I thought while in the shower that I miss even writing these little bits, and it's not like I am strapped into pantyhose or glued to this very keyboard but somehow writing never happens anymore and that makes me feel not so real and perhaps is the cause of so many nightmares. My status? Madly in love but not enough time to appreciate it. God I miss me. I admit it. The nightmares? Everything that happens while asleep doesn't exactly happen. Even when it's sometimes been funny. Only half happens and thus deserves no report.

Hi Mathew, I miss you. You and I both have recent death to absorb and I only wish I could hug you instead of type at you. I wish so much.

I just finished reading How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time and I feel like I relived my adolescence in two days, all the way from naivete to disillusionment, which the magazine's arc through history painfully mirrored.

I am sitting next to a stack of Garbage Pail Kid stickers and four tiny stuffed animals. Two bunnies, two squirrels.

I used to sit down and flush out my brain but now I just let all the shit swim around. Sitting down at the computer constipates me. What the hell do I have to do to write again?

Has anyone else had this happen on Zoloft? I hate this.

Jenny said, "i used to be a yoplait addict. but i've switched to the light dannon stuff or weight watchers yogurt.
the "dora the explorer" strawberry/strawberry vanilla yoplait is one of rory's favorites though," and what she said brought me here:

You know, I could probably have an hours-long conversation with [Jenny] about my awareness of the style-level inherent in certain brands/varieties of food since leaving Jax.

Coming from the suburban south, I quickly gained a very acute awareness of the way "suburban" foods are rejected as uncouth or tacky (and actually, "suburban" is not the word I want, but a better choice than "mass-marketed" or "factory-processed" isn't coming to me right now).

In both Boston and New York, and well, in Gainesville, too, I felt a subcultural effort to elevate a certain process of shopping for food to, like, conscientious objection. I haven't stopped feeling conflicted about that yet. If anything, I don't think the guilt people suffer from our evolution from agrarian to industrial culture is properly soothed by (a) paying more for food which is marked organic by a team of, like, eight people who work for the U.S. government; or (b) by staring down my nose at people who appreciate the convenience and affordability of the Dollar Menu at any of the major fast food chains.

The greenmarket and locally-grown scene in Brooklyn is very big. And yes, it is a scene. People who do not grow their own food (and can not subsist without buying food from people who do) have turned buying food into a statement. I participate, yes. And I love greenmarkets. I'm not a bumper sticker supporter by any means, I really just like going to greenmarkets in New York. They are outside and they bustle. It feels fancy to shop at an al fresco greenmarket. It feels European. And because I feel like it is all about being fancy, I am pretty suspicious of the Whole Foods-fucking movement.

But the side of this whole movement which concerns me the most is the antagonistic, condescending face it often wears. To me, eating, "pure, healthy, clean, green, specialized," blah blah blah, smacks more of class than environmentalist leanings. And the insincerity of that pisses me off.

I really could deliberate about this forever. But instead, I'll mention two key pieces of information which are relevant to the feelings informing my stance here.

1. I know a family in Vermont who are the full-blown, real-deal version of green living. Because of my upbringing, their way of life would not come easily to me. To live like them would be making a statement, and an insincere one at that, so I would never do it. I'd be too conflicted. One of the things I respect most about them is that they eat roadkill, because the animal is dead and its existence should not be wasted. I don't know if they would eat a human being run down by a car, but it wouldn't surprise me and I would not be appalled.

2. My father has had Multiple Sclerosis for fifteen years, and he has not taken medication for it for about twelve years. When it became clear the prescribed medication prevented further nerve damage but left my father with constant flu-like symptoms, my mom did lots of research and changed his diet significantly. He is still relatively (very) healthy years later. His twin brother used the prescribed medication and died in a state of paralysis two years ago, even though he wasn't diagnosed with MS until several years after my father. It's important to note that my dad has an iron will and unveering sense of self-discipline (didn't inherit that!), he can swallow eighteen dietary supplement capsules dry, and he can drink eight glasses of carrot juice a day. He proves to me that what one eats can dramatically change the way ones body functions. It is not all talk.

And between those two poles I sit.

Let's just say I've been overpowered all winter by a misguided devotion to television, fueled by the DV-R acquired in late fall. In the household, we have recently established a deadline for cable television. This deadline will coincide with the introduction of warm weather. Things are going to change around here, most optimistically my daily behvaior.

To welcome change, I must first decide that I've learned something from all this waste of time, and that I can now take what I've learned with me and throw myself forward. This is pretty much how I've always worked -- obsession, conflagration, followed by a nervous wobble in some other but not necessarily better direction.

