Things I am loving right now

* The new show Men of a Certain Age on TNT. I am especially loving Ray Romano, in a vaguely dirty way I can't quite put my finger on. I'm not alone in this--I went to the very awesome Television Without Pity the other day and there's all kinds of Ray love. "I am actually finding RR to be kinda attractive," said one person. "Does anyone else find that Ray Romano looks kind of sexy?" said another. This might be a good time to point out that his character is a total schlub whose wife left him because of his gambling addiction, which basically proves every social theory ever about how women generally think a man who can be saved/fixed/rescued is about the hottest thing since Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise.

* The latest Alicia Keys song Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart, more specifically the 1:45-1:55 mark. Nobody loves a good blend of pretty and angsty more than yours truly.

* Mindy Kaling, the girl who writes for The Office and plays Kelly Kapoor on the show. Her Twitter page is so funny/true, and she just wrote this great essay for the New York Times about her imaginary husband and kids. Which transitions nicely to ...

* The incredibly hot guy I saw at the gym. He was tall and cute and he actually brought a magazine to read while he worked out, like a real magazine (GQ). Guys never read when they work out! They watch, like, Cops or SportsCenter or The Simpsons, or themselves in the mirror. He must be smart, I thought to myself, and that was all the permission I needed to stand behind him a few more seconds than is socially appropriate to ogle his sweet little booty. (And then I might have possibly snapped out of my daze, walked into a wall and spilled half of my water bottle on the floor ... but let's talk more about that sweet tuchus!)

* My complete domination in the kitchen lately. (We're counting the holiday cookies and definitely NOT counting the way overcooked and completely inedible salmon from the other night. I am the only person on the planet who cannot make a grown-up dinner, I swear.)

* That blanket I made for my mom for Christmas. I hate it and love it at the same time. Here were the two problems at work here: I had no idea what the hell I was doing (thank you, Google, for holding my hand and whispering sweet words of encouragement) and I have this issue with details. As in, I obsess over them a little/a lot (and thank YOU, seam ripper!). But after one marathon eight-hour session to finish the thing, interrupted only by trips to the bathroom and copious chocolate-covered pretzels, we have a blanket.



Can I point out one more thing here? The fact that this is in one piece is all the more impressive considering it was done by a girl whose very worst grade of her academic career (a big fat D) came in eighth-grade Sewing class. (Although I somewhat beg to differ on the D. One of my projects was a telephone pillow, and while the numbers are long gone, I still own that telephone pillow and it's all still mostly in one piece. Take that, Mrs. Eighth-Grade Sewing Teacher!)

Photographic evidence:



* The little string of white lights over my living room window. I did make a holiday decorating concession or two, and that is one of them. They make everything look festive and pretty at night, and they go splendidly with the Christmas tree-scented candle.

* All of you. I hope you're having a great week. Have a wonderful holiday!

Evolution

Signs I have evolved as a human being:

* I decided to dust off the sewing machine I got in the height of my Project Runway fixation and make a little throw quilt for my mom for Christmas. Despite the fact that I very nearly broke into hives in the fabric store at the stress and pressure of it all, I managed to pick out the material and the thread all by myself, and I felt like a little mini-Martha Stewart just holding the bag as I walked out of the store.

* I am starting to realize that life is not all about me, in one of the very best ways--as in, if someone (or a group of someones) does not want to be friends with me, it does not mean there's anything wrong with me. (As I like to tell my friend Allee, you have to get to KNOW me first to decide you don't like me ... ha, I'm hilarious.) But really, that is my favorite part about getting older, not caring about stupid things quite so much.

* I have let a smidge of my vanity go and occasionally wear glasses out in public on my days off.

* Part II: I actually bought a winter coat based solely on the criterion that it is warm as opposed to cute and semi/not really warm.

Signs I have definitely not evolved as a human being:

* In the process of starting the quilt (and by "start," I mean, cut out a few squares) I might have set a new world record for the number of times one person has managed to say "shit" in a very short period of time. I also have announced that I am a "renaissance woman" at least a dozen times to my largely indifferent coworkers, which I think somewhat nullifies the point. ("That's nice," said one. "Will you make one for my cat?")

* I fail to recognize the connection between working out (sort of) with no visible effect and the consumption of lots of yummy holiday chocolates, cheeses and caramel corn.

* I still think life should be like a Julia Roberts movie. Or The Holiday. Both of which were on TBS yesterday. (Great movie weekend, TBS. I wholeheartedly approve!)

* I am seriously wondering if lighting a Christmas tree-scented candle (Fresh Balsam from Bath and Body Works, sooo good) in one room and a cookie-scented candle in another room is a good enough substitute for holiday decorating and baking.

* I totally forgot to transfer money from one account to another. I'm at the coffee shop for a little bit, but then I have to run a million and one errands (that require money in the one account) and I don't want to go home first, otherwise I'll never leave because I have the attention span of a guinea pig. So I logged into my bank account a couple of minutes ago but, once I'd entered my pin and security question, I totally started to freak out about some hacker getting into my account, so I logged out and did the transfer over the phone. I am now completely obsessing about becoming Sandra Bullock in The Net, which all could have been avoided if I'd transferred it at home when I first thought about it. Please tell me I'm not going to get my identity stolen for being stupid and logging into my bank account in a public place. I logged RIGHT out, no one was looking over my shoulder and I promise I'll never do it again. I swear. Please, please, please???

(Clearly, I still have a little way to go.)

The answers to life's biggest questions

So ... You’ve Got Mail is on. Definitely, Maybe was on earlier today, and Love Actually was on a couple of days ago. The only thing missing is a Julia Roberts movie, preferably My Best Friend’s Wedding or The Runaway Bride. All of this quality Thanksgiving week programming has me thinking about romantic movies, specifically the lessons they teach and the hard-hitting questions they raise. Such as ...

Is it possible to completely make yourself over into a different person by plucking your eyebrows and taking off your glasses? The eyebrows are a good start, but otherwise, no. No, it is not.

Do nice guys get the girls in the end? I think so. We sure do like to torture ourselves with the naughty boys first, though, don’t we?

Are any of the following effective ways to get the girl: singing to her, showing up at her house unannounced with a boom box/love poem/bouquet of flowers, outright stalking her? The only time a serenade is not an 11.5 on an awkwardness scale of 1 to 10 is if you’re Tom Cruise and you’re singing You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling with 15 of your closest friends. Stalking seems to work wonders in the movies, but as a general rule I’d stay away from it unless you want a date with a judge instead. (That said, I continue to be amazed by men’s ability to wear women down in real life. Like, FINE, I will go out with you, just stop making me mix CDs and writing cryptic messages on my Facebook wall.)

