someone who

Hard as it is to get a boyfriend in Washington, it may be harder to get a girlfriend.

No, not the kind you have sex with, but someone who, when you meet her, makes you think "Oh my GOD this woman is awesome. I hope we are friends forever." Someone who just GETS you, because your minds work at the same ridiculous speed and for once you've met somene else who knows that conversations can, under the right circumstances, become a competitive sport. Someone who is incredibly smart yet also brings out your silly girly side, the kind who you don't feel embarrased drinking fruity cocktails or watching two different DVD versions of Pride and Prejudice with in the same weekend, because, after all, Matthew MacFayden and Colin Firth made some very different character choices that warrant discussion (and swooning). Someone who is really good at mixing circles of friends and gets genuinely excited, instead of intimidated or jealous, when they become friends independent of the original link. Someone who you know you can call when you are celebrating, need a shoulder to cry on or because you just heard "Poison" on the radio and it reminded you of that episode of Scrubs that you guys all dance along to.

We all know that girls can be just awful to one another, and age often only sugarcoats any inherent bitterness. We compete with the other women we call friends, comparing ourselves to them or bitching about them silently or behind their backs, not telling them the truth even when they ask for it out of what we call politeness but what is really cowardice. Even when that nastiness is absent, it's still tough to find another girl who you click with. After all, we look for that je nes se quois in our romantic partners-- to find it in a woman friend after mucking through all the other stuff is rare, and, when it happens, so great.

Libby and I met almost two years ago through a Senate race our bosses consulted for. I had drive out to meet her on the corner outside her downtown office to give her a video camera for a prep session. I Google Image searched her before the hand-off because hey, better to recognize her quickly and not hold up a motorcade or something. The photo that came up was of her in the Michigan Daily, meaning she was obviously good people. The oft-mentioned R had already told me that we should meet and that I should take care of her because she was new to the city and had just been through an awful breakup.

HA. Little did he know what was about to ensue.

Since that equipment hand-off, the subsequent football game and Lord only knows how many toes stubbed doing the aforementioned dance, Libs has been an amazing friend. I seriously cannot imagine the last two years without everything she's brought into my life. I wouldn't have met my many amazing friends, I may never have found the guts to go backpacking and I certainly wouldn't have gotten into nearly as much trouble. There would have been a lot fewer hangovers and a lot less laughter. In short, it would have been a very different life.

Tonight I and a bunch of our girlfriends went over to watch her pack, mourn and toast her with a bottle of Michigan's finest. Most of the other girls left before me, and most of them cried as they said their goodbyes. When it was my turn, I couldn't work up the tears. I mean, I'm sad, but I'm also in total denial. It absolutely hasn't hit me that she's leaving for a year and won't be in close contact. It probably won't until the first time I reach for the phone to tell her something ridiculous or bitch about the fact that stupid people are still allowed to work and walk among us that it will sock me in the gut that "What? Libby doesn't live in America anymore? Who the hell let that happen?!" You will not want to be around when this all finally clicks into place.

So ladies, if you have these kinds of girlfriends in your lives, go and tell them how much you love them. Because one of these days, they'll pack up an go to graduate school in a whole other damn country and be all "Dude, you should have come with me," and you'll have to be the girl who says "Well, you just have to kick enough ass for both of us while you're there."


Libs, it a testament to our friendship that I am sharing a picture of my shiny-ass club face with the Internet.

television for women

I emerged from my apartment exactly twice this weekend-- once, to take out the trash and kitty litter (see, I'm at least germ-free, if otherwise slovenly) and once to get margaritas on Saturday night. The rest of the weekend was spent watching not writing the paper that I probably should have submitted in July, making a million lists for things I have to do at work this week (the busiest week of the year for my job), and watching bad TV.

And friends, when I say bad TV, I mean BAD TV. In no particular order, this weekend I watched:

- at least three hours of wedding programming on WE! (say it like "wheeee! Women's Entertainment! Wheeeee!"), ranging from PWT bridezillas to this girl who spent $80,000 on her gown. I can think of lots of good ways to spend $80,000, and almost none of them involve Swarovski crystals.

- The Notebook. Twice.

- The Oklahoma State Sugar Art show, as broadcast over the Food Network. It's actually not a bad show-- think Project Runway, but with cake decorating and mullets-- but still shameful because this is the second time I've watched it. The first time was the Sunday after my Bat Mitzvah, where B padded over through two feet of snow and we gnawed on Dominos and draped ourselves all over the couch whining about our hangovers and laughing at the female judge's hairpiece. And yes boys, we are both single.

- Degrassi. You already know I have a weakness for the BBC, but Saturday night centered on Canadian teen soap operas on The N! (why must all these networks have exclamation points?). They happened to be holding a marathon of every Degrassi episode ever, which for me is the equivalent of the heavens opening and the sky ringing with the trumpets of seraphim sounding the coming of Our Lord. After drinks and greasy Mexican food I dragged my friend K back to her house and made her watch four consecutive episodes. It is to her credit that she not only didn't walk out of the room, but that by the end of the two hours she developed very strong opinions on Paige's nose and repeatedly asked for clarification as to the Kevin Smith story arc. Way to drink the Koolaid, K. I am so proud.

