At last.

A gift I can get down with.

Gold.

Why didn’t I buy gold when all the ads were insisting that gold was the only rock-solid investment out there?

Because I’m stupid, that’s why. Seriously, I should start an investment service where I tell you what I bought, and you can sell it.

Oh well, easy come easy go.

Actually, it’s more like hard won, easy go.

Or no come, all go.

But such is life sometimes, and I still say the trade off was worth it. Security is lacking, but sense of purpose is high. As someone wrote, “What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”

In other news, I don’t know much about five golden rings, but I know an awful lot about five dozen cookies. My dad requested a batch of his favorite childhood cookies, and I decided to do him one better (or three better, I suppose) by making a batch using the original Hungarian recipe, a batch using the first-ever American version (a Betty Crocker recipe circa 1950), and a batch using – verbatim – his mom’s recipe.

It’s possibly a waste of time (and no doubt waaaaaaay too many cookies), but there’s something kind of cool about comparing old and older and oldest and seeing if there’s some kind of wisdom to be gleaned from each.

And if that isn’t the big hit I’m looking for, next Christmas I’ll look into turning lead into gold…

I’d buy your love.

I would.

I might.

Okay, you got me.
I wouldn’t.

I’d quite possibly buy a lot of stuff and most of it I wouldn’t need, but I’d probably take my queues from the super-rich Beatles (as in ‘Can’t Buy Me’ more than ‘All You Need Is’) over the probably-barely-getting-by-anymore Barenaked Ladies and forgo the love buying.

Meanwhile, I must confess that I feel bedraggled and borderline ill. I’m mainlining zinc and  considering another dance with the devil (AmbienCT, which made me puke about ten days ago) in order to get some much needed – if not necessary – zzzzs.

In the meantime, and in the spirit of compensating for over two weeks of doing for others, I spent the day indulging in three of my favorite, pointless activities:

1. Reading cookbooks

2. Watching old episodes of Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations

3. Window shopping online

And the critical word there is WINDOW because I’m not exactly financially solvent at the moment and because I spent two entire days purging a colossal amount of stuff from my closet…and it’s still brimming with a veritable shit load of stuff. Beloved stuff. Precious stuff. Cute stuff. Stuff I love. Stuff I (obviously) can’t part with. And yet the love of new stuff surfaces in the face of so much stuff…

On the surface you might think I’d make a really bad Buddhist, but that’s not the case. Nope. One can love their stuff so long as they maintain awareness that the stuff (both the stuff I have and the stuff I do not have, but would like to have) and I are one. Loving my stuff is self-love.

Allow me to make this a little bit more confusing:

In Buddhism, non-attachment (the ideal state) is the exact opposite of separation. To have attachment, you need two things:

1. The person who attaches
2. The thing the person attaches to.

In non-attachment, you’ve unified with the whole universe. There is nothing outside of you. Thus, there’s nothing to attach to and the notion of attachment becomes absurd.

However, because as a species we tend to believe that we are having an autonomous and intrinsic existence within our skin, and what’s outside our bodies is “everything else,” most of us go through life grabbing for one thing after another in an effort to be safe or feel happy.

And the rub there is that we ‘pursue’ happiness because we think it is an external quality, something that lies outside ourselves. And because we think it is ‘out there’ or external, we stress and worry about gaining it…and losing it. Whatever can be found can also be lost.

Which is, in the end, a long-winded way of saying that I am one with the items for sale at Urban Outfitters.com and thus looking at them and owning none of them brings me the same level of pleasure as owning them. Although, admittedly, if I had a million dollars, I would own a few of them.

Like this skirt:

And this wallet:

And this jacket:

And this jewelry holder stacked doll chairs thingamabob:

And this sweater:

But in a totally non-attached way…

Really.

Honest injun.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

I can’t get this to format how I want, so sorry about that. Sometimes (more often than not), Wordpress mystifies me.

If I were slightly more enthusiastic and energetic, I would find the old post I’m about to mention and link to it, but instead let me just explain: Last October when I was in Istanbul, Turkey, my friend and I went to a Salvador Dali exhibit at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum (which, by the way, if you try to walk back to town from there – as we did – be forewarned that that is not a reasonable plan. And then, when you realize that you’ve been walking for an hour and are still incredibly far away from Sultanahmet, let alone Taxsim where we were staying, and thus give in and get onto a public bus in rush-hour traffic, be prepared to have 12 and 13-year old school boys grab your butt while chatting you up. It was all I could do to refrain from reprimanding, “I could be your mother!!!”  But I didn’t…mostly because I don’t like admitting that stuff to myself. Not that I fancy myself Mary Kay Letourno, I just find the passing of the years so much more pleasant when you don’t actually acknowledge the passing of the years.)

Anywho, while I was at that exhibit, there was this movie collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney that was so amazing, I recorded it with my camera. I was showing my sad cinematography effort to some friends last night, and they kindly suggested we see if a better version was available on YouTube…and lo and behold (!), it temporarily is.

It may not be temporary, but seeing as the movie is clearly not supposed to be posted here…it probably is, and since I truly regard it as one of the more amazing things I’ve seen in the last few years, I wanted to share it with you:

Is that not the most jaw-dropping mix of the Disney optimism and the disturbing Dali imagery you could ever fathom?

