October Resolved

It’s not that I’ve cleaned up my living – I haven’t. (I never.) The running, the spilling, the piling of things – I’ve come into my habits, and now they and I are comfortable together. There's a mess of half-designed “personal finance” spreadsheets littering my desk at home; I revere the rules, but I don’t have to follow them.

The success of this month is that my plan worked minimally, brilliantly: it changed me only in details. I do exactly as much nothing as I always did, but better. Some people know about my nothing now, and I like that. What is to be said of my progress is that I noticed it. That’s all. I’m sleeping well now, if less.

An Admission, First of Many

I’m not usually one to go all goopy over celebrities, but apparently I’m going through a phase. The most horrifying evidence of this is the following: I sat down at the computer this morning for my Sunday review of washingtonpost.com, scrolled right past Campaign 2006, Joel Achenbach, and Gene Weingarten, and went straight for “Britney Baby Does Have Name” in the Entertainment section.

(For the uninformed, that name is probably Jayden James, but could be Sutton Pierce – it seems the golden couple either has yet to decide or has yet to admit. Both are Malibu-fabulous, obviously, but my vote is for Jayden James. Because J-Fed sounds way cooler than S-Fed.)

At the bottom of the story, there were links to both Britney’s and Kevin’s website. Even I already know too much about her, so I headed straight to K-Fed online. Much to my surprise, I found that he’s kinda, um, compelling.

Mainly, it’s the stare. (Sharp. Deep.) But then there’s the flaming drink, the loosened tie, and white button-down with the sleeves rolled up a little. (Note to all men: roll up your sleeves. EVERY GIRL I KNOW thinks this is hot. It takes two seconds to do and anyone can pull it off. You’re welcome.) When the music kicks in, I expect to be totally unthrilled. But I’m not. It’s 12:30 and I’ve been listening to “Privilege” on repeat since 11:51.

I know.

Crossing Oceans

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I'm currently writing a piece for my workshop about my experiences this past spring in Europe. I'm finding it pretty challenging to take all that stuff - traveling is stuff, mostly - and build it into a story with one core message. So, as an experiment, I'm going to post unedited passages from my journal on this page. Not every day, just whenever I don't have anything else to tell you. I want to see if the bits I select somehow come together in the end to tell me what I'm thinking. Because I never know what I'm thinking.

I'll start at the beginning.

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[11:15 pm, Eastern time]

Three months ago I was a vegetarian and now I’m eating airline beef. I consumed the thoroughly disgusting meal in about five minutes, having not eaten for hours before takeoff, and takeoff having been an hour delayed. The meal included yogurt (Dannon La Crème) that was warm. Warm yogurt. I would not be surprised if the barf bag gets used tonight. It would be my own fault.

[Slightly later]

Here’s a suggestion: if you are going to fly, and that flight takes place for eight continuous hours, and you are sitting in coach, and in the middle seat of the middle block, and you used to be a vegetarian, do not eat airline beef.

[10:30 am, We should have landed but we haven’t…]

Because of the delay, we are still up. We need to be down. Down in time for my 12:35 connector to Berlin. I had not realized just how crucial it was to my best laid plans that this plane arrive exactly on time. I will have an hour if I’m lucky to navigate the notoriously user-unfriendly Frankfurt airport and catch that flight. If I don’t, I will definitely not make the train. (If I do, I may still not make the train – whoops, as it turns out there’s customs on the other side, how did I not think of that?) The 3:30 train is a stretch anyway, and that’s it for runs to Copenhagen today. I will have to find a place to stay in Berlin. But – travel adventures, right?

I have just had an airline donut, very packaged. And coffee with not enough cream in it. And I am on the second chapter of my J.S.F. postmodern journey to Everything [Being] Illuminated. I need to be studying German. Flughaven German. Bahnhof German. I’m going to need it.

Strangely, I Love

I'm not a hiker, camper, or lumberjack. I'm not hardy or pioneering. I don't wear khakis, booties, or scuffs. I don't live near the mountains, woods, or frozen lakes of Maine, Idaho, or upstate New York. I don't have a puppy. Or a braided rug. Or a rocking chair. I don't light pine-scented candles and sit around smelling them.

