Feels like the right time

...to start living Crosby Stills & Nash again... the theme song of my life should go:

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

That would be me, so I better git practicin'.

So much for my happy ending

You know things are bad when you quote an Avril Lavigne song in your blog post title.

Not that I expected a happy ending. But what always, always, always catches me by surprise is when people are mean, selfish, or thoughtless. That sort of behavior is always astonishing to me. To get a one-two punch from two different people on two different days has laid me out for the past week.

You know what? I don't ever want to be so cynical that I expect and accept people to be mean, selfish or thoughtless. I want to always be surprised by it, to always believe in people's better nature rather than expect the worst from them. This isn't blind Pollyanna-ism. I have a genuine belief that people are inherently good, so when someone demonstrates behavior to the contrary, I actually do experience heartbreak and grief.

So when someone behaves in a way that is deliberately mean, or careless and selfish, it has the capacity to take my breath away.

I don't even want to go into this right now. I've been so sad for the past week that I've been near tears several times a day since I woke up on Wednesday. And IN tears as well.

The Dalai Lama says that a broken heart is an open heart.

I'm realllllly trying to come from that place right now.

Sunday Morning

Having been deprived by a certain fur person of my favorite hour of sleep in the entire year -- that is, the extra hour we are granted with the switch for Daylight Savings Time -- I find myself this morning unusually awake and !!!!!! in the office. I knew I had to be here anyway, but this early? Come on.

Nancy Sinatra, I need you RIGHT NOW...

...to sing for me.

'cause I'm wearing my birthday present to myself, which arrived via our hotsy-totsy UPS man (what is it with the cuteness of UPS guys? They are far, far cuter than FedEx guys. My theory is that UPS guys have to be cuter because they have to overcome a brown uniform. And in his UPS-ness, our Prentiss is one long, lean, chocolatey treat. Right down to that voice!)

See here.

And watch me struttin'.

I've wanted to add them to my collection for over a year. To line them up next to the 13-yr-old blasted out tan Fryes, the new black ones I got last year. I luuuurve them and put them right on (after I finished jumping up and down like a kid at Christmas, shouting, "They're here! They're here!").

They're a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

Relief

Dear Janey,

I'm a little relieved your hubby is out of town, though I have to admit being surprised at the news. On the other hand, a golf outing to Oregon with 16 pleated-pants wearing suburban motherfuckers sounds like a little slice of hell. That could be my punishment come judgement day: "I hereby sentence you to umptillion years riding around in a golf cart with 16 Short Hills former frat boys, all wearing pleated Dockers and pink polo shirts."

The relief comes from having dodged el llame de boote for the past week or so and being able to dodge it for another five days.

So your kid is the class bully, huh, Janes? Beat up another kid last week and you had to deal with the principal? Hmmm, now let's recap for the folks -- he was nearly kicked out of camp for being the bully. And now you're getting the calls from school about the same thing. Can you say, "Acting out"???

You may be dipping into the funds you had set aside for the bar mitzvah a little early in order to pay for that therapy he so clearly needs.

But no, your hubby wanted to punish him for fighting in school by taking away something important to him -- Fantasy Football, or whatever the fuck that is. And mommy decided that punishment was too harsh... well, isn't that the point of punishment? You punish your child for misbehaving to clearly demonstrate that there are consequences for actions.

Well, I just offered him a sympathetic ear and told him he's going to fuck up his kids anyway, so he may as well do it the way that's most comfortable for him.

It does my heart good to see how effective modern parenting is.

Thanks for the crumbs from your table, Mrs. Dives

So in a move of apparent magnanimity, the MTA announces fare rollbacks for the holiday season. We, the helpless and hamstrung ridership, are supposed to be grateful for this.

What I am asking is this: Ummmmm. Shouldn't the MTA be firing their accountant?

Remember in 2002 when they "found" a budget surplus of something like $800 million -- then raised the fares to $2 anyway? This time they "found" $928 million.

