After this, I solemnly swear that I will try not to mention crime shows ever again. Because I don't NEED them. I can stop at anytime. Amen.

Last night, I received an email from my mother:

I was totally hooked on the travel channel today. I was watching Bizzare foods with Andrew Zimmern. Zimmern was on all afternoon! I watched Taiwan, Japan, India, Vietnam, Trinidad and Tobago, and Mexico.

My mother does not write quite as, you know, PROPERLY as I do, but if she did, she would've absolutely written "TOTALLY HOOKED" and "ALL AFTERNOON" and would have put a couple more exclamation points after "Mexico." And at the end, she would've added "All of them. In one afternoon!" Also, she would've put in some footnotes and inserted several links. But most importantly, her last sentence would've been: You do know that when I tell you that you watch entirely too many crime shows in one day, what I'm really saying is, "Give up the remote because I NEED TO WATCH THE TRAVEL CHANNEL!"

Alright, she might not write that last part, but I mean, please. At least my regular viewing of investigative journalism enhances my relationships with family and old friends.

Which is why I'm fully expecting our next gathering of family and friends to include several platters of bizarre foods from Tobago.

Like a toy fish in a pond full of Koi

An unexpected ring of truth from this week's ponderous quagmire of academic reading, which is, tragically, EVEN WORSE than academic writing:

Even Mary Wells developed a kind of feminist consciousness. She still did not like "militant libbers," as she called them, and she regretted that her eminence kept clients from flirting with her. ("It was more fun when they thought I was a sexy blonde.")

-from Stephen R. Fox's The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and its Creators*

And this, my friends, might help to explain a small fraction of why I stayed at the stone showroom job for way too long. (the blonde and fun part, not the eminence part because if that were the case, you'd think I'd be happily collecting commission checks instead of plowing through scholarly texts, acting as if I belong in the graduate school pond)




*I feel the need to add that this is a SMALL excerpt taken out of context and does not represent the book's nor the author's view of feminism in any way. I also, as some may have noticed, seem to love writing footnotes.

No longer strangers, enjoying a beautiful sunset by the lake

Drawing inspiration from Angie , I’d like to begin this post by sharing my own thoughts for a word or two.

FLUMMOXED! is the look you get when you show up at someone’s 30th birthday party at his family lake house and say, “Happy Birthday, John*! So nice to meet you!”

Flummoxed is the look you get when you further explain, “Oh, right. I’m Carl*’s friend and since Carl’s out of town, I drove out here with Ken* who I’ve met only once before. But he can TOTALLY vouch for me because I just spent an entire hour in the car with him and I did NOT manipulate him into handing over his wallet, his keys and his SOUL. Even though I was trained in sales and am now schooling in the ways of advertising and as EVERYONE KNOWS, that is what we do.”

Just kidding. Yes, I did show up to a total stranger’s birthday party because his roommate who is out of town invited me and I drove out there with an almost perfect stranger because I really, really wanted to go to this party at the lake but didn’t want to get lost in the back roads of Texas Hill Country. But OF COURSE the last part isn’t true. I mean, please. I’ve only been in sales and advertising for less than 10 years. But I’ve been a girl for 32 years. We have much better things than money and souls on which to waste our natural manipulative skills . We have parties at the lake to finagle into, for Pete’s sake.


*Fake names of course

Perfectly grounded in reality and never, EVER carried away by an overactive imagination. Not EVER.

I saw an old friend last week. And Stephanie is exactly the same as she was the last time I saw her when we were both 5 years old. She still has the same dark hair and eyes, she still wears the same girly pastel dresses and she can still do the coolest things. Like breathing. Without any oxygen!

Because Stephanie, as I found out many years later, is what they call an imaginary friend.

And clearly, I haven’t seen Stephanie for a while because I am now a grown woman who has learned to channel my imagination through much more sophisticated avenues. Like “thinking outside of the box.” Or, oh I don’t know, refining an extremely reasonable and healthy sense of writing in hyperbole.

(As for the rest of my life, I am a very rational human being. I mean, how many other women can say that she developed an overwhelming fear of sense of reality about committed long-term relationships while still in high school?)

