“That’s Ice-T, man. That’s Ice TEE.”
Just keep running your
Hands along the wall ’til you
Find the hidden door
Playing this week:
Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind
Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison
Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan
Hot ‘N’ Cold by Katy Perry
Hiding Under Water by Beth Hart
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).
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.
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)
There are only three things that could get my parents to leave the house on a weeknight after the hour of 8PM:
A family emergency
A Doobie Brothers concert
A TimesTalks event
The New York Times Presents:
TimesTalks Presents Election Night Live at TheTimesCenter
Tuesday, Nov 04, 2008 6:00 PM EST
at TimesCenter Stage
Spend Election Night LIVE at The New York Times.
Get insight and perspective on the battle for the White House from key New York Times political reporters and editors, including executive editor Bill Keller, managing editor Jill Abramson, assistant managing editor Richard L. Berke, editorial page editor Andrew M. Rosenthal, Op-Ed columnists Gail Collins and Frank Rich, national political correspondent Adam Nagourney and others.
Discussion moderated by Times Magazine contributing writer Matt Bai, author of “The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics,” with Sam Roberts, Times reporter and host of NY-1’s “New York Close-Up.”
Discussion: 6 – 8 PM
All-American Food & Drink plus Televised Returns: 8 – 10 PM
And so I will be spending Election Night with my mom and dad, Gail Collins, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, and other members of the Times Editorial and Opinion teams. I wonder how they’re planning to get us to leave at 10PM? You know the results won’t be final by then.
My first question: Do I get to dress up? I have a navy blue, semi-formal dress that would look just splendid in the red and blue light cast by the U.S. Electoral map!
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
I wrote an e-mail today “to the many members of my urban tribe.” I’ll write the same message here to visitors, feed readers, friends, foes, and to tribe members not in my Gmail address book:
This is merely a reminder, a gentle prod to your ribs, and not a politically partisan overture.
I get a paycheck and health benefits, recycle, pay taxes, and have been called for jury duty in New York State. I’m still registered to vote in Connecticut. For the rest of you who have relocated to a new state since you first registered to vote or since the election in 2004—it is not too late to register to vote in your new state or to request an absentee ballot from your home state for the Presidential General Election on November 4.
I requested an absentee ballot from my home town clerk by mail last week. This website walked me through it: Long Distance Voter. It was easy. Seriously. If you’re looking for a challenge, get your voting rights squared away and then come by and help me try to fit all my clothes into my closet.
I would consider either one a personal favor.
To expand:
In a way, Republican candidate Senator John McCain inspired this general petition to exercise your voting rights. Today, he opted to participate in the debate with his opponent, acceding in his actions if not with his words that, as Barack Obama said, “it’s more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country.”
But in fact, John McCain first inspired this message when I met him four years ago, less than one month before the 2004 Presidential election. By chance, we were seated at the same table at a bicentennial celebration at the Naval Academy Prep School in Newport, Rhode Island.
He introduced himself and then asked my two friends and me, all three of us Mount Holyoke students, if we knew who we’d vote for. One declared herself undecided; the other said, “pass;” I said that I would vote for his party’s opponent, John Kerry, because I preferred his positions on education and the environment.
McCain told us that it’s important for young adults to know which issues matter to them and to vote accordingly; that it’s important for us, as young women, to cast our votes.
I did vote, Senator, and I am voting again.
There was an episode of the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete and Pete where little Pete, the brother with the wiggling mermaid tattoo on his arm, hears a garage band playing this one song and then can’t get it out of his head. He realizes he’s discovered his favorite song, but he doesn’t know the band’s name or the song’s title. Everybody he tells about his favorite song thinks he’s imagining it or making it up.
I was probably in fourth or fifth grade, just starting to explore new music, when I watched Pete and Pete. And I wish I could remember the songs I recorded from the radio at that age, the ones I intended to play for the clerk at Volt Records, who I sort of perceived to be the oracle of chords and lyrics and could identify the title and artists. Â
Those were the days before Google. Thanks to the internet, so favorite song will ever get lost in a garage.
There is only one song that I’ve never been able to identify with a Boolean search. It’s by a children’s duo that played a concert at an elementary school in town and sold low-budget recordings when I was a small child. It’s about a leprechaun who jumps over a rainbow and I think its melody was inspired by Seven Wonders Fleetwood Mac, so I think of it every time I hear that song.
And now I will identify the songs I’ve been listening to this week:
21 Reasons by Frank Black and the Catholics
It’s You by Annie Stela
Don’t Mess With the Radio by Kelis (“she’s only Nas’ wife!”—sales associate at Jo Malone)
Already Gone by Sugarland
Sun’s Gonna Rise by Citizen Cope