Revisiting Old Friends.

I felt like a real sham logging into "blogger" just now, because I have not been a blogger. I have been a shirker.

However, some things:

- I am currently blogging on another site about my attempts to reduce energy usage. Overall, it's a very cool project that also has participants from eight other countries. While you may think that phrases such as "energy diet" and "carbon footprint" are less than compelling (and you would be correct about this), in reality this blog involves lots of other matters that are undeniably fascinating, such as milk machines, sunflowers that dwarf children, going straight from a cross-continental flight straight to protest in Cairo and commuter pain in one of the world's worst cities for traffic.

- Prince is currently on tour, and I have not bought any tickets, nor do I have plans to buy tickets. My friends, who know (more or less) about my Feelings, have helpfully pointed out that he and I are going to be in California at the same time. He also was in NYC when I could have been there. And, well, I don't know. In NYC, ticket prices hovered around $150. They are lower in Oakland, but my time in the Bay Area is limited, and if he is going to drag Jehovah's Witness proselytizer Larry Graham out on stage, it's really best that I sit this one out. I'm excited that he's selling out arenas on short notice and still looks eerily the same as 20 years ago even though he's 52 years old, and that he's still rolling with Sheila E. But brothers and sisters, Prince is not even stopping in DC, and hasn't made an album I want to listen to in seven years, if I'm generous enough to include Musicology, which I am, but still. I refuse to acknowledge that our relationship is over, because he is Forever in My Life. But my affections have been sorely tested.

- Recently, I needed some reading material for the train and, a propos of nothing (well actually when I think about it it's because at my new workplace, there's a woman named Jo, which put the book in my subconscious, along with having read about the new Susan Cheever biography of its author), decided that I felt like re-reading Little Women. It seemed like the answer to my craving for characters and comfort.

As a child, I was given a whole library of abridged classics for young readers. I devoured 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Poe's stories ("The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Gold Bug," "Fall of the House of Usher") Treasure Island, Little Women.

Basically, I'm a sucker for any book that involves women sitting by fires, reading books, longing for excitement and anticipating "gay parties" or encounters with desirable gentlemen, maybe because that pretty much sums up my girlhood, except for the fireplace part. The March girls fit the bill.

When I took the Bantam paperback up to the register, the college-age cashier paused. "Oh, I read this when I was little," she said. "So did I," I said, a little surprised that girls now and girls then might still be reading the same things. "I thought I'd revisit it."

"Aw," she said in a way that suggested she thought I was kind of cute but also kind of sad.

Had I picked up a children's book? Was Little Women going to be less satisfying to re-read than, say, Jane Eyre or The Woman in White?

I'm sad to say it, but.... kind of yes. I've been struck by how Louisa May Alcott really hits you over the head with how wonderful and virtuous the girls are, not to mention with Jesus Christ.

The book opens at Christmas, when the four sisters are lamenting their fate of being poor and without their father, who is away during the Civil War. They know not to expect any presents, but their beloved mother (Marmee) promises that they will find something under their pillows in the morning.

[Jo] remembered her mother's promise and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a little crimson-covered book. She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going the long journey.

Seriously?

"Girls," said Meg seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her to the two little nightcapped ones in the room beyond, "Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once. We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away and all this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things. You can do as you please, but I shall keep my book on the table here and read a little every morning as I wake, for I know it will do me good and help me through the day."

I have a pretty high tolerance for pious, ridiculously upstanding heroines (Clarissa, holla), but this and other elements of the book bummed me out a bit, to be honest. I just remembered the March girls as being more earthy, more real. But then, I read this book at a time when I thought the Brady Bunch and Olivia Newton-John were spittin' truth.

So yeah, it was disappointing to encounter a book that felt less authentic than the first time I read it. But then Jo meets the Laurence Boy, and the girls bicker, and I'm all swept up again. Despite Alcott's heavy-handedness with the characterizations sometimes, I can't help but be charmed by passages like this:

There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Beth was a child still and loved her pets as well as ever. ...One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied [um hello Louisa, dangling modifier much? -- ed] on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, read to it, took it out to breathe the air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to bed without kissing is dirty face and whispering tenderly, 'I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear.'

Reading that, and knowing what happens to Beth, well bless my own heart, I have to keep going, because this is where Louisa May Alcott becomes a cross between Beverly Cleary and Charlotte Bronte in capturing the young and the female Sentiments. So now I am more than halfway through Little Women, even though it makes me want to say "capital" instead of "great" and may be even more embarrassing to carry around than a Twilight book. But I do not care.