So the day before Stephanie came back into my life, I went to get my mail. And when I opened my mailbox, there was an official post office key waiting for me right at the front of my box. My initial thought was, What the hell? My initial action was to stare blankly at the thing for a full 30 seconds (because I am a graduate student and we are very smart that way) before I picked it up and read the key chain, which said that it was property of the post office and that if found, was to be dropped into any U.S. mail receptacle. So of course, I figured the mailperson left it in my box by accident and I immediately dropped it right back in the box for outgoing mail.

Later that day, I started thinking about it again and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t an accident. After all, there was that time in Dallas that we got warnings about some suspected mail theft that was going on in our apartment complex.

OMG. SOMEONE IS STEALING MAIL AND TRYING TO FRAME ME! They put that key in there so that MY fingerprints will be ALL OVER IT! How could I be so careless?

Immediately, I started figuring out what I was going to say when the police called.

The next day, I checked my mail again only to find the SAME KEY. In MY mailbox. AGAIN. Of course, I jumped back and put my hands behind my back because there was no way in hell I was going to touch that thing again. Except that it looked a little different today. So I leaned closer and saw that they key chain was flipped on the other side. And this other side said something about having a package in #8.

#8? I looked to the right and saw the larger mailbox labeled “P8.” The same larger mailbox I always thought belonged to, logically, a larger apartment unit. A unit so large that it was called a "penthouse." Or a "palace."

Was someone in the "penthouse" trying to FRAME ME? Unbelievable! I mean, un-bloody-belieava- Wait a minute. Unless “P” stands for…

Which is when I saw my old friend Stephanie. And when I started to think about what the mailperson must think of me. Me who recently mailed out a stack of thank you cards, each with insufficient postage. Me who even more recently angrily wrote “RETURN TO SENDER!” on a letter and tried to mail it back without crossing out the barcode.

And that’s how I decided that the next time I drive up to the mailboxes to collect my mail and the mailperson is standing in a place where he might at ALL be able to see me open my box, Stephanie and I are going to just drive right on by and come back later.

Maybe I should let them take my violin card

You know those people who are SO BAD at hearing lyrics that they go around singing about “watermelon phone lights” in a hip hop song?

Well I’m one of those people and I’m totally cool with it. But that was before this morning when I found out that the lyrics to Jessie McCartney’s Leavin’ are actually “flying on a g5, g5.” You see, what I’ve been hearing is “blah blah blah blah G-flat, G-flat.”

Why do I care about this? Because those FAKE lyrics took me to a very, very dark place. One that smells like rosin dust and never hears the light of Britney Spears. Because ALL I could think about every time I heard these lyrics was that I HATE G-FLAT. It’s an awkward note on the violin, it’s an obscenely stupid key with 6 bloody flats, and F-sharp is SO MUCH BETTER.

Every time the song came on, this would rage on in my head and afterward, I’d be completely pissed because I’d just WASTED 3 minutes of my life.

But now I’m scared that when I hear this song, even though I now know that he is singing about a plane, I will still be thinking about E-flat minor. And then I will start thinking about the time I got in a screaming match with a former client who had a stick up his ass because he was a songwriter and to HIM, a G-flat sounds exactly the same as an F-sharp. Which, as all violinists know, is a LOAD OF CRAP. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Holy crap, do you SEE how annoying I am in that dark place? I need to RELAX.

Excuse me while I go light a lavender candle, put on Baby One More Time, and remove the violin from out of my ass.

Sometimes you have to dumb it down, glam it up and add in a little David Caruso

The day I learned to spell g-e-o-p-h-y-s-i-c-i-s-t (officially because I needed to fill out those assignments at school that say “My father is a _________,” but as the offspring of two pathological spellers, this was also a fun family activity) was the day I started having no idea what my father does for a living.

Back then, I knew that my father went to work from Monday through Friday in a 3-piece suit and a brief case and when I asked him what he did there, there was a really loooong pause before he finally said, “Uh. Well, I –“ And he looked down at his little right-brained girl with the crayon in her hand and finished, “I find oil in the Earth.” At least that’s what he said until we had the fun family activity in which we learned how to spell p-e-t-r-o-l-e-u-m.