Do people really profess their love in crowded places, followed by applause? I mean ... do they?

Can you fall in love over email and/or snail mail? (Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, I’m looking at you.) Possibly. As long as there’s some sort of vetting process to weed out the perverts and predators, possibly. Gentlemen reading this blog, my email address is on the righthand side of the page. Let’s see you charm the cynicism right out of me.

If a guy sees you in the produce aisle at the grocery store and thinks you’re cute, but you and your cart walk out of his life before he can say anything, will he go to incredible lengths to track you down and ask you out? No, Craigslist Missed Connections does not count!

Do opposites attract? We see this all the time in movies: the rich guy and the poor girl, the cool girl and the nerdy guy. I would say yes, of course they attract, the opposite-ness is in fact a huge turn-on, but do they last? Or did the girl in Can't Buy Me Love end up kicking Patrick Dempsey to the curb before he went to medical school and got a job at Seattle Grace?

Do the best kisses happen in the pouring rain? They can, as long as no one’s drowning.

Is it normal for people to attack one another, kissing frantically against a wall, after months of pent-up tension? Or is this more likely to result in a restraining order? Discuss.

Is unrequited love more interesting than love that’s reciprocated? I will say this, it definitely makes for a better soundtrack.

Can men and women be friends? This is possibly my favorite romantic movie question of all time. The answer is yes, but you always have to think about the what if factor, even if the “what if” is immediately followed by a “hell no.” It’s like an imaginary Choose Your Own Adventure book. Like, would he be a good kisser? If the timing had been just a teeny, tiny bit different, would we have hooked up and fallen madly in love instead of falling into the friend zone? Or, even if you KNOW it would be a total train wreck, just HOW BIG of a train wreck would it be? Would it at least be a fiery, smoking hot train wreck?

I guarantee each half of a male-female friendship knows the answer to the question "Could I?" Even if the answer is no, or maybe, or yes, but only in 10 years if he hasn’t found anyone and I haven’t found anyone and we both want a baby, you still know the answer.

That said ... I hear friends DO listen to Endless Love in the dark.

OK, we have a lot to talk about

First order of business: Oprah.

I'm much more partial to 10-years-ago Oprah than I am to present-day Oprah, but I'm still a little bit sad that she's ending her show. I'm sure it won't be OVER-over, she'll probably do something at some point on her new cable network ... but the current version, at least, will be done. It might sound strange, but I always found something really comforting about the consistency of Oprah. For most of my life, no matter how many things changed or how crazy everything got, I could always turn on my TV at 4 o'clock and see Oprah.

And honest to goodness, at her best, she really did make me want to live a better life. I remember watching once and thinking, you know, it's not that hard to be a little bit better of a person. To be a little bit nicer, a little bit more thoughtful, to try a little more ... it's really not that hard, and I should do it more often.

(Even if she can be kind of a lunatic sometimes.)

Next on the agenda: People's Sexiest Man Alive.

Listen, I am just going to admit it: This whole thing actually drove me to write on Hoda and Kathie Lee's Facebook wall. I know. I KNOW. But I was outraged, and I needed an outlet, and they were talking about it on TV, and FINE, I DID IT. Here's the thing about Johnny Depp: Yes, he's great-looking, and when he combs his hair and shaves a little he is on-fire hot, but he is wayyyy too anti-social. He doesn't have that charm of a Clooney or a Pitt or even a Cruise. Do you know that he didn't even do an interview for the story? WHAT IS THAT? Everyone else plays along, makes jokes about Sexiest Man Alive crowns and sashes and whatever else. Not Johnny Depp. He's just so ABOVE it all.

I would have picked Ryan Reynolds. He had a big movie this year, he's got two huge movies coming up, he's fresh and young, and OH, YEAH, HE'S HOT.

The third thing is fast: I had on the American Music Awards, and they said Fall Out Boy has a greatest hits album coming out. What? Really? For real, that is like when they put some random movie from 2003 on AMC.

Oh, and I watched part of a Curb marathon today and Susie Essman is hilarious.

That is all. Happy Monday, everyone!

I love the way they say loo

OK, this might not be a cool thing to admit, I don’t know, but I absolutely love the fourth hour of the Today show, the hour with Kathie Lee and Hoda. We have a bunch of TVs in my office, and one day someone had the Today show on for some completely legitimate reason (unlike the reasons it's on nowadays). We all sort of forgot it was on, but then 10 o'clock rolled around and those two came on with their ambush makeovers and their Man Panel and I was like, hello, Kathie Lee and Hoda, where have you been all my life? They are insane in the best possible way. Kathie Lee makes some ridiculous comment and Hoda just gives the camera this look that I love, a perfect blend between bemusement and complete and utter how did I get here? Last week, they talked about Carrie Prejean and her sex tape every single day and I seriously almost lost my mind at how funny it was.

Anyway, a week or so ago they were talking about a survey that had been done about which accent people found sexiest. You know, like British, Australian, Scottish, even a good old Matthew McConaughey-esque Southern drawl. None of those was the winner, though, the winner was an Irish accent. Irish! I told my co-worker I did not understand that at all, maybe because the only Irish accents I've heard have also been slightly slurred after a few too many pints of Guinness (being half-Irish himself, he conceded the point).

Personally, I am a flat-out sucker for a British accent. There are a whole bunch of British guys in another department at work whose cubicles are on my floor and I am constantly eavesdropping on them and trying to trick them into talking to me at the water cooler. ("Pardon me" "Oh, no, pardon me! And, oh, by the way, have you seen Victoria Beckham’s new hairstyle? I hear that's sort of a big deal across the pond." ACROSS THE POND! So authentic! And yet so ineffective!)

Invariably, after this happens, I try to speak with a British accent for the next 15 minutes (" 'ello, my name is 'arry potter") to absolutely, horrifically disastrous results. I am horrible at imitating accents--except one. For some bizarre reason, even though I grew up in New Jersey and haven't lived in the South a day in my life, I'm often accused of having a Southern lilt. I blame Friday Night Lights.

All of which leads me to this: Which accent do you find most irresistible?

(P.S. I totally became a fan of Kathie Lee and Hoda on Facebook the other day. Hahaha.)

