A Portrait of Domestic Tranquility

Usually, my boyfriend has to get up very early for work. This morning, he did not have to be in until 10, so he made me very cute eggs and peppers for breakfast. He is very good at sneaking vegetables into my diet.

Right before I left, I told him that one of the things I loved most about him was that I am confident that, in the event of a zombie invasion or apocalypse, he will protect me and our theoretical future children. He then started planning our theoretical future weapons cache.

This is why he is my boyfriend.

My mom's Thanksgiving insanity

As I just told my Dad, I'm not heading to Florida for any of the upcoming holidays or his birthday. Then again, it's not like he's even thought about coming to DC for Thanksgiving or my birthday.

Secretly, I kind of like being on my own for the holidays since my mom died. There's no disruption to my life. I can do what I want, with whom I want -- and if that involves sitting in bed eating pie, so be it. I am beholden to no one. Plus, there's no sense of urgently trying -- and horribly failing -- to recreate the family feeling that died along with her.

Even if we tried, it would be impossible to recreate my mother's version of the holidays. She loved any holiday that involved her getting to have her entire family around her. She would get super busy with the planning and the cooking -- and, as a result, was more than occasionally crazy -- but she loved it. All of it. I have video evidence to prove it.

She also got super weird around the holidays. One year, shortly after they moved into the current house, I was visiting over Thanksgiving and wanted to go out for breakfast. She agreed, and said that we might go with some of her new neighbors. I got up that morning, and as is my custom, threw my hair in a ponytail and put on a ratty old t-shirt and jeans combo. She saw me and said, "You're going out LIKE THAT?!?", with an incredulity that belied the fact that she had seen me go out LIKE THAT almost every day of my life that did not involve (1) office work or (2) a formal occasion.

I chalked it up to the fact that she either really wanted to impress these new neighbors or was clearly losing her marbles, and promised her that I would at least brush my teeth before we left. (Basic hygeine FTW!) My dad was laughing in the background. I interpreted that as a sign that either he thought I was funny or that he knew that asking me to dress up for breakfast was as ridiculous as asking him if he wanted to go to the mall.

We got to the restaurant, and the neighbors were there -- with their age-appropriate Jewish-y son, who, "coincidentally" also attended one of my alma maters and lived in the metro-DC area. It was a surprise set-up -- FOR BOTH OF US. And, as luck would have it, we were both hungry, tired, and completely disinterested -- and, as a result, spent the entire breakfast focusing almost exclusively on our eggs and bagels while our parents gossiped about the goings-on at the clubhouse and the homeowners' association.

I miss my mom, even if she was insane.

My dad vs. the time change

I always think about my dad when it's time to set our clocks forwards or backwards. This is because the man refuses to observe this custom. I don't remember whether it's Daylight Savings Time that he ignores, or whether he ignores the reversion to Standard Time, but either way, he refuses to change his clocks.

I think that he's batshit crazy. Funny, but crazy.

We have the same inevitable conversation every year: I will be in his car and I will look at the clock on the dashboard -- or I'll be in the house and look at the clock in the stove -- and I will note that it is an hour off, and I will offer to fix it. Then he tells me to just leave it alone, and it will be right again when the time changes. And then I tell him that it is annoying and confusing for all of the clocks to be wrong for half of the year. And then he tells me to fuck off and mind my own business.

Here is the funniest part of all: His sister does the same thing. They apparently share this particular insanity.

Bad luck or bad karma?

I almost never write about dating. There are many reasons for that, but they probably all boil down to the same central concept: I am no good at it, and I don't want to give my friends any more ammunition than they already have. Still, sometimes there is a really really good (read: horrible) story that just needs to be told. Today, the merit of the story outweighs my general rule.

A few months back, by happenstance, I met a guy. Right age, right religion, single, liked a lot of the same things, worked in a similar job, similar background, had interests outside of being a lawyer . . . in other words, he was perfect on paper. (Of course, the last time someone was perfect on paper, he wound up dumping me in the IHOP. I should really know better.)