During the summer that I was 19, I worked at his company as an intern. And when you are a violin performance major working as an intern at an oil & gas company, you get relegated to the basement where you spend all day panicking that all these hours of filing and entering data instead of PRACTICING is surely going to result in completely forgetting how to do left hand pizzicato.

I was still curious about my petroleum-finding father however, so the highlight of my day was going up to his office to figure out, once and for all, WHAT HE DOES. But by the end of the summer, all I could deduce was that he spent all day looking at big colorful wavy lines on the computer screen or on printed out graphs.

THIS?? THIS is what takes my father on trips around the world and makes his signature worth millions of dollars? Still, I was afraid to ask him what it all meant because for some reason, just the sound of the word “seismic” made me laugh uncontrollably and my father just didn’t get this. And I was pretty sure that he didn’t want me to ask him what it all meant either. I mean, what geophysicist wants to explain seismic waves to his 19-year-old daughter who was wearing her music-conservatory-in-the-Northeast fashion to his North Texas corporate office?

A couple of years ago, in the middle of my second career breakdown and job search, long after I’d stopped wearing bohemian shirts with sunflowers on them (shrudder), I figured it was about time to look up the job responsibilities of a geophysicist. It went something like this:

• Responsible for the depth conversion and integration of 2D and 3D structure maps with well tops and gridding maps for input into the Petrel static model
• Interpreting 2D and 3D seismic data sets
• Integrating well logs, VSP’s into interpretation of seismic data
• Helping to build and modify static geologic models with geophysical attribute maps of lithology, facies, stratigraphy, and thickness


I immediately went back to telling people that my dad “finds petroleum in the Earth.”

But about a month ago, my father asked me to proofread a course description and instructor biography for a class that he will be teaching later this year. And that is when I found out that my father is not just any geophysicist. He is a geophysicist and ”longtime advocate of proper depth conversion.” All of a sudden, I felt very responsible. How can I be the daughter of a longtime advocate of proper depth conversion and still not know what my father really does, let alone how I feel about proper depth conversion or about any kind of depth conversion?

So last weekend, the daughter of a longtime advocate of proper depth conversion finally asked her father to really explain what he does. And y'all. It turns out that my father is actually a Crime Scene Investigator! Well, if you count the formation of the Earth’s crust as a crime scene. He actually prefers to use the analogy of a doctor who interprets sonograms, but is it not just a little more exciting to think of subsurface sand structures as crafty criminals who will not be outsmarted by a depth converting geophysicist? See, it turns out that interpreting seismic data is like interpreting DNA and other forensic evidence to figure out how the crime happened. (formation, crime, whatever) And when you can figure out how it happened, then you know where to get the petroleum and suck it all out into the open. You know, the way Horatio always gets the truth all out into the open in CSI: Miami.

Sure, it took 32 years, but I can finally say that I KNOW WHAT MY FATHER DOES. My father, the geophysicist, outwits subsurface structures in order to uncover the grisly petroleum.

And just in case you’re wondering: yes I too am an advocate of proper depth conversion. Because not believing in it would be like not believing that Horatio’s team should properly dust for fingerprints. Can you imagine the ending of THAT episode?

Who says TV doesn’t make you smarter?

Hoping that everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend as much as I did

During my visit to my parents' house:

Mom: What are you watching?

Me: Forensic Files

pause as she watches for a moment

Mom: This is about a murder!

Me: Mmm-hmmm.




Hours later:

Mom: Now what are you watching?

Me: 20/20 on WE

pause

Mom: Another murder story?

Me: Investigative journalism





The next day

Mom: Is this 20/20 AGAIN?

Me: No, this is Cold Case Files on A & E

Mom: Is this the kind of thing you ALWAYS watch? What happened to Judging Amy reruns?

Me: Shhhh. They're about to get a big break in the case...





Later

Me: Can I change the channel?

Mom: Ok.

channel is changed to "48 Hours Mystery"

Mom: ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Me (looking over in surprise): What's wrong?


