I'm Addicted to You, But You Know That You're Toxic

My last two posts focused on drinking and smoking -- specifically, my age-inspired decisions to cut back and/or out. And as if my online professions of decrepitude and pollution were not enough, i was felled three weeks ago by an ulcer attack.  and guess what? guess what that means? it means i have had to give up coffee and carbonated beverages. oh, and grapefruit juice. and guess what i drink when i am not drinking wine? seltzer with grapefruit juice. oh yeah. so, for the last week i have not had a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, a cigarette, or SELTZER WITH GRAPEFRUIT JUICE. do the math, and one would conclude that i feel much better. wrong. i feel cranky and tired. i am here to report that i am now officially a curmudgeon. no joke: i looked it up, and the definition is "a crusty irascible person full of stubborn ideas." Present!

My stubborn ideas are as follows: 

1. wine is good.

2. coffee is good.

3. cigarettes enhance one's experiences.

4. seltzer with grapefruit juice is fucking GOOD FOR YOU.

i am not going to bore the poor reader who stumbled across this blog when she was surfing blogpsot by making aren't-i-clever statements about how lame/stupid/aggravating it is to abstain. i have already done that, remember? two posts' worth. plus, i mean, eventually my ulcer will heal -- it isn't even a real ulcer yet; it's more of an abrasion than a hole -- and i will be able to have some wine and an occasional cup of coffee. i am not being forced into abstinence, but rather into moderation. so i guess the topic sentence for my stubborn ideas essay is "moderation is lame." 

i realize i am a high functioning addict of sorts. i'm addicted to coffee. i'm addicted to cigarettes. i am not addicted to wine, but i am addicted to the idea that i should be able to drink it whenever i want (yeah, yeah, you say tomato, i say shut up.) and since i am too cranky, too curmudgeonly, to finish this post even , i am going to wrap it up with the light-at-the-end of the sober, clear-lunged, sleepy tunnel: i figure if i am an addict, even a high-functioning one whose substance is excess, that qualifies me for "Celebrity Rehab." i know i'm not a celebrity, but neither is that amber woman, and she's on the show. i am clinging to this (stubborn) idea, because a little dr. drew would make this whole bitter pill so much easier to not swallow.

At Least Billy Joel Is Older Than I Am

I haven't posted to this blog since July 31, which was almost three months ago. see, i've been busy. getting old.

in my last post, i bemoaned my decision to stop smoking. i have to stop because i'm getting old. that was the sum of my reasons, really: i'm old. certainly, my daughter, her life, is the primary catalyst, but, otherwise, it's because i'm old. that alone is enough to make me furious at time. time. ooooh, aren't you big and bad. you suck. but because smoking is, well, ill-advised, i can allow my psyche to release the indication of my age. i have to quit because it's bad, no matter how old i am or am not. but the last three months have activated the rage. and i am going to turn 38 in a week, so the rage is deep and present.

before i go any further, let me address any rumblings of "you're only as old as you feel," or "40 is the new 30!" or any similar crap. those are the platitudes of the old. that shit is psychological botox; that's all it is. so spare me (can you hear it? the rage?)

first of all, in addition to having to relinquish my beloved nightly smokes, i have had to cut down my consumption of red wine. recently i have noticed that there are visible lines on my face that seem to disappear after a few days without booze. what sort of nonsense is that? outrageous. yes, it is my vanity, not my liver, who dictates my alcohol consumption. and apparently 2 glasses a night is enough to make me look old. the sight of my brighter, seemingly tauter skin in the mirror does nothing, though, nothing, to kill the grief i feel each night drinking tea. tea. who drinks tea? old ladies drink tea.

one could read this and think, aw, come on. having to give up toxic vices shouldn't be a bad thing. it doesn't mean you are old, it means you're wise and healthy. yeah, well, first of all, it is a bad thing. secondly, "wise" means "old." furthermore, i know i was adorable at 28 after a raging night of booze and cigarettes. and, plus, none of this is even the point, because today i had inescapable confirmation of my proximity to the other side of the hill.

