Thanks for the fish

2 day hangover to make you feel old. I don’t feel like throwing up today, but my skin still hurts. That’s ok, though because I’m totally confident that one day I will learn to not treat my body like this. Another snow storm so I “worked from home” today, which mostly invovled going through my old cooking light magazines and ripping out the good recipes. I’m trying to downsize in the office and realized I never looked through them, so maybe if I organize them it will inspire me to try some new things. Though mostly I just ripped out the desserts, as everything else seems to be pasta and shrimp.

Joined Swaptree.com today. It’s a site where you can post stuff you have, like books and cds and then post a list of things you want. Then if someone has what you want, and you have what they want, then you can just ship the stuff to each other. I posted some books and it looks like someone wants “the interpreter of maladies” which I have for “The adventures of huck finn” which I want. So I proposed a trade.

J downloaded a book called “getting unstuck” or something….it’s about buddhism and meditation. I know I’ve said this forever but I really do want to start meditating. regularly. The premise of the book seems to be that you have to sort of go through pain and then once you conquer it, you’re golden. So this pain - let’s call it existential pain - you know that general restlessness, boredeom, angst that sort of underlies all of our lives - we try to get rid of it through booze and food and shopping and drugs and sex - but supposedly if you can conquer that through mindfullness, then that’s preferable. To some extent I buy into that and have been reading stuff like this for years, but I can’t seem to quite get over the hedge and actually do something about it. And I do love booze so. And food. And sex. And shopping. It’s a tough call.

Tonight on netflix I have Capote. I’ve never read anything by him, and don’t know much about him, but I’m always interested in writers lives. Tomorrow I’ll guess I”ll start a diet. Isn’t that a requirement for january 1st?

The redskins are in the playoffs!! Football season just got infinitely more interesting! Unfortunately they have to play Seattle - the team that kicked their asses last time they were in the playoffs.. and then they have to play the cowboys again. Last night I drank way too much and invited our friend Z (a cowboys fan) over to watch the game. Cowboys and reskins get along like um… cowboys and redskins, so it could’ve gotten ugly, as I can be a really poor loser. But luckily that was a non-issue since we smoked them like a… something (can’t think of anything funny).

It was fun to have someone over. We get hardly any visitors over here… partly because we live in the middle of nowhere but mostly because we never invite anyone (unless I’ve had too many glasses of wine). I would have to say, though, that the one thing my life is missing is a more active social life. I don’t have any good friends that I see on a regular basis. I have people I go to lunch with occasionally. And people I talk to at work. And a few good friends who live 600 miles from here. I don’t really have a friend that I would feel comfortable calling if I was crying and in an emotional crisis though. I should probably get me one of those.

I had a  hangover from hell today. Usually drinking doesnt’ bother me, but after I had a shower I actually had to go back to bed for awhile. But then I just started eating carbs and that seemed to work, so I haven’t stopped since. I made gingersnaps from the king arthur flour cookbook. and pasta pasta pasta. And ramen. I’m on a ramen kick.

I’m really digging kurt vonnegut. damn! why can’t i be that good??? It burns me up. I have to stop losing faith in my own book every time I read something though. I would like to write something brilliant and meaningful and funny though. I really really would.

What else? I was thinking today about some things and I sort of realized that some things I do because of other people’s suggestions. Like, by nature, I’m a pretty emotional and honest person and it’s really hard for me to hide my feelings. But I remember when my first boyfriend dumped me and my oldest sister said to me “Don’t you dare call him! Don’t let him know you care. Don’t give him the SATISFACTION of knowing that you’re hurting.” And I really took that to heart and have acted on that advice more than once. But now I realize that that’s just not my style. It doesn’t work for me. I’m the kind of person that just needs to have it out. Needs to let it all hang out as ugly as it may be. So at least I’ve finally figured that out. I think when you go against your true nature it just makes you miserable in the end.

Expecting more snow tonight. >: ( i HATE winter!!!