A few other moments that prompted looks of incredulity and sometimes horror from my parents:

• When I put a full tablespoon of Nutella* on one small strawberry to eat while my mother delicately spread a thin layer on an 8-inch crepe which she was about to eat with several small slices of fruit. After which, I proceeded to spread half of the jar onto my own crepe.
• When I was 1 ½ -ing a recipe and said, “2 tablespoons x 1 ½ is 2 ½ , right?”
• When I crossed several of my toes at once as we were all chatting in the living room (What? I’ve got very long toes and I’m telling you, it feels really good – like stretching.)
• When in the middle of a conversation at the dinner table, I said, “Not since 1989? That was ten years ago!”

You'd think by now, they'd expect this sort of thing from The Blonde Sheep.




*My ONE exception to the Dark Chocolate Rule

Where credit is due

Now that I've begun my mission to brainwash all of you into the life of a public library rat, I'd like to thank the one who encouraged me to rediscover its shelves of "inked paths/opening into the future" *

As I was reading Mrs. G's comment to that public library post, I suddenly remembered that it was SHE who reminded me of my love of smelling old books. Back when we worked together in the stone showroom in an industry where reading for fun was about as crazy as putting MARBLE instead of granite on your kitchen countertop. (Take my word for it, this is considered damn crazy. And you have to say "damn crazy" as redneck as possible)

So Mrs. G, I thank you from the bottom of my library lovin' heart. I owe you 3/4 of my brain and at least 3 toes. And my first pair of Manolos. (It might be a while)


*You DID look up Linda Pastan's The Bookstall, RIGHT?

Get a library card already

Most women agree that aside from the Manolos, Fendi bags and Cosmos, they love Sex & The City for its verisimilitude. They will tell you about all of the episodes during which they jumped off the couch, pointed at the screen and screamed, “I said that 3 weeks ago!” I am one of these women.

And I had one of these moments about a month ago during Sex & The City, the movie. Fortunately, I had the sense NOT to jump out of my seat, point, and scream into a theater full of totally pissed off people. Pissed off because, you see, I was possibly the only one in that theater identifying with Carrie Bradshaw at that very moment, not because she said anything about men or relationships or sex or even shoes, but because she, too, loves to go to the public library! To CHECK OUT BOOKS!! She even opens the books to smell the binding. Mmmmm…

Yes, I go to the public library on a regular basis, not to use the Internet or to find some specific information, but because that is truly where I want to go after an afternoon of high end shopping (or more recently, high end browsing). I know, I know. There is nothing exciting about the thought of a silent, musty-smelling library. Believe me, I don’t get excited about actually working in a library. Not when there’s a shaken iced tea lemonade, upbeat music and the smell of new books right around the corner at Barnes & Noble. But to all of the people, including Mr. Big, who wonder why anyone goes to the public library? I’ll tell you why: because as soon as I walk in that door and get my first whiff of books (musty or otherwise), it feels just like childhood summers when my mom would take me to the library, hand me a big empty canvas bag and turn me loose. Oh the euphoria! Shelves and shelves of books I have yet to read. Or yet to read again for the 10th time. In the words of Linda Pastan,* “freshly baked loaves/waiting on their shelves/to be broken open”

For FREE.

So that is why you will find me with my Manolos and Fendi in the musty-smelling library on a sunny afternoon, browsing through ancient Greek epic poetry and early Shakespeare.

Ok, actually, you’ll see me in my BCBG Girls and bebe, swiftly picking out a stack of teen fiction. (Ok, so it’s not so sophisticated. But, I have read a very broad range of teen fiction genres. And only a very SOPHISTICATED teen fiction reader would know about all of these genres.) After I’ve picked out my stack, I pick up some other things too – an old Nancy Drew favorite, a DVD, even a “grown up” book or two.

And then there was the one time I picked up an actual grown up. Yes - a very nice, blond, grown up man.

Now, then. If you haven’t been taking advantage of your local public library, how will you ever be able to read that last paragraph, jump up and scream, “I said that 3 weeks ago!”







*If you are at ALL a lover of books and have not read Linda Pastan’s poem, The Bookstall, then you have not read at all. Go and find it.

WORKOUT OVER

Yet another addition to bebe Me's catalog of BAD GYM BEHAVIOR (including that of officious trainers, grunters/groaners/weight slammers, blithely naked women, inconsiderate weight lifters and the smelly people).

