if you think that i could be forgiven, i wish you would.

it's that time of year.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

ha, that's easy - i got married.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

hmmm, let's see. i did mildly to moderately well on my resolutions from last year:

- start approaching life as something to be experienced, not just survived: not there yet, but goddammit i'm working on it.
- cook more: yes, i did - i bring leftovers for lunch all the time.
- run a five-mile race: nope. i abandoned this one purposefully, because i really wasn't into it. i do go to the gym on 5-6 times a week, but life's too short to force yourself onto the treadmill, you know?
- get over myself, in general: again, a work in progress.

for this year, i haven't formulated any concrete resolutions yet. but i think i will.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

nope, i don't think so.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

yes, my grandmother died of cancer in april and my uncle einar died of cancer in july.

5. What places did you visit?

i logged a lot of airline and highway miles in 2008! in chronological order, we hit: chicago for a wedding, vegas for our wedding, downstate illinois for a wedding, home for a funeral, great barrington for a wake, home for a party, downstate illinois for another wedding, and home for christmas. next year we're taking a proper vacation that doesn't involve someone getting married, i swear!

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

more money would always be great, but i'm not holding my breath on that front. a little less static. a little more peace of mind.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

friday, may second, in the year of our lord two thousand and eight, as they say on the fancy wedding invites that we definitely did not have :) i know i'm not a big proponent of weddings and what not, and i'll always kind of consider january 17th our "actual" anniversary, it was no doubt a major step for jason and me to bind ourselves together in the legal sense :)

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?

i'd say asking for new title and a raise, and getting them both. that always feels good.

9. What was your biggest failure?

waiting so long to kickstart a process that needed to happen in order to improve my sanity and quality of life. but hey, better late than never.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

i got the flu from HELL back in february. i'm hoping to avoid a similar fate this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

plane tickets to vegas! twice actually, as i just booked our flight for next year too, yessssss.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

the person who turned my new ipod nano - which i couldn't have had for over a month - in to lost and found at the gym. amazing.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

everyone who voted for Prop 8 in california. what a step backwards.

14. Where did most of your money go?

rent. and savings. and plane tickets. and hotel rooms. and new ipods.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

i know i sound like a broken record here but vegas vegas vegas. the whole trip was so much fun, and i can't wait to go back next year. mcdonald's breakfast, and blackjack, and fontana bar, and free drinks, and cabanas, and gonzales y gonzales, and....

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

viva la vida by coldplay. it came out during the height of a lot of emotional stuff, and i heard it often during the summer. i remember driving home on 295 from einar's wake, exhausted on so many levels, and it came on the radio - something about the insistent violins and the rolling drums as i made my way home at sunset - i just cried and cried. sad/beautiful, as they say.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? hmmm. probably a bit sadder. but i'm hoping for a really good 2009 to return the equilibrium.
b) thinner or fatter? i'd say just about the same.
c) richer or poorer? richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

reading. smiling. cleaning. happy hour-ing.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year?

same as every year, back home at my parents' house. and this year we got to meet the newest addition to the family, the little rotund kitten clarice. jason wanted to steal her.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

stayed solidly in the "love" camp, yes.

22. How many one-night stands?

zero.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

mad men. wow i was a little obsessed with that show. can you believe elisabeth moss didn't get a golden globe nomination?? scandalous.

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2008?

escaped the DC august heat and headed home - went to a lovely lake party thrown by my family, and also spent much time by the pool. and golfed. yes - i can golf!

25. What was the best book you read?

the brief wondrous life of oscar wao, by junot diaz. though the title drives me crazy - a comma or an "and" pleeeeeease, you're killing me here! also, i became completely enamored with the kenzie/gennaro mysteries by dennis lehane - they are such page turners, i've read each one within 48 hours at most. can't put them down.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

beyonce! preachin' it! "if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it" - god i could listen to that damn song 500 times.

