“I was thinking that when I die, if I die before you, I’d like to have a small, stone monkey on my gravestone. Like one of those squirrel monkeys we saw in Costa Rica, just sitting up there, with a mischievous look on its face.”
“Why only if you die before me? You think I’ll do this for you?”
“Well, you’re the only one who knows about it, so…”
“Right.”
“Or maybe - maybe a bird - a stone bird like a hawk or a falcon or something, swooping down -”
“Um - ”
“Or maybe a real bird. Like, I don’t know, maybe there could be some little holes on the top of my gravestone? Right? And I could pay someone to come and fill them up with birdseed? And then the birds would all land there.”
1. Forget to get the mail every single day even though that is one of my like, three, duties.
2. Sign off phone calls with technology execs by saying, casually “Great, talk to you later,” even though I will, literally, never talk to them again.
3. Turn on the space heater under my desk, which causes the computer to short out, over and over again, even though last time I turned it on, guess what? It did the exact same thing.
4. Think about all the other things I could be doing that don’t involve sitting in a desk staring at a huge, flat-screen computer monitor, pretending to be doing things.
5. Spend no time learning anything about the company. Spend significantly more time trying to sneakily read up on celebrity gossip.
This past weekend my parents were in New York City so J and I took to the train in to hang out with them for the weekend.
Over brunch Sunday my father took out his Blackberry and said, as he so often does, “My Blackberry is messed up,” and then handed it to J and immediately started muttering under his breath about how “there is no point him studying science at Yale if he can’t fix my Blackberry!”
J, being the good soul and inquisitive fixer of all things electronic that he is, immediately got down to work while my father expounded on what was so “messed up” about his little email machine.
He told us how when he typed certain words, the Blackberry would take over and finish the word or phrase in a strange language, which explains why I got this email from him recently in which he was telling me how he understood the difficulties involved in our choosing the perfect house to buy where he said, “It’s so hard when there are pt no pot down sides.”
So “no” obviously became “pt no pot.” Which, of course, I assumed was one of his typical spelling mistakes.
Other, simple words would become long Spanish phrases, he said, and he couldn’t stop it. “As though his emails weren’t ALREADY hard to read,” my mom said, who, like me, was getting a big kick out of this.
After a few minutes of careful study, J turned the Blackberry back over to my father. “Try it now,” he urged.
He did, and was forced to stop complaining about the scientists at Yale who couldn’t fix a simple Blackberry because the problem was gone. He asked J how he did it, and J told him that he’d gone into the options menu and switched the default language from Catalan to English.
How my dad accidentally made the original switch - from English to Catalan - I don’t know, just like I don’t understand how every time he answers his cell phone, without fail, my father automatically sets the phone to “speaker” so whether he’s home in bed, or at a really nice restaurant, he’s holding the thing close to his ear but everyone around him can hear the caller clear as day.
However he does these things, he’s really got a knack for it. Because I got another email from him today, in which he was asking me for someone’s number, that said, “Honey, do you have his phone pt no pot?” and was quickly followed by another email that said (and I could almost hear him scowling through the typed words), “I think my Blackberry is messed up again.”
I’m starting a temp job tomorrow which I’m both happy and not happy about. How’s that for being specific?
I mean, let’s face it, I need to get out of the house and I very, very badly need to make some money. But then there’s also the fact that this is an administrative temp job, not a job in journalism, my field, or in any way related to journalism or even related to anything I like to do, and there’s always the fear that I’ll do this for a few weeks, get complacent, and stay at the temp job forever. This has never happened to me before, but there’s a first time for everything.
Anyway, since today was my last day lounging around at home for awhile, I decided to turn on the TV, park myself at the computer with the phone, my datebook and a long to-do list and get some stuff done. J and I may soon be buying our first house (!) and it turns out purchasing property requires lots of binders and folders and organization. Thankfully, the process has been much more manageable than I thought it would be, but it’s all still very time consuming.
