In Treatment.

I can't seem to interest anyone I know in this show, even though it's brilliant. When I bring it up, the responses range from some variation on "Sounds boring" to "I don't want to watch a show about people blathering about their problems." This latter response always confuses me, because aren't most non-comedic TV shows about other people's problems?

I haven't watched season 2 of In Treatment yet. Part of me is afraid it won't be as good as season 1. So I am re-watching season 1 first.

While watching a scene where one of the characters has a breakthrough, I asked myself whether therapy had ever really helped me. Did I ever have that fabled breakthrough, in the handful of times I sought counseling? Do those kind of moments really happen?

In Treatment doesn't glorify therapy or therapists, and that's one of the reasons I like it. It shows that therapists are as screwed up as the rest of us (which we already knew) and how thankless and treacherous their job can be (which maybe we didn't). But it also shows some pretty smart head-shrinking.

I thought about the professionals I'd seen and whether any of them really changed my life. On the "no" side, I've never left therapy because I felt like I'd worked through the problem I came there for. Usually, I left because I wasn't getting what I needed, or because life circumstances forced me to. On the "yes" side, certain comments made by these therapists have stayed with me over several years. The following are not direct quotes, but are the gist of what was said as far as I remember.

The comment: I'm not sure about this, but I think on some level, your parents don't want you to succeed. If you asked them, I'm sure they would swear up and down that of course they want you to succeed, and they would be telling the truth. But I think they don't want to lose you.
My reaction: This was shocking and offensive to me at first. I was 23 at the time and considering a move to New York, which got an unenthusiastic response at home. I remember the therapist being very tentative about sharing his theory -- he said that the idea was just occurring to him, and he didn't sound certain. This may have been a tactic, but I remember being enthralled. It made me feel like this wise person and I were figuring something out together, and it made me listen closely. Still, it was a very troubling assertion. My parents had been nothing but supportive my whole life! How could he say that? But it was a simple overstatement of a layered truth. Of course my parents wanted me to succeed. But when "success" might entail departure from the DMV... eehhhh.
Did it help? Yes. It made me realize I need to be more responsible for my own decisions and that even though my parents love me a lot, they aren't always going to know what's best for me. This sounds obvious now, but at that age it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The comment: Do you realize that when you [behave in a certain way], you are actually causing [your boyfriend] tremendous pain?
My reaction: At first, my reaction was no. I didn't think I had much of an impact on this person in general, so it seemed like the therapist was just being dramatic. On second thought, maybe my actions were causing real emotional pain. Maybe he was truly hurt after all -- but too bad. I was angry with him about some stuff, and what I felt was more important.
Did it help? Not until later. I finally realized that if you are pulling a bunch of b.s. and the other person is getting upset with you, the answer isn't to justify and/or repeat your b.s. The answer is to ask yourself why you feel the need to pull the b.s. (and deep down, we always know when we're pulling b.s.) instead of a) working out your beef with your loved one or b) cutting bait because you're in a situation that isn't working.

The comment: Can you imagine that a long-term monogamous relationship would actually deepen and get more interesting over time, as opposed to being "boring"?
My reaction: No.
Did it help? Yes and no. I have reason to understand the truth of this idea now, and I think back to that comment often, but no one can make you feel that way if you aren't in the right place with the right person.

The comment: I recommend that you read a book called The Good Marriage.
The reaction: I got the book.
Did it help? Yes. Unlike most marriage books, which focus on fixing what's wrong, this book surveys people who are happy in their marriages and classifies the unions according to four types: traditional, romantic, companionate, and rescue. It didn't give me answers for my situation, because no book can do that, but it gave me some context and perspective.

The comment: For engaged people, I usually recommend therapy, because if they are having issues with getting married those issues need to be explored. But if you're already married... I recommend the antidepressants.
The reaction: Shock, plus a desire to laugh and cry at the same time. I am not making this up, a therapist actually said that to me. She was the same one who recommended the book and said some other insightful things mixed in with dubious things, so the fact that she was batshit and a shill for pharmaceutical companies did not become undeniable until our third session, when she uttered this statement.
Did it help? It helped me avoid wasting my time further with her, yes.

