she never gives in,

she never gives in, she just changes her mind

my junior year in college found me stir-crazy and dissatisfied with life. in that state of mind, i flung myself into the idea of spending the second semester of my senior year abroad, in london. i applied, hoped, dreamed, and recieved an acceptance letter to UCL right after september 11th.

by then, however, my senior year was shaping up to be a barrelful of fun. friends returning from overseas, no more newspaper-running chaos, enjoying my photography class... so i wandered around for a few days, offering my indecision on the grounds that the world seemed like a much more unsafe place after 9/11. most friends and family took this with an understanding nod.

i bumped into marvin, a psychology professor i'd studied with and gotten along with famously. when he asked about whether i was still going abroad, i offered up that stock response. marvin took one look at me, smirked, and said i was being an idiot. of all people he knew, he said, i was the least likely to be afraid of anything overseas. he took a moment, looked closely at my face, and said, "no, that's not the reason at all. it's simply that you've changed your mind and you're afraid of looking foolish so you've concocted this other seemingly rational reason." seeing my surprised look of agreement, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "live your life, krissa. and don't be afraid to turn on a dime."

it was the first time i'd ever heard that expression outside the context of a car's turning radius. i understood, however, that following a path simply because it was the path you'd decided to travel was no way to live a fearless life. time and time again, since that talk with marvin, i've had cause to remember it. take the easy route? follow through on stated desires or plans? or allow yourself the freedom to change your mind?

for years, since the termination of my last long-term, serious relationship at twenty, i've sworn off the idea of "love" at first sight. no, no, i said. you can like, lust, someone without knowing them well. but love? no. love takes time, and trust, and a deep understanding of the other person. love is not instant.

then i met stuart. and the combination of how well we get along, with our shared belief in fearless emotional honesty... it was like a chemical fire. i opened my heart without compunction or distrust and he did the same. and you can call it whatever you want. yes, it's new. yes, there are years of trust and time that need to accumulate for everyone else to accept wholeheartedly the idea of true love between us. but we do.

i could have rationalized this by calling it a different kind of love, or something leading up to love. that would have allowed my prior beliefs to rest comfortably in place while making room for this amazing, inspiring, deeply loving and beautiful man in my life.

but i didn't. i'm not rationalizing anything. i have fallen in love. i have changed my mind. i have switched my path. i will continue to do what it takes to keep him in my life. i love him, and i have thrown my arms around him without the slightest reservation. for me to do anything less radical would be an insult to this beautiful thing we've found in each other. so i've turned on a dime.

and i couldn't be happier.

city of bankerly love

city of bankerly love

i'm a little disturbed by philadelphia. specifically, the corner of 17th and walnut. here in the heart of "center city" i'm sitting at an internet cafe. let me rephrase that. the ING Direct Cafe. wherein casual passerbys can purchase incredibly inexpensive coffee, use free internet, and chat with the baristas who are, it seems... qualified banking experts.

beyond my fear that i'm going to walk out of here with an unwanted checking account attached to my back... how sad is it that bankers are now serving coffee to plebians? what DO they put on their nametags at business school reunions?

oh, it just got worse. now they're playing oasis.

heart, meet sleeve blogging

heart, meet sleeve

blogging is often a game of coquetterie, where the writer flashes a little leg and lets the reader play the seductive game of reading between the lines. i do it just as well as the next blogger, i fully admit.

the thing is, none of that today. i'm in love. i'm in love with the most beautiful man i've ever met, and i have no cute or coy way to say it. i met him a week ago. i've spent every night with him since. we've stayed up late, whispering secrets and telling stories. he pulls me to him on the subway platform and kisses me with promise and purpose and my knees turn to water. he tells me the truth and listens to my truths, and this week has been spent wandering around new york, arm in arm, an island of two.

i love him for so many reasons, they'd sound like a resume if you heard them. but most of all, because i've finally found the man i can be fearlessly open with, the man i can pour myself into. i have finally given my heart to someone and had them recieve it with joy and care.

and he lives in england. and he's moving here. and there will be days and weeks and months of details and questions and job searches and visas and phone calls and longing and laughter down the phone lines - and i hope you can all be there for the ride. and i hope you have ideas and advice. because we're doing this. one way or another.

