I Am a Hot, Hot Supermodel

Here is a picture of me showing off my incredible modeling skills:

People are always amazed that I don't even have to wear a wig to make my hair look this bad. My supermodeling secrets are: 

1. Neglect to apply makeup, even though, according to that one kid, "Diana's nose is ALWAYS red! DUH!"

2. Wear yesterday's clothes, and make certain the shirt is a really baggy cut in a bland color.

3. Use a webcam to take the photo, for optimum reflection on your glasses.

In related news, I'm incredibly bored and having difficulty coming up with reasons why I should keep spending money on food. Maybe soon I'll have a supermodel body too, not just these incredible supermodeling skills!!!

"Ten Minutes of Straight Dongs"

From Google Maps:

Brooklyn. Am I right?

Here's the church, also from Google Maps:

(Pretty impressive photography for a robot on the back of a car.)

Rabies and Kids!

THE CDC HAS IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT RABIES AND KIDS!

CRM O TARTER

Cream of Tartar

I Have a Giant

I have a giant. :(

An Update on This DOG, plus How Thanksgiving Went

It has been a whole week since I last blogged about this DOG I found, and a lot of big things have happened. On the Saturday before my last entry about this DOG, I went to the local pound/shelter to check their lost and found book again. I almost didn't want to go, because she was already starting to feel like MY DOG, not some stray that just anybody could take away from me! But it turned out, yet again, that no one had come looking for her. 

On Tuesday afternoon, my mom and I took this dog to see our last dog's veterinarian. I felt horrible going into the building because when I last went in, nearly four years ago, it had been to carry our poor old German Shepherd down the long, dark hall and lay her on an exam table to be put to sleep. She had been too old and sick to struggle or even be afraid. My mom and sister and I had all petted her as the drugs took effect, and just going in and seeing and smelling the place brought back the very most painful feelings. It took all my effort to make light chit-chat about the new dog (whom I also had to hold in my arms, in this case to keep her from leaping at the other dogs) and not cry. 

This new dog got a shot in each side and a butt swab without the least complaint, but then the vet called his wife in to hold her while he drew blood from the top of her right front paw. The little dog barked and struggled and then let out what I can only describe as a scream. She was very bewildered and rushed back to me as soon as they were done, and I had to squish her up against my neck with both arms to calm her down.

We had to give the dog a name at that point so that the vet could have it in his records and put it on her rabies vaccination certificate. My mom chose to call her Ginger, after her grandmother's "red" miniature pinscher. This one does have a bit of "red" on the back of her head, so I guess the name doesn't seem entirely random. 

Right after the (expensive) vet visit, my mom drove me around my neighborhood so I could take down all of this dog's "Found Dog" signs. Every time I got out of the car to grab a sign, I handed "Ginger" to my mom, who would hand her back to me afterwards so she could drive. Right after I pulled down the very last sign, my mom handed her back to me one more time. I could feel Ginger's sides moving in a really weird way and knew from observing my old dog what was about to happen. I grabbed an old hand towel I'd brought along "just in case" and held it like a bag while this dog barfed her entire lunch into it. Then I put the towel in the plastic bag that I would have grabbed instead if I had had time to think. I guess all the excitement and over-handling was a bit too much for our Ginger.

Below is a picture I took about an hour later of Ginger curled up on my mom's lap. I think in this one she is saying, "This is MY mommy now. Go and find yourself a new one!"

And in this one, she's too worn out and comfy to say much of anything:

At about the time those pictures were taken, Ginger became legally ours, two weeks having elapsed since I found her and began making an effort to find her owners. The following day we raced to the shelter to register her (as my mother's dog) before it closed for the holiday. That evening we bought her a blue harness for walks a little red-and-black plaid collar for her tags!

The next part of this entry will be about Thanksgiving and will have stuff about my family in it, which now includes this DOG!!! (There will be more pictures of this dog afterwards.)

I was really anxious about Thanksgiving Day, not only because I was nervous about spending time with my dad and his mom (who can be very mean and critical), but also because this DOG would have to spend time with my dad and his mom (who can be very mean and critical)! I gave her a bath the night before in some flowery-smelling shampoo and hoped she wouldn't scratch at fleas or be naughty in any way during the holiday.

I was helping my sister prepare (she hosted the meal) when my parents showed up unannounced at noon. "Oh! This is the little dog!" my dad said, the moment he walked in. I had been worried that his reaction would be negative because when my mom first suggested keeping the dog, he had been dismissive. (I'm still not sure he understands that he and my mom are keeping this dog long term, not me!) I took the dog to a back room so that  she would be out of the way, but before I'd even gotten her settled, my sister knocked on the door: "Dad wants to play with the dog!" she said. I couldn't believe it!

Another surprising thing was that my dad helped with the meal preparation. Usually all he does is carve the turkey. But he was perfectly happy to work away at a couple of side dishes while this dog ran around at his feet! My mom put the turkey giblets in a sauce pan, and after they'd cooked slowly for a couple of hours, I chopped up some organs for this dog and put them in her bowl a tablespoon at a time over the next hour or two, so they would last longer. Little as she is, I think this dog could inhale an entire turkey in three minutes if you let her! Speaking of which, whenever someone opened the oven to baste the turkey, I had to clamp this dog to my chest in a death grip to keep her from writhing away and leaping into the oven!

