But Call Me Betsy

Here we are again. Tonight in class, we talked about Katherine Anne Porter's short story, "Old Mortality." I wrote my paper on the wrong story in the series, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," which I highly recommend. Excuse me for mentioning here that Katherine Anne Porter was the name of the prize my book won. I refrained from dropping it into my commentary during class. I confess I wasn't listening most of the time, was instead trying to read the middle story, "Noon Wine." It ended in suicide. Our teacher managed to tell us about KAP's sex life (she was married four times). The guy whose cell phone rings during class had to present and it wasn't clear if he had read the story or not. Next time, we are going to read As I Lay Dying which I kind of hate. I vaguely remember that it starts with them talking the corpse of the mom across country. In other news, Emma Carol has decided in the colder weather to plaster herself to me during the night, no...

This is the first year in my entire life that I have not worried what costume I would wear. Halloween is on a Wednesday this week and Shawn is not having his traditional Funk N Groove party (not that I would go) and so I have not even contemplated what I would chose as a costume because I don't seem to have any plans. Let's review past costumes: 2004: First Funk N Groove at Shawn's house on Spruce Street. I think I stole Jodie's idea and went as "Miss Fortune;" a beauty contestant with a black eye and a dress with car tire tracks on the skirt. Luke was there as a ladybug. 2005: Second Funk N Groove at our apartment on 6th Street. I was a mermaid in a pink wig. My work friend, Karen, helped me put together the scales. I wore a fish net on my head. It sounded good theoretically, but didn't turn out to be that hot. Elizabeth showed up dressed as a kid in pajamas. How fucking lame. She had designs on him even then. Shawn was a hip hop Jesus. 2006: Third Funk N...

I saw a girl on the subway on Sunday who was crying. She was in her early twenties, blond, vaguely pretty and miserable. She had tears on her neck even. She was staring out the window, watching the different stops streak by, thinking whatever she was thinking and trying to hold it together. I imagined her finally getting home and throwing herself on the bed and sobbing, sobbing. I realized that I do not carry Kleenexes and maybe I should. You never know when you're going to have to hand someone a tissue to wipe away tears or blood or other assorted bodily fluids. I scanned my brain to see if there were something I could or should do to make her feel better, but then I put myself in her place and realized it would be worse to have a stranger slip her a note reading, "It will all be okay." Because maybe it won't all be okay. She didn't seem in shock--so, it didn't seem like she'd gotten news of some one's death, she just seemed sad, in a my-partner-broke...

My book has arrived at the publisher’s and I have decided that I want to be famous and I also want to be a terrifically bad famous person. I want to forget all my friends, talk incessantly about my brilliance, interrupt people to quote my stories, and refer to myself in the third person. All of you bitches better buy my book because for every book sold, I get one cent (or something like that) and as those of you closest to me know, I am trying to save as many pennies as I can so that I can have one dollar. That’s 100 hundred books, people! If you want to help me out even more, you can write a gushing review of the book on barnes.noble.com. You don’t even have to read it, just say nice, innocuous things like “the best book I have ever read in my entire life and I have read a shitload of books.” Is it too much to ask to want to be discovered? To want to have the book made into a movie starring me? Why oh why didn ’t I include more love scenes in my stories so that when it’s made into a ...

I have been a bad blogger lately for personal reasons. And yet, the funny thing is that my life goes on whether you can read about it or not. I have developed a new superstition. The quality of the rest of my day is now determined solely by the number of cats I see resting in windows on my way to work. On Thursday, I saw about five lazy cats of varying colors, just hanging out in South Philly windows, waiting to bless my day. Today, I saw exactly no cats. It's funny how random these things are; how desperate I am at this point in my life to find some sense or meaning that I will let these things determine my mood. It's ridiculous how I consider myself an athesit and yet adhere to all this magical thinking.

Visited IKEA today in order to find a wardrobe and/or hanging rack upon which to hang my many thrift store clothes. Walked out with about 5 things I don't need, including a kitty bed in the shape of a kitty (only $6.99!!). I resisted many other things, including candles which I've decided are a total waste of money. It's not like a hold a ton of seances or anything or have bubble baths with candles--I'm too nervous about the shower curtain catching on fire. Will be going to dinner at a byob tonight. I need it. I have to do something fun and I have to be around people who think I'm the greatest. Have been doing better this weekend, especially since reading The Metamorphosis, surprisingly. I've learned from the introduction that it's somewhat a response to the suckiness of work and modernity (at least according to Jason Baker, the intros author). Here's a quote from the story: Why was Gregor condemned to serve at a firm where the smallest infraction was s...

Hey, ladies and gentlemen! Are you tired of diets that don't work? Exercise plans involving huge inflatable balls that you never end up using and which just deflate and clutter up your living space? Have you tried everything from hypnosis to shock therapy to cutting off one of your legs, just to shake that extra ten pounds? Well, there's a new weight loss program that is guaranteed to leave you without an appetite for days on end. You'll find that the thought of eating has no allure and you will have absolutely no appetite. How does this work? Simply throw yourself into a highly stressful situation where you can imagine yourself homeless, jobless and friendless at any moment. I promise you that you will drop the pounds without even noticing. The drawbacks: headaches, stomach-aches, loss of sleep, de ja vu, inability to have any other facial expression except fear. Try it today and be skinny tomorrow!

Before the show starts, I have to mention the best episode of Clean House that I saw last night. Clean House is the show where a bunch of not well-known comedians go into someone's wreck of a home, force them to get rid of all of their crap, sell it at a yard sale and then use the money to make the house livable . Every single show I've seen ends with the family being so happy that they don't have to live with boxes and boxes of Mickey Mouse paraphernalia , china dolls, jars of old food, piles of clothes and general garbage. Last night, they episode ended in tragedy when the mom flipped out and started crying and saying she was going to throw up because the walls were greenish and the sofa was green and all of her shit was gone. She had a total meltdown. It was the best. Okay, and now, on to more important things...Who will get the most drunk on The Bachelor and how many times will the word "connection" be used and how many random women will he make out? I hope l...

Our next story is Joyce's "The Dead," which I stayed up reading until midnight. I will have to ask Padhraig what it all means, seeing as he's a Mick and all. Our teacher leads the class as though we are in AP 11th grade English. For one thing, you can find all of our books on any high school syllabus (Heart of Darkness, Daisy Miller, The Awakening) and our conversations in class (I would use the word "discourse" if this were a graduate class) are stilted, in part because the teacher doesn't really want us to talk, she wants us to listen to her dramatic pronouncement about vibrators and the sex life of Edith Wharton. I don't dislike her, but I am not learning anything (except how to pronouce the word "phlegm" correctly) and in our last class, she wrote words on the board to help our little talk. I can't remember what they were because I was refusing to take notes and instead doodling pictures of angry faces in the margins of my notebook ...

I suppose I could take this blog in an entirely new direction and start writing just about my adventures, though it would quickly get boring except for those who participated. Or I could make The Adventures of City Girl to a more scintillating level, but I'm not sure how long I could keep that up before it got ridiculous. I should clarify that I don't currently work with the aforementioned person--he's a man from my past who has recently resurfaced as a single dude with an open mind. And that's probably all I should say about any of this as I don't want to start getting side-long glances from my co-workers or have someone give me some unsolicited advice in the rest room. (P.S. He consented that the blog post was okay , not great. That it could possibly earn me a platonic back rub, but that's it. Unless I prostitute myself further and write more. But I am not that kind of girl. I will not prostitute myself in public, only in private and for a very high fee plus d...