Crude, angry, politically incorrect, chain-smoking and sophomoric = dreamy. I am counting the days until Rescue Me returns to FX. Yes, yes, I know, I am a sad excuse for a feminist.

My trip to Paris is a month away and I cannot wait. I have done plenty of solo traveling but Tampa to Paris is a new one for me. My efforts to acclimate myself to the French language have been limited to changing the setting on my ipod to French. But of course, when looking for particular tracks they are all spelled in English so it's kind of not all that effective. But listening to Piaf sing La Vie en Rose every night as I walk the dog is really getting me in the mood. Grace and I are planning a tour of the Burgundy region and my travel editor wants me to do a night bike tour of Paris so there will be fun that is also subsidized. Who said a liberal arts education is worthless?

My spouse is going through what all my girlfriends are gleefully referring to as male menopause.

The signs and symptoms? He’s driving a new black Mustang convertible and has joined the gym. What can I say? Could we be any more clichéd if we tried? Probably not. He works hard and he deserves to embrace whatever makes him happy as far as I’m concerned, so what the hell, right? The only thing that truly mystifies and sort of bothers me about any of it is that he seems to be dragging my dad along for the ride, literally.

My dad is a die-hard type-A as is the Guy in the Boxers. So they have had more of an arms-length relationship with one another over the past 17 years rather than a warm fuzzy one. Dad is a retired career officer of the Army genus and the GITB was enlisted swine in the Navy. Strike one. Dad was raised Catholic and converted to Buddhism after one too many tours in Southeast Asia. The GITB is a non-practicing Jew. Strike two. There really is no strike three. All that they have in common has always far outweighed the things that they don’t, but still, there’s always been a bit of antler-ramming and intellectual sparring over the years. Just enough to keep my mom and me entertained. But they have of late become gym buddies, working out together several times a week and hiring a trainer together. Which is weird for me. Dad has even taken to calling the GITB “son.” I’m sure this meets some need for the GITB who grew up without a dad but for him to suddenly bond with mine now is just kind of unexpected. It’s nice. Just weird.

Maybe part of this coming together has to do with the small but steady steps our kid is taking toward full-out adulthood. She is sailing through high school at alarming speed and with great academic success, so much so that she has been invited to transfer to the local college for her junior and senior year of high school, graduating with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. She’s learning to drive and the old family sedan has been spruced up and is in dry-dock in the neighbor’s extra garage, patiently tapping its toes awaiting her 16th birthday. Her trajectory is making us talk about what we’ll do in two years when she launches from the nest. The possibilities sit whispering in the corner of my writing room and I try to tune them out but they sneak up and tap my elbow and say “Hey! what about…”

Maybe I’ll go get a doctoral degree. Or I could join my friends who do merchandising for Broadway tours and go out on the road for six months. Maybe I’ll tell my bosses to shove it once and for all and totally go out on my own as a consultant. Or maybe school is it. I start teaching at a local small liberal arts college this summer and the idea of settling into academia for the rest of my working career is more appealing now than ever, especially with the fabulous schedule and freedom it affords.

In the meantime, it’s watching the gym rats do their thing and trying not to freak out over the demise of newspapers and the fucked up economy and all the for sale signs in my neighborhood. And the surreal awareness I have as I drive in relative safety and security to pick my kid up at school marveling at the serene blueness of the cloudless sky and the warm sun that it is disrupted by Coast Guard helicopters searching for a group of friends who went out on the water Saturday for a day of fishing and camaraderie and never made it home.

mistress of my domain

We just got home from a lovely trip to North Carolina, where I spent a final week hanging out with my fellow MFA pursuers and contemplating post-grad school life.

The Guy in the Boxers (spouse/consort)and our sweet little schmoopie (almost sweet 16)drove up on the weekend with the dog in tow in time for my graduation and tearful fare-thee-wells to my classmates.Then we high-tailed it to the Smokies for a few days of snowman-making and hot-toddie sipping and getting reacquainted. Our trip home was delayed by snow, which was a beautiful wonder to behold, most especially for my kid who has never seen it before. So there was a lot of perfunctory snow-eating, snowball flinging and angel-making.

One thing I know for certain is that education -- good education -- is well worth the money spent and the time devoted, which is usually precious and diverted from other needy areas of one's life and so it can be a sacrifice not only for the person in grad school, but that person's near and dear ones. So I feel fortunate to have had the resources to do this and the support of my tribe to go off for weeks at a time to work on my MFA. This was something I thought about a lot while in my final week of grad school, especially when engaging in conversation with my fellow grads. One woman told me that her husband had grudgingly supported her pursuit of an MFA, grudgingly because he had been teased relentlessly by his friends and family -- all techies and engineer types, she said -- for allowing her to selfishly indulge in a "useless" degree that was the basic equivalent of paying someone $20,000 to lock you in a room for two years while you write poems about dandelions (she got her MFA in poetry last week). As a writer of nonfiction, I feel a little less defensive about it, but still, I bristled when I heard her story.