Music: "Old Friends 4 Sale"

Uncomfortable Moments With Putin.

Clearing your cache can lead to some unexpected discoveries. Tonight I meant to go to my blog and typed "uncomfor" --

and lo, what do you think comes up in Google's auto-suggest? It isn't UncMo, my friends. It's Uncomfortable Moments With Putin.

My hat is off to this site, a compendium of awkward national leadership rivaled only by Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things.

The search term "uncmo," fyi, brings up a lot of inscrutable results from UNCC, such as UNCC Moodle. I don't know what a moodle is, but I respect that the good people at University of North Carolina Charlotte came up with it, and thus captured search results for uncmo.

Death.

How did you first come to understand what death is?

I can't remember the answer to this, myself. It probably involved a goldfish. But I can remember experiencing, for the first time, being lied to about death.

My grandmother had a golden retriever that I absolutely loved when I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Cindy was one of the highlights of my visits. She was furry and let me ride her and was my friend.

Then, one visit, Cindy wasn't there. Where was Cindy, I wanted to know? I was informed that Cindy had gone to the vet.

Cindy was at the vet for a super long time, but that was OK. I would simply wait until she came back.

But it took a really long time for Cindy to come back. I was on this story like Geraldo Rivera. Was Cindy back yet? When was she going to come back? Why did she go to the vet, anyway? WHERE THE FUCK IS CINDY?

I never got a satisfactory answer. Cindy never came back. Eventually I, the most Gullible Child in America, figured it all out.

It was (and is) not my mom's style to lie to me. However, it was my grandmother's style to lie, and she insisted that the situation be dealt with in this manner.

It seems like parents get kind of stressed out (I sure would) about this moment -- the moment when death must be explained somehow. I'd like to come down with a firm verdict and say that being lied to scarred me forever. It did not.

I advocate honesty. But whether you're straightforward, roundabout or downright deceptive, our culture tends to be severely fearful of death, and you're not going to change that in one instant.

This post was inspired by a friend's comment on Facebook about how she dealt with this same situation:

"[I had] to explain to J. yesterday that a dog he knew died. ...This dead dog has been dogging me since September!" she wrote. "It belonged to the physical therapist J. sees twice a week, and he'd fed him treats before. When we came back after the summer break, there was a photo of Freddy posted, and a message saying he'd passed away.

"And now, in January, the photo is still there, so naturally J. has started asking when Freddy is coming back. I decided to use the word "died," but now he is working it into everyday conversation and saying "so and so died," which is usually untrue, but kind of jarring to hear!"

My mom -- though she lied on behalf of her stepmother to me about Cindy -- taught me more about death than anyone, because she experienced it so harshly and so soon. Her mother died when she was 9 years old, and her father died as she was rounding her 20s. She also lost her beloved grandmother too soon. She communicated this loss in the way she talked about those loved ones after they were gone, and in the way she hugged us and said "I love you."

In college, for a sociology of religion class, I decided to write my final paper on belief systems around death. I thought (and still think) that the way religions and cultures explain death is fascinating. I was printing out my paper (dot-matrix) in the university lab and encountered a student from Israel who asked what it was about.

As I told him, he looked confused and dismayed. "Why would you write a paper about something like that?" he said. He had served in the Israeli Army and had witnessed a lot of death. He couldn't understand why anyone would dwell on this subject willingly, make it an academic topic. A paper.

I felt, in the moment, like a dirty voyeur, because that's what I was. At the heart of my academic interest lay a desire to find an coping mechanism that would work for me when death inevitably came my way.

I liked the idea of no mirrors. I liked the idea of setting a time limit on mourning. Other than that, not much insight. Because you can't prepare.

The first time I had to face death -- for real -- came when my grandmother died of colon cancer. It was the first time I'd ever seen a person on her deathbed.

It was horrifying. It was horrifying not only to see my grandmother, so beautiful and proper, reduced to a rattling skeleton where she lay, but also to see my father hunched over her, weeping, clasping her hand and telling her what a good mother she had been.

I remember being very angry. I was angry about what happened to her, and then about the fact that we were all asked to convene at the restaurant Grandma liked to visit for her birthday dinners.

What the fuck? Why would we go to the RESTAURANT where we celebrated her BIRTHDAY after her DEATH, as if she were here? That was, like, a cruel joke to me. I ran and ran on the treadmill that day, dry-eyed, trying to work it out. I never did. I just had to accept that that's what her kids -- the ones who mattered -- wanted to do.