Around five, my dad went to pick up my grandma. Luckily she, too, liked this dog (or at least pretended to). Also, having this dog on my lap gave her something to talk about besides Fox News, "Dancing With the Stars," and how everything about me is wrong! At one point though, my dad, believing that helping with dinner gave him the right to make executive decisions, invited his mom into the kitchen. I knew this was going to go badly. In less than five minutes, she was complaining and criticizing my sister, while this dog ran around under five sets of feet. I scooped Ginger up and took her to another room and shut the door. It was so loud out there!

When it was quieter, I went out again. Grandma had spilled gravy all over the stove and down the front of the oven. She was still complaining. I saw my sister leave to get more paper towels and followed her.  "What's the best thing I can do right now?" I asked. Her answer: "Keep. Grandma. Entertained, and OUT. OF. MY. KITCHEN!" I went into the kitchen and said, "Daddy, Grandma... [my sister] would like you to relax in the living room." Grandma threw up her hands and sneered, "Fine. I know when I'm not wanted!"

I'm probably the very worst person to keep my dad's mom "entertained", but I milked this DOG for all she's worth, and also brought up the time I went to Italy for five weeks (seven and a half years ago), retelling stories I've told a million times before because 1) my Grandma loves talking and hearing about European travel and 2) I haven't done anything that interesting since. We managed okay until it was time for dinner.

At that point I decided I should take the dog out one last time before I shut her away in a back room under her hamper, but my dad was carving the turkey and slipped her a strip of meat longer than her head! I managed to get this dog outside, but then all she would do was jump against the door in hopes of going back in for more meat. I carried her in, put her under her hamper, shut the door, and sat down to eat. She was barking and wailing and crying so loudly we could hear her at the table.

"The only time I've heard her make a noise like that was when the vet did a blood draw," I said. I told everyone that I imagined she would calm down soon and we could go on eating in peace, but my sister was very upset.

"Let her out!" she pleaded. "She'll behave!" I didn't think that she would, but I thought the best way to prove myself right would be to do as my sister asked. Amazingly, the dog sat under the table with her ears up and her tail wagging, hoping-hoping-hoping that someone would drop something, but I don't think anyone did. It was a very delicious meal, and other than the gravy situation, everything went pretty smoothly.

My mom invited me to come over and wash towels the next day (the house I live in doesn't have a dryer, and I was WAY out of clean towels, considering I'd already used all my regular towels to death when this DOG shook soapy water all over my extra-nice "emergency" bath towel during her bath). My mother went Black Friday shopping that day, so my roommate agreed to babysit (my parents' house isn't puppy-safe yet). I realized it was the first day in two weeks that I had left the house for more than an hour or so. I felt weirdly free and excited, but I still worried constantly about Ginger. My baby!

On Saturday, this dog and I got up earlyish for an informal photo shoot. She looks a bit strange here with the flash, but you can see her pretty Texas-shaped rabies vaccination tag:

After just one picture, this dog decided she'd much rather snuggle than model, and since I was conveniently squatting in front of her, she jumped up and pushed me onto my bottom:

Then she made her "I'm sorry" face: 

And as soon as my guard was down, she climbed onto my tummy and pushed me onto my back!:

Then she was startled for a moment by my roommate stirring in another room. I think she looks like Zoolander here: 

See?

She was distracted just long enough for me get on my feet and try to pose her:

And again:

And I should probably mention how much she loves the squishy dog bed my mom bought her. But I think these photos say it all:

THE END

If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say

With Thanksgiving unpleasantly near, the pressure in my brain has been going way up. I won't be seeing any family that doesn't already live close by, but I'm still feeling the dread of being in close quarters with certain people for the entire day. In fact, I recently tweeted some "jokes" about my dad and his mom, and I'm not really sure how I feel about them (I mean both the jokes and the people).

On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn't drag unpleasant things out in front of an audience mostly composed of strangers. I'll get an encouraging star here, or an unfollow there, but, regardless, it seems like something someone with poor moral character would do. Also, none of my traumas are especially traumatic. There are probably people following me on twitter who have much worse stories.

On the other hand, when someone mistreats you and then shames you into keeping it to yourself, it can be hard to realize that the things they've said and done are still affecting you. Also, it's a kind of emotional blackmail to be cruel to someone and then to convince that person that telling others about it is the meaner action. As if the initial act were accidental, or even right, while bringing up said act is an intentional evil.

But even as I'm still sorting through the garbage heaped on me by my dad and his mom, I'm going to have to be civil to them three short days from now. I'm going to try something that I've used to deal with life in general, but never specifically, for particular people: gratitude.

It's easy to remember the controlling behavior, the cruel comments, the (mild?) physical abuse. But I think the only thing that's going to save my sanity on Thursday is remembering the good things (at least the ones that weren't completely tainted by an undercurrent of manipulation).

