Footloose and Fancy Free

Every year I make a list of resolutions, half of which I never keep. This year I’ve decided to make only one. That way, you know, if I fail, I can fail completely, woohoo!

Basically, I want to worry less.

I worry about everything. My grades, my weight, my cooking skills, whether or not I’m a good person, this adult-onset acne Laurie keeps saying sets in at 30 (thanks, BFF, LYLAS), the list extends interminably. In fact! I often worry about my worrying! Is it still in the normal range, or have I ventured into neuroses? Luckily, reading your blogs tells me I am just like everyone else, you worrywarts, you!

In any case, 2007 will be The Year of Less Worrying. I think it’s appropriate I’ll be ringing it in snuggled into a hammock in Belize.

So if you don’t hear from me for the next few weeks, it’s because my parents still have dial-up, or I’m out of the country.

I’ll leave you with a wish of happy holidays! And a happy, WORRY-FREE new year!

Magazine in the Bathroom?

First, this title reminds me of one of my favorite songs of all time, “Mirror in the bathroom” by The English Beat. The problem is that in the context of a magazine in the bathroom the lyrics transform into:

Magazine in the bathroom
I read freely
The door is locked
Just it and me.

Which brings us to the larger problem, the (ridiculous) question driving me to post this entry (against my better judgment, but then, aren’t the best parts of life against your better judgment?), which is:

Are magazines in the bathroom OK?

Let’s set aside the germ aspects for a moment. Let’s assume the only people (ok, living beings) who enter your bathroom are you, your man, and your cats because HEY LADY, you CANNOT leave us out here long enough to brush your teeth. We NEED you. In this instance, germ circulation can’t be eliminated by the absence of reading materials in the loo.

No, let’s talk about the other logistics.

Basically, I rarely get to my issues of The Economist. And I think I might if they were readily accessible while I was taking a bath, or, you know, otherwise spending time in the bathroom.

But the problem is, if I have magazines in there, aren’t I basically ADMITTING that I spend more time in there than the two seconds necessary to powder my nose?

In high school, my (brief, poorly fated) boyfriend Dave was of the stridently asserted belief that women NEVER spent the more than two seconds necessary to powder their noses. He also once won a contest for removing his underwear without removing his pants, so should he really be haunting me as a yardstick of ladylike behavior? Perhaps not.

In any case, I have been waffling on this issue. Part of me thinks, dammit, I am THIRTY in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. I am woman enough to admit to being, oh, HUMAN, right? And I need to be aware of what is going on in the world!

The other part of me thinks, are certain things supposed to remain a mystery?

What do you think? To Mag or Not To Mag? That is the question.

How Is a Whole Lotta Nothing SO TIRING?

First, some bidness: This is your last chance to e-mail me with your request for a winter mix CD — sending them out tomorrow! Don’t be shy, it’s jen@sundayundies.com (include your mailing address)!

***

In high school, my friend Tina’s senior quote was, “If the sun is a ball of energy, how come it makes me so tired?”

I feel the same way about the post-finals period. I haven’t done a whole lot, but even a trip to 7-11 to buy beer seems like climbing Mt. Everest. With a sweet, sweet bubbly reward at the end.

OK, I have done some stuff. For instance, I made my first Hannukah feast (The Boy is Jewish)! I made (with help):

Chicken with Caremlized Onions (OMG, SO. GOOD.), Sage and Olives

Long-Cooked Green Beans

The Ultimate Potato Latkes

And here I am making it:

Arty photos courtesy The Boy.

Also, I have been working MY FINGERS TO THE BONE making those damn mix CDs. Painstakingly poring over tracks, HOUR after HOUR. OK, not really. But I was trained in martyrdom by the best — my gramma. I have told the story of her afghan-crocheting/Joan of Arc-icity before.

In any case, your CDs have not been nearly as painful as crocheting an entire afghan. Also, I have had the chance to meander down my muscial memory lane, as stored in iTunes.

Three of my favorites (NONE OF WHICH made it into the CD, you can thank me now. Or not, if your bag is Rick Dees’ top 10 pop songs from ’90-’92):

• “One More Try”, Timmy T
• “More Than Words,” Extreme
• “Save the Best for Last,” Vanessa Williams

Also, this reminds me that I did not share any of my embarassing tearjerkers in my last post. I was so awed by Carolyn owning up to Sommersby and -R- owning up to Rudy (both of which I cried during, btw) that I had to admit a few that didn’t make the cut last time.

Namely:
• Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, which I’m embarrassed to admit how many times my family watched on VHS (approx. 87)
• Home Alone.
• Christmas Vacation, when Clark gets the lights to finally work.
• Where the Heart Is, which is one big ad for Wal-Mart, but I CANNOT HELP MYSELF.

Cry It Out

The other night I started crying without warning. This is not something you want to do in front of the man you’re seeing. Even if he is a kind man and just hugs you, I still don’t recommend it.

It’s finals, the stress. And also the fact that I’m going to be 30 in three weeks. And as the semester is ending, it reminds me, law school is ending. This dredges up all sorts of questions about what the heck I want from life.

So anyway, I believe there is only one cure for this kind of misdirected malaise: The Tearjerker.

Really? There is nothing better than a sad movie to just RELEASE all that angst. It’s more than mental, it’s the PHYSICAL sense of release. A good cry is the high colonic of emotional regulation. Only after, you don’t want to eat a house; you just want to go to bed. And hug your cats.

Here are my Top 5 Tearjerkers, guaranteed to make me cry no matter how many times I’ve seen them:

1. Steel Magnolias. The funeral scene never fails to make me sob uncontrollably. And then laugh so hard: “HALF O’ CHIQUAPIN PARISH’LL GIVE THEIR EYE-TEETH TO TAKE A WHACK O’ OUISER!”

