You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March, 2009.
I bought daffodils this weekend. Real, live daffodils. Flown from Ireland, their tag said, but I don’t know whether to believe that.
The sun is up when I am, and when I make tea after my shower, it’s not just me sitting there in an artificially-illuminated living room.
The trees are blooming, losing some of their spindly scrawnyness; something beautiful is emerging, and it’ll be here, for a little while. At work I sent off our issue for tomorrow, and the date? April 1. April. Already? How happy.
But for all its floral delicacy, for all its breaths of fresh air, spring is also somewhat didactic, I think; portentous, even. Yes, the winter is over, and we made it out. Good things are coming, but you’ve got this limited window in which to act. Bloom too soon, and you’ll freeze; wait too late, and the scorched earth will stunt your roots. Even if you do it perfectly, one day of heavy rains or high winds can do you in. It’s like the cherry blossoms, right: treasure beauty, but know that it is but temporal. This, too, shall pass: good, bad, or otherwise. All of those blossoms will eventually fall. You just try to see them, enjoy them, and appreciate them while you can.
Down around the mall these days, a lot of tourists are trying to do just that. They are flanked, however, by what seems to be some sort of baby brigade: an army of strollers and diaper bag-toting power moms. I feel like there are a lot more babies out this year. Not a day has passed these last weeks where I haven’t found myself dodging some truly outrageously-outfitted contraptions: fancy pedals and mesh attachments; light-up seatbelts and serious sunvisors (with space for the starbucks, natch). Little-bitty traction tires blocking the metro entrances and stalling sidewalk traffic. Some of them look jet-propelled, though I couldn’t say for sure. What I know is this: every day, in every way, I see little families, lots of people progressing just exactly the way they should be.
[It seems odd to me that I’m seeing more babies this year, when times basically suck. Then again, times basically suck. Good grief. Is everyone getting some?]
This year more than ever, too, there have been some unusual side-effects. “MOM,” the little maybe-babies inside of me yell. “We want to be zygotes. We want to be out there, too. We want electro-strollers and car seats and onesies with circus animals. GET WITH THE PROGRAM.”
My future children are a feisty lot. I ignore them, but they’ve been getting rowdy of late. I tell them I’m waiting to find them a good dad, the right moment, the right situation, trust me, maybe-babies, mom’s right on this one, but they don’t seem too open to suggestion at this particular juncture. I think they may be organizing a protest; pretty soon they’ll be marching right on out with a lengthy list of demands. I can almost feel them drawing out little picket signs on popsicle sticks.
Sigh. I drown out their cries with some peppy dance-around-now music, and pour a glass of wine. I look out onto the sun-swept patio below, and hope with all my heart I’m not destined to fall from the tree too soon.
And yet still something of a shopping win.
I thought it was plain bad luck that my credit card was declined at the liquor store on Friday. The ante upped to karma when it was declined, again, at the post office, after a prolonged inquisition re: the liquids in the box. “Bubble bath,” I said, and smiled my charming smile. “Yes, of course, it’s in a ziplock; yes, of course, I know the rules!” Lies!
It’s probably some kind of a crime to lie to government officials, even the mean ones who work in my post office. The bar association would also, likely, be interested to know about my proclivity to ship contraband across state lines. But I persist. Heh heh, I think. Stickin’ one to the man.
I had a nice chat with the Nordstrom Bank on returning to the office; apparently my card was declined because it had never been activated. I find this mighty curious, seeing as the card bought plenty of cheesy Mexican deliciousness just the night before, but whatever, I don’t argue. She said she’d fix it, and that was good enough for me.
A fantastically overcast Saturday found me down in Old Town. (You can take the girl out of Seattle, but it seems it’s much harder to take the Seattle out of the girl—those lightly rainy, drizzly grey days bring me an enormous sense of well-being, and make me want to just sit down on the asphalt and feel it. Smell it, breathe it in; we don’t get enough of those days here. In my northwest-oriented opinion, certainly.). It was the first “real” Saturday I’ve had in a long time—no studying, no essays to grade; no plans, and nothing that has to get done but just live.
