sunday best-of blogging: the surprise tuesday issue

best lullaby to sing to your tiny, unsuspecting cat the night before you leave her for six days, all the while struggling to smile sincerely enough to convince her that nothing's going on, even though secretly you're remembering how the last time you were gone overnight she threw up everything she ate in a dotted line along the length of your bed: "there is a light that never goes out," the smiths

worst song to wake up in the middle of the night and find said cat purring menacingly into your ear: "indian lover," by jude, which goes something like this: "and if you go at last and leave me here, i will slowly run the gas into it, i'd be invisible, and fingering the match i'll strike one mortal, final blow…" oh, ophelia, whatever shall i do with you? please don't eat any wood chips or thread or shards of broken glass while i'm gone. i'm coming home, i swear. unless we crash into the ocean, and then i'm not, but it won't be because i don't love you very much. i have no control over the plane.

best way to pass time in store you don't want to be in: hide in the center of a circular clothing rack and squeak "pick me!" at browsers who seem torn between items.

best line from a song about clams: "clams, clams, you don't have any feet / clams, clams, you're filled with squishy meat." this tune is a rare gem in the pop world, being both catchy and true. it's featured in amy winfrey's latest installment of making fiends, along with an equally upbeat ditty about preventing scurvy.

best logo to notice for the first time on the handle of the mop that's been in your bathroom for as long as you can remember:



best vacation weather forecast to tell yourself it could be worse about:



and it really could be worse; look, there's no hail or volcanic fallout anywhere in there. ten whole days without a hurricane! i'm a lucky gal.

so, that's it, kids. behave yourselves while i'm gone—no fighting (and no parties!). help yourselves to the leftovers, but if you have friends over and they damage the furniture it's coming out of your allowance.

sunday best-of blogging

best song to let coffee dribble over your shocked, slack jaw to as your eyes widen in numbing horror:

Real Media | MP3

uh, thank you (?), think progress, for making sure the right brothers don't get mistaken by the power-pop set for just one more guitar-driven we-*heart*-blink-182 derivative drivelfest. this here's a band with a message, instead of a buttload of liberal LIES. that eminem, man… what a pinko. this is exactly the sort of activist anthem america's mall-roving hipsters need to wake them up and get them involved. perhaps it will convince some of them to enlist. perhaps the right brothers themselves will heed their own call to arms. but then, i guess we really do need them here at home; who else will thumb their noses at cindy sheehan?

best travel advice: "now, if any italian men pinch your bottom, don't you get angry; it's a compliment. i know sometimes you get a little upset about those things, but you have to remember that you're in a different place." courtesy of my septuagenarian irish-catholic grandma. what a peach, eh? i didn't argue with her about it, but i have a feeling that the random squeezing of one's body parts by a stranger is frowned upon around the globe, although i'm sure that in some places it's gotten away with pretty frequently. i don't approve of it in any location, though, and i'll do my best to speak their language and politely scrape their cheese into an inconspicuous pile underneath my napkin, but i'm an american girl and ain't nobody pinching my bottom. maybe it's just that grandma's a product of a different, surprisingly less uptight era. when she and my grandfather were dating he was playing drums in a jazz band, and my favorite story of theirs is how one night he took her to see him play in a gay bar, and before he went on stage he pointed out a transvestite at the bar who'd been giving him the eye; every once in a while, from behind the drum set, grandpa would look over at him and wink, and when he giggled and waved back coyly grandma laughed so hard her cape codder shot out her nose. now that i'm thinking about it, i remember my mom complaining frequently about my grandfather's habit of patting her tush on her way past when i was young.

