

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (X)

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ()

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ()

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven ()

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ()

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (X)

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (X)

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X) Wait, didn't we already answer this one?

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

So that's 51 for me. The BBC (or whomever it was that actually came up with this list) can suck it.

Mug's game.

2009-02-24T15:37:00.000-05:00

Sunday.

Blah, blah, blah, here are some more pictures.

The end.

Nubilous.

2009-02-23T09:31:00.000-05:00

Saturday

I think this sums up the rest of the night:

chip butty from kat on Vimeo.

Today we woke up late and vaguely hungover, in that dreamy, foggy British sort of way. But up we must, and on to Portobello Road where I picked up a couple things, plus also a steak and Guinness pie. Though I did not sing and dance in the streets, I did eat a sausage.

We meandered back to Kensington by way of Hyde Park, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea as we wasted half the afternoon being chased by manic and gigantic swans. Would that I lived here no crazy cat lady would I be. Nope, my brain would go to the birds, and my loaf of bread too.

Excursive.

2009-02-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

Friday

Yesterday we landed round about 9 a.m. local time, and boy howdy were we tired. Yup, we were tired. So we collected our luggage and hopped on the Piccadilly line towards Glouster Road, popped into our hotel only to discover that the room wouldn't be ready until 2.

It was only 11.

As luck would have it we are resourceful, deep-welled individuals (or perhaps luck has nothing to do with it for if we weren't I doubt sincerely we'd pick up and go on these last-minute weekend jaunts as we do), so we pulled together our resources and reached deep in our wells and caught the Tube to Her Majesty's Palace and Fortress the Tower of London. But first, lunch! We skipped the jellied eel for Wagamama, a test run of sorts before one opens in our neighborhood next year. It was delish. Then we chased the ravens around the Tower for a couple of hours. Then we went to a pub. Or three. Then we went to the hotel to get our room and change our clothes for dinner, fancy Indian at my very first Michelin-starred restaurant. (This is a lie. I've eaten at plenty in New York.) It was delish. Then more drinks at a pub and an early bedtime for us.

This morning we woke up bright and early to catch a shuttle to take us to a bus where we waited and waited and waited to get onto another bus that took us to Windsor Castle! And then the bus took us to Stonehenge! And there were big rocks there, sure, but also sheep! I love sheep! And then the bus took us to Oxford! And then the bus took us back to London! And dropped us off in front of a pub! So we went in! And here we are!

Distrait.

2009-02-19T09:03:00.002-05:00

Wednesday

The older I get the more anxious I've become, and when a full twenty-four hours prior to our estimated time of departure we weren't fully packed I curled up in a tight little ball and cuddled with a glass of vodka and my book. And all today I tried to quell the creeping anxiety with busy work, taking it upon myself to do everything one does before jaunting off to Europe--watering the plants and strategically placing cat toys about the apartment and emptying the dishwasher and packing two suitcases and I even went for a run and drank a glass of bourbon and SHEESH. Then thirty minutes before we needed to leave I alerted the Collective Panic Attack Support Hotline that Seth hadn't even showered yet, and OMG, WTF, etc.

Breathe.

But after taking the train to another train and getting stuck under the Potomac while yet another train was hauled broken and limping out of service so we could take a bus to the airport to take a shuttle to the terminal to get to the bar before seven so I could watch the Caps game before our 9:00 flight? Turns out Dulles doesn't even have cable. Oy.

But the flight wasn't bad and the drinks were free, and despite what it looked like my vegetarian meal was actually quite good.

I could have done without the KitKat, though.

Dissever.

2009-02-10T10:42:00.004-05:00

25 10 Random Things:

I can spell Krzyzewski from memory.
I call all of the Washington Capitals by their nicknames.
When Jason Taylor defected from the Dolphins he defected from my heart.
Dude, remember when Tulane beat Louisville in '96 and we all rushed the court? That's right up there at the top of my favorite sports memories.
Walking into Tipitina's and seeing a huge sign over the bar saying "Congratulations Florida and Tulane, Co-National Champions" is up there too.
That time I almost got into a fist fight with that old man when Vermont beat Syracuse in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament was also pretty impressive.
I frequently start arena-wide cheers at Caps games. My boyfriend is simultaneously mortified and impressed by this.
I hate the Redskins because my father never loved me.
I specifically waited until the 25 Random Things About Me backlash before posting 25 random things about me.
Except I never got around to writing the rest of them, so I'm just accepting Vahid's passive tag and calling it a day.

Seriatim.

