life

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DFKJSDFJH;FGHAS.

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Okay so here is the deal: I don’t have a driver’s license. This is weirdly stressful to a lot of people– “You don’t have a WHAT?” they always say–but it actually works for me just fine. I’ve lived in a city for six years. If I’m going somewhere the T can’t take me, odds are I’m not going there alone. And frankly, I am a flipping TERRIBLE driver. So, whatever. I am handy on road trips because I make good mix cds, and also snacks, but you should know that if you get tired of driving you are shit out of luck, because I called shotgun before we got in the car and shotgun is where I am going to stay. 

But. Lately I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a license. It’s a life skill, I guess. It could be useful in emergencies, like if I was back home at my mom’s in New York and nobody wanted to go take me to get an iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and both my legs were broken so I couldn’t walk there (although I guess if both my legs were broken I couldn’t drive, either, so). And eventually I am going to want to punch out some kids, and maybe I will have to drive the carpool or something, or MAYBE I will get that farm I have always wanted and I will have to take the produce to market. WHATEVER. The bottom line is, I am off from work today, and over the weekend I decided I was going to go take my freaking permit test and get this show on the road, so to speak, once and for all. 

I studied the manual. I memorized speed limits. I wrote myself an inspirational “Git her done” message and stuck it on the bathroom mirror. I read the guidelines VERY CAREFULLY and made sure to have all my documents in order. This morning, when the Boston branch of the Mass RMV opened its doors at nine o’clock, I was standing in line. 

I waited. And waited. And when they finally called my number–“I’m here to take the permit test!” I said cheerfully–the woman at the desk explained to me in halting, broken English that I had the wrong papers. 

“No, they’re right,” I told her, pointing to the RMV-issued list I’d printed offline. “See?”

“Nope. Wrong.” She needed a copy of my lease, she told me–which was sitting in a file box back at my apartment, forty minutes away. 

JUST. What was I going to do? I trekked back to Southie, got her the damn lease, and trekked all the way back across town, where I stood in line AGAIN. I waited. And waited. I got to the front of the line, where a new woman now stood. “I’m here to take the permit test!” I told her. 

“Oh,” she said. “We’re not doing permit tests today. Machine’s broken. Could try taking it at another branch, though.”

Um. Would have been nice if the first woman had mentioned that, yes? But no matter. I was GITTING HER DONE. “Well, okay,” I said. “Where’s the closest one?”

“Watertown,” she told me. “But you’d have to drive.”

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I’m only interested in your process.

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I had a professor in college who used to say that. Freshman year he thought I was a genius and junior year he was disappointed to learn that I am, in fact, just a really nervous chick.

Here’s my process: I went to writing school, and then I didn’t write another good word for two years.

I mean, that’s not entirely accurate. Of course I wrote. I wrote  half-scenes and bits of dialogue that never went anywhere, that died on the table even as I scribbled them down. I wrote birthday cards and shopping lists. I wrote my name in fifty different styles. But that was mostly it. I just…had nothing to talk about. I’ve never been one of those people who write like they’re training for a marathon, who crank out a certain number of pages or words every day regardless of whether they have anything to say. I can’t. Do it. I’ve tried. It makes me frustrated and upset and pissed off at the universe, to sit in front of the computer or in a Starbucks and stare at a blank page, white like milk, white like blindness. I write–have always written–because I love it, because when it’s going it’s better than being in love.

But when it’s not going, it’s ASS. And frankly, who needs more ass in her life? Not this girl, that’s for sure.

So I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to force it, that I was going to read and cook and knit scarves and make lists and wait for it–whatever IT is– to come. That’s where this blog was born, actually: a way to keep the words alive while I waited for whatever was next to reveal itself. And, finally, it did: last spring I was in the right place at the right time and I found fuel for eight, nine, ten short stories, letters and paragraphs and dialogue spilling over onto the page and the screen faster than I could get it all down. Over the summer Tom got used to coming home and finding me doing things like eating cereal and broccoli for dinner, notebooks and markers like rubble at my feet. I could feel my muscles getting longer and stronger, making connections I wouldn’t have made before. A Shred, if you will, for my brain: and one with results.