If someone could tell me a good lie today, as an adult, about death -- if I could somehow revert to the child I was, and believe that lie -- I daresay I'd prefer it.

Music: "Sometimes It Snows in April"

No Thank You.

So, I faithfully watch The Bachelor franchise. I do not expect your support for this decision. It is a Personal Life Choice for me.

Those of us who watch The Bachelor know, and fully anticipate, that certain ridiculous words and phrases will recur throughout each season. The show knows this, the people on the show know it, and we in the audience wait for it, so that we can wince (or drink) accordingly when we hear:

"on this journey"
"soul mate"
"here for the right reasons"
"most dramatic/controversial/etc season EVER"
prince/princess metaphors
"I came here to fall in love"
"this process"
and many others

But the phrase that struck me on Monday night's show came during Brad Womack's one-on-one date with Jackie. To me, there was a clear dealbreaker on this date for Brad, and it wasn't Jackie's supposed cautiousness in love or the irksome amount of times she confirmed that she felt special.

It was how she kept saying "thank you."

I am all for being polite. My mother is a please-and-thank-you Nazi, and I admire her for that and (yes) thank her for training me to be a polite, appreciative person.

As a child, I learned to say thank you early and often, both verbally and via handwritten notes, which are probably about as common as five-year diaries these days.

But you can say thank you too much.

Let's say you're in a long-distance relationship, and your bf/gf comes to visit you. Let's say, like Jackie, you're on a date, and the other person signals that he's interested in being with you by kissing you, or making a general effort. Let's say you're going through a hard time, and a friend listens to you.

In moments like these, saying thank you is more insulting than polite. Certain actions are part and parcel of real relationships. You don't say thank you for them, as you would to someone who doesn't owe you these things. To say thank you in such a moment is actually a way of putting distance between yourself and the other person. You don't mean to do this, because you're busy being grateful and proper. But that's the effect.

Have you ever been thanked for something you considered it obvious to do in a relationship? It feels a little surprising and overly formal, doesn't it?

Still, my thank-you indoctrination has been complete and overly successful. Once, after a night out, one of mom's best friends gave me a ride home after a concert on her way out of the city. It was a no-brainer ride -- literally on her way.

I told her she could just drop me off a few blocks away. I get extremely uncomfortable at anything that might put someone out on my behalf. I generally avoid asking for rides, loans and most favors in general. She insisted on dropping me at my exact location. I thanked her.

At that point she got offended. "Of course," she said, shutting me up. She was understandably annoyed. The woman had known me for some 25 years; we were just at a concert together; my place is right on her way home. Of course she's going to drop me off at my door. To suggest otherwise by standing on ceremony and thanking her excessively is to cast doubt on her status as a real person in my life.

To this day, I have problems with this. Some of my loved ones are the same way. We thank each other too much: Thank you for listening to my crap. Thank you for coming out with me. Thank you for coming to visit me.

You do not say thank you for this stuff. It is part of the territory.

My thank-you heritage hit me one day after I'd been hanging out with my nephew, who was maybe 5 or 6 years old at the time, at my parents' house. At the end of the day, as he was about to leave, my mother urged him, "Say thank you to Neena for playing with you today." He dutifully thanked me.

My heart was broken in that moment. I tried to break the cycle there. My mom meant well. But I looked at my nephew and said, "You don't have to thank me. You never have to thank me for playing with you."

Music: "Thank You"

Cab Chronicles.

"Hey, you paying in cash, right? I don't take credit cards."

That was my first indication that this NYC cabbie was not like the others. Most of them have the credit-swipe machines and the TVs in the back that play light news reports and late-night talk show snippets. This guy had a gray screen and attitude.

I winced and got out. But fortunately, UncMo's Favorite Person was standing there seeing me off, and had cash for the fare. So back into the cab I went.

Like many cabs in NYC, this one was driven by an Arab gentleman. Unlike many cabs in NYC, it featured a soundtrack of Shinedown. At first, I thought it was just the radio, but no -- this guy was rocking the full CD, skipping songs he didn't like and humming quietly to the ones he did.

This cabbie was angry-lite. He alternated between humming to the power ballads, cursing other drivers ("The sign says Monday through Friday asshole! I'll kick your ass!") and inquiring about my relationship.

"Where are you going? Can I drop you off at Seventh?" he asked.

"Amtrak," I said. There was silence. "Seventh Avenue is fine, whatever's easiest."

