one hundred

It's sixty degrees and balmy here in Zoo York. I'm wearing my new grass-green cotton blazer and Stuart's enjoying his new job and we've got friends coming to dinner to celebrate, well, anything we want to celebrate. So I thought I'd give you guys a treat, should you want it -

- an 100 Things for the new season. My last list, written in 2003, was so hopelessly outdated and childishly pretentious that it was time to write a fresh one. Hopefully this one has a little less posturing, a little less structure, and is thus a little more enjoyable and honest.

Interested?

1. I cannot pronounce the word "drawer" correctly. Everyone else says "droor" while I say "drahhr".
2. I like to read the dilemmas in Randy Cohen’s Ethicist column, cover up Cohen’s answer, see what I come up with, and then compare.
3. I’m proud of my cute feet.
4. I watch Katie Couric in the mornings. She reminds me that there are chirpy people that have been awake for hours.
5. I asked Jason to give me a Thing about me, and he said, "you laugh like you mean it." I thought that was good.
6. I’ve only had two bee stings in my life: one, on the mountain roads of Crete in 1988, and the other, at the McDonald’s on Memorial Drive in Houston in 1994.
7. I am a quick liar and very good at it, but it’s karmically balanced, because I almost always get caught.
8. I won a speech competition in 1996 with a dramatic piece about child abuse. It was SO DRAMATIC.
9. I’ve kissed 42 men in my life. Most of them were frogs. I married the prince.
10. I’m addicted to cheddar cheese.
11. I know how to square dance, having learned at the age of 9 from my Texan grandparents at a now-defunct barbeque place called Texas Tumbleweed. I loved that place.
12. My family has the following three nicknames for me: gorda, titiu, and zuzuca. No, I won’t explain them.
13. My earliest memory of career ambition was wanting to be an architect, before I found out how much math was involved.
14. My dumbest injury is this: I was making pancakes, and I leaned down to look at the underside of the pancake and touched my nose to the edge of the hot frying pan.
15. My mother likes to tell people how I recognized some pewter spoons at the British Museum because Roald Dahl wrote about them in The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar and Other Stories. Secretly, I like this story too.
16. I was born at 2:30 am, on August 31, 1980, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
17. I know how to knit, make pasta, print color and black-and-white photographs, play squash, ride horses, play the piano, and bake a perfect quiche.
18. I have a birthmark on my stomach that I think looks like a maple leaf.
19. My future pet names are Caspian (for a dog) and Albion (for a cat). Steal them and I will totally cut you.
20. I climbed Mount Kenya and complained the entire way.
21. I love getting new cell phones.
22. I was a cheerleader and a drill team dancer in high school. This is often a source of taunting or blackmail among my friends.
23. One of my pet peeves is people treating me condescendingly because I’m young.
24. Even though I know nothing about cars, I really love Car Talk on NPR.
25. I like the smell of someone smoking pipe tobacco.
26. My mother wanted to name me Samantha and craved oranges while she was pregnant with me.
27. I’ve been known to rip up a page of notes if I don’t like the way my handwriting starts out.
28. I’ve lived in: Argentina, Aruba, Morocco, New Jersey, Cote D’Ivoire, Tunisia, Houston, Kenya, and New York. I’ve been to: Uruguay, Brasil, Mexico, France, England, The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, and most of the Eastern United States.
29. Most people, when they hear this list, say, "Military? Diplomat?" It’s oil – my dad worked for Exxon.
30. I grind my teeth in my sleep.
31. I’m not much for video games, but I’ll go a couple of rounds on any game I can drive or beat people up in.
32. I smoked for four gloriously irresponsible years. It’s been 3 months. I miss it, and still consider myself a reformed smoker.
33. I sing aloud in the car, and I don’t care if other people see me, which drives my mother batty.
34. I have two older half-brothers, both of whom epitomized "cool" for me, during most of the eighties.
35. I snobbily ignored The Simpsons until college. I was an idiot until college.
36. I’m finally learning how to sew from my mother, who has been the undisputed genius of the sewing machine for my whole life.
37. Being married to a Brit is awesome because we can eat cheese on toast with baked beans once a week and I get to say "BUGGER!" around the house in my awful American accent and he loves me anyway.
38. Until I was about 20, I fought my curly hair every day. Now I encourage it to do its thing and it looks great.
39. I’m terrified to the point of paralysis by even the most harmless of bug life.
40. Here is a spectrum of things I hate, from the marginally disliked to the violently loathed: cold pizza, broccoli, Ann Coulter, Catholicism, tapered pants, Jimmy Buffet.
41. I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until I was 11. I said it was because I liked rollerskates better but the truth is, I was scared. This is a pattern of denial and stubbornness that you can find running rampant through my life.
42. I have read the Douglas Adams books. My life is consequently better.
43. I can be a real hypocrite sometimes.
44. I think there’s a fine line between appreciating the good things in life and being a spoiled snob. I like to think I walk that line every day.
45. When I was four, some kid pulled out a chunk of my hair while playing duck, duck, goose. It was really traumatizing.
46. When people tell me I talk a lot, I usually brush it off but deep down, it hurts. It implies that what I’m saying isn’t worth hearing, otherwise they wouldn’t have noticed.
47. I have very vivid dreams that I will immediately tell Stuart about, first thing in the morning.
48. I have a natural aversion to all things cultish, like Star Wars and comic books, even though most of my friends are unabashed geeks of this stripe.
49. I wish I knew how to: drive a manual transmission car, sail, install lighting, garden, play the drums or the fiddle, speak Italian and Greek, and make bread.
50. My maternal instinct is a force to be reckoned with. I call this force "my ovaries".
51. I’m learning to drink two litres of water a day.
52. I used to want to be editor-in-chief of the New York Times. Now I want to be a good person with close friends and a family, a novelist, and happy.
