Would! You! Be! Mad?: M Edition August 27, 2007

It’s time for another round of Would! You! Be! Mad?! Except this time, it’s a limited-edition M version. As in, some things went down at the bachelor party he attended this past weekend (no, not those kinds of things; there were no strippers) and he was suitably appalled, as was I. However, we can’t tell if we’re overreacting or not. I told him I’d ask the Wise Internets, as the Internets – and my readers especially – are very, very smart.  
 
(By the way, hi, tangent: Whenever I talk about the blog now, M sings to me “secret blogggggggg-er” to the tune of that song “secret lovvvvvers.” You know the one. T-Mobile commercial. It cracks me up, without fail.)  
 
So, M is the co-best man for his close friend, who we will call Adam, who is getting married in September. He organized, as per Adam’s suggestions, a weekend for the boys in Atlantic City: steak dinners, gambling, more gambling, yet even more gambling… 
 
All was going fine on Saturday. They had played a few rounds of golf, hung out on the beach, won money at craps, and were getting ready to go to dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the most expensive casino in Atlantic City (it rhymes with Schmorgata.)  
 
M and Adam shared a room for the weekend – all the boys had chipped in to pay for Adam’s half, just like they were going to pay for his dinner, just like they had been buying him drinks left and right.  
 
But no, Adam felt the boys weren’t doing enough. So, as M shaved, Adam suggested that M pull aside the rest of the boys and get them to pony up $30 a person (as there were 12 people altogether, that would’ve been a tidy sum of $360) so that Adam could “gamble for free.” He went on to tell M that he didn’t feel the guys were “doing much” and since they “hadn’t gotten him a gift” (um, SINCE WHEN DO MEN GET GIFTS OTHER THAN FREE LAP DANCES FOR THEIR BACHELOR PARTIES?), he felt that asking everyone to pony up money was a reasonable request. 
 
M was very taken aback, especially because Adam is very soft-spoken and kind and not at all materialistic. 
 
“It screams of something Marley told him to do,” M told me later, Marley being Adam’s bride-to-be. Marley is very materialistic – she’s the Platinum Bride I’ve referred to in previous posts.  
 
So M awkwardly asked all the guys to throw down $30 each so that Adam could gamble for free, despite the fact that they all paid to get down to AC and paid for their own hotel rooms – and Adam’s – in AC and the fact that they were paying for all of Adam’s meals and drinks. Clearly, that wasn’t enough. 
 
“It was awkward. And the thing is,” M said, “I saw him play one game of poker for the rest of the weekend. Seriously, one game. Other than that he was just drinking or hanging around the other guys who were gambling, but not laying any money down himself.”  
 
If that wasn’t fishy enough, here is the final twist: 
 
Before they departed for home, Adam told M he was just going to slip into the Coach store. He emerged with a gift for Marley. 
 
So, yeah. M and his friends threw down their hard earned cashed so that Adam could essentially play one game of poker and buy a new purse for Marley. At least, that’s how we see it.  
 
I’m supremely disturbed. It’s not the fact that it was $30 because, really, $30 isn’t going to break anyone’s bank. It’s the fact that he asked for it, the fact that he felt it was owed to him, the fact that Adam felt that his friends weren’t “doing enough” for him (the pleasure of their company, clearly, was not even a consideration) that makes him a grade-A prick in my book.

Out-Brided. August 22, 2007

I thought I was doing pretty well. If Bride-to-Be were a class, I’d surely be earning at least a B+, if not an A. I mean, it’s eleven months from our wedding and already M and I have secured the church, the reception site, the registry, the bridal party and the band. Not bad, right? I mean, I should probably start thinking more seriously about dresses and we do have to get all that stuff to the church that we’ve been too lazy to compile and my diet has been more like a non-diet and damn it I had an egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast today, but hey. All in all, I’m proud of us. Or, at least I was.  
 
Then I talked to M’s friend from college, Emma, who is getting married a month after us. 
 
Emma not only has everything that we have but she also has her dress, and her invitations, and her bridesmaids dresses and her florist and an appointment for her first hair trial in just a few weeks. 
 
But that’s not even the most disturbing part. I mean, some people are overachievers and I’m okay with not being one. (Besides, the overachievers never had dates in high school.) 
 
