I’m Going Back to New York City…I Do Believe I’ve Had Enough

First it was Lou Reed. Now it’s Bob Dylan on repeat, and not a whole song, but just those New York City lyrics over and over.

I was back in Manhattan earlier this week for a business trip, and I cannot believe I am actually going to type these words – it was the first time in about two years that I was in the city. I’ve been in the Bronx for games and Brooklyn to visit friends and Staten Island to visit my dad at work, but everyone knows “the city” is Manhattan. And I was long gone from it.

Flying into LaGuardia, it’s hard not to be blown away from the view of the skyline. I’ve traveled all over, but New York’s skyline is still the most beautiful to me. You can see it from certain places in New Jersey, and as a kid (and teenager and college student and young adult), I always imagined myself living there. I was going to work at a coffee shop downtown during the day, and work on my novels at night. This gradually morphed into working at a magazine during the day, working at the same coffee shop (now shoppe and filled with eclectic New York characters) at night, and working on my novels in my free time. This vision was so prevalent and all-encompassing that I never really dreamt up an alternate plan, and that’s why you’ll still find me in my temporary career twelve years later. I was at an event with YG at MIT a few weeks ago, chatting with a few other PR people, and they nodded their head in recognition of this vision. One guy noted, “You don’t have to explain it to me. I majored in philosophy.”

I never did live in the city. I visited plenty, and I lived in my grandparents’ apartment in Brooklyn for a few months, but I was a tourist, a bridge and tunneler. I am from that place that dare not speak its name.

Still, I always think of New Jersey and the city as “home.” I moved to Massachusetts four years ago, but I’ve never really referred to it as my home. My brother probably feels the same. Home is home, and that’s just the way it is.

But, dudes, New York City has CHANGED. I felt so discombobulated by some things. Times Square has been pedestrianized, and there’s talk of building more of those plazas elsewhere. We were staying in Union Square, and while that was exactly how I remembered it, right down to all the restaurants, our waiter told me that Union was going to be the next to be plaza-ed. We ate dinner at Spice Market in the meat packing district and while we were waiting for the rest of the team to arrive, my friend, L, and I sat outside on some benches watching locals and upscale suburbanites, enjoying the weather. I was stunned that we were sunning ourselves in the middle of an area that I remember being sort of a shit hole, and even more stunned after dinner, when we walked the High Line, the new-to-me public park built on a defunct railway between 10th and 11th Aves. It was a perfect night weather-wise, and I couldn’t believe I was sniffing flowers and lying on a chaise lounge in the middle of New York.

How to describe it? A deluge of different feelings. Amazement to see such a great use of public space. Relief that some places like Magnolia haven’t changed a bit. And a little bit of sadness that I am now more of a tourist than I ever was. I’m just a visitor. I get to appreciate everything the city has to offer, but as a pilgrim, not a dweller. That’s weird.

And then before I could let that sink in, I was back here. Back to my new home. I took a cab from the airport and we drove down Storrow Drive, watching all the sailboats and rowers on the Charles, with the runners and strollers on the Esplanade. They’re setting up for the 4th of July celebration, and I remembered last year, watching it from home, singing patriotic songs to my 3-week old baby. This is the only home she knows, will probably be my home for the foreseeable future, and I’m happy to be back.

And Lou Reed Was Playing In My Head On Repeat

Yesterday was the perfect day. A mid-year course correction. Since I went back to work, I have been using Writing Fridays for house-wifely items, and yesterday was the first time in a long while that I actually had the entire day to write. I had dropped off Zygote and got the grocery shopping done all by the time I usually get to work. I drove to Walden Pond, and alternated between reading and writing all day, only breaking to eat some fruit and swim for a half hour. I finished an essay, started another one and did some free-write exercises. Warm, freckly, perfect.

What I DO Give A Shit About

So yesterday was one of those days.


Image courtesy of Hyperbole and A Half

I was whining to a coworker about how I don't give a shit about technology and I don't give a shit about corporations and I don't give a shit about profit and loss unless it's my own and how really, I don't give a shit in general. Most of this was brought on by lack of sleep and watching the documentary, The Corporation, which was great, by the way, but not the right thing to watch when you are in a mood and feeling kind of ick about your place in the whole corporate world. Especially the segment on PR and all its YOU GET TO BE THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE CORPORATION YAY YOU stuff.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the key question in all that ranting and raving -- what do I actually give a shit about? So I made a list because that is what I do when I am feeling ick. A list of things that I get all frothy and passionate about.

Things JM Gives A Shit About In No Particular Order

* Zygote
* YG
* Family and friends
* FCC
* Women's Rights: yes, this is all encompassing but work/life balance, gender inequality, abortion rights, moms' rights, etc.
* Body Image
* The politics of health and fat/Health at Any Size/nutrition
* Running/exercise
* The corporatization of the whole fucking world
* Living Simply
* Parenting
* Fashion and style, and not in the New York Times way
* Literature -- mostly the reading of, not the critiquing of
* Music -- appreciation of, not making

These are the things that usually get me to stop and pay attention, and I'm not quite sure how to take the things I care about and turn them into something I can do for a living. I am good at my job, and I like the choices and flexibility it gives me on most days, but I'm never going to be GREAT at my job because in the end, I don't give a shit. I am not creating art in the world (and yes I know that sounds all 'I wear all black and care about womyn' but bear with me). I create spin, and while it's good, I'm just not sure it matters.

I thought it would be different when I moved to Massachusetts. While I have a number of reasons I publicly state for coming here, it really was a great escape and I did it because I wanted to change everything that wasn't working. For the most part, I did. I absolutely love where I live and I love my simplified lifestyle, and I can't figure out a way to say this that is not vomit-inducing, so I will just say that I absolutely love my husband. Those things are all GREAT. But I'm still struggling to figure out my place in the world. To figure out what I should be doing with all the immense privileges that I do have. I don't feel I put that privilege to good use, and right now, I want to be open to well, anything. I found myself recently journaling about "when we move to San Francisco..."(which wouldn't be until MG went to college anyway, so we're talking years), and all the escapist fantasies that come with that. And then I knew that it's time to stop fucking around and figure out how to make myself useful. Advice welcome.

