I Don't Understand Why Everyone Is Jealous of Me! I Hate Being So Beautiful! (A Modern Love Parody)

I was 19 and gorgeous, but for me my beauty was always a curse. I know you regular people can barely comprehend this, but we who are gorgeous suffer. Terribly. As long as I can remember, I’ve been given compliments. “You’re so pretty”, an Aunt would say, meaning well. “You are adorable” would say a Grandparent. Little did they know that I hated their attention, their flattery, even though I had just asked them, “Am I the prettiest little girl ever?”

As I grew up, men cat-called me, fought over me; I hated it. I tried not to invite more than two men over at a time, but because I’m too good-looking to remember things, it happened again and again. I would let some random guy follow me home, forgetting I had a boyfriend and in fact was going to his home; as you can imagine it became awkward. But when you’re super good-looking, this is what you have to deal with. You are forced to develop coping strategies.

Time and time again, men would fight over me, and the coffee table in the living room would become the victim. Fighting men must have fallen atop of and smashed my coffee table 10 times that year. I was lucky; my parents simply kept replacing them. They asked me once to just get a wooden one or perhaps to stop inviting two men over at the same time, but I just liked those glass ones.

That year I was attending an Ivy-League school on the Upper West side which shall be unnamed, oh ok, it was Columbia, and I lived alone in a loft my parents had bought for me. It was the top floor of a renovated industrial building in Tribeca – but I hated its airiness, its numerous closets (why must there be so many of them?), its granite countertops and Miele appliances. They made me angry. I didn’t clean or cook, or shop – doing chores made me feel inexplicably sad. My empty refrigerator, cold and bright, mocked me. My friends, those few that I had, suggested, “For Pete’s sake, just go grocery shopping!” but I became clammy at the idea of all the men staring at me and lusting after my body in those places where men went, to stare at women like me, and so I could not.

Instead I ordered in. I was terribly lonely so I slept with the Chinese food delivery guy. I would throw him out afterwards – without a tip. That was the kind of person I was then. I also slept with the doorman, the guy that collected the change from the washers in the laundry room and the guy who installed my Ikea cabinets. It did no good. I continued to suffer. I hated myself for being so good-looking. People didn’t realize the burden I carried.

Even though my parents had paid my for education - my SAT scores were so high they sickened me - and gave me a generous monthly stipend, for reasons that are hard to explain, even to myself, I worked as a stripper. It was as tawdry a joint as you can imagine, and I hated the way men looked at me when I was up on the pole stripping – as if they had a right. Perhaps I didn’t need money the way that the other girls did, but I was desperate in my own way; the pain of being gorgeous was almost more than I could bear, and this seemed one way to dull the pain. My logic was the logic of an idiot, but I was only 19.

I knew that people exchanged glances behind my back when I told them in great detail about the professors who wanted to sleep with me – I hated their judgment. I felt powerless against their envy and this drove me into the arms of even more men. My loft was becoming a disaster area – the lack of my housekeeping skills and the constant fistfights between the various men that were showing up was taking its toll. I hated my need for men and theirs for me, and was ashamed and then I did it again and again. Why? I was great in bed (or so they all said; who really knew the truth?) and it made me feel validated, and yet sickened, and yet exhilarated and yet somehow sad. But happy too. But more sad than happy.

My enormous breasts were crippling – to me they were nothing more than oddly buoyant and pointed nuisances that drove men wild and so I wore a talisman that dangled into the crevasse between them, so that men, instead of crassly thinking how hot I was, would know that I also was a talented metal-smith and welded jewelry out of old fire escapes that I had sat on smoking after having sex with other men. Yes, I smoked.

After stripping I would find solace at after-hours clubs where I treated the bouncers like footmen and “forgot” to tip the bartenders and shouted loudly that “I need another drink!”. I may have come off like a giant asshole, but it was a front: I was only 19; afraid, insecure, and cowed by the men who desired me, and whose SATs were probably average at best.

I was miserable. I drank whiskey exclusively, except when I was drinking vodka or Tequila, or entire bottles of wine which I would share with the guy at the wine store who I slept with – I was simply too miserable to not ask him to come back to my apartment to sleep with me. How I hated being beautiful and sought after. Leave me alone! I would shout at the men I invited to my apartment. They looked at me as if I were nuts. I didn’t blame them. Perhaps I was.

I would often retreat to a nearby coffee shop to work on my novel – I knew I was a talented writer but my talent only made me miserable. I thought of what my creative writing instructor said to me as I left his apartment after sleeping with him, just after I stepped on one of his vintage LPs, weaving with the post-lovemaking dizziness of our 9 orgasms – all of which I hated. I apologized – rare for me (I was 19 after all), but he only said, “Jesus, what is your problem? I thought you left a half hour ago! You’re letting the air conditioning out!”

As if that was the problem.

At some point, I met Kevin. He was a musician, yet kind, yet with a lot of money, and he looked at me differently than the others. He thought I was gorgeous and hot, of course, but he also knew that I was smart – at some point during lovemaking my SAT scores had slipped out – and he was interested in my mind. We went for long walks on the promenade – I felt a need to prove to him that my long legs, which I hated, were good for something other than wrapping around him when my sexual hunger got the best of me. But he liked walking. And he liked talking. And finally, I realized that he wasn’t impressed with my beauty and wasn’t put off by my sexual insatiability or the fact that my loft had its own elevator – he saw the real me. For the first time, I was with a man who understood me, and asked nothing more from me than to listen to me play the harpsichord (I’m a talented musician as well, but he doesn’t seem too jealous) or listen to me recite my poetry for yet another slam.

Reader, I settled down with this man and now we live together in my loft. I made room for him here; it wasn’t too difficult as it’s a three bedroom so there’s plenty of room for the two of us, as well as a recording studio, a wine cellar and a room for me to paint – I’m an amateur painter with two paintings at the MOMA – and we have made a simple yet meaningful life together. Now that I have someone to share the burden of my beauty, someone who cares nothing about it, and understands that it’s not my fault I’m so hot, I have gotten a new coffee table and that’s where my coffee table book of my photos (published by Taschen) sits even as I write this.

I still suffer. I still hate the beauty that stares out at me from the wall of mirrors in the living room and in the bedroom and kitchen, and especially the recording studio, and the little one I put in the freezer, but as long as I have Kevin, and we have each other, and especially he has me, I think somehow, we’ll get by.

I Don't Understand Why No Winks?? My Profile is So Great!

What am I like? Well, let me ask myself. What are you like -- oh, sorry, I didn't know I was on the phone - sorry, I'll wait.

OK, now, let me ask you if I may: What are you like? Are you like, some kind of a stalker who won't take no for an answer? Or perhaps a person who uses an online dating service to post pictures that are 6 years old in an attempt to lure some poor schmuck to the rocks like the Sirens in that movie "Jason and the Argonauts"? Or was that Jason and the Golden Fleece? Anyway, the one that got the Oscar for best supporting Cyclops.

Or, continuing this line of questioning: are you generally a nice person who hasn't had sex since 2002 and is just a little anxious? Perhaps a combination of all three? But not a stalker really, at least that's what my friends say (except for maybe David but he's not a friend anymore, not since he sent that mass email about what he called my "problem" which was really not my problem but his which most everybody wrote me back to tell me).

Most of my friends would say I was fairly "normal", just like you probably, and I like all the same things that "normal" people like, for example: long walks on the beach with a metal detector; jumping into public fountains in a wet suit and snorkel collecting spare change; going to shows and shouting out the lyrics to all the songs along with the cast; hitting the rowing machine at the gym while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", or, alternatively, “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore”, and also making friends with guys who are bench pressing 200 lbs. right when they’re sucking in their guts for that big lift.

