But I don't wanna!

When I first started my job, all employees were expected to wear suits four days a week (business casual on Fridays). For the month of August, we also enjoyed business casual, which was fabulous, because part of the business-business dress meant pantyhose with skirts and no open-toed shoes, and that made me hot and sweaty and irritable. Not that it mattered a huge amount in the ice box of the actual office, but heading to and from work made me cranky.

Eventually, our leadership came around to the notion that business casual from Memorial Day to Labor Day would make good sense, and I agree wholeheartedly, especially because Minnams and I have great fun with people's -- almost always men's -- interpretation and execution of business casual.

Anyway, it comes to an end tomorrow, but today I have an offsite meeting at an impossibly conservative company, and although I didn't specifically ask, I can only assume that they are business-business alllllll the time, so here I am in my business suit, dreading, dreading, dreading having to go out in this humidity and heat. Blech.

But I suck it up, because I've realized that, as much as I hate it, sometimes I have to be a grown-up. In the last week, I've eaten green beans, cooked zucchini and overcooked tilapia; pulled off charming, engaging smalltalk with co-workers' spouses and significant others at the end 18-hour day involving a cross-country flight; and consistently refrained from telling people that they're arrogant, incompetent jackasses, opting to take the high road, smile, and play nicely in the sandbox. Because that's what grown-ups do, and sometimes you just need to suck it up.

But I'm wondering whether I'll ever get to the point where I kick and scream -- even just in my own head -- about these things. Does one eventually actually grow up, rather than playing the expected role of grown-up? And will being an actual grown-up mean that I'll actually be excited about the food issue of the New Yorker? It's now totally wasted on me (Gina, it's all yours if you want it!), just like fancy restaurants are wasted on me, because I enjoy food like white rice, or my mom's apple crisp with ice cream, or something not involving complicated sauces or intricate flavors or, god forbid, unusual textures. And although I suck it up when I really, really have to, in general I'm fairly naked about my food issues, unabashed about scraping off sauce or picking the broccoli out of a pasta dish.

I think my food issues are evidence of my lack of sophistication or resistance to being a proper adult, but I'm not sure to what extent this holdover from childhood, as it now manifests itself, is a threat to my credibility as a grown-up. Something for the back of my mind, I suppose, but for today, I'm focused on getting through the morning without passing out or dying of heatstroke from this suit.

Well played, pup.

So this morning, at long last, we took Tucker to the vet so his sutures could be removed. And we could finally take his spacedog Elizabethan collar off, even though he'd gotten fairly well accustomed to it: eating, drinking, running up and down stairs, removing his own stitches.

Yup. The vet came into the examining room, checked out his overall well-being (healthy pup!), flipped him over and said, "Huh. Somebody did a good job of taking those out."

And I was sure that we were going to get in trouble -- I love our vet, but somehow we always end up feeling guilty when we're there -- because it really did seem unfathomable that Tucker would have been able to manage that while wearing his E-collar, but the vet just said, "Okay, then. All done."

And then, guilt-free and collar-free, we headed over to the dog park, where everyone ooohed and aaahed over what a cute, fast, fun puppy we have, and my heart swelled with pride.

Yeah, I think it's official: I've crossed over to the other side. I'm a dog person.

Thanks, Mags!

A huge shout-out to Mags for helping me out with my CD problem.

Thanks, Mags! You'll get a copy of the final product (if you want it after hearing that one song...)

Portland, day two

It was a beautiful, perfect sunny day in Portland today -- yesterday was overcast for the most part, but today was crystal clear, and we could see Mount Hood from the hotel and from the office in which our all-day meeting took place.

Never fear -- I won't bore you with the details of the meeting, but I was very pleased with it. So often, I make a trip somewhere and just feel like it's a colossal waste of time because nothing really gets done, people talk just to hear themselves talk, round and round we go and we've not actually resolved any issues or made any kind of progress. Such was not the case today, so I was very grateful.

All I wanted to do after the meeting, though was go to the gym and then order room service in my PJs while I got some work done for a conference call tomorrow morning, but my boss wanted to go out to dinner, so off I went. It was a gorgeous night, and we sat outside right next to the waterfront, and it definitely beat the gym in the end.

One of the Portland people we met with today noted that Oregonians are manic in the summertime, because there is such a narrow window during which the weather is warm and clear and sunny up here, and everyone just pours out of their houses in July and August. This phenomenon was definitely in full effect tonight -- dozens of people were walking their dogs (which made me miss Tucker...when did I get to be such a sap?!) or jogging along the waterfront, or going out in rowboats on the river (the Willamette, dammit!).

After dinner, I excused myself and went for a walk along the river, and treated myself to some of the yummiest ice cream ever. I think I love Portland. It struck me how many cities I absolutely love -- San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., London, even Des Moines -- and I wondered if at some point I need to get out of Jersey and experience life somewhere else for a while. And maybe that'll pan out down the road -- maybe Smelmooo or I will get a job we can't pass up and want to move to another place for a couple of years -- but deep down I sense that, despite my crazy travel bug as of late (I daydream about us quitting our jobs and just traveling around everywhere -- Alaska, Australia, Africa, England, Spain, tropical islands, New England inns, everywhere), I'm forever a Jersey girl, in spirit and in fact.

Which is fine, actually, although it's sort of a drag that, when I have meetings with people in Oregon and ask, "Okay, I have half a day free in Portland -- what should I do?", they can't answer because there are too many great things to choose from: "You could go to Powell's (the giant bookstore) for a full day, or go to the rose gardens, or rent a bike, or go hiking on one of three mountains, or go on a boat tour, or just ride the cable car all around the city, or go to the gallery that features all local artists, or..."

