Be Brave Project, Day 25: Dealing With Dealing.

Labor Day weekend is here, and I feel a bit melancholy and reflective. Outside the milky curtains of of my apartment windows, I can hear the soft sound of cars swooshing by in the rain, of horns half-honked out of habit more than anger, of women clipping by in high heels. Whenever someone comes into my building, a typical NYC walk-up built in 1904, the front door squawks resentfully before easing back into a closed position with a sigh. Ground floor life.

I don't want to move; the hassle, the expense, the finding of the boxes and movers and time. . .and yet, and yet I have not yet sent my lease renewal. I am still waiting to see that damned duplex. Rec'd a call from Rebecca yesterday; they can show it to me next week. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow--this shit might just petty pace me out of a home. But the idea of having a dishwasher and stairs to climb, of laundry in the building and a full-sized bathtub (bubble baths! Oh!)--in addition to saving $300 a month, just keeps me dangling on the line with teeth firmly clamped to the bait.

They're not screwing me around; I just think Rebecca is shy about gaining access to the place for some reason. And if my landlords try to boot me out for being a few days late on the renewal (these landlords being the same people who took 4 months to repair a hole they knocked in my bathroom ceiling last summer), I shall simply say I mailed the renewal at the beginning of the week.

So that's what is making me uncomfortable; I really do not like duplicity. Even in the name--particularly in the name--of taking care of myself, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like duplicity or uncertainty or negotiations. I don't know when I turned into such a Pollyanna, but it's ruining my sleep and chapping my ass.

Anxiety about the Be Brave Project is also really kicking up. Yesterday I mailed the second out of the three tax returns I missed due to being a lush. Again, I am supposed to get money back; but I feel as if that cannot be the full story. Can you really just do the late taxes and that's it? I spent years feeling terrified about this, and all it took was 1 week, 1 accountant, and a stamp to sort it out? That cannot be.

My Health Insurance card, which I still do find a bit thrilling, is kicking up anxiety as well; I am profoundly mistrustful of the American health system, and convinced that if I actually use the damn thing all sorts of ghastly paperwork will reign down upon me. This, in AA terms, is known as catastrophizing. And, as you can imagine, it's a jolly fun way to live your life.

So, what with the stress of moving/not moving/might get tossed out, dealing with my taxes, health insurance mistrust. . .I find duplicity is seeping into all sorts of odd places. An old friend from Paris called and texted on to invite me to a dinner party in the East Village last night--I was told that attractive men would be there, that the food would be divine. . .

Phhh. That's how I felt. Phhh. First the hassle of getting dressed, which on an average day is far from a thoughtless, casual event for me. Then a hostess gift, two trains downtown, switching at Times Square. Long long walk from Astor Street stop down to Avenue B. "Attractive Men" always sound stressful and a bit high-maintenance, and as for food? Please. I have my pesto, I have Cadbury's Fruit and Nut bars. Unbeatable.

So I lied: I said I had to deal with my taxes.

And I sat on my sofa all night, quietly focusing on not freaking out about it all, the Be Brave Project and moving/not moving, sobriety and the stockmarket, grave family worries that kicked up this summer and the solace of the beginnings of financial acumen. I suppose you could say I was dealing with dealing with my taxes.

And that's attractive enough for me.

Be Brave Project, Day 24: Eat Your Greens, Mr. Eastwood.

Canoodling around on the internet yesterday, I found an old article from the London newspaper The Evening Standard in which a journalist took England's most famous female boxer, Cathy Brown, to see Clint Eastwood's film Million Dollar Baby. I love this film so very much, or the first 2/3 of it, that reading about a woman boxer's response to it made me leap around my apartment until I found the dvd.

In the article the woman boxer, 34 year-old Brown, had recently knocked out Hungarian Viktoria Varga after just two rounds-- exactly the type of fight Hilary Swank's character, Maggie, excels at in the film. Why is it so great (and really very weirdly satisfying) to watch Swank swing out a meaty arm and knock someone senseless?

