Happiness is...

NINE boxes of Girl Scout cookies!

Screw my New Year's reminders!

Good Stuff that Happened This Year

In no particular order:

1. New job--MUCH better job!

2. New house--still questioning my sanity on that one, but LOVE my new house.

3. One year anniversary. And I thought I'd NEVER get married. I don't FEEL married.

4. Tom Waits. If you have not seen him in concert, you are not allowed to die until you do.

5. Witty e-repartee with Lesbrarian.

6. San Antonio with Global and Princess.

7. Thanksgiving with Venus and Sheila.

8. Dweezil Zappa with the other rockuhs.

9. Christmas Eve with the V7s, Beth, Amelia, Meshay, and Marcy.

10. When I look back at all the writing I did, I changed my mind. I worked harder than I thought, and I didn't suck.

11. Mosaic. Fun.

12. Oscars with Crafty Lady and Angie. We had a dessert box of martinis.

13. My garden. I had a mimosa tree this year.

Don't mind me

My brother is joining the army. He ships out on January 24. I will be in Seattle.

If I'm not too chipper the next time you see me, now you know why...

A little piece of reading history

For all you reading women out there, take a moment for Tillie Olsen. She died earlier this week. Because of her, I have a minor in women's literature and some of you have majors. Tillie gave voices to folks who couldn't read and then let us read their stories.

Go stand by your irons (if you own one) and remember Tillie.

#74 Transit Epiphanies: 55 Rockhill

This is a quiet bus ride. Even when I ride the ungodly early bus with my two coworkers, it's quiet. I either read or listen to a book. They read the paper. This is usually the second crowded bus of the rush hour. I think that's why my coworkers ride it. I ride it 'cause I can't stand someone in my department getting to work before me.

But today, I was tired and caught the last morning bus into downtown. I've ridden this one before and I'm usually alone. I was surprised to see 6 people already aboard when I got on. I swing into my regular seat and get ready to read.

Two older heavyset ladies start talking. Loudly. To each other. They are not sitting together. They are sitting a few seats apart and across the aisle. So they are not really talking to each other, they are lecturing to the rest of the riders. I start reading until I catch the words "chicken and football." I realize they are rehashing last week's local football game, "The Miracle at Arrowhead." You know the one. Where LoJo descended into the endzone with a loaf of bread and some fish, clad in a toga and riding an oyster shell. On the sidelines St. Carl of the Headphones spread his arms and turned a tumbling pile of red and gold ballers into a lake of affordable shiraz. That one. You heard about it.

It won't last. But that's just me. And Joe Posnanski. He's got the right line.

Anyway, these two ladysports fans, start hailing each other and talking about today's wildcard playoff game and last week's game:

"I wuz servin' up de shicken an' I look up and daaaaaayyyyyy--uuuummmm!"

"Way-ull. Yuh know whut dey say. It ain't over til de fat lady sing. Maaaaayyyyy-uuuunnnn. She mustah bin one heavy-ass muthah!"

Cackling ensues. Evil eyes are shot around the bus at the silent riders. We have been hexed into rooting for the pigskin disciples.

Low resolution

I'm not doing too well with the resolutioning.

I had a meeting with my boss. I forgot to wear lipstick.

I missed my bus last night. I said "Fuck!" on the street corner.

I had three cookies tonight.

I had a glass of red wine and thought about hanging out with Venus. Oh wait, I'm doing okay with that one.

Forget the sky...

my ASS is falling!

And, no, I will NOT lipo my ass.

My husband, the pod person, doesn't know what I'm bitching about. But YOU know, dontcha ladies?

High Resolution

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I stopped after my friend Tim told me why he didn't do it any more either. We like to think we are in a perpetual state of self-improvement and don't need one stupid holiday to remind us that we are always a work in progress. I was 19, hot for Tim and thought, "that's a philosophy I can dig." So I stopped making resolutions.

What I do instead is make reminders, and rank them, of what I want to focus on improving in my life. This looks like a good place to put those reminders. Until I blog so much they get shoved down to the bottom and off the screen and I don't have to look at them anymore.

1. Wear lipstick. I keep forgetting to put this on in the morning. I look much better when I wear it.

2. Get haircut regularly or PinkyNicole will nag me incessantly. She will nag me anyway, but she will find something other than my hair about which to nag. Nagging is one of her favorite hobbies.

3. Read more challenging, elegantly written, complexly plotted books so I do not sound like a complete biblio-bimbo when I talk to Princess about what I have been reading. I do not suffer boredom in my books easily and am grateful I am not on the Notable Books committee.