Anyway, the guy and I hit it off almost instantaneously, but because of work, we didn't go out right away. Instead, we spent a few weeks getting to know each other through long email conversations. Eventually, we went on a first date, and a second. I even told my best friend about him, which is something I generally don't do unless I've been seeing someone for a while -- like a month or more.

Anyway, then we went on what was our third or maybe even fourth date. To a relatively early movie, on a random midweek evening.

For those of you who don't know, I like to watch movies. I pay attention. I think about plot twists and acting and cinematography.

I am also not a teenager. This is an important detail.

So, the movie started, and about five minutes in, the guy started pawing at me, like we were sixteen years old and sitting in the back of a theater in a suburban mall -- instead of mid-30s professionals sitting in a downtown art house theater. I politely pushed him away.

He did this on and off for the next two hours, to the same result.

Now, granted, I can occasionally be cute, but I am not that irresistible. And I expect to have my boundaries respected. So by the time the movie was over, I was really annoyed and felt more than a little violated.

He sent me an email that night telling me how nice I was. I ignored his email, and several other attempts at contact over the next several days. I thought about responding and telling him what I was thinking -- and if I were really a grown up, I would have explained and given him a second chance or something -- but ultimately, I am a child, and in that moment, I lacked the desire and motivation to communicate. So, instead, I continued to ignore him and instead concentrated on work -- which, in my defense, was really busy. Not being a total and complete dumbass, the guy eventually got the message and stopped pursuing me.

I thought this was the end, but still, had an inkling that it wasn't. I mean, we don't work with each other, but we run in some of the same circles. I understood that, eventually, my luck would run out, as it always does.

Which brings me to last week, when I was looking for concert tickets on Craigslist and ran across an interesting personal ad. I pretty much never respond to those things. Really. But the ad was interesting and funny and witty and my curiosity got the best of me. So I wrote a quick note in response to the ad.

Of course, it was him. And rather than ignore it (like I would have), he decided to write me back, making a joke about trying to figure out what etiquette dictates. And what would Emily Post or Miss Manners do? Well, they wouldn't have responded to a Craigslist ad in the first place. So now, here I am, completely mortified. FML.

Message received

Last night, I took the computer out to my desk in the sunroom and worked until the essays were finished and printed, and the grad school application packet was all ready to go. I finished well after midnight. After the writing and proofreading and printing and re-printing, I surveyed my surroundings, took a quick breath and a final swig of Diet Coke, and turned off the light switch, forgetting that the one light switch controls all of the power for the entire room. There was a subtle snapping sound and then the quiet buzz of all the electronic equipment was gone. Not that it mattered, I was going to sleep.

This morning, I got dressed and ready for work, wrote the check for the application, and clipped the items together, getting the packet ready for the post office. I grabbed my keys, cellphone, and bag, and as a matter of habit, looked down at my mother's watch, the watch that I've taken to wearing over the past few weeks. It had stopped, at 1:44 -- which, as far as I can tell, was the exact moment I turned out the light in the sunroom. But stranger than that? When I went to adjust the time, the watch started back up as if nothing had happened. It was as if the watch merely wanted to make a point of the time when I completed my effort.

After I mailed in the application, I got to the office and started my day. As I usually do at lunch, I checked the internet -- facebook, twitter, news aggregator, email. And on my email home page, I saw my horoscope.

There's nothing you love more than education -- however it is that you choose to define it. You see the world as a huge classroom and everyone you meet as a potential teacher or student. At the moment, you're craving something resembling an actual classroom with a real, live teacher. Even the prospect of homework doesn't sound too bad to you! It's time to sign up for some classes or maybe to take a more active role in your kids' education.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

Weirdness

I spent my first night in the new condo last night, but only because that's where the bed is.

It was weird -- like sleeping in a stranger's room. Which is really weird, when you consider that I'm sleeping in the same bed -- different frame, different furniture, but still the same bed that I've been sleeping in for about 10 years now.

My new room is really dark. When I woke up, I thought it was really late, but it was 8am. Which is also weird, because without an alarm, I almost never wake up that early. Scratch that -- I NEVER wake up that early without an alarm.

It'll definitely take some getting used to.