Let's start with my grandma:

1. My sister and I used to go to our grandmother and grandfather's house on Friday nights. We'd eat broccoli and... I don't remember what. Something cooked in the microwave. It was nearly inedible. But then they usually took us out to Baskin-Robbins in my grandfather's little sports car. Then we'd go back to their house and lie on the couch, and grandma would cover us with a quilt, and we'd doze in front of the TV until our parents came to get us. (Also, she gave me that quilt recently when she redecorated.)

2. Before I grew up and began having my own beliefs and opinions, my grandma used to brag about me to her friends. Then one day I'd be at some charity function in an ugly dress and itchy tights, and a bunch of old ladies would gather around me and say, "Is this the girl who...?" and pinch my cheeks.

3. My parents must have been out of town or something one time because my sister and I were staying over. (I think this was shortly after my grandfather died.) My grandma took us to Michael's and bought us blank t-shirts and t-shirt decals. She ironed on the black-and-white patterns for us and then let us paint them ourselves (with minimal criticism, considering it was her).

4. She used to raise money for a local orchestra and made my parents buy season tickets every year, which meant I got to go to classical concerts throughout junior high and high school, which was when I was playing viola myself. I really enjoyed those concerts and used to make notations of which classical pieces I wanted to use in the movies I would make when I grew up to be a famous movie director (what happened?).

5. She sold my parents her old car for $1000, so "my first car" (my parents were clear that it didn't belong to me, and I couldn't drive it without permission, but still) was a 1990 Acura Legend (this was in 2001). I was only allowed to drive to school and back, but still, it was pretty sweet.

Okay. My dad. Five things:

1. Even though he was angry at me for living at home again, my dad got me a whole box of books from Amazon for my 23rd birthday. I think there were six of them! I couldn't believe it! He got me The Keep by Jennifer Egan, Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Lauren Russel, Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt. The first four I read almost immediately, and they were all very good. I checked out the audiobook of Jonathan Strange (30 disks!) at the library and "read" it that way so I could have my hands free to sew a dress (still haven't finished the dress, but the book was a lot of fun). The only one I haven't been able to get through is Invention (it's fakey-historical: excessive historical details, like the characters are aware that they're living in the "past"). I'm still amazed by how generous he was.

2. When I was 11, he got me a dictionary of etymology I desperately wanted for Christmas, even though it cost $50. I still have it and still use it often, even though the author's explanations are sometimes more creative than scholarly.

3. He took me to the movies a lot as a child and a teen, even as often as three times a week in the summers.

4. When I bought my car, he walked into the dealership ahead of me and (physically?) grabbed a female salesperson and made her help me so I would stand a chance in the negotiations. (Wait--is that a good thing? Or was he trying to undermine my confidence again? I think he meant well, so I'll let this one stand.)

5. He helped me move to college, and then home again four years later when I had three times as much stuff and needed a small U-Haul trailer that I would have been unable to tow myself.

6. I'll add a sixth one--why not? When I got Phi Beta Kappa membership (I was too sick from stress and overwork to go to the induction, so I'm not sure how to phrase that), he bought me the gold pin, even though I told him I never wear jewelry and didn't want it. He was too proud to take no for an answer, and it moves me to tears whenever I come across it.

Okay, so that's pretty good, right? On Thursday, I can focus on the positive and try to stay strong. And if that fails, I can do what I've done every year since I turned 21--hide in a back hallway, in the dark, crying into a glass of cheap Merlot while my dad and my grandma, who are both going deaf, disparage me loudly in the living room, thinking I can't hear them.

They think I can't hear them, right?

This Dog, Being Weird

For those of you just joining us, I found this little stray dog almost two weeks ago. I didn't have any intention of keeping her, but she was out on a cold night with lots of heavy traffic around, so I took her home with me. So far, I have been unable to find her owners.

Below is a picture of the dog sitting in such a cute way that, had the photo been properly lit, you would be dying of cuteness overload right now, so you can thank me for not using the flash. 

This dog likes to be near me as much as possible. I had originally planned to keep her in my bathroom (with a soft rug and some water and food) until I could find her owners, but she hates to be shut in there alone, especially at night. For that reason, I set up a second soft rug in my bedroom. She sleeps there under an overturned laundry basket with a hand weight on top so that she doesn't go around at night finding coins and rubber bands to choke on, or trying to eat my face while I sleep. 

For a while, she was waking me up every morning at 4:30 for potty-times. I thought this was crazy until my mom pointed out that I'd found her right after the time change, meaning that if her owner had had to leave for work by 6 AM, then the dog would have had to go tinkles and poos at 5:30 AM, which is now 4:30 AM again for some reason that nobody remembers. Anyway, my point is, when I let her out of the basket at 4:30, she runs straight for the back door to do her Monkey business (I call this dog Monkey because she looks like a monkey, so when she does her business in the yard, I call it Monkey business). Afterwards, she'll go back to bed. 