The comment: What does your dad do?
My reaction: Huh?
Did it help? No. I was in college and came in to the student health service as a senior extremely Freaked Out About Life. I felt that my situation was dire, and yet every comment I made was met with an inventory-style question. I would say, for example, "I'm afraid I might be in a depression. I'm really worried about what I'm going to do when I graduate," and the counselor would go, "Mm hm, and are your parents still married?" It is the single weirdest and worst counseling experience I've ever had, and that's even counting the batshit therapist who wanted me to take drugs because I was married.

Has therapy ever helped you (or let you down)?

Music: "The Operation"

I Swear, It's for a Friend.

So, I'm at work printing out a travel reservation for this week. I walk over to the printer and my reservation didn't make it, but I see that I have another print job -- sitting alone on the counter next to the printer -- that someone set aside for me.

All of our print jobs come out with cover sheets featuring our name in big type. But the one I found this morning wasn't my travel confirmation. It was this article, which I linked to for work purposes on Friday and apparently printed out by mistake.

The headline type on the printout was big and bold, right there with my username. So that now it appears to my coworkers I needed to print out this article specially for closer reading. Ugh.

Music: "Fitter Happier"

No Thanks.

I was enjoying a nice, quiet evening checking out Diary of a Mad Black Woman on BET when this nonsense came upon my screen.

Let me just start by saying that I hate "real women" advertising. If I wanted to look like a "real woman," I wouldn't be interested in your product. I know it's not politically correct to say, but I prefer fashion models (or at least I do when they are allowed to still look human).

I also think an attempt by a company (you too, Dove) to sell products to women by using regular-looking people, pretending to buck the beauty myth while putting jarring, publicity-generating pictures of half-naked plus-size women everywhere including bus stops, is just as (if not more) full of crap as an attempt to sell using a fantasy.

I don't want to be "friends" with my commercial. When the lady on the screen talks about her "girls being happy," I don't nod knowingly and smile. I wince and wonder why she has to be so goofy. Please don't talk to me about your big boobs and how men can't take their eyes off them and stuff. It is not going to make me want to buy the bra you have on. It is going to make me want to change the channel in embarrassment.

Girlfriend... OK?

Music: "Video"

Lessons I Can't Seem to Learn.

People can act one way to your face and another behind your back.

Your body knows better than your mind does.

It's never worth clicking on pictures of Lady Gaga.

You will never be glad you stayed up watching Intervention instead of going to bed.

Tortilla chips. God help me. Tortilla chips.

Your job does not define your self-worth.

Magazines are less fulfilling than books.

If the meat seems undercooked, it probably is.

Anyone care to add?

Music: "Learning to Fly"

Weirdest Halloween Ever.

How do you feel about Halloween?

More than any other "holiday" (and I put the word in quotation marks because unless I get the day off work, it isn't a true holiday anymore, unlike when I was a kid and "holiday" could be defined as any day with special decorations and candy), Halloween transforms into something else altogether when you're an adult.

When you're a kid, even if you hate scary stuff, you're going to get on board with the whole shebang because sweets are involved. By the time I was a teenager, when I could procure candy on my own and shaving cream fights had furnished all the diversion they possibly could in my life, I was pretty well over it.

As an adult woman, you go one of three ways with Halloween: a) nerdy group costumes with your s.o. and/or children, channeling your theater-tech days; b) Weird "I get to look slutty tonight" outfits and c) complete apathy. I would totally be in the B camp if it weren't for my aversion to cold, aversion to crowds and attraction to complete laziness. So that leaves me in camp C.

Best associations with Halloween:

- Being a bag of jellybeans, circa third grade. My mom pinned balloons to me and put a big plastic dry-cleaning bag over them. It was genius. If you've never walked around with a bunch of balloons pinned to your person, I recommend it. This year it's timely because of the Heenes. Go for it.

- Being Pippi Longstocking my senior year of college. I was over Halloween at that point but somehow got it together to do this. It was great because it was so simple: all you need is braids wrapped around wire and striped leggings. The braids made it. You can't imagine the number of times I got the drunk, good-vibey exclamation, "PIPPI!" that night.

