all hallow's eve

Last year I was Piglet. Two years ago, I was the blonde one. The year before that, Holly Golightly. Tonight, we're hanging out with Shana and watching the freaks disband in Chelsea after a good dinner and a rousing game of Clue, but Saturday night's festivities were the part with the costume dilemma.

In college, I mostly ignored Halloween. In high school, I was a cat, a gypsy, and a cheerleader. As a kid, mom usually made my costumes because we were living in Africa so there wasn't much to go on. I remember being a little red devil with an adorable foam trident, a southern belle in a yellow silk dress with matching parasol, and one year, a little Indian girl. Feathers and all.

When I was about seven or so, we were living in New Jersey. Mom must have had a cold or something, I remember knowing she wasn't feeling well, so I presume she went with the luxury of being in America and able to buy me a costume. That year, Dad trick-or-treated me around the neighborhood, holding me by the paw of my Pound Puppy costume. I remember with some hilarity the solemn fear I had that my mother must have been deathly ill indeed, to not be able to sew me a costume. She laughed when I recalled it for her, pointing out that it must have just been a little cold or something. For me, it was devastatingly serious, though.

This year, it was four PM and I couldn't decide what to do. Stuart landed on Arthur Dent as the path of both least resistance and most applicability, what with being English and obsessed with Douglas Adams. I still didn't know. I was going to give up and just go as a photographer when the idea struck. We'd found this little pin at a thrift-store weeks back that said simply "Nixon's the One".

I got dressed all in black, blow-dried my hair stick-straight, lined my eyes in dramatic black liquid-liner, grabbed a black flashlight, affixed the pin, and went as the Watergate Burglary.

I had to explain my costume to exactly everyone at the party. About half of them laughed. It may not be on par with Holly or the little red devil, but I think it at least wins my most esoteric costume ever award.

Happy Great Pumpkin day, everyone.

redux ridiculous

You'd think I would have learned by now that unless my beverage is located to the top right of my keyboard and only accessed for one sip, then quickly returned to that spot, that I will spill it all the fuck over myself no matter what it is.

You'd think that knowing the exact spot to put it would stop me from putting it in the area between my arms, in front of the keyboard. You'd THINK, wouldn't you?

the city politic

Dear Mike*,

My name is Krissa and I'm one of your constituents. I live in Astoria and vote in the 22nd. And I'm a Democrat and I voted Democrat in 2001. It's time that I tell you a few things, because I think you'd like to hear them. Consider this the extra sheet attached to my vote (if I decide to vote for you), as my caveat, my explanation, my extra space.

I'm not going to claim to be a political whiz. But I'm a naturally curious person and so I've followed your campaign and New York City politics with some modicum of commitment. Also, I'm a firm believer in the city stage as a good platform for democracy. People really care about their neighborhoods, Mike, as you well know, and while it's easy to ignore what's going on in Washington because, hey, NBC's must-see lineup is so stellar, people don't ignore what's happening to their schools, their streets, their jobs.

Democracy on a city stage is a beautiful thing because it's messy, it's complicated, but it's often triumphant. Or, it should be. If your constituents are willing to come to meetings to discuss their problems with their local councils and their borough presidents and their City Council, then you need to be the mayor that listens to them, and to all the corresponding bodies. I'll bet it's quite a din you listen to every day, Mike, and one of the reasons I'm writing to you is to tell you that I understand and appreciate that, and I think you've done a very good job of listening to people.

I also think you understand what it takes to run a city in that way. You've had to be tough in the past, cutting programs that you felt were bleeding too much money from a weak economy and hugely deficited budget. You've had to deal with NYC being used as a touchpoint for national politics but then getting ignored when it comes to paying the bill in aid and funding. You've faced down Albany many times, and your brother-in-party-and-little-else, Mr. George Pataki. You've openly disagreed with both national and state opinions, and I respect that, too.

