I could not agree more. Thanks to everyone who commented yesterday, I think our little book club was a success! I sat down last night with a glass of merlot the size of my head and re-read all the comments, it was like listening in on the best conversation at the party. What struck me most was how careful everyone was to say their opinion but not be a jerk (there was no, "You're wrong and stupid! This book is a masterpiece/suckfest!") In this age of sex tapes and "Sorry, officer, that's not my cocaine, I was holding it for a friend..." I think our book club was a rarity and a gem. Jane would be proud.

The comments helped me see the book in new ways (more on that in a bit) and I wish you could all come to my house and chat about books every weekend. It would keep me reading more and we could drink while gabbing.

The randomly chosen winner of book-club-comment-day is Linda who commented:

However, rereading Pride and Prejudice in the new annotated edition was really a revelation to me. Taking time to read the annotations forced me to slow down and really look at the world Austen was describing--and it was almost like visiting another universe. Previously, I had glossed over all of the humor, especially with Mr. Collins, and was clueless about the implications of one's choice of carriage.

She will be receiving an equally random assortment of goodies from my unemployed stash, including some 100% pure Norwegian wool in a golden orange hue, a few skeins of my favorite wool Noro, a few knitting books, some knitting markers and a mixed CD I made myself. I am also including a copy of a book I bought just for this winner:

Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell.

I thought we could all read it in September for another book club chitchat. It's a fast read, you'll zip through it in a day or two, and it's a contemporary novel. It was recently made into an amazing indie film which I hope gets nominated for an Oscar this year. I've already read it, which is why I'm recommending it. I am selfish, you see, I want to re-read this book and talk to people about it. And I want to share it with everyone. Are you in?

So, make a date. Winter's Bone Book Chat on Monday, September 27th!!!

And I still want to re-read Gatsby. Any takers on that one? Can we fit it in September, too, or should we wait until October?

- - -

The comments yesterday had my brain bubbling, so I wanted to jot down a few things:

1) It's Colin Firth, yo
Thank you so much to everyone who subtly pointed out the difference between enjoying the BBC mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice versus enjoying the book itself. I feel the same way about the movie Emma! I love the film but can't get past twenty pages in the book.

I have never seen the Colin Firth mini-series or any of the P&P movies but it's now in my Netflix queue. After I finished the book on Sunday I tried watching the one version of Pride and Prejudice offered streaming on Netflix and I couldn't get through it. That 1980s Mr. Darcy was too creepy for me, he looked like he'd just escaped from a mental institution and would at any moment break into song OR murder Elizabeth OR become a gay porn star. Weird.

My favorite comment about the movie/book gap was from reader Donna:

I didn't mind watching the movies while knitting as I am assuming the producers are displaying the correct period housing, clothing etc....but reading her book, Jane does not get into any detail of her environment, just the gossip! It would of been nice to hear about the decor of the rooms, the gardens, the food, what they were doing to keep themselves busy (beside gossiping).

There were several points in the book where I wanted someone to describe the food or the wallpaper or even the weather. Please, Lord, send us a stormy day and deliver us from the drawing room, amen. But after reading the comments I can see where the lack of in-depth description is almost part of the draw for some readers. If you love the conversation and observation, you want more. If you're able to sink into the conversation, then descriptive leaps into dinner or weather might be a distraction. Inneresting!

2) Happily Ever After
The discussions I thought were most intriguing in the comments were all about the ideas of marriage and the "happy ending" to the story. Is being married a happy ending? I certainly grew up thinking that it was, a notion which probably added to My Bigass Mental Breakdown of 2005.

Some comments pointed out that there are women in 2010 still quite focused on getting a husband and marrying well just like Jane Austen's characters. There was a time in my life when all I wanted was to get married. I was so sure that marriage would open the door to happiness. (There was also a time when I really wanted an Epilady. Times change.)

I thought reader Jennifer said it best:

I think the happy ending part is not that they get married, but that they both cause each other to change in ways that make them better people (and bonus that those people they change into are so well suited to one another).

I wonder if I would have had a completely different feeling for this book had I read it when I was 19, instead of now at 39? I know the way I feel about marriage has completely changed in the past few years. There was a point while reading P&P when I realized my feelings about marriage probably colored how I related to the book.

The author's life, on the other hand, is better than the best page-turner on the shelves. I read something online about her sister and other siblings burning all (or most) of Jane's letters after her death. I loved that they had such a fierce protection for her privacy even after she was gone. Fascinating stuff, no?

