Lyndsey Fifield

Where are my keys?

2012-02-08T05:24:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, I went to get ice for BlogBash. I was driving through the dark in my Prius in post-Snowmageddon D.C., without a GPS, having never driven in the district before.

Astonishingly, I got lost.

Very lost. Welcome To Maryland lost.

I called everyone I could think of to help navigate me out of Georgetown and get me back to Penn Quarter. I cried. I had a full blown panic attack. I tried to sally on, pull myself together, and figure out where I was, but I had no idea D.C. was divided into quadrants. I was raised in cities with basic grid systems. The diagonal roads and circles were baffling—and yes, that night, I managed to tour every circle in the city.

Devon finally navigated me back to the party where I proceeded to meet a majority of the people I can't wait to see this weekend.

Tonight, as Devon drove in from Lynchburg he got hopelessly lost trying to find my house on the hill and it brought this memory flooding back.

Happy CPAC, everyone.

And an elephant—for protection.

2012-01-23T12:19:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I tramped up and down 14th Street poking through furniture shops until I found the perfect vanity stool. I probably looked a little pathetic carrying it all the way to St. Thomas circle, but I'm so happy I found it. I bought a few records (one is a folk album produced by Arthur Garfunkel—we'll see how that turns out) and a few pieces of costume jewelry before Sarah and Chelsie picked me up and we went properly shopping.

It was gray and cold and damp, but it was a perfect weekend in every way.

Early this morning I felt compelled to ask Hilary Funk for life advice. Honestly the woman should be my life coach.

She's given me an exercise: Go a few days letting things that happen, just happen.

Well there's an idea.

Don't assign value to them or create a grand narrative.

But I assign a value to everything.

Notice how we don't have to have input all the time, that sometimes laying off makes our lives more peaceful and (yes) gratifying. Not everything has more meaning than we want it to.

Let's just introduce the elephant in the room, shall we?

I think entirely too much about everything. Everything. Absolutely, positively, everything.

Shocking, I know.

In every quiet moment—walking home, riding the train, curled up in bed, washing dishes—I am reflecting on something, assigning value to every turn of phrase, weighing possible outcomes. Everything has a meaning. Right? Wrong.

I need to learn how to relax.

And that, dear readers, is how I spent an hour this morning reflecting on how I should stop being so pensive all the time.

Astra inclinant, non necessitant.

2012-01-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight I told my spin instructor that I'd taken Dayquil a few hours earlier and asked if that might present a problem in the class. He said it shouldn't cause any trouble but that I should listen to my body—which I took to mean that I should slow down or take off gear if I felt off.

It sounded like quality advice, but sadly I don't listen to my body... because my body is lazy. It tells me to slow down or take off gear when I know I can handle more, harder, faster. I focus on the music, the motivation from the instructor, and I don't listen to my legs telling me they're tired. If I listened to them, I'd stay home and eat M&Ms in a bubble bath, watching Donwton Abbey.

So as usual, I find this almost perfectly relates to how I live my life.

It's as though I walk around constantly seeking metaphors—bear with me.

If I failed to note it sooner (and I doubt I have), I move through each day with a series of detailed lists and absolutely cannot sleep in for the life of me. I want a personal laminator and Kate Spade day planner for my birthday. I don't listen to that part of my brain that tells me to coast through life. That part of my brain wants to move to St. Thomas and live on tequila. That part of my brain wants to leave my office every day after lunch and walk through museums.

I remind myself frequently that what I'm doing is worth the reward. In the gym, it's fitness; in work, it's success; in relationships, it's joy.

All that to say: laziness isn't bliss. So don't touch that gear.

Am Probably Too Fond of Throwing Things Away

2011-12-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

Every time I move, I use it as an excuse to re-organize my whole life. I edit my vast collection of products, give books to friends, and toss out half-burned candles and bits of colored paper I thought I'd use in art projects. I don't move unhandled projects or paperwork. I donate clothes.

I strive to live with less. Something I heard frequently as I prepared to hike the Appalachian Trail was that people are often astonished by how little they actually need.

I rolled my antique champagne glasses in yesterday's Post and gently stacked my favorite novels into a box. I dismantled my curtain rods and made a list of utility companies to call. It took three car trips to carry everything from Alexandria to Eastern Market. Anything more than that I would have set on fire.

Lost in the tedium of it all, I forgot to remember that Tabitha and Sarah, two girls who have been my friends since almost the very day I moved to DC, are leaving. My life is going to be quite different now.

My new room mates are fantastic, but I can't escape noticing that most of the girl friends I've made since moving here have since moved away. Perhaps that's just the transient nature of DC—very few people are actually from here, especially those in politics, and many don't stay for more than a few years.

Today I arrived to my office almost an hour earlier than usual, latte from Pound in hand, after a brisk 4 block walk from one door to the other.

There is absolutely nothing about my life right now that I'm not wholly and completely thrilled about.

Friday night my firm had our annual holiday party and everyone took turns saying a few words about the year. Being the horrifyingly awful public speaker that I am, I said something about being fond of every single person in the room. I failed to say that every day I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I didn't mention that when I moved to DC, I had a limited idea of what sort of job I wanted and never dreamed I would love my work this much.

I'm approaching the new year having accomplished more in the last twelve months than I ever dreamed possible.

Our row house is solid and charming, full of mismatched fixtures and drafty windows. Tune Inn is barely a full block from my front door and some of the bartenders already know I take a gin and soda.

I'm in love.

I'm Laying On a Table, Mike

2011-11-30T05:50:00.000-08:00

Two years ago I took a friend by the hand, looked her in the eye and said, "I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility that Justin might not make it."

I felt unspeakably cruel.

I regretted it immediately even though I knew it needed to be said. Treatments had been exhausted and options had run out—he was at home, resting comfortably, and my friend believed he was simply gaining strength so he could return for more chemo. She is a perpetual optimist—naive, as well—and sometimes I ache to be that sort of person.

I'm the cruel one, if that's what that means. I'm the realist. I see everything coming—and I knew the time had come to stop pretending and begin mentally preparing for the worst.

Few know this about me, but my first job after college was editing obituaries. No, it was not the most sunny job I've ever had, but it taught me more about communicating with and relating to people than I learned in four years of college.

But it was because of that job that I discovered, alone at my desk, that a friend of mine had passed away. I clicked on a Word document from a funeral home expecting a brief biography and survivor list for a cherished grandfather—not the swiftly written announcement of death for a beloved 20-something I'd never seen without a smile.

I was laying on top of a picnic table in a red sundress drinking a stella when I last saw him. "What are you doing, Fifield?" "I'm laying on a table, Mike." "Well you look good." When I sat up on my elbows he was walking away so I just shouted that I'd see him later.

Nobody took me by the hand and gave me the news slowly.

I've never been afforded the courtesy of finding out bad news in a controlled sort of way.

But I suppose if you want people to treat you like a delicate little tea cup, you have to act like one.

Somebody that you used to know.

2011-11-29T07:45:00.000-08:00

I only have 2 more weeks of commuting back and forth from Alexandria until I can move into our lovely row house in Eastern Market.

I've been commuting this way for just under a year and never really minded so much until now. It seems the universe has decided it will make me feel each one of these remaining days as painfully and frustratingly as possible. The trains will be delayed, the gym bags will feel heavier and heavier, the happy hours will be harder to resist. It will rain when I'm wearing suede pumps.

Example: today I forgot to bring a shirt for the gym. In two weeks, I won't even have to pack a gym bag because I will just go home to change in the first place; but since I haven't moved yet it means I either have to borrow a shirt from my friend or will have to skip spin. And I do not skip spin.

Strangely, most everything that I love in this city is in a 6 block radius of my new house—yes, I have made a collection of favorite places—my bookstore, coffee shop, gym, church, brunch spot, and office are all right here. Marines run through the neighborhood like sweating American Apollos. Bartenders know my name and drink. This is my neighborhood—Del Ray, I am so over you.

This morning I stood on the platform with all the other sleepy hill staffers and Pentagon types, wearing my coke bottle reading glasses, buried in a complex novel. I stopped to put on my pearl studs and adjust my skirt and knew I was being watched by the man standing beside me. We stand beside each other almost every day with a regularity that is almost depressing—our morning routines are so buttoned down. We stand at the same spot because we both get off at L'Enfant and know exactly what car we should enter if we don't want to fight a current of people to make our transfer.

He'll probably wonder where I've gone in a few weeks.

Yes, these are the things that go through my head.

Wintering

2011-11-25T16:33:00.000-08:00

I can't remember when I first started trying to find a city, but it was at some point in college. I hated Atlanta, felt out of place in New Orleans, and found nothing attractive about New York—every city was fun to visit, perhaps, but never enough to move. And as much as I love traveling to foreign countries and experiencing local cultures I'd never said "oh, I want to live here" or felt a sort of cosmic tug at my heartstrings.

The first time I came to DC I had a sort of ineffable sensation that I'd just arrived home. Everything fit.

I know, I know, we're all supposed to haaaate DC because it's sooo establishment and beltway and corrupt and blah blah blah—no. I love DC. I walk these streets and I feel alive and part of something bigger than myself. I adore our idiosyncrasies and even our flaws—watching CSPAN in bars, complaining about the metro, rolling our eyes about how hill interns dress inappropriately, brazenly jogging in congressional campaign t-shirts. After years of feeling like I was perpetually trying to change myself to suit my setting and my friends, I finally found them—my happy family of wonks. A whole small town of them.

My liberal college friends are quietly (and some not so quietly) unfriending me on Facebook. Most of my friends are here now. Many of us communicate almost exclusively by cutting each other off mid-sentence as if we're constantly practicing for our debut on Hardball. There is something thrilling about knowing I can have endless conversations about tax reform or congressional races and nobody will be bored to tears or confused. And we drink a lot.

So then I landed in St. Thomas.

I've been to places like this before. It was a sort of mix between Guyana and Puerto Rico but not anything like either. We got out on the tarmac and piled into a doorless jeep with two locals and sped off. I felt it again. It was that same feeling I had when I first came to DC… and it made no sense. Sure, it's paradise, but why would I want to live here? I love my city. I love my life and my friends and my adult milkshakes at Ted's Bulletin and spin classes with gossipy hill staffers. I don't want to get skin cancer or look like leather when I'm 40. I like having wifi and access to 5 Starbucks in a mile radius. I like seasons.

Nevertheless, I can't change that I had that same sort of clairvoyant feeling that I'm going to live there one day. The astonishing bit is that I felt it as we were driving past roadside chickens and rundown buildings—before Virgin Gorda and beachside bars, before snorkeling or taking a ferry to another island and drinking too much—I felt it from the start. I'm only writing this now so I can look back and know I was right.

I'm not one for major plans. My theory is that if I'm constantly aiming to improve my narrative, my life will be amazing. So far, I've been totally right. But if I had to have a plan, I'd say it's to work in DC for another few years and then move to a place where I can work in a bikini.

Because winter.

I'm Surrounded

2011-11-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

Making plans to return home for Christmas involves finally tying up loose ends I left in Montgomery years ago.

There is a steamer trunk in Rosemary's attic, a bookshelf of books at Robin & Joe's, and I left my grandmother's writing desk with a friend I've since cut out of my life like a cancer. I thought I had coordinated for someone to pick up the desk and move it after I moved (I don't know how many of you have been suddenly hired to work on-location for political campaigns, but you just sort of throw things in your car and go), but apparently it was left behind.

There was also a mobile of origami goldfish my Nana made for me, an antique terrarium, a purple lamp I'm fond of, a green clock I adore, and a few paintings and mirrors. I'm almost certain those things have been trashed, but really all I want is the desk.

Since my attempt to reach her was unsuccessful, I reached out to a friend and asked if he would inquire about it. He too has cut contact. I asked another friend... she too would prefer not to have to speak to her if it could be avoided.

This is a girl I tried countless times to pull from the ashes. Some people go through life in perpetual need of being rescued.

But this girl is a toxic vortex. The narrative of her life is riddled with self-inflicted bullet holes and countless burned bridges, but she always manages to consider herself a victim.

