cranky mcbitchface goes jogging

As predicted... awkward email in my inbox this morning from the latest Disappearing Act. Man, do I know how to pick 'em and call 'em.

I hope you'll forgive my bad mood. It's 8:45 am as I type this and I've already been awake for three hours. "Why?" you ask, because you are a smart person and are very confused by the World Champion of Sleeping In, Hater of All Things Early, voluntarily waking up at such an ungodly hour.

Because I was running. At 6 am, I was running to beat the heat. This is the second day in a row I've done my early morning runs and I've not yet trained myself to go to bed corresponding early. So right now I'm operating on my second day of five hours' sleep. You'll forgive me if I'm Cranky McBitchface today.

You see, a while ago I got a bunch of pictures back from the first round of summer parties and weddings, and also recently spent a Sunday tubing on the Potomac with some of the most beautiful, skinny and brilliant people in Washington. Ergo, I am not feeling so great about my looks these days. I can't do much about my propensity for Paris Hilton wonk-eye in photos, but the extra layer of winter padding around my thighs? My Buddha belly, which is moving from kind of endearing to kind of "not making me able to wear my favorite jeans?" Yup, I can do something about that.

I let my gym membership lapse because I hate waiting for the treadmill with 18 year olds in full makeup and booty shorts and since then my workout routine has actually improved. In normal weather I run once or twice a week in the evenings, lift weights and do crunches while watching bad TV and, most importantly, don industrial strength Spanxx. However, the arrival of summer in the fetid swamp that is our nation's capital makes the first and the last of these things extremely difficult. I don't do well in heat. I mean, I really don't do well in heat. I break out in hives if I'm in the sun for more than an hour, my face gets bright red and stays that way long after I've moved indoors, and I glow in a most un-ladylike manner.

So I've started taking hip hop dance classes, which have helped my endurance a lot and are a lot more fun of a workout than jogging down 16th Street (sadly, they haven't helped my moves. Despite my teacher's best efforts, I remain a very, very Caucasian dancer). At ten bucks a lesson and all in the evenings, though, I need to find something else, and that something else has become early morning running.

This morning as I gasped uphill past Meridian Hill Park, an unpleasant thought entered my head. "You'd probably have to run less," something whispered "if you gave up your morning cake donut with your coffee. That thing has 12 grams of fat in it."

Of course, I chuckled to myself and picked up the pace. No way that is going to happen any time soon. After all, Cranky McBitchface needs her carbs.

everything's bigger in texas (except my vacation plans)

Interweb people, I need your help. I will be in Austin for (yet another) wedding this weekend and am looking for some fun things to do in my too-short time there. Austinist has been a big help, but you lovely people are so very smart and well-traveled I'm sure you have your own suggestions. I'll have about four hours to myself on Friday afternoon and will then be with my dad and his brother from through the Saturday evening wedding until our respective flights home Sunday afternoon. Specifically, I'm looking for recommendations for:

- Barbecue

- Live music, preferably some really excellent country and honky-tonk stuff. My family takes bluegrass very seriously, if that helps you at all. I already checked Stubbs' website and sadly no one is playing while we're in town.

- Unusual museums. I enjoy a good traditional museum as much as the next gal, but am still regretting that while in Wichita last weekend we chose the art museum instead of the Hopalong Cassidy Museum.

- Any farmers markets, shopping districts, excellent antique marts

- A place to buy cowboy boots

Please, please leave any suggestions and recommendation in the comments section!

sometimes a girl just needs one

I usually don't write about guys and dating in this space. This is for a variety of reasons:

1. There's not a lot to write about. I live in DC, am tall and won't date bisexual men, conservative Republicans or guys who cite The Da Vinci Code as their favorite book. This dramatically limits my options.

2. When there is something to write about, I prefer to keep it to myself for a while. That way, if we wind up actually dating, I won't be forced into a conversation that begins "Hey, I write about my feelings on the Internet. Oh, and I published stories about you there, too."

3. I repeat the exact same pattern over and over and over.

Let's explore # 3, shall we?

In the last year, I've repeated the same relationship three times. The guy is always older than me, of the indie rock persuasion, in a sell-out job he hates and is a little bad at life but not so much so that it's a major red flag (31 and sleeps on a futon, 35 and still goes home to do laundry). We date for a couple of weeks, agree we both hate Dane Cook and are rapidly losing affection for Zach Braff, introduce one another to our favorite movies and songs, hook up a few times... and he completely disappears.

THEN, within two months of the last encounter, he reappears full of dramatic apologies and self-hating prose, completely disproportional to the amount of time we've been dating. These emails, phone calls, text messages and online friendship network requests have all contained at least two of the following phrases:

- "I can't believe how I blew it with you."
- "You are the coolest girl I've met in a long time."
- "I'm dating someone else now so I'm not doing this just to get in your pants."
- "The way I treated you is my biggest regret."
- "Please forgive me. I hope we can still be friends."
- "Are we still going to that concert?"
- "Can I come over?"

My response to all of this has of course been to completely ignore it. Because when you blow me off, especially after we've slept together, you don't get the reward of my friendship or even me acknowledging your continued existence. Internally, I've been terribly jolly whenever I get one of these crawling-back contacts. It may not be as great as actually continuing a relationship, but knowing that you're still thinking about me long after I've stopped thinking about you... not gonna lie, kind of validating.