I painted my toenails, and did laundry; I dropped off shoes for repair and took a breath as I crossed the cobble-stoned streets I should walk down more often. I popped into Ann Taylor Loft and found the. most. adorable dress for Gold Cup (and possibly Easter, too; I’m all for combining resources) (and NO, this emaciated model is not me):
Grand total, $31. A steal! Except. The platinum visa had no friends there.
The upshot, I suppose, is that my alternate airline card is racking up the miles; I’ll need them since I wiped out the account going home for free last year at Thanksgiving. Still, though.
I call them when I get home, those platinum visa people, and demand an explanation. “You entered the wrong expiration date,” they say, which is preposterous since all I did was swipe it.
Come to find out, and I am seriously less than amused about this, my account was somehow implicated in a data breach with one of Nordstrom’s creditors. They claim they sent me a new card with a new expiration date and back-side code in February. Clearly it hasn’t arrived; hence, I’ve been using the only one I’ve ever had.
They cancelled it immediately, and a new one is in the mail.
All well and good, until you take into account my next errand: returning a jacket I bought at Nordstrom. With the now-cancelled Nordstrom visa, of course.
She can’t credit it back, my poor flustered clerk; it keeps coming up as an error. Rather than get on the phone with the bank, she just refunds me in cash; probably against policy, but good grief if they looked at my spending history there, they ought to be bending over. Plus, I get to keep the points this way, so cheers all around.
Pockets laden with pennies and nickels and folded bills, I cruised then into Banana Republic, where the coat I saw in NY last weekend lives; the reason, yes, for the Nordstrom return. So much cuter. And so totally on sale.
A rogue shopper pulls me aside as I’m trying it on, though; “you know, if you buy that online before tomorrow, you can save an extra 20%,” she says, and nods a knowing nod. “Enter code ‘EXTRA20.’ Seriously.” Then she disappears. Sweet guardian angel of shopping! On her word, I skipped the long, long, very long lines for the checkout, and headed home. Lo, she spoke the truth—the code’s good through midnight tonight, on my reading—and the coat that was originally $225? Mine for $87, plus shipping and handling. The platinum visa’s exploits are making it miss out on all of my fun, seriously.
Perhaps that’s for the best, though … maybe it needed the vacation. Maybe its replacement will be a mild-mannered cousin, a shy one who’ll demure on being whipped out. One who’ll calmly remind me to save, not spend. Whether I listen though; whether I listen will be the real test. Huh.
I’m an oldest child, and have always had something of an independent streak to me. I’m good at keeping myself entertained, and staying on-task. I hate group projects when I’m not in charge.
I don’t get a lot of oversight at work; I get assignments, but am basically granted the liberty to execute them on my own time and as I see fit. I’ve found this works out marvelously.
I’ve gotten used to an empty office; my boss has been “working” a lot from home (verb to be construed in its loosest possible sense). So much so that his presence today, a day he’d said he’d be out, is kind of jarring. It’s broken my focus.
The lights! The lights in that corner office are on! How strange. He’s here! He’s here in the flesh! It’s like an apparition. But one of those bad apparitions; the ones that poke their heads in every fourteen-point-five seconds with a “whatcha workin’ on?” question that makes me want to take a red sharpie to the man’s white board with the following edits:
1. Re: respect. I am a “you,” not a “cha.”
2. Re: dropped letters. They are against our style rules.
3. Re: prepositions. See, “should not come at the end of a sentence.”
4. Re: logic. As in, I answered an e-mail with a shocking rendition of this same question not a half hour ago. As in, you made the assignments, remember? As in, I’m working on it, so take a breath already.
Except at the moment, clearly, I’m not so much working on it. I’m planning now how I’ll slip out for a longish-lunch under the radar; how I’ll make it to the liquor store, to the post office, and to chipotle in under an hour. (Because yes, I am mailing alcohol to a friend for her birthday. I am that friend. Amazing, I know).
At least it’s Friday! At last.
I used to be outrageously good at keeping in touch. I remembered birthdays, and I sent long and newsy e-mails; I wrote to my grandmas, and I’d sit down in the evenings and really talk to my parents.
It never seemed like it was that much of an effort, but maybe I’m just looking back with the glow of time elapsed: goggles for the good old days that filter out the stresses and troubles that must have been there.
