Animal planet.

I just had a showdown with a 2-inch gecko. In my house. I think it shimmied in under the front door. I saw it on the wall in the stairwell and brought George Michael (cat, not pop star) in on the case. As his owner, I feel responsible for teaching him the ways of the world. And I thought he would be an efficient killing machine (God knows his claws and fangs are sharp enough), but he wasn't. He just batted it around for a while, and I started to think a) this is kinda mean and b) what if he brings it on my bed?

So I put on my thinking cap to devise a way to trap the gecko and release it, just as my friends in PETA--and Jesus, of course--would want. WWMFiPaJD? I considered going the same route as David Sedaris when he found a mouse in his house (with hilarious results!). But instead, I got a cup and a piece of paper. I dropped the cup over the little guy, which sent GM into a frenzy. It was like he was looking at the day's special through the glass of a display case. Then I slipped the paper underneath and viola! A makeshift cage.

I swear I could see its little cold-blooded heart beating through its translucent skin.

I took it outside and removed the glass cage. Run free, I encouraged it. GM stood in the doorway, as menacing as a cougar. I tried to shake the gecko off the paper, but nothing doing. You know, what with the magnetic hair on the bottom of geckos' feet that allows them to climb stuff. So I tried to prod it off the paper with the edge of the cup. Well, that only severed its tail. Oopsies.

In the end I managed to force it off the paper and into the grass, right near its still wriggling tail. GM is furious I decreased his kill record and I'm sure I'll pay for it later, but I feel good about what I did for America tonight.

Tasting apples.

This is what I read at work today, which I think you will agree is far more interesting that transitive vs. intransitive verbs:

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

--The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich

That was my daytime book. I also just finished my nighttime book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and it's seriously excellent. Devastatingly sad--in a post-apocalyptic way, of course. His best book by far.

It's like me, crossed with a Disney princess.

I took my Little Sis out for pizza tonight. And discovered that she thinks my name is Cambriella.

I suppose it's an improvement over Gabriella, which is what she was calling me before.

I like to think of it as Cambria + Cinderella. But pre- or post-midnight Cinderella? That's the real question.

I told her, let's try "Cami."

¡Que bien!

I'm bringing back the mojito as my summer drink of choice, and I don't care that it takes 20 damn minutes to make one.

The key is not to over-muddle.

The haunting of Twain Hart Cabin.

I have a slight obsession with ghosts.

I don't really ever want to run into one or have one haunt me or anything. But I am fascinated by the idea of them.

For the record: I do believe in ghosts but I don't believe in aliens.

My parents have a house they call a "cabin" in Twain Hart, about an hour north of Yosemite. The cabin is haunted. Which I find both thrilling and terrifying.

One of the first times I ever went there, I was talking to my mom as she stood on the stairs. In a pause between words, there was a loud whisper. What was that? we both asked.

I'd like to say I got goosebumps or that the air went cold, but it didn't. A million rational ways to explain it all? Probably. It was the middle of the day, and the idea that a real-life (ahem) ghost lived in the cabin was just too much to hope for. You understand there's a certain romance in this.

My mom goes up to the cabin alone quite often, and since then she's had several odd experiences, all auditory, all difficult to explain. Also, once a bat got in the house, but that's not ghostly. Just a nice detail.

My mom does not tell anyone about these things and has forbidden me from mentioning them to my younger siblings. She doesn't want to ruin the cabin for them or scare them out of going there. Apparently there's no worry about ruining the cabin for me.

Two weeks ago my mom was at the cabin with her sister. The morning after the first night, my aunt asked if there were ghosts in the cabin. My mom said nothing. My aunt described hearing whispering/murmuring, but tried to up sell it by comparing it to the sound of "angels' wings."

This week my mom was there alone. She heard the whispering again.

Just angels' wings, I'm sure.

Jesus, take the wheel.

My six-year-old niece, Emily, and I have a tradition when I go home for Christmas: every year we spend time on the internet looking at ghost towns and old graveyards. It's an interest we share, apparently. (I still contend it's a heathier interest than those slutty Bratz dolls.)

As my sister drove her to my parents' cabin this evening, Emily fell asleep. When she woke up, her first question was, "Did we pass the graveyard?"

Kelly: Yes.
Emily: Why didn't you wake me up?
Kelly: You see it every time we come up here; I didn't think I should wake you up for it.
Emily: [exasperated] Well, I hope you would wake me up for Jesus' grave.

