Shacking Up

You may have heard about this alarming housing slump the country is in. Apparently interest rates are super low because the fed is panicking that nobody is buying, and home values are falling through the roof! Can you imagine? Yeah, well, we can't. Because apparently Seattle was the only city in the union who didn't get the frickin memo.

We didn't really think things through when we moved here. Naturally we knew it would be more expensive, as most of the more interesting places are, but we didn't really think about the whole water thing. Seattle is surrounded by water, and therefore expansion is extremely limited. Nearly halted, in fact. The city is so short on space that they are dividing lots, and then dividing THOSE lots, until they have disproved the theory that you can split something in half only down to the atom. In Seattle, even half an atom is prime real estate.

Since space is at such a premium, the fate of the real estate market is pretty much unrelated to that of the rest of the country. As Tom and I enter our second month of bone-weary house-hunting, our spirits have been broken down considerably. Things that formerly were on the must-have list have become far less important, such as indoor plumbing. Because when you live in a city that ran out of space about 75 years ago, you find that pretty much all of the houses are at least that old.

Here's what I've learned about Seattle history. In olden times, people didn't feel the need to be able to stand upright in all the levels of their homes. They seemed to be big on that point only on the main floor. On the top floor or in the basement you can just stoop.

Bathrooms were nearly superfluous and certainly a luxury. Two bathrooms in one house was simply foolishness. You were lucky you didn't have to go in the yard. Two bathrooms. Please!

Dining rooms were the center of the universe (on this point, at least, my forefathers and I can agree: dining is the most important expenditure of one's time). Therefore, the dining rooms are the size of football stadiums while living rooms are just slightly larger than the luxurious indoor toilet room. This is because there was no television, so the only thing they used the living room for was, well, whatever they did before television - knitting maybe? Must be. Knitting doesn't take up much room.

What I've learned about the present is this: if it sounds to good to be true, it costs a million dollars. If it sounds good enough, it causes cancer. For once I am not exaggerating. I fell madly in love with a renovated Victorian that was oozing so much charm I'm surprised it let me in its front door. I nearly wept with joy when I saw it, because it was in our price range. I should have known. Turns out it was near a major industrial wasteland, the kind that makes up Erin Brokovich's wet dreams, and the ground water was so contaminated that it was causing cancer in the local wildlife. This is why we could afford that particular house.

I was a wreck when we discovered this. I actually thought for a minute, would cancer be THAT bad, really? That's how difficult this search has been. I am so tired of falling in love and getting my heart broken every single weekend. It's like dating but so much worse. When you're dating, you meet a guy that seems like a viable candidate, what, once every few months MAYBE? And then you get all excited and your heart pounds and you tell all your friends and you gush a bit and then he turns out to be a cokehead or a mamma's boy or he spells "a lot" as one word and then your world is shattered for a few days and you drink too many appletinis and then you start the process over again. Now try speeding it up so that you go through this cycle on a WEEKLY basis. Is it any wonder that my face is broken out like a sixteen year old's and that I daily eat my body weight in chocolate?

There's also the added stress of apartment living to deal with - another comparison with the youth I am no longer. I am too old for apartment living with these kids playing their loud music day and night. And as grown ups we have furniture that needs to go somewhere. We were already fairly tightly wedged in to begin with but since we've been here I've added a purple velvet chaise (it was free, and what rational, normal human being would pass up a free purple velvet chaise?) and a treadmill that I am not allowed to use because the people who live below us threatened the poor apartment manager within an inch of her life because they thought their ceiling was going to fall on their heads when I used it. So I can't work off all the chocolate. All of this just adds to the aggravation and puts even more pressure on us to achieve the impossible.

After a few weeks it dawned on us, clever college graduates that we are, that perhaps we need to manage our expectations a bit better. So what if we don't get a house in the top school district, or that is within walking distance to shops? Pre-wired surround sound, two full baths, a roof... we don't really need those things. But even as we incrementally lower our standards and raise our budget ("the house will be so nice we won't want to go to the movies ever again anyway" is our reasoning) we STILL can't find anything I'd call liveable. Like with all its walls and maybe a hook-up for a washer and dryer. Is that so much to ask?

I'm starting to envy the homeless couple I pass sometimes on my way to work, who have souped up an old warehouse's entryway. They've got some nice digs there, and I bet they paid under 300 grand for it too. I think tomorrow I'll ask them about the school district.

Christmas With the Clampetts

This year's Christmas was a disaster, and it's all Theo's fault. Let me explain.

Tom and I decided that we would spend our first Christmas in Seattle somewhere else. Gathering with one or both of our families presented a number of difficulties due to the widespread locations of our family members and anyway we thought it might be fun to buck tradition and take a week long trip to Napa Valley and spend the holidays blitzed. This was half of a good idea.

The first problem we ran into was the dog. Everybody we know locally was, of course, busy over the holidays and their plans did not include pampering somebody else's old, grouchy Lhasa Apso. To board her would have required two things: forethought, and a huge wad of cash. So I brilliantly searched the internet for a B&B in Napa that would allow dogs and found one: the Hillcrest Inn.

