But Call Me Betsy

Not the Disney ride, but one of the two independent coffee shops in Princeton. It's a cash only place where the baristas are always cheerful instead of surly, like every single coffee shop employee working in Philly. I have the next two weeks off from work, and so am out in the world at 3 p.m. on a Monday. I fully expected the place to be quiet send deserted, but instead, it's hopping with white people, almost exclusively, some old, some young, some in between. Perhaps they are also off work because of the holidays, or else there are a lot more people in town with leisure time than I ever knew. It's standing room only, so I am sitting at the counter part rather than a table, next to a woman who appears to be reading a book that requires her to underline sentences. How she can focus on words with the trio of girls next to her is hard to fathom. The girls are all brunettes, either skipping seventh period high school or possibly college students, though their topics of convers...

The other day, someone I don't know asked me to give her my email address over the phone. For whatever reason, she had trouble hearing what I was saying, even when I went really slowly. I did that thing where you say the letter, and then give an example. I always say, "'A' as in apple, 'B' as in boy..." She was very confused, and when she repeated what she thought my email was, she had written down something like,"applelisaappleboyrightintoexchange@gmail.com." We started again. "No, the letter 'A' as in apple..." She said, "Okay, apple..." This went on for some time until I just started saying yes, that's right, and accepting that I would never get an email from her, though someone with a thirty-five letter username would likely be receiving her message. I told my friend Adam this, and he said he had an idea for a skit, where you're in an office setting and start spelling out your email to a client,...

Everyone at work, at the coffee shop, at the library, at the synagogue seems to be talking about the Ugly Sweaties parties they're invited to. You've heard about them--those are the usually office-centric parties where you are required to wear the ugliest Christmas/holiday sweater you can find at Goodwill. Except now, it's such a popular phenomenon that you can buy these special horrible sweaties at Target and Urban Outfitters and Kohl's. What an embarrassment, though, if you bought what you thought was the funniest, most unique sweatie at Walmart, only to realize that Jean from accounting is wearing the same one! I've participated in these parties and I even suggested one at my last job, but I guess it's one of those snotty things--like, once everyone's doing it, it's no longer funny and cool. And then you start to see the variations of sweaties that allow men to talk about their favorite subject, the penis. And women too, can use it as an o...

Or to complain that they start playing it earlier and earlier each year, or to wonder if anyone under the age of 35 has any idea who Bing Crosby is or to say that I cannot watch Elf again. We have purchased a single wreath which Dan hung on the front door, but have not yet committed to a tree, as the whole endeavor will also require lights and new ornaments, since we can't face the same Target ones circa 2006. I am not invited to any Ugly Christmas Sweater parties, but we will have a staff party on Thursday and another one the following week. I have done no Christmas shopping, and have no brilliant ideas for what to buy my loved ones. Maybe we need to sit down and make our respective lists for one another. PJs? Yankee candles? Gift cards to Starbucks? I really need to find some time to think about this more--I used to be creative and make photo albums and gift certificates, but now, I feel like I'm just trying to figure out how not to wait until the last minute.

Princeton Library has this table of book club books and I occasionally browse through them. They're not current books, necessarily, just books that the people seem to be popular with book clubs at the moment. A month ago, I checked out A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because I never got to  it when I was younger. I read four pages, felt depressed by her scrounging for tin,  and put it aside. My guess is that the girl will find that the tree is her one steadfast friend through her years of poverty and painful girlhood lessons. But I could be wrong. Instead, I checked out a Graham Green book, The Heart of the Matter . I read half of it, and then realized that I wasn't sure if the story was set in Africa during WWI or Syria during WWII or possibly current day Dominican Republic. The main character's name is Scobie, and so that made him hard to take seriously. I couldn't decide if it was a novel of intrigue, socio-political critique, or an historical account of racial relation...

Did you see this movie? I missed it somehow, and so we rented it on Saturday. The beginning scene is two twenty-something women talking in this slightly stilted, artsy way (or maybe it just seemed artsy because the movie is filmed in black and white) about their futures together. They're best friends, not lovers, but they are extremely close. That first scene is needed to set up the rest of the film, which is somewhat about the friends going in different directions (one appears to be jumping on the career/marriage track and the other is still finding her way), but it's mostly about Frances, a 27 year old dancer's apprentice trying to make it in New York. It took me a while to warm up to the movie, and it took Dan about 30 minutes to dismiss it completely to go work on a logo in the kitchen, but I kept watching, and it never became what most movies about women turn into--this search for heterosexual love. In fact, there was pretty much no sex in the whole film, because, ...