- The entire Emmy preshow and the Emmys. Observations recorded during these: 1) Ryan Seacrest, just by pretending to not know who Zac Posen is, is STILL NOT FOOLING ANYONE, and 2) Katherine Heigl looked unbelievably gorgeous, but her look took me straight back to her performance in my all-time favorite Disney TV movie Wish Upon a Star. I have not the words for how much I love this movie, and the gleeful squeal I emit when I catch it on TV is matched only by that I also issue for when Death of A Cheerleader is on Lifetime Television for Women. It's basically Freaky Friday with sisters, and was made in that great post-Clueless period of fashion where every girl was wearing sheer knee-high white stockings and clunky platform shoes, preferably topped off by a teeny drawstring-closure backpack. I also loved it because the older sister's boyfriend is way hot and the whole movie is actually rather risque for a Disney flick (they make out with TONGUE and get HICKEYS) (and there's a whole subplot involving the little sister in a dominatrix outfit). If I ever met Katherine Heigl, I'd totally gush about this movie to her face and she'd probably be all "the hell is that bitch talking about? I'm on Grey's Anatomy, damnit!"

Delicious, sweet, gluttonous weekend television, how I love thee so.

Ugh, and now I have to go pretend to be an adult all week. Eat me, real world.

working women cause of cancer, conflict in Lebanon, the unsatisfying amount of blowjobs in your life

Another day, another intentionally irksome article saying that educated, professional women are the reason everything in your life sucks.

Did we all agree to teleport back to 1954? Was I in a meeting when that memo was handed out?

Oh, wait, no, I was busy finishing a paper for grad school after working a twelve hour day and NOT VACUUMING MY CARPET, LO THE EVIL MAN-HATING HORROR OF IT ALL.

I'm particularly charmed by the development of this "point-counterpoint" format, which was slapped on yesterday after Forbes.com posted the initial "Don't Marry a Ho With a Life" article solo, without the forces of reason, logic and rationality to counterbalance the fucktardness of Michael Noer (who, BTW, is not around to repsond to the furor over said fucktardness because he's at a wedding. His next article "How To Salt Your Own Game; or, Why Not To Publish The Most Mysogynistic Article on the Internet Right Before Attending an Event Filled With Desperate Women and an Open Bar" is expected in next week's edition of Forbes Online).

My first instinct upon reading this article was to get all screamy and respond to every point-- "Of course women get less attractive over the years, they pop out your children! And why is it solely the woman's job to take care of the house? Maybe you could do a load of laundry, you lazy bastard--" but I quickly settled down and chuckled to myself. It's not so much the existence of guys like this that annoys me. We're pretty used to men who are threatened by girls who have their shit together and go after what we want. These guys are a pain but they generally reveal their true colors pretty quickly, allowing us to dispose of them with relative ease and a roll of the eyes. You don't need a PhD in psychology to see that men who think like this are freaked out because they know they can't live up to the increased responsibility (ie. you split the chores and it's not okay to fuck your assistant) that stems from an equal partnership. Guys with these kinds of expectations for marriage tend to partner up with really vapid women and learn very quickly that just because she picks up your socks and makes your dinner does not mean your marriage or life is happy. Ahhh... knowing that stupid, obnoxious people will end up miserable feels so good. It feels all warm in my stomach like a nice glass of single-malt scotch.

But Forbes, really. Is August that slow a news month that you feel the need to print this drivel? I'd rather hear all about the ex-child brides of JonBenet Ramsey's accused killer than read one more article on why working women are the cause of everything from child serial killers to stubborn bathroom mildew. Besides, you all have been trying to make us the scapegoat for the suckiness of life for sixty years now! If you have to keep trying this hard, it's time to give up and find something new. May I suggest bedbugs? They seem to be the Hot Scourge for the New Millennium.

new and improved EJ: now with twenty percent more riboflavin

I reached a point where some of the most pathetic words ever known to womankind were constantly buzzing in my head, much like the mosquitoes that gleefully attack my shins every time I walk down the steps to my front door. I think they lie in wait for me every evening, rubbing their little translucent pinchers together in glee as they anticipate swarming my uncovered legs in a bloodthirsty mob. "They're back!" they squeak (if mosquitoes spoke, they would speak English, because that's what everyone in America should do, right?). "Those long things that feed us are back!" They swoop and suck as I fumble for first the gate key, then the door key, then kick in the door because the wood has inevitably swollen in the swampy humidity that is Washington, these moments ensuring that by the time I lurch indoors, slam the door and set down the Utah-sized Kenneth Cole bag I stubbornly lug everywhere, my legs will be on fire. Last week I complained about my mosquito bites for a good five minutes to a coworker, who informed me that her Serbian sister-in-law suggested dabbing rocket fuel-grade alcohol on the bites before scratching as to lessen the torment. When I got home I used the strongest booze in my over-crowded kitchen, but it turns out that Jose Cuervo Gold does not an effective astringent make.