53. Even though I’ve complained about my last name for most of my life, when it came time to switch to Stuart’s, I became suddenly attached to it. Thankfully, he understood.
54. My favourite flowers are tulips, lilacs, and magnolias. I also like hydrangea, snapdragons, and irises. I even like roses, provided they’re the cheerful English kind.
55. When I’m having a bad day, I like to buy People Magazine or US Weekly. It’s crap, but it’s comforting.
56. My eyes turn greenish when I cry.
57. When I was a teenager, I used to sneak sips of port from my parent’s liquor cabinet.
58. I used to think my parents were kidding when they said my Russian piano teacher in Cote D’Ivoire was working for Moscow. Now I realize they weren’t.
59. I always quicken my pace when I’m half a block away from our apartment.
60. I have an agent. This never ceases to amaze me and makes me feel like a complete and utter hack when I say it aloud.
61. My two best friends from high school, Erin and Rachel, are still two of my best friends. Two of us are married, two of us are in law school, and we all share a serious affinity for the Police.
62. Once, at a restaurant during a one-day layover in London, my chicken-breast exploded herb butter all over me. My mother and I still laugh when we remember this story.
63. Aside from everything I’ve said about cultish pop culture, I’m a die-hard Buffy fan. Remember what I said about hypocrisy?
64. I’ve never had much interest in going to California, and until I have a good friend in every city, I probably won’t go. It costs the same to fly to Europe.
65. I’m still a little surprised that I’m living in New York and making a life here, just as I said I would when I was 13.
66. Once, Erin lost a word for a whole month, and she finally remembered it, but every time I try and tell the story, I forget the word. She never does – I just asked her. It was "speculate".
67. When I was little, my favourite color was lavender because I thought it was cliched to like pink. Now, I love all colors but am partial to crisp shades of green and warm shades of yellow.
68. "But I am le tired" never isn’t funny.
69. Stuart was one of my blog crushes way before any of us met him.
70. I don’t worry much about the world, because I think it’s the height of arrogance to assume all the catastrophe will happen during my puny lifespan. That said, I wish someone would do something about diabetes.
71. When I say I don’t like seafood, most people (correctly) assume it’s because I’m stubborn about trying it. However, this is, in this case, untrue: due to respect for my seafood-loving friends, I have tried almost every single thing that swims.
72. My favourite shoes in the world are Brazil’s Havaiana flip-flops. I have three pairs and I can’t get enough.
73. I like really violently gruesome threats, like, "I’m going to rip your arms off and beat you about the head with them" or "fuck that in the EAR", mainly because I’m 5’2" and who would believe me?
74. I saw my first snowfall in the Atlas Mountains, in Morocco. This is indicative of the weirdness of my life.
75. My dad and I used to "speak Spanish" when I was a toddler, which meant we’d just babble back and forth incoherently. We thought it was very funny.
76. Galoshes are good for keeping your feet dry from rain. Also, from my killing rampages. See? Violently gruesome threats.
77. I dated a gay guy once. Yes, I knew he was gay. Yes, HE knew he was gay. In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid idea.
78. I have "vaults" with some of my friends, where we can be as cruel and catty as we want and it stays within the bounds of the "vault". You don’t want to look in there.
79. I love llamas. It’s inexplicable. I just do.
80. In the eighth grade, I played Lucy in "You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown". It was the pinnacle of my acting career.
81. I love summer downpours, driving in Texas, and running at sunset.
82. I probably quote Eddie Izzard too much, but I don’t care.
83. I vote democrat, inform myself on the issues, and then get on with my life as best I can.
84. My favourite authors are, in terms of sheer quantities read and enjoyed and in no particular order Roald Dahl, John Irving, Phillip Pullman, Michael Chabon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, JK Rowling, Kate Atkinson, Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, and then John Irving again.
85. I am immensely proud of how much I’ve read, of how addicted to reading I am, and so is everyone else with as prolific a habit as I have. If they’re trying to be humble about it, they’re lying.
86. I only like white towels.
87. I know next to nothing about sports, but I particularly like attending baseball, soccer, and tennis games.
88. I love England, but everyone loves England, except I love England in the sense of it being Stuart’s homeland and thus someplace new to explore and eventually understand.
89. I wear a men’s watch because I like the weight.
90. The idea of homeland, while I’m on the subject, is very complicated to me. My blood is Belgian, Irish, and Greek, while my adopted cultures are American and Brasilian and my childhood was spent mostly in Africa. Like I said – complicated.
91. Stuart and I have this thing about the letter E. My phone texted him an "E" one day, for no reason, and ever since then, we say it to each other every day. We don’t really know why.
92. When I meet new people, I have to quell the impulse to talk at a mile a minute, especially if they’re quiet.
93. I don’t like the word "nice". I don’t think it describes anything, and I think it should be exiled from our vocabulary.
94. I think if there was a song about me, it’d be Billy Joel’s "Vienna".
95. I love the Bronx Zoo.
96. My mom and I have talked about pot, and traded stoner stories. This is awesome.
97. I wrote a short book when I was six about a mouse named Emily. It was very detailed, stapled, and illustrated.
98. I’ve had five dogs in my life – four German Shepherds (Jade, Mouschka, Aquaba, and Champion) and a Jack Russell (Kirby). Four of the five died young, 2-3 years. Champion lived to a ripe old age and proved Darwin wrong because he was dumb as a bag of hair.
99. I’m an accessory fiend, currently in possession of about 50 pairs of shoes, 28 purses, 3 pairs of sunglasses, 6 wallets, 6 hats, 8 pairs of gloves, 3 brooches, and god knows how many scarves.
100. My real name is Christina.