I've watched many iterations of makeover shows. In grad school, I was ready to write a curriculum solely about the meaning of makeovers in American culture. I take them, even the staging of them, seriously.

Reflecting on all the makeovers I've watched this winter, I thought about my own staged turning points. There are a lot of them, and I know this is the root of my fascination. Why be fascinated with something if it doesn't wind its way back to the only thing one can really be in charge of -- the idea of a self?

So, Einstein's. Einstein's was a significant makeover for me. Some people suddenly become Richard Simmons devotees, I went to Einstein's. Started smoking. Started investigating my ability to be bad and risky for the first time. This was all in confluence with a lot of funny family business, a lot of confusing and upsetting stuff which certainly merited a version of escape.

That was my first time trying out being bad. And in being bad, I allowed myself to be stupid, which is no different than being cruel to myself and other people.

I have to vouch for my own willing stupidity. I half knew what I was doing through all those different mistakes.

I feel less mature at thirty than I've felt my whole life. It's embarrassing because I bet you five dollars I stunted my own evolution in high school.

Sometimes I think about the way I was a bad kid, how my older siblings were tempestuous enough that my parents couldn't afford the emotional strain to pay attention to my badness. I try to remember the exact moments of making decisions. All the decisions were cluttered, maybe I was thirsty for rigidity. I know I was angry a lot. Probably not as often as I am in adulthood.

My parents watched my grades and enforced mild curfews. I learned the routine of parents through siblings, quickly abided by the rules -- said the right things when I did wrong, paid them off to ignore me by saying what I should. I am good at presenting an appropriate representation of my end of a deal.

Oh, the point the point point, or else go on endlessly.

It's only recently that I've become profoundly aware of the determination of age in my own experiences, as in how old I am when other people in my life are at specific ages of their own. It's not that I've been oblivious to age, never that. I just get the whole coexistence between dramatically different places in people's lives better than I used to.

My parents didn't invite friends into our home. Our home was populated with children and children's friends. Adulthood occurred outside of the home.

Adulthood occurred accidentally all the time.

There is a lot to be said for productivity. Turn over the soil. Plant the seedlings. Cut his hair. Vacuum the car. Wash the dishes. I think I turned into a couch this winter. An ass is not a couch, and a house is not a home.

Cell phones are killing honeybees via disorientation. Old men who've eaten ham and cheese on white bread for years are to blame for disproportionate Farm Bill crop mandates, too. Ice hockey is lovely to watch when soundless.

Today I keep imagining Mary Gaitskill shoving a banana up Stephen King's ass, with Mary crying and Stephen giggling ferociously. Did you know you can shine your shoes with the inside of a fresh banana peel? But it's not recommended to do so with a banana from Stephen King's ass.

Some ways I recognize myself to be middle class:

I have participated in Earth Day celebrations.

I want and expect to celebrate my birthday with festooning.

I was given a used car when I turned 18. And I never paid for my own car insurance.

I have credit card debt.

I experience hopeful pleasure when I have a new pair of shoes.

I find it tacky when I can hear another person's ipod on the subway.

I feel a thrill when I swear in front of coworkers.

My bra and panties sometimes match.

I like American Idol.

I like artisanal bread. And artisanal cheese.

I always sleep in pajamas.

I like cupcakes.

I consider being thirty years old to be a type of deadline.

I feel guilty when I can tell someone else is wearing cheap shoes.

I feel envious when I can tell someone else is wearing expensive shoes.

I never write anymore, even when it's all I want to do.

Yoplait, it is so good.

Day at the Spa good? Satin Sheets good? Here's your chance to tell us how good Yoplait is.

Write a short statement with your idea of "Yoplait is _____good." The most original entries will be posted on the site.

http://www.yoplaitusa.com/sogood.aspx

I went to brunch with Starr on Sunday and the world felt so big and so small. I went to brunch and the world felt smig.

The Internet is still in its infancy.

My boyfriend says that when he writes cover letters. He is a pioneer of a civilization which is in its infancy. I suppose he lives up to that on a daily basis, pioneering along subway rails to coffee machines and endless YouTube exchanges and lunches ordered online. I suppose I do the same.

The Internet as a force of community is in its infancy, which too easily makes it feel cutthroat, ominous, more like it is invading your life than your life is invading it. I'll admit I've grown a bit phobic myself, so I send fewer emails and I almost never exchange instant messages. Stopped writing here almost entirely.

I mentioned it once briefly before, the story of my coworker and her paranoia. I finally heard the whole story from another coworker in whom she'd confided prior to her dismissal.