I've thought long and hard about all the good choices I've made in my life that have put me where I am. I made bad choices, too—and I paid for them in spades.

But the most important choice I made was to stop surrounding myself with bad influences. Where I used to gravitate toward and attempt to fix, I now I step away from those who are complacent, complaining, self-important, life-long victims.

Surround yourself with people who make you want to be better. People who are creative, motivating, joyful, and—most importantly—who hold you accountable when you're being less than you should be.

Everything after that is cake.

The War On Christmas... Tree... Sellers.

2011-11-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a blog post about Christmas Trees and this new 15 cent tax tree sellers are now burdened with. I was going to write about it because I have a bit of firsthand experience in the industry and I thought my insights would prove helpful. Then I started crying at my desk.

Like most people, my best childhood memories are related to Christmas-time and the holidays, but my childhood was a little unique.

Unlike most kids, I was the daughter of nursery owners—the kind with plants, not babies—and our house was actually on the same property with the greenhouses, gardens, and tree beds. My childhood was awesome. I was homeschooled so I spent a lot of time outside, helping clear weeds from flats of pansies or rake a never-ending torrent of leaves that fell from the hickory trees.

Every December, my dad would take a big, white work truck and drive up to Tennessee to buy Christmas trees—live ones. That was my parents' deal: they hated the very idea of cutting down a beautiful tree just to decorate a home for a month. They had to be living trees with burlap-covered bulbs of soil at the base. They were more expensive but, my mom argued, they didn't lose needles, they didn't dry out, and they could be planted in a yard after Christmas was over. My grandmother's property is lined with just such trees.

When I was 11, I drove up to Tennessee with my dad. This meant that my mom put my Precious Moments sleeping bag and a few puffy, pink pillows in the truck and filled the passenger side door storage with notebooks and school work. We woke up while it was still dark and my mom filled two Stanley thermoses with the kind of coffee that, after years of cultivating snobbery, I'd never dream of drinking.

I failed to mention this sooner: we were poor.

I don't know if my mother intended for my brothers and I to be as painfully aware of it as we were, because it helped structure my financial ideology, but we certainly never forgot it. I did schoolwork alongside my mom as she sent out invoices and handled the accounting. When I went to college and got my first phone it took me a week to stop answering it "Hickory Grove Nursery, how can I help you?" as I'd done my whole life. In that office I got to hear it all—what customers hadn't paid, who my dad hadn't billed, how much money was in each account. I learned to hear the fear in my mom's voice when things weren't good. It sounded like a slow moving panic attack—the words sort of caught at the back of her throat as if she was always just about to cry.

During the winter months, when people don't really care about how their gardens look, things were hard. Christmas Tree sales mattered—a lot.

Confession: this is making me cry at my desk just writing it.

Anyway, back to the trip.

I was thrilled. My dad and I listened to the radio and blew the horn at anyone who gave us The Universal Truck Horn Blowing Signal that all children gleefully make on car trips. It took forever. Even back then when gas was somewhere around a dollar, my mom had carefully calculated the cost of gas and marked stations on the map (this is the age before GPS and cell phones). We had packed food for the trip, but my dad bought us honey buns.

Sometime around noon we pulled up to a wholesaler and I waited in the truck while my dad handled the sale. The truck began to shake as young men started loading trees into the bed, so I got out to help (the trees were about a foot taller than me, but I was tough).

"Leave that, Lyndsey, get back in the truck" my dad said as I started to pick up my first tree. "This is all we're getting."

I balked at the almost-empty truck bed. I was a kid and I didn't understand a lot of things, but I knew this was bad.

While my mom wore her financial burdens on her face, my dad never seemed scared or upset in the slightest. Back then I thought it was just his way of keeping calm under pressure, but looking back I see it as arrogance—he knew if things got too tough, his parents would bail the business out of trouble; my mother, on the other hand, would have rather eaten glass.

I ate the rest of my honey bun as we pulled the truck out of the driveway. I thought we were heading home until we pulled into another, bigger wholesaler. I was horrified to see workers filling up the rest of the truck bed with cut trees. Not my parents. Not at our nursery. Cut trees were for those over-priced, roadside stands.

The drive home took even longer—and it didn't just feel that way, my dad had to drive more slowly to keep the wind from bruising the trees. We didn't have any insightful conversations—I didn't ask why he bought cut trees. I knew. Live trees were simply too expensive and cut trees were within their budget.

So now I'm reflecting on this new tax.

I know it's not much.

I've written about the tanning tax and other seemingly innocuous taxes and I haven't gotten emotional. But now I'm thinking about small business owners (read: families) stretching their dollars as far as possible, using cheaper supplies and products just to stay afloat. I am thinking of pre-teen girls reading Nancy Drew, bringing home Christmas trees with their dads.

And I'm angry.

When you're happy like a fool, let it take you over.

2011-10-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

I'm counting down to our trip to St. Thomas. I really hope the weather in DC is miserable and cold that week so we can send dozens of twitpics of us laying on the beach in the sun and make everyone back home so jealous.

I've been reflecting lately on how I got to this wonderful point in my life and how everything truly happened for a reason.

If I hadn't dated the wrong person, I wouldn't have met a dear friend—if I hadn't made that dear friend, I wouldn't have been able to get started in DC.

If I hadn't gotten into a car wreck I wouldn't have figured out that a car is a huge burden in DC and living without one is a weight off my chest.

I have been blessed daily since I've come here and I can't get over it sometimes. Something in the DC water just makes me thrive. I am healthier than I've been since high school, I am almost totally debt-free, and I have friends I adore. I am a total workaholic but I love everything I'm doing so it hardly feels like working—my firm is incredible and I feel overwhelmingly lucky to work with each and every person there.

And life is about to get even better. I am moving to the Hill in January and I will live with three new lovely girls (confession: I will miss Tabitha and Sarah terribly) in a darling old row house inches from my office and my gym and (most importantly) my coffee shop.

I know this isn't my usual deeply pensive blog post...

I have to admit that I've been putting all of my blogging energy into my (anonymous) fitness blog where I ramble on evangelically about spin classes and my amazing gym (I can seriously never move—it's like my church). Monday we're launching Politicalistas (I'm the managing editor) so that will probably also take a good chunk of my blogging bandwidth.

But this blog will always have my heart.

Posture

2011-09-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today I rode my bicycle to the metro, locked it up, and took the train to the Hill for church with Chelsie.

Nothing really seemed too out of the ordinary with the day aside from increased policemen and police cars. I don't know why, but I couldn't help but walk slowly. I usually walk quickly and with a purpose, but today I just couldn't.

I got a latte from Pound (it was perfect) and waited for Chelsie. I walked down to Barrack's Row. I went to my office to change shoes for church (I've taken to leaving all my heels at the office and wearing flats on the train) and fix my hair from the bicycle ride. I felt everything. It was palpable. We were all walking around—people with babies and Hill guys running with their dogs, and maybe I was just imagining it, but I felt it in the air and I think everyone else could too. My barista, the Steelers fans waiting outside Pourhouse before it even opened, the bums. We were all in a fog. We weren't quite there.

We all have unique remembrances, but today means something to everyone.

PS: Someone in Dover really, really likes to see if I've updated. I'm flattered.

Divorce and Hearing Loss.

2011-08-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

You know, for months I've known it was worse but I didn't actually do anything about it.

Otosclerosis.
Otosclerosis is the most frequent cause of middle ear hearing loss in young adults. It typically begins in early to mid-adulthood. It is more common in women than in men. The condition usually affects both ears.

Symptoms:

Hearing loss may occur slowly at first but continue to get worse. (Check)

You may hear better in noisy environments that quiet ones. (Check)

Ringing in the ears (tinnitus) may also occur. (Sometimes?)

I was trying to wrap my head around it. I called my mom... because that's what a girl does when she has something huge to put on the table and needs someone to tell her everything is going to be okay. I needed The Talk. I needed the I'm so proud of you, you're such an amazing young woman, you're so beautiful, everything will be fine because you're so strong speech. I love that one.

But my parents finalized their divorce today. So we talked about that instead.

Sometimes it's okay not to put your shoulders back and take the pain. Sometimes it's okay to drink sake and talk to friends and be emotional. I'll be strong tomorrow, but tonight... well, this is what I'm doing.

They Don't Have To Understand.

2011-08-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

There is nothing so sweet as having a friend who says aloud the things you're thinking to yourself. We were running past the Capitol and she put her hands in the air, "can you believe we run by this?" I threw my hands up, "I know, right?"

There isn't anything wrong with being happy or anything embarrassing about loving life.

Explosions.

2011-08-29T07:26:00.001-07:00

I think my most overused expression lately is that I feel my heart could, at any moment, explode from happiness. I walk around on a little cloud, excited about what might come next. Life isn't just good—it's amazing.

Last week my dad called me while I was waiting in an airport. His torment was palpable. The divorce is absolutely destroying him and he is lost in an ocean, despondent and afraid, but worst of all, alone. He asked me something that stood out: "Do you ever feel like your heart could just explode?"

It's hard for me to tell anyone to put their shoulders back and rise above their circumstances—in my experience, people are either equipped to handle trials or they aren't. But it's different because it's my dad. I can't imagine 30 years from now having a child comforting me over the phone, "just hold on, mom, take a deep breath and get through this."

I replied, "yeah dad, all the time."

The fundamentals are the easiest part.

2011-07-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

I remember being 18, sitting in a diner in Mobile, Alabama surrounded by people who would become my friends. It was my first week away from home and I was smoking cigarettes (indoors, yes) with people from my dorm.

I realized after I lit my cigarette and started smoking it that I had no idea how to use an ashtray. It looked simple enough. I watched other people and what they were doing. A simple imitation.

I tapped my cigarette so hard that ash sputtered onto the table and the cherry fell out. Nobody else really seemed to notice except for the boy sitting next to me who said, "you're not a smoker, are you?"

To the uninitiated, life seems so complicated. Even the slightest gestures give it away.

And how I felt in that moment is how I've always felt and how I will always feel.

Every day I move forward, knowing that one day someone will take notice, lean in and whisper, "you have no idea what you're really doing, do you?"

The Universe Doesn't Give A Damn About Your Timing.

2011-04-20T09:38:00.001-07:00

Life is what happens to disrupt the plans we make for ourselves. Usually for the better.

While some slip beneath the surface and spend their days herding cats, others put their shoulders back, let the waves come, and keep moving.

I had a plan this week. It involved meetings and an endless to do list; it involved changes and a great deal of working. I had to give notice for one job and make plans for another. I had to meet a stranger to buy a cabinet and air dry a row of cardigans and fix loose hemlines and sort out a whole box of paperwork.

Then I stopped for an ambulance.

It's curious what happens in a person's mind during a car accident.

Everything came to me in details and I absorbed it all—physically from the shock of the car that hit me and the feeling of the cabinet hitting the back of my seat, and cognitively from what shoes I was wearing to what song was playing. A man told me not to move and not to get out of the car—he looked like Adam Sandler but he wasn't Adam Sandler.

I was wearing a blue dress and a trench coat and some floral ballet flats. I wore no make up and had done nothing to my hair. I had returned from picking up my cabinet in Eastern Market and it was sitting in the trunk of my car.

I remember every detail of the accident as it happened, and I won't bore you with those, but what I want to hold on to are the elusive thoughts that popped into my head as I very seriously thought I was about to die.

I thought to myself in those moments—no, this isn't right, this isn't fair, you haven't had a squishy baby or said yes to the dress or had a really stunning black and white photograph of yourself taken.

Then I realized my car and all the other cars had stopped moving, no more cars were coming toward me, I hadn't been propelled into the ambulance as I'd imagined I would be—and I had lived.

A few hours later, David and Tony had brought me home (with the cabinet that we wrenched from the back seat somehow) and made sure I was fine and then they were gone. The bruises hadn't yet come to the surface and the pain hadn't really started—it was just me, for the first time since I was 16, without a car.

I walked upstairs to my bedroom and stared at three to-do lists I had spread out at the end of my bed earlier in the day.