2009-01-28T14:48:00.002-05:00

The rules, per my own interrogator:

1. Leave me a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I'll email you five questions of my choosing.
3. You update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. They will answer these questions. If they don't, you can legally hunt them down and destroy them by the method of your choosing.

1. You could've grown up to become a circus clown or a chef or a clown who knows how to make elegant and complicated sauces, and yet....how and why did you end up in The Law?

Oh, Sir, I love what faith you have in me. But truth be told there was nowhere for me to end up but in The Law. Did you know they let anyone be a lawyer these days? True story. The fact of the matter is that while I attempt and adequately accomplish just about anything, I am as ever merely adequate. And mere adequacy does not a fulfilling life make.

As my mother remarked several years ago, in hindsight she should have known all along that a lawyer I would be, because (and these are her words though I do not dispute them) when it comes right down to it I am a bitch. And bitches make the best lawyers. (They also get shit done I hear but this I do dispute. Whatever it is I get done remains a mystery to me.)

For the why, I practice environmental law. The answer is self-evident. (All trees are created equal, except the invasive species. Those should be ripped out by the roots and ostracized in front of friends and family.)

2. What Muppet character would you be and why?

Easy, peasy, one-two-threesy. I'd be Miss Piggy so I could bonk Kermit the Frog every night. Also she has fabulous shoes. (Though I think it might be fun to be the guy who throws the boomerang fish, if for no other reason than to freak the fuck out of people.)

3. What astounding lesser-known facts about you might cause people to whip their glasses off in a surprised and dramatic manner, even those who don't wear glasses?

I would like very much to take in foster children, though to do so I'd have to trade in my boyfriend for a different model. I do not in any way wish to have sexual relations with Ryan Adams. I've lost twelve pounds since November. Despite a lifetime of scoffing at the idea, I do in fact have a housekeeper. I drink a hell of a lot more than you think I do.

4. If you could wake up tomorrow with a different career in a different place, what and where would you be?

Both day and night I dream of different places, and in recent years I've grown smitten with the idea of living in Brussels. But then I went to Montreal which smote me too, and then I ate in Vancouver and wondered whether it would be possible to transport the restaurant scene east. And then I've spent several months at least reading up on Saskatchewan of all places, and did I mention that I'm going to London in two weeks? Because I am. Also I'd really like to see Mount Rushmore.

As for what I'd do in any of these places were I to suddenly relocate, honestly I have no idea. Pretty much my biggest talent is sitting around looking cute, so trophy wife is what I'd be I guess.

5. What do you wish I had asked you, but didn't, and how would you have answered?

I wish you would have asked me the real reason why I will not be attending TequilaCon, but since you didn't, you don't get to know.

chúc mừng năm mới.

2009-01-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

Louche

2009-01-23T09:07:00.002-05:00

Wow. $12.7 million AND a wife! Today is my lucky day!

Dearest, Kindly accept my apology for sending mail to you.I believe you are a highly respected personality, I am writing this mail with tears, sadness and pains. I know it will come to you as a suprise since we haven't known or come across each other before considering the fact that I sourced your profile from a human resource profile database on your country through Internet. I do not know to what extent you are familiar with events and fragile political situation in my country Sudan but it has formed consistent headlines in the CNN, BBC news bulletins. I am Miss Pamela John Garang 24 years old female from the Republic of Sudan, the Daughter of Late Dr. John Garang. Before my late father’s death in Uganda on 31st of July 2005, was vice president and former rebel leader of Sudan and was kill by Sudan President Omar al Bashir in helicopter crash. You can read more about my father in the link below. I am constrained to contact you because of the maltreatment which I am receiving from my step mother. She planned to take away all my late father's treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved Father. Meanwhile I wanted to travel to Europe, but she hide away my international passport and other valuable documents. Luckily she did not discover where I kept my father's File which contained important documents. Now I am presently staying in the Mission in Burkina Faso. I am seeking for longterm relationship and investment assistance. My father of blessed memory deposited the sum of US$12.7 Million in one bank in Burkina Faso with my name as the next of kin. I had contacted the Bank to clear the deposit but the Branch Manager told me that being a refugee, my status according to the local law does not authorize me to carry out the operation. However, he advised me to provide a trustee who will stand on my behalf. I had wanted to inform my stepmother about this deposit but I am affraid that she will not offer me anything after the release of the money. Therefore, I decide to seek for your help in transferring the money into your bank account while I will relocate to your country and settle down with you. As you indicated your interest to help me I will give you the account number and the contact of the bank where my late beloved father deposited the money with my name as the next of kin. It is my intention to compensate you with 20% of the total money for your assitance and the balance shall be my investment in any profitable venture which you will recommend to me as have no any idea about foreign investment. Please all communications should be through this email address only for confidential purposes. Thanking you alot in anticipation of your quick response. I will send you my photos in my next email for you to know me well. Yours Miss Pamela John Garang

Those had better be nude photos.