Fun With Keywords (Or How You Find Me)

Google Analytics can be pretty addictive. I like to check in every once in a while to see what's going on and imagine who you, dear reader, actually are. I actually know some of you in "real" life, but I'm more curious about the folks that just lurk and read like I do on a good many people's blogs.

And oh my god, do I love the keywords!

The vast chunk of you get here by searching for "the fantasy of being thin" and that's probably because I refer back to that post so many times. The real Fantasy of Being Thin was written by Kate Harding and is here and you should go read it RIGHT NOW. It was a defining piece for me, but alas, I did not write it. Another big mess of you get here by searching for "like seriously?" or variations on that, and I assume this is because we have all lost the ability to communicate without sounding like Valley Girls.

My personal favorite searches are just the really weird and unexplainable shit. For a while there, "swinging testicles" might have been my all-time favorite, but new contenders include:

* "i need something that could make last , when i am doing sex , i am coming too soon ."
When I am doing sex makes me very happy.

* "knee socks"
More random than anything. Who searches for knee socks and then stays here? Oh, it's my compelling prose!

* "seriously how to grow boobs"
Very serious, indeed. Nothing to joke about there with the growing of the boobs.

* "that teenager persists, when these songs materialize over the speaker systems in department stores or reworked as television-commercial soundtracks"
I like this sentence. I wish I had wrote it. It's from Fatshionista. I cannot imagine typing that entire thing into Google. You are a very specific searcher.

Tell me about you.

Not Buying It

I am amazed by the bloggers that manage to have full-time jobs, families, and scads of well-articulated essays. Here's how my week usually goes. I go to work and eat my lunch at my desk. This is designated Blog Time, where I read through the blogs I follow and attempt to shovel in food at the same time. I usually send links to my personal account with subject lines like "For Blog" or "Write This Topic" or "Think" with the idea that I am going to go home, eat a meal, spend quality time with kid and husband, read all the books that are piling up on the bookshelf, and then write some brilliant essay based on someone else's post, and then get to bed in time to get 8 hours of sleep. Yeah, right.

If I ever do anything with the links, it's usually more of a Link Love post with a message that says, "they said it better than me."

That being said, I have been thinking about this post, Why We Buy, over at Cat's Meow for a while. The sermon at church today discussed our culture of conspicuous consumption and how even so-called Christians base decisions about the life of the church on money and status. It reminded me that I wanted to write something about this.

I took a big paycut after I went back to work post maternity leave, so that I would have a day free to spend with Zygote and to write and to basically do all the housework things that don't get done when they are not part of someone's job description (grocery shopping, dry cleaning, pediatrician appointments, etc). Before Z, I was aware that a disproportionate amount of my money goes to clothes and books, keeping my hair a shade of "natural" red, remaining hairless and drinking lots of wine. In other words, grooming and being selfish. I've had to cut back drastically, but I still notice that I am surrounded by clutter, STUFF. This was the impetus for the outfit project and this month's "no clothes or books" project.

Cat's Meow asked the question,

"So, why DO we buy stuff we don't need, like that much, or possibly even afford?
And why, for goodness' sake, do we clean up, and then go and buy more useless stuff to fill the empty space?"

That's it, isn't it? The why. I know that I'm capable of saving money when I need to, and I have never used a credit card to pay for "fun" purchases, but I get serious, clear out, and then replace everything. Editorial note: the day last month's shopping ban was over, I bought a bunch of new jewelry and dresses at the Ann Taylor outlet. Same DAY people. And yes, I may make hilarious fun of the Dwell kids on Unhappy Hipsters, but my main reaction is fascination: Where is all their stuff? You know, the books, the piles of shoes, messy magazines, cds....where is it?

The explanations that most resonated with me were:

-We feel insecure and uncertain in the world and what the future will bring, so we buy "for the future". Like the world is going to run out of stuff soon and we need to hoard a "safety net".

I am a multiples buyer. Almost all the time. Just in case the world ever stops manufacturing the cotton underwear I like, I have enough to last me for the next couple of years. Same with gym socks. If you are ever having a gym sock emergency, call me.

- We like to project an image of a person we wish we were, say bohemian, artsy, intellectual, sporty, adventurous.. through our belongings, clothing and home decor.

I have lots of "on writing" books.

-We think that the knowledge from the books we own magically "belongs" to us if we just own the books. Buy the book, be smarter. Lose the books, lose the information they contain. (Hey, anyone heard of libraries and the internet?)

Our books situation is a bit out of control. We have boxes of books in the basement that were never unpacked and shelves just bursting from the weight of my books. Now we have a shelf re-arranger (read: Zygote) so all of those books end up strewn all over the floor. I always said that I buy books because I like to write in them and take notes (true), and then I can refer back to them when I want to write about a quote that stayed with me (also true). But I think Cat's Meow's explanation hits closer to home. It's been so long since I've had any kind of real creative work, and/or intellectual stimulation. I think that all the reading I do about topics outside of my daily realm help prove to myself that hey, look, I can be smart and that I do know things.

-We are depressed and use shopping as an escape.

I do not do this anymore, I think, but it's been a habit that was hard to break. I still have clothes with tags on them and unworn shoes and unread books that I bought when I was seperated from my first husband. When he was away in treatment, I would visit on the weekends and then hit a different outlet mall every time on my ride back. I wouldn't eat. I wouldn't drink. I would just buy things.

-We are happy and want to celebrate by buying ourselves a gift.

Also known as: Stay Away From Anthropologie.

-We are bored and entertain ourselves by shopping.

Same as above. During the seperation time, if I had not made plans with a friend or my family, I would wander around the mall and buy things to make up for the fact that I had nothing else to do. The JCrew sales girl knew my name, and I will always remember her fondly because she never brought up the fact that I spent most Saturday nights during that time, alone in the mall, eating at Starbucks for dinner.

-We buy in to the subconscious idea that happiness is just one purchase away. After you get that one thing, it's still just one purchase away. We think, "if only I had a bigger home", "if only I had a better car", or that fabulous couch, that awesome outfit, the perfect pair of jeans, flattering shade of lipstick, and on and on.

This is a little bit like The Fantasy of Being Thin, but with shopping.