(Yes, I am taking a risk giving the name. You'll see later why it's not that big a risk.)

Our first night was spent in one of those typical hotels found along the interstate: fair-priced, no frills, clean and functional. It was just a stop-over to break up the 12 hour drive to Napa so we weren't looking for anything fancy. Which is a good thing because about 30 minutes after we checked in, Theo barfed all over the carpet. Not only that, she insisted she wanted to a) walk through it and then b) take it back, if you know what I mean. So Tom held on to her while I cleaned up the mess, and Theo was snarling and grousing the entire time in her typical demon-like manner. She is so grouchy and pissy these days that I thought nothing of, after cleaning up the barf, reaching out to clean the rest of it off her face. Theo had other ideas in mind, apparently, because when I tried to do this she bit me. HARD.

Chaos ensued during which I screeched, Tom did his best to discipline a snarling ball of canine terror and Theo escaped under a chair where we gladly left her. She and I were not on speaking terms for a good five minutes, until her brain cell forgot what had happened and she came back out, fluffed herself up, and looked at us like, "Hey guys! What's to eat?"

That was one of the better nights of our vacation.

We arrived the next night at the B&B. It was up on a hillside (hence the name) and quite remote, so there were no lights to show us much of the grounds. We pulled up to our room and found the key in the door as promised. We saw nobody else when we arrived; in fact, it would be two days before we met our hostess.

Our room was monstrously small and horribly laid out. To make up for this, the owner had thoughtfully crammed every nook and cranny, every inch of wall space, with clutter. Our room was called the Shangri La (or the "Shanga La" as the wood-carved sign on the door read and nobody apparently saw fit to correct). Now, I never really thought much about the meaning of "Shangri-La" or if it was even a real place. But I was fairly certain it was not located in Florida. However, our hostess seemed to think it was, based on the many palm-tree-associated accoutrement foundjunking up the place. We had our pick of tacky palm tree lamps, for example. She also imagined Shangri-la was inhabited by parrots and monkeys, many stuffed versions of which could be found hanging from the ceiling.

Another highlight of the room, which Tom was lucky enough to discover, was a mound of damp, used towels in the corner behind the door. Further inspection showed they were damp with what appeared to be blood. Tom, with a look of severe distress, gathered them up and threw them outside the front door.

There was no phone, no cell phone signal, and certainly no internet. We were completely isolated. We noted it was unlikely there was anybody to hear us scream, should screaming at some point come into the picture on this vacation, for whatever reason.
The bathroom seemed to double as a storage facility for the grounds. In there we found unhung paintings (mercifully so) wrapped in garbage bags. Cabinets stuffed with cleaning solutions that had grown rusty with disuse. Piles and piles of old towels that reminded me of the donations we used to receive at the ASPCA for the homeless dogs to make beds out of. But the charm of the bathroom did not end there, oh no. There were huge patches of mold growing on the walls and around the toilet, and, mysteriously, the left-hand knobs of all the cabinets and fixtures had been removed.

Tom and I decided that really it couldn’t be this bad. We were tired and grumpy after a long day of driving and we were sure the light of day would show us beautiful scenic vistas of rolling hills covered in vineyards and a generally more cheerful outlook. So we removed the twelve or so throw pillows depicting various parrots and palm trees from the bed and crawled gingerly in.

But a good night’s sleep was not a part of our hostess’ vision of Shangri-La. For one thing, the linoleum in the bathroom had grown warped to the point that you could not shut the bathroom door without giving it a mighty shove, which allowed the wood to scrape over a hump of linoleum and then slip back into the doorframe with a loud BANG. The loud BANG naturally woke up the other of us, and Theo was so distressed by the loud BANG that whenever we so much as stepped toward the bathroom she would flee under the bed.
Our rest was also interrupted by the curious folks who shared our cabin. I had deliberately booked what was described as a “charming, rustic cabin set away from the main house” so we could have romantic privacy. What the description did not say is that the cabin was divided into two rooms. The people who had the other room were, we surmised, working for the FBI on a very special case involving either wild animals or dead bodies. They would arrive at the room around 11pm and would open and shut the doors of their minivan at least fifteen times either to let out all the secret animals or because they suffered from OCD - we were not sure. Then around 7am they would repeat the process in reverse, crossing the threshold of our door several times (each one of which emitted a new round of growling and barking from Theo) and opening and closing the minivan doors with religious dedication.

