Here's What Looks Unspoiled to Me While Rome Burns

Trader Joe's
Pumpkins
Intervention on A&E
This cotton dress I have on that looks dressed up despite the comfort it provides
Beautiful Booty followed by Cardio Kickboxing followed by Ab Lab at the gym
Whole-wheat pasta
Wednesday night girls' night at my house
Huell. Freakin. Howser. (How do I love thee?)
California's Gold on public television (see also: Huell Howser)
In-jokes
Hiking
Judaism
My best-ever nephew who talks now, I am told
The Onion
Laughing
Regina Spektor
Spearhead, particularly Chocolate Supa Highway, which sounds so quaintly outdated now
Rosemary and basil
"My lovey" and "butzie girl," which my mom calls me sometimes
Club soda
White wine
Stilton cheese with bits of apricot in it (see also: Trader Joe's)
Making lists (such sweet therapy)
Em dashes
Abbot-Kinney
AE, LGP, AK, MIG, MAW, ADGL—in short, friends
Staying home on Friday night
Yogurt sundaes (fat-free vanilla, light choco syrup, granola, blueberries, fat-free whip)
The valiant protesters of Prop 8 (thank you)
Cream eyeliner
Wholehearted people
Honest people
Candid people
New people (but mostly not)
My fair reader(s)
Dinner. Bye!

Lucky Girl

"Whatever you need, girl, we're here for you."

"I dedicated my yoga practice to you. Did you feel the strength and the peace?"

"We all think it would be a good idea to see your girls if you can muster the strength. Would it help to talk? Or would it help to listen to others' trivial problems? Or would it help to tell fart jokes all evening? Just say the word."

"I will continue to pray that you find love and joy of a more permanent sort and peace in the meantime. Om."

"Since you're probably feeling fatigued anyway, why not perk up your bathroom a little with new paint? I will send out feelers to the girls and work on a painting-party spreadsheet. Nothing makes me feel good like a) making a fabulous list, and b) getting stuff on it accomplished."

"In the end, you discover that you are a wiser, richer, fuller person for the experience. In the meantime, we have friends, family, and vacation! Not to mention shopping, countless hours at the gym, and martinis with the girls. I love you endlessly."

"I have Xanax."

"Take the day off! We'll go to the beach, shop for 'kinis, drink beer at the beach bars, and lick our wounds."

"We are women and don't have the option to dither forever on whether we want a family or not. It's important that you are faithful to your future self and your dreams of having a family. Love your broken heart, because your heart is what makes you so special. It brings pain, but it also brings you so much joy."

"I'll treat you to a private Pilates lesson."

"I love you lots! Call me whenever you are ready. Or I will harass you."

"Should we meet at someone's house instead of a public space? You know, for maximum huggability? Just hugging and being hugged releases good drugs in the brain. It'll help."

"I know it hurts now, but when you find the right person, you will have joy for the rest of your life. I love you with all my heart. You are so strong. This is a new beginning, a new adventure."

Memorial Day Weekend: By the Numbers

1.5 loads of laundry done (goal: 2)

2 out of 5 total Planet Earth DVDs watched on a 46-inch HD TV (obsessed), along with at least

5 episodes of the Deadliest Catch marathon

1 kick-butt 90-minute massage session

1 Lakers loss

70 degrees, or maybe not even, for a high temperature (boo)

$150 spent on a new blue polka-dot dress at Intuition (marked down from $310)

2 fancy cocktails consumed at Seven Grand downtown

1 new in-joke, at least (involving the "Pita-Pizza Connection")

45 minutes spent at the new Americana at Brand complex, competing for elbow room with about...

20 billion other shoppers

3 workouts since Friday evening, including 2 solid Hard Body Meltdown classes for a total of...

1,250 calories burned, which hardly neutralizes approximately...

50,000 calories consumed at...

3 barbecues, including

1 that was totally saturated with meats and meat paraphernalia, where I ate mostly desserts, and

1 that was almost fully vegetarian and included

1 recipe that I want to steal (portabella burgers with feta, pearl onions, garlic, dash of cayenne), plus

3 rounds of insanely concentrated fresh veggie juices that included stuff like kale. Overall, there were at least

5 instances when I felt like I would rather get my stomach pumped than endure the over-full feeling for another moment, but that's just

1 of the hazards of another great

3-day weekend among pals.

Sands/Hourglass

I bought three bunches of daffodils yesterday at Trader Joe's and they've already all opened into terrific yellow blooms in vases around my house. Daffodils always make me smile on account of this memory: In Berkeley, there was a thing called the Daffodil Festival, which was some kind of Greek-system charity fund-raiser. All the sorority houses would sell bunches of five flowers for $1 on Sproul Plaza. For that price, it seemed the campus became transformed into a brightly hued kinetic sculpture, with blooms peeking from bobbing backpacks, tucked behind ears on happy heads, and sitting in sills all along Bancroft. For a limited time, the sunny accessory seemed to transcend genres; who wouldn't want one of those pretty little things? Such a fond springtime memory from an era during which a handful of life's greatest gifts converged: youth, optimism, curiosity, hope, friendship, and learning. Le sigh.

Today I have the first sunburn of the season after a hike in Malibu with the girls (during which we figured out the answers to all the world's mysteries, natch) across five little streams to a graceful waterfall. Warm weather is my happy place.

You can take the girl out of California, but... please don't.

Things I Thought About During Yoga Class Tonight

work
house paint
spinach (whole wheat pasta with)
sweatbands (useful?)
blue-eyed boy
the Ashram (curious)
Super Bowl
Pasadena
TMZ
work
check-engine light
glasses
dry cleaning
rain (unhappy with)
mom
working out (tomorrow)
friend (AE, moving)
positivity (striving for)
work
restaurant recommendations (Grove adjacent)
friend (LP, studying Final Cut Pro)
tomatoes
vacation (Mexican Riviera cruise?)
vacation (Turkey?)
this list (making)
Valentine's Day
PBS
vacation (San Simeon?)
Coachella
wine
working out (last Thursday)
friend (MG, feathered haircut)
New York (Capella, moving to)
New York (work, traveling for)
steam cleaning (carpet)
Project Runway
Devon Aoki
Lululemon
headlines (punchy)
Obama
Dubai (L.A. Times article on)
Santa Barbara
sister (birthday, Wednesday)
Essie polish in Wicked
yogi rhetoric (vs. stereotypic California rhetoric)
Huell Howser
friend (MW, cute glasses)
looseleaf paper (notes from 1992 to EW on)
work
blue-eyed boy (cold, coming down with)
Ikea
Times Square
new dress (bras to wear with)
Zicam
Home Depot
donuts (I wish)
Bed Head mousse (integrate?)
State of the Union

Is anyone in here really getting close to achieving transcendence? Man, honestly, that must be amazing.

