Overly Verbal

So I started my list of things to do in 2007 with the words, “purchase a car”. This I have not done. But I do have a car at my disposal now, because Uncle Wiggly has lent me one. Or something. The details have not yet been worked out. Maybe I will buy it from him, and therefore actually do something I intended to do, but I’m not sure that’s the smartest thing I could do. As it happens, the Kelley Blue Book does not have data online for cars quite as old as this one is. At any rate, it’s out in the parking lot now, and there are only three things I have to say about having a car:

1. You know how when you first got your driver’s license they taught you how to make hand signals to indicate which way you were going to turn, if, say, your turn signals weren’t working? I totally wish I had been paying attention then. The turn signals don’t work. Even if it was warm enough to be waving my arms around outside the car window when I wanted to turn, I can’t remember which signal indicates which turn. But I did learn today that there’s even a hand signal for when you’re going to stop. Which is bad. Even though the brake lights work, now instead of having a 50/50 chance of getting whatever signal I might make correct, I have only a 33 percent chance of doing so. Damn.
2. I, being a natural worrier, am currently under the impression that my neighbors, who may not be the most sophisticated and law-abiding bunch, might steal the car. So in the morning I have to check and make sure it’s still there, and then when I come home I have to check again, and maybe it would just be easier to take it to work with me. I can’t decide.
3. The car, unlike me, has a lot of junk in her trunk. (A thing it had not occurred to me to make endless bad jokes about until I last night had the distinct pleasure of seeing the video for “My Humps”, a thing I had not done before. Oh, my life is rich now that I have MTV in something like six different iterations.)

Now I can drive to the library and check out more books so I can stay in and read instead of interacting with humanity. Yay!

So there’s that, and there’s one other thing.

There’s this McDonald’s near my work. And in this McDonald’s there’s a sign taped to each and every register that reads, “If you do not receive receipts or wrong receipts, ask the manager for a free apple pie.” I don’t know much about punctuation, but every time I go there I get a correct receipt. Am I or am I not entitled to a free apple pie on every visit? I don’t want to push the issue, because I don’t even like the apple pies at McDonald’s (True, or not true? True. Something that McDonald’s makes and sells does not please me. Weird, but true.). But I figure the $11,893,547 I spent on a fancy English degree should be good for something, so maybe one day I’ll ask for a pie. (When I have an extra-long lunch break, and after I have learned the Spanish words for “comma”, “pie”, and “blatant disregard for the language of the country you have chosen to make your home”.)

So that sign’s been there a long time, and I’ve never told you about it before (because I am nothing if not a cruel, cruel mistress). But today for the first time I noticed a sign indicating that the manager’s name is ANAL. I’m thinking that maybe her name is Ana L., because my cashier’s name today was Ana, and you have to distinguish the managers from the cashiers somehow, so you might as well go with last initials. I think it’s already been established that the signmakers at this McDonald’s are perhaps not the most careful signmakers ever. So maybe it should have read “ANA L.” - I just don’t know. And so, of course, that reminded me of Ana Ng, and then I got “Don’t Let’s Start” stuck in my head.

Sometimes my whole life is like one of those puzzles where you have to turn HEAD into HAND by changing only one letter at a time while still making real words. The lucky thing is that not only do I enjoy that sort of puzzle, I also (not to put too fine a point on it) happen to kick ass at them.

(So am I out this evening playing Scrabble with strangers? No, no I am not. I’m making a casserole, and knitting. Go ahead, tell me I should be doing something else. Believe me, you don’t want no drama.)

So I’ve been getting a lot of comment spam lately. Like, a whole lot. And it’s annoying, because I get an e-mail each time someone posts a comment, and then I have to read that e-mail, when I’m probably busy reading something else interesting on the Internet, about knitting or Britney Spears or something. And then eventually I have to log in, mark the comment as spam, and kick it out of my queue. So I’ve turned comments off on the posts that seem to be getting the most spam. If you find yourself suddenly inspired to make some brilliant and witty comment on some brilliant and witty thing I wrote in July or August, and you find you can’t, let me know via e-mail, and we’ll somehow remedy the situation, so that we don’t rob the Internet of the brilliant and witty things that any of us have to say.

Because that would just be wrong.

Do I have anything else to say at the moment? Not really.