Much to my delight there were back to back episodes of “The Golden Girls” on Lifetime this morning so that’s what I watched as I got to work. It was a pretty great setup, all in all. Cozy at home, being productive but also watching television, and no one there to make fun of me for watching “The Golden Girls.”
I was busy making phone calls and writing emails and eventually a Lifetime movie came on that I didn’t bother to turn off. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Lifetime movies. In fact, when you’re in the mood, there’s nothing better. It’s just that I was kind of busy and wasn’t sure I had the emotional energy to invest in characters that were going to inevitably die or get molested or something.
But before I knew what was going on I was mildly involved in the plot and decided that there was no point depriving myself of what looked - at the outset - like a somewhat interesting story. I didn’t catch all the details, because I was in the middle of various things, but basically this woman, played by the Peggy Bundy from “Married With Children” and her husband, played by the dad from “My So Called Life” had a baby very prematurely.
The baby turned out alright, but then the Bundy woman started having back pain that seemed innocuous enough but you just knew something was wrong. Big time. At this point I went downstairs to make myself lunch, and when I got back up here she was doing a lot worse and asked one of her girlfriends if she was going to die. “I think I’m going to die,” she said, answering her own question. Cue the dramatic Lifetime movie music.
For some reason the nurse who’d taken care of their premature daughter came to take care of her in her dying days. This nurse, played by the girl from “Mystic Pizza” and who also played Pudge in “Shag,” her best role ever, became very close to the Peggy Bundy character and encouraged her to write letters to her daughter since she wasn’t going to get to see her grow up. Meanwhile the “My So Called Life” dad is semi-freaking out because he can’t accept that his wife is dying.
You know what happened next. Peggy Bundy died in this incredibly sappy death scene that included her holding her now-flourishing baby daughter one last time. Everyone was puking all over themselves, it was so sappy. Ok, they weren’t, but I bet they were between takes.
I totally thought the movie was over. You know, that the dad would show his young daughter some pictures of his mom and they’d talk about what a special woman she was just before the credits started rolling. But instead the movie took another turn and all of a sudden the dad and Pudge are out at a bar having an awkward drink. I guess before she died, the mom had gotten it into her head that her husband and this neo-natal nurse/caregiver would be a good pair once she kicked the bucket and had suggested the idea to each of them individually.
You would have thought this plot couldn’t handle any more conflict, but turned out it could because in the next scene Pudge was talking to her adolescent daughter about how she wasn’t, couldn’t be, in love with the dad because he was still in love with his dead wife and their relationship would never work.
At this point I got on the phone to talk to my dad because, come on, what was going on with this movie? As I was chatting with him, the TV on mute, I noticed the new couple making out at some New Year’s party or something. I guess Pudge got over her misgivings. Then, of course, they got married and I think at the end there was some touching reminiscence regarding the Peggy Bundy character but I wouldn’t really know because I was on the phone again.
If this is your favorite movie, or you were planning on watching “The Incredible Saga of the Premature Baby/Death From a Painful Disease/Love After Losing a Spouse” tonight and I just ruined it for you, I am sorry, but I wanted to make a point, that point being that it may be just a temp job, but it is obviously rather urgent that I get out and about during the day because I can’t imagine sitting around and getting angry about the various complexities in Lifetime movies is a healthy way to spend my time.
The other day J and I were driving around running errands when we decided to stop at the cemetery where his grandfather is buried to pay our respects. Besides this being an obviously nice thing to do, it was also cool because I like to look around cemeteries. No, I’m not into ghosts or anything, but I like to look at the headstones and the pictures and words inscribed there. The family names. The ways people are remembered.
We were standing there, freezing cold by the way - the sky grey and severe wind whipping around our legs - when J heard a his favorite kind of noise and turned quickly on his heels to check out where it had come from. Before I knew what was going on or could tell him to “Calm down! We’re in a graveyard!” he had sprinted back to the car to retrieve the pair of binoculars he now constantly keeps under the front seat and had made his way back to the small patch of grass where he thought he’d seen a new bird, and was shouting over his shoulder to me that “Eitan says cemeteries are really good places to bird because there’s lots of well-maintained grass and not a lot of people.”