And yet, strangely, I LOVE the L.L. Bean catalog. As I turn the pages, my thoughts drift to cabin life in the wilderness: my nearest neighbor straps on snow shoes and braves half a mile in a November blizzard to come have coffee with me while our ruggedly handsome husbands chop wood. December comes, and we all put on vests of 'Mallard Teal' and go tree-farming with sleds and children. Life is simple, all stew and corn muffins.

The catalog is that powerful. Not only does it overtake my perpetual daydream (which isn't easily wrested from urban semi-fame and my future Brooklyn Heights brownstone), it also causes me to reconsider my position on flannel and vertical wood-paneling (unfavorable). I wonder how I could use or if I might actually need a 'Trailblazer II Headlamp.' I think about purchasing barn coats, fleece pullovers, knit pants...stuff so elemental and unpretentious that, for a minute, I believe sporting it might actually constitute a stand for human decency.

Then I revert to my usual snippy mood. I notice the blatant and not-so-decent oversupply in this catalog of white people, and also of Christmas wreaths. I wonder about the confidence of marketers. Do they know they'll be safest preaching to their choir? And is that a good enough reason to leave everyone else out?

We liberals sure ruin everything, don't we?

100 Things

Ok, onto the bandwagon!

1. People call my hair blond, despite that it is clearly brown.
2. People call my eyes brown, despite that they are clearly…not.
3. A lot of the time I just feel invisible.
4. My favorite place in the world is the Place des Vosges in Paris.
5. I am mad for triangles. Totally, freakishly, love them.
6. I don’t believe in bumper stickers. You shouldn’t piss off people who are operating heavy machinery. (And you shouldn’t distract them either.)
7. I think change is good.
8. I can’t be left alone with cheesecake.
9. I very rarely swear in real life.
10. I am afraid of the dark.
11. And roaches.
12. And AIDS.
13. And schizophrenia.
14. I also have an inexplicable fear of knee-high robots.
15. I hate the smell and taste of cinnamon.
16. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
17. My first memory is of cracking my head open on a concrete bench. It was my third birthday.
18. London was my first love.
19. All loves after that have also been cities.
20. Except one.
21. And I don’t want to talk about him.
22. I used to pretend my name was Liz Spencer – I thought it sounded fancy.
23. When I was eleven, I made up a country. It was an island nation called Liane.
24. I also made up a Liannese constitution, language, and royal family.
25. I once organized a Summer Olympics for the children in my neighborhood. I was 14.
26. Neither of my parents has a regional accent, but both can do British very believably.
27. It bothers me that most people don’t know the grammatical difference between "less" and "fewer".
28. I listen to NPR when I’m driving.
29. This American Life is my favorite program EVER and Ira Glass is AWESOME.
30. I have only ever lived in Maryland and Germany.
31. I have a long list of favorite writers. The top ones right now: David Sedaris, Mark Twain, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Sarah Vowell.
32. I own many Sex and the City DVDs and watch them all the time, even though I could hardly relate less.
33. Fresh linen is my favorite smell.
34. I insist on using toothpaste (not gel) with baking soda.
35. Beautiful sculpture makes me cry.
36. So do movies. Not just sad movies – all movies.
37. I love my laptop like a friend.
38. I really want to learn Mandarin, but so far haven’t made any effort to do so.
39. The central drama of my life involves making people think I’m prettier than I am.
40. Which is terrible and needs to change, obviously.
41. My biggest regret in life is having lost touch with so many great people.
42. I don’t believe people who say they have no regrets.
43. I love bright colors, but I wear a lot of black, brown, and purple.
44. I think most people look better with short hair.
45. I’m very liberal, but several of my good friends (and many members of my family) are not.
46. I’m alternately the least and most competitive person I know.
47. I’ve taken actual time out of my life to figure out what brand of dryer sheet smells best.
48. One of my lifelong dreams is to travel West in a covered wagon.
49. Another is to host a party on a rooftop.
50. I require 16 oz. of coffee to leave the house in the morning.
51. I didn’t want to like Harry Potter. But I do.
52. The University of Maryland is my alma mater.
53. I loved it, but often think I should have gone to Smith.
54. I majored in architecture, but I am not an architect.