Repeat after me: $928 million.

That's nearly a BILLION dollars of surplus from an agency with a 2004 operating budget of $8 billion.

Now, it seems to me that with surplus numbers like that, there are a few things that the MTA could be doing besides this pissant little giveback. Like:

1) How about some improved service? We got a fare hike in 2002 and saw service go down the toilet almost immediately. How do you explain a 20 minute wait for the 1 train at midday during the week? Or a G train that appears like Brigadoon, once every hundred years?

2) Clean up the damn stations and trains! There is nothing like the smell of urine and garbage first thing in the morning to make a girl's day. And how about that trash bin at the 6th avenue end of the 14th street tunnel? Can you maybe send a guy around to empty it more than once a week? Every blessed Monday morning, there is a mountain of trash surrounding that bin and it is just disgusting.

3) How about a permanent fare rollback? Or are you guy so damn callous that you are sitting in your offices, rubbing your chins and saying, "Heh-heh-heh. FUCK the riders, we can charge whatever we want and they will still pay." Throw us a bone, man.

4) Do you mean to tell me you can't take some of that surplus and put a clerk back into every single token booth?

But, no, I imagine that come the New Year, we'll be seeing fares going to $2.25 or $2.50, even worse service on more lines, and even fewer human beings actually working on the railroad.

Mark my words.

Someone should make this a BLOOMBERG CAMPAIGN ISSUE.

Poo-tee-weet

Read this: A Man Without a Country

We need more pissed-off patriots like Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal, because both of those guys are cranky old coots who love their country, and I don't see anyone racing up the ranks to fill their shoes.

So it goes.

I've Had It!

Yes, after I left here on Saturday, I did the one thing guaranteed to kill my sunshiny buzz... I went to buy new jeans.

Now, when I'm feeling particularly gordita (I don't care what my Cuban friends say, it's not a compliment!) I buy specifically from The Gap because they have what I like to call "ego-massage sizing." Wherein an article of clothing that anywhere else would be a size 10 will have an ego-massaging tag that says "8." Whew, I'm still in the single digits, I can tell myself. I can't be THAT huge. Not to mention their stretchy denim which does all that sucking in at the belly area so I don't have to actually do it myself. They've gotten even more liberal with their sizing, clearly, because a pair of "8" pants I bought there several years ago don't fit me anymore. In fact, I sat down in them at home and the zipper just said, "Oh, no you don't" and completely gave up the ghost.

So I go into the fitting room with a couple of 10's and a couple of 12's. I like to try on the bigger size to reassure myself that I haven't gotten THAT big. Well, da pants don't lie. And the mirror tells the ugly truth. And the 12's won. I stood in the fitting room gazing into that demoralizing mirror and all I saw was the roll of flesh bulging over the top of the jeans. My lord, where did that come from? I always prided myself on my small waist, even when I was a few pounds over fighting weight. I was always curvy. Bodacious. Ample. Never fat.

Well. Like I said. The mirror doesn't lie. I am fat.

I met my friend H for brunch on Sunday, dutifully walking from 14th Street to 4th -- not because it was a nice day for walking, but because I need the exercise. The mirror does not lie, I told myself as I jiggled and bounced down Third Avenue, practicing holding my stomach in as I did it. I'm sure I had a constipated look on my face because of it. But those 10 blocks allowed me to decide a few things for myself.

I don't want to be average by American standards. Take a walk with me through any concourse at O'Hare Airport -- I would be one of the slimmer women you'd see. But I'm sorry, average in America now means 25 pounds overweight!

My goal is to be average by regular standards. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. Not necessarily the lollipop-headed size 4 I used to be (which apparently is "average by New York standards), but a nice, average, fit and healthy size 8 or 10. A real size 8 or 10. Not "Gap-sized." I'm of a certain age, I can accept having a little tummy and maybe a couple of pooches of cellulite on the back of my thighs. But when I run across the street to make a light and I feel stuff moving independently of the rest of my body, and coming to a stop after I do, I am absolutely horrified with myself.