I'm sorry, where was I? The itching is a tad distracting.

Ah yes, the words. The words that were buzzing.

The words that were buzzing were "how will this look on my blog?"

I know. EW. But hear me out.

People I knew "in real life" were starting to introduce me as a blogger. I'd see someone after a few weeks of no contact and he'd already know what I'd been up to. That's not how people who live within five blocks of one another are supposed to interact.

The stories got harder to tell, both because of the content and the crapass writing. News wasn't shared, it was issued, like the moronic press releases on steel dumping I wrote as a 19-year-old intern. Blogging opens doors, but it also shuts windows. You witness something, experience something, long to reflect on its significance and someone else specifically tells you "don't write about this on your blog." So you look at it through a plate glass window, unable to touch it and hold it and share it, and you write about a news headline that ticked you off or post pretty pictures, because, hey, who gets ticked about pretty pictures? Who, unless they work in politics, gets fired over stating that the Bush administration couldn't find the clitoris with a flashlight and a copy of Gray's Anatomy, much less find a way out of Iraq?

And let's face it: at the end of the day, does the world really need another blog about how hard it is to be a upwardly mobile single white girl in the city?

Well, fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. I gotta navel-gaze. It's what I do. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then the life of a narcissistic blogger must be the Cadillac of lives, worth more than those other unblogged lives that fill its days and make it fascinating, entertaining, painful and full. Patently false logic, I know, but compelling nonetheless.

So over the last few months, my writing deteriorated. And a lot of crap happened. Crap that I couldn't write about, crap that for once I actually didn't have to stop myself from writing about because really, spewing it back to the universe didn't make me feel better and wasn't doing the universe any favors. If you're not going to contribute anything productive or inspiring or at least new, then why write?

So I stopped for a while. And I'm not saying that blogging is a bad luck jinx; that the mere act of keeping a blog attracts negative and/or hostile elements into one's life, but damn. I quit blogging, and life felt easier. Lighter. More fun. I kicked a lot of ass at work. I started running again, traveled on weekends, ate really really well, spent a lot of time with friends old and new and thought I Met Someone (it turns out I Did Not, but that is a story for another entry, one that explores how eating raw cookie dough by the pound while watching Project Runway is actually lots better than bad sex).

But I found I really missed it. I did manage to kick the habit of approaching a situation thinking "how will I write about this on my blog?" but some situations triggered it in a positive way. The trick, I think, is to be very conscious of what goes in here. I used to write something and then instantly post it, maybe going back to edit after posting after noting a particularly egregious typo. No more.

So what did I learn on my summer vacation? Patience is our friend and protector from emotions and crappy writing alike. Blogs are in no way a substitute for human interaction. And despite all of the above, I will forgive myself the occasional lapse into trite prose and story and remind myself that, as I am a single 20-something girl in the city, it is okay to write like one.

Because, as the estimable Mimi reminds us, it's hard being a motherfucking white bitch.

Nice to be back, y'all.

I'm briefly resurfacing from my hiatus (coming along swimmingly; so far I've cured cancer and stolen David Beckham from Posh Spice) to note this:

World Trade Center has a MySpace page.

And we wonder why the rest of the world hates America.

it's not goodbye forever, it's just goodbye for now

252 posts. 16 months. Eleventy jillion unsolicited opinions. Entirely too much living in my head.

I'm going on hiatus, friends.

Momma needs a break from all this navel-gazing.

No, I didn't get dooced or anything. I just need to get back to a place where my first reaction to a situation is not "And how will I frame this on my blog?"

So, I might be a while.

We'll see.

putting the "errrrr" in "spinster"

Wow. I didn't know the meaning of "low point" until my little sister pointed out a typo in my online dating profile.

Oh, wait. Then I blogged about it.

Maybe there's a D&D message board I could go inform. Y'know, right after I get ten more cats and tack this up on my bedroom wall.

CLUNKetyCLUNKetySHIT

My friend Adam, who was Phi Beta Kappa and currently in law school, genuinely believes that aliens built the pyramids. "There is no way that humans could have lifted all those stones!" he'll holler, usually after a few margaritas. "But they had pulleys," someone will inevitably respond, naively thinking that an appeal to reason and logic will work magic. Then he'll get really red-faced and cantankerous and start ranting that it's simply not feasible, that there is no way that even hundreds of people working together like ants could heave a single block into place, much less create giant pyramids over decades.

I once babysat for a little boy who knew, without a doubt, that the neighbor's dog was trying to kill him. This despite the fact that their most violent encounter involved an unprovoked licking of the face of one of the involved parties.

I know several people who insist that George W. Bush is the greatest president America has ever had.

Look, we all have our things. Many people adhere to a belief that is so irrational, so completely contrary to all logic that it somehow goes beyond a mere phobia or display of faith. Everyone has them. But I am the exception to the rule, because my crazy-sounding thing happens to be TRUE.