So what do I do with all this information? I'm not quite sure. I'm still trying to institute a ban on "extras." YG doesn't think that I have a spending problem, but it feels like it's about more than the money. I really do want to try and simplify things, make do with less, de-clutter, blah, blah, blah. I don't NEED anything right now. I worry about what happens to all my stuff when I'm done with it. I worry about raising another generation of conspicuous consumers. And I'd like to keep the money I make for me. And so on.

Like:This Is Why I Will Never Be An Adult

Everyone on Facebook has been linking to the exceptionally brillaint, Hyperbole and A Half post, This Is Why I Will Never Be And Adult. I don't think there has been anything written in recent history that better describes my state of being.


Image: Hyperbole and a Half

Zygote is sleeping, YG is riding, and here I am, typing and thinking:



Thank you, Allie. I don't know who you are, but I like you, like you.

Live Blogging (Maybe): Celtics v. Lakers Game 7

I had some serious posts planned, but this could be more fun. Assuming I don't run out of battery power, here we go.

* I am 12 years old. Every time someone talks about someone's stroke, I giggle.
* I still don't like Charles Barkley. Why is he in every commercial on tv?
* I love you, Dos Equis man, the most interesting man in the world.
* There is a rumor that Pau Gasol is gay. Not with that neck hair, me thinks.
* My mother refers to Lamar Odom as the guy "married to that fat Kardashian."
* Love that they put the Great White Hope in for a few seconds in the end of the first half. Call me, Brian. We can do yoga together.
* YG just gave me a wet willy when I made fun of the Red Sox for only winning 6 World Series. He claimed the right number was 8. The right answer is 7.
* Jeff Van Gundy -- the most photogenic announcer on tv.
* "High tension situation" -- no shit.
* It's Rondo Time.
* 1 million dollars an hour = 8,760,000,000 dollars a year, per YG. In response to Toyota commercial.
* I remember Ray Allen when he played for UConn. It's been a long time since we graduated.
* Lots of profanity. 13 point lead. I love when you catch these guys mouthing "MOTHAFUCKA!"

So far. Signing off at 10:45 p.m.

Feminist Chicks -- Being A Woman Does Not Automatically Mean You Are A Feminist

Since I spent the vast majority of last week navel gazing and reminiscing about Z's birth, I totally missed everything going on in the world of politics. So, Carly Fiorina is now the GOP candidate for US Senate in California, making bitchy comments about her opponents hair and everything in between. Much has been written about Fiorina's disastorous run at HP, but people seem to forget where she was prior to HP.

My first job out of college was writing articles for the employee newsletter of the "Global Service Provider Networks Group" at a huge corporation. That group, later renamed the much-sexier Service Provider Networks Group, was run by Carly. During that time, she was named Number One on Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business list. The rumor mill at big companies is always nuts, but nothing out of the ordinary. I had no axe to grind with her until she decided to move on to HP and made some dumb-ass comment about how it proved that there obviously "no glass ceiling anymore." Right. I was sitting in a conference room full of women watching Carly say this on tv -- these were women who had attended her meetings, written her speeches, distributed her news, planned her itineraries and the silence was deafening. My boss, an African American woman with two kids, was the first, and I believe, only, to speak, saying, "well, that's news to me."

I've pretty much loathed her ever since, but at the same time, am freakishly fascinated.

Red Vinyl Shoes post, Feminist Does Not Mean "Strong Woman," is an amazing read.

"These women are part of a new wave of conservative feminism, which apparently views women’s advancement in the workplace and politics to be the most important tenet of actual feminism. Basically, these conservative feminist leaders have decided that the advancement of women to the upper echelons of business — something they have already achieved — is what feminism should really be about. Behind the complicated, self-invalidating beliefs pairing the “right to life” with an exhortation to protect women and children and their token glorification of the homemaker is just the basic white feminist desire to finally reach that level of equality with men in regards to power and most importantly, privilege. Once the smoke clears, wealthy conservative feminist candidates will likely discontinue the rhetoric exalting homemaking as one of the most important things a woman can do. By opposing ideas like subsidized child care, access to birth control, and legal abortion, these women will actually make things worse for any homemaker not privileged by race and wealth."

As a white woman who has spent all of her career in corporate America, I feel very conflicted about what it means to be a business leader and what sacrifices I would have to make to go further. I know that I am lucky in my achievements. I respect the women who have achieved more than I have, but I do not believe that becoming the leader of a multinational corporation means that all women have suddenly become equal, and there's no need for a feminist movement anymore. As I said before about Sarah Palin, it really fucking disturbs me, though, that people are falling for it.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety

Yesterday's showdown with the cupcake was a bust. Poor kid was surrounded by paparazzi and just stared at it. Tonight was a different story. She is bouncing off the walls now.

June 11: One Year Old

June 11, 2009: 11:47 a.m.



June 11, 2010: around 9:30 a.m.



Happy Birthday, Z!

Nostalgia Train

On this day last year, I was in labor. Zygote will be one tomorrow. In a nutshell, this has been a fast, exhilarating, terrifying, educational, sleep-deprived whirlwind of a year.

Of course, I have been all about the reflecting this week on her birth story, and I recently told a work colleague that I was really starting to LIKE spending time with Zygote, that she was fun and smart and that this was very different from the ferocious mother love you feel. Of course, I love my child. But now, I’m enjoying watching her discover new things and play games. I would choose to be with her even if I didn’t have to be.

This is different from those early, hazy, sleepless days. When she was born, I was thrilled to see her, but the thing I felt the most was this overwhelming sense of responsibility. And fear. A this-is-it-welcome-to-the-big-show-youre-an-adult-now-don’t-fuck-this-up inner monologue was on constant repeat. Looking back, it’s obvious that there were a number of factors contributing to that. Zygote was born when YG was still dizzy and recovering from his hearing loss. My labor was extremely long (30+ hours.woot!) and painful (back labor.woot!) followed by major abdominal surgery (C-section.woot!). MG and YG got sick with the flu right after Z was born, so they couldn’t be near her and the medication that Z had to take made her cry pretty much 24-7 for two weeks. Then MG got appendicitis and had to have surgery. And I had some pretty bad postpartum depression that required medication.