Now that we've lived in Princeton for two months, I can say that the main thing I like about our new location is avoiding route 1 completely. Remember last year? Remember how I used to race home at sundown because I was so scared to drive on route 1 after dark? And when it rained? Or during the day? And pretty much any time I got behind the wheel? In our new location, I take 206 into work. Not only is it a shorter distance by about 10 to 15 minutes every day, it's one lane. One windy country road that goes past farms and mansions and the governor's house and then through quaint downtown Lawrenceville. There are a few traffic lights, but that's okay with me too, because it keeps people from racing too fast. I have a theory that you will find better drivers on country-type roads, because they are more interested in having a calm drive than in getting to their destination as quickly as possible. Those who want speed, efficiency, and near-death experiences are drawn to th...

Did you ever have one of those days where you spend half your time putting off the things that you know you need to do? Or are you like me and those days are every day; this Scarlett O'Hara mantra playing out again and again, "I'll think about that tomorrow..." That is how I am about some of the promises I make to myself, like eating better, exercising, responding to emails right away, pursuing my life's dreams, etc.  This blog, for instance. I keep telling myself that I need to do a post, and then I go read an article about procrastination. For real, because I just found this blog called Life Hack that is rife with lists of ways to improve your life or things to avoid or ways to be happy. And a part of me hopes that if I read enough of those articles, one or two if the ideas will stick. At the same time, it reminds me of this article from The Onion that reads "Man has life changing epiphany and forgets it on the ride home."  No matter how many inspira...

We don't often go to the movies, and when we do, I almost always get to pick what we see and Dan goes along for the ride. The last few times, I've chosen movies that are too long and ultimately dissatisfying. The one before Gone Girl was the Tom Cruise blockbuster where he keeps having to live the day over and over, an action packed version of Groundhog Day , minus any attempts at humor or logic. We didn't hate that one--but it was another in a long line of what I call dick flicks, where the cast includes hundreds of men and two women. In this case, the two women neatly fell into the mother/whore dichotomy. One was the mommy of the evil doer and the other was a lovable prostitute. There may have been a third who was a little stronger--the main ninja trainer or whomever, but ends up not being quite as smart or wily as TC, and I think he gets to save her in the end. There's this thing called the Bechdel Test developed by a woman comic where the movie isn't totall...

Dan's mom visited last weekend, and she and I went to West Elm, because we both felt we were in need of more things to make our lives complete. In my case, I was looking for decorative pillow cases. I told myself that I could not actually buy yet another throw pillow (we have a dozen), but I could buy a cover. But then I saw a pillow that completely matched the other two I got at West Elm a few months ago (go figure). It had a tag on it that read $34 and another that read $12. This made me think that the pillow was on sale for $12, in part because the helpful worker told me that though the insides of the pillow weren't included in the price, they also weren't that expensive. Imagine my surprise when I checked out to discover that not only was the pillow not on sale, the cover itself was $34 and the stuffing was $12, bringing this impulse buy to $46 plus take for something you can't even really rest your head on. He gave me a chance to reconsider, but I still mistakenly ...

I hope you don't mind that I am just going to endlessly make comparisons between the condo in Plainsboro and the apartment in Princeton. One thing that's notably different is that we have a yard to ourselves. In Condoland, we had a back patio that looked out onto a bike path, so we didn't technically have a yard to speak of--just a patch of grass before the bike path that Dan and Luke used to kick the soccer ball around. The other thing was that we lacked a certain level of privacy, because every five minutes, someone would whizz by on a bike or jog through (and a disappointingly small number had dogs with them) or just leisurely walk by, looking into our back patio windows. Here, we have fenced in yard, and though the neighbors are still close (I met three of the four so far), they are not in our living space. Here is the back yard. Living in that big white house you see is a man named Lew who has two giant golden retrievers with sweeping tails. This dog house comes ...