I believe you do so because you understand that as Mayor of New York City, your top priority is here. Perhaps that's why you went so buck-wild over the Jets/West Side Stadium debacle, Mike, and I will say I think that was a touch too far. Did you listen to the entire city's population saying that given the odds of getting the Olympics, they didn't want the stadium? They didn't want it, man. Overwhelmingly, people thought it'd be too big a hassle, too big an expense, and too big a burden on a city just getting back to its feet. You didn't listen, and I think you know that was a failure on your part, to your main clients - the people.

I do think, however, that you've brought the various accomplishments of prior administrations to completion - the crime rate is better, the hospitals are too, we're fairly dealing with the homeless again - and you've worked to correct some of the class and racial tension that has existed since then too. You've built upon the good accomplishments of your predessors without taking on the divisive agression of Guiliani, for instance. You're assertive and bulldoggish when you think something needs to be addressed, but you're not vainglorious, and you appoint good people to help you do your job. Some people who know more than I do about the education system say it's getting better there, too, but I don't know as much about it and it seems really complicated.

I'd like to see you, if you're reelected, pay more attention to the gay-marriage issue, because while it's not your decision to make - that's up to the state - it is something that a lot of your people care very deeply about. I'd also like to see you work more with the MTA, because I think our subways are a very weak point in this city, both on a day-to-day basis and on a safety level.

Basically, Mike, I might very well vote for you because while I have my disagreements with you, I can see how hard you're trying, how committed you are to the city, and how willing you are to put party politics behind you and work with anyone and everyone that will help you get your mammoth tasks done. I cannot say that I see the same dedication to the right-now issues in your opponent, and he doesn't seem like the appropriate mayor for today, for New York in the 21st century. Or, even, if he's mayoral material at all. He has had a lot of time and my natural party inclination to prove that to me, and he has failed to do so, which speaks volumes with the leg up he has, being a Democrat and a city politician (neither of which you were).

Please know this is a difficult decision - I am a staunch Democrat. My father says I'm a one-issue voter, but I disagree. There are many reasons I am not a Republican. I am not a Republican because I do not agree with their stand on social issues, I do not support the exaltation of Christianity in our national decisions, and I do not like the Bush Administration. I am not rabid about this, and I understand that there are good Republicans out there, but I have avoided voting that way because of my disagreement with their platforms on the issues I care about.

Know that voting for you is fraught with cautious trepidation. And I'm not the only one; there are many New York City Democrats that are willing to - again, cautiously - give you a second chance to keep fighting the good fight for what the city needs. Consider that a great honor, Mr. Mayor, that so many dedicated New York City Democrats are considering voting for you, in spite of your party affliation. It is a compliment to your committment to New Yorkers first, parties second. Keep that in mind, Mike Bloomberg. If you are re-elected, think of the city first, continue quietly working for those day-to-day successes, and be strong about standing against your political party if it's for the good of the city.

If you can do that, Mike, I think we'll all get along fine.

Best of luck,
Krissa

* caveat: I am veering from my strict regime of never writing about politics because the upcoming mayoral election (hee hee I wrote "erection" at first) is very much at the fore of my mind. I think I am not alone in this, many New Yorkers are struggling to understand the race and their options. If you completely disagree with me on every level, may I suggest simply telling me you disagree, in polite terms (May I suggest: "Dear Krissa. I disagree with you because of ______. Sincerely, ______".)

Know that I will not delete anything, nor will I argue back, but if you are rude or agressively violent, ranting on for pages and pages, or completely off-topic, I might just close the comments. Please do not use my comment box as a place to attack people. If you have something to say, say so without being rude or off-topic or personal. Thank you so much, darlings, I know we can get through this together.

childhood, i

This may turn into a sporadically ongoing thing. It may not. I'm capricious like that.

When I was about nine years old, I had two best friends that were sisters. Well, we weren't all best friends. Anna was seven and Julia was ten so by rights, I should have been closer to Julia. But Julia was a mature ten and I was a more innocent nine, so Anna and I got along famously.

