The One... The Only... The Vieve

Lessons learned (or simply forgotten and recently remembered)

• I am not too old to couch-surf through 3 cities in 3 days.
• Sometimes drunk dialing is not disastrous.
• Leaving the charger for your 5.5-year-old cell phone in Bay Ridge is a sign that you should just buy a new damn phone.
• I heart New York.
• Pittsburgh is cold.
• I hate when people beat my ass at games.
• Happy news makes me cry sometimes (especially at 2 AM after 2 shots of whiskey).
• Relaxation and fun with people you love and would trust with your life is the best medicine.

Merry merry

Some things I am thankful for this Christmas:

• Stilton cheese
• Good cheer
• Wood fires and wool socks
• Spending time with family
• Stuffing my face for a few days (gratis, no less)
• Reconnecting with old friends (thanks, Sean)
• Making new friends
• Learning to let go of the bad that is past and looking forward to the good that is to come

This year was hard. Painful, and full of too many changes. But I'm looking forward to 2006, I really am, and that's a small miracle. Thank you, everyone who has helped me get to this point. I am so grateful.

Over the river and through the woods (literally)

The wood stove is blazing, my mom is still wrapping presents (looks like she went overboard this year, again, some more), and I'm wearing my Santa hat that emits spuffy clouds of glitter from the "Vieve" spelled out on the front. I put all my presents under the tree, I'm drinking a glass of wine, and soon I'll gorge myself on cheese and shrimp and fish chowder, and then we'll watch Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, and I'll go to bed feeling unbelievably full and bloated and resolute that I won't eat as much tomorrow, but of course I will. And tomorrow I will open presents and eat more food and take a walk and take some naps and maybe watch A Christmas Story and read a book.

Things are so different this year, but also very much the same. And that's comforting.

Searching

Last night I went out to dinner and, after we were finished eating, I asked my dinner companion if he liked what he had ordered. As you do. He said it was OK, but that it's funny, because he doesn't really like portobello mushrooms all that much, but he had ordered the sandwich because one time he had had a really really delicious portobello mushroom sandwich, the best ever, and he keeps hoping he'll find another one as good as that one. "There's a metaphor in there somewhere," he said, "but I'm not quite sure what it is."

It made me think of my first really fantastic kiss. "Larry Straights" (not his real name) kissed me under the cherry tree in front of the art building at school when I was 17. It made my knees weak and my lips tingle and it was perfect. Erotic but sweet, soft but firm, inistent but not overbearing. We kissed until my lips hurt, and it was glorious, and I still remember how it felt. And I realized that I've been holding that kiss up as the ideal, the touchstone against which all other kisses are measured. Not that I haven't really enjoyed kissing other people, or that the whole time I'm kissing someone I'm thinking about that other kiss. But it's the ideal I hold in some part of my mind. And I think I've been searching for it in some small way, and I haven't found it, and I don't know that I ever will. And that's a little sad, but I guess perfect kisses and perfect portobello mushroom sandwiches are fleeting, and not the holy grail of happiness.

My head is fuzzier than my sweater

I didn't sleep very well last night, which happens a lot, but last night was worse than it has been in a while. I have a headache, and my brain is all fuzzy, and I have a ton of work to do before I leave for my whirlwind holiday tour.

I wish I could focus, but I can't at the moment. I wish I could climb into my hammock and take a nap. I wish I could just go home and try again tomorrow. Instead, I will continue to gaze, glazed-over.

Mmmph mmmph

I've discovered the best part of my new job: holiday treats from freelance packagers. Today, my favorite packager sent a huge tin full of chocolate-covered everything:

• Chocolate-covered pretzels
• White chocolate-covered pretzels
• Chocolate and caramel-covered popcorn
• White chocolate and caramel-covered popcorn
• Chocolate-covered chocolate
• White chocolate-covered chocolate
• Chocolate-covered white chocolate
• White chocolate-covered white chocolate
• And so on

We also had a cookie swap at work today, so now I have a tub full of cookies, not a one with raisins in it, which is as it should be. I made Peanut Blossoms, which are peanut butter cookies topped with Hershey's Kisses. But I just call them Nipple Cookies.

Everything is illuminated

On Saturday night I went on the Somerville Illuminations Tour, an annual event sponsored by the Somerville Arts Council that features some of the most over-the-top decorated houses in the city. I've been meaning to go for the past couple of years, but I kept missing it. But this year I planned ahead. It was spectacular, shiny and sparkly and fun, and also educational. (Did you know that marshmallow fluff was invented in Somerville? Now you do.)

Trolley tours are fraught with peril.

Aaah! Frosty's trapped!

Big Santa.

REAL Santa.

Trolleying through Union Square.

I think this was on Springfield St.

And another on Springfield? I can't remember. I think I had had a few absent seizures at this point.

Crowded house.

Ho. ho. ho.

A week before Christmas, and I still haven't done any shopping. Usually I'm a little more organized than this, but the past month has been sluggish and full of inertia, which doesn't make it very easy to face the frenzied shopping masses.