She's a bit of a Bible-thumper but has a little trouble with the details. When she gets mad at Kelly and wants to liken her to the devil, she can't because she can't remember the name "Satan." She calls him Saul. She has to ask Kelly to remind her of the right name:

Emily: You're just like that guy--what his name? I call him Saul.
Kelly: Satan?
Emily: Yeah, Satan.

Take this broken wing and learn to fly again

I think I broke my elbow this morning. Is that even possible, since it's a joint and not an actual bone? I remember there's a part in The Lovely Bones that bothered me so much because it said the narrator's dog came trotting back from a nearby field with an elbow in its mouth (the narrator is a murdered teenage girl telling her story from heaven--that's not a spoiler, it tells you that much on the back of the book). How is that even possible?

Anyway.

I banged my funny bone hard on the towel rack this morning and have not been able to fully bend or extend my left arm since. Maybe I fractured my radius and/or ulna. Or maybe I'm a hypochondriac looking for attention. Sometimes it's hard to tell with me.

Bowie knifed.

I fell in love with living in the South during grad school, so once I graduated I decided I wanted to stay east of the Mississippi. I started looking for writing or editing jobs in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nashville, New Orleans, Jackson. One by one those places started to rule themselves out, mostly because no one in them would hire me. So I turned my starry, working-retail-in-the-meantime eyes to D.C. It seemed exciting and new and like it might have a slightly larger pool of writing/editing jobs.

One day as I was preparing for my 2-9 shift at the Pottery Barn Outlet (where I lugged 9 x 12 rugs for Germantown women and tried to cram them into the "backseat" of 2-seater sports cars in 110 degree heat), I got a phone call from a publishing company in Bowie, Maryland. Come for an interview, they said.

I had to drive to Nashville, fly to Baltimore, and drive to D.C., a circuitous route resultant of my meager retail wages. I arrived the day before the interview with my brand new suit bought on a department-store credit card I had opened to save the 10%. As I drove around D.C. with only the free map from the car rental place, I thought to myself, look at this hustle and bustle, this history, this hub of industry! And then I started to make a ring around the Maryland side of the city, thinking, I need to find where I would live. But everywhere I turned was not there. It all seemed run-down, dirty, and unsafe (including the no-tell motel I was sure to be murdered in).

The woman interviewing me was possibly the most abrasive person I have ever met. She was from New York, but lived in So Cal for a while so she supposed we had a connection. It was my first interview ever, and I thought I did pretty well. I was hopeful. But I had not done my due diligence: after listening carefully, I discovered the company was a vanity press: pay for pub. Still dripping with grad school idealism, I knew I could not take this job. So I relaxed a little. And then things got interesting.

The elastic on my pantyhose snapped while on the office tour. Admittedly, they were probably at least 10 years old because pantyhose aren't really what a modern girl has on hand. I had to duck into the bathroom and take them all the way off.

The interviewer insisted on taking me to lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant in Bowie. We pulled up to an abandoned mall. There were maybe three other cars in the parking lot. She guided me inside, where every single store was vacant except for the Italian restaurant. The lunchtime rush consisted of two customers. I ordered manicotti, though to this day I have no idea why because I have never ordered that in my life. She ordered a side dish of green beans. While we made small talk over lunch, every once in a while she reached across the table and took bites off my plate.

On the way back to the office, she offered herself a piece of gum, rolled the window down, and tossed the gum wrapper. Litterer! And also rude: she didn't even offer a piece to me.

On the plane ride home, the manicotti got mad and tried to make a jail break. I made it to the bathroom in the Nashville airport before I threw up. And then again in the dirtiest Chevron station in Tennessee. And again on the side of I-40 somewhere east of Memphis. Big rigs honked at me as I doubled over to barf.

When I got home, I had an email from the interviewer asking for an "assignment": an essay on why I thought I was the right fit for the job. Between finding Maryland repugnant, the vanity press angle, the busted pantyhose, the abandoned mall, the littering, and the food poisoning, I couldn't think of one compelling reason to give her. Instead, I called my parents and told them I was moving back to California.

It is finished.

I just finished The Deathly Hallows, and to be honest, I don't know how I feel about it yet. But I'm not going to talk about it and risk giving anything away because I am not that kind of girl. And also, I need to come up for air and rejoin the land of the Muggles.