I might go out Wednesday night to play Scrabble with strangers, but I might not, so don’t count on a report on that. I really feel like I kinda need someone to go with me. I’m not generally afraid of strangers, unless they’re deliberately meeting for a specific reason. Saturday night on the Metro, for example, there were two rather amorphous groups of people in the system: anti-war protestors going home, and hockey fans going to a game. And so I was a little frightened. Some of the people had their torsos painted blue, some had giant signs with vaguely threatening messages, and I was a little afraid.

Afraid that the blue men would accidentally fall onto the tracks while they were forming a human pyramid on the platform. Afraid that the people with signs would notice that I wasn’t dressed for an anti-war protest, and want to talk to me about politics. Afraid that the groups would join together and somehow decide to hurt me because I was not like them.

I think we all know that I don’t really like people. I like people even less when they’re in large groups that I don’t belong to. Which is pretty much any group of people, isn’t it? But maybe, just maybe, the people who gather to play Scrabble with strangers are not scary, and are maybe sort of like me? I can’t decide. I mean, I’ve seen movies about those people, and they seem like fun in the movies. But is that only because I can talk to them but they can’t talk to me? I guess all I can do is go and find out, but if anyone’s free on Wednesday and wants to go with me, let me know.

(Speaking of talking to people who can’t talk to you, Uncle Wiggly and I went to Maryland on Sunday. And when we came back, Uncle Wiggly was in the other room, and I was in the bedroom, talking to the cat. So he says, “Who are you talking to?” and I explain to him that I was talking to the cat about where we’d been, and why we didn’t take him with us. I told Mouse about the time he went to Maryland, and about how he didn’t like it because he doesn’t like the car. And I think that’s a perfectly normal thing to do, because of course Mouse wonders where I was. Apparently, though, that’s weird. Whatever.)

I have no idea what a TCP window is, or a return SYN-ACK, for that matter (but I am inexplicably tempted to say fo-shizzle now). I do know that after speaking to no fewer than seven Verizon employees and having three different routers in my home, I decided that there wasn’t anything wrong with my computer or the router, and I was going to figure this damned problem out if it killed me, because the Ethernet cable trailing all over my living room was starting to get to me. So I did some Googling, and now that I’ve edited my registry, I can successfully use the Internet without any wires. Which is cool, especially because the instructions I found on some tech forum somewhere said that if one isn’t comfortable editing their registry, one should give their neighborhood geek a six-pack to do it. So now, among other things, I am also, apparently, the neighborhood geek. So good for me. (Now I have to wait for Verizon to call me and tell me when they’re coming back to my house to give me the correct set-top box. I’m supposed to have a DVR after all, a thing that I only noticed when I re-read the order confirmation after pulling it out so I could call them once again. Being able to record TV is going to revolutionize my life. I just know it.)

In other news, well, there is no other news. I’ve several times in the last week planted myself in front of the computer and written half an entry, only to be interrupted. So I saved those entries and when I went back to finish them the next day invariably thought, “Yeah, Jen, that was relevant and/or amusing yesterday. Too bad it’s not now.” Ah, well. Here’s some junk:

Some people have suggested that brain damage will make you quit smoking, but I read a news story that said, “Clearly brain damage isn’t a treatment option for people struggling to kick the habit.” So I guess I’m not going to try that.

I went to a party on Saturday night for work, and it was fine. My hair looked fabulous, but it took me a very long time and a foreign substance to make it that way, and then who even saw it? A bunch of people I work with, and Uncle Wiggly, who is, I believe, completely immune to the power of my hair. Ah, well.

And I think people were a little surprised to find that I was the girl who was trying to stir up some fun. Maybe I come across as slightly more serious in the office than I do the rest of the time, but I really don’t think a party’s a party unless there’s dancing, and not to “It Had to Be You” or “Fly Me to the Moon”. Upon asking the piano player whether he would play Copacabana, the Electric Slide, or YMCA (it was a group effort, this stirring up the fun), we were told, “I don’t do that.” Well too bad for us, I guess, but too bad for you, too, pal. What a sad life you must lead; hope things turn around for you soon.