Lately it has been colder in the mornings (I keep the thermostat at 70 degrees, but my room gets a little chilly). When we get up again at 7:30 or so, it's cold, and she doesn't have any urgent need to go outside. Therefore, since she's an opportunistic little thing, she makes a beeline for the warmest spot in the house: my lap.

It turns out I don't even need to have a lap for her to try to jump in it. One morning, I made the mistake of kneeling as I let her out of the basket and she immediately snuggled up between my legs! I couldn't believe she'd actually behaved like such a weirdo, so the next day I brought my camera along in order to obtain photographic evidence:

I took a picture right after this one where she had even tucked in her cold little nose, but I was looking at it, and I could hear my mom calling out from the back of my mind, saying, "Don't put that picture on the Internet! It's gross and weird! Why did you take it in the first place?!" It's a really funny picture though, because it looks like I have a third leg that's black and furry. I took the picture below right after prying this dog's tiny snout off second base. As you can see, she's not quite ready to get up and start the day.

This morning I thought I could safely let her out of her basket while wearing a nightgown if I stood instead of kneeling, but still she took a flying leap at me! I caught her in mid-air and actually heard myself say, "No no no! Let Mommy put on her snuggle-pants!" I put my jeans on and sat in the big chair so she could sit properly ON my lap, instead of IN it.

And it's not like this dog isn't getting enough sleep! Here's a picture where she's sleeping in the daytime while I do some writing:

And here's another picture where she's snuggling on my lap yet again. I like this close-up because you can see her funny little ear and her tiny knee:

And here's a picture where she's lying in a Costco box with an old towel in it. She rolled back and made a funny face at me, but I was taking the picture with my laptop webcam and couldn't tell which way the lens was pointing: 

I hope you liked these funny pictures! I could tell you a million stories about how weird this dog is. Currently, the dog's owners are still AWOL, and, by law, the dog will be my property in two days' time. My mom desperately wants to keep her herself, but needs to get a room ready where this dog can sleep and play and stuff. Until then this dog will be following me everywhere and trying to sleep on or near any part of my body she can reach.

THE END

This Dog Might Be a Monkey

Monkey:

Also a monkey:

I rest my case.

This DOG!! (Part 3)

Look at this dog's face. I think she knows I'm about to look up the number for the SPCA.

Computer Time (With This Dog)

Sometimes when I'm using my computer, this dog will crawl underneath the little stool I sit on and curl up and sleep there:

 I'm totally cool with that. I know where she is, and I can check lost dog listings and tweet and stuff. But today my roommate took her out in the rain and then let her in again without drying her. I took the picture below with my computer, which was already in my lap when...:

The End

This DOG!!

On Election Day, in the evening, I decided to take a walk in order to get my mind off big, stressful thoughts (like who's gonna be president for the next four years?). I was on a familiar route, not too far from home when I found a little dog that was sniffing some cardboard that had been left out on the curb.

I asked the dog if we were in its own yard, but it just ran up to me and put its paws on my leg. Then it put its little face between its paws. I rang the doorbell of the nearest house, but no one answered. I hung around for a while and asked everyone who went by if they recognized the dog or knew of anyone who was missing a dog. I tried to get on with my walk, but the dog just followed me around until it was cold and dark, and traffic was heavy, and I finally just had to pick her up and take her home with me. 

When I lived with my parents, I would get lost dogs back to their families pretty often and fairly easily because I knew most of the dogs in their area. But I've only lived in this neighborhood a year, and plus, it seems like people here don't walk their dogs as much or have a lot of windows in their fences where the dogs can look out and see--and be seen by--passersby. And there are a LOT more houses in between the major roads here than in my parents' smaller neighborhood. 

The last time I found a dog in this new neighborhood (a French bulldog puppy), she followed me home, and, after I made some "Found Dog"signs, I tied the belt from my bathrobe around her neck and took her back out into the neighborhood. That was a Saturday, so lots of people were around, and through some excellent detective work, I found the dog's home, and the owner was happy to see her.

But this time around, most people are too busy to help. Other people will stand around and chat with me, but they don't know where the dog belongs either. I put some info online at Fido Finder, and registered her as "found" at the local animal shelter, but no one has called. I put a sign up near where I found the dog, and one at a popular veterinary office. Normally I would be happy to have a dog around, but I want to get this particular dog back to her real family ASAP because she thinks I am her mommy, and she won't give me a minute's peace.

You might look at the picture above and think I picked up the dog and put her on my lap just to take this cute picture, but nothing could be further from the truth. Whenever I try to leave her alone, she whines and barks and throws herself at the door, and whenever I sit in her presence, she jumps up onto my lap. (This has made my last several trips to the bathroom very awkward in one way or another.) Yesterday, I wore a relatively nice outfit because I hoped I would be meeting her family, and I wanted them to know their dog had been cared for by a conscientious individual. But the dog is smelly, and now my nice outfit is smelly, so today I put on old, paint-stained jeans and an old, paint-stained t-shirt instead.

