New Year's Eve

Note to self: Don’t drink the night before New Year’s Eve. Nobody wants to wake up with a hangover the morning of the biggest party night of the year.

Of course, I wasn’t the one with a hangover but my house, with guests, was a somber place Monday morning. Only time would tell if the shampoo effect would come into play. Lather, rinse, repeat. Instant buzz. In the meantime, people were moving like molasses – slow and thick, sickeningly sweet and syrupy.

Taking the day off work, I rose and baked. Coconut orange snowballs. I mixed the cream cheese frosting for pumpkin bars, handing the beaters to the boys for a sugary treat after I fed them frittata and risotto, pumpkin bread and fruit. I would spend most of the day in pajamas, prepping for the new year. Mentally cataloging the year that passed. The places. The friends. The books and music, movies and events. Another year gone and I baked.

Eventually, I'd have to shower and dress. Get ready for the night, the day, the year ahead. For the moment, I could focus on butter and sugar, vanilla and cream cheese. Mixing the ingredients. Mixing friends. Family. Beer and wine. As long as I remembered liquor before beer, never fear and I didn't drink the night before, I would be fine.


Tag: Drinking

The telephone

“You do it.”

“No, you. It’s your turn.”

“If I call, you have to answer the door.”

My sister bailed out of the fight entirely, the push to see who would call for delivery. She made her list and opened a magazine, keeping her head down and hoping that either our brother or I would call. Eventually, I made the call. My brother answered the door. It wasn’t too bad.

A week later we found ourselves in a similar situation, trying to plan dinner over the phone with our visiting parents and playing phone tag.

“Tell Scott that he has to call Dad and tell him the plan,” she informed me before hanging up.

“We’re meeting at the hotel at seven and you have to call Dad.”

“Wait, what? Why do I have to call him?”

“Because I talked when he called and then Amy talked to him. It’s your turn.”

He growled at me. At the phone. And made the call. It all worked out – we met in the lobby at seven and went to dinner from there. The task really could not have been easier but for the fact that we all – my brother, my sister and I – hate talking on the phone.

We don’t really talk about it, even face-to-face if not on the phone, but it’s there every time we need to order something for delivery, make reservations, coordinate our plans. Nobody wants to do it.

At work, I don’t want to answer. Every time the phone rings, I sigh. I groan. I smile and pick up. Inside, I die a little.

At home, even with caller ID, I struggle to lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer. I will deliver. You know I’m a forgiver. Reach out and touch faith... Sorry. Even with caller ID (and without Depeche Mode), I struggle to answer the phone. To smile. To talk. Every time it rings, I jump. My heart stops.

Fortunately, my mobile doesn’t ring all that often because most of my friends know that I hate talking on the phone. That, a lack of reception in my apartment and the fact that I leave it on vibrate because of my never-ending series of meetings at work and fear of becoming “that girl,” the one whose cell phone rings while she’s meeting with the Senior Vice President of Finance or presenting to a team of international delegates, and I’ve been in those meetings. With the phone on vibrate, I don’t even hear it, saving myself the gut-wrenching decision of “do I answer?”

I’m not sure why the issue. Generally, I have no problems with the people at the other end of the line. I do have problems hearing, not to mention focusing on a voice so far away, and the talker often seems just as distracted as me.

“So, you liked the movie?”

“Um, no. I thought it was melodramatic and overdone.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d go see it tomorrow... Do you want to see it again?”

I hate talking on the phone.


Tag: Communication Fears

Other plans

Apparently, there's been a bomb threat in my building. We haven't quite shut down the office but those who have work to do at home are working from home. And those who don’t have work to do from home, well, they've just left - except me, the girl at the front desk and a manager at the end of the hall.

My dad and stepmom are in town though not really in town as they're staying in Reston – halfway between my sister's house and mine, which requires all sorts of complicated planning on everyone's part. My brother moved into my tiny place last weekend. A friend's coming to visit. We're all driving to West Virginia, and I need to bake and clean and shop, not necessarily in that order, as I'm having a few friends over, friends who probably shouldn't know each other because they know a little too much about me, and my stomach's so wonky I didn't even make it into the office until noon.

I can't exactly leave now; though, I'm going to have to move my car because the bomb squad wouldn't let me into the garage. I'm parked on the street, which means I'm totally going to get a ticket. I couldn't deal with a ticket right now. I wasn't sure how to deal with the Macy's gift card I found on my windshield this morning and I shouldn't have driven into the office in the first place.

Of course, a sane person might ask why I didn't stay home. Take the day. Work from home. But there is actually work to do in the office, and I'm taking off Monday and Wednesday with my friend. And Tuesday's a holiday. And I didn't plan to get sick. I don't have time for it. Or bomb threats. Or police cars blocking the entrance to the garage. Or explosive-sniffing dogs in the hall.

I don't have time.

But sometimes, life has other plans.


Tag: Work

Timelines and deadlines

All I wanted to do was eat myself into a coma and sleep 'til spring, but strangely enough, that's not socially acceptable, on any level, for a professional, single 30-something in the working world, not the working world of DC, anyway, if she's billable.

The first alarm sounded, the one in the window. I groaned and hit snooze. Then, the one in the bed. The one in the window. The phone. The one in the bed. Window. Phone. Bed. Phone. Window. Eventually, I pulled myself from the warm comfort of blankets and quilts, pillows and flannel to shower. Dress. I even made myself look pretty with boots and wrap to metro into the office and sit alone for alone for eight or nine hours. In my office. Alone.

Approximately 20 or 30 of us work in the space. About five of us made it into work, three for a half day, give or take and two of us for the full. We went to lunch.

I listened to music all day. Without my headphones. I did a little swivel chair dance, turned it up and sang along when my favorite songs played, and they were all my favorite songs because it was my computer and my office and nobody was there. I kept the heater on, even when I reached a happy, drowsy state of almost uncomfortable warmth late in the darkening afternoon. The day, the office, the music and heat were all about me because I managed to drag my tired, holiday-sated self into work.

A three-day week turned into a two-day week for some, a one-day week for others, and some just took off the time between Christmas and New Year's.

I planned take advantage of the quiet office and work. Hard. Get work done in the toasty, thumping office with the tap, tap, tapping of my keyboard drowned out by some of the plucking and crooning of Sufjan Stevens. Iron and Wine. Frou Frou.

I wouldn't eat myself into a coma.

I wouldn't miss work or "work from home" or pretend to "work from home."

I would act like a grownup while longing for a Christmas break, just like the ones I used to know. Sleeping. Sledding. Worrying about midterms and grades and boring myself to delicious anticipation of a return to school, structure and crushes. Accidental meetings in the hall. Basketball games. Moving toward the next big thing. The next semester. The next holiday. The next stage in life. And I would miss that anticipation more than I ever expected.

Over Christmas, I get a day off work – two days, this year, with a little luck – and another for New Year's Day. Timelines. Deadlines. Endless projects. Rising early. Working late. I don't even have time to miss it before starting again.

At least I have my music, chair dances and lunch with friends. Holidays with family. Dreams of upcoming trips to New Orleans, Argentina, South Africa. Eating myself into a coma will have to wait until retirement.

