emlocke

emlocke logo with teal letter 'k'

  • In the future, let’s avoid analogies that link physiology and food

    My PT told me
    The spine is like a stack of
    Jelly donuts.  Squish.

  • I will let the government try to buy me off

    I have had this dream twice now where I open my mailbox and find my economic stimulus rebate. Which means that when I do finally get that check from the White House, it will literally be a dream come true.

  • Getting dressed for work is no longer as easy as flip shorts and I’m okay with that

    It’s gotten warmer out, officially too warm to wear wool, so naturally it was just last week when I decided that all my woolen clothes are my favorites. The olive cashmere t-shirt, the tweed pencil skirt, the fitted black cardigan, the aubergine sweater with the deep vee. Also all my opaque tights, my flannel sheath dress, my ugly, filthy winter boots and the long brown coat that my mom bought for my birthday are obsolete just as I got cozy.

    And now I have to remember all over again how to carry off my summer wardrobe. It’s like having to break in a new skin—every season, whether I’m covering up or stripping down, I resist this transition. I feel like I get dressed in the morning and I’m out of my element, like I don’t know what to do with my hands until I’m back in my perennial pajamas again at the end of the day.

    The summer before my freshman year in college, I was a camp counselor who lived, day in and day out, in four pairs of cotton YMCA-logo “flip shorts,” the kind with the elastic waist that folds over. The boy I dated, where “dated” means “chased after, pushed away, let toy with me, let coddle me, bickered with, and crept around in the woods after dark with” hated those shorts. He nagged me at practically every other meal for dressing the same way every day.

    He made me self-conscious but I kept wearing them. There were days when I’d change out of a different outfit and pull my flip shorts back on just to disprove any suspicion that I might care what he said.

    Sometimes, we would sit cross-legged facing each other and he would pinch at the inside of my knee as he kissed me. Right where my leg folded under, there was just enough skin to grab between two fingers. I don’t know if he was conscious of it. I was. I started wearing jeans when we met up after lights out.

    Sometimes, I approach myself in the mirror over the bathroom sink at work or pass myself by in a pane-glass storefront and I feel like Lucas in Empire Records for a second, with somebody purring that one line from the beginning of the movie in my ear.

    Baby, you are sex.

    It’s my own voice in my own head. And I always listen. I love that voice.

    So I’m saying “goodbye, winter wear!” and happily flaunting the bony ridge on my shoulder that I love* and baring the dessert plate-sized birthmark between my shoulder blades where appropriate, even if I am still covering up my inner-knee pudge.

    * So much so that I just got up to admire it in the mirror before I finished typing that sentence.

  • How shall I say this without sounding like a frivolous child?

    I WANT THAT.

    Is that so wrong?

    Elsa Peretti® sterling silver bubble blower wand. 5.25″ long. $165 at Tiffany & Co.

    I also sort of really love the egg shape of this locket: Oval locket pendant, $350.

    Tiffany shows her tough side with the Return to Tiffanyâ„¢ Heart tag in midnight-black titanium: Charm and bracelet, $450. Charm only, $100.

    And lest you think I’ve lost my marbles six ways from Sunday, I can totally rationalize this one: Fifth Avenue charm. It’s in case I forget where I work! Chain and pendant, $160.

    Build a dream (as in wildest dreams) bracelet with Tiffany Charms.

    Visit the engagement store at your own risk.

  • Big Bird wasn’t playin’

    Snuffy was outed
    In nineteen eighty-five: Not
    Imaginary!

  • txt the address i’ll cu l8r

    I am a reticent text messager. I don’t like awaiting a response without knowing that the recipient has seen the message or even has their cell turned on. I almost never get a meaningful answer to texted questions. What am I to do but follow up with another message: “Did you get my text?” I wind up calling anyway.

    Making plans with text messages is the worst. It’s like playing a game when no one knows whose turn it is; a cross between ping pong and 20 Questions. Want to hang out? Yeah, okay. What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do? I don’t care. Where are you now? If it’s such a challenge to coordinate a social life, and I know that it is, why add this obstacle?

    I’d rather get together just to do the apathetic thing. Let’s keep each other company while we writhe with ambivalence, wrestle pent up energy and fend off fatigue. What do you feel like doing? I don’t care; what do you feel like doing? I don’t know; ask me again in ten minutes.

    In New Zealand, the hot cellular promotion was free text messaging on weekends. From Friday evening to Monday morning, pre-paying wireless customers (the vast, vast majority) could send as many pub addresses, estimated times of arrival, pick-up lines and where r u‘s as they could type. Which was a lot. The weekend timing was perfect. I just keep hoping that U.S. wireless companies will give in and give up a similar deal.

    And until they do, I’m going to hold out. I save texting for especially opportune situations. Because I know as soon as I really get into it, I’ll be a goner; I won’t be able to stop. I’ll communicate only in 160-character phrases and expect every word processor to guess the word I’m typing and fill in the end of it for me.

    I will enthuse that text messages are a fantastic medium for one-liners. If I were willing to pay for an unlimited texting plan (which I’m not, and that’s why relentless text messages irritate me so—twenty cents to send or receive!), I would use it to shoot quick messages to friends, just to say hi (plus a little).

    These are messages I would have sent today if I could have sent them for free:

    To: Caitlin
    Do we need 1,000 drinking straws? Four colors only $4.99!

    To: Jonathan
    Coming to see your new place. I don’t have a housewarming gift but do you need any drinking straws?

    To: Amy
    I know I said I didn’t like Leona Lewis but now I keep listening keep keep listening to this song

    To: Jimmy
    My parents are sending my car to DC with my little brother. He better not take the Mount Holyoke sticker off the back window.

    To: Will
    You better not take that Mount Holyoke sticker off my car!

