Project Me!

Cyborgs vs. Hedonists

Even though my xoJane.com It Happened to Me article (hey, I've had the urge to write one since day one and the topic presented itself to me) is ostensibly eating-related, it's more me-related and oddly, I am feeling shy about putting it on my food blog, despite already Twittering and Facebooking a link. Nothing stops anyone from clicking here or vice versa, but I like the mental separation between the two blogs and pretend that this is the one where I can say whatever and no one will read it.

I've never been a big comment generator (something I could remedy by fostering more interactions with others on blogs, something I vow to change each year and never do) so it's enlightening to get a large number or reactions to see how you come across. I was very careful about what I did and didn't say, nothing was written off the cuff. Here, it always is. I don't want to be perceived as angry or a martyr, so I'll try and keep that in the check in the future even though I thought I was being tempered. But being angry really isn't the worst. It might be better than being depressive and ineffectual. It's a motivator and gets things done. When I think angry and martyr I think Janeane Garofalo, in other words, very classic Gen X. I see this age divide a lot now even when I try not to be age-obsessed. Self-deprecation mixed with abrasiveness confuses people under 30 and they think you are genuinely mad when you're just wound-up and animated because they are used to a meandering indirectness, complimenting, killing with kindness and exclamation points that read breezy but are possibly covering up insecurities. Actually, Kat Denning's character in Two Broke Girls (which yes, I'm still watching) is angry and a martyr and she's young, so ignore everything I just said. I know nothing.

I've also learned that there really are two types of people, not quite A's and B's, bottle-feds and breast-feds, or am and pm kindergarteners (kids who grew up with parents who either brought them to the morning or afternoon sessions) as I used to divide the world because I've shifted from an am kindergarten type to one who uses a snooze alarm and will sleep in till noon on weekends.

But I do think there are food as fuelers, a.k.a. cyborgs, and the hedonists. I am the latter, obviously, I could never be the other. The first is healthier, regimented, someone who is likely to say that they forgot to eat, an unfathomable impossibility to me. Maybe even a little puritanical, routineized for sure. They like running, work late, aren't crazy about vacations but probably get massages and spa treatments.

Then there are people who enjoy eating, quantity over quality. Really, there are tons of people, probably the largest group, who are just in the middle making no waves. The types who might  say things like how it's healthier to eat real food like spaghetti carbonara in small portions rather than a giant bowl of "spaghetti carbonara" made from shirataki noodles, egg substitute, and Laughing Cow cheese wedges. I would say the same thing, but I'd in practice I'd eat the giant bowl of real carbonara. Hungry Girl is wildly popular for a reason, right? People, by which I mean Americans, prefer large servings of crap to restrained portions of high quality fare. Maybe the hedonist camp is more like 60% with the remainder split between the rational and the cyborgs.

When someone loses like more than half of their body weight, like a serious drop from 500 to 175 and they stick with it, it is because they are a cyborg at heart. I really believe that it has something to do with genetics or how the brain is wired as much as willpower. It has probably been studied. Or maybe I have it backwards and the cyborgs get joy from very small doses of food while hedonists aren't getting the same amount of pleasure so they overdo it. That's sort of what this University of Oregon study found with milkshakes and "reward circuitry." The brain response in overweight women (the study was comprised of all females) was not as strong as in the normal weight women, and those with a gene variant were even less receptive brain-wise to the chocolate milkshake. Frankly, I'd rather have a sundae than a milkshake. In fact, this specific sundae that I saw in last month's Saveur and obviously am still thinking about. Butter pecan beats chocolate, any day.

Old Old News

That  president John Tyler (born in 1790) has living grandchildren may be the ultimate in Old Dadness. But the whole recent media discovery is kind of charming, so no judging. Someone needs to get these 80-year-old dads together with the 30-something grandmas for the ultimate reality show.

 

 

Provenance

An astute reader (yes, I have them) not only found the photo of "Isloation" but noted that it got seven bids and sold for $51.10 I see that the print was only made in an edition of 12, is actually a solid twenty years old (1991? Really?!) and is far more tiki than I had remembered.