What is it with boxing and films? Why does boxing transfer so well to cinema when, for example, movies about movies so frequently suck? (Don't even get me going about The Aviator. . . Scorsese got more from one shot of blood dripping from rope in Raging Bull than he was able to muster in 3 hours of the crap Hughes bio-pic. ) Say what you like about Sylvester Stallone, but Rocky is an extremely well-constructed, enjoyable film-- plus, I can't help but remember my pre-adolescent stirrings at the sight of his armpits. (And if you think you're disturbed by that, imagine how I feel.) Would On The Waterfront have been quite so earthy and moving if Brando had been, say, a failed golfer?

There's essentially something very moving about the strength and sadness of people who get beat up for a living.I suppose much of the appeal of boxing films is obvious: Women like watching well-built men sweat with very little clothing on. Men like sports. Boxing is an inherently simple conflict-- two people face to face with their fists and their minds as their only weapons. It has a structure that is inherently both violent and sexual: The rounds of only a few minutes a piece, the terse interstitial instructions, leaping jets of blood as eyelids get sliced open and noses re-arranged. Plus, boxing films have the climactic potential of the old KO. Add a condom and a pizza and that's a Saturday Night!

Million Dollar Baby relies on a lot of standard cinematic relationships, and it is all the better for that. Eastwood clearly is too experienced to avoid the necessary and enjoyable cliches: He knows their power. Swank is a classic underdog, born of the trashiest family in a trash-filled town, and freely confesses that if she were thinking straight she'd buy herself "a used trailer, a deep fryer and some oreos." Eastwood's Frankie is a world-weary old trainer with a mother-hen instinct, who helps his boxers with their automotive problems and worries about their health. The story is told in flash-back, in voice-over. And who does the voice-over?? Only the biggest smoothie in the business: the buttered gravel voice of Morgan Freeman. This man's voice held The Shawshank Redemption together, its gravity belying the movie's potential for sentimentality. The man could read the back of a tampon packet and make it sound epic and evocative.

Eastwood and Paul Haggis, the screenplay writer, also rely on one of my favorite movie conventions: The Same Sex Non-Sex partner. Think Laurel and Hardy, Voight and Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, Butch and Sundance. (In fact, the only film cliche I like more than the Same Sex Non-Sex partner is The Makeover. I just love it when they take a beautiful person with no make-up on, make them up, and suddenly. . .guess what?!? They look like a movie star!) But I digress: Eastwood and Freeman are world class SSNS partners. I would happily watch hours of footage of these two characters, Frankie and Scrap, sitting in a van waiting for the Automobile Association to come fix their alternator. Or maybe shopping with double-discount coupons at the Piggly Wiggly.

The best SSNS couples express their affection through rudeness and honesty. After Frankie's #1 fighter coldly dumps him for his rival, Scrap observes, "It wouldn't be so sad if you weren't so old." Exactly. That's exactly right. And that's exactly why Frankie has taken as his motto: "Always Protect Yourself." He doesn't want his fighters in over their heads, because they might get hurt; yet he doesn't want to get attached to them because he might get hurt. He doesn't want to train girls because it's painful to watch women get beaten up.

All of this vulnerability makes Million Dollar Baby a difficult film to watch at times. After a few girlfights I began to distract myself, to have fantasies that Hilary Swank might want some revenge on the bastards who raped her in Boys Don't Cry, and start kicking a little male ass. After all the films we've had to sit through watching women get assaulted, it seemed time to even things up a bit.

However, the filmmakers are far higher minded than my vengeful soul, and they took this quietly inspirational story in a very different direction. After Maggie and Frankie have realized that their friendship has turned into a deeper father and daughter relationship, Frankie forces himself to throw caution to the winds: After several refusals, he allows Maggie to fight Billie, the WWF champion. Billie's a dirty fighter (we are told she's an ex-hooker from Berlin, so presumably she's a little cheesed off what with us winning the cold war and all those low-paid blow jobs). And, in an exceptionally nasty move, Billie throws a series of illegal punches which culminate in Swank's spinal column getting snapped.