I can hear my mother's voice walking up the stairs behind me, "My goodness, a young girl like you shouldn't have such a big bucket." This from a woman who stood all of 5'2" and never topped 115 pounds in her life.

Aggh. I'm a walking cliche, still listening to my mother at my age! Or at least to my mother as she was when I was 13. See, my mother was beautiful like a movie star. When you see photos of her in her mid-twenties, holding her 4th baby in her arms, you gasp at how stunning she was. Apparently, she was legendary on her island, for her beauty, for her brilliance, (and for the fact that she escaped). Imagine being the plump, plainish, not the smart one, takes after the Hunkie side of the family daughter of such a paragon.

(I guess that's why I became funny. Seriously, I'm the funniest person I know. I crack myself and my friends up on a regular basis. My brothers and sisters think I am a hoot. But goddammit, I'll never be the pretty one. I don't know why that still bothers me, but sometimes, it does.)

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Bitched about it to G today when he complimented me on my new jeans. Oh, no, I couldn't just accept the compliment. I had to bitch about being fat. He gave me that eye-roll thing and said, "I don't know why you let it bother you so much."

Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to tell you the words that actually left my lips. Only partially in jest. But there is real tragedy in them. Not the words themselves, but in the LIES I have internalized so deeply that I find myself surprised that I still believe them. Here goes:

"Well, if I'm fat, it means I'm not a good person, right?"

???????????????????????????????????

Who the HELL said that? I still can't believe it fell off the velcro wall that is my mind (which must be differentiated from my brain, apparently) and tumbled down the chute and out of my mouth.

I need to go and sit with this one. Right now I'm more fascinated than anything about where that came from.

Feeling Rapture-ous!

Okay. I have this theory I'm gonna lay down all over you. Sometimes you just have too much time to think and make up theories.

Like the "God is love. Love is blind. Ergo, Stevie Wonder is God" theorem.

I swear to you these things come to me when I am supposed to be meditating. Oh, did I tell you I invented a new type of meditation? I call it Smoking Meditation. I sit in my big green chair with a cat in my lap, drink coffee, and smoke. I think I will try to sell the concept to Denis Leary. He could use it in a bit.

Need to preface with: I'm not a religious person. I'm a recovering Catlick. Never did get over Sister Kathleen yelling at six-year-old me for getting out of my seat without permission. After that I trained myself to go through the motions of Catholicism. Sit, kneel, stand, open mouth, insert host, recite-recite-recite (I can still repeat the Apostles' Creed whenever I find myself in church. If you asked me to do it anywhere else, I couldn't do it. But something in the waxy incensey smell inside your garden variety Catholic church winds up that trained-monkey part of me). I used to go to confession and make shit up because I honestly didn't believe I was bad. I was a little kid, how bad could I be? Maybe even then I was a Buddhist.

Anyhow, the theory.

You know how the Jeebus Freaks are convinced the Rapture is coming? You know. End Times. Last Days. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera (thanks Yul). When all of the saved will be taken up to Heaven when Jesus returns and the rest of us sinners will be left behind to our fiery damnation.

Well I had a thought.

My friend T observed recently that in the past few years, a whole lot of souls have been leaving the earth in large clusters. In thousands and hundreds-of-thousands chunks. Think plague, natural disaster, man-made disaster...

If you were a religious person, couldn't you maybe posit that Jesus got here already and we just don't know it? And these people who are departing en masse ARE the saved? After all, who said it was going to happen all at once? Maybe Jesus needed to do it in a phased move-out for efficiency's sake.

Of course, the SuperChristianRight won't believe it because of course, everyone knows that Jesus likes white people better than brown people, so the people who died in the tsunami in South Asia and the ones who died in Pakistan and Central America and New Orleans couldn't possibly be who he intended to take, right?