That whole not buying things I don’t need project? I bought another Happy Meal, two songs on iTunes, and a magazine. Granted, spending $12.05 unnecessarily in 12 days is not all that bad, but obviously I could be doing better. (I’m doing a bang-up job of bringing my lunch to work two-thirds of the time, though, so I don’t feel all that bad about it.) There are still several days before the end of the month, and I’ve redoubled my efforts.

I think that’s it. The shopping cart is gone. There’s been some movement toward actually doing one of the “Things to Do” in 2007, but I’m not saying anything about it yet because the situation’s in flux. The sweater I’m knitting is coming along nicely. I’m reading a book that isn’t all that good, but I keep thinking it’s going to get better, so I keep reading it. That’s dumb, isn’t it?

I have to get some kind of life, don’t I? Is anyone else doing anything interesting? If so, can I live vicariously through you for a while so I have something to write about? Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

Wait? Did I get that backwards?

You know why you’re supposed to make sure the door to your building closes fully behind you when you enter or leave? Because otherwise religious peddlers can get into your building, and then you open the door, in case the person knocking on your door is your upstairs neighbors and there’s a gas leak or something, and you and your cat are in imminent danger.

So two sheepish-looking blonde girls are at my door, and I open it, and they’re saying, “Good evening, ma’am” at the same time there’s a commercial on my TV with that sappy Lee Ann Womack song in it. (I secretly love that song, even though I would never tell anyone that.) (Um, oops.) (What I like most about it is those men singing in the background, and how you have to listen really hard to understand what they’re saying, but then when you do figure it out, it’s like they’re speaking truth to power or something: “Time is a wheel in constant motion, always rolling us along. Tell me who wants to look back on their youth and wonder where those years have gone?” Can I get a witness?)

And then the one sheepish-looking girl tries to hand me a card with a picture of Jesus on it.

And then I nearly snapped and kicked them out of the building, because there’s a somewhat prominent sign that says, “No Soliciting”. But since I am not overly fond of any of my neighbors at the moment, I just said, “Thanks, but I’m not interested. Good luck.” And then I closed my door, and left them to fend for themselves in the upper reaches of my building, where there are small new barking puppies. Was that mean?

And that’s how I got “I Hope You Dance” stuck in my head. (And why I keep hearing doors slam throughout the rest of my building. I don’t think those girls speak Spanish.)

And, you know, I have been known in the past to invite people like that into my home, to see what they have to say. Because if they continue to find it necessary to knock on doors to tell people the good news, it must work occasionally, right? I mean, why would they keep doing it if it didn’t sometimes work? So maybe one day someone like that will change my mind. As one might say, living might mean taking chances, but they’re worth taking.

I hope you still feel small when you stand by the ocean. (And all that fluff about dancing too. As we all know, I’m totally pro-dancing, as opposed to sitting it out. Dancing is fun.)

(And while we’re at it, who are you not to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Go on do it. I am.)

Anyway, the door of my old building just sort of automatically closed when you used it, because it was really heavy. You just don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

It’s snowing. This makes me happy because I do believe that if it’s going to be really, really cold, it might as well snow. Snow is pretty.

Well, actually, while very many things look lovely covered with a light dusting of snow, a shopping cart is not necessarily one of them. Maybe a shopping cart parked with all the other shopping carts in their little corral in the grocery store parking lot, but not one parked by someone’s front door. The snow only serves to remind me that the cart has been there long enough that it’s actually beginning to collect things. Dead leaves, snow - so far there are no empty 40-ounce bottles in it, but I think it’s just a matter of time. (Heck, if it stays there long enough I may eventually become so distressed that I start drinking 40s on my stoop, and then throwing the empty bottles toward the cart.) (I had my groceries delivered this afternoon, and I do hope that some of my neighbors noticed the truck, and the nice man who carried my groceries in, and put two and two together when they realized that there is not a shopping cart parked in front of my door. I’m doing everything I can.)

Also, kids are sometimes cute when they’re playing in snow - it warms your heart to see the little ones making snowballs and running around, filled with glee because it’s the first snowfall of the season. But when one of the kids, in response to being hit with one of those snowballs, turns around and loudly says, “Shit!”? Sort of shatters the tableau.

