Aaaarrrrgh.

Sigh.

Just needed to get that out there. I’m so totally uninspired to do any schoolwork these days. Man, am I sick of being in school right now. And I’m just whiny, whiny, whiny. What else can I whine about? The Cardigans are playing at Southpaw next weekend but I can’t go ’cause it’ll be the night before my final on seventeenth-century literature. My knee hurts. I am craving some cake. Whine, whine, whine. Oh, also, tonight there’s a meeting in my building to talk about setting up a board of directors for the condo, and I don’t want to go ’cause I think that the other lovely, quiet people in the building are gonna look at me and be like, Oh, you’re the one who gets in those insane, raucous, rollicking, three-hour phone conversations where it sounds like you’re speaking in tongues.

Neways, so I was in the library all afternoon yesterday alternately reading and trying not to fall asleep reading, until I spoke to Maud and was invited to go read on Jill’s roof on West Twelfth instead. Of course when I got there all’s we did was look at the new tomato and cilantro plants (where the cilantro is currently just a pot of dirt), and wave at other people on their roofs, and chat, and giggle. Then I started getting allergic reactions (nose itching, throat closing up) to all this new spring air, and then Jill started getting tired of Maud and me talking about Nathalie Sarraute, and then we decided to go to dinner. The West Village was crawling with all manner of hungry people, which means we were turned away from a couple of other restaurants before finally falling into the patio out back at A.O.C. Salmon tartare and frisée aux lardons, yum yum yum. At one point we were trying to remember the lyrics to “I Like Big Butts” but didn’t get very far. At another point Jill’s friend Pip came by and Maud said, “Ceci n’est pas un pipe,” but somehow I was the only one laughing. I may even have snorted, I don’t remember. There’s a good chance, though. At another point we realized the odds of Jill’s cat Gitane getting a cell phone are better than Tom getting a cell phone. Throughout the night, whenever someone said “mode”—as in, “I’m in that mode where. . .” —eyes darted toward Maud and then there was collapsing and chortling. Actually it’s still funny now.

Recently this weird thing has been happening where I get a feeling something’s going to happen, and then it does. Like, I was in the library, getting a book out of Reserves, and I thought, “I’m juggling too many things and I just know I’m going to forget my wallet.” And then an hour later I was rifling through my bag and of course my wallet wasn’t there. It’s also happened with my phone, also in the library, when at one point I looked at all the stuff my bag had vomited up on the table in front of me, and I thought, “I’m sure I’m going to leave my phone behind or something.” And then I did. Both things were regained at Security later on, but still. Oh, and there was also the time I put down the coffee cup and was like, “You’re just asking for that to tip over,” but then I just vowed to be very careful, and then like half an hour later knocked the cup on its side. Wha-ha? And walking home from the subway station last night, I thought, “Up ahead is where that uneven bit in the sidewalk is, let’s try not to trip over it,” so of course a couple of minutes later I’m sprawled on the pavement, and then I’m limping and bleeding the rest of the way home. What kind of strange cosmic things are swirling around me? My mum said it’s my guardian angel giving me warnings, and I just need to pay attention. And I’m like, Shouldn’t the guardian angel just take care o’ bizniss? Like, hello, not make the coffee cup tip over? And my mum said no, ’cause I’m an adult and the guardian angel’s just there to give suggestions. Huh. Somefink smells like a bum deal around here.

Also, I am sorry that I used the words “smell” and “bum” in the same sentence.

The finals coundown—

(HA HA HA)

—is two down, two to go.

I can taste the summer.

And I finally booked my round-trip home yesterday, with a lovely woman in the airline company reservations office in “L.A.” Planning said trip also involved a call to Lufthansa where this conversation evolved:

Me: So I arrive in Frankfurt and then I need a separate ticket to Oslo, then on to Paris, then back to Frankfurt.
Lufthansa woman: OK [click click click], that looks like it’s going to be 349 euros.
Me: OK, that sounds fine.
Lufthansa woman: But [click click click] if you book it in Europe it’ll be 149 euros.
Me: Oohhh? Um. Oh. But. Oh. OK, so like when I arrive in Frankfurt I just buy my ticket right then?
Lufthansa woman: That’s correct.
Me: But maybe they won’t have any more tickets?
Lufthansa woman: There are hourly flights from Frankfurt.
Me: To Oslo?
Lufthansa woman: That’s correct.
Me: Um. Oh, OK. Hmm. Well, well!
Lufthansa woman: . . .
Me: It’s just, I just don’t know if that’s too, y’know, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants for me.
Lufthansa woman: hee hee hee.
Me: OK, well, um. . . well well well. Um. OK, thanks, bye!!!