    To: Rachel
    Just passed that Thai place with the purple logo and the weird bathroom sink. Take-out or gym? Take-out or gym?

    To: Chelsea
    Remember when we used to ‘smoke’ invisible cigarettes to ‘calm’ our ‘nerves’? Have fun tonight!

    To: Doug
    So, you never told me your marathon time

    To: Bridget (except Bridget doesn’t text at all ever)
    Did you know that the Harry Potter Lexicon guy is “vilified” and cast out from the HP society??

    And now, I think I have some phone calls to make.

    Further reading:

    Other New Yorkers gripe about Evites and texts in “Blame the Messager,” Alexandra Jacobs’ etiquette column in the May 4th issue of TMagazine. She quotes another Emily White (no relation).

    Anand Giridharadasa looks at textiquette and social evolution in Mumbai: Flirting by Text Message, Indians Test Social Limits

  • Imaginando la ciudad fantasma

    The Chaitén volcano in Chile erupted—continues to erupt—this week.

    And once, I was there.

    It’s hard to admit now that, before I fell asleep that night, I rolled over in my sleeping bag and pressed my hands into the soft black sand and thought it was special, a beautiful thing, to walk on a volcanic beach. I wanted that to be my last thought before I slept. I wanted to end the day on that feeling, to epitomize the day with that special thing I got to do, the special place I got to be.

    It’s hard to think about people evacuating their homes in Chaitén and wonder where everyone was on the night I was there. I saw people at the restaurant and a few at the market, but—thousands of evacuees? It’s as though the eruption roused them just to chase them out of the woodwork.

    It’s hard to read about the irreversible devastation, the abrupt loss of flora and fauna, the halt to the agricultural industry, when the volcano seemed to me the gentle face of Mother Earth on that one night. Now I remember, the sand was so brutally black.

    Nothing can stop a natural disaster like a volcanic eruption. No one can anticipate it, though now it seems like it will be impossible not to just wait for the next one, even if it takes another nine thousand years.

    Here is a collection of photos of the violent eruption as the volcano’s contents sparked into a “dirty thunderstorm” taken by United Press International photographer Carlos Gutierrez: Tormenta eléctrica en erupción del volcán Chaitén. The caption translates to, “The startling (moving) beauty of two natural phenomena. An electrical storm (thunderstorm) above the gigantic column of ash that rises from the Chaitén volcano, reaching an altitude of 14 kilometers.”

  • Right now: 64°F / Feels like: 64°F

    This is me right now by the hotel pool.

    I came out with my laptop after a hot bath in my enormous tub to let my hair dry and try to gauge how conspicuous it would be if I were too slip into the water in a black sports bra and panties. It’s pretty quiet down here at this hour, and the other guests don’t look like undercover officers of the Socially Acceptable Swimwear Police. I will continue to pre-meditate this crime of fashion.

    If I look a little smug, it’s because I have never spent a Monday evening this way: with my feet up on a lounge chair, laptop aglow in my lap, the lightest, most floral urban air I’ve ever smelled breezing down the back of my t-shirt. I’m facing the hotel fitness room, which I’m not allowed to use because of my back injury. A workout is a nagging temptation, but for the first time in weeks, I’m content with the alternative.

    (Heaven Sent by Keisha Cole is in that iPod earbud.)

  • What is this, St. Petersburg?

    Upon arriving in Atlanta.

    Another city
    Home to one golden-domed pile
    And ten-plus Starbucks

    There is this one remark that my family has been quoting me on for years every time we drive through Waterbury, Connecticut on I-84. I was a little girl, riding in the back seat, and I think I dozed off and woke up cranky and bored. I saw the Union Station Clock Tower and, mistaking it for Big Ben and then confusing London and Paris, I snarked, “Where are we, Paris, England?” The implication that we had been driving forever, long enough that we could have made it to Europe and back, was lost to my adorable, unworldly slip.

    The Georgia State Capitol building has a golden dome that reminds me of buildings in Hartford, Springfield, Boston, Albany, Chicago, DC . . . I was cranky in the cab from the airport—when the driver said ‘good morning’ I couldn’t believe it was still the morning—but managed not to snark out loud about it this time.

  • Highly Notable Events in April 2008

    I found this note on my keyboard when I got to work this morning. “Happy One Year!” everyone called from their offices where, at oh, 9:15 or so, they were already seated and down to business.

    Visible in this photo of the wall beside my desk is a chart of copy-editing marks and meanings. I have annotated it to include ?!?! which is the unofficial symbol for “needs so much work, I don’t even know where to begin.” Also, while wt in a circle means the wrong font has been used, wtf in a circle means (I think you know what it means). Though neither symbol is officially recognized by any style guide that I know of, they are both universally understood.

    I think the purple Post-it with “sugar, sugar” written on it was a coded reminder to a now expired password. If I needed the reminder, I know I don’t remember it now, and if I can’t figure out what the code is, I doubt you’ll be able to break it. I’ve gone through a great many passwords in the last twelve months.

    The blue Post-it says “Force Refresh CTRL + F5″—the keystrokes clear any data that Internet Explorer has saved and force it to access the ‘freshest’ version of a web page when it’s being lazy.

    Kate Winslet is on the wall because I’m told I have “Kate Days,” when I resemble her, though nobody can pinpoint the like trait. Ariel is there because she is a redhead and a princess—the like traits are implicit.

    Here is my April 2008 list:

    • celebrated one full year with my company, with a job that I keep on loving
    • flirted with a firefighter in uniform
    • received my first wedding invitation from a Mount Holyoke friend
    • took a day off just to go see August: Osage County with my mom
    • a kind neighbor brought my copy of The New Yorker to my apartment after it was misdelivered two and a half blocks away