On Monday, my roommate sent me an article about a matzo shortage in the Bay Area.  Matzo is “unleavened bread” – basically a kosher cracker – that observant Jews are supposed to eat in place of bread for the week of Passover.  Even unobservant Jews, like myself, eat it during the holiday, usually (in my case) during Seders, which are ritual dinners celebrating the holiday.  Matzo is an integral part of the Seder: you eat it, you talk about it, you point to it, you hold it in the air, you hide a piece and make someone find it, and then you buy it back from that person.  

We are giving a Seder tonnight, so the possibility that there might not be any Matzo sent me into a panic.  To steal a phrase from “Little Women” (with slight alterations): a Seder isn’t a Seder without any matzo.

I called supermarkets: all out.  I looked on craigslist: lots of requests for matzo, nobody selling it or giving it away.

I told my aunt and she offered to send me some from Seattle.  This seemed slightly ridiculous, but also like a perfect solution: family coming together to save a thousand-year-old holiday ritual via FedEx.  It’s like a commercial come to life.

Of course, it does raise some issues, starting with: is it really worth $30 to overnight matzo?  If you get past the monetary cost (anything for family and tradition, right?) you are confronted with the less-obvious environmental costs: the gas expended on the airplane used to fly it down, the cardboard used to package it.  It is definitely not eating locally.  Did we really want our Seder to contribute to global warming?  Not to mention the social implications of being able to ship boxes of matzo around when there is a worldwide wheat shortage and people are actually starving in developing countries.

Being terrible at making decisions, I passed this one off to my uncle, who went ahead and FedEx-ed the matzo.  It arrived yesterday, to my office.  The Seder was saved!  Tradition trumped environmental and social guilt!

Of course, a half an hour after I received my FedEx tracking number by email, I got an instant message from my roommate saying that her grandmother (who lives in San Francisco) had gotten some matzo from a friend.  This was followed twenty minutes later by another instant message from a friend who is coming to our Seder saying he has extra matzo he can bring.  Then I went to my brother’s Seder, where they ended up with two leftover boxes of matzo, one of which I took home.  Now, instead of no matzo, we will probably have too much.

To make the whole situation even more ironic, I was asked to drive to Sacramento yesterday for work, so I did not go in to my office.  I asked my brother to pick up the FedEx-ed matzo, but he might not be coming to my Seder, and it is possible it will never arrive.

What is the lesson to take from all of this?  I can think of a few possibilities.

One: Exhaust all local options before turning to outside help.

Two: Murphy’s Law holds – as soon as you don’t need something, it will appear in abundance.  If Doug had never FedEx-ed the matzo, no one would have found any, and we would have been matzo-less.  Since he spent the time and money, we ended up not needing it.

Three: Shop early for dinner parties, especially when they involve unusual foods.

Four: God will bring you matzo one way or another, even if you are not really an observant Jew.

Normally when I write in here and say that life is busy, I mean that it is busy, but I still have time to read the New York Times online.  I just prefer reading the Times to writing in here, most days; it's easier, and if I don't read the Times the day does not feel complete, but if I don't write in here I get by okay.

I mention this, because when I say that life is busy right now, I don't mean in that way.  I mean in the have-not-read-the-Times-all-week way.  In the behind-on-NaNo way.  The will-have-to-work-this-weekend-because-8-to-9-hours-of-work-a-day-is-not-enough way.  The having-a-party-tomorrow way.  The going-home-for-Thanksgiving way.  The leaving-the-country-in-two-weeks way.

(Two weeks!  Hurrah!)

I literally have not had a moment to relax.  Which is okay, overall, I am fine being busy.  What's less okay is knowing I'm going to have to work this weekend (ugh) and going back and forth about how stressed I should be about NaNo.  On the one hand, I have 37,700 words, which is pretty damn good - better than most people, I assume, since we're just over halfway through the month.  On the other hand, I am insanely busy, and I am just going to get busier, and I REALLY want to get to 50,000 words before Thanksgiving so I can relax about it.  Also, I said I would finish before Thanksgiving, and I am an insane, uptight person who hates missing deadlines, even self-imposed ones.  I've decided that, to finish by Thanksgiving, I need to write between 7,500 and 10,000 words this weekend.  While throwing a party.  And writing a paper for work.

