snow

Happy Birthday, Kristen Boyer Errera!!!

We had a small snowstorm yesterday and 5.5 inches landed in my backyard. It was lovely snow—straight out of a movie—and until mid-morning today, when it began melting, everything was unspeakably beautiful.

We were expecting some ice last night, so as soon as it stopped snowing I set aside my freelancing and went outside to shovel, shovel, shovel. I wanted to do the shoveling while the snow was light and fluffy, instead of concrete-heavy. We ended up not getting as much ice as predicted, but even the small amount we got would’ve made shoveling this morning more difficult.

Meanwhile, I’m impressed that I managed to do all that shoveling without pulling any major muscles. How the hell did I manage that?


song heard most recently before posting:
Cross-Eyed Bear—Damien Rice

just a small whine

Last night I went to the Bethesda Barnes & Noble to look for some gifts and a card. They really ought to oil their escalators, because they currently sound like dogs yelping and crying in pain. Seriously, they sound like puppies are repeatedly being crushed beneath someone’s heel. It’s unnerving.

Once again, I was unable to snag a copy of heat magazine (grrr), but I did have some minor success in the gift-buying department, including snagging two British lad mags that were wrapped in plastic, and thus made me feel like I was purchasing porn. At a store with a Starbucks in it.

On a cool note, I was flipping through the newest PostSecret book, which I have yet to buy, and I found someone’s secret wedged inside. I’d heard that some people were leaving secrets in bookstore copies of the various PostSecret books, but that’s the first time I encountered one in the flesh. It gave me the biggest grin. I loved it. And no, I won’t reveal the person’s secret to you.

Then I realized that my meter was probably running low, so I ran back to my car. And I found…a parking ticket. Oh, damn. That’s only the second parking ticket I’ve gotten in my life—the first one came when I attended a Chernobyl 20th anniversary memorial observation on Capitol Hill last April and inadvertently parked in a 2-hour-parking-only zone. I worked in Bethesda for four years, so I know how notoriously bloodthirsty those parking cops can be, but although the ticket is only $35, I’m still irked by it, mainly because it’s like, “Does Bethesda—a town that has money oozing out of every pore—really need my freaking $35?? I think not!”

Anyway...


song heard most recently before posting:
Indian Summer—Tori Amos

Happy Fastnacht Day!

Screw Mardi Gras and Carnaval, man. Today is all about the fastnachts! These doughnuts are a traditional treat from Germany and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country and are served on Fat Tuesday. They traditionally served a practical function: emptying the pantry of fat and butter before Lent, when those things were forbidden. Pennsylvania Dutch fastnachts are made from fried potato dough and are often coated with sugar. Where I’m from in the PA Dutch Country, many Catholic Churches have fastnacht sales as a fundraiser.

Because they’re often made with lard, they can sit like a chunk of concrete in your stomach. That’s why I only ever tried a fastnacht once and never went back for more—my wussy stomach just couldn’t handle it. Nowadays I couldn’t eat most types of fastnachts anyway, because I’m a vegetarian and can’t eat lard. So why do I like Fastnacht Day? Because it’s part of my heritage, mostly, but also because I can’t help but love a day devoted to doughnuts. And gluttony.

My friend Debbie, another PA Dutch native, made fastnachts for her coworkers in DC, and graciously shared the yummy-looking photos with me.

An article from today’s edition of my hometown newspaper, where fastnachts get front-page coverage:

They’re firing up the fryers for annual rite at St. Cecilia
By DAVID MEKEEL
Staff Writer
Lebanon Daily News

Nearly seven tons of flour, almost three tons of sugar, 720 pounds of margarine, 1,000 gallons of milk and more than 1,000 eggs.

Sounds like someone’s going to be busy in the kitchen.

It’s that time of year again when the workers at St. Cecilia Church, 202 E. Lehman St., strap on their aprons for what can only be described as all-out fasnacht frenzy.

For as long as almost anyone can remember, members of St. Cecilia have been holding an annual fried-doughnut fund-raiser for Fasnacht Day, the traditional day of feasting — some might say gluttony — before the start of Lenten-season fasting. The big day is tomorrow, and they’re at it once again at St. Cecilia, frying up more than 80,000 of the traditional German treats.

“Our shifts start Saturday night and run around the clock until we run out of ingredients Tuesday afternoon,” explained Anna Ilgenfritz, one of the organizers of the fund-raiser, as the ingredients arrived at the church’s social hall last week. “It’s quite an operation.”

About 100 volunteers will work shifts preparing the fasnachts, using two commercial mixers, five deep fryers and about 7,000 boxes to pack them for sale by the dozen.

They can sell as many as they can make.

“We had over 3,000 dozen pre-ordered,” Ilgenfritz said. “And if you didn’t pre-order, you have to come wait in line. It gets pretty busy in here, too. Sometimes they stand there for a couple of hours.”

So what’s the big deal about the St. Cecilia fasnacht?

“This is not your typical supermarket doughnut,” Ilgenfritz explained. “I would say it’s very unique. People just love them.”

They must. Those who pre-ordered had to order at least six dozen, Ilgenfritz said. St. Cecilia’s biggest single order was for 140 dozen.

“Some businesses get them for their employees, or people freeze them or send them to family members,” she said.

Along with the wonderful taste — Ilgenfritz likes hers still warm from the fryer with a cup of coffee — there is another aspect of the fasnacht sale that those involved say they cherish.

“This all started with German immigrant women probably more than 75 years ago,” she said of the fund-raiser. “I’m proud to be a part of it. To think, it was started on such a small scale with a handful of immigrant women, and it has grown to this scale. It’s a beautiful tradition.”

Ilgenfritz also said she loves getting a chance to meet and work with her fellow parishioners.

Joe Carrara, who was in charge of placing the orders for all of the ingredients this year, seemed to share Ilgenfritz’s sentiments.

“The first time I came here I was impressed,” he said of his first experience with the fund-raiser in the mid 1970s. “I came from working in a factory, and that’s the type thing they were doing here. They were so well-organized.”

Both Ilgenfritz and Carrara have been involved in organizing the event for the past four or five years, but they look at its future a bit differently.

“I tell Anna if we can make it 10 more years we’ll be OK,” Carrara said.

“Oh no! I’m already looking for a replacement,” Ilgenfritz said, rolling her eyes.

While she loves being involved in the sale, Ilgenfritz said, it takes its toll.

“I get excited. The night before I usually can’t sleep too well,” she said. “And afterwards, the cleanup, that’s another ordeal. There’s sugar on the floor. There’s flour all over the kitchen. It’s a mess.”

But, in the end, it’s all worth it, she said. Last year, the fund-raiser garnered about $24,000 for the church.

For those who did not pre-order their fastnachts, they will be on sale at the church’s social hall from 7 a.m. until they run out tomorrow. Each dozen costs $5.50.

song heard most recently before posting:
Now’s the Time—Charlie Parker

not dying to dye

Happy Birthday, Leo Boyer!!!

(yesterday)

Happy Birthday, Susan Boyer!!!

(today)

This is another freelancing weekend for me, with yesterday taking the brunt of the load (I worked from 11:30am - 9:30pm). Today I was finished by 3pm, which felt absolutely delicious. Tomorrow is a holiday, and I’m sure I’ll be spending it vegging until I damn near explode. Last weekend I didn’t have to work at all, so I took time out from relaxing and Netflixing to hit two small exhibits in DC: Northern Lights/Nordic Visions at the Hillyer Art Space and Silver Mysteries: Black & White Photographs of 1930s Washington by Volkmar Wentzel at the Decatur House.

This weekend I also need to [*cringe*] dye my hair. Note that I didn’t say I want to dye my hair. No, unfortunately, I need to dye my hair. I don’t want to do this. Contrary to what my teenaged self, with her black hair dye, would tell you, I actually like my hair color. It’s a nice shade of dark brown and has equally nice red highlights that surface in the sun. I’m not in a hurry to shed that color, and I think dyeing it seems like both a pain and a potential disaster. But my hair is turning white at warp speed, and because I don’t want to look old before my time, I feel like I have no choice but to dye it.