Auld Lang Syne Language

Happy New Year, lovelies! I thoroughly enjoyed the last couple weeks of 2007, which involved a lot of friend time, and family time, and a lot of touring around California, which—and I know I repeat myself—you just can't beat. It's so breathtaking, our state.
On New Year's Eve, in a friend's Russian Hill apartment in San Francisco, MT innocently inquired as to my hobbies (no doubt after I'd said something snotty about how busy I am and how robust my blessed life already is, dang, lay off). All I could think of to say on the spot was "working out" (which might be a kind of lame cop-out L.A. answer), and "blogging" (which is also kind of a cop-out, since my Internet self is a more composed, less-interesting, anecdotified version of my real-life self and adventures, and I haven't blogged much lately anyway, like I'm Princess Melissa or something). Then of course there is watching Project Runway while texting, but you don't have to tell me that's not a hobby. And hair is not a hobby; it's damage control executed with scientific precision. I like to think I am a good and dutiful friend to many among a close-knit but large group of folks, and I know good friends are an earned privilege. But a hobby? Not so much, I guess.

And of course there's work, which I have resolved to remember in 2008 is not a hobby, but a job—albeit one that happens to consume most of my time including evenings and weekends on account of events, and one that not coincidentally combines things that I deeply care about: writing, photography, and career. Still, how did I come up job-swamped and hobby-free in the waning weeks of 2007? The Sassy-reading 1989 version of me would not have seen that coming.

So I'm putting this out there to friends and strangers, this question of what my new hobby will be in 2008. Can you help me with a suggestion? I always lean toward hobbies that I can parlay/multi-task into being, say, money making as well as fitness promoting, or perhaps crafty and meditative and entrepreneurial and tummy flattening all at once. I'm into free-time efficiencies. But of course, I'm open to any constructive or fun ideas. Whether you know me or not and you've got one, hit me.

[Current potential hobby front runners are Italian language refreshing, healthy vegetarian cooking at a higher level, volleyball (which seems like cheating, because it's one of the blue-eyed boy's existing hobbies, and he'd be coaching me), tennis (same deal), hiking (fab, but achingly obvious)...]

I thank you in advance for your ideas. And I wish all of us more joy in 2008 than we possibly could have known was coming. Then bam—you got it.

If My Poor Friends Must Suffer Crises, I'm Glad They Weave Them Into Funny Emails

"I think I may need to call it all off. I already wrote essentially a Dear John letter and have it sitting in my desk drawer at home. It's like having a loaded pistol in my desk with no gun lock, safety off, while Dick Cheney is rooting around my stuff."

Memba Wa Day Weh Wi Dweet?

I want to tell you what a soundsystem party is like in Jamaica.

Actually, I think soundsystem is the general term the Jamaicans use to describe any mobile party at which gigantic towers of speakers are brought to bear on a typically vacant space, and people come and listen. But I'll tell you about a soundsystem party near Treasure Beach, on the remote, virtually tourist-free south coast of Jamaica.

So we're there, last week, in Jamaica, four whiteys. Normally I would not call Mexican-American MG a whitey, nor would I call Russian-American AE a whitey, nor would I even typically consider my ethnic Jewish self a whitey, but we were all whiteys down there, relatively speaking. (We even got called whiteys a couple of times, but I'm pretty sure those remarks were only observations, not meant as judgments or disdain.)

We met a friend called Andy who told us he was going to take us to this party around 10:30 if we were interested. So we pile in his right-side-driver's-seat car, with his friend Ruell, and drive a ways to a parking lot where we hear loud music, and see lots of totally mild-tempered Jamaicans hanging around, drinking and smoking. The whole thing was very Heavy Metal Parking Lot, only different in the obvious ways.

Across the street, there's an outdoor staircase leading to a bar (N.B.: much of Jamaica doesn't really have wet bars--more like rooms with painted signs and wooden counters decked with bottles, and coolers full of ice) where folks make their way for Red Stripes and delightful Appleton rum drinks in plastic cups and some sort of gross energy drink/malt liquor hybrid called Magnum, which tastes like Dimetapp that's been in the fridge since 1981 plus moth ball juice.

So we're sticking fairly close to Andy and Ruell (ourselves being whiteys and all), and we're drinking, and trying to fit in (ha!) and lots of time passes, and we're still in the parking lot, and the whiteys start to wonder aloud to each other whether this parking lot is indeed the soundsystem itself. I mean, there seemed to be people, and music coming from somewhere, but no one was dancing, and WTF? We inquired with Andy, and he said we were just "waiting for the right time" to go "in." It was probably 1 a.m.

At some point, it became the right time. Andy gestured to us that we should follow him to a parked Corolla (which I guess belonged to the soundsystem's promoter) and each pay $200 Jamaican (about $3 U.S.) in exchange for wristbands that would get us into the actual soundsystem.

Someone opened a gate in a chain link fence, and we were inside. But it was still a parking lot. But it was the other side of the parking lot, the one with the giant towers of speakers emblazoned "Stone Love" and the DJ spinning mostly reggae and dancehall. Loud. Us whiteys figured we better put torn-up bits of napkins in our ears, which we did. Discretely, of course, mon.

We were all excited to see Jamaican girls dressed in bright colors dancing the night away. But we didn't, really. First off, it was mostly men. But more importantly, no one was really dancing yet. Apparently, the girls don't heed Sean Paul's call to shaaa-aaake their thiii-iiings until the sun comes up.

So when we crossed the chain link threshold again to go home, maybe around 3 a.m, we saw a sea of Jamaicans in the parking lot, their numbers tripled or more since we'd gone in, all angled toward the gate, waiting for the "right time." It was like Night of the Living Dead, the Caribbean version.

Anyway, bredrin, that's the story of the great south coast soundsystem of the summer of 2007.

Likkle more.

State of Self on Waning Days of Twenties

Spazzy, blessed, awesome. Not sure. Changeable.

Sometime early this week, I changed the course of my spazz attack (which was the standard no-baby-plans-yet boilerplate) to the wait, I'm too young to grow up, look how young I am, woooo!-variety spazz. Didn't see that coming.

In addition to my girls-only Jamaica trip at the end of the month, the blue-eyed boy had made plans for my upcoming birthday weekend involving sea kayaking in the Channel Islands near Ventura (an idea which, if I recall, I might have instigated after we watched a California's Gold episode about it, and, basically, if Huell Howser jumped off a cliff, I would do it too). But then I decided that sea kayaking seems like something staid that families do, and we're not a family, we're crazy fun young people, woooo, and we should go to Vegas instead and wear tiny, besequined dresses and bikinis with gold hardware (at least I should), and throw dice and be rowdy, and shop shop shop indiscriminately, and let it ride on red number 30, woooo! Because that's what the kids do! And that's essentially what I've wanted to do for most birthdays since I turned 21 (19).

Well, what happens when you think you might want to change plans a scant few days before your existing plans, is that airfare goes up so high that it's prohibitive, and who wants to drive into the desert during Friday rush hour, and then back all day Sunday when it's your birthday and you're sitting in the car with a hangover getting blasted in the face by the AC, eating Gardetto's party mix and Crystal Light Slurpees from the 7-11 on the interstate? So driving and flying are both out, which means Vegas is out for my 30th birthday this weekend.