I'm just saying.

Dancing With Myself

Sometimes, I find myself stepping outside of myself and just watching with bemusement and amusement. Kind of like that woman in the building across the backyard this morning who caught me doing The Twist in my kitchen and singing along with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons doing "Candy Girl" into my Thumb Microphone (I never leave home without it!). What she didn't see was that I was wearing pink flipflops with giant hot pink flowers on them and singing to Mambo, who was giving me his patented "we are not amused" stare.

I didn't stop. In fact, I waved at her and grinned. She waved back. She looked like one of those Brooklyn residents who has been in the neighborhood forever. You know them -- they wear their little housedresses and actually use the clotheslines that are strung across the yards from the sides of the buildings.

It must be the sunshine, making me bushy-tailed and frisky.

Carlos, the downstairs neighbor was probably as amused as Mambo. Especially since I followed up the Four Seasons with AC/DC "Hell's Bells," which meant of course I had to do my best Angus Young from the living room into the kitchen and back. You can't listen to AC/DC and NOT do Angus.

Have you ever tried stomping without actually stomping? It's a rare and special talent, I tell you.

Keep her off caffeine, Mrs. S.

What is that big, bright thing? Why, I think it's the sun!

I have been so thoroughly drenched in the past week that I stopped bothering with my umbrella and just accepted feeling mildewy. I watch the rain fall sideways and wonder, "what's the use?" So I don't bother. I'm not a fan of umbrellas, anyway. I carry one more reflexively than anything. It's more of a nod to acknowledge the rain than a useful tool. 'Specially here in the city, where it seems some people wake up on rainy days and seem to think to themselves, "Hmm, what am I going to have for breakfast? Should I wear the brown shoes or the black? I wonder if I'll finally be able to poke that Asian girl's eyes out?"

In the past five or six years, being out in the rain has been (for me) a dharma lesson about suffering. When you hunch your shoulders over and huddle against the rain, when you are carrying your umbrella directly in front of you as a shield, you are fighting against what is, rather than accepting what is. Of course, as I stride boldly through the rain with my head up and my face welcoming the moisture, the downside of this is strangers looking at me as if I am insane and the messengers in our building hooting, "Girl, where is your UMbrella?" Not to mention some real hair tragedies.

It's the same as the time I was "learning" how to be a cyclist (as opposed to "someone who rides a bike" -- there's a difference, believe me, and it ain't just padded lycra shorts). The more advanced riders would spin up to me as I fought and struggled up big hills (the mile-long ascent into the Alpine Police Station comes to mind) and say (without even breathing hard), "Just be the hill." With my lactose-deprived quads shrieking, the response I wanted to but didn't give was, "Oh, go fuck yourself, you lycra-wearing homo." I would usually grimace and grunt in response.

I realized that this only happened to me on hills -- the rest of the time I was on my bicycle, I was in a zen state of complete awareness and oneness with the bike, the terrain, the air around me. In fact, on the bike is when I was most centered and present. I had to be. A moments' woolgathering, of not being in the moment, could -- and once, did -- mean an accident. But on hills, I don't know, I would become a machine of suffering and "I hate this." I had internalized the belief that "I suck at hills" so completely that while I was riding hills, I was living that belief.

Then. There would be those days when it didn't happen, proving that my belief system was just that -- a belief system -- and not necessarily true. When I wouldn't approach a hill like Closter Dock Road or Booth Avenue with dread, but as just another piece of terrain to be covered on my way back to the George Washington Bridge. For some reason, this usually happened when I was alone, not riding with a group. As if, when I was riding by myself, I didn't have to believe it, and I didn't have to make anyone else believe it either. When those moments happened, I just rode my bike, and breathed. I didn't think about how long the hill was, or how steep, or how much my legs hurt, or how thirsty I was. I just pedaled and breathed.