But now it’s getting colder, and as I polished up the last story I worked on a couple of weeks ago I could almost feel those very same muscles protesting, the thoughts coming more slowly, the words a bit sluggish. And couple of days later it occurred to me: I have no new writing in the pipeline.

My first reaction was panic–oh man, not this shit again. I hate this feeling, the fear and impotence, the creeping suspicion that I’m probably not a real writer after all. I banged around for awhile, slamming doors and crabbing out and staring, staring at that luminous white page. But as the leaves start to drop off the trees I’ve been starting to reconcile myself with the idea that I might have some waiting to do this season. And that’s okay. Because if I’ve learned one thing about my process this year, it’s that it will come. It will come.

Happy weekend, kiddos. I’m off to find some alternate creative outlets. See you Monday.

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Moody

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When I was fourteen years old I left my mood ring on the sink in the bathroom of an Italian restaurant in Universal City, California. I came back twenty minutes later and it was gone. I remember that panic so clearly–looking under the sink, searching my pockets and purse, the strip of pale skin on my finger. I came pretty close to tears.

For some reason I’ve been thinking about that ring–and that trip–a lot lately. I went with M, my best, most treasured girlfriend back then, and her parents, whom I loved like my own. We spent two weeks driving up and down the coast, hitting Yellowstone and the tar pits, the Getty Center and the Madonna Inn.  M and I spent hours in the backseat of the rental, sleeping and watching the ocean roll by. We laughed a lot, I remember. We trafficked in Starbursts and CDs. 

Still, I spent those West Coast weeks feeling weird the way you do when you’re fourteen–or always, if you’re me–jangly-limbed and nervous, always waiting on the tides. I was starting high school. I was far from home. I had the worst, most obsessive, most miserable crush of my life on a boy who–literally–did not know I was alive. I wrote stories in my notebook and looked down at that mood ring often, depending on it to decode my feelings like a five-dollar Rosetta Stone. Blue meant happy; amber was envious. Green denoted “intense”. I felt intense a lot, that summer, and it helped to put a name to things.

“What does it mean if it’s black?” I wondered aloud one morning, climbing out of the hotel pool and holding my hand aloft.

M looked at it carefully, squinting in the light. “I guess it means you’re dead.”

Ten years later and I’m thinking I’d like a grown up mood ring, a way to put a one-word name to all the things I’m feeling. And I’m thinking I’d like to head back to the ocean, to see if I can’t find the things that I’ve lost.

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Battle With the Heart

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We hit a couple of speed bumps around here earlier this week–an infected nose ring (GROSS RIGHT? I KNOW), a domestic disturbance that was probably more than half my fault, the sudden and unwelcome ubiquity of Jay Leno’s chin on my television. I think we’re just tired, is all, and the weather is doing that weird thing where it’s not a season, and things are just generally out of sorts. 

No matter. We are PLOWING AHEAD. I’m trying to adopt Kal’s Bulletproof Positive Attitude as my own: I baked some maple oatmeal cookies last night to help shoo fall in through the door, and I’ve been burning my Ember candle nonstop. We had turkey melts and potato soup for dinner. Glee continues to delight my freaking face off. I’m coming off a super awesome writing collaboration with my good buddy A, and there is one more story in the pipeline before I settle into some editing. Things are fine. Better than fine, in fact. We are back on track.  

Also, you guys! Kelly has a blog, and it is amazing! I never knew! You should all check it out. Things to know about Kelly: she is great, and the very first time I met her I smacked her on the butt by mistake thinking she was my friend Jennie. Luckily she didn’t smack me back.

How are you all? Tell me how you’re hanging in.

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Randomness, and Icebox Cake

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Have I talked here yet about H&J?