I mentioned that I'm crazy right?  I'm crazy.

On Saturday I helped high school seniors with their college admissions essays: a boy explaining how being in jail taught him that he wanted to go to college and be a children's attorney; a girl pondering whether there was a word in her native language for bisexual.  I got home tired (I have a cold which has wiped me out all weekend) and starving, and missed "Thriller" while I was eating.  I am a little, but not a lot, disappointed; I have no regrets about the matter.

I am hormonal and have a head cold, and wrote a very general and rather angry post on Friday.  Like many general and angry posts, it contained some truths and a lot of over or under statements, so broad as to lose any real meaning.  I blame the head cold, and too many editorials/articles/etc. which refer to my generation as one entity, as if everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 has the same worldview, the same motivation or lack thereof.  I admit in responding, I was guilty of the same generational-ism.  That cannot possibly be a real world.

In other news: I went to a pumpkin carving party today.  I have a slight complex about pumpkin carving, due to the fact that my pumpkins usually come out with one enormous mouth (having screwed up the teeth or jagged edges or whatever was supposed to make the mouth interesting) and unevenly sized (and placed) oval eyes.  In short, they continue to look like a five year old carved them.  This despite the fact that my mother, the artist, is able to pick up a knife (a regular knife, not one of those special pumpkin-carving saws) and create lovely and creepy faces without template or forethought.  Pumpkin carving is a yearly reminder that I am not artistically inclined.  This year, I caved, and used a pattern.  Now I feel inadequate in a whole new way!

(I'm kidding, mostly.  I love carving pumpkins.  Even though I suck at it.)

NaNoWriMo starts on Thursday.  I am all geared up, though I keep making plans for social engagements after Thursday, without really meaning to.  Still, I have confidence that I will keep pace: I have a 10 page scene-by-scene outline to keep me chugging along, and a goal of finishing before Thanksgiving which requires 2,500 words a day.  Now I just have to hope the cold goes away, all of my friends cancel on me, and my characters and narrator cooperate once I actually start writing.  This process is so different from how I normally go about writing I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, or how it will go once I get started.  Usually I start with characters and get to know them very well, writing about them, trying out different narrative voices.  I don't discover the plot until much, much later, and it grows out of the characters, and expands slowly, internally.  In this case, I started with a plot and fit characters into it; granted I changed parts of the plot to fit the characters better, but the overall structure remained the same.  I now have a description of every scene, but haven't written a word - I have no idea how the voice or characters will actually sound when I start writing.

Luckily, it doesn't matter much.  This is not supposed to be good.  I have to keep telling myself that, because I keep forgetting.  I'm sure when I am actually producing 2,500 words a day, it will become much easier to remember.

Last week I started to write an entry and wrote quite a bit - and then suddenly I hit the wrong key and it was gone.  But just now when I came to update, it asked me if I wanted to restore my entry - and here it all is back again!  So I am going to put that under a cut.


Anyway, now a week later.  I am moving tomorrow.  I am meeting Erica's parents in an hour (they are in town on vacation).  I am a little stressed, but in the way that I can step back and look at myself being stressed and laughed.  Tomorrow night I will be living with two dear friends.  I will go to sleep in a different room and wake up there, and eat breakfast at a table with chairs instead of sitting on a stool (there is no table for eating in my current apartment).  In between I just have a 20 item To Do list, a brunch, and a lot of heavy lifting to get through.  No problem.

Moving is always a little sad - the actual act of packing makes me sad, I think because I associate it with leaving.  Enough now, when I am not leaving anyway, but rather becoming closer to people, I feel an unaccountable sadness creeping in.  One minute I think I have too many things - so much junk - and the next I think how easy it is to pack up my whole life, and how I have no roots anywhere.  (Maybe I am sad about other things though, and I am just projecting it onto moving.)

