Question: Why did the chicken...

Sometimes I forget that this blog really can just be a blog, i.e. something I use to entertain myself and also to enjoy the community of people out there reading it, instead of a place where I pressure myself to be brilliant and witty and interesting. So in the spirit of not really trying to be brilliant and witty and interesting, I'd like to do something that I've done before to great success and entertainment. So, shoot. Ask me a question about anything in the wide magnificent universe* and I'll probably answer it over the course of the day. Leave your own blog-link and it'll appear in the question, leave an email and it won't.

* Actual questions about the universe and its wide magnificence will probably be relegated to our handy accessory, the Husband Feature. Questions about fashion, though, are encouraged.

The questions are starting to roll in, and they're "after the jump", as all the cool people say.

What's your favorite show these days? What fashion trends do you predict for spring (that you would wear)? If travelling to NYC in July (as I am) what sort of wardrobe do you recommend? And are there any Must-sees that are off the beaten path? (this is my 6th trip to NYC). - akaellen

My favourite show these days is almost definitely House or Grey's Anatomy ... hrm, medical dramas? But neither of these compare to the awesomeness of the entire Buffy series on box set, which is currently taking up my time and energy, oh yes, LOVES. Also, Firefly rocked the face right off my very face.

I'm not really good at predicting trends, but I'm looking forward to continuing last year's flowing skirts trend, and I'm also seeing a lot of 1970's cut spring dresses in the mags, which I look forward to because, hello, psychadelic patterns and empire waists = so much fun.

I think one of the big must-sees for New York is Queens. Spending a day wandering around Long Island City, riding out to Forest Hills for some unbelievable pizza at Nick's, taking the subway to Corona to get some Italian ice from the Lemon Ice King of Corona and sucking on it while sitting under fairy lights watching old guys play bocce in the town square? Seriously? Can't be beat. Most tourists, though, miss this side of the city completely. And a lot of snobby Brooklynites, I might lovingly add.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? -Pete

Pete, you're spending a little too much time with Queen, is all I have to say.

What are you absolutely favorite blogs? What blogs do you check up on every day? And why do you love them so? -Jen

This is sort of like being asked to pick the dodgeball team, because I basically read ALL the blogs I read every day, but I would be lying if I didn't say there were those I click on more readily these days when I see them in my Kinja. I feel like it'd be a little unfair, though, to list them (although I will say, I check on Kristin a lot lately because I like that dame and because I know she's going through stuff). So I can honestly say, look at my links page. There isn't a blog on there I won't check every time they post something. I don't link to make friends or make people happy - those really are the blogs I read every time they post.

I usually lurk here. I'm leaving a question today because I recently found out that a movie version of The Golden Compass is in the works. I had never heard of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy until I read about it on your blog and then read it and fell in love with it. So my question is, are you excited about the movie and will you go see it? I also have a bonus question: Are you generally able to watch book-based movies objectively or do you always compare them to the book (and point out the movies' shortcomings)? -Susan

I WILL be seeing the film(s), because I really adore those books and I've heard that Pullman has been fighting to keep the anti-dogmatic message true to form. But yes, you've hit the nail on the head - it's a blessing and a curse to see books I love turned into films. John le Carre said something fascinating about this process - he was talking about how brilliantly Alec Guiness portrayed George Smiley in the BBC adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. He said he'd never again be able to write George Smiley, because Smiley had BECOME Guinness in his mind, so the character was no longer elastic, existing only in le Carre's mind. I feel that way, a little, about my favourite books turning into movies. I love the experience of seeing those stories put into images but it's bittersweet. They exist now, outside of my mind. Somone else has - no matter how accurately - shaped the visuals of something that was entirely in my head. Even when it's well-done, it's taking something away from me.

I would love to hear the story of how the Tribe (your group of friends that you refer to frequently) assembled. You've mentioned that you didn't grow up in New York, so how did you all meet and become friends?

And question two: Do you envision yourself staying in New York long term, or would you consider living anywhere else? -Jaimie

Believe it or not, the tribe is borne entirely out of Colorado + Sarah Lawrence. Long ago in the ether of the 20th century, Biscuit's good friend Belinda came to SLC. She made friends with a group of people, Biscuit came to visit and loved NYC so he moved here, and became friends with Belinda's friends at SLC - Jeb, Luke, Bill and Barrie, to name a few. Shiv and Conrad also rolled in through Jeb, they're also SLC alums, and we got Ben through Jeb as well. I got to know Biscuit through Conrad, even thought I'd known Bill and Luke since I got to SLC as a freshman. Kate and Jen, we got to know through the blogs, Stuart and Mark as well (who's dating Stephanie who's MY good friend from our early days in New York). Then there are a lot of wonderful girlfriends and boyfriends who've come into our lives through all these people, and roommates and new friends and old friends and things. It's really incredibly organic and amazing, and they're one of the main reasons I'm still thriving and happy in New York.

I would never want to leave New York because I just didn't think I could hack it anymore, or enjoy it. New York challenges you every day to keep loving it, to stay committed. If I left, if and when I do, I hope it will be because the thing I'm going to is as exciting if not more so than the city. Until then, I will find a million ways to love this place, even when it drives me crazy.

What will you do if you don't get into grad school?

Of course, you totally will. But let's just pretend you don't. Do you have a Plan B? -Emily

Good, tough question, Emily. Yes, I definitely have a Plan B (or, as I like to call it, my "IN CASE OF FAILURE, PULL LEVER" Lever). I don't want to really detail it here, but I can say this much - it involves radically reshaping my current life and committing more hours of each day to writing than I ever have before. It might also involve puppies.

What's your stand on those adorable little flats with skirts? If yay, what length and style of skirt do you find them to be cute with? If nay, do you think there are any acceptable exceptions? -Polichick

Well, I'm not graced with perfect legs and I'm short, so I usually wear some kind of heel with a skirt, especially if it's either 1. short or 2. long. However, I do wear that lovely spring/fall length, right at the knee, with flats all the time. I try not to wear anything bulky, though, sticking to a slim tee or a tank and a blazer, so that I don't get top-heavy without the heels to pull it off.

1. Why are people still wearing UGGs and ponchos? 2. Do you have a favorite airplane story? Or just a story in general you tell to everyone you meet? -Devlyn

1. Seriously, Devlyn, I HAVE NO IDEA. I have never, ever worn a poncho. I've worn a shawl wrapped over my shoulders in a poncho-esque manner but DAMNIT, it's not a PONCHO.

2. I went through this brief phase in 2000-2002 (okay, that's a two year phase) where, when people would actually drag me out from behind my book to "chat", I'd start lying voraciously and enthusiastically about everything they asked. I don't do that anymore mainly because Stuart is there and I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. However, this IS one airplane story that several of my friends have fallen to bits laughing over, which is the Passive-Agressive BITCH OF AN AIRLINE ATTENDANT story. Kate's laughing RIGHT NOW, as she reads this, because I think she's the one who thinks it's its the funniest. It involves a man who looked like ZZ Top and some VERY PRECIOUS BLANKETS. It's really better told in person, so if we ever meet, remind me of this.