Tag: Work

Twisted

Playing Twister. I lost, despite the somewhat coincidental wearing of a favorite T touting “The Game that Ties You Up in Knots.” Of course, I was playing with a 6 year old - shorter reach but greater dexterity.

“Lodi’s old. She can’t do that,” my sister explained.

I beat the 7 year old but only by default: she quit the game to watch and wait for a spot with Connect Four.

I had shared a bed with my niece – she slept in the middle.

“It’s the warmest spot,” she explained when we awoke. I huddled along the edge, trying to maintain my balance through a shallow and sleepless night. I nudged. I pushed. I asked her to move and finally gave up and took the space I could find. It was the most sleep I’d gotten on a Christmas Eve in years.

My sister cried. I did, too but just a little. Only my brother-in-law won on the scratch off tickets. That’s not why anyone cried.

Too much food with goat cheese-topped frittata. Bacon that I skipped. Pumpkin pancakes that I didn’t. Cheese and crackers. Shrimp and dip. Lasagna. Broccoli. Garlic bread and salad. By the time we left for home, late in the afternoon, I couldn’t bear the thought of an eggnog sweet. I could barely keep my eyes open on the road, lulled into a food coma, but I made space later, crashed on the couch, for the fluffy, whipped dessert.

Watching movies. Playing on the computer. Trying to send text messages by hitting “retry” and moving around the house, trying to find a single bar of cell phone connectivity.

At home, I waited for a friend to call. I waited for my brother to return. I waited to open my own presents and napped on the couch to the sounds of “Dreamgirls” on the TV. The friend never called but my mom rang to wish me a merry Christmas.

“So, did you get any good presents?” asked another.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t opened much. I like the stuff from my sister, but I was holding off on the rest until we got home. I was going to open them with my brother. I’m not sure where he is. Maybe tomorrow or... I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

Playing Twister – that mattered. Playing on the computer. Wearing pajamas ‘til late afternoon. Eating too much. Crying a little. Sleeping even less. Time with family. Christmas.

And now I'm back to work in an empty office where everyone called off to "work from home" even though they don't have portable assignments, in an empty office with work to do in the three-day week, keeping myself busy.


Tag: Games Family Christmas

Unstuffed

“Do you have your stocking?”

“Yeah, somewhere… I don’t know where it is.”

“I don’t really care. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t have it.”

I had the worst reputation and the longest running in the family for not hanging my stocking(s) by the chimney with care. Or anywhere else for that matter. I had three or four, counting those that were solely decorative plus the patchwork, quilted one with my name that my mom made when I was born.

In my mind, all rested quietly in a box in the closet where they’d been for almost three years, since my last Christmas with a tree and stockings, Santa towels and red plaid. In reality, I had no idea.

I actually had a tree that year - Ings and I strapped them to the top of my Jeep with a little bit of bungee and a whole lot of finger crossing, to get them home. One for myself. One so she could surprise her then fiancé, now husband in a place they no longer live.

The boy I adored came over to help me decorate the tree, contributing a rather tasteless World Trade Center ornament, years after the fall of the towers, from a service plaza somewhere in the Garden State, thinking of me as he drove his lawyerly self to NYC to try his hand at standup comedy. Apparently, he failed but I never saw him on stage.

Eventually, he disappeared. So did my decorative holiday spirit. It seemed too much work for so much unrewarded effort. Besides, my sister went all out with trees in multiplicity. Santas. Garlands. A snowman toilet tank cover with a top hat/tissue box. All I needed to bring was a stocking, the stocking my mom quilted more than three decades ago for her newborn babe, but I forgot.

I always forget.

Fortunately, this year, I wasn’t alone in the forgetting. My brother packed his somewhere with the rest of the little used but important things he needed to keep and didn’t want to see.

We’d spend hours alone, side by side, as my sister worked a crossword puzzle, my brother watched TV online and I played “sad fairy dressup” with my nieces. I’d play them out of their games and straight into bed where they’d pray for deep and dreamless sleep, where visions of sugarplums danced in their heads and hopes for Christmas kept them up too late.

Santa would just have to leave our stockings unstuffed, the stuffers in a pile on the floor.

Tag: Christmas

Rock star parking

“At least we got rock star parking,” I said at the end of the film, “but I’m never going to get those two hours back... I can’t believe I paid for four tickets to see that movie.”

The film wasn’t that bad, but it seemed filled with its own self-importance, with swelling strains of orchestral splendor as a man in uniform walked through a field of poppies or a girl looked out a window, watching what she imagined that she understood. It was too much, too much for me anyway, but the parking, the spot on the street outside the door, that almost made it all worthwhile.

I don’t drive much and I love that aspect of my life. Walking everywhere. Riding the metro. Living in a city, but I still remember a night in Adams Morgan when I backed into one of those angled spots in front of the bar. I climbed out of the Jeep and stood on the sidewalk, half-beaming, half-disbelieving the legitimacy of a perfect spot, the perfect spot.

Like so much in life, it must have been too good to be true. I spent half the night worrying that I’d walk out to find a ticket. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t quite believe my luck, almost ruining it for myself.

The same happened when I pulled up in front of the theater last night.

“They’re leaving,” I observed from the driver’s seat at the flash of taillights. A car rounded the corner and pulled in behind the backer to wait for the spot. “Oh, fudge.”

I leaned over the steering wheel and checked the road to the right. The light changed and I pulled through to cruise the street, moving slowly past the theater to the next light.

“Hey, wait. Is that a legal spot?”

“It has a meter,” from the passenger seat.

“Is it legal?” popped up from the back.

“It has a meter.”

“This is the best parking spot ever.”

“And look – there are free tickets inside!”

The tickets weren’t free but I was the only one who paid, providing a Christmas treat for my brother and friends. It was a little long and overwrought. A little over-hyped. The spot, though, it was perfect.


Tag: Washington DC

Ho ho ho

"They look like 7-year-old hookers," I laughed into the phone, watching my nieces parade around my apartment in dresses and wigs, boas and beads. "The bad part is that they're wearing my clothes."

I didn't go all out to entertain the girls. My wardrobe managed well enough on its own given that I happened to own not one but two feather boas, dozens of bangles, beads, lais, high heels to break any neck, including my own. Though, they did look a bit trampy with the Halloween mullet wig and v-neck bodices that on tiny little girls cut all the way to their belly buttons, despite strategic pinning that kept all the important bits covered.

My nephew was a little less than entertained by the fashion show but laptops and playing cards served him well when he wasn't whinging about the fact that three adults and three children crammed into my apartment, on a single couch and a chair and a half.

"Lodi, do you ever get bored here?" my niece asked.

"No," I replied, watching and waiting.

"Why?" my brother asked. "Do you?"

"A little bit."

I found the clothes, pens and paper. Crayons and markers. An envelope dropped from the pages of my coloring book, an envelope bearing the address of my freshman dorm.

"This is older than you," I told the girls. Almost twice as old, actually, as I hadn't lived in the dorm since the spring 1994.