The night I found her I gave her a fried egg (which she loved--I had to chop it into dime-sized pieces because her mouth is so little). She had the same for breakfast and dinner yesterday, but my mom, who isn't a vegetarian like me, bought her a hamburger at McDonald's for lunch (I took it out of the bun and scraped off all the onions because too much bread is bad for dogs, and onions can make them sick). This morning, I went to Petco and got her four little tubs of fancy food for fancy dogs, mostly to make it easier to feed her. 

I felt really sad when I was shopping for dog food, and I realized it was because the last time I really took care of a dog, I was taking care of my own dog who died a few years ago. My dog was patience and devotion personified (or dogified, I guess). The closest she ever came to jumping up on people was if you were eating some really delicious-smelling meat, she might slink up and rest her chin in your lap and look up at you with the biggest, saddest brown eyes you've ever seen. When I was on the dog treats aisle, I saw some of her old favorites and got super-upset that I couldn't buy some for her. (In fact, I think we still have some leftovers at my parents' house all these years later.) Below is a picture of me and my dog when she was very, very old--almost fourteen, which is about four years older than German Shepherds are usually expected to live.

I ended up getting this little stray dog the tiny trays of fancy food with the peel-off foil lids because I didn't want to buy a whole bag of anything. Also, I'll admit, I was super curious what Nutro Ultra Holistic Superfood Small Breed Adult Chicken, Lamb & Salmon Pate´ Entrees look and smell like. That is seriously what they are called--look it up. No, I'll show you:

And if you're curious like I was: it smells like dog food, and it looks like dog food with tiny flakes of vegetables in it. Another thing that made me sad at the pet store was when I saw the bird section and thought, "Oh, I can get Baby-Chicken some new toys and treats!" But Baby-Chicken, my runty little budgie, died in the spring. A few months ago, I was helping my mom move some furniture near where we used to keep his cage (he lived with my parents while I was at my apartment) and I found a toy I'd bought him just before I noticed he was sick. It was still in its packaging... I'd been so distracted by his illness that I'd forgotten to give it to him. So needless to say, going to the pet store did NOT put me in a good mood.

The dog loved the food though, so that was something. But then she just wanted to sit in my lap again. I decided I would resign myself to it and found a podcast to listen to. We got set up on the back porch with my computer on one arm of the Adirondack chair and my cellphone on the other in case anyone called about the dog (still no calls as of 48 hours after posting her info online). Then the dog deposited herself in my lap for the next couple of hours as I had expected her to.

In the photo below, I was trying to show my displeasure at having a 212-degree-Fahrenheit dog in my lap in 77-degree-Fahrenheit weather, but at the very moment the camera went off, @mrdavehill made a funny rejoinder to Dick Cavett (The Dave Hill Podcasting Incident, episode 52) and I ended up finding out what I look like when I'm laughing, which, at present, I have somewhat mixed feelings about. 

Right now, the dog is in my bathroom where she has a nice soft little rug to sleep on, although she just now seems to have settled down (after at least half an hour of bumping against the door and making periodic whining noises). My mother drove us around earlier to various veterinary offices to see if she's microchipped or if they have any flyers up about her... so far nothing. My mom wants to keep her, but she can't (because of my dad), so I think she might want me to keep her FOR her. And right now, once again, bump-bump-bump goes this crazy dog against the bathroom door.

Practice Makes Imperfect

This morning I was listening to an old J.S. Bach CD, literally one of the first CD's I owned (my parents got me a CD player and a ten-dollar ten-pack of classical CD's for Christmas when I was twelve). I lay in bed, spacing out completely to the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, just letting that incredible multitude of notes wash through my brain, flushing out all the gummy nooks and crannies, which is the best way to listen to this piece, second only to being part of an ensemble that is playing it. And for the first time in the seventeen years I've owned the CD, I noticed a mistake.

The music of every place and era has a particular character to it. Every now and then, a musician will reach beyond the character of his or her (but mostly his--eff the world!) place and time, and then a new musical era will be born. But this was some solid Bach, some of the most unified and contained madness the world has ever seen. (Here, I wish I could tell you about the ending of the book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but the end is the only really good part, so that would be major spoilers. But it has to do with Bach and it really gets at what I am trying and failing to say.) Bach's music is mathematical. It's beautiful, beautiful art, but, in the Brandenburg Concertos especially, everything lines up. There is nothing out of place. And this note I heard, this "mistake", was definitely out of place. It was like a different, much later era, phoning in and saying, "HALLOO there!" for a fraction of a second.

My orchestra class played the piece at some point, maybe in 8th grade. As I remember it, instead of just being made of four parts (violin, viola, cello, bass), the extreme polyphony required multiple violin parts, multiple viola parts, and so on. So in the (small) chamber orchestra that made the recording I listened to this morning, a single musician was responsible for that one incorrect note. It didn't sound bad. It just sounded like... not Bach. So he or she may not have even noticed it. In fact, he or she may have practiced it that way every day and played it that way in every rehearsal. And that reminded me of something...

