Stuff & nonsense

In case anyone was wondering, True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff was all I hoped it would be and more. It deserved the National Book Award that it won. I cried while finishing it in bed, lying on my side, until there was a pool of tears on my pillow. I mean, I don’t really know what to say other than that. It was beautiful, and I will now wait with bated breath for the final installation of this trilogy that I did not even know was a trilogy until last week. I have to know what happens to LaVaughn and Jolly.

Let’s see … I feel like this was a pretty excellent weekend despite the fact that the sun did not show its face until Sunday afternoon and Friday was one of the foulest days in history, weather-wise. We avoided the cold and rain Friday night by ordering Italian take-out and watching The Lookout, which was pretty good. On Saturday evening, we had dinner with B.’s friend from school and her fiancée. I drank wine and ate veggies with couscous and a giant plate of cheese fries, my first truly decadent gorging in a while. I’ve been pretty much overdosing on fresh fruits and vegetables from the produce market on a daily basis. I’m sure I need more protein but I can’t help it. I just want to eat satsumas and roasted sweet potatoes all day long.

On Sunday, I slept in and eventually got over myself and hit the road to exercise after a weeklong hiatus. It was GREAT. The sun was out. It was cold but not unbearable by any means. It was a wonderful day to cruise around the lakes. The opening piano notes and then the fiddle of the swelling opening notes of the Everwood theme filled my ears as I rounded a corner and was greeted by dozens of big white pelicans and life was beautiful. I even ran an extra five-minute leg at the end when I wasn’t required to. It was Brandi Carlile’s “The Story.” It just made me start running. Have I mentioned that I love her? Because I do. The fact that it’s January is going to mean going to the gym for some of these workouts even though I truly loathe it. But I have to do it. I felt so good when I was done; I have to overcome my laziness and remember that to feel that way again I have to actually do it again.

I read Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers. I have to say that I liked Ellen Emerson White’s Echo Company books a lot better (and I’m psyched to be getting the last two through interlibrary loan because not single library in this entire state carries them and they cost $1,000,000 used, practically). I listened to Boy Meets Boy, which is a cute book, but I think I am just fundamentally annoyed by audio books in general and would have enjoyed reading it more on paper. I'm in the middle of Maus II, which is good to kind of an unbelievable degree. Sometimes I have to stop and sit there and blink and just take it in.

Eastern Promises caused me to hide my eyes too many times for me to be able to recommend it.

Don't forget to watch Eli Stone tomorrow night! I guess that's it for now.

Bloggin' for Barack

My dear friend has just started a blog about Barack Obama. He's inviting people to submit their own posts about all things Barack. If you'd like to submit something, please send it to this e-mail address: Bloggin4Barack [at] gmail [dot] com. I'll be the one fielding the e-mails, so you'll actually be sending them to me.

This friend of mine knows a lot about politics. He's not an experienced blogger, he's just someone whose soul is on fire this political season, just like a lot of people's, and he's really feeling the Obama hope in his heart. If you are feeling the Obama hope in your heart, too, and feel like you want to shout it from the rooftops or simply make your opinions known, please think about sharing your thoughts. Your post can be posted anonymously or with a pseudonym or with your real name; just specify your wishes in that respect in your e-mail. Your post can be long or short, light or heavy, whatever's on your mind. Or it can simply be a link directing readers to thoughts you've already posted elsewhere, like on your own blog. I think my friend's intention is simply to have a place where Obama lovers can gather and bond in this next intense and exciting week or so and get their thoughts down in a collective place for posterity.

You can read his thoughts on the matter in this post. I think his position is beautifully stated. I'm proud of him for creating this space, and I encourage you, if you feel so called, to take part.

Boys & girls

Last night, B. and I watched Friday Night Lights, and Smash's little sister was receiving obscene phone calls from the complete jerks who were harassing her at the movies in last week's episode. And it made me remember something that I hadn't thought about in a long time.