"You can get Amtrak from any entrance," he said, which was clearly a "you are dumb and I don't care" statement, because any cabbie knows that "Amtrak" means "Eighth Avenue or as close as you can get to it." I did not respond.

But now he wanted to know: "You going to New Jersey?"

"No, D.C.," I said.

"Oh. That's where you from? Was that your boyfriend?" he asked. Mr. Shinedown had gone suddenly from angry to inquisitive.

I answered him. Long-distance relationship? Yes.

"Looks like it," he said coldly. I wasn't sure what that meant.

"My girlfriend is in New Jersey, and sometimes that's too far for me," he said. "Sometimes I just don't feel like going out there.

"She wants to live together, but I say no. I come to see you, and you come to see me, and that's it. You live together, and that's when the problems start," he said.

"Maybe," I said.

"Unless you get married, that's something else," he said.

I kept quiet.

We pulled up to the LIRR entrance to Penn Station, which was about a block and a half from where I needed to be.

"Is this OK? You can get to Amtrak from here," he said.

This cabbie was a d.b. I knew this, but actually ended up giving him a really good tip, because my a-la-minute math skills were not subtle enough to calculate the exact amount that says, "you weren't terrible enough for me to stiff you, but you don't deserve a good tip, so I'm giving you this middling amount," but also because he had managed to remind me that even though I was bummed in that moment to be leaving NYC, I was still a lot happier than, say, this guy.

He drove off and I trudged over to Eighth and 33rd, half annoyed and half amused.

Music: "Call Me"

Dear Diary.

The last time you shopped for a five-year diary, which may have been just last month or perhaps December of 2005, or perhaps never, you probably did so with some trepidation, knowing that five-year diaries -- and well, even the concept of writing anything down on paper -- have become increasingly obsolete.

I just filled my sixth five-year diary (yes, friends, that multiplies out to 30 years of crazy) and needed a new one. Not getting a new five-year diary was not an option. I've come this far in chronicling every damned day of my relatively boring life, and am not about to stop now. Contrary to what many people believe about a new year, it is really an opportunity to affirm that change is bad.*

Despite the fact that many of my five-year diaries have metal locks on them, or embossed script, or gold-edged pages, they are devastatingly unspecial and banal. They more often resemble an accountant's ledger, if you will, of my life.* Take a sample day: Did I work? Did I go to the gym? Did I eat at a restaurant? Did I have some notable sex? Did I watch a movie? Did I finish a book? Did I talk to my mom? Did I meet a new person? Did I have a generic, oppressive emotion? Wow, yeah. What's on television?

Still, the diaries are a handy reference point for me. Every once in awhile, I will thumb back to that vacation, or that holiday, or that date, and get a useful thumbprint sketch. Occasionally, phrases capture slow shifts and sudden revelations: "I feel sort of stateless, [my mom] and I have a new gap in understanding." "I broke down and said I wasn't feeling like I could try." "I'm sort of addicted to his presence in my life right now." (Note: When circling grand proclamations, it's prudent to use the words "Sort of.")

To me, journals are different than diaries. The word journal, post-1990s, is a little icky. It sounds like a yoga retreat assignment (to be expressed in the verb form "journaling"), or a positive-thinking exercise. I love yoga and positive thinking, but would just as soon leave journals out of it. The best journals do not have structure, themes, or self-aware labeling.

I was faithful to a system through my teens and twenties: journals were for long-form and diaries were for short-form. The long-form is now a Word document on my computer, rather than a book. But the short-form remains handwritten. I still believe there is value in putting a pen to paper every day, even if it's only for five or six lines.

So imagine the warm and happy surprise of coming across this five-year diary. I literally almost wrote a fan letter to the designer of this book, Tamara Shopsin, and apparently I am not alone.

First of all, Shopsin's diary simply revives the form. It looks clean and alluring, rather than antiquated and inexplicable. It has six lines allotted for each year, rather than the customary four or five, which, as it turns out, is just the right amount of space to make you feel more expansive, to make you share more, to make you try, when you're writing about your day.

It has the requisite ribbon for saving your place.

And -- I love this, because I used the "notes" space at the back of my last diary for this very same thing -- it has a BOOK LOG section at the end.

Do not let your days slip away unmarked. Someone -- your spouse, your child, your parent, some alien in a museum, maybe even you -- will want to hold onto something and look back at you someday, will want to find you through a looking glass.