- Candy corn. BRACH'S ONLY, bitches. I can tell by looking when candy corn isn't Brach's because it's too wide and has weird ridges in it and it tastes like shit. Sure, you might say that all candy corn tastes like shit, but that's because you haven't appreciated -- or refuse to appreciate -- the honey-smooth divinity of Brach's. If you know what I'm singing about up here come on raise your hand.

- Mrs. May's house. I was lucky enough to grow up in a solid neighborhood with lots of good houses for trick-or-treating -- except for Mrs. May's house. Mrs. May was a grouchy widow who was always ordering us off her property. On Halloween her house was always dark and no one would ever answer the door and it looked haunted. Every block needs a house like that (just one) on Halloween.

Worst associations with Halloween:

- The movie Halloween. I remember seeing this on VHS while over at my friend Julie's in maybe fifth grade. At first, the idea that we were getting to see an R-rated movie with nudity was super enticing. But I think I knew I was out of my league within the first minutes of the film. The theme playing over the opening credits was bad enough, but what I remember most was being disturbed even by the mean kids smashing a big pumpkin on the ground (around 6:30 in the link above) -- forget about the topless women being knifed. After my mom found out that I had been allowed to see this movie and The Groove Tube, I wasn't allowed to go to Julie's anymore.

- Being Charlie Chaplin circa 8th grade. Epitome of awkward. It's already kind of weird that I had a thing for Charlie Chaplin (I mean in the '80s really any dude with eyeliner was fair game) and then that I tried to carry that over into drag is just even more weird.

- Three Musketeers. Most expendable booty of the lot. Fuck nougat.

- Being out at night on Halloween as an adult.

Last year at Halloween, I agreed to go to a work-related event. At the time, I was working for a cooking-party company and we were actively seeking both venues and clients. One of the venues we work with was having an open house.

Pathetic admission: If I'd still been married at the time, it's likely I would have skipped this event. But I was newly single, with one low income, and what else did I have to do but try to goose my event sales by attending this function? So I went to the open house, which was at a small professional kitchen in Pacifica, CA.

Now, Pedro Point Creative is the nicest kitchen you could ask for if you're planning a small dinner or cooking class. It's a gorgeous little space and I recommend it to anyone on the peninsula.

That said, the event ended up being basically a neighborhood party. I felt a bit out of place walking along uneven road behind the windy cliffs in my heels trying to find the kitchen, at one point passing a yard filled with a junk (the old man there had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him where Pedro Point Creative was) and then later stopping to ask for directions at a recreational hall filled with teens who were at some sort of dance or party. It was the most random street ever. Finally I found it, a modest but attractive house nestled in between other modest houses of varying attractiveness.

Most of the people who showed up brought their kids and were obviously from the houses nearby. No one was really interested in booking a cooking party. The neighborhood was a quietly dramatic group of houses perched on cliffs next to the Pacific Ocean, but it wasn't a particularly affluent crowd. It was the kind of area where sweeping sea vistas, junkyards and tiny homes all came together.

Pacifica is small, odd, very windy and starkly beautiful. It's also the last place you're going to land a big event client on Halloween night. I kind of knew this going in, but again, what else did I have to do but go and see what a professional kitchen on the lower level of a house on a residential street in Pacifica was like?

I drove home along Highway 1 in the rain and felt more alone than I ever had on Halloween, even more than the ones spent alone in my apartment in New York. It seemed as though everyone I met that night was wearing a costume that would never fit me. I was about as likely to become a princess or Spider-Man as I was the chef behind the stove making hors d'oeuvres, or an outdoorsy mom leading her kids and dog through a remote seaside street from house to house, or a hippie artist/photographer/stylist.

Not sure what I'll do for Halloween this year, but I'm going to try to avoid anything that involves work, Pacifica or Charlie Chaplin.

Music: "Shockadelica"

Points of Contention: Big Questions.

Sometimes the topics of debate that take place during my work day blow my mind. Here are some examples, just from today. *

Is the word "panties" objectionable?

Do people care about Amber Rose?

Are most people aware that their gas contains ethanol?

If it's a cardigan with a hood, can you call it a "hoodie"?

