There is a light that never goes out

The worst part about this whole bein' sick thing is that I've had to put my swimming on hold. And I just learned how to do kick turns!

I took advanced swimming lessons in college, and I'm pretty sure they taught us how to do them then, but I seem to remember practicing them a couple of times and then deciding they were too much work for what was just recreational fun for me at the time.

Well, in my inimitable fashion for overdoing everything, I have registered for a couple of open water races this summer. So now I am, I suppose, officially in training. Suddenly kick turns seem a lot more interesting to me.

Of course they are no help in the ocean, of course, thank god, but in order to prove to myself that I can, in fact, swim more than two miles non-stop without ceasing and without the luxury of stopping, I think it would be prudent to start employing them in my daily workouts. Before we have to involve sexy rescue lifeguards in canoes in Provincetown harbor.

Hang on a mo'...

No, forget it, no amount of proximity to hunky gay lifeguards can be counterbalanced by the mortification of puking up seawater in their faces. Kick turns it is.

Is that even what they are called? Or am I just confusing them with that thing Gene Kelly does with a lamppost in Singin' in the Rain?

The dumb and the restless

It's Friday night again, and bored bored bored am I. I now get why people make such an unholy fuss about going out on Friday and Saturday night -- when you only get a couple of days to sleep in, you like to take advantage. I used to think people were just like sheep, and they went out on weekends just because everyone else did.

I wasn't thinking clearly. Or rather, I was thinking like a restaurant worker.

Cooks and waiters go out on Monday nights. Well, actually they go out every night, but that's another story.

I'm now sufficiently acclimated to the working life that I have more than enough energy to go out at night, too. The first little while, I needed my sleep like heroin. Now I am less of a junkie. I can stay up past my bedtime and still be productive the next day.

But now! Just coming home and having a cup of tea and some quiet time on a Friday night is bumming me out. What's there to do? I'm a young, professional, culturally hip person! I crave stimulation! And, as my friend Tom used to say to explain why he always went out to bars all the time, all the libraries and museums are closed!

It's also super windy, which always makes me restless. When I was in grad school, and it was windy like this, I used to go out walking all night long. I had this amazing black duster that flapped around my ankles as I stalked the backroads of Syracuse's University neighborhood. Then sometimes I'd hitch a ride up to the Inn Complete (the grad students' clubhouse, kind of) and prowl for hotness.

That's what I feel like doing right now. Prowling. Like a feline. Thinking predatious thoughts.

Well, I've got the wind, and I think I've still got the duster, and now I don't need to bum a ride -- I've got my own. Maybe I'll just hit the town on my own. I at least need some fellow human interaction.

Wish I had bought those cowboy boots when I had the money.

Liar paradox

Yesterday I drove out to visit Nita! Finally! After planning on meeting her for lunch lo, so many times! And I took all sorts of nifty pictures that I cannot share with you right now because I cannot find my USB cable to get the pictures off my camera. I also cannot seem to find a contraction to save my life, but that is the way things go sometimes.

So instead of telling you what actually happened I am going to share a few versions of what happened. At some later time I will share pictures. For now, you will pick your favorite version of events and assume that is what actually happened.

1. I drive out to Nita's town on a beautiful sunny day, going about 90 in my hott little car and listening to the Pixies at top volume. On the way, I pass a cute guy in a beat-up black pick-up truck with a Pixies bumper sticker on the back and flash him the horns and give him the tongue as I holler melodiously along to Broken Face. He looks bewildered; but he smiles and pulls over and we make out in the breakdown lane. When I get to Nita's house a little later she is dressed in a black leather jumpsuit and dancing around the house with Rio to Whitesnake. I join in, and we forget about lunch.

2. I get to Nita's house bang on the nose at one o'clock, feeling pretty good about myself, my life, and my car. Then she comes running out of the house to meet me in the driveway, and I realize she is the cutest person ever in the whole entire universe; I spend the rest of the visit wondering how much plastic surgery it would take to make me that damn cute.

