i know i cry at stuff, but this stuff plus I heart brian williams

on my ride home last night, i hooked up the trusty iPod for some drive time with Terry Gross.
First of all, I love her. She's my second favorite NPR personality, but she's my first favorite 'i believe you're being sincere 99.999999999% of the time' person.
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still coming off my high from the fall tv season openers, i was excited to hear Terry's interview with Tracey Morgan.  It was a long day, and I knew the laughs would distract me from thinking about how to resolve a $26.00 payment dispute from 2006.
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Well, i was right in that it was totally distracting.  Distracting in that the tears were flooding my vision and causing me to swerve recklessly into the passing lane.
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I'm not going to try and explain or dissect the interview but I will say that it was easily one of the most surprising and compelling pieces of radio that i have heard in a long long time.
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also, he called his parents 'mommy' and 'daddy' and it felt totally right.
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This morning, I got the laughter I wasn't expecting when I turned on WWDTM with Not My Job guest, Brian Williams.  This guy is hysterical.  I mean, seriously. He made a joke about balloon boy and Jiffy Pop and, though I had heard it said before, his delivery was perfection.
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Also, he has great taste in music and writes a spiffy little blog about it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30622506/
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around 9:30 this morning, I did my ritual check-in on facebook.  they've been doing some weird stuff lately - like changing the feed around to show popular stuff vs recent stuff.  they also started showing the strangest Friend Suggestions, people I don't know who don't know anyone I know and some who literally don't know anyone at all (as in, they have zero friends).
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today, however, i saw the saddest thing of all:

"She only has 18 friends" - She only has 18 friends?! is facebook suddenly the ruler of appropriate friend levels - do they know how many friends someone is supposed to have?  in real life, i don't even have 8 friends. jeez.
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but why cry at this, you ask? because this is my mommy.

it's time to admit...

...i have no sense of direction. literally and figuratively.
...i am jealous of happy-looking teenagers.
...i could never be a writer, because i love procrastination too much.
...i judge most what i hate in myself.
...i love most what i can never have.
...i was much smarter when i was younger.
...i have no idea what i'm doing in this life.
...i'm thrown to my knees in amazement every single day.
...my main insight into things is that others have more insight.
...i have an insatiable desire to know how people work.
...i'll always want to ask just one more question.
...i'm only afraid of three things: mummies, bombs, and abandonment.
...i could sleep for 18 hours a night, but only end up sleeping 3.
...i feel guilty when i don't have something funny to write about.
...i sat here for 5 minutes questioning whether or not to publish this post.

oprah, i was with you up to the very end...

for the past year, a friend of mine has been convinced that her husband is cheating on her. for the same length of time, i've marveled at the fact that stories like this really do happen in real life. wives get paranoid, anonymous letters are sent, pictures are found. this is not just a perrotta/hornby novel.
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so, anyway, she emails me to tell me that she took oprah's quiz and that hubbs is definitely a cheater.
now, that's pretty much the bottom line for me. if oprah says it's true - find a good lawyer.
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but i was curious, and i looked up oprah's quiz, thinking maybe i could memorize the questions so i'd know what to look for in the lucky chance i meet someone, get married, fall into a rut, get suspicious, find no evidence, and decide the best way to get to the bottom of the issue is to ask oprah.
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the questions are sort of basic and not really those i would call red flags to anything more than low self-esteem, or the normal trappings of domestication (though I suppose the normal trappings most often lead to cheating so what do i know?)

"I believe my husband feels he values/appreciates me"
"I believe my husband finds me physically attractive."
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i'll get to the point, though, because i'm tired of this story already.
the last question is this:
'My husband attends organized religious services regularly"

I swear I don't know how the answer to this question will effect the outcome. i mean, my first gut reaction was to think, 'wow, oprah must be on to something here. if the guy's headed to church all the time it must be because a) the hot ladies always go to church and/or b) he's feeling insanely guilty.'
the my second thought was, 'oh, they probably think a god fearing man is less likely to cheat.'
my third thought was, 'oprah, you're an idiot!'
i immediately felt like i should wash my thoughts out with soap. i'm sure oprah didn't write that quiz.
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but seriously, is it just me? does this seem like a totally normal question to be used in scaling the probability of infidelity? should i be more weirded out by the fact that there is such a quiz?
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hubbs is cheating, by the way. oprah said it, and then finally so did he.
i'm not happy about this at all - but my faith in oprah is restored.