My birthday calendar is under my bed somewhere now, and the majority of my calls are made while in transit or in the midst of a multi-tasking frenzy. Little gets done if it’s not on some almighty list, and even then, it’s iffy.
A to-do list fell out of my planner this morning from early February. On it were five names. FIVE people I’d meant to get in touch with, meant to write, meant to shout out to. Five names uncrossed.
There’s so much I want to keep up with, so many details I want to know, but only so many hours in the day, yeah? Even finding time to think these days seems trying, which is totally ridiculous.
If asked for my biggest flaws, four out of five ex-boyfriends would, I expect, list near the top of their lists that I live in my head too much, that I lock too many thoughts up; that I’m too introspective too much of the time. That I like my melancholy moods of sad English music and quiet writing more than I like getting out there and making friends and cultivating interests. Maybe that’s true. I like my head; things make sense here.
Living in one’s head can be isolating, though, and in a lot of ways I depend on my lifelines of keeping in touch. I don’t have a lot of friends, at least not friends that really know me inside and out. I let a lot of people into the periphery, but those on the inside? The people who are really, truly, “my people”? Their ranks are growing, sure, but I can count them on a hand and a half. Twenty-seven years, and fewer friends than fingers; is this sad?
They’re worth it though, those friends. They forgive my failures, and time elapsed means little.
Back in the Spring of 1999, two rather ordinary girls—the quiet ones of the class, the ones not terribly concerned with makeup, the ones who were satisfied with the unadulterated version of the uniform so easily tarted up by their classmates—are zipping down the hill in one or the other of their parents’ Honda accords. They’re on their way to Starbucks (predictable); they know they can get there and back before they need to sign in for 7th period tutorial. This was me and my best friend from high school.
Now, in a newer version of that same Honda, she picks me up at the train station. We park with less urgency this go-round in the graduate lot, but our laughs haven’t changed as we wait for the light to cross; at the Starbucks there on Nassau, we order the same drinks. If you looked hard enough, you’d see the current Economist peeking out of her bag, and you might catch a glimpse of the case files beneath the novels in my cutie overnighter. Stare a little longer and you’ll notice her sophisticated haircut, my (preposterously expensive) jeans and tailored sweater; our collectively adorable shoes. Little hints, these, that something is not quite the same from our high school prototype. You’d have to look, though.
I need her like I need all of my friends. I need her to keep me balanced, and to keep me real; to keep me conscious of who I am. The world changes, time changes, but the good stuff stays true.
I lost touch with her for far too long. We were lucky that it didn’t matter, but still, details were lost. Growing up and finding love; getting degrees and mending broken hearts. I’ve done a lot of it alone, and while that’s worked, it’s not all that enviable.
The weekend was a breather, a glimpse back into who I was and who I still am. A reminder of how good life was before I let my calendar, my lists, my urgent sense of time-related panic prevail.
I want to get back there. Back where a blank e-mail window is a welcome reprieve, not a name to be crossed off; where keeping up with friends and family is part of my head-life, not antithetical to it. It’s a process.
It’s been paradoxical, this week; I’ve been busier than anything, but my motivation has hit an all-time low. I’m distracted. I’m flighty. I’m here and there and everywhere; I get what needs to get done done, but it’s a senselessly painful progress. See, e.g., how ridiculously long it took to get to Friday.
I put on some music, and pretend that I care. About essays, about e-mails, about work.
If I look long enough at the mash of letters in this qwerty mess in front of me, it starts to feel outrageously foreign. Letters and numbers and how do they make sense to me? Getting from the i to the I to the me, where’s that path again? I want to see it. I want it charted out. I want answers. This sea of jumbled pieces just isn’t doing it.
The thing is, my fingers have this sort of magic. They know the dance if I’d just let them go. I blink and they’re up, those letters, in a fury of rearrangement; back down, they scramble into position, ta-da, and take a tu-tued curtsy.
I can make sentences and stories from letters in Russian. I can make muffins from scratch. But I have no idea what this is all about, or how to get there except by letting go.
So I float, and I think, and I eat a muffin or two.
