Finding my center

Hey guys! 

Been gardening and writing and reading and taking yoga and figuring things out in my head. My cousin's super-talented wife is helping me redesign the Lance. I'm dense when it comes to technology – borderline luddite. Rebecca offered to help make this site look snazzier, which I'm apprehensive to do because when I started writing it, I could give two-shits about design. I just wanted a place to write. A little bit of structure to my mornings. A creative way to pass the time before Joe woke up.  

I've been sleeping in later and Joe's been waking up earlier, which means we've been rising together, drinking coffee together. Not much lag time between my waking and his. Oddly, parts of me are rubbing off on him. Parts of him are rubbing off on me. Kind of like how when you stick a sliver of soap on top of another sliver of soap they become one. Joe does this with his bars of Irish Spring. Whenever a bar runs out, he sticks whatever's left on top of a new bar of soap. It always makes me laugh, the tiny nub of Irish Spring glued to the full bar of Irish Spring, like the soap is wearing a green derby cap. He does this so he never wastes soap. Very thrifty that Joe. 

He dug me a vegetable garden last week and I've been nuts about watering it in the morning. Nuts about watering my other plants too. PK is baffled by my sudden bursts of domesticity. To quote, "I never thought I'd see the day when you'd care about petunias." 

I told Joe I was quitting the Lance last night. I told him I want to write a book more than anything in the world and I've made zero progress on that front, but we'll see ... 

If Rebecca makes this site look freaking cool, I'll have to keep posting and just suck it up and write my fiction book regardless. My stupid annoying fiction book. Even if it means waking up before Joe again. My sanity depends on it. My center, so to say. 

Anyway. It's 1:30 in the afternoon here in St. Pete, Florida and I've got a lunch date with Zipper Boy. 

--

PS. I took the photo at last year's Langerado Music Festival on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation outside of Fort Lauderdale. Group yoga, y'all. Throw your flubby thighs in the air and spread 'em like ya just don't care. It's liberating. 

For red-headed pug lovers and hometown farmers

This ain't me, but if it were, I'd be fine with it.

The hair! The pug! The ankle socks! The Mary Janes! I wish this chick lived in St. Pete so we could kick it over beer and peanuts. I wish I hadn't just happened upon this picture while randomly searching for PUGS on Flickr.

Today I'm word-loose and Lancey-free, basking in the kind of deep relief that comes with turning in a story at 1 p.m.

When he's in the middle of an assignment, Joe, my fiancé, who's an associate editor here, likes to say: "The story's done. I've just got to write it."

On most days, that's usually where my head is. Floating somewhere between Story's Done and Just Got to Write It.

But not today! Today I turned in a big story – a cumbersome but interesting one – then I took the pug to Coffee Pot Park and I sat on a bench by the bay with my eyes closed for 20 minutes and daydreamed.

It was glorrrrious. 

I called my Nana, and then my mother and I sat for awhile longer on the bench and listened to water lapping at the break-wall. The sloshing reminded me of my childhood spent on a sailboat in Lake Erie, so I closed my eyes again and willed memories into focus.

The pug, happy to be in the shade under the bench, was so quiet and grunt-less I forgot he was with me, so I let the leash go slack.

Then I walked back to my house off Coffee Pot Drive, scheduled a few interviews and retreated to the backyard, where I sat in my Sky Chair and contemplated something my mother had said:

One house down from the house I grew up in, lives a man named Norm who owns the grape fields stretching up and down Langford Road.

He's about 90 years old, dour as hell and drives a rusted truck. When I was a kid he used to pull into our driveway and lay on the horn whenever he wanted to talk to my dad. According to my parents, he still does this today except lately his visits are fewer and far between.

My parents say it's been years since the red-headed goose-haired farmer stopped in, so when his pick-up truck pulled into the driveway yesterday my mom kind of did a double-take and my dad kind of sat back and waited to hear a horn-honk.

When that didn't happen, my dad went out to the truck to see what was up and a few minutes later walked back in the house with a bemused look on his face.

"Do we have any masking tape?" He asked my mom.

"MASKING TAPE?" My mom yelled from the kitchen.

"Yeah," my dad said. "Norm needs a piece of masking tape."

"MASKING TAPE? What?" My mom asked.

"I'll tell you later," he sighed. "Just rip him a piece."

So my mom ripped my dad a piece of masking tape and my dad brought it out to Norm, who was waiting as usual in his jitney truck, and the two sat in the driveway for awhile catching up on stuff.

That night, my dad wondered out loud if maybe Norm just wanted someone to talk to. He apparently needed the masking tape to adhere his crumbling car inspection sticker to his windshield, but my dad has a hunch the old man's just lonely. His wife died not long ago and since then, Norm's been up to all sorts of nice things. For one: he reconciled with his estranged brother Carl, who lives one door down from him on Langford Road, and whom he hasn't spoken to in 25 years.

Turns out Norm's leaving the country for the first time this summer. His daughter is taking him on a Caribbean cruise.

Well, my dad said, wouldn't ya know the old bugger doesn't have a birth certificate! He's come across nothing but trouble trying to get a passport for this cruise. He tried talking to the town clerk about it and she suggested he talk to someone in New York City.

The Office of Vital Records in New York told Norm they only deal with ancient birth certificate requests in person. So next thing Norm knows, he's flying into LaGuardia to deal with the matter face-to-face.

When he got there, the agency suggested he find someone who was at least eight years old when he was born to prove he wasn't trying to pull a fast one on the government.

"That's gonna be tough," Norm said. "Nobody that age is still alive."

So the agency let it slide, using testimony from Carl, who's three years older, to prove that yes, Norm was born in the United States and has lived in North Collins, N.Y. since the Paleozoic Era.

"All of this to go on a cruise?" I asked my mother.

"Hell," she said. "It'll probably be the first time Norm's left the state!"

--

PS. Lance turned one year old on Friday. Happy belated, pal.

PPS. R.I.P. Dorothy Zbornak.

PPPS. Pug-walking photo by Zen. For his photostream, click here.

Cheap thrills.

Meet my new wheels. She's a real Bianchi. 

Light as a feather and the color of a robin's egg, my Bianchi came from Goodwill. She's got pizza-cutter tires and handlebars shaped like my pug's tail.

When I wedged her into the front seat of my Honda Civic, she contorted into a kind of fetal position, which made me think perhaps Bianchi was scared or sad, having just been pulled abruptly from the bike pile at a tidy Goodwill store on 4th Street in St. Petersburg.

She's a 23-year-old Italian with a stubborn saddle, caged pedals, soft tires and a nervous tick. I think her rear break might be chaffing against the rim, but with the proper tools and gentle touch she'll be prime for riding long distances. 

I hadn't intended to get a 1986 Italian racing bike. My sister Heelya and best friend Ro are visiting next week and I wanted a third bicycle so we could pedal the Pinellas Trail together. I've been eyeing a tricked-out mountain bike for a month now and was fixing to shell out $500 for a better (and I mean way better) bike than the one I pedal now, but today's little lesson in negotiation and good will has prompted me to forgo a new model in favor of a more seasoned cougar.