all i ask...

is that my brain not explode in the middle of the night.
here's hoping.

my ipod is so wise...

according to my ipod,
Love is...

a battlefield
a deserter
a rose
all around
always lovely in the end
everything
for lovers
here to stay
innocent
just a four letter word
stronger than justice
the new feel awful.

pay no attention to the time stamp in the corner

i am not currently blogging at work, shirking my duties.
seriously.
i'm not.
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sometimes i wonder if there's a price to be paid for sharing your internal dialogue with the rest of the world. at the least it's sort of presumptuous but presuming things has never been a problem for me.
i suppose i'm more concerned with perception - how much of a clown can you allow yourself to be and still expect people to respect you? how much truth is just enough?
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if you admit that you're afraid of what people think of you, doesn't that automatically make them think of you poorly? paranoia is so unattractive.
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there have been two times in my life that I have been called a "toxic friend". The first was during high school, via a letter from a camp friend. It didn't really hit me in any meaningful way because I always viewed our relationship as sort of transient.
The second was in college, and I was completely exposed and confused and seriously fucking pissed.
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That's such a buzz word, right? "Toxic friend". It belongs right up there with I'm Ok, You're Ok and the Here and Now and Free Hugs.
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I've recounted the path this relationship took almost every month for the past 10 years.
I know.
Totally pathetic.
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Yesterday I was feeling very action-oriented and I thought "bull by the horns, molly" went into the bookstore and scanned for a book on how to find the things about me that were "toxic" and how to, well, detoxify myself.
Shelves and shelves of fucking books about how to dump an abusive husband, wife, friend. how to deal with a demeaning boss, even a "When Your Lover Turns Toxic". but not one single book for the actual 'toxin'.
As if we don't feel outcast enough.
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if it happens a third time, i'm writing the book.
"So, You Think You're Toxic."
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re-read Ferdinand last night. love that book.

just a moment ago, it had a purpose

this one's going to be short because i'm drained for a long day -
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today was my grandmother's 90th birthday and we celebrated with brunch. when we brought out the cake and sang, she started crying and i realized how strange it must be to not have the man that stood by her, singing this song for sixty three years.
he's been gone a few weeks now, and i don't suspect she has enough days left in her life to get comfortable with the idea of his absence.
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i drove her home to long island, and went inside to pick up some cds - my grandfather was an avid music lover; jazz, classical, opera. I filled three trash bags of cds. as i was going through the cases i noticed that one was empty - a benny goodman album. my grandmother looked perplexed for a moment, knowing grandpa would never leave something out of place. then, with a sense of conviction she walked into the back room and came back holding a portable cd player. She flipped it open and inside was the cd.
"This is what he was listening to," she said, "in the hospital. This was the last music he heard."
I closed the player and put the jewel case back in the rack.
**
it struck me then, as i thought of him dying in that hospital bed, of all the moments we leave behind when we go. all the moments we mark. the papers we disturb, the seat cushions we indent, the letters we start to write. in today's modern circumstances, the emails drafted but never sent.
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i always imagined that the hardest part would be to give away the clothes, clean out the closet, the attic. but i think, now i think that would be the easiest of an impossible situation. for me, the pain would live in removing the handwritten note from the refrigerator door, emptying out the half drunken glass of water, washing the pillowcases and the sheets.
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the moments of disturbance; put back into order. that, to me, is heartbreak.

i was totally expecting a box of cookies...