3) Happily Ever After addendum
For those of you who do like happy endings but also like a little thievery and piracy and some good old fashioned revenge fantasies, read or re-read The Count of Monte Cristo. I picked it up several months ago when my job was taking a Sylvia Plath-like turn for the worst and it got me through several weeks in the cubicle farm. I LOVE the Count. For one thing, it is not the depressing downer most folks think -- the ending is so happy that people are literally sailing off into a sunset. And even though it was also written in the 1800s, the writing is fairly accessible and the plot just grabs you. It has some overly complicated scheming toward the end but it's a great story. I think someone should do a movie re-make with a modern update setting it in the present. Javier Bardem as Dantes... what do you think? Green light all the way?

4) Cracked me right up

You know, I'd take a long day in a drawing room over the courtship rituals of Jersey Shore any day.-- RB

- - -

Reading is a uniquely personal experience. I love sinking into a book, getting lost in it, I don't care if it's smutty V.C. Andrews or highbrow Henry James, if you get sucked into a book it's a decadent, pleasurable thing. I feel obligated to read classic lit because it's the foundation for all reading and writing (and reading and writing are my two favorite things to do in life!) Pride and Prejudice reminded me that it's OK not to like a book, even a beloved classic. Not everything will speak to every person. But it's good to try it out to see if it will fit. Every palate is different.

Don't forget! Monday, September 27, 2010--
Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell. I cannot wait to hear your take on this book. Oh, and if you saw the movie I want to hear your review of that, too.

I took a break midway through reading P&P and did a little research online about Jane Austen's life (hey, it's been a while since I was in school and I'm not one of those people who goes around pretending to know everything, nothing irritates me more than pedantic pedantics, I fully admit I have to wikipedia shit all day long) and once I brushed up on my Austen facts I was much more interested in finishing the book. She died when she was so young, just a few years older than I am now. And I kept thinking how she never got to see what an impact her books had on the world ... here we are almost 200 years after the book was first published we're still talking about it!

I'm not a book critic, I can only say if a book spoke to me or not. I'm also deeply aware of the hate mail and criticism which would happen if open season were declared on me for not loving your favorite book. So I will not say I hated it. I didn't hate it at all, actually. While it was not a lifetime favorite for me, I'm certainly glad I read it. My main irritation was that the characters don't do anything except sit in drawing rooms and talk -- perhaps I would have enjoyed the Zombies version better -- maybe you'll assume I'm not subtle and literary enough to get the social commentary. I do see it, I mean that's all the book is, social observation, but I guess my appetite for marriage chitchat isn't 400 pages long.

I have to say, this book did make me feel grateful I didn't grow up in turn-of-the-century England. I can't imagine spending your childhood waiting to be married and then spending your adult life waiting to marry off your kids while gossiping about marriage all day long. (During one long scene where everyone sits around in the drawing room, I wrote in my diary, "These are people who could have seriously benefited from a TV.") In the end, though, it was pleasing to close the book and feel a sense of accomplishment. I'm glad we all read this book because now I can say I've read it and cross that off my list.

What did you think? I'm especially interested in folks who also read this book for the first time like un-subtle, un-literary me. Did you like the characters? Did you like the style of writing? The tone? The setting? The ending? Did you wish for zombies, too?

Frankie is still mad we didn't decide to read Cat's Cradle.

Have a great weekend! See you Monday!

It is 107 degrees outside. I wish I were exaggerating but I'm not. It is mid-afternoon and 107 degrees here in the San Fernando Valley. Summer in the city! Everyone drives worse than usual when it's this hot. I went out early this morning for some groceries and I saw three accidents on Ventura Boulevard in a 2-mile radius. There was much honking and berating across the land.

The weather has been mild until just recently and then overnight the city turned into an oven. Dapper Dallas Raines says we'll have chilly fall-like temperatures in the 70s by Monday but right now all is sweaty and lethargic at Chez Furball...

The dire anguish of encountering the badly knotted Noro.

Everyone says "Get a life, man!" and what does that mean anyway?

What is a life? Get a life! I think what people mean when they say it to you is, "Be more like me!" "Get a life I approve of!" "Be less freaky to me, because anything different makes me question myself and I don't do that navel-gazing bullshit!"

Whatever, it's a song.

So the very first piece of existential philosophy I ever applied to real life came from the movie Top Gun. Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer at the hotness, and personally my favorite ever Meg Ryan role. I was twelve.

See, in the movie Jester gives Maverick flight-school hell for flying below the hard deck. No one goes below the hard deck! You get penalized for flying below the hard deck like that crazy Maverick! And I realized in my family -- and at school, to a lesser degree, and in all relationships -- it seemed there was an invisible emotional hard deck inside all social groups and we are not allowed to go beneath it. We all join in on an implicit agreement never to go below the hard deck in polite conversation.

