love & kisses

I was a big letter-writer from around age 12 until today, and of course it is email now rather than letters.  I've written plenty of business letters, too.

Here are all of the ways I can remember ever signing my correspondence, from most to least formal:

Sincerely
Very truly yours
Regards
Best Regards
Best wishes
Happy holidays
Happy new year
Hope to see you soon
Hope all is well

Love
Much love
With love
All love (& maybe more) [used for a brief time as a flirty teenager]
Love you

I purposely put a gap between the first group and the "love" ones. Is it a huge difference? how to you jump that gap?

It never occurred to me until a couple of days ago, writing an email to someone I've never met face-to-face, and who comes from a different culture to boot. We had fallen somewhat out of touch, and I do feel a lot of affection for him. After a longish email, touching on many important topics, I felt the urge to discard our customary "Regards" for "Love."  Would this send the wrong message? Often there are certain nuances missing from written correspondence: sometimes joking, teasing, or sarcasm reads as some thing hostile. So I signed "Love, (I hope it's ok to say that)". I hope it is.

---

I come from a huggy, kissy generation. I am a huggy, kissy girl. I hug and kiss hello and goodbye. And again, like when to sign "love" and when to sign "best regards," I don't generally consciously decide who gets hugged, who gets kissed, and who gets kissed on the lips. It's usually pretty clear. But the day after the "love" email, I saw a friend and did decide that it was time to make that move from kissing on the cheek to kissing on the lips. The "hello" startled him. The "goodbye" was a mite softer. Clearly it was the right thing to do.

Hard to figure out, sometimes, how to up the show of affection a little. And twice in two days!

I can't really get into it, but...

My family is a disaster. Have I mentioned this? Divorced parents always brings some level of dysfunction into the picture, but a couple of years ago, just when it seemed we were all older and more mature and could put the past behind us...something else happened that ripped everyone up and severed lines of communication and just made everyone a million times more troubled and miserable. And, as the only person in the family still speaking to all of the other members, I spend a lot of time saying that I don't want to be put in the middle. But I live in the middle. Everyone seems to have different kinds of misery and different levels of misery, but we're all miserable. Probably every relationship and every dynamic has been altered, so my place and function int he family is radically different, which is good in some ways and dreadful in others. I am heartbroken for everyone who is disconnected. We're not all that big a family, and we're a disaster.

Guess it's a little more on my mind because I've actually spoken to all parties over the past couple of weeks, which is a little unusual, and the last of those conversations was tonight and with the person I believe to be most damaged. It's just all so sad.

It's an understatement to say that there are not enough hours in the day. There aren't even enough hours in the workday. There were a few really dead weeks at the office, sometimes spaces where there was literally almost nothing to do - the kind of days where you send the interns home early - and all of a sudden it's overwhelming. In fact, it was so overwhelming one day last week that one person I work with said something to another, and that person called a third person, who called me (and she was the appropriate person to make the call), and said, "What's going on, are you OK, and how can I help?" I really love the people I work with and for. But things are still insanely busy and will probably stay that way until mid- or late June. Then it gets kind of dead until mid-August.

Things are even busy in my non-work life, with quite a few dinners, visits, and events coming up. All good things, but I still don't have any time for some of the kinds of relaxing I seem to need. I want to see an Indian movie; I want to spend a little time on Twitter; I want to while away a couple of hours on YouTube. (However, I should say that a week from Friday is planned as a movie-in-the-theater night: Rochelle, Barry and I are going to the opening night of Department, the new Amitabh movie. The last two movies I saw in the theater (I can't remember which order) were Spiderman (fell down a few steps in the auditorium and sprained my ankle) and Lord of the Rings (I fell asleep). I'm too lazy to check when they were in the theater, but it was some time ago. I mean, aren't they about to reboot Spiderman?

Last thing: I have to give a shout out to Mental Floss, which is a simply fantastic website and blog and Twitter with all kinds of fascinating and nerdy and odd facts and lists. I entered a sweepstakes there, forgot about it, then won: twelve tee shirts of my choice from their store. Please click on this link, because these tee shirts are outrageously cool and not very expensive. I've had my eye on a few of them for a while now, but could never choose which one to actually buy. I love tee shirts and could easily spend stupid money on them. I've actually earmarked half of them for Barry, because I don't really wear them as much as I used to, and he does. (I actually wore tee shirts to work at NYU for the early part of my work there, and always wore them on weekends and to the gym. Now I wear them sometimes on weekends and mostly sleep in them. But this has not diminished my tee shirt lust one whit.)