The most disturbing part is that, in order to get in shape for her wedding (please note: this woman is a size two, on a fat day), Emma wakes up at four thirty in the morning to go to the gym. That’s 4:30. A.M. 
 
It’s okay, I’ll wait for a few moments while you pick yourself up off the floor, no worries. 
 
You back? Ok good. 
 
Because FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING? FOUR FUCKING THIRTY? IS SHE KIDDING WITH THAT? I WAKE UP FOUR HOURS AFTER FOUR THIRTY IN THE DAMN MORNING AND I THINK THAT’S TOO EARLY TO DO ANYTHING, LET ALONE GO TO THE GYM. 
 
In a way, I admire her dedication. She (despite being a size two, did I mention that?) wants to look good on her wedding day, so she’s making sure that she does.  
 
On the other hand, FOUR THIRTY? IN THE DAMN MORNING? (I’m a little afraid that all of you will respond to this post with “yeah, uh, duh Clink, we all go to the gym at four thirty in the morning, we’re part of an army of people slipping into gym clothes at four thirty in the morning, you hadn’t heard, you fat ass you?”)  
 
I’m kind of inspired. I’ve never been a competitive person but hearing that kind of got my juices flowing. She’s out-briding me at the moment, but it’s still early, and that doesn’t mean I can’t pull a come-from-behind victory. Ok, I know this isn’t a head-to-head challenge for who can be the hotter bride and have the better wedding, but anything that motivates me to get turn off The Hills, put down the remote and go to the gym, is welcomed.
 
Except, I plan to be going at six-thirty in the evening because REALLY? FOUR FUCKING THIRTY?

Oh, and a job-related non-update: I haven’t heard yet and I feel so sick, down to the very core of my stomach, about that. I am literally staring at my phone, urging it to ring out of SHEER WILL. One of my references emailed to tell me that she gave maybe-future-boss a stellar recommendation, so that’s all I have to go on right now but GOOD FUCKING LORD this is so painful. I need some wine.

Thinking. You know, about…stuff. August 20, 2007

Much of my Sunday was spent in my pajamas, in my bed, messing around on M’s laptop. 
 
Some of the resulting evidence (please excuse the wet, tangled hair; I was post-the only shower I took all weekend):

       
 
The weekend was non-eventful. I did get out of my pajamas a few times – to go shopping in SoHo, to eat lobster rolls in Nolita, to see (and laugh very hard at) Superbad, to inhale Mexican on the Upper East Side, to spend $54.98 at Duane Reade when I only went in for paper towels.  
 
But mostly, it was me and the laptop and M beside me, with his books.  
 
Mostly, it was me staring at a blank screen, waiting for divine inspiration to come and possess my hands and type the sort of short story that brings prizes and accolades and financial independence in the form of feature film rights.  
 
I haven’t been writing. Other than, you know, this thing that I do here. I haven’t been writing fiction, I haven’t been writing the short stories that prompted one of my professors – himself a published author – to tell me mine was the best undergraduate writing he’d seen in years and years of teaching. I haven’t been writing and, as a result, and I know this is going to sound odd, and I don’t really care – my soul feels cluttered. 
 
I have all of these half-ideas and characters and storylines running through my head and they have no home. To paraphrase that song that was very popular as a result of Grey’s Anatomy, if I get them on paper they can stop threatening the life they belong to. So I should do that, get them on paper. Or up on screen. Or anywhere but my head, where the ideas just tend taunt me, upset about the fact that they are just that – ideas.  
 
I’m curious as to how many of you bloggers also write fiction. I know that they don’t go hand in hand, but I also know that in many cases, they do. I know that blogging, for many, myself included, is a form of exercising the muscle. If you write every day, the bicep of your craft is going to be toned, is going to look stunning in a halter. (I think of the writing muscle as a bicep; I have no explanation). Some of you (hi, Pete! How are things in Canada today?) incorporate fiction into your blogs, which I so admire. I’m more terrified of presenting my fiction than I am of laying my neuroses bare to be judged.  
 
So, tell me. Do you blog just to blog? Do you blog to keep the bicep fit, or get it into shape? Do you blog in lieu of fiction writing? Or do you (cough overachiever cough) manage to do both?