One of the things that happened when we moved was that our big fluffy sectional couch did not fit into our narrow, old house un-fluffy door. The movers tried it all--taking off the front door, then going up the back and taking off that door, removing the legs to the couch, all to no avail. We were on the verge of sawing it in half when we decided to let one of the movers keep it. Actually, what happened was that Dan agreed to drive back to Plainsboro with the mover guy and put the coach back into the condo to be removed at a later date. In any case, a week later, we found this sofa at Crate and Barrel outlet and the related ottoman. We think they are related. Upon closer inspection, we aren't 100% sure that the two match. We do not care. This is what I would call a design cranny, and it now features two small objects de arte from Target. Here is Dan, fixing Luke's breakfast. The plastic pumpkin is new. Spice rack in the kitchen made out of what I think is supp...

Tomorrow will be our two week anniversary in this new apartment in Princeton proper. I feel weirdly self-conscious now when people ask me where I live, as if I'm bragging or being snotty. I have an impulse to apologize and add, "But we don't own there. We could never afford to buy in Princeton unless we lived in a shack." From now on, I will practice not saying sorry for living in a town I love. Our new apartment is beautiful, closer to the shops and restaurants and the library than anything we tried to buy, and it's only a $150 more per month than the condo in Princeton (or $75 each, as we split pretty much everything down the middle). And, I just changed over my car insurance to my new zip and it's $10 cheaper. Oh, and the cleaning ladies are charging us $15 less per month to clean the place, so that's another $17.50 less for me ($10 plus half of $7.50, if you're following), plus I use less gas going to and fro, and so when you get down to it, it...

I keep making  a promise to write more in my blog, but in part because of a morning teaching class and in part because of my own inertia, I can't seem to get to it. I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m.--not something that is easy to do, for me or for the students. They are tired and disinterested, half-asleep, and I am usually pretty awake, but annoyed by their lack of enthusiasm. On top of that, the class is long--an hour and a half. When I taught at Penn State, I seem to remember that my T/R classes went from 9:45 to 11, for example. You wouldn't think that the extra 15 minutes of class time would make a difference, but it does. The first few times I taught, I would be working really hard to do the lesson plan, and have this whole thing planned out, and then I would be wrapping that up and discover it was only 8:30. I would write more about teaching, but I'm cautious because I want to be mindful of the possibility that students could find my blog. Suffice it to say...

Where was I? Yes, when last we left, we were attempting to buy a home in one of the most expensive cities in the country (I mean, I'll compare Princeton prices with like a penthouse in Soho, and the penthouse in Soho will be more reasonable). Okay, so we bid on this other house, above asking price as we were advised to do, and the guy accepted our offer. Just to back up a little for those of you who haven't purchased property in a while, you can bid on a house, but you first have to be pre-approved for a mortgage, just so that nothing crazy happens later, like you find out you can't afford it. We were so excited to have the house! It was adorable--two huge bedrooms with slanting ceilings upstairs and a bathroom there too, then another bedroom with an on-suite bathroom, and a square sun room and decent living room, kitchen and dining area. The basement was clean and dry with high ceilings and the appliances were good (all I cared about was that the refrigerator had a water...

Why have I not been writing more? I feel stuck and mute---in the middle of lots of change, and most of it has been turmoil of the domestic kind. It's weird how you think your situation is difficult, and then it becomes more difficult and you go, Hey, wait, that thing before? That was easy. I suppose there is a lesson in that somewhere, but I hope the lesson is not "It is what it is." For the last four months, we've been trying to buy a house in Princeton, in part because that's where Luke has gone to school since he was in kindergarten and so we want to keep him with is friends, and in part because if I have to stare at this condo parking lot for much longer, I may go AWOL. In case you are unaware of what the realty market is like in Princeton, the median range to purchase a home is around $750,000. I made that number up, and so it could be higher, maybe more like $1 million at the minimum. Just know that most of the houses you see are millions of dollars. ...

