I find it slightly disturbing

when women refer to their breasts as “the girls.”

I resolve to keep better track of things that thrill me. Because (and you can quote me on this), if you don’t focus on what thrills you, you’re more likely to obsess over the stuff that’s annoying you and discover that you’re a bottomless well of complaint, irritation and woe.

• The charming Cooper Square Hotel construction workers still screaming outside my window. I love you guys! You’re the best! Louder, please! Earlier, PLEASE! Should you catch a glimpse of me getting out of the shower, PLEASE WAVE! I sometimes forget you’re there! Pay lots of attention to me! That means whether I’m inside my apartment or on the street. Wherever I go, please acknowledge me!
• My white noise machine. Like a fan, without the fan action. Should I happen to grow weary of the constant adoration of the construction crew, it helps.
• Jens Lekman
• My stuffed-up nose and head. I like when I wake up and realize I’ve been breathing through my mouth for four hours and have been dancing a pas de deux with strep all night. I also love when my snuffly head drips down to my throat and I feel like I’ve swallowed a hair. Would that this action continue all winter!
• Fresh Direct! You guys! I don’t need soy sauce! Being out of absolutely every staple is adorable. Keep it up.

Hold on! It seems like I’m making a list of things that suck! Did you notice that too? A sarcastic list of things that suck! How did this happen? This is supposed to be a New Year’s Resolution. For self-improvement. Not a gripe session. MELISSA. Focus.

• The varying styles of the teachers of spinning classes at the gym. The guy who is overly-concerned with what percentage of my heart rate I’m up to when I have no clue what he’s talking about. The guy on the headset who is so unintelligible that I just imagine he’s telling me I’m riding on a flat road through the countryside and to take it easy. The girl who is so bossy and dominatrixy that all I can think of is how spinning class is for masochists and, as a legitimate bike-rider, I should eschew all stationary bicycling because if not for the dim lights and loud music, it would be the saddest workout on earth.
• Michael Cera. I saw Juno. I don’t think he’s ever played any other role but the one he perfected on Arrested Development, further honed in Superbad, and flaunted like a peacock in the totally irresistible Clark and Michael. And like everyone else on earth, I’m a total sucker for him/his shtick, which might possibly be his actual personality. I love him. I can bring myself to tears just thinking about that scene where Juno says “You’re like the coolest person I’ve ever met and you don’t even have to try” and he says “I try really hard, actually.”
• The guy from the laundromat who offered to let me pay him $2 to dry my delicates on low instead of not putting them in the dryer at all, as I’d requested. I like when I pay you to use less energy. It just feels right.
• Raspberry Soy Delicious bars. I had never seen them before, only the orange and chocolate ones. I got some last night at Whole Foods which was total madness but I had to go because hey Fresh Direct, thanks for nothing, I can’t make quiche without crusts. Why didn’t you order more crusts, FD? Why are your crusts a dollar more than Whole Foods? Why is your crate of clementines $2 more? Are you aware I could get my delicates dried on low for that difference? Revenons aux nos moutons. I now know that not only are Raspberry Soy Delicious bars DELICIOUS, that my cache of melted-then-refrozen-because-I-accidentally-left-freezer-open-a-little (it’s not my fault! that freezer has a really dumb, weak seal!) orange and chocolate Soy Delicious bars are GROSS. I can’t believe I have been living so long with these burnt, shriveled bars. EXTRA RESOLUTION WITHIN A RESOLUTION: I resolve to throw away that bad shrively Soy Delicious bars and to make sure my freezer is always always always shut.

And here I leave you. If you’ve gotten this far, I love you. If you didn’t get this far, well, we can use this place to talk about you, because you’ll never know. And if you’re reading this in a Christmas haze because you happened on this blog after receiving the Girl’s Guide for Christmas, I’ll sign your copy, too. Just email me.

Happy? Holidays!
Melissa

What’s the point of the blog if it has not a theme, is sporadically updated, acts coy and withholding when it comes to intimate details?

I don’t know either. But you care, so I persevere, with vague promises of posting more, and my evident discomfort with really revealing everything is maddening even to me. But I think that anyone who really wants to get to the kernel of what is what with me should read/study/commit to memory the following mundane facts about my week.

1. I have yet another ingrown toenail. I’m suspecting it’s genetic. This one can’t be attributed to running shoes because I haven’t been running because either I’ve been working too much, it’s getting cold, or whenever I’m not working I think “Oh it’s too cold I’d rather crawl under the covers and think about work.” Suspicion: combination of the three.