It's a party in the USA

I had a dance party in my apartment today. I was the only one dancing, but oh, you'd better believe it was a party. I was supposed to be cleaning, but this song came on--Starry Eyed Surprise (you know it, it was in a Diet Coke commercial)--and it is a biological impossibility to hear this song and not go instantly, completely spastic shaking your groove thang.

I'm seeing stars, I'm seeing stars ... awwww, yeah!

I've been on a big music kick lately. I know, what else is new, but every few months I get on this thing where I am just dying to listen to music, to find new music, and I spend inordinate amounts of time skipping from song to song on iTunes and YouTube and listening to my favorites until they literally burn old-school record tracks into my brain.

Some of the songs I've been loving lately (links are YouTube videos):

Lovers in Japan, Coldplay. I was at lunch last week with a couple of my friends, and this song came on in the restaurant. I got home later that night and downloaded it, and I've been listening to it all week. I'm not sure why I like it so much, I think there's something about it that just feels like possibility.

All the Right Moves, OneRepublic. OK, seriously. This song comes on ALL the TIME when I'm in the car, and you would think I'd be sick of it by now, but I'm totally not. I know it's about rich people or whatever, but I love the part where he's like, "Do you think I'm special? Do you think I'm nice? Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces?" (1:40 mark) because I think that's a great way to describe what it's like when you have a crush on someone new.

Crack the Shutters, Snow Patrol. It's just an unabashedly romantic little song. My favorite part is the chorus: "Crack the shutters open wide, I want to bathe you in the light of day. And just watch you as the rays tangle up around your face and body." (Administrative note: I think the video for this song is stupid, so I'm linking to some Twilight fan video instead. Don't hate me.)

That's What You Get, Paramore. I still like this song better than any song I've heard from their new album. I blast, blast, BLAST the part in the middle--"Pain, make your way to me"--I just love it. I'm sure the neighbors do, too.

But I need more new songs to listen to! I always seem to do a CD giveaway around this time of year, so we'll do another. Post a song you've been likely lately in the comments--I'll pick one and send the winner a CD of some of your favorites and some of mine.

And yes, you are totally invited to my next dance party.

Love at first sight

So I was listening to the radio the other day, and they were talking about whether it was possible to fall in love at first sight. No, no, no, I thought. Anyone who's been hopelessly, brutally, blissfully, gut-wrenchingly in love knows that doesn't happen in a split second.

And then a lady called in and said she walked into a bar one night, laid eyes on a tall guy with brown hair and just knew he would be her husband. More than 20 years later, he still is. So there you go.

I guess maybe I believe in both a little bit. Love at first sight? No, not really. But I do think sometimes you can meet someone and just know that person is going to mean something in your life. It's like you recognize something in them, an unexpected little piece of magic. And maybe you don't know why, but you know there's a chance you COULD love them, and that's just as good.

Coincidentally, I got this link in my email today, an article about whether falling in love at first sight is possible. The answer? Sort of--they say we know in a second whether we're attracted to someone, and we know in three minutes whether we'd be in a relationship with someone. First, we look at general appearance, then their voice (for men, the deeper the better), then their words.

The story made me laugh a little bit when I read it, because I like to joke that I can spot a man, have an entire relationship with him in my head and then break up with him within five minutes. I look at the face first, then I look at the hands (I'm a sucker for good hands). And then, yes, the voice, along with, oh, does he seem like he would be a good father, a good kisser, would he bring me breakfast in bed, sing stupid songs with me in the car, play with my hair while we watch all my favorite shows, and ... wait a second, is that a third nipple poking through his shirt? ANNULMENT, PLEASE!

I don't really believe in love at first sight. But it sure is fun to think about.

The extent of my exciting life

So last week my lower back starts getting really tight, which I attribute (as usual) to not really getting into a consistent workout routine again since I've moved. I'm complaining (of course) at work, and say I'm going to the gym later, where hopefully working out will loosen up my back a little. My friend shakes his head. "Nooo," he says, "I don't think that sounds like a very good idea."

Trust me, I say. I know what I'm doing. No way, he says. Don't do it.

Well. Fast forward to an hour later. I'm bending over to tie my shoes, when OW OW OW OWWWWWWWW, SOMEONE JUST PLUNGED 37 KNIVES INTO MY BACK, NOW I KNOW WHAT DYING FEELS LIKE. It takes 20 minutes to get off the floor. Later that night, it takes me 15 minutes just to pee. This lasts for like three days. I have never experienced anything like it, and my back is STILL sore.

So, my October: death flu and back spasms. Translation: more excitement than a bucket full of firecrackers.

This IS exciting, though: My friend Allee is coming to visit this weekend. This is very, very, very, VERY SUPER EXCITING news, actually, and leads me into the real point of this post. A couple of months ago, Allee sent me an email with this link, which is basically a challenge to do something out of the ordinary every month. Allee said we should do that too, take some kind of risk each month. And I was like, TOTALLY! We totally should! It'll be so great! So empowering! So we agreed we'd do it.

Two months later ... um, did I mention the back spasms and the death flu?

But! With Allee coming, this is the perfect time to renew our commitment to new, exciting, risk-taking lives. Since my idea of exciting these days is plopping onto the opposite end of the couch (everything looks totally different from there!), I need your help. What should I do? Finally run a 5K? Drag myself to the lady-parts doctor? Track down the CIA guy? WHAT? If either of us does one of your suggestions, you're totally getting a prize. And, of course, there's safety in numbers, if you want to pick something to do, too :)

(P.S. I just tried another--yes, another--hairdresser and it was both risky AND thrilling. We have a winner! So that one is covered.)

Overheard in the office

Coworker A to Coworker B, about me: "I can’t tell if it’s her silly laugh or her real laugh."
Coworker B: "It’s her silly laugh. Her tired laugh. Which means we’re about 8 minutes from cranky."
(Eight minutes and 3 seconds later.)
Coworker B: "See? What did I tell you?"

**********

Coworker B, on comments that he's been complaining a lot lately: "I don’t complain. I point out situations."

**********

I get a little annoyed about something.
Coworker 1, to the person sitting next to him: "Swishy has a very large doghouse that she puts people in. And it's not decorated as well as you'd think."

**********

Coworker B to no one in particular, prompted by nothing in particular: "What has Canada given us except circular bacon?"

**********

Me, complaining about writing a self-evaluation for work: "I hate writing these. I hate being like, I did this, I did that. It just makes me uncomfortable."
Coworker A (in a high-pitched voice): "Slash YOU LOVE IT!"