Update to a previous post: Oh, and Mike - Molly’s boss and one of my true BlogFriends - has put up his own take on the Great Patriots Garbage Can Debate of ‘07: http://mikesgotnothin.blogspot.com/ It helped me to understand why the damn garbage can is so important to M. I think I’m going to, reluctantly, let him keep it. But I’m going to make sure it is stored out of view, UNDERNEATH the desk. See? Compromise.

Hi, I’m a freak. July 18, 2007

I was going to slap up a couple of photos from Vegas (“photos from your nose down,” as Molly put it, referring to my desire to remain anonymous on this here site) and call it a post. However, my new work computer and I have not yet made nice and he (I’ve decided it’s a he – a stubborn, obstinate, hateful he who likes to rob me of internet every so often just to show me WHO IS IN CHARGE ‘ROUND HERE, LITTLE LADY) refuses to acknowledge my camera when I connect via USB.  

So, no photos. 

And, well, writing about Vegas just makes me feel nostalgic for Vegas and leaves me further unmotivated to do anything but sigh about how I wish I was still on vacation.  

I actually asked the following question to M last night: “So, how much do you think croupiers make? Could we eek out a living being croupiers?”  

“We’d probably be better off if you were working a pole on the strip but hey.” 

Not that I really want to move to Vegas. I joke about it but, no. I actually had a meltdown in Vegas about, well, Vegas.

This is so embarrassing to admit but I’m at a loss for what else to write since no one wants to read a “hey, here are a list of my fears about my new job!” post, or a “we haven’t made any progress on the wedding plans because I am a lazy whore” post so whatever.  

We had been in a casino all day. From dark, cold casino to dark, cold casino, only stepping out into the light, hot outdoors momentarily – and then only to get to another dark, cold casino. 

It was my fault. I said to M that I wanted to see every casino on the strip. (“Even Imperial Palace, Clink?” “Yes, M, even Imperial Palace.”) But by 5pm I was sun-starved and disoriented, sitting at the crowded slots while M played blackjack, feeding dollar after dollar into a White Diamond machine, drinking a free glass of white wine, waving cigarette smoke from my face. 

I’ve had anxiety attacks before and I could feel the symptoms coming on. The shortness of breath, the tingles in my limbs, the need to get outside immediately and just exhale. 

I told M – as discreetly as possible – that I would be outside and then I ran for it. No easy task, as casinos are arranged like cornfield mazes, the exit almost as impossible to find as a clock. 

I whipped past throngs of heavyset Midwesterners and their tantrum-throwing spawn, past the bachelorette party, and the bachelor party, and the group of confused seniors milling about the exit. 

I burst into the dry desert heat and found myself a patch of shade. M followed moments after, his hand on my shoulder, his face full of concern.  Seeing him, I knew I was safe and could submit to my emotions and let it all out. 

Oh, and I did. 

“I just…this is so UNNATURAL, M. Like, this whole place! What are we doing in a casino at 5pm? With all the fucking cigarette smoke and the washed up cocktail waitresses and that asshole from Texas who placed don’t come bets and cheered every time the rest of us lost! I just feel so…weird! And…and…UNNATURAL.” 

I paused to catch my breath. Then I kicked a fake rock outside the casino and said, “see! Everything is. Just. So. Fake!” 

I don’t know what spurred it. I don’t know why I couldn’t have just been an adult about it and told M I was going to go sit by a pool for a little while, to get my bearings. The unfortunate thing (one of many) about anxiety attacks is that you don’t have much control over them. The only control I had was over my body and that control I used to get myself out of the situation before I crumpled into a ball on the floor of the casino. 

M took me to a restaurant. Got me a bottle of water and something to eat and said that we’d never have to set foot in another casino for the rest of the trip. 

“But…but…I want to play craps at the Hard Rock tonight!” I stammered. 

He pat me on the head. “Aww, that’s my good little gambling addict.”  

The rest of our trip went off without a hitch. And I mean that – not a single hitch. We won money when we gambled, we saw our first Cirque du Soleil show, we had food that surpassed my snotty New Yorker expectations, we made some friends at the craps table – croupiers and bachelor party attendees alike, we had sex in the Heavenly Bed and the Heavenly Bath, we landed safely when we came back to New York. 