Before you get the idea I was special and gifted at age twelve please recall I spent an hour every morning applying so much blue eyeshadow I could have passed for Papa Smurf.

But it was an apt philosophy. Families and relationships and even whole companies develop an emotional hard deck which no one is permitted to fly below. People have personal hard decks, I have mine. Above the hard deck I'll share and give, below is a different story. You start making low-flying recon missions below my hard deck and I shut it down faster than a block party in a swine flu epidemic.

If I ever had the desire to return to college I could freak out the professors with my life lessons and social anthropological mores learned from 1980s films. This is just the tip of the crazyberg.

Do you have an emotional hard deck? Does your family have one? Have you ever dared venture below it, dared to fly low and dangerous?

And what do you think, are we livin' in a world of ghetto life get a life where everyone seems so uptight?

- - -

Edited to add in what surely must be irony considering the last sentence, above, that yes thank you to commenter who pointed out I must have been older than 12 if the movie came out in 1986. I looked online to be super accurate because all that matters clearly is the exact age I was when I saw Top Gun and I was 14. Also, Meg Ryan is in the movie and she plays Goose's wife. It's a small part that I personally liked.

Now I am closing comments and taking a nice long break. Goodbye!

Edited to add: There are apparently a number of ways to get this book free, thanks to all the folks who commented to let us know. I bought the version in Target that looks all Twilight-ish, well, I just thought it was hilarious that it says "Bella's favorite book!" or something right on the cover. But here are other options:

• http://www.online-literature.com/austen/prideprejudice/

• Free from Project Gutenberg

• Free Audio Book from LibriVox

And on August 30th, everyone who comments in our little virtual bookclub will be entered to win a drawing for some goofy prize. Being on the thrifty side of finances these days, it will likely be an odd assortment of yarn and books from my stash and who knows what else. Can't send Bob after all, besides my missing him terribly he would break the bank in shipping weight charges...

Get reading!

I bought two other books recently as well -- Pride And Prejudice and The Great Gatsby. I've read Gatsby several times but the last time I read it was probably over a decade ago (maybe two?). But I have never read a single Jane Austen book. Can you believe that? Can you believe I am admitting that?

So what do you think about us having a goofyass virtual bookclub this month and you all pick the book you want to read most -- pick one, Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice, post today in the comments and majority rules -- and we'll meet back here maybe on Monday, August 30th (so you have that weekend to cram, hah) and we can chat about the book? And everyone who decides to participate in that chitchat in the comments will be entered to win some fun gift, like some yarn and maybe a signed copy of the Drunk book (I still have copies of that but am out of the new one, go figure) and who knows what else I may throw in. You may get a cat if Blob doesn't stop eating my size 8 circulars.

You in? You have to cast your vote today for which book, though. If ya'll think this is a stupid idea just let me know and we'll pretend I was stoned on paint fumes or something. Happy Monday!

Last month I also discovered something crazy in my eating habits. For the final year or so that I worked at the bank I was eating two dinners. I didn't know I was eating two dinners, mind you, but I was. I didn't discover it until June when my job ended and after just a few days I realized what I'd been doing all that time and I was horrified.

Looking back, I think it started to go wrong in the Spring of 2009 when I moved offices. In my new location everyone came in late and stayed late. I had been accustomed to coming in early and leaving early like the folks on the other side of the building (and that had been my schedule for YEARS!). So I started this weird schedule of coming in kinda early and staying kinda late. Add that to the everlasting gobstopper of the commute and my personal time dwindled dramatically. On the weekends I'd prepare ahead (as much as I could) for five lunches and five breakfasts and maybe some snacks. Dinner was just too much to prep ahead of time, too. That's a lot of work, you know, shopping for and cooking and prepping and packing a week's worth of homecooked meals in a day or two. My weekends became a long list of work just to get through the week ahead. Exhausting and dull.

As the months wore on I had to work later and later each night so I was getting home later and later. After an hour and a half in traffic, sometimes I'd walk in the door at 8:30 or 9 p.m. and of course by that time I was just off the charts hungry, I could have eaten the paint off the walls. So I'd start preparing dinner (I was committed to eating healthy, you see) and while it was cooking I'd eat a snack. Because I hadn't eaten since 11 a.m. and I was HUNGRY. Maybe some popcorn or fruit or leftover veggies, maybe cheese and crackers. A glass of wine. Just to take the edge off, you understand.

By the time dinner was ready I had already eaten. Here's the kicker though: since I had gone to all the trouble of cooking something for dinner, I ate that meal, too. Even if I wasn't truly hungry anymore. Because dammit, after this longass day I'd made dinner and it was not going to waste!