The more I look at this print in the  not terribly well-suited frame (I have cheap, sloppy tendencies, which are getting worse with age) the more I think it was my own--or in my family. It's ringing a bell, dully (next thing I know my sister will tell me its obvious origin and I'll look dementia-riddled again). For only partially irrational reasons, I keep thinking it must've been donated to Goodwill by my ex-stepmother (I've never been sure of what you call the spouse of a dead parent. They don't continue being a stepparent but they're not really an ex because there wasn't a divorce) which would somehow fit into the your dad left you nothing and I have nothing to give you narrative. Yes, I'm becoming obsessed with this old print made when I was still a teen.

Artistic Endeavors

Very occasionally I will vanity Google myself. It's pretty rare that anything unexpected turns up. I don't care so much about my so-called online reputation; I'm more interested in funny weirdness and I was rewarded this time. On like page 30 of search results, I found that a.) Goodwill has auctions, b.) that a painting titled, "Isolation" by someone with my name got four bids and sold for $28.77 in September. I have never been a painter, so I assumed this was someone else making bad art that got dumped at a thrift store. Yet, I could see it sold from a Hillsboro, Oregon branch, a Portland suburb. The accompanying photo no longer displayed. Was it some art school exercise? I did leave a bunch of artwork behind in my apartment when I  left Portland in 1998 but I'm sure that went to the landfill years ago and I didn't title homework.

Though it only makes me sleep in later and later, I've been going to bed later and later. Instead, of my self-imposed 1am weeknight rule it has crept up to 2am (and pushed to 3am the other night when I had to watch the 1am two-episode season two premiere of Downton Abbey--yes, I finally caved and am too old to figure out how to just semi-illegally stream episodes online). And I'm still not tired. Last night as I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly remembered what "Isolation" was. Not a painting, but a print. It was one of the first color blockprints that I made in probably '93 in a series of maybe 25? I don't have a copy on me--I have no idea where any of the art I made and kept is--but I recall I used four colors and it featured Easter Island head sculptures for reasons long forgotten.

I wonder where it came from. Who now, nearly 20 years later had this print in their possession and donated it to the Goodwill? And who bought the damn thing? I never was aggressive about art promotion, never showed at galleries like ambitious classmates, or took it seriously in a money-making way. I don't think I ever made a penny on anything I created. Now, I have a $28.77 legacy.

The Middle Ages: 35

"Later, during a time when there was no room in her thoughts for anything but remorseless obsessive recollection, a perverse desire to debase the tenderness she had felt for him led her to insist to herself that it had all been a kind of fatigued middle-aged prurience. "
--Sophie Bentwood in Desperate Characters, the mysterious book that showed up at my door and made me question my sanity, on an affair at age 35, i.e. "too old for romance."

People did die younger in the late '60s so there's that. You also did everything--marry, have children...I guess that's everything--earlier too. Now millennials (who are up to age 34, by the way) are all jobless and single and living at home or with a gazillion roommates, right? We're all stunted, but youthful.
If I were to believe everything I read in magazines, I would think that every woman over 30 was paying $15,000 a pop to jump start their shriveling ovaries. The pathetic state of fertility even when drug-enhanced:  "In a single cycle of IVF, about 64 percent of 30-year-old women wound up with a child. At 35, 47 percent were successful; at 40, only 28 percent; at 43, only 13 percent; and at 44 and over, it’s 2

And yet at 39 and a half, I am being told I should stop taking birth control (I do not disagree--despite studies saying there's nothing unsafe about taking the pill for decades, it just doesn't seem like messing with hormones for that long can possibly be good for you) because my blood pressure has been uncontrollable since I've lived in NYC (and likely in Portland too--I just didn't go to the doctor) no matter how many medicines I've tried (I started what's probably the tenth different one today and am being referred to a renal specialist) and was recommended to consider an IUD since I have at least ten fertile years left. How can that be? So, are  women over 35 barren and impregnable or they should be implanting interuterine devices because of the abundance of eager eggs?  It can't be both.

