if you order the pic, they don't come w/ the title smacked on it.
i imagine that's too keep people (like me) from stealing the image for their own uses.

had an incredibly beautiful weekend with my friend r. she was in from louisville, kentucky for her 30th birthday. yup - the same one we had a surprise party for last week. she already had plans to be here, so here she came!

saturday we lunched at The Coffee Pot and the wandered in union square. we came upon this guy's polaroid transfers. we all instantly fell in love with his diaphanous prints that are innocent and naughty all at once. hope you do too.

note to self: invest in a pair of rainbow tights and whole lotta gumballs.

check her boobs.

teamwork.

it's October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it isn't just about sporting pretty pink ribbons on your lapel. make your mammogram/breast ultrasound appointments, ladies, and make sure your loved ones make theirs.

hold on. have to step up on my soapbox.

ahem.

the average woman with no family history, should start getting annual mammograms at the age of 40. if you have a family history, it'll probably be earlier, but your doctor will help you figure that out (for me, it was 10 years before the age my mother was when she was diagnosed i.e. my mom was 38 at diagnosis, therefore, they started making a sandwich of my breasts between two cold metal plates at the age of 28. fun!)

every year, i get a mammogram, followed by a breast ultrasound six months later. why? if you're young, your breast tissue is usually too dense for a mammogram to reveal anything; an ultrasound is supposed to be better at detecting blips in young, pert ta-tas like yours and yours truly.

anyway, i made all of my phone calls on Monday. in the next month or so, i have appointments:

1. to see a breast surgeon specialist.

and no, not the guy you met at the bar last week. that card was printed at Kinko's, silly girl.

2. to see a genetic counselor.

do i, or do i not want to find out if i have the breast cancer gene? at 31, i know i'm not prepared at this point in my life to have a radical mastectomy, but determining my genetic risk level will help my doctors come up with the most proactive screening program which, hopefully, will lead to early detection if i do get this motherfucking disease. anyway, the counselor is gonna help me figure that out. should be a a total blast. wanna meet for drinks after?

3. to get a mammogram.

did i say breast sandwich?

4. to get a breast ultrasound.

it's the same ultrasound they do on pregnant women, but this one's for your breasts. they use some cold slimey substance and more cold metal plates. *snaps* for cold metal plates!

oh, but for all the bellyachin', i've got to do it, i know. it just so very much puts me in touch with my mortality, and it really is so much easier to prattle about in our daily lives as if we'll live forever, isn't it? i will not, of course, whether it's breast cancer that takes me, or whether i slip away in my "sleep" at the ripe old age of 95 (my aforementioned breasts being felt up by my very handsome and much younger trophy husband).

oh, goddammit, another reminder. life. fullest. blah di blah di blahhhhhh.

best to wear the sparkly shoes, eat dessert and go skinny dipping now.

ya know, while my boobs still float.

---------------------------------------

and then, providence! this email from my friend, c, received this afternoon:

so this waiter, after bringing us our drinks on saturday afternoon, proceeds to tell us that he spent a few years in a mental institution after his wife died of breast cancer in his arms. very sad, of course -- she lost both breasts and almost beat it, but didn't. so we're all somber. and then he tells me to check myself every month, which is borderline uncool, and then he turns to my boyfriend and says, to the astonishment of the other diners, that he needs to make sure to "check her boobs" (mine) all the time, because that's how they found the lumps in his wife's breasts -- HE found them. i didn't know whether to laugh or crawl under the table. this poor guy. BOOBS?

hey, early detection, no matter how it's done, is key.

my nephew can fly.

see, when you lean forward like this, it feels more like actual flying.

almost quite literally, a chip off the old block.

sorry for the baby pics...i couldn't resist.

dirt cake + dancin'

r, in artsy fartsy silhouette

i went to nashville this weekend for a surprise birthday party for my old college friend, r. she's a petite thing with curly blonde hair and a laugh that will make you laugh even if you're not in on the joke. i've often found myself reduced to paroxsyms of giggles at the sound of her peals from across the restaurant/bar/beauty salon. her guffaw nudges awake some dormant cachinnation within me, and everyone else within a 12 mile radius. seriously, listen hard and i think you'll be able to hear her in louisville.

it was an absolutely fabulous weekend, planned to perfection by her two cousins, m. and n., who are the quintessential southern hostesses. i still can't quite believe people like these girls exist, and that they did all this work for FREE. r is a lucky girl, and very well-loved.

the surprise

friday night was the big surprise. we all dined at Cabana, a lovely restaurant with the best damn french fries i've ever noshed...served with cheddar-gorgonzola-horseradish dipping sauce. i had the salmon with asparagus (because i'm a dumb girl), but if i had to do it over again, i would have gotten the Lobster and Brie Macaroni and Cheese served in a martini glass. i stole a few nibbles from my neighbors, and yes, it was as good as you think it might be.

when we got home that night (how did we get home?), n. had prepared a dessert whose recipe can be found in every community cookbook worth its salt - Dirt Cake. creamy loveliness layered with crushed oreos. yummerama! i did an impromptu cheerleading dance in gratitude.


n. was sweet enough to write down the recipe for me on her personalized recipe card that i will now share with you:

From the Kitchen of N. B.