As you can tell from the pictures, I am in pretty good shape for someone who's 45, even though I'm not 45 and I am 37, and my friends are also 37 and I was born in 1971 or 78 (I can never remember). I like to do all the things outside my apartment that other "normal" people do, like shopping for food and toilet paper, and sometimes going to Starbucks and "having it my way" by spending twelve minutes constructing a drink out of all the adjectives they have on the overhead signs. Sometimes I like to go to Starbucks and just sit and listen to people at the other tables, and sometimes I interject my opinions in their conversations just to be friendly. Sometimes I'll join them at their table, just so I don't have to yell. Every once in a while you get a meanie who doesn't want to listen and looks at you like you're some kind of a nut, but I just usually handle that by knocking their mocha latte onto their laptop. Typically, when I come back (I like to visit Starbucks several times a day) they're gone and never return, which is OK with me! As you can tell, I am very social and a lot of fun!

So you might be thinking: why do I have all this time to go to the gym and to Starbucks, but why would you think that unless you yourself were unemployed? If you are one of those judgmental suspicious types, maybe we just aren't meant to be. You might want to ask yourself, why do I always make these negative assumptions about people? Maybe that's why you're still single and have to resort to an Internet dating service, did you ever think of that? Don't you have any friends who could fix you up? Anyway, since you're wondering and even though I don't really care what you think, I do have a job and it is fairly high-paying which allows me to be in actual semi-retirement (even at the age of 39!). But more on that later.

A typical day for me is to wake up (I don't need an alarm, usually the people pounding on my door to turn down the volume on my TV is enough to rouse me), get dressed (by myself, silly!) taking care to turn my socks and underwear inside out, then I take my medicine, and head out for breakfast. I used to go to a local diner but I found that the Episcopal Church offers such a great breakfast special which even comes with a free orange, that you'd be an idiot and a snob to pass it up. And I hate snobs! Right after breakfast I head over to Starbucks where I like to work at my job, which involves typing on my computer and looking at the screen and occasionally looking up to see who else has come in.

I have all the hobbies that "normal" people do, including working out, reading, leaning out my window and yelling "Watch out below!" and waiting to see what everyone does, and dancing. I am a great dancer and will get up and perform at the drop of a hat, or a strategically placed dollar, and I don't necessarily have to have a partner. Sometimes I just get up on the table and let loose, but not at Thanksgiving and never on the kids' table, so don't worry!

And you, what are you like? Well, you are single or you can get out of the house regularly between the hours of 2 and 5:30pm. You like to have sex but you don't always have to have the lights on, and you aren't adamant that your partner takes off all their clothes or even gets in bed with you. You are fit and healthy and willing to be tied up and left for hours on your own without complaining or wondering what the point is (sometimes I like to go shopping and you never know when the urge will hit me!). You also have your own apartment that you own and that there's no way you could get evicted no matter how many cats you had or how loud you had your TV volume turned up or if you liked to check the recycling bins for cans and bottles late at night when it really shouldn't bother people.

So I hope there's someone out there for me; I haven't had that much luck on this particular site, even though I have had a few "repeat" customers (Melvin622 if you are reading this, you can forget about me coming back out to the oil rig!), I am a real believer in that old adage, "There's someone for everyone," or is it, "As long as you don't take the bracelet off, you're not breaking parole"? I look forward to hearing from you!

I Put My Thong On Sideways... Again.

You'd be surprised (or I suppose men would be surprised; not women who wear these things) how easy it is to do. This happens to me fairly regularly, me with my undies on sideways, and sometimes I catch it before the jeans go on, and sometimes I 'm in a hurry and don't figure it out until I get home and wonder what all the weird, pulling was down there (when I was younger, I might have gotten some sort of thrill out of it - now I am just annoyed), and then I have a good chuckle once I figure it out. I'd like to say my old boyfriend used to chuckle heartily along with me, but no; the boyfriend was always appalled at this; he thought it was inconceivable. We're no longer together.

I mean, it happens! Thongs are like this, this triangle of cloth, with three sides, three openings, and a front and a back. Geometry was the only kind of math I was good in at school, but this thing is like a really hard geometry question on a standardized test, with a misleading drawing and no multiple choices below. In the half-dark of my bedroom, in the morning, when I'm tired, every corner of the thing looks the same; every corner offers a pocket where the… goods go. Here's me, standing there at first, with all the confidence in the world, on one leg, thinking I'm getting dressed. Still on one leg, I see it's one of these inscrutable pairs (question: why is a single piece of clothing referred to as a "pair"? This query includes "pairs of pants" but not "au pairs"), of which I have a few. There are a few pairs in the drawer but not a lot, and since I only wear them for dates, or the prospect of sex, they rest, for the most part, untroubled by my hand, which is why when I pull them out, it's like, "Oh these are nice! When did I get these? How do these work?"

So OK, now I realize there's going to be some trouble ahead, so the raised leg gets lowered; I'm going to need my balance, in fact, all my faculties if I'm ever going to get these on.

The tricky ones are the ones without the identifying tag at the back (that makes it easy!), and are small and cute, like a Russian doll's headscarf, with perhaps some ruffles. Sometimes, the little ruffles go in the front and sometimes they go in the back, so here's me, turning it back and forth, back and forth, trying to figure it out.

Say I choose putting the ruffle in the front. Ok, I've made a commitment. That leaves those three holes. And you'd think it'd be obvious, the pelvis on (most) women being slightly larger than her thighs. But we're dealing with a thong here, isn't that the thing David used to slay Goliath? (And what was David doing with a pair of women's underwear? Was Goliath standing there thinking the same thing? "What the hell, Dave, where did…" THWACK!) And it's meant for war. It's meant to baffle and lull its enemy into a false sense of security by its tiny flimsy little self, cute, sweet, weak. But man, it is powerful. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So back to the triangle. Now I've got a front, and a back (probably) and I know your ass is supposed to sort of be exposed a little in the back, so I'm thinking the back part of the material should be kind of smaller than the front… but not on this pair. This pair, every way you turn it, you have the same amount of material. You've got about one inch of material on each of the three sides and so even though I have a back and a front, I'm spinning them around and around, like a guy spinning plates, really, or like a girl trying to get into a game of Double-Dutch, trying to figure out how do I get in.

After a while, I just stop spinning, sigh and climb in anywhere, just so I can get dressed. I have, on occasion, felt that weirdness you feel (or women feel), when you've got your underwear on sideways, where you can't take quite a full step over to the dresser, because something's pulling on your… parts. Since I'm not a regular thong-wearer, sometimes I just chalk this up to: this is the way these things feel, and this tightness in the wrong (or right) places, is just part of the deal, as is feeling the material of your jeans on your bare butt and trying to remember if you put underwear on at all, since it seems nothing is coming between "you and your Calvin's" if you know what I mean.

But sometimes I have to go to the mirror and look, because it's the only way I can confirm my suspicion that all is not right with the world, or at least with my panties, which, at 6:30am in your bedroom is where your world starts.

And yes, there I am, looking unsexy, ridiculous even, with the little hanky sort of listing to the side, with the middle part really taut across my belly, and on the left side, the material kind of puckering out because I've stuck my leg in the part where the whole body is supposed to go. If you've ever seen one of those ads for weight loss where the formerly fat guy climbs into one leg of his old gigantic pants, that's sort of what this looks like.