If I were more reckless (apparently, most women get pregnant this way--ambivalently and without thought) I would experiment with going birth control free at 40 and see what happens. Maybe I would get knocked up and I could troll infertility message boards about how easy it was. You know, I just relaxed and stopped stressing over conceiving and it happened naturally.  You just have to want it enough. Kind of like how any online discussion of fat discrimination will attract commenters who believe that skinny women have it just as hard, that vanity sizing has made size 2 too big for them so they can't find clothes either, and how hurtful, "eat a sandwich"  remarks are.

Fat Cats Welcome

As much as I love getting out of NYC, I don't think I'm cut out for traveling (even driving to NJ makes me throw up half time, and not metaphorically). I felt like crap the week in Berlin. And then my Christmas week sore throat (yes, my own fault for tending to buy a pack of cigarettes around the holidays--this is the first year, though, where I think my body totally rejected them because I am now middle-aged, it seems) morphed into a sinus infection/head cold thing in Las Vegas. Maybe the super dry air (my hands and face started chapping; desert climate+free flowing alcohol can't be good for hydration) plus airplane germs got to me. Then my last night in town I started peeing blood, which is never not alarming. I haven't had a UTI in years and have lucked out in not ever getting one while on vacation. Thankfully, I was in a US city (though if I were in much of Latin American or Asia I could just buy antibiotics over the counter) with a 24-hour drug store (AZO to get me through the morning), CVS where I'm already in the system and was able to convince an RN to have my dr. call in a Cipro prescription instead of waiting at a Las Vegas clinic my last day on vacation. Four days later and I still feel like a mess. (I don't think anything was helped by the 1:30am, 25 minute long term parking hunt for the car in 14 degree weather. Dressed for 65 in a light jacket and thin tights, I seriously thought I was getting hypothermia. After the hour drive back to the apt. heat blasting the whole way, I still couldn't feel my feet and my ears were killing.) I haven't even left the house or plucked my eyebrows (full hairs totally grow-in a half-inch, ok, maybe a quarter inch, below the artificial arch in that amount of time).

I did win $116 at the Four Queens Casino, my great grandma's (I always type grandmother because it looks nicer, but I never say that word aloud so why use it in print?) Grandma Weaver, as she was called, haunt in...I don't know, the '60s? '70s? When I was very young, i.e. the '70s, she lived somewhere in a mobile home in Nevada with her husband, who had a shiny plastic leg you could see between his shoe and pant cuff, that much I remember. There were hummingbirds flitting around outside. It was desolate. Grandma Weaver chain smoked, gave us the cat I grew up with, L.C. (Little Cat) and for Christmas one year sent a box of pencils with my name on them like you might find in the Lillian Vernon catalog, and I thought they were extremely cool. And then she died. I have no idea how old she was. Probably not more than 65. I've never seen a photo of her any younger than she is in this one (the only one in my possession with her in it) with my sister and me taken somewhere around 1979. I plan on adopting the housedress as a sartorial standard well before my 60s.

My regular grandma (who unsettles me when she comments on my Facebook posts--maybe she's here too? Hi!) and my aunt who still lived at home because she was a kid, also lived in a mobile home in the Nevada desert at this time.  Maybe they all lived in the same park? I don't remember. That is them, along with my grandpa, in the middle. I'm on the end. I never liked dogs, even as a kid, and my relatives always had/have them. They jump on you, slobber, and need too much attention, and smell while crammed into the back seat of a sedan with you. When my mint chocolate chip ice cream melted in the desert heat while eating it slowly on the porch, my grandma grabbed it from me and gave it to the dog. I still eat slowly and am always the last to finish, so that did not teach me anything as a tot.