They colored pictures and found room on the fridge, pulling down pages from visits past, from my stepbrothers' kids, from friends. We ate far too much and stayed up too late. I left for a bit to get drinks with a friend and found my way back well after two, regretting the late night when a niece and my nephew found their way to my bed before eight in the morning.

We walked for doughnuts and we walked for coffee, something they couldn't really from in their wild, wonderful West Virginia home. We went to the National Portrait Gallery, the Building Museum, Burger King. I painted my niece's toes and made hot chocolate with marshmallows for the entire clan.

It was loud and crazy. I can't seem to position myself upright, given a crick in my back, which could be directly related to toting around a 55-pound child, and I couldn't be happier.

Tag: Christmas Family

Sleeping in

I thought it would work. Granted, I didn't go to bed that late, midnight or so, but months of sleep deprivation should have kept me in bed. A four- (or five-) day weekend. Family. Friends. Far too much food.

I got up at seven.

I woke up at seven and got up somewhere closer to eight, padding barefoot to the bathroom to put in my contacts, and then to the kitchen to wash and mash, mix and bake. Four mini-loaves of banana bread to go with the chocolate chip cookies I'd made Friday night and the spice cookies that were somewhere between flour and cookie, in a ball of dough in the fridge.

The thing, was, that I didn't need to bake. I had already given away tin after tin of home-baked goodness; there wasn't anyone left on the list for gourmet treats. Just because a friend send a recipe for chocolate-peppermint crinkles did not mean that I needed to run out, buy the ingredients and spend hours melting, mixing and rolling. I needed to clean. I needed to organize. I needed to sleep, but instead, I baked.

An hour or so later, the alarm sounded, reminding me that I ought to get back to my regularly scheduled weekend, to pick up my brother and run my errands and clean. I ignored it. It sounded again. I ignored it again. Eventually, reluctantly, it stopped beeping. Eventually, reluctantly, I left the kitchen and creativity to shower and dress.

Maybe the afternoon would bring sleep, the next day or the one after that. I had time. It was a long-weekend and once I finished cleaning and organizing, all I would have would be family, friends and far too much food. The banana bread and cookies would come in handy.


Tag: Christmas Sleep

Spirit of giving

I like giving presents. A lot. I'm not such a fan of the receiving, but the giving of gifts, the finding something perfect to make someone happy, it just makes my day. Granted, in the American tradition, so much of what I give relies on shopping. On buying and spending and bolstering a lagging economy through the purchase of things my people never knew they wanted, but sometimes... sometimes it doesn't.

This weekend, I'll probably give my hair away. Cut it and mail it to Locks of Love if I can find time to get to a salon and a salon with time to take me. I've been growing it for a year and a half to donate, almost 19 months since my last cut, which was 18 months after the one before that, which was 18 months after the one before that.

Four times in the past five and a half years, I've let my hair grow rather unflatteringly long in order to chop it all off and mail it to an organization that makes wigs for financially-disadvantaged kids with a need for a hairpiece. If I don't make it this weekend, I'll go next. Or the one after that. Soon, though, I will give my hair away and start all over again.

This weekend, I will definitely give something else away: hospitality, as I host my brother and sister, my nieces and nephews, sharing a tradition that means more to me than the gifts we exchange on Christmas day. Cramming into my tiny apartment for a family slumber party. Watching movies. Museums and Chinese food. Driving each other nuts. Sharing some Christmas joy.

My brother and I did my laundry Wednesday night to free up the weekend. At the laundromat, between washing and drying, I found a pen for a girl who wanted to draw. She hugged me. Her mom and I talked about the holidays and the tendency (of which I am incredibly guilty) to over-gift. She left mid-dry to run home and meet her sister who planned to drop off a bag of presents from the Salvation Army. The kids would keep a couple each and give the rest to those who were less fortunate. I almost hugged the mom.

Instead, after she left her clothes in care of the attendant who works seven days a week, a man who keeps me company every time I fluff and/or fold, I kept talking about the holidays. He always chats with me, my brother, one of my best friends. He helps us with our baskets. He helps us find machines. He works two jobs and barely makes enough to afford his efficiency apartment in Southwest DC. Before we left, we handed him $20, barely more than the price of a good glass of wine in DC. I thought he was going to cry. I almost did, minutes later, talking about a similar situation in a laundromat years earlier.

"I was talking to this woman," I told my brother, "and she just gave me this horrible sob story, but it wasn't a sob story. It was just horrible. Things kept going wrong. I wanted to cry."

I explained that I didn't have any money. At all. But when I found five bucks in the dryer with my clothes, I gave it to her and she actually did cry.

"It was just five dollars."

I guess it was the gesture, not the money.

I felt the same the other day when I called customer service at DickBlick.com (which is just plain fun to say) to talk about an exchange. I'd ordered a half dozen frames to finish my holiday shopping, as gifts, to keep, to frame a print I've had for a year and a half and a pic of my grandparents from 1947. One of the frames was wrong. The woman on the other end of the line, a woman with a smile in her voice, told me to keep the wrong frame (a $50, archival quality frame) and she'd send me the right one. The glass probably wouldn't survive a second shipping anyway, but she made my day.

She didn't have to do it. She didn't have to be so nice but the fact that she was made all the difference in the world.

"Happy holidays!" I exclaimed, full of the Christmas spirit.


Tag: Gifts

That girl

"Aren't you cold?"

"Yeah, but I wore legwarmers today."

"Legwarmers?"

"I am that girl."

She stared at me with eyebrows raised and snorted. I thought she'd take to pointing shortly but the laughing eventually subsided and we got on with our meeting.

A series of unfortunate events led to the demise of my favorite flat boots. With searing pain in my leg, I found myself unwilling to wear heels and with girly sensibilities, I wanted to wear a skirt. I wanted to break into the favored pieces I'd finally pulled from winter storage. I wanted to feel pretty after days of trousers and elastic bandages.

I pulled on my skirt and sweater, nylons and flats. I shrugged into my coat, wrapped a scarf around my neck and pulled on my gloves. I unlocked the door and stepped out to face the world.

Three seconds later I stepped back inside.

"Fudge, fudge, fudge," I thought. "It's friggin' cold."

One would think I'd accept my lot in life and change into something warmer. It was far too cold for a skirt without boots. Honestly, it was far too windy for a skirt, in general, but my mind was set. I headed back to my bedroom and rooted through my sock drawer for a pair of legwarmers. I might have bought them as a joke around the same time I learned the Thriller dance for a world-record attempt, but I wore them, only slight embarrassed by my foray into the 80s during the rush hour commute.

By the end of the day, I'd almost forgotten about them, thrown under my desk in a warm sleepy office, but I pulled them out and covered my lumpy shin. I rode the metro home in the evening rush hour, walked to my brother's and drove to the post office, waited in line, chatted up a friend, all in a fad from two decades past. I almost forgot how absurd I looked.

Almost.

At least I was warm.

Tag: Winter Clothes

Growing up

"Oh, fudge," I realized before I tucked myself into bed. "I've grown up."

I think I knew on some level that I was a real, proper grownup for ages. I have a dental plan, for teeth's sake, but I've always felt somewhat adrift, neither one nor the other. Something must have happened over the course of the weekend that drove the point home.

