Smells Like Happy

Only Connect...

I was at dinner with friends the other night, and one friend remarked how much she hates people. In fact, she said, she's starting to hate people more and more. It was funny because she's not a sociopath. She was talking about work and bosses and the kind of people who say, at first meeting, "I AM THE DIRECTOR OF MANY IMPORTANT THINGS. AND WHO DO YOU PURPORT TO BE." And then they walk away.

That brought up something that I've been thinking about: I'm liking people more and more. I said this to my friends, with slack jaw, dopey grin and wide eyes. You know, the kind of look that would make you say, "Oh, no, you don't want to like me. I'm a terrible person," while backing up and fumbling for the pepper spray.

But you know what? I like those people too. Those funny, suspicious people. The ones who reflexively say to approaching, smiling strangers, "NO, I DON'T have thirty seconds for the environment. Jesus." I like those people because they want to be smiled at without being asked to sign a petition, and that's a legitimate wish. I like them because, like me, they don't know a single person in their whole apartment building, probably live a good five hundred miles from where they grew up, and quickly warm up to any genuine offer of community that they receive. I know this because they are human, and because I am too.

Only connect.

In cities full of strangers, it can be terribly difficult for two individuals to connect. All of the old guideposts are gone: We typically can't tell whether we have the same religion, or any religion; we can't tell what town we're from, but it's often not the town we're wandering around; we can't tell our political leanings or our economic status or our how nice we are to our parents (and that last thing is really the only one of importance in that list). Most of the time, our dour faces won't even betray our moods. Sunglasses hide our eyes. Headphones plug our ears. Purpose snaps our lips into thin lines. We walk quickly.

But we all crave the same thing: to connect. Even the ones who say they disdain people want this -- and if they're playing such offense, it's a sure sign that they really want to connect. This desire is coded into their DNA, our DNA, because connecting is how we humans survive. Evolution gave us this need for community, just as it gave us opposable thumbs and a narrow pelvis for walking upright. Generally, humans only isolate if they feel isolated, point if they feel pointed at, discount if they feel discounted.

I see it all around me, in strangers and in friends.

For a spell in my late teens and early 20s, that was me. I was an armadillo, a "little armored one." I suppose I felt isolated, pointed at, and so I reflected those feelings. But the very presence of my armor said much more about me than it said about anyone else.

I'm not like that anymore. (If you're very lucky, a bit of age will do that to you.) And now when I meet people whose defenses are clouding their base nature, I feel more compassion than annoyance. They're not bullshitting me any more than they're bullshitting themselves, but it's OK. I get it.

But it is bullshit nonetheless. And I'm pretty sure that the truly happy people in this world don't slog around in their own bullshit all day.

I often think we'd all be more connected and honest if we could get in touch our inner six-year-olds. Kids have no bullshit. They have no capacity for it. Kids are perfect. They smile when they want to smile, cry when they're upset. Even when a child is touched by ugly circumstance, her core is clean and honest and, usually, available.

I was perfect when I was six, and I bet you were, too. At six, my mistakes were innocent, my intentions were pure. At six, I was always in love, with everything. With dolls, with boys, with patent leather tap shoes and a pair of pink shorts that said "Buzz off" on the back pocket. With a Laura Branigan record and a microphone. With Miss Spain, who was my teacher, not an Iberian beauty pageant winner (but every bit as extraordinary to me). I rang neighbors' doorbells and performed choreographed dances when they answered. They cheered.

Now, I try to keep one hand on that girl at all times and let her lead the way. Because when it comes to connecting, she knows what's up. She's my touchstone: If it works for her, it works for me.

That's why I made a decision, about a year ago, to walk around with a smile. Just a small, pleasant smile. And it changes things. People smile back, automatically, because we're programmed to exchange these nonverbal communications and to accept kindness at face value. In urban life, we build little walls around our humanity and staff those walls with little guards in little watchtowers. But when somebody smiles at you for no apparent reason, your little guards freeze. Confused! And before the guards can issue orders ("MAINTAIN! LIPS! DO NOT BREAK FROWN FORMATION!"), you have smiled back. And god damn it if everybody doesn't feel a tiny bit better.  

This meandering manifesto is leading to something that you might have figured out ages ago. Or maybe you're still not getting it, but here it is: It's not about you. It's about us.

Maybe it took me a little longer to figure that out and incorporate it into my life. I feel a little silly saying that.

But here it is. And here's what I'm doing with it.

1. I'm matchmaking. My relationships don't have to stop with me, so I'm spreading them around. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues -- I have so many good people in my life, and some could benefit from knowing each other. I'm being the conduit for their connections and watching what happens.

2. I'm advocating. I started a local chapter of an organization that I believe in very strongly. The people we help are in desperate need, and I have the ability to help alleviate that need. So I'm doing it. It's highly political (although something of a no-brainer for people on the left and the right, I believe). Maybe such public advocacy will mean that I won't be writing for major newspapers anymore. I don't care.