Thus double dinners. I wasn't even aware of it.

Needless to say that has stopped.

My physical fitness goal for July was the same as it has been all year -- walk every day for the whole month. In July I got close to my goal. I walked 21 days out of 31. And these weren't your quickie 15-minute strolls, on 19 days I walked over 3 miles each time.

Just a word here about my walk-every-day-in-a-month goal. Over the past few months as I have continued to make and re-make this goal (and continued to not meet it) I have gotten hundreds of comments and emails and suggestions from folks online. "Just shoot for three days out of every five." "Five days out of seven..." "Every other day." "Aim for 10,00 steps a day, and buy a pedometer!" "8,000 steps..." "5,000 steps!" "Take the stairs!" "Just park far away and walk and count that..." "Go for mileage not days!" "Speed not mileage..." "Instead of walking try yoga!" "...swimming." "... biking."

Now this stuff is always interesting and funny to me. I love trying to see what clicks with people or makes them tick. But sometimes I can be kind of slow on the uptake! So I didn't at first understand why so many strangers had an interest in modifying my personal goal. It took all this time for it to finally sink in. People look at goals differently and for some folks, watching me miss my goal month after month must be like Chinese water torture, slow and painful. They simply wanted to give me tips to help me move along already.

The whole purpose of goal-setting for many folks is to achieve it as quickly as possible, check it off and declare victory so they can move on to the next goal. That does make sense now that I think on it. Continual plodding failure must feel like, well, failure. And failure becomes a problem to solve. So it came out as, "Here, just do this and then you won't fail!"

It's very sensible. But my brain works differently. Sure, I have to-do lists of little items that need checking off quickly: go to the post office, buy milk and cat litter, drop off this bag of stuff at the goodwill, mop. But my personal goals are very different from to-do list items. They are my landmarks along a path, my hopes, my optimism for what I want to be like in the future. For me, the real success in a goal comes from working toward it each day. For example, one of my goals is to declutter my home. The success isn't achieved on the one day I wake up and look around and think, "There! I've done it! Check! Now what do I do next?" The achievement in my mind is spending ten minutes every day or so to declutter a drawer or sort through old paperwork. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Anyway, my goal of walking each day in a calendar month isn't a particularly difficult goal. It's not very physically demanding ("walk" is loosely defined, no set time or mileage) and it's certainly not financially unachievable. It's a good, do-able goal. The actual victory of knocking this goal off a list will pale in comparison to the days spent working toward it. Let's be honest, nothing dramatic is going to change in my life just because I walk 30 or 31 days in a row. The real success is derived from working toward it and getting incrementally better.

There is no way I would change the goal and dial it downward to meet me halfway. The whole point of my personal goal setting is to rise up and meet the challenge. Tomato, tomahto.

Don't get me wrong -- this isn't to say my way of looking at goals is better or worse than any other way. It's just different. Thank God we're all different, yes? My way would drive some people insane, but to my little brain it's simply another whole month stretching ahead of days that I can possibly achieve a goal. The goal is arbitrary. The exercise is the point. The only reason I am yammering on and on about this is that I think it's fascinating we're all so different! I personally love it. And if it weren't for my future husband Al inventing this innernets I would never have had you all share this with me. Thank goodness for Al.

So of course in August my ideal is to go on a walk each day in the month. One day I'll get there. See, it's like a mystery. Gives you something to look forward to!

2) Goal: Get Happy
Another vaguely defined goal, but you get the idea. And things are good. I've been able to spend time with my family and the cutest dog ever, it's great having them on the west coast and especially now when I can actually visit with them. The rest of the time is my own. I'm well-suited to being alone most of the days and I keep myself busy and industrious. My stress level now is so different I can't even explain it without adding in some effusively bad 1980s breakdancing.

Looking back, I spent all of 2009 and most of 2010 in a state of tightly wound neurosis, like a wind-up toy about to bust a spring. It's a relief to breathe, have time, sleep, go for long walks. Walking is like therapy, I spend my long walks daydreaming or planning or working out stories and it's such a luxury.

No matter what happens in the future, I want to keep this calm feeling of not always being in a rush. I have my moments of panic about money and finances but it passes. Everything will work out. Somehow. I truly believe this down in my cells.

- - -

So that was July. In August my goals are to walk (for the whole month!), write more (which will make me happier and keep me feeling productive), and cook a few new recipes. I want to try some new stir-fry meals and maybe make something with Indian spices. I am actually even starting August by inviting a friend over for dinner next Friday (I don't entertain much, so this is a nice little change for me.)