Cohere.

2009-01-19T06:31:00.001-05:00

Flummadiddle.

2009-01-13T08:41:00.000-05:00

Conversations with my mother are few and far between, but during our most recent I happened to mention my security clearance, which was unexpectedly met with a twenty-minute harangue of the Communist Party. This sudden vitriol was curious to me, until I remembered her last stint in Vietnam, during which she decided once and forever to put out of its misery her retirement plan to move back permanently. I never could find out why; it seemed the worst thing they did to her was put her up in a fancy house with a washer and dryer, chauffeur, maid, cook . . . but maybe that's the point. Anyway, I, myself, and I am a socialist, though that doesn't really mean anything in the context of this conversation since unlike it seems most Americans I know the difference between socialism and communism, and that one does not necessarily lead to the other, sort of like atheism and satanism, which I also am. An atheist, not a satanist. I happened to read yesterday (modern jackass alert) that atheism is reason enough alone for 49% of Americans to vote against me in an election, and really? There are SO MANY better reasons not to vote for me in an election. My alcoholism, for example. Also the recreational drug use. And then there was that time I was arrested for inciting a riot. Plus I value plants and animals way more than people, and now that I think about it, I actually kinda hate people. I never return phone calls or emails, I'm judging your Facebook photo RIGHT NOW, I think your kids are not only ugly, but borderline retarded, I . . . .

Oops. There goes my promotion.

Unveiled.

2009-01-12T09:50:00.000-05:00

There is this thing in torts called Assumption of the Risk so that if for instance you touched an electric fence that screamed DO NOT TOUCH MOTHERFUCKER! the consequences of the touching are your own damn fault. But like everything in law there is an equal and opposite, and that equal and opposite is called Attractive Nuisance, so that say you have dark hair and eyes, or say you are ever so tall, or say you walk around with a paperback in your back pocket YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, then it's not my fault at all if I might have maybe kissed you right there at the bar. IN FACT, you are the one who is liable to me and I will be accepting apologies forthwith. Also martinis.

But say you don't know who you are, or maybe you know me but I don't know you, or maybe you don't know me but you'd like to, or maybe we all know each other just fine and dandy and isn't that nice? Well, have I got something to show you:

Tamara clued me in and Sir reminded me, and since I've got nothing better to do today (the law) won't you stop in to say hello?

Imprimis.

2009-01-10T11:53:00.003-05:00

The boyfriend and I are busy collaborating on the script to my next epic movie, but first thing's first: Who the hell is this guy?

Legerdemain.

2009-01-06T05:43:00.001-05:00

Ressentiment.

2009-01-03T02:25:00.000-05:00

I haven't been sleeping again, a direct correlation I think to the decrease of tonic in my daily routine. More than a year without insomnia and here I am again, square one, and if you think this would give me ample time to write again you'd be very much wrong indeed. Again.

Regarding history I've decided to neither rewrite nor relive it, and despite being a student of such have mostly succeeded in forgetting it (tabula rasa and all that). But despite the clean slate one thing haunts me still. On New Year's Eve my coat was the only coat stolen from the coat check, and now here I am in the middle of winter without a coat. They say we make our own luck but as a student of they, I can tell you without doubt they lie.

Rasorial.

2008-12-28T23:25:00.001-05:00

Blackened grouper, jalapeno cheddar grits, and smothered greens.

Deviled eggs.

Jumbo lump crabcakes, herbed sweet potato fries, and arugula salad.

Potato latkes topped with smoked salmon, tarragon creme fraiche, and caviar, and mushroom, onion, and Pecorino-Romano frittata.

Crab-stuffed mushrooms topped with creme fraiche and caviar.

Short ribs braised in red wine, mashed potatoes, and roasted brussels spouts with bacon.

Sorry, I've been busy.

Serein.

2008-12-19T14:14:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I look at my life and all I see is blackness, a blank tablet dotted with isolated moments of joy shining like buoys along the horizon. Guides they are, promising safe passage, promising protection from sandbars hidden just below the surface of the unknowable sea. Other times the outlook is bleak, sorrow spreading like this cancer in my immune system, replacing marrow and lymph until I can no longer heal myself. I am nothing but bloody noses and bruises, poison in my veins.