Dirt Cake
1 large package of Oreos, crunched
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 stick oleo (that's Southern for butter or margarine)
1 cup powdered sugar
12 oz. Cool Whip
3 cups milk
2 small vanilla instant pudding mixes

Mix cream cheese, oleo, and sugar in a bowl. Mix Cool Whip, milk and pudding in another bowl. Mix the ingredients of both bowls together. Layer mixture with Oreos. Finish with a layer of Oreos. V. cute served ina flower pot!

saturday morning, we rolled out of bed and headed over
to Lyle's School of Hair Design for manis.

later in the afternoon, off to m's house for a backyard barbecue
complete with peach sweet tea and a birthday cake made by r' s Grandma.

m's hubby is from Texas, and a self-proclaimed "nerd for the grill."

then, out on the town in a limo with Quentin, our driver,
who wore a beret and loved our mix CDs.

first stop, Sambuca. a very chi chi bar with women in long sequinned gowns, and martinis so strong i'm guessing the bartender just waved the bottle of vermouth over the glass.

met a really nice guy named "Bob" who let me rub his belly for luck.

bob and i are soulmates, i think.

then, on to Decades, an 80's bar in downtown N'ville, right across the street from Boots 'n' More (where i hear they have a 3 for one special). i have no pictures for that one. sorry folks, i was busy dancing.

but here are the shoes i wore. imagine them drenched in beer and dancing to "Come On Eileen."

there's no place like Nashville.

oh, what a weekend. but now, back to regularly scheduled programming.

boo.

hoo.

hoo.

chicken-on-a-stick + babies-in-stilettos

okay, so they weren't quite this bad, but frighteningly close.

i'm in mississippi this weekend, judging the Mississippi State Fair Talent Competition.

so far, i have 3 questions:

1. when did i become a "ma'am?"

as in,

yes ma'am the coffee is complimentary.

oh, god.

2. when did fried chicken-on-a-stick, fried onions, fried corn-on-the-cob, and fried pickles become a suitable dinner?

don't get me wrong, i loved every deep-fried bit of it, although i do think i'll still be digesting it a week from now.

3. when did it become appropriate for 13-year old girls to wear what i will henceforth refer to as "porn shoes?" glittery, clear lucite 3 1/2 inch high heels that they teeter about in while singing "Before He Cheats" (and what, pray tell, do you know about that?) go into any porn store in NYC, and you will see the shoes that i speak of. hey, i'm all for sexual adventurousness and stilettos, but i'm also 31. not 13. i couldn't even wear pantyhose until i was 14, and i still look like a retard in heels. i realize that i should allow for the fact that i'm in PageantLand, but all these gussied-up babies (and they are babies) in push-up bras and stilettos make me a little sad.

at 14, i was still sneaking up into the attic to play with Barbie. these girls are dressing like her, and their parents are footing the bill.

blech.

the power of positive drunk dialing/emailing

nothing quite like waking up to an anonymous voicemail message left at 1 in the morning. a deep voice that has seen waaaay to much cigarette smoke and Jack Daniels grumbles:

Check your email.

(click.)

hm. brevity is the soul of wit, The Bard once said. the same, one could say, applies to drunk dialing...keep it short, keep it simple, and if absolutely necessary, follow up with a platonically pseudo-amorous email.

this, found in my inbox this morning in response to an email i'd sent to a couple of friends from high school about recent size ate developments...(most authentic if read with a backcountry Southern accent, and if you can get your hands on a Budweiser and a bag of boiled peanuts, all the better.)

M,

I am a heterosexual male who is a model of perfect health. You may remember me. My name is E.H. I am so glad to talk to someone who can truly comprehend the perfect male. Please don't let the fact that I am drunk diminish this message. My wife and I are so proud of you and everything that you stand for. I am seeking a holistic solution that incorporates Red Bull and Mountain Dew for breakfast and double cheeseburgers into my very demanding regimen. I must maintain an unlimited energy supply for my wife's insatiable needs. As you know both of us, I am eagerly awaiting your cosmopolitan "New York" advice. Anyway, you have no idea how much we love you and sit on the edge of our seats for your fame to come so that we may stop working and our celebrity managing career begin. Don't ever change.