The laundry room here is not particularly pleasant. A concrete floor, tiny pieces of lint everywhere, and it’s cold and somewhat damp in there. So why are there no fewer than four people hanging out in the laundry room right now, one of whom is a small, crying child? It can’t be that much nicer than inside their apartments, can it? I mean, really, with the exposed pipes, and the rumbling of machines? Go home, and then come back around the time your laundry is through. Here’s a tip: those little numbers on the machine represent the number of minutes left in the cycle.

I may not actually do my laundry today. I just don’t understand these people.

In other news, I love Triscuits. But every time I eat Triscuits lately, I’m a little bit frightened. There’s an overly large photo of Rachel Ray on my box of Triscuits, and she’s been made up or airbrushed or otherwise altered so much that she looks somehow even less human than she normally does.

And she’s on the back of the box because of her “delicious, entertaining recipe”. I don’t know much about punctuation, but I think they maybe should have left that comma out. To my mind, at least, the recipe’s just not all that entertaining. It’s simply a list of ingredients with instructions. Which I guess is probably the definition of “recipe”, but I don’t see how putting the ingredients for a turkey sandwich on a cracker and then putting the cracker in the stove is so innovative. Perhaps I can be on the back of the Triscuits box, because I once put the ingredients for a ham sandwich on a cracker and then put it in the stove. (And one time I put pepperoni and mozzarella on Triscuits, and then put that in the stove. What a party!)

Otherwise, there is nothing of interest to report. I’m knitting a sweater. I hope I’ll have something interesting to write about next week, but don’t hold your breath.

So generally I consider myself a pretty ballsy gal. Talk to strangers in bars, figure if something’s broken I might as well take a shot at fixing it myself before calling in a professional, move across the country because I feel like doing so. But here’s something I don’t think I have the balls to do: go to Safeway, put my groceries in a cart, push that cart out of the parking lot, across eight lanes of traffic, and into my apartment complex, only to leave said cart parked in front of my building, until, well, when? Until I go to Safeway next? Seems to me I must have just bought an awful lot of groceries if I needed to take the cart home, so maybe I’m not going to Safeway again anytime soon. Until my young child has to cross eight lanes of traffic to return the cart? Maybe I’m just going to push the cart into the creek later, and hope no one sees me doing it. I don’t know. I’m just not that ballsy.

But one of my neighbors is. (But not one of my immediate neighbors. If there was a shopping cart immediately in front of my building’s door, I would not have the wherewithal to be writing this now. I would be weeping, probably, and in a fetal position. It’s like four buildings down, but since all the buildings are attached, it’s really like it is my building. Why am I not a sobbing mess, again?) (Oh yeah, because this is character-building. That’s why.)

I live in a ghetto. But it’s fine, really. Everyone’s really friendly, even if they have no class whatsoever. (I was on the verge recently of just buying new curtains for one of my neighbors and slipping them under their door in the cover of night (or well, okay, probably having someone else do that for me - I’m not sure it’s really wise to do things under the cover of night in my neighborhood), but a while ago they bought new shades, to replace the tattered bed sheets they’d tacked up in front of the windows. That was nice. Saved me a coupla bucks.) (And yes, I do mean a couple. Even eight dollars worth of curtains would have been an improvement.)

I just don’t understand how people get here. (I don’t mean get here, get here - that’s simple. They take the bus. To the closest bus stop to my house, where people may or may not be dealing drugs at 9:00 on a Thursday night, depending on how you interpret their behavior. Perhaps instead of leaving the bus stop when I and my friend arrive because they have forgotten something they needed at home, they leave the bus stop because we just harshed their deal. I don’t know. I think my neighbors are probably a little forgetful, but that may be wishful thinking.)

How do you go from being an innocent babe in your mother’s arms to being a person who pushes a shopping cart across a highway and leaves it in what small communal space serves as your front yard? And why? And what can I do, as a person, to stop this sort of behavior?

Serve as a good example? How? That’s really negative, isn’t it? I mean, if I just don’t do the sorts of things I’d like my neighbors not to do, who would notice? I do that already. It’s not like I can suddenly reverse my behavior so that my neighbors will see me change my ways, because I don’t act like a boor in the first place.

Talk to them about it? What would I say?