i was driving roo to the children's museum in the town just east of the city. roo loves music, so lately in the car i have been listening to the radio instead of her baby music CDs (ah, sweet freedom). the radio had been scanning until we hit city limits, and then i stopped on Billy Joel's "Don't Ask Me Why." i love that song. i love all billy joel prior to the "Uptown Girl" debacle. i don't care if that is lame and negates the one notch of hipster status i accumulated when i lived in brooklyn. i dig billy. plus, this particular song has sentimental value, the details of which i will skip (you're welcome). but suffice it to say, i had this album, and i wore it out. and then i had the CD, and i wore it out. and if you are a parent, you know how it can be to be trapped in babyland every day, all itsy-bitsy spider and all that. the song was a great refresher. it triggered great memories, i know all the words, i was feeling it. feeling, as one might say, young. and you're only as old as you feel! right? yeah. read on.

we neared our exit just as the song was ending, which was perfect. about a mile before i had started worrying that i would arrive and have to focus on parking and not get to enjoy every bit of the song. really: i had thought about that. but it was fine, it was great -- the song ended before i hit my first stop sign. i glanced at roo in the rear view mirror where i could see her in the opposing mirror that's set up; she was playing with her stuffed bear. my baby was happy, i was happy, the sun was shining...you get it. and then the music stopped, and the station identification jingle played.

"95.7, Your Favorite Oldies."

yup.

i had this album. AND. IT. IS. AN. OLDIE. yeah, one of your favorite oldies, sure, but an oldie. that's how old i felt in the car today: old-ie. not an adjective, a noun. a noun, you hear me? i know this story may be a little cutesy or trite or whatever, but it is what happened today. it is what happened, and i did not like it, and i am old. and if the universe is not already laughing at its poetry, there's this: the only thing that will make me forget that i am, come on now, say it with me, OLD, is a glass of wine chasing a cigarette.

ha. ha. ha.

Stupid Old Stinky Surgeon General

I quit smoking today. well, sort of. we are going to the east coast tomorrow, and j and i will spend one night in nyc while roo stays with my mom, and i intend to smoke that night. and, you know, sometimes when i am writing, i have to smoke to concentrate. but i don't do much of that these days -- writing. or concentrating. but for all intents and purposes, i quit. as it is, i smoke only at night, usually only two cigarettes, outside and after roo is in bed. two measly cigarettes. two measly delicious awesome i love you american spirit menthol cigarettes. the problem, of course, is that these two can become ten on a festive night. and festive nights happen once a week or so around here (yeah, by "festive" i mean "drinking"). it's not that i think two cigarettes a night is okay, but if i could keep it to just that, i might not be quitting right now. but it becomes more than that, and then i get j roped in to taking drags, and then we both feel like crap in the morning, and roo is going to be too old soon to hide things from, and i want to be a healthy mom to a ripe old age, and pretty soon it's going to start catching up with me and FINE! I'LL QUIT! aaaaaaaaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

here's the thing: i love smoking. i am not even a "real" smoker. i never smoke in the morning, i never smoke in my car with the windows up (ew), and i often go days without smoking at all. i didn't smoke once when i was pregnant. but once i do have one cigarette...then i want ten. i want one super long cigarette that never burns out that i can just smoke and smoke and smoke. it has always been that way with me since i started smoking. i started when i was 16. i had been offered cigarettes before that, of course. i mean, come on. i went to high school. but i stalled as long as i could, because somehow i just knew i was going to be a smoker. so, you know, there was no rush. then, between my junior and senior years of high school, i went to a six week summer program at carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh. it was my first time away from home for any long period of time. the day after i arrived i bought a pack of cigarettes and started smoking. i didn't start by bumming from people or taking drags. nope. i got to pittsburgh, i realized i was free to be whatever i wanted -- me, that is -- and i bought a pack of cigarettes. because being me was being a smoker. again, that was when i was 16. i am now 37. that's a lot of smoking. there have been merits and camels and the fantastic nat shermans. lately there have been the american spirits. i have loved them all.