so whether you believe in true love, this quickly, is not a matter we need to discuss. i don't know if i did either. but then i met him. and he kissed me. and i held his hand and i hold his heart. he's what i've always been looking for and never knew existed ...

and he loves me.

flash! bam! alakazam! you'll

flash! bam! alakazam!

you'll have to forgive me, cookie monsters. the rose-colored glasses i've found make it difficult to read webpages. getting hit by lightning leaves you too electrified to touch a keyboard. floating ten feet off the ground, well...

leaves precious little time for blogging.

so give me a minute to gather my wits again, wipe this grin off my face, grab a cupcake, and tell you everything. soon.

let me tell you

let me tell you exactly about a girl like me

stepping out of the elevator for my cigarette break, this burly older man steps in line with me, and begins a completely unsolicited conversation about the magazine company i work for, whose masthead is listed in the elevator.

he says he's polish. his cheeks are red and his goatee is disturbingly white and straight-bristled. he looks like santa claus's hard-partying brother. as we exit the building, i light up my cigarette and prepare to walk away, having answered in short responses his questions about the company. but he persists, explaining he was once a journalist in poland, and that he rode the trans-siberian railroad once, back in the grandeur of the soviet era.

this all seems normal. until he leans far too close and says with a lecherous smile, "and i was traveling with a mistress, she was a girl just like you, a beautiful girl. she was wild! man was she -"

this is the point where i step back about a foot, a hard smile pulls across my face, and i say, "i'm sorry, i'm meeting someone. have a nice day." i turn heel in my boots and stalk the other way.

for someone who always complains about letting people's affronts shock me into a polite silence, i'm quite proud of the sudden instinct that drove me to walk away quite clearly uninterested in letting him finish that sentence. must be something in the air. something strong.

great loves over a

great loves

over a year ago, i stood at the edge of a dance floor, watching one of the most beautiful friends in my life sailing around the room on the arm of the only man she'd ever, and will ever, love. i cried, the only time i cried at her wedding, and her father came up to me quietly and put his arm around my shoulder.

"this will happen for you, too. and we'll be there, my family, to cry happy tears for you." his comforting arm, his intuition, and his kindness just made me cry harder, so he took me outside for a cigarette and told me funny stories about growing up in india.

the intervening year and its disappointments has built up a hard ugly layer of cynicism over a belief i've cherished for years - that great love is really the only thing worth fighting for and nothing trumps it. for reasons that will stay close to my heart, reasons both personal and external, something's happened to slough off that scar tissue of disappointed detachment.

i remember what it felt like to watch her dance with him and know i'd find that someday. i look at my coupled friends with renewed appreciation of their passion. i believe in great love again. i always did. i can't believe i spent a year blustering otherwise.

welcome, spring.

tom petty said it

tom petty said it best

here's the thing: i haven't heard back from any of the six law schools i applied to. i sent all my applications in about a month before they were due, so this is an understandable delay. it's not like it means i'm more likely to get rejected just because it's taking longer to hear back.

but the waiting.

there are so many things i want to do, every day, that i struggle with the knowledge that i'm planning on laying three years of my life effectively into cement. law school means pursuing a scary, unknown and difficult dream i have. laying down plans for the future. but it also means forfeiting a lot of today. it means no crazy exciting travel for three years. less time with friends. much less money. less of that careless bohemian hither-tither wandering that makes my otherwise bougie life worth living. looked at carefully on the scales, both paths - the going and the not-going - have their merits and downsides.

and the waiting.

every day that i wait, i evaluate with more clarity how i'll deal if i don't get in ... anywhere. don't flatter me. it's a possibility. and i may be a soaring romantic when it comes to some things, but in matters of les cartes d'avenir, i like to be realistic. so there stands the hairy ugly beast that is rejection. that is not getting in anywhere. and what will i do? how will i say to my loved-ones and cheerers-on, "yes, i was planning on going, and no, i'm not doing so." my pride, drat my wounded pride!

oh, the waiting!