* My sister, a propos of nothing, recently sent around a link to a Meyers-Briggs test. A former boss of mine was obsessed with this test. I'd taken it once for her, and then another time in my latest round of kareer konfusion, and yet I still could not for the life of me recall which type I am supposed to be, though I had a hazy memory that I'm an INTJ, so I took it yet again. My result was ISTJ, aka the "Duty Fulfiller," aka the most Boring Spice of all possible personality types. ISTJs are also not known to love change. Among the recommended occupations for ISTJs: Accountant. However, the test indicated that I was one percentage point off from INTJ. So do you know what I did? That's right, I took the test a-fucking-gain to PROVE that I was, in fact, an INTJ, or "The Scientist". What is the personality type for someone who doesn't like her result on a stupid personality test, and so takes it again so she can prove she is a different type of nerd than what the original results indicated?

Music: "The Scientist"

Photos by sirmchin

How Was Your Holiday?

How was your holiday? And by holiday, I mean Christmas? I don't know about you, but I'm always a little startled these days when someone who doesn't know me at all wishes me a merry Christmas, or asks how my Christmas was. But at the same time, I kind of like it, because it seems so, well, rebellious. We all know that we are meant to say HOLIDAY as a way of avoiding insensitivity toward other faiths, which is fine, except that now I exclusively say holiday just as a reflex, which is kind of too bad.

Anyway, my Christmas was quite nice. Really no "buts" here. Last year, there were some "buts." My Christmas was nice, but my front tooth had broken, and it broke some more during Christmas dinner, so I had to get up in the middle of the meal and get some Super Glue to put it back on, in addition to which my sister was recovering from surgery and my boyfriend had been sick and had to get out to the suburbs in the snow in a ZipCar.

No such buts here. Everyone was healthy, present and accounted for. I felt very lucky for that.

There were a couple of moments, of course. Not buts. Maybe alsos.

My aunt defied the Thanksgiving pact stating that none of us would bring gifts for extended family this year. She brought gifts for everyone -- everyone except my boyfriend. My uncle saw his wife deliver my gift to me and said to her (as if the bf and I were not within earshot), "Did you get gifts for..." and yanked his head unsubtly toward my bf and my brother's girlfriend. My aunt looked flummoxed for a moment, then recovered with a cleverly worded reply. "Yes, I got gifts for all the kids!" she answered him triumphantly. There was no gift for my bf -- but then, he's not one of "the kids."

My gift was a lidded tea mug that looked ceramic, but claimed to have Thermos-like properties that kept the inner contents hot while keeping the outside cool to the touch. "I got it for you because I know how much you love to drink tea," my aunt enthused as though we'd talked about my beverage preferences at length, when in fact she has no way of knowing whether I drink tea. I mean sure, yes, I do drink tea. But how odd that she gave me this gift based on a pretense that could be entirely false, for all she knew! And we had agreed no gifts...

My dad had gotten my mom a set of wireless speakers to put around the house, because he'd noticed that she listens to music when he's not around. "I noticed that you always listen to music when I play golf," he said by way of explanation as she opened it.

"What? When you play golf? I don't listen to music when you play golf," she said in the unnecessarily offended way that only people who have been married 40-plus years can use with each other -- in the way that suggests there are years, RIVERS really, of transgressions buried here in this seemingly innocuous exchange that you as a bystander know nothing about.

"Yes you do, when I come back from golf, you're always playing music on your computer," my dad persisted. She finally got what he was saying, sort of.

"He was being thoughtful, mom," I said later.

"I just didn't understand what he meant! I thought he was saying that I play music when we go out golfing together, and I never do that!" she said. To be fair, my mom is a little too accustomed to my dad being -- well, not thoughtful.

When a gift-giver is truly thoughtful -- in other words, actually thinking about what you might want, instead of just giving a token prize, or worse, giving what s/he really wants -- it's a wonderful thing. But sometimes the gift-giver is thoughtful toward a version of you that does not exist; or existed 10 years ago but no longer does; or exists now, but has not been properly verified. And so we can't see the thoughtfulness, because we're staring at the petrified trees of old resentments and habits.

The tea mug, by the way, gets unmanageably hot within about a minute of being filled with boiling water, just like a regular mug would, except that this mug doesn't have a handle (because, you know, it has double insulation), which renders it nearly useless.

Still, my aunt had been so psyched about giving it to me. And it really was very thoughtful. So I will probably keep trying to use it, depending on how many burns my hands can withstand.