Their mother was Scottish and their father was Brasilian and you wouldn't know that Anna had anything of her father, or Julia had anything of her mother. The family was split down the center like that, some sort of folded card of genes. Anna and I used to color pebbles with chalk, thinking up elaborate designs and then setting them up on a table outside her house and try to sell them to the perplexed Africans that walked by. On days we did this, sometimes my mother would send along our driver with a few coins and he would lightheartedly make an exaggerated show of buying our merchandise, perhaps in the hope that his vocal appreciation of our pebbles would lure more buyers. But no, we were just spoiled white foreigners trying to sell rocks. Only our childish innocence on the matter prevented it from probably being insulting to passersby.

Julia, possibly a little jealous of my natural inclination to her baby sister, would often disturb our quiet little pretend games or our elaborate make-up houses (which were really sheets draped across small trees and borrowed pots and pans). She was a sweet girl when she wanted to be but too much a bully for my tastes.

I was often intimidated by their father, and I found myself disliking the way he'd come over to visit my parents (they were all great friends) and joke that my mother was a grand dame with fine things. He would call her Doris Day. Now, my mother explains that it was all in jest, but even she admits it was done with a slight pique. His wife was the picture of grace and sweetness, and when she called my teddy bear "Boo Bear" instead of Bow Bear, I thought she didn't understand his name. But she was so nice, I never corrected her. I know now it was because of her lilting Scottish accent.

There was a time that Anna and Julia were over, and Julia and I got in a spat. She started to storm down the front path, intending to walk the ten minutes back to her house, and I knew if she got out the door I'd be in trouble with both our mothers so I ran after her. We must have tussled briefly, I may have called her a name or something, but what ended up happening was that I fell down on the stone pathway and scraped the side of my left knee to hell. I was bleeding and yelling at her, and she managed to get out the door and home.

My parents scooped me up and bandaged my knee and consoled my raging heart, but I was grounded anyway. I found this spectacularly unfair, as Julia had been the one to throw the mile-high temper tantrum in the first place, but my mother explained to me that I had been host, even if she had been rotten I was meant to take the upper hand.

It was the first time I remember my parents teaching me that life's lessons aren't always fair, that you sometimes end up with both the scar and the unfair burden of punishment, because being a grown-up means knowing better even when others don't. It remains my least frustrating and most memorable grounding, only because I think I understood something that day. I took my punishment gracefully. I still have a nobbly scar on my left knee.

molting our feathers

There's some work being done around these woods. Some new banner action, so brilliantly designed by miss sohosally that it doesn't even need a tagline. Some new colors, floating through for approval and consideration. Some new content, maybe, this week, even.

Hoot!

Update, 10/24, 1PM: So we've (by "we've" I mean, "biscuit") rejigged the banner to nestle over the top of both the sidebar and the main text body, except for in safari and firefox, apparently, and we're (again, biscuit) still working on it! Patience, mes amis!

iii

Dear Stuart,

Last night, we arrived home from our trip to Florida, chattering and flipping through the mail as we came up the stairs to our apartment. We put our bags down in the bedroom and went around the house, switching on lights and turning on computers and yelling down the hall what we wanted for dinner from our chinese takeaway.

There was some kind of happiness in that apartment, I tried in vain to pin it to a wall and study it. It was some resounding contentment with how very much our home it was, how perfectly normal it was to walk around in it with you and talk about chinese takeaway and what's been happening on the internet in our absence.

We do lots of romantic things, you and I. We take long walks and make each other dinners and meet each other for drinks after hard days at work and read from magazines while the other showers. But something about coming home from traveling last night seemed like the most romantic thing we've ever done, only in its total normalcy.