So that locks us into our original kayaking plans, which I think will be awesome after all (if it had been viable to go to Vegas, I probably would have freaked out and insisted on reinstating the kayaking based on some impromptu consciousness shift) (hey, at least I know myself), and it will be good to feel healthy and alive out there on the pacific Pacific. I'm back on my eat-right/work-out kick (after a dastardly post-Half Dome June) and I've been all kinds of sore this week thanks to serious gym commitment. And I like the idea of feeling healthy and strong as I kiss 29 goodbye. (Sea kayaking Saturday + bowling birthday party Sunday clearly = monastically disciplined fitness regime, non?)

Today, I am wearing tiny shorts and sky-high sandals, and I got a few whistles from passing cars on my way to and fro Subway (veggie delight on wheat, bag of apples, Diet Coke) down Sunset Boulevard. Whether or not I am still wild at 30, apparently my legs still look good. (Actually, note to self: legs are bona fide asset. Why have never noticed?)

Last night at the after-party for the Espy awards, I told the blue-eyed boy I would not be morally averse to any procedure that would perk up my eye area a bit. It took him like four minutes too long, but he got around to saying, "You're perfect!" I think he's onto something.

...best and most supportive friends and fam ever, a job that is fun and challenging and full of perks and never boring, great condo with a separate walk-in closet just for shoes and accessories...

So, au revoir, twenties. I will miss the halcyon Berkeley years, and the New York years (although they were not hardly halcyon), but thank heaven I will not have to miss my woooo! wild friends, because I've still got em. See ya in sequins, girls...*


*Somebody please take me to Vegas in August, though, for real.

Cabin Pressure

Six days after my nephew was born, I got on a plane at PHL and headed home to LAX. Since having said goodbye to my sister at her house the day before, I'd hardly stopped crying. Part of it was the obvious: Because I'd decided to fulfill my commitment to attend the wedding of a dear friend in L.A., I'd left Philadelphia before my nephew's bris. This had been a rending choice. Part of the reason I was sad was that I didn't know when I’d see my sister again, or the baby, and “time marches on,” as my dad is so fond of saying. And I hate that it does.

The other reasons for the tears were more abstract. Everything had been hyper-poignant in Philadelphia. Like when I ate with my folks at City Tavern and my dad’s salad came with a purple orchid on top, and my mom was so determined that she should take this little second-hand flower to my sister. She dusted off the blossom and asked the waitress for a Styrofoam cup to transport it in. My dad poured a half inch of water into the cup, and my mom placed the bud inside, and we kept it in the cup holder of the rental car until it could safely be delivered to my sister. The way my mom was so precious about how this flower must be taken to her daughter—this killed me. There are lots of other reasons too, but my Internet self is not nearly honest enough to dissect them here.

I hardly slept a wink before I got on the plane, and then got up at 6 AM to head to the airport, where the security line was a hundred miles long and I barely got in Southwest's nightmarish B line in time to get an aisle seat directly in front of a screaming baby, for whose parents I should have had sympathy, particularly under the circumstances of our own family’s developments, but didn't because I was so dang tired. Seeing the tears, the girl sitting in the window seat asked with genuine concern if I was OK, and I really believed she was interested in the answer—which I would have told her with details, because I am the type, but it’s so complicated and I’m not even sure what it is.

Something about my mom handling an orchid from my dad’s salad with extreme care because it was for her daughter who is recovering from surgery, and because my mom would have always done anything for her daughters? Something about how I have a tiny new nephew who weighs five pounds less than my cat, and who could be god-knows-how-old before I see him again because we live far apart and that sucks? Something about how I’m going to turn 30 in a month and people in Philadelphia seem to be doing different things at 30 than people in New York or L.A., and how that complicates the value system in my head?

Meanwhile, the guy in the middle seat, who was wearing a ball cap that was brown mesh in the back and fake woven wicker on the brim, was oblivious to my--er--lack of composure. And he had a lot to say to me about his cat Daisy and the dog who’s name I can’t remember, and the crawfish his wife found in a pond and put in their daughter’s aquarium. (The wife, who goes by “All-Biz Liz” because she makes the family's decisions, and has no faith in her husband's decision-making abilities, had trouble carrying, which is why they had their daughter so late in life. So I was told.) This man had no idea that I was not really in the right emotional space to be on board with his idea that the way to make a million quick is to be a child’s birthday party entertainer, like this Safari Lady who came to one of his daughter’s friends’ parties and got $200 for entertaining the kids with goats and snakes for an hour. Can you imagine? $200! Get a couple of those bookings in a day—maybe four in a weekend—and you’re so set! That's the way to do it, boy, I tell you.

I tried to cover my head with the blue Southwest “blanket,” so I could “sleep,” but its mystery fibers were asphyxiating me, so I moved it aside from my face just as a stewardess walked down the aisle. She asked me did I need a hug, and gave me one, and seemed to really, really mean it. She offered me a drink on the house (which I wouldn’t normally have declined, but I had to somehow get myself to the rehearsal dinner in Pasadena without falling asleep at the wheel) and came back instead with some water and a box of tissues. Women have this ability to give hugs and make people feel better. It’s amazing how many men don’t (all due respect to those who do).

And my inability to understand their reasons for that must come from the same Mars/Venus schism that ultimately results in the husband wearing a shirt that says, “I’d rather be fishing but my wife’s nagging would scare away the bass." Or what have you.

Anyway, I was all prepared to come home alone in a taxi (the blue-eyed guy was in Cleveland, and my parents were in Atlantic City on a day trip from Philadelphia, so who would come get me?), and was prepared to miss the noise terribly. But when the wheels touched down and I turned on the ol' Treo, there was a message from AE and oh my god she totally missed me and she's checked my flight status online and knows I'm early and is on her way to pick me up and we'll have lunch and discuss, it's all good, girl, for real.

Thank heaven for friends. For real, girl.

The Half Dome Report

Our group of 10 adventurers is back from Yosemite where we embarked yesterday on our big, much-anticipated Half Dome hike. Just got back now, in fact. I walked in the door, took a fabulously long shower (if only it never had to end), and emerged with about 32 ounces of leave-in conditioner in the ol’ mane—which was desperately worse for the wear. And I’m utterly exhausted, but I thought it would be the most honest and raw time to write about the experience, so here goes.

Some background for those readers who may have come upon this by Googling “hiking Half Dome” or the like: I am 29 and do four to five rigorous weight training and cardio workouts per week in the gym, but I’m not known for being outdoorsy or a hiker. I am fond of clean fingernails and so forth, but I was eager to take on this challenge because LP was such a dutiful and excited leader (this adventure having been on her to-do list forever) and I was grateful for the opportunity to try something I would not likely initiate myself. It goes without saying, but my experience was not identical to the other hikers in my group, and this is only my tale of the intense journey undertaken alongside them.

