Life is Good

With a swanky new address and a bona fide new biglaw gig, my blog should be teeming with the sort of obnoxious, self-congratulative ramblings you'd hear during an evening out with Gwyneth Paltrow.

Movin' on up

I'm in love. Completely, utterly, and totally in love.

With a button-cute, over-priced, under-spaced Dupont Circle apartment.

I've never felt this way before, I think about it all the time. I think about it's cozy little kitchen where I could spend hours ordering take out baking muffins and its quaint little balcony where I could curl up in the sun and read US Weekly Jane Austen.

I love this apartment so much, I even think about it while I'm in my old apartment.

The journey towards Dupont Circle residency can be a little intimidating. When I first moved to DC, I got sticker-shock from the cost of a beer. Participation in DC real estate was unfathomable.

When I presented my completed, co-signerless, lease application to the property management, I half expected them to chase me out of their office with a broom, "Shoo you rascal, you go back to the Commonwealth and you stay there!"

Fortunately, my parents are always on hand to provide financial guidance.

Parents: How's the apartment hunt?

Me: I think I found a great place. It's a safe area to run and really close to my new job. It's expensive, the rent is $[insert cost of a Dupont Circle apartment here].

Parents: Dial Tone.

Our deepest fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? 

~Marianne Williamson

Insomnia and Me: 5 Things I've learned before 5:00am

1) Nobody cares that it's 3:00am and you can't sleep. Not even your mom when you call to tell her about it.
2) You can't buy alcohol in Virginia until 6:00am. 

3) Fungus is a weird word. 

4) Your downstairs neighbor hears your tossing and turning and thinks your dating life is way more exciting than it really is.

5) Whatever you do, don't think about ghosts.

Beyond Fabio

Romance novel heroines have drastically changed over the past ten years. The traditional princesses, governesses, and milk-maidens have been replaced by vampire-hunters, space assassins, and shape-shifters.

The transition of female characters from demure and passive to strong and capable could be viewed as a progressive step for portrayal of women in literature...if the bodice-ripping and bosom-heaving story lines weren't so largely the same.

Rather now, instead of seeking everlasting love with a Viking Prince while overcoming the evil intentions of a cruel stepfather, our heroines are seeking everlasting love with a Werewolf Lord while overcoming the evil intentions of the mutant zombies. They've upped all the stakes but haven't changed the dynamics.

Certainly I'm not advocating that we turn to the historical fiction/fantasy genre for our positive female role models, but I know if I was responsible for saving the residents of Zarton 6 from an intergalactic space drought, I'd like a few more resources other than just my time-traveling warlock lover.

Nature's nature

Last Thursday night, I saw the most beautiful sunset.

I say this not as an artist, poet, or some kind of hippie. In fact, let the record show, I'm exactly the sort of asshole who doesn't appreciate the simple things or natural beauty. But when I looked outside that evening, it took my breath away.

It was like that sunset was just for me. Mother Nature's red and gold mea culpa for the rough summer.

 

Learning to Fly

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings, I thought, I thought of everything
No navigator to find my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension -- that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

~Pink Floyd

Commuter's Delight

Each day, the population of Washington, DC shifts by approximately 70% due exclusively to commuters.

It takes anywhere from a brisk 20 minutes to an excruciating hour and a half to cover the six miles between my apartment and my office. The distance, as it turns out, is nearly irreveleant. My office might well be on the moon.

Each day begins with waiting for the bus. This public transportation system follows a strictly enforced policy that all buses arrive at their scheduled stop either 10 minutes early or 15 minutes late. This is where my fellow commuters and I go through the same, curious, daily ritual. Although we are all gathered at that precise location for the specific and limited purpose of getting onto a bus, when the bus does arrive, whoever is at the front of the line inevitability cracks under the pressure. They stare in bewilderment at the large, approaching metal chariot and freeze. Only after everyone is forced to board around them does the paralysis cease.

Then it's off to the Metro. Now this is when things really get sexy. If you've caught a train that's not delayed, overcrowded, or experiencing mechanical failures, you've won the commuting jackpot. If not, get ready to endure a traveling experience so irritating and inconvenient that Richard Sarles owes every passenger who has made it through a foot massage and six personally administered sessions of CBT. 

City shakes, then blushes

As the sixth floor of our office building swayed like a dandelion in the breeze at approximately 1:51 P.M. yesterday, the first thought that entered my mind was: "Alright, this is the moment you've been training for....time to fight those zombie aliens!"

But it wasn't an uprising by the planet Unetav - yet - it was an uncharacteristic 5.8 magnitude earthquake. Having never felt an earthquake before and knowing how rare they are for the east coast, the idea didn't even make it onto the list of potential catastrophes I though we could be experiencing. Rather, I considered the upcoming ten year anniversary of September 11th and my suspicions that the armed police who occupy the larger metro stations probably aren't searching people's bags for candy.