One can only imagine it was rekindled on some kind of Fantasia kick (especially seeing that Roy Disney played a role in the credits), but it’s still one of those cool ‘imagine if’ moments that it turns out actually happened. Now to get a time-machine and put Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the Pixar people together…

(Note to self: Make sure to toss plenty of anti-depressants in with the candy bowl.)

(p.s. Many thanks for Michael Kraabel for the beers! That’s right…not just a beer, but an entire pitcher or two! Seriously, THANK YOU. It’s oh so nice to be appreciated!)

Oh no, wait.

That’s me.

I’m getting very sleepy.

Something about combining half a beer, a couple thimble-fulls of sake, and a butabital (migraine medicine, but I think codeine is involved) does that to a person.

Who woulda guessed?

With a yawn and a slight whimper, thus dawns Memorial Day weekend.

Memorial Day has to do with soldiers or war or honoring people who went to war or died in war. I think.

Something uber-American such that it’s one of the three days of the year – along with the 4th of July and Labor Day – I feel empowered to pull out my Stars and Stripes bikini and parade around like a patriotic jackass. Otherwise, I feel like a jackass.

And that’s about all I’ve got.

Headache turned slightly wasted and an American flag bathing suit.

More where that came from tomorrow.

Sweet dreams!

I’m tired.

And drained.

And ready for bed at 8pm, except The Simpsons are on and then The Celebrity Apprentice, and I will no doubt stay up to watch. (Side note: Second wind is upon me, and I’m surprised to note that Donald Trump Jr. seems to be evolving his own [heinously ugly] hairdo. I thought baldness and unfortunate thinning were inherited from the mother, but apparently in Trumps it descends directly through the male genes. Or maybe it’s just a matter of bad taste? The world may never know…)

Is it me, or is this filled with icky, boiling blood?

Anyway, as it happens, I’m no longer the spring chicken I once was.

Actually, I’m not even sure I ever had a heyday as such…but I’m most definitely not in the midst of one right now.

Today was the 12k race, and from the get-go it was off to an inauspicious start. To begin, I didn’t get home from my trip until almost midnight.

Then, I slept like crap. I have this weird thing where sometimes I’ll sweat like I’ve got autonomic dysreflexia, post-traumatic syringomyelia, autonomic neuropathy, and a bunch of other stuff WebMD said can be the cause of night sweats that don’t sound like good things to have and hopefully aren’t the reason this happens to me every few months.

Actually, I once recorded the sweats for a solid year, and took all the dates in to my doctor (who probably thinks I’m nuts, although not quite nuts enough to have me committed against my will), and he pondered them for a few seconds Then he declared that the dates were too random to be a symptom of tuberculosis, but if they pick up in frequency, to let him know. Case closed.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I sweat it up and soak the sheets and it’s super gross and always leads to a crappy night’s sleep, partly because I wake up freezing, and partly because I have to get my freezing body out of bed and find new blankets and, in this case, crack open a window.

So that happened, and then it’s up at 6:45am and off to the races. It was cold and they called for rain all day, so I dressed more warmly than I have in past years. Then, I waited in a 45 minute line to use a disgusting portable potty which was probably riddled with tuberculosis and god knows what else, and then, the next thing I know, I’m off and running.

So the goal was to run the entire thing in less than an hour. Which meant 8 minute miles (or less). Which immediately did not happen. Mile one – 8:20. Mile two: 8:37 and so on, until I drug back down to my usual 9:00 or 9:15 minute by the seventh mile.

I was in sorry shape.

You wouldn’t have even thought I trained, which I did. Sort of. Admittedly, I only started said ‘training’ two weeks ago, and I probably didn’t kick my own @ss as much as I should have, but the  point remains: It didn’t work. And I refuse to blame my own lack of initiative and effort. I blame advancing age.

And the fact that I was wearing a polar fleece jacket, which had my race number attached to it, so I couldn’t take it off. Rather than pouring rain, the sun came out and it actually got quite hot. All in all, I was happy about this, but it didn’t do much to increase my need for speed.

Ouch and double-ouch. At least I wasn't in bare feet.

Then there was the ankle timer.

They make you wear this timing chip on a Velcro strap wrapped around your leg, and the thing had dug four holes into my ankle by the second mile. Then my leg started to feel all crazy and painful, and I got paranoid that I was running on a stress fracture or having some kind of random – but serious – problem.  In the end, I think I had the strap on too tight, but ultimately I stopped and attached the ankle timer to my shoelaces…and problem solved.

And two minutes lost.

So there you have it, mission not accomplished.

I got through the race, just not (remotely) as fast as I’d hoped.

In conclusion, and not to dwell on a topic that I am personally quite sick of and have come to believe is more hype than reality, if there is rampant swine flu epidemic out there, I’m probably in some serious trouble. Today during the race, no less than 50 people spit within three feet of me. And I”m sure I stepped in at least a quarter cup of human gunk of some kind or another during the 7 1/2 mile course.

That guy needed one of these.

But the worst of all?

And I swear I am not making this up.

At the end of the race, in the middle of downtown, right after the place where you pick up your ‘thanks for playing’ t-shirt, I saw a man – a mere four or five feet in front of me – plug his nostril and fire a giant wad of snot out of the other one. And then he plugged the other nostril and did it again!

In public!

Where people could see him!

Oh, the humanity.

At the same time, let me give you my solemn promise:  I will never, ever unload a noseful of snot onto the ground in public. And if I absolutely must do so for some unknown reason that obviously involves a complete and total lack of paper products, I promise to ask you to look the other way and plug your ears first.

Cross my heart and hope to die.