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I am wearing a really ugly sweater. Not ugly in a good way. It’s also scratchy. This was one of those mornings where I woke up way too late, couldn’t decide what to wear and then ran around all panicked putting one thing on and then taking it off and throwing all my clothes on the floor. So this sweater was maybe my fourth try. I would have changed again if I knew it would be so itchy.

Things are happening and my brain is busy. I started a new writing class at The New School – non-fiction this time – and even though the instructor mumbles when he reads in this way that drives me nuts, I think its going to be really interesting and motivating. When I came home I wrote four pages, just like that. Of course, I’m not getting to the million things on my immediate to-do list, like the book review that was supposed to be done last Friday, so I guess tomorrow night will be a chain-myself-to-my-desk kind of situation. Except that the latest Todd Solondz movie just showed up in my mailbox from Netflix. Shit.

Tuesday night I went to hear Mary Oliver read at the 92nd street Y. I was trying yesterday to write about what it was like to be at that reading, but I can’t really do it justice. I could mention that it brought me to tears – which is true – but that just sounds so dramatic and empty. All I can do is tell everyone to go read her poems. She read in an auditorium that I’ve been to before, and hate because it has a border of names of famous dead white guys (Lincoln, Jefferson, Moses, Shakespeare… you know the list) just below the ceiling, and therefore positioned over the stage. So there was Oliver, so humble and brilliant and amazing, standing at a podium underneath that list of names, a woman telling more truth than those guys ever did. And if that’s an overstatement, too fucking bad. It’s rare that you see a juxtaposition like that, one that SO cleary spells out a dynamic that we usually have to convince people even exists.

My new tote bag just arrived from Queen Bee so I can finally start carrying around the large amount of crap that I need to, instead of packing my dumb girl purse so full that it’s like a brick.

I really really want to believe that I was NOT hearing a musak version of “Get Up, Stand Up” in Au Bon Pain just now, but I guess I shouldn’t live in denial. On this same lunch break, I got asked out by a dude who was hawking his CD’s on the corner. I’m always slightly disturbed by how easily and quickly the “I have a boyfriend” lie rolls out of my mouth, I don’t even have to think about it. And I always resent that I have to use that excuse at all, as if that’s the only reason I would turn down having dinner with this guy… but it’s really just the easiest way to diffuse a situation and get the guy to let go of my hand. Whatever works, I guess.

Had a meeting this afternoon with the designers of our Annual Report, who I’ve worked with for a year and a half and who are great. After we’d gone over the project we were talking more generally, and one of them said (not completely out of nowhere), “I just got off the phone with my wife – she’s an art director and used to work for me – and I realized that because we used to work together, I am pretty much always telling her what to do.” I didn’t know what to say. Congratulations? That kind of insight usually comes after lots of therapy? He’s a pretty subdued guy, and was clearly awed by this revelation. The other designer is the one I do more work with, and he is Britsh and adorable and I have a huge embarassing crush on him. It’s usually easy to handle because we communicate mainly via phone and email, but when we meet in person I spend the rest of the day smiling stupidly.

There are a whole lot of things I love about the Sunday Times, and one of them is the “Modern Love” column in the “Styles” section. Sometimes it’s sappy, sometimes crazy, but always – ALWAYS – entertaining. Sometimes it’s even beautifully written or painfully relatable, though I don’t think this last thing is ever really the point. After a couple of not so great ones over the last few weeks, this past weekend’s kind of blew me away. It was suspenseful and spare and raw and gorgeous. And the subject is along the lines of something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and scribbling down notes for some eventual essay about… the way “older men” function in relationship to “younger women,” how it seems like so many women that I know have at some point formed relationships with much older men almost as a rite of passage, and how this dynamic is all over a lot of fiction I read as a kid/teenager. Abby Sher’s piece – “So He Looked Like Dad. It Was Just Dinner, Right?” – is more specific about her motivations, and so worth reading.

This piece about scoring massive amounts of free shit by posing as journalist is hilarious (and horrifying), and makes me even sadder that this is The Black Table’s last week in existence.

Yesterday at Bluestockings was one of those great, busy days where there are a million people buzzing around high on books and caffeine and that certain Sunday afternoon feeling, and everyone is in a good mood. Then it was off to eat dinner uptown with my favorite cousins and back down to meet someone for a drink, who it turned out didn’t generally like to drink. He changed his mind about that after the first round, but in between there was the pizza place where the guy stood next to our table shaping the dough for a new vegan pie with his hands, hanging just a couple inches from the floor, and telling us stories. That was the best part of the night. That, and the lights still on in the bookstore at 1am and Jeffrey there to commiserate. Other than that it was mostly me sitting and staring at the tin ceiling and stabbing at the lime and ice at the bottom of my glass.