My dad is in charge of the stockings at Christmas. This year he included the customary Ban roll-on at the bottom of my stocking, which is an inexplicable family in-joke (and not related to anything regarding my personal hygiene), even though I now have more Ban than I'll ever be able to use. He also got me a copy of Rolling Stone, which I haven't read in about 10 years, but subscribed to from my teens through my 20s.

In previous years, he has given me investing magazines, even though I'd taken a 10-year hiatus from stocks and I never read investing magazines. He was remembering that time in the '90s when I was excited about stocks.

But what I love about these magazines is that (and this is going to sound pathetic, but I try always to remain true to the spirit of this blog) they tell me I am seen. I am seen in a kind of blurry, Coke-bottle way, but when it comes to my dad, I'll take it. Besides, I liked catching up with Rolling Stone. It was kind of like visiting an old friend who got too annoying to hang out with, but had some redeeming qualities you'd forgotten.

Basically, that's all anybody wants from a gift: The sense that the giver sees you.

Did your holiday come with any buts or alsos?

HuffPo and the Spectrum of American Life.

Not sure why it took so long for a news site to cobble together a divorce section, but editors at The Huffington Post have finally done so, and my hat is off to them.

The only thing that enthralls people more than a good love story is a good love implosion, which is why it makes perfect sense that, according to Ariana Huffington, many of the divorce section's readers are actually married.

So while most of the left column of HuffPo Divorce contains practical headlines designed to serve divorced readers ("Is Your Ex-Husband Your BFF?", "Lawyers Love to Hear You Talk"), the center column is dedicated mostly to stoking the schadenfreude associated with watching others' marriages dissolve (Eva, Reese, Courteney) and to studies that might give one the false but satisfying sense that being armed with more statistics can help in avoiding the same fate. (In case you were intrigued by that arresting "DON'T Marry Your Soul Mate" headline in the image above, I'll give you the short version: Don't marry your soul mate -- unless you are rich.)

But the best part about the debut of the divorce section is that it adds another facet to the picture of American life that emerges when you scan only the section touts on the HuffPo front page:

MORE ENTERTAINMENT
MORE POLITICS
MORE RELIGION*
MORE TECH
MORE DIVORCE
MORE SPORTS
MORE FOOD
MORE MEDIA
MORE LIVING*
MORE STYLE
MORE EDUCATION*

I think if you put the word LESS in front of the topics with asterisks, you'd have it about right.

False Start.

Awhile back, I announced that I was starting a blog about D.C. life called States and Circles.

I wanted to write about things that I was wondering about, and for which I rarely get good answers: Where's the best place here to get a massage? Is there a pool nearby I can use? Who has the best bubble tea in Dupont Circle? How, for the love of God, can I escape the cupcake craze? (You know -- all the important stuff in life.)

I still want to write about those things, but now acknowledge that I'm never going to do it enough to warrant a separate URL. I started States and Circles while a) embroiled in one job b) looking for another job and c) thinking that I might want to be a local-coverage professional.

Now I am very happy to leave local coverage to the people who are actually good at it and start work that involves something else entirely. I am retiring the States and Circles blog and moving everything right here to UncMo under the tag "d.c. life," accessible at right.

To the .001 percent of you who care, I thank you for your patience and support.

Reformed Underachiever.

The tag attached to the over-the-knee socks I bought yesterday reads:

"Conveying a sophisticated sense of personal style, Passione is elegant, worldly and yet refreshingly relaxed. As at home with blue jeans and tennis shoes, as a black dress and pumps, Passione begs you to leave behind the 'I can't' mind set of the past, to live like never before. Open your heart to a love affair of possibility revealed in the romantic Italian inspired designs that are uniquely Passione."

I know now that you're seeing this knitted wonder, you're saying to yourself, Yes -- I want to date it.

Or perhaps you are saying to yourself that it's time to abandon proper usage of commas and hyphens, to go ahead and make mindset two words -- just like that! Because all of a sudden, you're feeling as though you can live as never before, except for that brief period in the 1980s.

To you, this item indeed evokes a love affair of possibility -- possibility that you can recapture your youth by donning the same type of footwear you would have worn in fifth grade; perhaps even the possibility (dare I utter it?) that we may have been right about leg warmers.

You find yourself opening your heart to the idea of paying $22 for socks, because they are called legwear, and because you have had such a hard time finding anything else remotely wearable in Bloomingdale's today. You're ready to put all those unromantic and emotionally stifling socks behind you. Who knows: Maybe you will even wear them with pumps. You might do anything now!

Well. That's what happened to me, anyway.