это все. That’s all.
Or maybe a barrel of wine.
A fantastically Irish weekend has deposited me rudely back into Monday. No, I did not spent time as one of those glitter-bowler-hat-in-public types; that drunk girl on the metro with green streaks in her hair and a “most likely to GET LUCKY” t-shirt this weekend was assuredly not me. I hid my green beneath a long coat; cloaking my indiscretions and keeping a bit of modesty, thanks. Still, I managed to celebrate.
That I am not one lick Irish is one of my biggest disappointments in life. Close behind are not having green eyes; not being a princess; having a shockingly poor sense of direction; and that funny spot where my feet bump out.
The Irish, happily, can be faked.
The all-around amazing Heidi invited me out to Irish Mass on Saturday, which is where my heart began her transformation to the leprechaun-lovely. Part of the Mass was in Gaelic, and the music, I swear, evoked the sweeping hills and glens of the Emerald Isle–at least the way they exist in my mind, having never actually been there. More than once, the harp, the violin, the voices made me want to cry.
I worried, then, that I may be turning into my mom. She cries in church a lot.
I quashed these thoughts with beers below. Reasons I love the Catholic Church, #5,112-5,113:
Against a backdrop of bagpipes and surely very Irish rain Sunday afternoon, I found myself at Chateau O’Brien, “Virginia’s Irish Winery.” Sure. And I’m Magda McLucky, the commonwealth’s Irish darling. But I’m a sucker for all things quasi-Irish (obviously, you say), and for all things wine. It’s a triple header when said wine comes paired with Guinness cheesecake; oh, good gracious, so freaking delicious. I’d learn to make it, but I’m pretty proud of my low cholesterol, and that I fit into my pants; better, then, as an occasional indulgence. Self control I sometimes have, but I fear cheesecake of that caliber in my house would totally do me in.
I was up alarmingly early today, sitting on my couch in the pre-dawn hours staring at my laptop and willing work to get done. The rains fell against the darkened windows and I turned up the celtic music on my Irish playlist, though, and it didn’t seem so bad.
Hours later and I’m still at it—cases to be filed and written, hearings to sit in on, interviews to conduct. This will be a week of living on espresso and vitamin B, I fear, but at least it comes with a little bit of green. And tomorrow, though no one will see it, I’ll be wearing my Guinness underpants. Being Irish, even fraudulently, has So. Many. Perks.
I read the papers, I watch the blogs, and I have a pretty good idea of just how bleak the outlook is right now for our economy. Here in DC, though, it’s pretty easy to feel insulated; there’s a lot of money still, and the government’s not going out of business any time soon. It’s not like you can expect to get right in if you show up at a fancy restaurant in the middle of a Friday night, and it’s likely you’ll have to stand as you sip your $12 martini at the bar.
But there’s still a slow-down. More under wraps, maybe; a hiring freeze here, cancelled conferences there. It’s happening.
Today is the second Friday the Thirteenth in a row. I feel like this is a bad sign.
At least in the legal world, last month’s 12th saw the start of major layoffs in big firms; yesterday was a booming aftershock. Read about all the blood and carnage at abovethelaw.com; long a facet of my reader but lying rather dormant of late. Kind of like respect for the dead; avert your eyes from the scene of the accident, etc.
These are my people. This is me, had I not bailed on traditional practice. These are friends of mine, classmates of mine, people who, three years ago, seemed so destined to go big places, be big successes. Suddenly these headlines have faces and real names. It’s a little bit scary, and I’m struggling to find the right words.
One of my best DC gal pals got her notice last night. Yes, there will be drinks. And yes, there will be toasts to the future, and new beginnings; beers for the brightness that must be right around the corner. It must be.
This is hitting way too close to home.
It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, I was down on the mall at the inauguration concert, holding hands with strangers and thinking about how positively wonderful it is to be American; today I open the papers with more than a little bit of dread.
In other news, it’s snowing. I woke up in the freezing cold. Turns out I switched off my heater when I had the windows open this weekend; a bit premature, I guess! The promise of spring is still real, but it looks like we’ll have to trudge through some slush to get there.