I'm not sure how old I was ... I think it was sometime in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade. I woke up one morning and there was an envelope with my name written on it taped to the outside of my bedroom window. I opened it, and it had some rude, foul things written in it. The main thing I remember is that it asked me to circle my lingerie size and leave the note out for the sender to retrieve. I remember that it freaked me out, and I threw it away. Some time later -- not sure how long -- I got another note. For this one, I remember that my parents were out of town and the older sister of my older brother's friend was staying with us. She was a really nice woman, and we loved her. I remember she always smelled really good. Anyway, I got another note and this one had something about wanting to do something that rhymes with top my ferry. And I was SO completely mortified and horrified and I don't even remember if I knew what that meant. I don't think I did, actually. At least not in those terms. I remember sobbing and sobbing and the babysitter holding me and telling me it was okay and not to be scared. I remember saying through bawling hiccups that it was probably just some stupid boys from the bus, several of whom lived in my neighborhood and would have been in walking distance or biking distance from my window.

I know that it was probably one or more of them, and I knew that then, and that the notes were harmless, but I still remember being so upset and so scared by them. I did not like the idea of someone talking to me like that, thinking of me like that, even if they were just being stupid and playing a joke. Maybe to them it was funny, but to me it was so mean. And though we had our afterschool arguments and dramas on the bus, I thought that we were all friends at heart and that it was mean to do something like that to a friend. Maybe somewhere deep down I worried that it wasn't one of them and that it was some grown-up weirdo, but I don't think I allowed myself to entertain that possibility. After all, only the boys on the bus would know my house and know which window was mine and all that jazz, right?

Anyway, the minute I remembered these notes last night while watching Smash's sister cry over those mean phone calls, I started crying, too. And I cried for Smash's sister and for me and for all the little girls who are taunted, harassed, bothered, and scared by mean little boys or big boys who might think they're being funny but who are really just being awful. I've been thinking about it all day, and it just makes me so fucking angry, thinking about how in 2008 we still live in a society where boys being lewd and disgusting to girls is something that happens and makes girls cry. And it makes me feel frustrated that the way this makes girls feel is something that men will never be able to understand, even the best men.

I never found out who left those notes on my window. I ended up going out later in life with one of the neighborhood boys, and I wish I'd thought to ask him if he knew anything about it. I remember knowing then that the notes weren't in his handwriting and trusting that he was my friend and would not treat me that way. I remember not recognizing the handwriting at all. Again, I know they were just jokes, and I know they were put there by kids, but they were still gross and made me feel so heartbroken and terrified inside. I don't know if I can explain it, really.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. Except that I understand why Smash wanted to smash those boys' faces in. I hope my brother wanted to do the same thing for me.

Good actin'

I caught a Nip/Tuck rerun recently and watched it because it featured Rosie O'Donnell even though for the most part this show is truly disgusting. She was good, and Oliver Platt was great. GREAT. I've always liked him. Ever since Flatliners. Which in my 9th grade mind was a really good movie. I thought he was the most hilarious thing in that.

And in this episode of Nip/Tuck - WOW. He just blew me away. Especially in his scene with Roma Maffia when she challenged him to be who he really was. He was reliving the splendor of his experience at the Pride parade and bursting to say YES, I AM GAY! But he didn't. He was able to convey about 45 different emotions on his face at the same time, and it was clear what each one of them was. Amazing.

I maintain that Nip/Tuck is a vile show. Not just in terms of the (VILE) graphic scenes but in terms of what side of humanity it insists on revealing: the vile side.

You can watch a sequence of Platt's scenes in this episode here. The scene I admired so much starts about 3:10 into this. Really, this entire 9 minutes or so is totally worth watching. He is so, so good. It's all very touching and funny. It's too bad the show can't be more like these scenes all the time. He and Rosie are great together - it's funny and sad and sweet. "I wish I could take your pain away." This man needs an Emmy. I mean it.

Misc. + Oscars

I had not been rollerskating since the 8th grade, so it was not surprising that I was not extremely sure on my feet at a roller skating birthday party Friday night. But I never fell down, I had fun, I did the Hokey Pokey, and that's what it's all about.

I've been enjoying my documentaries lately. The Jewish Americans is really good, and the end of last week's installment made me weep ... when the [graphic video] rabbi talked about how he doesn't want to lay a stone on the heart of his people when they look back on the Holocaust ... how we must "look hard for the sparks of divinity in the ashes of atrocity" ... the way he said it got to me. It was beautiful. This series is allegedly narrated by Liev Schreiber, but to me it sounds nothing like him. Anyway, it's still good. I had no idea that Henry Ford was such a hateful, incurable asshole. And I loved seeing old Mandy Patinkin talking about Irving Berlin. Awesome.