3. I meet the adorable, brilliant and charming Rio and within 30 seconds she is sobbing hysterically due to her previous non-exposure to such a person as myself who is utterly lacking in cuteness. Because of her mother's somewhat alarming levels of cuteness, the bar has been set high for her and she is understandably shocked at my appearance. As the huge tears roll down her face, I try to make friends with the dogs, one of whom is later revealed to have been only pretending to like me until he could get me in a more vulnerable position; thirty stitches are later involved, but I won't say who inflicted them on whom, pending litigation.

4. Rio eventually warms up to me and introduces me to her fleet of finger puppets. Surreptitiously she is signing to Nita "WTF with the non-cute friend MF"; I do not let on that I know sign language.

***

Did you figure out the trick? Everything up to the semicolon in each version is TRUE. Everything after the ";" is a LIE. If you figured it out then send me your name and address and five dollars; I will send you a secret decoder ring if you do.

I will post pictures as soon as I find the damn cable. Apparently Nita is going to regale you with her version on her site shortly; however everyone knows she is a compulsive liar and you should not believe a word she says.

Baby's on Fire

It's a damn good thing the temperatures are supposed to drop tonight, because this spring-like weather is making me giddy as a schoolgirl. Specifically, a nineteen-year-old schoolgirl high on pure endorphins.

Yeah, I've been working out, and yeah, that has significantly elevated my metabolism and energy level. And yes, I have an awesome new job that stimulates my imagination and challenges my skills and makes me excited to go to work in the morning. And sure, OK, maybe I've been doing other things that lend themselves to little emotional hard-ons of a pleasing variety. Like a little harmless flirting.

But I am seriously having flashbacks to being nineteen when I was regularly swept up in great surges of giddy fun and reckless optimism that are quite alarming, although no doubt fun to observe. They sure are fun from where I'm sitting!

I do mostly blame the daily workouts. Those exercise endorphins are serious business. And now that I am an entirely controlled-substance-and-alcohol-free kind of personage, maybe my brain is just grabbing onto and amplifying whatever high it can lay its grabby little metaphorical hands on. Greedy little junkie.

And temperatures well into the fifties are always good for surges of happiness, too. Add onto that it is the time of month during which I typical experience heightened emotions of whatever sort happen to present themselves anyway, and there you have it: Rock Grrrl is just a big old bag of rainbow sparkles right now.

In other news, I've been having fun throwing my voice around lately. I recorded a couple of radio spots a while back, then also I auditioned for some radio mystery theater not too long ago, which was an utter blast. And then today I got in the mail my new computer microphone that I ordered when Tony from Bowling for Jesus started badgering me for a voice clip. My first reaction was huh? And then I shook myself and remembered it is 2006 and I can just buy a gadget for that, so I did and today I sent him a quick little clip which he claims will make his spine tingle, as he has some sort of American Female Voice fetish. Eh, to each his own. Glad to be of service.

Then I wanted to go all-out and post a voice post here, but blogger doesn't seem to support that. Give me a few more days of this manic energy surge, I'll figure it out.

but first OH MY GOD WHAT IS FOR DINNER?

I went out for a bite after work with a friend, but I didn't eat much and NOW I HUNGER.

God, and I am still so full of juice. Let's go out! Have some fun! Anyone? Anyone?

Hotchie mama

Today I am liking all sorts of things that I did not like merely yesterday.

• My cute-as-a-button new haircut, now that I have f*cked with it to my satisfaction.
• Cooking dinner
• Wearing makeup
• Planning what to wear to an important meeting tomorrow

I am basically feeling more than a little hot-to-trot today, and a few of the words I'd like to thank for that are:

• gamine
• concealer

and let's not forget

• ten

and

• pounds

Tomorrow, I think, should be brought to us by the words:

• New

and

• Cowboy

and

• Boots

Don't you?