**********

Coworker 1 starts playing this song ("Take Me Home Tonight" by the great Eddie Money).
Coworker 2: "Really? THIS song? REALLY?"
Coworker 1: "Hold on. It’s been on for a minute and 14 seconds and you’re just now saying that?"
Coworker 2: "You suck all of the fun out of my day. (Pause.) I hate everybody. I hate the world."

A mess of random

* Death flu update: On DAY EIGHT, I finally have my voice back, no more squeaky laughing or hacking in the middle of a sentence. And I re-weighed myself and was down five pounds instead of up four, which is great news and naturally means I just spent the last five minutes eating mini Chips Ahoy cookies.

* OK, so the answer to the multiple-choice question was a very lame none of the above. I did, however, read all about the Khloe Kardashian wedding, get stuck behind a very angry little man who drove 15 mph and very nearly caused me to lose my mind and sort of START catching up on the DVR (I mostly caught up while I was sick, and of course I'm already falling behind again). I am LOVING Modern Family, you have to watch it. And I do like FlashForward--some of the dialogue is a little corny, but I like it.

* I got a really good review at work. I forgot to tell my mom so I am telling you.

* I have had this totally insatiable appetite for ridiculous music the last couple of days, which I blame on Miley Cyrus and that ubiquitious, completely catchy song of hers that comes on every single time I get in the car. So what am I doing right now? I'll tell you what I'm doing, and then we'll never talk about it again. I am actually sitting here listening to a Hannah Montana song on YouTube. HANNAH MONTANA. Let me reiterate that I am not the mother of an 8-year-old girl, nor am I the aunt, older sister, guardian or next-door neighbor of one. And yet here I am, belting this thing out like I'm auditioning for American Idol. My friend's daughters used to sing this song all the time, and it would totally get stuck in my head and then I'd botch the lyrics and they'd get totally exasperated with me, because I am clearly not as cool (see every sentence of this paragraph) as I pretend to be. (By the way, between that and stuff like this, I am experiencing severe sixth-grade nostalgia. It is just way too fun and angsty to be a girl sometimes.)

* Anyway, so that song? It's called "If We Were a Movie," which reminds me of a story I was going to tell. So I stumbled across this guy's blog a few weeks ago, super randomly, and he was all, Friday Night Lights is so great, (500) Days of Summer is so great and I was like, hello! Been there, done that, let's see what else he loves that I love. So I scroll down, and there are pictures of him and I'm like, hold on one hot little second, I KNOW THIS GUY. And sure enough, I scroll down a little more, and it turns out we went to the same college.

So THEN I jump on Facebook and put in his name (since it's all over his blog) and would you look at that, four common friends. OBVIOUSLY we took a class together or lived in the same dorm or majored in the same thing or something, but I cannot figure it out and it's driving me nuts, so instead of obsessing about it or being all stalky about it on his blog, I decide to send him a note.

Me: So. Hi. I stumbled across your blog a little while ago, I don't remember how (maybe because we share an appreciation for the greatest TV show ever created), and then I was like, wait, do I know this person? I think I vaguely know this person. And it is sort of driving me a little bit nuts trying to figure it out.

(And then I ask him if he lived in the same dorm that I did.)

He replies that he didn't live there, but he did live on the same floor freshman year as a guy we're both friends with. I say, oh, I knew him at the end of college and then we took jobs in the same city, so that can't be it, and then I ask him if he majored in communications. He says no, he majored in English. I say, well, I would be a horrible Law and Order detective, wouldn't I?

This is the part of the story where he makes some joke back and then we're like, OK, well, let's be friends anyway even if we can't figure it out because we both live fairly near each other in cities TWO THOUSAND MILES from where we both went to college, we know some of the same people, why not be friends? And then maybe we decide to meet for lunch at some cute cafe one crisp fall afternoon, and he decides to bring his newly single, ready to mingle roommate with him (because falling in love with the first guy would be a little too tidy of an ending, and we're trying to avoid cliche storylines here) and Other Guy has never met a girl like me in his entire life. And who knows, maybe I turn into Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan and he turns into Richard Gere or Tom Hanks and we go on to earn $100 million at the box office thanks to legions of girls like me.

But NO. No, that did not happen, because MY LIFE IS NOT A MOVIE, unless you count one in which there are plenty of spiders and possibly a strain of a rare, life-threatening disease. That was where it ended, with me making a Law and Order joke. IS THAT NOT THE LAMEST THING EVER? I didn't even find out how I KNOW the guy!

I totally wish I could script life. It would be SO AWESOME. Even if the soundtrack WAS sort of cheesy.

If I ever give birth, we're all in trouble

If I had written my last post today, there would be another option: G) Spent the last several days staring into the jaws of death/suffered through my first bad cold in a very, very long time. I rarely get sick, which means I am a horrible sick person. A pathetic one. A whiny, achy, mopey, "I can't breathe" one, as evidenced in my "diary" of the last week.

Monday afternoon

Me, to my coworker: "I feel weird. I feel like I have something in my lungs."
He glances up. "Um ... air?"

Monday night

I get home late from work, decide I'm going to sit on the couch juuuuust for a second before I go to the gym, and pass out. For, like, three hours.

Tuesday night

It's master-of-the-obvious coworker's birthday, and his girlfriend has planned dinner at this restaurant at a casino. It's a good dinner full of lovely revelations, such as the fact that my friend was circumcised as a baby by Jackie Mason's cousin.

But in the car on the way home, I start whining that my throat itches. It's the cigarette smoke in the casino, they said, you're just not used to being around it. I agree, that makes perfect sense. So I drink some extra water when I get home, go to bed and dream of slot machines and Brad Pitt, just because.

Wednesday morning

I wake up before my alarm, which is never, ever a good sign, and my throat is on FIRE. I can't call in sick because ... actually, I can't remember now, that was three whole days ago and my brain has been drowning in mucus and phlegm since then, but there was some good reason why I had to go. So I do.

Me, to my coworker, about 2.1 seconds after I walk in the door: "So. I'm sick. Like, legitimately. My throat is killing me."
He glances up. "Maybe you have swine flu."
Me: "Maybe I ... OH, MY GOSH, WHAT IF I HAVE SWINE FLU?"

I Google swine flu symptoms. The checklist is very lame, it's like, you can't tell the difference between swine flu and regular flu, neither can the doctor without a lab test, blah blah blah. I skip down to the symptoms that require urgent medical attention.