I watched The Fog of War this weekend. I knew nothing of Robert McNamara, which makes me feel like an utter ignoramus. I liked it; it was pretty fascinating.

As for the Oscar nominations, I don't really feel like doing a whole entry about them this year, so I'll just say this. The best nomination on the list is the one for Hal Holbrook. I think Keri Russell should have gotten Ellen Page's place. Is that mean? I like Ellen Page, but I think Keri Russell was better in the indie chick-flick slot. I'm thrilled that "Falling Slowly" from Once was nominated for original song, and the main reason I hope the show actually occurs this year is so I can see Hansard and Irglova perform it live. The rest of it? I don't really care about. I haven't seen any of the nominations for best picture except for Juno. I've seen none of the best actor nominees. I've seen none of the best actress nominees except for Ellen Page (best in the crying alone in the mini-van scene, I think) and Marion Cotillard (good in a pretty good but depressing movie). I've seen none of the supporting actress nominees except for Ruby Dee in American Gangster, and while she was very good in it, her part might have been even smaller than Judi Dench's in Shakespeare in Love, and I find that irritating. The whole thing is irritating because it makes me feel like I saw no movies last year when I totally saw many and loved several. Anyway, it seems very white male-dominated, somehow, the whole thing. And excuse me, but where is Hairspray? WHATEVER.

But go, Hal Holbrook, go! You totally deserve to win.

Make Lemonade

The bookcases in my room are mostly stocked with children's and young adult books I've read a million times. Paul Zindel, Lois Lowry, Jean Little, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, and so forth. Mixed in with the multiples by those authors are a few singles. One I hadn't picked up in years is Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff.

I couldn't sleep last night and could not get into the new book I was reading, so I pulled this one off the shelf and read for more than an hour past my bedtime. I just took a long bath and finished it and cried my eyeballs out. It is a beautiful and powerful little book, and I loved it a decade ago, and I love it still.

I first read this book in a multicultural adolescent literature class my first summer of graduate school. It was taught by the professor whose other class in adolescent literature I'd taken with my sister as an undergrad. That class had three sets of sisters in it, weirdly. My sister and I discovered a long lost cousin in that class as well. I could go on and on about how special that class was to me, but I won't right now. I'll just say that the fact that the same professor headed up the graduate program I entered promptly upon graduating from college was pretty much the reason I did it. I loved her. She taught me so much about teaching and about books. I was never the teacher I think she wanted me to be or half the teacher she was, but I still cherish all that she taught me, and it's books like this one that I'm so grateful to her for sharing with me.

OKAY, I JUST LOOKED THIS BOOK UP ON AMAZON IN ORDER TO LINK TO IT IN THIS ENTRY, AND I SEE THAT IT IS PART OF A TRILOGY. OH MY SWEET LORD.

And excuse me, but the second book won the freaking fracking National Book Award? And was a Printz Honor Book? Oh Jesus Pete, where have I been? Now I am crying with happiness! I do not see a third book, so I'm not sure why they're calling it a trilogy. Maybe the third book is still unwritten.

I just ordered True Believer. I am so happy. I love everyone and everything.

Yum

I had the day off today. I slept in a little bit and then went shoe shopping with my mom. We had a nice afternoon. I went to the produce market, where I'd never been for some unknown reason, and loaded up three bags of stuff for a mere $16. I bought six little Louisiana satsumas. I ate three tonight. I could eat three more. I've decided they are the best thing I have ever eaten.

I made a simple but very yummy dinner tonight, a recipe suggested by my friend. I sauteed bell pepper, onion, celery, and garlic in lots of pepper and thyme, oregano, and basil then dumped in a can of diced tomatoes and cooked that down. Then I heated some Tyson chicken chunks (already cooked, in the frozen foods section, because I recently decided that life is too short for me to hold back the puke cutting up raw chicken ever again if I can help it) in some olive oil and stirred it into the other mixture. Then I served it over some tri-colored orzo pasta and topped it with feta cheese. YUM. For good measure, I made some sweet potato crack with the sweet potatoes I bought at the produce market even though it wasn't really a sensible side dish. I feel so very pleased to have three kinds of squash and a refrigerator full of strawberries, grapefruit, satsumas, apples, and leftovers from tonight's dinner.