I might have realized it from the look on my neighbors' faces when I dropped off a ribbon-wrapped tin of home baked, gourmet goodness.

"Well, bless your heart," the southern lawyer proclaimed. "That's just so sweet of you."

If not then, I definitely should have gotten it from my the look my brother shot me as he crashed in the chair and a half, munching on spinach and hummus and deflecting the cookies I tried to force feed him between episodes of Weeds.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

"What? No, I'm OK."

"I think I'm going to make pasta with sautéed butternut squash and spinach."

"What? Right now?"

"Yeah. I have the ingredients. I'm hungry and it's better than buttered noodles, right?"

He just looked at me for a minute or five and shrugged. I might have figured it out then. That I'd grown up. Instead, I sautéed the butternut squash that I just happened to have on hand. The same with the garlic and spinach. A little lemon. A little salt and pepper. He ate it. He liked it, too.

I've been responsible for myself for ages. A grownup, for all intents and purposes despite the overwhelming desire to say "intensive purposes" and giggle at the intentional malapropism. To play hooky. To get a friend to call a boy and listen on the other line or maybe pass a note asking "Do you like me? Circle one: Yes, No or Maybe."

Maybe not.

I don't often feel like a grownup, living in the basement as I do. Sleeping on the couch for months. Not sticking up for myself. I run to the laundromat. I prefer cereal with marshmallows.

Maybe I should have realized I'd grown up when I started buying organic granola and eating it with soymilk. Or when I booked my first trip out of the country. Alone. Or when I bought cool glasses less for the sake of buying cool glasses and because I needed corrective eyewear. Or when I started worrying about cancer. Or bills. Or medical bills. Or the price of milk, even soymilk.

Sometime, when I wasn't looking, it happened. I grew up. I turned into a woman who baked for the neighbors and kept butternut squash and spinach on hand. Who knew how to use anise seed. Who kept a guest bedroom.

As I tucked myself into bed for the night, the first night in my own bed since August, I realized I liked it. Being grown up. I smiled and sighed, snuggling up to ratty old teddy bear as I drifted off to sleep.


Tag: Aging

Fashionable

"What did we do to make it better?" the attending asked me, looking at the line on my leg that didn't seem to match the redness and swelling.

"Nothing," I shrugged.

"Nothing? No antibiotics."

"Nope."

"Did we draw the line or did you?"

"You did," I replied. "But I've been tracing over it to make sure that I still had it this morning."

"Good idea."

He placed his palm on the red, hot, swollen mass of pain that made me go to the hospital in the first place and puzzled over the retreating infection. He poked and prodded, palpated and decided to go and check my file.

I sat back with my bare feet and dress trousers, sweater and scarf, waiting. The physician's assistant came back with discharge papers.

"It probably isn't an infection if it's getting better on its own." She looked dubiously at the lump. "Obviously, come back if the swelling or redness returns."

She recommended seeing another doctor if the giant knot in the middle of my shin didn't disappear. She didn't quite believe it was a bruise either but offered no solutions other than rest, ice, compression and elevation. It was only slightly better than the recommendation to "keep doing whatever it is that you're doing," which basically consisted of rest, ice, compression and elevation. It did little to alleviate the pain that brought me to the Emergency Room in the first place.

Honestly, I almost skipped my "wound check." I felt far better than I did on Saturday with a pain level of about eight on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being "I just stuck my hand in a shredder and it's still going." The shredder, not my hand.

I didn't want to get up at five to face the bracing wind and cold, to metro to the hospital and wait in the Emergency Room, as much fun as it might be, but I decided to do what I should. Do what I could. Follow the doctor's orders. At least it brought some peace of mind: I probably don't have a flesh-eating infection that could kill me.

I do have a slew of hospital bracelets, though, one pair of broken boots, a knot of swollen, lumpy, painful flesh and a pair of crutches. Quite the fashion statement.


Tag: Health

Humming

Five hours. I'm pretty darn sure that's how long I spent on it. Baking. And I didn't even need to make the dough – I had spent hours on Saturday doing that.

Between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, I managed to bake pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chip cookies. Spice cookies. Coconut-orange snowballs. A threesome of tiny, conjoined thumbprint cookies with three different types of jam. Marshmallowy wreaths dotted with sprinkles.

I also spent a good five hours in the emergency room for what seems to be a really bad bruise. Either that or it's some sort of skin infection that could, actually, be life-threatening. One or the other. Whatever it is, I could barely walk by the time I went to bed on Friday. I cried.

I don't cry.

I couldn't take it, though. On Saturday, sometime between 7:30 and noon, a doctor drew an outline of the redness and swelling on my leg. Upside down and from a funny angle, it looks a little like Italy. Or the U.K. I'm not sure – I've always been bad with geography, especially upside down. On Monday morning, I get to go back and brave the emergency room again.

The drawing needs to stay until then. It's a point of comparison to see if there's a change, a need for antibiotics, dead tissue to cut away. Unfortunately, it was drawn with a ballpoint pen. Didn't stand well to showering or shaving so Saturday night, when feeling returned to the leg I'd overextended through the course of the day with the aid of prescription painkillers and a Blue Moon with lunch, I found myself twisting and tracing, trying to keep to the lines I could barely see of the possible bruise, definite redness and swelling that extend from my ankle to knee. A little bit awesome at 2 o'clock in the morning.

I did, however, manage to make the dough and back a couple dozen cookies and the pumpkin bars, plus frosting, to take to a party. By Sunday afternoon, I had baked for friends and family. The guys who work at my favorite bookstore and the neighbors upstairs. Swiveling on one foot, I made the kitchen hum.


Tag: Baking

Just wonderful

I'm not a fan of It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, I downright hate it. I find the film a miserable reflection on the holiday. Three-quarters of the flick seems bent on driving the incomparable Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey to the brink. His life spirals out control to the point that he's snapping at the kids, out of love with his wife, facing jail and contemplating suicide a little too intensely.

And then it gets worse. Much, much worse. Life without Bailey is even worse than the dismal present that he faces, suicidal as he may be.

Granted, Bailey sees the light of day, the good of humanity, the value of a human life, even his own, but the last three minutes of cheer do little to make me like the film. By the point little Zuzu proclaims, "Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings" I'm well into my cups and ready to throw bells, wings, and quite possibly little Zuzu at the screen.

Of course, that doesn't keep me from watching the flick, from trying to find merit in the Christmas classic. I'd just rather something lighter. Give me Vera Ellen and Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney any day. A little singing. A little dancing. A lot of Irving Berlin. White Christmas. Holiday Inn. Holiday with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. I watch them all year 'round.

I like Scrooge, in every iteration. The Grinch. Charlie Brown. All of the claymation creations from Rudolph to the Abominable Snowman and everything in between. I like the ABC Family Channel's 25 Days of Christmas, and I've seen that one with Roma Downey and the guy from Will & Grace – Borrowed Hearts – a half dozen times. I just don't like It's a Wonderful Life.

Last night, as I walked from dinner to home, realizing Yes! had closed and I'd need to wait to bake, I lamented, "I don't know what I'm doing."