But at the time, I wasn’t able to see how all of that may have contributed to my totally fragile emotional state. I wasn’t really seeing anything. I was just living one long continuous day and FEELING everything. I remember sitting in my doctor’s office, filling out a form that asked questions like, “Do you feel you have lost the ability to be happy?” I couldn’t stop crying, and I tried to take as long as possible to answer the questions so I could delay having to go home, to have to go back to THAT PLACE, where everyone needed me. I like being alone. I was not, and to some extent still am not, used to all this contact. I was also convinced, deep in my core, that YG was going to leave me if he got even a whiff of vulnerability from me. It sucked.

Prior to birth, I had referred to my maternity leave as “my summer off.” I thought it was going to be all mommy play dates and beers on the patio and going to museums and writing with my beautiful, snoozing infant in her eco-friendly sling. What a load of crap! When I realized that all I would be doing for the first few weeks was choosing what chair to nurse in next, I was overwhelmed by grief. Every little task like picking up the dry cleaning or emptying the dishwasher or even taking a shower took on monumental significance – I had to prove that I could accomplish SOMETHING or else everything would come crumbling down.

It was over a month before I even attempted grocery shopping, and because I am a glutton for punishment, we went to Costco. Zygote screamed the entire time, while I angrily shoved the cart around the store, and a teenage girl and her mother gaped at me wehn they caught me hissing, “Jesus Christ, will you shut the fuck up already?” The next day, during an epic screaming fit and a diaper change that resulted in shit all over the wall, I bit Zygote’s leg. Not hard, but enough that she stopped the crying to notice. I didn’t know what else to do. I gave up. I had zero confidence in my ability to function as a normal human with the capability to love. I longed to go back to work (this should scream DANGER if you know me), but at the same time, wondered how the hell people managed to have anything left over for their jobs or really, anything besides the baby. YG told me that we would cross that bridge when we needed to, which I interpreted, of course, as “get your shit together. I’ve done Crazy once. I’m not doing it twice, and if you can’t get it together, I’m leaving you and this kid and hightailing it to San Francisco.”

I don’t know what the turning point was. There was no magic bullet. It just started to suck less. Medication certainly helped, but it wasn’t the cure all I wanted it to me. I still had to feel and fumble my way through shit and I hated that. I started to ask for help. Made lunch dates with people. Accepted the offers of the pastoral care team at my church for company and conversation. Joined a mom’s group. Everyone recovered from their illnesses. The sun came out. I walked for miles every day, sometimes feeling like I was sleepwalking, but I discovered a bunch of new neighborhoods and watered our plants a lot. I learned how to nurse and read at the same time, despite Dr.Sear’s (AAAAAH) advice that I should savor every moment of our bonding time. Barf. I read good and bad books, sometimes out loud. I wrote a teeny tiny bit. And I watched the entire My So-Called Life series again. Twice.

Zygote started smiling and knowing who I was. I started to realize that I knew how to comfort her. We went away for two weeks at the beach. YG and I spent two nights away in Atlantic City. We started to figure out a new normal.

I went back to work. I’m trying to figure out the dreaded “work/life balance,” but I’ll be forever grateful to my kid for giving me some perspective. My mom stayed with us for a month and then YG’s sister sat for Z before she started daycare. We trusted our instincts and switched her to a different daycare within a month. Words cannot express how much I love it.

We did Christmas in New Jersey. We did her first snowy winter in New England. YG and I each survived a week on our own with Z when the other had to go away on business. Nothing quite beats seeing that shock of crazy hair and toothy grin, when you’re stumbling up the front steps after a particularly hideous red eye. We did Easter in Florida, and our first family trip to Disney. I did not wear white sneakers. Or a visor. We did MG’s 11th birthday on a Spirit of Boston cruise. We survived.

But it was more than survival. We got to know one another. To like one another. We learned how to be a family of four. I started to learn how to be a mom. I made several attempts at cooking. I learned that I still really, really, really LIKE my husband.

To use corporate speak, I am continuing to work on my “areas for development” like patience and patience and patience. And I am becoming more confident in my abilities to not totally screw this kid up. In fact, I think I may be able to teach her a thing or two.

Happy Birthday, Z, one day early. Love, Mama.

Another Lost Child

My brain is mush. I am thinking of sweet Pearl and how unfair it is to have another friend lose a child. Logical me knows that there is no rhyme or reason to why accidents happen, but in my heart, I am sad and angry and afraid. I am so sick of the universe throwing lost children, miscarriages, infertility, autism at my friends. This seems like a childish rant, but that's where I am right now. Shaking. I feel blessed to have what I have, but so fucking angry about what's been taken away from others. I am thinking of you, MM, and keeping your family in my prayers.

Heavy Rotation

M.Ward is usually on heavy rotation around these parts, and (500) Days of Summer reminded me how much I like Zooey Deschanel, so I downloaded the newest She & Him album. It's been on repeat all day. This clip is old, but I love it.

Reading, Watching, Eating

I had written out this entire post before, but then our Mac -- you know, the machine that never fails -- failed big time and I lost the entire thing. I'm sure the previous version was infinitely more brilliant.

READ
1. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy -- I heard a piece about this on NPR's summer reading series a few years ago, and it was collecting dust on the shelves for a while. It's one of those books that comes and goes every few years. It seemed worth the wait. Reviewers called it effervescent and charming, and I thought it was quick, light airy lead. While the narrator is sort of a flaky cross between Holly Golightly and Carrie Bradshaw, you want to stick with her as she traipses around Europe in her early twenties. The descriptions of Paris were lovely, and it reminded me of taking overnight trains through France and Spain, and thinking that was what the rest of my life was going to be like.

2. Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby -- I bought this when it first went on sale because I wanted to see it do well, and I've been following Shapely Prose and The Rotund for years now. I felt like I already knew a lot of stuff in the book because I've been reading for so long, but I still found it an informative and hilarious read. I love both of their writing voices, so I found it enjoyable. Plus, rereading the chapters on cognitive dissonance resonated since I've been hovering in that place for oh, years -- knowing that diets don't work and that fat doesn't necessarily equal unhealthy, but still wishing I was a little bit smaller. And still sometimes thinking that I would be a brand new fucking me if I lost a few pounds.