And Jersey has great stuff -- beaches, hiking, biking, Hot Dog Johnny's, historic landmarks, whatever -- but when people come from out of town to my office, and ask what to do, I say, "Well, there's a Ben & Jerry's across the street, and if you have a car you could drive into Princeton proper and walk around and window shop, and there are some good restaurants there, but otherwise...eh...not much nearby...Oh, there's the mall! And a movie theater."

But still, there's no place like home, and I'm looking forward to getting back tomorrow to my hubby and our puppy.

'Gateline 1995

Exactly 10 years ago today, I woke up very early in the morning and headed off to the big, scary world of college.

Okay, so it was 2800 students in a town of 2500 other people, so it was not a big world, but it was a scary one for someone who'd never lived away from home, not even for summer camp, and who'd not gone to school with boys for four years.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm tight with my family; as the baby of the family, my milestones were -- and are -- met with an extra measure of emotion, because I'm the last, and they all remember when I was five and wore feety pajamas and my littlest sister is going to college. So the night before I left for school, my sister Kathy stayed at our parents' house (which I thought was lovely; she went to college when I was not quite seven, and it was devastating. I cried and cried and cried and cried, and our oldest sister tried to distract me with a game of Trivial Pursuit, but when she picked the blue pie piece, I cried even harder, because Kathy's bedroom was blue. Boy was I a wussy kid. I also used to hide Kathy's keys and/or purse when she was home on break from college so she couldn't leave again. Boy was I a bratty wussy kid).

Anyway, Mom and Dad and I were ready to roll at about 4 in the morning, and Kathy and another sister, who lived at home, got up with us, and walked me to the car. We hugged and cried and we looked up at this beautiful, clear sky where the stars were still all twinkling brightly, and we spotted Orion and promised that when we missed each other or got lonely, we'd remember (a la An American Tale) that we'd all be looking up at the same sky every night. So melodramatic; it makes me cringe.

We stopped for breakfast at a diner about 30 minutes south of Colgate; the participants in some Miss Teen New York State were also there, wearing their sashes and tiaras. The restaurant closed sometime before I graduated, and I never went back.

I was the last of four roommates to arrive -- two had gone up a few days early to work on the newspaper, and my other roommate had arrived that morning with no hangers but lots of baggage. When I got there, she was sitting on the bed while her mom unpacked her stuff; she kept telling her mom she was doing everything wrong, and at one point told her to shut up, which would've gotten me knocked to next Wednesday, but her mom seemed unfazed. This roommate moved out within the month, blessedly.

I was christened Banana Girl, which fortunately didn't last long, but which was still kind of humiliating. My mom had asked one of my friends who worked at a supermarket what the sturdiest boxes were, because the liquor store had started charging for them, and he told us banana boxes were best, and brought me a whole boatload of them to pack my college stuff in, and they held up beautifully, but obviously invited a good deal of mockery.

My parents refused to cry when they left, which they did quickly. I didn't cry, either, and they kept us busy with barbecues and socials and ID cards and all kinds of orientation stuff, but I still felt lonely and out of place and uncertain.

The roommates who'd been there a few days had already made friends, and were going to a party in another dorm. I declined, maybe because I wasn't feeling social, who knows, but found people in my own dorm to hang out with and play cards with or something. I did okay. The party in the other dorm got busted by Campus Safety, and my roommates had to go to an alcohol counseling session and do reports on the perils of drinking, so I was glad I'd skipped it, especially because I was still 17, and couldn't they call my parents about that sort of thing if I were a minor? (I know, I know...big wussy first-year college student and, let's face it, still wussy 10 years later).

That first day felt like one of the longest of my life, with a whole bundle of emotions that I don't know that I've ever experienced in such a complicated way in such a condensed period of time.

People told me that college would be the best time of my life, and I believed them, and I think that was a mistake. In Avenue Q (which you should see, if you haven't, because it's fabulous, and once you see it, you must get the soundtrack), there's a song called "I Wish I Could Go Back to College" -- I've never felt that way, actually. I wasn't really cut out for the kind of college experience I had. I thought about transferring in my junior year, but I realized that (a) it was kind of too late, especially since I was studying abroad, so I needed to suck up the final three semesters and (b) the lack of fit was probably not about Colgate, specifically, but with campus life in general, and better just to get it over with.

I think it all sort of boils down to me being a little bit of an old soul, and a little bit of a misfit, and a little bit of a misanthrope. There are moments of college that I loved, loved, loved, and my experiences there shaped me in ways that I'm still realizing now. But the best time of my life? Not so much, thank goodness.

Portland, day one

The Smelmooo mocks me for blogging regularly only while I'm away, or about trips, and he's mostly right, but I feel like that's okay, because sometimes life at home is just sort of get up, let the dog out, go to work, eat dinner, maybe watch TV or play poker or darts or whatever, bed, repeat. But on the road, things happen, baby.

Today I flew out to Portland, Oregon for a work meeting that starts tonight with dinner and ends with an all-day meeting tomorrow. I got here before 10am west coast time, and I'm not leaving until Thursday, so I actually have some time to wander around the city, which is excellent, and not something I always get to do when I travel for work.

Anyway, I first want to give Smelmooo a big thank you, simply for not being That Guy on the plane this morning. That Guy was sitting across the aisle from me, and in the row of seats behind him were his pregnant (early 3rd trimester, I'm guessing) wife, her three-ish-year old daughter (I think not his) and her/their 10-month old daughter. Despite there being no one in the middle seat, That Guy declined to sit with his family, which in itself is not a big deal, but even when the baby was screaming her head off, spit up all over mom, 3-year-old crying and needing to go to the bathroom? That Guy CONTINUED to sit there, watching the in-flight programming and not doing a damn thing to help.

"Hey, Nathan? Could you give me a hand here?"
"Whaddya want me to do about it?!"
"Could you at least take her? She spit up all over me, and Madison needs to go to the bathroom."
"Nope. I don't think so."