"I need to get my life together," I continued. "And I need molasses."

During the course of the day, I had managed to bit off every nail I'd spent the past three months growing. I had developed a pain in the leg that I was semi-convinced would kill me before the weekend passed. I had worked too late and fought with a coworker who hadn't. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball. That or bake about 17 types of cookies until I couldn't stand anymore but frankly, I couldn't stand anyway, given the deadly pain in my leg.

I came home, retrieved boxes from under the stairs for my neighbors and crashed on the couch. I turned on the TV to find the film. The antithesis of Christmas. And I couldn't tear myself away. I felt guilty changing the channel.

I didn't feel guilty leaving the room, though, and I leveraged myself from the sofa and into the kitchen to bake a little and listen to the film, to give it one more chance. I baked pumpkin bars and chocolate chip cookies, balancing on my right leg and whispering, "I'm not crying. I'm not crying. I'm not crying." I honestly didn't know if it were an observation or a warning.

By the end of the night, though, and back on the couch, I did cry. Maybe. Just a little. George Bailey's utter joy at the thought of facing prison made me tear up even more than the pain in my leg. I didn't like it, but it got to me. Rather, it got to me and I didn't like it.

Maybe that's why it's not at the top of my Christmas list, but I'll try again next year.


Tag: Movies

Naked

I paused for a second, reluctant to shed its warmth. Shaking my head, I slipped out of the robe and hung it on the back of the door. I kicked the flip flops under the table and crawled under the light blanket. A soft knock sounded and I heard a voice from the other side of the door.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes," I answered and in walked the woman I'd met minutes earlier, a woman who would spend the next hour kneading tension out of my back, rubbing oil into my bare skin as I drifted between sleep and wakefulness, dreams and life. I hoped I wouldn't drool.

In one of my more lucid moments, I considered the fact that I paid a stranger to touch my naked form, to ease my aching body and mind. For the most part, though, I accepted it. It wasn't the strangest place I had been naked or even the strangest place I found myself perfectly at ease with my nudity. From doctors' offices to gyms, beaches to spas, I spend a solid chunk of time naked and naked with strangers, and it has little to do with sex.

A year ago, in Istanbul, a large, matronly woman in a black one-piece suit scrubbed my body, sliding me across the marble on water and suds as my toes tangled in the loose hair of a friend on the slab. Somebody else's feet rested near my own head. At first it seemed strange, but the awkwardness passed as the woman washed me like a baby. The only ones who seemed out of place were the women who wore underwear or bikini bottoms in the steamy room.

Granted, most of my experiences aren't quite as exotic. I didn't grow up in a naked house, and I grew up faster than most of my friends, wearing a bra as far back as third grade not because I wanted one but because I needed it. The words "late bloomer" were not part of my vocabulary and I bloomed in different ways than my flat-chested, skinny little mom. If I weren't mortified enough on my own, she was embarrassed for me.

As a swimmer, I found myself in locker rooms well before I realized the changes my body would make. My face reddened as I showered in my bathing suit with my eyes half closed and dressed under my towel between strategically opened locker doors. Eventually, the doors closed. I rinsed out my swimsuit, wrapped myself in a towel and forgot to care.

As I grew up, the pediatrician made way for a grownup girly doc and a table with stirrups, to health problems and cancer and appointments more often than not. More often than desired, in any event, and I got used to it. I got over it. And I got naked. A couple of breast cancer scares left me topless and shivering as strangers pressed my breasts between cold metal plates or asked me to find the lumps, palpating my breasts. I'll be back for more in February.

In India a few weeks ago, as I reclined in my conservative one-piece racing suit, reading a book, men sat in chairs mere feet away, closer to the water but facing the wrong direction: us. A couple of girls in fairly full coverage bikinis. A couple of men in board shorts. Me. The Indian men snapped pictures of us with their phones and their cameras, capturing video of us reading and napping. In the water, men frolicked in damp cotton briefs as fully-dressed women splashed in their trousers and tunics. Not even naked, we felt completely exposed in our suits.

Work requires a different level of dressed, a different degree of the cleavage to whom men have been talking since I was 10. Skirt lengths. Boot heights. Shoulders. Necklines. A different rule for every situation.

Every day, writing my thoughts, writing my feelings, I shed the robe and slip between the sheets, hoping for the proper context, for the right degree of coverage and a professional demeanor. Hoping that I haven't bared too much. Hoping that nobody stops to take pictures of those soft tender bits that jiggle just a little too much. I don't like them either, but they're part of me.


Tag: Naked

Gift giving

For all intents and purposes, I am finished Christmas shopping. Done. No more. Except maybe...

I do this every year. I make my list and check it twice. I add a pivot table or three and sort by store, action, and wrapping requirements. I wrap and label, making 'em pretty with miles of ribbon and bows and curlicues, using alternating, but matching paper and accessories for individuals, and I tuck them under the tree or what would be the tree if I had a tree but I don't. They're in the window, and I am done.

Then, I buy more. Lots and lots more. For others. For myself. And that's the worst. I know better than to buy for myself in the season of giving but I just can't seem to stop. The prices are just so good and free shipping? I needed another dress like the two I've worn to weddings recently. It's on sale and I don't have it in coral and brown. I do, however, have it in brown and blue and coral and pink. I just can't seem to stop.

New shoes, nightie and dress. Frames to encase the print from Alaska I've had for a year and a half, the sheet music I bought six trips ago, a photo of my grandparents from 1947. Obviously, I couldn't go the entire holiday season without framing that.

I panic. I figure I must have forgot a gift or seven. My stepbrothers. My friends from college. The girl from my third period Spanish class with Miss Decker in 1991. Every social event during the highest holiday social season seems rife with potential for disaster, missed gifts, somebody who bought for me and I forgot, and so I shop. And I shop. And I shop.

Embarrassment over the number of packages coming to the office prompts me to ship to my house where they very well might be stolen from the doorstep but by this point, I no longer know how many packages to expect. I wouldn't notice the loss of one or 10.

Maybe I'm not quite that bad, but the "Kristin took herself to [fill in the blank] over Thanksgiving so it's going to be a small Christmas" plan never seems to play out as expected. I do it to myself, and I just can't help it.

Something about the season of giving strikes a chord. I like shopping. I like giving things away. I like finding a gift, the perfect gift, and giving it away for the sheer pleasure of seeing happiness on the face of someone I love. It's the best gift I've ever gotten.

And maybe I need to reconsider retail therapy.


Tag: Shopping Christmas

Awkward moments

"A lot of guys wanted to ask you," my best friend said. "I told them not to bother. You wouldn't want to go with them anyway."

"Thanks," I thought, as I waited futilely for someone to ask. Anyone.

In the end, I would go with friends, buying my own dinner, my own ticket to the dance. I would wear a corsage that my mom ordered but forgot to pick up, a corsage I ended up buying for myself. I would stand against the wall or sit on the bleachers, at a table, in the hall, as the popular kids and diehard couples slow danced to Whitney Houston and Boys II Men.

"Although we’ve come to the end of the road... Still I can’t let you go... It’s unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you..."