I should go, pack, etc.  Also get dressed for brunch.  Eek.

On the drive home, the western sky was incandescent pink with dusky purple lows.  As I neared the city, the pink deepened without darkening, becoming one of those shades you don't expect to encounter in nature, which make you remember how flawed and confined your view of nature really is.  Waiting on the freeway off-ramp, the sky above San Francisco was jewel blue, so rich and lovely that I thought, "I want a wedding dress that color," before I remembered wedding dresses are supposed to be white.

On the Writer's Almanac (a short daily radio piece by Garrison Keillor) yesterday he talked about the longest running newspaper columnist of all time, Herb Caen, who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for 60 years.  I found this in one of his columns from 1940: "It's the indescribable conglomeration of beauty and ugliness that makes San Francisco a poem without meter, a symphony without harmony, a painting without reason -- a city without an equal."

Every time I try to sit down and write something distracts me.  On Sunday it was dim sum and the St. Stupid's Day Parade, which was a wonderful excuse for young and old alike to wear their Burning Man/Oregon Country Fair/Berkeley Day/mismatched/political/bizarre/naked costumes.  On Monday, our Seder: 12 people (4 wrong-half-Jews and 8 gentiles), a Haggadah aimed at young people (including songs by Lou Reed, Billie Holliday, and Bob Marley, along with the normal prayers), and lots of food.  It was stressful, and amazing to see it all come of, a real Seder, with the (mostly) full ritual and all the right courses, and a Seder plate, and a shank bone.

And now I must go, before finishing my description of our Seder, or anything else.  I am called away from the computer once again, for friends and more charoset, etc. etc.  And off to Seattle tomorrow, for Family (hurrah!), and more charoset (hurrah!) and more craziness. Crazy craziness.  Next week, when I come home, I am going to barricade myself in my room and write reams, about everything that is going on in my life and in my head.  Or just watch Anne of Green Gables.  One of those two things.

On Sunday we drove to Point Reyes, a national park about an hour north of the city, a large group of people: fourteen in all, I believe.  I elected to make base camp on the beach while everyone else went for a hike in the nearby hills and forests.  I spread out a blanket on the side of a dune so I could see the ocean (the bay actually), while I took a practice GRE.  The combination of algebra and sea breeze was a little incongruous, but pleasant.  I paused, occasionally, to watch children frolicking, or dogs passing, or the cloud shifts.  I feel very lucky to live in a place where water and sky are easy to access, and I could spend a few hours working, and a few hours playing, and not feel that I was missing anything.  In the dusk, we built a fire and made s'mores; someone passed around a bottle of whiskey, just about big enough that everyone could have a swallow.

Life has been busy.  On Friday I made butternut squash quesadillas and Elizabeth and I talked about religion and spirituality for over an hour (no conclusion was come to).  On Saturday I read, and libraried, and then we went to the Chinese New Year's parade.  I love parades, though more for the crowds than for the parade itself.  Little children sat at the curb and conducted negotiations with their standing mothers for fruit juice.  When people came by throwing out treats they held out their hands and shouted, unashamed of their greediness, while Elizabeth and I shyly waved our hands, and muttered under our breath.  In the next five days I have, in order: Spanish class, a date, Santa Cruz, a party, and book trivia.  I have a feeling the party may be subject to cancellation, but everything else is set, I believe.  (And having said that, how crushed will I be if everything falls through?  I have recently noticed my tendency to cling to expectations, even if what actually happens is just as satisfactory.  Life is not as good if it's not what I thought it would be.)