i can't explain it. i just thought i had one coming to me today. can't say i'm not disappointed.
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i'm going to be brief about this next part, maybe someday i'll feel like talking about it more. in the past 3 weeks i've lost two friends to suicide. just when i think my heart can't break anymore, it does.
i've been working a lot and writing and making music and pretty much anything to keep my mind active.
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that's enough about that.
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the other day, on the train, a girl was filing her nails. i looked around me for a sharp object with which to stab her when the old man sitting next to her said, "Miss, that's not a very polite thing to do in public." i waited for the cheers, and ticker tape to fall, as this man was clearly a hero. She sneered and put her file away in her bag.
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so satisfying.
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i'm 31, and for the first time in say, six years, i have a full-on, total, sophmoric, junior high school crush.
and i thought the cats made me pathetic.
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you know what's weird? the phrase "mine as well". or is it "mind as well"? I'm pretty sure it's the former and i'm definitely sure that it's weird either way.
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i'm excited that weeds is back for the season, but i really with mary louise parker would just chill out on the nose wiggling. just a little bit. scale back, you know?
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my mother sent me a pandora station. broadway showtunes. and elvis.
mom's are awesome.

somehow, that's comforting...

i put many miles between my home and i this weekend. physical miles, mental miles. tire treads are worn.
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my parents are selling the house i was raised in (the house i was born in) and on sunday, i went upstate to collect the remaining memories from the attic.
my dad and my sister were talking about her childhood and they were debating whether or not it was a happy one. which is a COMPLETELY ridiculous debate to have with someone, but this is typical of our family. and just as typical i interjected, asking my father if he thought i had a happy childhood. almost defiantly he laughed, "you had a wonderful childhood. a very happy childhood." i stood up and went to the bathroom.
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as i was closing the door my stepmother poked her head in and said, "for what it's worth, you had a shitty childhood."
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three hours later, we packed up our things and left. though we were supposed to stay the night, a small argument over some family video tapes had silently escalated to a fury so rich, my lungs refused to expand inside those walls.
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it's not something i'm ready to deal with, so i'm just pretending it didn't happen at all.
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things i never thought i'd see...but did

a friend washing her hands in a toilet
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that's it.
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work has been pretty crazed lately. i fluctuate between being in love and being exhausted, but i suppose neither of those are terrible places to be. i wonder when the love will wear off and it will only be exhaustion. it's only been four months so i should probably pace myself.
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i've been pretty pensive lately and then I feel like writing about it, but it seems so serious and not fun and who wants to read such seriousness? it's a fucking problem.
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here's something i've been thinking about. I'm not afraid of being alone now, i'm only afraid of being alone at some point in the future. i mean, right now i do alone pretty well. for all the talking that i do (and believe me, i'm a fucking train with words) there's something so satisfying about silence. it's sort of the perfect truth.
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i think i'm still hungover.
i'm going to bed.

and then it's the morning

i woke up in a foul mood. it's a few hours later and i'm still feeling pretty foul.
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you know how kids can be devastated by something and with a goofy smile or stupid sound you can completely change their perspective on the day? i don't think you're supposed to have this kind of trigger as an adult. clearly someone forgot to tell my insides.
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things that have made me cry recently, but first a random story

the other night i was talking to dewie and at some point, when talking about people complaining about one thing or another, i said, "they just need to buck it up." dewie was like, "buck up? i don't think they're in a bad mood, i think they're just complaining." "No," I said, "buck it up. You've never heard the phrase buck it up?" I was incredulous. literally.
just now i realized that the phrase is definitely not buck it up.
it's, obviously, suck it up.
idiot.
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having gone through years of my life crying and falling apart without knowing why, i've gotten used to collecting tearful memories without having memories of anything more than the actual tears.
but now that i'm feeling remotely sane, there are actual THINGS that make me cry. And some of those things are embarrassingly dumb. like almost too embarrassing to put down in a blog that nobody reads.
but i'm just sort of bold that way.
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1. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - two episodes in which people were dead or dying

2. The Biggest Loser - I know. I have no words.

3. Work - I had to write this paper and suddenly I felt like I was in High School, in AP History thinking "How do these people think I'm smart enough to be in AP History? How did I fool them all? I'm fucked." My paper was on Thoreau (my paper for school, not for work - thank god - could you imagine having to write about Thoreau for work? I'm crying just thinking about it. i guess that can go on the list, too.)