When you were a kid, what were the top 5 "things" you wanted to be when you grew up? Now that you're somewhat more grown, what are the top 5 jobs you'd love to have?
What are five things you want to do that you haven't yet done? (that should keep you busy for a while right?) -Mayumi

When I was little, I really wanted to be an architect, a vet, an actress, an English professor, or a professional jockey. As you can imagine, there's only one left on that list that I still aspire to, albeit begrudgingly.

Nowadays, my dream jobs that I'd never really make a career are: an interior decorator but only if my clients had great personalities, limitless funds, and absolute trust in my taste. An owner of an awesome coffee shop (matt, me and the llamas are looking at YOU). A travel writer. A children's toy designer. A geneticist. And of course, a writer - but I'm going to make that happen, so it doesn't count.

Five things I want to do that I haven't done already? I'm going to limit this to things I know I will accomplish in my lifetime. Okay, I want to travel around the world for a few months on one of those awesome globe-traveler tickets. This doesn't have to be soon, in fact, I'd love to do it once Stuart and I have kids that are in the right age bracket to enjoy it (read: 10-12). I want to have kids. I want to at least get NEAR Everest, if not climb it (as was my former ambition). I want to own and adore a house, have a place where the work we do with our hands enriches it, the memories we make reverberate through the rooms. And I want to fulfill the promise I made to my dad that we'd rent an RV and drive across the U.S.

There, that took me six minutes.

1. Have you ever been to Andorra?
2. As a young'un did you believe in anything supernatural; Egyptian deities, Santa? I totally used to roller skate around convinced that the chicks from Xanedu were going to beam me up into some kind of eighties heaven where everyone had feathered hair and wore head bands.
3. If you haven't been to Andorra have you ever met an Andorran(?) native?
4. Without looking it up, do you know what langues are spoken in Adorra?
5. Who's the most well known person you didn't recognize until someone else smacked you. I just interviewed um, what's his name that guy from the Capote movie and beyond thinking hey, that's an actor guy who just won something, for the life of me I couldn't think of his name. And still cant'. -Sohosally (who, if you don't know, is singularly responsible for those FUCKING AWESOME CRACKED-OUT OWLS.

DAMN, woman. Take it easy on that root beer. OKAY: As for Andorra and it's peoples (Andorrean? Andorrian? Andorrite? Whevs). Okay, I had to look it up on wikipedia, so I think that clears up whether or not I've been there. I've also never met anyone from there, and I restrained my eyes from seeing what language is spoken, so I also don't know. THANKS FOR SHAMING ME INTO REVEALING MY IGNORANCE, THERE, PAL. Sheesh.

Okay, supernatural powers: Look, I really believed in the Greek gods until I was about nine. I also had an active and far-reaching imagination, but I didn't actually believe in anything except one thing. I really believed my stuffed animals were real. So imbued with personality were they, that even to this day, when Bow Bear has been lying face down on the floor for days and I pick him up, I swear I see a little guilt-inducing scowl of disapproval on his face. I SWEAR.

I tend to either recognize celebrities immediately or they escape my notice entirely. My favourite realization-of-approximate-fame moment, though, was when I was crossing Seventh Ave on a sunny day, talking to Beth on my cell phone. Garry Shandling was crossing in the opposite direction, also on his cell phone, and as I realized it, I apparently made some sort of shocked and amused face of recognition, BECAUSE HE MIMICKED IT AND SMILED. It was AWESOME.

Who is a writer that you recommend? I actually picked up Connie Willis through your blog, devoured her entire corpus, loving each one more than the last. I'm looking for a modern, since I don't usually hang out in the post-1970ish stacks.

And don't send me to the Booklist, I still am not over the whole Dashiell thing! -Simon

Oh, Simon, you are so adorably curmugeonly! I'm sorry about the Hammett thing, really, I just didn't like Red Harvest as much as I liked Maltese Falcon, which I didn't like as much as The Big Sleep, and I read them all in rapid succession so the grade was more a relative thing. That said, I used to be very intimidated by contemporary literature. Bookstores used to overwhelm me, leading to what I lovingly refer to as "The Thomas Hardy Syndrome", where, even though I find old Tom to be a RIGHT BORE sometimes, I've read his entire body of work out of an inability to try a new author.

So, on the one hand, I would refer to you to Audrey Niffenegger because I haven't met a person YET that didn't love The Time Traveler's Wife. But that's just one book and I sense, my friend, that you're like me and you enjoy devouring whole troughs of books by the same author, just for the compare-and-contrast delight.

Let me then recommend (if you've already read any and all of these guys, let me know and I'll think up a few more) you make immediate waves into John Le Carre (specifically the Karla trilogy and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, don't start with his more recent stuff - the Cold War is where he shines). If you think you have to be a snob about Le Carre because it's spy fiction, THINK AGAIN. Some of the most sublimely subtle protracted drama you'll ever read.

Also, John Irving. Now, I know I've gotten a lot of flack for loving this dude, but DAMN, I love this dude. His body of work isn't consistent, though, so start with Hotel New Hampshire or Prayer for Owen Meany, also awesome is Setting Free the Bears. Again, if you've already read him, you might understand why I picked him - his style may not be subtle or even astounding, but his characters are literally unforgettable and his stories are very human.

Then, if you haven't already, there's Marquez. I think you'd love Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Simon, he's so dedicated to the divine and the surreal. It's like Phillip Pullman means F. Scott Fitzerald in South America. If One Hundred Years of Solitude is (understandably) intimidating, start with Love in the Time of Cholera or Chronicle of a Death Foretold. And when you DO read One Hundred Years, remember: the point isn't to differentiate all the same-named characters. The point is to see them as a repeating, undulating cycle of personality and interaction.

If ALL of these authors are ones you've already read, set me off on a different track, but I consider them, as collections of work, to be some of my favourites. Just thinking about them makes me want to go home and hug my bookshelves.

I bought a denim skirt today at ATL ($25!) and Kevin revealed to me that he is not really a fan of denim skirts. But this one is grownup and fits well, so I told him I liked knowing what he likes and doesn't like, but I'm wearing it anyway because I like it. Tell him that denim skirts are appropriate for grownups and will never go out of style. Also tell him he looked really cute in his orangey-red springy checked shirt. -jen

Kevin, like Jen's skirt. Denim skirts are completely apropriate for grownups and also, Jen looks hot in them. Also, I like your shirt.

What would we do if we hung out together in New York? What would we do if we hung out together in San Francisco?

Also, how adorable will your children be? Cute overload dot INDEED. -Leah

Leah, I'm pretty sure if we hung out in EITHER city, we'd just drive Stuart and Simon crazy by cooing and giggling at each other and then taking pictures of the other taking pictures of us. Also, in New York we'd: eat pizza at Nick's, drive miniature boats at Central Park boat pond, make fun of pompous art at MoMA, sneak bourbon out of flasks on the Staten Island ferry, and get very drunk on pitchers of cosmos in my living room whilst playing something incredibly geeky like Book Lover's Trivial Pursuit.

