As 2012 goes on, I’m going to try to look back at the end of each month, just to keep up with my own life.

Books:

• Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott: What can I say? I love her.

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I read this over a decade ago along with the rest of the world and decided it needed a re-read. It has not disappointed, though it’s taking me forever & a day and I’m not done. It’s fun to look back and come across parts I underlined all those years ago, in what sometimes feels like another life.

• Natural Woman by Carole King ~ A pretty good read. Semi-boring at times but she’s Carole King and a goddess and I loved all the James Taylor parts.

• Guts by Kristen Johnston ~ Wow. Really raw and surprising.

• Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin ~ I could not really get into this one. I might try to go back to it; I think I just was more in the mood this month for celebrity memoirs.

• Girl Walks into a Bar by Rachel Dratch ~ Speaking of celebrity memoirs … this one is so good. I laughed out loud & got teary-eyed and she is a fantastic writer. I mean, I finished it just now and I’m sitting here feeling all warm and hopeful and have decided that it’s the best celebrity memoir I’ve ever read. Which is probably not sensible, but: it’s really good. I liked Mindy Kaling/Tina Fey’s books a whole lot, but I liked this one more. It also brought me back to that swell Saturday night when we all first saw this and all of the joy it brought to us. Or at least to me.

• Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner – A Sort of Love Story by Alan Zweibel ~ This is a lovely little book. I never had an awareness of who Gilda Radner was until picking up my mom’s paperback copy of her book It’s Always Something when I was in high school. I read it not once, not twice, but many, many times. I don’t even really know why. I just knew that I loved her and I was so sad that she died and I felt like I knew her because of her book. So reading this book, about her friendship with Zweibel, really touched me deeply. It’s wonderful.

• The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ~ Watched this on HBO On Demand and it was gutting and fantastic and reminded me of my deep conviction that John McCain is not a nice person and if nothing else comes from Obama winning in 2008, at least this was repealed. Excellent documentary. Powerful. John McCain, shame on you.

• Strangers No More ~ Another documentary on HBO. About an amazing school for refugee children in Tel Aviv. Won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Inspiring. Moving. Really damn awesome.

• This old photo of Susan Sarandon & Prince Humperdinck.

• This look back at Freaks & Geeks.

Pets still alive:

All. I can’t even talk about the flea situation. Let us focus instead on the peaceful sight of the hopefully now flea-free cat sitting benignly in the window on a spring day.

Dead cars:

One 2000 Honda Civic. I know that everyone the world over sings the praises of the wondrousness of the indestructible Honda, but mine only has 118,000 miles on it and has honestly cost me a large amount of money in my life and I am done. I took Sylvia (her name) in for one last check to see if the overheating issue might be a simple fix, and I don’t know what exactly happened under the hood, but Eric the mechanic stuck his napkin inside something and pulled it out and smelled it and said, “What the heck is that in there?” Well, Eric, if you do not know, I cannot help you. He said it’s supposed to be green and not look like coffee. Great. I just started laughing my head off at that point. Poor stupid Sylvia.

Farmer’s Market:

I love it. That is all.

Ice cream eaten:

The Salty Pimp reigned surpreme.

Flowers, Plants, Trees:

At home this month, it’s all about the jasmine, which makes everything smell amazing, as well as the continued excellence of the canna lilies, day lilies, and irises, the latter two of which are my favorite because they were transplanted from my grandmother’s yard to my mom’s to mind and thrill my soul every single year.

Louisiana Iris

My beautiful grandmother's beautiful daylilies

The grand prize for April plants goes to my mom’s purple bougainvillea. I am so sure something exists that is this awesome. Magic.

In addition to the lovely local flowers, I was delighted that every time I looked up when visiting my sister, all I could see was the beautiful New England spring exploding everywhere.

The most important thing that happened in April:

Meeting my new baby nephew.

The most important houseguest:

This lady came to stay. We drank some wine on the patio, ate some shrimp po-boys and drank some Strawberry Abita on another patio, and then we drank some rosé in our pajamas and watched Grey’s Anatomy and cried. Then we woke up and drank some iced coffee and ate some biscuits. We are Southern, and it was good.

The most important festival:

There is no fest like Jazz Fest. As my beautiful falsetto singing, white t-shirt wearing boyfriend Justin Vernon, who first came to Jazz Fest when he was 14 — “It was the beginning of my life,” he said of the experience — proclaimed to the crowd of thousands and thousands, stretching out as far as the eye could see as the sun set over the Gentilly Stage, “This is hands down the best music festival in the world.”