She'd spent the election season participating regularly in a political discussion board. It was an intense liberal discussion. She felt her name was all over the news as a result, which it was not. She told the confidant that Hillary Clinton named her as "One to Watch" after reading her comments on these boards.

I don't know what it was about me that gave her focus for her paranoia, but it did scare me good and weak. I don't feel like I mix so well with modern times.

What essential perspective of a child recommends the marketing of cereal via themes of theft or insanity?

In minutes before the crashing stroke of midnight, I leaned far out the window into the shuttling air and watched bottle rockets flaring uncontrolled, into the path of cars, onto the roofs of the projects across the street, with no one caring too much except for a little old lady. Beyond her curtains her apartment looked like a void -- a sad, germ-free kind of place with plenty of room to pace and shake ones head. In deep silhouette in her second window stood an aloof vacuum, wilting from overuse. I love it here, I love it here, nothing terrifies me in certain corners of Brooklyn, nothing can go wrong with bottle rockets and vacuums holding such close quarters.

Contemporary writers and artists, working in the wake of post-essentialist theorizations of identity and the accompanying critique of identity politics, face a particular dilemma when they attempt to represent lesbian subjectivity.l The lesbian-feminist corpus of fiction and film which emerged during the 1970s and 1980s dedicated itself to forging "positive images" of lesbians and of lesbian sexuality: in our own decade, such representations have proliferated as the mainstream media have rushed to cash in on the marketability of a newly discovered "lesbian chic."2 However, these depictions, although important in providing points of coalescence for lesbian communities,3 tend to resecure the straight/gay binary which mainstream culture is so thoroughly invested in maintaining.4 More significantly perhaps, they are often premised on and, in turn, help undergird an identity politics which can work to delimit rather than to expand the kinds of political engagements and issues deemed relevant for the gay individual. Consequently, writers wishing to thematize lesbian subjectivity while simultaneously disrupting such essentialism have frequently constructed texts which "reveal not lesbian sexuality per se, but the anxieties it produces" (Roof 1991, 5). Roof argues that lesbian desire, in much avant-garde literature and cinema, does not appear directly within the text. Rather, it is most successfully gestured to as an absence, its evanescence forcing a breakdown in normative representational structures. Paradoxically, however, this anti-essentialist strategy can also work to replicate heterosexist norms and procedures, in this case, the practice of repeatedly relegating the gay subject to the margins of the text, or of rendering her invisible ("Don't ask, Don't tell").

It's like medical jargon about literature. I appreciate its effort. Its clinical, clinical effort. Isn't it bizarre how people learn how to read around these marks of footnotes and citations -- works just like insincere manners.

I just finished reading it. I liked it because all the appalling shit is just a commonplace in the whole big story of being poor white trash. It wasn't overly pretty, it just told.

Jeez Louise, sometimes all the crap everywhere invested in opinions being shared makes me want to entirely avoid expressing an opinion ever again.

Today I was called for jury duty. I didn't have to serve. I only had to sit all day in a room of six hundred people and wait. I made tremendous headway in my book of crosswords. I drowned out the yakkers with Jenny Lewis and thought about faith and music and whether or not the combination actually moves me. I listened to two older women, one French, discussing the French woman's son's first Thanksgiving visit home from Cornell.

Madame: At least when he is away I don't have the daily worry. Every night that he was home he was out late with friends from high school.

Woman: Oh, you know, you should have a glass. It puts the worries away. I tell you, wine is magical.

Then ensued a conversation about wine, wherein the French woman proved herself an amateur sommelier, while the American woman admitted she just likes the intoxication. Le Magie!

At lunch I went to Wendy's, because the vicinity offered that or T.G.I. Fucking Friday's. Wendy's was very crowded and a nice old lady joined me at my pathetic resin-topped table. We talked baked potatoes and weather. It was one of the very first times since moving to New York I have had a black woman speak to me voluntarily. I think my excitement annoyed her. She was very, "Why don't you eat already, Big Mouth?"

Not that I'm keeping score (too closely), but Downtown Brooklyn is considerably more pleasant than Midtown Manhattan. The lady at the Duane Reade where I went after lunch even looked me in the eye and smiled. I didn't know smiling was possible within the doors of a Duane Reade. I still think she may get reprimanded for the eye contact.

I also noticed that not a single man commented on how nice my feet/eyes/purse were. Bizarre!

I had a shorter day than Monday usually offers. I made it home in time to buy fish, in time to work out, in time to study the Polish phrase book. Kiedy robi to koniec? Alas, tomorrow. If only I could solve crosswords for a living!