My friends and I danced to the faster songs, jumping from foot to foot with arms tucked self-consciously close. I hadn't yet learned to let go, to find the beat or just stop caring. All of those years of lessons and I hadn't quite figured out how to move.

For the most part, though, I skipped a lot of high school dances. I hardly ever had a date and I couldn't quite make myself believe that I didn't care. I hated standing there, at the edge of the floor in my new skirt and sweater, in a new dress, a formal gown, with my hair all curled and pinned and sprayed into unnatural stiffness, waiting for someone to notice me. To take my hand.

Eventually, I outgrew my fear of dances. Eventually, I stopped reading romance novels. The two might be related. At some point, I learned to move my body or rather it learned to move itself. The boys came running and I just stopped caring about the rest of it. Eventually, though, blessedly, the dances ended.

And then came office Christmas parties.

High school dances had nothing on the exquisite awkwardness that is the office Christmas party. How does one dress for the midweek transition from office to bar? How does one socialize with people she sees every day but never in a social situation? With strangers?

Along with kids and spouses, cousins, parents and the guy down the hall, at least two ex-employees found their way to the festivities and one woman we all thought was fired. It was an interesting mix of people I see daily and those I see maybe once a year. At the office holiday party.

I have, unfortunately, served my turn as "drunk girl" or one of the drunk girls, in any event. I was not the only one in that role. The company's filled with a healthy blend of heavy drinkers and teetotalers – nothing in between.

I'm still living down the one really drunk party (one of the downsides of working in the same place for many years). At least in my own mind. I'm also still living down the numerous really sober parties, the forced smiles and inane conversations fueled by my own frightfully detailed memory.

One of these days, I'll figure it out. I'll learn how to move at the office party. I'll learn not to care. In the meantime, I'll sit at my table with a plate of hors d'œuvres and a handful of friends, tugging at my tights, wondering when I can leave and hoping for a fast song.

At times, sitting there and smiling, my mind wanders. I wonder what might have happened if my best friend hadn't shot down all those guys, if I hadn't skipped so many dances.


Tag: Work

The ghost of boyfriends past

I lied when I said I'd never been in love. I fall in love a little every day. I'm a big fan of just handing my heart away like so many copies of the Express outside the Metro entrance, cards about the Rapture, free advice. For the most part, though, I didn't know it at the time, not until I acted crazy or he acted crazy or one or both of us fell so completely out of love that we didn't know what we were doing together in the first place.

I've been thinking about it lately. Love. Not so much in my own life, but maybe a little. October Road brought it home, though. The writer of one of my favorite films (Beautiful Girls) Scott Rosenberg brings Knights Ridge to the small screen with a look at what happens when a man tries to go home, to find his way in a place that he left a lifetime ago.

The thing is, it's not the same place. They say you can't go home again, and it's true. It might be the same buildings, the same storefronts and landmarks, but time changes things. It changes people. Sometimes we just don't see it.

The main character moves in with his dad and brother. Wants to run with the same best friends To date his childhood sweetheart. As if a decade hasn't passed.

There's a boy from my hometown. I haven't seen him in a decade and a half and I'm not sure that I would have recognized him if I had but the 12-year-old girl in me is still in love with 12-year-old in him. The 12-year-old in me will always love the 12-year-old in him as I spend my life pining for a boy who doesn't exist any more.

A couple of years ago, I heard a rumor that his life spiraled out of control, that he's selling drugs today, but I don't know. He could be married and living in suburban Ohio. California. New York. He could be single. He could be gay. He could be rich and famous or a poor, street-living junkie. I don't know anything about the person he is; the man he became has nothing to do with the boy I loved. Love.

Fortunately, I realize in both my head and my heart that it's absurd. He holds no more power over me than the occasional passing longing when I think of home or childhood, teenage angst or the idealistic girl I used to be. I know I'm in love with a ghost.

Actually, I'm in love with a handful of ghosts. The men that my boyfriends used to be or the men that I thought they were. None of them really hold much power, but for the accidental sighting, the unexpected brush with someone who looks like someone I used to love, breaks my heart just a little.

I think that's why I like the show so much. Honestly, it's a little crappy, the acting a little stilted, the story lines less than compelling, but there's something there, underneath it all. The desperate desire to be who we've become while going back to the people we were. Trying to find balance between then and now. Loving a person and a place who no longer exist. I get it.


Tag: Love TV

Somewhere between Breaux Bridge and home

Somewhere between Breaux Bridge and Louis Armstrong International Airport, sometime between four and five in the morning, I came to a realization. Actually, I came to several realizations, not the least of which was that I never drive any more. It used to be my therapy, my balm, my sanity in a sea of uncertainty and then I moved to the greater DC area.

Driving up 395 every day made my head ache, not to my shoulders, neck and back as I developed a slight addiction to ibuprofen and my eyes twitched. I shook a little and took up smoking in the car to quell the desire to vomit. Eventually, for the sake of my health, I moved into the District and I stopped driving. A few quick trips to the Laundromat, the grocery store or my sister's house in West Virginia, and that was it.

As I drove in a Louisiana morning that seemed more like late night than anything else, through rain and fog and swampy heat, I realized how much I missed it. The driving. The thinking. The being alone with myself without entertainment. Dimly I recognized that I'd been listening to Modest Mouse for the better part of an hour and half. Less dimly, I recognized that I'd been thinking about the wrong man for even longer.

I hoped to leave all thoughts, doubts and lingering futile hopes locked, screaming and useless, in the car with the keys once I got to the airport. It seemed like a plan, anyway, but for the moment, along I-10, I let myself think, try to work it out.

I noticed that I drove with only one hand, as if I were driving stick in the automatic car but I managed to keep my left foot off the brake in search for a clutch. I realized that I didn't really know how to change the temperature or fast forward through the scratched bits on the borrowed CD in the borrowed car on an unfamiliar road in the middle of the night.

I thought of the cat scratching at the window by my head, mewling to be let into the house, but it wasn't my cat and it wasn't my house. I knocked, hoping she'd just go away, but she returned with a pathetic meow before the alarm sounded at 2:45.

I remembered my half-waking fear that I'd pull the curtain aside as see a scary, grizzly old man instead of the cat despite the fact that I had no reason to believe that I would or could, nor any fear of grizzly old men.

As I drove, I thought of work and home. Of the right man as well as the wrong one. Of flying and driving and a trip my host and I once took to Mexico. Of weekend boyfriends. Of good wine and better food.

I thought about my job and my life and how I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I realized that I'm getting awfully old not to know and wondered if anybody ever figured it out.

At the airport, I parked the car in the garage and left the keys, the ticket, some money under the mat. I pulled on my coat and shouldered my bags for a walk through the almost-deserted airport. MSY. I still think of it as Moisant.

My flight would be delayed by an hour or so as we waited on board for mechanics to fix a problem the pilots discovered as we taxied down the runway. I would sleep a little in the cabin, surrounded by the sounds of strangers snoring. I would dream a little and think even more. My break from reality broke my hold on the same.

I realized that I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even know what I want but driving helped.


Tag: Travel

Sleep

"Cold," I thought. I pulled myself and gracelessly flung my body from the overstuffed recliner. I made my way to the bedroom for a pashmina, the bathroom and back to the chair to curl up for another hour or so.