I pulled into Goodwill today with two $20 bills in my wallet, feeling good about myself, my friends and the world. I'm on a new cash-only budget thanks to $3,000 in fraudulent charges at a Panama stereo store. My debit card number was stolen last week (perhaps in cyberspace) and when the bank told me I'd have have to wait a week for my new card, I decided now was as good a time as any to pay homage to my parents by paying for everything in cash. 

Peering into the back stockroom at G.W., I asked one of the employees if there were any decent bikes for sale. One guy perked up and said, "Sure. We got a Tour de France bike out front."

I figured he was pulling my chain, (bike pun!) but as I followed him out front to the parking lot where the robin egg blue Bianchi was parked, the vintage bike stuck out like Christie Brinkley ...                                                                                      

... in a sea of Tonya Hardings.

"It suits you," the guy said.

"I'll take it," I replied, not knowing how much it would cost, but assuming not much.

So I wheeled it into the store and up to the counter, where an employee with a name tag that said JAYME asked, "You buying that bike?"

"Yup," I said.

"Do you know how much it costs?" He asked incredulously. 

"Um. No. How much does it cost?"

"Fifty bucks," he said.

Before I could even get a word out, the man in line behind me said, "No way is that bike worth fifty bucks. Man, you're rippin' the girl off. Give it to her for 25."

A woman standing in line behind the man chimed in:

"Fifty dollars! She's gonna have to put new tires on that bike!"

"It's an expensive racing bike," the Goodwill clerk snapped. 

"It was an expensive bike," scoffed the man behind me. "Man, that thing is old! Being that she's a girl, she's gonna have to pay someone to fix those tires."

Slightly embarrassed by the attention I had drawn, but thrilled by its sitcom appeal, I quietly said to the clerk, "It's OK. I came here thinking I'd get a deal. No biggie."

Upon further inspection of the name tag, I noticed that JAYME was the store manager and as I turned to push the Bianchi back to the bike pile, Jayme sighed and said, "Alright. $35 and that's as low as I'll go."

Forking over my money, I nodded at the male chauvinist behind me, grateful for his cojones. Although I don't usually take kindly to being treated like a damsel, in this case I curtsied, grabbed my bicycle and headed home. 

--

This isn't my first love affair with a 1980s bicycle. I was once infatuated with a clunker 10-speed named Ross. For more on that torrid romance click here.

No disrespect to missing dogs

Once upon a time, on a day too dark and chilly for sunbathing, my sister PK and I sat in my living room in St. Pete, telling stories about odd apartment neighbors.

PK lives next door to a guy who used to keep his kid's hamster in a cage outside his apartment, presumably because tenants aren't allowed to have pets.

One day the hamster just disappeared. Gone. Cage and all.

Inspired by the number of missing dog signs in my neighborhood, PK and I designed a hypothetical missing hamster sign.

MISSING HAMSTER

REWARD $75

Male teddy bear hamster

Age: 2 1/2

Has small ears, tiny eyes and strawberry blonde fur

Has black fleck on front right paw

Last seen on wheel

Call: ###

And yes, we printed out a dozen copies and tacked them to telephone poles around my neighborhood.

Please don't chastise me. I'm a sucker for missing animals. Remember Pooh Bear?

Lighten up and do something funny for the helluvit. It's April Fool's Day – nine days before my birthday! For hoax-y inspiration, click here.

--

PS. Please swing by Name Your Dream Assignment and vote for my friend Ricci. I've sung her praises numerous times. She's an amazing photographer and she has only a few days left to win this contest. Voting ends April 3.

Learning to sit still and write

I learned a long time ago that newspaper stories don't always flow like wordy liquid from the fingertips.

The process is usually ... how I do I put it?

Painful.

As a 16-year-old cub reporter (or as my first editor called me, "a stringer") I would drive home after covering three-hour town board meetings in a rural town where the council members' various concerns included accidental or deliberate manure seepage by farmers driving their tractors up village roads.

I had to summon an army of self-disciplined brain cells to write about this stuff. When I'd return from these meetings, I typically had two days to produce a story, which I understand is a virtual god-send for daily newspaper reporters.

(I've always written for weeklies. I still haven't decided if it's because I'm too slow or too intimidated by the pace. I think it's the latter. Daily newspaper reporters, if they're lucky enough to still have jobs, can't afford to lollygag. I have a good friend who works at a daily newspaper in Southwest Florida, who often returns to the newsroom after beastly city commission meetings, and busts ass on a story until midnight with his editor lurking over his shoulder, insisting he call a source who just a week ago announced at a planning board meeting that all reporters are lousy muckrakers hellbent on manipulating quotes.)

So, yes. I write for weeklies. To motivate myself I often set Reese's Cups beside the computer. For every 300 words written, I get one Reese's Cup. Depending on the length of the story it's possible that I've consumed an entire 8-pack of Reese's in just one afternoon.

It's a motivation/reward system.

Back when I still worked in a newsroom, before I started doing this job from home, I would reward myself with several vodka cranberry cocktails at a bar down the road, where a guy named Nick played Spanish love songs on a small guitar.

The motivation/reward system is precarious. Over the years, I've repeatedly failed to achieve many of my personal deadlines, which means I've plodded back to the kitchen with handfuls of uneaten Reese's, pissed off at my lack of ambition, or even worse, my propensity to procrastinate.

I knew I was a glutton for punishment when my high school newspaper internship turned into a reporter gig that lasted an excruciatingly gratifying three years.

Things I used to do the day after town board meetings to avoid pumping out 500 words on the board's decision to turn down the construction of a telecommunications tower:

1. Walk to the bathroom and put on my mother's red lipstick. Wipe it off with toilet paper. Reapply. Wipe it off again.
2. Perform handstands against my closet door.
3. Call my friend Ro and gossip about nonsense.
4. Eat dinner with my family extra slowly, impersonating a councilwoman whose voice sounded like Lily Tomlin sucking tennis balls through a vacuum cleaner.
5. Tear out useless notes, crumple them into balls and chuck them at my sister Heelya, whom I shared a room with.
6. Sign onto AOL and submit poetry to writers' Web sites.
7. Re-read dogeared pages from Alice in Wonderland and type sentences only the Mad Hatter would say.
8. Hold down the fast-forward button on my hand-held tape recorder, amused by how council members sound less irritating as chipmunks.
9. Do homework.
10. Daydream about becoming a marine biologist.

Ten years later very little has changed, except of course that I've fine-tuned my motivation/reward system.

Yesterday after finishing a story on deadline, I rewarded myself with an Adirondack chair.

When Joe and I first moved into our house, we pedaled our bikes on a cobblestone roundabout, where we passed a small house with one Adirondack chair in the front yard with a sign tacked to it that read: ADIRONDACK CHAIRS FOR SALE. CALL ###.

I made Joe memorize the phone number and when we got home I jotted it down on a piece of cardboard torn from an empty case of Pepsi. I decided when I was ready to jazz up the front yard, I'd call and purchase a proper chair from a craftsman in my neighborhood.