Mostly I'm learning that all this is a choice. Is happiness dependent on outside factors? Do I have to wait for X opportunity and X job and X man and X car and X money and X day to be happy? What if that exact combination of factors never comes? OR worse, what if it comes and I'm too tired to enjoy it? So right now each day I just wake up and decide to choose good thoughts over panicky, anxious ones. It sounds simplistic and selfhelpy and lined with Velveeta but it really does work. Picture a future of abject poverty and no food and scabies and loneliness -- hey, that feels bad. Horrible. Maybe I will cry in a corner and eat my hair.

But picture instead this beautiful summer day and freshly vacuumed stairs and a watermelon I got for 15 cents a pound at Ralph's and it's so delicious. That feels happy. Have I cured cancer? No. But do I feel pretty good about life? Yeah, not too shabby.

It seems to be working so far.

3) Oh-kay, here's the situation, my parents went away on a week's vacation...
(Song lyrics from when Will Smith was a rapper. Oh ye of youngness who do not remember the good old days.) So my folks may be staying in Orange County for a while, maybe even a month or two! Very exciting, because the OC is LA-adjacent and I can see them more regularly. My Dad is slowly improving and that's a relief, though he's not all the way better. I think it is very surprising how things work out. If I were still at the bank I would never get to spend time with them even though they're in my time zone and just a car ride away. But now I get to see them really frequently and we can have dinner together and just visit. Time isn't merely a luxury, it's the only luxury, isn't it? Time to breathe, time to just hang out with someone, time to do grand experiments with deodorant.

4) I ponder not just the navel but the underarms as well
You can't really experiment with deodorants when you're working full time. If you get a product dud you could find yourself five minutes before the afternoon staff meeting trying to de-stink with wet wipes or mask with perfume. Don't act like you don't know. So I have taken this opportunity -- this grand life change -- to do awesome things with my time like experiment with deodorants. Yeah, I know, because my life is about science, people. Practically a modern day Marie Curie. I plan to report on the Stink Mitigating Study of 2010 very soon in an essay so detailed it is sure to win me a Pulitzer.

5) The Summer of my Knitcontent
Summer knitting continues in full force, I'm now on the first of many hats. This one was originally planned for my Dad but even though I measured carefully and swatched it still may be too large -- I hadn't counted on the high cotton content of the yarn being so darn stretchy. I'm used to using wool which holds its shape so well. But all is not lost! My little brother Eric who has a ginormous Sputnik-style cranium loved the looks of this hat and so if it's too big I'll give it to Eric and use the other skein of yarn for another hat for Dad.

I'm using Noro Taiyo in color #5 (gorgeous, amazing) and unlike most Noro this yarn is very soft, probably thanks to the 40% cotton content and 30% silk. It's also 15% wool and 15% nylon. I almost always buy my Noro on sale but even at a discount this was a pricier skein (I don't remember what I paid, but I only ordered two skeins because of the price). But I was surprised what you get for the money -- a good size skein, 100 grams/200 meters and it's unbelievably gorgeous yarn! Each skein is more than plenty for a big, cushy hat. I think this yarn would also make an excellent bag (it feels durable) or mittens.

I'm making a 2x2 ribbed hat of my own creation. There's a nifty little trick for getting the brim to fold just right -- you knit 2, purl 2 for the length of the hat brim (I like it just around 2 inches) then when you're at a place you want the hat to fold you mix up the pattern -- on the next round you start with purl 2, knit 2 and keep working in that pattern the rest of the hat. The offset row where the two different ribbed pattern meets makes a natural fold.

When I'm done I'll write up the whole pattern and post it. My big challenge will come with decreases since I like to decrease totally in pattern and retain the ribbing. It will be fun working it out.

Also, I'm not sure why my iphone camera got all fuzzy and romantic this morning for a dang hat but here it is:

Here is all the help I had behind the scenes styling this photo shoot:

- - -

Oh! And yesterday I saw the movie "SALT" with Angelina Jolie. It wasn't bad for a summer afternoon popcorn flick. I'm still not a huge Angelina fan but I love me some Liev Schrieber. And it was good to see a female action star movie. After listening to the female leads in both Killers and Knight & Day do nothing but whine and hyperventilate and scream and run in circles while people shoot at them, it was kind of nice to see a woman scaling buildings and doing insane Tom-Cruise style traffic jumps with nary a whine or cutesy comeback. Have you seen the movie? What did you think?

Sleepy dog on Grandma's bed. (That's a picture of my Grandma & Grandpa on the bedside table.)

Here he is finally getting some attention from my mom because he is so neglected. Yeah. So not the center of all attention of the universe...