My sixth grade teacher once told our class a funny story about playing in her church bell choir: In the last rehearsal before a major performance (maybe a Christmas show?) the director of the bell choir noticed that one of the ringers had been ringing B-flat instead of B-natural all along. The ringer promised to remember to play it "right", but suggested they run through the piece one more time so she could practice playing it right. They ran through the piece, and this time, as she had promised, she played the note "right". But everyone hated the way it sounded! For weeks they'd been playing the piece "wrong", so now, playing it "right" sounded wrong. Everyone was in a kerfluffle. How could they play it "right" when "right" sounded so wrong? The director finally decided: they would play the piece "wrong" just so it would sound right to them. And that's what they did. And as far as they could tell, no one in the congregation even noticed.

That old story got me thinking, as many things do, about human behavior in life in general. How many "wrong notes" do we play again and again, just because we're so used to hearing them that way that they've begun to sound right to us?

For example, I have an elderly relative who, like most elderly relatives, would like her family to visit more often. But every time I visit, after serving up hugs and a hot or cold beverage, she sits me down and berates me on every aspect of my person, personality, and beliefs. I wear the wrong clothes! I have the wrong political outlook! I have the wrong political outlook because I went to the wrong school! My health problems are just in my head! But going to a therapist couldn't possibly help with that! I just need to stop being sick! Stop being wrong! Stop being myself in any way! Despite being asked again and again in every way by every member of the family to be nice, she persists, and then is very sad when months go by and maybe this person visited her, but not that person. Or everyone went together to morally support each other, and then everyone left all at once. She could play a different note, be just a little bit nicer, but she goes on banging the same out-of-tune drum, only because after years and years of banging it, it sounds perfectly right to her.

And now, on Election Day, every American is marching around, tooting his or her own melody on his or her own horn. Three hundred million little songs, on three hundred million little horns. When you put certain people together, they make a harmonious sound, but try mixing them in with other people, and they'll blow your eardrums out! What out-of-tune notes are you playing today? Are you creating something new and great, that reaches beyond the constraints of your own era? Or are you playing out of key just to spite someone?

Imagine one person tooting the  note: "Hurricane Sandy was caused by global warming! SCIENCE! SCIENCE! SCIENCE!" Another person, right in his face, toots: "Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by elite ivory tower intellectuals! USA! USA! USA!" These notes are as out of tune with one another as they could be. And, objectively, both notes are "wrong". Somewhere in between is a more likely answer: hurricanes have been happening for as long as our planet has had water and air and heat. But Sandy caused more trouble than previous hurricanes, possibly because the ocean was a bit warmer and higher (for whatever reason) and the warmth over Greenland (however that occurred) pushed Sandy sharply west into New York and New Jersey when previously she had been on a straighter path.

For this issue and everything else in our complicated world, we can learn and study only in order to INFER causes and effects, never to know and understand them fully. But somehow, one note or the other just sounds right to us because we've been playing it for so long in comfortable harmony with like-minded friends. And what is the "right" note anyway? Some people think they've found the sheet music, but they haven't. Every note in this world merely relates to other notes. All our music comes from us. We determine how it sounds.

Sayonara, facebook!

A month or two ago, facebook sent me an email saying they were rolling out a new feature. I didn't really care, except that they mentioned this new feature would involve making even more of my information public, so I went through about a million passwords, logged in, and deleted four of the five or six things I still had on my page.

Then I noticed, on the new "timeline" feature, that a handful of people had left messages on my last birthday. These included people who had made my life so horrible in high school that I'd had to sneak into the library senior year just to eat my lunch in peace. One had even written, "Facebook is telling me to tell you happy birthday." Just like that. Why did she fucking bother? And why was I "friends" with her on facebook anyway? I let it all be for a few weeks, and then, with my next birthday fast approaching, I decided to delete my account.

I shouldn't have had a facebook page in the first place. From the beginning, the service was promoted as a social network for "your real-life friends". If you've been following me on twitter for more than five minutes, you might be aware that I haven't had any "real-life" friends since college, and the friendships I had then and before didn't last. I think I made the page (in 2008 maybe?) for two reasons: 1) just in case some boy from college (class of 2006) or my study-abroad trip to Italy (2005) suddenly realized (several years later) that I was the ONLY girl for him EVER and he NEEDED to contact me and tell me so IMMEDIATELY, and 2) so I could see how many of the girls I went to high school with had gotten married and/or had babies (answer: they are all married and/or have babies).

I wasn't even going to friend anybody, but I made the mistake of entering my high school's name, and, over time, a few dozen requests rolled in. (I didn't send any requests of my own.) It turned out that to see some people's wedding and/or baby pictures, you had to be "friends" with them, so I accepted most of the requests. There was also a girl from middle school who had been bullied a lot and to whom I had gone out of my way to be nice since she only seemed a little weird and misunderstood (like me) and not as bad as everyone was making her out to be. I think I actually thought, "I'd better "friend" her so she doesn't feel bad." That turned out to be an interesting one. Her photo page was literally dozens of professionally-made portraits... of herself. You know how if you're planning to be an actress, you go out and "get some headshots done"? It looked like she had done this every six months for the past several years, then uploaded every single photo to facebook.