55. I always get butterflies before I make a phone call, even just a call for pizza.
56. I believe in second, third…100th chances.
57. I was seriously bad at physics in school. After much tutoring, I finally grasped the basics of force. But nobody could teach me anything about electricity; I still believe the world is really lit by glow worms.
58. As children, we were labeled: I “the smart one”, my sister “the pretty one”. The truth is – she’s both.
59. I adore dashes and semicolons. I use them far too frequently, sometimes flat-out incorrectly.
60. I love to travel and am happiest when I’m walking the streets of some European city, drinking a lukewarm Cola Light.
61. Berries are the best kind of fruit, followed by peaches, then apples, then grapes.
62. I don’t care for citrus and can’t understand people who put a lemon in everything they drink.
63. Blue Moon is my favorite kind of beer, which IS citrus-y, and I do like it with lemon. Better, orange.
64. I contradict myself all the time.
65. I can’t dance and only try when I’ve been drinking.
66. Once I get going, I really enjoy it. (Dancing, drinking…this applies to most activities.)
67. I am a procrastinator.
68. Some people would call me a girly-girl (I have a thing for shoes, feelings, bread products, fragrant soaps, etc.).
69. But I do exhibit several stereotypically male qualities: I can’t multitask, I shop in a very goal-oriented fashion (and as quickly as possible), I think bodily functions are hilarious, and much of the time, I just wish people would stop talking.
70. I can ski, but not snowboard; skate, but not skateboard. I like the concept of two separate feet.
71. I am a mutt-mix of Irish, German, Scottish, British, and Native American.
72. The Irish totally won out – pale, pale, PALE, and serious freckles in lieu of a tan.
73. In person, you can tell when I’m trying to be funny because I'll put on a mild New York accent.
74. I think New York accents make people automatically funny – this is at least 7/10ths of the reason why Seinfeld was so great.
75. I claim to love to read, but I’ve never read most of the major classics.
76. Of the ones I have read, I haven’t liked a number of them.
77. This makes me feel tremendously guilty, like I’m not entitled to any literary opinions I may have.
78. And I do have them.
79. I am both an early riser and a night owl.
80. I love and depend on caffeinated everything.
81. I was raised Roman Catholic.
82. Then I broke all the rules, so I don’t know what I am now.
83. I believe in God, I just don’t think he’s a giant white dude up in the sky.
84. Maybe he’s Morgan Freeman. He probably should be.
85. I joke about things that scare me or make me nervous.
86. I love babies but don’t know if I’ll ever have any, because it’s so hard for me to imagine getting married.
87. I have to wash my hair every day, I don’t care what the experts say.
88. I am a cat person who also likes dogs.
89. But only small-to-medium sized ones, who don’t smell, drool, or shed excessively.
90. I think the best pet names are wildly inappropriate ones, like Tito Jackson for a teeny Siamese kitten.
91. I love Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup and if they ever try to take it off the market, I’m going to hit the streets with pamphlets and petitions.
92. One of my current goals is to apply such grassroots activism to non-soup causes that actually matter.
93. I have been a babysitter, warehouse worker, desk receptionist, bookstore associate, architect, bartender, waitress, and now…my job defies classification, but it’s pretty enjoyable and I don’t have to get anyone anything.
94. I think money is very nearly as important as love.
95. My all-time favorite movie is The Sound of Music. I also revere: Forrest Gump, Pay It Forward, and The Shawshank Redemption. The best funny ones are Office Space and The Princess Bride.
96. I actually love almost all movies and am leaving out a bunch of great ones.
97. Car noises and street fighting put me to sleep.
98. It drives me crazy to be even five minutes late getting somewhere, although I'm at least that late half the time.
99. It’s 10pm and I have three hours of work left to do tonight.
100. And yet, somehow, I felt obliged to provide reading material for the 4-6 people who read this blog.

Meh.

Deprived

My October resolution has worked so well that I now have no time to blog. Whoops, didn't think that one through, did I?

Between the three-to-five hours of sleep I've been getting per night and the medical mini-drama of last week (no trouble now, it looks like I won't drop dead), I'm simply and totally drained. I hope to have more interesting-ish stories for you next week.

There's a pretty good one about an emergency room, an old man, and a pair of red briefs...

