Digging Deep

"What does this mean to you? Dig deeper!

Numerous people in my workshop wrote this comment on my story about developing breasts and being tormented by their ginormous size and then undergoing breast reduction surgery (if they bothered to give me back my paper at all, which one person did not, but that is another story). It vexes me because in many cases I don't say what the situation means because it means (or meant) nothing.

For example, I talk about how breasts have not worked out so well for the women on my maternal side. My granny is a short women who walks around stooped over, maybe partially from the two watermelons stuck to her chest. On the other hand, my mom is a woman of average height with a very small frame who had two small boobs until she lost one to cancer when I was 4 years old. The people in my class wanted to know what I thought about her scarred chest when I was growing up, and the honest answer is that I didn't. It was just a fact of life that I accepted. My mom had cancer. They had to cut off one of her boobs. The end.*

The point is that this made me realize two things. First, I am not a deep person. I really do often accept things for their surface explanation. This is not entirely true, as I also analyze certain things that happen until I've beaten the dead horse to a bloody mixed metaphor, but still - I'm shallow. The second thing is that I am lazy. I'm probably not as shallow as I claim (see dead horse metaphor), but digging deep means extra work and maybe even painful revelations, and I'm not going there. Sometimes I just want to tell a funny story. Why look for the underlying pathos just to make the story more literary? It's all very distressing to think about.

*Now you know the truth, so if I ever do write a best-selling book about puberty and there are paragraphs describing how I didn't want to get boobs because I was scared of cancer and blah blah blah, you can all go to the tabloids and say that I am a liar just like James Frey. And then I will have to lie and say that I had recovered memories in the process of writing the book and blah blah blah and it will all be very scandalous. If you do sell me out, I hope that the tabloids pay you good money. Then you can take me out for afternoon tea and we can laugh about it.

I Just Wanna Celebrate

Theo and Barack Obama* share a moment of victory in my apartment in the wee hours of the morning/late last night.

Man, last night was exciting.

*Yes, that is really Husband wearing a 99 cent paper mask he bought at a costume/card shop down the street that is disturbingly realistic, causing people to do double takes as when they notice a neckless Barack Obama with white hands walking down the street/on the subway/at an election results party/etc.

The Rewards of Voting

I am going to vote. If all goes well, today will be as sweet as the bag of Brach's Caramel Candy Corn that I consumed over the last few days. Theo is hoping that he can come to the polling station with me. We'll see.

Actually, voters in New York and Seattle can get orgasmic rewards for voting. Babeland is offering a free mini vibrator or penis sleeve thingy to anyone who walks into one of their stores and says they voter. Word of honor is honored. That voting rewards are worth $15 and $20, respectively. I am awed by their amazing generosity.

Other freebies for voters include coffee from Starbucks and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. But the vibrator or dick sleeve is definitely the voting gift that keeps on giving. I'm speechless. Me! Speechless!

It's Up to Us

When I heard that Barack Obama's grandmother died, I went to the New York Times webpage to see how people were reacting. One wise, eloquent person wrote:

"May she rest in peace knowing that we are going to carry her grandson over the finish line tomorrow."

Now I can't stop crying. We must win this election tomorrow. We must.

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

It doesn't feel possible, but tomorrow is finally election day! I am so excited and nervous. With a modicum of luck, the 2008 election season will end tomorrow, and with even more luck, the next president of the United States will be Barack Obama. My fingers are crossed.

At the same time, once the election is over, what will I spend too much time obsessing over? I'm going to need something with which to fill my free time. It's a good thing that I had a job interview last week...

So let's sing it:
Tomorrow, tomorrow
I love you, tomorrow
You're only a day away!

Sunday Homily

Normally I hate Sundays. I have hated Sundays for about as long as I can remember because I knew that once Sunday was over, it would be Monday, which meant another week of school, which I found a dreary and dreadful prospect. Even when I liked school (i.e. - college and beyond), Sundays continued to carry a taint. When I was out of school, it meant a week of work, which was almost as bad as school.

This Sunday, however, I am cheery. First, I love daylight savings time. I woke up at what would have been 11 am, but it was only 10! How awesome is that?!?! A full night of rest and yet the day lay ahead of me, full of possibilities. As Teddy Roosevelt liked to say, delightful.

Plus, this is the first Sunday in November, a month full of exciting and fun events. Tuesday is the election, for which I have great hope. I'm not counting on anything, my fingers are crossed, I'm knocking on wood and saying "ken ahora" (Yiddish for "no evil eye" or "not to jinx it"), but I am still excited at the prospect of positive change. And, boy, do we need it since the Bushies are pushing through horrific last minute regulatory changes that really screw women (don't forget, IUDs are now "abortions," etc), the environment, and the economy. On Nov. 13, it's the Mr. Lower East Side Pageant, which I loved in 2005. That night, Mara and her family are also coming into town. The next day, Husband and I are having "an authentic eighteenth-century dinner prepared on an open hearth, served on period tableware" at the Queens County Farm Museum, which is a site in my book. Later in the month, we'll go see the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, which are inflated the day before Thanksgiving near our apartment, and have pizza and hot chocolate. Finally, there is Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays.

All in all, I'm just ecstatic about November. There's so much to look forward to!

Daylight Savings Time Ramblings

If you live in the United States, don't forget to set the clocks back and hour at 2 am. The nice thing about this is that you can screw up really badly at 1 am, then go back in time one hour and do it over. Sort of like Groundhog Day but not really, since it is only an hour not a full day, and the people who were affected by the screw up are going to remember that you screwed up. So unless you can also erase memories or no one witnesses the screw up, maybe one should not think of Daylight Savings Time as an opportunity to screw up and go back in time to fix it.

When I was growing up, my mom always wished that Daylight Savings Time would come after Halloween so that it wouldn't get dark so early and kids would have more time to Trick or Treat when it is light. She finally got her wish, although about 25 years too late to affect her children. Oh well. She's a civic-minded person sometimes, so I'm sure she is happy for my friends who have kids and all the others out there who benefit from the change.

I did not go Trick or Treating this year, but I wore my dirndl to two Halloween events. The tailoring helped me breathe, although the tailor made it way too big on top, which pisses me off. (I forgot to mention that when I picked up the dirndl from the shop on Tuesday, I noticed that someone had dropped off a new suit jacket with a $1,299 price tag. That's when I realized how out of place the dirndl was in the shop, and I laughed and laughed.) At one party, I ate chocolate with bacon bits in it. Surprisingly delicious - smoky and salty perfectly offset by sweet. At the other, I ate more chocolate and my friend from school told me my fortune, then one of her friends cast a one-word spell that involved lighting a piece of paper on fire in her palm. It would have been great if the tailor made the waistline a little too big as opposed to the bust. Harumph.