Cleo, the Doberman, raced around the house and barked at the horses a bit before settling into a spot of sun on the deck. Ramona the cat darted under the house. Joe found a recliner and Celeste, the big leather chair. The day in the country consisted of sleeping, eating and more sleeping.

We picked up Fat Daddy's pizza from a service station near the exit. I played with the vending machines, buying Homies from Series #9, seemingly urban dwellers in baggy clothes packaged in little plastic bubbles. We hoped for the man with the ironing board but ended up with two of the tube-topped/baggily-trousered girls with the lumpy-looking hair.

After the pizza and Sunday morning political news shows, after naps, we lounged with soda and the Discovery Channel, Man vs. Wild. We laughed and gagged in turn, a quiet afternoon. A perfect afternoon. I couldn't remember the last time I slept away the heat of the day, much less surrounded by friends. Sleeping friends.

We walked through the Quarter and into the Faubourg Marigny for tapas Saturday night, trying a new place.

"Do you take reservations?" Joe asked when he called, turning to us and telling us it was more bar than restaurant. "Perfect for someone who prefers drinking to eating."

The walk was longer than we expected, the neighborhood slightly less safe. On the way home, a man shouted indistinctly at no one or the world at large. Before that, though, we ate heavenly morsels of Spanish cheeses and gooseberries, manchego mushroom toast, salmon and cucumbers, figs, dates and almonds.

We shared a bottle of wine and lamented our apparently unhip demeanor as the bartender/waiter/busboy helped black out the windows and clear tables. In the corner, a DJ blew up pads to cushion her equipment. The space started to fill with hipsters and hipster wannabes and a man who seemed to really enjoy scratching behind the ears of his date.

I fell asleep on the couch, watching a PBS program on the history of New Orleans. I awoke to come to Breaux Bridge and sleep some more, a break, the break I needed, from the eternal go-go-go of life in DC. I'd need to rise at 3 the next morning to make my way to the airport and to find my way into work for the day.

That night, the repairs in my room should be done and I could sleep in my bed for the first time in almost four months. For the moment, though, I just wanted to sleep and eat. Eat and sleep. Watch the Discovery Channel. Enjoy a lazy Sunday with friends.

My Friend Hoss Part III; Blurring Around the Edges Part II

By NOLA Celeste

I've never had Jambalaya with a crack whore before. No, scratch that. I have never met a crack whore before. But, there one was, sitting between Kristin and Joe on the gigantic aqua sectional sofa. Had her eye sockets not been so pronounced and her face so ashen, she may have been unconventionally pretty.

Gunther, the owner of the house, sat in the back of the room, pretending to mix Hoss another Crown Royal and Coke. From what I could gather, he knew Hoss from offshore, but also had some involvement with the video poker industry. His house is on State Street Drive (yes, that is the name of the street) in the Fontainebleau neighborhood of New Orleans. The house was painted a happy yellow color inside. Pots of jambalaya and corn maque choux sat bubbling on the stove. Gigantic luminescent fungi grew and died before our eyes thanks to the magic of the Discovery Channel and HDTV. A cat tiptoed into the kitchen. Joe, noticing the mailing label on one of the magazines on Gunther's coffee table, told Gunther that he also subscribed to the New Yorker. "Oh yeah," Gunther said. "The people who lived here before me had a subscription. I started reading it and liked it so I ordered it for myself." The other magazines on the coffee table were Playboy and Car and Driver.

It was actually a pleasant setting but for the gigantic 80 pound elephant in the room. Hoss had fixed her a plate of Jambalaya, made from his grandmother's recipe, that she took outside to eat. The plate came back empty, but I don't think she actually ate any of it. According to Gunther, she had been asleep for about 18 hours before we arrived. Hoss had apparently been drinking for the past 18 hours.

"Pour me another drink there Gunther," Hoss said, as Gunther poured out the last drops of a handle of Crown Royal into Hoss' Mardi Gras cup. "What," Gunther teased, "You wanna use the empty bottle for a candleholder?" "Bottles done make nice candleholders," Hoss said gruffly. "That's because YOU'RE A GIRL," Gunther said, and teased him about his new drivers license where the letter "F" appears under "gender," right next to the name Ronnie D__ F_____ and the weight: 375.

Hoss has a driver's licence??

I had seen and heard many strange things this weekend: (i) a lady at M'sER who walked around the bar sporting a Bloody Mary mix moustache, (ii) the New Orleans Bingo! Show - a mix of performance art, bingo, wrestling, short films and burlesque, (iii) a group of historical characters ordering double lattés at the coffee shop down the street from my French Quarter apartment, (iv) a man dressed like a clown making balloon animals who yelled that I should not bring my Doberman to Jackson square because she could hurt children (I think the children have more to fear from him), and (v) Hoss' tearful apologies to Kristin about the woman . . . the crack whore . . . that he met at Club Rio and the sex acts tangential thereto.

All of these items combined do not outweigh the absolute strangeness of the fact that someone at the New Orleans DMV issued Hoss a drivers' license.



Tag: New Orleans

Blurring around the Edges

"What, do you have job interview?"

"No," I thought. "But thank you. I feel pretty today."

Instead, I answered. "No, I'm going to New Orleans."

It didn't really explain the professional attire, the dress and heels, the nylons and overcoat, but it seemed as good a reason as any. New Orleans accepted the business-dressed me as much as anything else.

It's a forgiving city.

The night passed in a blur. An inebriated blur, actually, as I gave in to multiple vices in the city of sin. Drinking, smoking, boring friends to tears with stories of India, stumbling down the street, coming home early to pass out on the couch and leaving the wonder that is, that was, the New Orleans Bingo! Show at One-Eyed Jacks. It was fascinating but I was too drunk and far too tired to enjoy the wrestling on stage.

Was there really wrestling?

Friday blurred into Saturday, retaining its fuzzy borders as my alarm sounded at 6:25 and I staggered across the room to find purse and phone, to stop the infernal racket, in full dress because I couldn't be bothered to find my pajamas or toiletries Friday night.

The Departed at home. A walk with the dog. Brunch with a friend's client and one of the more fascinating individuals I met in the morning as he waxed on poetically and vehemently about his Xbox and Halo Three. Of course, I didn't meet the skateboarding crack whore until well after noon.

Sometime in between, we saw a full regiment of people in period dress from the 1800s drinking coffee and talking on cell phones at CC's. Bought ourselves presents at the lapidary. And the Faulkner house. And visited the ongoing construction at various houses.

It was a full day.

And then there was the skateboarding crack whore, a friend of a 360-lb offshoreman in ponytail and overalls who made the best jambalaya I'd ever tasted and which earned him a sex act, though not from anyone in our party. We weren't that hungry.

The house was empty but for the bar and the humidor, a giant sectional sofa and an equally large TV. The Discovery Channel pulled us in as we tried to talk, balancing steaming plates of rice and meat on our knees. The crack whore wandered in and out as did our offshoring friend, but the host seemed quite gracious as he told us of his cat – a story that involved a motorcycle, a bar and a 30-day stint in the hospital including a 10-day coma – and mixed drinks from his perch behind the bar.