In San Fransisco, I have no idea how you'd get me away from the seals, so that's totally your thing.

Our children will be obnoxiously friendly with enormous eyes, like a BUSHBABY. Kristin and I have already decreed this.

If you and Stuart got tatoos testifying to your love, what would they look like (a cute quote, or you as a mermaid and him as a sailor)?
Also, which celebrity makes you cringe? -Sarah

Stuart and I would probably never get tattoos testifying our love (HELLO, that's what the blogs are for) but if we did, I hope we'd get WE MET ON THE WEB tattooed across our shoulderblades.

Kate Hudson, for some reason, makes me want to claw my own eyes out with a spoon and fling them at people. ACK ARGH SNAAARRRF. I can't explain it. Tom Cruise, however, ALSO causes the eyeball-flinging rage, and I can explain that - HE'S INSANE AND WE'RE STILL LISTENING TO HIM TALK INSTEAD OF THROWING HIM INTO AN INSANE ASYLUM. Seriously, if we can actually put that man on national television and act like the crazy monkey-poo-flinging nonsense he's spouting is normal, then I vote that my local screaming cat lady should be president, because clearly insane = the new sane.

That is all.

Theme song if you had one? Like, everytime you walk into a room everyone would think of this song. It wouldn't necessarily have to play but people would think of it. Like Vader or Sinatra.

Closing credits song for your movie? The first few notes of what song would kick in when you said your triumphant/tragic/poetic/ironic/clever/brilliant/poignant final line?

Former aspiration that you look at now and go: Umhmm. Yeah, I 'm not so into that idea anymore. I was young! I was in love/brokenhearted! I was lost! Please pass the whiskey my friend!

Favorite meal whether for the company, the food, the wine, the location, blah, blah, all of the above or just one? -Kahli

Man, a theme song? I used to say Vienna, by Billy Joel. It's probably still true. But for the longest time, the song I've related to the most, that pleases me the most when I hear it and its relevance to my life, is probably New York City by They Might Be Giants.

Hrm, the movie of my life? I've actually never thought about my life as a movie. Especially since I have no idea how it'd end. But if it ended the way life does, with a long happy one and death, I'd like "I'll Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie to play then, I suppose. Life really is just about love and who you choose to be with you for it.

I think wanting to be a lawyer is my "Uhmmmmm" moment. I got seriously misguided by the fact that I'd be GOOD at it, which allowed me to sort of overlook whether I actually WANTED to do that with my life. I'm naturally pretty realistic and pragmatic so it seemed to make sense with my life goal of Not Dying Penniless and In Debt, but it's just not how I want to spend my life (or not spend it, as the reality of it usually is).

Honestly, my favourite meal is probably fajitas at Lupe's in Houston. Or a bowl of queso and chips at Magnolia in Austin. Or, wait, steak and wine at Bugaboo Creek in RI with my parents. French Roast on our anniversary with Stuart. The steak and risotto and plaintains we made on Eleuthera, with Jen and Kevin. And ANYTHING I EAT at Mario Batali's restaurants. Burgers at Fuddrucker's with my dad, or ceasar salad at Paragon (in Providence) with my mom. French bread and cheese on a weekend morning at home with Stuart. Favourite meals are all about the people and the familiarity of it.

I want to play! Okay:
1. Have you been back to Africa since you lived there as a kid,
2. Have you thought about going there with Stuart to show him where you grew up, and
3. How do you take such fast showers? (Krissa takes exceptionally fast showers for a girl. Like, 5 minutes max. Crazy.) - Steph

HAHAHA this is hilarious, it took me a minute to realize that this was MY steph (yes, Mark, she's also MINE). That showers thing THREW me.

1. The last time I was technically in Africa was 2001, in Egypt, when my parents lived there during my college years. But I don't entirely count that because I didn't LIVE there, just visited. So, we lived in Africa from 1984 to 1991 (roughly) and from 1994 to 1997, and that was the last time I lived there.

2. Yes, god yes, I want to go back. Not everywhere, really - Morocco, Stuart's already been to, Tunisia and Cote D'Ivoire are not nostalgic places for me, only nostalgic times. But Kenya and Egypt, I'd say, are very high on my re-visit list, this time with Stuart.

3. Seriously, it's a SHOWER! Not a feature-length MOVIE! I'm in, I clean my body (Lush's Honey I Washed the Kids soap), I shampoo my hair (Pantene Pro-V Amino Protein Volumizing), I condition with the matching conditioner, I brush out the tangles with a paddle brush, I wash my face with Cetaphyl face soap, I rinse my hair, and BAM, I'm OUT. On to better things. Showers are nice and all, but so is sitting around eating bon-bons.

and another gone, another one gone

For those of you following along at home, yesterday's mail brought another letter, with more of the same. I could say I'm upset, and I continue to be disappointed it's true, but at least it gives me a good excuse to listen to this piece of genius and laugh bitterly. Bitterly I say!

dream-kenya

Every few nights for the past month, I've dreamt about Kenya. It's always a similar landscape and plot - I'm in the neighborhood of my home and school, in that suburban northwest corner of Nairobi's sprawling slopes. In most of them, I find that I'm returning to ISK for a few more classes, ten years on, and I'm both shocked and surprised at this turn of events. In one, I'm getting into a bus just down the street from our house, right where Lower Kabete Road turned into Kyuna, and trying to navigate the friendly driver into stopping by my house before school so that I can put some decent clothes on for my first day. The streets are soaked in color, the red dirt kicking up along the side of the road, the blue sky draped above the trees. I keep getting very close but not quite making it to our home, but I'm not fussed, so distracted by the wonder of the familiarity of it all.

In another, I'm with Marnix and Seigfried, my inseparable sidekicks for the best months of my life there. I'm thrilled, so thrilled to be around them again without any of the venom and animosity that marked the decline of our little triumvirate. I keep patting their heads delightedly and surprising them with hugs as we amble along Marnix's street - Kitisuru Road, which I also know in the dream.

In yet another, I'm back on campus, in the sun-drenched fields of my high school, chatting animatedly with the still-teenagered students that surround me, asking when I attended, what I'm doing back. In many of these dreams, I'm eagerly introducing Stuart around, or I know he'll join me soon and I'm soaking up memories to tell him about. I always know where I am in relation to the town, which is the mark of an important dream. I'm never hazy on the details, events follow a certain logic, I don't get frustratingly transported from one spot to another. These aren't nightmares or anxiety dreams, and they're not scattered absurd dreams. They're not even nostalgic fantasies, per se. I'm not getting a do-over, a chance to right any wrongs or reenact tough moments to make myself come out better. The message is very clear - I am in Nairobi as an adult and for good reason, it is bringing me joy. Also, I still know all the street names and how to get from here to there.