This is not a good look. Even alone, just you, it's not a winner. When the ruffles are going kind of vertical but on a slant, instead of parallel to the floor, this is a problem. So I take 'em off and start again, and, it has happened on more than one occasion, sometimes when I put them on the second time, they're still wrong!

And that, sir, is why I was late to the meeting.

I Don't Understand What's Going On Upstairs??

I have put my earplugs now, and I can just barely hear the sound of rocks being tumbled in a cement mixer in the apartment above, so now I can gripe. It’s noisy here. Real noisy. I recently bought my first apartment in NY.

I was living the cloistered contented life of an Upper West Sider, living in a solidly built, Pre-War building, with walls a foot thick, taking the quiet for granted, clueless and happy. But I was renting and wanted to own, and so I departed that gentle place.

After the typical tortured search, I found a place I could afford to buy, in a Post War building. My new apartment was the right size, a decent price, in a good location. Being a Post War building meant it didn't have the details of my old place – in fact it looked a little like a hospital inside – but it was immaculate and on a block I loved, and did I mention it was affordable?

The noise didn’t begin until the second month I’d been there. It was the most amazing sound: the crisp, clipped, clomp of high heels, treading down the public hallway upstairs. I sat up and did the human equivalent of cocking my ear as I heard the key upstairs inserted into the lock, the turning of tumblers, the entrance of the high heel-wearing neighbor above.

As my eyes widened (which they do, by the way, whether or not you can see the remarkable thing happening), I heard her (I assumed it was a her – I hadn’t yet gotten into the fantasizing part of this sonic experience), put her lead-lined handbag on the floor, kick off her heels – into the wall – and pound into the kitchen.

After a few minutes of quiet, I relaxed. I comforted myself with the thought that there must be some special level of humidity in the atmosphere, carrying the sound in a particularly extreme way, like how you always hear a train when it rains, or a lawnmower when it’s sunny outside, and never any other time.

An hour later, I was lying in my bed and I heard the woman above clomp into the bedroom above me, and heard her take off her high-heeled shoes again – didn’t she already take them off once?? – that I knew this would be my acoustic fate. As I lay there, now with my book on my chest, I heard her take off her shoes two or three more times, each time flipping them handily off her big toe against one wall or the other. I imagined she was seated and about to recline when I heard her get up and walk around the room WITH HER SHOES BACK ON. (With no actual visual evidence I started now to try to deduce what was going on up there. Fantasies began forming, not of the fun variety).

It was like “Ground hog’s Day” or a Stephen King novel. The shoes would not stay off her feet, and she could not stop walking around. Even more bizarrely, as I followed her path with my eyes marking my own ceiling, it seemed that she was walking on every inch of her bedroom – criss-crossing here, tossing the shoes off on this side of the room, and then the next.

Where is the bed?? I thought to myself. In every bedroom I’ve ever known, you can’t traverse the entire floor because: there’s a bed in the way.

But no matter how I tried to visualize the space above, she kept thwarting me – because she walked here, there, and everywhere, as, I assumed, she tried to shake off those horrible shoes (Manolos?) that kept re-attaching themselves to her feet!!

I finally fell into sleep (dreaming about Savion Glover trying to put out a fire) until 6am the next morning.

My eyes opened without my moving my head because I was on a certain level, still asleep. Working nights means that I sleep in, at least until 7:30am, and this particular morning, my body couldn’t believe that I had set an alarm. Only it wasn’t an alarm.

The woman upstairs gets out of bed and, yes, she already has shoes on. She must sleep in them I think. They must be sleeping stilettos. In a new state of amazement, I listen as she clomps to one edge of the room. A moment, and then I hear her pull out a Titanic-era steamer trunk from her closet, dragging it to the middle of the floor where she unzips it. (I know most steamer trunks don’t have zippers – this one apparently does). She unzips, and then she unzips some more, and then I hear the zipper chattering yet again, or in another direction, and then again she unzips, and then one last long unzipping makes me sit up in bed. This is ridiculous. How many zippers does this thing have?

But it’s the packing that gets me standing.

For apparently she is (I imagine) a shoe salesperson, and she stores her 600 shoe samples in various bedroom closets, and when she leaves each morning, she packs by yanking out pairs and throwing them across the room into the suitcase. Clomp, Bang, Clank, Whap. The banging continues, until she’s finished, and then she zips the trunk’s eleven zippers up again. Finally, she sets it upright and drags it away. Some mornings she has a limp as she drags, making the whole thing fairly sinister.

Suddenly the walls of my apartment shudder with the slamming of her door, and the world is still again. A picture tilts on the wall.

Since then, I’ve come to know her and her partner well without ever having met them or even seen them. He arrived the next night, unzipping his suitcase (!) for he too it seems, is a shoe salesman. He (apparently) sells steel-tipped work boots. Each night, when they get home, the routine is the same. They tip their suitcases onto the floor of the bedroom, spilling the shoes out into an enormous pile (there’s room because there mustn’t be a bed). And then, each takes turn putting the shoes on and clomping around the room showing each other the new product line. Sometimes he wears the heels, sometimes she wears the boots. Each time a route is completed, they ceremoniously remove the shoes and throw them against the wall.

They also (apparently) sell steel cylinders, perhaps thermoses? which they carry from the bedroom to the living room and back, dropping 4 or 5 in each direction. They may also sell aluminum pots, small dogs with unclipped toenails, cymbals, gongs, cue balls, and loose marbles.

There is occasionally an electrical motor of some kind that sounds in the bedroom. This thing is fascinating to me in its mystery. Even as I lie there at 1:30am, exhaustion tugging at my eyelids, I still muster the strength to marvel at the mystery of this sound. There’s electricity involved, simultaneously grinding, creaking and buzzing.

It must be a winch I imagine, perhaps used to lower the bed from the ceiling or tilting down from the wall, like a drawbridge. Even in my semi-conscious state, I admire their clever use of space.

Revenge is not called for since these two are blameless – this is their job (I think). Everyone needs shoes, and I get a sense they’re good at what they do, or at least they have an enormous inventory. But I can’t do nothing.

My newest idea is to start painting. Buy some Benjamin Moore white, and start rolling it on the ceiling. Just start that first layer of paint that every Pre War building started with in the early 20th century, lapping on another coat every year for the next 80 years, until my ceiling is 5 inches thick and soundproof.

By then I figure the market will have improved and I can just sell the place and go live in an Ashram. As long as it’s in a Pre-War building.

Is It Just Me? I Don't Understand How Someone Can Misplace $40,000.

Forget all this twaddle about people going broke and losing their homes and living in tents and not having enough money to buy milk and bread and Tall skim frappuccinos.

If you just look around, like open up empty boxes left in a corner of your office hallway, you too can be rich!

I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of money being lost. Misplaced. Forgotten. And we're not talking a tenspot.

For example: in 2009, the New York Times reported (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26cash.html) that a little box was left on the counter at a car dealership in Orlando filled with $40,000 in cash. The box was small and unassuming, unmarked, unlabeled, unnamed, containing a mix of old and new bills, none of it “dirty”. Cash. $40,000. That someone “left” there, the assumption being (since no one there could recall threatening to break someone’s kneecaps if they didn’t “pay up”) it was left “accidentally”.

So my question is: how the hell does someone put $40K in a box (in a box?), take it somewhere for whatever reason, whether it’s on its way somewhere else or not, and then, like a $12 pair of sunglasses or a $3 New York umbrella, leave it on a counter? Forget about it?

