the ocean

Somehow it is already November. I certainly can't say I know where all of that time went, but I can speak for some of it.

Work, of course, is a thing. And it has taken up some of that time. I was up until 1 AM for a case filing a few weeks ago for the first time in years. I am perhaps no longer really equipped for that sort of thing. I reached a point where, as I attempted to read, words no longer made sense to me. There was also a bit of maniacal laughter for no reason. All perfectly normal, I assure you. I've also had work travel, which is not just eating lunch alone at an International House of Pancakes, but also having awkward encounters with all manner of security personnel. And performing unlicensed therapy for clients, of course. It's all a very rich text.

There are also the joys of home ownership, of course. Planting plants, watering plants, murdering plants as the cold season approaches. Staining and caring for wood that seems to have a death wish. Wondering where all the bugs come from and if there is some gentle, ethical way to get them the fuck away from you. Putting up holiday decorations, taking down holiday decorations. Working with contractors who clearly despise you. It takes time to do these things right.

Social engagements. Charcuterie boards, appetizers, dinners in and out. Engagement parties, bachelor parties, weddings. All manner of alcoholic escapades. Seeing friends in shows. Talking about having seen (or not seen) friends in shows. 

Also, of course, family. My niece and nephew now have packed schedules of dance, theater, and sports. I fortunately do not have to drive them to all of these activities, but I do have to show up and appreciate those activities occasionally. I assure you that grade school dance recitals have lost none of their luster.

And then there's the creative stuff. Lots of time spent writing and probably twice as much time spent staring despondently at the screen and not writing. Time performing or meeting about writing or performing. Dreams haunted by weak rhymes or awkward meters. 

Dogs have gotten a lot of time, too. I am less convinced now that they are trying to kill me than I was a few months back, but it's still a distinct possibility.

Anyway, it's all flying by! In a good way. Also a bad way. But regardless in a way we really have no say about.

This weekend, I re-organized not one, not two, but three different closets. 

I'll give you a minute to control the arousal you are naturally feeling upon reading that sentence.

You see, I had to finish converting my primary bedroom closet from summer-fall clothing to fall-winter clothing. (After weeks of denial, of course.) So that involved swapping things to and from the guest bedroom closet. At which point I got inspired to do a full gut rehab of the primary bedroom closet, changing the location of my short sleeved tops and purchasing a bunch of close organization items from Target. At which point I decided to go ahead and clean up the organization of our pantry as well, since I feel like various dog-related items are always falling out of there and causing a frenzy. And before I knew it I was on a stepladder culling our collection of old shopping bags for the recycling.

Obviously, these are very exciting times.

I also cleaned the front patio, ordered new heads for my Sonicare, and called my mother.

Let no one say I am not down to earth and relatable. 

 Here are some photos of recent happenings, just because I can.

My niece started building a fort in our basement and then cried when they had to leave before it was finished. I'm pretty sure Gaudi felt the same way about Sagrada Familia. Regardless, Dolly found it to be a pleasant place to crouch, so we've got that going for us.

Fall is actually not my favorite, but there are plenty of fun ways people can observe it:

As an attorney, I am constantly doing exciting and glamorous things that are exactly like what you see lawyers doing on television. I'm basically that lady ADA from SVU. Not the tall blonde one, the shorter, squarer one. I'm constantly in court and my cases only last for 52 minutes once commercials are removed.

No, the truth is that ever since I left the exciting world of people who murder their elderly business partners with hammers, my work more closely resembles The Office than The Practice, to say nothing of Love Island. I sit at a desk and type. I meet with people. I go to the break room and hope that there are still some Sun Chips left. (There are not.)

Last week I broke things up with some travel. Saw some New Jersey and Michigan conference rooms for a change. Ate a meal by myself at a Buffalo Wild Wings and decided just to go with an appetizer sampler as my entree. Ate a meal by myself at an airport Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville and was assaulted by live steel drum music for forty-five minutes. Dominated the heck out of boarding group two.

Then this past week I was a panelist at a conference. It was kind of wild because pretty much no one in the audience did the same kind of work as me, so I realized I could pretty much just say anything and no one would be the wiser. I did not, of course. With great power comes great responsibility. 

