I have this obsession with the show The Girls Next Door all of a sudden—and with Playboy in general. I can't stop watching it. Hugh Hefner, I've decided is brilliant for producing the show the way he does. One expects a "love to hate them" kind of thing, like My Super Sweet Sixteen, where the girls are vapid and spoiled and horrible but you can't stop watching. Not so with Girls Next Door; they are surprisingly down to earth, kind, fun, considerate, grateful. And of course, it's presented that way to attract a female audience, women like me who would have otherwise dismissed the entire Playboy brand as being misogynistic or outdated. Instead, I'm watching and saying, I need to move there! How do I get into Playboy??

I Wikipedia-ed everything about them last night; I learned the difference between Playboy (softcore) and Penthouse (hardcore). And it fascinates me to watch the girls on the show interact with their parents, proudly showing off their pictorials and inviting their younger siblings to the mansion. Only once have the parents ever seemed the slightest bit uncomfortable.

The more I watch it, the more normal their lifestyle seems, even though it totally isn't. But I love it. They make me want to show more cleavage.

autumn

The living room has 13 windows and a glass door so it's the perfect place to sit, just sit, and look. I haven't seen a winter here yet, haven't seen a snow storm. When we moved in during the summer it was all green, everywhere, with a flowering dogwood tree, pink and white petals drooping lazily in the heat.

The windows are a picture frame. The autumn is spectacular and today's no exception. The sky is soft shades of white and gray, charcoal smudges on a muted canvas. One large tree—oak—stretches its branches over six windows and the leaves haven't yet fallen. They're gold, touches of green. It's just rained and the rain came horizontally, lashing through the leaves. It's stopped and the windows are speckled with droplets. Inside it's warm, comfortable, Kona coffee that I'm drinking black because I'm out of milk. Outside it looks balmy, low 60s, unnaturally warm for a mid-November day.

ten tiny changes

I’m in Border’s with Dave and trying to decide if I should splurge on a gooey melty cheesy sandwich for dinner. I mean, I probably shouldn’t, but Dave is eating a sandwich now and it smells good. I’m flipping through “The Artist’s Way” by Julie Cameron. Purchasing it was supposed to be my reward for getting to 10K words (just did) but of course I’m second-guessing myself now, trying to make sure it’s worth my fifteen dollars.

I like her idea of morning papers, writing down 3 pages of plain ol’ stream-of-consciousness every day. She also has an exercise called Ten Tiny Changes whereby she asks you to list ten changes you’d like to make for yourself.

I’d like to

1. Train for and run another marathon, and another after that
2. Become, once and for all, a Morning Person, or at least wake up when my alarm clock goes off
3. Buy some matching bra-and-underwear sets
4. Keep my room clean for more than a couple days
5. Write every day
6. Learn Spanish and Portuguese
7. Good posture
8. Do my laundry more often
9. Remember to use eye cream
10. Learn how not to care what others think about me

need stacy, clinton

It was cold walking from class to my car last night—beyond cashmere-sweater-and-fall-jacket cold. It was legit winter-in-New-England-hats-gloves-scarves cold. It was walking-around-my-house-in-Uggs cold. I love my Uggs. I don't even care. The furrier the boot, the better. And if I find humongous, Abominable Snowman furry boots in my size and the right price, they will be mine. And then I'll have to find the right skinny pants to wear with them. A petite skinny pant because the tight-jeans look doesn't work when the pant was made for someone five inches taller.

Two, maybe three, years ago I decided to embrace the winter, meaning embrace the accessories that winter brings. It was a "if you can't beat it..." sort of attitude. My (male, twenty-something) cousin pulled my name out of the Extended Family Christmas Grab and later my sister saw in a bar and whispered in his ear what to buy me: winter accessories. He (or, I'm sure, his girlfriend) got me a skinny black-and-white scarf and a white knit hat with a pom-pom and earflaps. Love. I am enamored with huge furry winter hats, just as I'm enamored with huge furry winter boots. The uglier the better. I requested a furry ear-flapped hat for Christmas last year after pointing out one I liked in the pages of J. Crew. My mother and I had been perusing the catalogue and I gasped at the hat, brown suede, a bit Elmer-Fudd meets prep school, fur-lined. It was $100. My mother found me a similar one at Macy's for less than $30. I hadn't even gotten it out of the gift box on Christmas morning before my mom said, "You can take this back. I almost returned it, it's so ugly." I love it. Not surprising.