When I go to Duane Reade for a pack of gum, occasionally I drop a quarter on the way from my hand to the clerk’s. When that happens, all commerce stops for 10 minutes, while I hunt for it in among the Snickers bars under the counter. I enlist the help of the salesperson who is apologetic and equally concerned, and sometimes someone in the line behind me will join in the search. This is for a quarter. I am slightly less anxious about dimes and nickels, but I will take a moment for those as well. Pennies? Eh.

But $40,000 in cash? That I would not walk away from. Not only would I push the Snickers bars out of the way but I would tear open the counter with my bare hands, knocking People Magazines and Chapstick out of the way, clawing and scratching like a terrier until I found that cash.

Forget about the ridiculousness of having that much cash on hand, and the equal insanity of putting it in a cardboard box; how could you just leave it somewhere, because, why? You got a really important text message from your spouse about picking the kid up from school? Did an old flame friend you on Facebook? Did you get a raise or get fired? WHAT could distract you enough to forget about your $40,000??

I guess it wouldn’t have come to this - a post - if it weren’t for the frequency with which this happens. Why work for a living when, in April of 2008, you could find $140,000 (in cash) on a street in Cerritos California, tied up in bundles of twenties? Left (again, “left”) by a Brinks truck on its way to make a deposit (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/09/state/n113337D59.DTL&tsp=1).

Or the more modest $10,000 left in December of 2008, on a grocery store bathroom in Federal Way, Washington, by someone who was moving (http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=230943)? Hey it’s not $140K; maybe some people would leave it holding out for the bigger payout, but, you know, it’s better than a quarter.
Or what about one of my favorites: the $97,000 that was found in another bathroom (it pays to hang out in bathrooms despite the experience of some Republicans), this one a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee (http://www.blinkx.com/video/lady-finds-97-000-in-a-cracker-barrel-bathroom-and-gives-it-back/ONajwyt8uqhyH1SHcCvsVw) in the SAME MONTH as the $10K was left in that Washington water closet? (Proving I suppose that absent-mindedness occurs at every latitude and longitude…)

The $97 grand was in a purse, which makes slightly more sense I suppose than a cardboard box, or a paper bag, the more typical conveyances for wads of cash to be left in. But then, who leaves their purse hanging in the public bathroom? Where are you car keys or your bus pass? Your sunglasses? Your cell phone? How did this lady get home? Even if you forgot about the $97,000 you had jammed in there; what about your breath mints???

In October of 2007, another $65,000 was “dropped”, “left behind”, “lost” by another armored car (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/05/Southpinellas/Hey__65_000_in_cash__.shtml) near St. Petersburg, Florida. A sanitation plant employee found it lying in the roadway near the garbage bags. It wasn’t in one of those cool canvas bags with the single dollar signs on it (which I know they come in from years of “Batman” reruns), no, it was in a PLASTIC BAG. Apparently it had been run over several times. It apparently dropped out of the back of an armored car which had recently passed through.

Hey, forget about bolting sheets of lead onto your truck! Just CLOSE THE BACK DOOR. Write it on your hand if you must, as soon as you put your hollow point bullet-loaded gun away: “Note to self: Close back door of armored vehicle!”

In Littleton, Colorado in 2005, a teenager left the $50,000 his father had given him “to start a new life” (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local/4926337/detail.html), on top of his car and DROVE OFF, spilling the money all over the roadway. I too have left stuff on top of my car and drove off; many cups of coffee, a few cans of Diet Coke; at least two times, the gas cap after pumping my own gas.
But I just know that if I left, like, the change from buying the newspaper, or say, $50,000 in cash, I’d have this little niggling feeling like, “Where the heck is that $50,000 in cash? Darn, it was just here…” Not to mention, WHY WOULD YOU PUT IT ON TOP OF YOUR CAR IN THE FIRST PLACE??

It’s much more common of course for people to leave cash in taxis, along with the iPod, or iPhone or iGlasses. And that’s what happened in July 2007, in Manila, when someone left $17,000 in a “motorcycle taxi” (what’s that?) (see: http://hubpages.com/hub/Taxi_driver_returns_lost_money_worth_US17000).
The other favorite thing people love to forget about: priceless Stradivariuses. (Stradivarii?)

In April of 2008, some guy left his $2 million dollar Stradivarius in the third row of a shuttle van he’d taken from Newark after returning from a concert in Texas (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90252259). So, you might ask yourself, when you’re exiting the shuttle, “Ok, I’ve got my rolling bag, my camera, and my house keys. Now what am I coming home from? Why am I here? Oh yeah; I just was in Texas performing on my $2 million dollar Stradivarius. Well, I’ve got my house keys; I’m good to go.”
In May of 2004 (http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/18/local/me-cello18) a Stradivarius cello valued at $3.5 million dollars was left on the owner’s front stoop in California. Some lady found it a few days later near a Silver Lake dumpster.

In October of 1967 (now we’re going back), some guy in LA left a “Duke of Alcantara” Stradivarius violin either ON TOP OF HIS CAR or maybe (he can’t remember) in his UNLOCKED car when he went grocery shopping (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl101794.htm). Who goes grocery shopping when you have a Stradivarius in your car?? Can’t the Pop Tarts wait? Can’t you go home and drop off the (in this case, piece of crap, valued only at $800,000) instrument before you go into Waldbaums to buy your arugula??

And again, who puts their Stradivarius on top of their car? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?? I am starting to understand the $50K, but the Stradivarius??

As it turns out, even those people whose names are synonymous with their instruments can forget their names, er, instruments in the back of taxis as Yo Yo Ma did in 1999, forgetting all about his $2.5 million cello on the way to a hotel from his home in Manhattan (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19991017&slug=2989399). Did I mention he was in the taxi on his way to rehearse for a concert that night, which would certainly have been a boring concert without his cello?

And the most amazing thing of all? All these wads of money were either returned to the owner, or pending return (except for about $29,000 that the teenaged boy lost in increments of $100 bills). That’s pretty cool.

I once found a $20 bill on the sidewalk and I was happier than a clam for 2 days. I felt lucky, privileged, attentive and in the right place at the right time for the first time in my life. Clearly, I was wrong.

Um, I Don't Understand How to Operate Your Shower...

I'm one of those who travels for the holidays; not to anywhere interesting but to the homes of friends and family who put me up in the spare bedroom, on the couch, or who kindly kick their small children to the floor so I have a place to sleep. These small children still seem to like me, because I'm their Aunt who they don't see that often and so I have the advantage of always being a novelty to them. Kids between the ages of 5 and 14 have a kind of instinctive caution about talking back, rolling their eyes, using the kind of foul language reserved for the bowels of slave ships, and borrowing my clothes, which they reserve for their parents and those who they see regularly. In fact, as long as I show my face only once a year, they actually roll their eyes TO me, in a conspiracy against their parents, and how "dumb" or unreasonable they are, especially when those parents ask them to eat vegetables, turn off the video games, or not to have sex with the goth guy in homeroom.

So all in all, it's great, except for the problem of the shower. I live in NYC where, on the Upper West Side where I live, the shower valves haven't changed since 1941 and therefore have a "Hot" device and a "Cold" device, clearly labeled, separated by a natural distance and incredible in their logic and simplicity.



I mean, just by looking at them, you know: 1) how to turn the water on, 2) how to make the water "Hot" or, alternatively "Cold", 3) how to get the water to come out of the overhead valve onto your head, 4) how to turn it all off at the end of the event. You can also figure out fairly quickly what to do if the water is: 1) scalding and your skin begins to redden and peel off, 2) freezing so that everything made of flesh rises in self-defense, 3) brown with chunks.