We came home to rest, to rally, to recover our senses after the meal. There was still a lot of NOLA to see and a lot of weekend left.


Tag: New Orleans

25 Days

My brother talks about it all the time. Thinking outside the box. Thinking there is no box. Doing something a little bit different and getting people to support a cause.

Yesterday, I read a blog that linked to another blog that linked to a 10-year-old girl who's trying to make the world a little better through a blog dedicated to her grandfather.

"I’ve decided that the best way to remember my grandpa during the holiday season is by living my life like he did, by making a difference and being a leader," Laura writes. "So, for the next twenty five days, I will work hard to make the world a better place one day at a time, and I will write about my adventures here."

I'm a little late joining the movement – five days, actually, as she's chosen the month of December (25 days until Christmas, 25 ways to make a difference in the world) – but I'm here now.

I've been positively grouchy lately. Normally, when things go wrong, I get nicer. Karma. This time, I've been a little off kilter. A little slow to pick up the pace.

Tonight, though, I'm starting. With two friends, I'll read books to kids in a domestic violence shelter. Yesterday, I promised my dad I'd come to a family reunion in North Dakota. The day before, I spent an hour and a half talking to the attendant at the Laundromat, making his night a little better (or so he said).

I guess I did start already; I just didn't know why. Today, though, I'm on the bandwagon and plan to spend the next 25 days making a difference. Thanks to Laura.


"We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know."
- W. H. Auden


Tag: Being good

Snow days

"Pants," I thought. "I hate wearing pants."

News of snow and premature school cancellations kept me out of the skirts I adored, away from the dresses, into dowdy but warm trousers and a turtleneck sweater

"Blah," I thought.

I looked terrible. I felt terrible, but I was warm and grateful for the covered legs when I stepped into the brisk morning air. I shook involuntarily and considered driving five blocks to the metro. Instead, I ducked my head, donned my gloves and started walking.

A light dusting of snow covered cars parked along the street. Drivers brushed the snow from their windshields and rooftops. Flecks of white clung to branches. A week and a half ago, I was on the beach, frolicking in the waves, working on a pathetic tan, drowsy in the late afternoon, slanted sun heat, and suddenly, winter found me.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas," I sang to myself as I shivered my way to the metro. "Everywhere we go..."

The snow – trousers, shivers and all – made me positively giddy. I briefly considered skipping, as frightening as that might be (a winter-wrapped, pony-tailed, 30-something-year-old woman skipping through the streets of Capitol Hill) and restrained myself to a grin stretched ear to ear.

I wanted to stick out my tongue and catch a few flakes. I longed for snow days and big hills, hot chocolate with marshmallows, chapped cheeks.

I thought back to the days of lying in bed, radio tuned to the local station and straining to hear "Cambridge City Schools" amidst the list of cancellations, as if young ears could ever miss that.

Long johns and snow pants. Gloves, mittens and hats. Boots.

"It's snowing," I thought as I made my way to work. "And it makes me happy."


Tag: Snow

Coming down

"You can just take that back," I said, looking the waiter in the eye. "I don't have time to eat it... I'll pay but you can just take that back."

He looked at me, at the plate in hand and back at me. He didn't move.

"Take. It. Back."

Over the course of the 45 minutes, the hour, since we'd placed our orders, the dishes trickled out of the kitchen one without rhyme or reason. Desserts first. A pair of chicken sandwiches separated by a 15-minute delay. Water, one bottle at a time. The naan actually took the longest, canceled at the last minute, mere seconds before the appearance of my eggs and chips.

"We have to leave. I am leaving... I can either pay you or just go."

I was a little surly. I was a lot surly. I was over waiting for utterly incompetent service. The noise and the smells. The sensory overload. The constant staring and touching. The sauce and the spice. I was over everything and I just wanted to go home.

Forty-one hours later, I found myself on the couch checking my email, catching up with work. I'd been held captive in a cab by an angry hotel clerk, desperate to make somebody pay for an undrunk bottle of water. I'd sat in a Goan airport for an hour or two.

I had waited in Mumbai for eight hours, a solid chunk of which I queued in the dark. I watched men shrink wrap suitcases for hours. Spin, spin, spin, flip. Spin, spin, spin, tape. Cut a hole for the handle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After a 10-hour flight, I waited seven or so hours in Amsterdam, lugging a heavy bag. The highlight? A wink from an Irish bartender. A close second would be the nine-dollar cup of coffee and third, the seven-dollar half hour on the internet. Another long flight. A couple of movies. A cup of red wine down my leg. I got sick in the car on the way from the airport. I wanted nothing more than to be home.

Then, I was. Home. Checking my email. Getting back to work. Waking up at 3:30 in the morning, ready to start the day. Falling asleep on the couch, on the phone, at 9 o'clock at night. Baby stepping my way back to normal.

I realized that everything was normal, and things weren't any better than before I left. In fact, most were worse. A broken window in my car. Incomplete repairs in my room. A hike in my rent. A hike in the workload. I wanted to cry. At times, I did, and I wondered why I wanted to leave so desperately.

And then I called Autumn. My best friend from home. A girl I met on the playground of Washington Elementary, the fall of 1984. We talked for more than an hour, flitting from topic to topic and back again, running through the decades since we'd met, talking about kids and the kids we once were, our loves, our losses, our lives. We hadn't talked in a year, give or take, and it was as if the conversation never stopped.

I still remember her phone number from 4th grade.

We made plans for the spring, for a trip to another friend's wedding in New Orleans in March, and suddenly all was right with the world. The jet lag and the apartment, the work and the car didn't matter. Nothing mattered but laughing on the phone with a friend as her young son sang Christmas carols in his underwear three time zones away.

Everything would be OK.


Tag: Friends

Productivity

For the first time in weeks, I was alone. Other than a few hours on Saturday and a hug from the guy who owns my favorite used books store, I had been alone for ages. What felt like ages. Most of the past 48 hours.

I didn't like it.

I did, however, manage to use my time wisely. My fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Jirles would have been proud - she always gave me poor marks in the area. Unlike grade school days, when I would use class time to devour the world of Nancy Drew, I used my weekend, my time alone, to get something done.

On Saturday, I wrapped all of my Christmas gifts. I listed everything I bought and wrapped, shopping for boxes and wrapping paper, labels and toys for the kids. And then I went to a party and drank glogg – a mix of wine, vodka and spice. I was pretty much useless after that.

On Sunday, today, I awoke early once again. The jet lag worked in my favor as I baked two loaves of pumpkin cranberry bread and delivered one, hot from the oven, to the guys at my favorite bookstore. I got a free copy of a James Joyce novel and a hug in return for my efforts. I think I also got a discount on the book for which I paid.

I walked through the market, buying a gourd. The hardware store. The grocery store. The bank. And then I came home to make soup. Risotto. To label and beribbon my gifts and to order a few to fill in the gaps. I felt satisfied with myself, and incredibly exhausted, proud (if only a little) and lonely. The gifts and the food, the chopping and the walking, did little to fill the gap.


Tag: Home