blah blah blog

I feel restless. February is almost over but it totally has me by the balls. Cold, gray, awful. I hate everything. God, I am such a grump. The yoga helps but when I leave it only makes me more nitpicky about things. Zen is out the window. And the window is nailed shut. I know this is temporary but I feel like emoting it anyway.

I miss stuff. You. And you. And how we used to do.

dark green and leafy*

Last night I came home from yoga and went to kitchen to get my quick dinner. It smelled bad, like meat (*the kitchen, not my dinner!). Odd because usually I don't mind the smell of meat at all. Sometimes it smells delicious, I just don't want to eat it. Not this time, yuck. I heated up my leftover broccoli-cauliflower soup from the night before, salted a ripe tomato and a few pieces of cucumber and some carrot sticks.

I went upstairs and Rooster was just finishing up his reheated Chinese food -- the source of the mystery stank. He looked at my dinner -- bright green, red, orange -- and whined "In five minutes you made yourself a dinner ten times better than mine!"

I am inadvertently bringing him over to the dark side. The dark green and leafy side.

Please stand clear

Saw a great elderly woman on the train this morning, as I was getting off at Union Station. She was maybe 5’ tall, wearing a floor-length sable fur coat, with blood-red lips. Her pale powdery face had long loose jowls and was surrounded by auburn hair that had streaks of Manic Panic red amongst the curls. She was just so unexpected and funny and wild, for a moment I flashed that I was getting off the train at Penn Station in New York.

There are a few characters I encounter in my commute, but they are fewer and less bold, and all at Union Station. There is the plaintive “please help me please help me” man – there always is. There is a gaunt, chain-smoking woman with a voice as low and coarse as gravel who wheels about in circles – I can’t understand what she says. My favorite homeless man stands out by the bus stop every day, by the same stand of newspaper dispensers, ranting the same story about someone stealing his money for 36 years. (When I first moved here a year ago it was 35 years. He is keeping track.) His voice is so booming and magnificent. He smokes a cigarette, glaring, and yells like a senator. Every day the same. Someday I will sit and listen to the whole story.

There is one man stationed near the metro card machines that I assumed was quietly selling the newspapers stacked around him. He wears one of those reflective safety-orange vests. I recently realized though that he is telling it to all the sinners that pass by. I want to let him know that his delivery is much too faint, soft. We can hardly hear you; you’ve really got to project.

I don’t know what the newspapers are for, but maybe he knows something I don’t, like if you are more unassuming, the DC police won’t bother you. Maybe he knows why there are no homeless people on the subway here, on the actual trains. With the entry-exit ticket system, it might just be plain harder to get in there without a fare. There are no drunken, drooling, ranting, raving, begging, scamming, proselytizing nomads wandering from car to car. You can’t even move from car to car. There is also no Dr. Z ad or mono-tanned Bud Light models plastering every surface, just the occasional modest poster promoting Alexandria, VA, as a good place to lease or buy office space. The cars are lined on either side with sets of two seats, so that the person by the window must say “excuse me” to the person sitting next to them, who must then stand up and let them out. There is no piss or soda or unidentified liquid pooling and rolling from one end of the car to the other with the rhythm of the ride; the floors are carpeted. It is subdued, but inefficient.

It has been one year since that freezing “sucks day” last February when two strapping orthodox Jews loaded my stuff on the truck and ten hours later unloaded it in DC. That was when my single life really ended, when the spaces for solitude shrank and reduced in number. It is a different life now, where we share many things and most experiences, and I love that we do. But among the times I have for my own reflection are the 60 minutes round-trip each workday. The subway, she is mine.

Yay for me.

look book *now with pic

I really would like to learn to sew. There is something mysterious and powerful and sooo attractive about the ability to make things oneself. My mother grew up sewing and tried to teach me a few things, but my interest level didn't go beyond buttons and rough hems.