I've fallen a little out of touch with some people, which is kind of a bummer, but I never seem to have any time. Shiva and I haven't emailed for a while; it could be six or seven months since I've been in touch with Rafael; and I owe phone calls to Winnie and to Joyce. I need more hours in the day, I'm serious. And perhaps a mite less family drama.

and yet

And yet it seems very complicated to get to know someone. You want to listen attentively and observe closely. But there are also things you want to put out there, things that make you seem as interesting and attractive as possible. Rushed. Flop sweat. And then it's over, and you have no idea what to make of any of it. This does not feel as if it were successful.

And looky here! Blogger has just changed their interface, and I have even less of a clue about using it than ever! Maybe this blog will start looking better, maybe worse, and maybe I will just find some place other than Blogger to post this mess.

no Super Bowl content whatever

I really have to remember that no matter how much I love reading Amitabh Bachchan's blog and even leaving comments, most of the commentors (the "EF") are totally insane.  Or some are totally insane, many are partly insane.  Anyway, I am often stupid enough to let some of them bother me, and often it's an issue of snub or neglect rather than attack.  Still, I let someone get to me over the weekend, and I let it make me feel lousy.  And then -- whoop, mood swing! -- I saw something this morning on Facebook that tickled me no end.  Only takes one nice person to counter a dismal mood.  I'm lucky enough to have a lot of nice people in my life, so the nasty ones can just take a hike. I only have to remember not to let myself be bothered by them.  I'm so oversensitive sometimes.

I made one more of the Village Scandal necklaces this weekend:  8mm lapis beads, with dangles in white "rice krispie" pearls, 4mm round blue agate, 4mm lapis barrels, 4mm iolite saucers.  (For those of you scratching your heads:  dark opaque blue, white pearls, translucent medium blue, dark opaque blue, transparent dark blue.)  The blue and white looks very fresh.  I think the third one will be pink and light green, which is pretty much my favorite spring color combo.  I have some round 10mm faceted cherry quartz that's been sitting around for a while, and I have insane numbers of all kinds of green beads.  And I think some little pink pearls.  For some reason, I have way more green and yellow/orange stone beads than any other colors.  Way lower on the pink/red, blue, and purple.

I did make the move to silver-plated headpins.  It didn't hurt too much.  They're sooo much less expensive, and they look fine.  And it's really nice to work with material where I don't have to feel stingy.  I bought 500 headpins for around $8.

It looks like my PPSC holiday jewelry sale is going to go ahead, except it's been morphed into a crafts fair, which means I'll be alongside other sellers.  It'll be small, so there won't be other jewelers, but there may be a potter, a painter, etc.  I'm slightly disappointed, because I really wanted (and expected) to have the showcase all to myself; and I'll certainly earn less money.  But it's a big vote of confidence and a great opportunity, even a little diluted; the Board of Directors voted to go ahead with it on Friday, so I really have no cause for complaint.  The Board rocks, really.  I used to take minutes at the Board meetings at NYU Law School, and man, that was a dull group and a dull meeting (although the lunches were pretty good).  The PPSC Board is smaller and way less formal, plus I can even make some suggestions or comments and it's OK -- sometimes even very much welcome.

The people at PPSC...well, we all understand that they have professional training that I don't, but no one uses that to put themselves above me.  They all act as if we're all talented and useful, just in different areas.  No one assumes that I don't know things.  When I worked at Tarcher, the editor-in-chief, Mitch, was (and is) a very bright guy, but he tended to assume that other people were not, especially people in lower positions than he was (like me).  Once we were coming out of a sales meeting, and he said, about a sales guy in the meeting, "You know, Hal Fessenden's brother is this really crazy avant-garde movie director."  I said, "He's Larry Fessenden's brother?"  And Mitch said, "How do YOU know about Larry Fessenden?"  Pardon me, but fuck you, Mitch.  No one would ever do anything like that here...not only that, but they're always quick to give me credit, and always welcome new info and new ideas.  It's not just that I'm a little older now and not someone's kid assistant; the people here don't really have anything to prove, and they're mostly pretty warm, kind folk.

I guess I'm counting blessings right about now.  Financial need has been twisting my life in a truly miserable way over the past year, with no end in sight.  But I work for and with nice people, and I have some very wonderful people in my life.

Apart from making that necklace, I spent a lot of the weekend watching Downton Abbey.  Highbrow and addictive.  I watched the entire first season on Netflix over a couple of weeks, and then totally cheated and downloaded the entire second season and have now watched all of it.  So they'd better hurry up and make that third season!  I'm reserving my opinion on HBO's Luck; so far, a lot of good actors, and a whole lot of horse-racing jargon.  That guy Gary Stevens is in it, an actual jockey who was also in Seabiscuit.  In fact, looking at the IMDB, it seems he won the George Woolf Memorial Jockey award in 1996 before playing George Woolf in Seabiscuit in 2003.  You can't get much better trivia than that!