4. Two cookies. ONLY two. Not a handful with a glass of milk! TWO!

5. Get new glasses. Because I need something I might actually accomplish on this list.

6. Write more zany postcards to family and friends. I am going to bring back snail mail one stamp at a time! Besides, isn't a loopy postcard better than a "Have you seen my child?" flyer or the gas bill?

7. Get back into yoga and tap dancing. I need something to keep me from turning into a wizened and brittle basket case. Banging your feet on the floor and breathing through your left nostril are very therapeutic.

8. Call my sisters more often. I forget how much I laugh when I'm on the phone with them.

9. Stop saying "fucker." Especially loudly in public when the bus blows right by. It's nobody else's business that I was too lazy to get to the stop on time. And when I say "fucker" on a street corner in downtown Kansas City, that's what I'm saying.

10. Read other sections of the New York Times besides Arts, Style, the crossword, Ethicist, On Language (fucker!) (oops, sorry), End Paper, Funny Pages (hell the whole damn magazine) and Week in Review.

Loafing

I know I should be working, but I just can't. I did a big presentation for Albany Public Library's "By the Book" conference earlier this week with my writing partner, David Wright. We did a great job and a rep from Farrar, Strauss Giroux wants David and I to come to BEA and do this little "schtick" we have with gender and reading!

I met up with one of my editors from ALA and we went shopping at H&M.

They served us egg salad sandwiches for lunch. Yah, I am a simpleton. Don't care.

So today I am just happy to be able to goof over here on the MSpage. Although I really should get back to work now...

#161 in the Transit Epiphanies Series

I have new buses to ride now. And I have a lot of choice. I can ride the 51, the 55, the 51X or the MAX.

I have a much shorter walk to and from my bus stop, but I never take the same bus to and from work. I'm too lazy to get up in time to catch the 55. DJClem drops me off at the corner of 59th and Ward Parkway so I can catch either the 51, 51X or the MAX.

The first time I rode the 51X I didn't like it. I ride with some bloodthirsty people and they are all blond women "of a certain age." They have sensible hair and earmuffs. I engaged in one of my favorite public hobbies, readsdropping and notice that one of them is reading In Cold Blood and another is reading The Empty Chair by James Patterson. The third person is reading a Mrs. Pollifax mystery. Nothing gory in that gentle little book.

But I do notice that we are all quiet. The bus driver has gold teeth and a sunshiny grin. He teases me when I get on the bus because I had to run the last half block to get on. He says good morning and I laugh and huff while I swipe my bus pass. This busride is eerily quiet and all the passengers are suburbanites.

I do not feel civilized enough to live in my new neighborhood. I wasn't cool enough for my old one and I'm not refined enough for this one. I'll get used to it.

The 55 going home is a little different. A blind lady rides with me every night. It's my job to tell her which bus is ours. Lots of buses stop at our stop and she needs to be certain she gets on the right one. The first time I ride the 55 a grandmotherly figure is driving. The blind lady asks Grandriver to drop her at 59th. It's too dark to see the bus stop. I ask if there's a stop at 61st and Grandriver says, "I'll make one."

The MAX is the bus I take in the morning. It's always crowded with business and office folk from the outer lying suburbs before we get into midtown and all the interesting people get on. There's Tweaky. She gets on at Linwood and is whippet thin. Not scrawny, just thin and sharp. Everything about her--her lips, her legs, her hair, her face--is sharp and thin. She has this high-pitched voice and talks like a projekt chik. She twitches a lot.

Until yesterday, there was never anything interesting about the bus riders on my new bus lines. Yesterday, something interesting happened. This tall guy in a Chiefs jacket and red ball cap, carrying a bottle of soda, got on the bus. He leaned against the bus wall behind the driver and when the bus lurched, he dropped his soda. It didn't spill, but he let out a "Dayyy--um." Some folks got off at the next stop and he sat down in one of the handicapped seats and pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open and tapped out a number. As usual, the MAX is full of quiet officefolk reading books, the morning paper, plugged into the morning news on NPR, snoozing, staring out the window, but not talking to each other. It's like riding a graveyard to work, I swear.

But THIS guy breaks the silence with, "Hey! Hey, is Peggy there? Peggy? Is she there? Put her on." I glance over, interested that FINALLY, there's some noise on this bus. Dude says, "Peggy? You 'member me? You know who this is? This is the tall white guy you used to cheat on!" INSTANTLY everyone on the bus looks up from whatever it is they're not doing and tunes in. The double take of the other bus riders cracks me up. It's a cranial chorus line to the left to look at the Cuckold. His Cheated Hart goes on, "Yeah, I bin outta town breakin' horses and ridin' bulls. Hey, how's yer sister?"

Maybe the MAX ain't so boring.