Yesterday, while blundering through a halfway interesting lede for a mostly boring story, I decided to fish through the kitchen junk drawer for the chairmaker's phone number. When I called it, an old guy named Ernie answered in a Long Island accent.

"Hey there," I said. "Do you sell Adirondack chairs?"

"Sure do," he said.

"You make 'em yourself?"

"Yes m'am. I got two right now. One made out of cypress. One made out of cedar."

(When he said cedar, he sounded like seeda. Oh, downstaters!)

"How much you selling them for?"

"Ninety-nine bucks."

"Listen," I said. "I'm on deadline trying to finish a story. As soon as I crank it out, I'll be over."

At 5:30 I headed over with $125. I wanted a table too and Ernie had suggested he had other bits and pieces of furniture for sale.

When I got to his house, eight blocks away from mine, I knocked on his front door and heard a woman say, "Ernie! We have company."

Ernie opened the door, shook my hand, and took me to his back porch, where he told me how he makes his chairs using plans designed by some Bob Vila-type guy on PBS, and how he purchases his wood from a guy who lives in the sticks an hour outside of St. Pete, and how cypress is insect-repellent and how he and his wife are going on a cruise next week through the Panama Canal.

"You know much about the Panama Canal?" Ernie asked.

"Not really," I said.

"Ya know 27,000 men died building the Panama Canal."

"Really?"

"Yellow fever and malaria. They didn't know about mosquitas then."

"27,000 men. Jesus."

"I know," said Ernie, wringing his head. "The French tried to build it in the 1800s, but after so many men died they gave up on it and Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and finished the job."

"Wow, and now we motor up and down it in luxury cruise liners."

Ernie smiled and hoisted a cypress Adirondack chair into my trunk.

"Do you have a little table I can set beside it?" I asked.

"Sure do," he said, pointing to a crude plywood table by his garage with a dusty flower pot on top. "I'll sell it to you for 25 bucks."

"How about $15?"

He paused for a second, reached for the flower pot and said, "Ahh, alright," tying the table to the Adirondack chair with a piece of twine and fastening my trunk shut with a bungee cord.

"Where do you live?" He asked.

"30th and 2nd Street," I said.

"Ah. The center of the universe."

"Yeah!" I said, reaching into my wallet for cash.

"'$114," he said.

I handed him $115 and told him to keep the buck.

He thanked me, tugged on the twine and the bungee cords and declared the rigging safe for at least 10 blocks.

"I tell ya what I do in my Adirondack chair," he said. "I get me a cold drink and I set it on the arm rests, then I lay back with my feet out in front of me and I think to myself, life is great and I've got no complaints."

--
PS. I tried to write this post from the Adirondack chair, but it's too bright in my front yard. Must build porch!

"She's the other half of my zipper."

ST. PETE – Today I had lunch with one of my oldest friends in Florida.

It was at a Thai restaurant called The King & I, and we were talking about relationships – his not mine – and I could tell by his blushing and squirming that the chick he's dating is turning his insides to goo.

If he hadn't squirmed and hadn't blushed, I'd be writing about his smile. His smile was a billboard that flashed: DUDE IN LIKE, as it was one of those punch-drunk smiles that you cannot, no matter how much you think you're in control of your facial contortions, pinch shut.

Basically, the man is smitten and getting smitten-er by the day.

Before I tell you what he told me today, which I'm pretty sure you garnered from the title of this post, I've gotta give you context. I've gotta paint a picture of this kid so you can squint him into focus in your brain.

I won't tell you his name for fear that She, whom he is falling for, might read this. We're not Facebook friends or Twitter friends, but who knows? We might one day be, and just you watch this relationship go in the shitter.

Ey! I pray it doesn't. At heart, I'm a romantic. By trade, a cynic. It's just that in the event that She screws Him over, or He screws Her over, I don't want to air His vulnerabilities on the Internet.

This friend of mine. He's analytical. Nerdy in the best way. Wears T-shirts with ironic expressions and dinosaurs decals. He's a whore for gadgetry and all technological advances. And despite his CNET membership and frequent use of the word, "app," he's devoutly religious. I think the only friend I have who goes to church every week.

For four years he has insisted on paying for our lunches and dinners, which usually run several hours long and have functioned, for me, as food-talk-therapy sessions.

Anyway. So he's dating someone new. A girl I've never met, but whose name I've invented a song for. (Well, not invented, per-se since the song I sing is a real song with a refrain that sounds like this chick's name, but more like a song I adapted in the spirit of her name.)

It's a nice name. Makes me think of gingham curtains and Ashley Judd in bare feet.

As grease dripped down my chin from the tubular spring roll I was eating, this glowy friend of mine explained in the most rudimentary terms, how this girl is just about perfect for him.

"It's like my zipper theory," he said. "You know how a zipper has two parts that are a little different, but kind of alike? We're like that. She's just different enough."

"You're so head over heels it's killing you," I said.

He blushed. Smiled like clothespins were pinching his cheeks and nodded begrudgingly in agreement. My supremely picky, painfully rational friend had found himself a lass.

As I began pounding the table in approval, he began pointing out that there was, of course, one problem.

The Perfect Fit had been really busy lately. So busy, that last month they went one whole week without speaking or seeing each other. So my friend, the self-preservator, decided to end the relationship. Nip it in the bud, as they say.

But of course, there was one other problem, he said.

He liked her. Good and plenty. He liked her tons. And when he dumped her, he felt cinematic-ly sad. Couldn't concentrate at all at work the next day.

"She wasn't making time for me, so I figured maybe she didn't like me. But when I broke up with her or whatever, I could tell that night, by her face that maybe she liked me."

So he decided to call her a few days later to see if she wanted to meet for dinner. And without officially reconciling, they began dating again.

As he told me this story, blushing and eating spring rolls, insisting he wasn't going to invest himself in the situation because he wasn't sure how the gal felt about him, I couldn't help but pound the table again.

"But she's your zipper," I cried.

"I know," he said.

Thank you for pushing my buttons.

Of all countries, my first blog critic hails from Canada. Miffed over my blase attitude toward guardian bum angels.

You may have already read Natasha's comment after the Tree frogs, bums & wedding dress post. My face was burning when I read it. I haven't been this scolded since a newspaper advertiser reprimanded me for likening his real estate gimmicks to David Hasselhoff's German popularity.

YET, I was simultaneously thrilled and pissed. A Mormon Canadian mother-of-four wearing an adorable scarf in her blog photo AGHAST at something I wrote in St. Petersburg, Fla.?

Bring it, benevolent Canadian!

Before I hammered out a reply I Mapquested Alberta, Canada and saw that her province's southern towns border Montana. Picturing this blonde woman and her husband Jude, their four kiddos and tag-a-long dog living in some prairie mountain town north of the border, I was flattered to have held her attention.

Pasted below is our exchange. It is by far the most constructive feedback I've received since starting Lance last April.

BUT, before I go ... Natasha, how do you feel about the word canuck?

