Psychedelic Furs, John Hughes, Molly Ringwald

One of these days I just know that Cosmo or Glamor will be on the streets of DC with their cameras, and I will wind up on the Fashion Don't page with a black bar over my eyes.

I got lovely Christmas presents from two of my knitting colleagues. One, a fantastic pink felted hat. My friend Kay knitted it and then felted it! It's beautiful and fun and shockingly pink! I love it!

And the other is this lovely, fuzzy, pink and orange supersoft scarf from my friend Marta. It feels delicious. I love them both.

I can look like a reasonably normal person wearing the scarf and the hat, just so you know, I can do it. I just don't always choose to.

I was told very sternly by Steve that I cannot wear the scarf and the hat together. And especially not both of them with my bubble-gum pink coat. And then, definitely, definitely not while I am carrying my pink and orange and red striped umbrella.

"Even if it's really grey and rainy and gross outside and people need some color to cheer up their day? Like right now, today?"

"Yes, even if it's really grey and rainy and gross outside.You absolutely cannot."

Oh, really?

Oh, I Love My Friend Maude

I spoke to my friend Maude yesterday. We hadn't caught up in months. She married a man who took her off to England and I don't think they'll ever move back. I know she loves him so I try not to resent him for it.

I have known Maude, who is 6 weeks older than me, since I was born. Our parents were friends in the Peace Corps, and then, purely coincidentally, they were living in India when we were born. We were in Delhi; Maude's family was in Chandigarh. I couldn't pronounce it as a kid, so I had two dolls I named Candyjar.

We have the kind of brutal frankness with each other you can only have with family. We have had the fights that could end a friendship, but we've worked through them, because we will be in each other's lives forever. We have supported each other through massive life ups and downs, Even if somehow we didn't talk for three years, we'd still pick up where we left off.

Maude says my dad decided we were going to be friends, which I think is probably true. We only saw her family every few years, but Maude was often inserted in the bedtime stories that my dad made up for my brother and me. I didn't realize till I was writing this that it was a little twisted - all our bedtime stories were about these two evil witches, who were always chasing us. And if they caught us, well, they were going to cook us and eat us for dinner!

Sometimes Maudie would be there for me, and sometimes, oh, sometimes "Lisa was all by herself, in the middle of the field..."

"No, Daddy! Maudie was there! Lisa wasn't all by herself! Maudie was there in the middle of the field!"

Because of course my little brother would be of no use. Always better to have your friend Maude get eaten by the witches as well. We'd always get away at the very last minute. How's that for a way to put your kids to sleep?

So Maude was this constant figure in my life, even if we didn't see her family very often. The summer after 10th grade, when we hadn't seen each other for years and years, her family was living in NY, and we were living in India again, but back in the US for the summer.

We went to the beach for two weeks, and my dad said, "Lis, Maude really wants to come to the beach with us. She doesn't know anybody in NY." I couldn't imagine why, but it was fine.

She asked me years later why I'd wanted her to come to the beach so badly. Turns out her family said, "Lisa really wants you to go to the beach with them. She doesn't know anybody. You should go." And they packed her off with us. And fortunately, we really liked each other. But we were both terrible about keeping in touch.

And then we reconnected again while we were in college, and after college we shared our first apartment together. Maude and I lived in Mt. Pleasant. I've written about her before, and about our messy, messy apartment.

So Maude, now Maude is pregnant. And yesterday she said the following to me.

"So, I've learned that when you're pregnant, your sweat smells a lot less!"

"Oh, really?"

"Yes! With all the house guests and commotion lately, I just realized that I haven't bathed in a week! And it's not too bad!"

"Does your husband know this?"

"I think he's starting to suspect."

Figuratively Speaking

So yesterday Betty and I were talking about how excited I was that the new year had begun. She said, "You didn't have a very good year last year, did you?"

To which I replied, "My entire year sucked ass."

My poor little mother. She looked stricken. "Sweetheart! That's a terrible expression! Suck ass! Oh! Awful! Don't say that!"

"Sorry."

You say these things often enough, you really don't think about the visual. (One might, of course, question my need to say "suck ass" so often.) Yeah, sucking ass. Really not appealing. I mean, for me. I don't judge if it's your thing.

I think maybe, considering the countires we've lived in, and our acute awareness of parasites being transmitted through fecal-oral contact (it only takes the tiniest microscopic bit of poo), it makes the idea of it all the worse for us. Or for her. Clearly I run around talking about ass-sucking very cavalierly. I just don't actually do it. I promise, mom and dad, if you're horrified and wondering.

I'm becoming friends with a friend of my friend Jane, via the blog. He's a really good writer, so when I was starting the blog, she emailed him the link, asking if he could help come up with a tag line. He emailed me recently to say that he likes my writing, and that he thinks I write like I talk. And now we've struck up a correspondence.

So I relayed the story about horrifying Betty with the "2006 sucked ass" comment. To which he replied, "2002 was my ass-sucking year."