As much as I’d love to go red, I think it would be too much work to maintain it (plus I’d have to dye my eyebrows, which...no thanks). I couldn’t decide if I should just dye my hair the same color it already is or if I should try something different (but not so different that it requires tons of upkeep). After hemming and hawing in the hair dye aisle at Target long enough to sprout vegetation, I decided to compromise with a dye color called chocolate cherry. It should be hard to screw up, but if I succeed and my hair turns, like, carrot-orange, then I’ll just chop off everything. I’m currently growing out my hair to 10+ inches so I can cut it and donate it to charity for the third time, and chopping off everything now would set me back a year, but oh well, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll just start growing it again from scratch.

We’ll see…


song heard most recently before posting:
Symphony No. 30 in D—W.A. Mozart

VD

Like a bout of herpes, Valentine’s Day has flared up yet again. This year Mother Nature gave me the greatest Valentine’s Day gift: a day off work. In a way. A smallish ice-sleet-snow storm gave my office a two-hour delay (and thus two extra gorgeous hours of sleep for me), and then I, along with many of my coworkers, opted to work from home today rather than deal with the gridlock and everything else that comes with slushy, slick roads. So, while I’m still working today, at least I’m working from home, which means working in comfy sweats with cats by my side. That counts for something.

You may have guessed that I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. You know, I almost hate to admit this, because it just makes me look like a bitter, frosty-hearted shrew (which I can be, but that’s beside the point). People automatically think that I don’t like V Day because I’m resentful that I’m single, and blah blah blah sour grapes. But no matter what anybody thinks, that’s not the truth. It was, once. I was bitter each Valentine’s Day because I was alone and didn’t want to see other people being all lovey-dovey-gooey and showering each other with cutesy hearts and flowers.

Not anymore. These days I like being single, and that doesn’t go away just because it’s Valentine’s Day. What I dislike is the excessive commercialization of the holiday; the rote, cookie-cutter sentiments it inspires; and the exclusionary competitiveness involved. It places so much pressure on people; if the day proves to be anything less than a fairy tale, the disappointment is tangible. At college people flaunted the flowers and gifts they received, and those of us who received nothing felt like the gum wedged between the treads of a shoe. In adulthood it’s not much different—some folks coyly make a big show of receiving flowers and I Wuv You balloons at the office.

It makes me cringe seeing so many people buy bland, mundane, overpriced merchandise just because they feel like they have to. Obligation is not romantic! I would like to see more people think beyond the Hallmark cards, roses, heart-shaped supermarket boxes of waxy chocolates, cutesy-wutesy teddy bears, and diamond jewelry. There’s just such a lack of originality there. I mean, some people love that stuff, and so that’s fine for them. But most people want something that means something on a personal level. So do something that is truly romantic and thoughtful and personalized. And don’t let a day on the calendar—or Hallmark—define the perimeters of when you show someone you love and appreciate him or her. True romance and thoughtfulness should be scattered throughout the year—not held hostage to February 14th.

Anyway, to show that I’m not completely curdled, I’m providing a list of some of my favorite love songs from over the years (favorite love poems are here; favorite love quotes are here). This list isn’t 100% thorough; it’s composed of beloved songs that are currently popping to mind. I’m sure plenty are missing!

There is a Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
Honey and the Moon – Joseph Arthur
Love You ’Till the End – Pogues
At Last – Etta James
Until – Sting
Fields of Gold – Sting (but I actually prefer the Eva Cassidy version)

The Way You Look Tonight – various artists (I like the Tony Bennett version best)

Cheek to Cheek – Irving Berlin (I like the Eva Cassidy version best)
All I Want is You – U2

Ch’ella mi creda – Giacomo Puccini
The Promise – Tracy Chapman
Grow Old with You – Adam Sandler
Sanctuary – Madonna
Case of You – Joni Mitchell

Such Great Heights – Iron & Wine
Walk the Line – Johnny Cash
Thank You – Led Zeppelin (but I prefer the Tori Amos version)
Here with Me – Dido
Possession – Sarah McLachlan

Dance Me to the End of Love – Leonard Cohen

Amie – Damien Rice

Crossroads – Don McLean

Songbird – Stevie Nicks (I prefer the Eva Cassidy version)

The Kiss – Trevor Jones (from the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack)

Beyond the Sea – various artists (I quite like the Robbie Williams version)
Endless Love – Lionel Richie & Diana Ross
Everlong (acoustic version) - Foo Fighters

Make Me Happy – Kermit and Miss Piggy
I Need You – Leann Rimes
Wonderwall – Oasis (I love the Ryan Adams version, too)
Home to Me – Josh Kelley
I’m On Fire – Bruce Springsteen
Can’t Smile Without You– Barry Manilow

Looks Like We Made It – Barry Manilow
Everything I Own – Bread
Through the Years – Kenny Rogers
You Decorated My Life – Kenny Rogers
Your Song – Elton John

Come to my Window – Melissa Etheridge
I Drove All Night – Cyndi Lauper
Blood of Me – Heather Nova
Winterblue – Heather Nova

Like Lovers Do – Heather Nova
The Animals Were Gone – Damien Rice
Eve the Apple of My Eye – BellX1
Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Mad About You – Hooverphonic
Out of the Woods – Nickle Creek
Close to You – The Carpenters
Just You and I – Eddie Rabbitt & Crystal Gayle
I Say a Little Prayer – various artists

C’est lui que mon coeur à choisi – Edith Piaf
Delirious Love – Neil Diamond
Create Me – Neil Diamond
Secret World – Peter Gabriel
All I Ask of You – Andrew Lloyd Webber
You are the Everything – R.E.M.
Song for the Asking – Simon & Garfunkel
For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her – Simon & Garfunkel
I Am Stretched on Your Grave – Sinéad O’Connor
When We Dance – Sting
Why Should I Cry for You – Sting
The Same Deep Water as You – The Cure
Just Like Heaven – The Cure
Original of the Species – U2
Unchained Melody – Righteous Brothers
Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
Have I Told You Lately – Van Morrison
#1 Crush – Garbage (definitely more of an obsession song, but who cares!)
Constant Craving – kd lang
Kiss Me – Sixpence None the Richer
Don’t Know Much – Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville
Groovy Kind of Love – The Mindbenders
E lucevan le stelle… – Giacomo Puccini
At This Moment – Billy Vera & The Beaters
Always – Atlantic Starr
Faithfully – Journey
The Gift – Annie Lennox
Lovesong – The Cure

song heard most recently before posting:
Vidrar vel til loftarasa—Sigur Ros

“it’s so hot” xoxo

I noticed that the Washington City Paper stopped editing its personal ads. This is annoying but also beneficial, because it helps to weed out the idiots. Like this ad:

i’m a nice,loving,warming person i’m new at this i need a teacher to teach me i’m looking for someone who wants to start out as friends and then well see it depend how u treat me i want a women to comfort me in anyway i’m looking for that hot passion love that can make me want you more and more everyday. oh i love to have sex so if u want to be with me have to please me when ever i want lol i love it when someone talks to me dirty during sex “it’s so hot” xoxo.

Dude. Seriously?

I think I would rather eat my own puke than respond to an ad like that. Does that make me a snob? Maybe. I’m not expecting anyone to be a walking Chicago Manual of Style, but coherence would be nice. Throwing in a period and/or capital letter every once in a while would be nice. Although, to be fair, this person did use a correct apostrophe in “it’s,” which is more than I can say for many other folks out there.

The root of my quibble? A personal ad is a first impression. If you can’t even be bothered to sound coherent when making a first impression, what will you be like weeks or months into the relationship when things get comfortable? I just think it looks lazy and slipshod. It’d be like if I had a blind date on a Saturday night and I showed up at that date looking exactly like I did on Saturday afternoon. Which means paint-splattered pajama pants or sweats, quite possibly with a ripped crotch; an old paint- or food-splattered t-shirt from high school; my hair in a messy, greasy knot on top of my head; and zit cream and/or Vaseline (hey, it’s winter; my skin is dry) smeared on my face. It would show a lack of respect (and profound lack of social skills) if I showed up on a blind date looking like that. It’s fine when I’m alone in my apartment and vegging or spending the day working on freelancing (a girl’s gotta be comfortable to do both), but it would be appalling to look that way when I’m meeting someone for the first time. A personal ad is the same way, as far as I’m concerned. So kudos to the City Paper staff for separating the wheat from the chaff right from the get-go.