I'm not sure what to make of all this. The returning to school is quite plain - I'm thinking about school a lot these days. The sheer exhiliration of returning to Kenya itself is also obvious - it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived, and there were so many firsts. I was 16. Everything that happens when you're 16 becomes larger than life, exposed with glaring vibrancy on some photographic plate that never fades in richness, only gets more hazy around the edges.

And to differentiate this pattern from my norm, I rarely give more than a moment's thought to dreams. I wake up, relay snippets of them to Stuart, and basically forget them. I identify what they're relating to in my daily life, or I laugh at their absurdity. Dreams aren't always pertinent - I often think of them as my imagination exercising itself. But this is getting to the point that I'm noticing. If I don't subconciously desire to return, literally, to my youth (and I don't), what is all this about?

So for some reason, things occur to me on my walk to the subway. Perhaps because it's just a dull boring walk, one of the ugliest sides of Astoria that I only use in the morning because it's the quickest. So I don't look around much, I am still half-awake and susceptible to the whims of my scattered mind. So this morning, I was thinking about this dream-fixation with Kenya that's only cropped up in the past month. And I plucked something else about Kenya out of a musty drawer - I never write fiction about Africa. Ever.

I have what I thought was a good reason for this - it would seem like a sell-out, like an obvious violation of my attempts to truly create fiction, not simply rest on the undeserved laurels of having lived in exotic places. I've never considered writing fiction around my own experiences - in the few times I've tried, it's seemed forced and uninteresting.

But perhaps I need to revisit this point of view and see if it should be tweaked. Perhaps there's a reason that Kenya is on my mind in the weeks that my immediate future is being decided? Is it some agent provocateur in my subconscious, trying to tell me that perhaps I never write around my own experience because I'm afraid it won't be good enough? Or that I'm aspiring to an ideal I don't need, because buckets of great writers have shamelessly drawn on their own life and the only trick they needed was talent at making it relevant to everyone else?

And as quickly as I thought about my own firm justifications, a story started brewing, mostly fiction but with enough sense of place that I knew the story revolved around my non-fiction memories. What does that mean, that I was able to see an interesting story in the fabric of something I've long refused to even bring into the shop, so to speak?

It's hard to make clear to you, the feeling these dreams are giving me. It makes me wish, when I wake up, that I could really show you the dream, as if it were a home movie. This delight in a place that I once loved, it casts this neon glow over the images of the dreams. Walking down Kitisuru, I remember looking up into the canopy of trees and gasping in awe at the leaves, that looked like fern fronds in a million different shades. When looking along the back roads of Kyuna for my house, the kombi broke down, and I jumped out and dipped my bare feet in a stream, not caring that the red dust settled between my toes as I walked back to the van. When I was with the boys, I kept playing with their hair, playing with the german shepherds that walked alongside us, everything feeling very pleasingly tactile, like some esctasy trip. I loved being there, and when I woke up, all I wanted to do was write it all down to capture those feelings of good will.

What does that mean? Far be it from me to psycho-analyze my dreams, so perhaps they are simply just feel-good dreams that my imagination is indulging in to combat the stress of the past few weeks. But what good's a subconscious if it's not helping me sort out what I want from my life and by extension, my writing? Why these dreams now, when I'm thinking so much about the future of this ball of unformed talent I hope I have? If the dreams themselves are linking up with other thoughts about Africa and imagination, maybe I should start listening?

Reading over this, there are an unusually high number of question marks in this post.

no-go

I just got another rejection from one of the lesser-competitive options, leaving me the three big scaries on my list. Blah blah blah faith self-confidence trust in myself keep on keepin' on etc etc blah blah.

Anyone got any funny jokes? Greg? I'm looking at you.

on the edge of my seat, by the seat of my pants

It's official. I'm obsessed. What's frustrating is, I'm obsessed with something I'm not ready to talk about here, but I'm a blogger, so it's my natural instinct to want to talk about it here. I'm obsessed with the applications I've eluded to, and the responses I'm NOT getting, the Mail that is NOT arriving, the worst case scenarios I am trying to be prepared for, and the best case scenarios that I'm trying not to want too badly.

Two months ago, I was healthy about this. I was confident and as laid-back as I'm capable of being. I had faith. Two weeks ago, I was anxious but ready. Two hours ago, I was in total denial of my escalating panic and worry. Two minutes ago, I realized I was sitting on the very edge of my chair, with my face three inches from the glass of my iMac, staring at some college student's livejournal page where she mentioned letters she's received from places whose letters I haven't received yet.

Two minutes ago, I entered into obsessed.

It's been bad enough coming home from the subway every evening. I've turned the corner onto my street, realized the Mail was waiting for me in the lobby of our apartment, and suddenly wished for a full flask of vodka strapped to my leg to help me cope with the rising nausea and anxiety. It's like the Oscars, all this mail-waiting. I'd much prefer to get phone calls out of the blue - phone calls are a sudden-onset sort of anxiety, brought about when the phone rings. They don't have the constant ritualistic guarantee that for seven minutes while walking up your own street, you will be terrified of your OWN MAIL.

If my first response (which I mentioned last week) had either been 1. positive or 2. from someplace I wasn't sort of expecting a positive reply, then I wouldn't be as bad off this week as I am. As it is, I've never wished so hard to be drunk all the time, just as a coping strategy.

You'll note that I managed to fill four nervous paragraphs with anxiety and hang-wringing without ONCE giving you all the satisfaction of really explaining what I'm talking about because my domino-conga-line of superstition won't let me talk too much, too openly, until I know whether or not I'm getting what I want. On a certain level, I've already said too much. But I don't think Stuart's willing to scrape the exploded carcass of my balled-up energy off the walls of our apartment, so I guess I've said just enough to get myself through another Walk to the Front Door.

Two minutes ago, I forgot all the good advice I got about how freaking myself out to the point of blanching isn't actually going to have any affect on the outcome of this process, nor will it make me feel any better if I get bad news to have known that I was freaking out for a good reason, that YES, I am the Cassandra of my own disappointment. I'm currently grappling through the crashing waves to find that lifevest of calm again, yes, I am.

So before you very justifiably tell me how I'm working myself up for nothing, I just want to let you know that I KNOW that if you were sitting across from me at the bar, friends, here's the moment where I notice how hard I'm squeezing that nice comforting hand you'd extended across the table to stroke my arm, the stroking you thought would coax me into an altogether lower plane of tension (without resorting to marijuana). I'm self-aware enough to know what my own panicked face looks like. Wow, look! I've drained the blood from your fingers. You okay? Me? I'm FINE. I'll be FINE. YEAH. No, totally fine.

Don't I look fine?

the best weapons come in teacup sizes

People are always getting on my case about my irrational love of chihuahuas. They're tiny and loud and nervous, everyone says (and by everyone, I usually mean Biscuit, who swears he won't darken my doorway if I ever own a chihuahua). People don't seem to understand that I'M tiny and loud and nervous, which makes me + chihuahua = match made in heaven hell. I love those tiny yappy-type fuckers. I think they're fierce miniature little ninjas and I want five of them. Also, they have the added bonus of being portable in even the daintiest of my purses and people, my purses get pretty dainty.