when i first started to seriously consider the rejection beast, i flippantly said to a friend, "well, if i don't get in, then i'll definitely write a novel." i was mostly kidding. i'm sort of not anymore. lengthy inspiring discussions with stuart, as well as the myriad of recent encouragement that's poured out of friends and readers alike, has made me take a harder look at a path i thought i'd decided against years ago. who knows. don't count any chickens before their parents meet and mate. i may not write anything. i may switch jobs. i may travel. i may fall in love. i may start up windsurfing or wood carving. i may, very well, do anything i'd like to do.

but the point is, the waiting will be over, eventually. until then, there are only two things i DO know:

1. if i get in, then i have the choice of going to law school. which is what i want.

2. if i don't, the world remains as it always has been: my oyster.

maybe the waiting isn't the hardest part. maybe it's really just the choosing.

cidade maravilhosa, coracao do

cidade maravilhosa, coracao do meu brasil

..and every stranger's face

..and every stranger's face i see reminds me that i long to be..

if the sky is light when you go to sleep and dark when you wake up, is that the inverse of sleep?
where exactly on the spreadsheet of forward-marching time does the elastic exhaustion of jet lag live?

i finally fell asleep last night [this morning? tonight?] by tucking my head into the corner of one seat and shoving my feet into the seat-pocket of the other. it only lasted an hour, but it was the closest i came, after three espressos at the airport and two cokes on the plane, to approximating the sensation of sleeping on a grounded horizontal surface. but while it mimicked my tendency to shove one arm, crooked, under the pillow that supports my head, it was lacking severely in the chalk-marked-dead-body aspect of my leg pattern - that is, one stretched out and the other pulled up and bent at the knee, usually corresponding to which side my head is turned to.

and worst, most ignoble of all, the shortness of air on planes makes me drool tenfold my usual amount. so there you have me: feet shoved into seat pocket, arms clenched around head, hands clenched at chin, lower back poked by seat buckles, collecting buckets of drool.

the dreams of the inverse-night plane-sleeper are either lost in low-oxygen ether, or remembered and exceedingly bizarre. the sound of a passenger snoring made strange dream-babies with the constant rumble of the engine and the uneven hum of the wing slicing through clouds. it left me dreaming of driving down the road in a car with long hairy arms instead of a steering wheel. as i tried to navigate the rumbling machine down the road by jerking at the weird forearms that protruded from the dashboard, some part of my still restlessly-conscious brain thought,

this flying thing is for suckers.

as a child, i had very little jetlag because i actually slept on these netherworld overnight flights. i'd stretch my tiny body across the two seats my mother always miraculously procured for me and dream my way over the atlantic, or mediterranean, or the wilds of the sahara, or the caribbean. as i got older and taller, i discovered other tricks of the flyer's trade. the seat-rest foot-tuck. using the pillow as a bridge between the edge of your seat and the window. exactly where to fold your coat so that the metal arm of the chair doesn't cut into your ribcage.

but still the relentless march of my age takes its toll and i find myself more and more disoriented after every international jaunt. it's like i'm stoned. my body is on autopilot, so that i've taken a shower, gotten on the subway, and spent three hours at work without even choosing these movements. i'm fine. friendly, even. until some tiny grain of sand gets wedged in the machinery of forward-motion. like i can't find my lighter, even though i'm sure i put it in my coat. or someone questions the simple writing-down of a phone number. or the printer stupidly chooses 11x14 instead of 8x11. or my finger gets briefly trapped between the drawer and desk-frame.

and the exhausted frustration makes my inner child [the one who used to love sleeping on airplanes and playing make-pretend in airports] beat her tiny fists against my breastplate from the inside, so that suddenly i am fighting a wailing scream that will end only when i collapse to the ground and sleep for what feels like it should be eight solid days.

olha que coisa mais

olha que coisa mais linda, mais cheia de graca...

it was precisely the moment where i was drunkenly kicking sand around on the beach last night, arguing the value of techological innovation with fabio, wearing tiny red gingham shorts and a white button down, smoking a cigarette and drinking a caipirinha, that i realized...

this is the life.

