emlocke

Category: Lately

  • The pumpkin pie filling will go straight to your head

    My cousin couldn’t make it back to Illinois for the holiday, so she came out to Connecticut.

    Marie: Thank you so much for inviting me for Thanksgiving.  If it weren’t for you, I’d probably be eating Thanksgiving dinner out of a can.
    Emily: Aww!  Like kidney beans that you have to cut into slices? (Like in Mickey and the Beanstalk, when Mickey Mouse slices up the one last kidney bean to share with Donald Duck and Goofy.)
    Marie: More like pumpkin pie filling straight from the can.

    I barely turned on my iPod this week.  I’ve figured out that reading is a much more effecive distraction from the many irritants, discomforts, and small tortures of airline travel, and so I’ve spent more time with earplugs in my ears than earbuds.  I read about four back issues of The New Yorker and Head Cases by Michael Paul Mason.  Now I can recycle all those magazines and I will happily pass along the book so that it gets re-read.  It’s great.

  • Right there, under the rainbow

    I was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1984.  A few months before my parents moved to Connecticut in 1986, my pediatrician relocated to a new office.  It featured a rainbow sculpture that arched across the sidewalk leading up to the front door.

    The rainbow is my earliest memory; the first image imprinted permanently on my brain.  For literally as long as I’ve possessed the ability to remember, I’ve had the image of this rainbow in my head, a little hazy around the edges.  It’s what I’ve always contributed to conversations about San Antonio: “I remember a building with a rainbow in front of it . . . ”

    But it was the one thing that we didn’t have a photograph to look at.

    My coworkers, bless their hearts, brought me to the rainbow on the way to the airport after our conference in San Antonio last week.

    My parents had sent me the addresses of the hospital where I was born and of my first home, the names of a park where I split my little chin open and of a few Texan landmarks that we visited as a family, but all I really wanted to see was the rainbow.

    I wanted to confirm that fading mental image with my own eyes.  It’s the one memory of my infancy that hasn’t been influenced by my parents’ memories, like the chin accident in the park, or reinforced throughout my childhood, like the rooms in my grandmother’s house, which is where the three of us lived when we first left Texas for Connecticut.

    I felt a little homesick in San Antonio.  Without many concrete memories to represent it in my mind, I think of it as a place that I’ll always share with my mom and dad.  Before my brother or my dog or pre-school, it was just the three of us among the bluebells.

  • Time out. Time in.

    You might say my run for daily posts in November ended with an incapacitating muscle cramp.  Ouch.

    I had about two hours to recover this morning.  My ride to the airport didn’t arrive until 11, but I got out of bed at 8 because I so often leave for work while my roommate is eating breakfast and watching Saved by the Bell, and I wanted time to experience that for myself.  After Zack Morris got in and out of a bind involving Mr. Belding, a girl, phone impersonations, and detention, I took a hot, hot shower and finished packing for San Antonio.

    This is what I played on iTunes while I tried to pick out four days worth of wardrobe appropriate for Texas in November:
    I Feel The Earth Move by Carol King
    Extraordinary by Liz Phair
    You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC
    Delicious by Semisonic
    Don’t Phunk with My Heart by Black Eyed Peas

  • I resolve to turn the volume down

    By the time I came across 2 1/2-months-to-New-Year’s-Resolutions Resolutions through Design Crush, it was almost half a month down, two to go, nearing the end of October.  It remindes me so much of the “It’s okay . . . ” pages in Glamour, my favorite magazine pages of all time, the pages that single handedly lead me to choose that magazine over all the others when I’m in line at the airport or under the helmet dryer at a salon.

    Unlike all the placid allowances made by Condé Nast, some of the resolutions pinch me.  13. Remember, love doesn’t find you on its own. Oh.  31. Don’t waste another second. Please? Fine, fine.  Since you asked nicely.  I’ll try to try.

    Just over the cusp and into November, the day after a call was made for our resolutions, new updates ceased.  Did the project run out of steam?  Funds?  Resolve?

    This is the resolution I submitted:

    Maybe not the metaphor one would expect.  Then again, less or lessened volume isn’t always a bad thing, metaphorically speaking.  And literally, it’s almost certainly a good idea.  Turn the volume down, please.  Protect your hearing.  Be kind to your ears.

  • I recommend Nutella to replenish the chocolatey hazelnut reserves in the bloodstream

    I’ve always wondered about comfort food—is it a specific type of food?  The way Chinese Food is, at least as far as my apathetic Western pallet can tell, a specific type of food?