However, when the latest Disappearing Act resurfaced at 2:30 last Saturday morning, it stopped being validating and started being a little fucking annoying. This was partly because I was in Wichita, sharing a hotel room with my entire family, and one does not generally enjoy receiving drunk dials when one's father is in the room . But mostly, it was annoying because I knew exactly what was going to transpire the second I saw his name on my caller ID. He would chicken out and not leave a voicemail. Then he would call back later, sober, to try to explain why he called before. I would not answer this call either and he would leave a stammering voicemail full of apologies for both bootycalling me and for dropping out of contact last month. And sure enough, this is exactly what happened. If tradition continues, I fully expect an awkward follow-up email within a week.

This is not a pattern I'm particularly enjoying, and yet, given the less-appealing options of celibacy or dating college-age Republican Hill interns, it's what I have going for me at the moment. There have been other options in the last few months, perfectly nice guys with whom I share little chemistry and banter, guys who are very good about keeping in contact, but I'm a spark junkie. That such sparkage seems to be irrevocably linked with guys who can't handle it and run away is frustrating, but I'd much rather be single than desperately trying to cultivate attraction when none is manifesting naturally.

And, on a somewhat related yet semi-random note, there is no horror quite like the horror of talking with a nice guy at a wedding, doing shots and comparing favorite bands and asking him how he knows the bride and groom and realizing that this guy hitting on you, doing the elbow-stroking thing to move in a little closer, IS A COUSIN. Way to make drunken apology texting from DC man-boys seem terribly appealing.

the very anti-climactic story of how i almost threw down in a kennedy center bathroom

Cracking up over something, the details of which I now cannot recall and were probably terribly silly, Lisa and I took our places in the ever-growing wait for the Kennedy Center's garage-level restroom. As I leaned against the wall, exhausted from the crowds of reggae fans dancing above our heads and the stifling humidity pressing down on all of us, I accidentally nudged the arm of the woman standing next to me with my huge black Kenneth Cole tote. If you've ever spent time with me, chances are good you've met this bag. I bump into a lot of things with it, because I am klutzy and it is massive.

"Excuse (hic!) me!" I snorted, trying to apologize to the stranger around an unfortunately-timed burst of hiccups brought on by laughter and the Sam Adams Summer Ale I'd consumed a half-hour earlier. Still giggling, I started to rummage through my bag looking for my lip gloss when:

"I think someone has had a few too many drinks, because someone keeps invading my personal space!"

It took me a moment to realize she was talking about me. Hands still buried in my tote I looked up to see the woman I'd bumped into starting to gesture wildly from on high, as if conducting an invisible symphony of Woe. Looking past Lisa and me to the row of women snaking through the open Ladies Room door and into the hallway, she was clearly performing for an audience.

"This," she exclaimed as she wildly gesticulated, drawing a three-by-three foot box in the air around her person , "is my personal space. It is my zone. No one should enter it unless I specifically invite them too. Especially not drunk white girls. But what can you do when a drunk girl decides to get all up in your space?" She gestured to the bathroom ceiling with the kind of shrug that is both impassioned and downtrodden, the kind often made by Jewish mother types in Woody Allen movies. It was a gesture that seemed to say "no one will ever know how much I suffer, but this action might convey a smidgen of what I endure."

The other women in line were by this point staring at the walls or floor to avoid making eye contact with Personal Space, and both Lisa's and my mouths were hanging wide open as we looked at one another in total confusion. "Is she really talking about you IN FRONT OF YOU?" Lisa's eyes seemed to be asking.

"I don't know!" my eyes silently exclaimed in response. "Did that bitch really just call me a drunk? Why is she all rowdy about her space? What is she trying to accomplish with this? Are we going to rumble in a Kennedy Center bathroom?" It was a surreal moment, and felt like the first time I smoked out of an apple bong and spent the evening touching my friend Jason's nose and asking him "Are we really here? Is this really happening???"

As Personal Space continued her speech, the line continued to awkwardly shuffle towards the stalls. She finally concluded her speech with a dramatic flourish as the door to the handicapped stall opened, pausing for a moment before she swept into the toilet as if expecting the other women in line to break out in applause, or a perhaps a chorus of "Oh Happy Day!" With no adulation forthcoming she swept into the stall, bumping my own arm with her hemp duffle bag.

Lisa and I stood there for a moment, utterly unsure if what we thought had just happened had actually just happened. A woman came out of another stall and I entered it, shaking my head at the absurdity of the last few moments when Lisa called out behind me:

"EJ, honey, did I step on your foot? I'm sooooooo sorry!"

Without even thinking, I threw open the stall door and in my best Exorcist voice growled:

"YOU BITCH. THAT WAS MY PERSONAL SPACE."

I went about my business to the sounds of fifteen women hooting with laughter.

Personal Space was bent over at the sink washing her hands when I exited the stall, the other women in line still chuckling. She glowered at me as I washed my own hands, then continued to glower as we both walked over to the paper towel dispenser at the same time. We stood in front of it together, frozen for a moment in time; self-righteous lecturer and smartass, tipsy taunter locked in a battle of wills for the right to dry our hands. I blinked first, but only so I could goad her further by dripping with sarcasm and calling her old:

"After you. MA'AM.

And that is the very anti-climactic story of how I almost threw down in a Kennedy Center bathroom.

the four beer blues

Sitting in the basement of an old haunt, I felt the familiar tug of the Four Beer Blues.

You know what I'm talking about. That sudden sweep of melancholy that hits out of nowhere after a few drinks, not exactly sobering you up but definitely pulling you down. Everyone's symptoms are slightly different, but we all are stricken from time to time. Me, I stare off into space thinking about things that have no business being thought about at a bar (do I need to buy more paper towels, what am I going to do with my life when I finish school, would it be rude or kind if I let the unfortunate girl by the bar know that I can see both her ass crack and the hem of her granny panties, etc.), prompting friends to occasionally poke me and ask "EJ? You still there?" Things move a little more slowly during the Blues, and it seems to take an inordinately long time for me to smile and nod and answer "Of course!!" just a little too brightly.

