Everyone sat around the small bar and didn’t look at each other. They sang strange, obscure songs in warbly, coked-up voices and no one performed for anyone else. No one smiled or laughed or hit a wrong note to be funny. It was like prison in that everyone seemed to know each other but not by choice. The No Exit Karaoke Bar. A begrudging acknowledgment that there were other people there but they would get no attention, this was a night to be endured, like every night to be endured. Twenty people in a karaoke bar, the same people every single night they had probably sung every song in that catalog. There was no joy.

When our number, Total Eclipse of the Heart, finally came up, after about one billion years of solitude in a crowded bar, Derick and I got the two mikes and belted. We caterwauled. There were two extra verses that don’t exist in the real song. It was like “Turn around, bright eyes, Every now and then there’s an adorable little boy and now he’s grown up to be a man. Turn around….” What? We sang it anyway. We went for drama. As much as we could in a room full of stoics. I’d forgotten Derick is a real rock and roll singer, rock and roll star, so he could actually harmonize but I was wailing so hoarsely that his sophisticated stylings were mostly lost. The crowd didn’t love us. The crowd was possibly secretly handcuffed to its stools with its jaws wired shut.

Earlier, we ate hamburgers at the Sunburnt Pig that had beets, eggs, pineapple and bacon on them. That’s where we first heard the Bonnie Tyler classic on the sound system and decided it was important that we go sing (sing) karaoke. They also played “Oh Sherrie” by Steve Perry which damn I still love, that’s a love song, it’s so damn earnest I love it . I had a big crush on SP in that video, singing to Sherrie on the steps of like a courthouse (?), so deeply yearning and passionate and then flinging himself around a stairwell, squinting a lot with pain, the exquisite pain of ardor and Sherry and the world too much with him. I also looked a little like Steve Perry when I was a child so I think there was something there–long stringy black hair, middle part…I felt like we were kind of meant for each other. I think I need to find that video.

I realized today that email isn’t just email. I’m a writer. As in it’s my job. Email is work. It stresses me out. In 2008, I’d like to email less and talk more.

I resolve to stop emailing long letters to friends who are in the same town, whom I could get together with easily. Email is for quick communication. It’s for business that doesn’t require tone. Writing a long email feels more and more like an obligation. Communicating with friends shouldn’t feel that way. I’d rather send one postcard a week via US mail than write an email update on “what’s up.” I’d really rather talk on the phone.

I know this is unrealistic. Email is easy. People are at their desks all day, it’s an efficient way to catch up without having to make noise or wait until after work. When writing is your job, you sit down at the desk to do your job and then there’s email and it’s exercising the same muscle you use to do your job but the job doesn’t get done. Then when you (or I) go to do the job, the muscle is frequently tired. The job is harder for having emailed.

In 2008 I resolve to make things easier.

Is it obnoxious to ask friends to call me to catch up rather than email? It seems mean and anti-social. It’s mean and anti-social not to return emails, one could argue, or to do so without an explanation. It does sound rather “I’m above your whole ‘technology’ thing” for me to try to exempt myself from email. But socially, I’m going to try. If you’re a friend of mine with whom I exchange long rambly emails, let’s try to do it less. I care about you. (Some of you more than others–YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I’m kidding. Wouldn’t that be funny if I weren’t? Or ridiculous? Oh well. I find it a little funny.) I don’t want our communication to feel like work.

I’m not going to stop emailing altogether or get mad if friends email me. That would be sociopathic. But I’m in need of a moderate lessening of intensity. Obviously it goes without saying that if you EVER have anything even remotely emotionally delicate to say to anyone, don’t do it via email. With me or anyone. No tone. Email. Has.

NB: Please keep emailing me constantly: business associates, Girl’s Guide fans, people who want signed bookplates, people who don’t know my phone number, people who want to offer me money, secret admirers, people who want me to send money to Nigeria or purchase misspelled prescription drugs.

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.

Remember my funny & smart friend Jean Villepique? The one who was just a stitch on The Office last year? Well just in case you forgot, this is your week to gorge on Jean-ness because she’s going to be “appearing” on two of the best shows on TV in one week! I know! That’s what happens when you move to LA!