Which brings us back to what Cathy Brown--remember the English boxer?--thought of Million Dollar Baby. She felt that the film enacts a big fear that people in the boxing world have always had about women's boxing: "That a serious injury to a woman boxer might destroy the sport. I think some people will come away from this film not wanting to see women box in real life. That would be a shame. We train as hard as men, we fight as hard, and we have the same right to be in the ring."

Well, I can see why Brown would worry about that, but in fact this film reflects quite well on women's boxing (though slightly less well on ex-hookers from Berlin). What I would say to Cathy Brown is this: a. Please don't kick my ass, and b. Maggie traveled places she'd never imagined visiting, earned beaucoup bucks, excelled at a sport she loved, and found a very meaningful relationship with Frankie. As Scrap points out, "People die every day after mopping floors. Never got their shot. If she dies today she'll be thinking 'I did all right'."

In short, thank Christ for Clint Eastwood. He just keeps cranking out film after another intelligent, serious, thoughful film. He doesn't have the soundtrack shout his intentions at us (are you listening, Scorsese?? Howard Hughes was deaf: I am not). And Eastwood can take the piss out of himself. I will be trying not to let the Angelina Jolie effect deter me from seeing his next, The Changeling, though the pulsing veins in her arms--and the crazy in her eyes--are somewhat distracting. But eat your greens, Clint baby. . .we need you around.

And as for the Be Brave Project, my own efforts to stop shadow boxing with the past? Sent off my 2006 taxes to the Dream Accountant, received my 2005 from same. Am within one day of sending off that damn Self piece, and will be seeing the elusory duplex this weekend. Oh yes, and I've decided to get over my fear of Russian Literature: I bought War and Peace.


I just wish Morgan Freeman would read it to me. . .

Be Brave Project, Day 23: Butler Library & The Glare of the Blairs

There's already an autumnal lilt to the air, here in Manhattan, that I've never detected before the third week of September. Usually the students move to the city at the end of August and spend three weeks gasping in the dying grip of a New York summer; they gawp in shocked appreciation as models stroll up Broadway wearing nothing more than three handkerchiefs and a pair of knuckle-dusters, they avert their eyes from bearded hipsters in cut-offs (there's just something about the sight of a bearded guy in shorts that's a bit porno in all the wrong ways.)

But this morning something happened that's the equivalent of Groundhog's Day--I woke up, scratched my way to the kitchen, fed & watered Gigi Colette, and then went to get a glass for my morning diet soda. But I froze. I sniffed the air. I wrapped my arms around myself and felt the need for a dose o' cashmere, or at least a velour hoodie. And then I made myself a cup of tea.

Autumn's come early this year.

I should have been expecting it: Last week I had a slightly disconcerting experience. I was heading to Butler Library on the Columbia University campus. As an alum I have access there, and it's a fine, elegant, efficient place to get some work done (whilst occasionally distracting yourself with their quality baked goods). The architecture of the building is so marvellously over the top in its self-important pretentiousness that I always smile when I see it. I adore this building. I can see some 1930's Preston Sturges characters discussing its design: "I want some columns, see--big ones, and don't be stingy with 'em! Gimme lots of columns, a few big hanging lamps, and a couple a' archways. And let's get some names up there! Who's big in this book business? Aristotle--I heard of him--get his name up there. He's dead, right? Good. No lawsuits. . ."

Anyway, I'm walking towards the library, smiling and thinking girlish thoughts of Preston Sturges, chocolate chip cookies, and the diversification of my credit portfolio--when suddenly I noticed that the people around me were far, far better looking than the average variety of human being. And that these good-looking people were weirdly over-dressed for a summer's day. They all had sweaters tied stiffly around their necks, and the guys wore khakis with knife-like creases ironed into them.

And they were glaring at me.