I have a deep personal appreciation for the get-out-of-my-space fierceness of chihuahuas. My friend Raych had Lupe, when we were in high school together, and I've never been more reluctant to turn my back on anything quite that small (note: I am usually only reluctant to turn my back on rhinos, veloceraptors, and other much larger predators). Lupe would bark and snap at you in this way that stated, very clearly and without prevarication: "the minute you turn your back on me, fearsomely large adversary, I will BITE MERCILESSLY THROUGH YOUR ACHILLES' TENDON so that when you are felled, I may eat victoriously of your face and possibly internal organs, depending on time." This is quite clearly the message of a chihuahua's bark.

You might wonder why this would attract me to them. It's because I respect that. I respect the genetic ability to cause a ruckus totally disproportionate to your size. As you can imagine, this ability resonantes with me. I also respect skunks for the same reason. I was at the Bronx Zoo this one time, and we were looking down on a serene wooded area where absolutely fucking enormous deer were roaming about aimlessly. Suddenly they all started skittering about, freaked out like they were teenagers caught smoking. I looked around for the source of the commotion and oh, yes - there was a skunk. A small animal about a foot in length with a God-given defense mechanism that drove deer twenty times its size away. That commands RESPECT. I, also, am small and seemingly without defenses and while I don't stink up a room or rip through your Achilles' tendon, I have built up my own set of defenses against the cruel world (mainly involving my awesome lung power and big, big friends).

So you see, I have respect for the diminuitive chihuahua. I feel that we would be great companions. One of the reasons I don't insist on getting one as soon as we're allowed to have dogs is because of my husband. I seriously cannot imagine Stuart carrying around Doctor Death*, my little chihuahua. And you know, he'd have to be carried, because Doctor Death cannot cross storm drains on a leash. At at some point in his life, he would have to be carried by Stuart. And, well, Stuart is a lot of things but dainty and wee is not one of them. Because I love him, I perhaps think that getting a chihuahua would rob him of the ability to live his life NOT carrying around a tiny little dog the size of his hand. Still and all, I'm pretty sure that if anything could convince Stuart of the AWESOME POWER of the angry chihuahua (and our immediate need to own one, STAT), it's this video. Stuart, and the rest of you as well.

FEAR THE CHIHUAHUA.

* This is not really my dream chihuahua name. My dream chihuahua name is so awesome that if I told you, you'd rush out and buy a chihuahua just so you could use my awesome name and I'm not stupid, so I'm not telling you. PPFFBTBT.

yippee ki yi ...

So, whilst the war rages on in Iraq and the people of New Orleans struggle to rebuild and Australia sends relief to a devastated coastline and Milosevic is buried and, well, the world turns, New Yorkers are obsessed with this coyote.

Let me rephrase: I am obsessed with this coyote.

There's a coyote! In Central Park. Apparently, this isn't the weirdest thing in the ENTIRE world - there was a similar incident in 1999. Still and all, there's a coyote roaming around Central Park consistently evading capture by whole swarms of police and Parks Department people. What's much more amusing than actually reading the relatively mundane articles about this coyote where everyone tries desperately to avoid using the word WILY but can't, in the end, and cave to the inexorable pressure to use the word WILY but then giggle moronically to themselves after they do (Channel 7 reporters, I'm looking at YOU) is actually discussing the various ways a fucking COYOTE got onto the island of Manhattan.

Because the news and articles keep suggesting he came from Westchester, and I'm thinking, Metro North? Surely not. He'd have to leash himself. Henry Hudson Bridge? That toll can be seriously prohibitive when you've got no pockets. Maybe a cab? Oooh, rollerskates! The news keeps saying he might have swum across the Harlem River but this is obviously a very urbane and sophisticated coyote, surely he'd know better than to swim in a body of water for which you need tetanus shots before even entering. Plus, I don't know, THE CURRENTS.

This would be a good time to make a joke about the other definition for the word coyote, namely the human border smugglers. Instead, I'll just sit here and giggle about a coyote riding Metro North. Coffee? Paper? Umbrella? Coyote.

@*&$$@*$&!?!?

Someone explain to me how 27 degrees counts as the first day of Spring? My hair is still wet, after my shower, and I can't bring myself to leave the house.

Spring? Really?

the first day

I won't say that two years ago, Stuart walked through the front door and I knew I'd marry him. I'll err on the side of caution and say, I knew it three days later. So today is the anniversary of the day we met, three days before I knew without question that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

I will say that the heart doesn't lie. When we sat down to eat Chinese food, 30 minutes after he arrived at Shiv's apartment, we started talking about books and I got this feeling in my ribcage, possibly my heart. The best way to describe it is this: when a horse has been locked in a stable for a long time but it's a beautiful day and you open the stable door to let him into the paddock, he will immediately sense the wildness of the land outside the paddock. He will sense the summer day, the grass, the running he has to do. And he will pace, back and forth, twitching his tail, trying to get you to notice that he needs to be let out of the paddock; he needs to run. That was my heart, when Stuart and I were talking. I didn't even know what the summer's day was, or that it was there, but there was something fundamental inside me, pacing back and forth, demanding to be let free.

Another way of describing it would be to say that I'd been sliding along in a dark room, along the smooth wall, for years. I'd been sliding around a doorless room, almost wondering if perhaps there was no door, there was only wall. But I didn't stop sliding. The feeling inside me during that first real conversation that I had with Stuart, where our eyes kept lighting up with understanding and camaraderie, was the feeling of having crept around uselessly in a doorless, unlit room only to finally stumble upon a crack in the wall, and to follow that crack around the pitch-black wall with the tips of your fingers barely daring to believe you'll find a doorknob. And the doorknob will be there even if it's never been there before, and that frantic excitement mingled with disbelief mingled with incontrovertible proof, that's how it felt to meet Stuart. Like a door had opened.

So you can see what it was like two years ago. I didn't have these words, I didn't have the assurance that would come with our first kiss, the first time we said the word love, the first time he told me he couldn't and wouldn't be apart from me anymore than he absolutely had to be, that beside me was where he was meant to be even if it meant crossing an ocean. I didn't have those comparably solid emotions, words of substance to react to. All I had on that first day was this kicking, breathing, daring-to-believe-it feeling that the summer day was here, the doorknob was there, and something huge had arrived. Something life-changing had happened.

And I couldn't wait to get started.

the elusive end of the rainbow

I'm home today to deal with some domestic household issues (read: everything's a mess) and I got some middling-to-poor news about my MFA plans from one of the places I felt confident about. I realized, in the past hour of moping about it (oh, waitlisting, why do you feel like a consolation prize) that perhaps this is what blogs are for sometimes - to dump some negative mojo into the ether and let it go.

So I'm letting it go here, feeling a little gloomy, and knowing all the care bear stares of love that you guys send my way all the time will perk me up. So will Belinda and Abe's disco wedding CD, which is totally on right now for me to tidy the house by. Because how can you be down and gloomy when you're positively being FORCED to do the hustle, right?