I’d read so many blogs about the hike before attempting it, and I found that nearly all of the writers focused on the physical experience, with little mention of the emotional one, so that’s much of what I’ll write here (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me in real life). I also hope I’ll get the chronology of trail milestones right, because many of them have already merged together in my memory.

***
We awoke at 5 AM yesterday, and made it to the trail head at about 7:45 AM. (We’d already walked an easy mile from the car to that point.) We took the Mist Trail up the first couple miles, which takes you past Vernal Falls via an intense stretch of granite stairs. Per the trail’s name, it was wet and we were prepared with windbreakers (although it was the beginning of the end for my hair). I was wearing a heart rate monitor, and noticed I was really coming close to my maximum heart rate even in this first stretch (although I’m convinced my heart rate at rest has increased by 10+ BPM in the last few months due to work-related stress, so that was probably not an unrelated factor in the high reading). I’m sure we were all feeling exerted, but I really felt fine and recharged after a short Power Bar rest to enjoy the fantastic view. At this point, DL had a bit of a nose bleed, which may have already been an altitude issue, since we’d come from Los Angeles and the Yosemite Valley floor is at 4,000 feet—and I believe we’d already climbed about 2,000 feet from there. (The blue-eyed guy later told me that it was around here that he saw a woman vomiting from exertion off to the side. When her hat fell off her head, her boyfriend, who was cautiously standing paces away said, “Ah, your hat fell.” Nice guy.) A bit further up, an arcing rainbow spanned the notch view through the granite. Spectacular.

More granite steps upon more and more, and I was managing, but a few of us stopped to the side to wait for another to catch up. We ate some more trail mix and pressed on. Keep in mind that this hike is more than eight miles to the top, and nearly all of it is accomplished by going continually up, up, up.

But there is one sandy stretch of about a mile that is roughly flat, which we encountered next. This is such a nice relief. The Merced River runs next to it, the pine smell pervades, and some wildflowers grow. And it’s perhaps the first time I could really appreciate those things because I wasn’t just focusing on the work involved with ascent. There’s a bathroom here with a composting toilet (if I recall that’s the last stop before the squat-behind-a-tree method becomes the go-to relief). Also around here you get your first glimpse of the dome, but it’s sort of a meaningless gauge of distance because there are so many switchbacks over about five miles still between you and it. But with the extreme zoom on my camera I was able to catch my first sight of the folks climbing up the cables at the very top.

At this point, I’d already drank two liters of water from my Platypus (I’d found it hard to ration since you can’t see how much remains in your backpack), but our group had use of a filter and pumped water at the next stream we encountered, which, it turned out was the last filterable water I remember seeing. According to my Polar heart rate monitor (which I have tested and believe is fully reliable), I’d already burned close to 2,000 calories at this point. And we saw a very pretty little butterfly alight near the spring.

At some point we saw a sign that said 2.0 miles to Half Dome, and I mistakenly allowed myself to feel like we were almost there. (Ha.) (HA!) This was a particularly treacherous stretch, and my heart rate monitor was flashing at me (I never read the manual, of course, but I assume the flashing heart means cease and desist. SE suggested I apply more sunscreen because my chest was getting pink, but I’m like, “Girl, I think that’s just my heart trying to leap out of my chest…” I believe most of us girls, who had clustered together at this point, were in roughly the same condition.) Five of us gals sat down to rest on a fallen tree. Another girl, a stranger, passed us and said, “FYI, there are termites all over that log.” And we all just looked at her and managed a giggle when we realized that no mere termite swarm in the vicinity of our shorts-clad bums was going to deprive us of this little rest.

The blue-eyed guy, whom I hadn’t seen for miles—and ended up being somewhat of a dark horse master of this hike—came bounding down the hill to pick up my pack for me and carry it a few dozen paces, since he’d already been up further and mysteriously had energy to spare. Not too much further up and we came to a clearing where for the first time we could see—everything. Everything! The valley floor thousands of feet below, snow left on other peaks, waterfalls. And to the left and up, Half Dome. There we could clearly see the treacherous cables that guide hikers up the last 1,000 or so nearly vertical feet (I’ve read it’s a 45-degree grade, but it looks like, er, 9 million degrees) to the top—the cables about which I’d read so much and knew I was going to have to overcome tremendous fear to conquer. But what we also saw below the cables were a bunch of folks scurrying up a cable-less stretch of granite in a way that seemed, at least from where we were standing, to defy gravity. Looking at those hikers, I said to LP, “I don’t get it.” And she goes, “I absolutely don’t get it either. How…?”

Pressing on, we got to that stretch next. It’s a series of switchback steps cut into the granite, which I either had not read about, or had not understood the severity of. So up, up, up I’m heading, facing straight into the rock, until I heard the woman right in front of me say to her friend, “I need to go back down right now,” with an urgency that flipped a switch in me. I looked down. And then, in Hitchcockian fashion (perhaps not, but I like the film-school drama of saying so), my view got all distorted and foreshortened and vertiginous. And I started to panic. I wanted to train my brain to keep the fear at bay, but my physical body betrayed me and I began to hyperventilate. I moved off to the side of the path and clutched on to a bit of granite (natch—what else?), and three of the girls in my crew caught up with me and comforted me.

And then I heard a man’s voice from a few paces above say, “You need some of this?” And there was a guy clutching onto a small pine tree with his right arm and holding out a bottle of Jack with his left. Turned out he’d experienced a spell of the same vertigo and his girlfriend had gone ahead without him. He was essentially paralyzed with fear—clutching some flora and a bottle in desperation. (Which I admit is at least a little bit hilarious in retrospect. But I didn't agree that drinking on the side of a mountain could help one get either up or down safely.) Somehow, inspired by the girls’ pep talks, and my determination to press on in spite of the fear, (oh, and a small blue anti-anxiety pill from the bejeweled pill box in my backpack—what, like I was leaving camp without it?), we all headed up the switchbacks and our new friend put away the bottle and followed suit. I was holding onto the rocks instead of walking fully upright—leaning in gave me more confidence. Seeing my condition (and hearing my loud hyperventilation) I got a lot of encouragement from hikers passing us on the way down. “One hundred more yards—you’re there. Right where those two trees are—you’re so there…” someone said. I looked up and saw the blue-eyed guy standing by two trees and I mustered all my strength to hustle up toward him. In this stretch, though, there were no steps at all—just an impossibly steep slab of granite that is more than a little bit sandy.

I scrambled up quickly ahead of the others knowing I had to do it in one fell swoop—like ripping off a band-aid—if I was going to do it at all.

At the top, the girls sat down next to me, and I put my head in the blue-eyed guy’s lap and cried a little bit. I had read in several other blogs that this hike provoked tears in others for a number of reasons—exertion, elation, and convoluted feelings of triumph and insignificance in the face of, “this giant whirling rock [that is our earth] and how we're all going to die,” to quote a j-school buddy and commenter on this blog.

Tracing his fingers around the dirt and rocks, the blue-eyed guy discovered a left-behind ring and gave it to me. It has a silvery pearl in the center and some brown stones beside and, by the looks of it, it was probably owned by a hiker who uses rock crystal deodorant and wears Tevas, but it fits me just fine and I adore it.