Boy, they sure are patient and nice at Lufthansa!

After hours and hours in the library, I am leaving, wrinkled.

A couple of nights ago I got a call from a old-new friend-acquaintance, which was a nice surprise because I right that second needed a break from working on my paper, and also because he’s an old-new friend-acquaintance and who ever expects those to call? Anyway, somehow we ended up on the phone for, I dunno, something like more than a couple of hours, where part of those hours were spent not only on the phone but also online and on AIM. I mention it because sometimes you swear off friends because you think you need to be all Studious, but that is so the wrong path to take, because then you feel not only like you have homework but also like you are alone in the world. And that makes you crabby. And so when you’re up late writing, having sworn off friends and Friday-night parties, a phone call from an old-new friend-acquaintance ends up being exactly what you need.

I was just stepping out this afternoon to make a photocopy for class when Jeff called, and he was in the neighborhood, and neither of us had had lunch, so—clearly—we needed to rendez-vous at Blue Ribbon for some nosh. P.S., there is a waiter at Blue Ribbon who really wants you to know about his butt—it is all pert and well supported by his bluejeans. Neways, a duck sandwich and a hummus platter later, we were buying Jeff a vintage lamp for his living room and parting in the rain. I like an impromptu nosh, and I like friends in the neighborhood.

The tangent is: the last time I hung out with Jeff in the ’hood, my hot neighbor E.— because it was a gorgeous day and he was sitting on the front steps of our building with his dogs, looking all hot—saw us and later asked me if Jeff was my boyfriend. Jeff and I both like boys; who does E. like?

Sometimes it’s as easy as perfectly timing the coffee, the scrambled eggs, and the challah toast with strawberry jam. Sometimes it’s as easy as a white bowl and a green bowl and a pink bowl in the sink.

Day in, day out, I am sitting and writing. I am tired of sitting and writing!!! My butt doesn’t write, but it is tired of sitting!!!

I’ve been trying to be a Serious Grad Student who is Very Disciplined about school and it’s not really working out for me, ’cause this girl can only take so many days of solitary sitting in front of the ’puter typing and erasing and retyping the same lame sentences into a final paper over and over again. Happily, yesterday evening I put my books in my locker at school and hopped the train to Williamsburg with a bottle of Saint Emilion to visit Schmio’s new place. Said place has: windows that look onto a tree with little green sprouting leaves; windows that look onto a centennial rose bush and a neighbor’s roof; a tin ceiling in the kitchen; more than one cute hipster boy neighbor; a pink wall; an orange wall; the cutest wooden furniture in the world, including a red-and-white flea-market kitchen table with a round-bottomed flour and sugar bin drawer. Said place is: railroadey; on a street with a big purple girl’s head painted on one wall; in boxes and unpacked suitcases, already Schmio. At one point the scene was me and Schmio and Maud, with a still-life of half a saucisson, two small bags of fancy chocolate, three wine glasses, and half an Evian bottle serving as an ashtray. Then it was time to go to dinner.

It is nice to have friends, and it is nice to laugh long and loud.

Sometimes things happen and you don’t know how to blog them, because they’re so unnerving and make you feel crazy.

So:

I got mugged yesterday.

I’m in the subway station, trying to buy a Metrocard. I see the kids, two of them, but I’m like, Eh, kids. And then as I’m at the ticket machine, I see, reflected in the screen, one of the kids behind me. So I turn around, and he walks away. At that point, I’m just thinking, Kids these days, just hangin’ out with nuthin’ to do. But I step away from the machine for a little bit, ’cause, well, I dunno, I just do. But I need a ticket, so I go back to the machine. And this time the other kid’s coming up to me, I feel his presence, I see the reflection in the screen, and before I can think anything or do anything, I feel my wallet slip out of my hand, so quickly, a flash, a bit, a nothing. They’re off running, I run after them, up the steps onto the street. It’s a great sunshiney blue-sky day and it’s Sunday morning and everyone’s out and about and there’s a diner at the top of the subway steps and people are eating in the open air. Suddenly I hear that I’m yelling, Stop him, Help me, He’s got my wallet, I don’t even know what I’m yelling, but I’m yelling. The kid’s off and running down the street. I know I’m not going to catch up. This guy on the street is carrying a baby, for no reason he’s the first person I wildly make eye contact with. He ducks into the diner to—I find out later—hand the baby off to his wife, then he comes out and says, “The kid in the white shirt?” And I say Yeah, and he tears off after him, but the kid’s got a massive head start and I just stand there, thinking, OK, what was in my wallet, what numbers do I have to call, crap, crap, crap. I start walking in the direction the kid was running in and I see that the second kid is just hanging out on the street so I go up to him and grab him by the shirt and I say, You were with him. And he’s all wide eyes, surprise, No, no, I wasn’t. And I’m not letting go of him, but he’s not even really struggling, and I see down the block that the guy with the baby and a couple of other guys have gotten that first kid. So I drag the second kid with me up to the guys, and I say, This kid was with him. And the kid’s saying, No, No, No. And one of the guys who helped out says, So why were you running? And the kid says, Because the lady said, Get him, he’s got my wallet, so I was chasing him. Man. Anyway, so, fast-forward to the end, I get my wallet back; the police are called; Jeff, whom I was going to meet for a quiet breakfast, comes to meet me and is the best thing to happen all day; we ride in a police car to the Seventy-eighth Precinct; we sit around for a while; they take my details; and it’s only been just over an hour since I left my apartment.

