Tea and shoes and bad pickup lines.

This is what I had for lunch yesterday. To the right is my polka-dotted belly, anxious for the sandwiches, cakes, and scones I will soon fill it with. Kelly and I have made Tea and Sympathy on Greenwich Ave. between 11th and 12th streets our haunt. I've written about it here before, as a place where a lady can have a meal by herself and not feel like a loser because the place is so small, but it really is lovelier with a good friend. Most things are. We split the afternoon tea for two by the window, where we people-watched and talked for a long time. People who walked by gawked at our impressive tiers of tea goodies. It made me feel smug. They wish they had that egg and cress.

From Kelly's photography skills with her Blackberry, I segue to mine with my webcam. Here are the shoes I got at the Salvation Army on for $10. I'm a little obsessed.




Purple suede, a few extra inches of height, and toe cleavage should be worth more than an Alexander Hamilton, but I'm just glad I snatched these puppies up before someone else did.

To close, I leave you with a theory I've recently thought up on pickup lines. They're kind of irrelevant to me, because if you're attracted to the person delivering them it really doesn't matter what line they use, you're probably going to give them your number or Facebook name or blog URL or whatever else floats your boat.

Case in point, my current celebrity crush by the name of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He can currently be seen looking suave in three piece suits while wielding machine guns in "Inception." You should go see it. But without further ado here he is winning me over with a bad pickup line.

I'm sure it would, darling. But if anyone else tried this on me I would run fast in the other direction.

Lists make me feel better about the direction of my life

I'm trying a new technique that will hopefully result in a dramatic increase in my overall productivity. Every night before I go to bed, I'm going to write a list of what I need to do the next day and put it on my nightstand. My Youtube crush Alex Day does it, and he seems pretty productive and well adjusted. Or maybe he just appears to be like that because he has a British accent.

Anyways, I've been finding it remarkably easy to get lost in the lazy days of summer. Freelancing does that to people I guess. So does Netflix Instant Play. But I think a little bit of structure and direction is good, so I have a list on some graph paper by my bed. Tomorrow I need to finish compressing boxes in the garage so they can be recycled, sweep said garage, call someone back for an interview for an article I'm working on and hope I don't get their voicemail again, leave for a doctor's appointment at 3:30, and if I have any time at all in between these things, I'll work on my Division 1 essay. This is basically something that my granola artsy crunchy school has us do to evaluate our first year at school and discuss what we want to do in the future. I have about a sentence so far, and I'll probably scrap it in favor of something else that makes me sound like less of a spaz.

I hope that my grandparents who read this blog are still with me after I dropped that slang bomb just then.

So hopefully by tomorrow I'll have a semi-clean garage, pages full of interview notes, and a new arm attached to my side so I can dangle things in front of my cat, drink tea, and flip through my mom's "Oprah" magazine at the same time (that's what the doctor's appointment is for.)

Oy vey that was not a good joke.

Laundry and movies.

I just put in a GIANT load of laundry and there's plenty more where that came from. I have a weird habit of waiting way too long to wash my clothes. It's not like I wear dirty clothes or anything, but I just let my hamper get fuller and fuller and then I finally have to carve some time out of doing nothing all day and get them downstairs to the laundry room. This is probably done out of pure laziness on my part, but when I don't do laundry for weeks at a time I get the chance to get a little more creative with my outfits. When my old standbys are out of commission, I get to dig around for things I haven't worn in ages and break them in all over again. Also, it's so much more satisfying to do more laundry than less laundry.

I'm kind of in freak-out mode now because I'm leaving in a few hours to go to the North Shore in Mass to visit some family, and I haven't packed yet. I can't pack until my laundry is done, really. So for now I'm eating and blogging and having this strange urge to go to the movies. I love seeing movies in the summer. It's always pleasantly freezing in movie theaters, I like having popcorn for dinner, and I just plain like watching movies.

The last movie I saw in theaters was "Toy Story 3" and everything people have said about it thus far is the truth: it's awesome, and it will make you cry. My entire face was wet by the end of it, and when I got home and talked about it with my sister who had already seen it, I started getting choked up all over again. But even though it made me really sad, it's a gem of a movie. I love that Pixar made it for the people that have grown up with "Toy Story." It's all about growing up and being torn between holding onto parts of your childhood and leaving them all in the dust. Fitting, considering this is the last "Toy Story" movie. Maybe someday the kid sitting behind me will understand why I was sniffling nonstop at the end.

Also, folks at Pixar, those were some seriously sneaky innuendos. Thanks for not following the typical Disney fashion of putting phallic things everywhere and calling it edgy.