The actual flight was another story. I was alternately fine and then crying; quietly reading a book and then sobbing aloud. Turbulence, combined with the fact that the flight attendants were freaking out about a passenger who had locked himself in a bathroom did not make for the easiest ride. All I kept thinking was “he’s going to bust out of that bathroom with a bomb strapped to his chest and DUDE it is ALL OVER.” (Turns out the man just had stomach problems from the beef-and-swiss sandwich served onboard. “Stomach problems, folks!” he announced when he exited the bathroom. Also, he bowed.)  

So, all in all, yay Vegas. Yay craps. Yay my awesome fiancé for taking the reigns and making the trip memorable. 

And a big boo to being back and at work and at a stressful new job.

Holding Pattern. July 3, 2007

I’m in a holding pattern at the moment.  
 
I’m waiting for tomorrow: Brunch at our favorite spot, lounging in the park with each other and a pile of wedding magazines, a rooftop barbeque to watch the fireworks. 
 
I’m waiting for Friday: A barbeque at my parents’ home. Some suburbia - and some family - will do me good. 
 
I’m waiting for Saturday: Driving down to my beloved Philadelphia for a weekend with two of my future bridesmaids. (PS - any cute ideas on how to ask them, short of blurting it out while drunk as I did when I asked my first bridesmaid?) 
 
I’m waiting for next Thursday: Departing for Vegas, having packed my sluttiest dresses and tiniest bathing suits and tallest heels because if not in Vegas, then where? 
 
I’m waiting for the sixteenth: Starting a new job. Should be old hat by now but there are butterflies. Yes, already. 
 
I’m waiting for next July: Because, quite frankly, all this planning has made me ludicrously anxious and excited about the wedding. 
 
Sigh. The wedding. Or, The Wedding, as it deserves to be capitalized because it is a Thing of Magnitude - lowercase does not do enough justice. 
 
It has become The Thing We Talk About - between M and I and also amongst our families and friends. I’ll refrain from bringing it up - not wanting to be That Girl Who Can Only Talk About Her Wedding - only to be bombarded with questions and suggestions and opinions and “please do not wear a strapless poufy gown. You’ll look like every other bride. Also, a cupcake.” 
 
Last night I had a dream that I tried on dresses. And - seeing as it was a DREAM and therefore NOT REALITY - every dress I tried on fit perfectly. From the sexy A-Line halter to, yes, the cupcake fairy princess happily ever after poufy dresses. I woke up smiling. 
 
Way to set me up for disappointment, Subconscious, for when I actually do try on dresses and none of them look right and I’ll be standing there all “but they looked so great in my dream!” and then everyone will kind of give each other the “she’s officially lost it” looks and someone will hand me champagne and ask if I’m getting enough sleep.
 
Which, hello, I totally am. Because it’s while sleeping I look fucking amazing in every dress.  
 
Have I lost it already? Possible. Also - a massive hangover (hi, four glasses of wine last night on a stomach containing nothing more than a granola bar eaten at 10am) combined with a massive dose of allergy medicine (really? With the allergies? Still?) does make for a bit of a fuzzy Clink.  
 
Luckily tonight seems to be just the antidote: dinner and drinks al fresco with friends for Roommate’s birthday, and then a quick nap before a 2am (yes, you read that right) Revolutionary War tour of Manhattan - did I mention it starts at 2am? - because my fiancé is insane. Also, cute. So he can get away with it. 
 
Plus I’m wearing a red and white polka dot dress (Fiance: You look like Minnie Mouse. In a good way) and that just makes everything - even a damn Tuesday morning holding pattern - better. Eh?

The Sexlesses. June 22, 2007

We haven’t had sex for two days. 
 
If you knew M and me, kept a log of our sex life for the past two years (except that would make you kind of pervy and I don’t know that pervy suits you), you would know that two days without sex - two days having slept in the same bed without having sex - is wildly uncharacteristic. 
 
“Omigod, we’re the old married couple. That doesn’t have any sex. Except for like once a month but even then it’s perfunctory and I’ll be thinking about the laundry and you’ll be thinking about the bills. OMIGOD. We’re just a stone’s throw away from my vast collection of romance novels, your vast collection of porn and ‘goodnight hun, see you tomorrow’ before turning over onto opposite sides. Omigod.” 
 