On Saturday I was awoken at 4:40am by the sound of my upstairs neighbor gabbing on the phone. His praying has awoken me in the past at that hour, but this is the first time his phone-gabbiness (that man talks on the phone more than a 14-year-old girl) has awoken me. Who the hell chats on the phone at 4:40am??

I had to spend much of that day working, but Sunday was clear for doing some secondhand shopping and watching a few DVDs. Plus I wrapped birthday presents, got started on Olivia’s valentine (I make one for her every year), and meticulously cut out several large, blank hearts from heavy-stock paper so I can help her make crayon- and sticker-heavy valentines for her parents and grandparents the next time I see her. And I sewed buttons on a shirt, too. Go figure.

Some random and wonderful links:

• An excellent blog posting on depression.
  

• Fabulous jewelry made out of steel and concrete.
  

song heard most recently before posting:
Fantastic Voyage—Coolio

gripe, gripe, gripe

Yesterday my boss told me about a recent AP article. It was a story out of Bethlehem, PA, where he used to live, about an elderly man who sent his local newspaper a letter to the editor in which he stated that when Saddam Hussein was executed, “they hanged the wrong man.” The letter-writer was then visited by Secret Service agents. For a letter to the editor written to a small, local newspaper. That’s where we’re headed, folks. Welcome to your new life. Oh, and last year this same man received a visit from two FBI agents after he wrote a letter to the same newspaper advocating a civil war to unseat Bush. I want to give this fiery old guy a hearty pat on the back.

Me: “So, uh, I guess maybe I should remove that F**k Bush sticker you gave me from the rear window of my car?”

Boss: “Yeah, that’s probably wise. Especially since you’re inside the Beltway.”

Me: “Well, that sucks, but I don’t want to end up in Guantanamo Bay—you know I can’t stand heat and humidity.”

And now for my Gripe o’ the Day (no, not the America-is-scary segment above!). BBC News is reporting that Catholic leaders in England and Wales are saying that because their teachings prevent their church-run adoption agencies from allowing gay couples to adopt children, they would rather close those agencies than abide by rulings that would force them to comply. The Church of England has now backed that decision. The ruling in question is The Equality Act, which is due to come into effect in England, Wales, and Scotland in April, and will outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities, and services on the basis of sexual orientation.

I’m gonna preface my gripe by saying two things.

First of all, I’m not a huge cheerleader of Catholicism or organized religion in general. I mean, if religion brings you comfort, joy, and peace; if you choose that religion on your own volition—rather than just blindly accepting it because it’s how you were raised; and if you aren’t afraid to question that religion when doubts arise, then I think it’s wonderful for you to be a believer. But I personally do not pull anything meaningful out of organized religion. And its many downsides (wars fought in god’s name, for example) kind of override any advantages religion might offer me.

Second of all, I was raised Catholic. I’m talking the whole she-bang—everything short of parochial school (although I did attend a Jesuit university!). I was even baptized Catholic twice. (You read it correctly: twice. The first time was an emergency baptism in my parents’ living room, when nobody thought I was going to live long enough to see a full-scale christening, and the second time, after everyone was pretty sure I wasn’t going to kick it in the near future, was a traditional church baptism with all the bells and whistles.) I attended CCD for years. I attended mass every Sunday (my sister and I had to be on our deathbed before we were allowed to skip mass) and attended mass on the most obscure holy days you can imagine. I did confession, had my First Communion, attended nighttime Confirmation classes, got Confirmed, prayed for the souls in Purgatory, kept a vial of holy water in my bedroom after being wildly freaked out by Angel Heart and Prince of Darkness, blah blah blah. (Don’t believe that I was a good little Catholic girl? Click here to see a picture of me—along with the rest of my First Communion class—in my full-on creepy bride-of-Christ garb.)

I mention my former Catholicism because I think it gives me a bit more leeway with criticizing the Church. It’s easy to criticize and condemn something you don’t understand (ie, Christians who condemn all Muslims as being terrorists), and because I have 22 years of in-the-trenches experience with Catholicism, I feel like I have a bit more breathing room with saying, “Hey, I gots some problems with your tenets, yo.” Like the fact that women can’t be priests, bishops, or popes. And the fact that those priests, bishops, and popes—who are, for all intents and purposes, asexual beings, because they choose to lead a life of celibacy—feel that it’s okay to tell other people how to lead their sexual lives (eg, don’t use birth control, don’t have abortions, don’t be gay, don’t have sex outside of marriage).

But anyway, back to my Gripe o’ the Day.

Okay, look, under ordinary circumstances, I’m all for people not being forced to do something that goes against their beliefs. A pro-life doctor shouldn’t be forced to give abortions. An atheist student shouldn’t be forced to say “one nation, under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. If these Catholic adoption agencies don’t want to adopt children out to gay households…well, I think it’s an appalling choice, personally, but since it really goes against their spiritual grain, fine, let them refuse. But to want an exemption from a law? A law that’s beneficial no less? (And yes, I think a law constructed to protect people whose rights and protections are tenuous at best, a law that seeks to end discrimination, is beneficial.) Is it right for the Church to be exempted from a law? The National Secular Society pointed out that allowing an exemption for the Church would open the “floodgates for a never-ending series of demands.” Everybody will be vying for one exemption or another.

That’s what bugs me about this whole thing—this idea of being above the law. That and the fact that these people—contrary to what they say—do not have children’s best interests at heart. How can they? They’d rather keep kids in orphanages, institutions, and in the foster care system than let them be adopted by loving gay households. How is that good for the kids? A non-gay adopter might come along at some point, or might not. The kid could be stuck without a home for years before adoption takes place. And if the kid is non-white, older than a baby or toddler, or has any semblance of physical or mental disability, his/her chances are lowered substantially. That ain’t pretty, but it’s the truth. There are good people out there who are willing to adopt older kids and disabled kids, but they are outnumbered by the kids who need homes.

Please, don’t tell me gays and lesbians are incapable of raising kids properly and morally. They do just as good a job as anybody else. Often better. Like Augusten Burroughs said in Magical Thinking: “But as a rule, gay guys do not make bad parents; they make excellent parents. Because unlike straight people, gay people can’t have kids by accident. Only by power of attorney. I would be a questionable parent not because I’m gay, but because I was raised by lunatics.” We’ve all heard the horror stories about straight people who are incapable of raising kids properly and morally. Parents who ignore their kids, beat their kids, molest their kids, starve their kids, keep their kids locked in cages. Straight people are just as capable as gay people of fucking up their kids, abusing them, or, at the very least, simply not instilling any morals in them. If the Church is that concerned about gay households being destructive for kids, then they need to investigate those household thoroughly before allowing them to adopt kids, just like they are hopefully investigating straight households trying to adopt kids, and they also need to keep tabs on the households after the adoptions go through.

There’s the argument that kids shouldn’t be sent to a home without a mother figure (two gays) or father figure (two lesbians). Well, what about all the single-parent households that are already out there? Does this mean that they’re inadequate or downright toxic to children? Look at how many kids are being raised without a father or a mother. Are they all disasters? Absolutely not! And even if you do have a mother and a father raising the child together, it doesn’t mean they’re both parenting equally. One of the parents could be physically absent much of the time and/or emotionally absent all of the time. I should know. I’ve been there. Just because there is technically a mother and a father in a household doesn’t mean the child is getting a positive and/or consistent influence from both sexes.

And then there’s the argument that gay parents will turn their adopted kids gay. Please. It’s shocking to think that this belief still persists in our supposedly enlightened 21st century age. Homosexuality stems from biology, not influence or coercion. Biology. It’s why straight parents sometimes have gay kids. If the Church is concerned about the welfare of kids around gays, then *cough*maybe they shouldn’t have shuffled around all those pedophile priests—sending them to new parishes with a fresh crop of victims instead of sending them to jail or forcing them to retire*cough*. I’m just sayin’.

I just think the important issue here isn’t so much sticking by personal beliefs, but making sure as many children as possible are adopted into loving, stable homes—be they gay, straight, black, white, mixed race, Christian, Pagan, Muslim, whatever.

I will shut up now.


song heard most recently before posting:
Endless Deep—U2

for whom the veg tolls

Happy Birthday, Jill Schade!!!