But for the most part, facebook was the opposite of interesting. I guess I don't have to tell you this, but it's people sharing recipes and going on about the crappy music they like, pretending they've completely forgotten about the time they put a yearbook in your lap and made you point out the handful of guys you LIKE-liked and then went right out and fucked them all so that none of them would ever even look at you again. But I digress.

Or maybe I don't digress. Maybe the very most maddening thing about facebook is that absolutely everyone you connect with is a "friend". There's no accounting for the shades of jealousy and hatred and superiority and disgust and annoyance that color nearly every human interaction. It's not just phony that everyone on facebook pretends like everything is always going great--it's phony that we're even there in the first place. (Like I said, I shouldn't have been on facebook.) High school graduation was one of the happiest days of my life, not because I felt I'd made any great accomplishment, but because I knew would NEVER HAVE TO SEE ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE EVER AGAIN. Yet here I was, choosing to see "those" people.

And what about the people I didn't choose to see? When I deleted my account on Saturday, I had a backlog of eight unconfirmed (and mostly inexplicable) friend requests. They were from:

1. a girl who had roomed with me in college for just a few months. I think that's "enough said"--I won't detail the horrible situations she dragged me into, or the disrespectful things she said to me, or the messes she left behind (that required three Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and over a dozen man hours to clean up, just so I could get my deposit back).

2. a boy from high school who whined constantly (and to some extent, with good reason) about how "no one" accepted him because he was gay, even though he was one of the most popular kids in the school.  Also, we were in a musical together (I played viola in the pit, he was one of the leads), and he kept going on and on to me one day about how I couldn't possibly understand the pressure of performing or the amount of preparation he had had to put into his role, even though (according to himself) he had one of the best voices he had ever heard. (Also, I once overheard him tell someone I smelled bad. The school building had a major air intake next to a sewage exhaust pipe, but he decided it would be cute to blame the whole smelly situation on me. Thanks.)

3. a middle school English teacher who, for an intensive project with lots of analysis and writing to be done, recommended a particular book to me saying, "On a scale of 1 to 10, this is, like, a 14, oh my gosh it is so good!" It turned out to be a cheap fantasy fiction paperback, the single most poorly-written book I've ever read all the way through, and I still had to do all that work on it because I had "committed to it". (Also, she used to mock me in class regularly for being messy and shy.)

4. someone I recognized only by name. The "friends" I had in high school weren't very interested in introducing me to their other friends, but apparently this one had heard my name like I'd heard hers. Or maybe facebook did the mutual friends recommendation thing, and she was like, "Whatever, okay."

5. a boy who was expelled for threatening me with a large knife.

6. a relative who once tried to have me disinherited, even though I was, at that time, for 8+ hours per day, PHYSICALLY CARING FOR THE PERSON IN CHARGE OF THE ESTATE. My mom says she was mad that I'd gotten such a high SAT score, yet had refused to tutor her daughter (over the phone). Mostly, though, she just wanted the money for herself (because a 3,600-square-foot house on a five-acre wooded lot and three (or more?) luxury cars isn't enough).

7. a high school English teacher who was actually kind of cool, but in whose class I met a boy with whom I was fast becoming friends and maybe even starting to LIKE-like when he suddenly and unexpectedly died. Yes, let's reminisce about that.

8. a boy who was a real twerp in 4th grade, but okay after that. Actually, I ran into him a couple years ago, and he was very nice to me. I probably could have confirmed that one. Oops. Okay, this time I'M the bad one. OH! I just remembered! He was the person who taught me how sex works! (Yes, everyone was wearing clothes, and no, I didn't "get it" until he explained it to me--I was eight or nine years old.)

Before I deleted my page, I glanced through a few people's profiles just to make sure I wanted to leave. It was all very same old, same old: "I'm more successful than you!" "I love my family more!" "I take better vacations!" "I go to more and better concerts!" Then I ended up on the page of that girl from middle school... the one with all the pictures of herself. I'd run into her "in real life" a couple of years ago... actually, she had seen me out walking and called me over. She was very polished-looking, with a big smile (and fancy makeup, fancy hair, fancy dress, fancy shoes). I complimented her handbag, and she said it was a [very expensive designer] handbag that her fiance had gotten her as an anniversary present because he liked to buy her nice things--she just couldn't stop him! And he had so much money, so why bother trying! And she went on and on about how great her life was. I finally had to say, "Well, facebook me!" while walking away. Looking at her page the other day, I noticed she had given up on acting and singing and had taken up politics. Hard right politics. Among her many political "likes" were the NRA (okay, whatever), and THE CAMPAIGN TO REELECT SCOTT WALKER (smh, smh, smh). For years, I'd thought, "I was nice to this girl when no one else was. I did the right thing!" But it turns out I had wasted my efforts on someone who would eventually become more repugnant to me than she was to all those kids in middle school. And if I'd never been on facebook, I never would have known.

Something Kind of Depressing, But Also Maybe Interesting to Think About?