    For a long time, I associated the term so closely with macaroni and cheese that I wouldn’t have put it past myself to point at a pot of elbow pasta and cheddar syrup and say, “please pass the comfort food?”  Then it was linked to mashed potatoes and I thought “comfort” cuisine must have a Thanksgiving significance.  Then I learned that BBQ chicken and collard greens comfort Southern diners.  And one Sunday morning in college, someone glanced at my plate-sized waffle and clucked, “comfort food?” and I figured it must equate ‘hangover food.’

    There is an element of nature versus nurture in defining comfort food.  As a general rule, “comfort foods”are carbohydrate-based.  I could pick a different comfort food any day of the week; I think my physical cravings manifest as emotional cravings based on what my body needs.  Sometimes I want desperately for red meat—a temporary iron deficiency?  Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about apples with peanut butter—low blood sugar?  And sometimes I crave spaghetti, a carbohydrate through and through, even in whole wheat noodles, but it doesn’t always sound appetizing without Boca burger ‘meat’ sauce—not enough protein?

    I think I like Latin American food so much because I like the taste of multiple saturated flavors blended together.  Hot or cold; homemade, ordered, or microwaved, it tastes simple and complete at once.  It sustains—nature.  And yet, I recognize instantly the memory, the nurture associated with cheese melted on a tortilla.  No meat, no beans, no salsa.  In the toaster oven for two and a half minutes, fold in half, nibble.  The crisped edges and soft, warm center remind me of sitcoms on the couch after school with my mom.  I relish every bite—hold the relish.

  • I didn’t actually hate not having a cell phone

    Last month I lost my cell phone on the IKEA shuttle bus.  I was not drunk; I did not drop it in a toilet; I was on my way home to put together my new filing cabinet and go to bed at 11PM.

    I didn’t realize it was missing until the next morning and I had a heck of a time contacting the outside world again.  My roommate was away for the weekend and we don’t have a landline, so I turned to my laptop.  I e-mailed my brother, who has a BlackBerry, and asked him to call our house and ask my mom to sign in to AIM.  He was in class (on a Saturday?), and since my parents don’t [know how to] text, he had to wait a couple of hours before calling.  When he got in touch with them, it took approximately seventeen minutes for my mother to boot up the computasaurus.

    With my mom on AIM and my brother on Gchat, my dad got on the phone to AT&T to switch my number over to their family plan.  Thank goodness my Verizon contract was up the previous weekend.  Perfect timing, Bad Karma.

    Meanwhile, my pink Razr was out there in the big bad world.  According to my account status on the Verizon website, no calls had been made since the last call I received myself on Friday, and so I wondered where it could be.  But while I crossed my fingers that my phone was down a storm drain along 9th street, someone racked up $515.51 in text messages, calling card charges, long-distance calls to the Dominican Republic, and Lil Wayne ringtones.  Oh, and a picture message to someone on Match.com.

    Let this be a lesson to all of you: if you have any reason to think that your cell phone could be in untrustworthy hands, please log in to your service provider’s website and suspend your service temporarily.  Even if you have a feeling it might be on your desk at work or in your boyfriend’s car, an inkling of doubt is reason enough to hold the phone.

    The Verizon website makes it simple; there is no charge and you don’t have to sign a new contract or order a new phone right that second, so if your phone does turn up, you can reactivate the service.  I have fewer nice things to say about the accuracy of the account usage details reported on the site, but I should have known better than to depend on those.  To put off suspending my service and hope for the best was lazy and against my better judgment.

    It took two cumulative hours on the phone with Verizon, but they shrank that bill down to $121 something.  And it took too weeks, but I finally got my new phone (goodbye pink Motorola, hello dark purple LG!) and activated it and I’m starting to add phone numbers in one by one.  There will be no Facebook events or groups in honor of my foolish misfortune and someone else’s malevolent fortune!  Nor will there be any Lil Wayne ringtones.  I will consider Sara Bareilles, however.

  • E is for nesting

    The IKEA HELMER ($40 in white, red, or silver) was my project for the weekend.  I got it to replace a set of three plastic drawers on rubberized wheels—the kind that furnish dorm rooms and pantries but are better off hidden under a bunkbed or behind a closet door.

    This is so-o-o-o much classier.

    Since it’s the IKEA version of steel drafting drawers, the casters only roll forward and backward and the drawers do not have sliders or stops.  This makes it a little awkward to store heavy items.  I did put my blow dryer in, but if I open that drawer and let go of the handle, the blow dryer tips the drawer clumsily down and forward.  That’s not a problem that outweighs having an easy-access spot to hide an unsightly object out of sight.