It's a little life metaphor. Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe. I would get to the top of those hills, stop to swig from my bottle of blue Gatorade (Gatorade is not about "What's your favorite flavor?" It's alllll about "What's your favorite color?") and not pat myself on the back. I would just get back on my bike and continue riding.

And the rain is kind of like that. You can fight it, and try to repel it, and try to create barriers between you and it, and it becomes a battle, and you are suffering. But if you accept it, and move through it and with it, you become part of it, and after awhile you aren't noticing the wetness running down your face or soaking the hem of your pants. It just is what it is. After all, life isn't all sunny days. Sometimes you just have to deal with some rain and navigate those giant puddles.

Waterproof Frye boots help.

Authoritatively Wrong

Dear J,

You know, the "bad friend" part of me love-love-loves it when you are wrong -- if only because you are wrong with absolute conviction. I don't even feel the need to correct you, since there's something grimly amusing in watching you be wrong with such devotion to your belief in your right-ness.

Today's FYI: Fresh Direct is NOT part of Fairway. It was founded by a former president of Fairway, but it is NOT, I repeat, NOT part of Fairway.

So there.

Book Purge

Ahhh. So in the midst of moving books onto the faboo new shelves, I made an unsettling discovery.

Chick Lit.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I own Chick Lit. And I'm not proud of it either. As I moved and stacked and shelved, I saw far too many hot pink and lime green spines in the stacks, and I started to pull them. Things with titles like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, and High Maintenance. So I've made a pact with myself. They all go.

I've read one a day this week, they are that fluffy and predictable. Potato chips for the brain. I'm kind of embarrassed to be seen reading them on the subway. It would almost be better if I sat and read the Post instead. How did these women get literary agents at all? These books are pure crap.

I blame the entire unfortunate literary (and I use that term loosely) genre on Helen Fielding.

Mother Nature She Be Pissed

Wow, we're getting some sort of message, but I don't know if anyone is hearing it.

The most violent season of hurricanes ever. Earthquakes and brushfires in California. Two feet of snow in Colorado -- EAST of the Rockies. A massive earthquake in Pakistan. Mudslides in Central America. The Tsunami last December. Unending rain and flooding here in the Northeast. And the impending avian flu pandemic, which according to the US Secretary of Health & Human services, is pretty much a fait accompli. (Can you say The Stand? Maybe Stephen King knew something before the rest of us, or maybe he was just given his dark vision to foreshadow the future? Go back and re-read The Dead Zone. Then look me in the eye and tell me, "George Bush is NOT Greg Stillson." If I hear voices from my drain saying, "We all float down here," then I'll know for sure.)

I don't know if the writing on the wall could be any clearer.

Mother Nature's waaaaaaay pissed off. And she's showing it. She is throwing the clothes out the windows and dashing the dishes to the kitchen floor and all but setting us on fire in our beds, and we just don't seem to get it. We've plundered and raped and pillaged and strip-mined and deforested and polluted as if it's infinite. We have been terrible stewards.

She's gearing up for something big....think about it. Personally, I believe that MN gives herself periodic enemas. She concocts something particularly diabolical to dispose of a lot of souls in efficient periods of time. Think Black Plague. Think Flu Epidemic of 1918. Think AIDS in Africa.

These huge natural events that are killing thousands and hundreds of thousands -- well, maybe they're a housecleaning of sorts?

Maybe we should start paying attention? But then again, as long as we have our SUV's and cable TV, who gives a fuck, right? I got mine, screw everyone else. (The GOP should put that on bumper stickers).

Then again, maybe the message is simple: Take care of each other. After the earthquake in Pakistan this weekend, their longtime enemy India sent aid and supplies -- I saw the containers being loaded into planes with labels on them "To the people of Pakistan, from the people of India." Now, these are folks who have been at war at least three times over the Kashmir region (where the quake took place), setting aside their differences to HELP EACH OTHER. The president of Pakistan graciously and publicly accepted the assistance of his longtime enemy, India.