So off mom goes to get the girls cleaned up, and That Guy pretends to be asleep when they come back from the bathroom, so he won't have to deal with them. The hell? So anyway, thank you, Smelmooo, for not being That Guy.

So all is well; great hotel, great location. I wandered around the downtown area a bit with a couple of my co-workers; I was crabby-desperate for a snack, and they were crabby-desperate for caffeine, so despite the Smelmooo's friend Renee's insistence that, when visiting Portland, I was under no circumstances to go to Starbucks, I got outvoted (although there did not appear to be a Coffee People, Renee's recommendation, anywhere in our vicinity).

Anyway, I was delighted with the Starbucks decision when I saw that they had these cute little snack packs of strawberries with chocolate dipping sauce. Hooray! Chocolate-covered strawberries! Awesome. So I got those, plus a cinnamon roll because chocolate-covered strawberries are not walking-around-the-city food (plus, frankly, I didn't want to have to share.

So we wandered around a bit, and ran into all of these random people (a) giving away free candy in honor of American Idol coming to Portland and (b) offering to sell us random crap for a dollar. Not like in NYC when people are selling t-shirts for a dollar or something: a guy with a -- one, singular -- cell phone case, for a dollar and, separately, a woman with a -- again, one, singular -- beat-up purse, also for a dollar. What? Is this usual? A Portland thing? A west coast thing? A hidden camera show?

Back in my room, I settled down with my chocolate dip and my strawberries; I even took a self-portrait with them to show Smelmooo when I get home. I'm very smiley in the picture, which is followed by a pouty picture of me when I realized, very quickly, that "strawberries with chocolate dip" is not the same as "chocolate-covered strawberries, where the strawberries are edible and the chocolate forms a hard shell around them." Instead, it means "bruised, yucky strawberries with a cup of Hershey's syrup to be used as a light glaze for the berries." Very disappointing, and I'd had such high hopes.

There are lots of local wines in the gift shop, but I feel like you're not allowed to bring wine on a plane to NJ. Am I making this up? Probably. I may be wild and risk it (but, more likely, I'll go research whether it's legal, and then buy or not buy accordingly). You can take me out of Jersey, but three days in a far-cooler-than-I-am town like Portland could never take the dork out of me.

Help for the technologically impaired, please?

So I've succumbed to the pressure and agreed to join a CD exchange, and I'm enjoying the process of putting my CD together, and hopeful that others will enjoy it, even if it doesn't have the same meaning for them as it has for me.

Anyway, this is the first time ever that I'm burning CDs -- and I'm needing a ton of help from the Smelmooo; at this point, I've not done a single thing myself but write down my songs.

My biggest challenge is this: one of the songs I want is from a weirdly-cut live CD, where the intro to the song (which I want to include) is on, say, track 7, but the song itself is on track 8 (which also includes the intro to the following song, which I don't want).

Is there any way around this, or should I just abandon it? Any help from my tech savvy readers would be much appreciated, and the one with the winning advice gets a copy of my CD regardless of whether he/she is signed up for the exchange!

Someone got here by searching...

I remember someone had a great feature on his/her blog that was titled "Someone got here by searching..."

Last week, after my post-vacation entries, I was startled to find that someone had found me by searching on "blowjob," which was incredibly unsettling.

More amusing to me, today, was to see that someone from Australia stumbled upon my blog by searching: "some people do not agree with Oprah where are they."

Here I am, lovey; here I am.

If You Know What I Mean

Friday was a classic rainy August day: angry bursts of torrential downpours, followed by periods of sunshine and heavy, humid clouds without rain. It was during one of these resting periods that the Smelmooo and I began our walk to the train station, the first leg of our journey to see Neil Diamond in concert at Madison Square Garden. And it was during this walk that the weather abruptly shifted into the "downpour" cycle, and we were -- despite our hooded, waterproof (or, in my case, "waterproof") windbreakers -- fairly soaked by the time we reached the NJ Transit platform in town. On the bright side, though, we arrived just in time to hop on the train, so we didn't have to wait outside any longer.

We were cold and wet and cramped and tired (Tucker was all out of whack after his surgery, and kept getting up in the middle of the night, which wreaked some serious havoc on my REM sleep)on the train ride in, which took nearly an hour (it was rush hour on a Friday, and the train made every blessed stop between Metuchen and NYC). And an hour later, we were still pretty much soaking wet when we arrived at NYC's Penn Station.

Not wanting to risk any more rain, or to try to find a decent restaurant that wasn't too far away, we decided to have dinner at the Houlihan's in the train station (we discovered only later that there's a less chainy bar and grill on the other side of the station, right next to the Krispy Kreme, which probably would've been a better choice, but Houlihan's it was). We had the sort of an unremarkable dinner we expected, but noticed that a good number of Neil Diamond fans were also dining at Houlihan's, and when the jukebox started up with Sweet Caroline, there were lots of heads bopping all over the restaurant, and when I went to the restroom I noticed an awful lot of sequined shirts, American flag shirts, and Diamond Girl shirts like mine (on women and girls of all ages, shapes and sizes, which I guess is kind of fun, but also made me worry that I'm really too old to be wearing it, but I kind of don't care, because it's a really fun shirt, with pink letters and faux sequins).

Anyway, after Houlihan's and Krispy Kreme, we headed up to the Garden and made our way to our floor seats. You heard me: floor seats. Smelmooo had gotten our tickets, and he wouldn't let me see them ahead of time, so I had no idea how close we were. There were tuxedoed servers with champagne and strawberries in our fancy section, which I thought was very exciting, and most of the people around us appeared to be true Neil fans, which is always fun.

We were in the middle of a row, which was excellent both in terms of lines of vision and in not getting knocked around as people came and went, although when the couple next to us took their seats, the woman knocked into me and spilled her beer on my sandals, and then apologized profusely, which I've never experienced at any sort of concert. We need floor seats more often.

