Month: May 2007

I love wysteria. We had it at our house in Centerport, LI when I was a kid. This is growing on a building on 13th Street. This is Manhattan!!

Today I’m a little stunned. I finished the last chapter of the book in just a few days. I may decide to go back and do something more with it, but for now I think I can move onto the epilogue.

Can I just say: I’m freaking terrified of this epilogue. Even though I hopefully have already done this with the whole of the book, now I’m supposed to provide some perspective about the subject by whatever I chose to do with this looking back, summing-up, here’s-where-it-all-ended-up chapter. So that’s scary about it. Who am I to provide perspective to a subject I have not spent one day of my life participating in, but only reading about and to some extent, watching? You know, I feel like a criminal profiler who has just spent all this time trying to get into the heads of my killers/scientists. Plus, I’ve got a pile of books and papers that I planned to read first, but I’ve only got a month to work on this, so that’s not going to happen. So, I’m uninformed.

I mean, you see the insanity of it, right? I know from past experience I will manage, but still. How? HOW??

My friend Jonathan just IM’ed me to ask me if I wanted to go see Spiderman this morning. I think that’s how I’ll do it — by going to see Spiderman. That will totally work.

I shower and it’s curly! I may be alone in this but I prefer the curly version.

Ugh. I’m obsessing. I almost wish I hadn’t started. I will never find peace. Stupid, I know, but there it is.

HELP.

Have

to

fill

up

space.

Otherwise these posts line up weird. I wish I knew how to fix that.

Okay, so what do we think?? I think it’s really cute from the front, but the back, I don’t know. He said I would lose the look in the front and it would feel soccer-mom-ish if he cut it more in the back, so what was I going to say? Yes, make look like a soccer mom. Also, my bangs dyed back to my original shade of brown now looks fake! I think it’s because it’s one block of unbroken, unvaried color. I’m going to live with it all a few days and see how I feel.

I do love the cut from the front though. I mean, you can see from this shot how cute it is. (I couldn’t figure out how to take my own picture without the camera in my face. It was like some weird spatial puzzle, or early-onset alzheimers.)

I posted about this before, but it got lost in the webserver make-over. I’m going for a new look. My appointment is Monday and I’m freaking out. These cuts are kinda what I’m thinking about. Right now my hair is longish, but I never ever wear it down. The thing is, I love the pulled back look, or wearing it up, so am I going to miss that too much??

Scared, scared, scared.

But, they’re cute, right? I know it will always grow back, but who wants to look bad for months until it does? Especially around a birthday? (My birthday is next month.)

My friend Chris called me yesterday to tell me how nice my brother Douglas is. He is so nice she had to call me to rave about him for a while. He is THAT NICE. He had called her to invite her to go to my choir performance and that he would be taking everyone out to dinner beforehand. She was actually high on the wonderfulness of my brother and she had to tell me. I was working and she didn’t have my complete attention. Then I got distracted by a 1947 Maya Deren movie of kittens. I am probably everyone’s most infuriating friend.

But I knew what she was feeling. My brother Douglas is the kind of person who says the things that we all later think, “I should have said that.” He says them. He is direct, honest, funny and sweet. It’s a heady thing sometimes, talking to him. Then we talked about how nice my other brother Peter is, but a different style. Douglas is effusive-nice, and Peter is quiet-nice. I once said I wanted a jewelry box and had been looking and looking for one, but I couldn’t find any that I liked. The next Christmas Peter gave me a jewelry box that he had HAND MADE. Plus, he’s gifted in how things are put together, so when you pull out the top tray of this box and put it back it always softly shooshes into place with this very satisfyingly perfect cushioned plink-feel. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, Peter has a good heart too, and manages to communicate what Douglas communicates, but in his way. Anyone who has ever gotten a perfectly crafted thing knows that it is love made into a physical object, and is every bit as comunicative as words.

Seriously though, I lucked out brothers-wise, they really are special. AND THEIR WIVES, Robin and Karen. Great people attract great people. I will never forget how Robin and Karen cared for my mother when she was dying. Robin is an artist. I’ve got a couple of her pieces here! Karen, I think she should be a school principal. She’d be like the cool principal. She is great with kids, but she has a wicked sense of humor. AND THEIR KIDS, Greg, Ellie, Nicole and Christopher. Greg is a writer too, although he may decide to go in an entirely different way with his life, he’s 16. But he’s really good and could be a writer if that’s what he decided. He’s a sweetie. Totally Doug and Robin’s kid. His sister Ellie, who is 9, is a handful, which for me is BIG compliment. I love a girl who is a handful. Go out there and KICK LIFE’S ASS, Ellie. Christopher, I know him the least, but he’s an aethist!! YAY. He’s also young, 17, so we’ll see if it holds, but one more for our team maybe!! Nicole is at Stonybrook and she loves animals like me, so of course Nicole is the BEST ONE. Just kidding. They tie. I keep meaning to ask Nicole how she likes Stonybrook because one of the women who I’ve been interviewing for this book (her grandmother was a medium I am writing about) has a daughter who is thinking of going there.

The top picture is Douglas on the beach at Amagansett, I think it was 1975. The next picture is Peter, around 1973. This is the Peter I grew up with. He was NEVER not playing guitar, and he loved Jimmy Hendrix, and while I can appreciate the man’s talent, I was not a fan. Many a time I plotted against my brother’s guitar. I wonder if they felt the same way after my millionth rendition of Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag?

Oh, and please be noting that they are both blonde. I’m the adopted one, right??