I give off a force field that destroys electronic equipment.

After a lifetime of damaged consumer goods, mysteriously deleted files and subpar performance by all mechanical goods designed to make my life easier, there is no other explanation left. Something that I emanate literally sucks the will to live from my electronics. In the last six years I have gone through two desktops, three laptops, seven iPods, two TiVos, two DirecTV units and one car with a damaged OBD II monitor, the latter of which no one can tell me why is so important or even what it DOES, but by Golly it IS important and listen missy, you will not drive that car until you get it fixed, even though we're not sure it's broken!

Anyhoo.

This latest rant was sparked when , after I finished a big chunk of my scary paper this Saturday, my hard drive suddenly decided it was tired of holding my papers and MP3 files and, with a violent "CLUNKetyCLUNKetyCLUNK" noise, went to that big scrapheap in the sky. Total system failure. New hard drive needs to be installed. All my photos, all my music... Phhhht, gone.

This has happened before, and so I do have a backup system. Everything-- and I mean everything-- was on my iPod. What's that? you ask. The iPod that is currently being held hostage by the warlords at Best Buy, who have wiped it so they can "repair" it?

The very same.

So you see?! I give off a force field that destroys electronic equipment! There is no other explanation for the sudden shitstorm of failure that is my apartment, littered with corpses of machines gone by.

Surprisingly, this is my "acceptance" stage of grief.

not optimistic

As I'm sure you're aware, there's been a lot of chatter about DC crime over the last few days. The tragic murder of Alan Senitt in Georgetown has gotten the most attention locally and nationally, but as as of this posting there have been fourteen murders in the last twelve days. Let me repeat that: fourteen people murdered in twelve days. Ten men, two women and a child.

I don't know how much attention would have been paid to this statistic if one of them had not been the murder of a white man by black people in a ritzy neighborhood. Frankly, I don't care. It's a damned waste of time to fret over hypothetical racism when people are being stabbed in the streets. I'm sure there are some who would say that as a white, middle-class person I don't get to make that judgement call. To them I say "Can we talk about this later? Someone is breaking into my neighbor's house and there's a body in the street a block down."

Having recently been on the periphery of a violent crime, I haven't felt safe in my home and my city for several weeks now. This latest spate of violence may bring attention to DC's violent crime problem, but who knows if any tangible results will come from it. In the situation I've referenced before in this blog, I was deeply disturbed with reaction of the police involved. It's hard to explain without getting into specifics, which is not appropriate for this forum, but they behaved in a supremely unconcerned manner, sauntering around the crime scene and not bothering to interview witnesses or, that I saw, even write anything down. At one point I pointed out a car across the street that had been recently broken into-- there was still glass on the backseat and the weapon-- a rock wrapped in a scarf-- was hanging out the window. When I pointed this out to an officer, thinking they might find it of note that a robbery had taken place across the street and on the same night as the incident they were presently investigating, he responded "we can't do anything until the owner calls it in." He didn't even bother to write down the license plate number. I wrote it down, along with as many notes on the scene and the officer's reaction to it as I could recall, along with his squad car number and my contact information, and sent it to police headquarters. I'm sure they'll never do anything with it. It's probably sitting in a box somewhere in Anacostia, or more likely, is resting in pieces at the bottom of a shredder. From what I've been told, the continued investigation of this particular crime has been more of the same: apathy, dropped calls and general callousness towards the victim.

I don't have a lot of faith in the DCPD. After reading a lot of the comment threads and blog entires about this issue, I'm losing a lot of faith in the power of DC citizens. Events like these should push us to measurable action, not a round of race-baiting and finger-pointing. Everyone is too scared of the very large and ill-defined task of reducing violent crime, and so they play the blame game. It's the yuppies' fault for being stupid and living in bad neighborhoods. It's the parents' fault for letting their kids run wild. It's the schools' fault. It's the cops' fault. It's because of racist condo developers; Congress; gangs; crystal meth.

One thing I'm particularly losing patience with is the gentrification blame game. People like me are damned if we do, damned if we don't. Yuppies who live in Northwest and the suburbs get all kinds of crap for fleeing and taking their resources and influence with them, yet are told that because they don't live in the rougher parts of town they don't get to comment on what goes on there. If they, as I do, live in "transitioning" neighborhoods and something bad happens, they get a reaction of "what did you expect? This is a city. If you can't deal, get out." It's a vicious cycle that doesn't go anywhere or help anyone, and I'm sick of it.

I fully expect that this latest surge of violence will, in the end, change nothing about the way DC law enforcement is run or tangibly address any of the underlying causes of the rise in violent crime. What it will do is stir a simmering kettle of tangential crap. People will use the violence as a further reason to attack one another's lifestyles and choices. They will get up in arms about perceptions of racism, and quibble over how much attention to race and socioeconomic status is appropriate. Little will be different and people will still get hurt.

It'd be nice if I'm wrong, but I'm not optimistic.

unconditional, with occasional exceptions

My mother hung up on me.