A year ago, we stood in front of a judge and swore under the state of New York and the laws of this nation to love, honor, and protect each other. Privately, we also swore to fight each other's battles with grace and cheerfulness, to be each other's first resource for love and understanding, to be compassionate and fair and to always make the other smile, even if we're fighting. We agreed on a lot of things that day - that we'd have children together, foster each other's dreams, grow old together. We also agreed to never fight to win, only argue to understand. We agreed to consider each other's needs and desires above all others, we agreed to share the chores of a life together - everything from deciding on graduate school to washing up after dinner.

We were married at City Hall a year ago and we made all those promises. But the very best promise that went unspoken was the one where we'd simply be around each other, every day, forever. It wasn't something we took for granted back then, only ten days in each other's arms after six months of trial-by-fire separation at the very beginning of our relationship. It was a tough path we carved from meeting each other in Shiv's living room to walking into the judge's chambers together. It was also a path we carved joyfully, with confidence, and above all, with love. We were married knowing we'd never be apart from each other again.

And perhaps that's what was so beautiful about last night - how very normal it was. Because every day since a year and ten days ago, no matter if we were in Florida, or at work, or at the doctor's, or visiting friends, we've come home to each other. And of all the promises both lofty and mundane that we've made to each other, that we continue to honor every day, this is the one I love the most.

Thank you for marrying me, but more importantly, thank you for just being with me.

Love,
Krissa

aie, mami!

We're in Southern Florida for one more night. We flopped about happily like manatees in the warm Miami waters today. One more day... I think that's enough time to get Stuart into a mankini, don't you? More camera phone silliness over at flickr. See you bitches soon.

rainbird

Bugger this for a lark, we're off to Florida.

we interrupt this camping miniseries to bring you some weather*

So I've been planning for weeks to buy my new brown Frye boots this week from my special discount place near my office, that has them for half price. Today, I came to gym/work only in my sneakers, intending to make the trek up 8th avenue to buy the beloved Fryes. At 11:15, with already wet sneakers, I could stand the suspense no longer and grabbed my umbrella, my wallet, and headed out the door.

I should have called first. After a five block trek in the driving rain, crossing streets that are more like shallow streams, and fighting with other people's umbrellas and hordes of lost be-poncho'ed tourists, I arrive at the store to see the metal grate pulled down. They're closed today. Who knew my buddies with the great shoe prices were Jewish. Seriously, WHO KNEW?

So there I am, with plans for tonight that involve a fair amount of walking through Brooklyn, in my sopping wet sneakers and soaked-to-the-knee jeans. I formulate a quick plan - who'd sell wellingtons or rain boots around here? So I start walking another ten blocks to the Daffy's on 57th and Broadway. Daffy's, I am sure, will have rain boots.

Daffy's, it seems, has a discouraging dearth of rain boots. So, in a last ditch attempt at not getting trench foot and/or being miserable for the entire day, I go across the street to the Gap. Maybe the Gap sells rain boots. What do I know? It's, at this point, my only option.

This is where the story gets funny.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the gap with a pair of little boy's tough-leather wallabees. Yeah, you heard me. Size six little boy's shoes that have the lace across the top. Look, I figure, they're not rain boots but they're also made for the most destructive little tyrants on the planet - little boys. And anyone who's making shoes for little boys is going to think to themselves, "will little boys sensibly wear rain boots or take taxis when it's pissing it down?" And they will answer themselves, "NO THEY BLOODY WILL NOT," and then proceed to construct relatively durable little-boy wallabees. This is the thought process I am relying on, right now.

This is where the story gets tragic.

As I step outside of the Gap and try to simultaneously re-don my trenchcoat and open my umbrella to the torrential flooding from the sky, a gust of wind rips around the corner and sends the metal pole of my umbrella on a direct and successful collision course with my forehead. This stunning achievement on the part of today's weather meant I dropped my trench coat from the shoulders I was slinging it across. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle - INSIDE DOWN.

And then, because it's only funny when this happens, a bus drove by and soaked my back as I bent down to pick up the jacket from the pond it was floating in.