--

Heidi,

I was going to give you some Twitter advice to help you promote your blog because I uncharacteristically clicked on your spam barrage of links on your Twitter feed and I thought, Huh-- this blog is not half bad.

Then I read this post.

I am AGHAST at your LACK of "humanity". You were indignant and offended at the ladies at the store who didn't say "good anything" to you and yet when presented with a man whose foot just might even have to be amputated, you told him it was disgusting and gave him all of one dollar. When telling his friend to get Jed to a clinic, you forgot to add, "...after you collect a lot more money because, of course, a dollar isn't going to get you anywhere." Maybe you don't have much money or didn't have much on you. That's understandable. What is not understandable is your comments to him. Not, "I hope that gets better soon!" or "I'm so sorry. That looks painful." No, you "snapped" that his foot was "dis-gusting". Where was your compassion? You judge some ladies for having poor manners when you lacked something greater?

Your first thought was "Foot ointment? Ah, this is one I haven't heard before." You were judging him. Sure, a lot of homeless people suffer from alcoholism, to try and shut out the pain of their world, but not all of them do. And because you cannot know for certain, you should never, ever take it upon yourself to judge. Live generously without judging and be blessed while letting the sin of lying be upon the head of he who lied to get money from you.

You couldn't have taken him to the clinic yourself and asked someone to fix his foot? Asked if they had any sort of charity program or whatnot? I don't know how it works there. In Canada you don't have to pay for basic health care-- everyone is cared for.

Even the word you use for these people-- "bums"-- associates them with something lowly and maybe they are by appearances. But when judgment day comes, it's very possible that these bums will rise higher than you, because they've very likely been given very little with which to work.

And even if you don't believe in God, you claim to believe in humanity. But you begrudged it.

Even to sandwich such a sad issue like homelessness in with your prophetic tree frog and your wedding dress shopping is so dismissive!

I NEVER leave critical comments on people's blogs. But you really don't seem to have any idea how this post comes across and since you put it out there, and you linked to it, and you're trying to drive more traffic to it, and you're trying to become a writer, I couldn't in good conscience walk by and just toss you a measly dollar.

Best of luck with not stepping on the tree frog, finding the right dress, and dealing with "the bums".

--

Natasha,
Your blog is very pretty. I like the scarf in your picture and I dig most of the to do's on your bucket list. I figured this place was as good as any to post a reply to your criticism (ie: MY first hate mail.)

What can I say? I refer to bums as bums. It rolls off the tongue.

I realize it's less P.C. than "homeless person," "man on the street," or "transient.” I've learned from many conversations with bums that street peeps resent the word transient. Most of these guys/gals hang around one city block longer than I've lived in some apartments. And since “homeless man" or "man on the street" sounds too Phil Collins, and since most of the ones I interact with nearly every day tend to do a lot of bumming around, I’ll stick with bums.

Despite my crude sense of humor, I do have a heart. I’m a sucker for GD bums. In fact, I have friends with much more sarcastic senses of humor who've suggested I suffer from, “a Pollyanna complex.”

Note: I only had two bucks on me that day.

Note: When my boyfriend moved out of his apartment two years ago, I delivered a stack of his old blankets and pillows to a man sleeping on the sidewalk. Having observed this man earlier in the day on a bike ride, I returned with my car and the bedding, careful not to wake the old bugger as I set a pillow by his head.

Good lord, Mormon. I wasn't passing judgment. Sure the guy's foot was battered, but no more than mine after a muddy music festival and a bad fall. His request for foot ointment WAS a new plea. Usually I get asked for cigarettes, quarters, dollar bills, lighters, etc ... And usually these requests are followed by - or preceded by - a catcall.

Was I cavalier? Probably. Am I always cavalier? No. Was this post an honest snapshot of the day? Sure. Did I embellish his wound by calling it "gangrenous?" Probably. I'm a writer not a doctor.

As for driving this guy to a walk-in clinic, if I were to personally escort every ailing person I pass to a medical facility in St. Pete, I'd log more miles than a NYC cab.

Natasha, your blog is lovely. And I mean that sincerely. My boyfriend was "following" you on Twitter and since I'm a blogger with limited readership I figured I'd follow you too. I wanted to share my posts. The "spam barrage of links" on my Twitter feed is the only way I know how to draw traffic to my site, that and Facebook and MySpace. As irritating and exhausting as social networking sites can be, they’ve introduced me to a bevy of talented writers and photographers.

Like you, I just want to make people laugh and think and come back for more. If my "behavior" chaps your ass, I encourage you to read more of my posts. I'm much more than a bum-bashing pisspot.

Also, by scolding my dismissive behavior you totally overlooked my two favorite literary devices - juxtaposition and symbolism. The post that left you AGHAST had both.

Having said all that, thank you for your comment. I’m tickled by hate mail too. I was working on a freelance piece about a Tuskegee Airman when I read your comment. It woke me up and carried me through to deadline.

Maybe we can be friends.

--

Hi, Heidi. (That was the name of our favourite cat, by the way.)

Okay, first of all, I did not give you hate mail. I didn't call you stupid or use crude language. I was commenting on your behaviour and I believe my writing left it open as a dialogue.

I sort of hear you on the symbolism and juxtaposition thing. Sort of. I wrote a post about my Twitter philosophy that got me MY first critical comment, except that unlike my comment to you, this one attacked ME personally instead of just my behaviour. And the reason she attacked me was because she didn't notice the symbolism in the very thing she was criticizing: I was telling people who use Twitter to tell me (or you or any other Twitter follower) how they could make them happy, make them "remarkable", etc. etc. I objected to the arrogant language by using it myself to say, "Maybe I can help YOU!" and then proceeded to tell them a better way to use Twitter and it was TOTALLY on purpose and some readers picked up on it.

Speaking of which, here is what I wanted to tell you: People want to get to know you. If you tweeted little random thoughts, links to other things on the web, comments back to people, and funny observations, only then intermingling links to your blog, you'd get a lot more followers and ones who would be following not out of obligation but because they found you engaging. Twitter really is about relationships. But when all your tweets are about your blog, it looks like you don't want a relationship. You just want to talk about you.

And that's NOT a criticism. I am not suggesting that there's any symbolism there with how you use Twitter. You just started. And normally I don't even bother to tell people how to use it better but I could tell you weren't just some big business jerk-off and I liked your blog title.

However, approaching your point about symbolism and juxtaposition, I don't see it. If we're going to critique it as a piece of writing, here goes: It read like a "Here's what I did today" diary type post. It did not seem to have a moral, a lesson, etc. There was no point. Which is fine, for a blog post. Not all of my posts have a point. But for there to be juxtaposition or symbolism as a creative writing tool, there needs to be a point that is magnified by those tools.

And because it doesn't look like there was any intended point besides to give a snapshot of your day and your life (and your character, so it seemed) it did put you in a bad light. As I said, I didn't think you realized how it made you look and how it encouraged a similar mindset for readers. A few of these points that you're saying here, could have been included. Like how often you're catcalled, etc. You could have worked it in without breaking up the writing.