Speaking of what I think life will be.  My aunt asked me why I want to go to the school of Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley.  I've been puzzling over the question.  Part of it is certainly that the subject is so open and interdisciplinary that it requires less commitment - or a different kind - than another program, and while part of me is longing to go back to grad school, another part of me still doesn't know what for and this might satisfy both those pieces.  But there are better reasons too.  I am exceedingly interested in - passionate about - the wreck of our criminal justice system, and the havoc it plays with people's lives and families and communities.  A lot of the big problems in America - poverty, education (or the lack thereof), health care - all manifest within this system in egregious ways.  So that's one thing I want to study and think about and help fix.  There are other things this program would touch on or let me touch on - reproductive rights law, marriage law, international law, human rights law.  I envision this providing me the kind of access to knowledge and expertise about to influence these areas that law school could, but without having to actually suffer through law school, or end up a lawyer.  So I suppose those are my reasons.

(Thinking of those things, I also think of my reasons against - I don't know if this is really My Passion, or if it's just what I know, what I have seen and worked on and therefore is accessible.  I also care passionately about women's health in the developing world, and child poverty, and peace in the Middle East.  Maybe I really want to work on those things, I just don't know how yet.  Maybe I should wait and try different things, and see if I become more passionate about something else, before I commit myself to a six year program.  But then again - jurisprudence and social policy doesn't have to be about America.  It could be about the way law helps or oppresses people anywhere.  So maybe that is an argument for too.)

Part Four:

In my first Spanish class, this evening, we learned that "quiere" means both "to want" and "to love."  I am sure this is an observation that has been made a thousand times, by people who understand the Spanish language, and all language, better than I, but here goes anyway: is wanting and loving the same thing?  And why does the idea that the two might be inextricable bother me?  Perhaps because wanting is "selfish" and love is "unselfish."  Maybe one (in English) signals a base desire, while the other is nobler, more abstract.  Maybe I associate love with sacrifice, with giving not taking, but that can be wanting to.  Wanting for someone else.  I want (desire, need, long for) more precision in language, not less.  New languages confuse me.

Part Five:

I waited for the bus for a half an hour after class, in the Marina district, where the yuppies congregate in their designer clothes and high heels and pretty hair.  Small groups of handsome men walked by, and couples, and people laughed inside bars, and bent over their coffees in glowing restaurants.  I felt very small and frumpy and alone.  I blame the bus, which was supposed to come every 15 minutes.

Part One:

Several years ago, a friend told me that he thought I was a "Valentine's person" or maybe someone who "would like Valentine's Day" I can't remember exactly.  I laughed, maybe even scoffed, because I was cultivating an air of cynicism and bitterness.  But as I considered it more, I realized that I am, indeed, one of those people that likes Valentine's Day.  Even though I have never "had a Valentine."  Even though I am fairly cynical about relationships, and "romance," and can make fun of sappy poetry and bad love songs and the whole commercial enterprise.  I still made a point, as I do every year, of wearing pink and/or red (both today).  I sent a few Valentine's to dear friends far away.  I listened to love songs all day (granted, Magnetic Fields love songs, which are... not exactly your typical romantic ballads).  I just like holidays, I have concluded.  I am hopelessly childishly excited by Special Days, whatever the reason behind them.

Part Two:

One Valentine's Day I was in love with a boy.  He had a very serious girlfriend, and we were "just friends."  I made Valentine's out of construction paper that year, and despite the fact that I was 20, they looked like the work of an eight year old: you could still see the crease where I folded the paper to make a symmetrical heart, I used too much glue, and the overall aesthetic theme was pretty much red hearts inside of white hearts, or vice versa, with glitter.  But on the back of these Valentine's I wrote notes.  I wrote the sweetest notes I could write.  I thought of one thing I truly loved or admired about each of my friends, and told them.  When I came to The Boy, I did not know what to say.  The one thing I truly loved and admired about him was everything.  I think I eventually wrote about how he was going to do something Great, because he was always worried about not knowing his path.  It was the worst of all the notes - stiff, not personal, not really about him - because I was afraid of saying too much, giving myself away.  I wanted to write only: I love you, I love you, I love you.  I couldn't pick one thing out that wouldn't lead into everything else.  I loved all of him, or nothing.