And here he is watching all the neighborhood dogs walk by:

Yesterday as I was driving home along the twisted, congested freeways of Los Angeles I was reminded that it's summer tourist season. Lots of cars from out of town, lots of folks with GPS units and maps and still puzzled looks and mad gesturing at missed exits.

As I drove through downtown there were some crowds on the overpasses holding big banners and waving signs about the immigration stuff going on in Arizona. And of course this is Los Angeles so there's lots of honking and fists raised out of car windows in support, all of us carrying a little Cesar Chavez down in our souls. But it's not just this day or this issue, we always have people running around civic buildings and big intersections and movie studios holding placards and carrying banners protesting something or another. And I wondered what the visitors to our fine city think when they see the residents running around protesting stuff, all the cars honking just because it's traffic, and why not honk.

Or what do I know, maybe nonstop daily picketing is a way of life everywhere? Maybe in Des Moines and Kansas City and Boise and Charleston it's a regular old Wednesday to see people hanging bedsheets off the overpass with spray-painted slogans, just like in Los Angeles. What do you think?

Of course when I finally traversed the traffic and got back home my kittens were happy to see me and they got plenty of lap time and also a little paparazzi time. Here's Soba, exuding tortiness:

Later she plans to take over a small country. Something with ample Greenies distribution and no picketing allowed.

For those of you who love and enjoy exercise you can skip the rest of this. I myself haven't really enjoyed exercise in years. For one thing, when you have a tight schedule it feels like one more item you have to fit in your limited free time and add to the growing to-do list. And that's irritating. The other issue was that I had gotten so out of shape even a short walk was a huff-n-puff affair and all it did was reconfirm the bad feelings I had about my weight and health.

But for the past five-almost-six weeks I've really stuck to it, plodding through the first weeks with short one-mile walks that took almost forty minutes. Even now I'm not going to win any races, I still clock about an 18-minute mile, but I'm edging past three and a half miles each morning and I've gone from feeling like a wounded blob afterward to feeling more energetic than before I started. Can you believe that?

So, if you too are completely out of shape and hate the very idea of slogging up the block and back I think it will get easier. It took me six long weeks. But something turned over inside me. Crazypants.

2) Which is how I found myself in the sand yesterday
After I walked yesterday morning I showered and got dressed and had breakfast and did some writing and this and that I sat at my desk and looked outside where the sun was just starting to break through. It was just so pretty. And when I thought about the day ahead the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else in the entire world was to walk along the beach. So I did! I threw a few things into a beach bag, slipped on my flip-flops and I was off to Malibu Lagoon.

It was a spectacular day, with plenty of lovely wildlife in the bird sanctuary:

And plenty of other goodlooking wildlife, too:

I walked the whole length of the shore to the pier and back and then sat in the sand and read a book for a while. Sometimes I just sat and did nothing at all. I loved watching the surfers paddling and bobbing in the ocean. I loved listening to the waves crashing and foaming on shore.

One of the perks of walking so long in the sand is that your feet get all smoothed and buffed, it's nature's best pedicure.

My flintstone feet love the sand:

Yes, yoga pants at the beach. It was 68 degrees!

3) This book I'm reading is pretty good
I took Women Food and God with me to the beach. (What a load to carry! Thank you, I'll be here all week, tip your waitress.)

I've read just about every book Geneen Roth has written (I even went to one of her workshops back about 15 years ago) and I like this book, though I don't think it's going to resonate with everyone. Well, not that anything ever does.

The one thing inside this book that jumped out at me the most was a quote that's not even from Geneen Roth, it's from the writer Annie Dillard:

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Ain't that the truth.

4) Maybe I should re-evaluate all that teevee time?

I got some very excellent emails yesterday, this one made me feel relieved to see that it's not me, it's Design Star's fault:

I'm mostly a lurker on your site, but I just wanted to tell you that you are SO right about HGTV Design Star. My husband and I have watched every season of that show, and we really thing it has gone down hill this season. They got a new producer, the guy from Survivor, and we think that's the cause. The whole dynamic of the show seems really different now - it seems like Survivor with some paint thrown in! I wish it was more like last season. Anyway, it was nice to see that we aren't alone in being disappointed in this season. --Melissa

AHA! So they changed producers, and now that you mention the Survivor thing it does seem like Survivor with paint chips. How annoying. It used to be such a good show and I still love David Bromstad. But maybe I should take back that one hour of my life and let go of Design Star. Maybe.

Also thank you to everyone who assured me I am not alone in my Real Housewives of New Jersey trance. Why is it so compelling? Why?