Sometimes the poison is contagious.

"You want them, I know you do."

"I'm not discussing this with you."

"But you do."

"It's a moot point. It doesn't matter what I do or do not want."

Sometimes you spend your whole life pining for something you can't have, and for what? Another reminder of how happy you could be? How happy you were? How you'll never be happy again? It's a silly business this, and anyway I was never very good with numbers, too dyslexic to add up all the negative integers. When I was a kid I was sentenced to extra math homework, parents and teachers alike too disappointed in me to notice that I couldn't see, that I was all jumbled up inside. And now that we all know how broken I am, what? Now what? You kick a girl while she's down is what.

It's done nothing but rain here of late, and so tomorrow I'm flying into a blizzard. Seems about right.

Pleonexia.

2008-12-09T14:31:00.001-05:00

For Abigail M. Schilling, of course.

Antediluvian.

2008-11-22T12:42:00.000-05:00

Change.

2008-11-05T17:44:00.000-05:00

At lunch I went for a celebratory run, a celebratory run to run off a full bottle of celebratory champagne, and truth be told I thought I'd die before that first step outdoors. Over sleepless night the celebratory bubbles settled in my legs, but rather than effervesce they kept me so grounded it took effort indeed to fly.

By the time I made my first loop around the Capitol I felt them popping, a billion firecrackers bursting one by one along a string, a gaudy din of celebration as every fiber and sinew loosened and stretched. On typical afternoons I'd typically head north, end home again to complete an up-and-downhill pair of typical miles, but before I left I loaded up my Shuffle with The National to celebrate and I couldn't bear the thought of abandoning them in this our hour to celebrate.

Onward I pressed, passing Museums of This and That left and right, the marble tombs of every building block and bone of civilization. Despite the threat of rain and biting wind my joints held strong, ankle and knee and hip pain free for the first time in years. As I rounded the Tidal Basin, the great marble figure of Thomas Jefferson loomed, beckoned, reminded me of last night's mostly good surprises. Cheers at RFD as the map became truer and bluer. Crashing the NAACP party at Busboys and Poets. Dancing in the streets and honking horns and hugging strangers. Some other stuff.

By mile four I was waving goodbye to FDR. By five I bid Mr. Lincoln adieu. I had a lot to think about I guess, like how quiet the empty building across from my apartment is. Like how the same man sits at the guard desk, guarding nothing all the longer and longer night long. Like how last night I heard him whoop and holler, watched him jump high into the air and pump his fists in celebration from eight stories up. Like some other stuff.

By now I couldn't help myself; mile six found me smack before the White House, rubbernecking that epic catastrophe. Mile seven found me back on the Mall, thinking still. And 9.0915 miles later the best I could come up with after all that celebratory running, all that celebratory thinking, is I wonder what I did wrong.

For the record, I'm still expecting rain.

Hope.

2008-11-04T06:38:00.001-05:00

Noctilucent.

2008-10-26T20:27:00.002-04:00

nerds live here

Ressentiment.

2008-10-23T10:50:00.001-04:00

Things I could buy with $150,000:

Shoes for the homeless.
300 heifers, 1250 sheep, or 7500 ducks.
Job training and therapy for veterans.
New textbooks for our public schools.
6 Toyota Priuses.
Approximately 30,000 square meters of South American rainforest.
Equipment to help young girls start their own businesses.
Cancer research.
Food and vaccinations for animal shelters.
150,000 cans of Campbell's soup for the soup kitchen.
6000 manatees.
Daycare for working single mothers.
HIV/AIDS education in Africa.
4166 trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions.
College tuition for a couple deserving kids who couldn't afford to go otherwise.
An entire freaking new home in the Lower 9th of New Orleans.

Or, you know, a $3000 Louis Vuitton handbag FOR MY SIX-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER.

Z is for za.

2008-10-17T05:54:00.000-04:00

Pizza? Seriously?

Y is for yarn.

2008-10-16T05:53:00.000-04:00

I've been knitting a pair of legwarmers, thigh high and gaudy as hell, and I have to admit there's a certain flexibility in birch dowels that I adore. They warm to my touch and bend without breaking no matter the task at hand, and I know beyond a doubt that I can count on them when I need them. In short, they are nothing at all like me.

X is for Xing.