She hung up on me. Right when I was in the middle of confessing something really unpleasant, something that casts me in so bad a light that I haven't and will not tell any of my friends. The kind of thing you can only tell parents because animal instinct mandates unconditional love of a child who confesses something so deeply unflattering. Animal instinct, or at least stubborn hope that their twenty-five years of moral instruction have gone the way of the carrier pigeon and dodo.

She was in her hotel room in Hawaii. Yes, my mother is on vacation in Hawaii and is too busy to talk to her daughter, or even to listen. She was trying to figure out why their hotel room's DSL connection had suddenly broken and called the customer service line on the room phone.

Then the customer help line finally clicked over to an actual human being ready to help her solve her computer issue, and she hung up on me.

Look, she's very busy and important. She works hard. She needs that email access so that she can keep up on work and receive her well-deserved accolades. She also deserves what little relaxation she can get. I don't begrudge her that. And for the record, I'm really good at not minding when she can't talk because she's tired and frustrated and rushing from one city to another. She's got lots of balls in the air, and I don't mind that, now that her kids are grown, we're not on the top of her to-do list. I'm an adult. I know this whole "grownup" thing sucks the life out of one, and, well, generally just sucks.

But some days, this grownup just needs someone to unconditionally listen and sympathize and love. Somtimes, after a bout of unpleasantness, I want my mommy. The bratty child in me wants someone who, by genetic pull or at least the forces of guilt, does not, at the very effing least, hang up on her upset daughter to talk to the Dell service rep.

I had a great little monologue in my head for when she called back, basically consisting of the text of this entry. Something to let her that even thought I respect her time and the many demands on it, I was hurt.

She hasn't called back.

I've stopped holding my breath.

And because I'm too stubborn/wary of appearing needy to my own mother, I shall instead bitch about her on the Internet.

Yes, that whole maturity thing is coming along smashingly.

Chess. With Sex.

And now the DirecTV is not working.

Some people might choose to call the customer service line and wait for a technician, whilst working on their final paper for class like the good responsible souls they are.

I chose vodka. And a DVD of The Thomas Crown Affair. Original version, of course.

Steve McQueen may not fix my life, but he plays the sexiest game of chess known to frazzled, neurotic womankind.

frustration, or, how to wreck the relaxation incurred in a just-finished vacation

I returned home from vacation in full-on bliss mode. Look at these:

I mean, right? How can you not be relaxed when you're looking at views like that all day long?

Despite Michigan's best efforts to calm my frazzled, East Coast urban nerves, the relaxing simply wouldn't stick. I returned to DC to find a million little broken things and un-run errands that were placed in my path by some masochistic higher power who delights in seeing yuppies twitch with accumulated rage.

Scene One: I arrive home to find the following items broken: my iPod, my DSL connection and my bathroom light fixture. Individually these would have been annoying, but their combined suckage in one short night instantly drew me back from the beach into a world of automated telephone help lines and quiet showers in the dark. Due to a past encounter with Verizon customer service that was straight out of The Devil Wears Prada (boss made me order device that was not yet available to general public, the Mumbai-based service rep was rather unenthusiastic about my dilemma and I spent all of Thanksgiving evening screaming at various managers, convinced I would be fired by my Anna Wintour-esque boss because I wasn't able to purchase a model of Treo that had not yet been manufactured for sale), I approached the DSL issue with a wary hostility. My worst expectations were naturally fulfilled, and culminated with me yelling at the automated operator "No, I did NOT say BILLING ISSUE. GET ME TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, YOU STUPID BITCH!"

Shockingly, this did not get my DSL fixed. That took three human operators, one of whom spoke English, one repairman who arrived a day early (appreciated) at 8:45 AM (not appreciated) and one repairman's supervisor who examined the tangle of wires that is my setup and said "well, fuck if don't know what's wrong here."

Scene Two: I've been trying to get my car registered in DC for months. MONTHS. You can't get your car registered until you get it inspected at a station in Southeast. My car has twice failed inspection because something called the OBD II is not scanning. To fix this problem, the District of Columbia presented me with a charming piece of paper containing a seventeen-point driving course regimen that would make the Duke brothers shudder with fear. For example:

"Step Seven: Drive 5 mph for 30 seconds and accelerate to 35 mph for 10 seconds. Brake hard to a dead stop and accelerate to 55 mph in under 12 seconds. Drive at 55 mph for two minutes and decelerate to 8 mph for 20 seconds."

What this lovely document does not share with the driver is where, exactly, one is supposed to perform this seventeen-step stunt driving course. Am I to get up at 3 AM and peel up and down East Capitol, praying all the while that the Capitol Police are too distracted by a Kennedy to notice that the city is making me drive like a madwoman?

And what's more, I'll be doing this illegally, because it's taken so long to try to get the car registered that the original registration on it has expired.

ARGH.