Just as I'm complaining about my lack of things to write about, I have work travel that provides plenty of fodder for discussion.

Monday I flew to Newark for some work meetings. As fate would have it, I was seated next to an elderly Russian couple who spent the entire trip loudly discussing in two different languages how confusing nearly every aspect of the flight was to them. 

When I arrived, the man was hunched over in his seat with his eyeballs approximately one inch from the in-seat display, messing with the parental controls settings for no earthly reason. Then, his wife coached him on the process of selecting a movie to watch, which resulted in him accidentally starting an episode of the NBC sitcom I forgot existed, "St. Denis Medical," with what appeared to be Dutch subtitles. Understandably terrified by this development and apparently unaware that one can exit out of erroneously selected programming, the gentleman asked his wife to switch seats, but she was already too invested in The Barbie Movie to agree to that.

Shortly thereafter, and it's really important you understand I am not making this up, the woman became convinced that we had already taken off and landed, when in truth we'd just been doing the incredibly long taxi for which O'Hare is so well known. She convinced her husband to ask the flight attendant why we had landed so quickly, leading to one of the most meaningful stunned silences I've ever encountered. Fortunately, my new friends were actually delighted to learn that five-minute round trips are not actually in the United Airlines playbook.

Then there was the in-flight service. They asked the snack lady for a drink and the drink lady for a snack. Then the wife asked if they had any chocolate alcoholic drinks, apparently mistaking the plane for a bespoke speakeasy in Brooklyn. After discovering that alcohol was not complimentary, she settled on bloody mary mix with no vodka, which she then complained tasted like tomato juice. 

Once we landed, they entertained a ten minute phone call with their pet hotel on speakerphone whilst we waited to deplane. During which they asked to speak to their dog. Which I feel, but still, do not understand the need for the entire row to be involved. Particularly during the hold music, which was a janky electronic version of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Finally that music history training has paid off.

Needless to say, I am now best friends with these people and they're coming over tonight. Travel really does expose us to new horizons.

I am struggling more and more to come up with things to write about here, and I'm not sure why. I mean, yes, my life is relatively uninteresting, but hasn't it always been? It's not like I used to be a backup dancer for Madonna or Hillary Clinton's lesbian life partner (or both) or anything. I'm still in the same straightforward and largely not for disclosure profession I've been in for twenty plus years, and I'm still married to the same dude I've been with for more than a decade. I guess I do spend less time "out on the town," as no one says, than I used to, but it's not like I remembered most of that to write about it, anyway. I'm certainly not watching less television or doing fewer stupid things than I did back in the day.

Case in point: I was in my friend's wedding last weekend and, after two days of being friendly with strangers and taking photos for hours with only a Walgreen's sandwich for sustenance, I decided to practice some intoxication. And I ended up giving the Uber driver a combination of my current address and the address I lived at three years ago, realizing I hadn't brought my keys and could not remember the code for the back door that I enter literally every day of my life, and having to wake Ian up to let me in in the dead of night. 

Oh yeah, so maybe that's the shit I should write about. Except I just did. And it's not like I had anything funny to say about it, other than the fact that it happened. 

Should I start recapping old episodes of "Caroline in the City" or something? Only issue is that I would then have to actually watch old episodes of "Caroline in the City."

Actually having a reason for being is such a high bar for a blog...

Getting my dream Beauty & the Beast style home library has led me to realize I have a lot of books, though not nearly enough to fill all the shelves in my new Beauty & the Beast style home library. (For that, I am going to bring some books back from my parents' library in Quincy; that library also doubled as my bedroom when I was a kid, so I feel I have a valid ownership claim.) Among these classic volumes with which I could not possibly part are the following:

2009 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. I have never written a novel and I haven't written a short story in years. But if I do, I will certainly want to know where I can publish it in 2009.

Spanish Beginner's Dictionary. I never took Spanish at all, so I guess I am definitely a beginner.

America's Next Top Model Fierce Guide to Life. This requires no explanation.