Hi! Thank you for coming to my blog even though it says in the title that this might be depressing. It's going to seem like this is about the hurricane, but it isn't. Like most things I think about late at night, it kind of veers off selfishly into thoughts about my own future.

Last night as I was trying and mostly failing to fall asleep, I started thinking about the people in the northeast whose homes were destroyed or otherwise messed up by the hurricane. Some of them are in hotels, or staying with friends, but others were probably trying, at that very same moment, to fall asleep in uncomfortable, unfamiliar places. I thought, It's autumn. They'd probably even be okay sleeping outside for now, if they have to. But then I remembered autumn in New Jersey and New York isn't like autumn in Dallas, and I started to worry about them. But then I started thinking about the movie "Autumn in New York," which I never saw, but once heard described as a "May-December romance."

Then I started thinking, What month am I in? Am I a May, like Winona Ryder was when the movie came out? And surely, even with his silver hair, Richard Gere hadn't quite reached his December years yet, had he?

So then I thought, What if we say the average life-span is 84 years? (I know it isn't, but I used that number because it is evenly divisible by 12, and I didn't have a glow-in-the-dark calculator in bed with me. Also my mom's dad was 84 when he died, even though he smoked cigarettes and died of cancer. Although, don't think that makes it okay to smoke cigarettes--my dad's dad smoked too and also died of cancer, but he was only 62 at the time.) If we can expect to live 84 years, then that means each "month" of our metaphorical year is equal to seven years of life.

I like thinking of my life in seven-year chunks anyway. Once, I tweeted, "From 0 to 7, I was a baby kid. From 7 to 14, I was a smart kid. From 14 to 21, I was a hard-working kid. And for the last seven years, I've been a sack of rotting potatoes." But I deleted that one because it made me sad. Anyway, I'm almost 29 now, which puts me in the first week of May. If you think of this as a growing season, May is already a bit late to be planting seeds. Sure, I was an excellent student in the February and March of my life, but the seeds I planted then were nutritious, early crops, like onions and spinach and beets, that have already gone to seed (i.e. I can hardly remember a word of French, even though our teacher, who was FROM FRANCE said I spoke like a Parisian. I don't know--maybe she was from somewhere else in France where they think Parisians are dumb, and she was secretly insulting me. Hm. I wonder.)

But April! My "April" was wasted on me. When the weather was good, I took a lot of walks. When it was bad, I stayed in and read. (The grandfather who died at 84 left me some money which I'm abundantly grateful for, but which has, so far anyway, kept me from being forced to make a decision about what to with my life. I was never supposed to be able to live on it this long, but I'm crazy frugal and made some fortuitous investments before everything went to shit. No one can believe it!) Was it Eliot who called April "the cruelest month"? Yes, and he was being metaphorical, too. April is at least an unpredictable month--cold one day, hot the next, then pouring rain. So is our metaphorical April. Some people come out of college and slip right into grown-up life, with a loving spouse and a real career. Other people have a Texas April, full of tornadoes and hail storms.

And what to do with May now that April has passed me by with neither flowers nor storms? (I'm getting poetical. Deal with it.) June and July will be fruit season, for those who got their hands dirty in the spring. Is it too late for me to start? Can I have cantaloupes and watermelons in July if I plant now? And when will my July be, exactly? Ages 42 to 49, right? What can I do now that will come to fruition then?

That reminds me: what "month" was Richard Gere in in "Autumn in New York"? According to imdb.com, he was born in 1949, which means he was still only in August when the film came out. "May-August romance" doesn't sound quite as shocking, does it?

So what about the real winter of our years? Once we've spent our autumn picking pumpkins and other more elegant, late-season squashes, is there anything left to harvest? What happens when the new year comes, and we're in January again, wearing diapers while other people brush our teeth? Should we plant anything at all, knowing we won't be around when it blooms? If a person has been industrious and has planted and harvested as much as he could, I guess this is when he hands off the seeds he has saved to a younger person and hopes she knows what to do with them. I only wish I did.

Weather. UGH!

Eighty-six degrees? In November?

UGH!

Cloudy?! UGH!

WHY??

NO! NO! NO!

OMG--THIS IS SOOOO UNFAIR!

NO! UGH!

HAVEN'T I SUFFERED ENOUGH?

JESUS CHRIST, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

WEATHER!

UGH!

"The Avenue Will Not Shower": This Day in My Personal History, November 1, 2000

This is a diary entry from twelve years ago today, when I was almost seventeen. One of my favorite things at the time was writing poetry, and I loved my magnetic poetry kit, even though it was just the original set that doesn't have a lot of words in it.

November 1, 2000
5:00 PM

Did I ever write down this magnetic poem? I composed it about a month or two ago:

wild sounds

grow into

immense dark blue

summer evening showers

of wind and liquid lace

burning like songs pronounced by

secret tongues

I pulled a random chunk of words out just now and arranged them to say:

this evening of summer

burns like a

wild blossom

HA!

With the next handful, all I could write was this:

have tongue pronounce this:

from evening

do you tell me

the avenue will not shower?

slender is out!