Hospitality 101

I packed up the car to leave as he was on his hands and knees with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels working to erase all traces that we had ever been there. I made the decision to leave somewhere between "before you get started cleaning up, when are you leaving?" and him dragging out the vacuum cleaner and pulling furniture from the wall to catch any errant dog hair which was barely visible to the naked eye after a mere two days visiting for the holiday. Traveling is already its own little hell; staying somewhere that you are constantly reminded how put out your host is makes it heartbreaking. Driving away, I actually physically ached in a way that reminded me of the soul-punching disappointment of a failed relationship. I don't know what it is in him that reflexively knows how best to feed a lifetimes worth of hang-ups and neuroses but the man has a gift. I like to joke that my father is a man who will give the shirt off his back but will make sure to let you know how much it costs. He'll also let you know how cold he is now, but that he's glad and blessed he had the shirt to give. Catholic and Jewish guilt, you've met your match; miscegenation brings us the best of both worlds.

Very aware (again) of how having a dog in the house was near anathema to my father, I sought to earn my keep for the few days I stayed with them and left, wounded and semi-determined to not stay with them again. I ran errands, picked up prescriptions, and tried to minimize the impact of our presence as much as possible. I slept on the couch because the dog was not permitted upstairs, endured recurring comments about dog hair, and watched him grimace every time she shook or scratched behind her ears. He took a picture of my dog and printed it for me and told me the title of the picture was 'No dogs in the house.' I told him I didn't get it. He kept going on about needing a day to clean up after I left and even though I told him I would clean up, I packed up the car and dog to leave while he was on his hands and knees hand-wiping the floor because I wasn't going to be an additional source of stress for him. If he was that put out to accommodate us, he should have just said no.

It is so cliche to invoke the father daughter relationship as the backbone of any discussion on how women deal with men but what I learned about love from my father is that it is conditional and that you both earn and show love through work. You work to jettison guilt or prevent censure. So friends, I don't know what kind of guest I am but know that I'm really uncomfortable being your guest and this is why. I know exactly how put out you are and feel like it is only really acceptable to foist that inconvenience on family. I try to relax by thinking of how I would want you to feel in my home (welcome and carefree). But if you find yourself arguing with me over trying to leave things as I found them (i.e. washing sheets, towels, cleaning), here's the reason you should just let me do it. It is the only sure way I know to convey gratitude and affection and ensure most importantly that you won't resent me (at least not for that). I know it's the right thing to do for the wrong reasons but trust that I am a work in progress and hope one day to rest as easy with you as I should in my own home. If nothing else, I hope it makes me a better host.

The comedy of politics: great SNL piece

Andy Samberg-such a funny guy. Well played, Andy, well played.

Snow blankets and Loneliness

I was walking the dog, enjoying the lights of the city and turning my loneliness in my hands like worry beads, trying to figure out if this feeling was a fog, a heavy cloak, or something else. I was consumed with giving my feeling the right reference. I've settled on snow. Loneliness feels like the hush of a heavy snow. It's hard to picture the street below, much less the spring that will soon follow the winter storms. Sometimes it can be brushed off like the light dustings that fall so heavy and blow so quickly away in the same day. But more often loneliness feels like it will always be winter and there will always be snow.

I'm convinced someone always sees this

Date: 24 November

Time: 1942hrs

Location: Somewhere on 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA

Activity: Walking dog

Description of incident: Dog wanders in circles across mine-leaden field of other dog's random crap on a dark rainy night. Dog manages to find suitable spot to lay down her treasures. Dog lays down treasure save one nugget which is left dangling from her backside attached to her by the undigestible grass she insists on eating at every opportunity. She finds this uncomfortable and disconcerting (no doubt, the same way you feel about my decision to share this story). She hobbles around hunched over trying to get it to drop. I use my bagged hand to grab the grass and nugget from her hunched over rear end. Even though it is necessary, there is no way this doesn't look like a very wrong thing to be doing.

I am convinced that someone always sees me doing this and is totally grossed out. He is probably very cute and inclined to strike up a conversation until he witnesses me rummaging around at my dog's backside.