4. Tripping over the ottoman - This just happened about twenty minutes ago. And to be fair, I didn't really cry, I just cursed and screamed and maybe teared up a little. but just a little. like one or two tears. maybe three.

5. Wedding invitation - and before you go and think how sweet it is that I was so happy for the lucky couple, I'd like to introduce myself. "Hi, I'm Molly and I may not be good at AP History but I'm really good at feeling sorry for myself." don't get me wrong, i don't need marriage. but is it so wrong to ask for like a hand to hold? After a few weeks spent dealing with the probability that I'm paranoid, my therapist and I have moved on to this latest topic, that I'm unlovable. ok, now wait. just stop. stop with the "oh, molly, shut up" or "oh, molly, shut the fuck up" or whatever else you're thinking. this is not me being melodramatic (well, actually, it totally is me being melodramatic, but still).

6. The Biggest Loser - you might be thinking that I messed up and put this up on the list twice by mistake. well, you'd be wrong. two separate episodes, two separate nights, two absolute snotfests.
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all in all a pretty sappy couple of weeks.
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if i don't make it, tell my parents i love them: blackberry edition

The situation:
5 30 train home from the city. Fucking crowded. Apparently a lot of Mets fans are on their way to a game (where is Shea anyway?) Or on their way home after a game (why the fuck do so many mets fans live in connecticut?)

To my left is this salt and peppery jew reading what I thought was the new yorker (brainy, mysterious) but was actually New York magazine (I'm sort of interested in cultural things). Then. The foot starts shaking. Not for any particular reason (he's not listening to music) just shaking his foot nervously up and down.

Turn away, you say? And turn away I do. And there I find...
Old portly man listening to his mp3s which are apparently ROCKING because his foot is tapping like keith moon's. Straight forward I can see both, one in each corner, and of course it would be too much to ask that they magically were maintaining the same rhythm.
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Wait! Late breaking news! As I was writing the last part someone sat next to the nervous shaker, and has blocked the obstruction. Ah, sweet relief... For approximately 39 seconds. The new guy is a floppy head.
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Do you think agoraphobes are all afraid of people or is it just that everything they do drives them absolutely insane.
It worries me sometimes.

well, i'm glad you asked: The List

there have been a bunch of questions weighing on my mind.
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-- Does anyone actually like the sound of someone else whistling?
-- What's up with the floppy heads when people are falling asleep sitting up? It's one of the more annoying motions one notices peripherally is a small space, say, a train. Just lean back, or on your shoulder, or better yet, just flop forward. You never see anyone flopping their head back - if it's inevitable you mine as well skip to the actually sleeping.
-- If I read the new book about Columbine would it be because it's gripping journalism a la In Cold Blood, or because it's one extended human interest story a la People magazine? More importantly, what will other people think?
-- Would it be wrong to spend $1,000 for one lunch with Paul Rudd? Would you be convinced if I said I did it mostly because it was for a great cause? That doesn't sound much like me, does it...
-- My mom is turning 60 next week and I am currently thirty, and even though I understand that this is not true, sometimes i get confused as to how this year I'm half her age, but I never will be again.
-- Sometimes people see pictures of my niece and assume she's mine (like, for example, the guy who waters the plants in my office). Part of me thinks it's insane that people could possibly think I could currently be mother to a four year old. Then I realize that these people don't actually know me and probably assume that I could easily be a mother of a four year old, as many women my age are. I, of course, am still convinced that I'm 15.
-- I'm really good at dishing it out, but sometimes have problems taking it. luckily the people around me have no trouble helping me face my problems.
-- my grandfather is in the hospital. he was in for a while, and then he went home, and he didn't do well at home, so now he's back in the hospital. he's not going home again.
-- when i was young i was really close to both of my aunts. today, i don't speak to one, and the other i see maybe once a year. i really hope that doesn't happen with me and abby.
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this list got way too serious for a saturday night. sangria is dangerous that way.
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is this what horrid embarrassment feels like?