My heart is warmed to hear about you dropping off the blankets and I don't doubt you're telling the truth.

I'm friends with lots of people and you've made it clear that you can have a mature dialogue and are not easily offended. So, SURE!

--

PS. I took the photo above a year ago on a bike ride through downtown St. Pete. It is the staircase of the country's first open-air post office. Built in 1916, the St. Petersburg Post Office was designed by George Stuart, an architect who served as a captain in the Canadian militia in the 1890s. After he was shot in the neck by an arrow in Canada's Last Indian War, Stuart moved to Texas – where they used guns. Eventually he retired to St. Petersburg, Fla. (go figure) where he designed the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, the post office and dozens of gothic-y homes. I thought it was an appropriate picture given the context.

A post for Ricci's 26th birthday

This is Ricci and Mbaye.

If you've met them, you know they're a pretty dynamic couple.

Ricci moved to Senegal a year ago.

To say she moved there "to find herself," would totally undersell her career ambitions and gut instincts.

She's a remarkable photographer with an adventurous soul. And like all of us, she settles into comfort zones and second guesses her impulses, of which she has many.

When we were both journalists living in downtown Sarasota, Ricci would frolic around my shanty cottage in her bathing suit, reminiscing about the beach picnic we had just had as if it had happened 30 years ago. I suppose it's because she knows a good thing when she's got it. That, and she's grateful for moments. Not stuff.

But Ricci utterly thrives when she's plucked herself out of a comfort zone. Some flowers live OK in the shade but blossom in the sun. Such is the case with the Ricci species.

Last January, the night before her flight to Dakar, Ricci called me to debate her decision to move to West Africa.

"Buck up," I said. "Board the GD plane. Africa was all you could talk about for months. If you turn around now, you'll have shackled your brilliant whims and awesome plans to fear and anxiety."

In truth, I wasn't that eloquent and Ricci called several friends that day who were all likely to say jump, so of course she boarded the plane. Had she dialed my German grandmother I'm afraid she'd have accepted a full-time job as a staff writer for a magazine in Chicago with medical, dental and a 401K.

So Ricci moved to Dakar and worked as a correspondent/photographer for Voice of America, a radio and television broadcasting service governed by the United States and stationed in countries around the word.

And so it was, that as my life became increasingly domestic hers became fiercely independent. At night I'd browse her blog, blown away by the pictures – Bill Clinton on an AIDS mission, the president of Iran at an Islamic Summit, men in wheelchairs playing basketball, big-bellied women stirring vats of cous-cous, children sliding off the backs of beached whales, goats getting slaughtered in the street ...

I was so proud of her – mostly for politely stomaching goat intestine soup – that tears wet my laptop. Every now and then she'd post a picture of herself, and even in a headscarf and dusty pants I could tell she was euphoric.

Then she met Mbaye, a soccer player with a come-what-may attitude and contagious smile. They dated for nine months in Dakar and then Ricci moved back to Chicago.

A month later she flew back to Dakar. By Thanksgiving she and Mbaye were back in the states – Mbaye for the first time in his life.

Rather than explain any of this I'll dig up an old e-mail written by Ricci in bullet-point fashion, as I'm sure she was writing it while filing a story about Senegalese scrabble champions, while photographing a sword-juggling monkey, while carrying on a conversation (in French) with a soothsayer, while daydreaming of malted milkshakes.

Heids,
Filed the story and now ready to file my story with you.

• have bought plane ticket back to states for sept. 17. this freaks me out, because i do not want to truly leave to dakar.
• also have plane ticket back to dakar, where i will stay from oct. 20 -- nov. 22 (i have some work to do here at that time)
• my boy and i are going to the us embassy next wed. to apply for a visitor visa so he can come here and meet the fam. we're SO nervous. i'm scared of the us government. if they say no, i guess we'll just have to get married so he can come visit. (do NOT get me started on the ridiculousness of this process. i'm actually documenting it (via words).. it's SO convoluted and feels like some ridiculous Willy Wonka-type, bureaucratic scavenger hunt. Just so he can come VISIT!!) our country blows sometimes.

Not one to stop at a visitors visa, Ricci contacted a sports agent in the U.S., who arranged for Mbaye to try out for several soccer teams on the East Coast. In between tryouts they stayed with me for a weekend in St. Pete.

I interviewed the couple earlier this month on a sun-drenched stretch of interstate on route to Sarasota. Since Mbaye speaks only French and Wolof – his native Senegalese language – and since the only French sentence I know goes something like, "Ohh la la j'ai une rendevous avec David dans 20 minutes ..." I asked Ricci to translate.

Note: Unless Mbaye gets signed to an American soccer team he will have to return to Dakar in May.

--

Mbaye, are you nervous about your soccer tryout next week?
(Ricci translates)
"He says he’s a little nervous because he doesn’t know who he’s going to meet and if they’ll be as nice as they were last time.”

Ricci, are you nervous?
“I’m nervous about him flying by himself, about him getting lost at the airport or something.”

You don't feel the fate of your relationship hangs on whether or not he makes the team?
“I just have to think we’re going to work it out no matter what happens. If he makes the team, great. If he doesn’t we’ll figure something out.”

Have your communication skills improved, dating someone who doesn’t speak English?
“If we have a fight — and it’s usually me who gets mad because he rarely gets mad — I want to make sure I say how I feel correctly in French. And after I go through it in my head I realize if I can't explain it simply in terms he can understand, then it’s probably not worth getting mad over because it’s convoluted and more my problem than his.”

You’ve learned to not overreact.
“There’s a level of communication that has to be there because sometimes when you speak the same language, you just assume what somebody means when they say something. For us, when I say something, it’s like this is what I’m saying, but this is what I mean.”

What do you guys fight about?
(Translates into French for Mbaye)
Ricci: “I don’t think we’ve had a big blow-out fight.”
(Mbaye interrupts in French.)
Ricci: “Oh yeah. We had one in Senegal.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “It was over money.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “And we got in one once when we got in a car and I didn’t know where I was going. I was freaking out and he was l like, ‘Don’t freak out you’re going to get in an accident.’”

Is that his role? To calm you down?
“Oh yeah.”

(Ricci laughs. Translates into French.)

Mbaye (in broken English): “She is never calm.”

Ricci: “One time I was calm and peaceful and he was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ And he said, ‘When the volcano is quiet one must question why.’”

Did Mbaye have anxiety about coming to the United States?
“He worried that my friends were going to think he was different or maybe not a good guy. He wasn’t afraid that they would be mean. He just figured they’d act weird around him.”

Did we act weird?
(Translates)
“He says no. He says all my friends were so nice and took such good care of him.”

Does he have a favorite American food?
(Translates)
“He says he has a stomach he doesn’t understand. It accepts everything that goes into it.”