We were at 8,000 feet now. Although the cables still remained, I felt I’d made it. I’d overcome the panic on the switchbacks and was content to wait with many other hikers (including our new pal with the Jack Daniels) who also waited for friends to make that last ascent. But the more I sat (along with another member of our own group), the more I battled the decision to go on. (Even trip organizer LP had looked at that daunting path of cables and said, "I'm not even sure that I want to..." but the hesitation passed and she boldly went on.) The line to get to the cables was actually nearly an hour long (Yosemite rush hour!) and I had a lot of time to contemplate whether I should join back up with my crew and head on up the cliff. I was looking for a sign. At some point, it was too late because those members of our group who were going had already headed up, and I was in absolutely no place to tackle that without support—given that I was not sure I was in any place to tackle it with support. Then some disappointment set in because I knew—I know for sure—I had the strength (mostly upper body is required) to make it, but the height held me back. And the times I saw an unsecured hat or water bottle skitter off the side of that cliff and clang down into oblivion—well, I was relieved with my choice.

MJ and I waited near the cables for a while, and then decided to make our way slowly down the switchbacks and meet our crew at the clearing below; that would give us time to tackle the challenge at our own pace. I found this actually far less disconcerting on the way down than on the way up—in fact, hardly disconcerting at all (small blue pill at work, perhaps? I wondered if I should have taken it a little sooner). We met up with the crew after they returned from the summit, and I continued to bite back some disappointment on the way down that I hadn’t attempted the cables. (Although—notwithstanding my confidence in my upper body strength from those “Armed and Dangerous” classes at the gym—I’m not sure how a Jewish girl with a Jewish mom and a piano-drop mindset* could really ever do that part, but I'm sure it happens. In fact, AE was a fine example yesterday! Although her outlook is generally more sunny-side than piano-drop, bless her heart for it.)

It was after 4 PM now and getting late to start down. All the blogs that I read that said going down was not easier on the body than going up, but that was far from true in our experience. We took the John Muir trail—longer in distance but with fewer granite steps—and made it all the way to the bottom in about three and a half hours and my heart rate never went above 134 in those 8.6 or so downhill miles. We were able to filter some more water from the river (I drank three liters on the way up and had been plum out for the way down) and I managed to get in some good heart-to-heart convos (or was it just altitude/exertion/spiritual experience-induced T.M.I.?) with each the blue-eyed guy and dear old friend LP on the way.

We did pass one other hiker who asked us how our day had been and of course we said it was amazing, even through our exhaustion—because indeed it had been so incredible—and she said, “I stopped having fun hours ago.” Hmm, I felt bad for the friend walking with her who must have had to listen to those complaints for about 15 miles. Later, we passed a charming group of deer, and a bit further down, I got a “Go Bears!” from a gal who saw the Cal logo on my visor, which tickled me to no end (natch). And somehow, even though I had visible dirt caked everywhere and a blond afro roughly the size of Manhattan island, some Stanford alum tried to pick me up on the way down the mountain. Of course, I have a boyfriend. And, importantly (with only one notable exception)—Cal girls worth their blue and gold don’t date Stanford boys anyway.

Then, just as dark was setting in around 8 PM, we made it to the bottom.

The blue-eyed boy was driving my car back to camp. I got in the passenger’s seat and, without warning, fell right to sleep mid-sentence. Back at Wawona, I was so exhausted that I flung myself about haphazardly like a pinball in the tent trying to change into my sweats and out of my hiking gear. By the light of the flashlight, I noticed blood caked in the inside of my white sock, but was in no state to investigate. I was like, “I’ll just file this under T for ‘deal with it tomorrow’…”

I dragged myself to the campfire, fairly catatonic from exhaustion—but strangely not at all hungry or thirsty. (I think the adrenaline had suppressed my hunger all day, since I never had felt like eating and had only forced myself. N.B.: According to my trusty heart rate monitor, I burned close to 6,000 calories all told, far more than the 2,500 or so some other bloggers have suggested.) It all gets very blurry here—I thought it was from fatigue, but it likely also had something to do with the high ratio of whiskey to hot chocolate in my mug—but we laughed and carried on and congratulated ourselves on doing this tremendous thing. I was seriously touched when KB produced a piece of my hair from who knows where and told me he’d brought it to the top so my DNA made it up the cables indeed even if I didn’t. That sounds like some kind of yarn, but if it’s really true, I think it’s adorable.

Yada, yada, veggie sausages, s’mores, popcorn, putting stuff on the fire to see if it would explode—details are sketchy. At some point we were back in the tent, but couldn’t sleep right away—and not just because of the ongoing revelry around the fire outside. The blue-eyed boy said to me, “All I see is granite when I close my eyes.” And it was just what I had been thinking too.

This morning I woke up with a headache (dehydration? whiskey hangover? combo?) and sore hip flexors and calves. A very, very cold river runs near the Wawona camp grounds, and after we all took an excruciating dip, I swear I came out feeling perfectly good as new. I said, “I feel just like I had a bit of a tough workout at the gym yesterday—nothing more than that!” [Spoiler alert: that was foreshadowing.]

We packed up camp, took a series of fabulously goofy group photos, said our goodbyes, and headed out. (Sniff…I hate when wonderful things have to end.)

Afterward, the blue-eyed guy and I had a 300-mile drive home, and we stopped periodically—once for gas, once to get lost in a very lousy part of Fresno, once for pea soup at a place shaped like a big windmill, and once for coffee and Half Dome postcards. And each time I got out of the car my legs betrayed me and threatned to collapse under me like foldable tent poles and it was like learning to walk from scratch. The blue-eyed guy said, “Aw. You’re just like a little fawn.” A totally fair comparison (but he was limping too).

And so, over the Grapevine and through the woods, I just hours ago made it back home to good ol’ Westwood and my clothes-eating cat. Scanning the weekend mail, I pulled out an envelope containing my renewed passport. How’s that for well-timed poetry? One massive hike tackled in an ineffably beautiful national park, zillions of new adventures to go.

*From Aimee Bender's essay "House of Love and Bragging" in The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt:

"Here is the scene. Something good just happened. I am happy about it. Maybe it was a good writing day, or I am in a good relationship, or I have helped someone, or I feel a sense of self in a true, deep way. I am walking to the market, to buy myself a peach and fizzy water. It's a beautiful blue day. Or it's not, but my mood is so high that it doesn't matter. I myself am a beautful blue day.

Little do I know that the piano shipment in the freight airplane high above me has had a mishap. The baby grand piano, which was right at the bottom of the aircraft, has come loose. Someone didn't lock that airplane door. He was drunk. He was in a bad mood. The piano wasn't tied properly. It has been hanging there, by three legs—by two legs—by one leg and now it has tumbled out of the airplane. I am still walking to the store. Whistle, whistle. I do a little skip.