3. I'm investing in others. I've known about Etsy.com for a long time, but I've only recently discovered it. I'm blown away by the artwork and by the people behind the art. I'm going to buy exclusively handmade products as gifts for a while because I believe in supporting people who create, either to throw more good into the world or rid themselves of the bad that tries to creep in. And when a thing of art speaks to you, a thing born out of the head and hands of another, you can close the circuit. You can say to the person who created it, "You made something beautiful, and it makes me happy. I am investing in you." That feeds you both. It's a gift, the giving of which feels like, I don't know, waking up tomorrow and seeing on the front page of the New York Times, "WARM APPLE PIE, KITTEN SNUGGLING PROVED TO CURE CANCER."

Today I received a print that I ordered from artist Jeannie Lynn Paske, whose work speaks to me so deeply that I can't easily explain it. I envision a wall of my office lined with her prints. I don't know her, but I don't have to. I feel connected to the part of the artist that creates this art because it expresses something I feel in a medium I cannot master. And I feel grateful to her for making that possible. (Please go find some artists on Etsy who make you feel the same way.)

4. I'm creating. If I can give someone else that sense of connection, it will all have been worth it.

5. I'm forgiving. That's a verb, not an adjective. Forgiving is such an active task, sometimes requiring constant renewal. People don't always know what to do with you when you try to connect with them. Maybe they're lost. Maybe they're just not interested. Maybe they're hurt and messed up and temporarily closed for business. Regardless, when I feel let down -- especially when someone lets me down repeatedly -- I have a choice: I can get sad or angry, and swear and denounce; or I can step back from the situation and wish, with a heart full of kindness, that they can conquer their demons. I've learned -- and I promise that this, more than anything else I've said, is absolutely, immutably true -- that other people can't be made to fix themselves, no matter how much I plead or shout or persuade. No matter how much I try to connect. And I've also learned that anger blackens the heart. So when anger tries to move its big, ugly, stinking baggage into my heart, I say, sorry, all I can offer you is the couch. For one night. And I'm not feeding you.

 

Like I said, maybe you integrated this idea into your life a long time ago. Maybe you think it's nonsense (I think you're wrong). Maybe you're seriously afflicted by a lack of connection or maybe it amounts to nothing more than a minor annoyance in your life. Or maybe you, like me, benefit from the occasional reminder that the world is out there, waiting to connect with you.

If you're walking the world with a scowl, let your lips step out of formation. Your mental guards won't shoot.

If you're slogging around in your own bullshit, maybe after years of feeling disconnected and discounted, well... that's harder. I know it is. But just realize that it's a choice. A conscious choice. And once you realize that, you will have no one to blame but yourself -- and everyone to thank when they accept the hand that you reach out.

That's Democrazy, Yo.

So here we are. April 15. Have you paid your taxes? Oh, GOOD. Because now the country can pay for a bunch of stuff, like infrastructure and social services. And even though you probably don't feel like you authorized those expenditures, you sort of did. You elected the people who authorized them. And in our representative government, that's the way it works. Yay democracy!

Except here. In Washington, D.C., the city that perhaps represents better than any other city all that this nation stands for, we have no representative government. And BOY, did I pay some taxes, yo. Yay democracy!

Oh. Wait.

We have no senators. We have no voting congressional representatives at all. We have Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is allowed to sit at the table with the big kids and raise her hand when she has something polite to say. But when it comes to voting and actually, you know, mattering, she has to keep her hands firmly in her lap.

Did you know this? You probably did, even if you didn't realize it. That's what happened to me when we were considering moving here. "One hundred senators, two for each state, but D.C. isn't a state, so... oh. OH."

If you care, you can read a little more about it here. And if it really gets your undies in a bundle and you happen to live in one of the states whose senators are using all kinds of funny filibustering hijinks (silly boys!) to block legislation that would give li'l D.C. voting representation, you can maybe call those senators. Tell them to quit playing games or you'll go to the press with proof of their, uh, mafia ties? Indecent liaisons with high-priced hookers? Undocumented lawn care specialists? Indecent liaisons with low-priced hookers? Third nipple? Just keep shouting them out until you hit a nerve.

(No. Don't do that. That's blackmail! Blackmail is not nice. But effective. But not nice! Try threatening to TP their houses with that super-cheap, one-ply crap from Costco the night before a good rain. NOT SO FUNNY NOW, IS IT, SENATOR.)

Who Are These People?

I know I'm not the only one receiving a flood of spam allegedly from Russian girls who want to have my baby.

"I Think that there has come time when each person in this world reflects to create happy family for a birth in the future of remarkable children which will be surrounded with caress and care of parents."

It goes on, and it's signed "Russian girl IRINA." The suspicious JPEG pinned neatly to the top of the email suggests that IRINA wants to show me her ample bosoms and maybe eyeliner application skills. But I know that she, who probably isn't even a she, really just wants to hijack my computer. The goal is probably to slow things down and cause me mild inconvenience until I do a system restore.

If you're trying to bring down the financial institutions of the Western world or steal my credit card number, I see how that can be accomplished with nefarious programming. I get it. You're really into jihad, or you really want a new big-screen TV. But who spends days programming viruses that mildly inconvenience a few people?