Love,

E

i don't care if he was drunk. made me feel better, and this is going in the scrapbook.

aunt joAnne

a pencil sketch done by Aunt JoAnne from a photograph of herself at age 2

i always intended to get to know her better. i always intended to ask her questions about what my mother was like as a kid sister. i always intended to visit her artist's studio out in California. i always intended to record the story of how she, an earthy, liberal artist with paint-stained fingertips, met and fell in love with my uncle Mac, a quiet scientist who would go on to become renowned for his work in the field of superconductivity.

oh, the road to hell and all that tripe...

my aunt JoAnne Horsfall Beasley died on saturday night at 9:34 pm PST. sudden and sad, and i never got to watch her paint. i found out yesterday morning, awakened from a hard slumber by the cell phone on my bedside table.

after all of the phone calls were made and the shock diffused, i went to a friend's art gallery reception in Manhattan. in homage to Aunt JoAnne, i put on my most "artistic" outfit - a black kimono-style dress with an Oriental print dancing across the bodice and skirt, and a pair of dangly red-glass chandelier earrings (Aunt JoAnne was always known for dressing colorfully and "inefficiently." meaning, i guess, that unlike the sensible women in the family, she didn't buy loads of neutral separates that matched each other. she wore "outfits" - singular ensembles that exploded in color and texture and flow. now that i think about it, she dressed an awful lot like her paintings).


i'd planned on going anyway, but considering the circumstances, it seemed even more appropriate that i spend the afternoon in an old art club, surrounded by hundreds of canvases and idiosyncratic artists. i wonder how many afternoons Aunt JoAnne spent like that? hob-nobbing with her co-artistes, sipping white wine while mulling over the exhibit, fighting valiantly (toothpick as sword) for that last cube of cheese on the platter.

sigh. life is short, and yet it seems like 67 years should be enough. pish. it's not.

she never stopped learning, always adjusting and tinkering with her means and medium of creation. watercolor, pastel, photography. just a few weeks ago, she'd sent me a link to her new work in digital imagery. my favorite - one of a camellia and a pussywillow branch:


i haven't cried yet. maybe i will, maybe i won't. (i probably will).

the lesson...is there a lesson here?

well, margaux, how about instead of spending your life intending to...

do.

intentions make rather paltry paintings.

pretty isn't enough

my friend and mentor and acting coach e was at the IT awards ceremony the other night. she could only stop by for a bit, but it meant so much to have her there...without her, size ate never would have been. she really helped me get it all out of my whirling dervish of a noggin. she also convinced me that my story was worthy of being told...and heard.

bless her.

while we were at the bar, she told me a story about her daughter, t, a delicate little flower of a girl that she adopted about a year ago from a Russian orphanage. when t came to this country, she knew no english. she is now fluent. t is also a very pretty little girl, and as we all know, when you are a little girl and pretty, people will tell you this all of the time, as if, this is your only redeeming characteristic. e does her best to counter it with other compliments, but this is America after all...

the other day, t came home from school, and exclaimed to e:

"The teacher said I was very, very pretty, Mommy."

"T, now you know that there are more important things than being pretty."

"I know, Mommy. Like being beautiful."

this, coming from a 4-year old.

lord help us.

well, color me shocked.

so...whaddya know?

i won!

one of them anyway: Outstanding Solo Performance for size ate.

thank god joan and melissa won't be there.

well, heaven's to betsy, where have i been?

busy. lots of lovely things going on that leave little time for lovely blogging, but i hope to resume my almost-daily practice of posting. i miss it, and don't you miss meeeeeeeeeeee?

egads. tomorrow night is the awards ceremony for the New York Innovative Theater Awards. size ate was nominated for a couple of awards that i will not win, but it's a wonderful excuse to totter around in my silver "Barbie" shoes and drink martinis as if i am S.V.I. (someone very important).

as one might expect, what to wear has been the source of much consternation. first, it was to be a frothy, pink strapless number that i got for a song a couple of months ago. sparkly, pink and pretty, but still elegant. then i decided...too sparkly, too pink and too pretty for the Off-Off Broadway awards. for the first time in my life, i felt the need to be weirder.

so, i dug through my closet and unearthed two dresses from the late 70s that i bought at Salvation Army years ago. one's a shimmery champagne gold with a empire waist and a low-V neckline. very Saturday Night Fever. i decided, however, that it just makes my breasts look waaaaay too big (like a pair of pendulous flour sacks, frankly), and i prefer for people to look at me when we're in conversation, and not my flour sacks. the other one is a black, low-cut dress with 3/4 length sleeves and a flurry of ruffles around the neck and wrists. reminds me of something a sexy, suburbanite mom might wear to the neighborhood cocktail party...think Joan Allen in The Ice Storm. so, that was gonna be that. the black dress with a big chunky belt and my silver Barbie shoes. meow.

but noooooooooo....