Some interesting things are: That I don’t remember feeling very much until we were all standing around waiting for the police, at which point I couldn’t stop trembling and I saw, reflected in a car window, that I was gripping my hands into such tight fists that my knuckles were white. That it was around then, too, that I noticed my mouth was completely dry. That when Jeff showed up, having booked it over in a cab, and gave me a hug, it was the best hug in the world.

It was also some kind of wonderful incredible that these people on the street, these complete strangers, my neighbors, I guess, all just kind of jumped in and helped, no hesitation, and then really didn’t care to stick around and be thanked profusely after. People can be crappy, but people can be really, really great.

The rest of the day everyone else I saw seemed to be living their normal lives, in a world different from mine. Or, well, same world, but it seemed like I was, I dunno, not fully there, just a body moving forward, because that’s what bodies do. I still feel a little crazy about the whole thing, but I guess that goes away?

Now you tell me.

Spring means windows open; the big yellowbrown dog at the house on the corner hanging over the gate again, tongue out, happy to see you; kids dressed in oversized sports gear running down the street yelling Bryan! Bryyyaaaannn!!!; girl teenagers in their tight T-shirts and boy teenagers with their loping walks coming from the park wafting a sharp trail of pot smoke behind them; a guy and his banjo on the stoop; a baby with a cowboy-print bib that says “Howdy.”

My home smells good ’cause there’s rice in the works. And it’s gonna be accompanied by soft tofu topped with shallots and Kweichow Foods Pure Aromatic Fish, which, according to the bottle, is lots of little fried anchovies in chili and soybean oil. I am excited about it because, well, clearly, it is going to be tasty, but also because it has been a really crappy day with zero inspiration for paper writing, and at least if I accomplish something today it will be Dinner.

Seems like overnight the flowers are out. All pink and green and white and all-round lovely.

Hello, spring.

The last two-and-a-half weeks I’ve had to resort to drawing up daily schoolwork to-do schedules. With checkboxes. It’s come to this. But it’s been going pretty well, I guess, feeling all productive-like. Still, this ongoing low-level stress thing is getting pretty tired. Had two class presentations this week, then this weekend I write a paper, next weekend I write a paper, the weekend after that I write a paper, and then the week after that I spend desperately memorizing as much as I can about seventeenth-century French literature. Clearly, girl needs a break. And I knew it was gonna be a good one when today in the hall Jason and I were making plans to go see Dave’s band Chromeo, and I said, “Who are they opening for?” and Jason said, “The Unicorns, and I think the other opening band is The Ponies or something.” And I said, “Ponies, that sounds familiar.” And he said, “Only because you want a pony.”

And then it continued to be good when—passing by the bunch of girls tossing about a frisbee in all their long-haired slow-mo American-youth glory, as if in some sort of Juicy Couture tournament—we stopped by the cash machine in Lerner and the girls behind us in line said: “I know, I mean, I really wanna go to, like, Spain with the Peace Corps.” “Oh, I know! Me, too!” “Yeah, and like you’re in Spanish, too, right?” “Yeah!”

After the longest subway ride ever, involving four—count ’em, four: the 1, the 2, the N, and the R—trains, we emerged in the Slope hungry as all hell. Dinner at Mekong, where the grilled eggplant was a pleasant discovery and the grilled squid in a spicy mango sauce continued to be taste-a-licious, and where I had to order the thing called Royale Tropicale because (a) it was called Royale Tropicale and (b) it was champagne and passion fruit juice, and this girl doesn’t turn down a champagne cocktail.