Pet Peeve #6: irresponsible germ spreaders

Does the elliptical machine LOOK like your bed? Because that's where you should be if you are unable to stop your clamorous coughing and sniveling.

Gross.

God bless 17-year-old stupidity, without which I'd have nothing to write

A few months ago, inspired by The Bobby Bones Show (aka the only thing that makes me feel better about living in Austin besides an occasional celebrity meeting) and Brad Paisley, I decided that maybe it would be cool to try to write a letter to the 17-year-old bebe Me.

But no sooner had I started with “Dear (bebe Me),” than I was reminded of who I was at 17. I was a smug and supercilious aspiring elitist violinist and I can tell you what I would’ve done with a letter like that. I’d have smirked and thrown that unopened letter in the dumpster where I knew it BELONGED. Because no way in upper middle class, suburban teenage HELL did I need anything to tell ME about MY future.

So I abandoned the letter writing and made a toast instead – to my 17-year-old self. Because for once (and I really mean ONCE), she was right.

And it has nothing to do with the lyrics

Sit down y’all.

Because I, bebe Me, Princess of Upbeat Feel Good Girl Pop, am genuinely digging a song by- get ready for it- Coldplay. Yes, it is true. I can listen to Viva la Vida all the way through AND more than once. And it does not make me want to curl up in the fetal position and wait for the next terrible thing in my life to happen. In fact, the song actually makes me smile. Even dance. Coldplay!

Either this particular song of theirs is uncharacteristically pop-py or I am becoming more mellow.

Please God let it not be the latter.

Redeeming my frequent cryer miles

I’m ok with the fact that my first full semester of grad school (last fall) was a bit of a kick in the ass. Because sometimes a kick in the ass is what you need. Like vitamins. And pap smears.

But this past semester was far more than a fortified kick in the ass. It was a hard punch in the gut. The punch happened somewhere near the beginning of the semester and I spent the rest of it trying to crawl forward and get up off the slippery ground. Sometimes I’d get up for a second or two only to be shoved right back down on my still sore ass.

And yes, I know that doing “creative” work is painful. I know that being forced to make something you enjoy into work can wrench your sense of self, stop your breath and threaten to silence your voice. I’ve been there before and I chose to come back. So waking up sick to my stomach and angry because I don’t want to face another day of staring at a blank computer screen with nothing to write is all part of the package. Right along with the panic episodes on the stationary bike, the daily pacing and the tearful meltdowns.

Ideally, the reward for all of this adversity (in addition to giving you artistic strength and breadth of material, blah blah BLAH) comes in the form of newfound wisdom about the greater scheme of life.

So almost 2 months later, I am finally ready to reap the rewards and fill up this blank computer screen with some of that adversity induced wisdom:

Sometimes it just sucks.
And I still look ugly when I cry.

Wait, does this mean that I’m still not up off the ground?

Sex, Drugs and Pagannini

Last week, it took me ten minutes to tune a violin. Let me put this into perspective. Back in the day, ten minutes was enough time to tune my violin, check it twice, play through all my four octave scales and wonder for the 1015th time why bass players and tuba players can’t ever PLAY IN TUNE. And when I say that it took me ten minutes the other day, I’m not even counting the minute or two it took me to realize that I hadn’t tightened the bow.

Yup. Any day now, they’ll be coming to my door to collect my violin card.

But it’s ok, I’m still card worthy. Because I do still know that when your g-string is too tight, maybe you need some dope.

And if that sentence didn’t make you think about friction and lubrication, well, my friend, that is why you don’t have a violin card.

Now I can die a happy blogger

Last Saturday, I met a rockstar. And y’all. I totally geeked out. Geeked. Out. I mean, 11-yr-old girl meets Hannah Montana geeked out.

And just in case you don't believe me, let me give you a brief rundown of my shining moment:

I’m pretty sure I called her a ROCKSTAR at least five times, spoke something like 10,000 words a minute (every other one being “inspiration!!” “nervous!” or “excited!!!”), proceeded to share half my life story, and then somehow got a perfect stranger to take our picture. And in the meantime, almost completely ignored her husband and totally forgot to introduce my friend because I just could not get over the fact that I WAS TALKING TO HEATHER B. ARMSTRONG.