5) And for your weekend, I leave you with these...
Just want to share some of the beautiful beach with you! I only live about 30 miles from the coastline (up the 101 and across Topanga Canyon) but I'm embarrassed to admit I rarely go to the beach, maybe just two or three times a year if that. If you park on PCH it's free, and that fresh air and sunshine and sand are so good for you, it's a great way to spend an afternoon.

I think the very best thing that has happened to me in the past six weeks -- well aside from not feeling like I'm about to die when I walk a block and a half -- is that I have actually relaxed. Intellectualy I realize that you make a choice each day how to react, to live, to be and all that. But in reality when you're spread thin and full to the very limit with anxiety and worry and exhaustion it's hard to choose good feelings. This little break has given me my life back. There's a purely Puritanical streak inside me that feels guilty for enjoying a day off work but I'm successfully ignoring it. Why feel guilty about enjoying a day? After all, like the lady says, how you spend your days is how you spend your life.

I'm sure I could wake up each morning in a panic over money and the future and all that (oh trust me, I know how to do that REALLY WELL) but instead I'm actively choosing to look at all the good stuff. There's even some great stuff. It was there all along but I was so tired and worn out I couldn't see it. The anxiety has diminished and I just wake up loving the luxury of time, knowing nothing lasts forever, I might as well enjoy it while I can. I don't think I am explaining it very well. All I can say for sure is that I don't feel like a tightly coiled spring that's about to explode anymore. When I talk to my friends they say, "Even your voice is different." Nothing is perfect -- I feel obligated to add that -- but still. It is actually possible to be in an imperfect, unsure, not-perfectly-stable place and still feel OK. Who would have thunk it.

I hope you enjoy the this little trip to the beach as much as I did!

I know summer's going to return but it makes these little breaks even better. The best days are when we have the marine layer and it's cloudy in the morning. My Jeep doesn't have A/C so on really hot days I don't get out much, it's just excruciating in the heat of the day. When it's cool like this I can run errands, sit in traffic and not baste in my own sweat.

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On this website I write about the things I enjoy chatting about. If I don't want to talk about something in detail, I simply don't go into the details. This is the same advice I give people who ask me about personal blogging: it's a good idea to have clear boundaries and share carefully in a public forum. I'm happy to be candid about many things but not everything. Without boundaries you feel stripped and deconstructed. And trust me when I say no one wants to see me strip.

I realize some people reading today feel cheated out of the good dirt about how it is I came to be unemployed. I got your emails. And I understand your natural curiosity and certainly I would be curious, too. But this is not a website about my day job and never has been. I don't think that's ethical, for one thing, and it's certainly never been the focus of my stories. My job ended. That's all I have to say about it. Think of it as an uninteresting plot device in a bigger, more furry and yarn-covered story.

For several weeks in June I chewed over the best way to even mention it here in my online diary. I didn't want to pretend it hadn't happened since obviously it's a big change in my personal life but I also have no desire to chat with the world at large about all the intimate details. I certainly have zero intention to malign my former employer. And anyway it's in the past. Things are fine.

I hoped that treating this change in my life as a fact, a part of the timeline and brief logistical narrative of June, would be sufficient for this website. I apologize to the people who just think this isn't good enough. I don't know what to tell you. I guess you'll have to find a TV show with a much better plot than this old poopy blog. I highly recommend the new season of The Closer. That Brenda Leigh is the best woman on TV! And a Southerner at that.

Ok, so let's move on.

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Speaking of TV, my best friend, I cannot believe I tune in every week and watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Even when I am watching it I wonder why I am transfixed, if I am losing IQ points, why they pronounce things the way they do. I vacillate between wanting to adopt Danielle's children the whole episode or wanting to get my TV set vaccinated for gonorrhea. Or both. But I love watching Bethenny Getting Married. Even at nineteen months pregnant and with big cankles she was still hotter in a bathing suit than I will ever be and yet I do not hold this against her.

The Closer has been really good so far this season, though I sure didn't see the twist coming Monday night with Captain Rayder's investigation. The show that follows The Closer is a new cop program Rizzoli & Isles and I wanted it to be good -- I love Angie Harmon, I think she's a really appealing actress -- but the whole setup seems a little fake and weird to me, and not in the good-fake Castle way. I'm still going to give it a chance though, because that's how I am with TV, slutty and fairly undemanding.

I watch two reality/contest shows -- HGTV's Design Star and Next Food Network Star. I was thisclose to bailing out of Design Star because they kept sending home contestants other than Nina. I'm sure she's talented and all that, but I would rather eat a bowl of cold cow brains for an hour than watch 30 seconds of Nina hosting her own show. Finally finally they sent her home this week and the whole show gave a collective sigh of relief. Doesn't it seem like they're too focused this season on the team dynamics instead of the design? Not sure I'll keep watching this show after all.