I'm trying to keep up with the Artist's Way with my sister but the truth is that I haven't done a very good job. I am not really good about facing myself in any sort of paper journaling way right now, and this book is a lot of that. I want to overcome that fear.

Work is sure to be busy/crazy for the foreseeable future, but I am choosing not to think about that. I hope that school will be okay. I plan to stick with the exercise. I just want to have a happy and healthy life. I want to stop being a psycho in some respects. I think I'm going to bed early tonight. Goodnight.

Weekend update

What is better than a sunny Sunday afternoon? Not much.

It's been a nice weekend. On Friday afternoon after work, B. and I met downtown for sushi at a place we don't go very often. There are always lots of women in Carrie Bradshaw clothes, the music is bumping and loud, and the servers rush you out of there like their hair is on fire. But we were basically the first people there, so we took our time a little bit and enjoyed the terrace view, our wine, our scotch, our shrimp and eggplant miso, our seaweed salad, and our sushi rolls. We got frozen yogurt on the way home and watched Friday Night Lights, which I still love no matter how off the rails it might be going this season.

Yesterday morning, we got up pretty early. I went to the gym and did day two of week two of Couch to 5K and headed to lunch with my girlfriend. We shopped around a little after and exchanged late Christmas gifts. It was nice to see her. Then I went to a gathering of school friends, whom I was glad to see after the holiday break.

Dinner last night was uneventful leftovers, but the entertainment was eventful. It was Stardust, which I knew nothing about other than that Pajiba named it one of the best movies of 2007 we probably didn't see and that my little brother thought it was good. And it was. It was so good! It was just delightful and fun and very pretty to look at. It also did what I previously thought was impossible and that is make me like Claire Danes again. It was a movie miracle! She won me over in her first five minutes. Everyone in the movie was great. Just when I thought the cast could not be improved upon, up showed Ricky Gervais. Just kill me now.

The one thing in the movie that drove me a little nuts was the familiarity of some of the score. I was like, I have heard this before and it is driving me bananas! You can hear the little snippet that made me bonkers here. And I could not figure it out. And finally B. threw out, "Battlestar Galactica?" Whose title sort of sounds like Back to the Future. And I realized, eureka! That was it. (The first 25 seconds or so of that clip.) Anyway, other than that, the movie did not drive me crazy at all except for maybe with happiness.

This morning I went grocery shopping and did day three of week two outside, which was downright blissful because the weather continues to amaze. Then I went to paint some pottery with my favorite four-year-old, who announced as she madly splashed her ceramic plate with color, "I CAN'T STOP PAINTING." This is my last non-school weekend for a while, so I'm glad it's been so lovely.

Here are my playlists for week two, days two and three:

Piddle, Twiddle And Resolve/Till Then ~ 1776
Blame Canada ~ South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Pavement Artist (Chim Chim Cher-Ee) ~ Mary Poppins
What Would Brian Boitano Do? ~ South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
We're Not Sorry ~ Urinetown
Broken Heart ~ Motion City Soundtrack
Closer To You ~ Brandi Carlile
All I Want Is You ~ Barry Louis Polisar
The Story ~ Brandi Carlile
Who's Got a Match? ~ Biffy Clyro
Eyes ~ Rogue Wave
Shake It ~ Metro Station
Follow Your Heart ~ Urinetown (mainly for the part at the end when Hunter Foster knocks "laughter and glaaaaadness" out of the park)
School for Monsters/The Money Song ~ Avenue Q

Dear Prudence ~ Across the Universe
Run, Freedom, Run! ~ Hunter Foster (Urinetown)
So Nice So Smart ~ Kimya Dawson
All My Loving ~ Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe)
I've Got the World on a String ~ Michael Buble
Singin' In The Rain ~ Gene Kelly
When Your Mind's Made Up ~ Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová (Once)
The Nicest Kids In Town ~ James Marsden (Hairspray)
Busted Afternoon ~ Old 97's
Kind Of Hope ~ Pilot Speed
Happiness Is a Warm Gun ~ Joe Anderson (Across the Universe)
You Can't Stop The Beat ~ Hairspray
Everything ~ Michael Buble
I Will ~ The Beatles
The Story ~ Brandi Carlile