This was followed quickly with, "I mean, that didn't come out quite right. But you know what I mean."

I do. I certainly do.

The Year of Trusting Less

Someone asked me about my new year's resolutions last night, and I said: start doing yoga for my body and my psyche; be more organized and tidy; trust less.

"What was that third one?"

"Trust less."

The last night I saw M, we were driving and got briefly turned around. He has an amazing sense of direction, and he said that he has to look at a map before he goes anywhere. Once he has the map in his head, he can find pretty much anything. But if he doesn't know where he's going beforehand, he's really uncomfortable.

I said, "Oh, I'm terrible at maps. I just go."

This is true. It irritates my father every time I call him lost in VA asking for directions. He always asks if I've looked at the map. Why would I pull over to look at the map when he can tell me where I'm going?

"What do you mean, you just go?"

"Well, I get the Mapquest directions. And then I start driving."

"And if you get lost?"

"Then I call my dad or ask people. People are nice."

"You just ask people? You just jump in your car and go, and hope for the best?"

So I told him the following story. Years ago, I was visiting friends in Chile. My Spanish wasn't very good, but enough to get around. These friends live in Santiago, which is an enormous city. I'd gone downtown, and was trying to find my way back to their house in the suburbs. I got on a bus that I thought would take me there.

I asked the driver, who said, "Oh, no! This isn't the bus you need! You need the X bus. But don't worry - we'll cross it shortly!"

When we saw the X bus, he started honking his horn wildly. Yelling and waving his arms. "HEY! PULL OVER! There's this gringa who needs to get on your bus! She needs to go to (whatever the name of the street was)!"

And so the guy pulled over, and the first driver and several passengers wished me well, and I got on the other bus, and the driver told me when we got to my street. And all was fine.

So I told M this story, as an example of how people around the world are good, and how I am reminded of this every time I travel.

"You know what I think? I think you're just lucky you've never gotten kidnapped."

I thought this was a cynical view of things. I repeated this story to my best friend. Who said, "Oh, Lis, I have to agree with him."

So in 2007, I will do yoga, I will be tidier, and I will trust less.

I Cannot Ever Blame It On Alcohol

Hi friends! Happy 2007!

Our party last night was fun! I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve!

I've been in bed all day. I'm not hung over - I had 3 beers over 8 hours - but I am really tired and it's grey and rainy and stinky outside. And I have coffee and chocolate and a phone and the Internets right here. Why go anywhere?

Except that I have to bathe and go to a birthday party. In like 20 minutes. Thankfully, I won't have to make scintillating conversation. The guy whose birthday it is was alarmingly inebriated last night. And he's this huge, 6'5" guy. He was totally uncoordinated drunk and I was afraid that he'd fall over and take out 3 normal sized people in the process. I'm kind of curious to see how he's doing, actually.

Last night I saw this very cute guy that I'd met a couple times last summer. A mutual friend, someone I know, but not well, who is a very close friend of his, left me a message last fall while I was away for two weeks, asking if this guy could contact me.

So when I got back from my trip and listened to the message, I called her and said, "Absolutely! He's so cute and so funny!" And then I never heard from him.

I ran into him at a holiday party a couple weeks ago and we made slightly awkward conversation. And then last night I learned from this friend that he's dating someone. She was very apologetic - he'd wanted to contact me, but then it took a while for her to get in touch with me, and then it took me weeks to get back to her, and by then he'd met someone...Which is fine, of course; I barely know him.

So last night I was the temporary tattoo queen. I ordered these very fun sparkly tattoos from eBay. They work just like the ones you got in Cracker Jack boxes as a kid - you put them on your skin and put water on the back. But these, these are fabulous! Tacky blue roses, butterflies, daggers, dragons!

I offered everyone tattoos as an ice breaker. If you were standing alone in a corner, I accosted you. People who initially were like, "no way!" had a couple drinks and then came to find me to ask for one. The women, with few exceptions, wanted them in their cleavage (as consequence, I patted a lot of boobs). The men, who tastefully had very little skin exposed, mostly got them on their necks.

So the cute fellow, who initially was one of the no way! people, came up to me late in the evening for a tattoo. I was in the process of putting a tattoo on this very unappealing, bossy woman. She'd found me and requested one, and so I had just finished applying it when he arrived and said he was ready for one.

She immediately started telling him where it should go. And so I thought, oh, God, his girlfriend is awful! Yikes!

And so they haggled over where he wanted it. She wandered away mid-application, and then he walked away after I turned to tattoo someone else.

And later he came back and said, "Wow, your friend really is bossy!"

"My friend? She's not your girlfriend?"

"My girlfriend???"

"Yes!"

"You were talking to her when I walked up to you! I don't even know her!"

"Oh. But she was telling you where to put it."

"I know. Very bossy."

"Yes. And so I thought, wow - he never called me, and instead he chose to date this dreadful woman! I decided you must just have really bad taste."

Did I really say that out loud? Yes, I did. Ah, well. Happy new year, cute guy.