On the way from one thing to another, I totally had a missed connection, Village Voice style (or maybe more Craig’s List, these days). Except that it was someone I already knew instead of someone I sensed I was destined to meet. Waiting for the uptown V train at 2nd avenue late Sunday afternoon, a girl waiting for the F. From a good distance away, she already looked a lot like a girl who I went to summer camp with and was good friends with and totally loved. So I kept staring. And looking away. And staring again. She definitely saw me and nothing registered, probably not least because last time I saw her I had super short spiky hair. Her train pulled in and she got on, and right then I decided that it definitely was her. But by the time I ran to get onto that train (which I could’ve taken in the first place) the door closed and she was gone. And then I remembered that the V wasn’t even running. So I had a nice cinematic missed connection AND I was late for dinner.

The last time we talked was about 6 years ago. I was in Seattle and she was in Portland and we were trying to figure out a way to meet up but didn’t, and that was it. She was living in Berkeley and then ended up at school in Boston and I looked up her email address there a couple years ago but did nothing with it, and now it’s too late because even though I’m sure it was her yesterday, Google turns up no useful contact info.

Other Google snooping revealed awhile ago that another friend who I had a mysterious, fucked up and still pretty unsettling falling out with when we were 17 is most definitely living in Brooklyn. One day in the land of sleep deprivation and caffeine overload (otherwise known as work) I wrote him an email that I don’t ever plan to send. It’s still waiting in my email draft box though, with the placeholder subject line “an email to send to D if I’m feeling adventurous.” But it’s not adventure, just curiosity. I need to keep reminding myself that that is just not enough.

Trying to get back to work and not get caught by one of the overly earnest kids freezing their asses off standing out on the sidewalk trying to get people to give money to Children International or CARE or the Northshore Animal League or some other deserving organization that I don’t have $120 for, even if that’s “just ten dollars a month.” I really don’t know how these people get anyone to pledge money on the street like that, especially when the weather is this shitty. The worst is when they say things to you like “Excuse me, do you have a minute for gay and lesbian rights?” It crushes my heart. Today I had to half-hide behind a mailbox and then duck underneath some construction awning to avoid a Children International guy who had staked out the doorway to my office building. Another guy standing right outside smoking a cigarette nodded at me like, “Nice maneuver.” I don’t actually feel guilty not giving them money, but I do feel self-righteous about it sometimes and then that makes me feel like shit. Like, “I work at a non-profit! Give me a moment’s peace!” Occassionally I’ll get sucked in to talking to them, and then I try to ask them things that I genuinely want to know, like do people actually give them money? Then I’ll tell them that I’ve spent my share of time knocking on doors and standing out on sidewalks shoving leaflets into people’s hands and begging them to sign things or pretend to care, so see, I understand that their job sucks. But that isn’t enough. They still try to sell me on the plight of homeless kittens or hurricane victims or starving children and what pisses me off is their guilt trip, as in, you CAN give $10 to this cause. You KNOW you can. If you don’t, you are a heartless loser. I guess they have to convince themselves that they believe in it in order to withstand the elements and lots and lots of jerks who say things like “I hate animals” as they walk by. And I’m probably one of many people they talk to every day who tries to empathize with them while still not writing a check, and this is maybe even more annoying than the people who just ignore them or pretend to talk on their cell phones (I’m one of those people, too). I’m just glad that they mostly wear brightly colored nylon jackets so they’re easily idenifiable, and that I’ve perfected my laser vision so I can see where they are even a block away.

Also: If I read another interview with Jenny Lewis where she’s asked about her acting career and/or her former relationship with Blake Sennett, I am going to scream. You might even hear it, wherever you are. I am looking forward to “Rabbit Fur Coat” though.

Is anyone else disturbed by the photos that go along with this review of the latest anti-feminist polemic Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Families, Military, Schools, and Sports? Betty Friedan looks like she has a headache, Jane Fonda’s smile looks plastic and painful, and Gloria Steinem is falling asleep. Are these the faces of feminism? I think not. At this point, anyone who writes a book attacking these women is just lazy. And check out this side-by-side comparison of Ms. magazine’s latest cover alongside an issue of Ladies Home Journal. The design similarity isn’t the end of the world – it’s just really really lame – but why the fuck is Jane Fonda on the cover of this magazine instead of about a million other more interesting and relevant women and men? It’s not that there aren’t other great zines and magazines out there, but to see Ms. still hanging out on the newsstand, looking so clueless, really makes me cringe.

Anyway, Ana Marie Cox (late of Wonkette, now a Times It Girl with the publication of her first novel) makes short work of debunking Kate O’Beirne’s oh-so-inspired book:

[O'Beirne's] salvos against such dusty icons as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Catharine MacKinnon do all these women the enormous favor of making them relevant again. And, surely, anytime anyone recalls the deeds of Bella Abzug, an angel gets its wings.

It’s always fun to call conservatives on their shit, but it also seems like a waste of energy and column inches. Patrica Cohen also tackles “choice feminism” in the Week in Review.

If you’d like to see the literary scandals of last week turned into a rather snotty, completely serious, yet still pretty interesting intellectual type essay that manages to compare James Frey’s fictions to Holocaust deniers and the Bush administration (and who doesn’t?), go see what everyone’s favorite literary critic Michiko Kakutani has to say. And click here if you want to read Mary Karr’s more insightful Op-Ed about the same situation. It’s possible that I’m officially sick of this topic. Sick, yes, but still totally fascinated.