Dusting myself off

I lay in bed this morning feeling sorry for myself and disappointed in myself and I thought, "ENOUGH." Enough of not being able to button my pants, enough of feeling tired and slow and dumpy, enough of being cross and surly, enough. So I sat down on the couch and decided to make a playlist for my shuffle and start Couch to 5K again. I decided to start on week two. I made my playlist and I went to the gym after work and I did the workout and it was hard. But it was also good to be back in the land of the fit and those trying to get fit. I used to be one of them, and then I strayed away for a long time. The thought of nights in the gym stretching out before me almost makes me feel like puking from the sheer monotony of it, but I am just going to take one workout at a time. I know from experience that the distances and times run in Couch to 5K are not going to transform my body but they will transform my life and hopefully motivate me to keep on pushing myself to be healthier. I am no longer going to mope around and feel like a lame suckass for giving myself fully to training for months upon months and then squandering all of that fitness. Moping is doing me no good! So I am just starting the fuck OVER.

Playlist:

Don't Do Sadness/Blue Wind ~ John Gallagher Jr. & Lauren Pritchard (Warm-up)
Good Morning Baltimore ~ Nikki Blonsky (Run)
Bubbly ~ Colbie Caillat (Walk)
A Well Respected Man ~ The Kinks (Run)
Anyone Else But You ~ Michael Cera & Ellen Page (Walk)
The Long Way Around ~ Dixie Chicks (Run)
Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' ~ Gordon MacRae (Walk)
Save the Last Dance for Me ~ Michael Buble (Run)
Have You Ever ~ Brandi Carlile (Walk)
Piazza, New York Catcher ~ Belle & Sebastian (Run)
All You Need Is Love ~ Dana Fuchs & Jim Sturgess (Walk)
I've Just Seen a Face ~ Jim Sturgess (Run)
Put Your Records On (Acoustic) ~ Corinne Bailey Rae (Walk)
Again Today ~ Brandi Carlile (Cool-down)

P.S. This made me cry. They love Rosie like I do.

Game

So that was really fun.

I was not feeling all that excited about going to the game at first. I was stressed about taking off at work when I’d just taken off for the holidays and I had a pretty major assignment in the works, and I was bummed my boyfriend wasn’t going, and I was wishing we all could have made a big weekend of it instead of just showing up for the game and heading home. But on game day before heading out, I started to get more pumped and put on my grateful hat and knew I should quit my inner bitching and remember all the people who wished they could be going, hello.

It started with a trip to the city with my parents, which went smoothly (I listened to the new love of my life, Brandi Carlile, on my iPod) until we parked. My mom started singing the Tiger fight song opera style in the Superdome parking garage and stepped off lots of curbs into the paths of many tour buses. I think she was just so excited she lost her mind a little bit, bless her heart. We kept running into people we knew – in the hotel bathroom, walking down Canal, in another hotel lobby, randomly on the side of whatever road we were walking on, in restaurants, in the Superdome bathroom. Everywhere! So that was fun.

It rained on our way into the Dome, and I got actually manhandled and shoved by a policeman, which was so infuriating that I cannot think much about it or I start to seethe with rage, but by the time we settled into our seats with big buttery, salty pretzels and miniature pepperoni pizzas, I had calmed down. We inevitably bonded with the people around us – a guy with his elderly parents and a row of drunken lunatics plus one of their lunatic wives in front of us. They were pouring beer into each other’s seats, into each other’s baseball caps. It was just kind of insane, but my sister, brother, brother's girlfriend, and I definitely enjoyed the hilarity.

As for the game itself, we started out with the blues when we were down 10-0 at the start, but soon things were turned around and all was fun. At first I was a little morose about the seats (I hate sitting underneath other seats; the concrete ceiling makes it kind of dark and you can’t really experience the mass brightness of the Dome), but one of the drunks in front of me argued, “But we’re in the game. We’re IN THE GAME!” And I was put in my place. I wasn't drinking at all, but finally I got so thirsty from screaming that I accepted a beer from my sister, who accepted it from the drunken wife, who said, "They're buying it faster than I can drink it!"