I crossed off "wash car" and "get oil change." I took a hammer and banged one of the back legs of my cabinet back into shape. I added "call insurance company" and "go to the doctor" to a new list.

And then I just kept moving... so full of joy I think my heart might explode.

Off Buttons Are For The Unproductive.

2011-04-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

I've moved Goodwyn Bear to the foot of my bed. He's usually situated right beside me as I sleep, nestled beside my cheek like the dear old friend that he is.

He has been replaced.

By Blackberry Bear.

Slightly less cuddly with arguably fewer bacteria colonies, but such a comfort.

For weeks I kept saying "I absolutely must stop bringing electronics to bed" but then I gave it a good mull and thought... whatever for? I'm the grown up now and if I want to live on chocolate slim fast and carrot sticks for a month, I will. If I want to wear the same pair of jeans four times without washing them, don't try to stop me. If I wake up and realize I'm actually on top of my blackberry every evening just to make it that much easier to stay connected (which, in turn, helps me finally coax myself into sleeping for a few hours)... judge away, dear reader. I'm Lyndsey Fifield... and there is no off button.

I think I am one of those people who require less sleep in order to be ridiculously productive. Either that or I've gotten really good at faking it.

She looks like a girl who walks with her feet.

2011-04-01T08:50:00.000-07:00

I think I've failed to fully note that living with Tabitha and Sarah is an adventure.

If I had a normal, human schedule I'm sure it would be even more incredible. Sarah's boyfriend is visiting from Colorado and they haven't come up for air... neither Tabitha nor I have met this man yet. Of course he only just got here last night, but I am suspicious.

Yesterday Tabitha bought fish. We all crave pets. We compromised on fish as she originally wanted a snake. I said no. I think I may actually wind up getting a fish as well. Some fat goldfish to swim in a big glass bowl... in lieu of a dog. I need something alive to nurture. And we are never here. Fish are perfect.

This weekend we're all going to play tourist at the National Cherry Blossom Festival; hopefully I can take some impressive pictures during the fireworks tomorrow night over the Capitol and the monuments. Since we're going with orthodox friends, we're walking from Dupont. This was my idea because I want to pick up their phones and other things so they can have them after Shabbos. I probably care more than they do.

This is all based on the premise that at some point I will stop working. Unlikely.

Step into my office, baby...

2011-03-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest. Of course I have my office-office... but then I come home and work in my office-office. It's less stabby.

Yes, I know, we're not supposed to use electronics in bed... but ever since I took on my very first freelance contract, way back at the tender age of 19 (you can't see me, reader, but I'm icing my face with Regenerist right now), I've been working from bed. Once upon a time there would be a sleeping cat on my legs... or a yawning dog... or both... but otherwise, this is the perfect office. Until I lose my blackberry in the sheets and miss an important call.

And now we know why I really don't sleep.

That... and the fact that the lighting in here is absolutely gorgeous... for people who don't keep zombie hours.

Oh, reality.

2011-03-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

I think I've finally recognized my biggest obstacle in finding sleep: I cannot stop thinking.

I go through the routine—I turn off the electronics, drink tea, breathe deeply, and slip a mask over my eyes. I've turned my bedroom into a sleep zone. I adore my bed—I really cannot tell you.

I lay, as if on a cloud, in the darkness and quiet... and I see everything I need to do in the space between my ears. Stop thinking, think of nothing, think about that later, you can reply to that email later, you can brainstorm for that project later, shh brain, shhhhhhh, just sleep now.

I lay in bed for hours and stare at the ceiling.

People are concerned.

I say, "I'm fine."

Then I'm told in no uncertain terms that things aren't fine.

On the drive home I almost rear-ended the same car three times.

I fell asleep in my driveway. I fell asleep on a pile of warm laundry like a five year-old. I fell asleep at the dining room table trying to finish up a project. Then, in bed, when it's finally the right time... I lie awake and take inventory.

I suppose professionally speaking we're not supposed to expose our flaws so vividly or complain about things like this so candidly.

I am just so absolutely sick of holding everything together with bits of twine. I want everything to be more than passing. I want things to be excellent. I want my schedule to work. I want my sleep to work. I want people to think I'm the most impressively put together and effortlessly charming person they know. I want my dog. I want my mom. I want to eat more than 900 calories a day.

I am not a mess. I am not forgetful. I do not miss details and I do perfect work.

But this version of me drinks nyquil to sleep and diet coke to stay awake. This version of me has stomach ulcers and migraines and can't read without squinting or drive at night without leaning forward. This version of me is falling apart. She is unsustainable and heading into a nosedive.

And I know what the solution is—I think we all do—but the part of me that refuses to fail is going to make this work.

I Hear Merlot Is Making A Comeback

2011-03-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

As many people know, my parents are going through a divorce.

Just as my life has begun to resemble something organized and grounded, my parents lives seem just the opposite. And parents, in all things, ought to be constantly fixed guideposts in the center of the universe—always right, always there, always annoyingly telling me to put more money in a savings account and buy fewer dresses and drinks.

With what is often a two hour commute every morning, I have plenty of time to listen and advise. I'm not taking sides because I am both sides.

For as long as I can remember I've been waiting for my mother to treat me like an adult... and now I frequently feel like I'm the only adult.

So we move in the only direction we can... and become increasingly adept at opening bottles of wine.

Heartbreak Comes In So Many Forms.

2011-02-22T07:58:00.001-08:00

For all my small, contained emotional outbursts, I'm actually a pretty good sponge for pain. I've always wished I could just take the pain away from the people I love and feel it myself instead. I've gotten a lot of experience in coping and carrying on... and others seem to need a lot more practice. I might cry in bathtubs or traffic or train stations or bed... but I adapt and I sally on.

And while I'm celebrating what is to come, and while I'm confident that everything will be just fine soon, it's hard to take someone twice my age by the hand and say, "You're going to be fine. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go do something new."

So I speak calmly and evenly and I don't really say anything at all.

Besides I'm not seven years old anymore and I can't fit under my bed.

Blog Roll

2011-02-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

Breakfast At Toast

A Lovely Life

Rob Delaney

The Everywhereist

Smitten Kitchen

The Sweet Life

That's So Michelle

The Everygirl

Etta Jones In A Bathtub.

2011-02-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I lived in a little house in a historic neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama.

It had no insulation and all of the original fixtures (including the plumbing) were intact. The glass doorknobs were stripped raw from decades of use, but who needs a working doorknob when you have an antique glass one? The utility bills were often higher than my rent and there was no shortage of quirks. When words like "old" or "broken" might come to mind for some, words like "charming" and "romantic" come to mine.

I had friends who lived across the city in sterile, cookie-cutter apartment buildings in gated communities... with linoleum floors and particleboard cabinets. If something broke, a little man in a golf cart would come round and fix it while they were at work.
When my plumbing broke, a historian was consulted. My friends felt sorry for me, I think... and I always felt so, so much more sorry for them.

I keep having flashbacks of being in that house, watching steam rise from my porcelain tub while I counted rows of coke-bottle green tiles and listened to jazz records on Sarah Beth's turntable.

I had a lot of great ideas in that tub. I made a point to reflect. Was I good to my friends this week? Did I get angry in traffic? Did I try my best and work hard or was I lazy and rushed and complacent? Was I joyful?

This week I learned that I can't change people. It only took me 25 years of doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Some people will never open their eyes and see that their actions are blatantly disrespectful, hurtful, or wrong. Some people will not consider consequences or conceive of a larger picture. They see only their good intentions. And that is enough for them. They can live lives in peace, justified in the fact that they were just doing what they thought was "best."

I can try to take these people by the shoulders and walk them down the garden path, or I can accept that they will never change and be happier for it.

So I will walk down this garden path alone.

And I will close my eyes and watch the steam rise from the tub, and I will take inventory. Did I let someone rob me of my joy? Did I take the situation by both hands? Will this happen again?

In Which I Complain About Being Cold

2011-01-27T13:11:00.000-08:00

It's almost February. This would mean that I should start clocking longer hours in the gym and dropping hints to friends with pools (for the first time in my life, I don't have immediate access to a pool).

But there is real, actual winter here.

I just want to lay in bed, under four blankets, drinking gallons of hot tea, wondering will I ever be properly warm again?

I ruined my favorite pair of ballet flats this morning while cleaning the snow off my car and digging it out of a snow drift (thanks, Alexandria plowman).

But it gives me the perfect excuse to rock these darlings.

Because I Don't Have Enough Things to Read.

2011-01-27T05:17:00.001-08:00

New friend (and even newer neighbor in the lovely Del Ray), Adrienne Royer introduced me to Matchbook Magazine, Fieldguide To A Charmed Life.

It launched this month and I am already in love. I mean, hello - Lela Rose On Manners and Ballet Flats? Yes, yes, and yes.

I have high hopes for you, Matchbook!

According to them, the Matchbook Girl...

VIEWS THE WORLD THROUGH ROSE COLORED GLASSES • LOVES TO THROW DINNER PARTIES, BUT HAS BEEN KNOWN TO BURN THE ROAST • VALUES ECCENTRICITY OVER CONVENTION • IS THE FIRST TO LAUGH AT HER OWN BAD JOKES • KNOWS THE CHA-CHA, THE CHARLESTON, AND THE TANGO • PAINTS HER NAILS BRIGHT CORAL WHEN SHE'S FEELING BLUE • IS INFINITELY CURIOUS • COULD HAPPILY LIVE OFF OF RED VELVET CAKE • PENS HAND WRITTEN NOTES TO HER GRANDMOTHER • HAS A SIGNATURE SHADE OF LIPSTICK • SECRETLY THINKS SHE MAY BE BABE PALEY REINCARNATED • RECEIVED AN iPAD FOR HER BIRTHDAY, BUT WILL NEVER GIVE UP HER LIBRARY CARD • HAS A BUCKET LIST A MILE LONG AND DREAMS A DIME A DOZEN • IS SMART, BUT NEVER A SHOW-OFF • LISTENS TO THE DAY'S FORECAST, BUT TRUSTS HER OWN INTUITION • NEVER SAYS NO TO A SUNDAY MATINEE AT THE THEATER • IS QUICK TO BLUSH, BUT NEVER SHORT OF A WITTY REPLY • HAS A SKIP IN HER STEP AND A TWINKLE IN HER EYE • ALWAYS SHARES HER LAST PIECE OF GUM

Thanks to some new astrological sign, I'm not a Cancer anymore (Gemini? I don't want to be a Gemini)... I think I'm a Matchbook Girl.

Watching Golden Girls In Pajamas With Two Girlfriends

2011-01-24T03:57:00.000-08:00

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. - Christian Morgenstern

When the twitterverse (there, I said it) heard that Tabitha, Sarah, and I were moving into a house together, there was immediate talk of a reality show. I'm sure imaginations went wild... as well they should. Would we have endless political discourse and pillow fights? Would we hang a Don't Tread On Me flag by the front door? Make a drinking game out of Red Eye (every time Andy Levy says something pithy and a female guest gives a confused, humorless response, DRINK!)?

The truth is we lounge in jammies without make up, our hair a mess, drinking loads of tea, laughing and watching re-runs of the Nanny and Golden Girls. My fleeting attempts to turn on C-SPAN are met with threats of violence. We spend a lot of time contemplating the interior design of our living room. And talking about doing laundry. Really, really thrilling stuff.

And it's absolute bliss.

Why Worry?

2011-01-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

If you hadn't noticed, I'm not the kind of person to just relax and let things play out.

I monitor, fervently, every aspect of my life and ensure that everything is churning along as it's supposed to. When things are out of my hands, I hold my breath and watch from a distance, nervously. I blame my mother for this behavior. God give me grace to accept the things I cannot change was not a prayer we prayed in our house. There was nothing that we could not change.

My parents opened their business during the glory-years of the 1980s. Regulation was low, taxes were feasible, and they had the freedom to flourish... and flourish they did. My childhood memories are of helping weed garden beds and pull flats of pansies off delivery trucks, chatting with their young employees, and hearing many heated discussions through the wall of the office. Or at the dinner table.