Part Three:

My new roommate is polyamorous, and I have been thinking about monogamy, and about not only loving multiple people at the same time, but actually being with multiple people at the same time.  She is engaged, but also dating at least one other person.  The word "dating" threw me, a little, because in normal parlance, dating is always seen as a step, to somewhere else.  I thought, if you're engaged to one person, you're not going to go anywhere with that other person.  You won't move in with them.  Your future is limited.  And then I thought, is it?  R. Crumb and his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, were on Fresh Air yesterday.  Aline has what she termed "another husband."  He lives in the house with them.  The couple talked about having an open marriage; it's fine as long as no one is being hurt.  I believe that's true.  But then I wonder, would it be fine for me?  I laugh, because I have yet to be in a long term relationship with one person, so what's the point of considering adding more in?  And I like to be alone.  I don't think I could fit multiple romantic relationships into my life.  I want to spend time with my friends, and I want to spend time with myself.  You only have so much time.

Happy Solstice everyone.

Merlyn is pretending to have fainted on the couch.  She is rather fidgety for an unconscious person though.

I am home.  Home home.  The living room is clean, and Nick is lying on top of Merlyn, crushing her, and the tree is decorated, and we are going to have a party.  My head hurts, faintly, for no discernable reason.  It was a long week, despite being a short (work) week.  We have a new kitten in my apartment (in San Francisco), named Chloe, who cries when left alone, and sometimes sleeps in my lap, or on my chest. 

I saw Joanna Newsom on Tuesday night.  My first concert totally alone; between acts I stood, awkwardly, and watched the groupings of people: lots of couples, a few larger groups, two or three boys together.  At one point I sat on the floor, resting my feet, and examined shoes and legs clad in skinny jeans, and the ceiling.  Joanna Newsom has a little girl breathy voice and long, straight blond hair.  Her voice quavered and squeaked in strange and marvelous ways when she sang, and her fingers plucked and crab-walked over the harp strings.  She sang older songs at the beginning and end, and in between her entire new album Ys, five songs, the shortest of which is about 8 minutes.  I drifted through these a bit, I admit.  I am growing to love her new album, but it takes time to get to know.

We could stand for a century
Starin'
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don't keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don't be

At the end, during her encore, I held my breath and wished and wished for her to play "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie," my favorite of her songs, and she did, finishing with it, and smiling brilliantly at the end, a little wave as she left the stage.

It is a short day, today, the shortest of the year, but the sun is bright through all the windows of our cosy little house.

And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning
In the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been

If you want to make the attempt, here is "Emily" (from which the above lyrics come).

Home. My roommate is asleep on the couch, with a plastic surgery reality show blaring on the television, I am very tried, and we have ants in the kitchen. However, my comforter is still a lovely color, and warm and fluffy, and Sufjan's Christmas box set came in the mail, complete with stickers, a Rick Moody essay and Christmas stories by Sufjan himself ("Santa Magic Hands" and "Christmas Tube Socks").

( Thanksgiving, home, family, etc. )

( Portland, tea, paper, friends, etc. )

You know how sometimes life is like a movie, and you can't believe it's really happening to you?

I left my phone at Ashley's last night (Ashley is a friend from London, and yesterday we sat in Dolores Park and watched the San Francisco Mime Troupe call for secular humanism, but in a funny way, and then she made dinner and we played Scrabble with her law school friends).  Anyway, the phone thing is set up one for my evening.  Set up two is that I was supposed to drive down to the San Jose area to look at two cars.  One car I could not arrange to look at, because the only number for the person I had was saved in my voice mail.  The other car, I couldn't look at, because the people never called me back (but I only confirmed this after staying at work 15 minutes late, though I got there 10 minutes early).  At that point, I had found another car about 15 minutes south (instead of half an hour) that was supposedly parked in a lot, and the owner wanted people to come look at it and confirm their seriousness before calling her.  I say "supposedly" because I drove there, and it wasn't there.  It wasn't anywhere.