The Food Network competition is more interesting, though. I think my favorites are Aartie, Brad and Tom. I like Herb a lot, too, he's got such a great personality. I can't imagine how hard it must be to live and compete with a housefull of strangers and do it all in front of the cameras.

The best thing about trashy summer TV is that it feels productive when I'm knitting. With the air conditioning on, of course, and a big mug of hot tea.

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Best thing about working at my own keyboard is all the help I get:

She's sitting on my lap as I type. Makes for some furry shui.

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no comments today

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When we had our little earthquake a few weeks back, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom going through some paperwork. I looked up at the lamps swaying back and forth and then I looked down at my clothes.

"If this thing keeps going and turns into The big One," I thought to myself, "I am sure going to have to change my T-shirt before I can evacuate the premises."

Afterward I thought it was pretty dumb to keep a cheap T-shirt that was mainly held together by holes and stains, a T-shirt I didn't even feel comfortable wearing outside my bedroom. It's not like I don't have a bazillion other T-shirts. And this one didn't have some deep sentimental value, it just happened to be a shade of green I liked so I kept it long past its expiration date. I chucked it the next day along with two others in the same sorry state.

It's like that with me, I have to constantly monitor myself or I start hoarding my stuff. This summer I've been making an effort to cull and pare down while I have the time and it's a good activity for hot afternoons. Most of the real clutter is hidden away in drawers and in closets and in bins. Yesterday I pulled everything out from under the bathroom sink, Lord, you'd be surprised how much crap I can Tetris into a tiny cupboard. It's the only bathroom storage I have -- there is another bathroom in the apartment but I promised myself I wouldn't use that room's below-sink storage area since it would become unseen clutter. And I managed to keep my promise to myself.

Bathroom clutter just creeps up on you. One day you're a normal red-blooded American with a backup bottle of shampoo and two half-used frizz-ease products under the sink and before you know it, just a year has passed and you are hoarding what looks like a closeout sale from Sally's Beauty Supply.

I tossed old half-empty bottles of nail polish, dried up cosmetics, an eyeshadow I'd had so long it had an ancient, excavated quality to it. The activity of decluttering comes with a feeling of being in control. It's an illusion, probably, but a seductive one, like the flip side of acquiring things (which provides the illusion that this object or handbag or lip gloss will make us better, happier, complete.)

I've been decluttering steadily and still don't feel like I've accomplished much. Cleaned out the closet. Sifted through the dresser drawers. One night recently I closed my eyes and tried to remember what my first Los Angeles apartment was like, back when I had No Stuff At All. I can remember the layout of the place (it was infinitesimally tiny, you could stir a pot of spaghetti on the stove while taking a shower in the bathroom and simultaneously answering the front door) but I had nothing at all in the way of stuff. That was before home computers were a regular thing (reminder: I am an aged cheese) and so I had no desk, no computer, no external hard drives and printers and scanners and cables. No throw pillows. I did have some books, many of which I still have, and my clothes of course and shoes. I didn't knit so there was no yarn. I couldn't remember what stuff I had though. I looked back through photo albums from that time period and there was not one single picture of that apartment anywhere. Weird.

Decluttering feels good, though I'm wary it will become an excuse to re-stufficate. You know. You get to feeling that you've pared down so much you might as well go shopping. I'm not in real danger of that, since I'm not shopping at all these days both for financial reasons and because there simply isn't anything else I really need. But it's good to think about the motivations and the urge to re-populate the stuff. I certainly don't want to end up one day surrounded by towering piles of junk like those people on television programs about hoarding.

I've always held onto things and collected bits and pieces but now I have a LOT of stuff and I want to get to a place where I feel less heavy. What if I want to move when my lease is up this fall? The very idea of moving all this crap all over again makes me want to puddle up in the corner. I think when you're lighter and more mobile you just have more options. I don't need a pristine magazine home but I did love the feeling I got from staying in the cabin this summer and it would be nice to feel that peaceful in my own house. What a weird malady, this addiction to things. It's such a comfort and such a weight.

But anyway, the straggly old t-shirts are gone and that's a good thing. I did finally donate the backup skillet and some cookie sheets to the Goodwill. My closet is getting a trim down. There's still a lot of stuff hidden in the home office tucked away in boxes and in closets and inside decorative little baskets but there are plenty more hot afternoons ahead to tackle it little by little.

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And finally, end with the cutest feet on the planet:

Bob feet.