best out-of-the-blue infatuation: mine with catherine zeta-jones as velma kelly in chicago. i had zero interest in this movie when it came out, being a decided non-fan of both the majority of broadway musicals and the entire cast. i'll tell you what i am a huge fan of, though: 1920s fashion. so over the past few days, as bravo has been playing the movie on a loop, i've paused on it enough times to have seen almost the entire thing, and miss catherine has stolen my heart right away. i still can't stand that zellweger, though, and i'll admit that my distaste for her is now fueled by a huge amount of resentment over how much better she looks in those little flapper frocks than i do. i don't generally wish that my body were built more like that of a 12-year-old male farm hand, but i think it's the ideal figure for those get-ups. so sad. catherine, though, has this delicious little roll of chub that peeks out over the top of her bodice now and again:




yum. murder is wrong, it really is, i believe that through and through, and i didn't change my mind when it was bebe neuwirth singing an angry, indignant song. nevertheless, when this particular velma says they had it coming, i'm with her.

best reason to return to 1991: so i can never watch aeon flux on mtv's liquid television, thereby eliminating my reflexive loathing for the current movie version. for all i know it's very good, but i'll never have anything to do with it, because i'm such a nostalgic elitist.




picture i like found here, picture i like not so much found here. eh? you decide.

best subject for late-night introspection: why am i so taken with vengeful, gun-wielding women in black bustiers? let's change the subject, shall we?

best canine miracle: about two months ago a little dog, part shepherd, part who-knows-what, was admitted to the hospital as an emergency after having been hit by a car. the person who had hit her had tied her to a tree on the side of the road, called the police and given them her location, and taken off. the critical care staff got her more or less stable and wheeled her in for x-rays, which revealed a crushed pelvis and a right femur in so many pieces we weren't sure we'd find them all. the surgeons weren't convinced they could repair it completely, and because she was ownerless at the time, no one was sure whether or not we'd be able to help her at all (the financial office is sickeningly strict. you wouldn't believe how many patients we have to turn away. animals aren't people, blah blah blah, but if human institutions ran themselves with the kind of cold iron fist this one does, there'd be no more concerns about overpopulation), but we held her overnight and did as much as we could, hoping someone would claim her soon.

well, i don't know how it happened, but her owner did manage to track her down. it turned out they were from new orleans and had come to massachusetts to stay with a friend while katrina was blowing their house down. they made it all the way here safely, just so their friend's nincompoop landlord could let the dog out for no reason in the middle of the afternoon. stellar. she got her surgery, but when she left the hospital two weeks later she couldn't walk at all, and her potential for independent mobility was pretty uncertain. she was a trooper, though, and incredibly sweet. you can't help but root for the poochies who lick your hand while you're tugging on their shattered legs.

so we were all thrilled to death to see her running down the hall this week, wagging her previously lifeless tail at everyone she saw. her radiographs show that she's healing beautifully; she'll always be stiff on her right side, because it's now more machine than dog, but she doesn't seem to care at all. pain-free, eager and able to frolic as a little dog should—the world's happiest ending. i wish more katrina stories ended so well, or even half so well. it's something, how quickly we stopped following them.

best readers*: megan and dina, who have very kindly offered to supply me with snacks and postcards that are more readily within their reach than my own. you guys are totally the cutest.





* everyone else who made it this far ties for second, and if i could i would wrap each and every one of you in something fleecy and feed you tiny cupcakes.

the oyster and the seahorse: a soggy tale

there was a tiny seahorse who fell in love with a giant oyster. he told her he was growing a pearl in the center of himself, and she thought that was a beautiful thing to do. every day she went to see him, and he told her about the pearl, how much it had grown and how different he would be when it was finished. she said to him, "you're so clever and talented, you're so good and wise, i want to be with you all my life." he said, "you're a pretty little seahorse, but all of a life is a very long time. stay here with me while i tend to my pearl, and we'll see what happens then."

so the seahorse stayed with the oyster, and helped him whenever she could, and did whatever he asked, and loved him very much. they talked and talked about all kinds of things, but whenever the seahorse wondered about the future the oyster told her it was far away, and the most important thing was that he finish making his perfect pearl. she knew how much it meant to him and never disagreed, but sometimes she felt very sure that, in a place as big and strange and unknowable as the ocean, there must be lots of things at least as important as one oyster's pearl.

years and years went by, and finally the oyster told the seahorse that his pearl was complete. she was so happy for him and proud of him, and she scolded herself for ever doubting the importance of his work. when he offered to let her see it she was so overjoyed that she almost fainted. he opened himself up very wide, and she rushed to witness the life's work of her true love.

but there was nothing there. the seahorse looked and looked all around in the center of the oyster until she was sure she had searched everywhere, but there was no pearl, just a few grains of ordinary sand. at first she was disappointed, but then she realized that it didn't matter to her at all; the oyster had loved the idea of his pearl more than the seahorse ever had. really, the seahorse just loved the oyster, and the more she thought about it, the happier she was to know that he hadn't actually changed.