Though the Four Beer Blues can mercilessly strike unsuspecting revelers, there are often warning signs. Someone selects "High and Dry," or anything by Death Cab for Cutie on the jukebox. I find rallying for Friday nights a challenge, and the Blues are far more likely to hit at the end of a long day. The forced sobriety of a cab ride in the middle of the evening dramatically increases the likelihood of an attack, as does the sudden, unexpected appearance of an ex or an old mistake.

You can try to fight away the Four Beer Blues, to order a round of shots for your group, change the music, flirt with someone new. Sometimes it works, but only if all the elements align to distract from what triggered the Blues in the first place. More often than not, there's no going back and the evening is best ended quietly and quickly, before someone picks a fight or worse, orders and consumes an entire pizza at 4 AM. Surrender to the Four Beer Blues and no one gets hurt.

In the cab home from my latest bout with the Blues, I pondered the trigger for that night's attack. "Friendship evolution," one might call it. The natural selection process in full effect, weeding out the weaker connections that are not easily sustained to make room for new growth, new people, new possibilities. Not that they're gone forever, because you still love the old friends and have fantastic memories of time spent with them, but the paradigm has tangibly shifted. Room has been made for the new at the expense of the old.

I used to worry that instead of natural selection, I was just getting lazy and careless. That I was taking old friends for granted and sloughing them off when I got restless. But it's not that at all, something made transparently clear the next night when I spent time with much older friends, people I've known for years but hadn't seen for weeks, and didn't miss a beat with them. When you meet as many people as I do and approach life with the attitude that a stranger is a friend until they prove otherwise, you accumulate a lot of potential connections. Some will take, some will wither and die on the vine, some will seem to be going along strongly and then abruptly vanish for seemingly no reason. People will surprise you in ways good and bad, and people will live up to and down to your expectations.

I used to feel guilty about falling out of touch with people, like I'd done something negligent by not making one person or group my top priority. This has become really difficult over the last couple of years because I've found myself becoming a member of several distinct groups of friends, some overlapping one another and some completely distinct. They're all friendly people, and I wouldn't hang out with them if they weren't hilarious and kind and welcoming, but they are each very much their own clique and no matter how much I love the time I spend with them, balancing these various groups is getting exhausting. I've been out almost every night I've been in DC since school ended in May, and can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "EJ! I haven't seen you in forever!" since then.

Hurtling towards home and bed in the cab, I thought about the people I'd just left and how little I'd seen them lately, feeling a little guilty and a little angry at the chilly reception that had been waiting for me and the empty air left hanging after the initial squeals and hugs.

And for the first time in a long time, I kicked the Four Beer Blues with one very simple conclusion: "It is not my sole responsibility to maintain a relationship."

i get by with a little help from my friends

I was in the kitchen cooking spicy asparagus stir fry and salmon with wasabi pea crust when I heard Kristi howling with laughter from my couch. When I poked my head out the cutout window I saw that she was flipping through my saved programs on the DVR.

"Em," she asked me "exactly how many episodes of The Wonder Years do you have here?"

Even though she is a dear friend and I know she would not judge me, I just couldn't admit out loud that before I went to Ohio last weekend I deleted at least seven more episodes to make room for the Tony Awards. Because to vocalize it, to allow the words to exit my mouth and hang in the air and become part of the fabric of the universe, would inexorably establish that I am one Talbots pantsuit away from turning into my mother.

alert: right coast snobbery factor high

After spending the weekend with extended family in southwest Ohio, I think I understand why there are so many meth labs in the Midwest.

what the career day speaker saw

My friend B teaches at a DCPS middle school, one of the really rough ones that is more likely to be in the news for stabbings than for high test scores. To keep the kids busy at the end of the school year, she's been planning all sorts of special events for the kids who are still showing up, once of which was Career Day today. Since I work at a college, I was invited to talk about what it is like to GO to a college. B figured, quite rightly, that her class would be much more interested in what dorm life and step teams are like than the intricacies of Stafford Loans or what it means to be ABD.

These kids were great. Yes, she'd pulled the especially high-achieving students for this session, but they asked fantastic questions and were incredibly enthusiastic. They kept me there for two hours and I easily could have stayed longer, but there was an attorney waiting in the hallway to talk to them after me, and I felt a tad rude having him cool his heels while we talked about NCAA basketball.

To begin the session I'd stolen some tricks from my mother, who also works in higher ed. "How many of you know someone who has taken out a loan to buy something big?" I asked them as everyone scooted their desks into a circle. One girl shouted "a car!" Another said "a house." "Okay," I replied. "So you know that a lot of people borrow money when they want to buy something expensive. But what you may not know is the second you drive that car off the lot, it starts losing value. And the longer you use it, the less and less it is worth."

They started to look a little sober at this thought, and so I switched gears to rev them back up. "Who here thinks a million dollars is a lot of money?" I asked the kids. Everyone's hands shot up in the air, B's and mine included. "I agree," I said. "A million dollars is a LOT of money. And a study recently came out saying that over a lifetime, people who graduate from college will make an average of a MILLION dollars more than people who stop after high school."

Their eyes started to glaze over as they thought about what a big number "a million" was. "Now, think back to that car or that house that you borrowed money to get. You just as easily can borrow money to go to school. But the difference is, instead of getting less valuable, your purchase-- your education-- gets MORE valuable as time goes on. And no one can take it away from you. Your car can get stolen or maybe you can't keep your house, but you will always, always have your education. And the older you get, the more money you will make from it. That's why you can't afford NOT to go to college."