Mostly I just kept thinking about J.K. Rowling and how it must have felt for her to have written the last line and pushed away from her desk, knowing that 10 years of work and imagination and creation was complete. It must have felt huge and lonely and probably a little liberating.

With that out of the way, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Managing expectations.

This weekend my sister Kelly had a date. First one in a while, because it's kind of hard to be in the scene with a 6-year-old. Upon learning of Kelly's date, her daughter/my niece said, "I might be getting a new daddy!"

On Saturday I had a date downtown at the Museum of Art. Upon learning of this, George Michael (cat, not pop star) said, "I might be getting a new daddy!"

Turns out, no one is getting a new daddy any time soon, but expectations are being managed a little better.

As for me, I will give points for the date location (great photography exhibit going on at the museum right now), but I must deduct points for the black-and-white checked Vans with ankle socks. Culture giveth, and culture taketh away.

But besides and around that, a great weekend. Friday night dinner for Beth's birthday at Billy's, which is one of my favorite places in town for a veggie burger. Saturday night dinner with Alexis, her mom, Tim, Kathy, and Ron. Sunday trip to the mall with Little Sister, where I let her order Dippin Dots because they are the ice cream of the future. Or an overpriced sham. One or the other. Fill in the rest of the time with The Deathly Hallows, and you've got yourself a weekend, my friend.

Good-bye, wig, good-bye!

My hair is currently the longest it's been since my high school senior picture. Shoulder-length, nothing to write home about. But it feels like I could braid it and throw it over the balcony for some handsome young fellow to climb up. Or that I could be posing nude on a half-shell and be decently covered, like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus."

I can't stand it this long. And yet I get suckered to keep it like this because it can go in a ponytail. And as my sister Kristin has long told me, men like women with long hair (and also with blond hair, so I am at a double disadvantage when I cut it short).

I never feel like I look my best with longish hair. It's thick and weirdly curly in some places and basically feels like a heavy wet towel on my head. It has no style.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I want "the Posh" cut (it actually kinda embarrasses me to even admit that). Maybe not that short, but sassy and shaped and with a definite style. Yet this may be one more step in a long history of focilular missteps. If it please the court:

Exhibit A: During a spring-break mission trip to Mexico my senior year of high school, I decided I simply could not wait one more moment to have my hair like Winona Ryder's in Reality Bites. (Un)luckily, I had a magazine with an ad for the movie (it was 1994) as an example, and told the first person I saw to just do her best with a pair of kitchen scissors. Without a mirror. And no haircutting experience. I thought Winona's hair could be achieved by a messy, non-methodical cut...of course, I know better now how much artistry and effort slacker bed-head hair takes. The cut: a bit of a disaster.

Exhibit B: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I decided to go for that same cut my freshman year of college, and stopped the first girl on my dorm floor who looked competent to hold scissors. Misjudged that one. Again. Should have known where this was headed. Tears, mostly. I should have known it was a mistake when she told me to flip my head upside down and she just started hacking away. The cut: a bit of a disaster.

Exhibit C: You will never know how short is too short until you go there. Just before Joelle's wedding and my move to Memphis, I got a way-too-short cut from my trusted stylist (because by then I had learned that you cannot put a price on good hair). It felt like she had given me a men's cut: tight on the sides, kinda longer and poofy on the top. I came home in a panic and decided the best step would be to even out the length myself. I literally had the scissors in my hand, poised to take a chunk out of the front of my hair when Joelle intervened. We still talk about this as the day she saved my life. The cut: a bit of a disaster. And sooo short.

Exhibit D: Various times when I have decided what I need to freshen my look is a full set of bangs...which are never straight and always the wrong decision. No one who cuts bangs is ever happy with them.

But it's not been all bad. I have had some great color and style along the way, most notably the winter of 2002-03, when Ashley told me, "I don't care how much it costs to keep what you have going now, but you should do it." I should have listened. Now I'm stuck with hair that not even Britney Spears would wear on her head, and she wears some broke-ass wigs.

Under it all, remember this: it always grows back.

You know what I hope heaven is like?

An episode of So You Think You Dance, where every day is choreographed by Wade Robson, and everything is dramatic and jazz handsy, and everyone knows how to arabesque, and wearing short-shorts and bustiers is de rigour, and you can always dance with a beautiful Russian.

Bad stewardship.