Scene Three: I take my iPod to the Apple store. They have no appointments for five hours. I make an appointment for five hours later. I return, they inspect my iPod and pronounce it dead. "When did you buy it?" they ask. "June of last year," I respond. "Oh that's too bad," they say, "because the automatic warranty only lasts for a year." "Let me get this straight," I said, "if it had broken two weeks ago, or if I had punted it down a football field two weeks ago, you would have given me a new model for free? But there is nothing you can do for me now?" "Well," they said, "it's a year old! That's ancient! We've had, like, six new models since you bought it."

Right. How very naive of me to expect that something that costs three hundred dollars would still be functional a year after purchase! Silly, silly, EJ!

"Or," they continue, "you could test all of your files. Try playing each of your songs one at a time and see if the iPod freezes."

I have 4,434 songs on my iPod.

I leave, giving the surreptitious finger to the smug, be-tattooed "Genius" at the checkout counter.

Scene Four: I suddenly remember that I purchased this iPod at a Best Buy. Normally this is a terrible idea, but I had also purchased a three-year warranty with it. SCORE.

I go to Best Buy, present my situation and proudly cut off the bored-looking clerk who starts to drone that they can do nothing for me because the thirty-day waiting period has passed by smacking the warranty card on the counter with a satisfying THWAP. Being a packrat does come in handy. Not expecting his customer to be prepared and responsible, the Best Buy rep must find another way to inconvenience and anger me. "So are you going to replace it?" I ask. "No, we can't do that," he says, looking even more smug than the Apple guy. "We'll send it out for service. You get it back August 18."

I am literally speechless for a moment, then start practically spitting. "First of all, Apple told me it could not be fixed. They don't know what the problem is, but it's an old model that they don't even make any more. And if you somehow do fix it, it's just going to break again, because it's an old model, and I'll have to bring it back here and you'll keep it for another six weeks, is that right?"

I'm pretty sure I have steam coming out of my ears at this point. He stares at me for a second, raises his eyebrows and says "You're probably right. But that's all I'm going to do for you."

Scene Five: I take a shower. In the dark.

Actually, that part was pretty okay.


There's probably a moral in all this. Something like "acquiring stuff can't make you happy," or "material possessions end up owning you."

That's beautiful. You know what else is beautiful? My IPOD. And DRIVING LEGALLY. And BEING ABLE TO SEE WHETHER I'M ABOUT TO STEP ON MY BATHMAT OR IN THE CAT'S LITTERBOX.

At least the DSL is working.

home again, home again

Hey kids! Did you miss me? I missed you!

Well, I missed you when I wasn't spending time with family whose company I actually enjoy. Or visiting wineries. Or on the beach. Or shopping. Or biking Mackinac Island. Or stuffing my face with cherries, fudge and whitefish pate. Did I mention the wine? And the champagne?

You know how it is outside right now? All 78 degrees and sunny and no humidity? Yeah, I brought that back with me. The good people at Northwest Airlines let me carry it on, even though I also had a shopping bag full of food and wine and champagne and a bathrobe (new purchase, hot pink and furry and makes me look like a Fraggle, and the best thing I've ever had wrapped around me, including Jan the Flying Dutchman). The weather was this perfect all. Week. Long.

You know there's been some not-so-good stuff going on lately. This vacation was all about trying to purge the negativity and not think about stuff I can't control for a little bit. This plan worked better than I'd ever thought because something really big happened in my family this weekend. For the sake of preserving my semi-anonymity I can't really get specific, but let's say you happened to wander to the Purdue website and happened to click on the news section and happened to read a press release from today, and... well, you might get an idea of what all is going on. Bottom line: it's good, it's a big change, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with someone I love. And dealing with it and celebrating it all weekend took the focus off of all my crap, which was exactly what I needed.

*Exhale*

Pictures are coming, as soon as Verizon decides to remove their collective thumbs from their nether regions and fix my DSL. Really, it was gorgeous. That part of the country just restores my soul.

Hope you all had a great 4th!

vacation, all i ever wanted

See you kids next week. Maybe I'll even bring you a bottle of Chateau Chantal, if you're nice.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll bring you some cherries; I'm keeping the wine for my bad self.








Michigan is pretty, isn't she?

and now for something completely different

In a lovely departure from moping/jumping at every creak, here's a fun DCist post on my favorite local band The Roosevelt:

http://www.dcist.com/archives/2006/06/27/three_stars_the_8.php

Their bass player is a hottie, but I'm pretty sure he likes the bois.

it's not me, it's you

Washington and I are totally in a fight right now and I don't know how it started.

I know why I'M mad. The events of the last ten days have certainly been cause enough to be mad. Even with the most amazingly supportive boss, friends and family, I've felt bruised and totally helpless.

You know that adorable swill I spouted about the Pinot Grigio and the French rap? Suffice it to say that what really happened that night was that I totally lost my shit on the corner of 14th and C Southeast. What possessed me to walk to that party by myself at 11:00 PM I can't quite pinpoint, but I think I had a justification resembling "they can't make me afraid of my own neighborhood. I won't let them." That, of course, is bollocks.