If you live in a bad manner, you cannot go to Paradise, but rather you will fall into the Hell of agony. Buddhist teaching.
I think I’d like to sit down with a neurosurgeon sometime, or a well-trained psychiatrist. Our brains are so much more complex than we realize; they hold so much, remember so many details, and recount so many more happenings than we can possibly comprehend.
I was talking with the Japan Man a few nights ago, and the conversation went, perhaps not surprisingly, to Japan. About the people we knew there, the things we did; the places we went and the memories we shared. Nothing really about the us that somehow happened, but more about the whole thing; painting the background but leaving the subject a voided blank.
Since then I’ve been remembering. It’s been coming back, all of it. Memories and feelings; wants and weird details. Everything.
The Japan Man is a casualty of the BigLaw crumble sweeping the legal world; layoffs dressed up as downsizing, cutting costs, axing overpaid associates in a mad attempt to stay afloat. He has three months more there, he said. And he’s looking to come to DC.
I’d try to sit down and process that, but I’m off already in my head, lost in the fog at Unzen. Unzen, a hotspring outside of Nagasaki, where we went for a weekend; an area that, I have read, was held as holy ground for centuries. Monks lived there, prayed there, meditated there on the 84,000 buddhist hells and tortures awaiting wrongdoers in the afterlife. The sighs and whistles from the rocks, they say, are the eternal cries of the damned.
It can’t be yet 8am, and I’m walking there alone; me in my western clothes a stranger amongst contemplative old men in their robes. I read the sign-markers at each spring, the editor in me overlooking the hilarity of their English, thankful only for a hint at understanding. A translated version of someone’s truth.
I think. I did a lot of thinking that summer; perhaps too much.
I feel like I’m on the brink of something bigger as my flip-flopped toes creep up to the edge of Jealousy Hell. I can sense it but I can’t quite define it; I can feel it, but I can’t see. The fingers of my mind are reaching out and I allllllmost have it, there in the sulpher haze.
But the fog lifts; the sun comes up. The rocks return to being usual, the sighs just a novelty, and I blink in a photo snapped with friends then awake.
I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do this again.
It’s 5.30 on Tuesday. It could be sunny, it could be rainy; it could be sleeting snow and skittles, but I wouldn’t know seeing as I haven’t left this corridor all day, and my hateful office here has no windows.
I can’t remember the last time I left right at five. Can’t even remember. It’s illusory; its that imaginary number that turned me off of math for good. Rather like my boss. He, cheeky bastard, got to leave at 2.45. (ohhh, the words). (I’d note that he didn’t roll in till 10.30; I’d spend pages wondering how the man possibly has a job but alas, I will not, as I think it’s been adequately established that he’s a parasite. One of the ugly ones with fangs and gross hairs. And that is all).
I’m heading home to an apartment that was just as messy as it was before, to a voicemail box that will be just as lonely, to a thrilling dinner-for-one. It’s not really that I mind being single; quite the opposite at the moment, really. I’m actually liking being alone, taking time for me; eating popcorn for dinner if I want, and having only my own obligations to look after. It’s just that I’d just prefer to not always be reminded of it, pitied for it, targeted because of it.
I meet this ad every so often online, a cheeky cupid obstructing an article I’m trying to read, a pulsing heart dancing across the top of my window. “You have THREE love crushes waiting!!” it proclaims, or something else 7th-grade similar and wholly preposterous.
Granted, some of the men I’ve known, men of the texting-not-talking generation, probably would subscribe to this sort of thing. So maybe it’s plausible. But really? A love crush that can’t call me, can’t e-mail me, can’t buck up and tell me he likes me but tells a third party website? A website that has this stealth capability to track me down while I should be working and KNOWS, just knows that it’s me right here right now on this random stumbled-upon page on zen poetry?
I’m moderately impressed by the nerve of these advertisers, who will of course require all of your contact info in order to hand over the prized details; at least the love crush is cleverer than “hit the monkey with the banana and win an iphone.” Like anyone believes that.
The thing is, I never really considered the people who click that love crush, the people who think it’s really real; who sign away all of their information in order to learn this mystery person’s identity. I didn’t think that actual deception would enter in here, but I guess it makes sense: you click to get the iphone like you click to meet the man of your dreams. I find that more than a little bit sad.