There's this story I wrote once, I don't remember when, that I really liked. It was about a boy and girl who are falling out of love, and they go on a trip with some friends. It won an honorable mention in a flash fiction contest, then I used to enter things like that. I've never really cared for my fiction, but, in my mind, this story was different.

I can't find it anywhere. It's lost. Like Hemingway's suitcase of stories on a French train, except I have no one to blame but myself. And also, not that good.

I never took good care of my stories, and so they've flitted away from me like dry leaves.

Kitten heels + cuffed pants = bad idea.

If you wear heeled shoes with cuffed pants, you will trip. You will catch your heel in the cuff and fall forward in slow-motion, as if you're sliding into home base. Except home base is someone's cubicle in the desktop publishing department. And you'll try to play it off with a a friendly "Hi!" Like this is the kind of entrance you make all the time. But instead of laughing with you, she'll look at you like you're Urkel, and she'll ask you in a voice that parents use with kids who are constantly getting into mischief if you are OK. She won't laugh with you.

Redfaced, all you'll have in your defense is a skinned knee.

Welsh whore.

You know me, you know the story: my first name is the Romanized name for Wales, my last name means, well, "woman of ill repute." Thus, Welsh whore. Which has been quite the label to live up to, I'll tell you what. But it also means always having to convince cashiers and the like that yes, that's my actual name there on my checkcard. It's quite an elaborate hoax otherwise. Or possibly identity theft. Oh, okay, you got me! Here's my real card...and if you look over my shoulder, there's the camera! Gotcha!

Here's an exchange I had recently:

Me: [hands my checkcard]
Him: Woah! Lovelady! Is that, like, your real name?
Me: [slits own wrists over having to hear this question for the 9 billionth time] Yep.
Him: Lovelady! I want to party with your parents!

Which is weird, because when I talked to my mom tonight, she asked if next time she and my dad come to Austin, was there someone possibly high, possibly working in the service industry, they could party with?

Weekend round-up

I had a lovely weekend. It's been a while since I haven't had a weekend that was mind-numbingly boring, so this was a welcome change. And many more....[jazz hands].

Friday night: met Kathy for dinner at Home Slice, which, despite being full of hipsters and people who look deceptively like other people ("I think I know that guy, but I have no idea how"), was quite enjoyable. Except for having bird poo splash on our jeans while we sat under a tree, waiting for a table. That part was gross.

Saturday morning: met Beth for a walk. I tell you what: you need to figure something out or think out loud, go on a walk with a girl friend. All problems solved. We went for Mediterranean food for lunch. God bless the chickpea.

Saturday afternoon: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I already wrote about that. But it encouraged me to try to re-read HPatHBP before the next book comes this week. Since I have the reading retention skills of a goldfish, this is a good refresher for me. What? Who's Hermione? What's a Death Eater? Huh?

Saturday night: mourned missing out on RA concert.

Sunday afternoon: took the Little Sis to the Children's Museum, which was fun. We played giant-size game of mancala, and she beat me at it so fast I didn't know we were actually even playing. That brings my game-playing skills to like -80. I don't know what that means, either.

The kindness of strangers.

Whereas a dog never forgets a kindness, a cat never remembers them; instead, he will tip your glass of water into your bath and pretend it's a plugged-in hairdryer.

Whereas a dog will take up all the room in your bed, a cat will wait until you are vulnerably sleeping and then suddenly pounce on your face with all the fury of hell, fangs and claws first.

Sometimes I think I should get GM his own pet cat to bully. But mostly I am afraid they will form a rogue gang and straight-up murder me.

Someone: Will I ever get the life I thought I was going to get?
Someone else: No one gets the life they think they were going to get.

Dirty Muggle.

Is it inappropriate that I teared up at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? Is it inappropriate that I want one of those countdown clocks for Daniel Radcliffe like they had for the Olsen twins before they turned 18?

OK, yes to that second one.

I've got the fever, and the cure is not more cowbell: it's Book 7. I'm not going to a midnight release, and I'm not (ever) going to write fan fiction (though I could go for a spin-off starring the Weasley family), but my goodness do I love HP and J. K. Rowling.

Goes bump

I woke up this morning wearing a different shirt than the one I wore to bed. And I have no idea why. Which is weird. But not unusual.