Maybe it wasn't that desolate--that's just how Nevada looks. Thirty minutes out of Las Vegas and it's dust and mountains. But first you pass by every chain restaurant known to man and countless run-down apartment complexes (I appreciate that fat cats are included in the Large Pets Allowed perk, not just dogs as per normal usage of that phrase) and newer planned communities with vaguely Spanish names. There's a chain of gas stations and casinos called Terrible's, which is disconcerting because of the apostrophe. I'm guessing Terrible is someone's nickname. Taking night photos with a camera from a car isn't optimal, but I couldn't delete them.

New Year's day a gentleman in a scooter putted in a lane of traffic along The Strip with his ladyfriend on his lap and no one seemed to think this was a problem. The problem not being two lovebirds on a scooter but that a non-car does not belong on the road. People drive as they walk in Las Vegas, though: slow-wittedly. I forget that the rest of the country stops for pedestrians when they drive. I saw a Chinese delivery guy on one of those mopeds they now use--on the shoulder of the L.I.E. a few weekends ago and had to avert my eyes because I assumed he would be crushed at any given moment.

I don't really gamble and never bet more than $20 at a time. Caveman Keno is my game (it's just standard Keno but the balls are rocks that make a satisfying clanking noise when dropped and occasionally a pterodactyl screams and a volcano erupts) which thrives more in the garish old casinos with $3.50 well drinks ($12+ is standard on The Strip) free if you play at the bar and bet more than $10. You really have to seek it out among the slots and video poker. And both this December and last on my Vegas excursions, the only casino where I won notable money back was The Four Queens. Luck of the draw or help from beyond?

I didn't take a ton of photos, especially not of food because I did so last year, and didn't post most that included me because I looked haggard and bleary-eyed. Here's what I ended up with:

I Didn't Know I Was Forty

I called it! Well, sort of. In October I speculated between two unknown 40-year-old Asian actresses, Emy Coligado and Junie Hoang, being the Jane Doe suing Amazon for revealing her true age and ruining her career. It was indeed, Junie Hoang. She will never appear on I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant ever again. Crone-like IVF candidates do not get knocked-up mysteriously and have babies in toilets.

S.A.D.

Ok, I'm not interested in bath houses, even modern luxurious ones, but the intro to this post reinforces that I was not imaging the dank, soul-draining properties of the German capital this time of year:

"Berlin’s harsh winters can chill its residents to the bone, and the decrease in daylight hours can render the season truly grueling. To fend off the depression that the season can bring, Berliners find a respite in the city’s saunas and public bathhouses."

My solution would be to eat  greasy cheeseburgers and gargantuan pork shanks. Then wallow.

"Women and Children in a German Bath House are Spied on by a Man at the Window" via Art.com (I don't think this is a classic, right?)

Better Than Drunk Dialing

Yeah, so the mystery book that showed up at my door was from my sister and apparently we'd had a recent phone conversation about it.  So, I've reached the overtaxed point where discussions with humans now blur with things I've read online in my memory. Maybe this is when middle aged people go to those week-long silent retreats and recharge.

For a spell, I wondered if I had bought the book for myself and had forgotten. I checked my Amazon account and email, but found no evidence.  Did I drunk buy it? Probably not; I'm always conscientious about money, even when I'm sloshed.

I do love that The New York Times published a story about drunk online shopping today, Online Retailers Home In On a New Demographic: The Drunken Consumer. Not a cautionary tale, as gathered from the marketing angle in the headline.

But what I love even more are angry-sad commenters (most non-New Yorkers, as usual) disgusted with the immoral behavior.

"It’s so nice to know that so many people can AFFORD to be drunk so often as well as shop to their heart’s contents while in such a state."

I'm surprised Obama wasn't invoked. If you can't even afford a $2.99 bottle of Charles Shaw and a used $5 nine-cassette Billy Joel collection on eBay than you're doing life wrong.