27. What did you want and get?

a vacation with jason. a raise. a new phone. stronger muscles. tickets to the dark knight. a new president.

28. What did you want and not get?

a new tv (just have to keep banging on the top of the old one for now). a cat without chronic health issues (awww poor dottie).

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

the dark knight, definitely. that reminds me, i want to put it on my netflix queue to watch again.

30. Did you make some new friends this year?

i did! though i'd like to step up my efforts to get out and see people more - it can be so easy to get into hermit mode. so hey, if you ever want to hang out, let me know! and remind me i'm trying to avoid hermit-tude.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

pretty pretty ponies.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

basic. key to this year's wardrobe upgrading - more color. my closet is like a sea of black, brown, gray, and white, with a little bit of green and blue thrown in. would it kill me to purchase something red??

33. What kept you sane?

jason. my family. books. naps. booze.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

obama. c'mon now.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

if you didn't cry on election night, then you have no soul. and if you cried on election night because mccain lost, well...you have no soul ;)

36. Who did you miss?

all my massachusetts darlings, as usual. the absolute biggest drawback to living in DC.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

clarice. oh wait, she's not a person. but whatev, she's a fat kitten and i looooove her.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

"there are years that ask questions and years that answer." this one felt, in many ways, like one big question mark, so i'm hoping - and working - on getting some answers in 2009.



oh, and i tag toast, because he gets mad at me when i don't! but all you other meme-lovers, consider yourself tagged as well.

trade-offs.

did you know that when you buy a southwest business select ticket, you get a free drink? neither did i! until yesterday, when i needed to employ some travel ninja skills (which mainly consisted of picking up the phone and dialing) to change my flight home from tomorrow to today. trying to sneak myself back into new england between part one and part two of this weekend snowpocalypse. and while it cost me a little more coin, i can't lie - i'm pretty excited about the drink coupon tucked away in my wallet, waiting to transform itself into a glass of white wine.

so, send us some good travel karma and cross your fingers for our on-time departure - i hope you all end up where you want to be this week, too! merry christmas!

note to self.

do not venture out of the house carrying only a small purse, and then proceed to purchase and/or procure:

-four christmas gifts
-eight apples
-one quart of apply cider
-five library books
-four pieces of dry cleaning

and do not - i repeat, DO NOT - forget to bring gloves along for the trip. because your fingers, your forearms, your elbows, and your shoulders? none of them will be very happy with you during the cold, windy six-block walk home.

a declaration.

this happened a few days ago, but i still can't get over it.

these two women are getting on the metro escalator ahead of me in the morning - they are probably late 20s, early 30s. i infer that they're talking about some kind of office holiday party. and one says to the other, "they're only gonna have beer and wine. and you know, i don't drink that shit."

um...what?

so many things about this statement cracked me up, i don't even know where to start. but i think the biggest thing, the thing that has me shaking my head in bewildered amusement days later, was the actual disdain in her voice when she said it. like this was a position that many other people must obviously share with her. i told jason about it pretty much as soon as they were out of earshot, then we were making up other very commonplace things of which to be irrationally disdainful: "water? i don't drink that shit." "food? i don't eat that shit."

but somehow - and i'm just guessing here - i bet her standards for refined imbibing experiences are just flexible enough to allow for the sneaking in of half a dozen nips inside her imitation coach bag.

you've missed her. admit it.

dottie has that peculiar cat habit of desiring to sit on any article of clothing left on the bed. and if there's four loads of clean laundry available, well...



she's into that, too.

perplexing.

yesterday, i was riding home on the metro when i noticed something interesting. i was sitting on a pretty crowded train, and there was a woman standing a few feet in front of me and slightly to my left. she was young-ish - early 20s? - normally dressed in jeans and a gray pea coat, and carrying some type of fat textbook under her arm. on her left wrist was one thick black plastic bracelet, and one thin white plastic...hoop earring.