I’ve thought about this book a lot since reading it earlier this year, and I can’t really explain why I think it is so wonderful. Even if the author, John Corey Whaley, were not from Louisiana, I would love this book. It made me think, and it moved me.

Here are a couple of my favorite parts:

“Before Lucas Cader came to Lily and became my friend, I spent most of my time either with my brother or completely alone. Gabriel, though, didn’t really like going outside or swimming or anything like that. He liked to stay in, read books, watch TV, and pretend that he was grown up. I never wanted to feel grown up, to be like an adult. I wanted to scream until it hurt my throat and made me talk funny for the rest of the day, and I wanted to run through my neighbor’s sprinklers and track mud into the house and shake my wet hair like a dog would in the middle of the living room. In church, I used to try and get my brother to play tic-tac-toe on the bulletin, but he always refused, shushing me and pointing to the preacher. My brother once told me that God was like the best musician in the world, because he put together all the sounds of nature and gave people like Jimi Hendrix his fingers and John Lennon his brain.”

“… he imagines his little brother sitting on the floor of Libby’s room and trying to convince her to kiss him. He sees Gabriel lean in and, gently resting his hand on Libby’s knee, close his eyes and wait for her to meet his lips. He imagines Gabriel flushed with embarrassment when nothing happens, standing up and then sitting as far away as possible and trying not to look up at her. He sees Libby walk across the room, wrap her arms around Gabriel’s neck, and squeeze him tightly. He hears her say she loves him. He hears Gabriel say it back. His brother, he thinks, was in love with everyone he knew.”

I could go on and on, but many of my favorite parts would be spoilers, and this is definitely a book best left unspoiled. I knew nothing of it going in, and I’m glad. This is really a devastatingly wonderful book.

Books:

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander: We read this book of short stories for book club. I liked it very, very much.

• Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey. Gifts from Jessie. Totally enjoyable and I regret not reading them as a child. I am excited to read book three.

Movies:

• Becoming Elmo ~ I’ve been wanting to see this ever since reading this post long ago, and it did not disappoint.

• The Hunger Games ~ Clearly the books are dark. We all know this. But I don’t think I was in a good headspace to see it all play out on screen. I don’t know when I became the grown-up who sits there fretting about all of the children watching this and being traumatized. Jennifer Lawrence is clearly very gifted, and I thought Peeta was adorable. But it was just all a little upsetting, and I could have done without all of the blurry shots dissolving into focus constantly.

• Wanderlust ~ My brother and I saw this during a torrential rainstorm in Nashville. It was very stupid and definitely no Role Models, but we laughed a lot at Paul Rudd being his very Paul Ruddiest.

• Something Borrowed ~ This is a very stupid movie. It’s bad. But John Krasinski is as wonderful as always in a truly thankless role, and the guy who played Dex is basically smokin’ and very good at emoting.

TV:

• Mad Men: It is back. It is everything. It makes me cringe and swoon every second.

• New Girl: I remain very charmed by this show. I mean, Schmidt. It is all about Schmidt for me.

Music:

One March music memory was seeing Mumford and Sons and Dawes at the Ryman, which is ever a magical and wondrous place to see anyone play music, and where I fully ugly cried during “A Little Bit of Everything.”

Also: My friend and I went out for tapas and saw the Avett Brothers here at home, and they were delightful as always.

The major magical musical moment of March, though, was seeing my brother play a song at a funeral for his dear friend upon her request. I don’t think I’ve ever been more moved or proud of anyone in the history of life as I know it.

Trips & Fun Times:

Went to Nashville to see my brother and stay with my friend and hold her beautiful baby a lot. I’m not sure I can even express how majorly my expectations of Nashville are surpassed all over again every time I go. It is so much lovelier and more charming and delicious than I ever knew, and I love it utterly. As usual, blood orange mimosas/amazing coffee at Marche were a highlight, but we also loved Silly Goose, oh my dear Lord.

Spent the night in New Orleans with the Chaos for a race I could not run. We drank a lot of whiskey in our beloved hotel lounge, where Anna Beth Breesed her running outfit, and ate a lot of pizza and other delicious things at Capdeville and Domenica.

Other highlights in terms of fun: Girls dinner for a friend’s birthday where we were all kind of falling apart at the seams but somehow managed to have fun anyway, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, jumping on a trampoline that my five-year-old goddaughter got for her birthday, and hosting book club, where we drank lots of wine and laughed lots of laughs, as usual. I am not a host by nature, but I ended up having fun.

Races:

Let us not speak of this. Though my feet are doing better, and I’ve been able to walk a little and run a tiny, tiny bit, and that’s been good.