At Southpaw, our names were on the list. And, man, sometimes it just takes a rockin rockin room of thumping rockingness, and a deejay who knows to play Wham!’s “Everything She Wants,” and Dave’s crazy-shaped guitar, and the thing that makes Pete’s voice go Daft-Punky, to make the thought of homework go far, far away. (Um, the don’t-try-this-at-home bit is, apparently the thing that makes Pete’s voice go Daft-Punky can also electrocute you. Because you stick it in your mouth and the other end of it is plugged into, I dunno, a socket or something. Uhhhmmmm.) Dave said, “All our songs are about girls!” and “Our music was designed to make you feel good,” both of which are true and good. It turned out the Ponies were Pony’s, but we’d missed them anyway. And The Unicorns were good, I guess, and not just because one guy was dressed in pink tuxedo pants and a matching pink capelet and a pink shirt underneath. We just didn’t know what all the in-between-songs lame-banter down-time was about. It’s not like they were Britney Spears and (a) simulating masturbation and/or (b) having nine costume changes. But it was funny ’cause their two front guys look like: during rehearsals, one of them sits around getting stoned and giggling, while the other says, “Man, come on, let’s just go over that one one more time.”

Before we left, the coat check girl said I had the coolest bag she’d seen all night. And then because I am extra lucky, I got to walk home along the park.

Tomorrow, like Lars says, I will get my educate on.

The special flavor coffee of the day at the library café is Blueberry Cobbler. Uh, it’s all for you. It’ll be the Breakfast Blend to accompany me through the next few hours, and, oh, maybe also a bottle of chocolate milk—but only ’cause the label says it contains 67 percent more calcium than regular milk. Osteoporosis, begone!

I’m working on an explication de texte of the beginning of Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann, and I just took a look at my notes, which include:

“E. Time and consciousness? This is the bit where he wakes up and is like, ‘Whoa, I’m Charles the Fifth. But it’s cool, clearly I am Charles the Fifth.’ C/F Bergson.”

So maybe no more coffee tonight, then.

It’s already nice to step out into the cool night air to head home after putting in a bunch of hours at the library, but tonight I was extra rewarded with (a) running into Jason and getting to chat for a bit over some grapes, watching him expertly spit the seeds onto the lawn, and (b) some band rocking out on the steps of Low Library. The end of term kind of bites ’cause there’s so much to do, but, dang, there are still those sweet moments when you’re just like, School’s good.

So I went to get a loaf of walnut sage at Uprising (girl can’t go to Balthazar for breakfast every day, y’know), and cute hippie boy handed me the bag and then said: “And I put a hot cross bun in there, too.” !!!!! And it wasn’t even the bun-sized one, it was a hot cross bun loaf the size of my head!!

Meanwhile, I just also wanna say that on Saturday I was telling my silly friends that I thought I was making progress with cute hippie boy ’cause when I went to get ciabatta baguettes for the party we’d actually had a conversation this time. And my silly friends were all, “Oh yeah? Like, ‘Boy, you make my muffin rise.” Like, ‘Is that a baguette in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’ Like,
‘Mmm. . . that’s a big loaf of bread right there.’” Well now who’s got the hot cross bun loaf the size of my head?

Still no breakfast food in the house, so this morning I thought about croissants on the F train all the way to SoHo, and then at 8:30 was ensconced in a booth at Balthazar on Spring and Crosby. It’s nice in the mornings at Balthazar: so not a scene, and you can always get a table. And then, really, who cares if there’s no breakfast food in the house, ’cause here comes an orange brioche and a herb omelette and a steamy latte.

I kept meaning to go to the store yesterday for some food, glorious food, but in between reading Perec and Malherbe and Molière, there sure wasn’t a moment. So this morning I would really like some strawberries and yoghurt dusted with cinnamon powder, and maybe a little egg, and what I have is Goya coffee and the last heely bits of a weekold loaf of sourdough. Also, a fridge-drawerful of cheese leftover from the party. Oh, how the cheese has the last laugh.