How has your relationship changed in the United States?
“In Africa he knew how to get around and he knew the language and I was the person who didn’t know what was going on. If we’d have to get something done, he would know exactly what to do and I wouldn’t even ask questions. In Africa we never spent the night together. There were days we wouldn’t see each other. And here, I don’t think we’ve been apart more than an hour — once when he flew to Charleston for a tryout. I was worried at first that we would get sick of each other, but we’ve gotten along better the more we’re together."

(Translates into French for Mbaye.)

“He says the relationship is better here. When we were apart I'd call him 20 times a day.”

Because your insecurities are magnified when you’re apart. That's pretty normal, I think.
“Yeah. We fought more in Senegal than we do here.”

Were you worried Mbaye wouldn’t adapt to American shizzle?
“I was worried he might get homesick, but I wasn’t worried about him adapting at all.”

(In lousy French) Le Ikea pullout couch etait-il comfortable la nuit?
Mbaye: “Tres comfortable.”

Ricci, how would you describe your relationship with Mbaye?
“It’s easy. It’s almost like … I don’t know ... I’m happy. Girls always say, ‘I want to find The One. I want to find The One,' and when you think about it, it’s like, oh this is it. Anticlimactic is the wrong word because it has a negative connotation, but I don’t know … it just feels good.”

Finding The One was less dramatic than you thought.
"Yes, I guess."

The people in your life better be comfortable around cameras. Does Mbaye ever tire of being your model?
“He loves it. He always jokes he’s the poorest model in the world.”

Is it frustrating for him to not be able to communicate with your friends?
(Translates)
“He says he’s not frustrated. He’s sorry he can’t speak English but the fact that people try to talk to him is the most important thing. He says there’s a lot a smile and hand gestures can communicate.”

In what ways is this relationship different than others you've had?
“Well, we don’t speak English and we’re biracial. Those are the obvious ways it’s different. He makes me a better person. I feel like I have to be a better person because he raises the bar for me. Sometimes I’m like, but what do I do for you?"

How has the biracial thing played out?
“I have a lot of friends who date Senegalese men, but it’s also like ‘he’s with her because she has money and connections. Or, 'he’s using her to get further or whatever.' Someone said to me once when we were applying for a visa – 'how do you know he’s not just using you for the visa?”

That’s a rotten thing to say.
“First of all I said, 'He wouldn’t do that because he’s a good guy and an honest person.' Second of all, there’s a level of trust in every relationship. How do you know your girlfriend is not cheating on you? You have to trust people are who they say they are in any relationship.”

But generally you haven't felt discriminated against?
“Most of my friends are super liberal and accepting. I’m sure there are some people who have problems with it but then it’s like, it’s not your relationship. I’d rather be with him and have these kinds of problems than be with somebody who doesn’t make me happy and have people look at us like we are – quote – normal."

True dat.
“I feel like most of our problems are the world's problems, not our problems."

And what does Mbaye think?
(Translates)
"He says people look at us strangely because we’re beautiful.”
--

PS. The picture above was taken during a turkey sammie picnic on St. Pete Beach. For a glorious list of sammie recipes click here.

Dummy watches figure by drinking Mich Ultra

Go Rays!

This is the uber bizarro Rays dummy sitting on the porch four houses down from my apartment.

However, I should point out that Joe and I no longer live at our apartment in Old Northeast as we relocated 20 blocks north to a home we bought two weeks ago on 2nd Street across from the idyllically-named Coffee Pot Bayou. 

Since I'm in the middle of finishing a story that helps pay our mortgage, I best not piss away the valuable midnight hour.

But I promise you I've got a crapload of self-indulgent, heartwarming stories to sum up the last three weeks of my trifling life. None of which will include Saturday night's Tampa Bay Ray's nail-biter victory over the Boston Red Sox. (For more on that click here.) 

So, as my Aunt Dot would say, I hope you have a blessed Monday. We'll be in touch soon. 

Plot eureka

Ran into another guardian bum-angel yesterday. I didn't take his picture for fear that it would reveal he didn't exist.

FYI: it was not the same street prophet who predicted last month that our final offer on the house would be accepted. This guy was wearing a gray T-shirt that read: "I lost my #. Can I have yours?"

I was taking pictures of these fine ladies at the corner of 2nd Street and First Avenue (outside of Ivanka Ska's House of Ska) when this bum-angel said, "You should go across the street and see if the photographer over there needs your help."

I looked across the street, saw nothing, and snorted, "What photographer?" 

"There's a photo shoot at the post office. The models are wearing the same kind of getup as the mannequins. If I were you, I'd go see if the photographer could use a hand. You never know."

Because bums are northern stars, I sighed, pedaled across the street and watched as two statuesque (albeit extra terrestrial-looking) models pouted for a short blonde photographer who looked not unlike myself.

Intimidated by these specimens and feeling pretty weird about approaching the photographer, I pedaled back to the House of Ska and told my guardian bum-angel that I felt uncomfortable interrupting the shoot.

"Hey, you know never," he said. "She might not need your help now, but in the future say she's got a job that requires an extra set of hands, she'll remember you."

"I don't have any business cards," I replied.

"So," he said, challenging me. "What you do is you come back to the store here - I presume she works for the owner - and you leave your card and say, 'I saw you had a photographer out here Saturday. If you ever need help, or she's not available, call me.'"

Thanking the guy for his two-cents, I pedaled home and considered the idea. 

Later that night, while walking to CVS to get the usual chocolate ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, I had an epiphany. A plot epiphany.  It hit me when I passed a woman in hospital scrubs who, after rushing to get off the bus at 4th Street and 8th Avenue, asked me for directions to a house by the bay.

The plot epiphany was so powerful that it instantly made my stomach hurt. Scurrying home with my bag of ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, plot poured from my mouth like frothy Pop Rocks. 

It is the first plot idea I've ever had. 

With Joe's help, I ironed out some details, hammered out a synopsis and lovingly named my protagonist. 

Anyway, what I'm getting it is ...

I'm leaving my regular post at the newspaper. I put in my unofficial two-week notice last week. Instead I'll work as a freelancer, which will allow more time to write for myself and supplement the income I'll make as a nanny.

A nanny you say?

Yes. In two weeks I start watching seven kids in St. Pete.

Seven kids you say?

Yes. One family. Seven kids.

Granny panties rejoice. The thong is out.

I noticed that in the alley outside of our apartment, some woman with a small ass lost two thongs. If the butt floss belongs to anyone you know, please tell them this is no way to amputate a whale tail.

PS. Happy Birthday to a woman who has always rocked timeless bloomers. My mom! (She turns 48 today.) 

Once again, a bum is right.

I won't bury the lead here, or wait until the end to mention that we got the house.

And as always with me, the day I was told our final offer was accepted, I kind of already knew.

While walking my pug Thursday morning, a man on a bicycle called out to me, "Excuse me m'am."

Noticing his body was buckling under backpacks and a bed roll, I paid special attention, as homeless men and I share a kinship.

"Yes?"I asked.

"What is your name?" The man on the bicycle asked.

So I told him mine and the pug told him his.

"You're blessed today," he said. "You are beautiful and today is beautiful. Good things come to you today."