I've never injured myself sleepwalking, but I did once (allegedly) reach under my roommate's covers, grab her feet, and yell "gotcha!" I locked myself out of my freshman dorm room twice. I've answered the phone and had conversations. I've gone downstairs and accused a group of people of leaving a snake in my room. I've woken up crouched on my couch in a fighting position. I've woken up on the floor in my closet. I think I talk every night, still; it's a wonder I haven't given away all my secrets. I'm sure I'll make short-order of that on this blog, though. My vault door isn't so much a door as a rice-paper screen.

"You will admit that if it wasn't life it was magnificent."

While I'm waiting to learn of Harry Potter's fate, I've picked up Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise again. I read it years ago and am enjoying it in the second read-through. It's not quite as clean and deliberate as Gatsby, but it's engaging and sparkling and intelligent and playful, just as you want your Fitzgerald to be.

One of the reasons I enjoy Fitzgerald's work is wholly removed from his actual writing. He and Zelda--you cannot forget Zelda, an integral part of the image and the reality and everything that came after--were, and I suppose still are, the very personification of promise, of decadence and frivolity, of levity in a world trying to find its feet: the drowning out of reality with champagne and rides in open cars and splashing in big-city fountains while wearing furs and diamonds.

They circled the flame in a way that left their fates certain. Yet it's a beautiful dance until then. And so we watch.

Fitzgerald was America when everything was still possible: "They wandered on, mixing in the Broadway crowd, dreaming on the music that eddied out of the cafes. New faces flashed on and off like myriad lights, pale or rouged faces, tired, yet sustained by a wearied excitement."

Fitzgerald is like the moment before the fall.

Kafkaesque

There's a cricket armageddon going down in my office building. They are everywhere, blending into the corporate-patterned carpet just enough so that you're constantly almost stepping on them. In the break room, in the bathroom, in the cubes. My main concern is that one will jump on me (you know how wily insects are) or crawl up my pant leg, whereupon I will absolutely freak.

But there have been worse things. I once had a run-in with cockroach that made me get religion.

About two and half years ago, when I was living in my one-bedroom apartment on S. Lamar, I woke up in the middle of the night with a distinct feeling that something was on my bed. (I had this feeling once before, and clicked on the light to find a cave cricket cozied up on my pillow. I had no idea what it was--I thought it was some unholy union of cricket and roach, and I was torn between wanting to faint, wanting to take a scalding shower and never get out, and capturing this creature for science to discover.)

Anyway, call is sixth sense. I turned on the light to find a giant cockroach perched on the edge of my bed. And yes it's cliche, but that thing was Texas size: four inches if it was a centimeter. Not even being hyperbolic. I knew I had to stop it before it crawled under my covers (no one should ever have to make that contingency), so I batted it with my bare hand (blech!) off the bed. And I lost it: I didn't see where it landed or where it went. I stalked it for 20 minutes, wearing tennis shoes and with my finger poised on the Raid can. But it was gone. For sanity's sake, I told myself it shimmied back out the door, and went back to sleep.

The next morning I opened my medicine cabinet and found it perched on the my toothbrush.

You know those scenes in the movies where a bomb goes off, and for a moment everything is silence and slow motion? It was like that. My toothbrush! Is there anything more sacred or personal than someone's toothbrush? I really can't think of anywhere I would have preferred to find a roach less. It seriously makes me want to throw up in my mouth just thinking about it.

I wish I could tell you how this was resolved, but I think I blocked it from memory to protect my mental health. I'm sure there was weeping and gnashing of teeth and "why, God, why?" and the brushing of teeth with a finger that morning and the immediate purchase of new everything that was in the cabinet.

An unholy army of Cambrias sweeping the land.

I'm fairly certain that the guy at Jiffy Lube on Anderson Lane will be naming his next born child Cambria. He wanted to know the etymology, why I was named it, and how to pronounce it. As the Goodwill Ambassador of Cambrias, I was happy to supply this information.

All in service, of course, to the mighty army of like-named girls cropping up across the land. There are four Cambrias at my sister's school; there are at least four others that have been born to my fellow college alumni in the last five years. You do the math. We shall be a mighty force to be reckoned with. But will also fear confrontation, so I'm not sure how this will all work.

I'll always love you though, New York.

Ryan Adams is sold out. I can't win for losing.

Carefully planned seredipity.

There's a certain blogger, who lives in Austin, whose writing I love. It's the kind of writing I would aspire to if I even remotely thought I had a modicum of his talent: funny, sincere, intelligent, literate. He is seriously talented, and I admire the hell out of him.