2008-10-15T05:23:00.003-04:00

I was so lost I stood on the corner alone, stood on the corner and fell deeper and deeper within myself while the light flickered WALK and DON'T WALK alternately. I stood lost on the corner through three sets of strangers waiting impatiently and walking briskly by and waiting again and again and who knows what else, because I was lost and I stood alone on my city streets and Stars was playing and I couldn't move, let alone cross the goddamned street. And this is what I've become, this little girl so lost within herself that when Stars comes on the iPod I freeze, and in more ways than just the one.

W is for words.

2008-10-14T05:11:00.000-04:00

They're cutting words from the dictionary, shrinking the store of already inadequate words so that each day it becomes more difficult to select the one that perfectly expresses exactly this thing that I feel. Love, honor, devotion, they fall flat and feel cliched. Hate, sorrow, contrition, they fall short and feel anemic. I've lost so much already I cannot bear to lose my words as well, and would that I had a neologist to name whatever this is I feel, whatever this is that I feel for you, I would finally know what to whisper in my sleep. You ruined me, and I swear I will never feel whatever this is that I feel for you ever, ever again.

V is for voicemail.

2008-10-10T05:33:00.000-04:00

You told me you loved me and I said nothing in return, then Oh my God I ruined everything when my continuing silence smothered the air from your lungs. I tried to assure you that it was just the timing of the proclamation which gave me pause, three words seemingly plucked at random from the empty space between us, but in truth you did ruin everything. Your exuberance made me second-guess my instincts, the plot you wove made me forget myself. And so days later I lied to you, left a message I never should have left. If I could take it back I would, if not for you, well, certainly for me.

U is for underwear.

2008-10-09T06:17:00.000-04:00

Black briefs with a mesh behind, you were so proud of your purchase that immediately upon your return you modeled them for me jauntily. "Très français, don't you think?" you asked, and in reply I rolled my eyes and went to the kitchen for another glass of wine.

T is for tuxedo.

2008-10-08T06:16:00.000-04:00

I had my own Myrtle Wilson moment when I discovered you'd borrowed a friend's rented tuxedo for the event, and if I hadn't trusted you implicitly I would have heeded your roommate's warnings not to trust you. That you somehow managed to put the blame on me should not have surprised me so, but I trusted you and it did. And I should have learned from my mistake so that when history repeated itself I'd be prepared, but I didn't and I wasn't. Some lessons are better never than late.

S is for snow globe.

2008-10-07T06:15:00.000-04:00

Something cheap and inordinately cheesy, I requested, and what I received was anything but. Glass and porcelain with real gold flakes fluttering like snow upon two lovers entwined, you unwrapped this symbol of your romantic devotion while my skin crawled in disgust. They could be you and me you said wistfully; we'll honeymoon in Paris. But I knew better, of course. You got everything wrong, and with one shake of the crystal ball I knew you knew nothing about me at all.

R is for running.

2008-10-06T06:14:00.000-04:00

No one would ever guess that we started running to prove we could do what a bunch of fat kids have done, but there it is. And despite your constant complaints that you could never do it you've gone and done it, and better than me to boot. I said you could and you proved me right as ever; you said I couldn't and I didn't. You never think I can do anything and I know you can do everything and that is the difference between you and me.

Q is for Qi.

2008-10-03T05:41:00.000-04:00

My favorite Scrabble word, though I know not what it means, and I hope I never know because ignorance is bliss indeed. There are but a handful of Q- and Z-words that ever come to mind when faced with a rack of wooden tiles, and after the great za debacle of 2007 I've avoided dictionaries, Official Players' and Webster's alike. Za, you see, is short for pizza, and if I ever meet anyone who actually calls pizza za I will punch them in the neck for further handicapping my chance to ever beat Mysterygirl! at a game. That za is short for pizza is the most fucking ridiculous thing I've ever heard (excluding just about everything to pass from Sarah Palin's lips, of course), the yin to my yang, the sloe gin in my tonic. And now Qi is all I've got since I refuse to use za, even when za would make all the difference in the world. It's a matter of principle, you see, and I am a woman of principle.

P is for palm reader.

2008-10-02T05:41:00.000-04:00

You took the word of a stranger instead of what you already know, and in shock I laughed derisively. But when my laughter died the shock hardened into indignation, and I met your Do you really love him? with cold silence. I don't think you do, you continued, and whether you knew it or not you set your course for the sunset. She said you have no heart, you said, but truly my fortune was only half right. It's not that I haven't heart to love, it's that I had heart and broke it beyond repair.

O is for olive.