Let me be the first to report that this is not true outside of Manhattan. Apparently everyone else in the world lives in a house that was built post WW2, and at some point, some smart-ass engineers decided that having separate faucets was "too much trouble" or maybe simply not cool, and started building these things into one unit so that the person of average intelligence, and perhaps even people with advanced degrees, cannot figure out how to take a shower without being injured or asking a 7 year old for help.

This phenomenon is most obvious at the gym, where a shower needs to be fast, not only because other people are waiting, but because there’s always a chance that the naked girls with the “buns and abs of steel” might shove you out of the way because, let’s face it, they’re stronger and worked out harder and need showers much, much more than you.

I don’t live far from my gym, so usually I work out and walk home and shower there, with my normal, logical shower that leaves me confident and cheerful at my ability to operate something mechanical without breaking it or having to call in professionals. But sometimes I have to shower at the gym because I’m headed somewhere other than home and I don’t want to have people do that sideways-shifting-away-on-the-subway-bench that I do sometimes when people are… let’s say, unfragrant. So at my gym, here is what I’m faced with:



Now I get the color scheme, ok? I get it. Red is hot, and blue is cold; this is common most cultures and I don’t want to visit the countries where it’s not. But… please. What the hell? There is no way to figure this thing out without getting in there and just – doing it. This means, in my case, getting alternately scalded and frozen, at least twice, until I find the mid-point of water comfort. Those shrieks and whoops coming from the third stall? That’s me, and I’m alone and there is in absolutely no sex involved. The small crowd that gathers around the extra towels awaiting my exit exhibit the collective expression of a group that is concerned, but maybe not enough to risk their own lives to find out what is going on in that glass chamber. And of course, upon my exit, I act like I don’t know where the yelling came from either and walk out shrugging blithely at the be-toweled clique.

And the problem only gets worse outside of Manhattan. This is Cleveland. House of Brian. Nice house, modern, many bathrooms.



There’s an “H”, a “C” and an “Off” which you’d think would make things oh-so-obvious, but is it hot when the faucet handle is pointed at the H or when the handle is pointed at the C? Why isn’t there an arrow? Where’s the color scheme? There are many teen-agers at this house and if you think I’m asking their help, when I’ve already been humiliated not only playing Wii baseball, but even the low-tech board-game “Risk”, you’re nuts.

My family is a “Four Christmases” kind of a deal, so from Brian’s house, I went on to Alison’s (his ex-wife and my friend), also built in the era of the ambitious engineer. This shower is in the redone basement, and so it’s super special, and makes even less sense.



It’s a kind of diamond shape (and tastefully, looks like an actual diamond! Your guests will actually think you have the Hope Diamond in your downstairs bathroom!) and comes to a point, leading one to believe that if you point the point at one of the key letters (H, and C), you’ll have Hot or Cold water. Getting started here is the issue. You pull it out and then you have to dodge that spray until you can snake your hand in there and adjust it until you can safely get the whole body in there. A flushing toilet somewhere in the house can add layers of confusion and trauma, trying to understand whether it’s you controlling the spray, or some outside agent, and whether you should passively wait until things settle down, or go bold, adjusting wildly as armies of 13 and 14 year old girls dab their make-up upstairs, tossing little tiny pieces of toilet paper away, flushing each time, in their quest for Bratz-like slutitude.

I also visited Kelly who just redid her bathroom (what’s wrong with having an old, functional bathroom? People: leave your showers alone!).



This one stumped me utterly. The Barbie was ecstatic: I was glum. What’s that long metal thing over there? What does that do? How can that help matters? Why do we need extra devices protruding from the spigot? It was getting late and people were waiting for me for yet another blended family walk by the water. I tried, I honestly did, but ultimately I had to open the bathroom door and call for assistance. Her 7 year old, with an expression reserved for people who visit regularly (that is: disdain, annoyance), showed up and said, “Let me do it” and she did, getting it right the first time as I towered above her, wrapped in a towel, reminding her that I had a Masters and a driver’s license and also many boyfriends and my own apartment, which didn’t seem to impress her. This one required doing something under the faucet at the bottom, which I pretended I understood (like when I took Chemistry and stared dumbly at the blackboard for a whole semester), just so I could preserve some dignity and not let the little girl get the upper hand. “Oh yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought, it’s so simple, much easier than mine at home,” I suggested.

The holidays are over and I’m back home and I’ve been taking showers with no problem at all, and planning my trip to Miami in March, hoping against hope that either the retro-rebuilt town hasn’t touched the showers since 1941 or has redesigned them for the simple-minded, or perhaps, that a smart 7 year old is down the hall.

Fingernails: I Don't Get it. They're Dead and Yet Still Giving Me Problems

It’s an internal conflict from which all women suffer - one that forms one of the basic struggles of female identity. It’s not dress size or hairstyle, career path or marital status. It’s our fingernail length.

Some people trumpet their identity via the buttons they wear on their lapels. Others have bumper stickers. When it comes to women however, fingernails are a crucial barometer of the female self. I am them and they are me: the truest bellwether of a transient identity.

In my life they've been long and polished (the "Young Business Woman" era) or short and dirty ("The Artist Years"). They've been a different length on each finger like a ragged graph of the stock market (“The Happy Gardener”). There have been periods where 9 were long and one short (snapped it using trying open a CD), or the left hand has been short and the right long (learning the guitar). They've had 6 coats of $15-a-bottle polish during some phases and gone stark naked during others. Every once in a while, I go through a period where I don't think about them at all. It doesn't last more than a week.

I have traveled extensively and bravely between the most extreme territories of fingernail length. I have explored the rugged inner realm of nails bitten-to-the-quick, and I have journeyed to the outermost regions of nail length, exploring the netherlands of practical fingernail possibility with talons extending a half inch beyond the tops of my fingertips.

In college as an art major I wore them short. I had to, of course: I was an artist. I wore overalls and clogs and wore my hair long and wild. My fingers were serious and functional and even if my paintings were mediocre, I was to be taken seriously.

A few years after I graduated however, I found myself curious about the world of women with beautifully done nails. Sometimes, wishing I were that kind of a woman, I too would get my nails done, and for a time, I would be one of those women. My posture would be better. I would toss my hair. I'd use my fingers more, to point at things that really didn't need to be pointed out; to run my finger down lists; to touch-tone dial. I would handle things gingerly, with the pads of my fingers. It affected my whole physical self: when I ran with long nails, I'd run "like a girl". Breaking one would induce dismay and anxiety. Sometimes I'd catch myself admiring them as if they weren’t attached to me: watching them twinkle as I pushed elevator buttons or set the dial on the washing machine to Permanent Press.

My fingernails have been an Almanac-like measure of my mood at various times in life. At one point in my dating past, a date could look across the dinner table at my hands and know approximately what his chances were for an extended evening (shaved legs were an equally reliable measure). If they were painted at all, that was a good sign. To know my fingernails was to know me. Sometimes, in the biblical sense.

Most women will tell you that their fingernail consciousness was raised initially by their mothers who typically guide their daughters from: “For heaven’s sake, that dog can dig his own holes!”, to our first introduction to the proper way to use a nail file. Not baked in a cake to break out of prisons like my four brothers insisted, but gently, on one's finger tips, in one direction only, at first making the nails pointed and then rounding them, carefully pushing back the cuticles so the "moons" show. That was then.