When I lived in Harlem I had these roommates. They came from the Ivory Coast, and I’m quite sure they lived in mud huts before they arrived in New York. And they would do things in the kitchen that I simply could not tolerate. One day I opened the freezer to find half of a chicken there. No container, no plastic wrap, not even an old newspaper used to prevent chicken blood from getting all over the freezer. Just half of a chicken, naked, chillin’ with my frozen lasagna. And they would cook entire fish(es), with intact heads, in pans far too small to accommodate an entire fish, and in some sort of smelly oil that was probably not designed to be consumed by humans. The day I woke to find what I could only imagine to be the kidney of a cow* defrosting in the sink with the dirty dishes was the day I moved my coffee pot to my bedroom. I never did actually resort to using bottled water to make my coffee, because I was poor. (But I was leaning toward doing so when I finally had to move because the man two doors down from me set his apartment on fire in such a way as to require five fire trucks and a river of water flowing down the stairs. Man was he old.)

Anyway, I never said anything to them, even though we sort of had a language in common. (They spoke French. Not the French I learned in high school, but a sort of French. I could get the nouns. The verbs, however, were a problem. Are you going to leave the keys with your cousin, or did you already? Will there be a ritual goat sacrifice at midnight, or was there one last night?) But even if we had all spoken the same French, what would I have said? “I don’t mean to be overly picky, roomie, but in America we believe in clingwrap, and hygiene.” “Hey, wanna borrow my knife, to cut your fish into smaller pieces? I’ve got some canola oil here you can use instead of that tub of rancid lard.”

I mean, really. So I could go knock on my neighbor’s door (I assume it would be one of the two apartments on the ground floor, because I don’t see what would have stopped someone on the upper floors from simply pushing the grocery cart all the way up the stairs. That’s what I’d do, anyway, if I had any balls, and lived on an upper floor.), and kindly request that they use any number of other methods to convey their groceries to their home. I could point out that Safeway delivers for a small fee. I could even give them a coupon I received recently - Safeway will waive the delivery fee the first time you order from them. I could give them the number for a local taxi service.

But let’s assume that there’s a valid reason for the shopping cart in the yard. Perhaps the person who left it there has a medical condition that requires them to forgo motorized vehicular transportation.

I could offer to help them with their groceries, or offer to return the cart to the store for them.

But as Sara once (and oh-so-very-wisely) said, I am either too nice to or too hard on people. Is there a happy middle ground, where I could accept that my neighbors behave the way they do but also find a way to make them change their behavior without either making them feel bad or putting myself out?

Remember once, long ago, when I said that my having a blog would save me money on therapy? It’s your turn to help now. I amuse you, you help me with my neighbor-with-the-shopping-cart-by-the-door crises. It’s only fair.

Go ahead. I’ll wait here.

And, as ever, thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

_____
* That’s not true. I could imagine a lot of other things that giant hunk of meaty flesh might have been. I just chose not to.

So today I didn’t spend a dime. In fact, I made money. I apparently paid a deposit of $40 to Verizon well more than a year ago, and today got a check in the mail from Verizon in the amount of $41.66. Interest, or some such rot. Not bad.

So today? Brought my lunch to work; thoroughly enjoyed my day at work, as usual; came home to a remarkably clean and well-organized home; made and ate a grilled cheese sandwich (with bacon! I have what can only be categorized as an unnatural attraction to the bacon); intend to sit down and knit while watching a movie, until it’s time for bed. (A minor thing I also intend to do this year is actually sit through all of the Woody Allen movies I’ve never seen, or have seen only parts of. I’m way behind on the modern ones, but also have managed to ignore all of the movies that don’t take place in a period I care about - tonight it’s “Love and Death.” I love Netflix.)

The party dilemma seems to have resolved itself, but I’m not going to say anything about that here, lest I accidentally deify the person who has agreed to go with me. He can out himself if he wants to, but I’m not going to do it. That would be mean.

But there’s one thing to be reckoned with - I said that I was going to go out and play Scrabble with strangers the very next time the opportunity arose, come hell or high water. The opportunity arose this evening, and I eschewed* that opportunity because I wanted to come home and make a sandwich and maybe watch a movie. I can always practice playing Scrabble with strangers later - the year is young.