I couldn't help but compare and contrast to Georgie-Boy's response to Fidel Castro's offer of assistance after Hurricane Katrina. Communism doesn't work, blah, blah, blah -- all that Communism is bad stuff, I can get behind that. However, one can't overlook the fact that a) Cuba has the most efficient and effective hurricane evacuation system in the world -- they have to, since they sit in the path of most every storm bound for Florida and/or the Gulf; and b) for some reason or another, Cuba has lots and lots of highly-trained doctors (not to mention a literacy rate that puts us to shame). So Castro offered to send some of his highly trained medics, field hospitals and 83 tons of medical supplies to the US to assist after Katrina. I saw a photo on Yahoo News of a roomful of Cuban doctors, with their bags packed, waiting for the word to come directly to New Orleans. The White House response? Well, I quote Scott McClelland here:

“When it comes to Cuba,” said McClellan, “we have one message for Fidel Castro: He needs to offer the people of Cuba their freedom.”

God, it brings a tear to my eye, a patriotic swelling that during a national catastrophe the White House is so clearsighted that not only do they remember to put old Cold War grudges before actually helping our own people, they are able to do it in the context of their "Freedom is on the march" bloviating. I can just hear that Lee Greenwood song rising in the background as I hold my NASCAR cap over my heart, "I'm proud to be an AmeriCAN..."

And a Cuban doctor's response?

“Let’s get going,” she said. “This is not political. This is a humanitarian emergency. People are dying and they need our help.”

Hmmm. So India and Pakistan are able to put aside their differences to aid the earthquake victims, and the US tells Cuba to talk to the hand. Who understands the meaning of the word "humanitarian" better?

The Bush government is so fucked up that it makes my hair hurt.

I have to comment on Karl Rove in another post. My shoes are wet, my hair is wet, the hem of my skirt is wet, and my mascara is pretty much gone.

Food Whore!

Okay, I'll be the first to admit it -- I never, ever turn down free food. When someone else is paying, I'm eatin'!

So last night, F took me out for "our" birthday dinner. Went to Blue Hill on Washington Place. Oh. My. Goodness. Soooo delish.

We had a wonderful time. He put me in a cab afterward, with many regrets that he couldn't come to Brooklyn with me. Parental duties of disciplining his son for starting a fight at school. No, this kid isn't acting out at all.

I almost forgot!

In the midst of all my arduous tasks this weekend (the most arduous being me plonking my ass into the big chair and watching Rod saw and hammer), I realized that I had literally run out of things to watch On-Demand.

No more episodes of Sex and the City, no more Six Feet Under, no more Sopranos, no more Bill Maher, no more The Comeback, no more Dead Like Me.

On a Saturday night, for me, that's like White Castle saying they were out of hamburgers.

So, hmmm, I said to myself in my two-beer buzzed brain, let me try out this little series on Showtime I've been hearing about....

Check it out.

Weeds. Mary Louise Parker is BRILLIANT, and Romany Malco is HOT, HOT, HOT. The most pleasant surprise for me, though was Elizabeth Perkins. Watch it.

Make sure you inhale.

Rent-a-Husband and nesting activities

Oy-vey, I'm tuckered out today.

My friend Rod, former firefighter/cop/carpenter, came over on Saturday and spent the day building bookshelves in my wasted space niche.

Apparently, when Sammy the Landlord's Son took on the task of renovating my apartment a few years ago, he decided to just remove anything in the apartment that spoke of utility, character, or more work than he was willing to do -- that included french doors, transoms, and the small closet just inside the front door. Somehow he managed to hold his coke-and-booze-and-crack-addled brain together just long enough to put in nice hardwood floors. Then his brain went back on its coke/booze/crack vacation during the "re-wiring for electricity" stage of the reno, because Ann, the Landlord's Daughter (who has taken over the building from the hapless Sammy, whose motto seemed to be "Fix something, break two other things!") had to bring in an ace electrician a month ago to rewire my entire apartment (no walls had to come down, thank god, it all happened through the crawlspace in the attic).