(I want to just say that I am ashamed of the way some of our fans were acting. Just purely and horribly ashamed. What is with booing the other team's band? How classless can you be? I understand there is no stopping the booing of the team, even though I think that is disgusting, but the freaking band? They are just out there in their costumes lining up and marching their hearts out, and they get booed by us? I am sorry, band. I was not booing you! I tried to be really nice to all of the other team's fans. I was so nice to one lady in the bathroom after the game that I'm not sure she believed I was being genuine. But I mean, come on people. It is a game and we both went there wanting to win. And they lost two years in a row! Can we not show a little peace, love, and understanding? However, one very rowdy fan in red, during our march to the Dome, actually yelled "F*ck you!" to an old man who was holding up a bible and talking about how Jesus loves us, not at all in a hellfire and brimstone kind of a way, just a nice sidewalk standing kind of a way. So I guess fans in all colors can be disgusting. We all shot that drunk bastard a death glare. As far as I am concerned, he and the brutal policeman can go straight to hell!)

I think the beer made me a bit teary when the chants of "SEC! SEC!" would start. I don't know why I found that so moving, but I did. I don't know much about the politics of college football, but I have gathered that people look down on the SEC somehow and think we're all a bunch of losers? Can anyone clarify this for me? I don't know. But I felt like the whole Southern United States of America was cheering with us, even our rivals whom we hate and who hate us, and even if I totally made that up in my mind, it made me really happy.

The best thing about the seats was being so close to the band, which played constantly and kept everyone dancing and yelling in their seats. At first I was watching the time closely and feeling like it would go on forever, but then I felt like I was in another world, what with the screams and the thundering stomps of the people that made the ground vibrate steadily throughout the game, and time lost all meaning. While no game could top the feeling of four years ago, I don't think, this game was very fun, and it was special to sit with my sister and brother, and I’m so glad I got to be there.

My godchild

I'm posting this entry that was actually written by my lifelong friend who is the mother of my godchild. They've been having a rough time. Disclaimer: Some of this may be TMI for those who have a low tolerance for diaper content talk (there's only a little of that, though -- but I'll go ahead and spoiler code it for the weak). Feel free to comment or shoot me an e-mail and I'll connect y'all if you have any WoWs (words of wisdom) about this ... she's not looking for medical advice but could use some shared experiences or commiseration.

:::

Our pediatrician is suspecting Celiac's Disease as a possibility for our daughter. How would this present in a 9 month old baby? I'll try to make a long story short. She has been pretty miserable since birth. She was diagnosed with reflux and a dairy intolerance (green mucousy poop with blood) at 2 months and has been on Prevacid solutabs since that time. I have been exclusively breastfeeding my daughter (I cut dairy out of my diet), and we started solids when she was 7 months. Since starting solids, I have seen no improvement in her symptoms. She is perpetually fussy. We can't put her down without her crying. Not every night, but a lot of nights, she will cry inconsolably from 9 p.m. to 2-ish a.m. This is even with us holding her. It's definitely worse at night. She is fussy but ok in the mornings and during the day. She has had a few things medically that have been weird. She had an unexplained very high white blood cell count, but this went away with two shots of a heavy duty antibiotic. Most recently, she got a horrible rash. When we brought her in, the pediatrician looked at it and listened to a tape of her nighttime crying and said she should not be crying like that at nine months. She is running a bunch of tests. We won't get most of the results back for a week. Some preliminary results are suggesting inflammation. She wants to send us to a new pediatric GI specialist. What kind of tests should we ask for? I read that the test for Celiac's is unreliable in infants. I should add that she is not malnourished. She looks pretty healthy, albeit tiny. She is in the 10th %ile for weight. [Note from Eliza: To me she looks like a delicious chunky monkey, but what do I know?] Also, would she be better off on hypoallergenic formula if I can get her to take it? We are really, really desperate, so any advice/info is very much appreciated.

:::

It's Eliza again. Feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might have some insight or at least be able to tell my friend she is not alone and it will get better. Thanks!

I've got issues

1989



1990



1991



1992



1993

Sassy retrospective

I've been putting my hands on my old Sassy issues. They've been moved in a giant stack from house to house since I first moved out of my parents' house at age 18. I haven't looked at them in a long time because they're always in a closet.