And here’s something - I haven’t had a song stuck in my head for a very long time. Last week I did have “. . . Baby One More Time” stuck in my head for a while, but then I got to work, and someone was complaining about something, and I said, “Well, at least you don’t have a Britney Spears song stuck in your head,” and he said, “Which one?” and I said, “Hit me baby, one more time.” He said, “Ah, well, that’s a classic.” Hi-larious, and so it went away. And earlier today I almost got “Rhythm of the Night” stuck in my head when I heard it on the radio, but it just didn’t stick.

Something is wrong in my brain. I think it’s called happiness.

Could I be more boring? Probably not, even if I tried. You just tell me when you get bored, and I’ll stop. Well, okay, probably I won’t. It’s a nice idea, though, isn’t it?

_________________

* That is now the third time today I’ve used the word “eschewed”. The first time it just happened - I was at work, and simply talking. It just came out. The second time I couldn’t help myself, because it was at the front of my brain, or on the tip of my tongue, or something. This third time? I’m weak. Weak. No one has ever said, “This is Jennifer. She wields her vocabulary appropriately, and in a fashion that is neither annoying nor intimidating.” (Okay, maybe someone has said that, but he or she was wrong. Dead wrong.)

So I thought I had located and stored all of my yarn last week. But Saturday I opened a box that I thought just had random stuff in it, and found it half-filled with yarn. At first I though, “Yay! More yarn!” And then I thought, “Well, it’s too bad there’s nowhere to actually put this. I better sit down and knit.”

Some of you may remember the hats I knitted for charity a while back. (I recently mailed those, because the theme of 2007 is apparently “getting random tasks you’ve been meaning to do for a long time done, once and for all”.) I had also knit a scarf, for the Red Scarf Project, but I hadn’t mailed it yet, and when I unearthed the additional yarn, and some of it was red, I found the only logical thing to do to be to knit another red scarf and mail that one at the same time. I have until the end of the month, and I’m already almost halfway done.

So one might think my first semi-monthly goal would have to do with being more charitable. Nope. We’ll get to that, but first, some lists:

Things I have purchased in the last fifteen days that I did not actually need:

• the aforementioned $13 skirt
• green tights
• grey tights
• black cable-knit tights
• a pair of green socks, purchased solely because they’ll look nice with my green sheets, as if someone is going to come over while I’m wearing them and notice that my socks match my sheets. (You know what’s neat about my obsessive-compulsive disorder? I’m not ashamed of it.) (You know what else is neat? Someone came over today and said to me, “Those are nice socks.” He didn’t so much notice the matchiness, but that’s to be expected.)
• a coat (but I bought it at Goodwill, and it was only $7.48, and it will seriously be the cutest coat of all time, just as soon as I change all the buttons on it and spend more money having it dry-cleaned than it cost in the first place)

Things I have purchased in the last fifteen days that I might have thought I needed, but did not actually actually need:

• new silverware (while I used to only own two full-sized forks, I really don’t entertain enough to justify owning more than two forks - on Thanksgiving, for example, I just borrowed some forks from Goethe, and that worked just fine)
• potato chips and Dr. Pepper, when that seemed like a reasonable lunch Saturday (and then I bought even more Dr. Pepper, at the grocery store, because I love Dr. Pepper - Sara will now, and fondly, I’m sure, recall my old car, and how it had a certain smell. While that smell was largely Taco Bell wrappers and cigarette butts, it also had undertones of cherry, because of all the Dr. Pepper spilled on the floorboards.)
• a cheeseburger Happy Meal (but how much do I enjoy the bobble-head plastic puppy dog that came with my cheeseburger? Almost too much to tell you.) (And if you take your Happy Meal home, instead of eating it in the McDonald’s, no one will know that you’re a 35-year-old woman eating a Happy Meal - they’ll just think you have at least one kid.) (And that you feed that kid poorly.)
• a Limited Edition Triple Chocolate Twix bar (unfortunately not as happy-making as the regular Twix bar, but there was no way to find out that without trying one, now was there?)

So it seems I have a shopping problem. I mean, not really a problem, but my apartment is full of enough stuff already, so I’ve settled on a goal: for the rest of this month, I’m not going to buy anything I don’t actually need.

“Need” being open to interpretation, I think I better define my terms:

Food and beverages are basic necessities, but not food that includes chocolate, or involves complex manufacturing processes I cannot replicate in my own kitchen. Basically, if they sell it at 7-11, I don’t need it. (Except for carbonated beverages. While I could probably recreate Pepsi in my kitchen, I don’t want to go to that much trouble, so I’m leaving myself free to purchase as much Pepsi as I want throughout the month of January.)