I guess my luck of the Irish didn't come through for me today, but maybe it got lost in the post on its way from Ireland, and it'll come through for me like the drunk lazy leprechaun that it is, right?

I'm off to do the hustle. And possibly get down just a little bit, in funkytown.

I will write this entire post without ONCE resorting to the word "blogiversary"

Today marks the fourth year this blog has been in existence. That means it's starting kindergarten, asking about its private parts, and wrinkling its nose at vegetables. Oh, toddlers, nature's little marvel.

Petit Hiboux has changed a lot since I started it over on blogger. I've gotten less chatty but I like to think I've gotten more down-to-earth. I blog a lot less about the minute effects other people have on me, like heartbreak in all its various forms, but I also see more honesty, less subterfuge, in my daily writing. My life has changed considerably but some nice things have remained constant - my friends, my family, my apartment (ours, now).

In 2002, this blog was all about frippery and hidden meanings directed at boys I liked. There was a lot of song lyric quoting and a lot of silliness. This is because I was 22 and still learning what blogs were. In 2003, there was a lot of linking and high-school-like blog friendships forming, and towards the end there was a lot more heartbreak and subtle digs and coy intrigue. In 2004 there was sea change - from moments where I've never been more disconsolate about my life to the highest points of elation. In 2005 there was a lot of work, a lot of slow necessary changes and adjustments, and a lot of happiness. And in 2006, there will be more sea change.

So through four years, the blog has changed as much as I have. It's brought me some marvels and it's taught me that I'm not only capable but nigh addicted to writing something every day, writing out my reactions to my own life and the lives around me. It's taught me to take my writing for a certain necessary level of granted - to take my status as a writer as a given. That's no small thing.

But I won't make some pat reflection about writing this completely for me. I don't. If I needed to (and sometimes I do) journal for myself, I'd do it on paper, in my living room. If I need to write fiction, I also do that in my living room - not here. Here, I blog for you guys. I blog for the community, for the experience of sharing my personality and seeing what pings bounce back, for the feedback. I blog because I believe it's a radical thing to take your life and share it - it's something we do on many levels all around us and blogging is one of the ways I do it. I don't really believe bloggers who say they do it solely for themselves - did I mention the part about paper and privacy? So I do this for you, which is why I'm thanking you today.

There are some of you that have been reading this since its frippy, early days, there are some that read Petit Hiboux through all the moany self-reflection and intrigue, there are some who liked that and haven't liked the lovey-dovey crap, to paraphrase all the back-handed compliments about my current love life. So there are probably some of you that don't read this site anymore, because of that. I respect that. And there are some that started coming here right when the lovey-dovey crap started and perhaps for you, that's all pH has ever been and you enjoy that. I appreciate you, too.

That's the thing. I appreciate everyone that's ever visited this site, linked it, commented, loved it, become my friend through it. I don't get any hate mail so I presume my detractors are the smart kind of detractor, the kind that just move on. Really, simplistically cheesy and totally without ironic content as this may be, I appreciate you for reading, for following along, for being the wide spectrum of humanity at the other end of this little megaphone.

You rock. I hope we can do this for another four years. Thank you.

the state of not knowing

Consider this your fair warning that this entry discusses my uterus. Put down the computer and back away slowly if this startles you in any way. Most women and you select men can read on.

This morning there came about a method of divining - wait, let me try this again. In every woman's life about once a month there comes a moment - no, that's not right. Let's say that if there are two states, pregnant and not pregnant, and there's no real overlap between the two - ...

... what I'm trying to say is that this morning, I was given incontrovertible proof that I'm not pregnant. Now, this happens every month without fanfare because I'm a responsible modern dame with responsible modern contraception, which we use responsibly to prevent any grandkids for our parents for another couple years, please. But at the beginning of this month, there was a small snafu that involved the pharmacy being closed the exact Sunday and Monday that I needed it open to pick up a prescription, and some secondary contraception that didn't really do very well what it was supposed to do.

Like that responsible modern gal, I called my Ob-Gyn and was told to just make up the missing pills, use secondary measures all month, and oh, he ended the phone call with, "good luck!"

Ladies of the world, take a moment to look in your souls and see the exact precipice he put me on with that falsely cheery "good luck!" and you'll have a general idea of the mild torment I'd been suffering for exactly 22 days. Stuart knew about the phone calls, and the developments as they progressed. I followed the doctor's directions to the letter but it didn't prevent a smattering of conversations that stumbled mid-sentence:

"So, I mean, if we ARE, we'd have to ...."
"We'd be okay, it'd be a change, but we'd ..."
"So, what about school? If we are, do I ...."

And of course, all the jokes we made along the way about how the office was really going to be a nursery, damn you Jen, about how our lives would change upside down, about how we were totally, inconcievably (HA) not ready for this step in our lives but if the foot was lifted for us, by accident, we'd take it and we'd take it in style.

You already know the step has been deferred. If you're smart and you know about a woman's reproductive cycle and the effects of oral contraceptive, you know we weren't really in the hot water to begin with. But you might also know that the heavier the odds are stacked, the more thought-power you give even the slightest chance of .... and there I go, not finishing sentences.

What's remarkable about this is that I'm generally, well, baby-crazy. They're adorable. I love them. I can't wait to be a mother. Except that, well, I can. I very much can. And nothing makes you realize how much you're not ready for something when the heightened possibility of that something is staring you straight in the face. Before you know it, you're not finishing sentences, you're wondering about the reactions of your friends and family, and you're looking in the mirror thinking, can I do this if I have to?

It's scary to know that the answer was yes, and it's a relief to know the question hasn't been asked yet.

c'mon, get happy

I can't imagine that there's a grumpy New Yorker out there today. We're all like sailors on shore leave, running around gawping at the brisk breeze and the sixty degree temperatures and the sun, oh lord, the sun!

This morning I left the house in a black tee, a brown cord skirt and black tights and boots, and even though I knew it was already 52 degrees outside, I threw on my wool coat, out of habit. I was only four paces from the front door when I wisely changed my mind and ran back inside to switch to a black sweater instead. I didn't even wear the sweater when I went to lunch with the divine Stephanie Brown, or when I spent the morning in our magazine's art department, moonlighting as the assistant art director (who's out) by mounting the pages to the edit wall, which gave me extreme satisfaction because I'm a fiddly, visual person and it was a fiddly, visual job, very different from my usual drudgery at the magazine.

It reminded me of when I lived in Houston in high school and worked at the Gap (yes, I was that girl). I used to tag along behind my wonderful manager, Bernadette, as she set up the window displays for the store, and she got tired of me following her around so she just gave me the job. Oh, I longed for the days that I was scheduled to come in JUST to be the visual coordinator for the windows. The crisp guidebooks that came from corporate, detailing the look for that month, the long pins we used to rouche the shirts just so to the mannequins, the personal touches that I sneaked in to every window. Loved it possibly more than any other part-time work I've ever had. Doing the wall today reminded me of that.