Now the delivery trucks are far less frequent and they seldom seem to have more than a few employees anymore. Their exhaustion is palpable. I remember, on a visit home, hearing my mother's voice break when she said "thank you" to a state employee who helped her renew a license without charging an insane fee. I left the room and cried. That my mother would be reduced to tears by the savings of a few hundred dollars is a testament to so much that's wrong.

And as a young adult, I'm watching the lives of two people I love and respect so much change into something new. The nursery was the planet that everything centered around. It's difficult to imagine life without it. As a person whose life has just undergone an intense lesson in moving forward with grace and letting-things-come, it's hard to see through the haze that there will be a positive outcome. When everything else in my life is subject to change, my parents were always a constant. They were the unchanging dynamic that could be depended upon when nothing else could. But they are so, so tired. And retiring from owning a business seems like a bad joke.

They could sell it... which would mean selling my childhood home that sits on the property. Or my brother could take it over... which is another bad joke. Or they can keep going, spinning their tires, trimming bonsai and giving advice to hapless gardeners. It just isn't sustainable.

And most people seem to have this ridiculous notion of a personal life. Personal finances, a little set of things to do, a place to live, a garden to tend... and while I do have one of those and it is settling down and easing into a nice gear (I should be blogging about how much I love my new room mates and our house, shouldn't I?), there is always my family. And they will always be the most important focus. And for the first time in my life, I'm not just a quick jaunt up the road, ready to be present and help how I can.

So I call, and I talk, and I listen, and I worry.

If I'm Well Enough to Blog, Am I Really Sick?

2011-01-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

I am writing from the comfortable couch in Bethany's Dupont apartment, covered in a fuzzy, pink blanket, sucking a cough drop (confession: I've gone through half a bag in less than an hour), thinking thoughts of wellness. I can't take Nyquil to knock myself out because I promised Bethany I would stay conscious for the Peapod and KosherMart deliveries. So I will blog.

I'm kind of mad at my immune system at the moment. I know I've just completely upturned my schedule, I get that, but I've compensated with tons of vitamins, healthy foods, water, exercise, and sleep... spotty, cat nap sleep, but sleep nonetheless. I use hand sanitizer every time I get off the metro. I wash my hands constantly. I drink copious cups of tea. I do everything right...

... but here I sit, wondering "is this a cold? The flu? ... Malaria?"

In other news, earlier this week I finally contributed my first editorial to Pundit League. A little rant on feminism just to say "hello, Pundit League readers."

And by what we have left undone...

2010-12-27T14:59:00.001-08:00

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

I really hate to disappoint anyone who might think there is some sinister person underneath this ordinary-looking girl... because I promise... you'll be underwhelmed. But let me confess what I can.

- I am still thrilled when I wake up and I am here. Even if here is cold and windy and gray, I'm here. I'm so full of joy at every moment I think my heart will explode. You might think we're just getting drinks and sitting at a table and having a normal conversation, but I'm so happy I can hardly stand it. You might think I'm just walking down the street and that I've just read a very funny text message and that's why I'm smiling for no reason... but it's not.

- This experience has made me love my family in a way I never thought possible. I always thought I loved my family as much as one could love their family, but I've also always been so fiercely self-sufficient and stubborn that they were kept just a bit apart. I've learned through showing them my weakness that they really are my agape, no-matter-what support system. And they're amazing.

- I am still excited to use the metro - even as I grumble over their lateness and smelliness and over-brakeyness. I think it's one of the many things that I associate with DC and I'm still fascinated by the idea that I can go from place to place without worrying about my car. Bigger confession: I'm proud of myself for learning how to navigate it seamlessly. It took me long enough.

- Sometimes I think about the friends who have helped me survive here - Regina, Bethany, David, Sarah, Tabitha - and I cry. I cry because the love and grace and kindness they've shown me has allowed me to establish roots here. No matter how I look at it, without them it wouldn't have been possible. I aspire to be that kind of patient, giving person.

And I'm blogging about it. I blog the good and the bad, the struggles and the victories—and I do it because it hurts. But it's a good hurt; it's a growing hurt.

So if anyone seeks to expose me for what I really am, I ask: what do you think I'm doing with these words? I purposefully make myself vulnerable here every single time I update. Through supportive emails and rude ones, through childish google searches or legitimate ones. I am here and I'm not going away. And if that means someone thinks I'm too romantic or dramatic or ridiculous, then I don't want that friend. It really is this simple.

So this was Christmas.

2010-12-26T16:30:00.001-08:00

This week has been a little sad for me. I'm realizing I just missed what could very possibly be the last normal Christmas my family will ever have. My mom called from the Christmas dinner table and passed the phone around so I could talk to each person for a few minutes.

Since I'm going to be heading home to pick up a moving truck full of furniture in a few weeks, I decided not to go home for Christmas.

I walked around Dupont Circle, waiting for snow, talking on the phone with various friends and relatives. I got more than a few drunk-dials from friends in Montgomery who had all managed to make it home for Christmas (some from out of the country) who called to scold me for not making a measly 12 hour drive to get traditional "we're home for Christmas, holy crap our families are crazy, let's go to 1048" drinks on Christmas Eve.

Also since I'm almost positive that a few of my gifts are under armour, ear muffs, etc... sitting in Montgomery until I can come unwrap them... it's really frustrating that I'm up here with less-than-sufficient cold weather attire. I very quickly learned the value of good boots and gloves.

Since I was late taking David to the airport I didn't make Christmas Eve services (does anyone call it midnight mass anymore?), so this morning I made sure I was on time for services at St. Thomas' in Dupont. It was an absolutely beautiful church with lovely people, but I'm looking forward to moving to Alexandria with the girls so I can finally set down firm church roots. I've visited almost every Episcopal church in the DC metro area... and that's saying something.

Until our house is ready, I've been staying with a friend who I honestly cannot speak enough about... I want to write a book about her. She has a hamster, which fulfills my cute, fuzzy animal needs, and her apartment is in a really great location. She has a Kosher kitchen so I've had a ton of fun making sure that I use the right sponge to wash the dairy bowls, etc. I've turned into a total Kosher nerd - reading her many books on the subject and treating her like an encyclopedia. Reading about Judaism makes me feel like I don't have enough ways of expressing my spirituality in daily life.

I know a lot of my family and friends already read this blog to keep track of me, but I think I'm actually going to invite more of them to read as I transition this into a "this is what I'm doing now" blog. And while I suppose it's always been a bit of that, it's getting difficult to keep in touch with everyone.

We'll see how that goes.

I once had a wolf by the ears.

2010-12-24T05:25:00.000-08:00

One year ago, these were my circumstances.

I was doing meaningless work, wearing gray office clothes, carrying on through budgets and spreadsheets, forgetting how to write well or think critically. Moreover, the girl who once painted and created and saw incredible beauty in the green glass of a Peroni bottle on a sunny patio was exhausted. My lights were fading. Going to the gym and attending church provided surges of endorphins and peace (respectively), but not in satisfactory amounts.

And I felt trapped.

So I took on freelance work from different organizations to wiggle my way out. A magazine here, a marketing website there... and then began the communications for campaigns. There was nothing more important to me than electing Republican leadership in 2010. I took on boat loads. Even though I was staying up all night to work before going to my day job, I was alive again. I used vacation time to attend conferences and burned both ends of my candle... with joy. Falling asleep at my desk, but alive. As soon as I was given the chance, I gladly put a few dresses in my car and joined a campaign. Finally, I was doing meaningful work.

That first scary step to many may have seemed a huge mistake, but it has put me where I am today.

It's been an odd journey. Unorthodox. Scary at times, but worth every moment.

And I've landed jam-side-up.

I remember walking timidly into my first blogger briefing at Heritage and sitting across from Tabitha. She looked at me, shocked and confused, and laughed, "what are YOU doing here?" I knew from that day forward that she would be my best friend here. And she is.

She, Sarah, and I can move into our house on the 15th of January. It's going to be a house with love on the walls and joy in between them. I predict dinner parties with copious laughter and Saturday mornings with pancake flipping contests. We will walk for coffee at the shop on the corner and make friends with our neighbors. Friends from out of town can sleep on my couch and I will play tourist with them.

So I once had a wolf by the ears... and letting go was just the first in a series of really, really good decisions.

Being good to people is not a high concept.

2010-12-23T15:53:00.000-08:00

Heavily edited because my point has been made and my audience reached.

Part of me feels like I have been robbed of my grandfather's help. I was too young when he died and his political work is a largely undocumented blur.

I remember a few years before he passed that my parents wound up on the bad end of a business deal with a certain Alabama politician. Sitting cross-legged on my grandfather's office floor, I made a negative comment about the man who was hurting my parents (and, by extension, me). He stopped dead in the tracks of his work and swiveled around in his chair to make it a teaching moment: never, ever make an enemy you can't afford to make. If you make flippant comments like that you'll never have anyone's respect.

I know that was just a small taste of his wisdom. That was a man who knew how to navigate the murky waters of Alabama politics with ease. He didn't really know how to talk to children (at least, he didn't know how to talk to an over-emotional, melodramatic girl), so I take pains to remember what he said, gleaning from memories some hope that I might have inherited his wit.

And now I walk the city streets he used to walk.

I came here steadfast in my resolve to do as I have always done: I am good to people. Critical at times, judgmental as a fault, selective in who I call friends, but in all things I seek to be kind. I realize that this is just my twenties - and, God-willing, we'll be in this city for decades, working alongside one another in our like goals.

Life is just too incredible right now to squander even a moment letting anything whatsoever steal the smile from my face.

I have landed jam-side-up. I walk arm-in-arm down cold city streets with women I think of as sisters. I sit with aplomb and laugh with people whose columns I used to absorb like scripture. I can see monuments from my windows for crying out loud.

Shall We Call This a Lesson Learned?

2010-12-08T13:16:00.001-08:00

I was packing my suitcases and working out the logistics of getting back to Alabama when I was finally told... I got the job.

If I'd gotten it the moment I came to the city, I don't think I would appreciate it this much. I don't think I would have felt this much, or learned so much about myself.

I think it's important that people know, right out the gate, that I live my life as though I have Meredith Grey providing narration. I find a number of her quotes applicable to my life... and not just the romantic, wanderlusty ones.

I thought fireworks would go off the moment I got the "you're hired" call. But they didn't. I've grown so accustomed to the act of carrying on that I almost carried on through it. I nodded my head, said thank you, and immediately began making plans: what am I going to do with my car? How will I commute? What part of the city should I live in? Should I live in Arlington or Alexandria? Can I go home for Christmas?

I had to stop myself and remind myself to be happy, to be thrilled - to be excited. And I am.

I Need An Adult

2010-11-30T13:02:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago on one of my visits to DC I found myself walking down King Street in Old Town, Alexandria and decided that I wanted to move here.

There is something very alive and romantic about these uneven brick streets. And something very surreal about the fact that now... four seasons later, I'm sitting in a coffee shop watching Christmas shoppers and am actively apartment hunting in the area.

This is a promise: even if I fall on my face and utterly and totally fail on this adventure, I will never, ever regret leaving my soul crushing cubicle job and the security blanket of a complacent, boring life. I am strong and I am resilient and yes, I'm just writing this stuff down trying to convince myself to buck up and carry on.

I'll be honest—I'm scared. Every morning when I wake up there is a crushing weight on my chest that says "what's to become of you?" I have amazing family and friends who call and tell me they believe in me, that they just know I'm going to be successful and land on my feet... and I don't know what will happen if I have to admit defeat and say, after two months of ardent searching, that I still haven't found a job.

I wake up every day just before six and I do what I would do if I had an office to go to. I wear a dress and I rake the lint pills off a cardigan and I head out like a little soldier. I watch the world around me and I think to myself... why can't I just succeed today? Why can't I let my poor mother exhale and call her squealing "I got the job!" today?