I went to the fabric store last weekend and all these women were walking around the bins, inspecting things, pouring over patterns. "They all know what they're doing!" I thought. It was cool to be around. And of course the lovely women that worked there were helpful and cheerful and just what you'd want them to be.

So, I have an appointment with a little lady on Sunday. I'll drive out to her house, and she'll show me her book of work, and I'll show her mine. And we'll see what's what.

Here's a tease.

uptight

Call it what you will, but I am so happy these looks are coming back. Perfect timing . . . I love them!

Instead of . . .

. . . ordering seafood like I normally do, I went for the madeira mushrooms over a potato galette last night. It was the right call.

. . . working diligently, I have been procrastinating and then slamming things through at the last minute. I feel sort of bad about it, but not that bad.

. . . remembering to turn off the space heater in my room first, I went ahead and began drying my hair in the bathroom, and blew the fuse again this morning.

. . . watching the Super Bowl, I think I will listen to Alan Watts tapes this weekend. I've been on the verge of contemplative, lately. It sounds cozy.

friday five

1. It's cold as balls here. R and I debate over which is worse, January or February. i trump when I argue that January is worse because you still have February yet to endure! And it won't even SNOW, dammit. I want a snow day.

2. Though I watch poshgirlvintage.com like a hawk, I think I am going to get my dress made after all. This weekend I am going to check out a huge local fabric store and see if I can't get some recommendations, and hopefully a referral or two for a dressmaker.

3. We've decided on a honeymoon destination: SE Asia! Oh my goodness, the more I read about Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, the more excited I get. I'm giddy, seriously. I don't think two weeks will be nearly enough, but I guess we'll make it work. I GUESS.

4. Shrimp with white beans
saute garlic, sliced celery and raw shrimp in a little olive oil. splash on some white wine and season with salt and pepper, continue to cook and reduce the wine sauce. when the shrimp are just done, remove from heat and add a can of drained and rinsed cannellini beans. throw in some chopped fresh herbs like parsley, cilantro or dill -- or all three. squeeze half a lemon over, adjust seasoning. serve on a bed of arugula or other greens with a hunk of crusty bread. total time -- about 15 minutes.

5. P made it to Dallas. S bought a car. A has a boyfriend. C is laying low. 2008, y'all. So far, so good.

Bonus: I had lunch with Judy yesterday. We both agreed DC is lame. I love her!

soupçon

Work is busy these days, and these day slip away quickly. God, I can't believe it's January. I've never been a big fan of January. Cold. Baited. Uncomfortably inevitable. But here we are.

January has brought a renewed obsession with food and exercise, which is a welcome compulsion. My pants fit better already! Thankfully the time I'm spending in the gym is all benefit and no cost -- literally. I love that I have a free facility!

The food side of things has been unexpectedly vegan recently, without any conscious effort to make it so. I've been cooking a lot of soups and other vegetable dishes that just end up animal-free. Often the only sin is a rind of parmesan reggiano slipped into the broth -- and if that's wrong I don't want to be right. It adds such a rich silkiness to my italian soups. Delicious! I threw together a minestrone last night that was lovely, but I just know it's going to be much better today. And this time I made a ton of it so there would be leftovers -- a rare thing in our house.

R and I have been having anxiety dreams. Nothing like a wedding registry to make you feel like a real asshole. He dreamt I left him, and he had to deal with boxes and boxes of gifts. Sometimes I think about something happening to him and panic fast and hard. I remember Day telling me she experienced that too. Today he drove me to work, and sitting there beside him in the cold car, in the severe January morning light, I loved him so much it terrified me.

grouchy

Today I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. And that's because I woke up on the futon, not the bed. SOMEBODY was snoring and I had to evacuate the bedroom at some wee hour to try and salvage the remaining hours of potential sleep. So I'm not feeling 100 dollars. As a bonus, it's hump day. I've never understood Steph's appreciation for Wednesdays; they've always depressed me, the whole stranded between weekends thing.