Hamster wheel

Will someone please tell the rabid little hamsters in my brain that these are the hours we use for sleeping, not for working? That I actually need a few hours of sleep before I can do all the importantly important URGENT URGENT things they are yelling at me about in their tinny little voices?

So much to do, so much to do, they fuss fussily at me as they consult their rodenty little PDAs and furiously tap at them with their tiny little PDA tapsticks.

Mustn't forget, mustn't forget, they mutter feverishly, nervously patting their tidy little hamster up-do's, where they have tucked six or seven sharpened number two pencils in case of any sudden emergency that should require passing out a sufficient number of sharpened number two pencils.

Are you getting this down? they whisper crossly as they cross to and fro from ear to ear, from back of skull to front. Tsk, tsk, they only barely let me hear, what would you do without us?

All would be lost, all lost, reply the mice taking dictation in the secretary pool, chattering away on their laptops and shaking their pointy little heads with their sorrowful, reproving pointy little faces on them.

Great, I mumble in the back of my throat, where the tickle of their pacing has begun to penetrate, since you're taking care of all that, can I maybe get some sleep?

TSK TSK TSK TSK TSK TSK TSK they all erupt in cacaphonous unison, clacking all the more furiously at their keypads, tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk...

The girls

The most important thing I can tell you about bra shopping today is to stay away from department stores.

It's true, you only try them when you are feeling very, very gullible, or insanely dopey and optimistic about the chances of there being a single item of clothing on the second floor of Macy's that you would ever want to put next to your body. Maybe some well-meaning coworker lured you there with wild talk of sales and rebates. Well, sister, I am here to tell you DO NOT GO THERE.

Honest to God! Does anyone shop for bras there? It's always tucked away on the topmost floor, just past the ugliest bedspreads and remaindered crockpots. There's some saleslady up there guarding her treasures like a goddamn minotaur, pawing at the ground lest you molest the Bali minimizers. I swear to god there is dust on those girdles in the back corner.

So off you go, fleeing into the black maw of the mall, where you are so deeply and inexpressively thankful that they have moved the Victoria's Secret ever closer to your favorite mall entrance. Or perhaps VS is now like the Room of Requirement, appearing only when you truly need it.

And Honey, you have been wearing those utilitarian bras from Lands' End for far too M.F. long. And beige?!? Please, child. If anyone needs Vickie right now, it's you. Say what you want about it, but at least within those walls of throbbing pink you can buy intimate apparel that has at least a chance of getting you laid.

Fortunately for you and the unsuspecting sales staff at the World's Pinkest Bra Store, you have been serenaded in your slumber for two full weeks now by the steamiest, most energizing sex dreams you can remember having since the night you first saw real porn, and you are therefore feeling unaccountably delectable these days. I mean, all those nocturnal hallucinations can't be wrong, right?

So you, my sultry senorita, are what they call at Lex Wexner's Palace of Puerile Pleasures an easy mark. OK, so maybe you won't succumb to the oft-repeated siren song of 15% off today's purchases when you apply for a VS credit card. Maybe you won't veer disastrously off target when walking past those silky nighties they have splayed out for their Valentine's Day come-on.

But they know. They know from the way you know which drawer they hide the double-D underwires in. They know when they see you stride off to the fitting room with two pawfuls of lace and spandex and a grim set to your well-defined jawline.

They know. You, my friend, are not leaving this store without the bra. The one you have been dreaming of, literally -- the one you were wearing in that dream Sunday night, just before cruel dawn stole the dream away. That. Bra.

Good Christ Lit Up in Neon, if Victoria's bloody little Secret -- on the week before Valentine's Day!-- doesn't have a slinky, lacy, underwire push-up bra in Elvira black for the D-Girls down there, well then I just don't know a damn thing about a damn thing.

And they do, of course. And you, my sizzling little poptart, will wear it tomorrow while engaging in witty banter with your new friend and when he stops midsentence and looks up at you and asks you what that smirk on your face is for you will breathe in ever so slightly and hold it for a moment so as to feel the silk embrace your ribcage then release it and softly say

nothing.