H&J are the people who introduced Tom and me one thousand years ago, when I was a junior in high school rocking the acrylic nails and Tom had a Growing Up Gotti blowout. Good times. ANYWAY, H&J dated back then, and then we got to college and H moved to Florida and J moved to North Carolina and they didn’t date anymore and a bunch of years went by, and then they randomly got back together and now they live literally five blocks from us in Boston, two hundred miles from where all four of us started.

WEIRD RIGHT?

Anyway, the point is that way back when J’s mom used to make ice box cake, which like, I don’t even know what ice box cake IS except that it involves chocolate wafers and whipped cream and, well, an ice box, and I think it is what you eat in heaven if you’ve been really good. Seriously, at 4AM on New Year’s Day 2003 Tom and I stood in front of my refrigerator and devoured pretty much a whole cake like savages or secret eaters, and I am not lying when I say it was a VERY GOOD START to that particular year.

You guys. I had not had an ice box cake in five years, and then yesterday happened, and GROWN UP H & J BROUGHT ONE TO MY HOUSE. I nearly wept for joy. And then I ate a crap ton of it.

Because some things never change.

 

(P.S. Smitten Kitchen explains it better. Go read their post while I shove my face.)

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Eat Your Feelings

You GUYS. I’m going to get published.

Argestes, a literary magazine out of Iowa, has picked up a story of mine for their Fall/Winter ’09 issue, which is…pretty much the most exciting thing to happen in my life since I got to the episode of Lost where Sawyer and Kate do it and then escape from the Others. SO. You know. Pretty exciting.

Obviously, the only appropriate response was to drink a lot of champagne and bake cookies, which is EXACTLY WHAT I DID.

Have a recipe! And celebrate.

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1/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup chocolate chips

1/3 cup chopped pecans

1/3 cup flaked coconut

 

Preheat the oven to 350. Beat the butter for 30 seconds, then add sugar, baking soda, and salt; beat until well-combined. Beat in egg and vanilla, then flour, then stir in oats and coca powder. Add chocolate chips, coconut, and pecans. Dough will be thick. Spoon onto a baking sheet–small cookies work best, I think–and bake for eight minutes or so. 

Eat. Drink. And feel damn pleased with yourself.

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Love Story

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Dear President Obama,

I don’t know if you know this, but back in November you won the election, and we were VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT.

It was a romantic-comedy fairy tale if there ever was one, complete with meeting cute and a montage of us frollicking in the park while Sara Bariellies played in the background and a happily, happily, happily ever after.   You stood outside our window with a boom box.  You made us want to be a better man. We flew across the country to meet you at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. Nora Ephron couldn’t have written it better.

Six months later, we’re hitting a little bit of a rough patch. We still love each other, obvs–how could we not? But now instead of us running along the river and canoodling at Starbucks, the montage is of you eating dinner alone, us staying at the office until all hours, one side of the bed unslept in. Probably the song is by Iron and Wine or some other sad sack band.

 Maybe we grind our teeth at night and it keeps you awake.  Maybe we hate your friends. Maybe sometimes you try and try and try to explain to us very patiently about universal health care and WE WILL NOT LISTEN BECAUSE WE ARE NITWITS. We argue, and we shout, and we get backed into corners and lose our patience and have to go outside in the backyard and smoke a cigarette because are fighting so loudly the neighbors are starting to peek over the fence. Our sassy girlfriend wants us to kick you to the curb. Your buddies think we’re more trouble than we’re worth.

It’s okay. 

The honeymoon is over, that’s all. Now comes the real relationship. The part where we talk and compromise and try to make it work because we kind of dig each other, because we think it means something, because we’re better together than we’ve been apart. 

Don’t give up on us, okay? We won’t give up on you. 

Also, we’d really like it if we could be played by Sandra Bullock.

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Southie Brunch

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H and J came over yesterday for brunch on the roof deck. On the menu:

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My favorite brunch fallback: an Ina frittata with broccoli, sausage, and cheese

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Cinnamon-raisin muffins (recipe to come! I MADE IT UP!) and a big bowl of fruit. Plus lots of iced coffee, obvs. We don’t do anything in this house without a lot of iced coffee. 

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Frankie was suitably impressed.

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