When sleeping in was a commodity in the early days of summer vacation, my mother used to wake us up early. The garden needed attention.

She’d throw the pink swiss dot curtains wide open, and I’d whine and roll over on my white metal daybed trying to block out the sun. I didn’t get it. Why was she soooo happy to be awake when she didn’t have to be? And singing?

Her two favorites were Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma! and Good Morning, from Singing in the Rain.

Oh what a beautiful morning
Oh what a beautiful day
I’ve got a glorious feeling
Everything’s going my way

And this morning, when the first bit of sunshine was peeking in my windows and I was done sleeping, I totally got it. I didn’t sing, because I don’t know all the words anymore. But I hummed. And then went to the park to watch morning happen on the East River.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be up for hours.”
“Mmm… Too late, I’ve already taken the sleeping pills”
“Ah, so you’re having your very own Karen Carpenter moment.”
“Truly. Okay, so I’m gonna go wash my face and lay down…”
“Damn it.”
“What?”
“Now I think I have to go listen to my Carpenter’s CD.”

After I hung up the phone with Ari, I lowered all the blinds (to preempt any morning sun), washed my face and crawled into bed. I was in dire need of a real sleep.

I woke up this morning, some 12 hours later, a little disoriented and foggy. But once the haze wore off, crazy ambition took over. The laundry is sorted and ready to go. The bathroom is clean and Sir Halitosis, rid of his razor sharp claws. He’s laying in the corner sulking, and I have the sense he’s hatching some evil kitten plot to hide the claw trimmers. My furniture, on the other hand, let out a sigh of relief.

Now it’s off to the Laundromat. And the park for some freckling. And Barnes & Noble for a new read.

And then maybe to Blockbuster to rent the Karen Carpenter Story.

My tongue is electric pink from this morning’s overdose on berry-flavored Tums. Binge-eating leftover ethnic food on a stomach full of vodka ended up not being a really super terrific great idea.

Who knew?

What was really super terrific great was the Tribe-tastic gathering for last night’s show.

Shiv was amazing, of course, and for most of her performance, I just had to sit back and grin at my deliciously talented new friend.

Bright Sweater Guy (Casey Shea) was also fairly fantastic and gave me the giggles over something I can’t even remember now. He had digits on his hand, I had a camera in mine and we laughed and laughed about….who really knows what. It’s all very foggy.

BDubs wrapped it up with some of my favorites and, as promised, sing-along-worthy covers. Singing along to Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, my head on Shiv’s knee, Krissa’s curly head on my shoulder and a scruffy-faced Biscuit within reach, I was pretty well contented. All cozy and happy and totally wishing there had been a campfire involved.

Then there was vodka.

I got my shoe stuck in a subway grate. I stole Jonathan’s celery. I learned I am a good sport and a lousy photographer. I told Jason that he looked like an artsy Eddie Munster. And I was on-the-floor shocked when a stranger friend of a friend whom I’d never met (better?) walked a gazillion blocks to see me home safely.

Really super terrific great night.

This feeling in my stomach that we shall henceforth refer to as, The Burning Like the Fires of Hell?

Not so much.

the best thing about getting home WAY too late on a school night is: the left over Pad Thai in your fridge, only after the nicest thing ever to come out of MTV purposefully missing his stop and walking you all the way home. And then fraternizing with your cat.

Dude, if you give me your mother’s phone number, I’ll totally call to thank her. That was above and beyond.

I want to be fair about this, because like most things, it’s a whole hell of a lot more complicated than a quick blog entry on a Thursday morning.

I love my mother. Make no mistake. She worked very hard to raise me well. But having not had a very good example to follow (my grandmother is a bit cold and crazy), the warm fuzzies of motherhood didn’t exactly come as second nature. I don’t know if saying the Universe had been unfair to my parents in the early part of their marriage justifies any of the things that went on in my house growing up, but suffice it to say, things did not turn out the way my mother had imagined, and she may have been resentful.