for kate and stan, with love

krissa: isn't the word "sew" weird?
biscuit: It IS.
krissa: SEW weird.
krissa: eww, that was the worst pun EVER.
biscuit: Ugh.
biscuit: It put me in stitches.
krissa: oh, god, the puns are just NEEDLING me.
krissa: i can't even follow the THREAD of this conversation.
biscuit: I can knot deal any more.
krissa: i mean, it's just knitpicking at this point, isn't it.
biscuit: Now you're just being crewel.
krissa: oh my god i could just DYE.
biscuit: Yeth, I can not a-thimble a thingle pun more.
krissa: weave really run out of ideas.

all the people, so many people, and they all go hand in hand through their...

The rain is grim and determined today. It got its papers, it's fully qualified to soak the ground and our feet and leak down our collars and foreheads and into our bags. So when I left this morning, it was with a raincoat buttoned to the neck, quick-drying cotton pants, and a lucky umbrella. I also was packed off with a thermos full of hot tea in my messenger bag, several kisses, and a fully charged iPod.

And let me tell you something about rain and commutes and general public behavior: when you're walking through one big puddle that is your street and your legs are soaked from the knee down and you're fighting wind to umbrella, there's a loophole in the law that usually decrees you have to enjoy your personal stereo system quietly. Yes, I broke it.

And thus, thanks to the current infatuation (almost a decade late) with Blur, you would have seen me stomping down the street, rassling a thrashing umbrella, yelling PARKLIFE! at random intervals. And I might JUST have been sashaying my hips just the littlest bit.

What ELSE can you do on a rainy monday morning?

etiquette, example of

Cheers to sending an email politely reminding me that my hastily-constructed spring banner had the Mother of All Typos, the IE/EI in "receiving" (sincere thanks, Andrew).

Jeers to doing so in my comment box, and calling me a bad writer for it (totally unsincere thanks, Irene).

nimby, example of

I remember hearing that Bloomberg wanted to pass a law making car alarms illegal in New York City, due to noise pollution.

"Bah," I said. "We're New Yorkers. We wouldn't want our noise any other way but polluted!"

A car alarm, the honking kind, has been going off two doors down from our apartment for 50 minutes now. I've called 311 and registered a complaint. I've called my precinct and asked them to come down and do something about it. And then I went outside and put a plastic-sheathed note on the car, saying "THIS CAR ALARM HAS BEEN GOING OFF FOR 45 MINUTES. 311 AND THE 114TH PRECINCT HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED." And then I took note of the plates.

I'm not trying to be a complete bitch. Except, that when a honking continuous car alarm has been sounding in my ears for 50 minutes, I REALLY DON'T MIND BEING CALLED ONE.

signal failure, spring delayed

I am sick to the back teeth of winter. I am not actually someone who complains more than your average New Yorker. In fact, I try to complain less than your average New Yorker. There have been some beautiful things about this winter: my first married Christmas, quitting smoking, lovely green woolen hats and striped scarves, walking to bakeries in the snow, watching the city go dark and light up from my office window, warm sweaters and bear hugs from Stuart. On the whole, it's been one of my better winters.

But there's been a delay, a signal failure, a disruption of transmission. It's snowing lightly and persistently out my window. This isn't exactly okay. I need spring now. I'm ready. Everything in me is ready, and as with anything we wait for, I'm losing my patience. That feeling I get, when I'm already running late and there's no subway in sight - I'm starting to feel it about spring. It's that feeling of bubbling, childish anxiety rising through my throat, a wail of despair caught in a tangled net of helplessness and maturity combined. I've tried gently preparing myself for spring - why isn't winter gently preparing itself to leave?

I'm ready! As a treat for another successful week of being healthy, Stuart braved the pushy salesgirl and the olafactory assault and bought me something else healthy - a huge tub of Olive Body Butter. The huge litre and a half of water I'm drinking a day is making my skin feel smooth and clear. The running and pilates are waking up muscles I didn't know I had. I even broke last year's embargo on dying my brown hair browner by seeing myself in Feria. And even though half of my closet is still banished to the Another Ten Pounds Pile, I'm getting a lot of joy lately out of the though of a short white jacket, a green tee shirt, a red necklace, tweed flats, and looser-fitting jeans.