And in exactly twenty minutes, I get to leave the office and saunter over to Grand Central, one of my favourite and most memory-laden spots in Manhattan, to catch the 5:40 to Dobb's Ferry with wonderful Jason's loaned D-70, to shoot headshots for Barrie's students. I get to ride that Hudson line train with the setting sun, speeding north with a coffee and the paper, and it's two hours earlier than I've left work all week so I'm positively giddy with excitement. And it's Friday, and I've got a night of birthday celebrations ahead of me, with Barrie and Belinda.

Are you sensing a theme? I'm twirling with happiness, it's just bubbling over everything I do today. The coatlessness, the beautiful weather, the wonderful loaned camera, the lunch with Stephanie (veal and amaretto biscotti! raviolis! oh! my! god!), the satisfaction of the wall, riding Metro-North again, hanging out with Barrie and Belinda and their boys tonight ... it's all so much, look at all those commas!

I hope my glee isn't infectious in the bad way, in that way where you're having a terrible day and you want to fling monkey poo at me for being so goddamned annoyingly HAPPY. If you have the urge to fling monkey poo, I will hug you so hard that your monkey-poo-flinging urges will be squelched and you will be left hugged and loved with a handful of unflung monkey poo. If you're sort of neutral about the world, I will also hug you and spread some sicky sweet sunshine your way and you will feel better. And if you're riding on some bizarre drugged cloud nine with me, we can skip off into the sunset singing like some crazy Japanese animation where everyone has huge eyes and shivers all the time with glee.

Unrelated to all this but another indication of the giddiness: let's just say that last night I drank rather a lot of wine, shall we? So this morning wasn't a good time to try my balancing trick where I put my hose on, standing up. I had one leg in and the other foot inserted so of course I was not at a good time in history to be a little shaky, which I was, because I mentioned the wine, yes? So I fell over. On our bedroom floor, with my feet caught in some unintentional yoga Tree pose, lying on the floor, laughing so hard I couldn't even sit up straight.

THAT'S how giddy I am. Let's hope it lasts.

this entry is completely about socks

So, this is going to seem like an insane request, but does anyone have a particular brand of sock they're committed to?

Anyone?

The thing is, I'm a brand girl. I've got my certain brand of shampoo, my preferred soap from Lush, underwear is best in not only a certain brand, but a certain style, and I rarely buy generic anything. Anyone who wishes to berate me in the comments for this can just gently leave the room and watch that door slamming you on the ass on the way out.

So considering that I'm a brand girl right down to my brand pantyhose, I've got an appalling blind spot when it comes to socks, and socks are always letting me down. My mom usually buys me socks, actually, and they're usually pretty good, but they're scattered brands from everywhere, and if I had ONE brand of sock I loved, then at least I'd know where to go when I needed good scks.

I like non-white, comfy but not thick, without tight bands anywhere. Anyone got a sock for me?

wrapped up in bacon

I'm discussing tomorrow night's fondue extravaganza with Shana and Stuart, figuring out who's going to bring what to the table, and Shana mentions a salad that's making her drool - edamame with shiso and lemon vinagrette. I stare at the part of her sentence where she says, "isn't that yummy?" and I decide our friendship can certainly withstand my gentle honesty.

"Let's just celebrate our similarities, shall we?" And Shana laughs, because there is a Venn diagram between our two wildly disparate food tastes and it is clearly marked CHEESE so we'll be okay, Shana, Wallace, and me.

The point is, I'm a picky eater. I see you out there, friends and dinner companions of mine, rolling your eyes into the rear recesses of your brain, falling over and dying from not being surprised. Saying I'm a picky eater is a lot like saying "Vietnam was a mistake" or "the Hulk gets cranky". When I was young, we traveled through Greece every summer but you wouldn't know it for how I refused to eat anything but spaghetti Bolognese and french fries. My first reaction to almost anything you bring near my mouth on a fork is "no!", whether I've tried it or not. Mostly, I haven't.

People who know me well (and have a sadistic streak) like to trump my "no!" by pointing out the part where I haven't ever tried it. I'm forced to admit this is true and concede victory by sampling the contents of their outstretched fork. But this is done begrudgingly, and I'm rarely able to really taste the food for what it is, instead of the pulpy remains of defeat. Yeah, even THAT, whatever dish it is you love that you can't imagine anyone else disliking.

Things I have tried to eat and enjoy to no avail, by no means an exhaustive list:

Every single kind of seafood prepared any sort of way, ever, yes, even that one
Cauliflower
Liver
Caviar
Doritos
Black licorice (really, anything that reeks of aniseed)
moldy cheese
lamb
eggplant
edamame
brown rice
did I mention the seafood thing?

The seafood thing bears mentioning again because it's indicative of a larger problem. When I was 19, my brother took me on a trip to Key West with one of the provisos being that I try every single thing he ordered. I did. I tried all the seafood. Same brother and I ended up at a memorably horrific dinner at Nobu (made horrific by the fact that the woman who'd invited us insisted that the table order the chef's taster menu, meaning I couldn't order my own dish). I tried everything gamely, even when she pointed me out to the waiter and exclaimed in horror, "she doesn't eat seafood! Can you imagine what she's doing here?" to which I barely surpressed the urge to tell her that I wasn't there by my own choice and I knew a political leader in 1940's GERMANY she might get along with, I'll bet he liked sushi.

The point is, I've tried seafood. I'm married to someone who will carefully study every item on the menu until he finds one he's never heard of and promptly order it. Meanwhile, I've actually been to restaurants where there's feasibly only two things on the menu I can eat. So my point is, I'd LOVE to like seafood. It's healthy, trendy, plus sushi packaging is just so CUTE. If only I could bring myself to get past the distinctly fishy texture of fish (yes, even Mahi Mahi, no, it doesn't matter how many times I try all the fish you claim taste "just like steak").

And then there's all that other food I wrinkle my nose at the minute I've tried it. Eggplant? Slimy and tasteless. Edamame? Tastes like packing peanuts. Snowpeas? Just taste GREEN. Liver? Tastes like... well... innards. Do NOT get me started on broccoli. The more astute amongst you will long have seen through that whole "makes me feel like I'm eating little trees" routine to the true aversion behind. I hate broccoli. Most green things, in fact, rarely touch my plate.

Are you starting to get a picture of how incredibly picky I am? And in between berating me in my comments for being so close-minded, could you begin to picture how dissatisfied it makes me? How much I wish I truly loved all the varied, healthy colors of the food rainbow? I'm not one of those people who blame my parents for any and all adult flaws I possess, but I grew up in a very meat-and-potatoes household, very old-school European. Spinach was the extent of our vegetable contributions to the dinner table. And I only recently decided I like spinach. When it's raw. And in salad. And that was a BIG STEP.