Hoodoo Conjuration Witchcraft Rootwork, Volume Five. This was my dad's; he was a folklorist, among other things. Aren't most dads? I do wonder where volumes one through four went, though.

The Power of Kabbalah. This is Ian's. I assume it's related to Madonna's Kabbalah phase. He's also a big fan of her turn in Evita, as of course we all are.

Make it Nice by Dorinda Medley. I imagine this was a gift? I've not read it. I prefer a more literary bent in my housewives, you know like Danielle Staub.

Two copies of The Canterbury Tales, which I have never read. I mean, I ready excerpts in high school and college, which seemed like plenty. But I do plan to get to the whole thing before I die. And apparently read it twice.

Twenty Great American Short Stories. I have read this and must say that most of these American short stories are really just kind of mid.

How to Clean Practically Anything. Maybe from my mother? I do like things to be tidy.

UN Law on International Sales. This one is just for fun.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Some of these actually remain scary, even as an adult. I rarely if ever tell them in the dark, however.

Contemplating Courts. Just a great title, frankly. I think this was a textbook from one of my college classes. I just couldn't bear to part with it!

Approximately six thousand copies of everything I've ever written. I am nothing if not a narcissist!

I've been walking around with a black eye all week. I'm workshopping lies about how I got it because the real story isn't very flattering. I was trying to get a metal desk organizer off the top shelf in the storage room at work and I accidentally dropped it on my face. There was a significant amount of blood and swelling and I had to attend a full afternoon client meeting covered in band-aids and lightly oozing. I am sure everyone was very impressed. After a few days of gentle icing and anti-inflammatories, I have lost my resemblance to  Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, but there are still some interesting color changes going on around my eye. It's like the northern lights, but less attractive and more embarrassing.

Because the universe has it in for me, this was also the week that I had to go present about careers in white collar criminal law to a program for youths. They certainly found my eye diverting. They said they thought I was wearing makeup, which even in this somewhat more enlightened age they did not mean as a compliment. Fortunately, I was able to distract them with stories of horrific murders. I've found that everyone loves to hear about the mail bombers and hammer murderers I have kept in jail. And no, I am not suggesting that says anything positive about our society. But I'm not the one who broke it; I'm pretty sure that was MTV in the early '90s.

Now the big question in my mind is if my appearance will be back to normal by Wednesday, when of course I am required to have a new building ID photo taken. It's not so much vanity that drives my concerns as the thought that I myself would certainly not allow anyone who looks the way I do now enter into any respectable office building. Although I guess that begs the question of what respectable even means these days. I did once work with a woman who got fired for running a bedazzling business from her desk during office hours.

Ian has taken to putting on the Vevo music video channels (included with your Samsung TV, friends) while he is working. I am not questioning the soundness of this decision, as it really does provide some pleasant ambient noise to accompany one's labors without being too distracting. However, I have come to realize from this exercise that many music videos of decades past are incredibly strange.

For example, the "Doing it All for My Baby" video from Huey Lewis (& the News, of course). For some reason, this incredible upbeat, frankly saccharine tune was accompanied by a video in which Huey himself plays Dr. Frankenstein for some reason. It is seven minutes long. It literally could not have less to do with the song. Did Huey just see "Thriller" and think, hey, I guess people are doing monster videos now? It's kind of jarring for a song that even at the time seemed destined for Muzak at your local Dollar General.

And then there's "The Warrior" by Scandal featuring Patty Smyth. I think it's supposed to be post-apocalyptic? It's kind of industrial chic and there's some sort of dance battle involved, with people who are maybe aliens? Or fishermen? (There are nets, but also body suits.) It does look a little bit like Cats the musical.

Not as much as the video for "Bad Boy" by Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine, of course. It is a daring love story about a woman who seems to be sexually interested in man-sized cats. They are unambiguously cats, with tails that sometimes function as boners, whiskers, and a love of fish. And Gloria is in what appears to be a Quinceanera dress, dancing so stiffly that I literally googled to see if this was filmed after the accident where she injured her spine. It was not.

Anyway, it's all kind of a vibe. Not mad at it, but also pretty sure I'm going to have some fucked up dreams for a while.