Miles above me, whirring through the air, is this giant black paino, gaining speed as it goes. Free-falling. I am thinking about the good thing that has happened today, thinking about it. How nice I feel. How glad I am today. You'd think I would look up at the whirring sound, and maybe cars honk at me to look up, but I am oblivious, content, and proud. I step right into the path, and the piano flattens me into a pancake.

Better keep my eyes up. Better be vigilant, particularly on those good days. Any good day not marked by worry and vigilance will be met with tragedy. It exhausts me even to write it.

Secular me? Ha."

Thanks For the Memories, Coachella 2007!

Sis: where exactly were you guys staying?
me: we stayed at the quality inn in indio
in a king smoking room with a pullout sofa bed
very glamorous
Sis: whoa, so it smelled like smoking and air conditioner and stuff?
me: yeah
it was kinda ghett
or "bust out" as [my Brooklyn-by-way-of-Youngstown-Ohio friend] would say
but everything was crazy sold out
Sis: "bust out" means ghet?
me: even our room was $224/night with our AAA discount!
and it was kind of a coup to even get it
yeah
bust out is good, right? i'm trying to implement
Sis: wait: 2 things
me: k
shoot
Sis: 1) 224 a night????
even with the three As?
me: yes. for a smoking room at the quality inn with one bed and a AAA discount. and a small bug problem.
Sis: because of coachella, right? i mean, not normally
me: because all the cool kids with bangs flock to town and grab the rooms
right
totally because of coachella
Sis: ok also, you're trying to implement bust out - is bust out an adjective? That's so bust out?
me: yes
like: "our room at the quality inn was bust out, but at least it was close to the concerts."
or for another example:
it was so hot that [the Mexican architect] was fanning herself with her dirty-ass flip-flop. that was hella bust out
Sis: ok
me: or we saw a girl on sunday night walking out of the venue with a plastic bag tied to one foot because she apparently had lost a shoe. that was mad bust out
yeah
Sis: ok whatev you say but it's not totally intuitive

Girl Scouts' Motto: Be Prepared

Last night, when I was out with the girls on Pico for some wine, I realized, shoot, I forgot to eat dinner. And all they have at that wine bar to eat are cheese plates and chocolate plates, and you know I can't mess with those because it's not in the Brand New Booty plan. So I go, "It's OK, I have a granola bar in my purse." And the girl with the bangs goes, "Dang, Dubin always has a bar in her purse."

True! I always have a bar in my purse, along with an array of other things I use and don't use. Turns out, last night this included not one, but three pairs of sunglasses (Versace, Marc Jacobs, and Paul Smith, from Filene's Basement, Nordstrom Rack, and Loehmann's, respectively--bien sur. Never mind that it was dark outside.); boat tickets from last weekend's mini-break; one granola bar, one protein bar, and one fiber bar; a Betsey Johnson wallet the size of Manhattan island that contains photos from my 11th grade semi-formal dance and the likes of a half-stamped Tasti-D-Lite buy-10-get-one-free card only good at the Park Avenue location; antibacterial spray in a pen-shaped container; a metal tin of hand lotion; two cell phones (my personal Treo, and my work phone); the Modern Jewish Girls' Guide to Guilt book that I've only had time to read like 50 pages of, but I've nonetheless toted miles around the state of California in case I find myself waiting in some kind of waiting room; a pill box containing mostly pills I would never take because I cannot identify them; etcetera.

Having a purse like this is my gift to you, because I am very likely to have something you need before you even know you need it. It's kind of heavy, but, you know, you're welcome.

Anyway, TGIF, whew.


[Unrelated: Katherine McPhee's "Open Toes" just came on my "Aaliyah Radio" on Pandora. Why is this song so genius?

I could wear them all day
And listen to the click-clack
Shoes like this make me hate flats
Swipe that card--I'm good
Another pair in leather and wood
I'm a sucker for a name-brand
Skip the rack and stick to the game plan
Hey let's go!
If they're not too high, too low
I'll take them home in purple, red, or gold
'Cause I know them boys
They like those open toes...]

March it Out, Ladies.

Oh dear, I can't sleep. I hope I'm not having a resurgence of the Great Insomnia Bout of 2006. Lots on my mind. Work, mainly. It's award season mania. And the usual other stuff. But it was 80-something in L.A. today and it was gorgeous and I wore tiny shorts and ate Pinkberry. That's me in my element.

Part of the problem with my insomnia these days is that I better get to sleep around midnight, because I almost always wake up at 7:something without an alarm and I just won't get enough sleep if I stay up past Colbert. And of course, because I'm freakishly into clean living these days, I like to be rested and chipper and in the gym early. I'm kind of obsessed with my gym. And I have my special place in the room I like to set up my step and my weights and my mat--second to the left in the front row. There are some girls I don't like in my body sculpting classes, mainly for reasons relating to the stories I've made up about their lives and then forgot weren't necessarily true. The tiny 4-foot-10 miss thing bothers me because I've seen her drive a giant SUV she can't possibly need, and she always talks about her kids in a snotty way that makes me think they'll grow up feeling unreasonably entitled, and also drive giant SUVs, and probably be mean to my kids at Brentwood school or something. Then there's the gal who's probably six months pregnant by now, which bothers me because, hello, you're pregnant, eat ice cream or something, don't come in here showing up the rest of us with your lithe-except-for-your-belly body smooth under Lululemon gear. OK, so that's the mean stuff.

There are also the people I really like for the same, possibly fictional reasons. Like the one Brazilian girl with the outrageous gravity-defying butt who doesn't annoy me even though she wears matchy-matchy workout gear with asymmetrical straps. And there's the gal I didn't used to like at all because I could never understand why she couldn't at least smile at me when I saw her every day in there, until she saw my magazine's logo on some cheesy swag tote bag I was carrying and then she came up to me and introduced herself and said she loves what I write, which was extra great since we've only been publishing in L.A. for less than a year now and I was just excited we have name recognition already, so of course I like her now, natch.

I have a new favorite, too. This woman is a grandmother. She is possibly in her mid-sixties, with pretty dark curly hair, and the brightest eyes and smile. She always says hello and tells me about her weekend, and one time told me about how she used to work out at Jane Fonda's studio in the '70s or whenever it was, and she used to wear the thong leotard over tights at that time. (I'll bet she was smokin' in neon green and purple, no joke.) And she told me recently how she'd done her hair for her Hamilton High School prom, and it sounded really cute. She's sincere and she seems utterly self actualized--and she keeps up with me step-touch for step-touch for just-eight-more-ladies-you-can-do-it!

Where my Girls At

I love covering beauty events and product launches because undoubtedly there is always a very chic woman talking about natural ingredients and advanced science in a sexy and sweet accent, usually French, sometimes Nordic. (One time I went to a launch for a new line of French cosmetics on the penthouse terrace of the apartment belonging to the brand's impossibly chic red-lipped in-house publicist, with views overlooking Fifth Avenue and Broadway, right across from the Flatiron. It was outrageous. Then I walked home to my tiny unchic, unfit-to-bring-over-style-arbiters apartment with bars on the windows and the cat's litter box next to the sofa, because there's no place else you can put it when all you've got is 200 square feet.)