That night, I became the girl I swore I never would be. I became the girl who cringes when a strange man walks by her at night. He actually leered at me "heeeeeey, white girl, what you doin' all the way out here," as if I'd been pushed out of a plane and parachuted into enemy territory. He sauntered past and just ahead of me, walking too slowly and close to my path for my shredded comfort level.

Having never hyperventilated (to my knowledge), I can't identify the feeling-- but this was the closest I ever hope to come. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse, flipped it open and started jabbering to no one, hoping he'd think I was on the phone with someone very fierce and strong and very close by.

"Hi honey, I'm almost there... no I said I'm almost there... just a couple of blocks over... no, I'm almost there."

Did I mention I flunked Improv at theater camp?

He was still sloooowwwwly sauntering and I was dangerously close to a full-on freakout. The idea of stopping in the middle of the steamy, hostile block was awful, but not as awful as being at his heels, waiting for him to turn around. I stopped on the corner and called everyone I could think of, but people seemed to have other Saturday night plans besides comforting a terrified EJ.

Finally I did the unthinkable. I called my mother. I called her and asked her to talk to me, to tell me a story, until I could walk to this house and get behind walls and doors. And she somehow didn't yell at me for being so stupid, which any other time would have made me feel worse except I was too busy being scared of every raindrop. And so, from central Michigan, she walked me to that house.

I hate being that girl. I've been in this city for six years and have NEVER been that girl. I've never been scared of my own or anyone else's shadow. I like to think I haven't been too cavalier, though God knows I've made poor judgement calls and walked alone more than I should. But I have never been that white girl who is scared of her own "transitioning neighborhood." I did everything right! Look at all the valentines I've written to this neighborhood and this city. He didn't so anything bad or threatening besides leer, and I'm used to leering by now. Leering usually doesn't bother me.

But leering on a steamy street in Southeast, alone and in the middle of the night...

So yes, Washington and I are in a fight right now. And the apocalyptic rain is NOT helping. I've already showed emotion in public this weekend; could we please refrain from keeping the sky from sobbing along?

I think we need to take some time away from one another.

No, we're not splitting up. But we are definitely on a break.

exhaling

Thank you all so much for your kind words and offers of hugs. It's been a rough week.

What happened is not my story to tell, and so I won't be telling it here. What I can tell you is that things are being done about it, and that even though it was awful and scary, I am going to try to not talk about it here because it is not a story that is meant for public consumption.

Last night I sat with good friends and let them distract me from the events of the last week, and it was exactly what I needed. Today I went to the market and bought basil, lemons, a baguette, a Pinot Grigio and this amazing cheese that was marinated in olive oil. I'm going to go consume it all outside while Sadie curls up at my feet and French rap music wafts through the window onto my front yard.

Because, cliche though it's become, we here in Washington don't let them make us scared of our own streets. That is, after all, when the bad guys win.

pain

What do you do when something awful happens?

You feel as though you have suddenly sprouted extra arms from your torso, that they are flailing in every direction while your legs remain planted and immobile. Your new hands grasp at empty air, all reaching for different invisible items that remain tantalizingly, torturingly out of reach.

You ache. You physically ache for those who are in much worse pain than you. You feel guilty for induldging your own emotion at a time like this. You feel guilty because you weren't always so good to those who now need you.

You get scared. You get deeply, core-strokingly terrified that worst fears can and do come true. You become afraid of your own front door because of what is just beyond it. Scared because you have no ability to protect the people you care about from what wants to hurt them.

You get angry. Angry that something has so deeply violated the boundaries of right and wrong. Who thinks that they have the right to destroy like this? How can something this brutal be allowed to exist? Who the hell let this happen?

You marvel at your own capacity to hate, and understand with new clarity how inextricably hate and fear are mixed.

You walk with hunched shoulders and a stony face washed in that hate and fear. Not too long ago you trip-hopped down these streets. Now they seem filled with threats, and your feet race to get you home, behind bars and locks and into a bed where there is an open Swiss Army knife under your pillow but no sleep to be found.

You look for answers, for any speck of silver lining. There is no great loss without some small gain, right? Ma Ingalls said so, and she was a tough prairie wife who knew from struggle that life, dear friends, is full of pain.

You look and you look and you stretch at all boundaries of reason looking for a lesson, a reason, an explanation, anything substantive and hopeful that can be extracted from a pit filled with the filth of the world.

And it's only when someone else you love, someone who you reach out to for comfort, finally says "there is nothing good in this" that you finally allow yourself to understand that there is no lesson. Only hurt.

pity and envy

Someone taps my shoulder, and I start. More specifically, I choke on the sip of iced tea I'd just taken. The tip of the straw scratches the roof of my mouth.

I turn to see a strange man's grinning face, somewhere between a smile and a leer. He stares at me for a second too long, holding my gaze.

"I'm sorry?" I half-ask, half-apologize. Women do this. Apologize when there's nothing to apologize for. Once I apologized to a closet door when I bumped into it.

He's not unattractive, this man. In fact, he's pretty good-looking. Perhaps a bit north of my current age ceiling (31), but he has an intriguing grin and fierce eye contact. I'm a sucker for men who aren't afraid to meet my eyes.