A day later, the city's reaction has been, frankly, a little weird. Like we're embarrassed we got caught being concerned about our personal safety. I even caught some flack yesterday for not returning to work from an attorney who, immediately following the tremors, I watched wind sprint down the hall past five women, one of whom is seven months pregnant.

Is it really so lame to worry about the possible structural consequences of the strongest earthquake in nearly a century on a city whose foundation is comprised of swampland and tunnels? Can the Metro, which breaks down from wind, rain, and most often no reason at all, somehow be earthquake proof?

Family Ties

So I'm visiting my parents this weekend and using their one functioning (of three physical) showers. Mid-lather I hear the muffled voice of my mother outside the door. I can't hear her clearly - because I'm in the shower - so I yell for her to open the bathroom door and ask me whatever question is obviously so important it can't wait the five minutes until I'm out.

She comes into the bathroom, pulls back the shower curtain and asks, as though we were chatting over coffee: "Do you think your brother would think I'm crazy if I told him he's supposed to be in the Army right now because the end of the world is coming? I've been having bad dreams lately like I did before 9-11. Do any of you kids [my brothers and I] have premonitions about bad things happening?"

In fact yes, just recently my horoscope read: You will soon be asked a difficult question...by a crazy woman...whose genetics you happen to share...while wearing nothing but suds.

Big Girl Bed

It really ties the room together.

For the better part of my 29 years, I've slept on a twin bed. And not having been institutionalized or incarcerated, there's no good reason why.

Dinner by Ambien

Just when it seemed like it wasn't possible for God to have any more fun at the expense of my dating life, I realized my subconscious has been enjoying a rare, but real, side effect of the medication Zolpidem: sleep eating.

Luckily, it was recognized early on, about half a jar of peanut butter, a full box of ice cream sandwiches, three pounds, and—oddly—one beer in. It's comforting to know that while my subconscious is an uncontrollable food zombie, it's also a very responsible drinker. Maybe it planned to do a little sleep-driving later and didn't want to be too buzzed.

My family has a long history of nocturnal abnormalities. My little brother is a rageful sleeper-talker who verbally abuses my parents' fold-out couch each holiday season. Once, my older brother, in a dead stupor, tackled his college roommate because, he sleep-explained, he thought the roommate was a "fire bug." And when I was ten, my mother found me, drenched and dosing, in her shower at 3:00am.

I can't help but wonder why such traits kept slipping through my family's genetic cracks. Between midnight ranting, sleep bathing, and aggressive fire bug dealings, how our ancestors were not Darwined out of the food chain centuries ago is a mystery. Some people's children right?  

False Starts

Over the past few months no one's been more surprised than me by the handful of halfway decent posts I've managed to produce.

But even Barry Bonds doesn't a hit home run every time. While some posts received praise such as "insightful," "hilarious," and "readable," others, like the Wright Brothers' 1901 Glider, didn't quite make it off the ground.

But rather than delete these moderate musings, I celebrate this collection of semi-coherent conjuring. Among my favorites:

• A dissertation I hoped to develop that would reveal the true identity of Jon Benet Ramsey's killer. 
  Abandoned when: the project required an amount time spent researching child murder rate statistics that I'll describe only as "too much."
• A comparative analysis of the Nature versus Nurture debate. Abandoned when: I realized I'm so staunchly Team Nurture I could only visualize Nature bent over a table with a gag ball in its mouth.
• A multi-pronged conspiracy theory involving the office cleaning staff stealing the peanut butter I keep in my desk drawer each night wherein the cleaning staff symbolized corporate America and the peanut butter my dreams. 
  Abandoned when: A close friend advised me that it was really, really stupid.
  
  

Twenty-Ten

In three months, I celebrate the 1st anniversary of my 29th birthday, enter my very very very very late twenties, will be 29 years and 366 days old..

I'll admit to a little disappointment that I haven't become a Senator/night-ninja and am not currently married to an astronaut/billionaire, but looking down the barrel of thirty is gradually becoming less and less horrifying.

No. I'm lying. It'll be a goddamn miracle if I don't spend my thirtieth birthday covered in cake while rocking and sobbing on the floor of my roommate's closet.

Taking my ball and going home

But what I have accepted is why certain socially ordained life segments are so intimidating. If we didn't have ambitions, objectives, or goals for ourselves, there wouldn't be any significance or expectations attached to these seemingly arbitrary milestones. But anyone who wants anything meaningful knows it takes time to accomplish it. These birthdays remind us that our dreams don't wait around.

There's mixed feelings when departing a decade littered with experiences at vastly varying degrees of maturation. Memory cut to: graduating college; working at a high level law firm in DC; completing four marathons; putting a full-sized Yankee Candle through the wall of an ex-boyfriend's living room; or nearly coming to blows with the anonymous motorist who almost hit me while running only to discover it was a, superior, coworker.