i never tried to quit. i never wanted to. plus, i always said "well, i'll quit when i get pregnant, so i don't need to worry. i have a built in end date." well, i did quit when i was pregnant. and then i started right back up again once i stopped breastfeeding. so here i am, a 37 year old mom. smoking. ugh. i know, i know, it has to go. and it is going. but, please join me in a little retrospective as i fondly remember, in no particular order, some of my favorite smokings:

1. when i moved to san diego (the 2nd time), i didn't have a couch or a bed for weeks. i had a tv, of course. i had driven from nyc to san diego with only my dog -- 5 days, the longest i had ever been alone in my life. and i stayed pretty solitary for the first few weeks in cali. at night, i would sit on the huge throw pillows on my apartment floor and drink a glass of wine, smoke cigs, and watch tv. I left my front door open the whole time, and i can still feel the sweet san diego air rushing in. those were great smokes.

2. in high school, i used to leave home 30 minutes early and drive around in my car, smoking. that time allowed me to brush off home and steel myself for the inevitably anxiety-producing day ahead. i didn't much like adolescence. i am grateful for those smokes.

3. god, remember when you could smoke in bars?! those were all, every one of them, awesome smokes.

4. i wrote an entire novel with a cigarette between my fingers. that was during the camel days. those were some pretty fantastic smokes.

5. when i met my husband, he bummed smokes from me all night on our first date. this was during the nat sherman days -- otherwise known as "the golden age." i thought it was pretty rad that j was willing to smoke my funny brown cigarettes. it was cold out, but we kept going outside anyway, huddling in a doorway next to JJ Foley's in boston. that date was 9 hours long. those were some damn good smokes.

see what i mean? they were all good smokes, all of them. some were great smokes, and some were life-changing smokes. i am not going to pretend i am ecstatic about quitting -- it does feel as if i am giving up a part of being me, and i mean that. there was a movie....kenneth branagh (is that how you spell it? i'm not looking it up. screw him.) and emma whatever, his former wife...i don't remember the name or much about it. i think someone was a ghost. but there was a line in that movie that i always remember: when branagh's character bemoans his smoking habit, an old man (who i think was played by andy garcia with major aging makeup) says to him, "there are smokers and there are non-smokers. find out which one you are and be it." of course, he quits. laaaaaame. i wish he hadn't. anyway, my point is: i am a smoker. but depsite the fact that i love andy garcia, even with old man makeup on, i am not going to be one anymore.

sigh.

The Best Show on Television

i watch too much tv. i'll own that. but sometimes it really pays off. "so you think you can dance" is a perfect example. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I love this show.

EXHIBIT ONE, MIA MICHAELS: man, oh man, this chick is great television. first of all, she does the most challenging choreography on the show. more importantly, though, she brings to judging her unique blend of a raging hangover, too many years in therapy, and an actual, solid knowledge of dance. it is beautiful, all of it. she can reduce her critiques to a scathing psychotherapeutic rant, her accolades to a self-help confessional. add to that her multiple-personality wardrobe -- one week she is the flannel shirt wearing pottery maker; the next she is in fishnets and a fedora tipped to the side, all flip-chapeau condescension. i know that woman downs a bottle of bourbon a night, and i love her for it.

EXHIBIT TWO, WILL: there have been a handful of great dancers on this show. travis and danny come to mind. but will is by far the best. he is breathtaking and transcendent. and so the producers have now paired him with the weakest girl, comfort (his original partner, jessica, is injured). comfort flat out sucks, and, plus, she is totally annoying. i doubt comfort is even her real name -- 20 bucks says it's brianna. but it doesn't matter. even when will ended up in the bottom three couples because of jessica's weakness, it didn't matter. the judges would never have the cojones to cut him. in fact, if he ends up in the bottom three again, i think that instead of dancing his solo ("dance for your life" they call it), he should just sit in the middle of the stage in lotus position like, "what?! i dare you!" they'd still kiss his ass. now, for those of you who haven't seen the show yet, keep in mind that the above-referenced brilliance is balanced by the incessant shrieking of mary murphy and the shameless name-dropping of producer/judge nigel lythgoe. mary seems to fancy herself the poor man's paula abdul, which is reason enough for her to make an appointment with one of mia's five therapists. in addition to yelling all the time, she speaks entirely in metaphor, which i am certain is a symptom of psychosis. and, nigel, well, a producer's work is never done; what can he say? these two aside, the show is fantastic and worth every second of the three hours a week i spend in its glow.