My cat is passive-aggressive

I don't really ever do two posts in two days, but I'm in a bloggy mood lately so here we go. Normally I do my work from my bed, but today I decided to move to the kitchen table. Mostly because of its prime location near the coffee maker.

But my cat is distracting me. He's being very passive-aggressive about it, too. He crawled into my lap earlier, and I was all "awwwww" but then he jumped back onto the table and sat on my notepad, trying to stop be from working. When he realized I'm working on my laptop, he assumed the position at right and proceeded to swat at my hands as I typed.

I've noticed that a lot of times, writer types have cats as pets. It sort of makes sense, because cats don't need to go out ever and they generally keep to themselves. Therefore said writer/owner can spend their whole day drinking coffee, chain smoking, and writing about things while the cat only occasionally bothers them for some petting.

Considering my cat's affinity for meowing at me and swatting my hand when I'm not scratching him behind the ears, I'd say he probably thinks he's a dog. Dogs are only good for accomplished writers who get paid in advance and have time to take their pets outside for walks.

Octopus can be wrong!

I woke up today singing Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" in my head. Because today, unlike last night, I am feeling good. I have a new assignment for a paper I write for, and I squared away payment for something I wrote for another paper. This something, once my check is in my hands, will be my first paid piece of writing. Last night feels like a blip; now I've got a belly full of nectarines and Chinese food, the World Cup is on TV, and I feel content.

I really regret not getting into the World Cup sooner. I guess I was never home, and I could never get the TV to myself. No one else I live with is so into it. I caught part of the Netherlands vs. Uruguay match yesterday and was riveted. Soccer is just so easy to watch. The rules are simple and the ball stays visible on the ground, unlike American football where the ball gets tucked under huge arms and a lot of it seems like a bunch of big dudes body slamming each other without reason.

So I love watching the game, and I love the international aspect of it, but living in the middle of nowhere in a house full of women, I also love gawking at hot men in soccer shorts. There's a certain je ne sais quoi about these guys. They're athletes with godly bodies, but they're also emotional and expressive. They're not afraid to cheer, cry, or do flips of joy on the field, nor to hug-tackle their teammates after a goal. In fact, I just heard a commentator say of one of Germany's players: "He needs a hug. He responds well to positive reinforcement." I just can't get over the fact that saying that about him doesn't make him any less manly to anyone. I bet if Tom Brady or Reggie Bush were told they needed a hug, they'd be told to grow a pair.

I only know who those two guys are because sometimes I read Us Weekly at the doctor's office.

So I'm just waiting for this game to start now. There's just pregame commentary now. But some of it is interesting. Apparently some people use an octopus to predict the outcome of the matches. They take two boxes and put a playing country's flag on each one, then put a clam in each box. Whichever box the octopus takes a clam out of represents the winning team. It hasn't been wrong yet, and just picked Spain. The German's held up a sign in return saying "Octopus can be wrong." I just love this game.

The Blue Period

I'm a little bit upset right now, and I have no way to properly vent it because the person (or maybe it's people) I'm upset with read this blog, and writing in a journal seems pointless because no one will ever see that. I know that makes no sense. I'm not trying to be pretentious and vague, I'm just confused and frustrated.

I didn't choose to want to be a writer. It's just the one thing that always comes the easiest to me, the one thing I feel I'm actually good at. So I get pretty protective of that part of my life, and when people tell me I'm not doing it right, I get pretty broken up about it. That's not to say I can't take constructive criticism. I'm getting pretty good at that. But when I get told that I'm not doing the right things to make this into a career, that just makes me pissed enough to run to the Canadian border without stopping. This is coming from a person who never passed the mile run in middle school gym class.

I wish I liked other peoples' kids enough to babysit them, instead of just making faces at them in the line at Whole Foods. Then I would at least have money. But I don't, and therefore I don't. I wish I didn't live in such a boring, white bread part of the country. But I do. This is what it is, and I have to live with it as I plan my exit strategy for next summer.

Of course, people don't seem to believe I can leave this town. But I will. I have to.

I don't even know if I want to publish this. But I feel like I should. Because I'm not all sarcastic comments and poetic clauses.

Also, I'm getting rid of the signoff line, because I was reading through this blog yesterday looking for comments from people (oh man that was passive-aggressive) and I suddenly found it to be rather cheesy. I'm not going to go back and delete every single one, but future entries won't have a signoff.

Maybe tonight is a good night to look for my passport. I mean I do want to leave the country at some point.