Me: "Holy crap. Listen to this." (Pause.) "Are you listening?"
Him: "Yes, I'm listening."
Me: "What did I just say?"
Him: "You said are you listening."
Me: "OK, good. Thank you. So listen to this. It says confusion. It LITERALLY says confusion. CONFUSION! LISTEN TO ME. If I show ANY signs of confusion, you need to call the doctor, like, immediately."
He looks at me.
I wait.
He looks at me some more.
I wait.
Him: "Soooo ... I'm supposed to tell the difference between your normal confusion and your swine flu confusion how?"
Me: "I cannot believe I'm entrusting my life to you."

A few hours later.
Me: "Maybe I have strep instead."

A little while after that.
Me: "What about mono? I totally fell asleep the other night! Fatigue!"

This is all met by a lot of head-shaking.

Thursday morning, 3:30 a.m.

I wake up after an hour and a half and it feels like someone is stabbing me in the right side of my neck with one of those Ginsu knives. I cannot swallow at ALL, so I stand there in the dark and periodically spit into the bathroom sink. It's not melodramatic at all.

Thursday/Friday.

I happen to already be off these days, so ... lucky me! I get to die a thousand deaths on my couch without even taking time off work to do it!

Thursday afternoon.

My friend visits me on my deathbed to bring me some sustenance and some medicine. Also a National Enquirer.

Thursday night.

I summon all of the strength I can muster to witness a pop culture perfect storm: Jon Gosselin on one channel and David Letterman's affair admission on the other, with my laptop on my stomach set to people.com. All of the excitement wipes me out, though, and I spend the next 10 hours asleep on the couch.

Friday night.

I've officially knocked off 11 percent of the DVR. I'm now caught up on The Biggest Loser, Project Runway, Modern Family and The Amazing Race. Left to go: Glee, the first two episodes of FlashForward, and the entire last season of 24.

Saturday morning.

I weigh myself and am highly annoyed to find the scale up 4 pounds since Tuesday. I thought you were supposed to LOSE weight when you were sick! I chalk it up to water retention from the sodium in all of the soup I've been eating, and conveniently disregard the pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream I've eaten in the last two days.

I do, however, wash my hair for the first time since Tuesday night. I consider this major progress.

Saturday afternoon.

Apparently not enough progress. Snot is pouring out of my body, and I'm almost done coughing up my left lung. I disgust nearly everyone who crosses my path, and I get kicked out of work an hour early.

Saturday night.

I fall asleep for a couple of hours and wake up feeling like I've been hit between the eyes by the 7:27 p.m. Amtrak express. I turn to my last resort: Vick's Vapo Rub. I'm currently sitting on my couch, surrounded by a High School Musical tissue box, cherry cough drops and a very tall bottle of water, smelling like menthol, watching 27 Dresses. If anyone else is having a more glamorous Saturday night right now, I'd love to hear it.

Multiple-choice test

I haven't written a good and proper blog post the past few days because I've been too busy:

a) attending the wedding of Khloe Kardashian (yes, I caught the bouquet, and OH, YES were Kim and Kourtney pissed about it).

b) being booked at the police station for reckless something or other after flipping out on the passive-aggressive man driving 15 mph in front of me on a 35 mph road. For, like, TEN MINUTES.

c) cashing my lottery check and heading off to Bora Bora.

d) watching the copious amounts of television I managed to accumulate on my DVR after just one week of the new season. (OK, spoiler alert: I WISH THIS WERE TRUE. But so far Modern Family gets a thumbs up, and so does this season of The Biggest Loser even though it makes me cry and makes me feel guilty for eating my turtle Chex Mix. Grey's Anatomy, on the other hand, gets a "I really, really think I'm done this time ... for real." I had to see poor George's funeral, though!)

e) luxuriating at the spa and swimming in a tub of chocolate BECAUSE I'M WORTH IT.

f) I can't remember. Not so much in the "waking up on the couch of a dashing stranger" way but more of a "Where did Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday GO?!?" kind of way.

Correct answer gets a prize. :) Happy Monday, everyone!

Happy, happy Emmy day!

You know Emmy day is a big day around here (see exhibits A, B and C) but this Emmy day might be the biggest of them all. Not because of who's nominated (where is Friday Night Lights?!?) or because of who's wearing what (the red carpet hasn't even started yet), but because this year, I have a very special Emmy guest. An Emmy guest named ... Emmy. Yes, THAT Emmy. I have a friend who has won a couple (JEALOUS MUCH? NO, NOT ME!) and he very kindly offered to let Emmy come over for the Emmys.

Emmy and I have had a very action-packed 24 hours together. First, we had to rest up for the big show.



And then make the Emmy party food:



Of COURSE, we had to primp:



Best dressed or worst dressed?



Ready to watch the red carpet!



(Back with the live blog in a bit!)

**********

6:07: Ryan's hair is a bit tall. Still not tall enough to make HIM look tall, though (Heidi Klum is totally towering over him!).

6:13: Oooh, Giuliana's wearing her ring again! I guess I'll have to take back my Giuliana and Bill divorce rumors.

6:21: Christina Hendricks has a smoking body (apparently, I'm a 12-year-old boy). But seriously! She's like a human hourglass!

6:32: I say this every year, but I LOVE MARISKA HARGITAY!

6:47: Did you know it was hot in L.A. today? It's hot in L.A. today. Everyone is sweating. Ryan's sweating, that girl Kaley Cuoco is sweating ... CAN WE PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT ALL THE SWEATING???

7:08: What is with E!'s vampire obsession? Twilight and True Blood, I get it, I get it. Can we go back to the sweating?

7:27: Oh, Kristen Wiig. Such an unfortunate dress.

8:01: What a weird introduction. But here's Neil Patrick Harris singing!

8:03: "She could turn a gay guy straight ... oh, wait, there's Jon Hamm!"

8:12: I TOTALLY DO NOT GET THE GLASSES THING. Like, at all. What am I missing?

8:13: Aww, Kristin Chenoweth. She's cute.

8:27: Nice sweater vest, Jon Cryer. Funny first line, though!

8:35: Justin Timberlake wears glasses when he is SERIOUS Justin. (Not surprised about Toni Collette. OK, a little surprised.) (Second sad face in a row! First Rainn Wilson, now Mary Louise Parker! Usually they cover it up better.)

8:52: It is hard to type with Turtle Chex Mix on your fingers.