"is it beautiful?" the oyster whispered.
"of course it is, silly," the little seahorse answered, "it's you."
"not me, dumbass, the pearl! tell me about the pearl!"
"there is no pearl, darling. there's just you, the same as you've always been. but i've loved you without the pearl all along, and i'll love you forever—"
"THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU, YOU LYING BITCH! FUCK OFF!"

and the oyster slammed his shell shut tight over the tiny seahorse, and wouldn't speak to her again, and wouldn't let her out. the seahorse cried and cried to know that the oyster loved something he had made up inside his head more than he could ever love her.

and then she died.

sunday best-of blogging

best song to silently and tranquilly embrace the inevitable to, even while inwardly mourning and resenting the world for forcing you to do so: "casimir pulaski day," sufjan stevens.

best communication breakdown: one of our cardiologists submitted a request for chest x-rays to data entry, and in the patient's history he scribbled a picture of a heart, instead of writing out the word. when the sad, skinny boy in data entry processed the request, the slip that printed out in radiology read, "persistent cough x several days, weak; evidence of love failure." single doctors throughout the building hung photocopies on their office doors.

best item extracted from a dog's intestinal tract: an entire pair of girls' panties, with "sweet" penned in sparkly silver calligraphy across the back above a picture of what i believe is a tightly wrapped piece of saltwater taffy.

best airline meal:


i am totally getting this.

my thanks to ken brown, who also designed the fabulous wrapping paper i mentioned in a previous best-of post. toadie and i are quasi-poor fans, as we haven't actually ordered anything from mr. brown (his minimum postcard order is 12 dozen or something, and while we would find ways to use them, we aren't made of money orders); we are promoting him every chance we get, though, mainly by sporting stolen, photoshopped morsels of his artwork on t-shirts. does that count? we think that counts.

best tortilla chips: the flour tortilla chips available in the prepared-foods section of whole foods. (insert homer simpson drooly noise here.) oh, they're so flaky and greasy and delicious, they dissolve into liquid glee on your tongue. the second best, though, for those who can't always make the trek to mecca, are the tostitos gold chips, which i can sometimes find one lonesome bag of on the bottom shelf of my local supermarket's nacho-fixins end cap, like the gods have stashed their irresistible hydrogenated yumminess away just for me. death by chocolate is a fine idea, but i'll take my final bow salty and oily.

best tradition: from john seabrook's article on the renaissance-era fruits of umbria, published in the september 5 issue of the new yorker, which i am just now finishing:

the dalla ragiones keep many of the traditional umbrian festivals, and at the end of the year they burn la vecchia, the effigy of an old woman made of rags and straw, and livio curses—"vaffanculo, anno vecchio!" ("up your ass, old year!")—and spits into the fire.

i am, as ever, bothered by the new yorker's decision to italicize the closing quotation marks around the italicized text, but not the opening ones. i'm putting it right out of my head, though, because i'm so enchanted with the saying. this family lives pretty close to where we're staying in umbria, so i'll have to make sure our friend and soon-to-be hostess remembers the curse and shouts it drunkenly at the top of her lungs at someone who has no idea what the hell she's saying this new year's eve. she'll be absolutely tickled pink. i'll probably do the same, but i think it'll be funnier for her, since there's a chance that the person she shouts at will think he or she should know what she's saying. unless she comes home and we wind up at the same party, and then we'll just shout it at each other, which i'm sure will be, at the time, the funniest thing yet.

best guilty pleasure: i, um, i love the bee gees. love them. unfortunately, i do not feel better having gotten that off my chest, and i'm still only going to listen to them when no one else is home.