So the show began, a little late but not obscenely so, and Neil was accompanied by like 13 other people onstage (liars called it a "solo performance" before he came on stage, but I think they were trying to establish that there wouldn't be an opening act, but still). The beer-spilling chick and her date didn't get out of their seats once, until Sweet Caroline, and then they left immediately and never came back. So much for the diehards in the floor seats.

It was a good show -- I wish he'd played Heartlight and Solitary Man, but otherwise, he hit all my favorites -- but I couldn't help thinking that Neil's losing his edge. My mother-in-law -- who saw his show last week in Philadelphia -- said that he sometimes just can't quite hit those special notes that were once his signatures, and that's probably part of it, but I also felt like he was phoning his performance in a little bit. He hit all the schmaltzy bits -- my least favorite parts -- on You Don't Bring me Flowers and such, and he did a fun bit with Red, Red Wine, thanking UB40 for changing it up and allowing him to revel in the royalties, but overall he was not at his best. He seemed a little...old, and off. He did a funny rendition of Forever in Blue Jeans -- my very favorite Neil song, and the first song the Smelmooo and I danced to at our wedding -- and it was frustrating not to be able to sing along properly.

But Neil is like what other people say about pizza -- even when it's bad, it's good (although I don't agree with those people, who clearly have never eaten a beer-battered pizza topped with corn and chicken that's been sitting under a heatlamp at a take-away restaurant in rural England). And even though Neil wasn't in top form, he still put on a darn good show. He has that totally arrogant star quality, tempered just a smidge by the "I'm just a guy from New York" thing that comes out so beautifully in I Am, I Said.

So I shuffled out of the concert hoarse and smiling, happy to have had a fun date with my husband and to have seen a good show, and to be going home to our puppy and our bed. Good times never seemed so good.

Undue influence

Because I'm a huge procrasinator, I didn't until yesterday go shopping for a birthday present for my nephew, who turns eight today.

The other challenge with this particular nephew -- my oldest, and the only of my siblings' kids who's an only child -- is that I don't like the things he likes. I ask what my other nieces and nephews want for their birthdays, and I'm told books (my favorite things to get) and puzzles and maybe some crafts or something sports- or music-related. With this nephew? Star Wars, light sabers, war games. Which I just can't abide. My sister has a no-Simpsons policy in her house, to which I also object, but respect, but I have a personal no-weapons policy, and I worry that the Star Wars thing just makes my nephew a big dork, so I really struggle when it comes to birthdays for him.

At what point do I just suck it up and give him what he likes, despite my objections? Don't I have some responsibility as his aunt at least to try to be a good influence? I wanted to get him some good music, or some fun t-shirts, or even some books -- which, ironically, he hates, even though at his age, his mother had to be FORCED to go play outside because she'd a million times prefer to have her nose in a book -- so he'll at least be well-read, even if he's not cool.

But I'd be pretty annoyed if my siblings or my friends started giving me stuff they know I hate, just because it's "good for me" or because it's good for who they'd prefer I be. But part of me just feels like there's still a window of opportunity for my nephew, maybe until he's like 10 or so?

I don't know. I ended up getting him the first Harry Potter book and two board games, neither of which was Star Wars-related. I expect that he'll open them, go "huh," and sort of toss them aside, but part of me hopes that he'll find something in there that he loves, and that one day he'll thank me for introducing him to some cool new stuff. But I'm not holding my breath, and for Christmas my sister suggested a Star Wars backpack, and I may just have to give in.

Homage to Kim

One of my very favorite ways to avoid doing work at work is to visit Television Without Pity; I can easily kill an hour or seven scrolling through recaps of shows I watch and, more frequently, shows I used to watch or of which I've seen a couple of episodes, but would now prefer to read about than actually sit through.

The Real World falls into this latter category; I invested in more seasons than I'd care to admit -- Boston, Seattle, Hawaii, Back to NY (but I knew someone on it, so I feel like that's a good excuse!) and Chicago -- before I decided with Las Vegas that I was really getting entirely too old for this kind of crap, and lost all patience with it (although I still somehow find the RW/RR Challenges oddly compelling). But I'd still read the recaps of Las Vegas to keep up with the roommates' skanky behavior and, more importantly, for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week.

Almost every week, awesome recapper Kim takes a little detour from recapping The Real World and gives a quick summary of something else, often a Little House episode or a Lifetime Movie, and they always give me great pleasure.

So last night, I was home alone with Tucker (who's wearing his little spacedog Elizabethan collar and feeling a little lethargic but experiencing alarming bursts of energy where he wants to jump and run around and I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself, because I am a complete worrywart and thank god I don't have an actual child because I would be the most anxious, overprotective thing in the universe) while the Smelmooo did his fantasy football draft. I got take-out Thai food and, after watching the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, decided I needed something a little more inane for the rest of the evening.

I found great success with Friends 'Til the End, which admittedly I've seen several times before, but it is truly the Most Awesome Thing I'll see on TV most weeks.

First of all, it stars Shannen Doherty, the chick who played Kate on Party of Five, and Jason London (twin of Jeremy London, also on P5). The chick who played Whitney in Bring it On has a supporting role, and she basically plays a college-aged Whitney, making the exact same facial expressions and exasperated noises.

Anyway, the basic idea is that Shannen is the darling of her sorority and of her band (in which she's the only girl, of course, and her boyfriend Jason London is also in the band, as is some other guy who totally loves Shannen but never says anything, just stares at her moonily from afar and takes great pleasure in their songwriting sessions), and Kate from P5 is this nerdy girl who desperately, desperately wants to fit in, and Shannen feels bad for her and convinces all of her sorority sisters that Kate will be an asset to the house because she's smart and she'll get the Delta sisters lots of coverage in the school yearbook. This is enough for them, apparently, and of course within five minutes Kate becomes the sorority darling, and goes all Single White Female, trying to take over Shannen's identity. She steals Shannen's car keys and extraordinarily inappropriate dress that barely covers her ass and starts making out with Jason in the middle of a fancy restaurant on his birthday, and poisons Shannen's drink so she can't sing the night the band's shooting its video, right before she kills some guy in the alley (and then, of course, takes Shannen's place onstage 5 seconds later) because he knows all about her secret past, which includes time in a mental institution after she was accused of killing the winner of a pageant in which she came in second.