Concentration

Today’s to-do list had one thing on it: Write. Here are the things I’ve actually done since I sat down at the computer at 9am:

1. Brushed my teeth six times.
2. Re-read my favorite essay by David Sedaris.
3. Tweezed my eyebrows.
4. Tied a scarf around my head and tried to make it look cool. (Nope.)
5. Gone out for coffee.
6. Danced around the living room singing “Handyman” by James Taylor.
7. Considered a trip to Whole Foods for some lobster bisque.
8. Had instead a string cheese, a can of soup, and two Diet Cokes.
9. Read the latest entries by my four favorite bloggers.
10. Written this post.

Of course, I’ve also managed to produce a rough draft of an essay about my father, my car, and modern psychology. Call it my process.

Play Nice, Eat Big

My friends and I believe that the secret to world peace lies deep within the lime-cilantro center of a Chipotle burrito. Were we to be left in charge of the planet, we’d promptly appoint the staff of the College Park Chipotle to the highest cabinet positions. Then we’d send out Evites to all the world leaders and gather them inside the aluminum walls of our headquarters. We’d sit everyone down, give them paper cups with nifty stories printed on, and serve each their choice of chicken, beef, carnitas, or vegetable burrito. The magic would unfold.

A Chipotle burrito is a beautiful thing. It is seemingly disparate pieces coming together in, yes, harmony. Meat! Grains! Cheese! Fiber! Brought together by a tortilla wrap that, no matter how much it is asked to contain, always makes room for all. It’s a kindergarten class, it’s a sing-along. Or one of those bus tours through Europe, where everybody pretends to be cousins.

Of course, all that harmony is only up until digestion. The real heart of the Chipotle Theory of World Peace is the idea that after consuming one full pound of Mexican food, nobody feels like arguing. You must understand, this is a honking burrito. Stuff down one of those puppies and politics is the last thing on your mind. Is there a God? Are there weapons of mass destruction? Nobody cares, as long as there’s Maalox.

Phone your representatives, people. I’m telling you.

Let It Out

Here's something I love - International Moment of Frustration Scream Day. It's happening tomorrow and I just found out about it today. Lucky stars!

It works like this: You go outside at noon, along with friends, neighbors, and other stressed-out type A anxiety sufferers from around the globe, and you SCREAM for 30 seconds. Is that not beautiful in its simplicity? Is that not brilliant? Not only is this a fun, healthy alternative to beating the crapola out of your comrades and relations, it is also an opportunity to share a Moment with all humanity. I say pair it with a raised pint of good beer.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the Chipotle Theory of World Peace.

Free

I was off work for the day given in name to our favorite proponent of genocide, Chris “It doesn’t count if they’re not wearing shirts!” Columbus. I would have celebrated it anyway as a glorious, weekend-extending free day – giving no mention to the history, or to the irony – but my car had cooked up other plans for me. Deep in its blazing center, from the wheezing sounds and vaguely present smell of death-by-fire, it seemed to be roasting a rat.

Or so I imagined when the ‘Service Engine Soon’ light popped on. I find it disconcerting that vehicles indicate trouble so nonchalantly. In the future, I want my car equipped with the voice of Mo’Nique shouting, “Ooooh, giiiirrrll, you best get off the road, now!” But the makers of Saturn are not with me on this, so I take their demure warnings as seriously as I assume they are meant to be taken. I drove straight to the shop, envisioning roadkill sucked up into the workings, a leaf-based bonfire in the engine, a family of chipmunks making a treadmill out of this “belt” I keep hearing about. In the sparse land of What I Know About Cars, any such thing is likely.

I’ve always heard that women should be tough and knowledgeable when dealing with mechanics, or else bring a man along. I have no men, or knowledge, so I did my best to mask my innate nervousness (which I don’t mean to imply is a girl thing, it’s just a me thing, so don’t even go there) and act like I knew what I was saying. I did the one-elbow-lean onto the counter and gestured casually toward the parking lot. “Yeah, I’ve got the ‘Service Engine Soon’ light. Came on this morning. Car’s been sounding strange lately, so…”

“Strange how?”

“Well, like…uh, kind of like…actually I always describe it as…a wheezing old man?”