So here I am, fresh MFA in hand. What's next? Who knows. But the possibilities seem limitless. And I have a publisher interested in my thesis. :)

one more

I have no narrative caption for this one.

Except to say that unlike some of us, I kept my pants on whenever I was out in public.

more photographic dispatches from last month's trip

Ricky didn't know that drinking with a straw made him look gay.
I chose to not point it out.
Which didn't really matter because he insisted on wearing
the scarf he bought at H&M.
In the junior department.
Also, the "doesn't my butt look sweet in these jeans?" question
was getting really annoying after the fifth time. So there's that.

Two thumbs up: The Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
Best damn strawberry margaritas in New York.
And Patsy Cline portraits in the john.

When people leave their mattresses out on the sidewalk
in the middle of the Village is there anything to do other than
jumping up and down on them?

Scariest. Damn. Bingo game hostess on the planet. Ever.
I knew I was in trouble when she asked me how long I claim to have been
a woman. Oh, and she called my friends Kathy and Lisa "Cagney and Lacy"
or "Streetwalker Barbie and Midge" all night which I sort of preferred
and continue to address them as such.
It couldn't have been all that bad.
We got there at 10 p.m.-ish and starting lurching toward the door at 3 a.m.-ish.
I think. No. Yeah. Um. Yeah.

Best damn cupcakes on the planet.
Especially the red velvet.
Even though I saw them twice.
Once in the bakery and again splattered near my feet
when Ricky leaned over and said "Oy. Yeah, I'm gonna puke,"
as I hailed a cab. Good times.

I just came back from nearly a week in New Yawk working on a staged reading of a play written by a guy from my hometown. It was super cool to be on a stage in New York for the first time (at my ripe old age!), and I guess some things really are worth the wait. And now I have an off-Broadway credit to add to my theatrical resume not to mention one more item I can scratch of my bucket list.

Besides walking through the snow in Washington Square Park after seeing a friend perform in the new Sondheim show at the Public Theatre, hanging out in Tribeca and rubbing elbows with Judd Hirsch, Cynthia Nixon and David Hyde Pierce, and celebrating the recent coming-out of a young actor friend of mine by taking him to the Stonewall bar and helping him stake his claim to his rightful uncloseted place in gaydom in the very cradle of where it all began, it was a pretty average trip.

Re: Stonewall: We had a hell of a good time playing bingo and doing tequlia shots and being verbally abused by the drag queen who was calling the bingo game. Chuck the bartender served hot steaming bowls of buttered popcorn sprinkled with M&Ms and I did not win one single bingo game even though I was playing 15 fucking cards at a time. The rest is pretty much a blur but I do recall stumbling into a cab at 4 a.m. and someone puking red velvet cupcakes in close enough proximity to my suede boots to make me say "Hey, watch where you spew, mister!" But in a loving way.

Well, it isn’t Emily Post, but it was effective and I do sympathise...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A Tampa woman is behind bars for chasing after a Thanksgiving dinner guest with a machete.

Forty-six-year-old Annette Jenkins is facing aggravated assault charges. She's being held on $2,000 bond.

Police were called to her home Thursday night when her brother arrived for dinner with a woman. The hostess reportedly waived the machete at the woman while yelling, "If you don't get out, I'll kill you."

No one was injured.

Jenkins is being held at the Hillsborough County Jail. Bond has been set at $2,000.

Spending the day with the gays

So my parents called me this morning to ask why my picture was on the front page of today's metro section seeing as how it was attached to a a story about a gay rights protest against the recent passage of Amendment 2 in Florida. Imagine their dismay when I told them that the whole damn family including the dog attended to lend our support and join the chorus of voices opposing this hate and intolerance-driven measure. We attended with our friends Kathy & Lisa who have been married for 13 years and my dear friend Scott and his new partner Tommy. How I wound up in the paper I cannot understand, though, seeing as how I write for the paper and we have a strict policy about running pictures or stories of reporters. All I can figure is that the photogapher is new (I have not met her) and whoever was on the copy desk yesterday failed to recognize me, maybe because I am in fuzz focus here. I was laughing at the time the photo was snapped because the speaker was a woman with a Leonid Breshnev unibrow and Scott could not stop commenting on it in his syrupy southern twang. "Oh, Lord Jesus, please let me help her with her grooming, bless her heart..."

what the eff are the odds? Another hotel fire!