Tomorrow

There is a Christian song, a very old one, called Tomorrow. In it, the singer responds to Jesus' declarations and invitations, "Tomorrow. I'll give my life tomorrow. I've thought about today, so much easier to say, tomorrow..." and on and on in the way that is expected of a non-committal procrastinator. In the same way that procrastinating sinner is assumed to meet their doom for having eschewed the gift of salvation when it was available, I know my life is slipping off the rails when I both fail to plan for tomorrow and put things off until then. There is a point in almost every day when I simply give up on the lofty goals (laundry, bathing, food shopping, house tidying-these are my lofty goals) from the previous evening that I wake up in the morning dreading. This is why I end up staying up all night when I get anything done. It takes me all day to gather the energy to actually do something in the house and the trip wire is usually activated at night when the prospect of a tomorrow with the same things left undone becomes unbearable. It is such a needlessly painful experience but I simply can not help myself. No amount of self awareness both of what I'm doing or the pain that it causes serves as motivation to change my behavior. The one thing Dr. Awesome said that I've been thinking about without wondering incredulously how she manages to stay in practice with people paying a $125 an hour to listen to her talk, is that when I explained to her that discipline to me is, 'doing it anyway' she said that disciplined people don't wait to want to do things, they just do it. It really wasn't much different than what I said but it highlighted pushing through a lack of motivation and being instead driven by principle. Then I re-read parts of the Rolling Stone article on David Foster Wallace and noted his spells with using discipline as a means of ordering his mind and keeping his demons at bay. Then I thought of the little slices of life that find me doing the things I ought to do with little thought and the feeling I had when I recognized that I was keeping house, grooming, and moving through my day with none of the usual angst. When I notice, I feel like I've just snuck up on myself and then I try my best to remain quiet and let me enjoy as much of this lightness as possible. I also wonder how long I'll allow myself the respite. I also understand why DFW would count among his happiest days, his time living in a closet of a room. It forces a discipline of necessity that removes the need to make decisions for one's betterment.

But I don't live in a broom closet and though I have purposely downsized my life, it still does not offer the cramped simplicity of DFW's digs. I think somewhere in the delta between my hyper idealized desire for discipline and whatever it is that won't allow me to have even a modicum of it in any sustainable quantity, lies an area of discovery that I'd love to understand. I sometimes think I misrepresent myself, that I go on and on about lack of discipline when what I really mean is a lack of perfection. No wonder I'm rarely happy with myself.

Women who take relationship self-help books seriously

Please stop. If you can't help yourself then please resist "helping" others by dishing out inane advice from books like "He's just not that into you" and "Why men like bitches." I'm not any better qualified to give dating advice than you, in fact I'm a total spaz, but I still think relationships are far from formulaic or that there is some method I'm failing to apply to hook and sink the perfect guy. In fact the more single women I meet and talk to, the more I realize that regardless of the method, we're all still single. Whether we wait for guys to call or grab him by the tie and straddle him, we're still single. Whether the girls are using match, e--harmony, dating constantly, or never dating, we're still single. It's maddening but my philosophy remains, it's wrong until it's right. I am me. I can only be me and I want to be with someone who wants me. I hope to change and grow as I age, I endeavor to be better versions of myself always, but however I evolve, I am still connected to an essential, elemental, me. I know books that sell their methods with anecdotes of success but I don't have a single friend or acquaintance who owes their marital status to a self-help book. In fact the only women I know talking about self help books with any sense of authority about the truth they contain are single like me and trying vainly to find some truths to buoy them through the unanswerable questions who, what, when, where, why, how, and most importantly, if there will ever be a man for them. Oh, and the smug women and men who write them.

Twitter, blogging, Facebook, MySpace

I just read a horrible story today about a boy who committed suicide in front of a live web audience. He announced his intention to kill himself and then took pills and died not long after. The entire thing was streaming live, including the arrival of the police to the scene. A sidebar on the tragedy was this oft repeated sentiment that there is a generations of folks who live out their lives on the web, chronicling every non-event, every intimate detail of their very ordinary lives as if anyone would have any interest. The truth is that we are interested in one another, we do get caught up in the mundane and fantastical, not just of celebrities, but of each other. The web is so big that you don't often have to go far to find someone or something to connect and relate to. It gives people voices and a sense that because the medium is not as fleeting as the spoken word, that their thoughts may find their way to like-minded souls eventually. It is a community and while we can discuss and argue what kind of community it is or what we may be missing in our tangible lives that we seek in virtual connection, it is nevertheless to me just reinforcement that no matter the medium, human beings seek connection and community with one another. I know it is a strange place to go given my tragic lead-in but I could say nothing about the young man that his family and friends won't say better and with authority I lack in the matter.