Then the boy sitting across the circle started shouting around a mouthful of Pringles, "But if I want to be an engineer, I'll make even more money than that!"

"Excuse me, sir," I said "I cannot understand you when you talk with your mouth full." (Oh LORD, what a grown-up thing to say)

The rest of the kids laughed at him as he frantically tried to swallow before someone else could start talking over him. "I mean," he exclaimed, Pringle-free, "I'd make more than a million dollars."

"Over a lifetime, yes, I'm sure you would. I'm sure that as an engineer, you'd make more money than me."

"Hells yeah I would!" he grinned, and even though I didn't want to endorse twelve-year olds swearing in the classroom, he was so impish I couldn't help but grin as well. He started paging through the course catalog I'd brought as two girls passed around my old student ID card and another boy hollered "So teachers at college don't care if you don't do your homework because then they don't have to work as hard, right?!"

I've done a lot of college recruiting before, and some with underserved populations, but this was an entirely new perspective. B warned me that some of them had siblings or parents who went to college but the majority of them had, at most, only seen college on TV. Some other questions they asked me:

What is a major?

Does the teacher smack you if you fall asleep in class?

Do you have a movie theater on campus?

Do your dorm refrigerators come with food already in them?

Why should I go to college if I know I want to be a basketball player?

How do you say "cheese" in Italian?

Can you share books with other people? Cuz books are expensive.

How much does college cost? Like a thousand dollars?

How do you play water polo?



After I answered a ton more questions (and we discussed how to write a thesis using the example "Egyptians, not aliens, build the pyramids"), one very shy girl sitting next to me in our desk circle asked me what I wanted to do with my college degree. I told her that she'd asked a very good question, because I still didn't know-- but that because I went to college I was now prepared to do a lot of different things. To teach, to write, to problem-solve, to ask hard questions and try to find answers to them. That because I graduated from college I had all sorts of options ahead of me, and that I had such a good time there I decided to stay working at a college and keep going to school. She smiled in a way that made me think that answer might have sparked something in her.

I have no idea what will happen to any of those kids, if any of them will think about what I said or flip through the glossy brochures I handed out and daydream about a life in the other Washington. I'm not naive enough to think I changed anyone's life, but I hope that maybe someone heard me when I said it wouldn't be enough to go for the easy way, and that they should challenge themselves beyond what people expected and asked of them. That they would meet a lot of people who would say that they were smart and that that was good enough, and that they shouldn't stop at "good enough."

Maybe some of it did get through. At the end of the session I asked them "and what are the three subjects you should take as much as possible in high school?" and they shouted in muddled chorus "math, science and foreign language!" Do DCPS high schools even offer foreign languages? I have no idea.

But for the brief time I spent with them, I was utterly charmed and optimistic. These kids are fantastic. I hope they get the chances they deserve to show off what they're made of, because it's good stuff.

i will stop making fun of other peoples' life choices when it stops being funny

"This girl I know and her fiance aren't moving in together until after the wedding."

"As in, they're keeping separate apartments until the wedding night? Because then the Baby Jesus won't know they have the sex?"

"Yup. And they even live in the same neighborhood."

"That's ridiculous. People still do this? I mean, tradition is nice and all, but why not just dig a big hole and throw dollars down it?"

"Well, she's a second-year associate and he's a lawyer, too. They can afford it."

"But what a silly thing to spend extra money on. If I had that salary and wanted to waste it on something useless I'd get something really impractical and have it encrusted with diamonds."

"Like a diamond-encrusted PONY."

"A diamond-encrusted pony with ROCKETS."

"Yes! Diamond rocket ponies are a waste of money I can get behind."

how to annoy me

Tell me that you "go to law school in Connecticut," and then casually name-drop "New Haven" a few minutes later. Wow, you're SO MODEST. CAN WE HAVE SEX NOW?

dina lohan, dave eggers and the coalition provisional authority

One of the (many) advantages of having your life revolve around a university campus is that come summer, you find yourself with lots of free time and a brain lubed up by nine months of reading Russian historians and overusing words like "paradigm" in daily conversation. What to do with all that pent-up mental energy just waiting to be splurged all over the place?

I completely understand the impulse to turn one's brain off and spend the lazy days of summer reading chick lit novels with scrawly, loopy drawings of shoes or martini glasses on the cover. Or, maybe, not even reading at all, but instead celebrating in the sudden uselessness of critical thinking by enjoying happy hours, big-budget sequels to sequels, and reality TV along the lines of So You Think You Can Decorate, Dancing Idol: Las Vegas or similar.

However, except for that last one (because um, it would be awesome. I'm envisioning Steve Sanders doing the foxtrot with Dina Lohan, who is wearing Austin Scarlett's cornhusk dress from Season 1 of Project Runway, and then they'd have to redecorate Lindsay's suite in rehab using only $50 worth of Ikea products. Paula Abdul and Billy Joel's monotone child bride from Top Chef would host. Then in the finale Tim Gunn and Simon Cowell would show up and tell everyone how utterly ridiculous they were. LIKE YOU WOULDN'T WATCH THIS), I can't completely turn off my brain just yet. I have to power down a little, move from sprinting into a jog before I come to a complete stop, dripping with sweat from the intellectual exertion of it all.

If I don't, I might metaphor myself into a tizzy.

And so, I've been reading quite a bit over the last two weeks and have some reviews and recommendations for any other readers out there. Not just books; there are also some articles and essays I've recently read that have stayed with me:

"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" by Peggy McIntosh (via Feministing)
For all of the conversation about gentrification and race (if you want to achieve a unique combination of anger and utter despair, check out the comment thread on this DCist post), this article is the first commentary I've come across where the author simultaneously attempts to learn more about her own motivations and prejudices while successfully avoiding the blame game on all sides. This, in my mind, is the first step in getting things done-- keeping the focus on the reality of daily life, while being sensitive to the histories and motivations (blatant or not) that created it. Easy to say, a lot harder to do in practice.