(But food and beverages purchased in a bar or restaurant, while in the company of one or more new people I’m getting to know (or perhaps know already but would like to know better)? Totally not within the bounds of this little experiment in fiscal responsibility. Let’s try to be reasonable here.)

Clothing? One may in fact think of clothing as a basic need, but not when she (or he) already owns 34 skirts. (I know. That’s a lot. Even I did not believe that I actually own that many skirts, until I counted them for the second time. But I buy most of my clothing really, really cheap, so it doesn’t actually represent as much capital outlay as one might think.)

Books? I haven’t bought a book for weeks now, and I’m feeling pretty good about that, so I’m sure I can go without purchasing any new books for a couple of weeks. (Except that I have a coupon worth $8.52 at Borders - it would be silly not to take advantage of that, right? So maybe one book.) (Still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do about a library now, but since I have to go return some books in Alexandria anyway, I figure I can check more books out then, and therefore delay having to figure out the library problem until those books are due. Maybe that will be my first weekly goal in February - find a convenient library to use.)

I think that about covers it. No unnecessary things for the next 16 days, as defined above. The first weekly goal was a smashing success. We’ll see how this one goes.

In other news? Although my new kitchen is not the perfect kitchen, it works well enough. But I seem to be stuck in a pork chops rut. I’m trying to remember the last time I cooked something on a weekend and it wasn’t pork chops. (Okay, fine, it was two weeks ago, when I made lemon honey chicken. That was delicious.) Anyway, I love pork chops. With apples. And raisins. (Also, miniature loaves of banana bread are nice, especially while they’re still warm.) And today, when I was supposed to be working at home? I did a lot of work, but there’s still two hours of work to do, because I took a lot of breaks: vacuuming, talking on the phone, sending personal e-mail, and also (and - surprise! - relevantly) making brownies that came out so delicious it’s actually obscene. (I’ve eaten a third of them already. I sure can make good brownies.)

And my apartment is really coming together. This whole not having a social life is doing wonders for my personal environment. After I finally put the hammer away after hanging various and sundry things on the walls yesterday, I had to take it out again when I found the most perfect clock for my kitchen. It makes me happy just looking at it. (I guess that ought to go on one of the lists above, but I think the ability to know the time is a basic necessity, no?)

So I guess that’s it. I remain boring, and am now actually getting a little annoying, what with all the self-improvement projects. Last week there were four days when I pretty well had to eat lunch at my desk because of my schedule, but this week even though there is only one day I’ll need to do that, I think I’m still going to try to bring my lunch three days (not counting today, when eating lunch took place in my very own home - have I mentioned lately that I love my job?).

Okay, back to work.

Everybody’s being really quiet lately. What gives?

Although it’s the weekend, I regret to inform you that them freaks are not, in fact, coming. (And I really should stop with the Kelis lyrics, eh? If they only weren’t so darned applicable. All through the week I’ve been at work, doing my job. Now it’s Friday night, I feel alive, somebody told me the weekend’s just for me. What’s a girl to do?) (And I know I will not be the only person to appreciate that alphabetically, on my iPod at least, Kelis is followed immediately by Kim Carnes. Perhaps only Sara would be pleased to hear “Bette Davis Eyes” right after hearing “Weekend”, but at least I am not completely alone.) (I think. Sara, could you just go ahead and confirm that for me? Thanks. You’re a peach.)

Anyway, I feel like I’m getting away with something. I have no plans all weekend. I love not having plans all weekend.

Okay, I have plans. Big plans. Vacuuming, filing, perhaps sanding the grout on the bathroom floor, to ease my suffering each time I go to the bathroom and see the ugly grout on the bathroom floor.

And buying a bookshelf, if I can find a bookshelf I want. And watching a movie or two, reading a book or two, doing some laundry. God, if I could just plan my life so I never had plans on a weekend, I would be a happy girl.