3. The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve -- I can't remember how or when I bought this. I'm not typically into the Oprah's Book Club stuff, so I'm guessing this was on one of those Buy 2, Get 1 Free tables at Borders. It was a quick read and enjoyable -- I tried to put it away for a few days because reading a book about a husband dying in a fiery crash right before your own husband heads to Europe on a bunch of flights for a week tends to get the head cake going . But I couldn't. I wanted to know what happened. It ends up being a little Lifetime movie-ish, but who doesn't enjoy that shit every once in a while?

4. The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman -- Pretty much what I expected. I always read these books thinking that someone will have a cure for the 400 emails a day problem, but nobody does. It was well researched, and I really enjoyed the historical chapters on the telegraph, postcard, and telephone.

WATCHED
1. Up In The Air -- So, I had assumed this was a comedy, and holy crap was I wrong. It was brilliantly acted by the entire cast, but it made me SAD, SAD, SAD.

2. (500) Days of Summer -- This is pretty much the formula for my perfect movie. Quirky cute lead actors in a low-key romcom with lots of music by The Smiths. Thoroughly enjoyable. And yes, I bought the soundtrack.

3. Lost finale -- I watched it again, and I loved it. I always thought this show was an extended Bible story, and unlike most people, I hated when all the time travel/scifi shit was introduced. Yes, there were loose ends, but the redemption arc was beautiful and I cried like a freakin' baby when they all started realizing what had happened.

4. Biggest Loser finale -- We used to be fairly religious about this show because it was the only thing that the MG could watch that YG and I could get into to. It's cheesy and sentimental and sometimes horrifying, but we liked it. Now, I'm not so sure. I enjoyed the finale because one of the nice guys won, but I think this show is really jumping into spectacle territory -- 400lbs twins! The sickest man EVER! 500lb man! It feels too exploitative and is uncomfortable to watch. Undecided if we'll take in the next season.

EATING
YG is away on a business this week, and this strikes fear in my heart because it makes me responsible again for my own nutritional needs (read: cooking). I lived on my own for years, so it's not like I'm going to starve to death, but in the past, my "dinners" usually consisted of Lean Cuisine or a decaf latte and pound cake, or if I was feeling really creative (read: inclined to turn on stove), I would make oatmeal. Now, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to eat less processed foods, so I did have a few moments of thinking that I might indeed starve to death this week. We don't really have the type of money to eat every meal out, and with an infant, my choices are sort of limited anyway. So, I embarked on adventure to do two things I pretty much hate to do -- grocery shopping and cooking.

For the week, I picked up a rotisserie chicken and a lot of salad, along with tons of fruit that I could share with Zygote. I also bought tons of avocados since we've gotten quite good at making guacamole and it works great as a spread for the condiment-phobic like myself.

Then I cooked up a bunch of quinoa for main dishes and sides for lunch. I've gotten pretty good at the quinoa too, and have two recipes that I like. One is quinoa with avocado, corn, tomato and black beans, and the other mixes in cannellini beans, roasted red peppers and asparagas (I made it with green beans when YG and MG were around since they won't touch asparagas). I'm sure I will quinoa-ed out by the end of the week, but I figure it's way better than being Chipotle-d out or Hostess cupcaked out.

Editor's note: I haven't gotten over all my bad habits, though. Dinner the first night YG was away consisted of three cupcakes and a beer on the couch.

Marriages, Gores, Whatnot

YG left tonight for a week-long business trip in Europe. I'm already back to my old habits of wearing sweatpants and eating cupcakes and beer for dinner, while desperately hoping that there is an old episode of America's Next Top Model on somewhere. I like my husband, and I do not like it when he is gone. I hope this bodes well for our future.

Everyone is abuzz about the news of Al and Tipper Gore breaking up. My friend, Casey, has a good blog up on Double X about this and why so many people want answers. I totally agree with her assessment that it hits too close to home. The Gores seemed like they had a normal, if a little bit gooey (ew gross, mom and dad are making out), relationship, and nobody, including me, wants to hear that you can live with someone for the bulk of your adult life and just get tired of them. They were together 40 years! I haven't even been ALIVE 40 years.

I would like to believe that if you choose your partner well, that you can be happy with them in 10, 20, 30 years. It's important to keep changing and growing, and hopefully the person you change into is someone your partner likes and vice versa. Marriage is basically a leap of faith. I did this once before, and all my faith couldn't make that one work. I leapt again, and I think I made a wiser choice.

And I can spew that "wisdom," but still deep down want assurances that it's all going to work out in the end. That I'll be one of the lucky ones who still likes her husband and he still likes her and we support each other's careers and then we have a gaggle of brilliant and wickedly funny kids that cart us off to a really swank Assisted Living facility somewhere warm. I want to KNOW. I want to stop hearing about "late stage divorces," because it's just depressing, man. Starter marriage divorces you can blame on youth and stupidity, but when I keep hearing about these Gore divorces, all I can think is that if you live long enough, everyone must start to get on your nerves on the end.

Gah. Sad stuff. I have to think about bunnies or marshmellows or something fluffy now.

Slutty Fatties: And What To Do With My Life

Last week, MSNBC ran an article, Heavy Girls Likelier To Have Sex Early. This is the kind of article that just makes my head want to explode because the reporting is just so terrible. You get references to a medical study boiled down into a couple of easily digestible talking points. Taking complex shit and making it somewhat understandable by spinning it into 2 or 3 key messages is what I do for a living, so I can't bitch about that too much. But medical research is complex and we all know the media is in love with finding NEW! and INTERESTING! ways to demonize fat, so this one just makes me bristle. It manages to combine fat hate and misogyny and victim blaming all in one. Nice.

Tiger Beatdown has probably the best analysis of this and why it's so incredibly fucked up, that I've ever read. Seriously, I know I am a little crazy with the link love, but this is one you should read.

Points that jumped out at me:

"When you are in the pre-teen era, you spend a lot of time looking to adults to figure out how you should behave, because you are just beginning to become aware of changes in your body that mean you will be an adult within a few years! And holy shit! And guess what — the adults around you are constantly obsessing about their own weight. And yours. Because, since it is the responsibility of parents to decide what their kids eat, and there are a million narratives about how if you don’t eat right you will get fat, parents are looking for your not-fatness as a way to verify that they haven’t completely fucked up as parents. "

When I write a memoir, that could be the inside jacket.