I've been saying that a lot lately, in various situations: Who are these people?

My parents visited this past weekend, fluffy white dogs in tow. And during our visit to Mount Vernon, some woman beckoned a security officer and told him that one of our dogs had pooed on the presidential lawn and that we had not cleaned up. The dog had not pooed anywhere. At all. And I had to fight the urge to track down this lying woman and command both dogs to poo on her face. I successfully fought the urge, because I am not one of those people. But she, apparently, is.

Who makes up shit about dog shit?

Last week, we watched the 4.5-hour mindfuck that is "Bush's War," a PBS documentary about the run-up to and execution of the Iraq War. The documentary is brilliant and shocking and deeply reported; it's the facts that pour into your ears and mix into a combustible solution of lies and then explode your head into a billion pieces all over the living room couch. I'm one of those annoying People Who Do Not Allow Talking during certain programs, but again, I couldn't stop asking The Mouse: Who are these people? These people who run our government and hijack our government and send boys to die in a hot, dry, sandy hell for the privilege of escorting a private contractor's load of supplies?

"Nightmare at Guantanamo Bay" on 60 Minutes pushed me past my limit.

I know that a lot of people have outrage overload, which is why we don't act all that outraged. Once you hit overload, you acclimate. If the madness of the world won't go away, your brain has to somehow make that madness normal. And normal isn't so bad, right? It's just the way things are.

But when a little computer programming mischief makes me question human nature, I think that's a sign that I've gone beyond outrage overload. I've reached outrage fatigue.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about how The Mouse and I eloped. She asked why, I glossed over the religion thing, and she pressed for more. I groaned inwardly, because -- although I don't know her well -- I know that she is an avid church goer.

"Why wouldn't you get baptized?"

"Because I don't believe in it."

"Well, what are you?"

"Atheist."

"Oh...... Really?"

She spent the next few minutes attempting to uncover the rotten root of my godlessness somewhere deep in my past. I spent the next few minutes doing everything I could to tiptoe around the issue. I do not debate the merits and demerits of religion with strangers, rarely even with people I know. It's a one-way street to a flooded cul-de-sac. But the result this time was that I tiptoed too lightly, was overly deferential, and she interpreted my views as things that I resent, things that hold me back, things that make me sad. She looked at me sorrowfully, as one might look at a heartbroken child, and told me that her god would give me blessings.

I despise feeling misunderstood, but I let it go. It wasn't her fault.

Today, I was telling a good friend that I sometimes feel that transcendent happiness may be more accessible to people like that acquaintance -- people who believe in a god or a divine purpose or an afterlife. I do not want blind faith, I find it dangerous and counterintuitive. But I do admit that blind faith in some omniscient, omnipotent divine being might be quite handy in the battle against outrage. Why be outraged if everything has a purpose that we can't know?

That's overly simplified, of course. Most of my religious friends will say they are also outraged at the world because they believe in free will, and the world is full of assholes who exercise free will in a most despicable manner.

Which puts us all, once again, in the same pitching boat. A boat that has been commandeered by a gang of people we don't know, don't recognize. Who are these people?

I give my time and my money to causes I believe in. But even those efforts can feel hollow. And I don't know what to do about that. Sometimes I long to see outrage on the faces of others. I ache to hear it in their voices and feel it in their words. There's nothing so unifying or comforting among humans as a shared extreme emotion.

So if you want to come over, we can take the elevator to the roof. We can scream angry, improvised poetry through the night air. We'll be able to see the White House and the Capitol Building and the monuments to the people who died for purposes both right and wrong, but our words will likely reach only the next block where the same homeless man sleeps on the same park bench every night. We can scream at them, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHO ARE YOU, and no one will answer. We won't have changed anything, least of all the propensity for bored, pimply-faced teenaged boys to write silly email viruses. People will still lie about dog shit and weapons of mass destruction, and then volunteer the idealists to take the bullet. In the shadowy corners of our government, people will still be tortured and denied due process and sometimes killed.

But maybe we will feel better for having screamed side by side. For having defied the isolation that comes from watching 30-second clips of enraging news stories that are bookended by commercials for cars and bacon burgers and shampoo. For having connected in an honest, feeling way that seems increasingly infrequent but is as important as ever.

I don't know about you, but I really need that.

Progress

Whenever I come back from a trip outside the U.S., I'm always struck by details of American life that I hadn't much noticed before. Yesterday, on my way to meet The Mouse for lunch in D.C.'s Chinatown, I realized that skyscrapers block the sun. BLOCK THE SUN. Not to get all John Muir on you, but isn't that sort of odd? Blocking large swaths of land from the sun and covering them with concrete means that nothing will grow there. For much of human history, if nothing would grow on the land, there would be nothing for people to eat. And if there were nothing for people to eat, they would starve and die. But instead, we grew really big brains and used them to build really big buildings, transport crops from elsewhere, and otherwise conquer the Earth and all of the limitations it imposed. Progress.