Of course, in the end, Kate cracks and everyone realizes that Shannen wasn't the crazy one or the evil one, and Shannen and WritingPartner end up together and they win the Battle of the Bands or whatever (I think; this last part is fuzzy, because I didn't actually watch the end last night), and Kate either dies or is committed again, but everything works out in the end, except I guess for that poor dead guy in the alley. And it may be the greatest guilty pleasure movie ever, except maybe that one where Melissa Joan Hart arranges for her parents to be killed, but it's too close to call.

My latest conspiracy theory

A few months after the Smelmooo and I got engaged, he and my mother separately gave me the same ultimatum: Get thee to the dentist, or I won't be at your wedding. And I think that they meant it.

I hadn't been to the dentist in at least 10 years, although not as a result of any sort of awful experience at the dentist -- I actually rather liked my dentist in high school, who shared my birthday and had a wild thatch of red hair and matching mustache that somehow made him appear trustworthy. But somehow I'd just gotten into the habit of not going, and the longer I put it off, the more I worried about what would happen when I did go, which I decided would be more emphatic shaming than I'd experienced in my 13 years of Catholic school, and who needs that? Plus, there were these awful dental students in one of my public health classes in grad school, and I just abhorred them, and I decided that all dentists and future dentists suck, based on this n of 2.

So clearly, this anti-dentist stuff was not coming from a rational place, and it took the threats of my mom and my maybe-fiance -- along with a horror story from Minnams of a guy she knew whose tooth exploded while he was on his honeymoon, which may actually have been the more powerful kick in the pants, even if she made it up -- to get me actually to get in the chair.

I called the new dentist that the Smelmooo had visited, whom he liked very much, and the receptionist was so alarmed when I told her how long it had been since my last appointment (again, are you seeing the parallels here? "Father, it has been 10 years since my last confession..."), she gave me an appointment for x-rays and a consultation the following week, not wanting to give me time to change my mind.

So in I went, and the dentist told me I had perfect teeth. That's right: perfect.

My cleaning was scheduled for the following month, and the hygienist didn't berate me (the Smelmooo was right; I actually love this dentist and everyone in her office -- if you Jersey folks are in need of someone good, let us know -- despite the point I'll eventually reach. Promise). She did, however, say, "Sweetie, you know, you should really make a point to come in every six months, not just once a year."

Ten years of not going to the dentist, and the hygienist called it at one year. Pretty good, right? So I'm feeling quite smug and superior, and I'm all about going to the dentist every six months now. Piece of cake, plus I get all of this praise lavished on me: "They're perfect! Such beautiful teeth! Keep up the good work!" I might as well get a tiara on the way out the door instead of a free toothbrush and floss.

So I kept up the every-six-months thing, and had another appointment today. I am very much at ease in the chair now, chatting with the dental assistant about Oprah, Kirstie, and Tom and Katie, asking my dentist about plans for her upcoming wedding. I need to live up to my designated model patient role, so I'm patient and engaging and obedient (although the truly perfect patient probably would have agreed to the suggested x-rays, which I did not; my mother, who's had more dental problems than anyone I've ever known, has always been incredibly opinionated about unnecessary x-rays, and without even realizing it, I channeled her and declined to have them done).

The dentist begins poking around my mouth, tells me to rinse, hands me a mirror as she eases my chair back.

"Hold this up. See this tooth back here? I think that's the sign of a cavity starting to form, although it's nothing to worry about just yet. It's not soft or anything, but it's dark, so keep an eye on it."

I'm no longer the perfect dental patient. I feel deep shame. I ask what I can do to prevent it from developing into a cavity, but I trip over my words.

"I've...never had a cavity before. I don't... Is there...? I don't even know what it'd feel like. Uh, will I know it's there when I can feel it? Will it really hurt? What do I do? Do I call you right away?"

I swear she's smirking a little behind her mask, but her eyes are kind. She tells me it'll be sensitive to cold, that I'll know it, that I can just keep it clean -- "But I brush incessantly! Ask the Smelmooo! It drives him crazy!!" I think, but don't say out loud -- and maybe try a fluoride rinse.

And the x-rays will be able to show us more when you agree to have them.

Aha!!! I knew it! Lies, all lies, all designed to get me to succumb to the evil x-ray conspiracy, where you make all your money! Now it all makes sense!

"We're still looking for a place for the reception; they're all so expensive!"

"Nope, no vacation this summer; we're trying to save up our money."

A vast, white-coated conspiracy, and I'm not allowing myself to be sucked in. Although, of course, like a good little patient, I said, "Okay, so x-rays next time," scheduled an appointment for February, and stopped to buy some Act on the way home.

Sometimes it'd probably do me good not to be so eager to please, to be a model patient or worker or any of that, but it's almost as hard to resist that instinct as it is to ignore the echo of my mom's voice in my head.

Irony

During one of the rainy vacation days last week, the Smelmooo and I went to Atlantic City for an afternoon of 2-4 Texas Hold 'Em. My beginner's luck has evaporated completely, by the way, and I lost 30 bucks (although as a couple we ended up ahead, which is nice, but I'd prefer to carry Team Tangent/Smelmooo if at all possible).

Anyway, one of the women at our table -- there's one at every table -- was crabby and crotchety and bickered constantly with her husband, who was across the table from her ("Why didn't you save me a seat next to you?! You knew I was behind you; you should've put money down next to you!!").