And I said, thanks. And he said, good day.

Now. Had I not mentioned this story to Joe upon immediately entering the apartment, I fear he would have outright said I was lying, when later that afternoon, after a lunch interview in Sarasota, my phone rang and Joe said, "We got the house."

And like I said, I kind of already knew, so after squealing, "WHAT? WE GOT IT?" I lowered my voice and said, "Well, I suppose the bum already knew, right?"

And Joe agreed. He's used to things like this by now. We all have guardian angels. I have bum angels and if you ask me, Joe is damn lucky to have a girlfriend with bum angels. Especially in St. Pete, where bums abound.

And so our conversation took a turn, not in the direction of bum premonitions, but in the direction of total baffled shocked. After back-and-forth negotiations this week, we never expected the homeowner to accept our final offer. We were still $18,000 apart. Sure Realtor Randy gave us hope, what with his positive percentages and all. But $18,000 is still a pretty big unflushable turd, if you know what I mean ... or at least it's a turd to be reckoned with.

Cynical journalists. We were still not convinced. Even me, the hopeful one, the dreamy one, the one with bum angels at her fingertips. Even I was not convinced.

So after work we met up with Realtor Randy at The Ale House in St. Pete, where he said he'd be sitting in full Philly Eagles regalia watching a preseason game at the bar.

When we got there we were still so unconvinced that neither one of us felt compelled to order a beer.

"C'mon! Order a round," Randy insisted.

"Nah," Joe said and I shrugged.

"You guys just bought a house. Get yourselves a beer!" He cheered, throwing his own giant stein in the air.

"We'll celebrate when we're at our kitchen table," we replied.

Randy shot Joe a look. The kind of look that said, dude I carted your ass all over St. Pete for two months looking at houses. We find one. The guy accepts your crappy offer and now we're at a bar, signing the final offer and you disrespect me, your devoted Realtor, by denying one celebratory beer?

We could not get past the fact that no one runs away with Florida real estate, not even in 2008. Begrudgingly we each ordered a brewski, and by the time the last line was signed in Randy's stack of Keller Williams paperwork, we were both feeling good and celebratory.

Later that night while grocery shopping at Publix, I noticed that Joe reached for the cheapest, smallest can of bread crumbs.

"You never buy that little can," I said.

"We're homeowners now. We're going to be poor for awhile." He said.

I smiled and clicked my heels. In my head of hopeful girly bubble thoughts, I catalogued this moment under The Most Rousing Line Of The Night and proceeded to the check-out.

--

PS. The illustration above is by New York City artist Kelly Mudge. To purchase this hauntingly excellent painting click here.

Meet Pete.

Pete sits at at the bus stop on the corner of 8th Avenue and 2nd Street in my St. Pete neighborhood. I pass him nearly every evening when I'm walking the pug.

He's always pounding cans of Natural Ice, wearing a blue Dilmah Tea cap and white tee-shirt.

I walked past Pete today at 7 p.m. and I asked him, "Do you think we're gonna get this hurricane?"

And Pete said, "Nahhh. Ain't even gonna rain."

"They say it's calmest just before the storm."

"Yeah," said Pete. "I heard that before."

"Are you waiting for the bus?"

"Nahhh. Just drinking beer."

"So this is your hangout?"

"Yeah. I'm not allowed to drink at home."

Pete is very smiley and loves my pug. He likes to alert me to the fact that there are several pugs in the neighborhood.

He lives at a halfway house on 2nd Street, where he's not allowed to drink. So he sits at the bus stop around the corner with two 4-packs of Natty Ice from CVS.

He said he likes Natty Ice because, "it has the most amount of alcohol," - 5.9 percent to be exact, a figure he repeated twice for effect. 

There's a Bucs game on tonight. He said he was pre-gaming. 

On the subject of hurricanes ...

I'll be in Sarascrotum Monday night covering Fay. The last time I covered a hurricane the only property damage I could find was an overturned port-a-potty. Stay tuned for spillage and storm surge. 

Grilling & drilling politicians.

If you had lived in a synthetic bubble all your life, and one night were freed at about 8 p.m. on 8th Ave North in St. Pete (where I live) and heard what I hear now, you might think the world had ended or that aliens had finally arrived.

The cicada bugs sound like a dying game show buzzer.

If I were allowed to open the windows in my apartment I might hear them more often, but instead I'm forced to take in their grating mating call from my balcony, which is why it's so important Joe and I find a house with a porch. (For more on our house hunting shenanigans click here.)

I love the cicadas. I love that they're so obnoxious. I love that there are 2,500 different species of them and that they make the loudest known insect-produced sound in the world.

Cicadas are the one rural thing this city has going for it - another reason why I love them.

I'm sitting on my balcony with two citronella candles at my feet and a fire on the grill. The sun is slipping behind Kim and Russell's gargantuan house and Cubbie is roaming the yard below. Joe is watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, slamming together patties of ground chuck and my sister PK finally, doggedly got a job. It is a typical Monday night and I'm in a fantastic mood.

I have about two hours of tape to transcribe from an interview I had Friday with a state representative. That much I'm dreading.

But before I go, I think it might be fun to point out that last week I interviewed two state representatives in Sarasota, both republicans. The first one said he didn't buy global warming and that plenty of people feel the same way. 

"Ambulences aren't all of a sudden going to run on hydrogen," he said. "They're not going to run on nuclear. The technology isn't there. At the end of the day when somebody wants to go to the hospital they want 300 horsepower under the hood. Not three horses ... This is a capitalist country. We would have figured something out by now. Some entreprenuer would have figured out a cheaper way of producing energy and made himself a gazillion dollars. It's economics."

So I fired back something like this (minus the Toby Keith reference at the end):

"Don't you think we're seeing that now? Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is a big motivator. We're beginning to realize it's not the cheapest, most efficient way to power our cars so entrepreneurs are starting to perk up. (Hello T. Boone Pickens.) The market is ripe with money-making potential. It's like when the Wright brothers first started experimenting with flight. Believe me there's money to be made. Dependency on foreign-made goods ain't what Toby Keith sings about."

And then, after chalking up global warming to sunspots and volcanic activity, this same legislator said he supported state-funded research on alternative energy. What we should be doing, he said, is using service tax revenue generated by offshore drilling to support university research on tidal energy.

"I could see ourselves cutting back on fossil fuels," he said. "Over the next 10, 15, 20 years I could see Florida getting 30 percent of its energy from tidal, 10 percent from solar, 10 percent from wind, throw in some nuclear, throw in some natural gas ..."

I couldn't believe it. Towing the party line is one thing. Tripping over it is another. And tidal energy, eh? Surely he got the e-newsletter from treehugger.com. 

Ugh. I'm headed to the couch. Dinner is through and it's ice cream hour now. The cicadas have hushed and the mosquitoes are out. I'm off to itch my bug bites with credit cards and transcribe interview tape. 

Goodnight nation.

Attachments.

I have a tendency to write in either clipped sentences that make my Aunt Debbie laugh, or long tangled ones that stretch and pull like heavy muscles after a long bike ride.