I feel as though someone, somewhere is trying to temper my spirit and see if I really understand the concept of a breaking point. I wish there were some way to send that person a message. It would read: I get it. Life is hard. Life is not fair. We control our destiny and no one owes us any favors and I will carry on... now can someone please just give me a job now?

Dragging my heels on the way back to DC.

2010-11-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Forgive the blackberry picture while driving - I didn't bring a camera on this trip.

On my way back up to DC, I stopped in a friend's mountain home in gorgeous Highlands, North Carolina. Between wine, chocolate, and hilarious times with girl friends, I am in heaven. This is exactly the kind of post-election breather I needed.

On Winning, Losing, and Knowing the Difference

2010-11-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

I drove to Georgia last week to help Team McKinney cross the finish line. In a district designed for a Democrat to win, we came within an impressive striking distance of joining the overwhelming conservative victories on Tuesday night.

During Ray's concession speech, he emphatically rejected the notion that his race was a loss; at that point in the evening we knew Republicans had taken back the House and that, explained Ray, was an incredible victory. For the people of his district—19 of 22 counties of which overwhelmingly supported him—he urged that they not lose hope and commit to maintain their enthusiasm in 2012.

Ray's experience in the private sector and strong background in nuclear energy would have made him an asset in Washington. It was an honor to work with and learn from him.

I left rural Georgia with mud on my cowboy boots, a wellspring of emotions, and a wealth of new experience and stories. Road trips are a perfect time to reflect.

I tuned the dial to an NPR station.

The discussion was a lengthy, hyper-intellectual analysis of what message the American people were sending Washington. Does it mean they are rejecting Obama's policies? Heavens, no! Does it mean Democrats failed to listen to their constituents? Of course not. The simpleton, uneducated electorate fell prey to their fears and used their vote as one, big temper tantrum.

Then came the Obama press conference. As multiple reporters asked him variations of the same question (do you think the American people are hostile to your agenda?) with no clear answer, it became evident that the President blatantly refuses to see the results of this election for what they are: a clarion call to change his direction.

It blows my mind that voters sent such an unmistakable message to Obama and Democrats in Congress and they still approach the results as if there is room for conjecture. It lends the question when will they get it? January? Until they claw the gavel from Nancy Pelosi's cold, botoxed hand? 2012? When? When will they look around, take an inventory, and see that the American people have purposefully and lucidly taken back every bit of power and trust they once bestowed upon them?

Homo Republicanus observed in a preferred habitat: Coffee Shop

2010-10-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Watching Capitol Hill wake up with Cat Power as my soundtrack.

I wish I could capture these moments in some better medium than writing—the sounds of metal patio furniture, the subtle smell of newsprint on wet streets and the unhappy looks on everyone's faces.

I held the door at Le Bon Cafe and it confused the sleepy woman behind me.

In one soundless moment when our eyes met I could tell exactly what she was thinking: she believed I would let go and walk away the moment she trusted a stranger to help her cross the threshold with arms full.

And since I have plenty of time to hyper-analyze everything, I think that's a metaphor for my life right now. I'm always just about .5 seconds from bursting into tears, packing up shop, and heading back to Montgomery.

Some stubborn, stupid part of me that refuses to give up and knows how close I am to victory makes me stay.

I'm three hours early for an interview and loitering appropriately in a coffee shop. After being more than an hour late for two interviews in a row I've decided I'd much rather play it safe and be a few hours early than toy with traffic and parking. It's a wonder anyone here actually gets to their offices on time or how anyone accomplishes anything since it seems a majority of my time is spent dealing with the logistics of going from one place to another.

I sit with tea and try to be calm, try to think of the many things I want to say later and how I want to say them. I know I'm prepared and smart and having a good hair day, but this is the kind of position that I came to DC to get. And that makes me nervous. I tell myself to stop telling myself that I don't interview well.

I don't interview well.

I sit and I try to remain composed while people line up in front of me for their coffee but all I can think is "how much longer do I have to pretend to be a grown up before it starts getting easier?"

I will make a confession - since I'm Anglican and we don't like to do that behind screens - I have very prideful thoughts about being better than most of the people around me. It seems they have figured out that 90% of building a career has absolutely nothing to do with an actual work ethic or getting things accomplished, but on consistently selling themselves and their abilities to people who matter.

I've never operated that way. When I call up someone to make a pitch, I'm giving them a story. I'm making their job easy. If my press release is good (which, it is - pride again) it will run almost verbatim, especially if it's a local paper. I ask no favors and feel no twinge of anxiety. It's as effortless as breathing.

Conversely, job hunting is a soul crushing exercise in resilience that I have no desire whatsoever to continue for a moment longer than I absolutely must.

Be Honest - You're Faking it, Right?

2010-10-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

It has been one month since I said goodbye to a congressional campaign in Georgia and headed to the noble North (and if one more person here tries to tell me that Northern Virginia is the South I will cause a scene).

I've accomplished a lot. I've bombed a few interviews (thanks, DC traffic), bitten my tongue through networking events, and learned quickly who the nice people are. They weren't hard to spot.

There is nothing glamorous about networking. Unless it is done in an upscale restaurant in a pretty dress and shoes that hurt really badly when worn the eight blocks to the metro. Then it's still not glamorous.

My problem is that I have an increasingly low tolerance for bull.

Recently, a certain congressional campaign wisely decided to fire their campaign manager after months of watching him fail to meet benchmarks or accomplish even basic tasks that I've seen interns handle with ease. The fact that it took them months to recognize that he was steering his plane into a nose dive straight to the ground is galling. Thankfully the strength of the candidate is keeping them afloat and we're 19 days away from what I expect to be a victory. But I find the whole scenario to be a very good lesson on how easy it is for certain members of my generation to fake their way into responsibility they totally don't deserve and couldn't aspire to handle.

After the Greatest Generation we have the Baby Boomers, who insist that paying their dues and climbing the ladder is the only way to prove their worth, learn, and build a career. And it's taken a lot of effort from the people of my generation to prove them wrong. The truth is that the Baby Boomers have accidentally engendered a generation that can run circles around them in the productivity realm. We were raised doing fourteen things at once all while listening to music, effortlessly navigating between four browsers at one time, chatting with our friends, and monitoring our cell phones. Then we grew up and applied what we consider very basic principles to our work ethic.

So after watching 20-somethings get results while refusing to take meaningless work, the old school realized that this new generation is chock full of creative, ambitious, fresh-faced men and women with the loyalty of golden retrievers and the libertarian wits to get the job done with little directive.

The challenge comes in weeding out the fakers. Because the fakers ruin it for all of us.

It might look like I'm drinking a latte and playing on my macbook in a Starbucks, but in an hour I've sent out a newsletter to 300,000 people and generated ample copy for a contract client with no notice. All while google chatting four friends, tweeting my two cents about a gubernatorial debate, listening to The Shins, and paying attention to the types of footwear women are wearing in DC right now.

But who knows - the guy next to me who touts an LLC and a wealth of social media savvy might just be playing on Facebook.

So I have two questions for the people of my generation, and I'm just going to ask them: Why do we reward the tools? Why do we accept them in our midst?

They come in, nicely dressed, with the ability to sell ice to an eskimo, and bring with them the overwhelming stench of "trying too hard" and a whole lot of BS social networking jargon that nobody over the age of 15 should actually use. To me, they are painfully easy to spot and I bite my tongue to keep from screaming "GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY CAREER FIELD!"

And people in my parents' generation, unable to tell the difference between someone who is actually smart and someone who just knows how to pathologically lie their way in the door, hire them.

Who Does That?

2010-09-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

42.

Sci-fi geeks might think that's the meaning of life (and it is), but it's also the exact number of dresses and skirts I was able to hang from the handles in the back seat of my car.

I considered it a sign.

Packing for me is ceremonial, cleansing, and cathartic. Each time I move, I take less. After filling a cottage with furniture and copious mementos (origami birds, pictures of friends, antique salt shakers, etc. etc.) I can hardly believe my life can now fit into a few suitcases and some hanging clothes in the back of my Prius.

Am I going in reverse? Who does that?

I once thought I had my life together - I was careful, I was secure, I had my house in order... but it didn't take very long to realize I was spinning my tires. I decided enough was enough - I loaded my car and I drove 9 hours.

The kindness of strangers and new friends has brought me to my knees.

It seems the general motivation is either "I'm helping you because when I first came to DC a stranger helped me and I know how far a little effort goes" or "I'm helping you because when I first came to DC nobody helped me and I know how badly I could've used it."

Therefore, I am staying in the lovely guest room of a friend and we're about to paint our nails and talk about tomorrow's job hunting adventures.

So... what do we call "normal" now?

2010-06-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

We'll return to normal when we establish what normal actually is. - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Earlier this month, President Obama said that "things are going to return to normal" for residents of the Gulf of Mexico.

I spoke yesterday about the pristine water and sand of Pensacola Beach, where I visited my grandparents this past weekend. Rows of colorful umbrellas lined the sand as hundreds of happy families and children (still fewer than usual for this time of year) played in the sun. Not a single tar ball. No burnt-plastic smell.

I wondered how long it would last, or if they would continue to keep the oil from the shore.

Just two days later, there aren't just a few tar balls washing up - the shoreline is literally coated in thick, disgusting oil.

Much like any massive disaster, it is important to focus on small, personal stories to gain perspective. Hearing random, projected figures of gallons or barrels doesn't hit the heart or soul like reading the story of children and teenagers crying and struggling to save a baby dolphin, wiping oil off its body with their bare hands.

These are the dolphins we played with as children while wading on the sand bar, the ones that follow sailboats like old friends. We protect them - just as we do all the gulf coast wildlife. We tread carefully around areas where sea turtles lay their eggs. After hurricanes we walk the beach to pick up bits of glass and pieces of people's homes. We balk in disgust if we find a stray piece of litter on our perfect beach. This is not my normal.

It is difficult enough for me to try to wrap my head around this as an adult, but to imagine small children approaching an oil-soaked beach and witnessing wildlife struggle for air, the noxious fumes burning their eyes, asking, "mom, is this normal?"

It is more than I can bear.

Photo: The Pensacola News Journal

A Silly Woman vs. The Greatest Generation

2010-06-23T06:34:00.001-07:00

EDIT: For evidence of the awesomeness engendered by my parents and their parents and so forth, check out the video I added to the bottom.

I seem to have a difficult time balancing work with my personal life right now.

Strike that. What personal life?

While I usually have an hour or so in the evening to write or sort my thoughts after work-work and before I begin my freelance work, I have eliminated all that silly free time and have focused all my energy on making deadlines. Any excess minutes are spent waiting in traffic and knocking on the dry cleaner's door to beg her to let me in past closing time (yes, I'm that woman).

It's not a sustainable existence and I know it will only be this way for about another month, so I'm trying to hunker down and make the best of it without ticking off too many friends.

Yesterday a girl from my high school volleyball team changed her facebook status to "married" and I remembered that I still had her wedding invitation, unopened in a stack on my floor. And I live about 5 blocks from the church. I have literally nothing to say for myself.

Yet, when it comes to conveying the defcon of my stress levels, maybe I'm not dramatic enough. My mother somehow thought nothing of asking me to make time to spend an entire weekend at the beach visiting family. As if I'm just a silly girl running around in twirly little dresses, picking daisies who can pop off to the coast in a snap.

She never seems to grasp that all the things I do behind my little laptop are actually difficult, time consuming, and stressful. I'm sure she would be infinitely more impressed if I did the type of labor that leaves a person with calloused hands and a sweaty brow... but that's one of the many "work harder, not smarter" differences between us.

I was downright surly (on the inside) as I stuffed not-enough clothes into a bag and mentally considered every bit of work that I could be doing as I headed for Pensacola with my little brother and his friend from college.

When I saw my grandparents (who I love and adore endlessly) sitting in a beach-side restaurant overlooking the pristine water and sand of Pensacola Beach (which I love and adore endlessly), my mood unsurprisingly and instantaneously changed and I felt guilty for having my priorities so wholly and completely out of whack.

Later, I sat ~~indian style~~ cross-legged on the floor of their house, flipping through the laminated pages of genealogy books my grandmother has put together over the years. I was reminded that I am fortunate to be part of an absolutely incredible family... which is why I work as hard as I do.