Birthdays

Today would have been my grandfather's 84th birthday. A year ago, the family -- other than my parents, who were away on vacation -- crowded in the ICU, and read him his cards, hoping that things would end well. So much has changed since then, it's hard to wrap my head around it all.

When I started thinking about things, I noticed a strange numerological coincidence that had somehow managed to escape me for the past 32 years: My mom and her father were both born on the 15th; my dad and I were both born on the 27th.

Loneliness

Last night, I had a pretty long telephone conversation with my dad. He's not much of a complainer -- or a talker -- but apparently, the quiet of being in the house by himself is starting to get to him. How do I know this? He actually said that he couldn't see spending the rest of his life in the house, by himself.

He also asked me if, theoretically, I would have a problem with him dating.

I didn't know how to respond to that. The whole idea of having a single parent is so foreign to me. Plus I don't think he's ready as much as he's just lonely and used to having someone there all the time, the way it had been for the prior 34 years. So I said "Dating is such a loaded word."

He didn't know what I meant. We then had a discourse about how, to his generation, pretty much any time you make plans to do something with someone, it's a date. I laughed when he said that, because if that were true, I date a lot more than I think I do.

I told him that's what his kids call "hanging out."

I then decided it would be fun to turn the tables on him: I asked him if he has a problem with me dating. He thought about the question for a second, and said, "Only when I think about it."

Ah, there's the rub. Anything is okay as long as you're not thinking about it.

And in that line, the more I think about the conversation, the more bothered I am by it. Why is it that my dad hasn't even been living by himself for two months and he is so bothered by it, where I've been living by myself for the better part of six years, and I find it so much more palatable than the alternative? I mean, I absolutely relish having my own space.

I guess maybe I should be lonelier.

Trial, Day 13

Yesterday afternoon, on the train up, I kept thinking about how young and innocent and naïve I was when this goddamn trial started. Back when I thought the universe was a rational place, with a logic -- and, for lack of a better word, sanity.

I have been disabused of such notions. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Today, the trial started up once again -- and I am sick, once again. The judge was clearly feeling badly for me, so, after I had a particularly nasty bout of coughing, she kept offering me cough drops. It wasn't until later in the day that she made it clear that she knew about my mom when she called me up to a sidebar to ask a question. She then followed up with an offer of more cough drops, and told me that if I wasn't feeling well, her courtroom deputy had an office with a couch that I could go lie down on.

And that's when I remembered, once again, that I had entered the twilight zone.

The sweater

When I was a kid, my mom had this sweater that she used to wear around the house. Nothing special, just an oversized ivory cardigan with brown buttons and two pockets. But she wore it almost every day.

It was from Bamberger's. I know this, because, the other day, I found it, on the floor of her closet, tucked in a corner. It was dirty, one of the buttons was loose, and one of the pockets was torn.

I took the sweater -- not in a surreptitious way, unlike, say, how I acquired my dad's army jacket. Instead, I walked out of the closet holding the dirty old thing and boldly announced to my father and my sister and my brother that, if no one had any objections, I was taking it.

My dad and brother looked at me as if I were crazy. My sister asked to see the sweater and, after I handed it to her, she held it for a minute or two, quietly inspecting it. Equally quietly, she announced that it was torn, and folded it up and put it on the couch next to her. When she left to go back to her house for the evening, the sweater was still there.

Leaving it like that was clearly an act of consent.

Last night, upon arriving home, I washed the sweater and then sat on the couch, mending it. It made me feel just a little closer -- a little better.

Some things change, others not so much

With the exception of last weekend, I was away from home -- and my office -- for three weeks. All things considered, three weeks is not that long -- but it was enough time that things felt off. My commute felt different. Not wearing a suit felt weird. Sitting at my desk felt strange.

It must be the sleep deprivation.

But there were some actual changes. For example, on my walk to Metro this morning, I noticed that a bunch of stores in the mall had gotten facelifts, and that they're opening a new Harry's Tap Room to replace the icky Ruby Tuesday's. But then, on my walk back from Metro this evening, I realized that not even a Harry's Tap Room will make the mall patrons less annoying. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

So, now that I'm home for the time being, there's places to go, things to do. I'm pretty sure that a haircut is in order, since I'm pretty sure that, except for the drunken bang-cutting incident, my last haircut was sometime this summer.