Turns out that the tv show Gossip Girl was being shot on campus that day, and the entire College Walk was shut down. H'mm. Why, now you mention it, I did suddenly notice that there were plenty of people standing around with the self-important casualness of a film crew--and oh yes, those are some big ass cameras and equipment trucks over there.

While basking in the feast of my own imagination, I had apparently ignored the shouts of the various interns, assistant directors, and security guys, and wandered into the middle of the scene they were shooting. Whoops! I've never seen the show, as I watch Skins on BBC America and only have the capacity for one group of self-involved adolescents in my viewing life. . .but it certainly looked as if I'd just really pissed off a bunch of girls named Blair.

So if you watch that show and see a scene in front of a profoundly fabulous library, where there's an over-aged and apparently mentally challenged female student mooning around, wearing summer clothing when all others are tweeded up to their asses--That's Elusive D.!

Be Brave Project: Yesterday pulled together tax stuff for 2006. Called Health Insurance about activating plan. Edited Self essay, and think it's better and tighter. Called Rebecca about going to see the duplex in the ugly building. . .I decided to risk it for a biscuit, and slightly delay returning the lease agreement to my landlords: It's Labor Day weekend, and these things happen.

Just please God don't let me end up on the street. Think how many film shoots I'd screw up if I wandered this town full-time.

Be Brave Project, Day 22: Capital One, it's the Sock Drawer for You.

I don't like not quite knowing where I'll be living in five weeks, and I obviously don't enjoy the sustained effort it costs for me to dig myself out of the swamp of vodka and financial insecurity beneath which I was buried for most of the new millennium.

Turning around and facing the grotesquely self-sabotaging behaviors caused by addiction is not only frightening, but wearying: You feel as if you're stumbling up a down escalator all of the damn time, while next to you your friends and family glide serenely along, effortlessly moving up and forward, forward and up. My world got smaller and bleaker, while friends got married or arranged book deals; purchased houses--wisely at the time when a ham sandwich could get a mortgage--or decided to row across the Atlantic for charity; had children or leapt into exciting career changes.

A great deal of time at AA meetings is spent discussing the dangers of over-reacting when we are feeling "less than." (I know, these recovery phrases make you want to cover your ears and hum show tunes loudly, but as I mentioned, we are weary. Somehow it helps to speak in a sort of emotional shorthand, although you feel as if you're in an afternoon re-run of a crap Lifetime film.)

It's all a bit confusing, and ironic, and circular: Lushes drink when they feel inferior, and feel inferior because they've run away from life. Lushes drink because they feel resentful, but are perpetuating the behavior that created the disparity which causes resentment. Lushes isolate so they can drink, but drink because they're so cut off. But most of all, Lushes drink because they are lushes. And yet once you've put the bottle down for a bit, you do find that avoiding resentments and comparisons and anger and fatigue and isolation does quiet down the drink signals, and telling other people about it really does help to shut the signals off.

So the AA meetings exist, otherwise we'd be wandering the streets grabbing the lapels of innocent civilians and telling them our trivial stories of grudges and woe. Like I'm about to do here:

In my sustained effort to improve my credit and re-join the more responsible members of the human race, I bit the bullet and called Capital One yesterday evening. There actually wasn't as much fear/bullet biting involved in the call, because I have never missed a payment with them since I got the card (hot damn, Elusive D.!), and I have never made any previous requests. So I wanted them to drop my APR from 15.65%, and possibly give me a credit increase.

Fifteen minutes later I hung up the phone almost shaking with anger. I'd been spoken to like a child, told that having the low limit and the high APR was "good for me, and for my credit", and that as a Capital One customer I was "like a child in school asking for a good grade before the work has been done." Well, I asked, biting my words out so I wouldn't tell the woman what I thought of her demeaning customer service technique, what can I do in order to qualify for these improvements in the future? "I can't give a time frame. Files are pulled randomly." Well, fuck you very much, Darling.

