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So watch! I’ll be wearing either brown or greenish blue. Exciting!

However, did I really just hear a certain president say “the sticks and carrots approach”?

I think I did. Wow.

until 1:53pm today! After a crazy night of catching up on Gossip Girl, The Hills and Red Eye. Like when I yawn while people are talking to me and say, “It’s not that I’m tired, it’s that my brain needs oxygen,” it’s not that I’m tired right now, it’s my body needs sleep.

Also, I’m having a love affair with my electric blanket. I can’t believe I didn’t have one for so long. Guess it took living in an apartment with questionable heat to make me see what I was missing.

1) Sometimes I look at bruises I get (I bruise kind of easily and I’m clumsy) and think they make me look tough. In fact I had this big bruise on my upper arm a couple years ago which I got from walking into a door at Grand Central (it’s actually more complicated than that. There are these narrow doors at Grand Central where you push one side and this brass beam attached to the other side of the door whacks you in the arm, which I did three times in a row) and I would go into the bathroom at work when I was bored and pull up my sleeve and look at it and think that it kind of looked like a tattoo.

2) I’m reading—and enjoying—Gossip Girl. And in my head I imagine what I would say to anyone should they query why a 45 year old woman is reading Gossip Girl (note: I am not really 45), much like when I went through my mixed vegetables in a can phase I’d think of what I’d say to the clerk should he ask me why I’m buying like 8 cans of mixed vegetables and bottle of diet 7-Up, though it never came to that.

If so, please stop making out on the street.

P.S. I’m back and the airplane trip was without incident except ever since I’ve gotten off the plane I’ve felt like I’m on a ship. Everything’s kinda wavy. Am I the only one who gets this? I used to feel this way after pulling an all-nighter in college. At the time, I would describe the next day feeling as “like a hologram.” Not to be cliche, but it makes me think of that old saying: “Out of the airplane, onto the ship, makes you feel like a hologram.”

feel a little mournful before I fly. The whole process seems violent somehow, the rushing and the crowds and the jostling, the carrying heavy bags, the putting your trust in something that’s inherently kind of scary. Maybe that’s what it is for me, deep down being separated from people that care about me and from those I care about makes me feel like I’m pushing my luck. Or maybe I just feel especially mortal right now (except I’ve always felt the mournful feeling before I fly). I remember…. I was about to go off on a really sad tangent but my eyes filled with tears so I think I won’t. See what the pre-flying does to me? I’m always fairly fine once I’m on the plane though. So there’s that.

On a lighter note, Gale Harold and Ken Marino kind of look vaguely similar.

First prize for the reader who can identify the factoid I culled from a Red Eye episode (one I watched, not one I was on.) Okay fine, there isn’t any prize. But perhaps you’d care to read and guess anyway? Here’s the interview.

The thing about death that gets me is the things and the way the things remain unchanged. I’ve written about my relationship to stuff and death in various places, maybe I’ll try to link if I have the energy, but basically it’s walking into the person’s apartment and seeing all their stuff there, specifically the stuff at the end of their life, the medicine bottles, the two pairs of glasses, the box of latex gloves for I don’t know what, the sticker with hospice and a phone number in giant letters stuck on the phone, the magazines that arrived after she died and the chair she used to sit in, that makes me tear up. It’s the more prosaic aspects of death that make it crushingly real.

I don’t mean to make this a blog about death, and I promise I”ll lighten it up soon.

Speaking of, I’m tired of funny people who disavow jokes. I get it, you’re a comedian. You’re deep and you do “bits” and your humor is “observational” and culled from “reality.” Me? I like jokes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bum myself out.

Today I’m going to the funeral. I only hope on the way some stranger says “Smile! You look like someone died!”

We may have disagreed about Best Week Ever, we may have wanted different things from our imaginary pet dogs, we may have had near knockdown drag out fights over ampersands, the role of criticism in culture and something referred to as “yelling at the duckling,” but when I put forth a recent plea for links to “We Need a Little Christmas,” you not only found one, but you found the best one. Thank you.