I also love these events (because you walk away drunk, with armloads of free stuff and) because they are always filled with women, since the beauty editor crowd tends to be exclusively female, with, like one flaming queen with a pinky ring at the next table for good measure. And I always find this to be a very inspiring environment. All these beautiful ladies, all career women, with glamorous lives, generally supporting and not being mean to one another, as I think is the common perception of women en masse.

Today I went to a cosmetic launch in a sparkling hotel penthouse, with delicious coffee and fresh-squeezed juices, where I listened to a lovely Nordic woman talk about rare berry extracts. Then I collected my Marimekko swag bag and headed to another luncheon in the same hotel, where 650 women (and five queens) bidded on handbags in an auction benefiting lupus research. I sat next to a soap opera actress originally from Texas (the daughter of a minister), whose life was nothing like my own. And I found our conversation to be engaging and genuine, and I learned something. Because you can learn something from everyone. ("Even a damned fool," as my grandfather used to say, but that wouldn't apply here.) And it's rather pleasant when you exchange thoughts on life with other smart gals in a room full of smart gals just doing their thing, just like you're doing your thing.

It's the Thought That Counts

The other day my impossibly sexy, totally non-hippy vegan friend was talking about a nightmarish first date she'd had last week in which she received from the man a single long-stemmed red rose wrapped in cellophane, which reeked (if not literally) of beef jerky and lottery tickets from the check-out line at 7-11. Thank heaven he'd picked her up in his car, so she could safely leave the rose there on the seat instead of toting it mortifyingly around Oakland. I was very sympathetic to her horror. Like, hello, don't do that! Don't bring me a rose on the first date! And for the love of god, if you must, don't get it at Duane Reade or Wawa!

Another girlfriend had a similar freakout in college when a boy brought her a bouquet on her second date. She told him he was presumptuous and never saw him again. And then a year later, the man who would eventually become her husband and the father of the baby in her belly these days, sent to our co-op apartment in Berkeley a dozen cheesy red roses the day before he picked her up for their first date after they'd met (wait for it) at a rave. And she loved those roses and she was smitten.

I would have thought it is not very advisable to make a girl a CD on a first date because, I mean, that should be creepy or something. But you know, if you get a CD on a first date from a man who makes your stomach do that thing, it doesn't feel creepy at all. And you want to listen to it first thing in the morning when you get up too early because you couldn't sleep very well because you had a really, really great time.

Oh my God! The Most Amazing! Sensational! Traumatic! Heart Rending! Exciting! Thrilling! Finish in the History of College Football!

That's the way announcer Joe Starkey called the end of the 1982 Cal vs. Stanford Big Game, when Cal used an unreasonable number of questionable laterals and ran back the kick with no time on the clock--when the Stanford band was already on the field in premature celebration of victory--finally knocking out the tuba player in the endzone to win the game.

"The Bears have won! The Bears have won! The Bears have won! Oh my god! The most amazing, sensational, traumatic, heart rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football! California has won...the Big Game...over Stanford. Oh excuse me for my [hoarse] voice, but I have never, never seen anything like it in the history...if I have ever seen any game in my life! The Bears have won it!"

It's an oh-the-humanity broadcast moment. And I swear it saturates me with emotion and makes me cry every time I hear it (which will be more often now that some commercial that runs during NFL games has appropriated that clip).

I want to make a point about college football here. There's nothing like it. Particularly when you go to a school like Berkeley, which, even when it sucks at football (say, during all of the years when I was a student and had season tickets), it's still number one at man-to-man combat. When you can't count on a victory, you can at least count on a good old-fashioned, rush-the-field riot, with felt from the opposing team's ridiculous mascot flying through the air, alongside aloft ballcaps and cascades of smuggled-in beer. A mad we-love-this-place frenzy.

And Cal's Memorial Stadium is such an amazing place to be, all snuggled in the hills, with its 75,000 fans, its view of the campanile, and the canon on the hill. And there's that Berkeley-in-the-fall weather that will always, always remind me of taking a walk with a certain fiery Mexican architect (then an architecture student) and an optimistic, pregnant lawyer (then a psychology and political science student, not in the least pregnant at the time, but definitely as optimistic)--the same girls who accused me of having a you-get-the-gist attitude, and who were right about that--down College Avuene, crunching leaves underfoot, to pick out our Halloween costumes from the crowded racks of second-hand stores. And of the thrill of college football season. And of being young and of being hopeful and of being happy.

Now that college football season is back, it brings with it reminders of that optimism. Reminders of youth and happiness and hope. Hope that even an outcome as absurd as the 1982 Big Game--as unimaginably improbable as it is--could actually happen. And that the most amazing! sensational! exciting! thrilling! victory could be yours if you believe, and if you never, ever give up.

Down Dog, Interrupted

I’m in yoga this morning, just enjoying a gentle readjustment in the child’s pose, when the fire alarm goes off, transforming the room from the quiet sanctuary of self love and relaxation that I’d really, really needed today into a manic disco of flashing white lights and sirens and some dude saying muffled things over the P.A. system. It really is a classic summation of the experience of being me: The girl tries to relax, but the circumstances of her life make other plans.

And that’s OK though. I know I suck at yoga, because (I am strong but not terribly flexible and because) my mind does not like to shut off. The business of focusing the breath and letting the mind be clear is not my strong suit. Still, I enjoy yoga whenever I manage to get there because I love the idea that I’m doing something pure and purely for me, and my motives for that period of time are totally solid and uncorrupted and there’s no hip-hop with mean lyrics playing in the room (I love that stuff in spite of myself, so it’s usually on the speakers wherever I am) and I’m not investigating people I shouldn’t on Friendster or watching crime scene video on Court TV’s Forensic Files. It really promotes in me a sense of love—mostly love for self, but more than that too.

When I lived on East 10th, there was a yoga studio on the block. (until it closed, because who could afford a space on that block anyway? Certainly I couldn’t afford my own apartment.) And in that studio there was a teacher who always encouraged us to silently dedicate our practice for that day to someone in our lives whom we loved and was struggling and was therefore in need of good thoughts and positive energy. A dear old friend and a neighbor on that block—a very small and brilliant Korean girl with a nervous streak to rival any Jew I’ve met including myself—also used to go to that class. One day, she’d gone in the morning and I’d gone at lunchtime, and over dinner she’d said, “Girl, I dedicated my practice to you today.” And I’d said, “Oh girl, I dedicated my practice to you!” And it made me feel so warm and so loved and so grateful for my friends that the body movement part of the class was almost irrelevant.

Among the reasons I’d so needed the relaxation today: Last week my mom discovered my blog. And my guess is that her response was not unlike many mothers who discover their children’s blogs: She was “scandalized” and found my “values” questionable and actually said that I was not likely to ever meet “Mr. Right” with my objectionable values all up on the Internet. I hope she is not right about the last bit, but I know she is not right about the first bit. I do have good and honest values, and in fact I think they are as traditional as my mom’s. This is mostly about my struggle to make heads or tails of the men I’ve met along the pursuit of real love and respect and mutual admiration and attraction. And I only wish in my discussions I could be as honest as Megan or Capella.