"2. Here is what you learn very early, as a young woman prone to fatness, even before puberty: My body is bad. My body is disgusting. My body is something for me to fight against. My body will not cooperate with my desire to be thin. My body is a disappointment to the people around me. I hate how all these studies and articles just assume as true that it is the natural order of things that fat girls will feel bad about themselves, as if this is, in fact, the proper way to view yourself when you are fat. No, this is not natural. This does not come from looking in the mirror. Girls are inculcated with messages that fatness is bad and that their bodies are their enemies. Loving your body is not option. That fatness-shame, combined with the puberty-shame of our puritanical, anti-woman, anti-sex culture, means that at the onset of puberty fat girls undergo deep, deep dissociation with their bodies. This happens to all kinds of girls, but especially fat girls.

3. On the other hand, you have all these anti-sex messages coming at you, hard and fast, which says, oh your body is a temple your body is special don’t just let anyone touch it, sex is only for true love blah blah blah. But those messages can’t take hold, because you’ve already been taught that your body is bad and disgusting and is your enemy because it does not conform to the beauty ideal (and, yes, I am sad to say, there is a beauty ideal even for twelve-year-old girls). And those message are working on the other girls, who think that they will devalue their bodies if they get intimate with boys. But for fat girls, your body is already devalued, and so, it’s kind of like: FUCK IT."

Wow. Just wow.

"5. Can we talk about how we automatically assume that having more than three partners as a teenage girl is automatically a bad thing? Because I don’t see why it has to be, except for in our narratives about how promiscuity is awful. It’s only awful because it’s supposed to be awful, and presto! You get slut-shamed out the wazoo for doing it. And then you do, in fact, feel awful, because slut-shaming sucks. But you also get slut-shamed for not doing it. As has been aptly covered by every feminist everywhere, you can end up a slut for completely perplexing reasons, like because you have a single mom, or because you have big breasts, or because of your race or ethnicity, or because of a rumor that might not even be close to true.

6. Fat girls are more likely to get labeled as sluts, because “slut” is a catch-all word for women and girls who do not conform to ladylike and womanly behavior, and being fat is definitely not lady-like or womanly behavior. And look, I can say from experience, if enough people are calling you a slut, you start to believe it. You’re 12! What do you know about what a slut is? And you are hitting puberty, and having all these sexual thoughts about boys, and thinking, okay, people are saying I am a slut so OBVIOUSLY this is not normal and there must be something deeply, deeply wrong with me. Perhaps after a while, you think, hey, if everyone is calling me a slut, I might as well go ahead and be one, because they sure as hell aren’t going to stop, are they?"

Also in my memoir: remember that time that the popular girls accused you of calling Queen Popular Bee Amy G. a slut, even though you had no clue what a slut actually was and you never actually spoke to Amy G because she was popular and you were not? And then they started calling you a slut even though you were in sixth grade and had never even held hands with a boy? Remember that? Good times.

"7. I really hate that female desire is just completely erased in that MSNBC article. It chaps my hide something fierce. Because if it is the case that fat girls go through puberty earlier, why do we say “they grow boobs, so boys pressure them to have sex” rather than “they go through puberty, so they have sexual desire earlier than other girls.” Why was that not even thought of as an explanation? No. NOT POSSIBLE! Teenage girls? Actually wanting sex or sexual activity? No, it must be the boys who are making them do it. Puberty happens because of a rapid hormonal shift in your body. Those hormones do all kinds of things: make you grow boobs, get your period, grow body hair, and START FEELING SEXUAL DESIRE. Yes, so the girls who go through puberty earlier will start feeling sexual desire earlier than other girls. But we couldn’t possibly advance that as an explanation because if girls engage in sexytime because they want to, rather than because boys force them to, it doesn’t fit into our nice little narrative about how girls are being ruined by sex, does it?"

Those crazy boys -- turning all us nice girls into whores.

I've been trying to read articles like this and others with a critical eye. I will give the MSNBC folks credit for actually interviewing the study author, as opposed to so-called experts who try and boil research down into talking points to advance their own agendas. I call this Meme Roth syndrome. Finding someone who was actually involved in the research is actually quite out of the ordinary.

And I'm also, like, trying to figure out something to do with my life (i.e. Operation: Please, for the love of God, let me get out of high tech). Given that I've never really come up with a plan beyond "be a writer," I am trying to find a way to pay the bills that doesn't make me want to feel all icky inside. I've been trying to find a way to combine what I know (corp comm) with shit I am interested in: clothes, feminism, religion, food, writing, babies, etc. I am a mile wide an an inch deep. In doing some research, i stumbled across this program at Tufts and perked up. According to the website, "Americans' top sources of nutrition information are magazines, television, newspapers, and the internet. The print, broadcast, and electronic media are constantly seeking professionally-trained nutritionists who can communicate effectively. The same is true of public relations agencies, the food industry, and health and fitness centers."

The cons first:
* I already have a Masters Degree.
* Did I mention I already have a Masters Degree?
* A second MA would cost a ton of money.
* Looking at the salaries of people who have graduated from this program, nearly half make between 50 and 71K a year.
* See above.
* Course titles include words like: Epidemiology, Biochemistry, Physiology. Words that I don't entirely understand. Words that sound like science. I always sucked at Science.
* Time.

The pros:
* It sounds interesting.
* Combines interesting with 'things I already know how to do.'
* School! Yay!

So, I sent an email and asked if I could come in for an info session. It may be cool, it may not be, but it may lead me on to something new, even if it's just a different type of extracurricular class. Based on the article above, there's clearly a need for critical thinking regarding how to report on nutrition research.

And then when I'm done and we have won the lotto again, I'm going to do this program.

Kind Of A Big Deal

2:41:44. Slower than my best pace, but c'mon, it was 90 degrees and 13.1 miles, and I never stopped. Full race recap to come. One way of getting through 13.1 miles is imagining how you're going to write it up.