Hey, speaking of anger and utter despair!:

Babylon By Bus by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann and Donovan Webster
After slogging through The Secret History of the Iraq War and Fiasco, I picked this up expecting to get a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure approach to the Iraq War. Surprisingly, this book has both the best on-the-ground reporting of life in Iraq leading up to Fallujah and the insurgency and the most cogent analysis of the disaster that was the CPA and American policy. This memoir of two twentysomething civilians who went to Baghdad as backpackers and wound up spending three months supervising the creation of Iraqi NGOs also points out some of the most basic ironies and unanswered questions of the war. For example, isn't it odd that every other American-led post conflict nation-building effort has been led by the State Department (or its contemporary, civilian equivalent) and Iraq's was led by the DOD-- meaning that the least democratic organization (the military) in the US was in charge of setting up democracy in an tribally-organized society that had no history of democratic tradition and was coming off thirty years of totalitarian rule? Well, hmmmm? In four years not once have I seen a reporter or political candidate make so clear a point. This book is compulsively readable and not to be missed by anyone who has ever wondered "exactly how did we get in this mess?"

And hey, speaking of messes we're in:

The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

I keep promising to write about my deep, unwavering love for Al Gore. He was truly my first political love, and, unlike my first real love, my affection and respect for him has only been vindicated as the years pass. This book has been frequently described as "blistering," and Gore doesn't hold punches as he tries to identify the culprits as to why reason, logic and intellect have been cast as enemies to America. Such arguments have been made before, but Gore brings in several new twists that make his case for a decaying American political system even stronger. He is the first political scientist to bring in hard science on this issue, talking about how brain chemistry is changed after prolonged exposure to television over reading and human interaction. He synthesizes 9/11, the rise of the religious right, the media-entertainment complex, neoconservativism, brain physiology and Enlightenment social philosophy in an amazingly cogent, persuasive text. There's a lot to chew on in this book, and most readers will probably find things to disagree with (I know I don't find some of his lab rat anecdotes especially persuasive), but that's his point-- even if you don't agree, you're thinking, you're engaging, you're having debates with the text and yourself and maybe even other people! You're not just being talked at by a Nancy O'Dell or a Sean Hannity.

What is the What, by Dave Eggers

I want to give a copy of this book to every person who has ever whined about anything, ever. It had the power to shut me up for whole days after I finished reading it.

I have a whole huge stack waiting for me, but would love some more suggestions. What all are you reading this summer? Well, besides Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, obviously. I figure by July 21st I'll be sick of Paul Bremer and African genocide and ready for some wizarding mischief.

twitterpated

Flower: [about two birds fluttering around] Well! What's the matter with them?
Thumper: Why are they acting that way?
Friend Owl: Why, don't you know? They're twitterpated.
Flower, Bambi, Thumper: Twitterpated?
Friend Owl: Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: You're walking along, minding your own business. You're looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden you run smack into a pretty face. Woo-woo! You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head's in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather, and before you know it, you're walking on air. And then you know what? You're knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head!
Thumper: Gosh, that's awful.
Flower: Gee whiz.

Well-said, forest friends. Well-said, indeed.

Except the part about it being awful. Because it's pretty much the exact opposite of that.

it's not whining when it's couched as playwriting

EJ: Hi, I'm looking for a charger for this phone. She holds out a perfectly functional silver flip phone.

Cingular Employee #1: He winces in a combination of confusion and terror, like he's just seen Tori Spelling's chest cavity for the first time. I'm sorry, there's no way we have a charger for that phone. That's, like, a really old phone.

EJ: It's like three years old.

CE #1: Exactly. He smiles benevolently, as one might when a mentally challenged toddler points at a dog and yells "TRUCK!" Like I said, that's a very old model. You're really better off just upgrading to a new phone entirely and starting your contract over with better equipment.

EJ: I don't want to get a new phone. My current phone is just fine. And I really have no desire to change my entire contract just because housekeeping at the Hilton on 55th Street lost my charger. She is starting to get a little testy, as she often does when dealing with people who are condescending about technology. She is a smart girl, she knows that cell phones are capable of taking photos and syncing up with iPods and performing laparoscopic surgery, she's just not interested in all those bells and whistles.

CE #1: I mean, you could try to go online to one of those appliance warehouse sites and try to find a charger there. But you really should just get a whole new calling system.

EJ: A "calling system?"

CE #1: He calls out to a man across the store. Hey Tyrone, come over and see this.

Tyrone comes over to check out the phone, oblivious to the confusion on EJ's face. His jaw literally drops open as he turns over the phone in his hands, then quietly chuckles to himself.

CE #1: She says she needs a charger for this.

Tyrone: Good luck with that. Exeunt Tyrone.

EJ: So you don't have a charger for it.

CE #1: Not a chance. A phone that old...

EJ: Getting perhaps a little more angry than is appropriate for the situation. Look, if you don't carry the charger, fine. But I'm not spending a hundred dollars and re-upping my contract to replace something that works perfectly well.

CE #1: He is now a bit nervous. He senses that he and Tyrone have been too overt in their mocking this girl with the ancient, Luddite technology. But we have lots of inexpensive phones here with cameras, with wireless capability, that will sync up with your Outlook...

EJ: But all I want to do is make and receive phone calls. And texts. And this phone does that!

CE #1: Well, fine.

EJ: FINE. THANKS FOR YOUR HELP.