Once upon a time in the life of ell, a fabulously romantic night (blissful screw-a-thon)in a fabulous historic hotel was interrupted by a grease fire that broke out in the kitchen. We were never in any danger, but we did have to check out way sooner than we wanted to, that's for sure. We figured later that at the very least, on the bright side, the fire alarm woke us up to the point that we were alert enough to do it one more time before we had to flee. Looks like Jaimie and Bill can relate. Their first night together as husband and wife was similarly interrupted by smoke, an alarm and firemen tromping around with flashlights. Here's an e-mail I received from Jaimie:

"Good Morning Everyone! We had a WONDERFUL time last night and are very happy you were there to join us!!

So, we leave the reception and go back to the hotel. We go to sleep and I wake up at 3 a.m. smelling smoke. I look outside and there are FIRE TRUCKS where the valet area is and smoke is passing by the window. I wake Bill and tell him something is on fire. Then the fire alarm goes off and we get up and get dressed. I call the front desk and they inform us that the fire is NOT in our building but we can come down if we want. We go downstairs and the smoke is very bad. Everyone is outside and watching the building 2 over from the hotel go up in flames. There were MANY fire trucks and several ladder trucks. One fireman said that it was a 2 alarm fire-at that point. We see the rest of our friends and family that were staying in hotel. We decided to take a cab back to our house, valet cars were blocked with the fire hoses, and sleep. Now we are headed back to the hotel to get our things and car and head to Miami. The good news-it appears Paloma has died down to a Tropical Storm and seems to be a little past our path. We are both very tired and look forward to getting on the ship and relaxing!"

I marry Bill and Jaimie

Not into threesomes but I did marry my friends Bill and Jaimie Saturday on the beach at sunset. It was a smooth ceremony and being a notary in Florida, I was able to be the officiant without the pesky requirement that I be an ordained minister of some such bullshit or other. But there was much joking around as we set up that it was in fact the "church of the holy grill" since the beach the happy couple chose is famous for picnics and bbqs. After the ceremony we all went back to the mainland for the reception and whooped it up all night in the ballroom of a historic hotel downtown. As the 30-something bridesmaids stood in a tight wad in a corner and preened and re-applied lip gloss, we 40-something bitches took over the dance floor and tore it up, starting with an awesome run of Love Shack, Paradise by the Dashboard Light and of course, the Electric Slide. We had gotten so liquored up that we plain ass did not give a shit that we seemed to be the only ones dancing and let it rip, each of us affecting a frowsy sort of monkey that had been shot with a tranquilizer dart at times which must have looked like fun because all the cute little 30-something groomsmen abandoned the plastic boobed stiffs in the corner and joined us on the dance floor and tore it up with us all night long. Too much fun.

What a wonderfully surreal feeling to wake up in a newly Blue State yesterday. I never thought it would happen, Florida being as dysfunctional as it is. For once we managed to not fuck it up for the rest of the country. However. As a reminder of how truly good we are at fucking it up for everyone else, the good rednecks, ignorant and ill-informed bigots, and frightened bible-thumpers passed the "Marriage Protection Act" which adds language to OUR STATE CONSTITUTION, PEOPLE! that states that marriage is a covenant between one person with an inie and one person with an outie, period, the end. I just don't get it. The whole motivation for this amendment was solely based in divisiveness and hatred and the inability of some soulless idiots to live and let live. Live your life, assholes, and leave everyone else the hell alone to live theirs--how hard is that? Apparently very. And it's not like gay marriage or recognition of domestic partners was even lawful in Florida to begin with, so WTF?

There is still much work to be done. Or maybe patience is the key. As one Gen Y co-worker put it: "We just have to wait for the old people to die off--the generation before the Boomers. They're the ones who can't seem to leave everyone else alone or tolerate anyone who is 'different'." Hm.

My ex-office-spouse went to the doctor yesterday and they took one look at his nuts and sent hin to a specialist, who cannot see him until Monday. So I suggested he begin his weekend early with round-the-clock-drinking.