As children, we grew up with the understanding that my father was not good enough for my mother. She came from money; he did not. You get the idea. She nagged – mostly about his weight, she complained, and my father, an equally tragic character, made it his life goal to please her. In our house, we were bombarded with the notion that being an overweight person made you unworthy of love. This originated with my grandparents — a whole story in itself. It is no wonder, then, that three of the five siblings did not make it out of high school without serious eating disorders; the other two, obsessive-compulsive tendencies toward academic perfection. We all felt the same sort of pressure to be good enough. Did she mean for it to be that way? Of course not. She’s not cruel. She’s human. She made mistakes. But those mistakes do explain why I have a very difficult time relating to her.

In high school, she was constantly trying to get me to diet. She’d pinch my side and ask if I wanted to try the new {insert fad weight loss program here} diet. Looking back, I’d kill for the figure I had at 17, and I wonder, and not without undeniable anger, why that wasn’t okay with her.

My hair was too straight. Too long. Don’t you think maybe you should do something with it? We were in the car. I was 18. And I became furious. I remember shouting, taking up the small space with years of pent-up frustration. Why am I not good enough for you?! She pinched her lips together and we drove home in silence. If I remember correctly, she apologized in the driveway.

One night, I came down the stairs dressed for a dance and my father looked up from the paper. “Don’t we have the prettiest daughters?” My mother, doing leg-lifts near the fireplace, looked up briefly and countered, “At least they’re smart.”

I grew up understanding that my mother didn’t like my father. In my teen years, I became fairly convinced that she didn’t like me. Whether this is true or not, remains an open topic of conversation with my siblings.

Things changed. I went to college, grew up, became more patient and more compassionate — compassion being something I lacked nearly completely up until that point. My mother grew up, too. She let up on us kids, heaping praise where criticism had been. And in a sense, she also let up on my father. She divorced him.

These days, she tells me she admires me. My courage for taking leaps that took me from McKinney to Manhattan. My physical beauty. My talent. And my reaction is to be angry.

Why now? Why now am I good enough? I’ve been the same person all along!

And it’s all but impossible to fight the feeling that when I do see her, something won’t be good enough. I still haven’t done anything with my hair. I’ve got a love handle and big hips. Will she politely smile through dinner, all the while wondering why I’m not just having a salad?

Probably not. But that doesn’t mean I won’t feel like she is.

I haven’t seen my mother in two years.

(Whether or not this makes me a bad person is not really up for discussion at this point.)

Yesterday afternoon my mother called to tell me that she will be in NYC for business next month, and would like to spend the weekend together.

Hmmm. Let me check my calendar.

I now have exactly one month to lose 20 pounds, get a haircut, and alter my sinful lifestyle so that it appears I am not on the fast track to dying alone with my cat.

Totally doable.

Days like today aren’t as rare as they should be.

It started out just fine. Up willfully before 6:30 for some playtime with Sir Halitosis. A tangerine Popsicle for breakfast on the way to the train. Comfortable walking shoes. But by the time I hit the lobby doors, everything went… off.

Over the course of the next few hours, I tipped over the water cooler in the office kitchen, ticked off an executive vice president, and because of a forgetful mind and procrastination, missed out on tickets to a lecture I’d absolutely had my heart set on.

I know: they seem like little things. But some times the little things can be a really big deal.

It wasn’t my biorhythms; those turned out to be okay, according to Biscuit. So I did a quick diagnostic check. It wasn’t the who, the what, or the where of my day. It wasn’t anything I could pinpoint. Something was just off. So I decided I was going to do whatever it took to put it back on.

When I finally left work, I traded my sleek Ann Taylor calf skin slides for a pair of borrowed, too-big flip-flops and walked home, mostly through Central Park. I smiled at babies. I returned errant Frisbees. I sat perfectly still on a bench for twenty minutes and just breathed. And you know what happened? Not a goddamn thing.

If mother fucking nature couldn’t fix my funk, what could?

I stopped at the paint store. I sucked the hard candy shells off peanut M&Ms. And somewhere in the middle of therapeutic flirting, I excused myself and came home. I realized I was fighting the Universe for a losing cause. To quote the divine Ms. Sheryl Crow — in a completely out-of-context sort of way —

So what if right now everything’s wrong?

Get over yourself and your bad day! Go home, take a bath, put on something scandalous and take yourself to bed. Put an end to it already!