This winter I need a coat. I have three, but hear me out. One is over five years old and was beautiful in its day. It's olive green, knee-length, hooded, lined in nubby taupe and hooks in the front. My grad school friend called it my "Chronicles of Narnia" coat. I hadn't seen the movie but I knew what she meant. Only it's getting a little too nubby, a little worn around the edges. I bought it from Warehouse in London in, oh...2001? Yikes.

The second isn't old; I bought it a couple years ago from Macy's. This is what happens when I shop alone sans Mom: I buy things that are too big, thinking they look great. It took a year before my mom finally commented how it was too long, the sleeves too big, and the shoulders too wide. Linebacker-wide, that's all I can see when I wear it now. It's pink, tweedy. Cute but doesn't do anything for my shape.

The third is my puffer, chocolate brown and fitted enough so I don't feel like a marshmallow. I love it, no complaints, except it's not dressy enough. If I'm going to be teaching undergrad classes I need to look professorial. I need (need/want) something fitted, maybe one of those beautiful wool bell-shaped jackets with the fitted waists and three-quarter length sleeves. I could pair it with long gloves and buy it in a beautiful color, like winter white or a Burburryesque plaid. I could pair it with an A-line skirt and smart boots and wouldn't I be the well-heeled visiting lecturer!

Of course, it would take me a minute before I got lipgloss on the winter white collar. Anyways.

Going out with the laadeez tonight to see our friend's new apartment. Meaning we're all commuting from the 'burbs except the ones who are staying in town after work and going straight there. Meaning I don't anticipate parking anywhere close to her building and need to carefully consider my outerwear. Just like I hate wearing flip flops before at least mid-May, I don't think it's puffer-jacket weather until what...Dec. 1? They may be arbitrary rules but they're mine. I'm planning on my navy (the one thing I own in navy) turtleneck with awesomely big buttons down the neck, a jean jacket, a pink pashmina scarf, brown Chuck Taylors. And my pants? Will be wide-legged, in winter white.

holidaze

I read an article about how a pop star in England (how do I not know her name?) sang for the Oxford Street lighting and I smiled, remembering how in England Christmas decorations popped up immediately following the first of November. I say bring it on. Bring on the rush of holidays. I'm no hater of commercialism and I delight in rounding the corner of Target and seeing a fake Christmas tree display, racks of shiny packaged ornaments, Christmas music piped in. The older I get the more I love the holidays. I love sitting in Borders drinking some sort of spicy holiday blend coffee, flipping through the pages of a magazine that's going to instruct me how to stay cool when the relatives show and not gain ten pounds. I love the gift-giving ideas, things I'd never consider, things I can't afford: "Why not keep her warm this Christmas with a soft cashmere throw?" Love it, love it all, even the unaffordable.

I love the idea of the holidays presented between the glossy pages of magazines: the large extended family in New Mexico giving their Thanksgiving traditions a kick of chile; turkeys rubbed down with hand-grown rosemary. Families in toggled sweaters and ski boots in Vermont nibbling on goat cheese h'orderves. Or maybe I read too many cooking magazines.

The holidays don't stress me out and if they do, it's in a good way. In college we'd freak over final exams, literally fall to the floor at 3 a.m. in this heap of notes and books. We'd pull all-nighters and walk around the next day in a haze, all dark undereyes and serene smiles like "It wasn't that bad." Like martyrs. We'd take breaks for student lounge coffee and tuna melts and french fries and exchange Secret Santa presents. Most of all, we'd lament "missing" the holiday season, it was the rush rush rush of finals throughout December and then two days before Christmas Eve, we were home, exclaiming over the things we'd miss—twinkling lights draped around the house, the smell of the evergreen, the cookies we'd never baked but always wanted to.

