I have decided that now that I am a real adult, I should have real furniture. By "real," I mean furniture that I do not have to put together myself, though there are some exceptions to this. I sort of mean "furniture that wasn't bought at IKEA," but IKEA has some furniture that both requires construction and is nice. For instance, I put together my bed, and it's a pretty nice bed.

I just think I should have real bookcases and a real bedroom dresser. The thing is, the bookcase I want is $400, and the dresser is $800, not including shipping or taxes. My salary is good, but I'm looking at over $1500 for two items.

Buying the furniture would mean I'd have to curb my habit of buying new clothes all the time. With warm weather just around the bend, my fantasies of walking around in new, summery clothes are in what you might call "high gear," which I guess means that they're going at a pretty good pace and/or are going downhill, so I don't need to shift into a lower gear or pedal to keep them going. When I have time for pause in my daily winter-weather routine, a picture of myself strolling along on a sun-kissed day, wearing cute sandals and a tasteful but fun dress, appears in my mind like a screensaver.

The problem with making big purchases is that you have to pay a lot of money for the big things, and you end up feeling like you're missing something, i.e., money, though you actually have something solid and useful. Buying a shirt or enjoying a dinner out is much easier to accept, obviously, because they don't take so much out of you at once, and everyone knows this already. What I am trying to say is, I want to buy these things but I want to feel entirely okay about it, like it is the right thing to do.

I should probably have more of a "just rip off the band-aid already" attitude, because I know that after the money is gone, I won't think about it. For instance, once I bought a brand new car. It has been sitting in my parents' driveway with a dead battery for over a year.

Whatever; I guess since I'm viewing good, expensive furniture as a symbol of adulthood, it means I have mixed feelings about being an adult.

But who doesn't!

File under DAILY. Posted at 06:28 PM | Comments (9)

I just got back from a trip to the bookstore, during which I looked at a lot of books and started feeling depressed because none of them were written by me. Where do all these people find the time to write actual books? And these are only the published books; imagine how many unpublished books are out there, having actually been written by people.

Anyway, here is a list of ten possible titles for my non-existent book, which has not been written (as mentioned) or developed in any way. So it could be about anything. If you think these titles are just stupid and not funny, it's because a) you're right and b) I'm really tired because I've been working too much, so my discriminating sense of humor is malfunctioning.

1. The Finest Parade - An old-fashioned romance between a suburban divorcee and her young daughter's flute instructor.

2. Moussing It Up - A hairstylist has a lot of flings before finding her perfect match in a French bakery.

3. Well On Her Way - A coming-of-age story featuring a character named Well.

4. Twenty Years Until It's Twenty Years From Now - I have no idea, but this title has been with me ever since it came up in a Ouija Board session when I was in high school.

5. The Forgotten Basement - Sort of a Nancy Drew-style book about a young woman crime-solver.

6. The Handmade Paper Incident - Probably science fiction.

7. Another Glass Eye - Story of two brothers, one who loses his eye in a fight when he's 9, the other who loses his eye at the end of his life, for some other reason.

8. But First This - A man on the fast track to a great career quits his job and leaves his family to live in a swamp for a year.

9. The Double Bed - A young boy's bed turns into a boat every night when he goes to sleep and takes him off the edge of the world into outer space.

10. Ice Crimes - In a city made of ice, a smooth criminal lurks.

File under DAILY. Posted at 11:15 PM | Comments (3)

Even though I've been awake for barely eight hours, and even though most of it was spent sitting around, today has felt full, and in a weird way lively.

I woke up around noon and read the New York Times for awhile and showered and put on a new pair of Wranglers that I purchased at the recently discovered Queens Mall. I decided to make today Correspondence Day, so I put on a record called Piano Music of Latin America and started an overdue e-mail to my ex-boyfriend Stephen. Then Steve came into the living room and we rehashed our respective weekends. We decided that we would go to Fix, a nearby coffee shop, so that I could write a letter to my grandmother and he could read.

Fix was brimming (which is a nice pun on the way a coffee mug might brim) with hipsters, many of whom were using stylish Mac laptops. I wrote letters in my increasingly bad penmanship to one of my grandmothers and to a couple of friends. Steve read a novel by Willa Cather and laughed at some parts and highlighted some parts in yellow. After a couple of hours there, we left, and on the walk home we decided to make a spaghetti dinner. We sat down around six to eat and talk, and after the meal we kept talking, analyzing our lives and how we've changed in the past few years.

Spending a slow, contemplative Sunday with a good friend makes facing a stressful Monday much easier. My sense of a life outside of work is stronger now, going into the new week. The challenge is to hold onto it when work tries to tie me into a knot.

File under DAILY. Posted at 07:38 PM