Today may have had no reset button, but there is one guarantee: I get to get up and do it all again tomorrow. You know, barring any unforseen nocturnal disasters. And I’ll try to think of that as comforting because, really… it’s all I’ve got.

The M&Ms have been gone for hours.

Funny how losing one post-it note makes your whole career flash before your eyes.

I am officially fucked.

*** updated ***

post-it found. nothin’ like a good over-reactin’ to get the morning going on a good note.

I did something last night that I have not done in a long time.

I played the straight man.

Sitting with our fingers and toes under the fans and UV lights, Ari and I passed our manicure downtime in snarky gossip. Men, bad writers, mothers. At a rather high point in the conversation, Ari said something so spot-on clever that I didn’t laugh so much as I snorted. And then, as she attempted to describe someone as smart and funny…

“… so smun and farty…”
“Wait, did you just say… farty??”

A titter went up around the nail parlor. And from that point, we were the entertainment. A conversation for two had turned into a comedy act with an audience of… what, half a dozen?

“How’s your mom?”
“Better. I swear, Neiman Marcus is probably sending out a search party… flashlights in the windows of my parents’ house. ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you spending money?’”

The woman across the table stifled a laugh. Ari was on. Everything that came out of her mouth was riotously funny. Me? I didn’t do much but laugh, and set ‘em up so Ari could hit them out of the park.

After a while, a manicure finished up and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman came to dry her nails.

“Girls,” she said. “I just couldn’t help overhear you. You’re just so smutty… er, I mean, smart and funny.” She winked.

“We’re smutty, too!”
”Yes, but don’t tell our mothers.”

We let our nails dry longer than necessary; it would have been a shame to leave before we were out of good material.

And as we walked down First Ave, my cheeks hurting from laughing, I realized that as much as I love to be the one in the spotlight (who, me?), playing Ethel to a really good Lucy is just as amusing. Or maybe more so, because it requires less energy.

There are a few things in life upon which you can count. Death, taxes, and having a rough time of it in junior high.

Krissa and I sat on the Great Lawn yesterday afternoon, ignoring the New York Times that was spread out around us in the grass, talking about, among other things, love (which looks so good on her), and awkward stages (which look good on no one).

There were the junior high years with their nicknames. We shared ours. Mine, started by my brother and Brian Petersen (who used the word ‘reckon’ with astonishing frequency), had enough variations to keep the boys amused on many levels. Heather sounded like heifer… you see where I’m going with this. And thus passed seventh grade. At dances, I was the dancing cow. In French class, after culture day turned them on to the phrase, la vache qui rie, I was the cow who laughed.

In the eighth grade, when Brian slipped a note onto my desk asking me to the Halloween dance, I returned it signed, Moo, and went to the dance with Randy Seely.

My hang-ups about junior high ended with junior high. For Krissa, it was the same. Over salty pretzels and lukewarm bottled water, we admitted our insecurities, our tendencies to be hypercritical, and that the pursuit of physical perfection, while a fair enough hobby, just sorta distracts a girl from what’s really important.

And whereas, in the past, I may have wasted plenty of time being jealous of Krissa’s skin tone, or the multi-lingual compliments she got from strangers about her legs, decked out in tiny gingham shorts, I really had to admire our differences. And two things were agreed upon there, the both of us, propped up on elbows, bare toes flicking against the sun:

What we are attracted to in others may be the same thing that we consider a flaw in ourselves. And criticism is a waste of time. Self-criticism or otherwise.

Not that I’ll ever be able to give it up completely. I just think it’s a nice change, to be able to sit back with a truly fabulous friend, and think that you’re not so bad yourself.

Truly.

It is unbearably hot in my apartment.

If you have a Slip n’ Slide at your place, please invite me over.

If you don’t have a Slip n’ Slide, but do have popsicles and squirt guns, that would be okay, too.

I’m home… and just in time.

I pranced out the door this evening in all white, and now, thunder, lightning and a down pour. That’s one wet t-shirt contest I wouldn’t have meant to enter.

I got up this morning, intent on spending the day outdoors. A quick pedicure, and an ice coffee later, I was on the Great Lawn catching the first sunburn of the season.