“A what?”

“A wheezing old…never mind. To me it just sounds like it’s struggling, you know? Like it’s working way too hard just to keep breathing, er, running.”

“Uh-huh.” Okay, so my cred was gone at sentence two. He looked at me with what I hoped was amusement, not costly annoyance, and said they’d get someone on it. I sat down in the waiting room to read a book.

Three and a half hours later, after all the characters in my book had fixed their problems, I was told that I had no problems. “Ma’am, we checked everything.” Stuff was wired, connected, clean enough, and working. “Another couple thousand miles, you should replace the xlkdcfn jhssklas [I had him write it down], but other than that there’s really no issue.”

I had waited out the afternoon chewing off the ends of pencils, thinking this was the end, the old man was on his way out, that I’d owe thousands of dollars or should be headed to the junkyard. But nothing was wrong? Happy Columbus Day to me. I thanked the mechanic and drove off to Barnes & Noble, my happy destination on a free day, where I picked up a coffee and a new book, a new set of someone else’s problems.

Eh, It Happens

I had one of my weekends. The kind where I disregard all plans and goals, including the one laid out on this very page one week ago, and do basically nothing. I left the house just once each day – Saturday to buy some caramel apples and Sunday to go to the gym. I didn’t have any adventures or meet any people or learn anything new. I watched Forrest Gump twice and now I’m sitting here, muttering to myself in a southern accent.

And I’m not even sorry.

Okay, so I can’t turn on a dime. There’s always a bit of a backslide in the process of progress, I’m used to it. But lest you think I employ this justification lightly, here are the reasons why I deserve a couple days of nothing:

1. I’ve just completed my 12th week at the new job and I actually – gasp – like it.
2. This is approximately the 2,173rd word I’ve written this week, which certainly doesn’t break any records, but is about 2,172 words more than I’d put down in a while. So, yeah. It’s something.
3. I registered for a class this week. How’s that for proactive? (It starts on Thursday, so I’ll tell you then.)

Don't Say It

[A story from the past.]

“Is five dollars okay, honey? For your tip? Is five dollars good?”

I am needing more than the socially acceptable one second to come up with a response to this. Think. Think. Any more of a pause between utterances and this woman is going to understand her mistake and feel awkward. Or worse - she won’t understand it, she’ll decide I’m stupid, and then I’ll feel awkward. All of which, when either of you depends on the other for an evening's service (not to mention a living) is, well, awkward.

Is five dollars okay? Not on a fifty-nine dollar check it’s not, lady. Not after I ran to the kitchen and back twenty times, sweating like an obese porn star in a futile quest to satisfy your buffalo sauce-guzzling family. Not after I gave you six times a half-portion of everything, with no salt, with extra pepper. Not after providing bottomless Mr. Pibbs - as though you needed them, you horde of overindulgent, sugar-pushing crazies.

But I didn’t say that. It only took me a bit longer than my one-second window to come up with “Oh, yes, sure, that’s fine!” Because the thing was, she might really not know. Or even if she did know, she was the customer - in corporate restaurant speak, the “guest” - and therefore was always right. She should probably not be told by an employee that, actually, the standard at minimum is fifteen percent, twenty is nicer, and rounding up is really, really appreciated.

So, five dollars.

Herein lies the thrill of being a waitress: Maybe you’ll make rent and maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll make so much money in a week that you’ll be able to buy a Cole Haan handbag at retail, in cash, guilt-free. Or maybe you’ll find yourself on the phone with Dad, whose generosity, mercifully, still extends to your car insurance. You just never know.

In waiting, the tip is not the icing, it is the cake. And there is no icing.

Too Long, Too Late

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One night, in a dream, I had the following conversation with my daughter, who was seven years old (and does not exist in real life):

TRACY: So, what do people call you? I never really named you.

DAUGHTER: Phil.

---

My smoke alarm is off the wall. It chirps 1,440 times a day. There was no stopping it when it started. I noted the absence of any actual smoke, dragged a chair to the wall, fiddled with buttons and wires and then – I ripped it out, wrapped it up, and stored it in a drawer under layers of winter sweaters and unemployed bath towels. That was two years ago.