it had to go and get hot again. like most attire made in the 70s, my groovy dresses are made of the finest quality polyester, which means that in any temperature above 60 degrees, and i would be tres miserable.

screw this. i'm just gonna buy a black top and skirt, add some funky jewelry, and call it day.

so saturday i stopped into Express and tried on a couple of things. i first tried on the size 10 black pencil skirt. hm. too big.

do you have a size 8?

no, but we do have a size 6.

um, that will be way too small.

but i try it anyway. hm. odd. it fits like a pencil skirt should fit...a bit snug, a bit sassy, a bit Doris Day in Pillow Talk.

wait, wait, wait...a size 6? COME ON. i don't wear a size 6. here is vanity marketing at it's goddamn finest. companies make the labels in a true size 10 read size 6, a true size 8 a size 4, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. why? so we'll buy it, that's why, and so we'll come back and keep buying from the store that makes us feel skinny even though we're the same damn size we were when we walked through the door! Banana Republic does it, Old Navy does it, The Gap does it, and now i know Express does it. goddammit! how fucking stupid do they think we are???

(knock, knock, knock on the dressing room door.)

can i help you with anything else?

nope. i'm all set. i'll take the skirt.

boycott outback steakhouse.

this article from Gawker was sent to me by my friend b. oh, my friends know me so well...

Fattie Aussie Models Ruin Oz Fashion Week, Kicked Out of Oz Vogue

Look at these heifers! Ladies, please, cover yourselves -- you're repulsively enormous. While our own New York fashion week begins its weekend of anorexia-friendly fun, the Australian Fashion Week is still roiling in the aftermath of its own little Dreyfuss Affair. Seems that designer MaraJoara decided to champion "real women" by putting a few size 8-12 models on display along with the tiny waifs who can't keep their pants up over their skeletal pelvises. Though hardly even zaftig in any normal universe, models like those above caused much squawking among the Ozzie fashionistas. Even those who grudgingly admired the feminist statement couldn't help slamming the larger lassies' amateurish catwalking. Fashion organizers supposedly tried to get the designer to kick out the size 8-12s, but she refused; even though the fleshy models are calling it a win for their team, the puckish crones of Vogue Australia deleted coverage of the MaraJoara show from their website. Giant oozing lardos who look like they might actually consume food need not apply. Approved meals may consist only of champagne, Red Bull, cigarettes, and Vicodin.

well, yes...they do look like women, not prepubescent boys. i've always thought it's more of a test of a good designer; designing for a "real woman." as opposed to a clothes hanger. valleys and hills are always far more interesting than plains. i mean, look at oklahoma.

boooooooring.

on beauty

i'm mostly in favor of tiaras, but as a general rule,
i don't think their weight should exceed the weight of the person upon whose head they reside.

Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it, nor make flannel out of it.
- D.H. Lawrence

It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.
- Albert Einstein

housekeeping is overrated.

i just swept and mopped my kitchen for 2 hours.

how come i don't feel like more of a woman?

thin=happiness

a good friend of mine has been going through a bit of a rough patch so she decided to go home and stay with her parents for a couple of weeks. i don't know. it's a double-edged sword, being with your parents when you're going through a tough time especially post-25 years of age. i mean, it's a comfort to know that there are at least two people in this world who love you unconditionally (however dysfunctionally) BUT, these two people are the main reason you're so screwed up in the first place. god love 'em.

the other day she called me from her parent's house. her father had just said to her, and i quote:

you shouldn't be depressed; you're so thin!

thankfully, she's coming home this coming weekend. rumor has it that's exactly what Lizzie Borden's dad said to her.

baking + bedlam + blessings

of course Buddha eats carbs!

lovely, lovely, lovely weekend. spent much of Saturday inside since it was purely Londonian outside, but baked this yummy loaf of whole wheat bread - moist and soooo easy. the tip tip tapping of rain on my windows and the smell of baking bread...what more can a girl ask for? well, the perfect handbag, Naturalizer stilettos, and someone to explain my 401k to me, but 'til then...

Farmgirl's Almost Too Easy Whole Wheat Beer Bread
Makes One Loaf

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon baking powder
14 ounces beer (or 12 ounces beer & 2 ounces water)

Optional glaze: 1 egg & 2 teaspoons water, beaten

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Slowly stir in beer and mix just until combined. Batter will be thick. Spread in a greased 8-inch loaf pan, brush with egg glaze if desired, and bake until golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool 10 more minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Saturday evening was spent at a dinner party which, after the ingestion of multiple uber-margaritas, morphed into a full-out Scissor Sisters dancing party - a snorting laughter kind of night.

quote of the evening: i can't think; i'm wearing lipgloss!

yeah, i don't know what's going on here...margarita black-out.