Her advice was that I should start using the card, a lot, and then eventually Capital One would decide to award me for my good behavior. They clearly are using the oil crisis to push buying gas with credit, as she kept telling me that it's soo easy to just swipe the card at the pump. Twice I said, "I'm a New Yorker. No car." Oh, she piped in, I could do a balance transfer at a low APR. As if every other card on the planet doesn't have a low balance transfer. But how helpful of her to point out that how I can improve credit is by shifting debt around! Thanks ever so! Happily, I currently have very little credit card debt, having spent the last few years paying it off. I suppose the Capital One Customer Service Manager would have suggesting running up debt in order to transfer it.

I thanked her for 'the interesting information you've given me'.

She thanked me for calling and wished me a good night.

We hung up in mutual loathing. It really was one of those conversations where you realize --Oh, she doesn't like me at all.

So I went to the kitchen, removed the pitcher o' pesto from the refrigerator (anyone who doesn't have a fridge and freezer filled with pesto this time of year should really get off their ass and to a farmer's market pronto). I put water on to boil, pulled out my whole-grain penne pasta, and began slicing tomatoes. The entire time I was banging pans and muttering to myself about assholes who have no goddamn business dealing with the public. . .what the fuck is on my credit information there that she feels she can talk to me like that?. . .I've screwed up my life and will never ever be able to make it. . .the stock market's in the tank, the Be Brave Project has done nothing for me, nothing, it's just removed me from my protective cocoon. . .

As the water neared boiling, I went to the hallway to check the mail. One envelope wouldn't bend: It was thick and contained something plastic--always intriguing. Back in my apartment I threw the rest of the mail to the floor and tore the thick envelope open--

It was an Oxford Health insurance card!

I Have Health Insurance! Thank you, "Healthy New York"!

Scorecard:

Be Brave Project: 2 (Health insurance and Taxes)

Capital One: 0 (That card's going to be eating socks for the next few months.)

Be Brave Project, Day 21: Weirder and Weirder, The NYC Real Estate Gods Smile (Capriciously?) Upon Me

Yesterday I got up late, for a person whose exciting Saturday night consisted of chocolate chip cookies, a liter of milk, and a Peter Bogdanovich film. Like any rational human being I do usually try to avoid seeing PB films, just as I try to avoid looking at PB himself when he squats malevolently in his seat at MoMA screenings, wearing his peanut-faced scowl and milliner's eye glasses, with his poor re-constructed wife by his side. Rather creeps me out.

But The Last Picture Show is an excellent film, with a very young Jeff Bridges exuding sunny charm all over a somewhat thankless role, and I'd already had the dvd out from the library for two weeks, so I broke out the chocolate chip cookies and got down to it.

However, sugar combined with the black and white (literally and figuratively) view of people trapped, diminishing within the rigidly low expectations of their community: I had a fitful uncomfortable night's slumber. I dreamt Peanut Face was a wooden dummy sitting on my lap, with frighteningly long arms and fingers that crept along the floor. When I awakened, very late, I found I'd received a phone call.

Hadn't heard the phone ring.

The call was from Rebecca, a woman who fitfully attends my Home AA group. I always notice when she is there because a) she looks like Lisa Kudrow from Friends, b) she wears some marvellously simple clothes, which I know cost the earth, and c) she's a writer at one of the influential women's magazines. I like Rebecca because she has a wry, intelligent way of talking, and a few weeks ago she helped Jackie--another ex-drunk, the only person currently under treatment for breast cancer who's doing the Tour de Pink bike marathon this year--get some over-due assistance from her sponsors. Rebecca placed one call, mentioned her magazine's name, and. . .suddenly Jackie's bike is getting customization out the ass. As it were.