Exeunt EJ, in a righteous huff. She turns on her heel pivoting out the door and proceeds to walk smack into a puffy, be-suited man yelling into his Blackberry. He ignores her completely as he shoves past her into the Starbucks next door.

EJ: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

FIN.

you are now entering a whine-free zone

Okay. I declare EJ Takes Life to be a no-whining zone for the rest of the week. Entirely too much whining has taken place here, particularly when there are so many things to be thankful for.

Like family and vacations:


Like home and new rugs and finally getting rid of my busted Ikea furniture:


Like insanely hot new boots bought for a tenth of the original price (I swear, they look better on me. Like, movie star-better):


Of course, these all don't mean that someone is necessarily a good person. After all, a good person sees a desperately thirsty cat and thinks "I should get her water," not "this is a cheezburger moment:"

crime report 5/22/07, with commentary

I was going to write about New York this weekend. I was going to write about my dad's birthday dinner at Klee and running into Perez Hilton at Company on Saturday night. I was going to write about my insane new couture boots that I saw in Vogue a last month and then bought on mega double-secret sale on a rainy Saturday afternoon. About how a salesgirl in SoHo finally convinced me to embrace leggings and admit to myself that while I feel silly wearing them, they do make my legs look a million miles long. About the unbelievable intensity that is stage seats for Spring Awakening and the unbelievably fun dorkiness that is going to hear one of the actor's bands later that night at a ratty club in that sketchy part of the West 30s.

But I'm not going to, because when I went out to my car this morning I found the window smashed in and my CDs and an ancient laptop wrapped in a sheet both missing.

And so I'm really, really pissed off.

I'm really, really pissed off that a mere six weeks after moving and two weeks after getting groped and having strangers call me a bigot when I wrote about it, my car was broken into.

I'm really, really pissed at myself. It's not like I'm some hick who just moved to the Big City. How stupid was I to leave anything remotely of value in my car parked in Columbia Heights? Very, that's how stupid. Very, very, very stupid. No excuse. I should have known better. Of course, that laptop was utterly virus-ridden and virtually inoperable. I had grand dreams of refurbishing it and giving it to charity. Now I just really hope that the thief tries to use it before he hocks it. Maybe he'll use it to try to charge a (stolen) iPod, or maybe his pacemaker. That'd be swell.

I'm really, really pissed off that I'm just supposed to accept things like this as reality, because there's a voice in my head telling me that this is what living in a city means and if I can't deal then there's always the burbs. I hate this voice. It's the same voice I used with my mother when we were having brunch yesterday in Hell's Kitchen and she asked if I'd ever consider not living in a city. It's contemptful and disbelieving and while I'm not happy that I used it with my mother, having it saw in my head as I fume this morning does not seem fair payback.

I'm really, really pissed that today it feels like either/or, baby. Today feels like a day where nuance is a no-show and it feels like a choice between living in a safe space where a girl can take for granted that her car will remain where she parked it but where everyone looks the same and thinks the same and eats the same and takes the same mundane pleasures in the same pathetic things, or living in a dynamic community with the smell of jerk chicken and the sounds of bossa nova wafting over the streets, coming from homes full of people with whom I have nothing in common but who are mostly very, very good people, except the ones who yell and grab and rob without a care in the world.

I'm trying to stay focused on the office worker from the Baptist church who came out to meet me as I stared blankly at the gaping hole where my window used to be. I'd rather think about his kindness when he told me how he tried to report the break-in to the police when he first saw it on Saturday morning (yes-- Saturday morning) than that utterly stupid DCPD law that only an owner can report a break-in. Sadly, I already knew this. Way to encourage neighborhood friendliness and civil society, right?

And I'm really trying not to let this crap ruin memories of a wonderful weekend. Truth be told, insurance (which I pay an obscene amount for) will cover the damage and I don't care about the laptop. The CDs-- well, that hurt. I had every mix CD I've made or received since college taken. No two ways about it, that blows. Somehow I doubt that the thief listens to the Decemberists or the Polyphonic Spree, like, ever. But yes, I know that it's a miracle that my car was even still there, much less relatively intact. Lordy, I spent the train ride back yesterday reading What is the What. You have no idea how much I hate myself for even whining about CDs and a broken window right now.

Which, of course, makes me hate this thief even more. For committing an act against me that led to me feeling guilty for feeling angry.


Got that? No? Yeah, me neither.

Mostly, I'm just tired. I am thoroughly tired of constantly defending my lifestyle and my neighborhood, and to be honest, I'm tired of defending it to myself. I'm utterly sick of the round-robin cycle of gentifiers' woes and yuppie guilt and of so hopelessly embodying the cliche of the entitled white gentrifier. Of the voice in my head reminding me that this is really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and of the second voice counterarguing that hey, maybe it could have been worse but it is still most certainly not okay what happened. Someone robbed me, I'm arguing with myself and I'm so very over all of it.

a letter to myself, or; why seven diet cokes makes one's brain bleed

Dear EJ Six Months From Now,

Hi! It's me, Present Day EJ. I'm currently sitting in a study carrel in our campus library, surrounded by several volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States, empty Smarties wrappers and a pile of bloody Kleenex. I just got my second bloody nose of the day for absolutely no identifiable reason. Except that maybe I've read so many recently declassified CIA cables that our brain has started leaking out our head. If that's the case, I'm really sorry. You're probably missing that extra brain right about now.