2. I tore through Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, and now I’m slowly making my way through Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates and pretending it’s the book version of Mad Men because I’m sad that the Mad Men season is over.

3. I remain enthralled by the Larry King video podcast and I don’t care who knows it. I watched Kid Rock. I watched Eric Clapton. I watched Jenny McCarthy for chrissakes. I don’t care who it is, if it’s Larry King and it’s on a 2×2″ screen, I am rapt.

4. I started watching The Wire. I never like to admit anything is too hard, but I am having a hard time understanding what the hell.

5. I went to a spelling bee. I felt I could have outspelled the pants off everyone there but that’s an ego thing. I pride myself on being a really good speller. I make typos sometimes and this is painful for me because I kind of think of myself as also a really good typist. And a show-off. I’m braggy.

6. I can’t dress for this shit. I mean, I know: LAYERS. But I hate any season that’s not summer.

7. I felt overwhelmed by malignant envy maybe 2 times this week. This is average for me.

8. I felt sorry for myself maybe 4 times this week. This is a lot for me.

9. I got a new gear shift on my 15-year-old bike that is a non-stop target for neighborhood vandals and man, gear-shift technology has really come a long way since I bought my twice-used Specialized Hard Rock Sport in 1992.

10. My new bike basket is not working out. It’s not attaching properly to the handlebars and it slowly or sometimes quickly starts to dump all my stuff into the street while I’m riding. I get a lot of compliments on it, however, so I’m thinking: who needs stuff? The surly guy at the bike shop even complimented me! Thanks, Jean!

11. I almost missed Halloween because I was holed up at Paragraph and then emerged at 2am and nearly got trampled on 14th Street by drunk revelers and I realized eh, Halloween, not my holiday. My holiday, for those who keep track of these things, is Bastille Day because it’s French and it’s in the summer. And it involves heads on poles. No, not for that reason.

12. I stood behind the so so so pregnant Drea DeMatteo at my pharmacy (or should I say “our pharmacy,” since it’s mine and Drea’s) and eavesdropped on her conversation but held myself back from chuckling along or making a calculatedly clever comment because in spite of the fact that we share a pharmacy and I found her black suede hobo bag with tassels that TOUCHED THE FLOOR remarkable, she is not my friend and I am not a starfucker.

13. Two friends’ bands are playing tonight and I want to go to both. I don’t like going to see bands but I happen to have a minimum of three friends who are in legitimately good bands.

14. I have connected with more random people from my past on Facebook than is healthy or seemingly necessary and it makes me nervous that my policy of being apparently personal but not divulging anything truly personal is going to start getting dicey.

15. I realized that when you interview someone for a story, they Google you. Sometimes you interview like 20 people and you see in your site logs that they all Googled you. I find this creepy and I think this is me just being ridiculous because I mean, everyone GoogleS everyone, and of course I’d Google a reporter who called me. I think Google etiquette involves not admitting you Googled someone, as one of my sources did and I got very “this call is coming from inside the house” scared.

16. I am nursing a very cautious crush.

17. Julie brought me a big bottle of 100% aloe vera and I drank the whole thing as the directions advised me, 2oz. twice a day, and I don’t know what it’s supposed to do but it hasn’t done it yet.

18. Don’t not return an email, especially a business email. Don’t not return a call unless you never want to hear from someone again. Never forget to thank people whom you ask for advice. Don’t take the advice and run. People are busy being important/famous/having ingrown toenails and they took the time to give you, a total stranger, advice via email. Say thanks.

Can I pause here and just say that about 9 months ago, in the throes of doing publicity for my book, a stranger emailed me for advice. I feel no compunction in revealing the details of the scenario because I think she acted abominably. She was trying to decide between the MFA programs at Columbia and NYU, both of which had accepted her, and an old professor of mine suggested she contact me. I gave her a whole boatload of advice, a thorough compare/contrast of NYU/Columbia, based on my experience at NYU and friends’ experiences teaching at/attending Columbia–even though I found her sort of supercilious and full of herself. I was in primo advice-giving mode at the time as I was touring-slash-doing a lot of interviews where I was being asked for my opinion a lot. But I tried to abide by my “all unsolicited advice is self-serving” motto and really help her. We should all be so lucky to have such “problems,” but anyone who ever really wanted to get into one of those programs knows that. Anyway, I never heard from her. And I’m kind of pissed about it. Because if there’s one thing I hate it’s people who don’t express gratitude. I’m old-fashioned: I like to send cards. I like to send gifts. I don’t want to appear entitled, even if I feel entitled. I’m showing off again. Anyway. It’s shitty not to thank someone.