Good writing makes me excited. And I believe in applauding people when they do a good job--especially when there's so much crap writing muddling the internet, because I know I would want the same if I made my living by writing. So it started innocently enough: I wrote him an email about a year ago to tell him that I appreciate his writing, and he responded back. I thrilled a little, I'll admit. Over the next year, I read something of his whenever I could, and sometimes I laughed out loud, sometimes I teared up unexpectedly, and sometimes I would copy parts of it into this journal of quotes I've been keeping since high school. His writing is that good.

And so, inevitably--and because I am stricken with a malady similar to drunk dialing, except I send emails when I am completely sober--I sent another email. Which he responded to. And another. Which he responded to, with a question. It took me an hour to craft my 50-word response.

Keep in mind that the writing is the reason for all of this. I realize how this all sounds, but it's really just me getting caught up in the writing. In the way that I liked to be around people who read and wrote in grad school; same thing here.

I happen to read in his blog that he was planning to be at a certain Austin establishment this morning. And so I decided I would happen to be there as well. I would happen to be reading a book by his favorite author--not the one that everyone reads in high school, but his first one, to show that I know my way around modernist writers. And somehow, we would meet. Completely spontaneously.

I have a record of carefully planned spontaneity when it comes to writers I admire. And that record is: I act a straight-up fool around them. My carefully rehearsed speech to Dave Eggers made me look crazy, and my would-be memorable aside to Jonathon Safran Foer ended with me blurting out my full name and then nearly tripping down the stairs when my heel caught in the cuff of my pants. Because of this, I have put myself on restriction from talking to anyone whose work I admire.

So I decided I had one of two options here: do it but never tell anyone; or, don't do it and write about it instead. Sanity has clearly won the day. Relatively speaking. And it's for the best, really. Because I am 30.

On claiming furniture for a future date.

My mom is down in the O.C. (don't call it that) this weekend for my grandma's 83rd birthday. And also to meet her new dad: my grandma's tying the knot this fall with husband #3. It's like having Liz Taylor as your grandma. Or J. Lo.

Also in town for this occasion are my mom's three sisters. Altogether, this is one big bunch of crazy, in the way that only your own genetics can be. I imagine it's a lot of talking around certain topics; spending time with the blushing bride-to-be while slowly realizing that there are no such things as 83-year-old brides, only older 18-year-old brides; and secretly taping your name onto the back of furniture you'd like to see become yours when the time comes (my mom's been doing this for years, but sometimes she just quietly palms little things here and there; it's a victimless crime). A fight breaks out whenever one of these taped names is discovered, and I'd be willing to bet that more than one piece of furniture has serepitiously had the name on back changed.

My mom was not exactly looking forward to this weekend. What is it about sisters that incites such a mixture of dread and potential hilarity? I have two of my own, of course, so I have my suspicions. These are the people I used to have to sleep in between in the king-size bed at my San Diego grandparents' house, and they would literally fight over me--waking the whole house--and then roll over and take the pillows with them. I was left in the middle without a pillow (my brother, being the only boy, was always stuck on the couch in the living room).

The problem with and blessing of sisters is that they know you too well. They know the soft parts that hurt, they know how to pinch those spots just so, they know how to protect them from other people. There's a lot of power there. And not always used for good and not evil. It's a dynamic that never goes away, I think. In fact, I'm fairly positive there is furniture at my parents' house that already has a name taped to the back.

Think advertising doesn't work? It just did.

I think what I like best about this campaign poster (or perhaps it's an apolitical statement of fact, I don't know), which I saw on N. Lamar, is that someone felt strongly enough about freedom/Ron Paul to make this sign and go outside with a hammer and nails and post it. Long live representational government!

Nothing exciting ever happens in this town.

Thus, I have just set the following in motion: the discovery of a dead body; the uncovering of a conspiracy; a chase sequence; coming home to find my house has been ransacked; falling in love with the detective assigned to the case, even though he is totally not my type; the decoding of various clues overlooked by everyone else; discovering this thing goes all the way to the President; telling the police chief: "No, we will not stay out of this!"; learning a valuable life lesson, probably about patriotism; the salvation of the town, America, possibly the world; reflecting upon how saying "nothing ever happens in this town" virtually assures you will have to run for your life within days, just like talking about how long it's been since your last speeding ticket will guarantee one on the way home.

Cewl, as the Irish say.