This all stands in contrast to my experiences of the last two weeks. Down in tiny Samara, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, we spent two very slow and quiet weeks living as the Earth dictated. We slathered on lotion to block the sun's rays. We napped in the hottest part of the day when it was too hot to do anything else. We swam during high tide. Swatted flies that competed for our lunch, grew accustomed to the ants that crawled in our room. Awoke with the birds and slept when the sun set. Initially, the change-up of my normally self-directed routine made me restless. But in the end, I fell into step with nature's constant -- and often inconvenient -- rhythm. For us, it was a step back to a simpler time that existed many, many generations ago in our own homeland.

Three years ago, a friend spent a summer in Samara teaching English. When I told him today that two American car rental companies have set up offices in Samara, he was shocked. Pablo, the Costa Rican man who took us to a nearby island for snorkeling last week, told us that Samara did not have any white people roaming its streets five to ten years ago. "It's good and it's bad," he said. "The tourism is good for our economy and it gives us jobs, but it also introduces our children to new people with new ideas and new ways of thinking. That's not always good."

We could see the wariness on locals' faces. Not resentment so much as resignation -- an understanding that their conflicting feelings don't even matter because the change they're witnessing is inevitable. It's an unstoppable process that has already been thrust into motion. Italians, Americans, Germans, Canadians -- they're all snapping up property and building roomy houses and comfy motels to hold more of their kind. They hire locals to cook and clean and transport and guard, thus providing jobs to fuel the local economy. But they also drive up prices. And as Pablo told us, "People here were getting along just fine before tourism."

Samara is still relatively unknown to tourists. But as vacationers seek out spots that are quieter and less touristy than Tamarindo or Jaco, they'll trickle into Samara with increasing regularity. And to accommodate those tourists, Samara may grow to resemble the very areas that those travelers are trying to avoid. And then one day, when Samara perhaps has a Burger King and a Subway and a giant, all-inclusive resort, travelers will move on to the next beach town that is purer, less contaminated with the world they are trying to escape. They may leave behind a town that attracts only tourists who are less interested in cultural exchange than in packaged experiences that sample fragments of local life but never push them out of their comfort zones. A town that has changed irreversibly.

I love visiting other countries and cultures. It challenges my own ways of thinking and shakes up my routines and notions about the world. It makes me a better global citizen. But as much as we gain from our sojourns into other worlds, we leave behind traces of our own societies' values. We show up in our fashionable clothing with our ultra-portable laptops, shiny cameras and North Face gear, and we impart our ideas of progress. But is progress equal to to having more money to acquire more things? Is it the ability to buy a Coca-Cola on every corner? Is progress an ethic that values work more than leisure? The existence of farming conglomerates that grow, distribute and sell produce for lower prices?

Or are we merely teaching, by example, how to live in fruitless pursuit of the material happiness that is marketed to us? Are we, in effect, telling people who are happy and self-sufficient that they're measuring themselves by the wrong standards? That they're actually unhappy and poor and didn't even know it?

I don't know the answer. Maybe these changes are uncomfortable only for the one generation that lives to see life clearly on both sides of such progress -- the before and the after. Maybe the dark and the light of human nature -- the greed and the beautiful desire to achieve for achievement's sake -- conspire to make such change inevitable.

I know it's not black and white. But I think that exploring the shades of grey would make all travelers a little more aware of the exchange we take part in with every border we cross. And wouldn't that be progress?

We could call ourselves "People Concerned About the Written English Language." But "Whiny Snobs" is more succinct.

I found our current living quarters on Craigslist and, for about two months, interacted with our new landlord only via email. Her messages were always terse and economical, though never rude or curt. They were sometimes so terse that I worried she might be a 16-year-old delinquent scamming us for a security deposit. But I verified through public tax records that she did, in fact, own the place she was attempting to rent out. And based on her email communications, my mind proceeded to complete the picture -- to build her out, if you will -- of a small, shy, serious woman who avoided bright lights and direct eye contact with other humans.

I met her this weekend. Or perhaps I should say that I met her teeth this weekend, because she was so endlessly smiley and cheery that the teeth are what I remember most. Couldn't tell much about the eyes, but that's because every time the teeth burst through the lips, the eyes retreated behind a cloak of happily crinkled lids. It was like the opposite of the super-hot-sounding disk jockey who shows up to broadcast live from the state fair, rendering you speechless with his total lack of hotness. (HINT: They are never hot. And the state fair is still scary.) The landlord was, in person, a delightful human. Sweet as sugar-coated gum drops dipped in Nutella and sprinkled with the laughter of twelve kindergartners.

I'm always amazed at how many people -- people who are like the Delightful Landlord in person -- apparently lack email communication skills. What's happening here? I want to know: Are they incapable of making themselves come across, in email, the way they would come across in person? Or are they simply unaware of the disconnect?

Email has made writing the Everyman's mode of communicating. Yes, I write for a living, so I am overly conscious of the way I use my tools. Just like any craftsman with a toolbox, writers carefully consider the ideas they are about to put down and they immediately know which tools -- the em dash! the sentence fragment -- will help translate those ideas from brain to screen or paper. But I have lots of friends and colleagues who are neither writers nor editors but know, just the same, how to make it clear in email that they are not jerks or creeps or oVERLY HAPPY MAYbE MANiC OMG!!!!!