best dream: one of the emergency/critical care doctors at the hospital came running through and ordered everyone to evacuate radiology, because she, for some reason, had to treat a dangerous tiger, and she didn't want any unnecessary personnel to be injured by it. toadie and i stuck around in case she needed help with the x-ray equipment, but we climbed up on top of the processor to be out of the way. the doctor shouldered her dart gun and marched out of sight, and the roaring and bellowing that had been emanating from around the corner suddenly ceased. we assumed she'd successfully sedated the tiger and crept over to check things out, and when we peeked around we saw the doctor attempting to stick a man dressed up like a character from cats in the butt with a giant syringe as he backed up against the wall, hissing, and swatted ineffectually at her with his fuzzy hands. she triumphed in the end, but we just left him passed out next to the door and ate some bagels.

why i will never have a child, part nineteen trillion and three

so, i'm watching this episode of primetime about the sickest, most insane, most unfathomable story i've ever heard, and it's got me half ready to vomit into my own lap and half ready to hit the streets with a flame thrower. i know that a lot of people are quite intelligent, but apparently at least as many people are just dying to prove that they're dumb as rocks. how does a thing like this happen in real life? anyone? how does somebody's teenage daughter wind up naked in the back room of a mcdonald's, where her middle-aged female manager has her convinced that it isn't deranged for a police officer to order a strip search over the flipping phone? and it isn't like this was the only time something like this happened. even if the dolts involved in these incidents believed that they were actually dealing with police officers, in what disgusting world do we unquestioningly submit to these kinds of orders, even from police officers, especially ones who aren't in the room? whatever, man, i can't think about this anymore tonight, i'm going to have enough nightmares as it is. i just thought you all might like to know why i'm having my uterus removed and stored in a vault, where i can have it periodically milked for hormones.

for lsz, who has decided to teach me a lesson, and has succeeded

a few weeks ago lsz, my most attentive listener and the cattle prod to my ever-lapsing humanitarianism, told her readers that she was going away and gave us an assignment to complete in her absence: write about the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, felt or heard. and then she didn't go away, and so i don't think any of us wrote for her. of course, she didn't want us to write it for her, really; she wanted us to remember it for ourselves. she's sneaky, that lsz. wonderful, but sneaky.

well, today i woke up and she was gone. and i thought, what a brat, until i remembered that i told her i was going to vanish in exactly the same manner when i left on my vacation, and i didn't think i was being mean, but you just never know, do you? sometimes people count on your presence more than you realize. lsz has been missing for close to six hours . . . and i'm terribly sad. lesson learned, love: i'm leaving the evening of the 23rd, i'll be home on the 28th, i'll have presents for all of you and you'll have them in your hands by the end of the month. anyhow, coupling my sudden turned-tables revelation with the momentousness of last night's episode of my name is earl, which was about remembering not to neglect our loved ones or take them for granted, i was finally driven to make the time to do this small perfect thing i was asked to do by this small perfect girl.

you would think—wouldn't you?—that the most beautiful experience of your life would be eternally center-stage in your mind, like a spoiled lap dog waiting for you at your front door, frantic to be lifted up and caressed. but it isn't; it gets trampled and muddied and elbowed to the back of the room by all manner of stuff and nonsense, like sunrise from a hilltop or hellenistic sculpture or that song that made you cry that time you heard it live, or the time that person you were afraid to let yourself trust reached for you in the middle of the night, or the lightning storm over the ocean that you watched all alone from the beach . . . rubbish. iridescent baubles. they could have belonged to anyone. i had something better, something simpler, something right, if i could just reach it; so i thought, and i thought, and i thought and i thought and i thought

and then i remembered.

kismet was a little black cat who became a giant black cat. i told you how we met here and how we parted here, and after that i never really mentioned him. but he's the one true love of my life, and there was a moment when i became sure that he always would be, because no one else would ever earn it the way he did right then and there, and nothing's been so beautiful, before or since. if you'd like to listen, i'll tell you a story.

