Thing-a-day.com

Apparently, this is what I ACTUALLY order at my bagel shop on the way to work as opposed to a “bagel with cream cheese”.

What I’m saying is they put too much cream cheese on bagels. Period.

If you don’t think so, YOU put too much cream cheese on your bagels. Period.

Perhaps bagelIERS were a race of simple people, cursed in the ancient times by a race of Cream Cheese goblins who told them they would be enslaved until they unloaded all of this creamy whitenes onto unsuspecting victims? This is the the only reason I can figure that the girl at my bagel shop refuses to listen to my desperate plea of “just a little, PLEASE!” This must be why she turns her back to me when she grabs that stainless steel vat, a shovel and starts unloading. The curse is the only explanation that makes sense.

Bagel-iers…I am sorry for whatever has happened to your people. But it is not right to unload your goblin curse on me so that I’m stuck on the train pulling pounds of cream cheese off of my bagel with the square inch of wax paper you give to me!

Please accept your ancestors’ lot in life and carry on.

No posting lately, but I’ve been creative, I swear. Actually booked up the past few days in a writers retreat. Good, weird, productive, intense. Back to thing-a-day’ing tomorrow. Here’s a tease..one-word…Bagels.

I know you were all super-worried. Thanks for checking in with my Mom and stuff.

…And when I say “We” I, of course, mean Amy Winehouse and myself.

The only thing I had ever taken in from this brawd was when they played the chorus of “Rehab” in every freaking commercial break on MTV. All I knew was that beehive was too freaking much and that MTV had officially kicked me violently out of their demo.

Then eventually I saw a full body shot and she was like 13 lbs.
And that photo was of her in nothing but a tacky red bra and jeans, barefoot, wandering the streets of London. Now I’ve never been to London, but I’ve seen Mary Poppins a thousand times and I’ve read all of the Narnia and Harry Potter books.

That outfit did NOT sound appropriate to me.

Basically, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

But now someone had to go ahead and send me a youtube link of her grammy performance. And, well…

Amy killed it.
I’m sorry, but she did!
She killed it while managing to balance on those tiny-ass legs and with that big, fat hair.

So now Amy is all bought up in my iTunes and and she’s stuck with me here in my iPod on the subway. And in my apartment when I’m cleaning. And my bedroom when I wanna dance all sexy by myself…or someone else.

But I’m all Buddhist now and 32 and ready to learn my life lessons from Amy Winehouse. If she can wear a bra outside in the middle of the night, maybe I can wear a surprising color like orange for a winter sweater. Or if she can stick by her man “Blakey-y Incarcerated” perhaps I can widen my dating circle a bit. I mean, do my future boyfriends HAVE to live in the same borough I do?

More importantly, do we think Amy is learning something from me?! Is it possible when she’s getting all gussied up in some really great bra/jeans combo for a wild night in London that all of sudden she has a miraculous change of heart, “wait a minute, isn’t Lost on? Let’s just get some chinese and watch the whole season on DVD!!”

Buddha, or “buddh-sies” as I like I to call him, speaks of the “middle way” quite a bit. I think that’s where Amy and I have met finally met up. She may not know that yet. But she’ll realize something’s up when she’s at a supermarket somewhere buying ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies.

Of course, she will be sending them to dear Blake-y Incarcerated.

Two things..

1) Why do we all research the hell out of our doctors (primary care, dentist, gyno, etc) but everyone is completely fine walking into any one of the millions of “eyecare” chains and letting any yahoo basically poke your eyeballs out?! I purchased some long overdue glasses yesterday and realized for the first time that the following is NOT ok with me anymore…

-the store manager is 17.
-the store is offering a valentine’s day 1/2 off special (these are your freaking EYEBALLS! You can find a couple of extra bucks)
-During the exam, the optician does comedy bits that he wrote for dentist friends who did stand-up on the DENTAL CIRCUIT. (This is the truth. The act he wrote was called “This Old Body”)
-The whole establishment smells just like fried chicken. I swear.

2) When I was setting up an online account for some banking this weekend, I had to go through the whole security questions garbage. One of which was…”What is your greatest fear?” Jesus Christ..that’s a little deep isn’t, it?!

Obviously, I answered “fried chicken in my eyes”

Bloc Party? Hi, it’s me…hey..NO! Don’t hang up, please..I just need to say this to you really quick and you can do whatever you want with it…ok? ok.

You and I both know that we grew apart in the past year. I think it probably hurt you more than it did me. But I know now it was mostly my fault, and…

I miss you.
I need you.
I’m sorry.