Rebecca's message states that she and her husband own a duplex on the UWS, one block from Central Park. They do not live there since having children, as it's too small--yet there are some of the typical impossible NYC rules around the place, and they're not allowed to rent it out. But of course, they have been, and their current tenants have been transferred to LA. So here's the big ol' question: Would I be interested in renting this 2 bedroom duplex apartment, with 1 and 1/2 baths, dishwasher and central a/c? For less than 2 grand a month?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd prefer to buy a furnished mews house near the King's Road in London--but lacking that option--HELL YES I'D BE INTERESTED.

Dishwasher + Duplex???!! Dreamy! I could put dishes in the dishwasher, run upstairs, wave my arms around and shriek in high excitement, then compose myself and elegantly descend the stairwell a la Lana Turner in her MGM years. I could do a great deal of that.

You stick around AA long enough in this town, and you get goddamn connected!

The downside of course is that it's not tremendously legal. But there's not legal (happens all the time), and there's not legal (you're a warped freakshow who deserves to be prematurely cremated). In NYC, this rental situation apparently goes under the former category. I've called a few friends--profoundly respectable people, darling--and almost all of them have lived in a similar situation in NYC. Rebecca's out of town, but I could look at the place next week.

The nasty part is that I'm supposed to send in my new lease THIS week.

So today I went to look at the building. And I.M. Pei on a stick, it was freaking ugly. Tiny little windows and that grievous burnt orange sort of brick that you just know saved someone some money. The tenants I saw didn't strike me as very prepossessing: One guy was standing outside of the building, and he handed me a business card in which he proposes to "Hi pressure wash" my entryway. Well, really (she clutches her pearls). But. . .there's a concierge at the door. Mm Yeah. And have I mentioned the words dishwasher + duplex???

So I've got 72 hours to somehow figure this mess out.

P.S. I did some brave stuff today, regarding both work and credit, but will talk about that tomorrow. I am suffering from a marked sense-of-humor malfunction since I got off of the phone with Capital One.

Be Brave Project, Day 20: 9 out of 10 Wise Guys Agree: Take Your *%#@! Beta Blockers!

Thank God for the days off from Being Brave! I've come to realize that Being Brave produces an odd combination of feelings, none of which are comfortable: Anxiety, embarrassment, boredom. . .and the constant nagging thought--Have I Been Brave yet today? Oh, crap--would that count as being brave?

What's become clear is that, in many instances, what I call "Being Brave" is what other people would think of as basic self care. Taking care of your credit, tending to your career, maintaining contacts, taking proper care of your body and its necessities.

An example: For some reason I kept procrastinating a very simple call to my cardiologist in Chicago (I like my cardiologists the way I like my bankers: Handsome, Midwestern and Jewish). For some reason Duane Dumbass Reade, the pharmacists here in NYC, hadn't understood that my prescription was supposed to have re-fills. I've taken these pills since I was diagnosed at the age of 20, and believe me, sudden withdrawal from beta-blockers is no one's idea of a fun afternoon. The tightening of the heart, the shaking of the hands and the sudden sweating, all exacerbated by the worry that very soon one might just pass out. . .it's no good. (Though I did publish a piece in The Guardian about a ghastly withdrawal I went through in Paris one year, and was paid in Lovely Lovely pounds sterling).

Anyway, why procrastinate that phone call? Did I imagine the cardiologist's people would say, "Sweat it out, beta blocker bitch--no pills for you!" Did I think that my need for these pills would suddenly go away, like a yen for pesto or the urge to see a mid-week matinee? No. I didn't think any of these things. I just didn't feel like calling to ask for help. Knowing, as I did, that eventually I would have to call, I decided to just put it off. . .

That is just a little example of how an ex-lush, however fit and trim and nowadays filled with broccoli and calcium, can casually create a little drama and chaos in her life. And for some reason it requires an act of consciousness, and of bravery, for me to place a necessary call. I think that we have successfully established that I don't like authority figures, which is rather bizarre because I used to feel I WAS one. Ah well, the many complexities of Woman.