EDIT: okay, okay. so i thought i was pretty cool, because i read on monday that comfort was back to replace injured jessica. i assumed, then, that she would dance with jessica's partner. in fact, the partners are all switched up now (i am watching my DVR of last night's show as i type this). it isn't that big of a deal in terms of blog post content, but it's a pretty big deal to me that as a devotee of the show, i didn't anticipate partner switching this week: we are down to the final ten! my apologies -- to anyone who read the misinformation, and most importantly, to the gods of dance. and mia.

Tim Russert

The first crush I ever had was on Peter Jennings. No joke. Well, okay, to be fair, the first crush I ever had was actually on Donny Osmond, but I was only 5 years old at the time, so it was too callow a crush to count. When I fell for Peter, I was a seasoned, sultry 10. Fifth grade, man! It was big love -- BIG. I had terrible insomnia as a child, so my parents let me stay up late watching TV, and this is how I came to watch the late night news, which led me to the evening news. Mind you, all of this did nothing to help my insomnia. I turned 10 in 1980 (shut up), so the news I watched from then on was mostly about the cold war. Strangely, nuclear war talk did little to make me sleepy. All my parents' "remedy" really did was help me become obsessed with TV and with Peter Jennings. By the time I was in my 20s, I was a full-on news junkie, though I had switched from TV news to the New York Times. I still watched Pete, but it was less for the news than the sex. Pete was all sex. My news came from the New York Times, and that made me pretty cool, right? Right. However, at the end of my 20s, I was attempting to eliminate stress from my life, and I realized that I just didn't have the fortitude to deal with the news anymore. Things kept me up at night. And I don't mean just things like genocide. I mean, little things kept me up. One day I read an article in the Times about some type of mountain goat that was reproducing at such a fast rate that snipers were hired to pick them off from helicopters. I stopped working (well, I stopped reading the paper at my desk) and spent two hours drafting an enraged letter to the responsible park authority. Eventually, these things -- small and big issues in the world -- were taking over my life, and I had to stop. Politics, especially, left me feeling frustrated and pessimistic and impotent. I stopped reading the paper, and I didn't return to the TV news. I still watched Pete -- but mostly I watched; I tried not to listen. I wanted to sleep, so the news had to go.

Cut to me in my 30s. After a long news vacation, during which time I filled the empty space in my head with facts and figures from US magazine and E! television, I felt I needed a little help keeping up with politics, at the very least. And this was when I discovered Tim Russert. He was a miracle. Like many, I came to watch Tim Russert on Meet The Press. Eventually, like many, I watched Meet The Press only because of Tim Russert. What Tim gave me was the only avenue to the news that made me feel good despite any anxiety the content might have otherwise caused. First of all, I very quickly decided that he was right. Period. I didn't feel the need to read between lines, second guess, filter agendas, or fact check. I took what Tim said as truth --for better or worse. I don't remember a time when this blind devotion failed me. He made politics infinitely less exhausting than it had been before. In addition, I really liked him. I didn't have the prurient adoration I had for Pete, of course, but this is not to dis Tim -- I was just too old for such silliness (shut up). I liked Tim Russert, and that made me like politics again. If a guy like Tim Russert could be so passionate about something, it couldn't be all bad. He talked about things that had seemed just ugly to me with a purity of spirit and positivity that seems, still, singular. And, news or not, I wanted to hang out with him. I am pretty pissed off that I never had the chance. I am even more pissed off that I have to go through the upcoming election and every single important political even that follows without him. I don't know if I can go back to the old way of getting information. The Times -- ugh. All the other talkers -- ugh. It all feels icky again without him. Plus, I'm a parent now -- I don't have the time or energy to sort it all out without him. He spoke the truth, he was good, he was a genius. He made it possible for me to reclaim an old love that I'd had to let go. I don't know another stranger to whom I was so grateful, so fond of, and so impressed by. I'm sad.