Although...speaking of trivia...I've kind of come late to the game concerning LMFAO.  I guess Party Rock Anthem was a huge hit last summer, but I've just discovered it.  Those guys are awesome.  And here's the cool trivia part: not only are they uncle and nephew, but they're the son and grandson of Berry Gordy! 

So I guess I must...


http://youtu.be/KQ6zr6kCPj8

http://youtu.be/MBg1SxfCCM8

http://youtu.be/HnhGU-J5MxE

lipstick vogue

When the weather got warm, I started wearing fuchsia lipstick.  I bought two shades, one a little darker.  I usually wear something very subtle, a mauve or light wine or something almost natural.  But there was a time when fuchsia was very popular, maybe in the early 80s, when I wore it, and it looked good on me.  It's a lot more extreme than anything I ever wear, but it actually suits me.  Anyway, I like it.

Even though it was a four-day week, it was a bear.  There was a lot to do and to keep under control, and the days went by fast, and the stress level (that I put on myself) was kind of high.  Like I said, they appreciate and respect me a lot there, and I want to make sure I continue to deserve that.

I slept badly last night.  I woke up around 2:20 to pee, and then I couldn't get back to sleep.  I was actually thinking about the novel I'm kinda sorta writing.  It was originally around a woman and two men, one of whom had made three kids' record which she adored as a child, and the other one his peculiar brother.  She meets them and has intense but very different involvements which each in turn.  I kind of have the three personalities down, and I know that the odd brother shows up from the midwest and moves in with his brother.  The original idea was that she gets she gets involved with the kids-records guy and he dies, then she gets involved with the peculiar brother.

But last night, I came up with some details about her involvement with music, movies and books that could end up being more of the focus of the book (the one I'm not sure I'm writing), with the brothers as characters but not central.

What I've written so far, what I thought was the beginning, was a description of the brothers, then a flashback to the woman as a little girl, getting her first record player.  The kids' records are called something like "Weird Records for Weird Little Kids," "More Weird Records for Weird Little Kids," and "Strange Songs for Young'uns."  The idea was that they were kind of hip, mildly subversive albums, kind of a kid version of Tom Lehrer or Lenny Bruce, and that mostly they were given to smart, cool kids of smart parents.  One part that's been there since almost the beginning are her kid names for the three albums:  "The Red Album, The Blue Album, and the Striped-Shirt Album."  So that section would be, or would have been, her attachment to that musician as a kid, and rediscovering him (presumably now playing adult music) twenty years or so later.

It's a shame that I'm thinking about totally changing the format.  This is why I've written a lot of beginnings of novels but not too many middles or ends.  Anyway, I'd hate to throw out what I wrote, because it's pretty good, and I even have a title that I'd have to change if I took the focus off the musicians (who are actually both weird and peculiar).

Of course, another reason that I've never finished a novel is that I tend to write about writing it rather than just writing it.  But even though I've written very little so far, the idea has been rolling around in my head for a while, and keeps growing in ways that surprised me.

I recently reconnected with an old friend after about ten years; we had worked together in the 90s, when I was around my mid-thirties and she was around her early twenties.  I told her that I remembered when her girlfriend broke up with her and she was terribly upset, and came into my office crying, explaining that the "roommate" she always talked about was actually her girlfriend and that they'd just broken up and she was very upset and should she tell Winnie (her other supervisor, besides me, though she did mostly work for Winnie).  She was surprised that I remembered.  How could I have forgotten?  I felt so terrible for her and so moved that she came out to me...and more than a little amused that maybe she thought I hadn't figured it out like two minutes after I met her.  Lipstick, she's not.  But she's smart and funny and talented.  She did invite me to several of her birthday parties, but I felt a mite self-conscious, being both older and straight.  But hey.  Like all of the assumptions and hierarchies in high school, it just kind of slips away when you get older.

The reason I felt moved to get in touch just now is that there a Lucille Roberts (gym) in the building that I work, and her "roommate" used to teach aerobics there.  She was also surprised that I remembered that.  My short-term memory is starting to suck, but my long-term memory is still freakishly good.  I only know that because people are always shocked by what and how much I remember.

School year over means I'll get to see Lily again soon.  She had a terribly difficult and painful semester.  We e-mail pretty often, but I do miss seeing her.