At this point, basically, I can either give up, go berserk and rip my clothes off and go running down Broadway screaming until they either douse me in liquid nitrogen to put me out of my misery or lock me up in Bellevue for the rest of eternity, or I can Get My Shit Together And Figure Something Out.

I briefly contemplate the first option. By briefly, I mean, I stand there stunned, in the rain with a wet back, wet feet, wet legs, and a wet raincoat that was known as my last salvation from the wetness. I stand there for about two minutes. Two very long, agonizingly self-pitying minutes. I am fighting back tears that, like, long to join their people in the puddles on the ground.

So I do what any sensible person does. I fight my way across the street again, slip into Daffy's, and buy the cheapest rain-coat thing I can find that isn't a dreaded rain poncho. It turns out, it's a brown puffy jacket made almost entirely of polyester and plastic, with a fake fur collar. It cost me twenty dollars and I will probably love it until the very last gasping second of Time Itself because I do not have to be wet everywhere, just everywhere but my torso.

So, fifty bucks later and still wet-pant-legged, I sit at my desk with relatively dry feet and a relatively dry torso. My poor begraggled tan trench coat is hung over the chair and I've borrowed a coworker's space heater to warm my jean-legs into a semblance of dryness. Until the ark itself floats by my 43rd floor window and beckons me to join, I'm staying right the fuck here.

And ordering lunch delivered.

N.B.: Other considered titles for this post include but are not limited to: "how to spend fifty bucks without even trying", OR "a sopping advertisement for visa check card", OR "how I completely forgot everything I ever learned in girl scouts".

gone fishin' (adventures in camping, part two)

When little kids are toying with the notion of running away to join the circus or the dot-com boom or whatever, they have the almost genetically ingrained tradition of tying the cloth satchel to the stick, hoisting the stick over their shoulders, and soldiering bravely into the unknown.

It was sort of like that when we left our cozy, rain-washed tent on Sunday morning. We'd puttered about after breakfast, washing the dishes and rearranging the wet/dry stuff in and out of our tent. I'd lifted the heavy tarpaulin off the sides of the tent to air both rooms out, but we let it all down again before we left. Stuart had prepped and adjusted our rods and gotten the tackle ready. And off we went, rods on shoulders and water bottle in backpack and a small lunch and everything.

Well, we didn't catch much for the first three hours, but I learned how to cast out decently far and got far too much enjoyment from reeling back in to really patiently catch fish. We'd found a tiny rock outcropping from which to fish, along the southeast perimeter of the small lake, and after not catching anything there for three hours we decided to move to the less picturesque beach where the locals were fishing.

I'd gone on a walk with my camera, whistling "You Are My Sunshine" and, morbidly, "Teddy Bear Picnic", so that the bears knew where I was. I imagined the bears snugly watching television in their RVs, hearing my whistling and rolling their eyes, thinking, crap, we've got to go be BEARY now. After I misstepped and slipped in a tiny creek , though, and my already crapping-out hiking boots got even wetter, it was time to drag Stuart to the habitated part of the lake.

Actually, they called it a pond but it seemed a lot bigger than the ponds I've known, so I'm calling it a lake.

After another half-hour of Stuart's fishing and my reading at the picnic tables, we decided to take a break and venture into town to find a bait-and-tackle shop and maybe a hot cocoa or two. The stop at Ed's Variety Store yielded the following pleasant exchange:

"Where's the nearest bait-and-tackle place that might be open today?"
"Oh, probably Walmart."

So with a laugh and a nod in the direction of evil yet convenient megachains, we followed their directions to the as-unassuming-as-possible North Adams Walmart, where I got a hot cocoa from Dunkin Donuts and two camp chairs, while Stuart bought some heavier-duty bobs and weights and a mysterious spray meant to be like crack for trout.