It should be said: I was crushed when Peter Jennings died. Pete, if you can read this, you know I love you and miss you. But this is about Tim Russert. And, Tim, if you can read this, you rule.

Been Caught Stealing

the following list contains all the items that i have, in the last 9 days, found either in my leather "shopping bag" or stuck to my chest after roo has dropped them in one of those two places. she likes to handle and chew on stuff while i am shopping, so i hand her random things and she grabs random things. and because she travels in a beco carrier, facing in and straddling my waist, she has easy access to both of her stealthy stealing spots (oh, and by the way, the beco is the best soft carrier ever; if you have kids or a doll or a dog you like too much, go to http://www.becobabycarrier.com/). i have discovered these items after leaving the store, of course:



1. two-pack of mum pacifiers (score!)

2. a miniature, hand held mirror (she does love to kiss her own reflection)

3. single serving pack of organic tofu jerky (gross at first, but it grew on me. score #2)

4. safeway brand, individual "chocolate cream snack cake." (absolutely revolting. i didn't try it, or open it for that matter. but j. did. he wasn't sober at the time, and he still couldn't eat it. the worst part about this one is that it wasn't in my shopping bag, as one would guess. oh no. even though it is a big, wax-paper wrapped, fried snack cake, i somehow didn't notice it stuck between my boobs. let's just say the cleavage is...well, it's a mesa.)

5. a kumquat. i am not kidding.



so, little roo is a klepto. sweet. tomorrow we are walking to sephora. momma needs a new tube of eye cream.

Hoping This Makes Me a Genius by Association

i was in san francisco this weekend with j. and baby roo visiting friends and family. j. went to college there, and his sister, brother-in-law, and niece live there, too. plus, we love that city. let me repeat: we love that city. the people...well...they blow (friends and family excepted, of course). but that's another post. the real tragedy about going to san fran this weekend was NOT that i had to endure a bunch of people who make me long for a white trash karaoke bar. rather, the real tragedy is that i was not in new york, where my very good friend, lisa roy sachs, opened her second solo art show, titled "Olney," at Luxe Gallery. i would love to give you a bunch of rad links now, as well as some beautiful, imported jpegs (or whatever they are called) of lisa's work, but roo is sleeping and i am drinking a glass of wine, and, well, i don't feel like figuring out how to do it. but you can go to http://www.lisaroysachs.com/ and start there. instead of the links, let me say a few words about why you need to check out her stuff. first of all, photography is fucking awesome -- in general. secondly, lisa is a genius. please try to remove the ugly, bitter sarcasm that colors most everything i write and say from that last sentence, because, really, she is a genius. lisa and i met at a restaurant in new haven, connecticut (shut up) called scoozi, where we both worked while in grad school. lisa was working toward her m.f.a. at yale, and i was doing something much lamer someplace else. one shift, lisa had a contact sheet (is that what they are called? the page of negatives sort of printed? you know what i mean) of her photos. looking at them, i found myself inexplicably emotional in response. i blurted out, "i feel, like, anxious, looking at this one...and that one makes me kind of queasy...and that one is just happy -" and lisa said, matter-of-factly, "that's photography." indeed. when you look at her work, i strongly encourage you to look at her first solo show collection, too. it's called "carnival." and while it is so different from "olney" in many ways, the two shows together create a jarring emotional context. plus, they are so beautiful. for real. if you live near new york, get thee to Luxe gallery. and if you live near new york and have cash to throw around, BUY ONE. i would do so myself, but these $15 bottles of syrah add up quick. word up.