2008-10-01T05:41:00.000-04:00

I've all but abandoned my three-olive martini in favor of cleaner living, a pair of words that quite frankly gives me the creepy-crawlies. I am utterly uninterested in living, either cleanly or not, and so with sadness and sorrow both I smuggled empty liquor bottles from the office, filled my moleskine with a never ending list of things eaten and drank, laced up my running shoes and ran for the hills. These days my wine comes in grape form, my mint juleps all mint and no julep. I preferred it when I was coughing up blood.

N is for nicotine.

2008-09-30T05:41:00.000-04:00

Back in the days when you could smoke in bars, the days when you used to smoke and I used to smoke on occasion too, you lit a cigarette for you and one for me and leaned back in your chair and sighed. You sang along to the acoustic jams of whats-his-name and pressed your knee hard against mine, inhaled deeply and exhaled just as deep, a strong and steady pillar of smoke rising from your cracked lips to mingle with the dense cloud above. When no one was looking you'd stroke the bare skin about my ankles with unsteady fingertips, whisper huskily in my ear before returning guiltily to your unfathomable daydreams. And suddenly awake you plucked the cigarette from my pursed lips, killed it in the ashtray on the table behind us, and told me we were finished.

M is for mixtape.

2008-09-29T05:41:00.000-04:00

I made you a mixtape, heart on my sleeve guts on the floor and all that stuff, packaged it up with a copy of Gatsby and wrapped it all in shiny Christmas paper. And then you dumped me. So much for that.

L is for Louie.

2008-09-26T06:24:00.000-04:00

You'd come from a wedding and promptly ditched your date for me, though I haven't a clue why. The entire time you sat across from me I stared at the television above your head, bringing myself to look at you only to make fun of you and even then only disinterestedly. You were pretentious and affected, putting on airs though I haven't a clue why, and after several drinks I softened somewhat. I joined you for coffee after everyone else departed, for once in my life too polite to refuse. When you dropped me back at the apartment you said something unintelligible and rather than ask you to repeat yourself I agreed dismissively. It was only after you kissed me that the words clicked, and thus began the one relationship I never even wanted.

K is for Kit-Kats.

2008-09-25T06:24:00.000-04:00

And also mistakes. And how I feel about you whenever I think of you, which is always. And I can't stop thinking of you, and wondering whether you think of me too, and if you do if you feel as I do. It was an accident, a mistake, all of it, but it was my favorite one.

J is for Jameson.

2008-09-24T06:23:00.000-04:00

Your intentions were anything but clear, and so it was that I sat silently, confused, for the better part of an hour. All that time you waited for me around the corner, or maybe it was that you were just taunting me, but either way I did everything but rise to the bait. Or was it not carrot but stick? But either way instead I went for a run, took a shower and poured myself a tall drink and sat again silently until I knew you were safely gone. Yours was another goodbye--or was it hello?--I do not need to remember.

I is for ice cream.

2008-09-23T06:22:00.000-04:00

We took the long way, cruising instead along the riverfront with the windows open and the radio blasting. It was my penultimate day in town and I think you wanted to stretch the time we had left into the horizon, knowing as I didn't that this was the end of our journey. Across the causeway the sticky heat between us eviscerated with the ocean breeze, and with the sudden temperance our destination came into view. You pulled into the parking lot, a vast sea of asphalt approximately the same temperature as the sun, and gingerly we hopped to the graying shack, its wooden frame weathered by countless thunderstorms. Inside we laughed and held hands and I had a strawberry milkshake, and to this day I cannot fathom how that offended you.

H is for Hansen's.

2008-09-22T06:22:00.000-04:00

It was your idea to escape, to ditch our classes and disappear without a word. We drove up Tchoupitoulas in silence, stealing glances at each other along the bumpy street until you sidled the car into an empty parking space. The late spring day was blue and gorgeous, one of the last before that thick layer of humidity rolled out and blanketed the city until Halloween. You bought us both a sno-ball--wild cherry for me, bubble gum for you--and we sat silent side by side on the curb long after our cups were empty. The pressure of your knee against mine gave me goosebumps, and I swear I meant to kiss you that day but I didn't. If given the choice again I'd leap, and so with every leap that's mine to make I think of you.

G is for grapes.

2008-09-19T06:56:00.000-04:00

You always kept a bag of grapes, green, in the freezer. Every night when I came over that bag would sit between us on the couch while you absentmindedly plucked away during every conversation, movie, and television program. To this day I cannot see a grape and not think of you, and how much I miss your warmth, your constancy, and your friendship. And even though I surround myself with tangible reminders of those I've loved and lost, I never put my grapes in the freezer; I don't really like frozen grapes.