By the way, here is my sexercise instructor, Leslie Sansone. I don't have big balls like she does, but I do have her outsized hips! Leslie is great because she believes in GOD, so when she stretches her arms upwards, she reminds me to say HALLELUJAH and to call on my angels to help me suck in my abs!



P.S. My hair is so long and wild now that I am guaranteed to find a tangled strand between the cheeks of my ass when I shower.

I started a fire in my office and it smells.

I wish I was not flanked, daily, by two people who make a ceaseless melody of eating and drinking sounds. Sometimes I think I work inside a mouth, where occasionally I am struck in the forehead by bits of food loosened by heavy breathing.

Sip-breaths sound like: sssssstttthhllllllp—cchhhhuun—sssssstttthhllllllp—cchhhhuun

She got fired, the strange nervous girl, she is at least in some way validated. Poor crazy girl.

And what we believed to be a mouse crawling around in the office’s drop ceiling was actually a rat. He was a healthy rat. He ate a whole tomato, three packets of oatmeal, a banana, and a packet of vitamins, including the cod liver oil and the enormous royal jelly and spirulina pill. No trans-fats, whole fruit, whole grains.

He got into a box of Cheerios. And poor Frank, who got scolded after eating a lot of people’s food when he was cleaning our office, Frank wrote, "Do not eat Frank," on the Cheerios. The box was wrapped in Scotch tape.

The last thing the rat ate was poison. He started drying out on his insides and became desperate for moisture. Finding no water anywhere, he dug all the soil out from one of the plants to get at its roots. The rat and the plant are both dead now. It’s very sad.

My boss’s grandfather also died over the weekend, which is truly terrible. At her wedding last year, her grandparents participated in the ceremony by providing examples of how difficult but rewarding an enduring relationship becomes over time. She has always been much closer to her grandparents than her parents, and I wonder how empty her chest feels and if her grandmother took it better than she did.

I think I am going through a bout of depression, so I may be writing more than usual to stop myself from being too selfish.

Brother is gone. Longest eleven days of my life since moving here. Among the passle of stories available for the telling, there are:

Better Not Go Back to the Bar Around the Corner For a While
Smoking Inside Is Not Permitted, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
The DOD/NSA Conspiracy That Led My Brother to Get Lost Until 9am
The New York City Marathon That Could
Let's Not: A Rule Book on Acquiring Drugs While Visiting Your Family
The Sake Replaces Blood Spectacular (How My Brother Became the Drunkest Person I Have Ever Seen and Began to Slur Threats On Behalf of My Honor Despite Lack of Provocation While Wearing Dirt-Blackened Bunny Slippers)
Oh My God, I Want to Die, But I Will Kill You First
Tattoos (A Two-Part Series)
The iPod As Barter -- Brother Tries to Manipulate Sister With Gifts
The Losing Battle Against Excessive Expenditure of Divorce Settlement
A Meal Really IS One Thing Other People Cannot Take From You
Guy's Last Stand: A Collection of Lies, a Broken Lunch Date, a Missed Train, a Hotel Room, and the Keys on the Coffee Table


And now it is all ended, and there is nothing I want to re-live, and actually that is a pretty good way to feel about things that already happened. And I won't cry at work again for a long time. Maybe if the founder died, or if my arm got cut off or something. But not over things at home. Home is really, really great when there is not a crazy ranting brother in it.

Today we went to Prospect Park and walked and walked real fast. They have good babies at that zoo, I tell you what. And there was a felled tree whose trunk was a curlicue. How does that even happen? A squirrel snuck up right behind Abel and surprised him but alas, we were nutless. We gave a goose some bun, though.

I didn't like it when the library was closed.

We got some adorable brussels sprouts at the greenmarket, though, and some intimidatingly lush broccoli and also fingerling potatoes.

Brian met up with us to return Abel's car, after a lot of map accidents and phone calls. He and Starr took the car yesterday to get a high chair. I didn't know babies got high chairs so soon. That baby smiles so nice, he laughs, and he is madly in love with Olivia Newton John. We have a lot in common. Starr and Brian should probably get me a high chair, too. For my birthday, yay! On Tuesday I will turn 30.

The only thing I really want to say is how we went to the Brooklyn Museum and skipped right through all that Annie Leibovitz hoohah to look at all the Walton Ford paintings in person. I saw four of his pieces at the Whitney last year, but not a particularly compelling set of four. I don't believe it's always necessary to see things in person, but this was a really good chance to see huge things with tiny details up close. And those paintings really suck on you, you end up with your nose next to an elephant penis thinking about politics in Nairobi. Which is pretty much all a person can ask for, right?