I just saw the most ridiculously charming movie: Once. Go see it, go see it, go see it: if you're in Austin, it's at the Arbor. It has all the ingredients I need to love a movie: Ireland and/or Irish people; not-the-right-time love; music; music being the reason for living; montages set to music; and good writing. It's not a musical in the traditional sense, but the song lyrics do advance the plot. Which sounds like it could be a long narrative music video, but it's not. It works, is all I can tell you. Bloody fantastic. While my cold, cold heart hates rom-coms, it does enjoy a (musical) drama with a love subplot and a beautiful ending. Check and mate. I immediately came home and iTuned the soundtrack. Perfect for a rainy Independence Day.

The lead is Glen Hansard of The Frames, which I think is going to be my new favorite band. Oh, Irish bands, will you never cease to make me love you?

"But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall 'the world.' Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collasped. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light."

--Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Oh, gosh.

I should probably learn how ratios work (I had to fix the title of my last post because I got it backwards and it made no sense). This might explain why George Michael (cat, not pop star) could probably score higher on the GRE than I did.

Another thing: when will people realize that The Kite Runner is one of the most wildly overrated books of all time? Having a topical setting does not equal extraordinary literary merit.

And also: I spilled coffee all over my skirt this morning. It's like I picked up the mug and just dumped it. Sometimes I wonder how I manage to make it out of the house alive every morning.

The ratio of losers to winners is like 100:1.

This weekend, while I wore my hair in ill-considered braids and Tom-Sawyered myself into repainting my bathroom a lovely color called Kitchen Twine, I did some thinking. When you're on your hands and knees trying to reach around the back of the toilet to paint that one tricky spot, your mind wanders to, what else: dating (it's somehow an apt metaphor). Specifically, online dating. Specifically, that I have been matched on eHarmony with 571 (!) men in the Austin area over the last 18 or so months. Though it would probably be more accurate to say that I've been Punk'd about 571 times.

571. The whole thing is rather exhausting.

Listen, this is all I want out of a date: either be spectacularly good or spectacularly bad. Because if it's good, there will be more dates; and if it's bad, there will be more stories. I can't see how anyone loses here.

And yet.

Here's a random sampling of what I've gotten (this is not a complete list; there are several that I can't mention here):

• a guy whose only question to me was "Is there a late-night Arby's open around here?"
• the local FOX weatherman, with whom I got into a wacky misunderstanding that really showed his lack of humor
• a guy who collects Garbage Pail Kids trading cards (please note the present tense)
• a guy whose full-time "job" was selling his DVDs and pawn-shop purchases on eBay
• a Dungeons and Dragons player
• a guy who lived in his parents' basement
• a guy who spent an hour explaining to me why he would be buying my drink because he is a man, and he invited me out and zzzzzzzzz....
• a blind saxophonist
• a guy who stole my profile and posted it as his own (my first plagiarism!)
• a guy whose third language was English and who still managed to beat me in Scrabble almost every time we played
• a disappointingly large number of guys who name Dan Brown's Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code as the most recent book they've read

If this has taught me anything, it's that you need to have way more filters than you think you do. Because I didn't think I needed to weed for D&D players anymore; I thought it was like polio: eradicated, a thing of the past. Not so much, it turns out.

So why do I keep re-upping my subscription? While I stood precariously with one foot on the soap holder in my shower and the other on the ledge as I reached to paint the wall, I came up with a two-part answer: A) there have been a couple fellas on there that were pretty cool and with whom I did have a lot in common, and B) it seems like there's really nothing to lose. In other words, it feels silly not to keep doing it. A good friend of mine once said: you're going to meet a-holes no matter where you go--bars, bookstores, churches--it just seems like you meet a lot more a lot faster online. True, of course. People know how to hide the crazy until you've gone out with them a couple times: you're not going to be able to necessarily see it right away whether you're emailing or chatting in the fiction aisle of Half Price Books. It doesn't really matter where or how you meet them; you're bound to be as lucky with one as the other.

I've heard of enough Match.com or eHarmony weddings to believe that these sites do work. And I think we're far enough into the 00s to no longer turn up our noses or lower our voices about online dating. It's the natural progression from The Dating Game. And I contend, a much better alternative than auditioning for the next season of Flavor of Love.

So, I beat on like a boat against the current, borne back ceaslessly, just like Fitzgerald taught me. In the end, we're all just looking for that green dock light.

At least my bathroom looks good.