So that left me at about 7:45, no dinner, no cell phone, no car viewings, in Foster City.  I got lost getting back on the freeway, thanks to Google, which sucks.  I hit traffic coming into San Francisco and sat on 101 for twenty minutes.  I missed my turn onto 17th and did a fifteen minute figure-8 around Market St. to get back to it.  By the time I was driving up 17th towards Ashley's (maybe 8:45), I was in a bad mood, starving, and I thought, "If I see a store, I'll stop and get Ben and Jerry's, and then I won't arrive empty handed asking for food at Ashley's door, and Ben and Jerry's is just the thing to cheer me up anyway."  Miraculously, a corner store appeared.  I pulled the car over, left my blinkers on as I was illegally parked, ran inside, bought some Half Baked, and turned to leave, reaching into my purse for my keys.  They weren't there.  They were in the car.

This is a really funny story, and someday I'm going to find it amusing.  I stopped to get ice cream to cheer myself up... and locked my keys in the car.  The rental car.  And I didn't have my cell phone.  And I don't know anyone's number, because I just moved here.

Luckily the man at the store was very nice, and let me use his phone, and sit in the store for an hour, and the rescue turned out to be free, because my rental car is still under warranty from Chevrolet, so it could have been a hell of a lot worse.  But I was not feeling too good at the time.  I am not good without food, at the best of times, which this was not.  I just... couldn't believe it.  The end result was me, sitting on the step of a corner store, shivering, crying uncontrollably and eating ice cream with a plastic spoon.

However, I am now home (I made it back at 11 pm), with my phone, and all limbs intact, and I think I parked legally for the night, and, okay, still no car viewings, but what's $35 a day anyway?

In other news, because I realize I only write in here to complain, and I'm sorry about that:

Work is do-able, and though I am now on a project which is not my area, and which I am stuck with because no one else wanted to do, and which is sort of high pressure... I'm kind of happy, because it requires me to think, and that is far superior to formatting data tables, or copying and pasting things

As mentioned, yesterday I went to Dolores Park and sat in the sun and watched political comedy, with songs, and costumes, and it was excellent, and it felt like home: a park full of curly-grey-haired women in comfy pants and brightly colored earrings, and men with beards, and dogs, and small children, and white boys with dreadlocks.  It was wonderful.  And I got sun-burned!  In San Francisco!  And then I got to meet very nice people, and I won at Scrabble, and overall it was an excellent Labor Day.

Earlier this weekend, Friday night to be exact, Jen and I drove to the Napa Valley, to see Annie (!)  I arrived hungry, because I've forgotten how to eat dinner apparently, and she fed me peaches and cottage cheese and toast, and then we talked late and slept, hands touching, and on Saturday Annie had a party, at a vineyard on a lake, and Jen and I blew up balloons and talked to strange conservative adults, and paddled on the pond.

And I am in my apartment now.  I am still stealing very sporadic internet, but it should be hooked up for real soon.  We have dishes, and I did laundry, and there's a skylight in the bathroom which makes it so light in the morning I keep turning off the lights even though they're not on.

Independence Day in Washington D.C.  It's one of those things you should do in your lifetime; go to the National Mall, watch the fireworks over the Washington Monument.  I thought about going to spend the whole day, but it was just as well I stayed inside, because it poured from 5:00 to 6:30.  Instead I went down about an hour before the fireworks started, and met David.  We walked as far as we could towards the Capital Building; they'd put a large fence up around the Capitol pond, because that's where they had the big guns set up.  We could hear the concert in front of the Capitol, though we couldn't see it.  Musical guests included Vanessa Williams, Michael Bolton, and Stevie Wonder.  A family sat in front of us, a mother and grandmother and three children, the littlest one five or six, with a glow stick around her neck.  When the fireworks started everyone stood up, swaying to Stevie Wonder: little kids on their parents' shoulders, couples with linked hands.  Then they played the 1812 Overture, with lots of loud guns, and people jumped every time a cannon went off even though they knew it was coming.  Fireworks bursting in the air.  There were fireworks shaped like stars, and green and purple planets, and expanding Saturn rings.  My favorites are the large gold ones that hang in the air glittering.  We were at the far end of the mall, so we could see stretched out between us and the Washington Monument hundreds of thousands of people, with blankets and small children and flags.