My office husband got fired two weeks ago and work is so much more boring now. Plus I have no one to pick up Starbucks for me when he runs out for some for himself or trouble-shoot all my IT issues or fill me in on all the dirt in his dept. meetings and vice-versa. But more importantly, even though he walked away with three-months’ severance and a huge bonus check, he’s been having a tough time adjusting to being unemployed and things seems to be steadily caving in on him. Today I met him for lunch at the new Thai place around the corner from the office and as I greeted him with the usual “Yo!!! Wassuuuup?“ he unexpectedly burst into tears and not quiet tears – shudders of sobs that bent him into himself and seemed to be fighting to burst out of him while he tried to hold his breath and will them to stay in. This took me completely by surprise and I threw one arm over his shoulder and patted him like I do my kid when she’s having a tough time, which I know was completely futile and lacking in any real helpfulness. The first thought I had was that maybe his mom had died—he was crying that hard. When he was finally able to speak, he put his sunglasses on and looked away, out the window of my car and said very quietly that he had found a lump. “A lump? What do you mean, where?” Down there, he said. Yep, a nasty lump in the testicles.

This is scary because his dad died of testicular cancer and of course my friend has spent the last 24 hours feeling his lump and lurking on the Live Strong website, which has only made him more certain that he has ball cancer. I refused to get out of the car until he got on his cell phone and made an appt. to see his doctor tomorrow. So obviously the whole lump in the testes issue pretty much changed the tone of lunch. I didn’t know what to say and no matter what I chatted about I could see he was preoccupied with his lump. So was I. Here’s a guy I have spent 40+ hours a week with for the past eight years – more time than I have with my own family – and all I could think about as I stared at my steaming bowl of Pad Thai was what might be lurking in his pants, and not in a good way, and all of the sudden I had no idea what to say to him.

Have I mentioned that I hate the assholes who have commandeered our company? Yeah. I guess I have. We have lost a total of seven people from our office (roughly half) in the last year, all casualties of a totally mangled acquisition, bad management, piss-poor communication, ramped-up pressure to produce with fewer resources than we had two years ago, and, oh, yeah, a CEO who is a douche. And he hired all his college buddies to run the company and one of them decided he didn’t think he could work with my lumpy buddy and so he got the heave-ho. As I dropped my former colleague/office spouse/friend off on my way back to work, I leaned over to give him a hug and he kissed me. This made me very sad because I know it was an impulse – it was all about him needing to be close to another human being right now. And I know how utterly alone he must be feeling at the moment – because he really is. Now he’ll feel weird about calling me and letting me know how he’s doing and that totally sucks.

Distractions...distractions...distractions

I finally settled in today and got working. I was telling a friend last night that I hauled all these boxes of tapes that need transcribing and piles of old newspaper clippings and various sundry archives up here with me, because I need time away from my life. I need the quiet to put it all together in a cogent flow. I have all the ingredients, I said, now I just need to set about baking the damn cake already.

He asked how much I'd gotten done so far. When I hesitated he said "Yeah, that's what I thought." I confessed that I did dance around the table piled high with stuff then decided to settle into the comfy couch, light a fire and leaf through a book I pulled off the fireplace mantle, "Tuesdays with Morrie." I was curious about it because it's recently come out as a stage play and my theater is considering producing it next season so I paged through it. I ended up getting hooked on it and reading the whole damn thing, pausing only for a fast trip into town for wine and cheese and a small aged salami, which I had for dinner. I drank way too much wine (which is exactly two glasses), at which point all my inhibitions go right down the dumper, I feel great about the awesome wonder of being alive and the stupendous incredible oneness I feel with the universe for exactly about ten minutes before I disintegrate into mayor of asshole-ville. Which means after an hour of staring at the fire and ruminating about every regret I have ever harbored, I got all weepy and sat on the porch and smoked cigarettes and called up my old friend and boo-hoo'ed about how old and decayed I suddenly feel. Oh for chrissake, someone please come up to this here mountaintop with a shotgun and just shoot me already.

This morning I threw all the windows and doors open, cleaned up the cabin, took a long hot shower and faced my procrastinating self in the mirror. I sat and wrote. And cut and wrote and cut and made notes and actually got some work done. The only distractions I am allowing myself today are the woodpeckers and the chickadees. The hound dog next door came by for a bit of flirting with Miss Daisy and she has been hanging out on the back porch ever since he abruptly lopped off into the woods, no doubt pining and hoping he'll be back soon.

There's a lady who hikes every day along the trail at the top of the mountain and she sings as she hikes, very badly, in a high-pitched tuneless church-lady vibrato. From where I sit at the dining room table, I can see a flash of her white clothing as her song drifts down the side of the mountain. I squint but I cannot make her out and I strain for a moment to try and discern what it is she is singing but then I decided it doesn't matter. Back to work.

some people are just icky fuckers

One of the reasons why my friends with money have money is that they're pretty darn real estate savvy and have figured out how to own two fabulous homes and have other people pay the mortgage on one of them. 