8:57: I am a sucker for a good little dance routine. I think Karina and Maks should go make out in a corner now and rekindle their romance.

9:00: Awww, Probst. I was going to rip on him for not wearing a tie, but it actually looked kind of disheveled/hot. And he gave a good speech. And he has really, REALLY great dimples. In fact, I'd like to take a bubble bath in those dimples now, please.

9:23: Dorky Emmy note: I like the way they've reordered the show by genre (all the comedy awards, then all the reality awards, then all the miniseries awards). I feel like it moves at a better pace this way. Added bonus: Since I know the miniseries awards are going to take up the next 20 minutes, I can pee and practice my fake acceptance speech with my borrowed Emmy in the bathroom mirror!

10:19: Drama montage. My friend: "If Friday Night Lights was on HBO, it would be nominated in every category." SO TRUE.

10:35: A belated yay for Michael Emerson and awww for Patrick Swayze, Bea Arthur and Co.

10:36: I am totally platonically spooning with Emmy on the couch right now.

10:50: Boooooo, I wanted Michael C. Hall to win. And I seriously think Jon Hamm was about to start crying, bless his heart.

10:58: What's with the Leno slam, Tina Fey? He didn't take your time slot!

11:01: Dexter or Lost, Dexter or Lost--booooooooooo. I have tried watching Mad Men. I have TRIED. And I JUST DON'T GET IT. It moves SO FREAKING SLOW!

And it's a wrap. Emmy and I are off to crash some very exclusive VIP parties (translation: read all the backstage gossip) ... happy Monday, everyone!

Randomness all around

A few very random, nonsensical stories from my week to make up for my lack of blogging (long post alert!):

*** So, I'm driving home from book club a few nights ago at like 1:30 a.m. I'm behind another car in a left-turn lane. The light turns green but the car doesn't move, and we miss the light. A minute or two later, the light turns green again, and he's STILL not moving. I honk a little. Nothing. I honk again. Nothing. I LEAN on the horn. We miss the light. I get fed up and flip around to go the other way.

But then I'm like, crap, what if something's wrong, so I turn around again and go back to the intersection. I pull up next to him, and I can see him slumped over the wheel, so I jump out of my car and start knocking on his window to wake him up. Nothing. I try the door. Nothing. Now, I'm like, OK, SHOOT, what do I do? Do I call 911? Does this count as an emergency? Will I be arrested for abusing the system? I don't want to go to jail! Should I call the police department? I think I see a cop down the street, should I just go get him? Should I just keep knocking until he wakes up? WHAT DO I DO?

I decide to call 911. I go to my car to get my phone, and another guy pulls up behind us. I run over to tell him, look, you're gonna have to go around this guy, he's asleep and I've been trying to wake up him and now I'm calling the cops. He happens to work as a private security officer and has his radio with him, so he's like, here, I'll call dispatch. Two minutes later, we have FOUR cop cars and two EMTs in the intersection (plus my car, still running with the door hanging open in the middle of the street).

So the cops start pounding on the window with their flashlights, and he doesn't move. They get their lock thingies and try to unlock the door, and can't get it open. Then the paramedic looks in and is like, guys, I don't know if he's breathing, we need to break the window. So they smash the back window and he STILL doesn't wake up, and I'm like HOLY CRAP, what if he's dead, that will be so incredibly freaky, and the guy next to me is like, maybe he's in a diabetic coma, and I'm like, maybe he had a stroke or a heart attack, and he's like, maybe he had an allergic reaction, a really bad one. And back and forth we go.

Well. Apparently our friend in the black Explorer did not have a heart attack or a stroke, he had about 18 Jack and Cokes and was merely inebriated to the point of total nonresponsiveness. The cop took down our info, thanked us for our call and sent us on our merry way.

(Later, when I told people, they were like, YOU ARE INSANE. DO NOT GO UP TO PEOPLE LIKE THAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, THEY COULD KILL YOU. And here I was just worried about 911 etiquette.)

*** So this guy at work is in a band, and we went to this bar to see him play the other night. And there are two women dancing next to me, and all of a sudden one of them grabs my arm and points. "WHOOPI!" she cries.

She's pointing at this woman:



And, yes, the resemblance was impressive, striking even, but the funniest part to me was that this woman said nothing else, just grabbed my arm and yelled, "WHOOPI!" And now I have to keep fighting the urge to point off into the distance and yell "WHOOPI!!!" for no reason other than it makes me laugh.

*** I finally went to the dentist here, not so much because I'm concerned about my oral health but because I want to do Crest Whitestrips and I want to put those little strips in the best position to succeed by giving them super-clean teeth to work with. So I go, and they give me the "new patient" paperwork to fill out, and there's this whole huge medical history section. And maybe it's just been a while since I've filled out that kind of thing, but oh, my goodness, nosy much, Mr. Dentist? There were SO MANY things on there! The best is that it asks in about 16 different places whether you've had an STD. Like, OK, you said no the first time, but wait! We're going to ask you about VENEREAL diseases now! And herpes! And chlamydia! Like they're going to trick you into finally saying yes. The whole thing was just awkward. (P.S. They scraped the living hell out of my teeth and apparently I have a teeny, tiny cavity in between two of my back teeth, that maybe doesn't HAVE to be filled but should be, so I have to go back in two weeks. NOT THRILLED. Especially since my old dentist had cable and this one doesn't. It is SO much more palatable to have someone sticking drills and sharp objects in your mouth if you can watch Access Hollywood while they're doing it.)

*** We started talking about Miss Cleo at work the other day. No, I have no idea why, that's like asking me to explain cell division and binary fission, some things are just beyond my comprehension. But we were talking about Miss Cleo, which naturally led us to Miss Cleo's Wikipedia page, and did you know that Miss Cleo wasn't even Jamaican? I knew there was some big legal brouhaha a few years ago but I didn't realize that was one of the major takeaways, that she's not even Jamaican. (THE OUTRAGE!)

Anyway, my coworker is in the middle of a Miss Cleo rant when he stops and looks at me: "You totally called her, didn't you?" I look away, like, la la la, I can't hear you, I have things to edit and emails to reply to, and he's like, "You did! You totally called her! I knew it! WHY DOES THAT NOT SURPRISE ME ONE BIT?" And I'm like, well, if it doesn't surprise you one bit, why are you asking and, by the way, I only called for the five free minutes and she didn't even tell me anything ANYWAY.