But here’s the thing. During this entire effusive spectacle, Heather B. Armstrong never looked at me like I had three heads and a purple eye. Nor did she back away slowly while dialing 9-1-1. Instead, she complimented my rabbit fur-collared coat, sang a little Mormon pop and casually mentioned to me that she was an English major- as if I haven’t, you know, read every single one of the posts on dooce.com and also happen to know all about the Avon World Sales Leader and that a “crayon” is a “crown” and not a “cran.” Because the truth, my friends, is that Heather B. Armstrong, winner of four 2008 Bloggies and the one whose writing lit a fierce fire under my violin-scarred typing fingers, really is just as genuine as her writing is.

I finally know why it was meant for me to leave the birthplace of Neiman Marcus and move to the city that loves to suck all the fun out of good, clean materialism. I used to think that it was so that I could learn how to spend 36 hours writing 3 taglines only to watch my prof. look at them for half a second before crossing them out one by one. But now I know that it was so that I could be in Austin at the Halcyon Coffee Shop on Saturday, March 8th in my rabbit fur-collared coat TO MEET HEATHER B. ARMSTRONG.

And its alternate spelling is g-e-r-m-o-p-h-o-b-i-a

If you’re going to stand in a public bathroom stall next to that toilet and use a pen tip that will touch the bacteria-ridden wall and will then be used to write on something else that will be passed on and could very well end up in MY hands, then please for the love of God, LEARN HOW TO SPELL.

Seen written on a public bathroom wall near campus:

“All eyes on me and I can’t breath.”

I have TRIED to forget about this because even I know that a misspelled word is not going to end the world, but, you see, to some of us who have inherited spelling nervosa, completely forgetting about it is like trying to forget about a big, itchy baseball-sized mosquito bite on your face. The truth is that I’m just one frightening step away from being a certified spelling vigilante, avenging spelling crimes with my quick drying, fade and water-resistant Sharpie. And it gets worse when I’m stressed out. And I was so stressed out on the day that I witnessed this particular misdemeanor, that I almost reached for the Sharpie.

Thank God that my germaphobia trumps my spelling neuroticism.

Must be at least 6-8 characters in length

I wish I could say that I started the first semester of this, the best year ever, with my usual brand of perky, annoying optimism. Because I had every intention to do so. But the very second I set Steve Madden-clad foot on campus and got that first familiar whiff of Academia, something happened. I'd barely blinked an eye when that Big Bad Campus proceeded to suck the perky, annoying optimism right out of me and I immediately began to wilt. Which is why I spent my first two weeks of class, dull-eyed and droopy-tailed, sitting through lectures while visions of Dallas fun
danced (to old school Whitney Houston and surrounded by adoring gay men) in my head. Because I wanted to be ANYWHERE but sitting in a perfectly rigid, straight-back chair and staring up at a projection screen with pencil in hand, poised and ready to doodle.

And just like that, my wish was granted. You see, I was damn lucky enough to spend last week lying in my perfectly nonrigid bed, staring at a digital thermometer with Extra Strength Tylenol in hand, poised and ready to drug.

But was I grateful for this little break from PowerPoint and laser pointers? Why, of course not. Because the other symptoms of the flu that they don’t tell you about go something like this:

•Panicking about missing whatever it is that you are missing. Miss CLASS? What if they give out the SECRET PASSWORD? I can't graduate without the SECRET PASSWORD!
•Compulsive urge to call your mom (God bless her) at least once a day just to say, “I think I have Toxic Shock syndrome!" or "I'm TOTALLY going to have to drop out of school." or "Do I need to write up my will right now or can I take a nap first?”

So now that I have put the Extra Strength Tylenol away - right there on the shelf next to the cans of vegetable soup that for some reason, only taste good when the thermometer registers at least 101, I am relieved to go back and sit in those bloody straight-back chairs. Not because I’ve once again been reminded to appreciate routine WITHOUT a fever, chills and delirious phone calls. Not because I’m tired of sleeping for 18 hours a day. But, because damnit y’all - at least I’ll be there when they give out the SECRET PASSWORD.