This is a three-day holiday weekend and one of those ultra-rare weekends when I don’t have to work, so I’m spending my time doing household stuff, shopping in Takoma Park and at a dodgy-yet-cool gigantic thrift shop in Adelphi, watching DVDs, and vegging, vegging, vegging. Can’t get much better than that.




song heard most recently before posting:
Worn Me Down—Rachael Yamagata

more questions & answers

Here are some more of those questionnaire thingies that circulate on email; I may have filled these out already on this blog, but I can’t be bothered to check!

An identity alphabet

[A is for age:] 32

[B is for booze of choice:] English cider, although I rarely drink any alcohol at all, and when I do, I drink very little.

[C is for career:] Editing/Publishing

[D is for your dog’s name:] It was Benny. My dear boy died in 1999.

[E is for essential item you use everyday:] A tie between my bed and my TV.

[F is for favorite song at the moment:] A tie between Rootless Tree (Damien Rice), Your Ex-Lover is Dead (Stars), Breathe Me (Sia), In the Sun (Joseph Arthur), and The Moment I Said It (Imogen Heap)

[G is for favorite games:] Super Breakout (on Atari, because I’m a purist), Same Game for Windows, Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition

[H is for Home town:] Lebanon, PA

[I is for instruments you play:] None, unfortunately.

[J is for favorite juice:] A toss-up between apple, orange (no pulp, please!), and blueberry.

[K is for kids:] I have none and I’m not sure if I want any. The jury’s still out on that one.

[L is for last hug:] Krista’s dog Max!

[M is for marriage:] I’m not, but I wouldn’t mind being married someday, if I found the right person.

[N is for name of your crush:] No real crushes, thank god! Those things are the bane of my existence. Celeb husbands include: John Krasinski, Damien Rice, Colin Firth, Josh Groban (don’t like his music—just his adorable face & hair!), Hugh Laurie, Phil Keoghan, Jake Webber. Oh, and that dastardly EJ Wells (James Scott) on Days. Lately I’ve also played host to several embarrassing Brit celeb mini-crushes, too: Richard Hammond, Piers Morgan, and the main dude on Life On Mars. (I said they were embarrassing.) And I kind of have a little crush on Billy Bush, but only because he looks like Ryan O’Neal in Love Story, and that’s one of my favorite movies!

[O is for overnight hospital stays:] A few during infancy and one in 1997.

[P is for phobias:] torn leather seats, worms

[Q is for quote:] “People who stand back and watch the commotion for years will suddenly take the world by storm.” --G. Lorin Swenson (more of my faves can be read at: http://www.jenniferboyer.com/quotations.html)

[R is for biggest regret:] A tie between not going on meds sooner than I did and letting certain people treat me like utter shit.

[S is for status:] As in social status? Zilch. Relationship status? Single.

[T is for time you wake up:] 6:30am on weekdays; usually 10-11:30am on weekends.

[U is for underwear:] No thanks!

[V is for vegetable you love:] corn, tomatoes

[W is for worst habit:] laziness, procrastination

[X is for x-rays you’ve had:] A few relating to craniosynostosis, a torn temporalis muscle, and acephalgic migraines. Plus the x-rays my dentist takes every year.

[Y is for yummy food you make:] I’m an awful cook! I guess I make boxed food best!

[Z is for zodiac sign:] Geminis rock da house y’all! ___________________________________________________

In the last 24 hours have you...

1. Had sex: Ha!

2. Bought something: Way too many things at My Organic Market.

3. Gotten sick: Nope, but half my department is plagued with one thing or another.

4. Sang: Surprisingly, no. Often I’ll sing along to music during my commute, but today I didn’t.

5. Been kissed: No, although Plath usually kisses me a few times a week.

6. Eaten something: Dinner last night: vegetarian sushi. Breakfast this morning: a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. Morning snack: blueberry bagel with cream cheese.

7. Felt stupid: Surprisingly, no.

8. Talked to an ex: No.

9. Missed someone: No one in particular... ___________________________________________________

Last person who....

1. Slept in your bed: Freyja.

2. Saw you cry: My cats. I watched Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List and those movies always make me brutz.

3. Made you cry: Oh, I don’t even remember. I try not to let people get to me like that anymore. It was probably my grandfather, when he had a health scare a few months ago and I really worried he wasn’t going to make it.

4. Went to the movies with you: Myself, to see a Czech film (Lunacy).

5. You went to the mall with: Shesus, I don’t know. I avoid malls like the plague. Probably the last time I was in a mall with someone was like two years ago, when Kristen and I took Olivia to Montgomery Mall to enter her in a Beautiful Baby contest. ___________________________________________________

Random.....

1. Do you love someone: Friends, families, and pets, absolutely.

2. What book are you reading now: Fifty Russian Winters, by Margaret Wettlin.

3. Worst feeling in the world: Unrequited love. And the loss of a loved one to death.

4. Future kids’ names: I probably won’t have kids, but I dig the names Freyja, Finn/Finley, Eion, Benjamin, Oliver, Sebastian, Linnea, Magda, and Alistair.

5. Sleep with a stuffed animal: Rowlf stays on my bed!

6. What’s under your bed: Boxes and containers of stuff (storage in my apartment is very limited), my Atari set, my dream journal, and lots of cat hair and dust bunnies. Or shall we say dust yetis, because they are huge.

7. Favorite sports to watch: Nothing.

8. Location: In da DC ’burbs.

9. Piercing/Tattoos: Pierced ears, nothing else. Although I had a pierced nose in college.

11. What are you most scared of right now: Bird flu. Never being able to afford a house. Loved ones dying.

12. Where do you want to get married: In an old estate in Lebanon County.

13. Who do you really hate: My upstairs neighbors, Bush, Bush’s cronies, right-wing nuts, religious fundamentalists, people who think gay marriage destroys the “sanctity” of marriage (yeah, like straight people don’t destroy that sanctity themselves all. the. time.).

14. Do you have a job: I’ve got six jobs—my main job and five freelancing jobs.

15. Do you like being around people: Not really.

16. Have you ever liked someone you had no chance with: Sha!

17. Have you ever cried: Ever? Do people actually say “no” to that one? Of course I’ve cried!

18. Are you lonely right now: No.

19. Song that’s stuck in your head a lot: I keep getting earworms from Damien Rice’s new album. But I love that album, so discomfort is minimal.

20. Played strip poker: No—poker doesn’t interest me. I’d like to take a strip aerobics class, though.

21. Menage a trois: No thanks!

22. One night stand: No thanks!

23. Sex in public: Have I ever? No. Would I ever? Eh...

24. Married: Have I ever? No. Would I ever? Sure.

25. Divorced: Same as my answer for #24. ___________________________________________________

1. Something purple within 5 feet of you: The beak on a little rubber monster thingy I got as a Halloween present (he’s sitting on my monitor).

2. The sexiest item of clothing you own: Uh...my neon pink wig, maybe? Or my knee-high boots?

3. Your nails were last painted: Fingernails—I have no idea. Toenails—last summer. I always paint them in the summer because I wear a lot of sandals.

4. The weirdest thing you’ve ever heated in the microwave: Probably socks or something like that, since I’ve got poor circulation in my toes. (Do I sound 80 yet?)

5. How much Japanese do you know: None except “domo arigato”! (Thanks, Styx!)

6. Do you look good in yellow: It’s probably not my best color, since I’m pale, but I don’t think it’s horrible on me.

7. Do you sing: I sing in the car and sing to my cats, much to their chagrin, I’m sure.

8. Ever danced naked in front of a crowd: No, but if I wanted to inflict PTSD on the world, I’d do it.

9. Do you spit: Usually not.

10. Is your hair long enough to chew on: After cutting off 11 inches in December 2005, it is finally reaching a length where I can nibble on the ends if I really want to (which I don’t).

11. Least favorite color: Hmmm...teal, maybe?

12. Ever had Dippin’ Dots: I don’t think so...

13. Ever played an instrument: No, sadly. Well, I did have a synthesizer in junior high, and I do still remember how to play “When the Saints Come Marching In.” I just wish I had kept the music book that came with it, because it was filled with all sorts of rokkin’ tunes, like songs by Wham!

14. Ever had a H2O massage: What’s that? Does someone just shoot a jet of water at you? The thought of getting any kind of massage—except for a head massage and water massage, maybe—repulses me.