Last Friday, I was looking forward to the weekend and a quiet return to taking out the recycling, doing laundry and eating eggs with the Rooster. I took down the holiday decor and washed the last of the guests' linens. That was all good, but somehow there was also this undercurrent of irritability. R has been incredibly stuffed up though his cold is improving, and it makes him so dejected and ornery. And I've had this low-grade anxiety about planning the GDBD that I fixated on the need to get organized, whatever that means. But it just wasn't happening. Then we saw his parents on Saturday evening and finally updated them on our plans, and his mom flipped out a little when we told them the guest list was less than 40 people. We worked through that, mostly, but by Sunday night I was alternating between angry, stubborn, tearful, panicked and resentful and knew I had to take a step back.

I've decided I have to get philosophical about this whole GDBD. See, I went for years with this lame nonchalance about how maybe I won't ever get married, and how I certainly won't be wearing a white dress, and how the whole wedding industry is a scam anyway, yadda yadda yadda. All that was coming from a sincere but also confused place, and a deep inability to envision my own future self, let alone myself walking down some aisle. That arm's length attitude has made it really really tough to be enthusiastic and positive about planning my own God Damn Big Day, despite the fact that I am madly in love and feel wildly lucky that I met R and we want to live our lives together.

So I took that step back. I'm thinking about how much fun I had planning our little new year's eve thing, and how not stressed I was, and how wonderful it was to have so many of our darling friends there to celebrate with. If I can capture a modicum of that spirit and let it bloom into the GDBD, we're all good.

rosemary's baby

My invention already exists, dammit.

Oh well, I'm still making it for NYE! With club soda instead of ice, methinks. Along with cider hot toddies, oatmeal cookie shots, and plenty of champagne, natch. And Mark Bittman just set me up with munchies ideas, so we're set! (P, I hope you will make homemade hummus for us, too!)

Yum.

not my house

The summer before last, I was spending a long weekend at the beach with Rooster when David called and said the air-conditioner at home died. He was frazzled, frustrated with having to deal with the servicemen, trying to negotiate prices, etc. Oh, and he was hot, because it was August and it was typically sweltering and disgusting in DC. So he was understandably testy. It cost the boys several thousand dollars to install the monster needed to cool the house, but it had to be done.

This summer, when I was an official resident, R and I went camping with some friends, and had a great time fishing, eating, sitting by the fire. Our last night in woods however was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm, and in the morning, all of our belongings were soaked and splattered with mud. Driving home, wet and exhausted, we couldn't wait to unpack and take hot showers. But lo, the appliance gods had other plans for us. David called to let us know that the hot water heater had died and emptied its bowels onto the basement floor. "Bad things happen when you go away," he said to R. We got home and spent the next several hours trying to sop up the gallons of water soaking the carpet, and then ruefully took cold showers and went to bed. A day and a couple thousand dollars later, we had a new water heater.

I guess you can only go so long without needing a visit from your friendly HVAC/plumbing professional, and now that winter has a firm grip on the city, our boiler felt it would be a good time to call it quits. We've had intermittent heat for the last week or two, so I stayed home in the morning to meet the installers, and Dave took the afternoon shift. We were all really looking forward to having the brand new, reliable furnace that they were installing. Except that they weren't, because the new one was defective out of the box. And another one was 100 miles away. So they waited for hours for it, and when that one finally arrived and was installed, they still couldn't get the system to work right. The poor guys were at our house for 14 hours. We slept with many blankets last night. Our house is freezing. Hopefully today they will fix everything. And we will write another hefty check.