blame it on rio

blame it on rio

that's all, folks. this weekend, i'm leaving for the sunny sandy shores of my motherland. i'm going to walk up and down the beach every morning for exercise. i'm going to drink countless beers and caipirinhas with my brothers and visit my aunt in her mountaintop village. i'm going to sing silly songs with my niece and catch up with my saintly sister-in-law.

i'm going to drink coffee every morning with an amazing woman, sixty years my senior and every bit as sharp, funny and outgoing. i'm going to buy beers for her grandson and make his girlfriend jealous by dragging him along with me to clubs. i'm going to smoke cigarettes on the beach, after manicures, in the hallways of the shopping malls. i'm going to wear flip flops every day and let my hair be curly. i'm going to eschew makeup in favor of a suntan. i'm going to have afternoon espressos at our friend's jewelry store and watch the tourists stroll by with their fanny packs and their bermuda shorts.

i'm going to rio. and don't worry - i'm coming back. but i may not really want to.

heady on champagne and

heady on champagne and victory

the lovely karen and her esteemed panel have deemed my little valentine's day part two post to be worthy of the awesome POTM.

i'd like to thank the academy, my awesome producer, all the countless midgets along the way...

how do you know

how do you know if you need it when you've never done without it?

this morning, i woke up late, at 8:33. usually, i wake up at 7:55 and manage to shower, have a cup of coffee and a cigarette while watching katie couric be irrepressibly perky, then get dressed, put on some makeup, change purses, check that i have everything, and run out the door. this morning, i managed to shower, suck down a cigarette while throwing on clothes, and get out of the house by 8:55.

notice the crucial step missing? not katie couric, people. the coffee. the sweet, black, life-affirming and eyelid-opening coffee. the elixir that allows me to dress exactly right, every day, for every occasion. the sweet nectar that reminds me to take bills in to work and pay them, take my umbrella if there's rain in the forecast, turn off the damn lights when i leave. the ambrosia that prevents me from falling asleep in the shower. from stepping on stilettos. from trying to use a bobby pin as an eyeliner pencil.

i forgot the coffee.

i've heard people say they don't drink coffee because they don't want to be dependent. well, i never had to realize how dependent on coffee i was. BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS THERE. it always works. it always makes sure i don't step on stuff, or poke my eye out, or fall down in the shower, or take a completely un-matching purse to work with me. i never feel addicted to coffee AS LONG AS I REMEMBER TO DRINK IT.

but not this morning. this morning my brain feels like its about to sit down on a bench, pull a newspaper over its head, and start crying unconsolably. sentences being sent from my brain to my mouth don't make the journey intact. i just got out of my chair and forgot to balance myself, and thus pitched forward on the desk.

so now, i'm going to gather the scattered weeping forces of my brain, drag myself downstairs and across the street for a cup of sweet, live-giving coffee. and a bagel. hopefully, the whole crossing-the-street thing won't be my own personal coffee-less waterloo. really, there should be an emergency caffeine task force for this kind of thing.

welcome to le who

welcome to le who bakery. allow me to present the man with the striped hat and the michievous grin. no, it's not the cat. it's chef le biscuit. as i flit around the room in my best doofblatten polka dot dress and mussfringnet shoes serving out seussious delicacies, our chef will serenade us with musicial seussical couplets...

We'll start with a treat for one Miss Shivvy-Roo,
A quite close relation to Cindy Lou Who.
A hopplestalacious flantastic with cream --
A snack plucked straight out of a Gingerquat's dream.
Begin with a cake of vanilla and pearls
And ribbons of pink from five cute little girls.
Then dip it in custard and caramel goo
and top with a posey, for Miss Shivvy-Roo.
 
A small treat for Jason will do him quite well
Bubblemint hopplebums inside a green shell
And served with a spoon made of silver and gold
This hopplishly mintbum's a sight to behold.
Some freshly picked joob leaves are chopped up and diced
And added to tea that is quite nicely spiced.
It's poured 'round a crumpet and tied to balloons
And eaten by light of great Neptune's eight moons.
 