My mom—who was nearly 30 before she was married (an old maid in her generation) and a PhD in biology, and who is a very outspoken woman in spite of her diminutive size (seriously, look out)—always taught her daughters that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and to be strong, and to believe we could do whatever we wanted to do. So I will try to understand her visceral reaction to seeing her daughter reduce her own life to simple quips about boys and shoes (this is not the case, but this is only what she saw in her shock). But I think I will give this blogging business a little more of a go before I decide that what I’ve actually done is reduce my life to a series of punch lines about boys and shoes.

Another reason I was in need of some relaxation this morning: Turns out the delightfully easygoing Midwestern man who recently became my ex-boyfriend did have a fab time at his high school reunion. (Did I mention he was captain of his soccer team and was his high school's 6-foot-4 prom king with all-American good looks, green eyes, and freckles? He thinks he mostly won because he split the black vote. But if I’d have had a vote, I bet I would have picked him too.) A fab time that culminated with him making out with a fellow alum in a McDonald’s parking lot, followed by breakfast at a diner across the street. This bit of news actually struck me as almost retro-hot, and didn’t upset me too much. (This is probably because the girl lives in Detroit and is not likely to fly to L.A. to make out with him in local McDonald’s parking lots in the future.)

But I do still have a fondness for that man. And I respect the things about him that probably won him his prom king reign: his easily accessible wit, unambiguous smile, integrity, interest and aptitude in sports on TV and in the park, unwillingness to even pretend he was listening to my home decorating tales, sensitivity almost exclusively on the inside (except for an inexplicable favoritism for romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs), and all-around totally-from-Mars dudeness. Apparently this particular set of qualities does not a good long-term match for me make. I spent a lot of time preparing turkey sandwiches (“sandos,” as we called them, with extra avocado, which he loved and called “green gold”) for dinner (for him—I'm a vegetarian) in front of World Cup soccer or a movie on TV—which I enjoyed very much. But maybe my destiny is to do less of that and more of something else. (Although I’m not sure about this, because I watch King of the Hill with an envy for Hank Hill that is deeply unreasonable.)

After returning from an awesome summer-long Indiana Jones-like dig in Turkey, my tiny, brilliant, neurotic Korean girlfriend broke up with her long-term, dude-like boyfriend (whose primary ambition included a big-screen plasma TV for Eagles football) on the grounds of a similar sort of incompatibility. (Last Valentine’s Day, she felt like going to Medieval Times in the Bronx or wherever it was, just because she thought it would be a fun adventure. He wanted to put on a button-down shirt and go for dinner and a show in the city; this was more like his kind of adventure.) And we both think the changes in our love lives are sound and smart. But there is something very missable about a comfortable, settled life with a man like that.

Anyway, after standing around outside the Equinox gym in Westwood for a while (I was just glad I wasn’t the guy in the robe whose massage had been interrupted by the fire alarm), we resumed our yoga practice and eventually finished with a series of three cross-legged ohms and the instructor gave us each a little forehead massage using a dab of rose water. And it seems to me that this is what it’s all about: We encounter lots of noise, but if we rededicate ourselves, we always return to something sweet and soft and fulfilling. Or something like that.

Mean Girls

Last night I read a handful of pages from a blog so horrible it burned itself right into my eyeballs. This is the blog of a woman who thinks she’s better than all the women in the world—based on what she describes as her undeniably hot physical appearance, her level of education (four years of college), strong libido, financial stability (six months worth of savings), and interest in guns, gambling, and science fiction—and also better than the vast majority of the men, which makes it woefully hard for the poor girl to date, she says. “Quality dates quality,” she says, so she offers as a dating tip that most of the men who try to court her would be better off approaching fat, desperate, single mothers in need of U.S. citizenship—women more on their own level, she says.

This attitude would be quite bad enough if she didn’t also include many references to things that disprove her personal theories of greatness. I give as evidence this picture—which she self-selected and supplied as evidence of hotness—cropped tight on her chunky, unstylish, officey, suitable-for-wear-with-nude-pantyhose shoes. (I’m avoiding linking to the blog itself, because the last thing this miserable hussy needs is more support—and it seems she somehow makes her living through hits from her blog.)

Anyway, the point is, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize (contrary to my belief, say, in college) that I’m not better than anyone else. Matter of fact, no one is better than anybody else. Certainly not celebrities. (Simon Doonan says in Wacky Chicks: “We’ve done something silly…In the 1980s, for example, a collective screechy hysteria infected popular culture, and everybody rashly decided that movie actors were really, really, really important…We chose show biz folk. And then we sat there like puddings and inhaled all this drivel about the supposedly squintingly brilliant glam lives of these celebs, and we actually started to believe the hype.”) Certainly not homegirl with the blog. Certainly not rich people, or very attractive people, or even people who live on the coasts. (Although of this it has been admittedly hard to disavow myself.)

So the point is, I hope I never write anything here or anywhere that comes off as self important in the way that the lady miss Chunky Shoes writes hers. (Add this to the existing set of new blog anxieties.) This girl just wants a life filled with good words, a good man, family and friends, her lamentably undisciplined cat Cali, Raiders football, some cute home wares from Anthropologie, very tall shoes, Court TV, and so forth. So please, forgive me in advance, if it reads any other way.

Out to B.R.U.N.C.H.

News flash! Reading books is really awesome! And rewarding! My dark secret is that I don't read much, except for magazines, and even then, my guilt forces me to reveal, my favorite magazines--apart from the fab and inimitable New York--are more like catalogues (Lucky, Domino). I chalk this up to undiagnosed A.D.D. (and thank heaven I was never diagnosed because I didn't need one more complex), but it is what it is.*

Anyhow, yesterday, feeling very low, finally acknowledging the end of the good-but-not-good-enough relationship with the good and decent man who I liked very much but not enough, and allowing myself unhealthy explorations of people's MySpace pages totally unchecked for hours (this is one danger of working at home), I grabbed an unread book from my bookcase and took it outside by the pool. This book is Simon Doonan's Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women and it turned around my world view in 10 pages or less. This is Doonan's tribute to women who are out to lunch--or out to B.R.U.N.C.H. as it were, the belligerent, resilient, uninhibited, naughty, creative, and hilarious women of the world. These are women who have maintained their cool, risky individuality over the years of their lives and thrived precisely because of it, and not in spite of it. These are women unconcerned with prefab timelines for women's lives. This makes me feel good. And it’s all written in brilliant Doonanisms like "Feeling just a tad Oprahish..."

My goal is B.R.U.N.C.H. Well, first brunch, and then B.R.U.N.C.H. And not just on the weekends either.

*This really has been my secret shame. But I’m experimenting with blog honesty (blonesty?) and it still feels creepy.