And what a waste all that work would be if I never stopped, amidst the chaos and deadlines and full voice mail boxes, and made a point to spend time with the people who made it all possible, let alone worthwhile.

And, in any case, I hope spending time around my grandparents will cause some of their goodness and wonderfulness to rub off on me. One can hope.

***

This is my baby brother, Sam, in a concert last week. Shaky camera and random zooming courtesy of my great videographer skillz.

Alabama Primary Drinking Game Rules

2010-06-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

Content Removed

This was one of my most talked-about blog post ever—which is really, really sad to me.

More Self-important Whining!

2010-05-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

I remember a time in my life when I felt like I was the only person in my circle of friends who really had it together.

When my friends were broke, I wasn't; when their apartments were messy, mine was always spotless. I always woke up early, was always prepared, was always so excited about what was going to happen later.

Now I honestly think I would be content to live in a potting shed with dirty windows and a gravel floor if it meant I wouldn't have to go to work anymore.

I remember being 19 and thinking I'd had my heart broken. I was lying in bed looking at the cracks in my ceiling, wondering how on earth anyone could possibly be sad for more than a day. I looked down at my lily-white feet as I placed them on the cold, hardwood floor and I did what any person should do after 30 minutes or so of crying: I stood up and I carried on.

I am the little engine that could.

If anyone had told me two years ago when I was in college - internship with a publishing company, hired by said company, taking honors courses, tutoring children in Latin - that I would be working at a soulcrushing cubicle job feeling smarter than nearly everyone around me but being treated like an idiot - I would have laughed. I would not for a moment have believed them.

What am I so afraid of?

People are bewildered and it's honestly embarrassing. Sometimes they just smile. Sometimes they ask.

I stir my drink and I say, "it's my health insurance job; there just isn't enough freelance work coming in" but that's bull.

I was offered a job and I was worried about security; I was offered another job and I didn't want to move to that city. This is really not that complicated; if you don't like your job, if you feel degraded every day, if you feel yourself growing stupider and less creative by the moment: RUN.

I am really so dramatic.

Worst Blogger Ever

2010-05-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

You've proooobably noticed my lack of updates here.

I've been guest writing at Sundries Shack but will be adding new content soon.

Seriously.

2010-05-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, I am trying to be mature, but I cannot possibly be the only person who looks at footage of this woman and thinks of The Kids in the Hall.

Am I alone here?

Can we please stop asking serious questions about her sexuality, contempt for the military, and socialist thesis and start talking about That Hair?

Volunteering #fail

2010-05-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

I didn't go this weekend.

Apparently the National Audubon Society doesn't have need for people who don't know the difference between wading birds and waterfowl; especially those of us who haven't had rabies exposure shots.

So I will have to sit, pet the dog, and think happy thoughts about the turtles and the dolphins and the fish and the oysters and the birds and the fishermen and their families.

Manners Cost Nothing

2010-05-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

Planning another impromptu "vacation" - going to do my bit to save Gulf Coast wildlife.

Begging the question: will I ever actually vacation on a vacation?

Please get a hair cut and drop off your excess panty hose at Amplify Salon in Cloverdale.

I unfortunately am selfishly growing my hair out and have been in the habit of flushing panty hose down toilets since I was six and therefore don't have anything to donate except for space in my Prius and my undying compassion for the plight of suffering animals.

You may also Donate to the National Audubon.

I'm Not a Big Deal.

2010-04-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's in my bio and I say it all the time – it originated as a joke after someone, somewhere started saying "I'm kind of a big deal" and its meaning, for me, has developed over time.

It doesn’t mean I have low self-worth or that I will always feel this way; it means exactly what it says. I'm just a girl, not altogether unlike a lot of other girls, with thoughts and feelings and loads of memories and experiences that I want to share.

I approach this with open eyes. Blogging, as an information medium, can be very unreliable. Lesser-known bloggers, generally speaking, go ultimately unchecked. My intention is to declare, at the outset, that I am one of those people. I am occasionally wrong about things; it’s embarrassing and I move on. I don't want anyone to take what I have to say too seriously, unless of course I do.

As I mention all the time, I've been blogging since I was a child – before it became part of this "new media" people love talking about so much. The rules have changed. The environment has changed. The attitudes of readers have changed.

A bitter-sounding journalist very plainly expressed her disdain for the small-time bloggers whose words don't face the level of scrutiny that hers do. Nobody wants to pay dues anymore; nobody wants to be held accountable. I kept my mouth shut and felt she was somehow reading my mind or had googled me specifically for the conversation (which is so self-important of me). I was embarrassed on behalf of my kind.

I was raised to understand that paying dues is part of every process. I had an unpaid internship; it paid off. I have done loads of pro bono work; it is still paying off. We all want meaningful work, some of us want recognition and notoriety. I am fully aware that I simply do not know what I want. I just want to write things down. Maybe one day I'll have a granddaughter who will wonder about me.

And I suppose it shouldn't make me sick when people stop me in mid-conversation and say "well, I know this already, I read it on your blog." But it does.

Spitting Coffee On the Steering Wheel: Inglis on Morning Edition

2010-04-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I tuned in to NPR's Morning Edition in the middle of a segment on distrust of Congress and general public outrage over what we see going on in Washington. I was gelling right along with Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), until he started talking about how candidates benefit from making extreme statements.

The problem, Inglis says, is that "the political process rewards people who shout from their partisan walls."

When the focus is on campaigning rather than legislating, it benefits candidates to say outrageous things.

For example, Inglis says, a pro-immigrant Democrat might raise money by promising legal residency to all illegal immigrants. But a Republican against immigration might raise money by saying "shoot to kill, and drop those bodies over the fence," Inglis says.

You can read the full text here.

Someone stop me if I'm reading too far into this.

I understand Inglis was making hypothetical statements for the purpose of this story, and he did continue by saying "neither of those will happen" but this was an extremely irresponsible and misleading thing to say. Not only do his words reinforce the Left's stereotype that the Right is anti-immigration, it further suggests that at the heart of the issue we're so interested in getting rid of illegal immigrants that we would prefer to see them shot, killed, and dumped back in their homeland than legally brought in to this country.

It's bad enough when liberal pundits try (and miserably fail) at getting into the mindset of conservatives by suggesting we're callous, now we have Inglis goading them along as well.

Vacations... as a Diagnostic Tool.

2010-04-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

I've taken three vacations this year and summer is still months away. But somehow that isn't enough. I can't seem to work a straight week in my office without wanting to lie down on the floor and just give up at this whole pretense of being a responsible grown up.

The hilarious bit is that I work on my vacations. Because I love working. My work ethic is not the problem. I ran around New Orleans like a madwoman and accomplished more in a day than most people do in a week. I didn't do it for myself and I did it without pay. Why? Because that sort of thing, in my OCD little world, is fun.

He and I went to Puerto Rico, drank a lot of beer, wandered around a rain forest, and swam in the ocean off the coast of a tiny island. And I was miserable. I cried whenever he wasn't looking. I had way too much time to realize how much was wrong with us. As I ventured precariously into the water, the waves higher than any I'd ever attempted, I looked at him and said "I need you to pretend for five minutes that you're my boyfriend and that you actually like me." I said it as if I was asking to borrow his pen. I didn't think about it before I said it; I just knew, at that moment, that that was what I needed. I needed him to act like he gave a damn just for a little while. He picked me up and helped me through the waves and we gave each other salty, wet smooches. It was the happiest I had been on the entire trip even though I got sand in my hair and was waterlogged for weeks afterward.

Then we broke up.

I am infinitely more productive and focused when I am single. I have a propensity to structure my life around the person I am dating... which would be fine if I ever did so with the right person, but that hasn't happened yet.

And I'm getting more OK with that every day.

I Wouldn't Last Five Minutes.

2010-04-16T09:03:00.001-07:00

I just stumbled upon this photo and it begged to be posted.

Photo from Chocolate Brigade.

I Hear That Some People Relax on Their Vacations

2010-04-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first night home after the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. I feel as though I should be mentally and physically exhausted, but for some reason I'm not. I am basking in the glory of a week well-spent with friends, meeting new people, eating way too much, drinking way too much, and looking at pretty, shiny things.

Without being overly vague, I'll say that I'm excited about things that are happening. I love that my life is changing and gaining momentum, even if it's only in the elementary stages. Everything is still up in the air, but I'm strangely comfortable with that.

After the conference, I was relaxing in New Orleans when I realized that Stacy managed to forget his suitcase and was heading back to Maryland. I was already planning to mail a camera and other things that had been forgotten by other people (you know, the minutia that normal, sane people forget in travel), so I figured I would throw the whole thing in a large box and mail it later. Then I found out that he was staying in Northern Alabama for the night after being a guest on a radio program and watching the 5th district debates at UAH.

So I did what any normal, busy, exhausted girl would do when faced with an additional 6 hours of driving after a 5 hour drive home and work the next morning at 7:30... to return an unessential case of items to a man I had just spent the better part of a week basically talking to like a step-mother talks to a rotten child.

I drove to Huntsville.

Thinking about it now hurts my head. This is a level of exhaustion that it will take days of compulsive routine and buckets of tea to cure. My face looks tired. I think I've grown new wrinkles. After driving the three hours from Montgomery to Huntsville, it was nearly midnight.

I had some fun conversations with a congressional candidate and his campaign team, met even more interesting people, ran into some familiar faces, and learned a great deal of juicy campaign gossip (my favorite kind). Most of it is probably (hopefully) untrue. I tend to be skeptical of men in general, but when there is alcohol involved I believe them even less. Consider it part of my genius.

I'm returning to Huntsville again next week to be on a radio show. For the fun of it. I'll keep you posted.

So I'm home now. I have not eaten a proper meal in four days. Yesterday I ate an ice cream cone and I have a vague recollection of a diet coke around 2:00 a.m.

I don't know what's wrong with me when I travel; I just don't take care of myself whatsoever. In normal life I have a neurotic routine of gym time and balanced meals and manic closet organization; in travel, everything goes out the window. I focus on arriving punctually to unfamiliar places (not getting lost consumes about 85% of my travel-brain) and looking "put together" (whatever that means).

Tonight I am returning to normal... which is difficult considering I have no reference point for normal. I have unpacked, uploaded the pictures from my camera, and I've hung a row of damp sun dresses to dry.

It is astonishing what little is required for me to feel accomplished.

I have plans to tackle the epic stack of business cards I collected from people and stuffed into the various pockets of my computer bag during the conference. I will most likely put them in a drawer so I don't have to look at them.

I had an absolute blast. Most of the people I met were charming and excited (we Southerners love a good time). They all seemed eager to share their views and strike up a conversation with just about anyone. I didn't hear too many thick Southern accents, but I've been told I'm immune to dialect after years of living in the South.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to listen to many speakers since I was working on other things.

Despite what I have said in the past, some part of me feels like New Orleans could be home.

I suppose anyone could feel that way after spending a good amount of time walking through the dirty streets in perfect Spring weather. The dented fenders of nearly every car in the Quarter had some fashion of an "I love New Orleans" bumper sticker - post-Katrina relics that brought the community together. One read "I remember Helen Hill" and it sent chills up my arms. I tried to explain it to the person I was walking with, but I think I failed. I'm not a very good story-teller.

Maybe it's the clothes the people wear... or the way they wear them. I get the impression that everyone (even if it isn't what they "do") is an artist or a connoisseur of trinkets. They are gentle but loud and passionate; casually adorned with outlandish accessories; questionably insane, but they exude a sense that they know something you don't. Something I just can't put my finger on.

And me with pearl studs and a sun dress, constantly worried about being mugged: I could never aspire to be that cool.

Blog Bash

2010-04-09T11:57:00.001-07:00

No time to blog - must get everything together for BLOG BASH tonight!

Event planning with Ali is spur of the moment, but when it comes down to it, we know how to get things done. Fast. And running errands in the French Quarter during the festival has my blood pumping. I love this city.