I was asked to play wiffle ball, but, sadly, as I told the cute invitees, the most movement I planned to do all afternoon was flip front to back.

Back home, I showered, switched outfits, and went out for late afternoon of shopping and then over to the UWS for UN-fucking-Believeable Mexican food and margaritas. I bailed early, which brings us to now.

The storm is magnificent. Unless you’re Sir Halitosis, who is decidedly anti-thunder storm. He has gone from lazily napping in a flip-flop (yet another strange habit) to racing about the house from one hiding spot to the next.

Me? I’m hanging out in my underwear, watching the storm. Too damn hot to wear much more, and too damn good at being lazy to do much more.

I have been Friendstered by a minister and there was hot coffee on my desk when I walked in this morning. These things make me smile.

Last night, Carol and I were supposed to have cocktails at the Guggenheim. We did not make it. We did, however, make it out to Brooklyn. We traded getting too dressed up drinking cocktails on ramps, schmoozing with work folk for getting too liquored up on cheap beer, singing along to good, old, fiercely fun country music, schmoozing with folks inclined to wear trucker hats.

I forced Kevin to take my business card, though. You know, for good measure.

The Smith Family was fine, fine entertainment. Carol and I both developed some pretty serious platonic crushes on the drummer, who is just flat out A-dorable. I talked too much, drank too much, smoked too much and sang too loudly. My stomach lining is eating away at itself, being empty of everything but Corona and coffee. I am disheveled, under-rested and sportin’ a Bride of Frankenstein ‘do.

Stayin’ out too late on a school night never looked so good.

Yee-haw!

friday morning, coming down.

check back later.
busy replacing beer with coffee.

The communal box of Band-Aids is on the top shelf in the office kitchen. The result of a three-block walk in new-ish shoes is in two places on my left foot. There are two Band-Aid brand bandages in the box. I took one.

I needed two, but I took one. See, what happens if there’s a freak accident with a stapler, someone gets a paper cut, or New Work Friend gets a wound from her totally cute but not so comfy shoes? I don’t need bad Band-Aid karma.

Or any more caffeine. I’m trading in my (mumbles number) cups of coffee a day for plain ole good for you water. Contrary to popular opinion, twitchy and agitated is not the new black.

On a sorta-related note, I feel the need to celebrate. I woke up this morning one hundred percent pain free and I can’t stop grinning like a silly fool. Guess that means I’ll have to buckle down at work again, now that I’ve no legitimate excuse for being a space case.

That’s really all I’ve got. That and another strange tale from the My Cat is Just Not Normal files.

Halitosis Maximus wakes me up at quarter after five, because that is when he thinks breakfast should begin. Nevermind he already has a bowl full of dry cat food. Stinky Breath wants the nasty stuff. So, up I get, try not to breathe as I plop the still-shaped-like-the-can mess into his bowl and head back to bed.

Ten minutes later I hear him digging in his dry cat food. And he’s not quiet about it. Dig, dig, dig. What the…?? Up I get again, this time out of curiosity. Chef Boy-Ar-Kitty has taken dry cat food and mixed it in with the nasty wet stuff. And done it without making a bit of a mess.

Dude, who taught him that? Weirdo.

Have I mentioned that he sleeps next to me… on his back? Yeah, I’m thinking of renting him out for parties. The amusement never ends.

Donning appropriate-for-walking-lots-and-lots-of-blocks shoes, I left work yesterday and headed down to the Hammerstein Ballroom for C’s art show. The humidity, the heat, the hour of the evening mingled, and one (one!) glass of wine later, I was rocked.

Jabbering like a madwoman, I made totally irrelevant conversation with C’s parents, friends, and even complete strangers. Brilliant.

Dzu (my new friend, by virtue of his not seeming at all put off by my animated chattering) and I had toured the art show floor, both in love with the shoes-as-art.

“Imagine being a cobbler?” Dzu asked as I admired a pair of evening shoes made entirely out of ribbon.
“It would be handy”
“I mean, say one night you’re going out, you have a fan-tastic outfit and all it’s missing is the right pair of shoes. And so you make them. Seriously, good talent to have.”

We wandered some more.