Do people remember that Ben Affleck played Jack Ryan?

Who is more interesting from The Real World: Jacinda or Ruthie?

Is Paranormal Activity really that scary?

Is it that much of a concern if there's a Purell shortage?

* My opinions, consecutively: sort of, no, who knows, not really, no, Ruthie, who knows, no

Music: What's the Use?

Random Pics.

First of all, if you still even look at this URL, thank you. I apologize for not delivering much lately. That's a whole separate UncMo.

A side benefit of needing to have bloodwork done at the Quest Diagnostics lab on Connecticut Avenue in Washington is that you will leave feeling better about your life than you did when you walked in, especially after being exposed to the staff there. You may not be thrilled to watch multiple vials fill up with your own blood, but your phlebotomist is even less thrilled. I can't remember the last time I saw people looking so miserable in their jobs. Maybe it's just too many babies and specimens being loaded onto their counters.

A few years ago, I visited a friend and his wife, who is a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. While we were sitting at the dinner table, the surgeon looked at me and at her husband. "You both have placid face," she said. Placid face? My friend's wife pointed to her forehead, where she had a crease in the center, which drove her crazy. "Your foreheads are perfectly smooth," she said wistfully. "Placid face."

It's true that my forehead has always been a great, vast expanse of smoothness, which frankly never in my life occurred to me as an asset until then. After that, whenever I had a moment of grieving over my fivehead, I would console myself with the idea that someone out there actually thought there was something enviable about it.

Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of an Amtrak train window and realized that that vestige of comfort is gone. I have a big stress-induced pock mark on the side of my forehead. Aging is a sneaky motherfucker.

I found this attempt at distraction in my new lady-doctor's office pretty amusing at first. Did these people really think that something looking like the worst travel agency poster ever, taped up on tile ceiling over flourescent lighting, was going to enhance my experience in the stirrups?

I reconsidered my stance while I was involuntarily learning the meaning of the term vasovagal reaction during a biopsy (I'm OK) and becoming suddenly intensely invested in the idea of being on a seashore. I focused on that poster like there was no tomorrow as my insides were being scraped out. Thanks guys!


I could not stop staring at this man's hair while at the DMV trying to get Maryland license plates for my car (an astonishingly difficult feat, as it turned out). In the back (the party), his hair undulated in soft, impeccable waves. In the front (business), it was very spiky and filled with product. This picture really doesn't do justice to the textures involved. He also sat in his DMV seat with complete discipline, seemingly out of respect for his hair and/or for those who would admire it. I think the DMV should have been paying him to sit there, just to remind all of us hopeless souls waiting endlessly that true greatness is possible.

Music: "Private Eyes"

Lists.

I happened on an awesome bookstore this weekend in New York and ended up buying this book.

I went from hating Curious Lists to loving it in about two minutes. The book is basically a bunch of list titles followed by dotted lines so that you can fill them out.

My first reaction: "What? You have to complete them yourself? This is stupid. 'Ukelele Songs Appropriate for a Funeral?' How self-consciously McSweeneysesque* and hipsterish. I hate 'assisted creativity.' I hate the suggestion that it would be useful for me to spend my time ruminating on some other person's theme with the fake objective of enhancing my own creativity."

But then a couple of the illustrations made me laugh. And then a couple of the lists gave me ideas for my own writing. And then some of the list headers, which were entirely nonsensical relating to the lists themselves but still pleasing to contemplate (Lists for Vacations, Lists for Rainy Days, Lists for Lunchtime), made happy to think about. I thought about the fact that I do like to make lists. I liked that this book inspired me to think about lists again as a flight of fancy or a pleasurable catalogue (Nick Hornby) rather than something self-conscious and overly cute (not linking out here), even as it offered topics that were both.

I wanted to be above this book, in a way, but the fact is a) I'm easily impressed and b) I'm kind of old and not that creative anymore. Instead of coming up with this book, I'm buying it.

And filling it out on the train back from NYC.

Qualities of an Undesirable Train Companion

A fondness for farting
Deli meats, internal or external
Blaring ring tones
A tendency to speak loudly and often
More than two legs
Respiratory issues
Inability to detect boundaries of personal space
Anyone in a diaper

Additions welcome.