So I moved into the apartment last year -- a standard railroad, which means no closets. But there was this useless space by the front door in the living room, which I liked to call, "The Useless Space by the Front Door." Four feet wide by 16 inches deep, running from floor to ceiling. I shoved my blanket chest into the space, piled my Buddhism books on it where I could grab them whenever I felt a karmic emergency was at hand, and tried to pretend I didn't see the other 8 feet of space looming over it. Thought about putting a coat rod in the space, but hated the thought of unsightly garments cluttering up the living room.

Rod, in a fit of handyman-itis, offered to build shelves for me. I guess he got tired of listening to me bitch about the moat I had built around my bed out of all of my books.

He showed up on my doorstep on Saturday afternoon with lumber, tools, and his carpenter's belt, and proceeded to saw and nail and hammer and screw to his heart's content while I tried my best to keep the sawdust under control. Madison, per her usual scaredy-cat nature (so THAT'S where that expression comes from) stashed her tiny self under the space behind the bed, not to be seen all day, but Mambo, typically gregarious, was underfoot all day. He's the most doglike damn cat I've ever known. Even when Rod fired up the saw, old Mambo just sat there, looking more irritated than scared.

With the last piece of lumber, and some left over scraps, he fashioned brackets and a new shelf for my kitchen wall. Ah, more places to put my stuff! Then I hustled him into the bedroom to hang the brackets for my new red curtains. Last but not least, he leveled my stove.

Buy that man a beer! Or, three, plus a club sandwich at Teddy's. I was more than happy to buy him dinner and beers after all his hard labor. What a great thing to do for me! He may be a cranky old bachelor Republican, but he sure is handy to have around sometimes.

Man, have any shelves ever been so welcome? These are not weekend-handyman, make-do crapola shelves -- I could climb these shelves if I wanted to, they are that sturdy.

So I spent Sunday morning painting my lovely new shelves to match the living room walls. (Rod wanted me to stain the bastards. Like any good carpenter, he wants the wood to look like wood. But like a good New Yorker who has spent just enough time around interior design wonks, I want the shelves to disappear. I figure a couple thousand books stand out on their own, the shelves don't need to stand out, too. Or to quote Gloria Upson, "What a stunning apartment -- books are so decorative, don't you think?"

Then came the fun part -- my workout for the weekend -- loading the shelves. I spent HOURS moving books from the bedroom to the living room. An armload at a time, up the ladder, down the ladder, up the ladder, down the ladder. I must say, right now my hamstrings and my ass are aching righteously with the workout they got yesterday.

On fire with home-improvement zeal, I then decided to sand and re-stain the top of my parson's table, then hem and hang my new red curtains that separate my bedroom from the closet -- on the new brackets that Rod installed for me. Next step -- turning the closet room into a real closet -- get rid of the piece of particle-board crap left behind by the previous tenant and the Martha Stewart metal clothes rack from K-Mart and get a real wardrobe built...

Freddy, my new neighbor, must have been having some home improvement urges of his own -- he came over to borrow a hammer and nails yesterday. I say -- can you call yourself a man if you don't own your own hammer and at least a rudimentary toolkit? Or worse -- are you a man who has been living at home until your mid-thirties and using Dad's tools? I can't say anything; I'm a girl who owns not one, but two drills. Then again, he was sporting a backward Kangol and clog slippers, so I'm having a hard time getting a read on him. Gay straight man? or Straight gay man? Hmmm. His main visitor does appear to be this one guy....

Also on the home improvement front, looks like Ann will have to come and do yet more repairs on the front door, since Nancy and the animals who visit her on the first floor have busted the inside door right off the hinge. Nice.

It's very, very hard to feel compassion for the junkie crack-ho when the junkie crack-ho is directly affecting my ability to live in a decent home. I guess it's a dharma test for me. Om padme mani ommmmmm.