I'm ready! My iPod rotation has gone from wintery dirges to light airy finger-snappers. My food cravings are leaning away from soups and potatoes to crunchy salads and fruits and panini sandwiches. On Saturday, we opened all the windows while we cleaned and it felt like my apartment and all its warm spring colors was being reborn.

I'm ready! My bounce, my energy, my sunglasses are all waiting, poised, on tiptoes, for spring. And it's not here. And winter's tentacles are gripping in deep. Rain. Frustration. Thwarted hopes around me, friends in pain or need. Muscles not responding properly. Winter, and its discontent, lingers.

I'm ready! I'm on a date with Spring and it's late. Soon my corsage will wilt, my lipstick will fade, my shoes will slide off and I'll slump on the front porch, no longer concerned about posture or rumpled clothes. What if Spring is so late that by the time it shows up, all apologies and crocuses, I've lost my bouncing happy interest?

So I'm looking out my window at the horizon, begging the sunshine to come burn away these malignant traces of dour grey winter. Begging that crisp breeze to drag smiles out of people that have been frowning for too long. Yes, okay, perhaps I'm giving a mere season too much credit. Surely, perhaps people have problems in spring, and perhaps the world isn't suddenly perfect when the ground thaws. But right now, I'm digging into the cold hard earth and dropping all of my hope in, hoping for a fresh start for everyone when it blooms. Right now, as far as panaceas go, I can't think of a cure better than a fresh crop of tulips in my parents' yard, feeling the grass between my bare feet in Central Park, and that first day that an iced coffee is just what I need to match the sun's triumphant return.

So there. I'm standing firm - I'll stop complaining about winter right about the time it gets the hell out of my life. Bring it ON, Spring.

the tortoise and the hare, or, hunting and fishing, or, other metaphors for the writing life

I made the new banner you see above for me as much as for anyone else. All those verbs that complete the third person sentence "le petit hiboux is..." are there to remind me what I'm doing, and what I'm not doing, which is stagnating. Le petit hiboux is not stagnating.

This is something I've had to tell myself a lot recently, in my late-night self-evaluations that turn into complicated, sleep-deprived metaphors. I am not stagnating simply because I'm in the same comfortable, if intellectually-unstimulating, job that I've been in since graduation three years ago. I am not stagnating simply because I have made noises in the direction of various master's degrees without actually applying/accepting any. And most of all, I am not stagnating simply because writing is still like blood-letting from a stone.

One of the complicated metaphors I used, trying to understand my past and future trajectories, is the tale of the Hare and the Tortoise. You know, the Hare that stood at the starting line, derisive and snarky with his confidence in the awesome power of his hind legs, in his god given ability to shoot across the plains in single-digit bounds. And you've met the Tortoise, who took the grit and determination as compensation for the total lack of speedy forward trajectory, the Tortoise who didn't give up in the face of natural propensity towards plodding slowness. And you know who won the race.

See, I'm worried that I'm the Hare, the grasshopper who sang through summer, whatever. That the natural talent I find myself somewhat undeservedly in posession of, when it comes to writing, will be useless if I never write anything. I realized, a year or so ago, that there's absolutely no point in pretending to desire any other career path, when there's only one thing I'm good at in the way where I can't imagine myself NOT doing it. So what, then, am I doing? Will I end up the Hare, knowing all along what a good runner he is, spending most of the race at the pub, bragging about victory while it slips him by?

And then there's the hunting v. fishing metaphor. What is "trying"? A fisherman sits very quietly at his rod, with only the measly dangling offer held out towards his goal. Coming upon this scene, you could almost call his task fruitless, his sitting a waste of time. But he's working, isn't he, you just can't SEE it. Do you sit around and wait, quietly, for the words to come to you, for the stories to be naturally attracted to your ability to tell them? Or should writers be hunters, stepping carefully though miles of woodland, looking up every tree and turning around every corner? Will the inspiration then be as easy to trap as an enormous deer is to fell, at close range? What's the path?

The problem with these metaphors, see, is that they don't give you the answers. Neither do other people, as valiantly and lovingly as they try. My father tells me that a true writer cannot help but put words and ideas down to paper, and needs nothing but a writing utensil and somewhere to write it. He says this in that way that's uniquely born from his experience as a man who never needed anything but his own legs to stand on and the support of my mother. I don't need graduate school, he assures me, but if I want it, it's mine to take.

My mother and brother both tell me the same thing, and have been doing so since I was ickle bitty. "You're a writer," they say, "so write." It's such simple advice, but such a tiny liferaft when I start wondering if I've fooled everyone spectacularly.

"It's hard work," my agent (and friend) tells me. She tells me this to reassure me not to run scared away from the path just because it isn't flowing through my fingers like water. She sends me articles, and lists, and inspiration, on an almost daily basis, and this is overwhelming because it's a testament to her faith, not my prolific body of work. Which isn't so much a body as a trembling leaf.

And then there's Stuart, and while it almost goes without saying that he's supportive, there's no putting into words just how far his quiet unconditional support extends. He will hold me to no standard lower than "I am a writer" which is both terrifying and exactly what I need.