Sometimes I can't write at all. Sometimes I can't stop. It's what some therapists call an addiction and other therapists call an outlet. To me they're one in the same - addictions and outlets - marked by bouts of happiness and bouts of sadness. Marked by what we mull over on long drives home as the evening sun blinds us, making us squint, making us look in the rearview mirror to check our makeup or to check our teeth, where upon doing so we discover that years of squinting has etched lines on our face, which is why I suppose the passage of time is often illustrated by lines.

I know she was just a fish, so I'll just make this clear: it's not about the fish. It's about what we get attached to. And how we get attached. Attached to people, to TV shows, to bands, to cars, to brand names, to favorite pubs and football teams. And it's not just humans either. My dog is so attached to me that when I don't come home after work Joe tells me he sits with his nose to the front door and waits.

Some people cynically spin the word attachment and call it baggage. If you've met someone who brags that they have no baggage, don't buy it. No baggage means no attachments and the minute you hear that B.S., be wary. A person with no baggage is either deeply repressed, deeply afraid or deeply alone.

In 2002, when my favorite show Ally McBeal went off the air I remember retreating to my bedroom and crying softly into my pillow. On the surface it was a pitiful act. I remember my father snorting under his breath as I whimpered during the final David E. Kelley credit.

"Christ kiddo. It's just a skinny broad on TV."

And I remember my friends stopping by the house to cheer me up - half joking, half not - because they understood that even if I was a fool to mourn the skinny broad I had, from age 15 to 20, identified more with that neurotic, hallucinating, love struck lawyer than any other female character then or since.

Joe says Ally McBeal was my Mary Tyler Moore.

Attachments vary of course in seriousness. I was also, for about ten years, attached to a Paula Abdul concert tee shirt my mother found at a Goodwill store in Hamburg, N.Y. Even though I had never seen Paula in concert - and I promise you I begged - I became unreasonably attached to this tee shirt.

I'd wear the shirt to school, to bed, to the airfield where my father flew his model airplane, to my Oma & Opa's house for dinner. I wore it so much I convinced myself (and others) that I had actually gone to the concert. I held onto it for years. And when I finally threw it out sometime in 2005, a pang of wistfulness stabbed at my memory and I'm sure in my montage of memories I thought: what a great concert.

My office fish Martha died last week. She was 11 months old. Her bowl was cloudy and she was acting listless the day before, which gave me pause because Martha was usually a plucky fish. Just last week I gushed to my coworker Kyle, "Man, she's a cute fish, isn't she?" To which one of our editors replied, "Can fish be cute?"

It was in the way she swam - dive bombing the bottom of her bowl and then rushing to the surface to eat pellets and blow bubbles, staring at me with one distrustful eye and out the office window with one trustful eye - that reminded me of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys. She was a pale fish. Colorless really, which is why I chose her. All the other Betas in the pet store were red, purple, orange and blue. Ostentatious fish with gaudy dramatic fins.

Martha was understated. Sleek, simple, yet an extrovert.

I realize now that I probably overfed her. According to every Beta web site I tracked down, cloudy bowls are an indication of overfeeding. (Kyle you're off the hook. Perhaps by keeping her lean while I was on vacation you extended her life span by two weeks.)

So the next morning I spread myself out on the balcony with my computer, a cup of coffee and Patty Griffin on repeat. Noticing that a U-Haul was running at the apartment next door I did what I do best, and spied at the two women below as they stood hugging, saying goodbye and promising to keep in touch. I recognized the mover as a woman I named Plant Lady after the litter of busted ceramic pots and Little Shop of Horrors ferns she keeps by her door.

If there's one thing I've learned from living at five different addresses in four years it's that apartments are ghostly things. Unlike houses, apartments take shape after a person moves in. A shithole can look like a two-page spread in Better Homes & Gardens if someone with a decent sense of feng shui and fine art occupies it, and though I rarely get attached to my neighbors, I do in a sense get attached to their presence ... and their stuff. 

Once when I lived with my friend Zac in a second-story apartment in downtown Sarasota, I got attached to the habits of the couple two doors down. I grew accustomed to the sound of their baby crying, their deafening television set and their evening cigarettes, even though we didn't talk, save for the occasional "hello," "goodnight," and "how's the baby?"

 

Zac and I nicknamed them Man, Woman and Baby. And just knowing they were there was a comfort. Occasionally Man would mention his being a pastry chef on Longboat Key and according to Zac, he would sometimes bring leftover tarts to our door, the likes of which I never saw much less ate. 

One weekend Man, Woman and Baby moved away. I never said goodbye. Never even saw the U-Haul. And still I missed them. Especially their pastries.

I read a NY Times essay this week in which an Iraq war vet - now safely stationed in Brooklyn and "non-deployable" after getting shot in Baghdad - mourns the loss of his overseas daydreams, most of which centered around Natalie Portman:

"... She and I would have dinner in a darkened restaurant, somewhere hip and stratospherically expensive, thick with the smell of polished wood. The swirling flashbulb-pop taste of something unpronounceable on my tongue; looking up, smiling and feeling the shivering joy of having her laugh at a witticism of mine."

Attachments. All of it. Material. Ephemeral. The things we sometimes take for granted. The things we don't. I'm sitting here watching Plant Lady pull away thinking straight lines are pinched by the passage of time and even though we never met, I'm going to miss her man-eating ferns. 

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PS. Photo by Cate Cuerden. For her Flickr photostream click here.

Ready for his money shot.

Lance, meet Heath. Heath, meet Lance. You guys have not been officially introduced. But today I think is perhaps a good day for you two to meet.

A little background on Heath ...

Joe conceived Heath one January afternoon in a fit of obsessive compulsion. Heath is a composition/compulsion notebook filled with my boyfriend's daily budget. In it he accounts for every receipt, every deposit, every bill (cell phone, electric, rent, car, fancy expensive haircuts, etc.) And over the last several months Heath has become such a thing of beauty that just opening its pages is like discovering the DaVinci code or an ancient Dead Sea scroll.

Heath is omnipresent. He is the Buddha of our budget.

If we go to CVS and buy two pints of ice cream, Heath knows. If I skimp on groceries resulting in a rash of Carrabba's takeout, Heath knows. If the price of gas goes up today, Heath knows by tomorrow. If Heath could talk he would sound like Rain Main. "Ten minutes to Wapner. Gotta get my boxer shorts at K-Mart. Gotta keep a receipt. Definitely gotta keep a receipt."

When Joe created this thing he scribbled 2008 Financial Ledger on the notebook's cover and when Heath Ledger died I crossed out "Financial" and wrote "Heath" in it's place. I'm a morose celebriholic I know. (For more on Heath see the April post Dreamy for broken down ferris wheels.)

Today was a big day for Heath. Today was like Heath's first day of kindergarten. Joe and I got approved for two mortgages and looked at four grownup houses in our St. Pete neighborhood ... but more on that later as I'm tired, ready for bed and filled with pizza. Adventures in Real Estate: Take One.