With three months to spare, and some honest reflection, there isn't much rowdiness left to put my stamp on. Spending a Monday night at a strip club with an ex 14 years my senior...check. Being fireman carried out of an office happy hour...check. Stealing an old lady's seat on the Bolt Bus to make it out of New York...check.

So I'm composing a bucket list of a few items which – if that darn wine hadn't kept getting in the way - I would have perhaps paid a little more attention to in my 20s.

• Taken more pictures.  
• Been a Guest Writer on an episode of 30 Rock. 
• Stayed in better touch with old friends. 
• Worried less about my looks.
• Beaten my dad at a game of chess. 
• Learned when to hold them and when to fold them.

Everyone remembers their first

"A first marathon is like a first love. You might bumle through it, but you'll never forget it." ~ Joe Henderson

There was a time in my life when the only things that would have motivated me to run included an alien invasion, zombie uprising, or pack of rabid wolves.

I wish there was a better story for why I started running — I wasn't hopelessly out of shape, no gasping for breath at the top of every staircase or sobbing midnight binges in front of the fridge. No doctor-mandated exercise program or closet full of homemade belts — really, one day, I just kinda started. I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill. The next day, I did it again. In six months, I was running outside and was up to six miles. Now granted, at the time, I was 19, aided by mild North Carolina winters, and as a college student I had more free time than a Potomac housewife, but something clicked because ten years later, I'm still running.

When I started training for my first marathon, I had no idea what I was doing. I ran in the heat of the day, wore a brand of shoes that have since been recalled, and followed a training schedule my older brother hand wrote on the back of a flyer.

There weren't cushy running trails like Mount Vernon, or even sidewalks, in Asheville, North Carolina, so I ran alongside highways, through backyards, away from unfenced dogs and cows, or around the track at the community park half-a-dozen times before the local softball league shooed me away.

My training coach was my dad, who provided me with water breaks and pep talks during my long runs, if he didn't get too wrapped up in his Free Cell game and forget. And being young and broke, I couldn't afford the brand name apparel, Garmin watch, or high tech fitness gear that were the training staples of my fourth marathon years later.

But somehow, on February 19, 2005, I made it to start line of the Bi-Lo Myrtle Beach Marathon. My older brother ran it with me, beside me the whole way, entertaining me with jokes and stories early in the race and sharing my fatigue and pain during the later miles (not because it was his first marathon too or because we had similar fitness levels, but because I'd talked him into it five weeks earlier and he was woefully undertrained). Four hours, nineteen minutes, and fourty-four seconds later, we finished.

I'd imagined my first marathon finish as a strong sprint into a screaming crowd while Bon Jovi played a live version of "Living on a Prayer."

The reality was slightly different: there was a small but loyal group — composed largely of my parents and younger brother — who cheered as the back-of-the-packers completed the course; the weary DJ announcing the finish times mispronounced our last names; and my mom had tripped on a curb somewhere along the course and was sporting a black eye so startling that my dad was receiving threating glares from the other onlookers. They were also out of water.

But it was perfect.

City of Schemes

Seven years ago, like all spirited young college graduates, I felt my education was an unique contribution and one that society would immediately recognize and compensate accordingly. Three weeks later, I realized that my BA in English was the economic equivalent of Monopoly money and with $60,000 in student loan debt, there was little more I could do with it than die of starvation. But where could I find a financial future with quelled standards and a limited skill set?

 

Something like half of the population of DC are transplants. I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't come here for the fantastic winters, effortless commutes, or that special sweet talk I get from Stabby the homeless guy who lives outside of Farragut North.

And while the DC ratio of lawyers to, let's say, mathematicians, is slightly unbalanced, it still deserves a hat tip as one of the most economically and politically relevant cities around. Not just because it's the Capital—I mean, look at Islamabad or Ottawa—instead it's like the entire city keeps itself from sinking into its swampy foundation by sheer will or ego alone.

It could be the exact environment for my own big dreams: that one day I can support my entire family with a thriving career, a savvy investment, or the court settlement money from a congressman linked to my disappearance.
 

Punked by Punxsutawney

After promises from this deceptive rodent and a brief taste of warmer temperatures, we were coerced into thinking that winter might actually release its icy, rancorous, bitter grasp on the city…

…Kelly Ripa, 2 inches of sleet and a sub 30 degree forecast.

In a city with a climate that makes less sense than Glenn Beck during happy hour, it’s easy to get discouraged by the dark, looming, relentless, unending winter. But all you can do is grab an extra layer, cuddle up with a beau or a bottle, and remember that in six months, this town will be so scorchingly hot that the Potomac looks appealing. 