So TiVo the bejesus out of this good time, friends: She’s on 30 Rock tonight at 8:30pm on NBC, then she’s on Curb Your Enthusiasm this Sunday at 10pm.

In the meantime, it’s cold and rainy and I need new tights. Tights for tall people. Yesterday I walked around all day with kindergarten crotch. While yanking my tights up in a corner in Barnes & Noble I told the woman standing next to me I was sorry to be so awkward but I had kindergarten crotch and she was Fantasia from American Idol. Screw you, fancy Dim brand tights from France you’re going in the shitter and I’m going to try to find something Wolford-esque at a fraction of the price because yeah they’re good tights but they still rip just like every other pair.

I will not let go of summer. I will not will not will not absorb your silly back-to-school anxiety. Just because it’s Labor Day Weekend I will not wear a coat. I will not straighten out my priorities or stop wearing sundresses or turn my clock back. Today I went to Prospect Park.

Shira’s Birthday Banquet, an annual gala, a gorgeous day. Earlier, I went to Home Depot and purchased Baby’s First Power Drill. It was amazing. It was amazing to bike home with a power drill. I was all lopsided and wobbly but I had in my clutches my new drill. With which I will alternately drill and drive. Don’t say “drill” when you mean “drive.”

I made cucumber juice for the birthday banquet. It was so lovely, and listening to the This American Life podcast about break-ups on the iPod was so compelling, I didn’t mind getting lost, first in Park Slope, then in the park. I have never gone to any event in any park anywhere and not gotten lost. Central Park. I’ve gotten lost every time I’ve tried to find the carousel. Prospect Park is no easier. There was literally a sign with arrows pointing in two opposite directions and they both said “PICNIC HOUSE.” I was going to the Picnic House.

I rode back to the city with Amichai and we went to the Sunshine and saw a weird and quirky movie I knew not much about, Dedication. It was a spontaneous moviegoing, I’d not have seen the movie otherwise, but I’m glad I did. The film included a writer who gets anxious and a house in Sag Harbor, and they guy who played Tim on the British version of The Office (whose skin is looking a little craggy, not that mine isn’t, but I couldn’t help but wish they’d used a little spackle on him), and a completely gratuitous stunt-casting of Peter Bogdanovich. I’m not opposed to any of those things.

Yesterday I went to the Greenmarket and bought about 20 heirloom tomatoes. They’re not like regular tomatoes. I learned this when I got two in my CSA haul last week. I am now ruined for the Jersey tomato. I cannot beat the thought of not having the earth move every time. I am determined to subsist wholly on corn and heirloom tomatoes until the first frost. And beyond. Because I refuse to reckon with the possibility of frost.

Remember Cowboy Junkies? What happened to them? Springtime, it’s hard to just be in it without saying “soon it will be too hot to bear.” It’s in the 70s every day and we lurch towards summer, dread and anticipation, layering clothes for air conditioning as if going on trans-atlantic flights.

Spring in New York: I’ve been to two Yankee games. A friend’s mother passed away. There are people running faster and slower than me, and they’re all on the path by the East River, gumming up the works. Something about an afternoon spent doing nothing. Sometimes I go out in shorts even though no one wears shorts here. My pedicure is chipped and my ingrown toenail is back again with a vengeance. There is so much work to do. The construction continues. The radio interviews, the difference between hope and expectation.

In New York, on a random Friday, you could walk into the Union Square Barnes & Noble and find Al Gore. I dreamed I went on a book tour with Oprah and Ira Glass. I talk a lot about Al Gore being president.

It’s like 1999, but with less certainty.

Remember my good-intentioned ambition to make note each day of things I like about NYC in effort to remind myself just why I live here? Me neither. But yesterday I realized I was about to finish a very good day and noted it out loud. Because I find myself frequently saying “This was a bad day” or “I’ve had a hard week” or “The last four years have been generally not good” (I only said this maybe twice, and only really meant it once) and decided I would try, for a change, discussing my good day.