Sunday? glorious, sunny, Autumn-is-flirting-with-us-kind-of-day. i get a bit melancholy when fall starts unfurling her auburn tresses. nostalgia? regret? residual pining for a new back-to-school Trapper Keeper? don't know. it's not necessarily a bad melancholy. it's a reflective sadness, and it encourages afternoon naps and wandering walks. spent the afternoon alone in Astoria Park underneath the trees, reading 'n' dreaming...then stopped at the playground on the way home to swing. weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! an activity, i hope, that i will never tire of. impossible. i plan on staying a little bit 12-years old forever.

stare at my ass all you want, if you think it looks smaller.

most of us women have spent our lives fearing white pants.

2 reasons:

1. we menstruate.

2. it is a widely held belief that white pants make you look fat, or fatter than you are, or slightly bigger than your skinny-assed self. whatever. you get my point.

black is slimming. white is widening.

or so the story goes...

so, then, it was with great hesitation that i purchased a pair of white jeans on sale from the Gap last year for $10. don't know what drove me to actually make the final purchase, but i know i still wasn't certain when i left the store. would my bottom half end up looking like swollen marshmallows smooshed together in a cellulite-laden s'more?

apparently not, for every time i've worn them someone asks me if i have lost weight, and i have decidedly not lost weight. nightly chocolate peanut butter cup ices from Uncle Louie's do not hasten weight loss in any land that i know of.

the other day i wore them, and my friend p came over to rehearse for a small music project that we're putting together. p, you should know, is anything but subtle. he's completely and utterly inappropriate and frequently crass, but it is these selfsame qualities that make me trust him implicitly; he does not bullshit. i walked downstairs to let him in, and as he followed me up the stairs, he says in his thick Brooklynese accent:

"yo, you lost weight?"

"no, i have definitely not lost weight."

"bullshit. i'm staring at your ass, and you've lost weight."

now, i wish i could give two shits when someone says that to me, or better yet, i wish i were offended. i long for the day when i respond to a comment like that with:

WHAT?! ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY I HAVE A SKINNY ASS, MOTHER F*&^ER?!?!

until then tho...i need so many more pairs of white jeans.

Let me listen to me and not to them.
- Gertrude Stein

from an upcoming interview with Gloria Steinem:

You've often been described as "the good-looking feminist," as if the others were ogres. Does that bother you?

I wasn't considered so good-looking before I became a feminist.

baby mine, belly mine.

from a dear, dear, dear friend in an email telling me that she and her boyfriend are having a baby...i cannot divulge her identity or share her entire bittersweet life story, but let me tell you folks, if ever you have doubted...if ever you have been rendered hopeless and blubbering certain that there will be nothing more for you than despair and heartache...she is proof positive that that is a pile of bullshit, because this sweet girl waded through and found love, babies and weekend road trips through the lake country on the other side:

I'm not showing yet, but that's surely because I am "fat" anyway, I have not managed to lose more weight, but 35 pounds in the past 2 years helped, and, after the baby, he and I both want to be a little more conscious about eating and doing some kind of sport. I am starting to like my body, even though my boobs are growing even more (which is tricky if you have a E cup and can't find bras that size now... oh my..!) and my shape is changing, but I am welcoming the changes and can't wait for my belly to grow. It is starting to change and I feel for it everyday, wanting it to just pop out from one day to another to show and be proud of my little Buddha pooch. It's amazing that an experience like that can change your opinion about yourself. I am happy to just get bigger and actually, I have not gained any weight, let's see how I get on...

cookies make everybody taste better.

relationships...

fathers, mothers, siblings, friends, co-workers, something-sorta-more-than-friends-but-not-quite-sure-
what-the-hell-that-is-and-maybe-we-never-will

...are complicated.

baking, thank god, is not.

flour + butter + sugar + eggs + vanilla + a pinch of salt = cookie.

phew.

and so, on this rainy, depressing Sunday, i decided to whip up a batch of my mom's Brown-Edge Cookies to make a little superficial sense of the day. such a simple name for such an elegant nibble. nestled between the gluttonous Monster Cookie and the ubiquitous Toll-House Chocolate Chip, this recipe is, without a doubt, The Little Black Dress of my mother's brown Tupperware recipe box, as they're just as delicious dunked in a glass of milk as they are served with a scoop of la-di-dah lavender lemon sorbet.

i just whipped the batter up in my pink Kitchen Aid mixer (thanks brother Beau), plopped it onto cookie sheets by teaspoonfuls, slipped them into the oven, and in a matter of minutes i was rewarded with golden wafer-halos...little melt-in-your-mouth-sweetnesses...sugar-coated butter accomplishments that remind me of Milan and mommy and apron strings and when i believed in once upon a time i'm gonna grow up and

TADA!

everything's gonna make sense!

hm. notsamuch.

it is a small comfort to know, however, that in a world full of uncertainty and messy though meaningful relationships, cookies at least, are a given.