Walton Ford painted the cluster of birds in my icon. I like him a lot. I never thought I liked Nila, but it ended up being one of my favorites in person. I just wish he'd painted it on a single sheet instead of breaking it up.

We also saw all the totally fucking awesome Ron Mueck sculptures. He's the guy who had the "Dead Dad" sculpture at the Sensation show Giuliani shut down. I have the book from that show, but I never realized that the anatomically realistic sculpture was so small. It's 1/3 life size, but the wrinkles are all in place, the pouches beneath the eyes, the sunken skin around the clavicle.

I looked at the enormous naked man and the tiny mean infant and the little sleeping couple and felt a lot like I do when I look at people on the train. If those sculptures caught me looking at them, I would turn my head fast.

The best part was when we saw the dining-room size sculpture of a newly-delivered baby and a guy who'd watched the artist interview upstairs said, "The crazy thing is that he doesn't even look like an asshole."

My brother is a motherfucking compulsive liar.

Brother's visit, Day Three. Last night I wrote on a napkin, "McSweeney's Proposal: Liveblogging My Brother's Visit to New York." He noticed the napkin, of course. We argued later. He hates being excluded from jokes. He's attuned to that kind of exclusion.

I got pretty worked up after he told me not to tell my mother he was buying bottles of Veuve Clicquot -- "Mom and Dad postponed their retirement and took out a loan to support me over the last year. They'd be really pissed if they knew I was spending money like this." He's nearly forty. Nothing about this makes for inviting decisions. Cake with razors, or cake with cyanide?

He bought an eclair for breakfast two days in a row. Only nine more eclairs to go.

It's hard. I love him from afar. When he's all up in here, I start understanding my total lack of patience, my stubbornness, my tendency to silent treatment. I'm close to apologizing to everyone who's ever been caught in the thrall of my family hangover.

I'm sorry. My complaints are your excuses.

The whole house smells like a fucking cigarette. My brother is a fucking cigarette. He craned his neck around at every slutty costume Manhattan had to offer. He is a cigarette. I should wrap a condom around his head and hook him up to an iron lung.

During the anguish of this visit, I also realize how much I love Abel, how much I love Starr, how much I love wine. And all of it makes me fight to be more patient, less exhausted, as gracious as I can manage. As painful as it can be to have him around, I know he is here because he hurts pretty bad right now, and I know I make him feel better.

I really need to put that reciprocity policy to sleep. Should've done that years ago.

Treacle pudding, fish and chips, fizzy drinks and liquorice, flowers, rivers, sand and sea, snowflakes and the stars are free. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Ulysses - always fighting all the evil forces bringing peace and justice to all. Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose. This is Mrs H., she's gorgeous, she's one lady who knows how to take care of herself. Ulysses - like a bolt of thunder from the blue. One for all and all for one, Muskehounds are always ready. Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again. Mutley, you snickering, floppy eared hound. He's the most tip top, Top Cat. So, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon. He's the boss, he's a pip, he's the championship.

My brother is coming to visit. His divorce will (finally) be finalized, he will get his payoff from the divorce, and he will lose paternal access to his son, who is severely autistic. He needs to "get the fuck out of Jacksonville." He thinks you have a chance to know a total of twelve people in Jacksonville really well, and he already knows eleven. I think he needs to change, not just places. Just change.

When last I saw him, we stayed up all night on the balcony of a hotel, and he had so many confessions that there was no room left for mine. He molested my sister, for example, and in so many words; this was so obviously shocking that I couldn't even care, just didn't want details. Things like that, they only make me drink more than I should. I'm already committed to being calm in his presence no matter what.

He said his cheeks hurt from grinning at having this trip finalized. All I can think is: Loving and saving, they are two different things. Both are subject to translation.

I feel sad, itchy and sad. I wish I could make a statement to myself about something just now, just to divorce myself from now, just to float above things.

You can go for years existing with the knowledge that there is soap on your face, and if you open your eyes without splashing water at them, they will sting terribly. You won't be able to see a thing. Then there comes one of two events -- either something clears your face of chemical taint and you open your eyes without fear, but also without experience, or you brave it, open your eyes, and there is no pain because there was never anything but an idea of soap to begin with.

So many bad songs creep up on me, I begin to doubt my conscience.

Usually in those days when I have read Emile Zola to Abel in traffic to prevent my anxiety about exploding against a wall, I do not explain to him the preferred anxiety about class I see in those words. Sometimes lately I do not like reading Emile Zola at all. I start thinking about the culture of debt balancing out the middle class and I want to gnaw on my fingertips.

When I read anything lately I think all about time travel being absolutely real.