“To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring.” ~ W.J. Vogel

“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”~ Bill Watterson (Author of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes)

“The problem with winter sports is that – follow me closely here – they generally take place in winter.” ~ Dave Barry

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus

“Every mile is two in winter.” ~ George Herbert

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”~ Hal Borland

Kill all the lawyers

Legal wisdom from William Shakespeare and others...

“I get paid for seeing that my clients have every break the law allows. I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone.”  ~F. Lee Bailey

“Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns.” ~Mario Puzo, The Godfather

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” ~Robert Frost

“I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five. ” ~Stephen Wright

“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.” ~Groucho Marx

Eye of the Beholder

Why is it that every time I see the gorgeous salt-and-pepper partner at my firm, it's all I can do not to wind sprint down the hallway and stuff my panties in his pocket?

Beautiful people have a mysterious power, like wizards or El Niño. There are studies showing that newborns, free from social conditioning or influences, overwhelmingly prefer looking at what are conventionally considered attractive faces as compared to less attractive ones. But it's unclear what this means, aside from that newborns are perverts. Symmetrical features are associated with top shelf DNA so perhaps we're genetically drawn to attractive folks? I suppose...But the average person is quick to abandon a host of other evolutionary traits - for example the survival instinct through health and wellness - why does this one stick with us?

I exit this sociopsychological rotary at the idea that everyone - male, female, young, old - just likes to look at something lovely. In fact, on my morning commute, I sat across from an astoundingly beautiful woman and was entranced. Stop after stop, leering around the uggos and fatties who boarded and blocked my view, I literally could not stop staring at her. Probably to a point that was getting out of line. Environmental or biological factors aside, if I were a man, Metro Police would have quickly intervened, escorted me off the train in cuffs and announced: “There was an incident at Pentagon that has been resolved, we apologize for the delay.”

Here's to the Survivors

"How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." ~Trina Paulus

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." ~Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." ~Albert Einstein

"Kites rise highest against the wind-not with it." ~Sir Winston Churchill

"If you're going through hell, keep going." ~Sir Winston Churchill

Food for Thought

I awoke Saturday morning to a room littered with French Fries. They were everywhere. On my desk, under my bed, inside my pillowcase, even atop my Omron home blood pressure machine. Fried shrapnel from an interesting evening. It's a great story.

Sunday morning, I found myself in an even stranger environment: St. Paul's Lutheran Church.

To Asheville with love...

In my family the following activities will qualify you as having a "Type A" personality:

Having a To-Do list
Making dinner reservations
Cleaning
Using fabric softener
Getting directions
Purchasing ice from a store

While the above aren't exactly the "classic" traits associated with a Type A Personality, a typical conversation with my parents is as follows:

Me: "It looks like the goats have escaped again, maybe we should fix the fence."
Parents: "Sooo sorry your highness. Someone's gotten used to all those DC folks just spending millions of dollars and fixing fences whenever they want."
Me: "I think we can fix the fence for less than a million dollars. In fact, the Lowes down the street is having a sale on fencing material..."
Parents (with eye roll): "City girl."

And so this winter, Christmas Eve was spent enduring wave after wave of coyote attack because my parents' Great Pyrenees has chosen to stop guarding the goat herd. Even if my upbringing hadn't been influenced by a steady steam of Looney Tunes, I realize it requires a fairly lackadaisical environmental to cause a dog traditionally so loyal to livestock protection, they are sometimes referred to as "The Guardian", to decide to act against thousands of years of care taking instincts.

However, since moving to DC, my parents now deflect all home maintenance issues as the jaded rantings of an aggressive city slicker. 

This post goes out to all my single sisters...

With its dating follies, lowered standards, and that drunken 2:00am phone call to my ex-boyfriend, there’s a lot of things that aren't so great about being single.

But if dating is a battlefield, your Single Girlfriend is your Major Winters. A stylish symbol of sisterhood, she'll guide you like a beacon through the trenches. This wondrous wing-woman can be counted on to spot a wedding ring from 50 yards, flirt with the bald friend, or put you in a cab at the end of the night with strict instructions for the cab driver to take you to your apartment and your apartment only.

While your coupled girlfriends circulate complaints about their relationship (which you'd best not have an opinion on,) unsolicited dating tips, and those fun-free dinner invites with her and her guy (when you prayed the sangria was strong enough for you to drink yourself into a blackout,) your Single Girlfriend is a tough love distributing bestie who will be honest about your career, why not to invite your boss to Happy Hour, and how no one has really gained weight on the Pill since 1967. She'll touch up your eyeliner, wash the wine stains off your shirt, or field a phone call from Gram-Gram when you’re loaded.

So raise a glass, send a text, and thank God, Allah, or Ilaha the Syria mountain god, for your Single Girlfriend!