six months after i left him, eight days after my twenty-first birthday and eight months to the day after his first, i was at my parents' house for a visit. it was the middle of the afternoon and no one else was home, and i was in the kitchen reading a book that had been making me laugh but that suddenly made me very, very sad. it made me so sad that i had to put it down and move away from it, so i got up and walked to the back of the house, where the sliding doors let you look down over the back yard and the woods that stretch out of sight beyond it. i was crying, just a little. i wasn't entirely sure why. kismet, who was getting to be a very big boy, a much bigger boy than i had imagined he'd be, was taking up a fair amount of space on the floor in front of the left-hand door; when i reached him he opened one dozy bronze eye, yawned, stretched out his leg to grab the tip of my sneaker with his claws, went back to sleep.

something inside me imploded.

i started sobbing and couldn't stop and sat down to keep from keeling over, and as i did kismet looked up at me with a most unnatural degree of alarm and i was hysterical, could not catch my breath, and he was all at once on his feet and panic-stricken, his eyes so wide i could see the whites and my little cat, whom i had abandoned with no warning or explanation and who in the six months since had not shown any interest in any human member of his new household, did something he had never before done.

he climbed into my lap. when he lived with me he was everywhere i went; he followed me from room to room, sat in the chair next to me when i was at the kitchen table, sat on the couch beside me when i watched tv, spent the entire night curled beside my head like a furry pillow—but he never once tried to settle on me. now that he had done it we were both surprised, and he made some tiny, hesitant half-steps, not sure whether to sit or stand, confused on altogether too many levels for a young cat with an innocent walnut brain. but he didn't leave, and finally he stretched his small saucer-eyed face up to mine and pressed the top of his head against my wet wobbling chin. and i cried all over him, made sticky salty spots all up and down his back, and he never moved or even blinked, only leaned in closer to me and every few seconds offered a quiet, chirping non-meow. my little baby, kissing my face, saying, "don't be sad, mommy; i love you."

it was the first time i could remember being a part of something so clean, so even and honest and entirely above-board. it's the only time, and i can't imagine there ever being anyone in my life whom i could share a similar moment with. you can't cry in front of your parents because it breaks their hearts, can't cry in front of your children because it frightens them, can't cry in front of your friends because it's embarrassing for everyone in the room, can't cry in front of anyone, just because. because it's a futile exercise in guilt management; no one ever knows what to do. you know that no one knows what to do and feel guilty for making them feel like they should, and they feel guilty for not being able to amaze you by magically knowing what to do. or you think they should know, and they know that's unfair, and everyone is curdled by irrational resentment. a person who catches you crying asks you if you are okay and then hopes that you will say yes, which you most likely will do, and then you will quickly go about meaning it as the other person gears up to ask you if you are sure, even though you both would have liked for him or her to have left the room already. maybe not every time, but the majority of the time, comfort is either offered or received, or both, out of obligation, not sincerity. something is always off, and no one walks away without a little shame. that's not how it ought to be, and i don't think it's how it has to be, but i believe, when you're dealing with adult human beings, it's how it inevitably is.

only, not that time. that time i ran my hand over a soggy shedding body and knew what it was to be sure of something, and i didn't need to cry anymore. i tried to dry my tears off his head but he wouldn't hold still, he kept trying to look at me, to nuzzle my face. so i laughed and wiped the tears off myself instead, told him it was okay, i was fine, i didn't know what had happened but i was all right now; he didn't believe me. he stepped out of my lap, walked over to one knee, rubbed up against it, looked up at me quickly to make sure i hadn't started crying again, walked over to the other knee, repeated, did this until i had stopped sniffling, sprawled out in front of me on his side and yawned, stretched out his leg to grab the tip of my sneaker with his claws. everything as it was, only now he was purring, and until it became dark we sat there looking at each other, kismet with his foot on my foot as he purred and purred.

there it is, lsz; my one flawless instant. i'm sorry it took me so long.

now will you come home?

sunday best-of blogging

best tune to stare at yourself in the mirror and swear that you'll never make that mistake again to: the piano intro to "icicle" on tori amos's under the pink, ideally isolated on a home-spun recording and leading directly into the "all the girls hate her/over it" piano suite off the "god" single from the same album.