Maybe I'll just go to Target and buy everyone Chia Pets. Who wouldn't love one of those?

At least the White Witch was rad

Despite my fears of a total trainwreck, I went to see the Narnia movie last night. I had a feeling it wouldn't translate well to film, and it certainly didn't, but I had to see for myself.

The book is heroic and magical. It depicts the triumph of good over evil with inspiring grandeur, and at the same time conveys the cozy smallness and simplicity of childhood. The film, on the other hand, is just plain goofy. (And apparently C.S. Lewis would agree.) Melodramatic, overblown. People laughed a lot in the wrong places, and I understand that, but I couldn't join in. I felt protective of it, this piece of my childhood splashed on the screen, and it made me a little sad.

And also, when a little girl in a story befriends a kindly faun, it is sweet and magical. When a little girl in a movie does this, befriending and being fairly intimate with what is basically a half-naked man-beast, it's just kind of creepy.

The PO can suck it

So, what I want to know is why the post office doesn't forward important mail (say, credit card bills, my Atlantic Monthly magazine, big fat checks from anonymous patrons, etc.), and yet they manage to forward the crap mail that I definitely don't want (that stupid AAA magazine, a Christmas card addressed to me and my ex-boyfriend, etc.).

It's indicative of how fucked up and perverse the universe is, and it makes me want to beat my head against the wall until both have very large dents in them.

Feeelings...nothing more than feeeelings...

I have a hard time telling people how I feel. I guess that's not uncommon. A lot of people aren't very comfortable with their emotions, particularly negative ones. They can be scary and unpleasant, and communicating them can make you so vulnerable. I don't like feeling vulnerable. People might not see it, but I'm soft and squishy, like an overripe pear, and I need armor to keep my thin skin intact, to keep my guts from spilling all over the floor.

Lately I've been feeling kind of angry. At people, at circumstances...at everything and everyone, to be completely honest. And I feel like I shouldn't be angry, because nice people aren't angry, particularly when it's about something fairly petty. I mean, genocide, OK, that's something to be angry about. Not returning my phone calls? Eh, I probably shouldn't be angry about that. Annoyed, maybe, but not angry. But I am, and that's that, and I need to figure out what to do with that feeling.

But that's a problem. Because bad, scary things happen when you express anger. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the blow-up pool in the yard one summer (I was 3? 4?) while my father was working on the house. I guess the nail he was hammering wasn't complying, because he started swearing and yelling (my father was famous for his violent acts toward inanimate objects, particlarly the toaster oven, which ended up in the trash one day after he smashed it beyond repair). Then he reached the hammer back to give the nail a mighty whack, and instead of hitting the nail, the claw part of the hammer caught the back of his head, and all of a sudden he was yelling about the gaping gash in his scalp instead of the stupid fucking nail.

Lesson learned? When you get angry, you end up in the emergency room with 10 stitches and half your hair shaved off, and you're bloody well lucky you didn't fall off the ladder and smash your skull in.

I mean, I don't literally think that--I'm not a simpleton--but a gut reaction related to that memory (and probably lots of other, less dramatic experiences) is still there, and it's hard to overcome. Better to keep things contained and just swallow it. Because if you tell someone, "Hey, I'm really pissed off you did X, Y, and Z" or "Hey, you know, I really like you and I'd like to see you more often, and I'm feeling pretty lonely and ignored," you open yourself up to...I don't even know what. Something unpredictable. Something potentially bad. Ridicule. Embarassment. Rejection. Arguments that spiral out of control. Shame. Castigation. And why invite that? Why risk it?

Well, I know I need to risk it. Because pressure cookers need to release that pressure or they explode, and that's a whole lot messier than any number of stupid stitches in your head.

A plea for decent bagels

Dear bagel bakers of America:

Please come to Boston. We need you. We need someone to supplant the tasteless, bready Dunkin' Donuts junk and overpriced hockey pucks at Brueggers. I hear that Kupel's and Rosenfeld's have good bagels, but that's Brookline and Newton, and they're both a pain in the ass to get to, and I think they're both closed on Saturdays.

When bagels are good, they are so so good. When they're bad, it's depressing. And I'm depressed enough as it is. So please, if you bake good bagels, please move to Boston (or, even better, Cambridge or Somerville) and set up shop here. I would come and visit you all the time, promise.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Warm regards, Vieve

Sometimes I don't know why I even bother to go home

I just got into work, and I have this funny feeling that I was sitting in my office, in this very chair, not too long ago. Like, oh, 12 hours ago...but that can't be right, can it? Surely I wasn't here after 9 PM last night.

Wait, no, that's right. It's all coming back to me now. In fact, in the past 24 hours I've been at work more than I've been away from it. Staring at this computer screen, power walking between my office and the printer room, flipping through page after page of my latest 4-color fussy cranky overly designed baby. Clickety-click-click, tappety-type-type, rush-rush-rush.

I need a motherfucking vacation.