The place that has no apologies for its shiny new LA aspirations

If Dallas, TX wore a sweater - cashmere, I'm sure - I’d make it take that sweater off so that I could snuggle up next to the luxurious fibers and smell the shiny new shopping and pro sports centers before I fall asleep at night. Which might explain the sap oozing out of my pores after spending a week in the city that stole my heart.

It’s very sticky in here.

Them other girls, they don't know how to act

I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. I believe in whenever-the-hell-I-want resolutions. If I want to start a new habit on December 30th at 7:15 a.m., I’m going to start on December 30th at 7:15 a.m. Or April 9th at 8:37 p.m. Or July 8th at – well, you get my point. January 1st, whatever.

But I do usually take a few minutes every year at about this time to take stock of things: Am I going to a job day after day at which I am banging my head against the wall in noisy desperation? Are my relationships with family, friends and enemies where they need to be? (I am also a big believer in the power of relationships with enemies.) Have I saved enough money yet to completely furnish my place with everything in the cantoni showroom and just, you know, a few odds & ends from b&b Italia? (I leave a little extra time for laughter too.)

And if I'm unhappy with the answers to these questions, I try to figure out how I can change things. That is, I make sure that I’m not passively sitting around on my ass, letting life just happen to me. That being said, last January, I was so exhausted from my dedicated efforts to not passively sit around on my ass, that my only plan of action for the next 12 months was to get out of bed in the morning approximately 365 times. Which I did. And apparently, just by letting go a little, I actually did make a lot of things happen in the process. Not only that, but somewhere along the way, I started to feel like myself again and even managed to bring a little sexy back.

So this year, I'm going to do more than get out of bed 365 times. I'm going to get off my ass (even though it really is so comfortable on my cantoni sofa) and make important things happen. Absolutely. I think I'll even start by making some resolutions. Next semester, between case studies and research, I will fit in some good, quality, trashy reading. And while I'm condensing and condensing (AND condensing) taglines, I'll also write a few more earth-shatteringly meaningful blog posts with as many glorious and indulgently extraneous adjectives as possible. I will also eat a lot of Jazz apples and dark chocolate. And this year? I'm bringing ALL my sexy back.

How about that for a list of not-quite-January-1st resolutions?

This is going to be the BEST year ever.*



*People who know me well also know that I say this every year. But, as any other eternal optimist will tell you, somehow, it’s always true -even if it is only because you survived the WORST year ever.

Nice, generous, whatever

Everyone should grow up with an older brother. Because, you know, how else would you be able to play games with the same person everyday and somehow ALWAYS LOSE (even if you really did win)? Or let yourself be persuaded to trade your beloved sparkly, shiny puppy sticker for some other ridiculous, ordinary sticker of his and then when you regret it as soon as the trade is over, be informed that it’s now TOO LATE? How else could you discover that there is an alarm clock that’s set to go off every day at 4 p.m. hidden so well in your room that you never find it, even after 20 years? Or surrender your stuffed animals to an evil existence so that his stuffed animals could always be the good guys? So fun.

Of course, the fun times do go away after a while. Because one morning, you will wake up and have a brother who wants to be your friend. Who comes home from college and is sad because you are going out with your friends instead of spending every second with the one you’ve learned to trust as much as you trust a rattlesnake. And instead of buying one for himself, he gives you the newly unveiled Palm III for your college graduation and doesn’t throw up when you open it and can't figure out what it is. This is when you can expect that he will just keep getting nicer and nicer until you can hardly remember the innocent look plastered on his face right after he quietly pushed your DOING THIS WILL MAKE ME WANT TO PULL ALL OF MY HAIR OUT button.

Fortunately, you can always look back on the good times. Because you will never forget how a hidden alarm made you question your own sanity every day at 4 p.m. Or the way he used a sparkly, shiny puppy sticker to help you play an astonishingly good hand in the game of Mean Girl Sneaky Manipulations in high school. And sometimes, somewhere underneath that nice, generous grown man that everyone adores, you can still catch a glimpse of that manipulative, big brother that could outsmart you every time.

And you can breathe a big sigh of relief.