But the trouble with this is that when you live 700 miles away from your vacation getaway and you rent it out to folks one week or so a month, (which pays said mortgage), you're dependent on local "professionals" to assist you with the rental of your property from time-to-time. In this case, my friends need a new cleaning lady AND a new property manager because the people who were here for the week, a "very professional executive couple," are a pair of complete hogs. 

I arrived at around 5 PM and spent 3 1/2 hours cleaning before I felt like I even wanted to haul my own shit in here. How can people be so disgusting? Both toilets had obliviously been well used, but the dude apparently was raised in a barn or something -- whatever his damage is is a mystery to me but for whatever fucked up reason he thinks it's okay to leave the seat down when he takes a piss. 

The bathrooms looked worse than gas station toilets. The kitchen sink was piled with dirty dishes, wet towels all over the beds, the stove and kitchen counters covered with grease and god knows what. I am always astounded at the lack of consideration people seem to have have for others and total lack of pride in themselves. Who the hell leaves a gorgeous cabin like this? I would be embarrassed for the cleaning lady (who never showed up today, obviously) to see this. I leave hotel rooms spotless when I check out. Seriously. 

The icing on the cake? The fuckers SMOKED. INSIDE. And there's no trash pick-up way up here on the mountain, so guests are asked to do a few simple things: strip the beds and throw the sheets and towels in the washer on your way out and take your trash away. No big deal when you're staying in a beautiful mountain hideaway that's fully stocked and appointed with everything you could ever need or want, right? Apparently it IS a problem for Mr. and Mrs. BMW. Fuckers. At least Miss Daisy is enjoying basking by the fire. After cleaning ashes and half-burnt logs out the fireplace and hauling a shitload of wood up two flights of steps to the house I'm too tired. I'm going to bed.

it's the schiznick, baby

So every year the kid and I await Halloween with anticipation. Sure, we dig the Brach's autumn mix, and we even eat the tiny orange pumpkins that come mixed in with the regular and chocolate candy corn, but what we totally dig the best is the costume aisle at Target. Oh. My. God. Do we love to try on pretty much every costume we can squeeze ourselves into and then proceed to photograph one another? Oh, hell yeah. Even better when unsuspecting Tar-jay shoppers start up the Halloween aisle and stop dead when they see the bumble bee prancing around. Usually they behave as if they just opened what they thought was an unoccupied stall door in a dirty public restroom and discovered someone fully exposed from the waist down trying to drop some mud in peace. They flush and back out, beating a stumbling retreat. Sometimes they even mumble "Sorry....." as the do a u-turn with their red carts. For chrissake, people, lighten up! It's fucking Halloween! Come on in and try on the Homer Simpson mask. It totally rocks and the inside sort of smells like Silly Putty.

still in the tunnel

So I have been working on my masters for, oh, like 800 years. But the end is near. Not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel just yet but at least I'm gathering steam and back at it on my thesis. The challenge has been marshaling the inspiration and time and trying to get my shit together so that both are within reach at the same time. Luckily, I have a supportive family and even better, a rich friend who has graciously offered me the use of her cabin near Maggie Valley in which I shall hole up ALONE for a week next month and KNOCK IT OUT. Ten pages a day for seven days ought to do it. My thesis is due October 20th so I will have time to come back home and breathe for a few days, edit and send it off to my thesis advisor on whom I have had a crush for about two years. It's the whole deeply cerebral Jewish nebbish thing that I find so alluring. Plus he wrote a book on Jefferson. Enywho.

DFW

Not a week ago I recommended David Foster Wallace to a budding writer with the cliched admonition: “a decent writer always writes but an exceptional writer always reads, and you need to read this guy.”

It made me feel cooler to have DFW as a contemporary.

I feel like I’ve lost a childhood friend — one who totally understood me, spoke my language and got my jokes.

A friend of mine sent a message that said "This is how I felt when I found out John Lennon was dead."

Damn it

Yet another light has gone out of the world. David Foster Wallace wrote prose that made me weep and laugh out loud. One of my favorites: his short piece "Consider the Lobster," and his collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Kitty Jones

this is Kitty Jones, according to my daughter. Schmoopie likes to wander around the neighborhood every afternoon after school, creeping around with her camera and whispering to the dragonflies and squirrels and mourning doves and wild-child kitties, all of whom seem to stop and pose for her. She is a truly talented photographer and has even had a few of her photos published recently AND her first show in a local gallery. Not bad for a 15-year-old, huh? She's my hero.