Brown Edge Cookies
from the kitchen of Janie Laskey
passed to her from my Aunt Charlene Volk

1 pound butter
1 pound sugar (2 1/4 cups)
1 egg
3 cups flour
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

cream butter and sugar. add egg, floour, salt and vanilla. drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. bake at 375 degrees for approximately 12 minutes.

the edges should be a light brown...duh....but do not overcook, or these here cookies will do nothin' but crumble.

when you care enough to send the very best.

the best two dollars i might ever spend.

emotional eating...but in a good way.

my brother sent me these pics of of my nephew grant at his first birthday party yesterday. i think i can learn something from him; rather than merely eat food, he discovers it...







...and all of this lustful eating hasn't affected his swimsuit modeling career a single, solitary bit.

i want a red dress and comfortable shoes.

going through old publicity pics for size ate today that were taken by my friend g - a very talented artist, photographer, handbag and textile designer. i came across this one. it was one of my favorites at first glance as i think the pic is a pretty true representation of who i am as a person; ya know, that whole woman-child, angel-whore thing we all have goin' on. it didn't really convey anything about the show itself though, so it was relegated to the reject pile. boo hoo hoo. but today, i post it w/ this poem i found recently...just because i wannooo...and perhaps because i'm feeling a little vain. today, i just need to be seen. knowwhatimean?

as bill blass said, ladies: "when in doubt, wear red."

What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

i am woman hear me cry.

i spent quite a bit of time crying the other night.

please don't worry, i'm fine. really. no one i know is dead or dying. sometimes you just have to go there. i've been dealt a couple of swift blows to the gut these past few weeks, but that is lovely, luscious Life, right? sometimes you just have to weep on the subway, in the shower, on the treadmill and on your couch on the phone with your friend who says the well-intentioned though poorly-timed statement in between your racking sobs:

why don't you think about some things that you like about yourself?

WHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTT?????!!!!! i think to myself. i felt like someone had just dragged their nails across the chalkboard of my soul. i was so annoyed.

um. no. i don't want to right now. i want, i need to cry.

okaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy.

but that is this particular friend; she likes to fix things. we love her and hate her for it. i didn't need fixing that night though. i needed to be...in...my...scheisse. besides, i don't think i could have thought of a single solitary thing at that very moment that i liked about myself:

um, the hair on my thighs is a pale blond so i don't really have to shave there?

not gonna work.

everything inside me felt absolutely, irrevocably broken and alone. of course that wasn't/isnt' the reality, but i had to move through that morass b/c morasses have a way of resurfacing if you don't move through them the first 400 times you pass by. they will suck you in. guaranteed.

another friend paid me an amazing compliment the following day while we sat at the bar that shed a whole new light on my evening of tears:

you're the one of us that is most willing to say how out of control you feel - or how sad, angry, happy, depressed, but i think this is also what makes you the strongest.

i would have taken that as an insult a couple of years ago, the emphasis in my mind would have fallen on the first part of the sentence:

the one of us that is most willing to say how out of control you feel - or how sad, angry, happy, depressed...

i.e. you are an emotional mess.

but now, i hear this:

you the strongest.

so there you are, something i like about myself:

i am the Strongest Emotional Mess.

hurry, somebody make me a sash.

my home improvement

ego boost on aisle 5.

feeling bad about your body? feeling old? feeling unattractive? feeling as if you might never again feel the brush of someone's lips against your...er...cheek? feeling as if you might as well donate the heels to Salvation Army and stock up on muu-muus because your Prowling Days (what you had of them anyway) are over?

posh! get thee to Home Depot, woman...

...and in the early morning hours on a weekday.

i went this morning to pick out paint for my bathroom (a lovely shade of pink called "Bombshell"), and wow.

wow, i say.

i think i'm gonna have to schedule a weekly visit.

a woman is a rare bird in that place at that time, and you will be treated like the Bird of Paradise that you are. you need not be Heidi Klum's doppelganger nor possess the charm of Jackie O. as long as you have mildly-discernable breasts and a steady supply of estrogen wafting about you, they will stare as if you are Venus just emerged from the clamshell-style sink in Bathrooms, aisle 4. they will say "hello" and smile in the most gentlemanly way. they will hold the door open for you. they will let you go first at the automated checkout. they will reach for the grout that's on that shelf waaaaaaay up there.

granted, none of these men are necessarily date material, and yes, it is sort of cheap because you're taking advantage of the typical male's inability to remain sentient in any bodily region above the waist when boobs are present in an otherwise all-male environment.

but...that's their problem now, isn't it? we can't always be pillars of integrity. go. it will remind you what an awesome body of work you are. as is. absolutely no improvements necessary.