It is also shitty to not RSVP to a party; it is shitty to work very, very closely with someone on their book and then not acknowledge its publication (more common than you’d think!), it’s a good idea to kiss someone’s ass just a tiny bit when you ask them for a big favor, but in a genuine way that shows that you respect them and their time. I’m getting ranty now. I forgive you all. But come on people. Be human. Be nice to each other. Acknowledge people. It’s not a zero-sum game. Even if I am totally winning.

19. I think I should turn this more positive. I like my new shoes. Even if they look a little Wednesday-Addams-ish.

20. I worked hard this week and think I will reward myself this weekend. This means I will go running for pleasure and not beat myself up for only doing half my normal distance because I’ve not been running in weeks. This sounds like a dumb reward but I tend to be extraordinarily hard on myself and I think I will try to give myself this gift. Oh who am I kidding. I’m going to get that Cole Haan bag.

So I thought it would be a good idea to walk from 95th & Fifth to 62nd & Lex last night because it was nice out and I had the time because I now time all my trips with Hopstop so I am not late, I used to be very late always because I’d assume it took no more than 30 minutes to get anywhere and that’s a lie. Or so Hopstop will have you believe and p.s. it’s right. So it seems I bruised my heel.

I know this because I got home and found a bruise on my heel. I looked up bruised heel on Google and I found that this affliction is sometime’s known as “Policeman’s Heel,” which I find somehow hilarious–for all the obvious reasons–and maybe flattering. For all the obvious reasons. But what I cannot get over is the explanation of Policeman’s Heel (which, by the way, I have) on the very clinical-sounding website Sports Injury Clinic (dot net).

What is a bruised heel?

The heel bone (calcaneus) is protected by a pad of fat. Repeated pounding of the heel can cause the fat pad to be pushed up the side of the heel leaving less of a protective layer causing heel pain. This injury is also sometimes known as Policeman’s heel. It is common in sports requiring a lot of impact onto the heel and in particular soldiers marching up and down on the parade square.

[Italics mine]

What?!?! The parade square? Who wrote this? What copywriter on crack wrote this? Who marches up and down on the parade square?!? I know soliders have a lot of injuries to worry about. I wonder if I should send the Turkish troops some Dr. Scholl’s moleskin heel pads.

I didn’t intend this to go in this direction but COME ON. Another day, another totally unbelievable news story [via TimesOnline UK]:

The US Administration is opposed to the resolution passed last week by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee branding as genocide the mass killing of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War.

I mean, it seems so cut and dried. Yes it was genocide. What’s the problem? And then I read this:

Those who think this vote is about setting historic facts right aren’t paying attention to the present. What we’re dealing with isn’t some rogue, failed state housing sworn enemies but Turkey, the only Muslim country in NATO, a potential European Union country and the most-important front-line state in the struggle against Islamist extremists. It is the West’s leading bridge to and democratic model for the Mideast.

It also is the country through which 90 percent of cargo passes for U.S. and allied troops in Iraq. At the very least, U.S. logistical problems will increase.

Granted the second quote is from an opinion piece on Bloomberg.com.

Definitely should consider sending Dr. Scholl’s. Because insult has obviously already been added to injury, so it’s really the least I can do. Whose insult, whose injury, I don’t know. I’m just a confused private citizen with the heel of a policeman, after all.

Update: I continued reading on Sports Injury Clinic Dot Net and came across this zinger at the end, which is good colorful advice not unworthy of a Sports Injury Clinician Dot Net:

There is no point you stopping running for a week if you put up scaffolding for a living and are on your feet every day.

Only now my safety school is…the East River Park Black Fog of Exhaust By the FDR Pothole-Pocked Jogging Path That Goes By the Sanitation Department Trash HQ. I can’t help but suspect that the New York Road Runners’ Club knows about me and The Mile and is in a dark conspiracy with Coach Betts, my high school gym teacher.

Entry Number: 180832,

Dear Melissa Kirsch

Thank you again for applying for the ING New York City Marathon 2007. I am sorry to inform you that, unfortunately, you were not selected in the random lottery drawing. I wish we could accept everyone, but we have to limit the size of the field to ensure a top-quality experience - and I hope you get to experience it yourself one day!

Oh really?!?! That’s rich. I’m a full TWO WEEKS into training for my “top-quality experience.” And I don’t mind telling you that I have a blood blister on my future-bunion from my Dean Karnazes-esque regimen. Oh, I’ll just continue with the remaining twenty weeks in hopes that “one day!” you’ll let me into your stupid marathon. — Ed.

[...]