15. Do you believe in Big Foot: Yeah, sure, why not. Stranger things have happened, I guess.

16. Ever been to a palm reader: Yes, twice. But neither one mentioned my simian line!

17. Last Pez dispenser you purchased: I don’t think I’ve ever purchased one, but I’ve gotten them as gifts a few times.

18. Have you had sex in your current car: No. My Sukkamielli has virgin seats.

19. Did you have a good weekend: It was kind of terrible, actually. But it could’ve been worse.

20. What are you thinking about right now: How relieved I am that A) I don’t have to do any freelancing this weekend, and B) it’s a long weekend because of Monday being a holiday.

21. Have you ever had a black eye: After my last surgery there was yellowish bruising around my right eye; that’s the closest I’ve come to having a black eye.

22. How is today going for you: Meh.

23. Any plans for tonight: Hit the Vitamin Shoppe and Target, slump on the couch, read, watch TV.

24. Do you find Smurfette sexy? No, I was hot for Papa Smurf (I loved his rock star red pants) and Brainy Smurf (I dig guys in glasses!!)

25. Current disappointment: Where to begin? ___________________________________________________

More questions!

1. Do you have an air freshener in your car: Yeah, a diffuser with peppermint oil in it, even though I’m anosmic.

2. Do you have plants in your room: I’ve got heather in my living room that I think is dead.

3. If you could drink anything right this second what would it be: Hot chocolate, because I’m chilly.

4. Last piece of mail opened: A credit card bill.

5. Does anything hurt on your body right now: Astoundingly, no.

6. Last alcoholic drink you had: A glass of Vana Tallinn on New Year’s Eve.

7. If someone you hated died, would you laugh and spit on their grave: I might laugh, but I wouldn’t spit on their grave. Unless they did something really heinous, like rape me or someone I love, or murder someone I love (pets included).

8. What were you doing at 9 pm last night: Sitting on my bed, skimming a vitamin book, and watching Grey’s Anatomy.

9. Favorite drink at Starbucks: I never go there. I have a $10 Starbucks giftcard I received at work like two years ago and it’s still sitting in my wallet. Although, that being said, Susan and I did pop into a Starbucks on Halloween to warm up, and we had a bite to eat while there.

10. Do you exercise as much as you should: Hell to the no!

11. Did you do the deed on prom night: Doing it on prom night is so clichéd!

12. Would you give your bf/gf a second chance if they cheated on you? No!
___________________________________________________

Eye color: blue

Hair color: brown, but turning white (*flinches*)

Height: somewhere between 5’8” and 5’9”

Right handed or left handed: right

Your heritage: PA Dutch, German, Irish, Swiss, French (I think)

The shoes you wore today: My Nikes, because it’s Casual Friday.

Your weakness: Salty things (mind out of the gutter, please!), Andes mints, Cadbury chocolate eggs, marshmallow Peeps, Amy’s soy cheese pizza pockets, Cedarlane vegetarian ham and cheese pockets, Hershey’s peanut butter kisses, Yorkie bars. Non-food items: sleep, trashy British magazines, boys in geeky glasses, Perez Hilton.

Your perfect pizza: I’m a sucker for plain cheese pizza, but spinach and caramelized onions are great additions.

Goal you would like to achieve this year: Buy a house, visit friends out of state.

Your most overused phrase on an instant messenger: I don’t use IM, but LOL annoys the crap out of me.

Thoughts first waking up: “Arrrrrgggghh.”

Your best physical feature: My eyes. Not the effed-up shape, but the color.

Your bedtime: I aim for 11pm, but often have trouble falling asleep.

Your most missed memory: Hanging out at the playground in Schaefferstown; my time at Goldsmiths.

Pepsi or Coke: Coke, although I rarely drink soda anymore.

McDonalds or Burger King: Neither one is particularly vegetarian-friendly, so I’ll say that they both suck. But lord, I do love their chocolate shakes. And Burger King’s onion rings. And the old-school apple pies still sold at McDonald’s in Europe. Also, the McDonald’s in Tallinn sells baked Camembert chunks with raspberry dipping sauce, and that alone keeps me from wanting to wipe McDonald’s off the face of the earth.

Single or group dates: Group dates in the beginning, when things are still awkward; single dates after that.

Cappuccino or coffee: Regular coffee, I guess, because all coffee/cappuccino/espresso tastes the same to me (due to the anosmia), so I may as well stick with the cheap, easy-to-prepare stuff.

Do you smoke: No. It’s nasty and I’m allergic.

Do you swear: Waaaaaaaay more than I fucking should. Although I need to start watching my mouth around Olivia.

Do you shower daily: On weekdays, yes; on weekends—not a chance.

Do you believe in yourself: More than I realize.

Do you get motion sickness: Nope.

Do you think you are attractive: Nope.

Are you a health freak: Not at all. However, as I grow older, I’m becoming more concerned with what my shitty diet is doing to me, so I’m going to increase my vitamin intake.

Do you get along with your parents: Yes, quite well.

Do you like thunderstorms: Thunderstorms have screwed me over so many times (damaged house, damaged car, flooding, lost power), but I still love ’em.

In the past month have you drank alcohol: Only a glass on New Year’s Eve.

In the past month have you smoked: No.

In the past month have you been on drugs: No. Except for Effexor.

In the past month have you gone on a date: No.

In the past month have you gone to a mall: Yes, but only to buy Christmas gifts at Sephora and Crate & Barrel.

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: A whole box??? No. Not even a single Oreo. But I did ship a few packages of them to Richard in England for his birthday and Christmas.

In the past month have you eaten sushi: Yes, last night.

In the past month have you been on stage: No.

In the past month have you been dumped: No.

In the past month have you gone skinny dipping: In the middle of winter? Uh, no. But I did it before during the summer and I’d gladly do it again. During the summer.

Ever been drunk: No.

Ever been called a tease: Not to my face.

Ever been beaten up: No, but two people threatened to do it to me in high school!

How do you want to die: Peacefully, obliviously. Not from bird flu, because I don’t want to be shoveled into a mass grave!

What do you want to be when you grow up: A homeowner.

What country would you most like to visit: Countries where I’ve never been: Greenland, Norway, Faroe Islands, all of Eastern Europe, Morocco, Antarctica. Countries I’d most like to return to: Iceland, Scotland, Switzerland, Finland, and Estonia.

Number of drugs I have taken: 0, unless you count antidepressants, in which case: 4.

Number of CDs I own: A lot, but Dave owns more!

Number of tattoos: 0

Number of things in my past I regret: Let’s say 5-6.


song heard most recently before posting:
Sundrenched World—Joshua Radin

things I want

If you like Amazon.com wishlists (and I most certainly do), you will love TheThingsIWant.com. It brings out my materialistic side and serves as a dumping ground for all the things I’d love to splurge on when I buy my house.

Meanwhile, this is genius, and I must partake! If there’s one thing I understand, it’s overwrought, cringe-inducing adolescent journal entries. My journaling career began on January 1, 1983, when I was eight and a half years old. I’d received a Pac Man Book of Secrets for Christmas 1982 from my grandparents, and I took to journal-writing like the proverbial fish to water. I followed Anne Frank’s lead and christened my diary with a name about halfway through the year. I named it after...wait for it! wait for it!...KITT the car on Knight Rider. Yes, that’s right, I named my Pac Man diary after Knight Rider. You just try to get more ’80s than that. Go on, I dare you.

I think the best part of that diary is the fact that I was usually too lazy to write on weekends, so on the weekend pages I’d write something like, “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” and then I’d draw pictures of all the things I was supposedly doing which kept me from writing. Like riding a horse. Dude, I don’t think I ever rode a horse in my life. No, wait, strike that—my family once took me to Gettysburg’s Land of Little Horses, and my tube-socked self plodded around in dusty circles on a beleagured pony. That was the extent of my horseback riding experiences, although KITT, the Pac Man Book of Secrets, would beg to differ. I love that I had enough time to draw pictures and write “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” yet I didn’t have enough time to actually, you know, write.

So I’ve been keeping a journal for 24 years, and that includes several angst-ridden, maudlin volumes from my teen years. Picking just one entry for the Cringe Book is going to be so incredibly difficult.