When the waitress came around offering us free drinks, this woman asked for Evian, and the waitress explained that the casino has its own bottled water. She handed one to Cranky Pants, who looked at it as though it were a rotten egg sandwich, and said, "No, no. There are so many chemicals in that water! I don't trust it," and handed it back to the waitress.

About 20 minutes later, the woman went for a snack, and returned to the table with a giant hot dog. Nature's finest, I'm sure.

People make me crazy.

Boundaries

As usual, it was tough getting back to work after a nice week of vacation, especially because today was the last day that my boss and I are simultaneously in the office until September, so there was lots to be done. I had a particularly acute bout of crabbiness just before lunch, when a co-worker initiated a meeting in which she was alternately passive-aggressive and just plain bitchy. So I was eagerly awaiting a lunch break with Minnams so I could vent and we could catch up, just the two of us.

We ended up sitting with two other people, which was fine; we chatted about our weekends and I got my mind off my crabbiness, particularly when one of our co-workers told us about her Saturday night, when she and her husband went to visit their best friends for an evening in.

It was their last weekend before the kids returned home from their summer camps, so the friends -- Sal and Janet, for purposes of this story -- invited Anne and Fred over for dinner and drinks. At sundown, a Jewish holiday of mourning began, and all of the parties are very observant, and Janet and Fred both wanted to go to temple after dinner. Anne wasn't feeling well, and had planned to go home after dinner, but Sal, who wasn't planning to join his wife at temple, said he'd rented some movies for him and Anne to watch while their spouses were attending services.

And he whipped out Monsters Ball and Unfaithful.

Anne was sort of horrified (her husband's not big on pop culture, I guess, and didn't quite absorb that both of these films include lots and lots of sex and nudity and infidelity), and declined.

She and Sal have the sort of flirty relationship you can have when all four members of two couples are very close friends, but Anne thought he'd sort of crossed a line there with those movie selections, but clearly Sal did not -- he didn't show them to her slyly or leeringly or suggestively; he just brought them out before dinner like they were, I don't know, Million Dollar Baby and Finding Nemo or something.

It's so unsettling when people violate the unspoken but -- you think -- understood boundaries of your relationship. People at our table talked about friends who introduced skinny dipping and trips to nude beaches into the equation, and how awkward it is to have to put on the prude hat in those instances. Because it's not necessarily about being a prude (although, admittedly, in my case it probably is), it's about feeling secure in your boundaries, and the specific rules of engagement you understand to apply in each of your relationships.

One of our lunchmates, a lesbian, said she finds it impossible to watch movies that feature homosexuality when she's with her family members, because they ask her a million questions that make her uncomfortable. I understand this anxiousness implicitly.

My best friend during childhood was the daughter of a film editor who worked on Dirty Dancing, so we watched that movie about a million times, and always oohed and aahed over the final dance sequence, which was primarily his responsibility (no disrespect to Baby and Johnny). But every time I watched it with my family, I made an excuse to flee the room as soon as the arm of the record player hit "These Arms of Mine" in Johnny's cabin -- shortly before the "Have you had many women?" discussion, in which you can totally see Patrick Swayze's butt-crack. Because that is just not something I need to see with my mother, so I would frantically get up and pull the "Anyone want a drink?!" or "I really have to pee!"

Even as an adult, I have this same reaction: my mom said she wanted to see Wedding Crashers, and I advised against it, then reconsidered and said, "As long as I don't have to watch it with you." And she laughed -- as she did in my adolescence when I fled the living room -- and humored me with an, "Okay, honey." How embarrassing: I'm more of a prude than my 65-year-old mother. But at least she respects -- even grudgingly -- my boundaries.

Scarred for life

As much as I enjoyed our vacation, I was a little worried about some environmental factors affecting the trip. When we arrived on Saturday, it was absolutely scorching, and the ocean provided little relief because it was (a) low tide, which meant we had to wade out miles just to get up to our torsos and (b) filled with disgusting little jellyfish pieces -- not whole jellyfish that would sting us, but sweater-lint-sized pieces that were annoying and yucky and just gross. They were still there on Sunday, and the weather was still hot and sticky.

On Monday, the rains came in the late morning -- it started sprinkling and Smelmooo and I returned home from our walk into Belmar for Dunkin Donuts, although, sadly, we found no beerpong), and they didn't let really let up until Tuesday night. There was a brief reprieve on Tuesday morning -- I got up early and went for a run on the boardwalk, and the skies opened up when I was at the farthest point from home, so by the time I made it back I was the only person on the streets and was soaked from head to toe (although, as an old man hollered to me when I was about 4 blocks from home, "We needed the rain!"). My mother called and told me I'd inherited my dad's mom's knack for bringing bad weather along with me to the beach.

On Wednesday, however, the weather turned bright and beautiful, not overly hot, and the rains seemed to have swept the vermin out of the ocean, which now boasted perfect tides and medium-rough conditions. We spent the whole day lying on the beach, reading and sleeping in the sun.

Wednesday was also the day that we started to run low on sunscreen, and I did only a haphazard job of applying it to my uber-pasty skin. I made rookie mistakes despite more than two decades of strict adherence to regular sunscreen application: I missed the backs of my knees; a large patch on the front of each thigh a one-inch stripe across my entire lower back, just above the top of my bathing suit bottom; and huge spots just below the bottom of my bathing suit bottom. I also know I put sunscreen under my bathing suit straps, but didn't reapply sufficiently after carrying our beach bag from the house and shifting the straps around throughout the day, so I had some red lines, front and back, along my white-white strap marks.

In short, I was not a pretty sight.

I slathered on lotion at every opportunity to prevent peeling, and as I did so, studying the weird patterns on my flesh, I started also noticing the little -- and not so little -- scars I've acquired over the years, which pop out more when I've gotten some sun.

