"A Lifetime Amid the Lox and Rugelach"

Nowadays, most tales of longstanding and beloved family businesses in New York seem to end with a sniff and a final mop of the floor. But as Zabar’s, the venerable West Side purveyor of New York noshes, approaches its 75th anniversary next year, it is flourishing and still very much in the family. Overseeing aisles of smoked fish, a United Nations worth of cheeses, and the iconic coffee and rugelach is the firm’s president, Saul Zabar, who will celebrate the 75th anniversary of his 5th birthday next week.

Talk about kvelling! I may not know much about the Torah, but I sure am Jewish when it comes to deli!

At Village Grounds

ADAM: Your pride is so strong, for better or worse.
ME: But I've got to put that aside. I'm not married to pride. Pride's not going to make me an omelette in the morning. Pride doesn't pay half the rent.
ADAM: But it puts on a hell of a parade.

I was just remembering that the first time I met Adam's mom, she loaned me Mark Haddon's first book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

This led me to think about marriage and of joining another family. Every time Adam's on the phone with his family and I say "Send them my love", or when my mother gleefully addresses Adam as "SIL", or when Jonathan calls him Manischewitz (like he didn't do that before the wedding?), I truly feel the blending of two families.

Last week we were on the phone with my mom and I got snippy at him. My mother said: "I don't choose between my children, and Adam, you are one of my children." I liked that.

I'll sometimes talk to Adam about "if I had a different life ..." As in, if I had a different life, fill in the blank.

This is not to say I want a different life. I'm very happy with the one I have. Sometimes in the course of conversation, though, the subject of what I would do were I not married and committed in certain ways comes up.

For example: the University of Wisconsin-Madison fellowships. If I were single, I would totally go for something like this. Or living in Tokyo for a month (or maybe longer) at a place like the Sakura House.

Come to think of it, though, the Sakura House is something Adam and I could do together. He would also never hold me back if I wanted to go somewhere to advance my writing. When I went to Costa Rica for a month to be a resident at the Julia and David White Artists Colony, he not only supported me but came down to spend a week there.

There are many different lives. I've chosen mine and am happy.

Tonight's writing

Oh, I’m no innocent. I know what I did was wrong. Fucked up, you might say if you were Michelle Olander. I know that taking a baseball bat to someone’s possessions, stealing their cash, these are not good things. This is not the Miss Manners blueprint for good behavior. You may define this through a litany of terms, among them the word pathological.

I am 18 years old and I am a creature of glassy anger, of fragile hate. Duck when I shatter. Run when I explode.

The idiots at Gaylords

I can be totally vulgar, but I also have manners. Specifically, I know how to act in public. I'd like to give that lesson to these idiots who are shrieking and hopping around the coffee shop. Preferably, the lesson will be imparted with the back of my hand.

Bathroom-wall wisdom at A Cuppa Tea

LIFE LESSON: It's all about learning to give and receive love (That - and really great orgasms!)

Not an original statement, but who can argue?