What I Did
Rode my bike in the morning to Chelsea, where I met Ben, and we biked way uptown, with the goal of riding over the George Washington Bridge. We had a long, leisurely ride, waylaid but briefly when I got a ridculous flat tire on a steep hill. I say ridiculous because by the time I realized I had a flat, the tire tube had somehow escaped the wheel and tire and entirely wrapped itself around the frame of the bike. I have never seen anything like it. A very friendly biker who was suspiciously unsweaty and whose longish hair was suprisingly mane-like for having biked in from New Jersey, stopped and helped us (okay, fine, helped Ben) get the tire extricated with the use of his handy pliers. (There is a “women’s bike repair” class that meets once a week on Houston. Why don’t I go to this? If Ben hadn’t been with me, I may have idiotically sat down on the side of the path and wept helplessly. I am going to go to that class.)

We walked our bikes into Hamilton Heights, a very lovely section of Harlem, where the guy at the health food store had a large stack of business cards for nearby Manny’s Bike Shop — evidently I am not the first person to emerge from the path at 181st Street with a flat. Manny made quick and cheap work of the flat and off we went, over the Bridge. I’ve never ridden over before and it was almost exhilarating. A little hazy, and some women yelled “SINGLE FILE!!!!!” when we were riding out of the line, but there were trees and rocky cliffs and the Hudson and you could see the Empire State Building down there somewhere in the grey distance.

We rode back and tried to find a park in Inwood that a guy had told us about in the health food store, but instead ended up in Fort Tryon Park, which is where the Cloisters are. I’d never been there either, and Ben and I sat in the park for several hours, trying to recount the plots of Shakespeare plays. We did a pretty good job. I feel robbed that because of the “special” Modern Studies program I was in in the English department in college I was exempt from the English major Shakespeare requirement in which you read a play a week. So I’ve never read Othello, I’m much shakier on my characters and “What did Yorick’s skull signify?” type of questions than Ben, who took the class. We also attempted to recite Shakespearean sonnets but were very bad at that.

We rode back down to this very no-frills outdoor restaurant around 100th Street in Riverside Park and had dinner outside overlooking the river. I was filthy. Like my hands were black and my face was really sweaty and my hair, my hair that I just got cut in attempt to make it look something like Rachel Weisz’s in My Blueberry Nights, was full of city-crap. My skin had grit on it.

(I admit this is not the first time I have desired to imitate Rachel Weisz. And I’m not generally the sort of person who brings a photo of an actress to her hairdresser. That’s not true. About a year and a half ago I brought a photo of Mary Tyler Moore from ’70s to him and tried to get my hair to look like hers. About six months ago I read she was wearing a wig for the entire run of the show.)

Why It Was Good
It was on the ride back that I said to Ben “This has been a good day.” He agreed, but wasn’t excited as I was to have actually had a good day that had virtually nothing bad in it. I then became nervous that I would crash my bike or come home to a stressful email or be struck by lightning before midnight, but none of these things happened. I saw many sailors in town for Fleet Week, and thought about that Sex and the City episode and also wondered if anyone else finds it confusing that the Marines are called “the Marines” when their job is not marine-based.

People like to say that New York is the best on holiday weekends because everyone leaves and the real, die-hard New Yorkers (or those of us without Hamptons houses) have the city to themselves. This was not the case at the track in the East River Park, where I went to run today. I remember now why I hate to run there on weekends — there are soccer games going on in the middle of the track and people just sort of hang out in the shade and play auxiliary soccer games and roughhouse and roll all over the track at the shady ends which makes it a not-very-relaxing run. But I wanted to know my exact distance, so I went there and nearly turned an ankle about 40 times, almost tripping on various balls, Coleman coolers and small children. It’s about 400 degrees on the track by the East River. Why must the East Side be so dreary compared to the lovely Hudson River Park? Why must my feet feel weirdly run-over-by-a-truck after a moderate run? Why so hot?

The real reason, by the way, that NYC is better on a holiday weekend is NO CONSTRUCTION. For a few days, no 6:45am Armageddon. At least in my backyard.