there's a few stories that i have stored up, and i'm probably not going to get to them all, so i needed to prioritize and this one made it to the top for two reasons. 1. It happened on my commute, and apparently some people have an affinity towards my MTA adventures, and 2. it involves falling in front of a large group of people.
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i always thought it was really weird how people could fall asleep on the train. all those people around, sitting so close, there's no way to get comfortable when you're actively contracting your shoulder blades into your neck.

after two nights at the pod hotel, a crazed day at work and a heated argument with the shrink (yes i'm self-conscious, and yes i'm self-involved, and yes i'm self-conscious about being self-involved, but i don't see how this makes me "conflicted and paranoid") i hopped on the 8:20 train to connecticut.

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The train was packed for that late on a weeknight. I took my time deciding between the outside seat in the knee to knee four-seater (think diner booth with your portly out-of-town cousins), or the inside of a two-seater against the wall (think corner of an elevator at 9am on a monday in a movie about high powered business).
Both had high stranger touching probability, so ultimately my decision was dictated by which was furthest from the bathroom (elevator).
**
All the way into Harlem I tried to remember if I parked my car in Stamford or South Norwalk. (Dunkin' Donuts and an egg sandwich - stamford, or iced coffee and a hard boiled egg - south norwalk.)
Then, with Ira whispering about the recession in my ear, I fell asleep.

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The train was stopped when I opened my eyes. because i was sitting next to the wall and not the window i strained my neck to see the outside surroundings. Shiny railing, huge parking garage in the distance - stamford. shit! stamford! Dunkin' Donuts and an egg sandwich!
I stood up with a jerk, my ipod - previously nested in my lap - crashed to the ground.
"It this your stop?," said my outside neighbor.
In way of an answer, I tripped over her feet into the aisle.
This is when things went from ridiculous to you tube clip.
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My entire left leg, from thigh to pinky toe, was completely and utterly asleep. My first thought was that my outside neighbor had amputated my leg ('I should have taken the diner booth! More people around, witnesses to protect me).
I take one step down towards the door and my leg crumbled under me, resulting in a face plant on the floor, shiny with shoe bottom.
My outside neighbor, "Push the button! Push the button!" The button to which she was referring is an emergency bell button on the ceiling of the car, used to alert the conductor that some idiot forgot to get off the train.
**
I stood back up on my good leg, took a little hop, shook my left side and tried again.
The floor and I met again.
"Push the fucking button!" said the lady. I think that she now thought I was dying. The button is probably for people who forgot to get off the train and also for people who are dying.
I heard the bell and knew that someone finally obeyed.
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Third try: i wasn't taking any chances and pulled my foot in, dragging it behind me like Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects.
**
I get to the door just as I hear the conductor say over the loud speaker, "What idiot takes three minutes to get off the train?" Little did he know I was the idiot that takes three minutes trying to get off the train. I still had the issue of "the gap".
Pulling my foot up with my left hand, I did a powerful hopscotch onto the platform, as the train doors closed behind me.
**
i stood one-legged on the platform as the train rode off towards Darien. the numbness turned to porcupines which turned back to the "i have two legs" feeling we take for granted.
then i went to find my car.
**
i should tell you that you may, at some point in the future, hear me tell this story - but when i do, i might add this ending:
"and that's when it hit me: it was iced coffee and a hard boiled egg... shit."
i don't think that's lying though, because i've put the truth out there as well. and that cancels out the lie. Right?

2/10/1990

this is a transcription from my 7th grade journal. my 7th grade school journal.
we were often given subjects from which to pull inspiration.
the subject of this entry:
The Dominant Primordial Beast
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wtf
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Blackness, bleak, cold
it surrounds my bare body.
My blood dripping, flowing
from my wrists staining my
skin. I am at the peak of
glory. I, above all, now see
how life is meaningless.
I dance in the moonlight,
talking to the devil waiting,
waiting for my end.
I fall to my knees feeling
the weakness upon me tugging
tugging at my soul. I feel it
coming as I lay on my back.
One last breath and
I'm gone, gone and all that
is left is my motionless body
laying there on the cold, winter
night.
**
seriously, um, i just don't know.