I mentioned to Minnams a few months ago that it's really lonely being sick -- and I was sick a lot growing up, although luckily I'm an incredibly healthy adult so far. But the aftermath of being sick and injured, the scars -- the run-of-the-mill ones, anyway, not huge life-altering ones -- seem to spark conversations, create connections, bring stories to the surface along with the hard white splotches. Here is the rundown of my scars:

-- Two small ones on my toes, and another small one on my belly, from the chicken pox when I was six; I discovered them -- the initial spots, not the scars -- on the plane to Disney World.

-- Five scars around my abdomen from my gallbladder surgery when I was 16. Thank goodness for laporoscopic surgery and Vitamin E, because they're barely noticeable now unless you're (a) looking for them or (b) feeling around my belly, which you shouldn't ever be.

-- A pencil-eraser-sized scar on my right knee from a vicious wart I had in junior high (okay, maybe that one isn't an interesting story, and it's pretty gross, but a major scar that I figured needed a mention).

-- A long thin scar on my right shin from falling at a frat party when I visited Jenny sophomore year at Tufts. I wasn't drunk at the time; I was clumsy, and there was a gap between elevated surfaces, into which I of course fell. It was not a pretty sight, and still isn't, but it makes me think of Jenny, which is a nice consolation.

-- An inchworm-like purple scar at the top of my left ring finger -- both front and back -- acquired when I slammed my finger in the trunk of the Smelmooo's car more than two years ago. We had just gotten back from dinner with Seth and Leslie, and I still don't quite know how I managed to catch my finger in there, but it hurt like heck and I was bleeding all over the place, and all I could think of was "Oh my god; they're going to have to lop off half of my finger, I'll never be able to wear an engagement ring." Fortunately, Seth was thinking more clearly -- about me, I hope, and probably also about his new carpet -- and hooked me up expertly with gauze and bandages, which he fortunately also sent home with me, because it didn't stop bleeding until the next night. But the finger remains attached, and although I'll never be a hand model, the engagement and wedding rings look just fine on it.

Home again

The Smelmooo and I are back from our week at the beach, which was lazy and relaxing and filled with mostly good weather. We were ready to come home, though, largely because we both missed our Tucker so much; it made us so happy to pick him up from the puppy resort and to hear that he'd been a good dog (although the salt water taffy we brought for the staff there might have helped erase their memories of Tucker humping everyone in sight...).

Someone I work with asked where I was taking my summer vacation, and I told him the Jersey Shore, and he said, "Does that actually count as a vacation?" For me, it's the best kind of vacation: it's cheap, it's close, and because of both of those things, I don't feel obligated to do anything but lie around, reading and eating and doing nothing.

Even though the beach we now visit is not the one I went to growing up -- it's probably 20 minutes from there, and just has a different vibe -- just being at the shore brings back so many happy memories of the family vacations I took as a kid. When the Smelmooo and I went to the boardwalk on Point Pleasant (to see The Nerds -- I'm down to 92.75 in 900-something days!), I remembered my older sister walking five paces ahead of my dad when he wore black socks with sneakers to the boardwalk when we were kids; I remembered going to that boardwalk with a friend in high school and eating ice cream with cookie dough topping, and another visit with another friend where a vendor told me he'd give me a Coed Naked Beach Volleyball shirt for free if I gave him a blowjob. They keep you on your toes in Jersey, really.

I remembered sitting on the beach with my friend Kristin the summer before the Spin Doctors became really popular; she played me Two Princes on her discman as we sat on the beach late at night, bundled up in our matching hooded oversize Gap sweatshirts -- hers purple, mine coral -- Kristin smoking cigarettes and me lying on my back looking up at the stars, listening.

I remembered taking long walks on the beach at night, half-hoping the older kids congregated around bonfires would ask me to join them, half-fearing that they would.

Climbing on lifeguard stands at sunset, meeting up with other kids, feeling rebellious and cool as we climbed and jumped and made fast friendships that ended just as quickly.

Playing touch football with my brother and his college friends, with a yellow-and-brown Nerf football, with a giant black bruise on the yellow side, that we'd gotten at the corner drugstore.

Having awkward conversations with boys who wrote poetry by the lampposts scattered along the beach, trading phone numbers and having nothing to say once we'd left the magic of summer and sand and surf.

Holding my parents' hands in the ocean, judging the height and strength of each approaching wave, never getting tired of screaming "Over!" or "Under!" or "Through!"

Walking to the main drag every night for ice cream, waiting in endless lines and feeling that every minute was worth it, but regretting the last-minute trip to Dairy Queen before the long ride home, which always made me carsick.

Although we played bocce instead of miniature golf, and ate too much ice cream at the Beach Plum instead of at Dairy Queen, and we violated the no-TV rule my parents always instituted, there's something about every trip to the shore that just feels the same, in a good way: the kids at the water's edge with their pails and shovels, covered in sunscreen, hunched over and squealing as they water laps at their ankles; the cute college guys on the bocce court behind us who got police warnings for open container about 5 minutes after they got there; reading the newspaper and playing cards without a care in the world. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and I can't wait to do it all again next summer.

Life imitates art

The other night, I was half-watching an episode of Dead Like Me (which is a really good show, by the way, and now seasons 1 and 2 are both on DVD) where Millie/George, the main character, is charged with interviewing three candidates for a job.

The first is a guy with irritable bowel syndrome who farts through the entire interview, without acknowledgement or apology, until Millie/George calls him on it. The second is a guy from Chechnya who escaped war and torture and just wants to work so he can put food on his table. The third is a woman who'd taken 10 years to care for her aging parents, and she's desperate to re-enter the workforce now that they've died.

All three of them really want the job and try various means of bribery to get Millie/George to pick them; the woman is particularly persistent, sending a pie and a bunny rabbit and an email with a picture of her and her dying father, with the caption "Do I have a job yet? Pop would be so proud" or something.