Despite how grim that all sounds, I'm writing to you to remind you how good you had it in May. You only had one class, and you got to pick a paper topic that your geeky self at least somewhat enjoyed (because when normal sixteen-year-old girls in 1998 were obsessed with the Backstreet Boys and figuring out how long one should date a boy before going to third base stopped being slutty and started being good behavior, we were obsessed with rereading The Poisonwood Bible and lamenting the unlikelihood that we would ever personally witness a sub-Saharan African revolution). Yes, my thesis changed quite a bit over the last month, the last week, and, um, okay, the last weekend, but it's 12:01 AM of the day the beast is due, and, save a final edit, I'm pretty much done. That hasn't happened since our sophomore year of college, a year which saw us write the first of three papers in our academic career in which we referenced Paris Hilton. By the by, that we got into graduate school proves that there is a God, and that She has a great sense of humor.

Oh, also emember that you got to finish this paper in a study carrel, an experience that combines the focus and energy of a library with the privacy that allows one to eat Wendy's for dinner while blasting The Hold Steady and later talk on her cell phone as she makes a major timeline breakthrough in the Brazzaville cables section of her study. It's enough to make a girl want to pursue a PhD, after all.

So basically, you have it just fine now. That cab ride home will be a tad pricey, but I think of it as an investment that would otherwise be spent on Tums tomorrow as I tried to frantically finish the damn thing while not letting our boss know that I'm doing schoolwork all day. You know that feeling, the gut-twisting panic as your fingers flutter over the keyboard, the air between them and the computer seeming a terrible barrier to putting words, any words, on the page that is due in your prof's box in ten minutes? Remember that feeling. Now, remember how you felt right now. I'll give you a hint: SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER.

So come finals for fall semester, when you're tempted by holiday parties and happy hours and weekends in New York and seeing the Nutcracker, remember how very not at all bad this was. If I can spend three days doing wedding stuff for some of our closest friends and still punch out this sucker in time to not have a heart attack, then there is no reason for you to stall until the last minute like we usually do. Cuz remember, kiddo: you're going to have TWO classes this fall. As in "TWICE AS MUCH CLASS WITH JUST AS MUCH WORK, AND, PLEASE GOD, JUST AS MUCH IF NOT MORE FUN." So do what you have to do. Stop spending Saturday mornings watching TiVoed episodes of The Wonder Years and Buffy. Stop letting Jim from Capitol Hill books give you free Wallace Stegner novels. Spend lunch hour reading Clausewitz, not Gawker.

And I really hope you enjoyed our choice not to take classes this summer. I hope you read all that Stegner and that whole other stack of fiction sitting in our den, that you finally finished unpacking the new place and took a lot of road trips. I hope you spent time with our friends and family and maybe even some boys. I hope you learned to cram in fun time when you could get it, because we're going to get a lot less of it over the next two years. And kiddo, I really hope you learned how to not write blog entries after midnight, because MAN, we ramble.

Now, turn off the TV and go do your homework.

Love,

Present Day EJ

PS- Empty Sadie's box. Just because we have papers doesn't mean others should suffer. Plus she's already figured out how to fling litter all over the bathmat and by fall finals she'll probably know how to smuggle it into the sheets.

i'm the girl who loves you

I have the misfortune of being both a compulsive planner and terribly disorganized. This leads to scenarios like the one that transpired on Friday evening, the night of K and A's rehearsal dinner. Of course I'd known about it for months, had it marked on both my Outlook and the wall calendar in my kitchen, but did that keep me from buying a ticket to the Ben Gibbard show for the same night? Or from putting the concert on both my Outlook AND calendar, right below the rehearsal dinner? And from not noticing "hey there! I have a lot going on that night!" until, um, Wednesday?

Of course the rehearsal dinner trumped Ben Gibbard, but had I known that John Krasinski would not only be onstage with Ben Gibbard, but that John Krasinski would be singing "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," I can't promise that I would have made the same choice. Furthermore, I can't promise that I wouldn't have sold the groom's grandma for spare cash to bribe my way backstage.

It is a testament to my love for K and A that I did not ditch the wedding entirely to spend the weekend trying to hunt down Jim Halpert. But in the end common decency, happiness for my friends and the anti-stalking statutes of the District of Columbia got me to the synagouge on Saturday.

I knew it would be beautiful, because K has been planning her wedding day pretty much since birth and is blessed with both great taste and a will of reinforced steel. What I was not prepared for was how unbelievably, gorgeously stunning she herself was. Think every cliche you've ever heard about a bride glowing on her wedding day and multiply it tenfold. She was spectacular. K has me thinking I really need to have a wedding soon, because it apparently does absolutely magical things for one's skin and hair. And A didn't look bad, either.

Everyone cried during the weding and danced their best white people dance moves at the reception. Bless them for springing for a band that were once finalists on Star Search. Bless their lead singer for bringing K's mom to the microphone to sing a Patsy Cline number. Bless the expressions of K's Oklahoma-bred parents as they were lifted up on chairs during the horah.

Yes, it might have been even more perfect if John Krasinski had been my date. But watching how insanely happy my friends were and celebrating an amazing start to their marriage, thoughts of "if only" were miles away.

Congratulations, A and K. I love you both even more than John Krasinski singing Wilco.

mr. and mrs. K and A

I've struggled for a few days now to write something that honors my friends K and A, who are getting married tomorrow. We've known each other for almost seven years now, since we lived on the same floor of our freshman dorm, and they're the first from our college group of friends to tie the knot.

I don't often write about my close friends in this space because the voice I use here isn't always the best for doling out compliments or writing kind descriptions. It's difficult to paint a picture of a person without including the quirks, and I worry that in my snarky voice any descriptions of the things I love about my friends-- the way A yells along his agreement with Fox News or the the time K told us that she hated Rocky Road ice cream because it makes her think of fisting-- would sound trite or worse, condescending. Which, let's face it, pretty much describes a lot of my writing.