* I totally submitted lists to McSweeneys and I think even had one or two published and so this is just me being a jerk.

People I Am Not.

All I can ever be to you
Is the darkness that we knew
And this regret I got accustomed to -- Amy Winehouse

I was at the gym today, feeling pretty low about my day and myself, when this song came on. It hit me: Hey, now there's a person who knows feeling crummy. At least I'm not Amy Winehouse.

I started to feel better already, moseying to the steam room and contemplating all the ways I am not like Amy Winehouse, at least on the surface. "This works!" I thought to myself. "Who else am I glad not to be? Mark Sanford. Yes! I may be feeling a bit disheartened at work today, or pretty far down on the real estate totem pole for someone my age, or a bit socially adrift right now, but I am not Mark Sanford, and that's a reason to walk around feeling grateful."

I made a little mental list of people I'm glad I'm not. Maybe you have your own list. Feel free to share it here.

Amy Winehouse

Gov. Mark Sanford

This person

Courtney Love

Rick Pitino

The great thing about being human is that no matter how badly you've screwed up, chances are there's someone out there who has screwed up even worse than you have. If you're Courtney Love, it's arguable that you might console yourself by thinking about Amy Winehouse. Rick Pitino might think of Steve McNair. George W. Bush might think of Hitler. We've all messed up pretty seriously at one time or another.

Grudges.

How much professional disdain can you accommodate before it overflows and poisons the personal, and vice versa?

How hard do you try to comprehend a person's motives before you simply write off the individual as a bunghole, even though surely s/he has loved ones who could ably rebut this conclusion, excuse my pun, and might even say that you are the one who is the bunghole? Is it healthier to try to understand/forgive, or to decide that bh is bh and take a persona non grata stance?

Once someone has crossed the line in terms of your own acceptable rules of conduct, how do you deal with that person going forward?

These questions have always been difficult for me, and they have run particularly deep over the last few weeks.

Once, many years ago, I made an edit to a column because it was slanderous. The columnist, with whom I'd been very friendly up until then, screamed at me over the phone after finding out. I stood my ground. The columnist went to my boss. My boss backed me up. More screaming. I've never been talked to like that before by a colleague, and haven't since. It shook me, and shook my estimation of that person.

After a couple of days, all was forgotten -- on the columnist's end. But for me, that relationship was effectively over, and I avoided all but the necessary interactions.

Before the tirade, the columnist had offered to help me get connections outside my company and had already helped me secure one job interview. It would have behooved me to let bygones be bygones and continue to use this person for contacts, but I couldn't ask for any more help from someone who, I felt, had betrayed me.

Similarly, it took me several years to get over a relative's behavior toward my father in the wake of his mother's death and disagreements over her estate. I had to see this relative at holidays, and it took some energy to actively avoid her, to signal that she had done wrong, and that I had not forgotten it.

You see, I've been a grudge-holder for a good part of my life. The grudge is a symbol of principle, of justice, of righteousness, of self-preservation: One so concretely circumscribed by her sense of right and wrong is stronger, less permeable. Debilitating struggles with sympathy or grey areas are averted. Interlopers are swiftly judged and excommunicated.

My brother, unlike me, greeted the offending relative as he always would have. He had no chill in his voice. As far as he was concerned, the shadow was between her and my father. He could never understand why he should get worked up about something that had nothing to do with him. I used to judge this, too. Where was his sense of loyalty? Where was his sense of outrage?

But my father, too, forgave her over time, and I was left with my own righteousness on behalf of no one, slowly sapping my energy during family gatherings even though the original point had been lost. Eventually I had to just forgive and resume normal relations. I did not forget. But the contrast with my brother made me wonder: When is a grudge worth nothing more than the pain it inflicts on its owner?

I'll never be able to adopt my brother's easy approach to things, but I've come to a place of forgiving faster and forgetting sometimes. I come to it only as a white-flag surrender, not as an act of strength. I can no longer grant grudges to everyone. I simply don't have the emotional capital. Only the real bastards can earn it. The rest can languish in the emotional dustbin.

Music: "Running"

and

Music: "Float On"