Things have changed, fingernail-wise. Like everything else that can adorn a human body, the decoration of the fingernail has come to mean something. These days you have moody colors that are mixed in blenders, mostly dark, from deep burgundy all the way to the very popular black. There are deep purples, dark blues and rich greens with glitter mixed in. You can have nails as metallic as the side of a toaster or striped like a zebra hide. If you put plain pink on your nails and still frequent the lower East side, you're saying something about who you are... and who you aren't.

Culturally, there are fingernail differences as well. Black and Hispanic women seem more likely to sport exotically long nails, painted with patterns that would make Juan Miro envious, perhaps imbedded with a jewel. There's the classic "French manicure": the white-tipped, flat-topped style which prime-time TV actresses and female newscasters seem to favor, representing both approachability and responsible journalism. And then there are the bright red claws of porn stars and men's magazine models, meant to both intimidate and entice.

I always thought having someone else do one's nails was a silly luxury -- until I had mine done. It’s like handing over one part of your body to the curators of a particular wing of a museum. Your nails become the fine canvasses a staff of experts are trained to restore.

My informal research (conducted across countless manicure tables) has revealed that most nail operations are run either by rows of small, lovely Asian girls, or in spas and hair salons by middle-aged Eastern European women with oddly smooth skin. When we sit down before them and extend our hands, what do they think? It’s a question that kept me away from the table for years. What must they think of a woman who can’t do her own nails? Now, I assume they are just waiting until I leave so they can get their own nails done.

Unlike hair salons, we don't walk in and ask their advice; generally women know what they want in a fingernail. Frankly, I've always been afraid that if I did ask for advice, the news would be bad; that I'd be nail-cast: "Honey, bright red just isn't you. You're just not the type. Here's a nice pink." You mean you don't see me with a jewel? It's that obvious I'm not a "Purple Passion" person? Can I at least have a darker shade of pink??

These days, my nails are plain: unpainted, mid-length, kind of between here and there, sort of 5'5", brunette, Midwestern average. Sort of like me. And for now, I'm content. But I see blue on the horizon. And it’s called “Midnight Sky Metallic”.

Why Stop at 16 Babies When You Could Have 160? I Don't Get It.

In the light of Nadya Suleman's (The Octomom) delivery of 8 babies, while 6 others waited at home, and the interesting support of her by many with conservative leanings, I offer this satire. (Note that as of 2014, Nadya is on public assistance, her house is in foreclosure, her husband has divorced her and her parents are bankrupt. No one seems to give a shit what happened to the actual children...)

FOX news was first on the scene early this morning to report that a woman in northern Minnesota has given birth to 167 babies, or more accurately, is still actually "in childbirth" with 54 little infants left to recover from her distended uterus.

Apparently (it has not been confirmed) the mother had been ingesting Clomid and injecting progesterone for several months in an attempt to steal the recent record of 96 live births set by Kelly Davis at the Wisconsin State Fair last spring. Ms. Davis herself was the only entry in the widely promoted competition, being the only contestant who fulfilled the minimum qualifications of at least 12 simultaneously delivered children prior to the event. (Apparently this will not be the case next year as several women are in training now for the event and the reported $500 first prize; second prize being a brand new humidifier). Ms. Davis sheepishly told the judges that she originally had wanted to compete in the Apple Pie baking competition but her oven broke down last year and she hadn't had the money to have it repaired so she figured she might as well enter the Live Birth competition.

The as yet unidentified mother of the 167… oh wait, we're getting news that it's not 167… looks like there was a chamber in the cavernous uterus which has just recently been discovered and there are apparently between 20 and 25 additional babies in there, playing jump rope with the mother's lower intestine (along with a treasure chest filled with gold dubloons). This will make the delivery tricky as there were only 116 doctors on call for this event and experts say in a delivery of this size, it would take between 120 and 125 ob/gyns to assure the safety of the mother and her newborns.

Fox News reports however that Mrs. Helene Johnson from the Millstein Middle School has offered her third grade class, who were coincidentally visiting the hospital on a field trip, to help catch the babies as they pop out and carry them to the giant Bouncy House where they are being stored until someone can figure out what to do with them.

It's reported that the new mother's other 45 children are healthy and happy at home with her husband who has converted their garage into something resembling an egg-laying factory, with six stacked rows of box-like structures, each child having their own 3x5 enclosure and watered and fed with a series of hamster water bottles.

The mother, who is in excellent health and enjoying the attention of the press even while she squeezes out her 15th set of triplets, is granting interviews on a selected basis, with Harvey Levin in line just behind Wendy Williams and Barbara Walters, each of whom have come bearing gifts; in Wendy's case, 175 stuffed yellow bears presently stored in an Allied van parked in the hospital loading dock. (The 72 scrub nurses standing by apparently asked Williams if she’d lend a hand changing 41 of the babies who need clean diapers, but Williams demurred, citing journalistic objectivity.)

There were earlier reports this morning of a small group of protesters standing outside the hospital calling the competition despicable, arguing that no one family could possibly handle more than 85 infants at one time, but these naysayers were quickly shouted down by hundreds of fans of the young mother, smiling and waving even more stuffed yellow bears.

When asked what she planned to do once she healed from the grueling ordeal of delivering now what seems at last count, to be 182 premature infants, the young mother smiled and said, "There are a lot of people out there who want children to love and I plan on finding them, either through Craig's list or Ebay."

I Don't Understand Women Who Do This and Men Who Let Them...

He's not bad looking, he's a nice guy, and he seems to adore you. And yet, you can't help but treat him like an irritating cowlick -- always in your hair and unable to do anything right. You find yourself making fun of his friends, his clothes, his hobbies and his habits and you hate yourself for it. What's going on? You're dating a "Doormat Man".

Most everyone finds themselves in one of these relationships at some point in a dating history. It starts like this: an arid, dune-filled dating landscape stretches before you when a guy whose best virtue is that he's available turns up. As he's courting you by reciting the story line from last night's "Seinfeld", you're playing badminton with the idea of going out with him. "Maybe," you think. "Naw. Well, maybe. Naw!" Prospects look otherwise grim and hey, at least he's not married you think. So you give him your number, half hoping he won't use it, but knowing that within 72 hours, you'll get that call.

Getting the first call from a new man is one of the most exhilarating experiences in a woman's life -- most of the time. But when this guy's voice comes over the line, all that goes through your head is: "what was I thinking? Should I pretend that whoever he thinks he's calling moved out, why, just yesterday?" But you're a "nice" person. You can't do that. So you settle in for ten minutes of hemming and hawing on his part (you're filing your nails) before he can get to the BIG question. If you're in a charitable mood you might offer, "Yes, actually, I like Jonathan Demme movies too." While he takes that opening and runs with it though, your idle mind turns to thoughts of good old Aunt Tillie who, as family lore has it, was saved from spinsterhood when she unexpectedly fell in love with dull, reliable Ralph (now "Uncle" Ralph), a somewhat lumpy suitor who pursued her relentlessly for years until he finally won her heart. And then it occurs to you that Aunt Tillie was 2 years younger than you are now, when it finally happened.

"O.K.," you interrupt, "Sure. I think I'd enjoy that," you say to whatever he's come up with. And even as you hang up the phone, you wonder at the mysteries of womankind who accept dates from men they really don't want to go out with.