Hey, if you’re in New York City in the next couple weeks, might I strongly suggest that you not miss the LAByrinth Theater Company’s latest greatest production, Pretty Chin Up by Andrea Ciannavei? It features my dear friend Cusi Cram, who’s an out-of-this-world playwright, but this time she’s acting, which promises to be a rare treat. In addition, the play sounds great:

Pretty Chin Up asks the question: What’s the difference between an overweight marketing executive who sells women’s lingerie and diet pills and the starving spokesmodel who peddles the goods for the camera? About 100 pounds.

Of the intent of her work, Ciannavei notes, “I just want this play to explore the themes of perfectionism, despair, control and self-loathing (which is a close derivative of self-centeredness); how the heart slowly gets closed up when the obsession with food and appearance progressively takes over; and to do it all with a sense of humor.”

All performances are at 6:30pm
Wed-Sat, May 16 - June 2
at the Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street

Get tickets by phone at 212.967.7555 or online here. Use promotional code LABPCU1 to save 20%.

For more info, check out the LAB website.

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.

As I’ve mentioned, I went to college in Charlottesville, VA, and attended the Virginia Festival of the Book as a student, so it was slightly surreal to be back in town participating. Friday I made it to Peter’s panel/reading from The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo at the New Dominion Bookstore, which was great. If you ever get the chance to hear Peter Orner read, you should definitely go. He’s funny & charming & engaging.

Saturday, I was on a panel of women writers. It was tremendous to read to a crowd of eager book lovers, to sign books in the UVA bookstore where I once bought textbooks (actually, I’m not sure this bookstore was even built when I was in school here, but it still felt strange and strangely good). I’m proud to report we sold out of the book, which was exhilarating, and the woman who got the last copy told me she had a twentysomething daughter, but was getting the book for her twentysomething son. I was totally thrilled. (PS If you didn’t get a copy of the book, they should have some at the C’ville Barnes & Noble; if you want a signed copy, there will be a new shipment in at the UVA bookstore on Tuesday afternoon and I’ll be going back to sign them. Leave a note with the manager if you want me to make it out to someone special.)

I posted Sunday about my Rivanna Trail run. I met up with Catherine afterwards who brought me the local newspaper, The Daily Progress, featuring a big, fun review of Girl’s Guide which you can no longer read online for some weird reason.

This morning I was on Good Morning, Charlottesville, not to be confused with Good Morning, America. I’m enjoying ferrying myself about in a Chevrolet Malibu. I would make some sort of dumb Malibu Barbie reference, but I have to say, as much as I am thrilled to be driving a rental car, the Malibu is one of vehicle-land’s least attractive rides. I’m sort of amazed it made it off the assembly line. Barbie drove a Corvette. This car is very un-Barbie, but I’m in love with it anyway. It’s gold. Which makes it even more precious.

A Few Minor But Very Important Remarks on Hotels
I’d like to say a few words on hotels, as I’m becoming a seasoned business traveler.

1. I like Omni’s Select Guest Club. Heck, I love any club that doesn’t have rules about keeping people of a certain race out, but I have to love a club that is free to join that has so many perks. Like I get my choice of two beverages brought to my room each morning (I have had coffee and a very posh glass bottle of Evian) at the time of my choice. They will either deliver it or knock and leave it outside the door. I like this treat very much. I also like the turndown service, whereby I arrive in my room to find my ice bucket filled, my bed turned down, the lights down low, a chocolate on my pillow and the TV tuned to the “Meditation” channel.

2. Who decided what to stock the bathrooms with in hotels? I understand shampoo and conditioner, and appreciate body lotion. But I think it would be good if they gave me toothpaste. If we’re talking about necessities, I would forgo the body lotion (and the mouthwash and shower cap and sometimes Q-Tips) for toothpaste. It’s the one toiletry item without which you’re really sunk, that you are going to have to go out and buy if you forgot it.

3. I have gotten very used to two perks of hotel rooms that I don’t have at home: a 500x magnifying mirror that shows every pore on my face and a bathrobe. I think a hotel room without these two things is a slightly inferior hotel room. I like to put on my robe and look at my pores. I mean, who doesn’t?

4. I finally understand those foldable wooden thingies that you’re supposed to put your suitcase on. I use them. I also use the iron and ironing board and I like a tiny bottle of spray starch.