Favorite things on Internet:

• Anne Lamott on Twitter. And on Facebook.
• Posts like this and this, both of which I agree with on a deep and profound level. The latter includes a song that is on my running mix to this day and speaks of a film that came out the summer I worked at Disney World in college, and even though it wasn’t one of Disney’s major animated hits, I will always love it because it will always remind me of how my friends and I all called called in sick to work to see it on opening night. Somehow the parks remained in operation in our absence.
• Academic Coach Taylor.
• Footage from the opening night of Once on Broadway. (“Fair play to those who dare to dream.”)
• All of these are good, but my absolute favorite thing on the Internet this month, hands down, is this. I saw Jonathan Groff on Broadway five years ago this month and, let’s face it, have been mad about him since. Here, he channels his beloved Sutton Foster, and it’s a stage full of wonderful and a world full of love.

Most important food and drink:

All Strawbs, all the time. And crawfish. These two things are really all we need.

Pets still alive:

My sweet Daisy is officially in heart failure, says the vet, and her meds are now doubled to six pills a day. I have no idea what this means for the future. What this means for the present is that she pants really hard a lot of the time. She is 13 and the sweetest girl.

Ice cream eaten:

None. Lent. I did break down on a Friday after a hideous week at work and have peanut M&Ms and a few chocolate chip cookies. I cannot lie.

Neighbors:

They’re still wandering around without shoes or shirts, carrying their cardboard signs to street corners and living the hippie life. The tenants seem like sweet boys, and I’ve decided to just calm down about it and stop assuming that one of the drifters who comes through on this stop on the underground hippie railroad is going to kill all of us. That said, I really hope we’ve seen the last of Anorexic Peyote Jesus.

Flowers, Plants, Trees:

The canna lilies seem extra orange this year, I can’t keep cutting branches off my azalea plants and sticking them in vases, and my grandmother’s day lilies are making me as happy as ever. And I am trying to keep my new bougainvillea alive. We’ll see how it goes.

The most important thing that happened in March:

I have a new nephew. He is perfect. He has a bad-ass Irish name, and I predict he will be a bad-ass person, in all the best ways. I cannot wait to meet him.

Books:

• The Submission by Amy Waldman: Did not care for it very much. A bit melodramatic, maybe, for me.

• Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley: Printz winner by a Louisiana native. Wonderful.

• There But For The by Ali Smith: Hate.

• Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. Love.

Movies:

• 50/50 ~ Liked it!

• Moneyball ~ Surpassed my expectations. Enjoyed thoroughly.

• Big Miracle ~ My brother & sister-in-law and I were the only ones in the theater, which led to misbehaving and not really being able to get into the movie. I enjoyed the snacks & company, though.

• Certified Copy ~ I love Juliette Binoche beyond reason and she owned every moment she was onscreen, but I did not get this movie.

• Higher Ground ~ I wanted to like this, and I liked little moments of it, but I don’t think I can get behind Vera Farmiga.

• The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore ~ The best film I saw this month.

• Midnight in Paris ~ I saw this only because Kymm and my brother said I had to. And I’m glad they did. I thought it was totally a delight. As is Kymm’s review:

Mom, a consummate cream puff-smasher, asked me at home, “But how did he get back to the ’20s?” “Because it’s Paris!” I answered, and I realized that that was probably the reason.

TV:

• Downton Abbey: Even though it kind of went of the rails in some ways, my love was brought back around in full force by the end of the Christmas special, and I can’t wait until season 3.

• Parenthood: This show officially makes me cry in every episode. Sometimes in every scene of every episode.

• Raising Hope: The Valentine’s episode was probably my favorite episode ever. Romantic, hilarious, and beyond clever.

Music:

At long last, I downloaded a bunch of songs from So You Think You Can Dance that I’ve always loved, and life is all the more better for it. I get to listen to “Battlefield” while acting out the crazy good choreography in my mind and pretending I have Jeanine’s hair, and what’s not to love about reliving this weird awesomeness?

I’ve also been listening to the soundtrack of The Preacher’s Wife on repeat every single day for several weeks.

Trips & Fun Times:

New Orleans to see Morris Lessmore. Which you have watched by now, right? RIGHT?

Other highlights in terms of fun: Girls dinner for my birthday where I laughed so hard I thought I might actually throw up, Mardi Gras afternoon not at a parade but on a friend’s patio with some of my favorite people & their daughters and vats of tacos and pink daiquiris, and a gig of my brother’s which which was more fun than any gig has ever been before. I was so excited and proud that I basically had an out of body experience.

Races:

Let us not speak of this.

Favorite things on Internet:

• Things I Could Have Said to Connie Britton When She Came Into My Coffee Shop the Other Day

• The Obama Show

• This video of Kristen Bell’s birthday surprise. I love her. I love Dax. I love that they are together. This is wonderful in every way.