I dropped him off at the lake and meandered back to the tent to make us two cups of warm tea in the empty Dunkin Donuts cups. See? Renewing resources, I thought. It was a little stressful lighting the camping stove by myself because I am crippled with fear by almost anything requiring small, volatile tanks of gas, and flames. So I held an oven mitt over my face while I lit it, because damn, yo, they can replace arm skin but I like my face, thanks. My neurotic precautions were unnecessary and I made two delightful cups of tea, got back into the truck which we'd resigned ourselves to finding incredibly convenient to have around, and drove to the lake.

Once there, I settled into the camp chair and three sweaters, while Stuart proceeded to catch sunfish after tiny, adorable sunfish, which he didn't have the heart to kill and grill, so he slid them back into the water, somewhat cheerfully exasperated by the coy trout closer to the center of the lake, beyond the reach of his casting. Me, I even caught a sunfish, which means those little buggers were just gagging to get hooked.

When I started to whine about being cold, Stuart reluctantly gave in and we headed back to the tent to build a fire in the evening gloam and roast hot dogs, covering them in the packets of condiments I'd been stealing at every convenience store along the way. We told each other stories, asking questions about each others' lives that didn't know yet ("what's the worst trouble you've ever gotten into?" "ever cheated in school?" "best camping story", etc), and then sang our childhood songs while roasting marshmallows and polishing off the shiraz. My feet, which had been perpetually damp since we got there (trench foot, ahoy!) were toasted and warm and that may have been another pinnacle of the trip.

At bedtime, we put out the fire in the sprinkling rain, bagged our trash and put it neatly in the car, and snuggled down with books and flashlights until sleep stole over us both.

totally not the hilton (adventures in camping, part one)

This weekend I went to the Berkshires with Stuart, the "berk" part standing for "ber(ser)k" because it was pouring rain from Rhode Island when we left with a truck full of camping gear, dumping buckets all 3 hours to Savoy Mountain, and absolutely pissing it down when we arrived at our campsite.

Which wasn't even our original campsite. That one, beautifully situated right under an apple tree though it was, looked like the very swimming pool for us to drown in. So we found another site that looked sturdy and spacious enough to hold us, the car, and the canoe we'd have to use to leave after the floods, and Stuart and I pitched our tent.

Which was an insane experience all its own. Two people, in the pounding rain, both wearing rain slickers with hoods, yelling to be heard in the noise, trying to raise, hoist, and peg a tent. I started crying a little right then because it was ruining his birthday weekend, all this rain, it would be ruined and we'd have to hole up at a motel, and I cried because I wanted it to be perfect. But you couldn't tell, couldn't really see the difference between tears and raindrops, so I stopped crying. We somehow got the tent up, we somehow dragged the tarp over it, and threw ourselves into the front room to strip down before entering the sacred and dry second room. It felt safe and warm in there, comparatively.

We passed the time with salami and cheese sandwiches, and precariously made cups of tea, using our camping stove as close to the entrance of the front room as Stuart dared light it. We played Uno, read our books (Heller for Stuart, Penelope Lively for me) and flashed the maglites through the thin tent walls, trying to scare off invisible bears.

"What about psycho killers!" I woke up with a start and asked him. I hadn't thought about the killers, the machete-wielding lunatics that could be roaming around in droves outside our little tent.

And in the morning, when I woke up and woke Stuart up, there was no rain, no bears, and no psycho-killers. There was only the dripping from the trees and the leaves standing out in yellow and red on our blue tarp. We'd survived the first night, and it wasn't raining. After twelve hours and dire predictions and the quiet belief that we would, in fact, have to throw in the soggy towel and up-sticks to a motel, we were still there.

We had baked beans and cheese on toast for breakfast, and listened to the drip-dry forest around us. That may have been the best moment of the entire trip, because it wasn't raining and there was tea and toast.

Stay tuned tomorrow for stories of peeing naked, tiny sunfish, whistling for bears, and one big Walmart.

A month of firsts

October is always a great month because it's the month where Stuart arrived in New York, we got married, we went on our honeymoon, and it's also the month of Stuart's birthday.