I say it all the time: technically, it's not MY house. The dishes? Not mine. The ugly dining room table? Not mine. The mortgage isn't mine either. But heat? Yeah, I'd like some of that.

details

i am home alone tonight. the boys have gone to a swanky holiday party for real estate types. i am trying to catch up on reading; book club is tomorrow. it has been a long day of meetings at work and i'm tired. a few hours of reading on the couch with a blanket over my legs is restorative. i sip wine and think about telling the girls to read this book. i know it is worth it, although i am only halfway through.

the leather ottoman sits at the arm of the sofa. there is no other logical place for it to go, so that's where we put it when we bought the couch. to the left always sits david's briefcase. he must set it there every evening when he comes home from work, but i have never seen him do so. i usually arrive second.

on top of the ottoman is my black purse. it has been there for several days, collapsed like bagpipes. lately i have been using the red leather bag given to me by R's parents last christmas. it isn't my favorite, but it serves as a useful, appropriate bag for work, able to hold papers, files, or a laptop. it sits, gaping a little, to the right of the ottoman. tonight R's tumi briefcase sits against the exposed side of the ottoman. i like seeing all our things there, together -- a funny, modern family. last night we talked a little with david about the timing of the GDBD. he was surprised to hear it would be as soon as august. he thinks it will be "weird" to all be living together after R and I are married. i have felt the same way for some time, but now i'm not sure. i do and i don't.

upstairs, the bedroom light is on. R often leaves this light on absentmindedly. the hermit crab is in his new expanded terrarium on the dresser. he doesn't seem as enthusiastic about it as we'd hoped. what does crab enthusiasm look like? he hasn't moved into any of the new shells we bought for him.

in my room, by my desk, bits of cat litter get crunched under my feet. three piles of folded laundry sit on the futon, waiting to be put away. there is the faint smell of the cat box. i'd like to buy some new candles, to have fragrance and soft light in a few rooms, like reminders of something fond. winter revs and retreat over days and weeks. my ring is back from new york, special on my finger. i was getting used to not having a ring. it fits now, but still slides to one side or another, heavier than i'd expected. i know i will grow accustomed to that before too long.

GDBD

We had snow on Wednesday. Not enough to shut down the federal government, which kind of baffles me, because I was under the impression that our nation's esteemed agencies here in DC pretty much collapse when it so much as flurries. But alas, not this time. Despite the fact that I've been a resident of the mid-Atlantic for more than five years now, I still get excited about that first snow. It's the wide-eyed California wonder in me, I guess. I've been dreaming of a white Christmas my entire life. Not gonna happen.

We went to Rooster's dad's law firm's holiday party last night. It was really more a schmoozing opportunity for the firm's employees and all their clients, so I was fairly bored, but Mr. K really wanted to show me off, so to speak. It was cute. I talked to this one lady who has apparently been a client of R's dad for a long long time, and they adore him to pieces because -- wait for it -- he saved their farm. I'm not even kidding. They have this property that's been in the family for 106 years and was threatened by development nearby. This dear old lady was telling me how much she trusts, respects, admires and adores Mr. K. It made me a little proud, in a strange way. They are good people, people love them. And soon I will be part of their family too.

I didn't anticipate the inevitable questions that everyone asks, immediately. When's the big day? etc. But there they are. I know people are just making polite conversation. A few wives asked to see the ring, and were totally confounded when I held up my hand and showed them the $5 dollar clear plastic toy ring I've been wearing. My actual ring had to be sent away for resizing, and because it's such an old piece it is taking a little longer than we'd hoped. So these ladies see the fake ring, which I think is funny, and they absolutely don't know what to say. Even when I tell them the story and that it's just a "placeholder" they still looked at me strangely. Oh well.

Today we're heading up to PA to visit an old friend for the day/night. She and her husband still have never met R. I was in their wedding, which was one of those gorgeous and huge pageants, and I'm sure they will have tons of advice for us about planning "the big day." Maybe I'll start calling it the BD for shorthand. I'm sort of freaking out about planning the god damn thing. The GDBD. I just want to have it all figured out for me, and I'll show up in a nice dress, cry, drink champagne, eat fabulous food with my friends and family, laugh, dance, and have some sex. Done!

test

damnit