I recently came into some wine, two cases of it, actually, so—with no little amount of gentle nudging from Tom (“You can’t drink all that on your own!” “When are you having us over?” “I’m there, I’m already there!”)—I threw a little Saturday night wine drinking party. Wine drinking parties are easy (especially if you already have two cases of wine just hanging out in your pantry), ’cause it just means a little morning walk to the fantastical Blue Apron Food on Union, where they are always so, so happy to sell you cheese. Fifty-three dollars of cheese. Um, anyway. . . .The easiest party menu in the world also included a salad of arugula, walnuts and goat cheese, with walnut oil; a salad of various mixed greens, herbs, tomatoes, and artichoke hearts, with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Chinese vinegar; alternating slices of tomatoes and mozzarella sprinkled with chopped basil; and really, really tasty roasted potatoes (thank you, Donna Hay), which I accessorized with roasted garlics and dill. And ground black pepper and sea salt on every bloody thing. Oh, and then sweet black grapes, and strawberries, and crème fraîche, and a lemon mousse tart. I think that was it. Oh, wait, also some dark chocolate and orange-infused white chocolate. OK, that was it. Truly. And it was so much fun, and there was Jason, and Maud, and Philippe, and Tom, and Mateo, and India. And there was a lot of laughing, and a lot of bitching and swearing, and talking about French departments and S Club 7 and Philippe’s fake girlfriend and blogs and the Andrew McCarthy–Kim Cattrall movie called “Mannequin” and knitting and Mateo’s ear situation and Friendster and horoscopes. And we played The Shins and The Strokes and Dusty Springfield and Franz Ferdinand and my compliation of hula music and The Cure and Jet and Macy Gray and The Dandy Warhols.

At one point my mum phoned to ask if we were drunk yet. So I said no, and then she proceeded to tell me about all the different Singapore Arts Festival shows she was going to see, and then I said, Okay, now I’m going to talk to my friends, and she said, Okay, I just wanted to see if you were drunk, byeeee.

At another point we were lucky enough that the question we had to answer was “Does anyone want coffee or champagne?”

At yet another point we stepped outside for a smoke break and this guy in a black p.o.d. jacket walked past my front door at a quick clip, followed a few paces behind by a girl with big hair, and she was saying something about something, and he said, “I don’t care about your Park Slope bullshit.”

At the point that was three a.m. we realized that because this was the weekend of moving the clocks, it was really four a.m. That was the only crappy part, but then we kept on keeping on, and that was good.

Please:
1. Do not walk around naked in the changing room at the gym. Do not dry your hair naked, do not wash your hands naked, do not put on your shoes naked, do not stretch naked.
2. Do not wear pants that say things across the ass.

La Semaine sainte is set in 1815, there’s war, there’s Napoleon, there’s all manner of horses and mud and soldiers. It is also 853 pages long, and I have to read all 853 of them. En français, of course. I totally heart Aragon, but after spending an hour trudging through the first five pages, having to look up every single bloody bit of military vocabulary in the dictionary, it was clearly time to take a break. A literary break. Like any good glamorous romance novel heroine, I put the scullery maid to work doing the dishes, and went here:

The Regency Romance Quiz: What kind of Romance Heroine are you?

whereupon my decolletage and I discovered:

“Lucky you—you are the Belle of the Ball. Looks, wit, charm, accomplishments and money—you have them all. You are the toast of Society, and have received offers from no fewer than three Dukes. There is no one who does not love you on sight. Sound good? It isn’t, because to compensate for these riches, the author has something very nasty indeed in store for you. I mean, she does have to write a novel here, and you can’t expect to be happy all the time. So, you have a Dark Secret. Or perhaps a Secret Love for the only man who does not appear to desire you. Or maybe you will be kidnapped, or become embroiled in a scandal, or be wagered and lost by your brother in a card game. The possibilities are endless, but you may be certain of two things: (1) You will not get through this book without some kind of scandal being attached to your name. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is. (2) Whatever it is, he (the man of your dreams, that is) will fall in love with you, rescue you, slay your opponents, defy your detractors, marry you, and live happily ever after. This is a romance novel, after all.”

I don’t mean to brag, but when I’m looking at what I made for dinner, and it’s a plate of couscous piled with chicken curry with eggplant and baby corn cut in flower shapes, and sprinkled with fried garlic and shallots, and there’s a swirl of steam rising off the top, then, OK, yeah, I do mean to brag.

On the train home from school today, two thoughts: (1) I’m hungry. (2) I want to go shoping. Happy for me, then, that when I got home, there was a Delia’s catalogue in the mailbox and a slice of carrot cake in the fridge. Over cake and a glass of milk, I coveted some polka-dot slippers and a pink dress and some pins in the shapes of letters and a pair of jeans with buttonable pockets and a Ziggy bag that says “Be Nice to Little Things” and some underwear with a pink-and-orange car print, and eventually had to restrain myself, saying, in what I hoped was a fairly severe tone: “You cannot buy anything. You. cannot. buy. anything.”

However, the catalogue is still on my coffee table, in case I am wrong.