F is for football.

2008-09-18T06:55:00.000-04:00

I used to be the girl who stood from opening kick-off to the final whistle, screaming myself so hoarse I'd have no voice for the next week. I used to believe in every fake field goal, every fourth-down push, every onside kick and Hail Mary. I used to be the girl who believed in miracles. But somewhere along the way I realized that every game is lost before it's even started, that one-possession deficits are insurmountable. And it's all your fault.

E is for egg.

2008-09-17T06:55:00.000-04:00

"I should open an Eggateria!" you proudly exclaimed, and I have to agree that you were right. While my own attempts to wrangle denatured proteins were not necessarily disasters, you handled everything from omelets to eggs benedict to quiche and chocolate mousse with more than skill, you handled them as though you had laid the eggs yourself. There aren't many things you ever taught me, but the one lesson I'll remember forever is that breakfast can be so much more than breakfast; it can be dinner, too.

D is for dice.

2008-09-16T07:53:00.000-04:00

I'm not the gambling kind of girl, I told you, but I took a chance nevertheless. And just when I thought I'd hit the jackpot my luck changed. Instead of the hard six on which I bet my heart the die kept right on rolling, changing three pips to four. I thought I knew you and I think maybe I still do, just differently. Of everything you wanted to abandon you abandoned me because I was the only one you could, and not in an instant but over time my stack of chips shrank one by one. I put everything I had on the table and if I knew then what I know now I would have known that fate is not my friend. But it's impossible to know anything when you have no idea which way the dice will fall.

C is for cicada.

2008-09-15T07:52:00.000-04:00

Growing up all I'd see were hollow husks perched along the trunk of my favorite climbing tree in the back yard, backs split open after an arduous climb out of the spongy soil below. I spent hours in that tree studying these empty shells, wondering what on God's Earth could have created such mysterious ghosts. But when my father cut down that tree for no good reason at all the wonder faded, and I grew into womanhood without ever learning what could possibly leave pieces of themselves behind for brokenhearted little girls to find.

B is for butterfly.

2008-09-12T07:35:00.000-04:00

On land you moved awkwardly, lumbering from class to class pigeon-toed, your long, lanky arms swinging stiffly at your side. But for all your grounded gracelessness, I adored you intensely, and never more than when your mop-top curls were tamed beneath a swimmer's cap, your brown shoulders dotted with reflected sunlight. In the water your chlorine blue eyes twinkled with a little boy's joy, and no wonder, what a wonder of speed and grace you were. Once, we shared a perfect afternoon combing the beach for sea glass, nothing but the roar of the ocean between us. And now, whenever you see my mother combing that same beach you ask about me, and never once has she told me you're just around the corner.

A is for apple.

2008-09-11T07:35:00.001-04:00

"These trees--or trees like these, anyway--were all planted in the early 1900s," you said wistfully, the breeze rushing through the windows and tangling my hair as we drove through the orchards along a winding highway. You knew everything, and tirelessly answered my every pointless query with a simplicity and wonder both wise and childlike. You taught me more than facts and dates, you showed me a different way to view the world, and now that I no longer have anyone who will tell me the difference between a Fuji and a Gala I've forgotten how to see.

Cibarious.

2008-09-10T05:05:00.000-04:00

Z is for Zales.

2008-09-09T07:58:00.000-04:00

I found the receipt tucked neatly away in a box in the closet, backdated two years since, uncovered only in the shifting and purging of the move. Jewelry in and of itself is nothing, I know, but that piece of paper, saved after all those years, was worth more than all the diamond mines in Africa. I knew then that I would never be her, that I’d never be more than your shield against loneliness. And I can’t blame you for settling for the perfectly adequate, particularly when you’ve realized that your only chance for real happiness was never yours to begin with.

Y is for yo-yo.

2008-09-08T07:57:00.000-04:00

You are the greatest former yo-yo champion I know. That you are the only former yo-yo champion I know should in no way detract from this compliment, for my emphasis is actually on the adjective and not the compound noun. Countless times I’ve watched you sling that string back and forth as you pace the room, wheels spinning while working out a particularly difficult problem. So hypnotized I was by the rhythmic motion that I always followed your sage advice. I miss that toy, the hypnosis, the comfort of having you within pacing distance; in times like these I can’t help but wonder if you’re still walking back and forth, telling that yo-yo who’s boss.

X is for X-ray.