Finally, I encourage you to apply for the ING New York City Marathon 2008. Did you know that if you applied and were denied three years in a row, you are eligible for guaranteed entry the fourth year? (If this is your third consecutive denial, you may already be guaranteed for the 2008 race! E-mail us with your name, date of birth, and a short note and we’ll check our records and get back to you.)

Great! By 2010 I should have paid off my Nike +iPod running sensor with special attachment for non-Nike shoes! By 2010 I will be so old and grizzled from three long years of constant marathon training I will have crickety-crackety knee sockets and gross sinewy calves like the speed-walking ladies in their visors and fluroescent pink shorts, I will have wraparound mirrored sunglasses and skin like an old saddle. I’ll be able to limp my way across the Verrazano Bridge on my stumpy buniony feet, just for the glory in participating in the sack race you call a marathon.

I don’t need you people. I don’t need you one bit. I can run 26.2 miles FOR FUN, my Road Running friends. I don’t need a cheering section or a water stop or the streets of the city closed off or a finish line in Central Park. I can run a marathon any day I want on my very own TREADMILL in any of dozens of air-conditioned branches of the New York Health & Racquet Club! Oh, you’re not a member? Well, I hope “one day!” you get to have THAT life-affirming experience. Don’t hold your breath, New York Road Runners Club! Did I mention NYHRC also offers a summer booze cruise around Manhattan, open only to its exclusive cadre of members? I don’t mind telling you that said booze cruise includes NOT ONLY a cash bar BUT ALSO a breakfast buffet! You heard me! Don’t believe the signs outside every branch of my special Club advertising a price-slashing sale every day. Not true. — Ed.

Thank you so much for your interest in the ING New York City Marathon. I wish you a summer of healthy and gratifying running.

Sincerely,

Mary Wittenberg
President and CEO, New York Road Runners
Race Director, ING New York City Marathon

Okay, super-secretly, I’m relieved. Phew! Close one! Now I can go back to my three-mile jaunts around the housing development. Or do I continue with the training because I do really want to run a marathon and lord knows I’m not getting any younger? What to do? Relief! Disappointment! Relief! Disappointment! Oh, Mary Wittenberg and the New York Road Runners! Quit playing games with my heart! — Ed.

Darling “Kidde” brand Carbon Monoxide Detector, I’d totally forgotten you were there. What a surprise, then, to awaken to your deafening screech! What a treat to actually sleep through an hour of your shrieking while integrating it into a dream in which I’m trapped in a cave with about 500 different smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, radon measuring devices from 1961, and am trying to figure out which one is making that noise. Silly me, it was just you, Carbon Monoxide Alarm!

What does this mean? Of course it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the batteries are low and I’m not dying a slow death from poisonous gases. But something tells me that the Kidde Carbon Monoxide Alarm exists for a reason. And I can only rashly jump to the conclusion that that reason is that the demolition site I like to call my country estate is emitting some sort of hazardous situation that is killing me softly with its toxic fumes.

What is going on: BookExpo happened, where I autographed trillions of books, Jewish Book Council Author Two-Minutes-In-Heaven Talent Night happened, some parties, some Seattle friends, a strange urge to write fiction (indulged yesterday when I also woke early, not to an alarm but possibly from the emerging onset of carbon monoxide poisoning that caused me to bolt upright at 4am). Radio interviews. Jackhammering outside. Nerves.

My publisher, Workman, threw a fairly magical party on the roof of Rockefeller Center. There’s a reflecting pool up there. I may never see the city so regally again.

As you may have guessed, I happen to…HAVE SOME STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT NAIL SALON CLEANLINESS. Namely, they better be hospital sterile, glistening, autoclave clean. We’re talking about feet, lots of people’s feet, their toenails, their foot fungi, some water, some sloughing. I’m getting queasy. It is possible to get a beautiful pedicure in a space that makes you want to notify the board of health.

As I did. Today. With a friend who’d never had a pedicure, so I’d wooed her with promises of feeling reborn, not recognizing her baby soft feet, the spa environment, the pampering, the massage chair, the STERILITY.

Nail salons need to be free of too much crap. Like figurines and knick-knacks and other dust-collecting brick-a-brack rick-rack crap. Because the pedicure experience is a luxurious one. Or should be. I like my lights low, my space uncluttered, my Sounds of the Rainforest didgeridoo/rainstick/tweety-birds music on low. Not fluorescent light, weird framed photographs of hands with painted nails clasping bunches of hundred dollar bills and Ellen blasting on five TVs.

This one defies description. Yes, that says “COLD, HOT & NAILS.”