Even though I don’t write as often as I should, and I abandoned hand-writing my entries in favor of typing and printing them out around 10 years ago, my fundamental motives for writing remain the same: it keeps me sane, it gives me clarity, and it preserves memories. As simple as that. My journals contain the meat of my life; this blog contains the broth.

Don’t you just love when you get completely obsessed with an album or a song and you can’t stop playing it? And you feel like maybe you’ll get the shakes if you don’t start listening to it RIGHT NOW?

It’s not uncommon for me to get ridiculously hooked on a particular song or a string of songs, but the album thing hasn’t been as quite an overwhelmingly consistent experience. In 10th grade I went through an obsessive period when all I wanted to listen to The Cure’s Disintegration and Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got over and over again. I barely touched any of the other tapes in my collection. In 11th grade it was REM’s Out of Time and Morrissey’s Viva Hate. In 12th grade it was U2’s Achtung Baby. The summer after 12th grade it was Don McLean’s American Pie and Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. Freshman year it was Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes and Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. The summer after freshman year it was 10,000 Maniacs’s Our Time in Eden and Peter Gabriel’s Shaking the Tree. During the first part of sophomore year it was Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman and the Indigo Girls’s Rites of Passage. The second half of the year was consumed by Tori Amos’s Under the Pink. I’m sure I drove my dorm neighbor utterly batty that semester, but she was always listening to—and bellowing along with—Meatloaf and Celine Dion songs, so she deserved whatever punishment she got from me blasting Under the Pink and weeping. And maybe doing some other things I shouldn’t have been doing. That summer I obsessively listened to Counting Crows’s August and Everything After. I’d sit in my room listening to it on a continuous loop, undoubtedly trying the patience of my mom and sister. There were no album fixations my junior year, mostly because I was studying abroad and didn’t have access to my CD player. My portable disc player broke like three seconds after I arrived in England, so I was left with a tinny little Walkman that kind of killed my desire to sit and listen to CDs over and over for hours at a stretch. My senior year was dominated by Tori’s Boys for Pele.

After college the music fixation dropped off substantially. I obsessively listened to Tori’s From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998 (so I always associate it with a shitty former job of mine!) and 2003 was all about Tori’s Scarlet’s Walk and Peter Gabriel’s Up. Over and over I listened to them, day in and day out. In 2004 I became completely obsessed with Damien Rice’s O, and here’s where we’ve come full circle, because right now I’m obsessed with his new album 9. My iPod is still in the shop, so I’ve been listening to CDs instead of MP3s during my daily commute, and this album has rarely left the player. It’s not quite as sumptuous as O, but gorgeously morose all the same. It’s just what I need right now. It’s giving me terrible earworms, though, which—because I’m not overly prone to earworms—makes me paranoid that I’ve got a tumor growing in the part of my brain where earworms are generated. Or maybe I’m just developing a raging case of OCD?


song heard most recently before posting:
Me, My Yoke and I—Damien Rice

rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Early January. Snow boots. A shovel. Non-clumping kitty litter for traction. One would think this meant that I got stuck in the snow this morning, right? Well, one would be wrong. This freakishly warm winter continues, and it was actually mud in which I got stuck, because I have to park on my lawn (long story; I know, it makes me look like white trash), and the rain has turned it into a mud pit of Woodstock proportions. I couldn’t back up onto the driveway, due to the mud, so I tried to drive forward across the lawn. It was was muddier than it looked, though, so after I got my car halfway across the lawn it ground to a halt. My spinning wheels sprayed mud everywhere. Kitty litter and a shovel didn’t work, and I figured I’d have to take a vacation day and spend it trying to dig my way out of the goddamn mud. But thankfully my next door neighbor spotted me when he was leaving to take his kids to school, and after a few failed attempts to get me out of the mud, he ended up lashing my car to the rear bumper of his SUV and pulling me out.

Not the greatest way to start a rainy winter Monday morning (which capped off a kind of crappy weekend), but at least I was only 15 minutes late to work, and hey, the whole thing could’ve been worse.


song heard most recently before posting:
The Drop—Peter Gabriel

life is a careless—sometimes exquisite—smear on the window

Happy Birthday, Annida Christofi Clark!!!

In DC Land, we’ve had an unnaturally warm winter thus far (nary a snowflake to be seen), but this morning was quite crisp. I went outside in my winter coat and scarf to fill the bird feeder and found…little pink flowers blooming below the feeder, tricked into thinking spring has arrived. It damn near broke my heart.

I’ve learned that my uncle/godfather’s brain cancer has taken an unexpected turn for the worse. A misdiagnosis had him thinking that the cancer was holding steady and he was doing just fine. Not long afterwards, another specialist realized, duh, there’s a thumbprint-sized shadow on his scan, indicating that the cancer has grown and spread to the opposite side of his brain. In the course of a few short weeks he went from “You’re doing great—see you in a year!” to “You’ve only got four months to live.” Chemo won’t do anything. They can’t operate because the tumor is too entrenched in his brain. Radiation will extend his life by 1-2 months, so he’s going to undergo radiation five days a week for the next five weeks. He got this news before Christmas, but waited until yesterday to tell my dad, so he wouldn’t spoil his holiday.

He’s a very good man, a very respected man; he deserves better than this. He’s a widower (cancer claimed my aunt/godmother in 1995), a father of two, a grandfather of three. He’s only 70—still so young. Less than six months ago he helped to nurse his aunt through losing battle with cancer, and now he’s in her shoes.

This is a tragedy on many levels, but what astounds me, aside from the gross negligence of his misdiagnosis, is the fact that, in this day and age, we still don’t have a cure for cancer. I’m not claiming I could do a more efficient job of finding a cure (science is not my strong suit)—I just have to wonder where this research is leading. I mean, yes, strides are clearly being made. For example, there is now an HPV vaccine, which, in a sense, doubles as a cervical cancer vaccine. And people are leading longer, better lives with HIV and cancer, both of which used to be automatic death sentences. But we still don’t have a cure. Every year brings about smaller and more powerful technology, both for good (medicine) and for evil (warfare, terrorism). Okay, great, you can now watch videos on your iPod, surf YouTube and look at Google Earth satellite shots of your neighborhood on your Razr/Blackberry/Treo/whatever, use your 10.5 megapixel camera to take startling crisp photos, and study every pore on every face on your big-screen HDTV-equipped plasma television. Cool, neat, but here’s the thing: although there’s medicine for male impotence, there’s no medicine to eradicate ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, AIDS. Where’s the fucking sense in that? Where are our priorities? Do we really need smarter bombs? Smaller cell phones? Cloned animals?

I guess I’m just shocked that we are capable of traveling in space but not capable of curing a disease that has been around forever. That we can map the humane genome and pull DNA from a flake of skin and create artificial intelligence but can’t figure out how to stop our cells from betraying us.

Anyway, this whole situation with my uncle is reminding me about how abrupt life can be. I want to beg my parents and grandfather to fill out one of those All About Me autobiography books. It’s just sad to think that loved ones could die and leave behind so many mysteries. I know all the big events of their lives—Papa’s war stories, for example—but I don’t know the little things. What were the names of their prom dates? What were their favorite subjects in high school? What’s the most rebellious thing they did? I just think it would be a shame for them to leave without me knowing them through and through.


song heard most recently before posting:
Dogs—Damien Rice

giving 2006 da boot

[nerdy editor]Actually, that should be “May I take a nap now?”[/nerdy editor]

Growing up, New Year’s Eve was always a family thing—a kind of small postscript to Christmas. My parents never went out and relegated my sister and me to a hapless babysitter. Instead, my maternal grandparents would come over and the six of us would hang out, enjoying the last waning hours of our Christmas decorations and candles, eating hors d’oeuvres, playing board games, watching movies (after we bought our first VCR in 1986, that is), and watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It was clean, innocuous fun, and even after I entered those years o’ torment and horror (the early years of adolescence), spending New Year’s Eve with my family was something I enjoyed doing.

Starting in 11th grade, I think, I began spending New Year’s Eve with friends. I always resisted ringing in the new year alone, even if it meant frittering away the last hours of the year in a snooze fest with one friend, doing and going nowhere in particular. When the inevitable finally occurred two or three years ago (I did have plans, but they fell apart at the last minute), I discovered: Hey, this isn’t so bad!