“Or a haberdasher,” he said. “They make hats.”
“I’m going to stick with cobbler. Hats are sort of faddish. Shoes are forever.”
“True.”

We left the event and made our way toward Grand Central; it was nice out and a walk was just the sobering-up I needed. As we were exiting the theater, Dzu stopped and spun around.

“This is where all the hot guys are. Out smoking!”
“You don’t want one of those, honey. They die young and get all leathery.”
“That’s why you lather them in cream. Besides, I consider every smoker a fixer-upper. They all want to quit.”

We walked to the subway, went our separate ways, and when I exited the 86th Street station, it was raining. I kept my umbrella stowed in my bag and walked four avenues in the rain. At home, I peeled off damp layers, grabbed a good book and Kitten II (Sir Halitosis Maximus) for a snuggle, and thought,

This city just keeps getting better.

I have the attention span of a fruit fly.

Not as a personality trait, mind you, but as a current state of affairs. And it’s mostly related to a nasty little thing I like to call, The Pain That Will Never End. When people ask, “How’s your back?” I have to say, “It’s so much better, thank you.” Because, well, it is — vastly improved in the last eight days. And because, if the conversation goes any further, it will require my concentration, which has vastly deteriorated in the same time span.

My mind just seems to flit from one thing to the next, while I physically shift to find the next comfortable position. You know, in order to temporarily alleviate The Pain That Will Never End.

Flit!

I’ve also become edgy, irritable and defensive. I say things I don’t mean. I feel resentful. I want to trample slow movers in the subway and yell at people who wear really bad clothes. This morning in the muggy-beyond-all-reason 86th Street station, I nearly French-kissed a man for the last sip of his iced coffee.

Flit!

It’s only been eight days. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I were living with constant pain as a way of life. My pops does. His disease is genetic, and we don’t talk about that. Because living with pain and guilt just doesn’t seem fair, right?

Flit!

At 11:00 I will have a headache. Like some magical pumpkin-coach spell, the dull ache that is in my shoulder at this moment will Bippity-Boppity-Boo right up to my temples. That’s when the saying things I don’t mean bit starts. I should walk around wearing Chanel Allure and an apology.

Now, normally, this is where I wrap it all up with something clever. Ha! Forget it! I’m like Phoebe Buffet on Ephedra.

Only less focused.

Last night, while I was in the middle of not concentrating on a movie I’d rented, my sister the elephant trainer called. No, it’s not a wacky metaphor. She’s actually an elephant trainer in San Francisco.

We talked about our parents, psychotic cats and boys.

“Whatever happened with that doctor?”
“Seriously, you’d think that after 30 there’d be a little growing up.”
“You would think. And that’s where you’d be wrong.”

And traffic.

“You’re lucky not to need a car. They’re such a pain.”
“I miss driving. Running over pedestrians just isn’t as fun when you’re doing it on foot.”
“Remember that time you got pulled over…?”
“Shh! No. No I don’t.”

And careers.

“We got a new whale at work last week.”
“Yeah, so? We um, got new stationery.”
“Oh, come on, you know I’d trade my man-hands for a manicure in a heartbeat.”

She does have roughed-up hands, a serious farmer’s tan and some pretty impressive triceps. I’ve got paper cuts, pinched piggy toes and a pretty impressive fear of varicose veins.

Job hazards.

The time difference was noteworthy. She was just getting home from the evening feeding; I was yawning, headed for bed.

“Have fun shoveling shit tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you, too.”

I went to sleep secure in the knowledge that the shit I’d have to shovel at work would smell a whole lot better.

And that my little sister could totally kick my ass on Survivor.

In tribute to spring cleaning, I’ve decided to clean up my links. And instead of wading through referrer logs, I’m gonna do it this way:

If you’re linked to me, and would like to see that reciprocated (which I’m ever so happy to do) drop me an email or leave a comment here with your URL and preferred name.

If you’d like to be un-linked (meaning you don’t like me anymore but somehow I’ve still got it in my head that you’re linked to me), you can also drop and email or leave a comment. But you know, screw you just the same.