2008-09-05T07:56:00.000-04:00

You came with me because I asked, though you were certainly under no obligation to agree. Many months of x-rays, blood tests, and urine samples were taking their toll, and I wanted my hand held as I faced yet another pair of cold, clinical hands tapping into bruised veins. But you didn’t hold my hand, you sat in the waiting room just out of sight as the needle pierced my skin and the syringe slowly filled a deep burgundy. Sitting there, arm extended and head leaning back against the wall, I realized that I didn’t need you, that I could suffer this on my own. You bought me a beer afterwards, but you never came to the hospital with me again.

W is for water.

2008-09-04T07:55:00.000-04:00

We spent every day that summer in the water, pulling skis behind your boat in the afternoon sun. I spent every night in the circle of your arms, laughing with friends over six-packs of Icehouse and bottles of Boone's. Our days were numbered by the calendar, and although the memories are faded by time I know wholeheartedly that we made the most of what we had. You were not my first love, but you loved me anyway. You loved me, but you wouldn't fight for me. And this is why you were not my first love.

V is for vodka.

2008-09-03T07:54:00.000-04:00

In high school I was strictly an Absolut drinker, so susceptible was I to slick and quirky advertising campaigns. In college I drank from the rail, student loans maxed out and my work-study employment barely employment at all. In law school I tried a bit of everything, found that I disliked Tanqueray, that Smirnoff left me with headaches, that Belvedere was overrated. Now I drink Skyy at home, order Stoli and tonics, and positively worship the perfect Grey Goose martinis.

U is for utility closet.

2008-09-02T07:53:00.000-04:00

You noticed my withdrawal, and I knew it. The distance had grown too wide, had changed you, had changed me. We shared the same space for an entire weekend but somehow I had managed to avoid you, both talking and touching alike. Then Sunday I had too many beers at Goose Island before you arrived, and upstairs by the restroom you caught my guard down and pulled me through an unlocked door, your grip on my forearm a vice, into the pitch black.

T is for turbulence.

2008-08-29T08:47:00.000-04:00

We thought nothing could be worse than the flight to New Orleans, diverted to Dallas to escape the threat of hurricanes, trapped on the tarmac for three hours in a stifling cabin, watching all hope of an arrival that night slip away with each flash of lightning. But the flight home proved unexpectedly rocky, as, without warning, the flight attendant was thrown down the aisle. The screams started then, passengers jostled to and fro like rag dolls. I gripped the armrest white-knuckled, you picked our Cokes up off of the tray tables to prevent them flying, only to slosh them over my white cotton cardigan, so violent was the turbulence. Several excruciating seconds later the pilots managed to pull our plummeting plane from another’s jet wash. As those around us thanked lucky stars that we avoided a Top Gun ending, I looked at you in wonder. You were sad that you couldn’t save our drinks.

S is for Skyway.

2008-08-28T07:46:00.000-04:00

An alien concept, like so many hamster tubes criss-crossing a frozen tundra. We make plans to meet here in the dead of winter, to withdraw into the maze, purposefully getting lost in its twists and turns until the past is quite forgotten and the future just another corner to round. We want to live in the moment, the glass walkway not a prison, rather, the only way to freedom. But we are the overlooked victims of global warming, concern focused as it is on the tillers, the sowers of seed. The lovers are drawn out of doors by unseasonable warmth, to face a world we had hoped to protect each other from.

R is for rain.

2008-08-27T07:46:00.000-04:00

It always rained when we met, tears of both joy and sorrow from an empathetic sky. I loved how you loved this rain, but loved more that you thought these perfectly romantic moments were ruined by imperfections of your own. One day you’ll know, as I know, that these precise imperfections are what made you precisely perfect.

Q is for quicksand.

2008-08-26T07:42:00.000-04:00

We spent hours together as children, plotting our escape from the unknown, the unknowable. I still have no idea if our fears were unfounded, if quicksand traps lurked in the woods and wetlands where we rambled. But I remember the debates - whether the burial would come fast or slow, whether we’d have time enough to catch our breath before we were overcome. It seemed like the scariest thing to me, sinking uncontrollably into the abyss. I’ve since discovered that I was right, but not in quite the same way I had envisioned.

P is for Pizza Mart.

2008-08-25T07:41:00.000-04:00

I liked having you around because I could always rely on you to finish my jumbo slice. I liked having you around because I could always count on you to suggest a good climb, so eager are we both for a few minutes of silence, a change of perspective. I liked having you around because you’d always hold my hands as we bounced on the dance floor, so concerned you always are about my physical safety, especially during delirious drunkenness. But I’m glad that you’ve gone, because of everyone, you are the only one who would notice that I am in love.