    On the other hand, these drawers are perfect for: hair accessories, a half-empty box of Q-tips, a collection of Sharpie markers, miscellaneous gadget cords, a sewing kit, a sticky lint remover roller, five pairs of pattern-cutting scissors, stationary and stamps, and a calculator that I haven’t used in two or three years.

    One other thing that I want to show off in this picture: see my laptop bag hanging from the side of the desk?  I thought I was brilliant when I hammered a nail into the desk, specifically to hook the bag there.  Any improvisational solution that will get something, just one item, off the floor of my bedroom is ingenious enough for me.

    Also picture: two FÄRM vases from IKEA ($2) and a fifteen-minute glass from cb2 ($10 in green or red).

  • Learned behavior

    In a moment of ingenuity (that, or creative desperation), my parents affixed springs to the feet of two legs on my crib.  “We would have tried anything,” my mom explained after she revealed this for the first time, half-pleading for forgiveness from my astounded face.

    Twenty-four years later, I know how I learned to rock myself to sleep just by jostling one knee until the repetitive motion carries the rest of my body along on a gentle sway.

    Convenient, isn’t it, that childhood amnesia effect?  I wonder what else they’ve been keeping from me.

    And I wonder where I could find springs large enough for the feet on my full-sized grown-up bed.

  • My mood has been a little too, “Yeah, so?” and not so, “Yeah!”

    Oh em gee.  Remember when I used to do this every day?  I don’t.  I can’t imagine how that ever could have been possible.  Did I have a lot going on?  If so, how did I find the time to write about it?  Was life too dull to occupy much of my time?  If that’s the case, what did I have to write about in all that spare time in which I had to write about it?

    It’s not that life has been particularly exciting or particularly dull, of late.  It’s just, I kind of feel like I do and think the same things every day.

    I loathe getting up in the morning.  I put on make-up on my way to work.  I want an iPhone.  I tell myself I don’t need an iPhone.  Consider getting a manicure or splurging on Blue Agava & Cacao from Jo Malone.  I do neither.  Write one of the e-mails I’ve been meaning to write.

    I try to think of a nutritious food for which I have an appetite.  I prepare or buy and eat that food and feel unsatisfied.  Open another box of chocolate graham crackers.  I go for a walk.  Jog half of the way home just because I get bored.

    Look at the calendar to see when the next Brooklyn Museum Free Saturday Night or 10%-off GapCard Purchases Tuesday or new episode of The Office or Law and Order: SVU will be.  Decide whether to wear my hair straight or curly the next day.  Make a mental note to charge my iPod/cell phone/camera battery.

    I’m used to taking a lot of pleasure from little things, like a special purchase, a special meal, a tough workout.  I looked forward to those things, got as much of a thrill from those things as I did from, I don’t know, Lilith Fair or getting my drivers’ license or quitting my first job to start my second (the first three things, in the last decade, that come to mind when I think about “excitement.”)

    God, I was so excited when I got my driver’s lisence!  But I already blogged about that.  So, I’m gonna need a new idea.

    This is what’s been playing in the background of the monotony this week:
    But, Honestly by Foo Fighters (still)
    Let it Rock by Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil’ Wayne
    Cruise Control by Mariah Carey
    Death Will Never Conquer by Coldplay
    Follow You, Follow Me by Phil Collins and Gensis (don’t ask, I have no idea)

  • At this point, it would take a whole heck of a lot to surprise me

    I feel like every time I’ve hung up the phone or walked out of a room or gotten out of an elevator in the last two weeks, I have had worn expression of utter befuddlement.

    If you watched a video that captured just my face twenty-four/seven, you’d think something was wrong with the recording because it would keep repeating the same scene over and over: squint, lateral ponytail twitch, pucker lips, soundless “what?” As in—”did that just happen?  What was that?”  Do not adjust your monitor; I really do keep living that scene!

    It’s like it’s started to take just as long for new information to reach my Logic Synapses or my Socially Acceptable Gauge as it does to process it through to my long term memory.  So, it’s not until the moment right after a conversation ends or an event is over that it hits me how tremendously odd it was.

    And even though I don’t usually censor much for the blog—I either just go there or I go somewhere else entirely—I can’t even provide diluted allusions without compromising personal and professional trust.  You’ll just have to take my word for it: everyone I know is bonkers.  Charming, for sure, but bonkers.

    This is what I’m listening to in this chaotic alterna-dimension:
    Storm by Lifehouse
    She Says by Ani DiFranco
    This Isn’t Farmlife by The Essex Green
    Galang by M.I.A.
    But, Honestly by Foo Fighters