Thanks,

The Management

Any plans I had of getting out and about before the nasty stormy weather hits have been put on hold by Kitten II who… get this… just poked me in the eye. You know, very Three Stooges like, jabbed me in the eye. Claws were involved. And now I’m sitting around the apartment, a Manhattan Weeping Madonna, giving Kitten II the evil eye with the one that still works.

I’m a few steps away from trading him in for a pet rock.

Friday, May 7th

Dear Valued Customer:

Today the hard drive of the SM5 Site Meter server, where your account
is located, failed. When we attempted to restart the server, the hard
drive in it would not boot.

We have setup a new server and are currently working to recover the
files from the old server and will have it back up as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience during this process.

We appreciate your business.

Sweet baby jesus! Not my sitemeter! How am I supposed to accurately gague my self-worth without knowing my average number of site visits?

And I’ll go ahead and pretend I’m kidding, as long as you pretend to believe me.

Deal?

This morning, I pushed the snooze button for an hour and forty-five minutes.

I nearly didn’t get up at all. And when I did, I didn’t bother with a shower. I just tugged my long hair into a ponytail, changed my clothes and left the apartment.

Maybe I’ve just been in pain for too many days in a row. Or maybe I’m really much more broken up by the series finale of Friends than I let on. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m really legitimately miffed. In which case, I intend to stay that way for a while.

This current state of miffed-ness, having simmered down substantially from last night’s knife-wielding rage (Sorry guys. I swear, I was only going to cut the bread) is really more the bastard stepchild of disappointment than anything else.

And while I still feel like karate chopping someone in the throat — you know, Miss Piggy style — I’m going to settle for being in one pretty considerable funk. Less violent that way.

I am sorta tempted to let the girls do their thing with ninja stars, though.

PS To the nice man from Wee Book Inn: I inadvertently deleted your email. I did intend to respond, so if you’d like to leave your address, that’d be swell.

1. You’re a big, fat stinking liar.

Hmm. That oughta do it. Looks like I didn’t need 10 after all.

Jerk.

We left the book party (Biscuit, New Work Friend & I) a bit early in the night. We left because of sore feet, long days at work and hunger. And boy, did we pay the price.

We missed Molly Ringwald.

The actual, for really real Molly Ringwald. Yeah, turns out she’s the main squeeze of one of the book’s contributors. I relayed the news to Biscuit, who understood the tragedy of the missed connection.

“You’re fucking kidding me. Would we have bumped into her and accidentally spilled drinks and all laughed and then she’d have offered to buy us replacements and then we’d have all been best friends forever more and she’d totally have let you try on the Pretty in Pink dress???”

Oh god, the Pretty in Pink Dress. And a sigh goes out across the internet. Only Biscuit could have created a scenario on par with the one going on in my own brain. You know, the one in which no one spills any drinks, but in which I meet Molly and don’t say anything remotely embarassing and I get to wear the Pretty in Pink Dress? Sigh.

I missed meeting Molly Ringwald.

It’s probably just as well, though. I’d probably have asked her to put on lipstick with her cleavage and been escorted from the party by security.

When Krissa volunteered to come over and brush my hair, I giggled. Silly girl. But when I found it all but impossible to not only brush, but wash my hair this morning, I did much less giggling. Who’s the silly girl now?

I’m sitting here at work – though, perching is probably a better word for it – praying the vicodin doesn’t wear off until after I’ve accomplished the day’s more difficult tasks. Like, opening my desk drawer. Or, hanging up my coat. I just want to know what the space planners here have against keeping all objects at waist level. All this reaching is really such a ridiculous misuse of time. And it hurts.

As does reclaiming my wet towel from the bathroom floor, cleaning up after Kitten II’s adventures in Q-Tips, and eating anything that doesn’t come from the middle shelf in the refrigerator (which basically boils down to sesame rolls, strawberries and hummus).

My apartment is a mess and I’m hungry.

What’s more, the magical massage god has failed to appear. I’ve clicked the heels of my red shoes, appealed to every known deity and made a voodoo doll of myself with a big silly grin on its face. And yet, nothing.

I think I’m going to rent the Bat Signal tonight.

Take off your cape and stay awhile, handsome. Oh, and while you’re up, could you get me some pretzels? They’re on the third shelf.