2. Sense and Sensibility. When Emma Thompson cries, I do.

3. Dead Poets Society. Duh. Also, when I first fell in love with Josh Charles.

4. My Sassy Girl. The Boy introduced me to this one. AMAZING.

5. Snow Falling on Cedars. I started crying in the first five minutes, AND NEVER STOPPED. Literally. 127 minutes of crying.

What are your top 5 tearjerkers?

A Great Loss to our Generation

No, not Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.

Wesley Snipes has been arrested for tax fraud.

He is, as he will tell you, the greatest actor of our generation. Him and Johnny Depp.

I hope they let him out of the Big House in time to make Blade IV.

Last Four Temptations of Me

1. The air of a two-block stretch of my nightly run is filled with the fabulous, fried fragrance of KFC. So far I have resisted, but I may celebrate finals with a big ole bucket of chicken.

Really, it’s almost as bad as college, when I lived across the street from both a tacqueria AND a 24-hour donut shop. I attribute 8 of my sophomore 15 to them. The other 7 I attribute to having two roommates with boyfriends, when all I had was Chinese homework. Bu hao.

2. After 5 days of non-stop studying, I couldn’t take it any more and bought a Christmas tree! So many pretty lights to stare at.

3. My soon-to-be employer sent me cookies again. This year they did not include a calorie count, but somehow I don’t think this makes the cookies any more helpful to my ass.

4. Last night I made some of Rachel Ray’s Sicilian Sausage and Fennel Pasta*, AWESOME. But now I have Sambuca in my apartment.

Temptation, temptation everywhere.

What were your last 4 temptations?

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*Sicilian Sausage and Fennel Pasta
3/4 lb bulk sweet sausage (also called mild italian sausage, and could also substitute toulouse sausage, or I just used pre-packaged Aidells’ apricot and ginger sausage from Ralph’s and it was really good)
1 bulb fresh fennel, tops and outer layer trimmed away
1/2 medium white onion
3 cloves garlic (I just used minced in a jar, fine)
A pinch allspice
Black pepper, to taste
1 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup Pernod or Anisette liqueur (I used Sambuca)
1 lb penne, cooked until al dente
3 tablespoons (twice around pan) heavy cream or half-and-half (I used h&h)
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, for the table (so easy with my new microplane!)

Break up sausage in deep skillet and brown over medium heat. Cut fennel and onion into chunks and process with garlic in food processor or mince by hand.

Add the fennel, onion and garlic to pot. Sprinkle with allspice and pepper. Give the pan a good shake**. Add broth. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 10 minutes, until fennel bits are tender.

Uncover and bring heat up to medium again. Let the broth reduce by half, about 5 minutes. Douse with liqueur. Bring mixture back to a boil. Drain pasta (uh, Rachel, when we supposed to put it onto boil? I think a good time was about when you cover the skillet to simmer). Add cream to sauce and give pan a shake. Toss immediately with the pasta. Serve with plenty of grated cheese and extra black pepper.

**If you don’t have a deep skillet, like me, stirring will do just fine.

Dirty Pretty Things

First, a few disclaimers:
I was trying for a clever movie reference w/ this entry’s title, but in fact it is about dirty AND pretty things. And also, not so much about pretty things. More about happy things, OK, ONE happy thing (finals suck!). And finally, I haven’t even seen the movie (I suck!).

Dirty Things

1. Me.

I have not washed my hair in THREE DAYS. It’s gross. AND I’m getting a haircut tomorrow, which means I have to get up an hour early to wash it in the hopes it will dry on time so Roberta doesn’t think I’ve either a) got dementia (she is like, 22, so she probably thinks anyone over the age of 27 is ripe for senility), or b) I’m gross (I am, and p.s. my body has atrophied from sitting in one place and p.p.s whine! (Laurie says it burns calories)).

2. My apartment.

Because I have not left my couch for three days? Neither have Fred & Ethel. Which means aside from the deserted island of where my bottom rests, my couch is a sea of cat hair. Yummy!

Pretty Ugly, But Happy Thing

Oh, how I have been holiday shopping my little atrophied buns off every night when I just can’t handle any more perjury or conflicts of interest or the fruits and instrumentalities of crime.

And I couldn’t resist buying myself THIS:

Oooh, I am so happy!! I used to have one in my old apartment, and after a long day of arguing with people over whether a link should say “Click here” or “Click here now,” I could come home and have a cold one without shuffling around in some drawer for the bottle opener, which, as everyone knows, is always hidden underneath the cheese grater, which you inevitably scrape a knuckle on.

No more!

p.s. For some reason, I cannot effectively study without a bra on. My old boss used to say the reason why he didn’t believe in business casual was that people’s work reflects their dress. At the time, I was like, “Dude, sure, you just say that because you’ve got like 40 years of Brooks Brothers in your closet, two pairs of khakis that you alternate wearing to Applebee’s on Friday nights, and one pair of shorts that you haul out once a year when your wife forces you to go to your neighbor’s BBQ.” But now? I believe my bra is HELPING MY MIND. Thank you, Victoria’s Secret.

Know What Sucks about Trying To Learn an Entire Semester’s Worth of Material in Nine Days?

EVERYTHING.

On a related note:

Dear justices of the U.S. Courts of Appeals,

Why can you be-robed people not agree on anything? Would it be so hard for there just to be ONE TEST for something? Pick up the damn phone, caucus, something! Why can’t we all just get along?

XOXO,
Jen