But Call Me Betsy

Have you heard of this not so new but still startlingly American phenomenon of paying a total stranger to send you presents? You can do this for all sorts of products--makeup, dog treats, clothes, arts & crafts, whimsical house items. The way it works is that you sign up for the service, and add some specific details about your skin and hair coloring, your likes and dislikes, the size of your bra. For Stitch Fix, you give them all of your measurements and choose colors you like and dislike and take this little quiz that gives you options of sets of clothes in certain styles--like, one that's termed romantic because it has lacy blouses and floral prints, or "classic" which includes polo shirts and khaki pants and an anti-choice button. You also say generally what you want to pay for certain items, though there is no range option for 0 to $20. Once you've filled out your style sheet, a person in this company picks out five items of clothing or jewelry for you ...

We went to see Mistress America on Saturday and it was charming and annoying and I felt like we were 20 years too old to enjoy it. The plot is about a first-year college student in Manhattan who feels out of place and so calls up her stepsister to be, who introduces her to the city and is quirky and funny and damaged and egocentric and grandiose. The young girl writes a short story about her called Mistress America and it's not flattering and then there is this long scene at someone else's house that felt like a play--all dialogue in the living room for twenty minutes between secondary characters. After the movie ended, I tried to uncover a second meaning. How the character played by Greta Gerwig is really a metaphor for the city or for lost youth or for America as this hopeful yet misguided place where amazing and terrible things happen, but I couldn't sustain it. Mostly, I watched the movie never forgetting that I was watching a movie, because the dialogue and acting ...

No one has ever died there (to my knowledge). One cat was put down, but not on the premises and it was his time. Not this cat. This cat lives and has moved to New Jersey. Exposed brick, built in bookshelves in the kitchen. Very lovely and perfect for cookbooks or a row of increasingly smaller Russian dolls. This little secret toothbrush holder in the bathroom. It's listed as a two bedroom, but there's a small room that could be a baby's room or an office or a huge luxurious walk in closet. My mom used it to keep her Singer happy. I used it for bookshelves. The previous owners kept a baby in here. Along with having central air, it has ceiling fans in both bedrooms and the living room (I'm proud of that one because I commissioned it). Which fan is it?? You'll have to come visit the house to see. The bathroom and kitchen have both been redone in the last three years and I got this little bitty dishwasher, and there's a garbage disposa...

I've been thinking a lot about college and a particularly bad crush I had. I don't know why this is on my mind, maybe because there are so many songs that remind me of college on the radio lately. For instance, every time I hear Prince's "When Doves Cry," I picture him, but only like the physical details of him, like my brain is making an amalgamation of the MTV video and his corporeal self--ladder-like abs, too-long curly hair and blue eyes. And it also reminds me of a certain stillness that would come over me in his presence, and awe that he didn't deserve, but I couldn't seem to stop myself from feeling that way. And thinking of my younger self reminds me how long and short life is. That sounds trite, but it's weird how thirty years ago seems both like forever and not long ago at all. I was thinking about far away/close when I was singing to a Pat Benatar song this morning in the car ("We're running with the shadows of the night......