So I tweeted the other day about people (people RAISED IN A BARN) who leave unused time on the microwave. It went like this:

Perplexed by those who are able to leave unused seconds of cooking time on the microwave, unhaunted by inner whisper of: “Clear. CLEAR.”

I had quite a giggle over it and then when like EIGHTY (ok, 6) people “liked” this status on Facebook and then like NINETY (ok, 5) people commented on it, I thought I was SO AWESOME.

And this, my friends, is why you should never, ever spend time thinking about how awesome you are or how your parents raised you right (i.e., NOT IN A BARN): because then you will immediately fall flat on your face (apparently I had to learn this lesson twice). Which in my case means finding that I have left unused seconds on the microwave TWICE in the last four days! True, it was just at home, where only Fred & Ethel could be annoyed by the microwave’s incessant failure to return to its resting state as a clock, and as far as I know, they can’t tell time (except feeding time, but even their knowledge there is sketchy as they seem to mistakenly believe it is, oh, about a half-hour before I actually wake up), BUT STILL.

In other news, I got a hair cut. Or two, rather. The first one I hated because my stylist, usually awesome, underestimated the thickness of my hair and I looked like a mushroom (also, if we are being honest, just amongst ourselves you understand, it might also, just maybe, have been, oh, BECAUSE HE CUT IT THREE INCHES SHORTER THAN I TOLD HIM TO).

The second I made him do because I couldn’t go around wailing to people (again) that I’d been shorn of my one beauty. Or looking like a mother, mine in particular. And now it is better. Still three inches shorter than I wanted it, but respectable.

Well, respectable, but apparently, according to the 8-year-old daughter, B., of the man I’m seeing, E., cupcake like. I am not sure what she means by this exactly, poofy from lots of layers I think. But what’s funny if that E. had told me I looked like a cupcake? I would have died a little inside and spoken in monosyllables for a half-hour while I recuperated. But for some reason, hearing it come out of an 8-year-old’s mouth didn’t bother me at all. I could acknowledge my hair’s resemblance to a cupcake easily; I didn’t rail against it the same way I might if it had come out of E.’s mouth.

I don’t know why that is. Maybe because out of a child’s mouth, calling someone’s hair cupcake-like isn’t an insult. Everybody likes cupcakes. Or maybe it’s because my perception of myself isn’t as bound up in her perception of me as it is with E., or any man’s, perception of me. It’s not because I discount her opinion because she’s a child; children see a lot, and she’s a very smart girl.

Anyway, I just thought it was funny how much more leeway I gave her in expressing her opinion without feeling threatened or hurt. Maybe that’s the difference. You trust a child not to judge more than you do a lover. Not because you should. But because (your own personal) history teaches you not to trust the latter. Sadly, and to the detriment of your relationships.

Which has nothing to do with time on the microwave, or glass houses, or barns even. Except a shared theme of judging. And the need to do less of it and be more trusting.

Less judgment, more trust, more cupcakes!

Everybody loves cupcakes.

Refrigerator door, dissected, totally unrelated to post and I think you have to click on the photo to get the dissection, meh, TECHNOLOGY.

Today Suganya I went for a hike in Runyan Canyon, a hike I thought would be only an easy 40 minutes but turned out to be an hour and 40 and some tough downhill, and now I am sunburned, sore, and tired from processing so much vitamin D but happy I did something in the sun on this beautiful weekend.

On the way to the park, Suganya and I were complaining about Easter and the fact that everything is closed and trying to remember what on Earth it was commemorating, trying to remember the word, you know, like, rebirth, renaissance, we knew Christ did SOMETHING on this day umpteen years ago (obviously, neither of us raised Christian), WHAT WAS IT?

And after our hike we went to Ammo, and had a glass of wine to celebrate our conquest of the hills, and apparently I am too old to drink during the day because I required a nap after.

So when Suganya texted me a few hours later: “resurrection,” I assumed she too had recently awakened from a siesta. I replied, “I know! Finally! TWO-HOUR nap! Now all wonky.”

About a minute later it dawned on me to what she was referring and I had to text again: “Holy crap, just realized you were referring to CHRIST.”

Totally going to hell (in case there was any doubt).

(Don’t actually think so. At all. May not remember Christ was “resurrected,” but I practice principles of love and forgiveness every day (almost)(I try)(only human, you know)(MUST END PARENS NOW).

Also, probably should have ended this post at “totally going to hell” but you know, sometimes pithyness has to succumb to precision.

Well, crap. I have nothing to say, really. It’s not just you — friends, boyfriend, family (you know, those who come and go), they’re like, what’s new? And I say: work.

That is, in all seriousness, one of the biggest bummers about working a lot. You haven’t read anything new, heard anything new, or rather, you have, but nothing that ISN’T protected by the attorney-client privilege. You want to be like, I swear, I have been doing something for the last two weeks, let me tell you about it! But instead you have to say: “Work is stupid.”

Anyway, do you remember Highlights magazine? I remember my favorite features of that magazine as being Goofus & Gallant and the one where you figure out which picture is different but I have no idea if those were actually my favorite features or if they were the only ones that were delivered with enough frequency for me to remember, 26 years later.

This question has no point except for it is the only non-work thing I have discussed in the last 15 hours, and also, how hard did Highlights rock??!!