And really, it’s not. Given the choice, yeah, I’d rather spend the evening having fun with good friends, but if that option isn’t available, and neither is doing something huge and memorable—like ringing in the new year in Times Square (I’ve always wanted to do that), or in London (I’ve done it twice; I’d love to do it again), or in a mass celebration in downtown DC (that’s how I celebrated the millennium)—then I’d rather be alone. Going to a crowded nightclub or an elaborate party where I barely know anybody doesn’t interest me. Going to a party just because it’s expected of me, because it’s New Year’s Eve and that’s what people do on New Year’s Eve, doesn’t appeal to me at all. And given how much I’m now working, due to my heavy freelancing schedule, spending a holiday at home without any obligations or traveling or socializing sounds like the best possible scenario for me.

This weekend I mostly cast my work aside in honor of the holiday (I worked for a bit on Friday night and for a few hours on Saturday, but barely made a dent in the freelancing stack before I tossed it aside). I never got out of my pajamas. I never bathed (ah, the joy of slothdom!). I didn’t go anywhere. I watched DVDs and read. This evening I began a hotly-anticipated art project. The weekend felt gorgeous. Tonight I’ll curl up on the sofa with a warm, furry blanket (faux, of course); some Estonian liqueur; and my cats. At midnight we’ll watch the ball drop in New York City.

As for New Year’s Day—that, too, was always a family affair when I was young. It was tradition for us to go to my aunt and uncle’s house and spend the day relaxing and fressin’ with my dad’s side of the family. Where I’m from, people are supposed to eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day to ensure good luck in the year ahead, so our day was always filled with steaming, sagging plates of pork and ’kraut (unfortunately for me, I didn’t like pork and I was sickened by the sight of sauerkraut; so, no good luck for me). It was also tradition—during the years when New Year’s Day wasn’t on a Friday or Saturday—for Kristen, our cousin Becky, and me to spend a good portion of the day gnashing our teeth and moaning about having to return to school the next day after having a week off school. Much dramatic flopping on furniture and pointed sighs accompanied our day. Also, one year we listened to Prince’s new single 1999 on a continuous loop for hours, imagining where we’d be and what the world would be like on that distant day when 1999 danced over to 2000.

This year on New Year’s Day, there won’t be much need to moan and sigh about having to return to work, because it’s not like I’m returning from a week’s holiday vacation; after all, I worked three days last week. I’ll probably just feast on Christmas leftovers (my grandfather’s divine PA Dutch potato filling), complete my aforementioned art project, watch some DVDs, read, and indulge in some sweet, sweet vegging.

2006 was a decent year; may 2007 be even better! Here’s one last questionnaire for the year:

2006 Year in Review

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
I auditioned for a game show and went to Georgia for the first time.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I stopped making resolutions a few years ago. I never kept them! But I’ve been resolving for months to buy a house in 2007, no matter what it takes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Antoinette had her first baby, Luca, in July.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My great-aunt Mag died, but we haven’t been close in years.

5. What countries did you visit?
England

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
A HOUSE!!! And maybe a bit of free time.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
29 September, because on that day I returned to London for the first time in over seven years and it felt so goddamn good!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving a ridiculously intense workload and a shocking dearth of downtime without having a complete nervous breakdown.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to buy a house. Failing to begin saving for the trip to Eastern Europe I want to take within the next few years.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just a double bout of pink eye—nothing overly major.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My favorite thing would be the handmade skulls-and-cherries purse I bought at Smithfield Market in London. Runners up would be the mirrored sunburst candle holder I bought in Athens, GA, and the black satiny trenchcoat dress I bought at Forever 21. And my new flat-screen computer monitor, of course!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Plath’s, because he hasn’t sprayed the furniture in months. (But secretly I think the Prozac actually deserves the accolades for that!)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Someone whose name I can’t say!

14. Where did most of your money go?
Into quarterly tax payments (my freelancing is really nailing me to the wall, tax-wise), into my savings account, toward my London trip, toward bills, and toward Christmas presents.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Returning to London after seven years away!

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
“Your Ex-Lover is Dead,” by Stars, because I listened to it over and over again.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
I’m in the same position, really. Still living in the same shitty apartment, still focused on buying a house, still working nonstop. The only difference is that I now have my tax situation under control (I’m paying quarterly taxes, which I didn’t do in 2005).

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Saving money and vegging.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Working!

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it with my family at my sister’s house.

21. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve?
I spent it alooooone, just like I spend most New Year’s Eves, but that’s okay with me, because, like I said above, if I can’t spend it hanging out casually with my closest friends or rocking out in Times Square/Trafalgar Square, then I’d rather be alone.

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
No, although there was an unfortunate crush that didn’t go anywhere. (Shocker.)

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
A tie between Lost and The Office.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Nope. Well...wait. I now hate my neighbors more than I did at this time last year, because my hatred for them just continues to grow and grow with the passage of time.

26. What was the best book you read?
Mmmm…I guess I’ll say The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, because even though his writing style kind of bugs (he violently swings between being overly flowery and overly sparse; his punctuation is erratic), the book really stands out because it was such a stomach-churningly bleak tale—probably the bleakest book I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books that makes me feel so grateful for what I’ve got in my life. Second runner-up would have to be Graves without Crosses, by Arved Viirlaid.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Joshua Radin

28. What did you want and get?
For Christmas I got pretty much everything I asked for.

29. What did you want and not get?
A house.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
In terms of what I saw in the cinema (and I barely saw anything): El Método. In terms of what I rented: V for Vendetta, Cube, The Eye.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 32 and spent my birthday in Athens, GA, with Annida and her husband. They got me a fab tombstone cake and took me to dinner at REM’s favorite vegetarian restaurant.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If I had managed to buy a house, thus releasing me from the hell of my apartment.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
It’s the same as it was the year before. On weekends comfort is key—sometimes I never even get out of my pajamas. The rest of the time I heavily favor vintage dresses, A-line skirts, chunky platform heels, secondhand clothes, flared pants, Aarikka necklaces, and the necklaces I make out of old ’80s earrings.

34. What kept you sane?
Dreaming about my future travels and buying a house. Friends. My cats.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
My #1 TV boyfriend John Krasinski.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The disintegration of the wall that is supposed to separate church and state.

37. Who did you miss?
Friends I didn’t get to see.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
I didn’t meet any exciting new people!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
I’m really, really lucky. (But that’s something I’ve always known on some level.)

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

A song lyric that is actually from 2006:

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It’s the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It’s the wrong time
For somebody new
It’s a small crime
And I’ve got no excuse

song heard most recently before posting: Eyes Without a Face—Paul Anka

'Appy Crimbo!

Another Christmas bites the dust. I had a great holiday with my family at my sister and her husband’s house in Frederick County. Delicious food, fabulous presents, laughing at old photos, reminiscing, spending a good two hours lolling in a hot tub, mingling with friendly neighbors...what more could I ask for?

The boy who lives next door took my little niece Olivia outside to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn last night, and it was so adorable because she took it so seriously. (Later we also left cookie crumbs and a glass with milk residue in it on the kitchen table so she’d think Santa stopped for a bite to eat when he delivered her pile of presents.) Honestly, it was just a really wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I will sign end this post on that positive note. (Plus I’ll mention that my office is closed tomorrow, so I’ve got another day of relaxation in front of me!!)


song heard most recently before posting: Christmas Time is Here—Ivy

Christmas 1994

Last night I finally wrapped all my Christmas presents, to the blaring soundtrack of the final disc of Doogie Howser Season 1. I’m so relieved to be done with it all (the wrapping, not my Doogie Howser marathon!)

There has only ever been one Christmas that I didn’t spent with at least part of my family—Christmas 1994, when I was studying abroad. For the holiday I went to Germany, where I spent about 10 days with two friends (Laura, a friend from home, and Dave, a friend from college) who were studying in Marburg for the year. Had this opportunity not arisen, I probably would’ve weaseled my way into spending Christmas with Annida at her parents’ house in Greece. Going home was always an option, I suppose; instead of paying for me to go to Germany, my family could’ve just paid for me to return to the States instead. But, although I missed everyone a lot, I didn’t want to go home until my time at Goldsmiths was finished. I just didn’t think it’d be good for me to interrupt my year abroad with the culture shock of returning home.