I am not very patriotic.  On the way to the mall I was listening to my "patriotic" mix on my ipod, and it consisted of a lot of songs about what is wrong with America.  But it made me proud, to acknowledge the faults, and love it the way you love a person, who has their good points and their bad points.

Surprisingly, this was one of my better Valentine's Days. Granted, I have never been in a relationship on Valentine's Day, so as the holiday goes, it's not my top rated, but nevertheless, today was... really quite nice.

I woke up to homemade Valentine's from Rawaan and Annie. One had feathers and a fabulous haiku, and the other has paintings of birds. They both made me extremely happy. Between City Politics and work a new friend bought me a chocolate and strawberry crepe, at work they game be a break and I walked in a circle through the sunny main green and back to the library, and then they sent me down to the basement to have cake for my boss' birthday.

After work I sat on my futon and graded a couple papers and worked on a fellowship application and my thesis, and felt somewhat productive. Turned on the Olympics in time to see Johnny Weir's lovely short skate. Briefly considered the idea of Valentine's Day.

My friend Rachel threw a party, for all her single and semi-single and single-through-distance friends. She baked chocolate lava cakes, which are very close to heaven, and I overate and talked to people I like very much and got a purple carnation from Nayla. And didn't think about boys very much, or what I might be missing, and didn't feel sorry for myself or worry too much about overeating (besides the stomachache). As the party was winding down I got a call from home, and picked it up and said "Hi Mom." It was Merlyn. She said she wanted to sing me a song.

I wish I knew the words of Merlyn's song, but the gist is this: she would like to wrap herself up and put stamps on her and send herself to me, and when she got here I would fill her up with cream soda and give her a bubble bath and snuggle her into bed. It was the best song ever. There were three whole verses, and she sang them perfectly and without hesitation, and I stood in the hall listening and grinning like an idiot to myself, and then got to go back in and brag about my amazing little sister and how loved I feel.

And I've been listening to the Magnetic Fields all day. This week in Seattle a bunch of local bands gathered and had a Valentine's 69 Love Songs show, proving once again that Seattle is a wonderful place.

So in honor of a lovely Valentine's Day:

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin
and, not better but perhaps sweeter...
The Book of Love
both by The Magnetic Fields

I love mini-vacations. I have spent the last three and a half days sitting around in my grandparents' house, reading, talking to Laura, watching Queer as Folk, and eating.

On Thanksgiving we went to Philadelphia to my step-grandfather's daughter's house - or should I say, gorgeous apartment. She has the second floor of a building right in downtown Philly, with fourteen foot ceilings, a beautiful kitchen, huge windows, not to mention the biggest and comfiest bed I have ever seen. It made me want to be grown-up and have money (though it didn't make me want it enough to go into consulting, which is probably the only way I could get from where I am to there). Margot, whose house it was, and her sister Rebecca made a really great meal and we all overate, of course, and dozed in the car on the way home and were generally very content.

I feel very lucky and thankful, for all of this and more:

Tonight Laura and I are going to see Bright Eyes, and Feist is opening - I think it should be a great concert.

Next Friday is my twenty-first birthday.

...and saving the best for last, I am definitely going to Israel over winter break. Elly is not sure whether she'll be able to come, but hopefully she will - and Robin, Doug and I are going for sure. Wow! I can hardly wrap my mind around it, but I'm so, so excited.