And a super awesome playlist doesn't hurt either:

Three Little Birds Bob Marley
Fat Bottomed Girls Queen
Back In Black AC/DC
Loveshack B-52s
Breathe The Prodigy
No Sleep Till Brooklyn Beastie Boys
Born To Run Bruce Springsteen
Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
London's Burning The Clash
Groove Is In The Heart Dee-Lite
Perfect Situation Weezer
Take Me To The Backseat The Donnas
Bright Future In Sales Fountains Of Wayne
American Idiot Green Day
Paradise City Guns N' Roses
Just Dance Lady GaGa & Colby O'Donis
Ace Of Spades Motörhead
The Seeker The Who
Just A Girl No Doubt
Solsbury Hill Peter Gabriel
Beverly Hills Weezer
Middle Of The Road The Pretenders
Firestarter The Prodigy
Portions For Foxes Rilo Kiley
We Will Rock You Queen
1979 Smashing Pumpkins
Sabotage Beastie Boys
Sugar Kane Sonic Youth
Baba O'Riley The Who
That's Not My Name The Ting Tings
Hash Pipe Weezer
Y Control Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) Bruce Springsteen
I'm The Man Who Loves You Wilco
Mamma Mia ABBA
Born In The U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen
Respect Aretha Franklin
Song 2 Blur
Love You Madly CAKE
I Want You To Want Me Cheap Trick
Jump Around House Of Pain

One Month's Worth of Outfits: Did I Learn Anything?

I started this little project on April 27 and took my last photo yesterday. It has been interesting, to say the least.

LESSON ONE:
I still have too many clothes, and/or I don't need any more clothes. Over the past few years, I have slowly (veeeery slowly) come to the realization that buying clothes is a wee bit addictive for me. If I am feeling down, I reward myself with a new dress. If I'm feeling like a fat sloth, I buy something that makes me look better (even though I probably have a bunch of 'you look nice' clothes already). If I feel old, I need to buy something that makes me look cute and hip. If I get a bonus, I "deserve" new clothes. And so on. There is something about buying something new that makes me feel like I have some fresh armor and can face the world.

Once I started being aware of this, I started culling the wardrobe. Throwing things away, making money at consignment shops like Poor Little Rich Girl and /Buffalo Exchange, and giving things to friends.

Still, in one month's worth of outfits, I only repeated sweaters TWICE. That's redonk. I still am confronted with this:



And this:



And this:



Did I mention that we (4 people) live in a 1200 square foot apartment? In the city? If I can't find anything to wear in this stash, the problem is not the clothes.

LESSON TWO
I pretty much know how to dress myself. I have watched enough episodes of What Not To Wear to know what works for my body. Fitting the smallest part with wrap dresses and belted pieces generally works best. Things that are not structured end up looking frumpy. I should painfully avoid anything that uses the word "flowy" as a descriptor.

I have an easier time with dresses because it's easier to fit my waist. Pants continue to elude me. When I look at the pictures from the last month, the pants outfits are always the ones that I like the least. I am still caught somewhere in the tweenie world between regular and plus sizes, and it shows. Either my pants are too big or I have the terror crotch.

LESSON THREE
I really need to find a tailor. See above.

LESSON FOUR
I still struggle with figuring out what my "style" as an adult is. My friend, APL, had a great comment on my denim skirt picture that noted, "I'm ultimately always just trying to recreate some great outfit I had in college. Fifteen years ago." I feel the same way a lot. While there are a multitude of outfits that I am mortified ever made it to the light of day (knee socks? black oxfords and socks with a dress?) in college and in the post-college years, I felt that I at least had a style that was my own. Most of my clothes right now are "work appropriate" and they come from stores like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic, so essentially, I look like everyone else. I don't know if this is necessarily a bad thing, but considering I spent most of my youth striving to look soooooo "alternative" (can you catch the eyes rolling back in my skull?), it just feels weird sometimes.

LESSON FIVE
I still have trouble accessorizing. I link to Already Pretty a lot because I love her shoes and jewelry, and through that site, I discovered Kendi Everyday. Both of these women have amazing style, and they can pull together clothes with the cutest accessories and bags. For example, I LOVE this outfit, and everything in it is stuff I can buy at places around her, but the way she pulled it together with the belt and the hair and shoes is just ADORBS!

Still, I'm learning. My work buddy, LT, is the jewelry goddess and she's teaching me about what I should and shouldn't wear with certain outfits. I channeled her when I bought this necklace, and I really liked the way the whole outfit turned out. My mom bought me that dress for my birthday a few years ago, and I thought it was too old looking, but um, maybe I am approaching 'too old.' Another woman I worked with said, "Did it make you so happy pulling that outfit on this morning? The necklace and the dress?" And yes, it did. It all came together and that was cool. I'll be reorganizing my jewelry to try and recreate that feeling.

LESSON SIX
File under: duh. You save a lot of money when you have a shopping ban. I pride myself on never buying anything full price and my thrifting and TJMaxxing skillz, but that adds up, and you end up with a closet full of cheap stuff. I spent only $26 on clothes in the past month and a half. I bought this dress which may have been a mistake style-wise, and an empire-waisted shirt at Buffalo Exchange for $6 because it fit perfectly. I have been tempted, but I keep reminding myself that it won't be the last great deal and I most likely don't need it (see Lesson One).

I am trying to commit to a second month of the ban, and will be extending that to books and shoes, as 6pm.com and their daily deals is going to be the death of me.

LESSON SEVEN
I am not fat. No shit, right? I can objectively look at those pictures and see a pretty normal sized person. This does not mean that I don't look at myself in that "oh, gross" sort of way more often than not, but seeing me in pictures just reaffirms that most of this stuff, as usual, is in my head.

That being said, I donated my entire lot of "when I lose the weight" clothes to Goodwill and some consignment jobs. I don't need a reminder of what I'm not. I need to be good with what I am.

LESSON EIGHT
I am prone to fits of conspicuous consumerism. I said more times than I care to repeat, "I bet these clothes would look a lot better if I had a nicer camera and better lighting." Not taking every picture in my bathroom might have helped with that too.

LESSON NINE
I can be really dumb sometimes. I'm in pretty good shape because of all this training for the half marathon. I don't think I lost any real weight, but some things are fitting looser. I spent half the day that I wore this outfit, fiddling with the pants and trying to keep them up, wondering if there was some kind of invention that would help keep them from ending up beneath my belly roll. Most people would refer to that invention as a belt.