I tell myself that I make up for this narrow-mindedness with passion - the foods I love, I adore. I will actually daydream about a new kind of potato I've never tried. I can talk for hours about the kinds of steaks I like, with what sort of marbling, and what I think about seasoning and sauces. I tweak and trim recipes until they're perfect, and by then I've memorized them but every time I smell their distinct smells, I'm incredibly happy. I love food.

I'm just selective. Exclusive. Right? But it's crippling, sometimes, so I've made Stuart my sherpa into the world of crazy foods I don't eat (instead of just catering to my weaknesses). For months, he wanted to make me his celery apple soup. I thought I'd hate it. I loved it, and humbly apologized for ever having doubted him, or celery. We've started making recipes with ingredients I never thought I'd allow on my chopping block - fennel, fish oils, radishes. And every chance we get, I try crazy cheeses, even moldy cheeses, trusting my favourite chefs at places like Otto and Celeste to bring out delicious cheeses even if they smell weird. I don't want to pass on my ... shall we call them peculiarities? ... to my children, making them wrinkle their tiny noses at broccoli just because Mom does. And so, I'll even eat broccoli, and god willing, fish, at our dinner tables of the future.

Perhap the trick is wrapping things in bacon, something I love fiercely with all my heart, something I think is missing in the global quest for peace and harmony. One of my favourite things to do with bacon is to wrap it around soy-sauce-and-brown-sugar-soaked water chesnuts and roast them. They're like crack, and they're the perfect winter-party snack. When I make them, they're gone in about eight seconds flat. So at Christmas, I walked into my cousin's kitchen and there were some gleaming, bacon-wrapped, wait until I get my mouth on you...

"... honey, those are scallops," said Stuart, knowing how sad I'd be that they weren't water chestnuts.

"How bad could it be, right? It's wrapped in bacon," so I popped one in my mouth. The world held its breath, or at leasst, Stuart and my dad did. "Tastes... like... fish." I grinned weakly. I'd tried! A scallop!

And so with meek, mewling steps, I'm trying to get better. I'm holding on to the small, nearly insignificant victories I've made - fish sauce in my Vietnamese takeout, actually eating the sprouts and onions in chicken-fried-rice, the spinach thing and the celery soup thing. I'm hoping for a day when fresh dark green broccoli looks as delicious in the grocery aisle as a flaky red potato or a wheel of parmesan Reggiano. Hey, you never know, right? Crazier things have happened.

Right?

the cheese drawer, OR, scenes from a marriage

We've just finished a late dinner and a couple episodes of Doctor Who when Stuart takes the dishes into the kitchen to start washing up. I flip to channel 11 (o, SaTC at 11PM, how you torture me) to watch a few minutes of the episode where Carrie finds out about Natasha when a plaintative bleat comes from the kitchen.

"The cheese is OUT. On the COUNTER."

I blink for a minute. I'd cooked dinner and grated some parmesan to go on the dinner and in my hurry to eat a warm meal, I'd left the parmesan block on the counter next to the ziploc bag it came out of. So I laugh.

"Cmon, you left the cheese OUT!"

"Are you serious?" I yell as I turn down the whining Carrie. Surely he's not seriously taking issue with the cheese thing, for reasons I will soon reveal.

"YES."

"So -" I get up from the couch and wander into the kitchen. "I was cooking dinner. We ate dinner. I left the cheese on the counter. Seriously?" He's got just a HINT of a smile but no! He's seriously taking issue! I strap on the relationship equivalent of a bazooka.

"Wait. The cheese, it's on the counter. And you're objecting to this? YOU ... are objecting to this?"

Stuart is now staring down the barrel of my bazooka wondering if his troops really have enough ammo. He's radioing the RAF for backup.

"YES! Look, the fridge is right here, you can just put the cheese back in the fridge!" He opens the fridge to demonstrate his point and my men launch a full-scale attack. Except we're both laughing so hard at this point it's difficult to hold my weapon straight.

"YOU. Stuart, every single time you put any sort of newly-opened cheese packet back in the fridge, you just PUT IT IN THERE. You never wrap it! Or pull a handy ziploc bag -" I swing around to indicate the handiness of the bag cabinet, "- out of the bag cabinet and put the cheese in it! Mozzarella has DIED a slow, hardening death in there! SERIOUSLY, you're still objecting to my hour of cheese-on-the-counter neglect?!"

We starts laughing harder.

"But," he says, valiantly holding the line, "it's so easy to just put it back in the fridge!"

"YES," I yell, "which is exactly how you do it, you just PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE. Do I need to bring up the DEAD CHICKEN IN THE FREEZER episode?!"

Stuart sputters that frostburn on chicken (which he simply PUT in the freezer in its open original container without the all-holy assistance of wrapping HOLY GOD THE WRAPPING) doesn't diminish the value of the chicken either way.

"THE BACTERIA... it...", but I can't talk for laughing now, because it's my turn up against the wall, I genuinely don't know WHAT the bacteria will do, it's a flawed argument, I just don't like FREEZERBURN CHICKEN but I had to go haul the bacteria into it. Nevertheless, I press on. "Raw chicken has bacteria!"

"And they're going to, what? Suddenly come alive in the frying pan only to DIE SECONDS LATER?" He imitates bacteria here, which may be the last recognizable straw of my ability to technically count this as a fight, because I'm sputtering and laughing and pounding his chest: "Oh, hello, I'm awake -AUGH AIE FIRE DEATH," and the bacteria go dead.

The thing is, technically this is a fight. Technically, we have a real communication breakdown about the need to WRAP THINGS BEFORE YOU PUT THEM IN THE FRIDGE, and the need to not bring up pointless arguments about bacteria that you can't back up with science. Technically, that was a fight. But it's really hard to snarkily deccimate someone else's argument when they're imitating bacteria dying in a frying pan, or when you know you don't stand a chance in hell arguing about the cheese on the counter because all I have to do is BRING UP THAT DEAD WITHERED TEN DOLLAR MOZZARELLA, you know the one.

I think it's fair to simply conclude that both factions have winning points. My winning point is the dead mozzarella.

tweaking

The very astute amongst you will have noticed that the navigation bar right up there has changed a little, with the addition of a Books button. That'll take you to a page where I'll do my damndest to update the books I'm reading, as I read them. I've always been asked for book recommendations by friends but it's gotten more frequent now that I'm writing for gothamist and when Stephanie asked today, I had to rack my brain for what I'd really enjoyed recently. Reviewing, too, is clouding the list because I spend so much more time thinking about the books I review, I can't remember which of the books I've read for pleasure are worth recommending.

So if you're looking for recommendations and you think you might share my taste (Erin, back away from the list), you're more than welcome to keep an eye on that page and pick out a choice treat. I'll star each book roughly from one to four. And if all else fails, you can always read Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

Unrelated to books, I'd like to blush and stammer with pride for a moment and say that after a gentle nudge in the right direction from Biscuit, I built the Books template myself. And by "built", of course, I mean "copied and pasted from my Links template", but still. Baby steps down the hall to website-maintenance independence. I also rebuilt all the navigation buttons myself which was hard because it required math. And I went to Sarah Lawrence, bitches, I don't do math.