Not your typical celebrity

Woody Harrelson's dad killed a federal judge? As a hit man for a drug dealer?

Who knew?

Florida: Still Weird

Imagine getting a speeding ticket from a leprechaun.* Only in Florida.


*As I typed this, they were talking about the same thing on the news. Weird, huh?

My horoscope

Remember how I said I'm in New Jersey for work for the rest of the week? Well, this was my horoscope today:

That itchy feeling you've been having from time to time lately is good old wanderlust. You need to travel out of your familiar territory and experience a new culture. Being uncomfortable in an airplane seat is a small price to pay for the rewards you will experience once you land. Start planning a long-distance journey today -- and consider a foreign country. There are ways of making the trip fit into your budget.

Close, but no cigar.*

For the record:

• I always have wanderlust.


• To many, New Jersey is a new culture, but to me, that's not really the case. I mean, I spent twelve years of my life here.


• It was a long and uncomfortable trip, but alas! I drove, so no airplane seat.


• It's my employer's budget, not mine, that they should be worried about.

*What does that mean, really?

Six weird things about me

This morning, Ryane tagged me to disclose six ways in which I am weird.

This is a hard challenge -- not because I'm not weird, but mostly because it's hard to narrow it down to six peccadilloes. And also because I don't want to repeat anything I disclosed earlier.

1. Even though I am cold all the time, I absolutely hate to put on the heat. I would rather pile on layers of clothing and walk around wrapped in a blanket. So, most days, that's what I do.




2. I am so bad at math that, more often than not, I count on my fingers.
   
   Yes, I am a tax attorney.




3. I love Christmas -- and not just the lights, the trees, and the presents. Remember though: I am, for all intents and purposes, Jewish. Yet, for some reason, I love Christmas so much so that, in high school, I used to tag along with friends to midnight mass.
   
   I still bake Christmas cookies (generally gingersnaps and snickerdoodles, occasionally shaped and decorated sugar cookies), and I always send Christmas cards. One year, I even made a mix CD to send out to all of my friends in lieu of a card. (My friends still, on occasion, remind me how awesome it was.)
   
   I really want a Christmas tree. For years, I've been trying to justify it to myself with the whole line about it really being a pagan symbol to celebrate the winter solstice, but for some reason, I can't pull the trigger. This year, I almost bought the Charlie Brown tree.




4. I have this compulsive need to keep busy all the time. As a result, I can't just sit in front of the TV -- my hands need to be doing something.
   
   I think it's sort-of like how a shark will die if it stops swimming.
   
   So, I pick up little hobbies to keep me occupied -- like knitting, or blogging, or -- several years ago -- scrapbooking. And then, out of the blue, I'll drop it -- with no warning. So, be warned. I might eventually get bored of blogging and stop.




5. As noted in previous posts, I tend to be obsessive about things. Not just because I catalogued my shoes, or because I arrange my clothes in the closet in color order, but how my movies and -- most importantly -- my CD's are in alphabetical order.
   
   At one point, I organized them by genre, but at some point, the collection got too large -- and some artists are hard to pigeonhole. Take a look at what they look like now:
   
   
   
   I also know that exactly five discs are not in the picture -- because they are in the CD player. They are Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), Taking the Long Way (Dixie Chicks), The Ultimate Collection (The Jackson 5), and Anthology (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) -- both discs.

   And for the record, on the bottom left are my collection of concert recordings (mostly U2, courtesy of Furthur) and on the bottom right are box sets and mix CDs. More on those at a later date.

   
   
   But the weirdest thing:

   
   

6. I don't organize my books. At all. I just put them on the shelf.

So, I should tag other people to do this now, right?

Mad's already done it, though -- in haiku form. And I'd tag Inbal, but she never blogs anymore anyway. So, I guess I designate Justin, Scarlet, Needtsza, and Evil Spock. Oh, and anyone else who wants to do it.