Women are by nature, charitable, sympathetic, nurturing creatures whose first instincts are to soothe and comfort. So it must be said that when we accept that first date from someone who we know is never going to win our heart (nay, not even score too well against it), we always have THE BEST INTENTIONS. Perhaps our first impression was wrong, we think, giving the fellow the benefit of a host of doubts. Maybe I'll learn to love him, we speculate. Maybe he's got a sense of humor á là Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally". Maybe he'll gain more confidence when he sees me in broad daylight.

And sometimes, we're evil and think: Maybe he's got a brother...

"Gee, you look great," he offers hopefully when you open the door, and the strangest kind of irritation wells up in you. It's not that you don't appreciate the compliment (any compliment), it's just that you really want to tell him, "Please don't try so hard!" But he doesn't know how not to try so hard. And you, with nothing better on your dance card, fighting your crawling skin, see him for the second time, and then a third, and soon, you find yourself transformed from mild-mannered nice girl into SUPER WITCH.

He's created a monster and you are she. You find yourself committing every crime in the Code of Dating Ethics and inventing a few new ones. You don't ever really listen to him (and yet you've always been such a "good listener"). You don't bother to conceal flirting with virtually anyone else who might be handy. You drop the phone three times per call because you're juggling two other tasks while he hangs on the other end. You've been "too tired" to have him up to your apartment for the last two months.

Strange, petty things about him drive you nuts. "Do you always have to blink that way?" you ask him, not really as a question. But instead of calling you on it: "And how would you like me to blink, your highness?", he apologizes. "Gosh, sorry!" he offers. "I'll try not to blink like that anymore." And now, for some reason, you're really mad.

When you socialize with a couple like this, you spend all your time cringing. Out for dinner with the gang, they sit across from each other, he, staring at her adoringly, reminds you of a lovesick seal. Meanwhile, she's flirting madly with the men on either side of her, and the 16 year old bus boy. Her date asks a question in an attempt to join the conversation and she rolls her eyes. He laughs at one of her jokes and she rolls her eyes. You haven't seen so much eye-rolling since Linda Tripp said she was "just trying to be a friend". You can't help but wonder why he puts up with it. It's almost as if she (or we, if we're in such a relationship), is purposely being outrageous, trying somehow to provoke him into... something! Defending himself, yelling at her, walking out and slamming the door.

On the surface of our thoughts when we're the ones doing the eye-rolling, we're thinking, "What does it take to get this guy to tell me to jump off a cliff?" But deeper inside us, in that reasonable self hunkered down in social hibernation, another voice asks, "Why am I being so mean?" Every evening we say goodnight to this guy with a sigh of relief and an hour later, the bad feelings start rolling in -- guilt for treating him so badly, and anger, at him, for letting us. The truth is that we're angry at him for letting us be the worst we can be, instead of the best.

A good relationship provides more than companionship. The best of them make us feel good about ourselves, glad to be with someone who is, in many respects, the half that makes us whole. Those cheery older couples who refer to one another as "my better half" are speaking of a symmetry in their lives that calms them when they're threatening to strangle the neighbor; that offers an objective opinion when the handmade birdhouse turns out looking more like a dish drainer; that reminds them that they're more wonderful than they know, or not as wonderful as they think, whichever they need to hear.

When a prospective partner can't provide that symmetry for us, our inner ogre comes out, beats up the Helen Hunt side of us, and turns into the playground bully. Oddly enough, bullying makes such men try even harder. They become kinder, even more gentle and more obsequious than ever. They turn into "Doormat Men". Exactly the wrong approach. When you look at them, all you see is a quivering dessert. You find yourself humming "J-E-L-L-O" during conversational breaks. What self-respecting person, you marvel, would allow his girlfriend to treat him so, well, disrespectfully?

Therein lies the answer. A man (and of course, this applies equally to a woman) who "takes" such treatment, probably does not have much respect for himself. He may feel he deserves to be treated like a sock hamper because he thinks he's somehow unworthy. He may have grown up in a household where he became the whipping boy for an unhappy, angry parent. Or he might have been the always unfavorably compared brother to a sibling who was the "star" of the family. Sometimes just having been largely ignored during childhood shapes a personality that expects to be ignored; an invisible person for whom any attention, whether positive or negative, is better than none.

So now we find ourselves in such a relationship, and wonder about our options. We can end it and throw ourselves back into the pool of wandering, dispossessed single women, staggering through cities, arms upraised like something out of "Night of the Living Dead", or we can stop and reevaluate. Life is short (as women who have wondered if they'll have one more date before they die are well aware of). If we meet someone who cares for us, this is a good thing. A real thing.

Think once again of "Aunt Tillie". She lived the dating life that, demographically doesn't look likely for this generation of women. And yet, she settled for good old Ralph. Take a second look at your boring beau. What would happen if you treated him honestly, told him what you were thinking, kindly? You know, a bird in the hand... might just be the falcon we're searching for.

If after reconsidering him and being honest with him, he still wants to bring you your slippers in his mouth, maybe you should bail out while his ego and your image of yourself as a "nice person" are still intact. But perhaps you can forge a new relationship. After all, something about him made you say yes to that first date (apart from the fact that he asked you!). And maybe someday, in a not too distant future, Aunt Tillie and Uncle Ralph will be dancing at your wedding!

Horoscopes For September 2015

HOROSOPES FOR ALL THE GODDESSES THAT WE ARE
By DEB VICTOROFF
#36 in a series (Oct. 2015):

1) ATHENA - the Smart One Who Never Got The Guys Until She Got Contacts (March 21-April 19)
It’s the end of the summer and you find yourself obsessing about the 14 pounds remaining from your goal to lose 15 when you started your diet in June. Your exercise sessions with your personal trainer did not go as expected (he expected you to show up: you did not), and so a new plan is in the works. You resolve to watch what you eat, and this does not mean, as it has in the past, watching how high you can mound your plastic plate at the few remaining barbecues left this season, nor adding up the slices of pizza and dividing the number of people to determine how many slices you can take and still be invited to the next kid’s birthday party. Losing weight takes only two things: determination and unfiltered cigarettes, so get yourself a pack and get to work.

2) JUNO - the One Who Says She's Happily Married (April 20-May 20)
September brings the lower humidity that Juno loves, as well as a hairstyle that doesn’t require she turn sideways when entering or leaving a room. Seriously; how much product can one put in one’s hair before becoming a fire hazard? This summer was particularly bad, when Juno was invited to a party and retreated to the bathroom to look in the mirror after one guest attempted to put his glass on her head and play her teeth, thinking she was a piano. A short haircut might be just the thing for next summer or perhaps a wig made of fiber optic cable.

3) APHRODITE - the Impossibly Thin-Thighed (May 21-June 21)
September is the time of the year that the kids return to school, unfortunately right on a path that runs through your backyard. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were quiet and respectful but kids these days are loud and armed and will kill you if you ask them to “keep it down”. In fact if you try to be subtle by putting a finger to your lips and saying “shush”, a 3rd grader will launch a rocket-propelled grenade into your garage. You might try to fence in your back yard or perhaps dig a deep hole and fill it with sharpened stakes but the last guy who did this had an unflattering movie made about him and had to move anyway. Patience is a virtue, as is having a big mean dog.

4) DIANA - the Bargain Hunter (June 22-July 22)
The 9th through the 24th will be mild with winds from the northeast causing unseasonably cool weather and the occasional freak rain of frogs. This will be of little note or concern to Diana unless of course she’s the meteorologist for the local news in which case, she’s got a lot of explaining to do. For the rest of the Dianas, the abundance of frogs will simply make their kids’ science projects a delightfully simple proposition, testing the theory of the number of frogs it takes to fill up a convertible if the top is left down, which was a trick question on the early version of the SATs if we can recall. Use this opportunity to learn more about the natural world and prepare for the “end of days”.