See some of you tonight!

We're Not at CPAC Anymore.

2010-04-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

This morning we're heading to the conference to get things established on blogger row. Apparently some people in my group think that it will be like a school lunch table and that we should arrive early in order to select seats like the popular kids.

I was home schooled and am unimpressed by this idea.

I'm going to have to assert myself and establish the fact that I am one of those rare humans that requires a decent night of sleep and much prefer waking up at 4am to do my best work than going to sleep at 3am after doing shoddy work. It does not compute with these people yet, but it will.

I did yoga on the kitchen mat this morning. It actually has all the finer qualities of an actual yoga mat so I didn't hurt myself and I feel like I've had more than three hours of sleep. Which I haven't.

I also just discovered that last night, on some back road in Louisiana, the prayer I was fervently praying aloud to Jesus to help find me a gas station and save me from alligators and rednecks was all wrong. Apparently my memory really stinks and I am a bad Anglican.

I am sitting at the dining room table with a French press of tea, velcro rollers in my hair, waiting for the boys to get ready. Kind of strange how that works; no matter how hard I try to be the girl that takes a long time and makes everyone late, it is always the opposite.

I am hoping that my overall impression of the few people I met last night is not indicative of the whole conference. If it is... we're not at CPAC anymore.

Like a Slumber Party... For Grown Ups.

2010-04-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

Just look at that time stamp. Hanging out with Ali is ruining my sleep-life already.

After a day of driving to New Orleans and hammering out the logistics, we're all finally here, settled in to an unexpectedly amazing house near the French Quarter.

So far it's only Ali, Ray, Zach, and I - sitting around the dining room table drinking tea and beer (respectively) - but apparently some other wankers are going to show up tomorrow to try to break into our clique. Haven't they seen this movie?

I feel obligated to be awake and working since everyone else is doing it. I'm sitting here, about to pass out at the keys, trying to look busy. How do other people have brain function with this little sleep? I'm having a difficult time spelling, let alone... braining.

Oh, in extremely important news, I lightly grazed a Belgium paver in the driveway and completely screwed up the bumper of my Prius. And yes, I will probably complain about it for the rest of the ~~weekend~~ year.

Okay this is ridiculous, I don't care if they put my underwear in the freezer or draw on my face with sharpies; I'm going to sleep.

Spoiler Aliert: I'm a wreck.

2010-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to try to meet up with some old college friends in Mobile on my drive to SRLC, but it looks like that might not happen. Hopefully I'll at least be able to grab a latte from Carpe Diem.

I stayed in last night and charged electronics, located all of my elusive cordage, and started packing... but then I started getting one of my lovely little migraines, so I knocked myself out and got up around 8 for a meeting about Alabama Book Festival vendors. It was an important meeting; we discovered that I've mucked up and we've over-reserved tents. Brilliant.

I was a bit panicked about being behind, but Ali just let me know they are about 6 hours from here and I have plenty of time to lollygag. Which is good because I'm about to get a manicure and shut my brain down for an hour. Screw it.

PS: I'm staying in a house with 6 boys. Including this guy. Please send prayers and estrogen my direction.

Because I'm Sure New Orleans Loves Republicans.

2010-04-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I drive to New Orleans for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

Since I am staying with friends, it is pointless (and also arguably dangerous) for me to arrive prior to my group. And since one friend is particularly famous for his fashionable-lateness, I have a feeling I'll have plenty of time to finish packing tomorrow.

There are many up sides to traveling by car instead of flying. My favorite? Nothing is forcing me to downsize. I am a chronic over-packer and it shows.

Meeker is giving me music for the trip since I've had an iTunes crisis. I'm not sure if he realizes I am mostly-fond of the type of music suited for dramatic bathtub suicides, but I'm excited to hear what he's put together.

A warm, sunny drive to New Orleans should definitely beat the cold, late-night drive to CPAC. I'll keep you posted.

Foodlike Substances.

2010-04-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

One thing that annoyed me about conservatives during Obama's campaign was their insistence on mocking him for his eating habits. What a pretentious, arugula-eating food-snob. How dare he eat a lesser-known variety of lettuce than the rest of America. What the hell is wrong with iceburg? It's crisp, cheap, and blissfully devoid of nutritional value.

You see... I don't see anything wrong with the Obama family's ardent appreciation for so-called "elitist food." If we should be anything in this amazing country, it should be food-snobs. We should support local agricultural endeavors, eat funny-looking vegetables, and demand the companies that supply our food hold themselves to the highest possible quality standards. We should be the healthiest nation on the planet - not the least-healthy.

But here's where Obama and I stop tracking: I don't believe the government is going to pull us up out of our obese squalor and save us from childhood diabetes. In fact, I firmly believe the government put us there.

After my room mate brought home Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook, I checked out the show on hulu just to get recipe ideas and see The Naked Chef back in action. He's so dreamy.

I didn't realize the show actually had something to do with its title.

Jamie is documenting his mission to improve the eating habits of Americans by starting at the most ingenius and obvious place - the schools. He started a similar program in England that was wildly successful at transforming the food children were being fed.

I had no idea how important this was. You see, I live in a dream world.

Until watching this program I was blind to the fact that children are still being fed bad food in public schools. I thought, surely in this time of FLOTUS vegetable gardens and the War On Obesity that we'd have gotten rid of the pizza and french fries for five-year-olds ages ago.

Here's the promo:

I say this all the time and I'll say it again - I was home schooled from 2nd grade on; my mother never bought soda, pre-made foods, or fast food. We grew up loving vegetables and whole foods because... that was just normal. It blows my mind to see children drinking milk with three teaspoons of sugar in it (yes, sugar in milk). It hurts me to see children dramatically acting like veggies are gross or yucky. I used to sneak up to our garden to pick parsley and sorrell and eat it like a rabbit.

Eating well is a learned behavior; if they were raised with vegetables as a normal, healthy, necessary part of life they wouldn't act that way. They should be gagging and spitting out the fat-loaded foodlike-substances they happily munch on every day; that is what's going to kill them, not the broccoli.

Shocking as this sounds, our system for school lunches has more backwards guidelines and pointless bureaucracy than the big bad increasingly-socialist U.K.

Children can't have knives; they might stab each other. Pizza is suitable for breakfast, french fries are a vegetable, oh and make sure you wear plastic gloves while you're preparing chicken byproducts for the kiddies! When it came time to look at the system that allows these types of things to go on in our schools, an expert explained that it's all laid out in regulation manuals thicker than phonebooks that she had to bring in on a dolly for their meeting.

Endless pages of pie charts, spreadsheets, and red tape... but our kids are eating pizza for breakfast.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I'm just a single twenty-something; I'm not a parent, but this has really boiled my potatoes. I aspire to have children some day and I wouldn't let them within 50 feet of a public school unless it was to take a standardized test to prove, once again, that home schoolers are infinitely smarter than public schoolers.

The government wants to give us "free" health care and tax our tanning beds 10% but they still present our children with animal-feed-grade fare?

Zen & the Art of Indoor Tanning

2010-03-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

Writing a piece in defense of indoor tanning feels much like I imagine it would to write in defense of driving without a seatbelt or eating raw oysters while pregnant.

It doesn’t feel like the intelligent thing to do.

But from the moment I learned of the tax increase for indoor tanning provided by the health care bill, I've wanted to speak up in defense of the countless small business owners who will be affected — people who don't have enough lobbying power to be heard. At a time when small businesses across this country are suffering and closing their doors, why raise taxes that specifically burden small business owners?

At first I shied away from the issue because, to me, it’s embarrassing – I don’t want everyone to know that I use a tanning salon. At best it seems frivolous, vain, and tacky; at worst, dangerous and deadly. I know it seems horrifying to most people: once or twice a week, I voluntarily fold myself into a coffin-like device, press a button, and slow-cook myself on a bed of high-power bulbs that could one day cause me to develop skin cancer.

Another disclosure I never intended to make on my blog: I’ve suffered from very mild psoriasis since college. Most people wouldn’t even notice it or let it bother them, but I am vain and have always been self-conscious about it. Using an indoor tanning bed is the only effective treatment I have to keep my skin totally clear year round. Period. I know that is not the reason 99.9 percent of other women use the tanning bed, but it is why I personally use it.

Since telling people I go to a tanning salon doesn’t fit with the overall Lyndsey Fifield narrative, I usually don't mention it. I’m more of a modern-day Beatrix Potter and when most people think tanning bed they think Jersey Shore.

I don’t advocate the use of them, much as I don't encourage smoking cigarettes, but I absolutely loathe any force that targets our freedoms and ability to choose for ourselves what we should avoid so long as we are aware of the risks. It starts with a 10% tax increase.

Do these nanny-state-craving, white-girl-hating (come on, who else is affected by a tanning bed tax?), realize how many forms people have to fill out before being allowed to step into a tanning bed? I'm surprised they stopped short of having me raise my right hand, swear an oath, and notarize a document saying that I was absolutely, 100% certain that I understood the risks I was taking. If that hadn't been enough, a very prominent warning label is printed in bold lettering inside every machine.

Ready for a shocker? Every precaution taken by this franchise, owned and operated by a local family, is voluntary. The government does not require them to have someone checking to make sure each person has safety-goggles, but they do. The FDA doesn't require them to have consent forms signed by a parent if a girl is under 18, but they do. I couldn't even get a sunburn in a tanning bed if I wanted to - trained attendants who are certified in the use of the machines help customers select the amount of time and the level of power they should use. None of these precautions are enforced by the government - they are self-enforced practices that responsible business owners have decided to put on themselves.

The tax increase for indoor tanning is the very first action (of many) we’re going to see as a result of the health care bill. Fast food taxes, soda taxes, and other "you're not smart enough to know what's good for you, America" taxes are in queue.

Why I Stopped Blogging

2010-03-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm the type of person who has to learn valuable life lessons by experience.

The sort of girl who tries to hand-wash a dry-clean-only cardigan or who puts a metal spoon in her mouth directly after stirring honey into scalding hot tea.

As a rule, an intelligent person should really only have to watch the demise of one favorite sweater before their very eyes before they see why dry cleaners are able to charge as much as they do. Lesson learned.

Anyway.

Not long after I began blogging, back around 1999-2000, I learned to edit myself according to my audience. I was about 16 when a youth minister from my church called my mother and had a long talk with her about some of the things he'd read on my blog. Lesson learned. From that point forward, I was cautious with my language, my content, and I thought to myself, "would I want my grandmother to read this?" before posting anything. Problem solved.

I continued to blog through college. I had locked entries on livejournal that were a little more risqué because I felt comfortable with my small collection of other over-sharing bloggers. I wrote daily (sometimes multiple times a day) and learned a lot about myself as a result. If I wanted to see where a dating relationship started going south, I could click through my archives and literally read my life like a novel. It was fascinating. For so much of my life, writing has been my sounding board. I have written my way through the most difficult periods of my life; but not this one.

When employees of a civil rights law firm began reading my former blog and harassing me based on what I consider to be milk-toast, personal-life content, I was shocked. I was confused and I did something that I shouldn't have done: I stopped writing. I didn't know what else to do; I didn't want to create waves.

Note: To clarify before an uninitiated reader thinks I was writing things like "today I was weeding my garden and realized I just don't like black people" it was nothing of the sort. In fact, had it been something like that, the group in question probably wouldn't have wasted their time harassing me.

I was running on a Saturday afternoon with a now-ex boyfriend and when we approached the firm in question there was something going on that seemed strange to me. I didn't really know what it was all about, but I made a flippant statement in a post, asked a rhetorical question, and had no plan of really digging in to the matter. I didn't have the chops or the desire to investigate; for Pete's sake, at that time my blog mostly focused on perfecting my cranberry scone recipe and what latest purchase I'd made from Etsy.