I’m used to the sound. It’s baby-faint, but there. I go to sleep with the chirping. I watch tv with the chirping. And when I wake up from another fuzzy apocalypse, the chirping is what tells me I lived through it. The summer I spent in Paris, I was greeted every morning by a pigeon that flapped and pooped right outside my screenless open window. This is not better; it’s only what I’ve got.

I bet there’s a way to fix my smoke alarm. It’s probably simple and there may even be directions. I’d find out if this were still two years ago. But I waited too long and so the story has written itself most weirdly. There’s another, functional smoke alarm right outside my bedroom door. I will be safe and strange, together.

On History

I’ve been a web presence before. I wrote a blog called Planet Tracy from January 2001 through March-ish 2003. It was a crazy-brochure that doubled as an issues resource. I posted on such important matters as the link between hand lotion and fire safety. I kicked off the widely supported “Campaign for Water Consumption”. I told of a fantastical future in which history and fun come together and they turn Mont St. Michel into a water park. My readership was vast – dozens of people in my dorm building, over four of my high school colleagues, and as many as one person from the UK.* You can imagine, with stats like that, how my eventual distraction from writing was a blow to the international e-publishing community. Should I ever have the drive again, I vowed to make it up to my fans by producing an even more exciting blog called – this is so inspired – Planet Tracy II.

Then I was recruited to MySpace by a few enthusiastic three-dimensional friends. Therein, I was assured, I would gain popularity via a technologically current, semi-adult version of “Do you like me? Check yes or no”. This was irresistible, so I promptly I discarded all notions of PTII.

But after months of bandwagoning, I have about 20 “friends”, mostly because I never accept anyone I haven’t met in real life (excluding the famous people, I’m not that cool) and I’m shy about asking people to be my “friend”, even if they are my friend. I would make a terrible politician. “Oh, you don’t have to vote for me. No, no, that’s okay. If you don’t want to…I understand, people are different! It’s cool. Really, Mom, it’s fine.”

And so I’ve reverted to my original documentary medium. It’s much better to self-promote in complete sentences.

* Hi, Paul! You were right about Kraft parmesan cheese, it does melt.

October Resolutions

At the start of the last quarter of the year, I do something confined by many people to the first week in January: I improve. The fall calls me to newness, a leftover feeling of back to school, I think. Self-improvement is happier here than in too-cold, too-white, too-dark January, a month whose innate depressiveness ought to be formally decreed. You can’t save it with lists and promises, and you shouldn’t have to put down your mint hot chocolate and try.

My list this October is short: Do stuff. I am a long-time champion doer of nothing, a sitter extraordinaire. With a little wine in me, I’m basically French. I’ve passed whole weekends just staring at things. It’s lovely, but it’s all wrong in the here and 25-year-old now. If nothing changes, nothing will change. That’s a dangerous chance I can’t take.

One component of the new doing is the doing of this blog, which I have been thinking about vaguely ever since I decided to quit writing Planet Tracy in 2003. Blogging had been a serious hobby of mine since my sophomore year of college. To its reputation as the pastime of the pallid self-obsessed, I will say that I don’t think that’s entirely off, I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Everyone has their own internal marketing department, quietly coming up with craftier ways to get the word out than to stand on chairs and shout “This is who I am!” Writing is the form that takes for me, and it worked before. At a university of 35,000 people, suddenly a few of them knew that a girl with my name was around, mixing ground beef into her Easy Mac and worrying that every action taken was another tally on the wrong side of the scorecard. Yes, it was angst-y, all about me and what I think. Some people hated that. But some loved it, and I loved doing it, and it made people think, and it made me think, and it made me write more – and some loved it, and I loved doing it… When that happens, who cares if people call it self-obsession?

I’ve not kept it secret that I think of myself as a writer. I can’t say that I am one now (that would mean I’ve been working) or even that I want to be one (that would mean I’ve been working), just that when I think about an occupation plotted over fifty weeks a year for forty years, writing is the only one that does not make me want to throw up. I’m not sure in what specific ways this blog is going to contribute to the achievement of that. But on the occasion of October resolutions, I’m going to start a tiny something, this indefinite thing thing, and hope the oldest two hopes in the world – that there is a point, and that we will eventually know what it is.