He stares at me. "You know that wasn't really Miss Cleo, right? When you called?"
"I KNOW."
"You know they can't predict the future, right?"
"I KNOW."
He pauses. "So what did they tell you?"
"I don't know. I'd get married to someone with brown hair and have three kids."
"You know that like 90 percent of the population has brown hair, right?"
"I KNOW. I didn't say I was, like, RELYING on it. It was FIVE FREE MINUTES and it was, like, SIX YEARS AGO."
He shakes his head for a very, very long time. "I really do not understand you people."
I throw my hands in the hair. "You people? What is that, you people? What does that even MEAN?"
"WOMEN. I don't understand you WOMEN."

Right. All because of Miss Cleo.

(P.S. Have a great weekend, and by the way, SUNDAY IS EMMY DAY, YAY YAY YAY! I will be blogging during the show as always, with a little surprise this year. See you then!)

If my life had to be a movie, why couldn't it be one starring George Clooney?

So I'm sitting there the other day, and I feel something tickling my ear, which is not such an unusual thing when you're a girl with longish hair. I put my hair behind my ear, but I still feel it. I push it back again, and it's still there and ... AHHHHH, IS THERE A BUG IN MY EAR? SICK, SICK, EWWWWW, GET OUT--

There's no bug in my ear. My ear stops tickling and I move on with life.

But THEN! A day or two later, I feel it again. I smack my ear for a minute, and it goes away. But then--THEN--yesterday at work, I feel it again. And it WILL NOT GO AWAY, and did I ever mention that I was neurotic, and did you ever see that Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan with the little worm things they put in people's ears, and OH, MY GOSH, I AM GOING INSANE.

"I think I have a bug in my ear," I announce.

"You do not have a bug in your ear," my coworker says, already completely bored with the whole conversation.

"But how do you KNOW?" I ask.

He lets out a very heavy, very labored sigh, the sigh of a man who knows it's only 8:23 a.m. and there's a whole lot of neurotic, hypochondriac chatter left in the day, and walks over. He looks in my ear. "No bug."

"OK," I say, "thank you." But then it starts tingling again and HOLY FREAKING CRAP, I ALREADY HAD ONE ANIMAL BUILD A NEST IN MY CAR, WHAT IF ONE IS BUILDING ONE NOW IN MY BRAIN? AHHHHHH.

So, naturally, my next step is to turn to Google (the litany of dire diagnoses--skin cancer, brain tumor, leukemia--it has given me in the past clearly not a deterrent). And instead of telling me that, no, silly Swishy, there is definitely not a bug in your ear, Dr. Google tells me that, you know, stranger things have happened than a doctor finding a bug in someone's ear. I tell my coworker as much.

"Well," he says, "what kind of vacuum do you have at home?"

OK, I say, that is definitely not funny. What do you think it is?

"It could be swine flu," he says. "I don’t know all the symptoms."

I glare at him and tell him I hope he catches it, then, for being so rotten. Another coworker jumps in and says I should go the doctor: "He’ll either tell you, yes, you have a bug in your ear, or no, you’re just paranoid, get off the crack."

"Not that!" my other coworker exclaims. "You can't take away her crack!"

Ha ha, very funny, you are all hilarious, just two big rays of sunshine and light and laughter in my life, I reply. Meanwhile, a bug is LAYING EGGS in my BRAIN.

A few minutes pass, and the feeling goes away. Of course, I announce as much. "Well, it can’t do any damage if it’s napping," my coworker says. He pauses, then adds: "You know what you should do? You should rent movies like Alien and watch it for possibilities of what could happen."

I think that's when I threw the Nerf football at his head.

So I go home, and I eat dinner, and I'm rinsing dishes at the sink, when I look up and see something seriously--I really am being serious now--SERIOUSLY disturbing. Like, freak-out disturbing. Like, run and turn off the kitchen light and hide in the corner disturbing (which, incidentally, is exactly what I did).

OK. This is the deal. There are spiders building an entire housing development outside my kitchen window. SCARY SPIDERS. POISONOUS-LOOKING SPIDERS. SPIDERS WITH BABIES. It is literally Arachnophobia outside my kitchen window. And yes, my window is closed, but wait, what's this? ONE OF THE BABIES HAS GOTTEN INSIDE AND IS SITTING THERE ON MY WINDOWSILL MAKING FACES AND STICKING ITS TONGUE OUT AT ME.

So, to recap: I feel like I have a bug in my ear, and mere hours later I see the New York City of spider towns outside my window AND a baby spider IN MY HOUSE. Hmmm. IS IT ANY WONDER I'M NEUROTIC?


I mean, did you THINK I was exaggerating here? TOTAL ARACHNOPHOBIA SPIDER!

OK. I killed the baby, just smushed the hell out of it, so it's gone. The rest sleep during the day, they come out at night, the whole thing is very disconcerting, but I mean, as long as I keep the window shut, I'm OK, right? They'll die when it gets cold, right? They won't lay a bunch of spider baby eggs that will hatch in the spring and eat my brain and feast on my corpse, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Holy crap, my ear is totally tingling again. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

A little bit of whatever

Well, hello there. One of my best friends came to visit, so I've been kind of MIA lately. We did a little bit of everything--concert, movies, amusement park, yummy food, sightseeing-ish stuff--and it was just nice to be with someone familiar again. He's known me for almost 10 years and is one of the best people I've ever known, so kind and patient with me. He left yesterday and oh, my goodness, the train wreck he left behind. I was crying rivers and swimming pools and hot tubs all night and into this morning. I guess I just miss everything. And sometimes when I'm stressed or trying not to be sad, I act really mean and snotty to people who are good to me, which makes me feel horrible and makes everything so much worse.

Sigh. So, yes. Lots of chocolate and Kleenex in Swishyville this week.

But! Visits are good, the weather's good, life is good, People.com and Entertainment Weekly are good. Let's talk some pop culture and entertainment to make everything a little better, shall we?

Big Brother. Yes, I am inexplicably still watching this train wreck of a show, albeit mostly in pieces while I clean or check email or whatever else. I cannot stand that girl Natalie, CANNOT STAND HER. The fact that she won HOH for next week is almost enough to make me shut it off for good. CAN'T. STAND. HER.

Project Runway. My early money is on Ra'mon, Shirin and the girl with two names and blonde hair. (How lazy am I that I am ON THE INTERNET and I won't just Google her name. Instead, she's the girl who two names and blonde hair. Fine. FINE. I will Google. Carol Hannah, her name is Carol Hannah. OK? Everyone good?) Also, maybe Christopher.