too much messy is a good thing.

a friend of mine gave me this book recently - Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life. i love the serendipity of how books arrive in my life at juuuuust the right time. this friend and i frequently discuss how very messily we are doing things in our life. i liken the way i live my life to a kindergartener fingerpainting - lots of paint in lots of colors that i'm just smooshing around to see what i get. so far, so good. messy works. i've even grown to love the paint underneath my fingernails. evidence, folks, that i've gotten dirty.

anywhoo...i'm just at the beginning of the book, but this excerpt struck me. i've spent so much of my life trying to diminish myself, both physically and spiritually. i've always strived to nail myself down, label myself, tie myself up into a pretty little package stamped FRAGILE so nobody will fucking disturb the bow i spent hours perfectly tying, dammit. i'm safe here. wrapped, bound and shiny. and everyone can see what i am! A VERY PRETTY PACKAGE.

pfffffffffffft.

Irwin Kula, a rabbi and the author of the book, posits that the search for self is futile b/c there is just too much of each one of us to discover. our Self is endless:

The images we have of ourselves are really attempts to streamline complexity, to make a neat story out of our many facets. Freud taught that we never will know fully the contents of our minds, of our selves. He called the idea "surplus life." There is "too-muchness" to our consciousness. In other words, our own psyche eludes our grasp. No wonder the Hebrew word for life is plural: Hayim means lives.

When I hear that someone is leading a double life, I think, "Just two?"

The Yearning for self is essential to our development but it is of course a quest that can never be fully satisfied. We can never fully grasp the infinite - God's or our own. There's very little difference between the secular belief that we can know who we are and the religious fundamentalists' belief that we can know who God is. Both lead to arrogance and what Christopher Lasch called a culture of narcissism. Could it be that all the striving, the pushing, the climbing, the acquiring, is rooted in this yearning to know that which can never be known? Rather than trying to define who we are, what if we sought an ever-deepening understanding of how much we are?...

imagine, if you will, a bottomless bag of fudge-covered Oreos that have the nutritional benefits of steamed kale and poached salmon...that's you. that's me. and life is a bottomless glass of milk.

dip, baby, dip.

a little sunshine + a dark theater = therapy

i want her boots.

Olive: Grandpa, am I pretty?
Grandpa: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.
Olive: You're just saying that.
Grandpa: No! I'm madly in love with you and it's not because of your brains or your personality.

run, skip, jete...whatever you have to do to get to the theater to see Little Miss Sunshine, a film about a little girl named Olive whose endearingly dysfunctional family drives 800 miles across country so she can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. (i always wanted to be in pageants as a little girl, but my mother would never allow me to be, thank god. i think for me, it was all about the outfits and the tiaras. mom must have known that i could buy those things for myself when i grew up without having to suffer the humiliation of duct-taping my breasts together and teetering about it clear plastic heels b/c they "lengthen the leg." i'm guessing the gross sexualization of her 8-year old probably didn't appeal much to her either. smart lady, my mum.)

Olive is no Jon Benet. she wears chunky glasses, she has a gap-toothed smile, and her costumes lack the requisite pastel poof, but you will love her, her porn-loving Grandpa and the rest of her seriously f-ed up family. i laughed so hard, so loudly; i blushed. you will love this movie. if not, you have no heart, no sense of humor and your house probably smells like tuna salad.

for another, far more insightful take on the film: http://everywomanhasaneatingdisorder.blogspot.com/


p.s. i don't know if you've heard or not, but yes...M & Ms now come in dark chocolate. discovered them in the vending machines this afternoon at work. oh, happy day.

my favorite new t

Overcoming Childhood Fears by Paul Bisceglia

found this t-shirt today at threadless.com. love so many of their subversive Ts, but this one in particular as it occurs to me that most fears are childhood fears. we forget, as adults, that we have the cashflow to pay for therapy, a hammer...or dynamite if need be.

drats! turns out i need people.

i'm really friggin' tired of doing this alone.

i wrote this poem/run-on sentence a few months ago, but it seems particularly appropriate considering the last couple of days of my silly life.

for the friends who dole out a unique casserole of sympathy, dark chocolate malted milk balls, lengthy voice messages, bad popcorn and beer...even when i fail to indicate that i am friggin' starving. somehow they know it. apparently, my j-lo-esque posterior doesn't fool them; my spirit looks like karen carpenter, and they have come around to

fatten.

me.

up.

____


knowing i
need
You
is a comfort now.

before
i bristled with
fear
and something
like
pitiable weakness
when
You came near
with your
poultices
and
cough
drop concern
(as if i could
be distracted
by the shiny
wrappers!).

i
allowed for
nothing
but
my own
touch +
tug tug tug
on my
bootstraps.

this is MY pain, thank you very much.

but
now
i see
my
need-ness
is
not
weak.

we are not meant to do it alone.

