In Brief

It is so entirely easy to become a 'workaholic.' You don't have to think of anything to do in your free time; you eat terribly and indulge your appetites; or, you completely lose your appetite and have toast for dinner and develop an eye tic; you don't have to be interesting or patient; you acquire all these privileges, like not washing dishes and hitting your snooze an for an extra gorgeous 9 minutes or so; there's downsides, sure, but you sleep very soundly.

V I C T O R Y

I haven’t known what to say. I still don’t! And I don’t feel like making confessions about how weepy I was, and how for the next week I got a little teary at nearly every newspaper article or editorial I came across. I still have the New York Times from Nov. 5 sitting on my desk, and every now and then I glance over to see OBAMA written in capslock across the top because sometimes I can’t believe it really happened.

Now when I see the Obama merch. in Union Square, my up-chuck reflex doesn’t assert itself nearly at all! It’s a welcome change, believe me. I cannot wait to see the puppy, and I’m going to stay with Deedi for the inauguration (people are renting their apartments for $2,000/night on Craigslist, but she’s letting me stay in hers for FREE; the city expects 1 million (ONE MILLION) pilgrims), and I’m totally throwing a Bye-Bye Bush party, because it will feel ALMOST as good to see the back of his head as it will to see his successor raise his right hand.

You think I’m gushing now? You should’ve talked to me last Wednesday. Hoo boy.

Now that that dastardly election is over, I can turn my attention to more important things, like the holidays. It’s starting to feel more winterish than autumnal, that’s for sure. The clock tower lights up before I leave work now, and yesterday morning when I went hunting through Leah’s closet for my winter coat, I discovered that I left it in NJ for the summer. It’s been a shivery couple of days.

In these trying times, with assembly lines slowing down, the stock market doing its bipolar thing, and nary a winter coat to be seen, I have just one piece of advice to offer: whatever you do, please don't go see 'Synecdoche, New York.' Debilitatingly sad. Mesmerizing, but so sad. Completely interesting and even sometimes funny despite all the blood and pustules and ageing, but horribly, unredemptively sad. It made me want to sit in a dark room all alone and never do anything ever again. When I got out of the theater and the Knishery was closed, I almost sat down on the sidewalk and gave up. It's a heavy one.

But that was Wednesday. This is Friday, and tonight I'm meeting Sylvie, whom I haven't seen since December 2005 in Bath, England. If you feel Brooklyn quake around 7 p.m. this evening, you'll know we've reunited.

Countdown to Paris: 21 jours

All I want to do is go home and watch TV.

This is Julia.

I've been her baby-sitter since she was one. Now she's seven, and she's a staunch Obama supporter, even though she can't say her R's and calls him "Bawack."

We had a plan.

Sort of. Leah was coming in from a business trip, Sarah was coming straight from work, and I was coming from a long-scheduled (and desperately needed) hair cut. We would meet up somewhere in the vicinity of the parade, have a drink, and watch the freaks and ghouls. 

Oh god, quel nightmare. More barricades than the French Revolution, more cops than an Irish bar, more Clockwork Orange droogs than the movie, A Clockwork Orange. I ended up sitting in a cafe on Bleecker St. with a turkey wrap for nearly two hours. Never saw the parade, technically, but my hair looked really good. And I was wearing a necklace with a rhinestone-studded boom box. YAH.

It turned out fine, ended with Guinness and a subway ride across from some chick with skulls for kneepads, but the absolute highlight was finding my favorite house in Manhattan. I first found it ages ago, maybe even in high school, some random wandering day in the city, and the instant I saw it, I considered it mine. It's built behind a big old wooden gate, which makes me think there's a carriage house back there, and it's set at a 45 degree angle to the street, and it has glassed-in porches stacked one on top of the other, and lace curtains, and warm floor lamps and big leafy plants and it's whitewhitewhite, and when I saw it last night, it was like a clap of thunder, spotting someone you haven't seen in forever in a crowd of hundreds. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and thought, "It's you."

And then Sarah Palin's dead moose asked me for directions to the PATH.

And now it's November. The anti-climax of all anti-climaxes. Now it's one giant Slip 'n Slide to Christmas. But I am hopeful, and excited, and excitedly hopeful for Nov. 4, and Thnxgvng, and mostly Nov. 4. I think about it a lot. It's in three days. You know how when you were a kid, and you really wanted a snow day, you wore your pajamas inside out? I've been wearing my 'Polar Bears for Obama' t-shirt to bed every night this week. Right side out.