For the most part, I enjoyed my time in Germany. Laura, Dave, and I went on a university-organized day trip to the medieval city of Rothenberg, which was really beautiful. Marburg, with its high-on-the-hill fairy tale castle, was beautiful, too. Laura and I went to Gießen for a day as well. I went to Laura’s orchestra practice with her one evening, meeting a Goldsmiths student who was studying in Marburg for the year. I committed fare fraud and got caught (just like I did in London!). I went to school with Laura one evening, and while she attended her Finnish class I made photocopies for her and hung out in the lobby, watching people go by. We hit the email lab so I could worm my way into my Goldsmiths and Scranton email accounts and look for new messages. We went grocery shopping and spent much time hanging out with Laura’s American friends, many of who came from our area of Pennsylvania (since they were studying in Marburg through a Millersville University [in Lancaster County, PA] study-abroad program). It was strange and wonderful to be around so many Americans and native Pennsylvanians again. One of them had a boyfriend visiting from Lancaster, and he brought a stack of celebrity gossip magazines from home, so I was in heaven. Also? I discovered that Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which was at that point my favorite cereal and which wasn’t sold in England, could be bought in Germany, under the name Cini-Minis. Our reunion was utterly glorious.

There were some downsides, unfortunately. Clinical depression doesn’t just evaporate when you cross the border into an exciting new country. It was tough being away from my family on Christmas for the first time, and not having any presents to open on Christmas day. The temperatures in Germany were far colder than they were in England, and since I didn’t pack appropriately, I was always freezing. Marburg was very hilly (whereas London is quite flat), so I felt constantly exhausted and sore. I got sick not long after my arrival, and my full-throttle cold made me feel even chillier and more exhausted than I already was. Plus I’d started the pill in November and it made me periodically hemorrhage; sadly, this excessive, grotesquely messy, and energy-draining bleeding overshadowed part of my time in Germany.

Laura and I celebrated Winter Solstice with a silly ritual we kind of made up as went along. First, she read my medicine cards. It began snowing, which made us deliriously ebullient, and we ran outside into the snow-lit evening, dancing around and catching snowflakes not just on our tongues but also in a shot glass. To fill the glass we also had to scrape some snow off tree branches. Back in Laura’s room, we burned some leaves she had collected over the autumn, chewed on some stems, anointed each other with the burned leaves, melted the shot glass snow with a big purple candle, and drank a mixture of the melted snow and burned leaves. We went out onto her balcony and uttered wintertide blessings we created on the spot as we dropped a burned leaf and watched it twirl downwards.

On Christmas Eve Laura, her friends, and I hung out in their kitchen, cooking, chatting, relaxing. A bunch of her friends were vegetarians and vegans, so I had loads of meat-free food to enjoy. At night, after dinner and after a relaxing day of playing Monopoly and Jenga and reading People magazine, we went to midnight mass at some Catholic church, even though most of us were areligious. Of course I couldn’t understand a word being said (my German language knowledge extended to please, thank you, hello, blood and milk—the latter being ever so helpful), but the service was still magical.

Christmas morning brought vegan pancakes, which were followed by a walk through the forest. Well, it was supposed to be a simple walk, but it really turned into a death march of sorts after a while. Laura, bless her heart, was fit as a fiddle and had no problem bounding around the woods’ steep hills at a steady clip. I, on the other hand, was out of shape, out of breath, shivering, congested, coughing a watery cough, sore, bleeding profusely, inadequately dressed. We got lost, too, which meant our hike went on and on, world without end. I really became concerned after a while, thinking we’d never make it back to her dorm as we threaded our way through the utterly still forest. I even began crying a bit toward the end, so devoid of hope was I that we’d ever find our way home—at least before dark. After roughly eight hours of this, we finally managed to stumble back into her dorm at dusk. I was beyond exhausted and couldn’t feel my feet anymore. But I did warm up and cheer up while eating her friends’ vegetarian Christmas feast. After that I not-so-patiently waited for them to stop using the phone to talk to their families so I could talk to my own family back in States. At night we hung out and watched Father of the Bride, which was of course in German, so none of it made sense to me.

On Boxing Day Laura and I headed to Frankfurt, where we poked around the city for a bit in the snow while waiting for our flight to London (she came back with me for a week or two, and we commenced a reunion with three of our friends from home who were also visiting for a week or two). It was stupid of us to fly into London on Boxing Day, though; public transportation was nearly nonexistent, and the commute from Heathrow to my dorm—which generally only took two hours, at most—took over seven hours and required a complicated tango of maneuvering our way through the warren of the city on bus, tube, feet, and taxi.

That, in a nutshell, was my only non-family Christmas!


song heard most recently before posting: New Year’s Day/On Christmas Night—Bonnie Rideout, Maggie Sansone, Al Petteway, Eric Rigler

Happy Winter Solstice!

The shortest day of the year has begun. I always found it intriguing how, on the shortest day of the year and the first day of winter, the sun is about to reclaim dominion over the sky (in tiny increments). Likewise, even though Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year and the first day of summer, it also signals the beginning of lengthening nights, the axe swing toward winter. I like the yin and yangness of it all; it really serves as descriptive metaphor for my emotional life.

I have a book, The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas, by John and Caitlín Matthews, which delves into the history of Winter Solstice celebrations and the fundamental connection between Solstice and Christmas. It discusses Solstice rituals and traditions from cultures around the world, both current and modern, from the ancient Romans’ Saturnalia celebrations to the sun rites of the Zuñi and Hopi to Solstice in modern Taiwan. It covers the meaning behind each of the 12 days of Christmas, the Mummers, the Kalends of January, Hogmanay, Santa, Shamans, the Nativity, etc. It offers ways to celebrate the Solstice (making a winter shrine and preparing a Yule log, for example). It’s a fascinating book and I recommend perusing it if you get a chance. A nice description of Winter Solstice from the book:

The Solstice is a time of quietude, of firelight and dreaming, when seeds germinate in the cold earth and the cold notes of church bells mingle with the chimes of icicles. Rivers are stilled and the land lies waiting beneath a coverlet of snow. We watch the cold sunlight and the bright stars, maybe go for walks in the quiet land. Sometimes we go carol singing—even those who would normally never think of lifting their voice in song. Attending Midnight Mass, even for those without Christian beliefs, can become a special event. All around us the season seems to reach a standstill—a point of repose. Then, as the Solstice sun moves across the heavens, the new year wakens, the darkness is dispelled, the days grow longer, and we prepare for new beginnings.

song heard most recently before posting: The Sadness of the Autumn is Now O’er—Megha Morganfield

books

Happy 1st Birthday, Ethan Hubbard!!!

Yesterday at work we were told that free books were being given away in this little atrium outside one of our lawyers’ offices—I guess they’re downsizing our staff library (or eliminating it altogether) and wanted to get rid of some the books. Well, because the room was so tiny, there was a mad rush of people trying to get books and it was a bit out of control. And some people were walking out with a ton of books, which I thought was unfair. Especially since, by the time I managed to squeeze into the room, a lot of the good stuff was gone. One of the first books I saw was a history on orgies, and I was like, “...the hell? Our staff library has a book about orgies?” Someone said, “Some of these books actually came from the kitchen” (people drop off unwanted books on this one shelf in our staff kitchen, so they can be taken by people who are interested in them—it’s a nice form of recycling). Okay, but...someone thought it was appropriate to leave a book about orgies into the staff kitchen?? Love it. And naturally that was the first book I grabbed.

Last night, when I stopped by an Asian supermarket to buy some bonito fish flakes as part of Freyja’s xmas present, I found myself becoming utterly bedazzled by their Russian/Ukrainian food section. I’ve been to this supermarket who knows how many times and I never saw that Russian/Ukrainian food before. I guess I simply never made it down that particular aisle. I don’t know why, but I just love seeing Russian products! There’s a Russian store near my office and I get a kick out of perusing their shelves. I didn’t buy any of the Russian food I saw last night, but will probably do so in the future. (And yeah, just for the record, I did save food wrappers and whatnot from my time in St. Petersburg; all of it went into my geeky travel scrapbook!)

Closing thoughts:




song heard most recently before posting: Light is Returning—MotherTongue