She's Writing a Novel

Someone has left their car parked on the street in front of our apartment building for over a month now. It hasn't moved once, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon. It has a valid parking sticker, however, so until someone comes and claims it or until the sticker expires, it appears we're stuck with this car.

Unless one of our neighbors snaps and takes a baseball bat to it; which by the look of the front left bumper recently, I think one of them already has.

The other day I came home from work and saw a note tucked behind the windshield wiper. It was scrawled by hand and said "YOUR CAR ALARM HAS BEEN GOING OFF AT ALL TIMES DURING THE DAY AND NIGHT FOR THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS. IF YOU DO NOT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, I WILL!!!!!"

Despite the fact that car alarms are useless at this point, whoever dumped their car on our doorstep did so with the car alarm set. And it is one of those hyper-sensitive car alarms. You know, the kind that goes off anytime a car with a subwoofer drives by, or it thunders, or a child screams, or a grasshopper sneezes. The best part is the fact that our street is a bus route, and there is a bus stop on the corner. Anytime a bus driver hits the gas? You guessed it! Our abandoned car goes into a frenzy. If I wanted to hear an obnoxious racket everytime something audible happened in the universe, I would get a dog.

Some people meditate, some people pray, some people listen to music. When I can't go for a run, I read through the Ikea catalogue.

When life gets stressful, I run to the comfort of hundreds of images of perfect organization. It calms me and clears my mind, as if I'm filing away my cluttered thoughts in the Svetborg bins or the Bafrinko boxes on the page. Everything has its place in an Ikea room; even the oddity all makes perfect sense. It's a vivid world of color and imagination; at the same time, its a world of perfect order. It's like a world I long to live in, where even the strange quirks turn out to be brilliant useful features.

I have always been passionate about organization; it's a strange thing to be passionate about. I suppose it's just a manifestation of the need to feel in some kind of control. I may feel helpless and confused in certain situations, but damn it if I can't get all the books on the shelf into alphabetical order. The need to create systems is a rebellion against the reality of so much randomness.

Even when I have a spat with the Russian lover, or when the Russian lover is having a crisis at work, the first thing I long to do is clean something -- anything. Dishes are good, because there are always dishes in the kitchen. The Russian lover hates this tendency of mine; my twitchy artificial busyness just makes him more aggrevated. One time during a fight he baffled me by doing all the dishes; I think in retrospect it was an effort to thwart my default settings and get me to develop a different response. In any event, I managed to stay calm for a record 30 minutes before I had to clean a bathroom. But so help me, that 30 minutes where I was able to just sit and go about my business was a milestone. I experienced conflict, and even though I didn't immediately start cleaning up something around me, the world didn't end.

But my Ikea catalogue habit I'll keep, I think. It's like my holy book; reading it just makes me feel a bit better, like the universe might turn out to make sense after all.

This is the time of year when Philadelphia fills up with out-of-staters; college students, families of college students, late season tourists. One of the easiest places to identify an out-of-stater is a state store. They don't even know what a state store is; they just realized there was no wine at the grocery store, and someone told them they had to go here. That's when they learn about the "Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board," and they start to wonder what kind of stick this state has up its ass, exactly, as they had been under the impression that the Northeast was a pretty progressive part of the US. Their irritation at having to make a second trip for a bottle wine becomes outright indignation when they learn that they will have to go to a third location if they want to purchase beer. Surrounded by aisles of wine and vodka and whiskey, they become combative with the sales staff. "What do you mean you don't sell beer?" And all they get is a shrug, because here in Pennsylvania we've resigned ourselves to this fate. It's like our own special taste of socialism.

Once the out-of-stater becomes resigned, they go on to become confused. Because while there are designated wine and liquor stores, beer sales are not so straightforward. There are distributers, where you go if you want to buy beer by the case or the keg. The distributers are usually in a slightly shady or at least out-of-the-way locale. If all you want are six-packs or forties, it gets even trickier. Most pizza and sandwhich shops will have coolers with beer, although not all of them will. Many Asian delis will carry beer, although not all of them will. Your best bet is to wander around until you find a deli or a pizza shop with neon beer advertisements glowing in the window. And by the time the out-of-stater has located a six-pack, what they really need is a shot of something strong, so its back to the state store.

And when they learn about the city's smoking ban, they're wishing they had gone to Jersey.

I got a pedicure yesterday, and right now my feet are clean and lovely and my toes are painted hooker red. I'm not wearing sandals, though, which might make the pedicure seem wasted and the bright polish pointless. But my shiny red toes are like a secret that makes me smile every time I remember it's there. I just slip a foot out of its shoe under my desk for a moment, wiggle my toes, and instantly feel happier.

It's like wearing expensive sexy lingerie during the day...no one knows it's there except you. It's being an exhibitionist without an audience; or an exhibitionist with an exclusive audience of one - the exhibitionist flaunting herself to herself.

In any case, my hidden display has been a little wellspring of delight that I can tap into whenever I feel myself starting to worry or inwardly grumble. It's good to know I've found a new pick-me-up, and that it only costs 3.99 at CVS.