I once had a boss who was so inept at written communication that to receive an email from him was to wonder -- initially in forehead-slapping astonishment and eventually in resignation (literally) -- why this man decided he was fit to establish and run a marketing communications company. A typical email to a Fortune 500 client:

 

Hi.

We have not been paid for our last invoice. Could you pls tell us when to expect it.

Tks.

This was the figurehead, the self-proclaimed president, of the company. Marketing? None. Communications? Poor. And doesn't he seem like an ass?

OK, he really was an ass. Bad example. But some people daily misrepresent themselves as angry or sociopathic or 15 YRS OLD SUCH A QT 8)OMG!!!!! I don't advocate the abuse of smiley faces or exclamation points, but an occasional one can do wonders for your image. Try it! It says, "I'm one of the good guys! And I bet you are, too."

You think I'm whining about nothing. You think I need to keep busier with more work or take up needlepoint. I'll grant you counts two and three, but to count one I say HAA! Readers, this situation is going to get worse. We must now begin bracing ourselves and our grammatical sensibilities for the day that the current crop of 14-year-olds enters the workplace.

 

hey

sup? afaik we still dont hav that invc pd can u or sum1 get bak to me @teotd n no l8r?

thx!!!!!!!!!

atb

 

And then that person will become your boss. And fire you.

i m +ly :( 2 hav 2 tell u this

but we r dwnszng

u didnt make the cut

coz u type 2 slo

wiv words 2 big

suggest txt training

ynk, they mite reconsdr

so sorry, ttly sux

b4n!!!!!!!!

bos

 

Oh, god. We must band together. Lead by example. Educate. Secure a celebrity spokesperson. Natalie Portman? Natalie Portman!

Please, continue your other socially responsible endeavors -- advocating oil conservation and the protection of habeas corpus, whatever you do when you're not picking up sidewalk litter. But please, when you spread your socially responsible messages to the wider world, do it with emails that portray you as the kind, educated sweetheart that you are. And someday, maybe we'll all get fired with dignity. Hope is all we have.

Suck it, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

When Kathy Griffin accepted her Emmy award on Saturday, she said this:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus! This award is my god now."

And yesterday, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced that Griffin's remarks would be cut from the pre-recorded broadcast of the show.

And do you know why? Because, in an unprecedented (and surely unintentional) display of irony that comedians such as Griffin surely must appreciate, the misnamed Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded it.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded that Griffin be censored for her remarks about Jesus.

And I am way beyond fired up about it.

Kathy Griffin is a comedian. And comedians, lest the ATAS which rewards them does not realize, make money for themselves and for television networks and for Emmy awards shows by saying provocative things in ways they deem to be humorous. And humor is subjective. I don't think Kathy Griffin is particularly funny; I find her rather grating. But she is an American born with the right to say whatever she wants about Jesus or Mohammed or Allah or you or me. (Of course, she could arguably be convicted of slandering or libeling you or me if she said just the right thing, but I'm pretty sure Jesus won't be filing a libel claim against Griffin anytime soon. Anyway, in this case, he'd lose.)

The Catholic League has classified Griffin's remarks as "hate speech," which is terribly amusing. What if Kelly Clarkson, upon winning her next award, says, "A lot of people come up here and thank Clive Davis for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Clive Davis. Suck it, Clive Davis! This award is my record producer now"?

Either the Catholic League does not employ lawyers, or the lawyers it employs slept in on the one precious morning their schools taught the First Amendment. Sure, they have a right to try to censor Griffin, just as I have a right to go to small claims court and try to file a suit against you for looking at me cross-eyed.

As a rational, thinking human being, I fervently believe that nothing -- nothing -- should be forcefully exempted from scrutiny. If you choose not to scrutinize the Bible and its many stories, great! Super! You can go to church every Sunday. You can walk around all day expounding your beliefs. You can even install yourself on a corner of your local park, dress yourself in pro-Jesus sandwich boards, and shout that I and my kind will feel the flames of hell lick at our flesh for all eternity if we don't repent and accept Jesus into our cold, withering hearts. But you cannot -- you absolutely cannot, even if you are a lobbying group with millions of dollars and politically powerful clergy behind you -- force another person to cease scrutinizing religion in the most private of inner thoughts or the most public of television acceptance speeches.

You might say, "sure she thinks that -- she's an atheist." And you'd be partly right. I am an atheist, and I am painfully aware of the fact that vocal atheists have precious few kindred spirits in the world of pop culture, the most visible of which -- hi, Lisa Simpson! -- is a cartoon character. I am painfully aware of the fact that I belong to the most feared, distrusted, hated and misunderstood group of people in America today. I am painfully aware that I would never stand a chance as a political candidate.