We called in the grublunk with his hundred hands
To make food for Dani's grand four-course demands.
The way we grow up leaves the grublunk aghast --
He's young in the future, but old in the past.
Zingzang tarts for dessert will start things off right
A ragout made with glerps picked late late at night
And backwards to lunch is a hot smirfle stew
Zeepple pancakes for breakfast, that's it, we're through.
 
Wee Sonya has ordered a razzle or floop
Instead we might whip up a Flooprazzle Soup.
It's pink in the middle but blue at the edge
But tasty all over, and to this we pledge!
Dished up in a bowl from the Great Grand Mazoo
You dip in with your forks, just like a fondue.
Cheesy in some bits and fruity in others
This Flooprazzle Soup tastes just like your mother's.
 
A wholelotofnothing is what Matthieu craves!
It's what he shall get, long as Matthieu behaves.
To make one, you start with a plate that's not there
And top it with bits of not-quite-there air.
You pour on some nada, some zilch, and some zip
Take care not to spill it or drop it or drip!
Then garnish with zero and sprinkle with naught
And sit back and see how much nothing you've got!
 
A tart made with berries, the snooglish kind
With extra grent icing's what Mark's got in mind.
"Be sure that the tart is tebfrantious," he calls
And back in a stout cushy chair our Mark sprawls.
The crust is quite crisp, the berries quite cherry,
Icing made out of a fairy's grent dairy.
And since these small tarts make you sleep like a pup,
Sextuple espresso to wake Mark back up.
 
From Stuart, a shout for pavlova rings out
The hullaballoonberry kind, I've no doubt.
They're light as a feather and airy as clouds
Bake up some of these and you'll surely draw crowds!
They taste like a mix of an orange and a pear
But unlike those fruits, this pavlova is square!
For fun we'll add whipped shumshum cream, just a drop
And shavings of choc'lit 'til Stuart says stop.
 
Can't find it in London? We have it right here!
For Steph, a mersnopple kerbopple, my dear.
Take fizzied up vodka plus fizzied up juice
And let it get shaken by Bruce, our blue goose.
All of these shakes make a great giant bubble
Do it again so you have bubble double.
Then fill up each bubble with sponge cake and rum,
These taste so fantastic, you won't leave a crumb.
 
A ballopalloulopoo, Matt, just for you
A sweet treat to snack on and munch on and chew.
It's layers on layers of pastry and dough
The highest dessert made today, don'tcha know.
It goes from the floor straight on up to the roof
Ten thousand feet high, and of this we have proof!
The two-miles tall Mega-Hippity-Pop
Was flown in today, to reach up to the top.
 
A Snirflebat Dinglysloop Pie for Miss K
And then we can finish and call it a day.
A pie stuffed with fillings both fruity and tart,
Like blooms made of stardust, a true work of art.
With each bite you take it tastes more and more good
Improving with age like a dinglysloop should.
It's pretty and pink and it's lovely, like her
The best of the best, as I'm sure you'll concur.

*clap clap clap clap*

ED NOTE: biscuit wrote this, people. in full. give me no credit for its sheer stupendipulous brilliance.

seusstastic! in honor of

seusstastic!

in honor of the great dr. seuss, and today's 100th birthday that he would have celebrated, tomorrow's dessert carte will be... rather a la carte. give us the most seussolicious name you can think of [wuzzy-bee pie or murkleposh fingleblatt tartes, for instance] and the great biscuit and i will come up with appropriately seussilian deliciousness to match your seussical dessert name.

because of the sheer quantities of whizzing bollijags and thumping swishvalloos in the back room for this operation, we can only make 10 desserts. everyone else is free to order drinks and their favourite seuss book to cuddle up with.

welcome to le who bakery!

saved in the daniella

saved in the daniella of time

to go, or not to go

p.s. voting closes tomorrow at 3 pm, assuming SG doesn't call. and calling a handful of hours before an event is the height of tackiness.

well, thanks to our gal pal daniella who actually bothered to check the queer eye site, it seems mister Flirty Flirty has a "long term girlfriend". which, hey, more power to him, it's a lonely city, n'est ce pas? but since not only was he openly flirting with me, his friends were jokingly encouraging it and giving me not so subtle go-thither hints... i think i'll daintily pluck my stiletto out of that wasp nest and traipse merrily along.