Yesterday I placed a lot of phone calls/emails in the morning. I emailed a former employer, a Web Publishing company for whom I wrote/edited/worked as consultant, to ask for copies of my tax information. Haven't heard back. I called Jefferson Capital Systems about 14 times to find out why they have placed negative information on my credit report when I signed up to make payments on an old debt the minute they contacted me, and have made my payments on time every time. I did the word count on a Self essay, and realized I have to cut over a page from my submission. Ouch! I also have been combing that brilliant credit site to find out about the world of credit and how to 'diversify my portfolio'.

Ooh that sounds so knowledgable and sexy! I also learned about off-shore phone calls being a sign of sub-prime cards, and that it's a good idea to get a card from a Credit Union. Which I think I shall try to do.

Went to an AA meeting yesterday and IT finally happened. The thing that any NYC lush dreams of: The man who spoke was connected. As in a Wise Guy. Fantastic stories of having no social security number, but owning these lush places on Long Island and the Upper East Side, of the girls and the drugs and the DUIs, of dropping an envelope off here and picking up some money there, 'helping some guys out'. . .Most excellent. The guy even had eyes like DeNiro--the sad humorous look under a twisted brow.

Damn, I love New York City.

Right now my neighbors are cooking bacon and it smells so good I could gnaw my way through their wall. And my landlords actually put a lock on our front door! Living large.

Be Brave Project, Day 18: Ah, the Days When I Allowed Myself Distractions. . .

Don't really feel like writing anything here today: I sort of wish I could resume my normal off-line journals, which I have been keeping every morning for years and in which I do feel less need to censor myself--and no need at all to be even vaguely interesting! It's an unusual combination: Uncensored yet dull.

Could be the title of some ex-Saturday Night Live Cast Member's next concert film. "Eddie Murphy--Uncensored Yet Dull!"

But. . .must keep moving forward. In the last few days I've been trying to keep my eyes focused on just moving my goals forward, quietly, just in an undramatic inch-by-inch method. I have:

-Sent 2005 tax information to the Dream Accountant.

-Mailed Proof of Payment of an old debt to the NYC courts.

-Rec'd and signed form for new organization of bank accounts.

-Organized new debit card so I get miles for using it.

-Received 2006 tax information.

Still need to get more of the 2006 tax crap, and to keep moving forward on letting the credit companies know my debt to Asset Acceptance has been paid--though I don't know if that'll remove the negative information from my credit report. Should ask the guy from the 123Credit link on the right here. Also should call old Web publishing employers for old tax forms.

But today I'm going to work on that damned Self essay. Need to check word count (it may be over, which would be v. annoying. . .), write cover note to Paula Derrow. Essay needs to have more personal detail, as in age and current life. I read several old Self Expression essays in the mag, and they're not too strong on either dialogue or humor, which is good for me (in this case).

So I'm going to skip the AA meeting today, I think. Just don't feel like doing the meditation that's the focus of the Thursday meeting, and I also am feeling slightly--actually, perilously--over-exposed since the qualification earlier in the week.

Oh boring boring it all feels so boring!! Four years ago I was dating a 6 foot 5 rugby player and living in South West London, going to pubs and parties and staying in the odd country house on the weekends, visiting. . .oh, let's face it, I was hungover every goddamn day. Either working illegally or hemorrhaging money in some way, starving myself so I could save the calories for night, for booze. All dolled up in the evening, but during the day eating one McDonald's cheeseburger (which are better tasting over there--must be the subtle flavoring the mad cow disease imparts), or a sad old Tesco egg-mayonnaise sandwich. And as for the rugby playing big boy? He was absolutely lovely--and I didn't give a crap, about him or me.

But oh, I wish I had him around now. I'd love to cook him enormous meals of Tarragon Chicken and vegetables, and cut brick-sized slabs of home-made tarte tatin for his dessert; I'd rent him dvds and sit on his lap as he watched them, I'd find him some rugby games here in NYC. (But he'd have to do his own laundry. I draw a line there.)

Sigh. Anyway. Shower. Self magazine. Being Brave. Ok, ok.