Top Chef. Love the brothers and the sorta-bitchy blonde girl whose name is ... wait, I've got it ... JENNIFER! Yes! I remembered one of the reality blonde girls' names! (The one name versus two definitely helps.)

Friday Night Lights. We had a little mini-marathon Sunday night and oh, man, that show just kills me. Just do yourself a favor and rent it. You will never, ever, ever regret it, except maybe the fact that it'll spoil you for TV forever. (Or not. See Exhibit A: Big Brother. But at least you'll KNOW you're spoiled!)

(500) Days of Summer. Very cute movie, with a perfect ending that made me a little teary because even though it was perfect it was still ... well, if you saw it, you know. Also saw The Time Traveler's Wife, which, while a bit slow, also made me cry. YES, I AM A GIRL.

The Duggars. Oh, goodness. I think it is a little tacky the way people talk about them sometimes because, you know, it's probably not really anyone's business how many kids someone does or doesn't have as long as the kids are taken care of and supported. But holy freaking crap, I cannot wrap my head around 19 kids. Nineteen children coming out of one person's body. Not all at once, but still. NINETEEN. I just ... wow.

Jon Gosselin. Total emotional infant. I have officially flipped from Team Jon to Team Kate, although to be honest I wouldn't really miss either one of them on the cover of my People magazine. Give me hot sexy single bachelors, People magazine!

OK, that's all I've got for now. Have a good weekend, everyone!

She may have a point

So I was at my parents' house last week. They moved to a new town last fall--it's not the house I grew up in or anything--which means I'm not super familiar with the neighborhood. Which also, naturally, gives my mom extra license to participate in one of her very favorite activities ever, backseat driving, when I am there.

So I'm driving my mom and my brother to lunch. We're going down a big hill, and I hug one of the turns a little close. And when I say a little, I mean, like, BARELY.

"Swishy!" she gasps, throwing herself around like Raggedy Ann over there for effect. "Be careful!"

"MOM."

"SWISHY," she says, and let me tell you, there hasn't been this kind of drama in her tone since a certain aunt engaged in certain extracurricular activities right before my cousin's wedding, "Swishy, I'm not even kidding, someone DIES on this road almost EVERY DAY."

I nearly almost DO drive off the road this time, because oh, my goodness, if there was not a more melodramatic statement in all the world. I can't stop laughing.

"You are beyond ridiculous," I say.

"It's true," she insists. "Almost every day there's an ambulance going down the road."

I tell her if those kind of scare tactics didn't work when she told me my face would freeze that way and the gum would stick to the walls of my stomach forever, they were not about to start working now. And yet, there she goes again with the death talk on the way back after lunch.

"RIGHT," I say, waving my hands in the air. "It's a TOTAL DEATH TRAP of a street. People are just DYING left and right. I mean, really. REALLY."

My brother pipes up from the backseat: "Well, there IS a senior citizen home on the street."

I whip around. "WHAT? Is that true?"

My mom shrugs. "I just said a lot of people died on this road, I didn't say HOW."

What can I say, I like to talk

So I'm going to catch a train--a train that, naturally, I'm running about 3 minutes late for and subsequently miss--when I realize I can't find my cell phone. I rifle through my monstrosity of a bag, then full-on dump it everywhere, and still no phone. I have no clue where it is. It could be sitting on my bathroom sink, on the hood of my car, in the hands of some nosy, nosy girl who now is reading all of my text messages and posting them on her blog, I HAVE NO CLUE.

This is a very big problem. I never leave my house without my cell phone. I mean, practically almost never. I am supposed to be meeting my brother. I am not going to be home the rest of the day. You know those people who are like, my cell phone died for, like, five hours the other day, and it was so great, so nice and peaceful, I didn't miss having a phone at all? You may be one of those people, in which case I tip my LED screen to you, but I AM NOT. I was very, very late to the cell phone party, but now that I am here, you will have to drag me kicking and screaming out the door after all the balloons have popped and streamers have been kicked around and everyone else is long gone. I NEED TO HAVE MY PHONE.

At the moment, though, I just need to figure out how to tell my brother that he is not going to be able to call or text me to find out where to meet me. I dig back, way, way back into the recesses of my brain, to try to remember HOW ON EARTH people communicated before cell phones. I could send him a letter ... too slow. I could send a pigeon ... I don't trust them, they poop a lot and I think they have little brains. Pay phone ... pretty sure those no longer exist. Email ... oh, yeah, no computer.

I am seriously--I wish I were kidding--considering trying to telepathically send him a message when I end up borrowing someone else's cell phone. A much fancier, much more technologically advanced cell phone than mine, a phone I can barely figure out how to talk on, let alone dial. And then we run into the other problem: I don't know his number. I don't know ANYONE'S number. I used to be the queen of remembering people's numbers, back in the dark ages of rotary phones and horse-drawn carriages, but who needs to memorize phone numbers when they can just be programmed in? When that valuable real estate in my brain can be turned over to memorizing the Jolie-Pitts' middle names and birth dates instead? Not me, no way.

After a minute or two, during which time the cell phone lender gives me several strange looks and very nearly snatches the thing right back out of my hands, I come up with my mom's number. I call her and ask her to relay the message.

Meanwhile, across the aisle from me, two teenagers are refusing to pay their train fare and the ticket collector is threatening to call the cops. The lady in front of them turns around and begs them to reconsider.

Lady: Pay them! They'll take you to jail!
Punk kid (sullenly): For what.
Lady: They'll take you to the blue pen! You don't want to go there. Trust me. I've been there.
Punk kid glares.
Lady: And it's a weekend, too, you won't see a judge til Monday. (Cackles.) I've been locked up lots of times, I know.

The train slows down, and the kids get ready to make a break for it.
Lady: Run! Run!

The train stops, but the doors don't open. Instead, we are informed that there will be a slight delay while we wait for police assistance. This is spectacular. There will be a riot two feet away from me over $5.25 train fares and I DON'T HAVE A PHONE.

That is basically the theme for the rest of the day: I DON'T HAVE A PHONE. My brother sending a text, the teenage girl gabbing on her hot pink Razr, the guy looking something up on his BlackBerry--they are ALL mocking me because they have phones and I DON'T.

I know it's neurotic. I KNOW. But I'll tell you what, when I came home to find my phone sitting primly on the kitchen counter, right next to the charger, I hugged it and kissed it and swore that, Verizon as my witness, I'd never leave it again.