I get very creeped out by nail art. But I could get over it. If you would make the water in the tub hot enough. If I wasn’t constantly seeing little casual cups of blue water with random tools sticking out of them instead of the Barbi-something situation they have at the hairdresser for the combs that always makes me feel a little more confident I won’t get lice.

My main beef with today’s establishement is they didn’t put flip-flops or some other foot-protecting item on my feet after the pedicure. You know how they always put flip-flops on you, really thin, one-use flip-flops and you pad over to the driers all wonky but at least you’re not walking barefoot where every Lamisil case in town has trod before you? No flip-flops. When I asked for them, the lady pulled them out and told me it was too late and too hard to put the flip-flops on now that she’d polished my toes, I should have told her sooner. I don’t mean to be a prima donna (Or maybe I do? I need to think about this.) but the flip-flops are kind of a big deal.

They are especially a big deal when the floor is soaking wet and everyone keeps slipping and when I point out that it’s gross to walk where everyone else has walked barefoot the lady responds “Don’t worry, we wash the floors once a day.” They are an even bigger deal when the nail dryers are across the room, the room that has wall-to-wall deep-pile carpet that, since everyone’s been padding barefoot on it from the barely-tepid footbaths all day, is damp and swampy. Like marshland carpet full of shaved callous and athlete’s foot. That’s where you’re going to be walking barefoot. That’s the swamp-carpet on which you will rest your feet while under the dryers. Flip-flops. I ask you.

Okay. So my friend is in love with her pedicure, which is a good thing, because it is indeed lovely, and the massage chair was nice and I am still a little sick about the cleanliness thing but I just won’t go back to that place. Can I get a witness?

PS While we’re on the subject, I would like to say that pedicures, in sterile environments, are a very fine treat if you can afford it. There is nothing quite like having your feet scraped and buffed and moisturized. I have very few girly musts, but one is that I not show my mangled jogger’s toenails to the world without a pedicure. I stand by this.

I’d just come back from my voyage to the Birthplace of Independence when Peter H. called and reminded me that we’d planned to escape to the country for the weekend. Contrary to my typical impulses following a period of intense activity and travel, which would dictate I rest, run, clean, reassimilate to the city, I hopped in the car and went to snowy country where there are big rooms and bathtubs large enough to stretch your legs in. As often happens these days, we pursued intense craft projects deep into the night. Cusi has introduced us to the Arts of Procraftination, which has evolved into a bit of a modern-day Bloomsbury (or so we like to fancy ourselves). Peter O. and Cusi’s hilarious friend Marcia joined us one night, and even these two inveterate non-crafters set to work painting and decoupaging and covering canvases in images and words like it was their job. It was heaven.

I had no phone or Internet in the country, which was a blessing. I’ve tried going on technology fasts before, unsuccessfully. But in this case, I had no choice and believe my quality of life was much improved by my ignorance of Britney Spears’ head-shaving. The only thing that happened was my email box somehow filled up, which should not happen in this century, but evidently not being on email for four days should also not happen in this century, so I deserved it?

I’ve been meaning to mention something that pisses me off to no end. Did you see this RIDICULOUS, insulting new product?

It’s the new ladies’ cigarette! We’ve come a long way, baby! To fuchsia and teal and a cigarette targeted at women (Wine cooler with your Light & Luscious, baby?) because there just aren’t enough women smoking Camels! How could anyone not be repulsed by such infantile, obnoxious, public-health-violating marketing?
Never mind the fact that lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in women, surpassing breast cancer. Let’s see if we can snare a few girlies into our net who felt that Camels were too manly before now that we’ve packaged them in the hues of a hospital waiting room! Smart thinking, RJ Reynolds!

While we’re on the subject of dumb (but not deadly — at least yet) marketing, I’ve recently begun a folie á deux with Splenda. Things are going well, but I can’t really get over the little Celestial Seasonings-style aphorism on the side of each packet that say things like “To err is human, to sprinkle divine” and “Get ready for love at first sprinkle.” These aren’t even puns. They’re not even smart. Splenda seems like a semi-smart product (chlorinated sugar!), but that’s just unsatisfying packaging.

All day, up and down. Absurdly so. It’s windy and each gust changes my perspective. These days I’m terrific and then I’m so ridiculously, despondently unterrific. I ask you.

Like this:

Et cetera. You see. I suppose this is a normal day. This is the sort of soaring/plummeting that normal people experience. It’s also kind of boring when recounted. I would like to be less susceptible to the tiny ripples of the universe, changing instead with the larger tides. Or maybe actually affecting the tides. I’d like to be the moon.

This week: The Change My Life Poll.

Thanks for fulfilling your civic duty!