Now that I'm, um, officially a grown-up (?), I like to start my own traditions. Taking the back roads to classes to see what sort of lights and inflatable Santas neighbors have put up; shopping online or in Target on off-days, to avoid the crowds; gingerbread lattes, now sugar-free; a baking session with my mans (last year it was gingerbread men, the year before, biscotti); helping my mom with her Christmas cookie and extravagent gift-giving; putting up a Christmas tree complete with as many tacky childhood ornaments as my mom would give me while watching "Elf."

I'll have to write a whole other post about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Eve: another favorite.

Cacoethes Scribendi

I'm inherently lazy. It's true. I had to drag myself from the couch to get into my car and drive down to Starbucks and force myself to write. I'm lazy. I created this blog two months ago but have done nothing with it until now. The first post seems overwhelming; all that blank space.

The purpose, my purpose here, is to write more. As such, this writing blog is separate from my day-to-day Live Journal. And it's deliciously anonymous. On Live Journal I have the tendency to self-edit. I like the feeling of my saving my words to this blog and having them float unread somewhere in Internet-space. It's somehow freeing. I feel like Gossip Girl!

So I've started Nano and it is not going well. First, I started it five days late (oops) because of a weekend trip. Got a sinus headache on the airplane, blah blah blah, couldn't write. Didn't write. Watched Top Model and What Not To Wear marathons on the way home. What can ya do.

And here I sit now, a sugar-free gingerbread latte in hand, with no excuses and nothing else to do but write, and I find that my output is not existent. What happened to my cacoethes scribendi, my writer's itch? I need to get that fire back. I've Nano-ed since November of 2004 and have found the month intoxicating. From the outside it seems so cozy; blustery winds and darkening days outside and inside, in this well-lit little cafe or study, the writer, with a cup of spicy tea and maybe fingerless gloves (don't own a pair, but still) and a cashmere throw tossed around her shoulders, tippity tapping into the night. But it's not like that, is it ever?

The first year of Nano I was caught up in politics. No metaphor there, was literally swept away with the fervor of the election. I based my novel on it. I woke up at 5 and drove in the dark to the gym to work out before commuting an hour and a half to work. I showered at the gym and the month still smells like creme brulee lotion, sugary sweet. I sat upright in a chair at Barnes and Noble with my old laptop perched on my lap and typed for five hours straight. The end result wasn't good but it was finished and I was pleased.

The second year was when I fumbled. I got so caught up in my plot. I wanted it to be "the one"; too much pressure, too much at stake. I wanted to make it perfect and I gave up. I was busy at a new job, etc. All excuses and I knew it.

The third year, last year, my first year of graduate school, I was determined. I listened to Chris Baty talk at my local Border's and had him autograph my copy of his book. I learned from the previous years' mistakes. I finished my 50K words.

This year I can see I'm making the same mistakes as year 2. The thing is, I've wanted writing to be my career for a while now. And I'm a bit out of careers. I've worked in publishing. I had a small stint at teaching high school earlier this year and hated it. I'm kind of running out of things to do with the English language. I want to write. I want to teach writing at colleges. I was lucky enough to get a job teaching one class at a college this semester and I love it, want to continue doing it. But to do this, I need some output, some words on the screen. And this is where the pressure is coming in.

I planned, this summer, while surrounded by my chattering aunts and godmother and grandmother, to write about my family. Like the Portuguese-American Amy Tan. But it's kind of a downer, writing these sad stories. It's making me not want to write. I need a change of plot, a change of something. I don't want to quit!

So that concludes my first blog. More to come, hopefully more "writerly" ones than this. BTW, I borrowed the term "blue stocking" and "cacoethes scribendi" from early American writer extraordinarie Catharine Sedgwick: the original blue stocking (is it stockinged?) girl. I picture myself in that time period, hopefully like her or, later, like Charlotte Bronte, blue ink-tinged fingers, wiping them on my pristine stockings and dress (always making a mess, easy to picture), chomping on apples like Jo March and writing writing writing into the dark.