The only problem (and this is not a complaint, just me trying to figure out how things are going to work) is that I really need to go to San Francisco over winter break to do research for my thesis - and I'm not sure how that is going to happen now. I'll be getting back mid-January, so I'd still have time, but not a lot of time - and flying to San Francisco for a couple days seems silly, not to mention I'm not sure I'll have the money. But this is a small problem and I'm sure it will work itself out somehow - more importantly, I'm going to Israel!

Right now I am going to go help Michael bring the Christmas tree inside, and then I'm going to 1) try to do homework or 2) more likely read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

It's been raining all day. Discussing my non-fiction essay (about London), Mark Dickinson said "Your mood seems to be ruled a lot by the weather." He has no idea how true that is. Though, having said that, I'm actually in a good mood today, despite the rain and the fact that all the umbrellas around here seem to be broken. I got to discuss my essay with the best writers in my class (I was switched from another group, which... did not contain the best writers in the group) and have pizza with a nice boy (don't get too excited), and sit in Tealuxe reading. I still have class tonight, and have to prepare for it, but besides that it is almost Thanksgiving, and I am so excited to get out of here and spent a few days in NJ relaxing and eating and sleeping and watching movies with Laura and completely slacking off (not that I haven't been doing a lot of those things in the last couple days here...)

Right before Thanksgiving I always get homesick, and this year is no exception, though it is tempered by the knowledge that rather than a cozy Thanksgiving at home, my family will be spending the holiday weekend moving, and if I was there it would not be to relax and enjoy being "home" but rather to help move.

The line that comes up again and again in my London essay is "Home is an open question" which is still how I feel, and probably will be for quite some time.

I haven't been writing because there has been little to report that is reportable. Saturday was a continuation of Molly Ball Day: I curled up on Rawaan's couch and knit and ate too much brie. That evening I tasted Kate's cheesecake and chatted in simple English with her boyfriend. Lots of small, nice things: I finished a hat, and had lunch with Rawaan yesterday.

I should be doing my laundry this afternoon, since I have no clean clothing, but the thought of carrying a huge bag of laundry to the laundromat in the rain is untenable. I will be one of those annoying college students who brings dirty laundry with them for Thanksgiving. After all, this is my last chance to do so.

I was actually planning to do this anyway, but then carlyinrome stole the jump on me by asking for good Halloween costume ideas for her friend somefairytale. But I'm asking for good costume ideas for me.

Despite Halloween being one of my favorite holidays, I suck at Halloween costumes. I have a long history of failure, culminating in last year, when my roommate and I dressed as "valley girls" in basically our normal clothes a little skanked out, and used really bad accents to try and "be in character" and then abandoned them after about fifteen minutes. This was not entirely my fault, but the point is I didn't have anything better lined up. The year before I was a rainbow, which is sort of cute but... eh. Too cute. I need something cool and funny and sexy and interesting and creative. Especially because we're planning to throw a Halloween party this year, and if you're throwing a party, you better have a damn good costume!

So far people have suggested cartoon characters - Disney heroines, Daria, etc. Okay, but been done. Then I thought maybe Baby from Dirty Dancing, but even though everyone knows who that is, I'm not sure people would get it right away, plus not that funny or interesting.

Yesterday I came up with the best one so far, but I'm not sure how I'd do it: fag hag. The only official fag hag I can think of though is Debbie from QAF, and I don't want to dress like that. But there must be some way to dress as a fag hag, and be obvious about it, and have fun with it, without donning a red wig and gaining fifty pounds. Or more. So if anyone has suggestions in that department, I'd love to hear them.

But really, any suggestions at all. Totally new and different ideas. And feel free to pimp my need to others, I don't care who knows that I have nothing and need help.

Do please keep in mind that I don't have a sewing machine, and I do have a limited budget. Besides that, go crazy.

I was going to do a real update and tell all about my weekend, but Lily is even now in the kitchen starting to make brownies for our anti-Valentine's Day-gorging, and I feel that I should join her. In my defense, I was basically going to say I walked a lot, which means that I'm allowed to go eat lots of brownies.