OK, maybe it does have a point, because someone I worked with recently was talking about her college-aged son, worrying about his ethics, his generation heading down the tubes (where do they go, them darn tubes? DOWN is all we know), the same sort of hand-wringing we seem to do with every generation. And I was thinking about myself when I was little, reading Goofus and Gallant, and the answer then was clear: Gallant was a pussy. Just kidding. Really, totally kidding, I was always able to figure out immediately where Goofus screwed up.

And then, as I got older, things got more confusing: there was “The Man” I was contending with, always getting the underprivileged, the underrepresented and me down, there were income taxes and what you could and couldn’t claim (my accountant tells me I am a .5 on a scale of 1 to 10 of aggressive, simultaneously awesome and embarrassing), there was just a general realization that is 100% completely possible to justify A LOT OF CRAP YOU SHOULDN’T BE DOING.

So what I tried to tell this woman worried about her son was, you know, when you’re younger, you’re good at rationalization, right, you’re human, but you haven’t yet developed the self-awareness to recognize when you’re doing so.

But when you’re older, just like you develop (kind of) enough sense to realize you’re just rationalizing a boyfriend’s behavior and really he’s being a dick, you develop enough sense, enough self-awareness to realize you’re rationalizing your own.

So you stop, and you do what’s right.

I dunno, that’s what I think. I think of some of the stupid stuff that I did to my friends, boyfriends, when I was younger, stuff I justified to myself (”all’s fair in love and war”). And I know I would never do those things now.

I’m too, like, adult and shit.

Or rather, I know full well when I’m not doing what I should. And I’m old enough to know better.

Oh, increased frequency of blog posts, lovely thought. And then there was billing 12 hours a day and then there were none. Blog posts that is. Or times I got to see my dad when he was in town. Or laundry being done.

I am rereading The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman right now, which is truly the most magical book I have read since The History of Love and even though this is probably one of the least profound of the many things she has to say, I have to totally agree with her that doing dishes is the antidote to confusion.

I am not even a dishes person, by nature. I go one of two ways: a) cook a huge production meal for a group of people and really wish I hadn’t the next morning when looking at the pile of dishes I have to do; or b) never, ever cook and never, ever do a dish because everything I eat comes with its own receptacle (SAD).

But E. cooks, so I do the dishes when I’m over there. Dish duty is my way to contribute. And I was worried, in the beginning, the same way you worry that maybe you won’t think someone will be as funny three months later, that my dish aversion would rear its ugly head and I’d get lazy and I’d be outed as a mooch, like, I’ll eat your lovely crab cakes, and then I will sloppily rub a sponge over the plates but that’s all she wrote.

Somehow, though, I have grown to love doing the dishes. Things get clean, they get put away, the stove top is shiny again. And not to quote Clueless in every third blog entry, but I can’t help myself, it gives me a feeling of control in a world full of chaos.
There is clarity, there is completion, there is calm. There is no confusion.

The dishes are done, man.

I always thought the level of cleanliness of my apartment was a apt indicator of my mental health, and I sort of still do. But it’s been a pigsty for the last month until this weekend when my mom came and then this week I’ve had more time at home because the man I’ve been seeing was sick — let’s go ahead and give him an initial now, probably will jinx us but I’m tired and willing to take the chance, E. — means my apartment is spotless but I am GRUMPY.

Anyway.

Things I’ve been thinking about:

1. This dude (I assume) in my parking garage with the license plate MAKSTER. Unless it is his last name, that is so 1993 and can’t you relinquish your vanity license plate? Or is it an extra charge to do so? Also, I saw a bumper sticker that Laurie would have loved and probably also been speedy enough to take a photo of that read, “I Hate Vanity Plates” which is hilarious is a ironic/meta sort of way that I can’t put my finger on.

2. E. said to me the other night that people take always the easiest course. Which I’ve been trying to figure out whether I agree with. At first I called bullshit (hello? Gandhi? was that the easiest course?), but you know, whether the easiest course is actually “easy” depends on your value system. Something might be the “easiest” course even though incredibly difficult because you’re committed to an ideal and diverging from that would disturb your world view; it’s “easier” to plow headfirst toward saving the world. So while this might be useful in describing why people make bad decisions, it’s generally not a useful tool for understanding why people do what they do.

3. Ursula commented on maybe my next to last post asking me how I knew the undergarment preferences of my lovers, do I survey them? Which totally boggled my mind until I realized that she is married to someone whom, while he totally made an awesome choice in a wife, OBVIOUSLY, is probably not all that particular. About things. Maybe I am wrong, but her husband Mike is pretty laid back and I really can’t see him developing a detailed list of his preferences in panties. He’d probably just like them OFF, and sooner rather than later (so would you, if you had Urs to come home to). But I have never really dated anyone who wasn’t. Particular. Particular in terms of food, design aesthetic, music, anything, everything, you name it, down to undergarments. I’m not quite sure what it is I find irresistible about idiosyncratic demands — OK, I know exactly what it is, it’s my Capricorn overachiever/general people pleaser nature, like, I WILL FIGURE THIS OUT AND MASTER YOUR PREFERENCES AND THEN YOU WILL LOVE ME FOREVER BECAUSE NO ONE BUT ME CAN MEET YOUR BIZARRE DEMANDS BECAUSE I AM THAT! AWESOME!, but it hasn’t worked out that way to date. As in, I have mastered preferences but still we have not lasted. But you know, I get bored without the challenge, so I’ll just hope one of these times fate/timing will provide so that I meet the test, and they will, too.