But this isn't about me or atheism. It's about all of us. And regardless of your personal beliefs, you should share in every ounce of my outrage that our culture abandons scrutiny to kneel at the foot of powerful politicoreligious organizations. Because the political bed you rest in today might feel just right -- not too hard, not too soft. But Goldilocks, you'd be foolish to assume that the bears won't eventually come home.

Hello from... Boston.

When I look back on our Chicago-to-Boston move, I feel warm and fuzzy. The movers were so nice! And helpful. And punctual! Communicative. Even our San Francisco-to-Chicago move in 2004 -- the one in which some 20 boxes came open and spilled their contents throughout the moving truck -- was a dream compared to this move to D.C.

I'll spare you the play by play. Boring! Complicated! Instead, I'll share some pieces of wisdom that I have learned over the last week.

1. When the movers arrive six hours late -- and quite possibly drunk -- and toothless quite possibly because, well, meth will do that to you -- and you have only five hours to empty your apartment of all items, you will smile and remind yourself that they are only possessions, only things. You will be as kind to the movers as possible, force a laugh when they tell you how much money your items "will fetch on the auction block," and decide that if your prized, ergonomic desk shows up in one piece, that will be really nice.

2. When you buy a car, you must not buy it from a private party. Just don't, 'kay? And if you do, you must not attempt to buy it immediately prior to moving to a new state and immediately prior to the date when the seller will move to another country. Just don't. You'll find yourself back in the city you just left five days prior, in the middle of a logistical and bureaucratic mess. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS. Just buy from the dealer and enjoy your life.

3. Two days after your move, when your husband suddenly loses the ability to walk and develops a blazing hot knee -- not, like, sexy (although his knees are lovely), but hot to the touch -- and all signs point to a repeat of the the time he wound up in the hospital with MRSA, you must take him to the E.R. right away. Yes, even if this happens during the tiniest of windows when he happens to be without health insurance. And after two doctors spend 30 minutes jamming very large needles into his knee joint in unsuccessful attempts to extract some material for testing, you must be at the ready with the Vicodin. Everything you say will be the wrong thing and he will think that having to hear words or say words or think in words is going to make him die just a little faster than he is already dying, and that's what he will mean when he says JUST GIVE ME THE GODDAMNED FUCKING PILLS NOOOOW.

He'll apologize later and you'll say hey, no problem, you had large needles in your joint, and someday when I am pregnant and laboring with contractions, you will be repaid in full.

4. Stop wearing button-up shirts. They're either perfectly sized in the chest and too big everywhere else, or too tight in the chest and perfectly sized everywhere else. You will not like the feeling you get when you look down at the end of the day and see that the all-important boob button has relieved itself of its burden. But at least you will have solved the mystery of why the 15-year-old boy in the drive through ogled you as though you were a Big Mac.

5. Stop sitting under trees. The United Association of Birds has obviously released a memo to all members advising that your head needs fertilization.

There! Have we all learned something of value?

Tomorrow night (if all goes well), I'll be driving back to D.C. for the second time in a week, but this time to stay. And this time behind the wheel of our first big purchase together. And then I'll spend the weekend writing 10 corporate web pages and a 1000-word article and unpacking a billion boxes. I'll battle with the moving company over our final cost and bug my husband to remember to take his antibiotics. But most of all, I'll be glad. Because... well, why not?

You're not fat. And if you are, I don't care.

Since I obviously would rather sit amid folded-up boxes than fill those boxes with my possessions -- there's nothing like a packing all-nighter before the movers show up -- I may as well share something that's been bothering me.

Lately, I've been reading more than a few blog entries about bodies. Pre-diet bodies and post-diet bodies and I wish I were thinner and I'm okay with my weight--really, I swear! And halfway through these entries, I find myself scanning the room, left to right and back again, making sure that I haven't teleported myself to a high school locker room.

No, no -- I'm still in my living room. And these words really are coming from smart, accomplished women. And that's when I shake my head.

Look. We all have our issues, and sometimes those issues are related to our bodies. If asked to draft our own hate-it lists about our bodies, most people would have at least one feature to shamefully scribble down, such as a flabby stomach or weird toes or asymmetrical eyebrows. Maybe we'll even blog about our asymmetrical eyebrows once in a while! But when I see a perfectly smart woman publicly hammering away at her own self-worth, over and over, I cringe with every thwhack of the hammer.

I might like to know what you look like so I can imagine you in the stories you're telling or pick you out in a crowded restaurant. But I don't care what you look like. I care about whether you would choose A) help elderly woman across the street over B) mow down elderly woman with car. I care about whether you're a sweetheart or a total asswipe. I don't care about the circumference of your thighs, and you know what? I really, really don't want you to care about the circumference of your thighs, either. Because your thighs will never be perfect, and if you're waiting for them to be perfect -- or even hitting the gym or the pavement or the punching bag in a sweaty effort to make them perfect -- you're going to spend a huge portion of your life obsessing over this life-halting minutiae, the sum of which does not add up to You.

The sum of which does not add up to You.

Please don't waste your time telling me that I don't have to read stuff that I don't want to read, because that's not the point. And please don't point out that not everybody is born looking look like a supermodel (not even supermodels look like supermodels, people) and some of us actually have to work for it, because you'd be getting even further from the point.