I never told you this, but your first album was on my banned list for the past 6 months. It’s just that break-ups call for drastic, FEMA-like emergency plans and “Silent Alarm” was simply not safe for me at the time. Of course, this was not your fault. But look, you’re going to have recognize that if you write a lyric like “I’ll pay for you anytime” in “this modern love”, it’s going to provoke a reaction!!

Ughhh, fine. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but whatever!

ANWAY, I don’t want to fight! I just wanted to tell you, that I was walking home last night and “This Modern Love” came up on its own on my iPod. And I am happy to report that instead of the emotional sucker punch I was expecting, I felt all open and good and New York-y again. I remembered our half-marathons together and your concerts with my brothers. I thought of how young and hip you make me feel because you’re the only band I like that doesn’t make it painfully obvious to anyone younger than me that I am 32.

Before my boyfriend became my ex-boyfriend, you all were there for me…fucking cute and talented and British and a rock band with a black singer.

So. I don’t know…if you wanna like, get coffee sometime or go for a run or clean my apartment with me…that’d be cool.

Or whatever…I don’t care.

Can someone please tell me why I think the monster in Loch Ness and “Champy” are absurd, but the Shroud of Turin is a miracle?

MORE CRAPPY FIRST DRAFT, I THINK THIS IS THE PLACE I’M TRYING TO GET TO. THE POINT I’M TRYING TO MAKE.

“Each person is a forest of emotions, new and different from moment to moment. With each and every breath.”

Now in my former life, (3 days ago), this would have been the corniest, crunchiest expression I ever heard, dismissed right after “forest of emotions” and easily forgotten; soon to be replaced by whatever new goal I was going to achieve to get over my ex-boyfriend.
Or the dissatisfaction with my current job
Or the pain of my parents’ divorce
Or the residual embarrasment of being a loser in high school.

But instead of running out of that meditation hall and frantically looking up an ultra-marathon training schedule that would surely make me feel safe, and perfect and invincible and loved and done, I just dropped my head and cried.

If I was leading the Dharma talk, it probably would have gone a little more like this.

“All roads, for better or for worse, all lead to YOU. Right here. Right now. And I got news for ya, that is all there is, period. And you better watch that breath and touch that earth and like every SECOND of it, because it is all you’ve got.

And can’t you KINDA understand why your ex handled that argument that way? Or why that person who drives you insane on the subway can’t seem to get it together and leave you alone during your commute? Because they are in the muck of it just like you! Their minds are really REALLY annoying too!

All you can do is breathe. Whether there is a nun ringing a mindfulnes bell or not. So you may as well sit.
Smile.
Breathe.”

(Obviously, I run a tough-love style Dharma talk)

Basically I cried because someone finally said I could be happy right here. Right now. And without risk of severe dehydration….That I was perfect and sufficient just as I was, even without showering for three days or making anyone laugh.

I am a sucker for the ends of chapters of inspirational/self-help books. You know, the part where the heroine experiences total blissful acceptance of all the conflicting moments of her life. Usually she says something shockingly gracious to her mortal enemy because she is no longer hindered by such petty differences.
But what I realized, in that moment, is I that I had forgotten that chick had pages and pages of being a total mess to get through! But I am always rooting for that sister. Every damn page.

Why did I not support myself like that? Why did I think I could skip to the end, without having to turn over a bunch of different pages?

And with the ring of the bell at the end of that Dharma talk, I finally reached the end of a chapter.

THE ONLY PART I CAN BEAR TODAY OF A SHITTY FIRST DRAFT I’M WORKING ON.

Like any girl… I started with the whole 60lbs overweight thing first. “Alright, I usually walk…what happens if I run to that stop sign instead..and then walk two blocks…and then run for three more blocks..”
I eventually wanted to run more and more blocks consecutively, so the smoking had to go (thank you zyban). And when I stopped losing weight but was still running, (now half-marathons and eventually The NYC marathon) I wondered if it had anything to do with the pints of ice cream I would eat for dinner. So I joined a guerilla dieting organization called Weight Watchers who said that you can eat ice cream, just probably not the whole pint, “Interesting, interesting. please continue..” And then that got me thinking how come so many people could skip a pint of ice cream without ending up in their bed feeling horribly lonely and angry? So I called up a shrink named Hannah and asked her about that. She wasn’t certain but she thought it might have something to do with me having been angry and depressed teenager growing up in a large bi-racial family in a small, mostly white town in Upstate NY…”Oh, for reals?!” So we chatted about that for like 6 years or so.

So after about 9 years this is where I landed. I went from 200 lbs to about 145. I worked myself up from an executive assistant position at a TV network to a writer/producer in the promotions department. I wasn’t frozen watching bad movies on a couch anymore, but going out and sometimes making out…with cute snowboarders…on couches. (and that my friends, is an EXCELLENT story for another time.).