she was wearing a big white hoop earring like a bracelet. and it wasn't even one of those full hoop types - there was a good inch between the end of the hoop and the metal backing, which was of course still attached. and then.

and then!

i noticed that she was wearing the other earring in her left ear.

a genuine commuting "wtf" moment. i was pissed that i couldn't get a good look at her right ear as i was getting off the train - i would've looked like a crazy person, craning my neck to get a glimpse of this woman's accessories as other riders shoved me out onto the platform. but who knows what i might have found there!

things that are true.

i will wake up...

plan a whole outfit...

febreze the hanger stretch marks out of the shirt's shoulders...

blowdry the spot where i sprayed too much febreze...

get the outfit half on...

and realize the weather forecast for showers means that i probably shouldn't wear the brown suede flats i was planning on wearing. then i will put everything away...

stand in front of my closet for five minutes composing a new outfit...

throw it on and run out the door...

and it definitely -

definitely -

will not rain a drop all day.

i would just like to report...

..that i am 64 pages from the end of The Brothers Karamazov. this is one long-ass book. but the second half? much better than the first. just in case you decide to ever pick it up, you know - soldier through those first 350. it's worth it.

i also need to go to the library soon for some fresh reading material. any suggestions?

paper.

the other night, while lolling about with the family out in virginia, we got talking about the weird things you encounter in college. and i remembered this.

it is the very end of my senior year, late on a may night- 2:00, maybe 3:00 am - and we are walking through southwest on our way back to one of the dorms. we are, unsurprisingly, very drunk.

southwest, for those unfamiliar with umass, is sometimes referred to as the concrete jungle - it is brick and stone and pavement everywhere. five high-rise dorms and a dozen or so smaller ones. we're walking by one of these high-rises when a piece of paper falls at my feet. i look down. and suddenly, there's another. and another. and another. i look up.

paper is raining from the sky. big, white sheets of notebook paper, cascading from somewhere above us, fluttering and diving and sliding to the ground all around us. i bend down to pick one up. it is blank.

they are all blank.

at the time, i just laughed and laughed - the alcohol helped with that, no doubt - but the memory of it still makes me smile today. i think it's because it was so nonsensical - there was absolutely no way to answer the "why?" of it. i mean, who takes the time to cut the screen out of a window twenty stories up, just to toss sheaves of blank paper out of it? who knows. it meant nothing. so, of course, it could mean anything.

i think that's where i'm going to start.

it's that time.

so i haven't posted in like a month. that's bad. but if anything can induce me to log back into blogger, it is that advent of that glorious day - you know the one - my sister's birthday.

it's today, people. today.

i sadly could not be in boston to celebrate with her highness, which i have been lamenting the entire weekend as i hear about the fun that's been had - dinners, parties, drinks, cheap dollar store tiaras, seafood at brown's - i'm missing it all! goddamn jetblue and their lack of reasonable last-minute fares. the facebook pictures are a lame substitute for actually being there. so sister dearest, sorry i couldn't make it, and i hope you've had an amazing birthday weekend.

maybe i'll tag myself in all the pics and note "there in spirit" in parantheticals....that wouldn't be annoying at all, would it?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

i can see down this road.

i've been having a hard time with boundaries lately. literal boundaries. not really with setting them - people aren't actually walking around drawing lines in the sand that often, i suppose - but more with, i don't know, perceiving them correctly. putting them in their proper context. i am troubled by the concept, and by the inevitable breakdowns, a lot more than i should be.

two weeks ago, roaches and mice started appearing in our kitchen. seemingly out of nowhere. we've lived here for a year and a half, and never had a problem. and then bam - vermin. for someone who hunts down all the holes in a new place and stuffs them with steel wool the minute she moves in, this was a problem. i'll keep what has felt like a saga to my anxiety-ridden brain to this brief summation: we kept finding small spaces to plug up in the kitchen, they kept coming, then we found a big hole behind the fridge to plug up, then a mouse died somewhere in the fridge. so at the moment, we have a (knock wood) well-fortified apartment and a decomposing mouse somewhere in the kitchen apparatus.