But it's not, in the end, other people. Or should I say, in the beginning. In the beginning, it's nothing but myself, a blank paper or screen, and my inspiration or lack thereof. What I've got, I think, is talent. What I don't have, I'm sure, is discipline. My parents might just whoop for joy at their daughter finally admitting this about herself, but I have a discipline deficiency. It's not a total lack, mind. I've thrown myself full force at many things I care about: this blog, my friends, the college newspaper, being good at crosswords, falling in love. What logically doesn't follow is, the one thing I so desperately want to be good at - writing - is the hardest thing for me to actually DO.

None of this is new. Most writers spend a lifetime struggling with how to go from think to do. Like the Hare, however, I'm not used to things I'm good at being difficult. I'm not very good at chasing the carrot - at knowing that through the hard work and the effort, the most worthwhile goal will be achieved. I've taken success and talent for granted, is the crux of my new challenge. And as time goes on and the stakes are raised, I've got to raise my own game.

The writing life, I'm finding out, won't be easy. It may be blood-letting from a stone for the rest of my life. Like any relationship, it will have its moments that make me want to fold, and it will have - I hope - such great heights as to keep me in love. Anything that's worth doing, though, is worth going through the fire for. Perhaps I spend too much time worrying about the second half of that sentence. Perhaps, of all the metaphors I've concocted lately, what I'm really looking for is running.

If everything aches while you're it, you're pushing yourself and that's good. If everything feels better once you've finished, you've succeeded and that's great.

greedy minds think alike

In discussing various financial windfalls of the Tax Return and Part Time Work variety, Stuart and I just had the following conversation:

krissa: and then you can put your paycheck together with my tax return,
krissa: and they can get super-cozy together,
krissa: and mingle,
krissa (4:44:07 PM): and maybe even have high-yield interest-babies together,
stuart (4:44:07 PM): And have little interest-babies.

Note the time stamps on those last two lines. INTEREST BABIES INDEED.

March 18th, 2005

I like to think that if Stuart and I were ever in a pretentious band like Belle and Sebastian, this would be our album cover.

* Only be warned - the Next and Previous buttons are freaking out in some of the other galleries. I wish someone would fix them for me. Hi, Jason!

recap

The best thing about being single and on a hot date is, after a delicious dinner you can go home with your sexy partner and TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF AND GET IT ON.

The best thing about being MARRIED and on a hot date is, after a delicous dinner you can go home with your sexy partner and take your clothes off and get it on? AND THEN YOU CAN CURL UP ON THE COUCH AND DRINK TEA AND EAT BLACKBERRIES AND SCREAM AND LAUGH AT SHAUN OF THE DEAD.

Wait, you want more?

Sometimes I hold back from posting about gloriously perfect days because I get a lot of behind-the-hand twitter about blah blah my wonderful life, or perhaps you'll think I'm bragging or showing off. Know that I'm not - know that I post here only because I know not how else to celebrate it.

Yesterday I was off work, and I'm sure that all of you in New York know it was the absolute tops day to play hooky. All over the city, people walked arm in arm and laughing, heads turned up like flowers to drink in the sunshine.

We came above ground at Union Square and wandered the market. We tried all the jams at Beth's Farm Kitchen stand, finally settling on Apple Butter. Stuart couldn't resist when he saw my eyes light up at the hand-dyed pistachio green lambswool and it's already five inches on its way to becoming my spring skinny scarf.

We bought two enormous Crispin apples and waited for the west-bound M14A, heading over to Chelsea Piers to see the Ashes and Snow exhibit at Pier 54. After an hour of whales and swimming elephants ("Swimming elephants might just be my new thing." -Stuart) and cold feet, we wandered south into the village and just happened to "find" ourselves at Myers of Keswick. The words "anniversary!" and "what diet?" propelled us into the shop and five minutes later, Stuart's eyes almost watering with the nostalgia of England, we emerged with warm Cumberland sausage rolls in hand, and damnit if I haven't already lost five pounds and am totally committed to this healthy process BUT THOSE WERE THE BEST GODDAMNED SAUSAGE ROLLS I'VE EVER HAD.

Ahem. Looking for a quiet warm drink, we couldn't help slipping into The Chocolate Bar and you know what I said about the sausage rolls? Well take that and double it when it comes to WHITE CHOCOLATE HOT COCOA.

Getting a little cold and tired, we wandered up to the 14th street L and managed to catch rush hour traffic uptown on the N at Union Square. I didn't mind standing the whole way home surrounded by tired reading commuters - I'd been in the sunshine all day. They earned their seats.

At home we got dressed, bought bus tickets home to the R.I. next weekend, and headed out for our anniversary dinner at French Roast. Let me make this absolutely clear: WHAT DIET? We, funnily enough, got exactly the same table in the secluded back alcove, and ordered the same delicious entrees as last year. We finished off by sharing the warm chocolate cake, Stuart with a pernod and I with a tea. We talked about love, and family, and Brasil, and how every March 18th, we wanted to eat here.

On the walk home, Stuart bought me a dozen daffodils to welcome spring, and a small box of fresh juicy blackberries.

And then? This is the best part, ready? We got home and ... shhhh.... WATCHED SHAUN OF THE DEAD AND DRANK TEA AND ATE BLACKBERRIES.