Plus, it would be really boring of me to say "I love you guys and I'm so excited for you and know you'll make it work." Yes, I do and I am and I do, but how does one make that into something that is fun for an audience of strangers to read?

Perhaps a story will best illustrate what I am (very inarticulately) trying to say. The morning after her bachelorette party, K took us girls out to breakfast at the Silver Diner. While we were inhaling coffee and biscuits and home fries, she told us about an awful girl she knows who recently tried to freak her out about getting married. "Aren't you totally scared of marriage?" Awful Girl asked. "Like, after you guys get married you'll be all... old, and stuff."

"Not really," K told her. "We're pretty much old already."

Which is true. Even though they're both very fun 25 year olds, we give them a lot of grief for being prematurely old. I'm pretty sure that the rehearsal dinner tonight and the wedding tomorrow will be the first time they've both been out on a Friday AND Saturday since junior year. They like wine and artisinal cheese and board games that allow A to air his competitive streak in a safe environment. They like a close circle of friends who are all up in each other's business and both enjoy hating Rachael Ray and loving Giada De Laurentiis. They both are really, really happy with each other and with planning their life together. And wow, that is cool. I don't know a lot of people our age who are truly, genuinely content with their day to day lives and with their anticipated futures.

When the first person from a group of friends gets married, there's often a collective tendency for people to freak a little bit. Duh, it's a huge big scary irrevocably grownup step. Honestly, I expected that as K and A's wedding approached I would completely freak out and have typical Girl thoughts like "Oh my god, I can't believe she's getting married/I'm gonna die alone."

But I'm surprising myself by not having those thoughts spring up at all. I'm just happy for my friends and looking forward to the fun party. My normal urge to obsessively compare and navel-gaze is completely gone from these proceedings because I'm just really excited for K and A. Because they are prematurely old, and because I love them both, and because more than any other couple I know, I believe they can handle this huge big scary irrevocably grownup step.

*sniffle*

Okay, I have GOT to get that picture off the top of my blog.


Dum-de-dum-dum-de-dum...



Gone yet?



Still there...?


Okay, fine. How about a list to take up space?

Reasons Why Being Sick All Weekend Sucked

- Apparently my body is old and can no longer handle eleven consecutive nights of going out. I shall now retire to the old folks' home with my Dentu-Grip and Centrum Silver.

- I missed a whole bunch of great parties, including Brunch Bird's Derby party, DJ's birthday at Sonoma and a Cinco de Mayo margaritas fiesta with Hey Pretty and 123 Valerie. Where was the flu when in February, when I had no parties but my birthday??? I mean, it just doesn't seem fair.

- The actual being sick part, which started off as "not fun" when my throat closed up on Friday morning and quickly became "like having my head gripped between the thighs of a very angry giant" as the throat closing migrated northward and became a sinus headache so intense that by Sunday morning I fully expected to sneeze out a diamond.

- Being that sick made any thought of working on my scary final paper, due in a week, utterly impossible. This is not so good, as I currently have two pages written and a weekend of wedding stuff up ahead. Oh, and the professor informed me last week that another student in the class has already written a fantastic, much longer paper on the same topic and that he expects me to propse a new angle on the subject. That might have been very helpful to know, oh, when we had our topics approved in FEBRUARY.

- Living alone is really great, except for when you're sick and you manage to get up enough energy to go stumble to the bodega down the block to buy more Advil Cold & Sinus and when you get there you realize you've forgotten your wallet and home suddenly seems A MILLION MILES AWAY, LIKE, GOD, and if you still lived with a roommate then she or he could go to the bodega and get you Advil Cold & Sinus, actually, based on the roommates you've had before, they could just open up the three-drawer plastic dresser of medication in their room and you could go crazy on it while they made you some soup.

Reasons Why Being Sick All Weekend Was Actually Kind of Okay

- The WE! Women's Entertainment made-for-TV movie Prince William.

- The entire third and fourth seasons of Boy Meets World.

- Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup with Extra Sodium, followed by Haagen Daas Bailey's Ice Cream. For three days.

- Sadie was pretty much ready to run away from home because she'd barely seen me in two weeks and was spending all her time crying under the bed and coughing up hairballs on my new sofa. After three days of hardcore cuddling time, she's finally the sweet, happy kitty I adopted. Still fatter and liable to shed all over everything, but happy again. She also makes an excellent pillow when all the other pillows fall off the couch and I'm too weak to pick them up.

small PENSIS! LOL

This was waiting for me in my work email this morning. Several thoughts entered my head when I saw this photo, and naturally, I am compelled to share them with you now:

- Judging by the dopey grin on the whale's face, this is quite possibly the first time he's ever been laid.

- Is the blue of the sheet meant to represent the ocean? The mystical memory of humankind rising forth from the primordial sea, leaving our fishy ancestors behind as we ventured into the exciting world of processing oxygen, knowing we would someday metaphorically return to our homeland via a union with a whale? Or is it just what the prop guy happened to have on hand?

- What, praytell, is a "pensis?" It is what the kids these days are calling penpals? If so, might one also have a penbro? Or does that make you penbi? Might parents write to their penkids? Curiouser and curiouser, indeed...

- Why is the whale using "LOL?" He lacks the opposable thumbs to instant-message, and presumably the vocal cords that would enable him to "LOL" in the first place. I agree with him that the size of her husband's pensis is indeed amusing, but find his word choice in expressing the matter to be somewhat surprising.

- There is a "humpback whale" joke somewhere in here but I can't quite flesh it out. Suggestions?

- This is the best spam email I've ever gotten. Including the one that asked if Thumb Drives were the modern-day Dongle.