In addition to my sheer lack of plans, I also have a sense of accomplishment: I set out this week to bring my lunch to work four out of five days, and I did it. Granted, the plan was to arrange it so I could go out to lunch today, after having successfully saved money on the other four days, but since I forgot my lunch on Wednesday, I had to bring my lunch today, so it did not go exactly to plan. But it’s kind of silly how pleased I am about saving less than $30. On the other hand, it’s also somewhat pleasant to be so easily amused.

And now I have to think of a goal for next week. It would be truly boring to have the same weekly goal each week, but I don’t have any inspiration at the moment. I’m sure I’ll think of something. (And that thing may be going out on Tuesday night and playing Scrabble with strangers. I’m not sure I’m willing to commit to that right now, so maybe I’ll make my goal something easy. Like finally sewing all the buttons onto things that are missing buttons. Perhaps not as productive in the long run, and certainly not helping me meet one of my yearly goals, but it still needs to be done.)

Otherwise, I got nothin’. My whole week was largely unremarkable.

I remain a person who loves her job. (Today I learned two new words: nosocomial and iatrogenic. And I got paid for learning those words, and what the hell more could you want than that?)

I’m sort of looking forward to Norman Mailer’s new book.

I still need a car.

Today I bought a new skirt. I need another skirt like I need another hole in my head, but it’s gorgeous, and was only $13. (But I have to fix it - it’s a little too big - if I shorten the elastic in the waist a little, it won’t fall off my body.) (Nothing makes me feel quite as much like a misshapen freak of nature as does shopping for clothes. Ugh.)

I have not yet figured out the party dilemma. (And when I was at CVS earlier, I was reminded that Valentine’s Day is coming. That’s really, really great. Super excited about that this year. Everyone I know but me is newly dating someone, or else happily engulfed in a longstanding successful relationship. Nifty.) (Okay, not everyone. Most everyone.)

Monday I get to work from home. It’s like they should pay you extra when you do it, just because you’re so much more productive. No long conversations in the kitchen with co-workers, no time wasted going up and down in the elevators when you could be producing something. Plus, you’re using your own electricity, instead of theirs. (And Mouse is gonna love it. He’s in my lap now, and I’m pretty sure nothing makes him happier than sitting in my lap. Monday he can do it all day long.)

So if you don’t hear from me again until Tuesday, rest assured that I am contentedly refusing to interact with the rest of humanity.

Sometimes something silly happens, and you’re reminded of a song you haven’t heard in a very long time, and then you might buy that song on iTunes, and then you might dance around your own living room. Or you might, if you were me, do it twice. (Okay, four times.) (Fine. Eleven. Be picky, if that makes you happy.)

And then you might, if you were lucky, realize that your new living room has way more room in it for dancing around than did your old living room.

And then you might realize that it doesn’t make a goddamned bit of difference where your mail is, or why you manage to meet only interesting new men who are, say, allergic to cats, or whether or not you’ll have a date to some silly work party.

Because dancing around your own living room is only like the best thing ever.

And then you might realize that your living room blinds are fully open, and that your neighbors might be watching you dance around your own living room.

And then you might think, “Well, hey, good for you, neighbors. You could do worse.”

(And I recognize that some people who read this might not believe me when I talk about dancing around my own living room. And all I have to say to that is that you should get to know me better, because I dance around my own living room way more often than I tell you about here. Often to Rick Astley. Sometimes Icicle Works. Occasionally Swing Out Sister. (I have even been known to dance around my own living room to Steve Winwood - something about the rhythm in “Higher Love” is just exactly like sex.) (But Dusty Springfield? Only when I’m drunk, which I am not now. Maybe I should get that way, because it’s pretty when I dance around my living room to “Son of a Preacher Man.” Pretty.))

Anyway, I know I’ve been kind of boring since the new year, what with all the happiness. And it’s not like expressing more happiness now mitigates that boringness, but I am really very easily amused, and for that I am glad, and you should be too.

And you should dance around your own living room more often. Everybody cool’s doing it. (Even though Mouse does sort of wonder what you’re doing, and why.)

Who was it that gave me a blog again? And why on earth am I so happy? Planets are misaligned? I don’t know. All I know is that I have been happy for several weeks going now, and dancing around in my living room to “Groove is in the Heart” only serves to make me happier.

And eventually some federal commission might just cancel my blog for me, on account of it’s boring.

I can’t help it if I make a man want to speak Spanish.