“I’m glad to see you’re not at all being melodramatic about this.”  
 
The truth is, I’m scared about domestic life. Excited, intrigued, anxious but also scared. Scared that it will turn us into faded versions of our vibrant selves. I’m scared that there won’t be any sex. I’m scared that life - especially a life filled with kids and obligations and car pools and mortgages - will intrude to the point that we become, essentially, roommates.  
 
It’s irrational, I know. Two days without sex does not a celibate couple make. But it’s easy to get tired and make excuses and then all of a sudden it’s been two months and you’re all, “maybe I should just put out tonight. I feel bad.” 
 
I know what a slippery slope it is because it’s exactly what happened with the gym and me. I used to go five, six nights a week. The cycling room was my second home. I was dedicated, enthusiastic. And then, well, life started to get in the way. I got busy at work and then I got engaged and soon I stopped going. I was “too tired.” Or I “had a headache.” Or I “just wasn’t in the mood.” And now it’s been weeks - WEEKS! - without a single visit to the gym. And I have no intentions of going back. Carving time for the gym is no longer a priority.  
 
See? See how that worked? See how easy it is to substitute “sex” for “the gym”?  
 
“Well,” he said to me this morning as I, fully-clothed and ready to go to work, lay next to him, shirtless and sleepy, “I’d be more than happy to seduce you right now if it means you’ll worry less.” 
 
“No! No! Then we’d be doing it just to do it and then we’re no better than The Sexlesses. Oh, and if you could see inside my head, I’ve capitalized Sexless as if it’s a last name because that’s what we’re going to call the imaginary family that we don’t want to turn into.”  
 
I know we’ll have sex tonight and it will be awesome and I’ll be all, “remember my meltdown? Ha ha ha, I’m so dramatic. We have nothing to worry about.” But still. Slippery slope, I say. Slippery slope.  
 
Note: I should probably be channeling all my nervous energy into worrying how the hell we’re going to help pay for this wedding, but as you can see, I clearly have my priorities in exactly the right order.

Case of the Mondays. June 19, 2007

Yesterday afternoon, I stood in a bathroom stall at work and called M and cried. 
 
It wasn’t a cute “sniffle sniffle” cry either. It was the ugly cry - when the snot and the tears run together and your face is red and your eyes are puffy and you think it’s the end of the goddamn world and not even a glimpse of your ring can make you feel better (that’s when you know it’s bad.)  
 
It was just that kind of day.  
 
Any woman planning a wedding is already at a heightened state of stress and sensitivity. If you yell at her, for not asking you before ‘borrowing’ an intern, an intern she HAD NO FUCKING IDEA ‘BELONGED’ TO YOU LIKE A FUCKING COW IN A FUCKING HERD OF CATTLE, then, well, she will cry in the bathroom to her fiancé. Because she has already had enough, what with being locked out of her computer for four hours due to a glitch in the company system that registered her last day as Friday, June 15. And with trying to print out approximately 100 film stills with two broken photo printers. And with having eaten five pieces of cut-up pineapple for lunch because she was too stressed and busy to leave and get something substantial. And with her rage at the total ineptitude of her boss, and everyone else at the company for that matter.  
 
Things are better now. Things were better last night, actually, when M met me outside of my office building and gave me a bear hug and took me out for sushi and wine and wedding magazine shopping. Martha Stewart’s Weddings truly has healing power, you didn’t know?  
 
That’s all I want to do these days, dive into the world of glossy magazines and pretty planners and books with beautiful pictures. I feel safe there, surrounded by ideas and my fiancé and a vision of what ours will be like. 
 
I do not feel safe out here, in the real world, where someone who is pissed at you for getting assigned to a kick-ass project will then berate you for BORROWING AN INTERN in order to get out her aggression.  
 
I know. I need to grow a thicker skin. Wah, wah, Clink got yelled at and it reduced her to a puddle on the bathroom floor.  
 
I’m just so happy right now. There’s a glow that surrounds everything having to do with love! And the wedding! And how much I love the guy that put a ring on my finger! So when something threatens that glow, takes it away, makes me feel bad or embarrassed or hurt, well, then there I am. Crying in a bathroom stall. Wishing that somehow someone would pay me to plan my wedding.