It turns out that I have exactly zero issues from 1988. Which bums me out. But I do have all of 1989 (except for June ... what was I doing in June of 1989? I had just graduated from the 8th grade and was most likely headed to summer camp ... maybe I brought that issue with me and it never made it home) and all of 1990, 1991, and 1992. Can you say "treasure"? I can. Treasure. I only have January through August of 1993 (except for April ... maybe it got tossed as a soiled contagion while I was in the throes of mono misery that month). In August of 1993, I started college. Maybe I decided I'd outgrown Sassy once that happened because I don't have another issue after that.

Inexplicably, I have two copies of February of 1991 (the month I turned sixteen) and three copies of March of 1991 (the month after that). Also two of November of 1992, which featured Mayim Bialik on the cover. (On one of them, I drew make-up on her face with multi-colored paint markers.) I have the covers with Johnny Depp, Juliana Hatfield, Robert Downey, Jr., and Courtney Love/Kurt Cobain. October of 1990's cover was ripped off at some time. Apparently that was the Christian Slater cover. I do vaguely recall making a Christian Slater collage on my bedroom wall after Pump Up the Volume, which came out in 1990, which explains that the cover was most likely collage fodder.

I am looking at these covers and they are so familiar to me even though I have not glimpsed them for years. Decades even, maybe. All told, including the few duplicates, I have 56 issues. Is that excessive?

I did a lot of doodling in these magazines, which is kind of dumb but also kind of funny. Lots of doodles about the love of teen boyfriends and one guy friend quoted as saying "no more tampon talk!" with an arrow drawn from a Tampax ad.

My boyfriend was at one of the Sassiest Colleges in America in 1989, when that article was written. He knew someone named in the article. That just made me jump up and down in my hall.

Also in November of 1989, I circles and drew arrows around a poem that started like this: "They wait to die / You wait to dine / You think it natural / They await a painful death ..." (about animals) -- I guess I was embracing vegetarianism at the beginning of 9th grade.

I really ... just cannot even begin to say how much I loved this magazine. I don't even know what to say. I think I'm going to try to take some pictures, but not tonight.

The love of my young life, River Phoenix, talked about veganism in October of 1989. The cover says, "River Phoenix wants to tell you something." I wish I could have told River Phoenix something, such as "I love you. Please don't die four years from now this month."

Day three

It's 6:59 in the morning. I managed to get out of bed, but I have now relocated to the couch and am having trouble forcing myself off of it. 25 degrees is too cold to face. I am pretending I don't have to be at work in an hour.

So, it's the beginning of the third day of the new year. 2008 was rung in quietly but happily. A matinee of Juno with Skittles and popcorn, then an afternoon of crock pot cooking and No Man's Land (excellent, thanks, Kymm) and Superbad (dumb but funny) and a bottle of red wine. I was asleep when the clock struck twelve, but I'm fine with that.

On New Year's Day, we watched yet another movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I jotted it down, hoping to actually stick to keeping my movie and book lists for 2008.

Last night in the tub, I finished What Gets Into Us by Moira Crone, which was very good, and then I tackled How Sassy Changed My Life. It really took me back to the days of Sassy. I have very vivid memories of lying around on my friend's bed reading it. I think she was the one who first discovered it; I'm not sure how. But I know we loved it from the start, and it meant so much to us. Reading this book was a nice way of learning that it meant the same thing to lots of other people. I also remember quite clearly getting the issue run by the new staff and being like, "What are you and what have you done to my Sassy?" It was kind of crushing, like the end of an era. This book was also enlightening relative to the boycott of the magazine and how it tied its hands when it came to sexual topics. I had no idea that ever happened. I was just happily reading it in my friend's bedroom and spinning my little REM record that came in one issue. I wonder if I still have that record somewhere? That I still have so many issues is one positive aspect of being a lifelong packrat. I don't see ever parting with them, honestly.

I am vowing to embrace the joys of this new year and focus less on the bummers. I really want to stop waking up in the middle of the night and using that time to fret, fret, fret the dark hours away. I want to be healthy and kind and energetic and creative and loving and have plenty of fun.

I guess I need to face the music and get up off the couch. I'll end this with a few pictures -- flowers by me, dogs by B.