For the record, there were 18" of new snow in my mountain town yesterday into today. Oh, boy! Wish I could be transported there RIGHT NOW.

Political Schadenfreude and My Latest Conspiracy Theory

Tom Delay indicted for the 2nd time in a week! Can't you just see his forked tongue darting out of his mouth?

Harriet Miers -- I'm speculating that she is just a red herring for the White House. Remember how things got a little hot for Karl Rove this summer and Bush rushed into the Roberts nomination? Well, the Valerie Plame story is once again hot with Judith Miller coming out of jail and naming Scooter Libby as her Administration source on the leak. Then George Stephanopolis this weekend revealed that someone in the Administration had told him that this went all the way to the top -- directly to George Bush! So Georgie-boy had no choice but to rush into one of his patented "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" routines by announcing Miers as his nominee. There is no way that she will be confirmed -- everyone, right and left, in the blogosphere and out, agrees that she is simply not qualified for the job. So I offer this theory: Offer Miers as the first nominee, because she is expendable. Watch the nomination get shot down in Congress, then offer an even more neoconservative candidate, whom the Democrats will oppose vehemently. The Repugnant-cans will then accuse the Dems of "partisan politics" and the Dems (weenies to a man, with the exception of a few, thank you Barbara Boxer and Henry Waxman) will back down in their special way. What the Democrats need is their own "Hammer" just like Delay (minus the lizardy eyes and corrupt circle of cronies)-- ruthless and not afraid to show it.

Where the heck is James Carville when we need him? Huh? Huh? I love the Ragin' Cajun! And I quote: "When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil."

In other news...

So, F's birthday was on Saturday -- so I sent him a text message wishing him a happy birthday; he responded "it's nice to know someone gives a shit." Ouch.

C & I got him a great big beautiful cake from the Cupcake Cafe yesterday, and carried it into his office with flaming candles and loud, albeit off-tune singing. It's the spirit that counts, right? If you could have seen the look of delight on his face... It was really quite touching. It made the trip from 18th Street on the subway with this 20-pound cake worthwhile! I'd swear he even teared up a little.

I gave him a card. I won't go into the details of everything I wrote, but it was enough to spur him to call me later and thank me, telling me how meaningful and important my words are to him.

He made mention of wanting to take me out to mark the occasion of both our birthdays -- after all, wasn't it our birthdays that started this whole thing? I'm suddenly feeling verrrry carnivorous, with a craving for a juicy Peter Luger steak. The man does love his Luger's. Who am I to turn it down? We couldn't schedule because at that moment C walked in, so I had to pretend that she doesn't know anything and change the subject.

You know, if he thinks no one knows, then he must also think that everyone around him is just blind. C has caught him checking out my ass on a number of occasions, and his old pressman P once caught him putting his hand up my skirt.

Well, if he needs to tell himself that he has a secret, then I guess we'll just have to let him go on thinking that. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

It's ma birthday, it's ma birthday

Yeah, that's right. It's my birthday. And I'm pleased to note that the entire Jewish community of New York City has decided to take the day off to commemorate the occasion. I didn't know you cared!

L'shanah tovah to you too!

Not to mention today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Like the Buddha, Francis was noble-born and made a name for himself as a young dilettante, then renounced his frivolous ways and the trappings of wealth in favor of serving the poor. I've always felt a special affinity for St. Francis, despite my own renunciation of Catholicism (capital "C") in favor of trying a more catholic (small "c") approach to life. Through his example, St. Francis reminds us that we are called to bring about justice and peace in the world, to end violence and war, poverty and oppression and to protect our fragile planet.

In my lazy Catholic upbringing, the Prayer of St. Francis always resounded with me as being one of the most universal. And in all my current studies, I have to say, the Prayer of St. Francis is the most Buddhist Catholic prayer ever written.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen

The Dalai Lama couldn't have said it better.