Douchebag. June 7, 2007

This is a sad excuse for a post (the work! It has accumulated up to my eyeballs!) but I just ran out to Starbucks to get my daily 4pm-ish “here, Starbucks, here is $4 for a cup of coffee now GIVE ME THE GOODS, DAMN IT, I need to stay awake until six” caramel macchiato.  
 
I was waiting on line for the drink when I noticed a man standing in front of me: tall, salt and pepper hair, distinguished. Casual clothes, but the buttery leather boat shoes were a dead give away that he probably owns not rents - in both Manhattan and the Hamptons. 
 
Near the drink pick-up station, Starbucks has a basket filled with children’s books that have been donated to charity. While I have not donated to the basket (I give in other ways! Like to the saxophone player at the 59^th Street Station!), I do sometimes notice the books. Especially the one that always sits on top - a bright yellow cover, something about baseball. 
 
Apparently the book caught the eye of Mr. Distinguished, as he picked it up and began to flip through it. Okay, I thought, just killing some time before he gets his drink. Maybe he has a kid and besides, this line IS monstrous. 
 
But then, to my utter shock, he casually slipped the book under his arm, where he was already holding a large file folder. The file folder mostly obstructed the book as he grabbed his drink and slipped out the door. 
 
I, ungraceful under pressure as always, just stood there - jaw dropped, eyes wide. Now, of course, I want to punch myself in the head for not calling him out. For not even saying, “sir, are you going to put the book back?”  
 
WHO STEALS FROM CHARITY? WHO STEALS FROM A CHILDREN’S CHARITY - CHILDREN WHOSE LIBRARIES PROBABLY HAVE ONLY ONE DOG-EARED COPY OF CORDUROY WITH MOST OF THE PAGES MISSING?!  WHO STEALS FROM CHARITY WHILE WEARING EXPENSIVE LEATHER BOAT SHOES? 
 
I just lost a little faith in humanity.

Would you be mad? March 13, 2007

Let’s play a round of “Would You Be Mad?” (in my head, that sounds like a studio audience shouting “WOULD! YOU! BE! MAD!?, just so you know).

Are you ready? (ARE! YOU! READY!?)

So, let’s pretend that you have a boyfriend. And he is gorgeous and smart and talented and lovely and totally into you and whenever you’re around him you feel compelled to just smush his cute face while making cooing sounds because he’s just that delicious (go with it, okay?). In sum: you are in love. He loves you back. Life is pretty good.

Your delicious boyfriend wrote a book, which he dedicated to you. You are no dummy; it means a lot to you that your boyfriend would essentially, as he told you, write a book for you. Nothing that is about to go down could possibly take away from the honor of seeing your name on the dedication page. It means the world to you.

You decide to pick up your boyfriend’s book and re-read a chapter that was recently excerpted in a major publication. Before flipping to the chapter, you stop momentarily on the acknowledgments page, realizing that you haven’t read it in its entirety.

Almost immediately – as if you have inner Whore Sensor – you zone in on her name.

Who is she? Why, only the bane of your very existence, the thorn in the side of your relationship. She was the woman in his life before you came along, and she has not taken kindly to being rocked off her pedestal. They never dated. He had a crush on her when he first met her – through work – but it dissolved into a close friendship. She’s the one who helped him pick out those shoes that you love. She’s the one who accompanied him to weddings and holiday parties. She’s the one he leaned on while going through rough times.

The fact that she was important to him once is not why you don’t like her. Well, not entirely. You don’t like her because she is a goldigging skank with loose morals. She sleeps with famous and semi-famous married men, uses them to both obtain material goods and for her own professional benefit. She is the woman that all women hate; she drags down the good name of the gender through her very existence. Since she doesn’t get much more than access to a black AmEx through her “relationships,” she leans on your boyfriend for emotional support. She even had him use his connections to put a halt to a very public scandal that would’ve outed her as a homewrecking whore.