I wish I could go into more detail, but suffice it to say that I had to interview someone for a position yesterday, and I was quite certain I'd find a pie on my doorstep this morning. I felt bad for her, because she clearly was so desperate for the job -- although I'm always intrigued by people who tell me why they want to work at my organization, as opposed to why they want this particular job, or why they're qualified for it -- but she was frankly a little batty. Very sad.

The end of an era

Later this month, it will become illegal in the town of Belmar, NJ, to play beerpong on one's lawn. I can't find a link about this, but...

Oh, wait. The Smelmooo just came in and looked over my shoulder and said, "Oh, that's on Seth's page." So, not only am I unoriginal, I'm stealing, but here you go (thanks, Seth!).

Anyway, I've never actually played beerpong in Belmar, so it's not like I'm longing for the lazy afternoons out on my lawn, or that I'm personally affected by this. And part of me understands the decision to try to make Belmar a classier town -- it's like a small-scale version of Giuliani's clean-up of Times Square.

But Belmar is exactly the kind of beach town that ought to have beerpong on the lawn. It's where 20 friends rent a house for a week and cram into tiny bedrooms, and just hang out and walk to D'Jais and lie on the beach all day sleeping off their hangovers, and start the cycle all over again. It wasn't for me, but for so many people it's a rite of passage, an annual ritual, a source for a million memories and endless nights of "remember when...?"s.

There's something distinct about Belmar: if you're walking north from Spring Lake, you know immediately when you've crossed the line into Belmar (it's less pronounced walking south into town, but there's still a different feel when you hit the Dunkin Donuts on Ocean Avenue, which I love and hope to visit at least once this week).

Please don't take away the beerpong; it's part of what makes Belmar Belmar.

On a related note, I spent many a night in college playing beerpong in the KDR basement, but there we called it Beirut for some reason. Same game, different name. I wasn't really a drinker before college -- I first got drunk, on Milwaukee's Best Light Ice (wide-mouth cans, of course) -- on my eighteenth birthday, thanks to the tag-team efforts of my two roommates, one of whom had a car (thanks, Sarah) and one of whom had a good fake ID (thanks, Katie!). Anyway, I didn't know about Beirut until I got to school, but of course I had to fake like I was an old pro and I totally knew how to play and what it was. And I turned out to be pretty good at it, which is so revolting, because there are ping-pong balls that have been all over that disgusting floor IN YOUR DRINK, and you go ahead and drink it anyway. What?! How could a germ-freak like me ever engage -- willingly -- in this game? Peer pressure, I guess. I don't know; I think I get competitive when I drink.

So there's another argument for keeping beerpong on Belmar's lawns: it's much more sanitary to have the ping-pong balls bouncing on the ground outside than inside a makeshift fraternity house's basement.

But the ban's not in effect yet, so perhaps the Smelmooo and I will take a spin through Belmar this week and play my first -- and last -- game of outdoor Belmar Beirut. If we do, I'll kick some ass.

Guppy noises on a Tuesday

First of all, I can't even believe it's only Tuesday. What a long freakin' week it's been.

Today our office had a "clean-up day," during which it's forbidden to have meetings; once a year, we're supposed to reserve the day for cleaning out our electronic files that clog up the system (there's another day reserved specifically for cleaning out the physical office). Of course, being such a rebel, I secretly participated in three meetings anyway, and they were all kind of long and drawn out and painful, and now I probably won't win a prize for most files deleted.

Anyway, in one of these meetings, I was feeling incredibly frustrated because the conversation just kept going around in circles; the same issues that came up a year ago on this project are still coming up, and round and round we go. Luckily, it was a conference call, so I pretty much kept quiet and let the other people hash out what they needed to.

In my next meeting, I wasn't as lucky; I was in the room with a lot of senior people who know more about the project than I do, but I totally disagreed with much of the direction of the conversation. And I had no capacity to express why I disagreed, other than gut instinct, which doesn't go very far with this crowd, or to offer other solutions that weren't met with total silence. Sometimes they were jumping around so much that when I thought I had my head around it and had worked out how to express my point, they'd moved on to the next, and I sat there with my mouth half-open, having started to talk but abruptly deciding the moment had passed.

Minnams calls this phenomenon "the guppy," even though she doesn't usually attribute the behavior to me. But there I was, totally being the guppy, fully aware that I was the guppy, and kicking myself because I know how incompetent Minnams' usual guppy comes across when she pulls this, and how badly I was revealing myself to be a total fraud.

Miraculously, though, I think I came through in the end. A generous colleague (who I think used to be a therapist, which explains a lot) in the room said, "Tangentwoman? It seems like you might not agree with this idea. What would you recommend?" and once the floor was mine, I was fine, and I meandered my way to valid arguments that wound up carrying the day in the end. But boy, getting past that guppy thing was tough, probably in part because I was so self-conscious about the guppy thing.

Thanks, Minnams!

Just kidding; it's all part of this wonderful world of career skills development and junk, although this kind of cracking under pressure makes me worry that I'm not particularly well-suited for my current job.

When I was in college and my dad was concerned that I didn't have a career picked out, he sent me to this career counselor guy he knew who gave me one of those tests that in high school told me I should be a flower arranger. The one I took in college told me I should be a director of religious education or a speech pathologist.

I actually have been thinking, just in the last couple of days, that maybe I ought to look into this speech pathology thing, although I know nothing of what such a job would entail, in terms of training or practice. Would I have to work with lispy kids in trailers and instill in them a lifelong hatred of Cheerios? Or would it be working with those people in the New York Times article a couple of weeks ago who somehow have never developed a capacity to change the inflection in their voice, so they always speak in a monotone? Or is it something totally different -- is a speech pathologist different from a speech therapist? I need to investigate this, I think.