Dream v. Reality

Maybe Justin is right and my ghost really was a dream. But if so, what did it mean?

Too bad I didn't have the Post to help back then. But today, I found this helpful guidance:

Ask any professional with dream experience, and their message is clear: Ignore quick-fix dream "doctors" on TV and the Internet. Toss your conventional dream dictionaries to the curb -- they are too strict, too patrician.

And their meanings? Meaningless.

It's common sense, really. Many people dream about cats, but not all dream that cats are manifestations of one's mother, as Freud suggested.

"After all, a dream about a house must mean different things to a carpenter and an arsonist," says Karen Shanor, a clinical psychologist who runs a private practice in Northwest Washington.

Dreams should be worked rather than cut and dried into categories, Shanor, Delaney and others say. No book -- and no one -- can tell you what your dreams mean, since one's dreaming life can be understood only in the context of one's waking life.

Riiiight. I guess that's what Richard Linklater meant with that weird movie.

Ghost story

Scientists keep trying to prove that vampires, ghosts, and other supernatural entities aren't real, but so far, all either side has managed to yield are logical reasons why such entities can't exist. But as much as I respect rationality, some things just defy logic.

As mentioned in my 100 things post, I once thought that I might have seen a ghost (#72). In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd elaborate.

Note that (1) this is, indeed, a true story; (2) I haven't told all that many people about it; and (3) last time I checked, I'm not certifiably insane.

First I should issue a little disclaimer: Pretty much my entire life, I've lived in new -- or relatively new places. The exceptions were my college dorms and the flat I lived in during my study abroad program in London. So, assuming that ghosts are tied to places of emotional significance for them, there was pretty much no chance of me running into one.

Anyway, during the summer of '97 -- midway through my law school career -- my brother and I spent part of the summer in New York City, celebrating his graduation from high school. For one week of this trip, we stayed in my aunt's friend's pre-war apartment on the Upper West Side, essentially as housesitters while she was on vacation. Only the back bedroom -- the guest room -- was air conditioned. My brother slept there.

I slept in the master bedroom in the front of the apartment. Since it didn't have air conditioning, to be able to sleep, I needed to turn on a fan and open the window. Generally, with the window open, I heard some traffic noise, but no discernable conversations. Mostly, they were masked by the sound of the fan, but the fact that my brother and I tended to keep pretty late hours didn't hurt.

On these hot summer nights, it usually took me a while to fall asleep. So, I'd toss and turn for a while, in the room full of white noise, trying to find a cool, comfortable position. One of these nights, in that gray area between awake and asleep, I had a conversation with a soldier.

I don't recall the specifics of the conversation. What I do remember is the feeling that he belonged in Gail's apartment more than I did.

Anyway, the rest is equally vague. What I remember is that eventually, I figured out that it wasn't normal, and I sat up, wide awake -- but by then, it was over and he was gone. I somehow convinced myself that it was just a dream, and managed to fall back to sleep.

So there you have it. My ghost story. It could have been anything, or nothing -- and indeed, it probably was nothing. But there's this teensy little part of me that likes to believe that there's something out there more than what we see, more than can be easily explained. And that little corner of my mind isn't completely convinced that I was dreaming.


Update: In keeping with the holiday, try some virtual pumpkin carving. Here's mine:

Real life pirate tale

Pirates are a recurring theme on this blog -- but usually it has nothing to do with real life. So, for an interesting change, read all about the recovery of Blackbeard's ship off the coast of North Carolina.

A day at the fair

Here's a little photo essay from my trip to the always amusing Maryland Renaissance Festival:

It was a beautiful day in the historically-accurate 16th Century English village.
Complete with baby strollers and $4.00 beers.

Despite rumors to the contrary, the technology back then was quite advanced.
And the cell phone really coordinated with this woman's carefully-selected wench ensemble.

Clearly, empanadas and chili were the cuisine of choice in 16th Century England. Mmmmm, delightful!

Alas! poor Marionette! I knew him, readers. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

Tickle What?

Today, I made every effort to try to post serious, topical, discussion-oriented material, but then I saw this and had to share.



I will never look at my Tickle-Me-Elmo the same.