Not really. But I love that song. What I did do was fall off of Abby's pilates ball and hit my head on the frame of her wicker sofa. It was one of those slow-motion moments, when you realize exactly what's going wrong and why but are completely unable to stop it. To add to the considerable pain was the regret at doing something I knew wasn't going to work. I was balancing, stretched out, and really enjoying the feeling of floating, thinking, "Wow, I'm floating but I'm not in the water. How cool is that! Wow, this is kinda hard. I wonder if people fall off these things. I sure hope I don't fall off of this thing, since I am precariously positioned between a large coffee table, tv shelf, sofa, and 8-foot-high wooden cat jungle gym." So then I sat up for a minute, enjoying that stretchy feeling, and decided to do it again, seeing as how nothing bad had happened the first time. Duh.

The XM Satellite Radio ad in which David Bowie is secretly pleased to have stolen Snoop's chain. David Bowie, arbiter of pop star fashion, enjoying illicit bling. Love it.

Leroy has just grabbed my piece of leftover FPT pumpkin pie off of my plate on the coffee table and eaten it. Not only do I not get to eat it, he no doubt will be ill. Double goody.

Blog redesign coming your way in a bit. The polka dots have done their service but they make me a little woozy when I scroll too fast.

My choir, Amasong, is singing a setting of "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry. This is a lovely thought, but there's one line in particular that grabbed me - about the wild things, "who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief." Why do we do that? As a worrieuse extraordinaire, this has special resonance for me. I suspect most people have some sort of urge to try to think some things through - you know, preparation, planning, whether just for resource expenditure or for something more subtle and lovely like anticipation of something joyful - but then there are those of us who grieve unnecessarily. What's the evolutionary advantage of that? What do we get out of it? I know what I get out of it: sometimes, it spurs me to think through a problem, all the way through to some possible solutions, or some sense of resolution or peace. But the other times, I grieve. And life is too short for that.

Fake Pretend Thanksgiving is coming up on Sunday and I have been trying to figure out what I want to say when it is my turn to talk about what I'm thankful for. Nothing leapt to mind immediately, which is rare for me, so then I started thinking about what has been going on this year, waht most of my significant experiences or thoughts have had in common, and I think the theme is change. But the question is, of course, am I grateful for that? No, actually, I'm not. I don't hate it or dread it, but I can't look my fellow celebrators in the eye and say I am thankful (honesty is big at the FPT table - tears, hugs, reaffirming hand squeezes, you name it).

But I am thankful for a variety of new experiences and thoughts that have come my way in the last twelves months (or, technically, ten, since last year's FPT was actually in January), whether gleeful (yes, it is the nineteenth century here on Pies Men Like) ones or gut-wrenching ones or simply ones that made me think about something in a new way. So that's what I'm going for at FPT this year: I am thankful for all the things I haven't done before, the people I didn't know, the opportunities I hadn't tried - sweeping or small, for a moment or for months - and even things that maybe no one really knows I'm excited about, or would ever guess were so important to me, but that are truly engaging and meaningful and have become part of my life.

And to relate these two thoughts - appreciating new experiences helps me not to grive, not to worry, not to freak out. It helps me with my demon of wanting to know how everything will end up or what's going to happen. For example, if I had known in April that by this fall I would have forgotten most of what I learned in my Spanish class this summer, I might not have bothered to take it, or I might have laid awake at night worrying about how I could keep myself from forgetting or about whether I was wasting time by even trying if I wasn't going to stick with it enough to be able to use it a little bit. But that would have been the lesser decision. Even if I nunca remember how to conjugate anything other than the present tense, I still got to stretch my brain, make some connections bewteen French and Spanish, meet some cool people, learn about some of differences between European and everyone else's Spanishes. Those things were all worth it.

I don't mean that I have overthrown my tendency to read the end of books first for a completely centered, in-the-moment outlook. I can't imagine I could ever do that. But if I can enjoy and engage even the slightest bit more than I fret, if my overall balance in life is tipped more towards enjoy than towards worry, then that is thank-worthy thing indeed.

And on a far shallower note, Sex and the City is on and Carrie is tying Big's tie as he gets ready in the morning. I. Love. That. That is one of the very best moments you can have with another person.

What you may not know about me is that I love American history, even though I was a Europeanist (tee hee) in college. Those of you who know how much of a romantic I can be may not be surprised by this, but believe me even I find it surprsing sometimes. On my trip to DC last spring I could hardly control the welling up of civic-minded happiness as I walked by the supreme court building, knowing that, in theory, our nation is really cool, and while in practice we are incredibly not, at least we have some important ideas written down that many of us try to stick to, even though it's hard to do and we interpret them so differently. Having those ideas is a big deal.

Anyway, the point is this: I miss President Clinton. I miss the way he talks. I miss having a leader who can put words together intelligently. I miss intelligence overall.

You probably can't do that, even at a workplace as flexible as mine. But despite the stuff that needs to be done, and even how much I really do want to work on it (quite a lot), it's hard to sit here. No one seems to have any faith in me, in my ability to do things right (or at least not completely crap). But I can. It just takes awhile, and sometimes you have to go through the draft phase to realize what needs to be fixed, right? I want to block everyone out of my office, but I can't even do that, becuase it's not just my office anymore. I think my inner only child is having a hard time. And the inner Lisa Simpson that can't handle getting less than an A on anything. Lisa and her ponies. Maybe the inner ten-year-old can be satisfied with some crayons and cocoa, then. Might as well try. Nothing else is working this morning.

A few years ago I saw this little cookbook from some other dimension named Pies Men Like. Except it wasn’t from another dimension. It was written by the folks at GM in the 1950s for the GM wives so they could make, well, pies their men liked. Delightfully retro in that gee-I'm-glad-the-50s -are-over sort of way. But also scary.

Be happy this is not our reality (at least, mostly it isn't, overtly it isn't). Rejoice in the people and experiences and things that make your pie yours. Pies I like! But I prefer cake.

Who am I?

contact me

I love Bollywood so much that I made a separate blog for it.

remember when I went to Australia?

when you take grad school too much to heart re: literature

when you take grad school too much to heart re: travels

The Trophy Wife

rock and roll lifestyle

Why God Why

Technically not a friend, as not a human, but still a place I love very much, so it counts: Massey College

Blog design is based largely on Not That Ugly with some ideas from Firdamatic with some additional tweaking

Flickr rocks! Really.

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And for folks trying to library-ize blogs: Blogwise and Blogarama

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