LESSON TEN
The little things, like taking pictures of yourself in cute clothes, can sometimes be the mood booster you need. That, and Sam Summer.

Insane in the Membrane - I Remember High School -- Writing Things

So my first two weeks post-weaning are over, and now is the time when my hormones are supposed to level off and I return to the land of the living. Or the land of the not choking down Zoloft and wine and wishing I could go to sleep for three weeks. I have my fingers crossed. Zygote ended up with a double ear infection, so what would have been a trying couple of weeks anyway, have been peppered with baby tantrums and screaming and non-stop whining.

Things not to do when you are feeling like the above: watch the sobfest that is My Sister's Keeper. I really have no idea if this movie is actually good or just Lifetime good, but dying children and family dramas? Not the right day for that kind of stuff.

So I moved on to music. Or more specifically, I moved on to The Smiths and blog trolling. Have I mentioned my love of Fatshionista? It's one of my daily reads, and I love the clothes, and the other topics, and then I found out in the Globe that the blogger lives in the area, and I had one of my 'omg, we should totally be BFFs and you're going to think I'm really funny and we'll hang out and I'll love your clothes' inner monologues.

Anyway, Lesley wrote this great post “Spitting in a wishing well”: On music and adolescence and memory, and it was just the right read at the right time, and I spent some time doodling about all those weird high school memories. Her pull quotes followed by my stream-of-consciousness ramblings.

"There is backstory: when I was sixteen I decided that nearly everyone who went to my high school was terribly boring, not least because no one knew about the music I liked (never mind, for now, that I liked the music I liked to some extent because no one else knew about it) and the music I liked was, at the time, the single most important thing in my life. In retrospect my taste in music was hardly distinguished so much as it was intentionally obscure. At any rate, I went to every all-ages show I could afford — someday I’ll tell you the story of realizing a guy in the mosh pit at a Bad Religion show was in my class, and the devastating dismissal I received when I attempted to chat him up about the show in the hall at school the following day — searching for someplace different to belong. I was too soft and brainy for the punks; I wasn’t angular or awkward enough for the goths. What else was there?"

Right? I was so proud of myself for owning Nirvana's Bleach BEFORE THEY WERE COOL. Can you see me rolling my eyes? And the fact that I got to wear my cool, older boyfriend's Dead Milkmen concert t-shirt was too cool for school. Yeah, that boyfriend? He worked at a record store. You can't get much cooler than that. AND he went to a different school. Editorial note: he was actually a real person, not one of those "I have a girlfriend that lives in Canada" deals. When I went to college, I ran into someone from my high school (and by ran into, I mean, got really drunk with) who said, "What WERE you? I mean, you dressed like a punk. You listened to music. But you were in the smart kid classes." Story of my life.

"One of these friends was a year or two older than me, and she published zines about music. Remember zines? Midnight sojourns at Kinko’s making copies? Casual competition over who could discover the best new music first, and get credit for spreading it around? . . . . .Wednesday nights were open mic nights. I read poetry. Yes. I read high school poetry, embarrassing, trifling, self-righteous, loud. I did! "

Wait for it...I had a zine. Called 'The Sphincter.' Oh God. It was totally going to "be discovered." Kind of like my blog! And this wasn't high school, but in college, at Zopies, I read a really bad poem I wrote titled "Boy in The Yellow Sweater" about a guy that I drooled over, who was a poet with his own zine. And holy shit -- Zopies has a Facebook page! When I got married the first time, my mom threw me a shower and gave me this scrapbook that she made for me with a bunch of my poems that had been published in the school literary magazine. It was really sweet, but I am mortified that my fifteen-year-old self could take herself seriously enough to pen the following opener, "she sits in the silent darkness. Contemplating? Death." The shame.

"I also remember the newfangled girl-fronted music that was cropping up around then, and even today when I hear some of those songs, that forgotten teenager wakes up a little. I remember hearing Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know” for the first time in the parking lot of a Miami Subs at 2 o’clock in the morning, the radio DJ announcing it as a new song that was “probably inappropriate” to play during the day. I remember seeing Morrissey for the first time in the video for “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” on 120 Minutes (thus began a long and predictably tragic love affair with Morrissey and The Smiths). That teenager persists, when these songs materialize over the speaker systems in department stores or reworked as television-commercial soundtracks."

120 Minutes! Seeing Babes in Toyland, who still sort of rock my running playlist. And Liz Phair before she got crappy. And How Soon Is Now, and playing these lyrics

There's a club, if you'd like to go
You could meet someone who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die

over and over ON A CASSETTE. And then like a hundred years later (also known as, two years ago), DS and I went to see Morrissey at The Bank of America Pavilion and he did 3 songs before cancelling the show and it sucked!

"He was surprisingly happy to see me, and after we exchanged the basics of what we were up to, he said, “Wow, man, I always thought you were so cool in high school.” I was astonished and blew past the compliment to get the hell out of there. I couldn’t imagine that anyone in my class thought of me as “cool”; at school "

This has happened to me on multiple occasions. Given how I would have/would cut a bitch to be cool, it's always a nice surprise, but also a little sad, because really, HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS? All that time wasted thinking that everyone thought I sucked. I could have maybe made more friends, been more confident, I don't know, not listen to the Cure so goddamn much.

It was an interesting trip down memory lane. I'm working on a number of different writing exercises where you have to do character studies of yourself at different ages (this lead to a panicked text to my brother asking for the name of our middle school Language Arts teacher, a woman who I could describe in great detail and who gave me an award for 'excellence' and who had a son with a motorcycle and whose name I totally forgot). You see, while I'm having no trouble describing everybody and everything else around me, I'm having a hard time locating myself in the middle of it. And if you can't write yourself, you're kind of fucked as a writer.

I don't know where I'm going with all this, but I had a kick reading Fatshionista today, sort of like the thrill of remembering high school and Sassy when I read How Sassy Changed My Life.

Coming Up

1. Books that I am reading.
2. Lost finale (otherwise known as Matthew Fox is still hot, hot, hot)
3. Recap of closet project. New pics are up.