What's In Vogue

I bought a German Vogue at the airport on the way back to NYC  to use up my remaining euros. It didn't matter that I couldn't read it (the imported English language magazines cost more than I had) because I can never read (or watch movies or type or sleep--flying is insufferable) while on a plane anyway. I just took a look at it now. One thing I was struck by was that beneath an article about Essie Weingarten (of Essie nail polish fame) where she's shown with gray hair, there was an for a gray-brightening rinse. I don't think I've ever seen an ad for such a product in a US fashion magazine, at least not an upscale one.

Not even in a magazine for older women like More (though nowhere does it explicitly state its demographic; instead you get "More magazine celebrates women of style and substance. We are the leading voice for the woman who lives in a state of constant possibility." Whatever) any which I just took home from the gym to scrutinize. Mariska Hargitay is on the cover (November, not the current issue) with the quote "My life began at 30 and took off at 40." The first ad after you open the flap is for Vanity Fair lingerie, showing a 1968 ad next to the modern one. Both feature three ladies in underwear; two of the women in the contemporary version are plus-sized though no attention is drawn to that fact in the copy. Diane Keaton and Andie McDowell are the models featured in the L'Oreal ads. There are ads for Botox, EstroGel,  Lee Jeans that make fun of "mom jeans" and a shitload of Campbell's soup ads throughout the entire thing.

I fess up to liking fashion spreads that don't go crazy with stilettos (eh, there are high heels too), always feature dresses with straps wide enough that you don't have to go braless, nothing cropped, and skirt lengths that wouldn't expose your ass if you bent over.  There's a whole spread (this is the abbreviated online version) about longer length skirts, duh. "Graceful lengths that flatter grownups." I think the no miniskirts after 35 rule is total bullshit and anyone who wants to flaunt their legs should wear whatever they please no matter how old; my thighs have just never been my particular best feature so all this grownup skirt business is for me.

So, there's a section on friendship and it features women like Paul Deen, Katie Couric and writers like Sandra Tsing Loh (whom I've always had as soft spot for with her older Gen X ways and I liked her essay because it was about having a friend who bought expensive shoes and would hand them down to her and this was great because they both wore "the same odd size: 9 1/2" Me too!) and um, Sloane Crosley?

It's quite a feat when a 33-year-old is so in demand that she can write for old lady magazines. It wasn't enough to pen a Thanksgiving tale for Bon Appetit, a Christmas remembrance for Vanity Fair, edit the 2011 edition of The Best Travel Writing, teach a writing class at Columbia and climb a volcano for a Kindle single (all which I stumbled upon during my normal reading routine in the past month--there are probably more).

In a way, the inclusion in More kind of makes sense because her writing is middle-aged, like a straight lady David Sedaris. I would say she's good at crafting a tidy essay (I tried to read one of her collections to be open minded and dig deep into why she's so loved and I just couldn't get past the third story) and obviously she has vast appeal so she's does everything right. But I find her voice tempered and droll, very much in control despite being whimsical on the surface, sensible like a woman with grown children into a long marriage. I would not be surprised to discover that she was raised by older parents and/or was an oldest child. There aren't a lot of young women with this voice, and maybe that is the appeal.

The style is the opposite of those confessional, damaged, self-destructive, therapy-on-paper type memoirs that often involve sex work and are also popular and that I don't identify with strongly either. 

Fictionally speaking, I just found Paula Fox's Desperate Characters in my mailbox and have no recollection of ordering it. After reading the back cover description of the 1970 book, "Otto and Sophie Bentwood live childless in a renovated Brooklyn brownstone. The complete works of Goethe line their bookshelf, their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. But after Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a half-starved neighborhood cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague their lives." I remembered yes, I read about this on some literary blog (I can't remember which one or find the recent reference) not so long ago and yes, it sounded right up my alley. But I honestly don't remember actually buying it (the receipt was from a Minnesota-based seller on Amazon). No matter, it's a good Christmas present to myself (unless someone read my mind a few weeks ago and sent it to me) since last night I finished non-fiction, Beijing Welcomes You, that was neither look-at-my-charmed-life or look-people-pay-me-for-sex in subject or tone. I tried to learn something from it, but I don't know if I did.