If that doesn't win the best day of the year award, I don't honestly know what does.

a number of anniversaries

I know that this is the time in our relationship for a grand gesture of apology. We've known each other for three years now? And I'm still gunning up for the beginning of every good story, over a cup of coffee with you? That hasn't changed, has it? C'mon, baby, you know I still make you happy.

Oh, you're upset about the week of silence, huh? So, I guess, this was a crummy week to show you how much I'm still here, how much I still love you, huh. Well, three blog years, that's like a midlife crisis in internet-years, huh? Great, baby. Then let me buy you a 'vette, maybe some decadently smelly flowers, maybe adorn your aging neck with a cascade of diamonds? The house is in hock, we can afford it, darling. Nothing but the best for my babies.

It won't help, though, our strained relationship to be blindingly honest with you, because honesty is dirty and ugly and it's not cascading in diamonds. But here's the thing - today's another anniversary, darling. With someone else.

Today is one year since I met Stuart and my life changed forever. And as much as I love you, baby, as much as I've known you longer, as much as YOU'VE changed my life, well, a girl's got to celebrate true love first, right?

Don't hit me. It's ugly, baby. I still love you!

Well, sorry about the diamonds and the infidelity but happy anniversary, baby. My new guy, though, he's taking me to dinner tonight to celebrate OURS. What have you done for me lately, baby? Huh?

OUCH.

covet

I want, in no particular order or urgency:

A dog, two nighttables, a day at the spa, longer hair, a working knowledge of italian, a weekend in upstate New York this summer, a ride on horseback, ticket back to England for August and December, a glass of Malbec, a nap surrounded by pillows, a ride in a helicopter, to learn how to sew from my mother, a Hasselblad to shoot portraits of my friends, a Nigella apron, a weekend at the shore with family, a working fireplace, an easter egg hunt, green grass between my toes, a hug from my husband, a sunny porch stoop to sit on, a new band to love, to be able to give the things my friends need the most right now (cooking school for biscuit and a perfect new job for kate and a couch for jen and peace of mind for shiv and no more biopsies ever for heather), to spend more time with my family (a trip to vienna with my mom and a road trip in a winnebago with my dad, a house on the beach in Brazil with my brother), a bagel with lots of cream cheese, a sweater with sailor buttons on the neck, a second pair of frye boots, a coffee for the old guy selling the daily news outside my subway, 10 good new books, a houseplant that stays alive and flourishes...

... that might be it. For now.

welcome to dayquil country

it's only been 20 minutes since i sucked down 2 tablespoons and suddenly every word in my head sort of sounds like "neeeeeee wagagagaga smooooble screeeeeee BOP" and i'm pretty sure it i stare out the window long enough i'll have some out-of-body experience where i'm flying around the empire state building with my bedsheets as wings oooooh here i go wheeeeeee

oh i just touched my cheek with my fingers and that sort of brought me back to reality so i'm no longer doing swoops around the fog but i'm sitting here at my desk and my legs are oh so tired and my elbows are overweight have you ever gotten that feeling like your elbows weigh too much to lift off your desk? which is lucky for you since typing doesn't require moving these hundred-pound fatty joints anywhere but what's funny is i have to wiggle my toes to feel my legs

and swallowing feels a little funny like i can see the cartoon-like motion of my adams apple do girls have adams apples well its like i can feel it sliding up and down and ugh its weird

so the best thing is that i can breathe through both nostrils again but the whole neeeeeee murgle blooofle zang PIP thing has got to stop because now my boss is heading this way and i think he's gonna want to know why i'm color coding my rubber bands and making small villages out of the carpet lint and all i'll be able to say to him is

spuckle flarrrrr jubby jubby trooooooooooooo VAP.

we inhaled

Sitting on the kitchen floor, a towel around our two heads, leaning over a metal bowl full of boiling water and a teaspoon of vick's vaporub... and still wanting to kiss each other afterwards:

IF THAT'S NOT LOVE, INTERNET, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.

le sniffles

I am home today with a headcold and a serious case of the sniffles. INTERNET, BE FUNNIER.

meet the liberal elite

Because the kate did it:

The Only Thing I'm Going To Say About the Fact That the Windchill Today was Zero:

I think bears have the right idea.

how to fight stress with lettuce

You had a bad day at the office, a bad day that lasted until seven PM. You're usually in a pleasantly hazy state of denial about how lowly your rung on the ladder is, how fleeting is the respect you recieve for the myriad of cluttered tasks on your plate. The pleasant haze was, let's say, lifted today. Today, you felt a little demeaned, a little unimportant, a little like your job starts where everyone else's ends. Everyone has days like this, you think, and today was yours.

You stop at your local Hectic Supermarket to pick up the last few ingredients for dinner. It's hectic because you live in a charmingly ethnic neighborhood where two hundred year old grandmamas still shop for their bratty adult sons and move at a glacial pace down crowded fire-hazard shopping aisles. (Your husband, for some reason, loves the chaos and madness of this place. You think this is possibly the huge dividing line between your personality and his.)