this is not, of course, the end of the world. but it came on the heels of a lot of other odd boundary-related issues that kept cropping up for me. for months, anxieties about that inside/outside divide, and all the ways that it is and can be breached, had been pressing themselves into my consciousness. i worried about bug bites that took too long to go away; i lay awake at night scaring myself with house fire scenarios; i obsessed over whether the hallway smelled like gas; the tip of my tongue went numb. yes, numb. it was either a jalapeno injury or a psychosomatic thing. and honestly, i wouldn't be surprised at the latter. everything, it felt, was encroaching.

encroaching on what, right? the anxiety over the physical piercing of boundaries is, so my pysch major sister informs me, about control. i am not surprised by this, as this is certainly not the first time i've dealt with this particular problem, this irrational and impossible desire to control the uncontrollable. but this is the first time it has manifested itself with this consistent theme. my reactions have not been at all proportional to the situations at hand, and at the very least, i need to try to change that. because i can see down this road and i don't like where it leads. at all.

there's lots to be done. lots of slippery and distorted thinking to wrestle to the ground, expose, interrogate. lots of behaviors to put in check. lots of ghosts to get in line. because really, it's their doing - and while i've lived with them long enough to know that they're not going away, they are going to have to start listening to authority. because i've had enough of this acting up. i've had enough of feeling like i'm being forced to run along a cliff edge with my eyes closed. i've had enough of being held hostage by all the people i used to be.

and i need a decent night's sleep.

other people's lives.

do you ever have the feeling that other people’s lives are so much richer and interesting than your own? even with all rational evidence to the contrary - we are, after all, surrounded by the pedestrian at every moment - do you find yourself imagining that other people are experiencing things in a thoroughly more fulfilling way than you are?

i find myself thinking this way sometimes. it’s such a subtle thought process that i have to catch myself at it red-handed. like the other day, i was reading a novel, and one of the main characters was home alone in his apartment while his wife was away. he got up, wrapped up in a robe, and made a pot of coffee and toast with butter and jam. totally boring, right? and yet, i felt like somehow he was getting more out of coffee and toast than i ever would, or ever do. the mere act of putting together breakfast somehow seemed enviable to me - like it was imbued with some type of pleasure that i’ve never been able to access. this is not restricted to fictional characters either. sometimes i’ll read a blogger’s account of an evening out or see a facebook friend’s photo album, and i’ll feel - loosely and faintly and with this vague, existential incomprehension - that i am missing some critical faculty, some way of living right.

it’s a strange thing, this impulse to overly romanticize other people’s lives and day-to-day experiences. i mean, on a rational level i am aware that the way they experience making a pot of coffee is probably, by and large, the same way that i experience it. so why do i give them more credit? why do i think they have access to some secret, some effortless method for infusing the mundane with meaning that i don’t?

when i see this in other people and not myself, what am i really looking at - what am i looking for? i do wonder about this.

it's settled, then.

i've found the best thing ever, courtesy of yvonne.



i just thought you might like to know.

things i am doing. right now.

i'm watching the baseball game.

i'm drinking chai tea.

i'm refreshing toast's haloscan comments.

i'm talking to chemist about the mitten-shaped state.

i'm feeling remarkably cool air seeping in through the window unit by the couch.

i'm trying to stretch my shins, because they hurt.

i'm also noticing that my head hurts a bit too.

i'm pondering aspirin.

i'm hating this futon cover.

i'm hating the fact that i'm going on 30 and i still technically own a futon.

i'm hearing the downstairs neighbor's tv along with my own.

i'm wishing these fricking bug bites would heal.

i'm cursing, silently, because jason is sleeping.

i'm reminding myself to take out the trash and dust tomorrow.

i'm almost, i think, through with the day.