Luke starts sixth grade in one week. Maybe it's different for boys, and easier somehow because they don't mature as quickly as girls, but I found almost all of middle school to be hellish. I was too young to do anything on my own like go to the Quick Mart, and too old to play with stuffed animals and dolls. Plus, I was losing that ability to forget myself in games I made up. Or maybe that happened in seventh grade. I do remember this distinct feeling of loss--losing the ability to be able to make up pretend stories, like when kids play house or imagine they are super heroes. When you're little and making stuff up, there's a part of you that believes it's real--you really are Wonder Woman or Batgirl or slaying dragons or running away from monsters--it's possible to forget that you're a human girl and imagine that you are more than that and the world has mystical things like dragons and if you concentrate hard enough, you might be able to fly or time travel....

The show always starts with this benign preview nonsense. We pick up right after the final rose ceremony where everyone is oh-ing and ah-ing over the fact that Michelle got a 100th chance for love on this journey. She literally went from going home empty handed to staying there with huge lines of black mascara running down her Barbie face. AshLee astutely observes that there is one less guy than usual, forgetting again that they always add extra people. First date card goes to Robert. He better ask out the one-arm lady. He does, mainly because they want to show her jumping into the water with just the one arm. Michelle goes from thrilled to absolutely pissed and crying more in the bathroom. Graham knocks on the door to comfort her. Highs and lows! Dude, he didn't pick you in the final rose ceremony, he's not going to then ask you out on a date, AND let us not forget that you shouldn't want to go on a date with a guy who has just expressed disinterest in you. She's g...

It's not written in second person, not really--what I mean to say is that the first person narrator spends most of the novel in direct address to a man who is stalking her. With sentences like, "You were waiting for me at the bus stop. Seeing you made my stomach turn over, like a fish was dying in it. You smiled, your perfect teeth reminding me of a wolf from a fairy tale story that ended badly." I made those passages up, but you get the gist. I only read about fifty pages before giving up.  Look, I know it's fiction and we should maintain our willing suspension of disbelief, but I was annoyed that the woman didn't consider going to the police to report her stalker until well into the harassment. And when she did, the police were like, Has he hurt you? Threatened you? No. Then there's nothing we can do. That may be true, I don't know. But it's still annoying to read a book where the suspense created isn't because of an interesting story with comp...

I don't know what all this chatter is about. Has the show started or is this all a preview? Or is it a recap? Or a preview of the recap? Elise says, "Through the storm, comes a rainbow. And I want Chris to be my rainbow." There must be a dirty joke there somewhere. A semi-black girl named Danielle joins the group, just to throw in a little excitement and so they can make a gesture toward diversity. Her date card says, "Choose a man of your choice to go on a date." I guess that's written by the same person who came up with the rainbow line. "Pick a person who is picking a people's very first choice." Danielle chooses Marquel. It appears that nerd glasses are in. Meanwhile, this other girl is upset, but you can't really tell because she's wearing a distracting Cleopatra head dress and a watermelon-sized turquoise ring. Lacy is so beautiful that she's hard to look at. It's like she's this super cute puppy that you jus...

Just finished reading Tana French's The Likeness , the second literary detective novel featuring Cassie Maddox, a weary detective in Dublin. The first was In the Woods --I have no recollection of the plot, as I read it a few years back and the details have since fled my brain. Something about some missing kids, and she and her partner Rob end up finding one of them, but there's a bleak ending. Most of this I recall because it's referenced in the second novel. In any case, this plot centers around a girl who is found stabbed to death near an old mansion outside of the city. The twist is that she's a doppleganger for Cassie, and she happens to be using Cassie's old undercover identity. It sounds a bit on the soap opera side, you know, like when an evil twin suddenly surfaces and wrecks havoc on things, but it doesn't read that way. Cassie, who has transferred out of the undercover life and into the numbing hell of domestic violence, is persuaded to go back ...

When I lived in Chicago, my friend Becky Wittenstrom (who I worked with at Northwestern), suggested out of the blue one day that we take a trip to Italy. I'd only ever been to Germany, and had never taken a trip with a friend, but she was a go-getter and found us tickets for a long weekend to fly to Rome and then take a train to Florence. Or maybe it was the other way around. She was an excellent travel companion, organized without being too bossy, un-fussy, and interested in both seeing the important sites (the Uffizi, the Colosseum) and walking the streets to just see what was happening. Here is a picture that represents one of the happiest moments in my life, because all of my favorite things converged at one time--a shop dog named Crisso (I wrote his name on the back of the photo), a gelato, and an adventure in a foreign land with a good companion.