A year ago, in the evening, he came through the gates at JFK and almost not believing it was finally here, I launched myself into his arms. I haven't left since then.

We took a taxi home, staring at each other in delight and also being the usual couple we'd become, talking about the flight and the city and our plans. It was so exquisitely new and yet so familiar, to open the front door with him standing next to me, as if I knew how I'd be doing it for the following 365 days to now, and all the days ahead of us.

A wedding anniversary is a special thing, and Stuart and I will celebrate it thusly. But this day, perhaps, was even more impactful, even more of a memory to be revisited and cherished. Last October sixth at night, I got into my bed alone for the last time. Last October eighth in the morning, I woke up to a lifetime of mornings with Stuart around.

This photo was taken at Astoria Park, underneath the Triboro with a view of the city. It's a spot we've come to love dearly, many bagels eaten and books read and runs relaxed from and kites flown there since last year. But on October eighth, last year, we ventured out of the house together for the first time to see the sunset together at Astoria Park, and then with my brand-new camera phone, I took this incredibly crappy photograph of us kissing.

The only thing you can see is our eyelashes and the outline where our lips met. But I've kept it in my phone since then, and though I've cleared the picture file many times since then, I've always marked that one to save.

And now, I'm sharing it with you, on the anniversary of the best day of my life.

indian summer swing

It's got to be related - for a week, I've been going to the gym in the mornings, and for a week, I've been more productive at my job and less tired at the end of the workday than I've been in years.

Most mornings since he started working, I wake up with Stuart, or around then. That is to say, I wake up and drag myself around moaning about how tired I am, and then I hang half-asleep in the doorjamb saying goodbye to him, at 8 AM. And then I wander around trying to decide whether to continue to catnap, or whether to get ready. I usually opt for the happy median - I surf the internet in my underwear until 8:45 AM, and then I hurl myself into the shower, throw some clothes on, and mope out the door at 9:10 AM. This means I am perpetually ten to fifteen minutes late to work.

It occurred to me exactly a week and a day ago that these mornings are a colossal waste of time, and while I've tried to do exercises in the morning, it's just as easy to sit on my couch. So I decided to bite the bullet and rejoin the Equinox in my building, and simply leave every morning with Stuart at 8, work out on the elliptical watching Katie Couric (or movies! ET!) for 20 to 30 minutes, have a quick shower and head upstairs to work.

The end result is that I've gone for five mornings now, have run a mile each morning which is a lot less of a nightmare without he pounding ache in my legs after real running, and have showed up on time and animated for my job. Something that happens even more rarely than me exercising. I've even found a way to make the gym shower experience a little less awful - I put a slice of my favourite soap in my gym bag.

The weird upshot of all this exercise is how much energy I've got. How much work I actually get done each day, even with the tantalizing distractions of internet, friends online, and the book du jour in my bag. I have to keep reminding myself to check the PWSWM and Stuart's Emails folders in my Outlook to see if my dearests have said hello or asked me something. I'm finding all kinds of little things that my coworkers need done and doing them with a speed that's alarming even them, who have known me for three years.

The act I'm so good at pulling, which is to spend an hour of every work day looking obviously and noticeably busy on a specific task, has actually extended out to my entire day. I get in at 9:30, pull up the shades and look at my city, set the hotpot to boil and make a cup of tea, hang my somewhat-smelly gym clothes on the bag hooks to air out (what! it's MY office!), put the palm, the cell phone, and the ipod on the desk for easy access, and then... just... hop TO. Like some sort of engine that has found out that idling for an hour beforehand makes the performance better.

I feel better after work, too. I get home in a good mood, glad to have accomplished stuff and ready to enjoy a night at home with Stuart. The few times I've done something social after work (I'm trying to cut back and focus on writing at home), I've had more energy getting around the city. I conk out right at 11 PM, though; wherever Stuart is in the apartment, I just fall asleep next to him. And I sleep like the dead.