I suppose it’s a bit different, or at least more plausible, in the social networking world—if an anonymous “love crush” were to send me something to my facebook account, maybe it would seem more real. But if the ad was hyper-ambiguous, and required my cell phone number “to validate,” would I give it up? Yeah, NO. A lot of people, it seems, do, though all they get is copious (and costly) text spam in return. Depressing.
Back around Thanksgiving, the fine people at the Washington Attorney General’s office said that enough was enough, and sued one of these operations—a group doing business as MyLuvCrush—for large-scale deception and consumer fraud. As the Washington attorney here, I had the pleasure of summing it up. And now, folks, they’re back. A violated injunction resulting in upped fines and, notably, forceful instructions to stop deceiving our singles.
Those weren’t the exact words, of course, but that was the idea. It’s an idea that seems to be catching on as a trend in these sorts of online consumer protection cases; an idea that deceiving single people with promises of an unattainable love is a special kind of fraud. That we’re somehow vulnerable online in ways that maybe other consumers aren’t. I kind of find that hilarious. As a member of this quasi-protected class, though, I don’t know whether to feel privileged or insulted.
For now, I think I’m just content to applaud the state’s effort, take pride in the knowledge that I’m not so easily duped, and hold on till tonight, when my real-life love crush and I have another tele-date: 9pm eastern, 8 central. It may work out to be just as illusory. But at least he already has my cell number.
It smells like summertime outside. I’m perched here at my kitchen table/desk/multi-purpose place, surveying the mess extending from the counters to the bathroom to the carpet, wall to wall: dishes in the sink, and DVDs out of their cases; shoes toppled over by the door, the sofa pushed back, and every blanket I own folded sloppily at my feet.
My window is open; a glass of the white I usually reserve for the warmer months is to my right as someone’s grandparents read the paper on the benches in the courtyard below. I’m just back from dropping my sister at the airport.
So worth it.
The best of weekends end like this, where cares don’t seem too pressing, life doesn’t seem that intimidating. I’ll get to it all. In time. No hurry. Take time to breathe.
The best of weekends start like a vacation. A day off of work; sleeping late and tip-toeing through the living room while the rest of the world runs for a train. Making pancakes instead of hastily packing a muffin into a ziplock, and sharing hilarious websites instead of reading hateful and stress-inducing e-mails.
Behold, our Friday breakfast:
Truly, it only got better from there. A springtime day at Mount Vernon, virtually free of tourists; long conversations on near-deserted forest trails; inside jokes remembering our shared childhood.
Far too much drinking with good friends after a late lunch, and an unfortunately skipped dinner. Rather horrific memories the next morning of sitting on the bar, stealing a pitcher of beer; they’d closed the floor but hadn’t told us to leave. A pitcher mostly full of foam (magda = needs practice); a pitcher pulled despite (repeated) attestations that “I could be disbarred for this!” (I’m a fun drunk, yes?).
Waking up in a Jagermeister t-shirt. I don’t even drink Jager anymore. The altogether too perky Jager girls came by our table, and in case you ever find yourself in their company, FYI, Jager has 56 ingredients. You, too, could be the proud owner of a midriff-bearing shirt from the devil’s distillery! Come on, all the cool kids are doing it.
Being glad I can relate to her now as a friend, and the knowledge that while my days as role model will never really be over, those functions are no longer in the top paragraphs of my job description.
Lazy Saturdays watching Sports Night on DVD. Pedicures with the doctor fish, the ones that swim around and nibble all of the dead skin off of your feet. Walking into Old Town for thai takeout, and talking to our parents on the way; coming home and watching The Trouble with Angels (long a favorite of Catholic schoolgirls the world over). Realizing that, although she’s as flawed as the rest of us, she’s got so much strength and spunk.
Falling in love with that blue-eyed baby who came home from the hospital 21 years ago all over again. Crying a little bit at the airport, and worrying she’ll think I’m turning into mom. Seeing that glimmer in her eyes, too, and knowing that what we have is more than just time together. This is life. It’s my life, and I can barely believe my good fortune.