"Will you join me?" he asks.

"Join you?"

"Join me."

It's a cafe at 4 PM on a Sunday. I wonder to myself, "join me for what?"

"Join me for a drink." The man actually answers the question I haven't voiced. Still kneeling on the floor behind the sofa, at my shoulder, he gestures to the bar behind us. "I saw you reading and you looked fascinated. Would you tell me what you are so interested by?"

I gesture to my book and say "I'm sorry, but I have to finish this for class tomorrow. Thank you anyways."

A total lie. If I were in fact reading The Black Atlantic, as I should be, then it would be true. Instead I'm reading The Man of My Dreams, the newest book by Curtis Sittenfeld, and have been having a three-hour-long panic attack because it is essentially the novelized account of my entire romantic history. He smiles ruefully and pats me on the shoulder. "Next time." Five minutes later he's bought some other girl a very fruity looking drink in a martini glass.

If I had a fairy godmother, this is the point at which she would flit into Tryst and smack me around a little. "EJ," she would say, "is not this this reason you tried on, like, five different shirts before you came here? Do you not want exactly this to happen-- a cute, slightly dangerous stranger showing interest in you?" She'd gesture to my top, which admittedly is both new and makes my boobs look really excellent and my hair, which I actually did in preparation for the unknown but possible. She's be spot-on, that nonexistent fairy godmother of mine. Not that I'd ever give her the satisfaction of ever telling her so.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to lie to him.
I'm not sure why I didn't join him for a drink.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this so much.

I pass up opportunities like this more than I should admit. If the moment isn't right, if I don't feel a tug of something new, provacative, I just can't muster the energy. I'm too busy treading the fine line between idealistic and all dead inside.

It's Sunday and it's hot and I can't stop listening to my "room chill" playlist, a playlist that includes songs like "Evaporated" by Ben Folds and "Gorecki" by Lamb and "Nobody Knows Me Like My Baby" by Lyle effing Lovett.

And I'm caught between pity and envy for those people who have it all figured out.

and in the end, balls are kicked all around

I wish I could get into the World Cup. It seems like people are enjoying themselves. Not being a soccer fan this month is like staying home to clean your closet knowing everyone else is at a big party.

But the sudden interest is mystifying to me. With a few exceptions, I don't know a lot of soccer fans. Soccer is notoriously not a big sport in America. Every few months, a sports magazine will publish a thinkpiece trying to explain why Americans play it as kids but lose interest by adulthood.

Plus-- and this pains me, because I know how passionately many of you feel about this-- televised soccer matches are boring. There. I said it. It's a lot of running around and very little scoring action. I'm sorry, but I'm an American. I want lots of points and quick plays and spectacular saves and, if at all possible, some injuries. To be fair, I did enjoy watching soccer matches on TV when I was backpacking in Europe, but there were large crowds and lots of enthusastic swearing in unfamiliar languages. Scheisskerl, indeed! In DC, World Cup games tend to bring out lot of 20 and 30-something white guys who are often most giddy about having a reason to leave their cubicles for a 90 minute lunch.

What most mystifies me, however, is that with the World Cup in full swing people are suddenly full of passionate opinions regarding the goaltending abilities of Croatia and can recite the most obscure stats of the team from Trinidad and Tobago. I'm so confused here. Have you had this extensive knowledge of Norweigan sports teams all along, and it's merely been lying dormant so that you could focus on your fantasy baseball teams? Did you spend a few intense days reading espn.com, as one might frantically try to cram for the final in a class they skipped all semester? Or is there a secret Man Code that forbids you from saying out loud: "I actually don't care much about this big international sporting event. I find its matches dull and my nation's team will not play well. Let's watch something else."

But it seems like you guys are having fun with it, so that's nice. And I do like the idea of a matchup like the Portugal-Angola game on Sunday. Even though Portugal won, it's nice to know that a former colony had the chance to athletically humiliate the imperial forces that devastated their nation and people. It's a swell idea. And actually, now that I think about it, much easier for a history nerd like me to get behind than, say, a rivalry between Los Angeles and Miami:

"Our clubs are hotter!"

"Our women have bigger tits!"

"Yeah, well, one time our guy was somewhat abraisive to your guy on AND off the court while he was still YOUR guy!"

"You're going down, bitch!"

Plus, soccer has brought us the deliciousness that is Footballers' Wive$, and for that I will always be grateful to the sport. While soccer fans gather at Lucky Bar and Dukem for games this weekend, I will be marking the World Cup by watching Jason impregnate Jackie with what will ultimately become Kyle and Chardonnay's hermaphrodite baby, whilst Salvatore Biagi moves in with Ian and Donna only to steal Donna's heart, which was weakened by both by losing the custody fight for the child she gave up for adoption when she was thirteen and by Ian's threesome with the hookers that wound up on the front page of the Daily Mirror.

Hey, everyone has their own way of celebrating. The important thing is that we ultimately agree to celebrate.