Favorite thing on TV:

I can’t really explain how much joy this brought to my heart. I might need to watch it every day for the rest of my life.

New cars:

None. I really should get on this, as I’m not sure how much longer I can drive around town in the giant boat of a borrowed vehicle I’m careening around in, though I’m lucky to have use of it. I think I want to buy a volkswagen of some kind, for I think they are cute, but I’m in denial, kind of.

Most important beverage:

The last week of the month brought the seasonal release of my most favorite beer, not only because it tastes yummy, because it it also tastes like parades, festivals, boiled crawfish, patios, and love. It tastes like spring. My sweet friend/co-worker who knew what I needed delivered my first of the season to my office on my birthday.

Pets still alive:

All. Daisy’s got some strangeness going on that I’ll spare you from describing, but the vet said yesterday that she’d have to be put under to fix it, and since she’s 13 and has a rather high grade heart murmur, if it’s not affecting her quality of life, we should just watch it for now, even though it’s kind of grotesque. Old age is not for wimps, is all I’m saying. She’s still as sweet as she can damn be.

Ice cream eaten:

So much. Until Ash Wednesday, which brought the giving up of sweets for physical health and, for mental and spiritual health, the Real Housewives.

Birthday:

Birthday celebrating was kind of staggered this year because of the day on which it actually fell (a very busy Tuesday at work). But throughout the week, there were some swell visits and meals and cocktails with family and friends, some heartfelt cards & thoughtful gifts, some bright & sunny flowers delivered at work, and let’s not forget the weird futuristic delight that is one’s birthday Facebook wall.

Neighbors:

Every day when I get home from work and the first thing I encounter is the neighbors out on their patio and their singing, strumming, whistling, knee-slapping, and hollering at my geriatric dogs through plumes of smoke and billowing beards, I die a little inside. And tragically, there’s now an accordion. To drown them out, I’ve been listening to a lot of “I Go to the Rock.”

Speaking of Whitney:

In February, I cried many tears over Whitney Houston. Countless numbers of us have our stories and reasons why we loved her, and mine certainly aren’t anything special, but she was special to me. I loved her when I was ten years old and never stopped, and I will love her always. Hers was the first concert I ever attended. It was 1987, in the Superdome, and she was my favorite person in the world. Remember how Anastasia Krupnik would make lists of things she loved and things she hated in separate columns? I copied this idea in my childhood diary. For 1986, in my “Loves” column, I listed the following, in this order: my mom, my dad, my sister, my brothers, garlic bread, our cat, my grandmother’s dog, school, summer, fifth grade, my teacher, and Whitney Housten [sic].

Flowers, Plants, Trees:

Azaleas. They’re here way, way too early, but they’re here. I’m also fond of the tulips planted at work, the Chinese witch hazel blooming in my front yard, the tiny bursts of leaves on my crape myrtles, and my red begonias in my flower boxes that don’t care what season it is and just really seem to love being alive.

I am going to try really hard not to go into the pre-birthday, taped feet, Downton Abbey has ended, un-endorphined spiral and just reframe what life looks like without running or looking forward to races. I feel like I can reshift my brain and remember that I love swimming and the lakes are still the lakes whether my feet are pedaling or on the ground. It might just take me a few days to pout and mourn. And the podiatrist seems very kind, explained everything in patient detail as I sat there and boo-hooed, and encouraged me to really focus on the long term goal of having healthy feet for the long haul and not blowing progress on a single race or two or on running through an injury when that’s just stupid. I understand what he’s saying but another part of me just wants to run, hurt myself, and stretch my feet and roll them around on frozen water bottles all the livelong day like I was doing before.

But I guess that I am not getting any younger and it makes more sense to actually take care of our bodies and not break them more as the months and years go by. Even though this is clearly not the end of the world, the weird thing I am realizing is that the difference between being fully healthy and capable of doing what you want with your body when you want to and suddenly not is a huge mental shift. Even if it is not a severe catastrophe, it feels like one and just like a huge life change. Maybe I am super blessed to have never faced this concept before. And surely it is just part of getting older. I feel like obviously I am grateful that this is not something extremely serious and life is a gift and I should stop complaining, etc. and so forth, but it is still a fat lot of mindfuckery, it really is.

In brighter news, added to the list of superstars with whom my brother has had amazing late night gig encounters in bars is Ms. Miranda Lambert, and it just reminds me that even though I miss him all the time, right now he belongs in Nashville, for he is a magical musical person in a magical musical place.

I have nothing more to say, so here’s a dog in a blanket.