a funny thing.

this might be kind of a juvenile thing to admit, but.

remember when the west wing came out? remember how great it was? it was a great show. and i would watch, religiously, as i wended my way through college and graduate school. cross-legged on the twin bed in my tiny dorm room in mackimmie hall, stretched out on the couch in the apartment i shared with my sister senior year, folded up into the papasan chair squeezed into my comm ave apartment. i watched, week in and week out, and i thought - maybe. maybe i could do that.

not be president, of course. but that - that life seemed like something i might be able to fit into, or at least try on for size. a life of policy and law, of thick-carpeted hallways and backrooms, of suits and cabs and wide avenues and the capitol coming into view. it was a feeling that i filed aware somewhere in my brain - put away in that recessed space reserved for everything that seems, somehow, too daunting. i thought it, but i never really considered it. it was too - too juvenile, really, and was best left in the realm of vague sensation.

but then, a funny thing - i kind of went ahead and did it anyway.

i didn't come here to DC to try to live out some aaron sorkin fantasy - i actually didn't even come here to get into politics or law. hell, i didn't even come here with a job. but looking back, i can see how the move here made sense - how it gave me a chance to slide sidelong into a place that had, to be honest, captured a bit of my imagination. i came here to do this. and while i'm no amy gardner and never will be, i go to lunch with the women who are. i've heard my heels echo as i walked down the marble-floored halls of the capitol building. my boss has the ear of the obama campaign. our reports are referenced in committee hearings. we are doing this work, and i'm part of it.

a while back, the speaker of the house threw a luncheon in our honor at her offices. i stood out on her massive private balcony overlooking the national mall - i pressed my palms into the cool stone of the massive railing and looked around. the sky, blindingly blue in the early spring, museums stacked up to the left and pennsylvania avenue reaching off to the right. i realized, at that moment, that i really had done it. wherever i went from there, whatever city i moved to or job i took or house i settled into - i had done DC.

and it felt really good. no - it feels really good. it feels good to have achieved a goal that you thought was too lofty, too hazy, too ridiculous to even set. a life like the west wing. really, who gets anything like that?

turns out, i do.

a thought.

"you say i choose sadness,
that it never once has chosen me.
maybe you're right."

in which i actually utilize microsoft paint to make a point.

something tells me this wouldn't be a headline on yahoo this evening if tim pawlenty had been mccain's vp pick.



that's some hard-hitting political reporting within the first 12 hours of her candidacy, wall street journal. kudos.

top three.

things i am looking forward to tonight:

1) wine
2) pesto pasta
3) mad men

food, drink, and good tv. sometimes, i am truly easy to please.

(and ok, any bets on when birdie's really going to crack up? we've had a shooting gallery on the front lawn, the return of the hand afflictions, and last week, a shoving match in the bedroom. it is imminent, non?)

true or false?

kate got a little overexcited while watching michael phelps win his eighth gold medal last night, resulting in a broken light sconce and the need of her sister's expert medical assistance to dress a small flesh wound.

yup.

that one is true.

summer.

it's so...hot.

everywhere, it's hot. it's either you're in the midst of the hot or you're near an a/c, in a respite from the hot. the hot dictates everything. august is here, and everyone who is smart in this city is somewhere else. the train cars are half full. dupont circle is deserted.

you walk up the escalators and feel the grime under your finger tips, touching the rubber handrail only intermittently, for balance. you sit at happy hour in the breezeway and feel your legs sticking to the leather stool, and you fan yourself with the bar bill. you kick the sheets off at night, trying to conserve energy (and money), the old air conditioner working hard even at half blast. you embrace it, at the beach, with the sun at high noon, and the sting of sunscreen in the corner of your closed eyes, with the screeches of children and tinny salsa music on someone's radio.

it's just hot. there is nothing to do but ride it out. sweat, wince, cry, purify. wait. because it will all be over soon.

right? right.