5) DEMETER - the Condom Bearer (July 23-August 22)
A distant relative asks you if he can borrow money. The wisdom of loaning money to this guy who throws money away the way Rush Limbaugh does words, in his attempt, like a boy with a crush, to get President Obama to look his way, is questionable, even if you are a Republican and have a lot to spare. There will always be some people who cannot handle money and should be kept to an allowance, or penned in a small room where they are fed and watered and watched by benevolent hosts. You may recall the last time you lent money to a family member, they said they were using it for school and ended up buying a 62” flat screen TV and they still won’t invite you over to watch “Mad Men”. Practice saying “No” or “Yes” with 15% interest.

6) VESTA - the Lover of Laundry (August 23-September 22)
This month brings a health crisis you were not expecting and which is both painful and painfully embarrassing. Since you live in the United States, you most likely don’t have a job, and also since you live in the U.S. you also don’t have health insurance. Head over to the local emergency room, or if that hospital has closed (due to bankruptcy as a result of free treatment of those without insurance), there’s always the free clinic, or if that has also closed (due to bankruptcy), then ask one of your friends if she has any left-over penicillin from that time in Cancun. Cooler heads prevail in the Health Insurance debate and you can rest assured you will be covered in time for your funeral.

7) PERSEPHONE - the One Who Never Wears White After Labor Day (September 23-October 23)
Happy Birthday Persephone! In this day and (your) age perhaps it’s time to give up on your archaic stand against wearing white after Labor Day, particularly since the public is just grateful when women wear clothes that cover their lower abdomens and men wear clothes that cover their lower extremities. You never thought you’d see the day when young men who wanted very much to be considered “tough” would actually pull their own pants down and wander the streets as if they’d been recently humiliated at the playground or were trying to get into a fraternity with an especially cruel initiation. What happens when these young men go dancing you wonder, let alone climb stairs or retrieve objects on top shelves? You become intensely grateful that you are as old as you are and that the men in your age-appropriate category still keep their underwear an uninvited guest until you request its presence.

8) LEDA - the Wearer of Tu Tus (October 24-November 21)
The 10th through the 17th offer a window of opportunity in which to make amends for an overreaction to a friend’s irresponsible act. Even though that friend continually leaves you standing on street corners waiting for them, their cell phone ignoring your rings until it starts raining and you don’t have an umbrella and the place you guys chose to meet doesn’t have an awning or anything so you’re not only wet, but freezing and still she doesn’t pick up and then you think maybe she got into some terrible accident or met foul play because that could really be the only reason not to pick up her phone when you made plans tonight, for God’s sake, and so now you are thinking maybe you should call her parents, but you don’t have their number, and you think the battery on your phone is going to die anyway, so after 45 minutes on the corner you head home, in a state of deep anxiety and don’t hear from that friend until she calls you a day later, and says, “Hey, how are you?” and you say, “Where were you last night” and she goes, “Oh, I must’ve forgot, I was cleaning my apartment.” If you want to make amends it’s up to you, but just to let you know, the 18th through the 28th are for building additional deep and seething resentment. Your call!

9) ECHO - the One With All the Good Gossip (November 22-December 21)
Keep your dreams alive by acting on them. Whether your dream is to meet that cute guy in your writing class or to sleep with that other guy you met earlier in the writing class; whether you want to finish your PhD or finish vacuuming up the kitty litter in the bathroom, you should be able to fulfill all your dreams with hard work and perseverance. Your mother always used to tell you this, but who listens to their mothers, and she had no idea when she said that, that you were thinking of getting your tongue pierced, and brother did she change her tune when you fulfilled THAT dream! But whether you dream of scaling Mt. Everest or climbing a step-ladder and finally figuring out what the hell’s in that box hidden in the back of the closet, don’t let anyone say “no” to you. Unless of course that particular box is in your boyfriend’s apartment, in which case we predict that fulfilling this particular dream will turn into a nightmare.

10) PANDORA - the One Who Always Overpacks (December 22-January 19)
Your job has got you stressed out and filled with anxiety. Although you asked for this position last year, they’ve only just now decided to give it you, after slashing the budget in half and laying off about 2/3rds of your co-workers, especially the ones who were really fun and who knew all the best YouTube videos which everyone used to send to each other and sometimes would gather around one guy’s desk to watch together after lunch. Have the higher ups recognized you as the responsible one, who was often the first to say, “Hey, maybe we should finish that report…”, or the unpopular one, who no one would ever listen to when you’d say stuff like that? You should realize that whatever your boss sees in you, your co-workers resent the fact that you got the promotion. No more “Wedding Dance” videos for you!

11) PSYCHE - the Headcase (January 20-February 18)
The 23rd is a great day for finding love; whether it means rekindling an old romance or initiating a new one, keep your eyes open for the signals that mean you are about to make a connection. Sometimes we’re blind to the signs that others are sending to us, whether those signs involve shy glances or loud explosions in which all the windows of the nearby buildings are blown out, one must always be aware of the ways in which potential mates try to claim our attention. Perhaps the guy who just dropped his whole plate of pasta on the way back from the buffet meant for you to look up, particularly since he dropped the pasta on your head. Now’s the time for you to wipe the red sauce out of your eyes and exchange a soulful glance with him, unless of course he meant to impress the girl with the enormous breasts sitting behind you, who seems to be laughing a little too hard for someone with such a flimsy bra.

12) PHOEBE - the Unlikely Sit-Com Star (February 19-March 20)
Phoebe is stunned when this month, a Republican Senator says something that makes sense, offering it up in a professional and courteous way, listing his reasons in a polished and cogent argument that reflects a good deal of research, solid facts, and an admirable grasp of the issue. His stand is something that is both intelligent and forward thinking, as well as clearly aware of years of American history on this topic… oh, wait a minute. Saturn and Neptune are totally fucking with us. This is about as likely as Phoebe having sex with George Clooney, and Phoebe is not even interested in George Clooney! Saturn and Neptune have got to come up with a new bit. Seriously you guys. No one was ever gonna fall for that.

Bonus Horoscope (for those who didn't like their own sign)
13) THALIA - the Upper West Side Theater (aka the Leonard Nimoy)
This month, the chickens come home to roost. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get a permit for a chicken coop but is just a figure of speech and refers to what happens when you fool around with your tennis instructor without finding out that his wife is the one who sets up the automatic ball feed thingy. You might want to wear a helmet to your Saturday session, and by the way, if in fact the chickens have come home to roost, and your instructor’s wife is in charge of the henhouse, what’s going to be coming at you from the ball feed won’t be tennis balls.

I like him. Him? Not so much. Pt. 2

We were awkward, but me more than he. He only seemed to be playing the part of the awkward guy for my benefit. In fact, I felt that he had reviewed me, found me acceptable and was settling in to see how I did for the rest of what he needed to evaluate. Would I be smart and sassy? Clever and quick with a comeback? Would I be too sweet? Or too forward? Would I touch him too soon, or seem repressed and reserved – too prim? What was he looking for? I could be nothing but myself because as intuitive as I am, I didn’t know. I started asking questions because his online profile was too vague to get a handle on him. What had happened with his wife? I knew he was divorced. He’d been married for 28 years. 28 years! What had I been doing all that time? Dating, going to grad school, working, dating, moving, dating, writing, dating. Lots of men, so few I cared about that I’d begun to think there was something wrong with my heart.