This was yet another of those charming times I learn something new about the world like the fact that birds love cemeteries, and that you can be having a perfectly serene afternoon checking out the headstones when a new species alights on a nearby twig and, suddenly, life is just way more exciting.
No, no, this blog isn’t going to become a repository for the latest internet fads, but it snowed a little last night, I’ve eaten nothing but carbs today and I can’t muster up the inspiration to write something, you know, inspiring.
So, instead, here’s my favorite YouTube clip of all times. I realize I’ve probably sat many of you guys down and made you watch this more than once, but I can’t help it. This guy never fails:
J and I just finished the movie “Once,” and because my normal commentary on films normally goes something like “It was so GOOD,” (or, if I didn’t like it, “it wasn’t my favorite,”) I’ll let an expert - a movie critic at the New York Times - provide this very brief synopsis of this “modern day musical” (a phrase I also stole from the experts) set in Dublin:
“It is realistic rather than fanciful, and the characters work patiently on the songs rather than bursting spontaneously into them. But its low-key affect and decidedly human scale endow “Once” with an easy, lovable charm that a flashier production could never have achieved. The formula is simple: two people, a few instruments, 88 minutes and not a single false note.”
Anyway, I don’t want to over-promote it, or give it away, or scream at you guys or anything, but seriously, if you like movies, and you like music, and you haven’t yet seen this please rent it and spend a quiet night at home getting totally into the subtly romantic and moving storyline and the really amazing music played throughout the film. I loved it. And if my loving it isn’t reason enough to see it, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, visit the Fox Searchlight homepage for “Once” and listen to “Falling Slowly,” performed by the two main characters and I’m pretty sure that will convince you.
This has been another of my rare attempts to try and discuss movies with any authority. Don’t worry, it probably won’t happen again for a while, and in no time I’ll be back to talking about things I know something about. Like how, ok, I finally saw the entire first season of “The Hills” and I CANNOT believe LC chose that loser Jason over going to Paris…
I was just editing one of the millions of magnificently constructed cover letters I’ll be sending out over the next couple days in the hopes of convincing Connecticut that, yes, I’m a really good bet, when the spellcheck feature on my Yahoo email account alerted me to the fact that the “caramcdonough” in my email address was not a recognized English word and suggested I change it to “crackdown.”
I was about to press the “ignore” button and laugh it off as another amusing computer anecdote when I thought it might be even better and funnier if I just went ahead and gave myself a new name like “Crackdown,” and how there is no way anyone in their right minds would refuse someone with such a name because, hey, they have GOT to be curious about somebody like that…
I’m 30. I’m living in the home my husband grew up in - in the very room he inhabited as a child, in fact - with his family, until we can find a place of our own. I have no job. I don’t really have any job prospects. Therefore, in order to avoid major catastrophe (which could involve multiple, daily trips to Dunkin’ Donuts among other atrocities) I’ve decided there have got to be some rules.
1. I will wake up at a normal time, “normal” defined as 8 a.m. or earlier. Just like people who work.
2. I will put on normal clothes every morning. Here “normal” could include the tracksuit I got for Christmas, but does not mean mismatched sweatpants and sweatshirts, or anything else that might prompt the words, “Um, are you going to go out in that,” from J.
3. Watching my new DVD of the first season of “The Hills” is ok during the lunch break I shall grant myself each day, but only during my lunch break.
4. My lunch break will not span two or three hours.
5. After searching for jobs for countless hours it is ok to play solitaire or write some emails to friends for a little break, but it is not ok to fall into a depressive slump and declare myself unfit for the world of employment, so maybe I should just eat this entire bag of Hershey’s Kisses…?