When three different "employees" direct you to three different aisles for water chestnuts, you have a moment where you have to stand very very still because it's eight PM and you're hungry and tired and feel so fragile that if the wind from a passing trolley were forceful enough, you might actually break. But you don't - you find the water chestnuts and you stand in the line with your eyes closed imagining beaches you've been on, and you finally stumble out of the supermarket and put Blur's "Coffee and TV" on the iPod because you think, in this moment, that the song really understands you.

It's when you get home that you almost burst into tears because your husband has, sensing the fragility in your voice, tidied the ENTIRE front of the apartment and vaccuumed everything you've both been procrastinating and when your living room isn't cluttered with coats and bags and magazines and junk mail and netflix envelopes, you realize how absolutely perfect it is, with the muted pinks and greens and browns and the vase of proud upright pink tulips and the pear-scented candles. So you almost cry because for the first time in a day of feeling like a peon, you feel like a princess.

So you unpack the groceries...

... and you take off that heavy sweater and switch to fuzzy house-slippers and as you breathe, you start chopping vegetables. You clean the dirt out of a little crate of white mushrooms, wrinkling your nose at how much brown earth comes out but secretly sort of pleased by the outdoor smell the mushrooms give off. You throw about ten of them in your trusted mini-food-processor and give them a whirl until you've got a full cup of bits-of-mushroom. You crank open the tin of water chestnuts, amazed that you once hated the taste. Using that awesome chopper your mom bought you last year (bang! bang! bang! voila!), you make with the diced cup of water chestnuts, diced small onion, diced three garlic cloves. Grating the carrot is sort of a pain but when it's done, there you have five little piles of diced veggie and fungal goodness. Wait, what IS a water chestnut, anyhow?

You're a little apprehensive about dicing chicken. Diced chicken? But you take the two breasts, one pound, and slice off the fat. With your bestest knife, you slice lengthwise along the breasts until you've got long 3/4 inch strips, and then along the lengths until you've got about 30 inch-sized cubes of chicken. Not too bad, you think, as you heat up two tablespoons of delicious extra virgin olive oil (the good kind of fat!) in a deep wok. Maybe a few weeks ago, you would have been nibbling on cheese or sipping a coke at this point in the cooking process. But maybe a few weeks ago, you wouldn't have thought this healthy recipe as appealing as it is.

So you heat up the oil until it's giving off that great tangy olive smell and you toss in the garlic and the onions. Since you were little, this was always your favourite smell, your favourite kitchen moment, the clanging bell of the race, the creak of the starting gates. When the onions start feeling soft you throw in your perfectly diced chicken and lower the heat a little, flipping the instantly-whitened fried sides around to get an even coat. You occupy yourself picking a few spices - sage, lemon-pepper, salt - while the water in your kettle boils for the cup of broth you're replacing the sherry with. So you load the carrots, the chestnuts, and the mushrooms on the cutting board, ready for their dive.

When the chicken's looking about half-way cooked, in goes the four tablesoons of soy sauce, the two tablespoons of chicken broth. In go the veggies (and fungals!) and up goes the heat, just a notch, as your dinner elements get acquainted with each other. Confident in their mingling, you turn away to wash and dry the green crunchy top half of each romaine leaf, carefully handling them not to bruise the leaf or the veins, placing them on a plate in the fridge.

When your wok looks like everyone's partying together, the chicken the color of the soy sauce and the carrot shreds wrapped around the chestnuts, it's time to lower the heat and thicken the bubbling delicious mixture with two tablespoons of cornstarch mixed into 2 tablespoons of cold water. Whisked quickly and poured slowly around the wok, suddenly what looked like a stew becomes a serious contender for a lettuce wrap filler, and the fire goes off, and you look over at your husband triumphantly. Every moment of the day slips away as you spoon the chicken mixture into a deep serving bowl, as you set it on the table alongside the cold crunchy romaine leaves, as you turn out the kitchen light and slide into your seat at the table.

And after you've both eaten your fill of tangy crunchy hot chicken wrapped in the cold leaves, after you've sloughed off the worthless feeling and wrapped yourself in a simple meal prepared perfectly, after your husband has led you to the living room with a bowl of sugar-free strawberry ice cream that you completely deserve and a cup of tea that warms your hands, it's only then you can finally see how simply perfect the evening was, how much you needed it, and how this life is yours and you love it, even on the bad days.

But, really, the lettuce wraps helped.

seven things in seven days

Tomorrow marks the end of our first week of the Great Weight Experiment (hereafter referred to only as the GWE). I have the following observations:

1. I haven't had a coca-cola in over a week. Because, you know, Saturday night's little episode (see also: nachos) NEVER HAPPENED.

2. I've been drinking my requisite six million glasses of water a day. This means I have to go to the bathroom roughly two hundred and thirty seven times every hour. THIS IS VERY BORING.

3. My mouth actually waters at the thought of a Gardenburger and corn on the cob. You know, if by "waters" you mean, "Wow, that's a 2 point dinner! That means I can drink, like, SIX GLASSES OF WINE that night." That kind of watering. The water that turns into, you know, WINE.

4. My idea of a perfect weekend breakfast is french bread, half a hunk of gouda, whipped butter, and coffee with half-and-half and an amount of sugar roughly equivalent to the WEIGHT OF BRUNEI. THAT, my friends, is a breakfast I'll never see again. At least, not officially. Only on DIRTY weekends.