It's not that I'm feeling a flat stomach or I'm watching myself shed pounds. I guess that'll come, after a few months of running a mile or two every morning. I was expecting that long-term goal. I wasn't expecting these short-term effects. And I like them. The funny thing is, of all I've done this week, the one thing I've forgotten to get done is, well, blogging. Small price, though, right?

And the best unintended benefit of all? For years, I would get in at 9:45 AM, fifteen minutes after I was supposed to be here, and see my coworkers already in their offices and feel really guilty. Apparently, this whole time, they've all been getting here at 9:42, because I'm here at 9:30, and man, they're not.

Who knew that running a mile could get so much else accomplished.

pulling teeth

Here is a list of things I would rather be doing than what I'm doing right now:

Walking around outside.
Eating lunch.
Buying myself winter boots.
Reading a book.
Doing dishes.
Cleaning the bathroom.
Taping matchsticks together, end to end.
Delivering a suppository to a hippopotamus with irritable bowel syndrome.

See how it goes from the somewhat desirable to the sort of tasks you'd assign to convicted war criminals? That's because I'm writing. And it's absolutely positively hair-pullingly AGONIZING.

I would like to take this moment to really speak to other aspiring writers out there. I'm not talking about bloggers - I'm talking about people who are actively (like, today) trying to create fiction out of thin, resistant air. You know all those novelists we read about in the newspaper, that we listen to on NPR, who say gloriously unhelpful things like, "oh, I love writing, it's like breathing, I'm not happy unless I'm doing it, etc etc etc."? You know them?

KILL THE BEAST, man. I say we all get pitchforks (the weapon, not the indy zine) and light them on fire and rake them across the front doors of their houses. I say fling elephant dung at these novelists' walls whilst stabbing at their rosebushes with fire and angst. Because I hate those people almost as much as I hate Gregory Crewdson and broccoli. I'm standing here to say that as part of the Betterment of Self v.4.5, Fall 2005 Edition, I have been (trying to) write, trying to work out the same piece of fiction for the greater part of three weeks now, and with all the generous helpings of constant, daily encouragement (Shana, Stuart, I'm looking at you), IT IS STILL HARD AS FUCK. Do you hear me, you novelists, you smug speakers on the radio who say that writing is like air when really it is more like being shoved underwater and trying to GASP for air? That is how hard it is.

So hard that I would rather attach my fingernails to ten trains all going in opposite directions at full tilt that stare at my blurry monitor for another second. So hard that words I wrote ten minutes ago, words I liked back then in the haze of ten minutes ago, are words that I now want to tie to a white picket fence and slice repeatedly at with an out-of-control chainsaw. So hard that even the act of coming up with violent metaphorical situations for my pain is easier than writing anything that ISN'T a violent metaphor.

You will forgive me, then, for this ten minute interlude of roaring confusion. You will understand that I'm going to publish this post, allowing my blog to serve its original purpose, that is, someplace for me to whine like a starving orphan baby, and then after hitting publish I will return to that wretched word document and continue my torturously slow pilgrimage to my own chosen destiny. But know that I will feel better for the outpouring of slammed-finger-in-car-door agony in which you have allowed me to indulge.

And if you know what I mean, if you know the pain of teaching yourself the patience to go in the direction of the things you've always said you've wanted and never had the courage to achieve, you can pour out your own violent descriptions of the angst of creativity right there in that little comment box. Because that's the howl of frustration I have unleashed.

But my title, my title is wrong. It's a frustration that leads to a pain that's not so much like pulling teeth, or getting blood from a stone. Those metaphors are not remotely apt, not nearly dramatic enough in their scope. It's more like that thing that cats do with the extension of all paws in opposite directions, making their own circumference thrice their actual size and creating a disc of cat so unwieldy, so unyielding, as to make the insertion of cat into carrying case an impossible feat.

Yeah, it's kind of like THAT.