He’s scaled back their friendship since the two of you have been together; no more nights at the movies, no more dinners, no more being a shoulder to cry on when her latest relationship goes south. He acknowledges that there is some validity to how you feel about her. But he cannot cut her out completely, he says, because they work together. But their relationship – as far as you know – is nothing more than a work acquaintanceship. A phone call or email every once in a while, but nothing more. Long gone are the days that he would consider dropping everything to be by her side. In light of that, you try to put it out of your mind that, at the very beginning of your relationship with him, you walked into a party and saw his hand resting in the small of her back. You try to convince yourself that that was then and this is now. You believe him when he says that he doesn’t have feelings for her, that you are the only girl he wants to be with.

So, imagine your surprise when you see her name among those he has thanked – his friends, his family, your family, his journalism professors, former bosses. There she is, grouped with a few of his colleagues. Not singled out, but still present.

You immediately shut down, chide yourself for being so naïve as to think he wouldn’t include her. Have you been duped? Has all that he said been a lie? Has he been hiding a friendship with her so as to spare your feelings?

You bring it up, when the TV and the lights have been turned off. When he’s thinking sex. Not so fast, buddy.

Okay, maybe you don’t so much “bring it up” as “scream about it.” You’ve lost your cool; you are furious. Why did he feel the need to include someone that has wreaked so much havoc on your relationship? And why didn’t he at least tell you about it, give you a heads up, offer a chance at a reasonable discussion? Why did he leave you to find it out all by yourself and fume quietly over it before eventually bursting Sunday at midnight?

So, this is where you come in. Because maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am, as he said in the heat of the moment, making a big deal out of absolutely nothing. Maybe I should just let it go.

But I feel that my reaction was valid. We’ve worked it out – we’re actively loving each other again, of course, despite the threats and crossed arms and turned backs of the other night – but it still eats at me. She will forever mar his book, something that is so special to me and us. She will always be in it, just as she will always be in our lives – for one reason or another. She always seems to find a way and he always seems to let her in. He says he included her not because of who she is to him today but because of whom she once was: someone who helped him along the way, in both life and his career. He doesn’t feel I should be threatened and in truth, I’m not. I don’t think he’s cheating or even carrying on an illicit friendship. But at the same time, I don’t want her in our lives anymore. This is someone who has never treated me or our relationship with respect. I can’t wrap my head around why he felt she deserved a place of honor in his book.

So, wise Internets, I ask you…

WOULD! YOU! BE! MAD!?

Unfocused. February 27, 2007

I’ve started and stopped multiple posts. I’m blaming it on the grey – both in the sky and on the sidewalks, in slush form. I chide myself for being weak enough to let the weather affect me but there’s no getting around it. The grey out there sucks the inspiration and the motivation and the good cheer from in here. Perhaps I would be happier spending my winters in California.Here’s the beginning of a post that I will probably never finish because writing about my father and the surprise dinner thrown in honor of his 21 year political career this past weekend is too large of an undertaking. If you knew my father, you would understand that the English language (and my rather mediocre mastery of it) is too limited, too full of trite clichés, to capture the man I will always try to live up to:

I built my outfit around a red and white pin from his first election, back in 1985. It took me a half an hour to find, eventually located in the nether regions of my “junk box,” which has accompanied me from home to college to both of my Manhattan apartments, becoming more and more bloated along the way. It was buried underneath some of the silver rings I was so fond of in eighth grade and mountains of Dave Matthews Band tickets, from back when going to one of their concerts was considered a life-altering event. I was four years old in 1985, and I wore the pin as a badge of honor as my father and I canvassed the neighborhood, finding out what was important to the people in the town and asking for their support come Election Day. There were a few doors slammed in our faces – it was and still remains a die-hard Republican town – but mostly it was fun. Even if I did spend the majority of the time hiding behind my father’s leg overcome by situational shyness.

I can’t finish it. I’ve tried, but I get distracted by things like my boss’ voice or an email or my steaming caramel macchiato or ooh, look! Keys! Shiny!

I just can’t stay focused.

I’m opening the floor to topic suggestions or personal questions. People do that, right? The “email me a question and I will answer it” thing. It’s like a meme, only more interesting. Tailored. So, email me a question and I will answer it in a future post. Just please don’t ask “why are you so retarded that you can’t even finish a tribute to your father, whom you adore above all others?” because then I will curl up under my desk and cry.