(4a. Did I mention that on the books, Saturday night never happened? And by "books", I mean, the official record of how good I've been this week? Because, um, Saturday would sort of take the word "good" out of that sentence.)

5. I think, at the end of the GWE, I'm going to have to write a treatise on the unfairness of their favouritism towards pre-prepared meals and god-knows-what "snack bars". My personal favourite afternoon lunch? Yogurt and an apple = 3 points. Their "chocolate peanut crunch" bar = 2 points. The delicious chicken-mushroom stir-fry wrapped in cold crunchy lettuce leaves I have planned for dinner? 8 points per serving. Their microwavable "lasagna"? 6.

Seriously, people. I am already fed up, after only one week, of totalling low-fat, low-carb dinner meals and finding out it's "healthier" to eat something out of the microwave. I'm going to keep eating my home-cooked healthy meals, thank you very much. Trying to sucker me into buying pre-fab food? To which I say BOLLOCKS with every ounce of my acquired passport to british cursing.

6. There's a certain amount of foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing childishness accompanied with dieting, the same I experience with quitting smoking. Why, I ask myself every day, do I have to face up to these facts, be pro-active about change, while everyone else around me gets to STUFF THEIR FACE WITH CHOCOLATE, SMOKE A PACK OF CAMELS, AND STILL WEAR A SIZE SIX AND HAVE GLOWING SKIN BESIDES? See? Childish.

7. And finally, I know this is about health. I know it's about learning to eat right so that I don't slide towards my family's propensity towards obesity followed by onset Diabetes. BUT LET ME GET A WHAT-WHAT FOR IT ALSO BEING ABOUT FITTING BACK INTO MY FAVOURITE LUCKY JEANS, people. Cut a girl some FUCKING SLACK.

A Conversation, or, Why I Love Jason, or, I'm Too Busy To Actually Blog, Figure This Shit Out For Yourselves, Yo.

Jason: hey, so what are you doing this weekend?
Krissa (two hours later): LAR!
Jason: there you are!
Krissa: i know!
Krissa: i've been knee-deep in shanghainese concubines.
Jason: I hate it when that happens!
Krissa: i KNOW.
Krissa: Movin' along, minding your biz, and then BLAMMO. wading through hookers from the Far East.
Jason: ...I was about to ask 'where did they COME from', but of, course, Shanghai.
Jason: Also, the idea of WADING through hookers is hillarious. Like they store them in vats.
Jason: Some plumber hip-deep in concubines, wiping them off of his brow as he tries to unplug the drain.
Jason: It was really hard to write that sentence without it being COMPLETELY obscene.

pause

Krissa: I am SO blogging this shit.

Lies and the Lying Liars that Won't Divulge Telling Them

Theoretically, if you had a blog, a great post idea would be "All The Lies I've Told To Get Out Of Doing Shit, Personally and Professionally" but of course, you couldn't post it because then the people you'd lied to in order to evade

1. working
2. doing a favor
3. hanging out with them
or
4. payment

would of course READ this theoretical blog and recognize the very specific lies you've told them about

1. that mysterious day-long stomach flu
2. your infrequent but crippling back injuries
3. how your landlord needs you back at the house because the ceiling is leaking
or
4. pesky bank fraud

and then you'd be in whole HEAPFULS of trouble.

Good thing you don't have a blog to post that awesome story about your VAULT of successful, crafty and BRILLIANT LIES.

(this post is dedicated to kate for reasons of she knows very well why.)

ashes and snow and pretension oh my!

I very rarely make reference to my job or the artwork it puts me in contact with, mostly because 1. I'm a jaded bitch about photography and 2. I don't want people thinking I'm actually important and thus trying to pitch their introspectively naked self-portraits at me.

But there's a pretty amazing show about to open this weekend, here in New York City, the kind of show that will even surprise the most jaded of all of us. Gregory Colbert, who has the best job in the world, is a photographer who's been working for twelve years on the same project - photographing animals and their interactions with humans. Elephants in tibet, jungle cats in Namibia, hell, he even free-dove with sperm whales and the results are amazing.

What's more, Ashes and Snow, the resulting exhibition, is going to be housed on Pier 54 in Chelsea, in a Nomadic Museum designed by Shigeru Ban. The building itself, which will dismantle at the end of the run and be rebuilt from local materials at the next location, is going to be beautiful, almost a temple, and the artwork is printed on these stunning enormous Japanese hand-crafted papers, and then simply suspended from the ceiling inside the structure.

Now, a lot of this is what my father would dismiss as touchy-feely hippy-dippy stuff, and he'd be partly right. Colbert expends a lot of energy going on about the symbolism of it all, of the humanity and the conceptuality and other words that make working in the photography business a little exhausting at times (hello they're just photographs).

But for all that, it's going to be a unique installation, in an interesting setting, with some truly superb and gorgeous photographs. For those of you who're sick of the usual white-walled glass-framed gallery scene, this is a show worth catching. And for those of you living elsewhere, well, you never know. The Nomadic Museum might be coming your way. Because New York shouldn't hog all this pretension!

I joke. But I'll be at the press opening tomorrow morning, and I'll be dragging Stuart next week. Seriously - go check it out.