We all can obsess about whatever we like on our blogs and in our lives. Shoes! Kids! Cats! Running! Boobs! Operating systems! But the point is that you will live a much happier life if you spend it obsessing about the good stuff that makes you happy, not obsessing about all the shit that's wrong with you but isn't really wrong.

You can stop being a victim of popular culture. If you want to.

When I was 13 and I asked my mom whether I looked fat in some hideous getup -- most likely stirrup pants and an oversized sweatshirt with a bizarre geometric pattern -- I was never satisfied with her answer because it would invariably go beyond "no" to include something like, "when will you realize that you're a beautiful person on the inside and that's what matters?" I would roll my eyes at this motherly cliche and storm off to change into my acid-washed, tight-rolled jeans. And probably dispense a liter of Aussie Sprunch Spray on my bangs.

But you know what? Now, when I look at my friends and nieces and nephews and random kids on the sidewalk, I really get it. People are chock full of potential, and that's beautiful. It's so goddamned beautiful to see someone happy, to see someone working to live a life that makes them happy. So I tsk anyone who chooses to spend their time feeling unacceptable or ugly or unworthy of happiness. See a therapist, talk with your friends, chase a runner's high -- whatever. But don't sit still under the weight of your body issues. Or someday you'll pull out a photo of yourself, perhaps one snapped just the other day, and it will break your heart just a little bit to think how that beautiful girl in the photo -- that beautiful girl for whom you will instantly feel a swell of pride and adoration -- couldn't love herself, get her wheels unstuck from the mud of these meaningless issues, grab life by the dorsal fin and go for a fantastic ride.

The longer that I wait...

One of the tremendous things about living on the east coast is that we can decide on a Thursday night to wake up Friday morning and drive from one major city to another. This weekend, we took a GPS-guided trip from Boston down to Washington, D.C., to look at 379,413 condos. Our learnings from the trip include such indispensable bits of knowledge as:

1. When you open the door to a condo that costs more than the GDP of several small nations, you should not, under any circumstances, shout, "HOLY FREAKING SHIT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"
2. "Up and coming" apparently refers less to a neighborhood's economic development than to the nether regions of the neighborhood's various street-corner transvestites.
3. In D.C. in the summertime, it is important to never, ever step outside without a NASA cool suit.
4. GPS is the coolest invention since the compass and the atlas! We named ours Vivian ("she's stern but fair," as The Mouse said).

I don't know if you're familiar with the housing market in the San Francisco area during the dot-com boom, but D.C. prices are about a kitty's whisker from that level of absurdity. And in the end, this last-minute trip felt too last-minute, and we decided to rent for six months. That way, we can decide which up-and-coming neighborhood has the most promising appreciation potential and the least aggressive transvestites.

(And now we've reached the portion of our post in which we must say, MOM, RELAX. D.C. is a very nice city with all kinds of cool museums and nice, normal people and pretty buildings and preserved documents. And SAFE! So safe. And to be fair, the transvestites who propositioned us were very polite and offered to give us whatever we needed.)

After all of this real estate thinking -- so what's that cost per square foot? but did you factor in the parking space? did you say .3 miles to the nearest Metro stop or .6? -- I had three nights of back-to-back condo dreams. Not so much anxiety dreams as repetition dreams. This happens when I've been focusing too much on any single thing for more than a day. They are plotless, just streams of repetitive thoughts and actions, and then I wake up feeling tired but full of useless new insights. Sunday morning's epiphany, the first thing I said after opening my eyes: "Do you know why it's harder to lift dead, floppy weight than to lift stiff weight? Because the center of gravity keeps shifting with dead weight."

My genius visits only in my dreams. And tells me that I should have been a mechanical engineer.

But last night's dream took a turn. After driving many miles and being stuck in standstill traffic for hours, I came home and dropped into sleep like a stone into water. And then I awoke in the middle of the night in a mild panic with my brain stuck in a loop of this soothing thought:

But if we buy a two-bedroom place and we decide to have a kid in three years, WHERE THE HELL WILL WE PUT THE KID??

In the light of day, this concern seems far less concerning than it did in the anxiety-filled darkness. (Answer: Make baby sleep on my desk in my office. Or sell place, buy new place.) But even after the sun came up and scared away the monsters, one ugly thought remained: It's so goddamned unfair that fertility is on a clock.

Seriously. Can I magically become 28 again? Or how about this: Can we push that infamous fertility decline out to age 43? No? OK, OK, 40. I'm perfectly willing to compromise.

No?

I want to have a lovely new condo with our shabby-chic furnishings! Lots of stainless steel items with sharp corners. Funky, breakable vases filled with fresh flowers. I want to sleep between the cool sheets of my minimalistically designed bed and get up when, and only when, I'm well rested. In the wise words of our national Poet Laureate Gwen Stefani, "The longer that I wait, the more selfish that I get."