best marketing idea: tootsie drops, the miniature version of tootsie pops. they'd be about the size of your average gumball and stick-free, so you'd get all the goodness of a tootsie pop without all the damned work. i think they'd be a tremendous success, because let's face it, folks, those lollipops are huge and impossible to enjoy while you're doing anything else. i suppose we'd have to alter the candy-to-tootsie ratio a little bit, but i think we could find a balance that would make everybody happy. well, not me, maybe, because i don't eat them, but it's not about me, it's about you—you and the millions of kids who leave saliva-drenched lollipops stuck to whatever public surface is closest at hand when they tire of their monstrous sweets. stupid stinking halloween.

best exchange overheard on a city bus: "you're gonna be toasted like a toaster strudel, gonna get scrambled like some ramen noodles…"
"man, you suck. you suck worse than scary movie 3."

best soup: imagine's organic creamy butternut squash. i've had it for lunch every day this week and i don't even like squash, that's how good this is. eat it. EAT IT!!!!!!!!

best compliment: "of course [i like you]! who wouldn't, save for someone with an ignoble heart the size of a chiclet?" hello, phila! welcome to the monkey house! i'll be your hostess. if anyone throws anything larger than a beer bottle, you come straight to me.

best search term directing a disappointed reader to this very page: heh. heh heh. the even funnier thing is that he/she followed it twice, on consecutive days. am i so forgettable? *sniff* i'm going to pretend he/she was just so bound up in the thrill of the search that names of pages got lost in the shuffle. sorry, dude. better luck next time. here, as you seem so devoted to your quest, i'll offer you a consolation prize.

best excuse for neglecting my sad, lonely blog: see next item.

best career news: this week i scored my first freelance copyediting gig for which i'm able to quote a price based on the difficulty of the document in question. the company i was working for before set a flat rate, and i could either accept it or not take the job. now i have to decide what i think i'll actually deserve, which is as daunting as it is exciting. i feel obligated to ask for less than most copy editors ask for, since i'm basically self-trained and impressively inexperienced, but the fact that this company thought me qualified before they knew my asking rates should have made me feel better about requesting a living wage. what i hope is that this experience will force me to look at my work with absolute objectivity, so i won't be afraid in the future to ask for what i've earned. it's a distressingly adult situation, and to be honest, i didn't really see it coming. my roommate thinks i might feel less uneasy about it if i put on a dress suit and did my work at a desk in the living room, instead of in my pajamas in an armchair in my bedroom. she could be right, but i think what i need more than that is a meager handful of instances where i say that i've worked this hard and should be compensated thusly, and the person who's compensating me agrees. and that, by all appearances, is precisely what i have an opportunity to provide myself with. i've knowingly lowballed on the first two jobs, but maybe i'll stand up for myself soon. that i'm even thinking about it is a giant personal step forward, so i'm applauding myself, but i'm only thinking about it, so that applause is being made surreptitiously by one hand inside my pocket.

why is this so strange? it's not as if i've never gotten the work i wanted before. when i decided that i wanted to work as a veterinary nuclear medicine technologist, well, by golly, that's what i did, even though there are only two veterinary hospitals in massachusetts that routinely provide such studies and no school anywhere that trains you specifically to perform them. i was hired a month out of school with the understanding that in no time i'd be heading and expanding the department, and i was just a baby; i hadn't even taken my licensing exam yet. but i worked for what i wanted, and i accomplished exactly what i told everyone i would. i shouldn't be shocked by a similar degree of opportunity in a different field, and yet i absolutely am. maybe it's just that i'm still a little shocked to hear myself admitting that this is what i want. i feel, for the first time, 100% in control of my own future, and it's this utterly foreign future that i had never once imagined myself in until it was waving its "welcome" sign in my boggled little face. it's weird. it's very weird. but if this is the way that turning twenty-seven is going to alter my life, i'll sure as hell take it.

best song to become suddenly certain it wasn't a mistake to: "michigan girls," califone.