But that's when the harassment began. First it was a comment on the post in question. Soon I received multiple comments on every post I made. My regular readers and commenters were confused but their defensiveness stoked the fires even more so that I finally turned off my comments feature. Just when I thought it was over, a friend alerted me to a parody blog that was made with the express purpose of mocking me. I'm not kidding. Vicious, bizarre lies and stories with no basis in reality began getting back to me from people in the neighborhood. In retrospect I handled it poorly, but I didn't know what else to do at the time. I thought going away would make it all stop... and it did. I stopped going into Cloverdale. I stopped blogging, period. I let myself fade from their consciousness like a phantom. And, finally, the parody blog started attacking other people (still referencing me on occasion, but very rarely). Then it was deleted. About a year later I received a sincere apology from one of the people in question. I attended the wedding of a former employee of the firm and it went without incident. It's over.

So I began blogging again. Silly, romantic talk about crying in Jane Austen films and running into old friends. The occasional conservative, political rant. A few friends read, commented, enjoyed it. It wasn't about garnering a large readership or recruiting people to give me feedback on my daily yammering - it was genuinely an effort to document my life and continue practicing an art that, at the end of the day, keeps me sane.

Then I wrote about my boyfriend.

This was not smart. While I have made a personal choice to write my life to strangers, my boyfriend hadn't made any such decision and it was unfair and thoughtless of me to yammer about our personal lives.

One of the many painful parts of this relationship has been its affect on my writing. I blogged about him; it upset him, so I stopped out of respect for him. Once again, I felt critical eyes on my blog and I cowered. I couldn't think of anything relevant or noteworthy to discuss that didn't have anything to do with how much I loved him or how much I was hurting... so I stopped completely. I put my blog on a hiatus and that is 100% why.

After everything I had been through, after the great lesson I learned in my dealings with the civil rights firm, my first instinct when my writing was questioned was to take my ball and go home.

So this was a new lesson. Instead of being able to click back through the archives and pinpoint where things went wrong with this one, I can only look to the date of my last update. It's shameful.

Let me tell you - single-me is fun. Single-me wakes up at 4am and accomplishes more before 9am than most people dream of accomplishing in a long weekend. Single-me wears red dresses and twirls on sidewalks and grocery aisles when nobody is looking. She bakes and laughs and loves her friends. She doesn't cry all the time. She doesn't try to frame her life around the narrative of another person. She doesn't get horribly embarrassed when she considers how many of her normal, happily-married friends will judge the demise of yet another relationship. Her heart doesn't break every time someone says he'll call but doesn't. She doesn't have to lie to her best friends, mother, and coworkers when they ask how her relationships are going. She can shrug and say she's focusing on her work.

We shouldn't air our dirty laundry. I get that. But this is how I cope. I sit at a keyboard and I write. And that's not good enough in itself, either - it's the posting that helps.

I've tried personal diaries. I've tried writing letters and then throwing them away... and it never makes me feel much better. I enjoy putting these words up for other silly, romantic human beings to read, too.

Hopefully this is the last time I'll have to learn this lesson.

Hopefully I can pick back up without any trouble and continue doing what I love to do, however badly I do it.

An Over-steeped French Press of Words

2010-02-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

There are fierce rumors circulating my office that our jobs are soon to become extinct. As higher-ups head steadily for the door (with smiles on their faces) and remaining managers tuck quietly into corners to whisper to one another, the rumors become more believable.

Coworkers talk about their plans of paying off debts and tucking away paychecks to soften the blow. Talking about it seems to help them; for many women planning is the comfort food of life.

I don't think I'd do very well in poverty, so my only option is to make gobs of money doing something new.

I should mention that I'm writing about this against my better judgment; my parents always taught me that it's bad form to talk about personal finances... but then again, they also told me that publishing a diary online was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard.

Anyway, my options are clear. Visions of freelancing at a breakfast table in fuzzy, pink socks dance in my head. I've decided that I'm not blonde enough or good enough at holding my tongue to be a trophy wife. And I would rather dry shave with a ten cent razor than go to law school right now.

But I wonder how secure it would be to freelance full time. Last night, I was told that a very popular blogger had the heat turned off in her home. I was confused - "she couldn't pay the bill?" I am still confused. How could that happen? How could someone so popular with so much traffic be that poor?

My friends and I are all isolated from the economic crisis; we all have jobs and perhaps don't understand the plight of those who do not. My concept of poverty is rooted in a childhood constantly being told by my mother that we were on the brink of packing our bags for the poor house... and then being told by my father that we were not. I don't think my mother knew of any better way to instill in us a respect for financial responsibility than to make us think we were always at defcon 1.

I was raised with an acute awareness of where my parents stood financially. They were (and still are) small business owners. My grandparents paid for the piano lessons, gymnastics, trips abroad; my parents homeschooled and balanced their checkbook religiously. I always go back and forth trying to decide if I should resent my mother for making me worry about things that I could neither understand nor control... or if I should thank her for giving me a clear understanding that every time I turn on a dryer it costs $5.

To this day, every time I sign my name on a $50 lunch tab I am ashamed of myself knowing that my parents would take absolute joy in a special trip to a restaurant to share a meal together and would talk to the wait staff like they were old friends. When my mother and I drove together to New Orleans for a funeral, she told everyone how "cute" it was that I'd ordered a gin and soda with Bombay Sapphire at dinner as if it was the most natural thing in the world... because she didn't realize that it was the most natural thing in the world. But it shouldn't be. While my parents struggle every month to pay for my little brother's college, I buy silly dresses that I'll never wear more than once and fly to warmer climates for vacations. I should be ashamed of myself.

In the six months I spent unemployed between graduation and landing this sweet little job I never once considered bartending or (making the sign of the cross) waitressing. The very notion that I might have to bring a new glass of sweet tea to a colleague made my stomach turn. Not this girl.

Where did I develop such pride? In college I woke up a 5am, opened a coffee shop, drank espresso while reading Wordsworth, headed to class, wrote papers on library computers until midnight and then went home and repeated the process day by day. I was resilient. I never had panic attacks or cried because I had two papers due and only four hours time to write them. I sallied on.

Where did that girl go? And how can I get her back?

No Wonder Nobody Likes Us.

2010-01-31T05:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I was reintroduced to the type of Christianity that I had completely forgotten existed.

I sat on the pew of a funeral home chapel, surrounded by close and distant friends, to honor the life of Justin Whittington.

For some ignorant reason, as I followed my mapquest directions to a location on the nethermost side of Prattville, I prepared myself for a funeral service like the ones I've always been to. I expected to hear words of comfort, to sing gentle songs of hope, and to close my eyes and pray for Justin's peace.

Right.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Outside the funeral home, there to pay respect to their friend who had died from cancer, were more than a dozen people puffing away on cigarettes. It seemed an outright slap in the face that so many young, healthy people would stand around willingly sucking the lives out of themselves when Justin had fought so valiantly for his.

We walked inside, hugged, sniffled, and when Sarah Beth arrived she began to cry in such a way that started a chain reaction. Tissues everywhere. We wandered slowly around and looked at pictures from his childhood and we even laughed a little at some of the more precious ones. Then we went in and took seats inside the chapel.

I shouldn't limit my outrage to the fact that I'm Episcopalian. I dare say most of my Church of Christ friends from childhood would have been equally offended and horrified by the choice of hymns, the tone of voice, and the downright exploitation of the death of our friend. Some fat, slow-speaking men in cheap suits with offensively thick Southern accents decided to literally ram doctrine into our faces. [If you'd known Justin, reader, you would understand how little sense it made.]

I was reeling, offended, and felt a wash of negativity roll over me at a time when everyone in the room, myself included, was seeking solace, peace, and comfort. I failed to see why anyone would subscribe to this awful version of following Christ and, more importantly, why they would see fit to lambaste an unsuspecting, mourning crowd with it.

When I think of Christianity, I don't think of these types of people playing hard, mathematical piano music to equally depressing hymns. I think of my peaceful, laid back church - full of loving, happy people - and the peace and joy that swells within me as we all hug and pass the peace each Sunday. I think of my stoic, gentle grandmother with her head bowed in choir robes as she walks in the procession. I think of Jim's casual but thoughtful and deeply philosophical, open-minded sermons; words of comfort and motivation every Sunday - never an admonishment, never inspiring shame. I think of the babies who yammer during the Eucharist and of their young parents looking back sheepishly and apologetically, not realizing that their children just put a smile on everyone's faces. I think of the copious amounts of vodka, celery, and bloody mary mix used for the betterment of a Sunday afternoon spent laughing around a restaurant table.

I realize that because I have this version of Christ in my life that I completely forgot that a negative sort existed. Of course, this should completely explain my ardent confusion when people are so hostile toward Christianity itself.

Me, Lyndsey Fifield, once proud Agnostic and rebuker of all fairy tales concerning religion, feel a slight twinge of hurt when I hear someone mocking a faith of any sort. I now believe that if someone has found something peaceful (read: something that isn't a source of hurt for anyone else and is, in fact, more often a help) that gives their life meaning, who is anyone to judge what that something is or whether or not it's valid?

For example, masses of Christian groups (including people from my own church) have been donating aid to Haiti long before the earthquake. I fail to see how anyone can prattle on about the foolishness of religious beliefs at a time like this. Scores of people are ready to donate their time and earnings to a cause greater than themselves - who gives a damn if they're doing it for God, Allah, or their own sense of compassion? While I'm all for endless philosophical and religious discourse for the sake of increasing our knowledge and understanding, can we suspend that discussion for a more appropriate time and place?

Anyway, back to the painful service.

I leaned over to my friend and said, "Justin would have hated this" just as the preacher was explaining "this is what Justin would have wanted - he would have wanted us to say these things to you today at the hope that the end of his life could bring someone new to Jesus." The audacity made my face burn and a new, different sort of tears well up in my eyes. We both said, "no he wouldn't" just audibly enough to elicit agreement from the people around us. We were all floored.

She leaned over to me, pointed, and said "this is your faith, too" and I almost hit her. No it is not I horse-whispered.

Here was a time set aside for remembering the life of a person and also for giving love and comfort to each other. His girlfriend and her father were given time to stand and say wonderful things - she even played his favorite song by Journey. During their words and throughout the song we smiled; thank goodness there were at least a few moments of genuine respect. Thank goodness someone actually paid attention and knew what Justin would have wanted at his service.

I hesitated before writing about this for a number of reasons. I didn't want to say something negative about Justin's funeral service at the possibility that someone might infer that I was saying something negative about his wonderful, long-suffering, loving family and friends or, worst of all, Justin himself. I am not.

I was certainly not the only one who walked out of that chapel feeling far more downtrodden than when we had entered. Talking about his life later over drinks, telling stories, laughing - that was where we finally gained our catharsis... which is the way I think Jesus would have preferred it anyway.

Auribus tenere lupum.

2009-12-10T15:28:00.000-08:00

I have a wolf by the ears.

One would think that this is a metaphor for being caught in some type of terribly exciting, dangerous situation, forcefully grasping a moment in which to decide what move to make next.

Sadly, it isn't.

My creative limbs are atrophied. I sit here and I am trying, but everything beautiful and original within me is quiet; every bit of enthusiasm asleep. It wasn't beaten out of me, it isn't exhausted from overwork; it has been sitting on ice, forgetting what to do.

I had silly little dreams. I had a house with hardwood floors and old light fixtures. I painted wood found in my attic and cut little animal shapes out of colored bits of paper. I made my own dresses, I kept a diary, I lived on money that I made creating lattes and triple shot cappuccinos in a scrubby little coffee shop. I was full of joy and confidence. I didn't wonder for a moment if anyone thought I looked stupid.

Sarah Beth and I painted the metal chairs that sat on our front patio. I listened to records while I took bubble baths in the narrow, porcelain tub. I have such rich and fond memories of a time in my life when I had so much and didn't even realize it. I can remember how my closet smelled and how the fire detector would go off whenever we made pancakes, but I can't remember what I wore to work yesterday.

At the time I thought I was living in the purgatory that everyone goes through before college ends and real life begins.

I could close my eyes and wake up 22 years-old, wearing a long, blue skirt, in my house on Magnolia Curve.

So I have a wolf by the ears. I am staring into a mouth of chalky teeth and wet, purple gums. I am scared not of a violent end, but of a boring life.