Ringo covered in plum blossoms

Yesterday I went to the reading of someone I don't like in order to support someone that I do like. As it turned out, everything went great. The piece that he read was awesome and very heartfelt, I got quite drunk, and I wore my kickass new red boots.

I felt good. I sat between my husband and one of my longtime writing colleagues, listening to another friend read. When the girl I don't like got up to introduce people, she stumbled nervously and I laughed.

I never said I was a nice girl.

So here's where I can feel superior

As of Feb. 6, Adam and I will have been married for twenty-two months. In that time, I have never regretted playing the wedding low-key. I'm sitting next to this couple and their Wedding Guest spreadsheet at a cafe and it's giving me a stomachache just listening to all this crap. They're spending $20,000 on one frigging event. What, is she going to match her tampon to his?

I do feel superior because I wasn't a damn bridezilla, because I didn't push my husband away with my whininess and demands before he even put the ring on my finger. I feel superior because we are not in debt up to our eyeballs for a single day, and because we stayed friends with all two of our vendors: Luke, our photographer, and Russell, our caterer.

I want to turn to them and tell them -- her especially -- that being married is so much better than getting married. I wonder if they'd listen.

2000, "Barbie Girl"

It's slow to download onto my doddering PC through my dial-up line, but I do. There is so much to learn, so much to be taught.

Today's writing

My splinter still hurt. Berkeley Bowl bag indeed.

See, Meredith’s not my type. I don’t even know what my type is, but she isn’t it. I like ... longer. Leaner. Maybe that’s my type. The double L’s. But there’s a turning point in your brain when that element of surprise strikes. You look at this person and you say: Nooo. The triple-O is not optional. It’s not merely no, it’s beyond that. Then a funny thing happens and the letters start to hiss. Like when a no becomes a yes. Something like that.

When that happens, watch your ass. You’re going to fall quickly.

Today's writing

Then her touch on my hand was no longer curative, but a disease. A wanted one. The kind that makes you burn inside and flush externally. Her tongue was hot and eager and indecisive. I had to wonder how many times she’d done this before. It didn’t seem like a whole hell of a lot.

It was that kiss that’s a first-time kind of kiss: both mouths open wide, lip tightly to lip. The kind of kiss where the tongues can’t seem to find enough space. The kind that makes you dizzy either because it’s romantic or wretched or somewhere in that awkward middle, leaving you hanging on an unsteady platform.

Eat, Pray, Love

How the hell did this become a best-seller and a movie? I'm not even 70 pages into Elizabeth Gilbert's deathless prose and already I'm drowning in cliche. As Jennifer Egan wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "Lacking a ballast of gravitas or grit, the book lists into the realm of magical thinking: nothing Gilbert touches seems to turn out wrong; not a single wish goes unfulfilled. What's missing are the textures and confusion and unfinished business of real life, as if Gilbert were pushing these out of sight so as not to come off as dull or equivocal or downbeat."

Indeed. I think Pollyanna's book is headed back to the shelf, or more likely back to Half Price Books.