You
know not
You
care not about
the tangle
of my
roots

You
strengthen
the stalk
so the world
can see
my
bloom.

because of
You

i can taste the sun.

the way to a girl's heart is through her belly

the Buddha, the impudent little belly, the pooch, the pouch, the love lump, the glorious gut.

now, in the past, i've obsessed over this little bump of flesh that disturbs the slope of my silhouette. i've done countless situps, taken tortuous Pilates classes, sworn off soda, refined sugar and flour products, and squeezed myself into those absolutely humilating Nancy Ganz Bodyshapers that do nothing but make you look and feel like a sausage...only far less appetizing. (for those of you who have yet to experience the joy...imagine, if you will, wearing a giant rubberband wrapped around your midsection.)

the other day i was chatting with my friend K who is similarly endowed, and the subject of our bellies came up (god knows how). we lamented a bit, then she stopped, her crystal blue eyes glittering with epiphany, she took a decidedly full sip of her martini and pronounced:

"ya know what though? my husband loves it, so i don't care."

i love that.

now, i'm a liberated woman. i am absolutely in favor of a woman coming into total acceptance and love of her body without looking for approval from the opposite sex. that's just as much an exercise in futility as trying to obtain the cultural ideal. why? same reason:

IT KEEPS CHANGING.

just as all of our bodies are miraculously and stupendously different, all men have different tastes and ideals when it comes to the female form. though men like to think they're so steadfast and true, don't let 'em fool you; they're just as fickle as we are. that ex-boyfriend of yours who said he's only into petite blondes with size B cup breasts...yes, well, don't be surprised when he shows up at your wedding with a towering Latina whose boobs are twice the size of his noggin. (of course, you're marrying a 6'5" black man who teaches kindergarten. you, whose ideal has always been a "corporate version of Robert Redford.")

so, yeah...we can't go looking for some guy to validate our innate beauty and worship the peaks and valleys of our landscape. that's our journey, and frankly, i want it to be. i want to stick that flag in the ground when i get to the summit. i'll admit though, there is something to be said for the little boost in self-confidence it can give you...The Boy who sees the lovable light in the heretofore unlovable bits...The Boy who sees your lifelong cursed freckles and christens them constellations. from your vantage point, you see nothing but cracks and fissures, but The Boy sees the genesis of a stream, and he's just taking you up into a helicopter to show you the miraculous view, a perspective you just can't get down here (you're so fucking busy planting flowers to cover up the faults, you won't even look up anyway).

so, in honor of The Boys that have helped us "appreciate the view," here's an absolutely ridiculous poem i wrote about a year ago after one such encounter. it's borderline bawdy (for me anyway), so pardon me if i blush, but it makes me giggle too much not to share. besides, he gave me a lovely little gift, and he deserves a little ode. thank you, boy, wherever you are.

The Belly

Someone kissed The Belly the other day
And it made my heart go hummmmmm
Made my gut go whirly dervish
Made my head go ummmm…?

“What are you doing?!” I wanted to shout.
“It’s fat, it’s round, it’s vile, it’s stout.
It’s bulbous, it’s bulging,
It’s not worth indulging,
Not ‘til it’s perfect and flat.”

“No, no,” he said. “Perfect,” he said.
“Perfect is what you are.
Your belly is a tender new autumnal moon
Crowned by two bright luminous stars.”

Ahem.

“Oh my god!” I thought.
“How can this be?!” I thought.
"I gotta get out of here now.
Clearly he’s lying, for there is no denying,
That I am nothing if not a fat cow."

Mooooooooooo.

“But no,” he said. “No, no,” he said.
Or didn’t so much say, as he did.
With his heart, and his hands, and his peckish sweet lips
All my “done up” got undid.

Eeek.

Now, what do I do with The Belly I knew
To be bulbous, and bulging, and vile?
The one that I’ve hated, abhorred, and berated,
Driven to nausea and bile?

‘Cause It no longer is
In the hands that are his
A bane, a bulge, or a lump
But a delicious dip, a landscape of plump
That makes someone’s ahem want to hump.

well, this would've sucked.

it's so hot here today that in an effort to conserve energy, my co-workers and i are tip-tip-tapping away on our keyboards in a half-lit office. i actually kind of like it.

know what it feels like?

pre-school nap time. you know...they'd dim the lights, you'd lay down on your little nap pads and all of the assistants would use their adult whisper voices. sort of feels like someone's just unfurled a clean cotton bedsheet over the entire office, and we're all playing in a makeshift fort. everyone's a little calmer. everyone's voice is a little softer.

now, if they would only pass out chocolate milk and graham crackers.