Yes, I want kids -- someday. Not now. I just hope that I want them when the ticking clock in my ears turns to a blaring alarm that can't be put off by a slap to the snooze button. The body is what it is, and evolution made it this way for a reason. So all I can do is play it by ear and hope that I decide to be ready when it's time to be ready. (And please don't tell me "you're never really ready"; I know that. I get it. Nobody wakes up one morning, smiles broadly and says, "I am very eager to purchase a Diaper Genie and stop wearing lip gloss!" I'm not naive, and that's precisely the reason I'm not jumping to get knocked up.)

So all I'm left with is the realization that, Jesus Christ, the years go by too fast. I could swear that a couple of years ago, I was just driving around in my old Plymouth Sundance with the windows open, putting off my homework and crooning out the lyrics of "Mayonaise" in an imaginary duet with Billy Corgan, floating in the angst of my early 20s.

Fool enough to almost be it
And cool enough to not quite see it
And old enough to always feel this
Always old, I’ll always feel this

No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me

It has that reading-from-a-secret-journal feel, doesn't it? You feel so old! And world weary! And you just want the world to let you be yourself, which means -- wait, who am I anyway?

Now I'm 31, quite sure of who I am, but feeling like one of those women who used to say to me, "I remember when I was YOUR age..." The women who made me roll my eyes and turn up Billy's voice just a little bit louder because, come on! I was 21! I was 21 years old and would always be 21 years old, with a 21-year-old's outlook and rich spread of opportunities laid out like an endless buffet.

But the reality is that at some point, we have to choose. I'm not at that point yet, but I will be. And when I am, I hope the choice is easy. Maybe I will wake up and just know. Or maybe I'll wake up one day with the choice made for me. Or maybe I'll do what I usually do, which is weigh the pros and cons and make a very rational, controlled decision (as rational as a creature can be when contemplating the survival of its own species, that is).

I would say that I hope it comes to me in a dream, but I'm too busy dreaming up the foundations of my mechanical engineering PhD thesis. Dead weight, shifting center of gravity -- I am really onto something, people.

Lucky

Tonight, while thousands of people crammed along the Charles River to listen to the Boston Pops perform patriotic numbers in the pouring rain, I was engaged in the most American pursuit I know of: bouncing up and down on the elliptical machine at the gym.

The Boston Pops Fourth of July concert that I did not attend is apparently quite renowned. On our way home from dinner last night, we remarked at the unusual number of people and police officers milling about the streets; our cab driver told us that people were filtering into the city to squat on prime bits of land a full twenty-four hours ahead of the show. This is, to me, only slightly less insane than sleeping on the sidewalk to be first to own a flashy new mobile phone, and only because the concert goers did not pay $500 for their inconvenience. (I wish they had, though. I'm attracted to the idea of a world in which people so worship the second-chair French horn player that they want to throw their bras at this musical God who coaxes out such round, full tones by delicately pressing just three valves. That's hot!)

As I pushed and pulled and climbed my way through a workout, I watched the live telecast on TV. Unfortunately, I couldn't listen to much of it because I must listen to my OK Go "Master the Treadmill" playlist (which works beautifully on any sort of cardio machine). Lately, I have refused to sweat without Damien Kulash talking me through a well-timed, adequately motivating workout against the backdrop of a good soundtrack. (I've learned to not mess with a working formula.)

Watching the telecast sans sound forced me to focus on the sights. At one point, a chorus of children -- junior high age, I would guess -- took center stage in red shirts and khaki pants. Their mouths opened wide and their little eyebrows bobbed convincingly on their foreheads as they swayed and made the happy performer faces that they've seen the big kids make -- the senior girls who starred in last year's productions of South Pacific and Annie Get Your Gun, who imitated the previous year's senior girls who imitated the pretty senior girls before them, and so on and so on. Pausing my music to hear the sweet, high-pitched voices of these children whose bodies are temporarily stuck in the awkwardness of adolescence -- it breaks my heart to imagine them ever being teased for wearing funny glasses or having perpetually runny noses or throwing like a girl -- and seeing the carefully crafted, overly affected performers' expressions on their faces makes it difficult to accept or deny my slightly misanthropic tendencies. Little children in North Korea have similarly happy expressions plastered on their faces when they sing about their glorious leader, and kids here are just lucky that they get to sing about democratic ideals rather than despots.

And now I sit in my apartment hearing the sounds of the fireworks mixed with the sounds of the fighter jets that criss-cross the sky, and seeing nothing of the color that explodes in the sky on the other side of my building. The sounds are unnerving without any visual context -- what I imagine to be the sounds of war -- and were it not a holiday I would be certain that we were under siege. 

Much as I despise many of the things this country has lately come to stand for, I love and desperately cherish many of the things it still stands for. It's an interesting set of emotions that my brain is serving up tonight, and I never know how to feel on such patriotic holidays. But the deep booms that rattle our windows, set off car alarms and reverberate through our concrete jungle of buildings make me sure of one thing: There are lots of people who don't have the luxury of associating such sounds with cheers, orchestras, drinks plucked from icy coolers or blankets spread atop cushiony green grass.

We are damned lucky.