One morning, unable to sleep anyway and overcome with curiosity, I pulled aside the dank, dusty curtain of the one window in the room and watched as the couple emerged carrying a huge cage-like object between them. It had a domed top and was covered with a large towel. It was about the size of a very large trunk or animal cage, except it wasn’t shaped like an animal cage. They maneuvered this thing into the backseat of the van, and then the woman crawled in with it and they slammed all the doors shut. I watched the woman in the van lift the towel (but not at an angle for me to see what was inside, of course) and talk to whatever was inside it. Then she got out of the van, carefully slamming the door, and went back inside. A few minutes later the couple re-emerged, taking care to jabber loudly as they passed our door, and once again slammed the doors of the van before taking off, not to be seen again till 11pm that night.
The first morning, we awoke to realize that it was not, after all, our being tired and grumpy that made the place seem like a dump. It was a dump. The morning light, what little of it came through that one window, showed the dirt even more clearly. Getting showered and dressed involved a two-person process where one of us held the dog to prevent her running under the bed while the other one attempted to close the bathroom door as softly as possible, always resulting in that big BANG that made us all jump even though we knew it was coming, kind of like the reaction to a jack-in-the-box or that puff of air they used to use to test your eyes for glaucoma.
To be fair, the view from our porch - several rungs of which were missing and, instead, had random pieces of wicker furniture shoved in the holes - was lovely. But that’s because it looked out onto someone else’s property.

A tour of the grounds consisted of more of the same. Rusted out cars. Pieces of farm equipment abandoned mid-project. For some odd reason there were disconnected hoses absolutely everywhere. A lake-like gathering of murky water. Junk piled high around the main house - huge slabs of wood, old plastic toys, many items that couldn’t be identified.

When we were away from the Clampetts’ we had a lovely time. Napa is beautiful country, even in winter when the grape vines are bare, and visiting the wineries is a lot of fun, and not just because you get progressively more tipsy. They are each individualistic, housed in spectacular buildings and Sterling even had a tram ride up to their winery that made the whole thing feel like Disneyland for grownups. I drank so much wine - and by “so much” I mean only slightly more than my 2 glass limit - that I took to carrying tums in my purse so that I could keep sampling.

But every evening, after the wineries closed and we’d had dinner at some cute little restaurant in town, our hearts fell as we climbed the hill to that awful place. We’d walk in the door, sigh, coax Theo out from under the bed - she was growing more and more dingy from God knows what under there - and settle in for another night of minivan banging, door slamming fun.

On Christmas morning we were invited to the Big House for breakfast. The Big House had one large main room where guests could gather. One wall was entirely windows and looked out over the vineyards. If one focused on this, that is, someone else’s property, one could imagine a luxurious experience. But if you allowed your eyes to focus on the musty inside it was a different story.

The big room was as cluttered as ours and similarly dissuaded you from touching anything for fear of what you’d get on your hands. The breakfast was surprisingly good and it was served by our hostess, whom we met now for the first time. She was a heavyset woman who wore a sweater, skirt, bare legs and furry boots that reached halfway up her calves. She would come and go through a door at the far end of the room that shut off the guests’ world with that of her family’s. At one point one of the family crossed the line to get something from the refrigerator located randomly in the center of the big room where we were eating. He was a large, hairy man, with a beard and wild hair. He wore a flannel shirt, pajama bottoms and one sock. The other bloated, hairy foot was bare. I was intrigued by this choice. Perhaps one sock had come off and he hadn’t noticed? Or in the midst of putting on his socks he was distracted and never returned to the task? Who knows, but it did make one wonder what he wore on days that were not major holidays.

Like the Clampetts, our hosts were extremely kind people. This was the way they lived; they outfitted their guest rooms in the same manner as their own home, and while it was miles apart from the way I would want to live, it was still some sort of an effort to make the place homey to their way of thinking.

We endured three more nights of BANG and SLAM and tiptoeing around the mold in our room before we decided to throw in the mildewy towel. Enough was enough. As much fun as we had when we left the place, coming back to it each night was such a killjoy that at this point we just wanted to be home where we weren’t afraid to touch anything and could turn a full circle in the middle of the room without whacking into a dangling parrot. We wanted to be able to use the bathroom without having to engage in a full military campaign of strategy involving corraling the dog and stepping gingerly in the spots that looked fairly mold-free in order to balance gingerly on the toilet.

Theo had also had enough. We didn’t know what went on while we were away during the day - and frankly tried not to dwell on it - but when we got home it was always to find Theo trembling on the bed or underneath it where sometimes, for extra fun, she’d throw up.
That night, as we listened to the weird minivan couple engage in their routine of door slamming, we plotted our escape. The catch was that there was a one-week cancellation policy, and the last night, being a weekend night, was more expensive than the others, so we didn’t know if we’d be able to get that money back without a fight. We whispered urgently to each other in the musty bed as Theo bellowed from under it at the crazy minivan couple trudging back and forth with their mysterious load. The thing was, as soon as we told her we were going to check out a day early, we were rather afraid we’d end up buried under one of the many junk heaps on the property.

Well, more realistically, it was that neither of us liked confrontation. Tom tended to babble uncomfortably and provide way too much information in a hearty attempt to save everybody’s feelings to the point that the person being confronted had no idea that that’s what was happening; and I tended to be so brutally forceful and to the point just to get it over with that I just managed to piss people off and solve nothing.

The next morning we marched purposefully to the main house. “So I’ll tell her that my best friend was going to be leaving town next week,” Tom babbled as we crossed the graveled drive, ”but now he’s leaving town tomorrow so we have to get home and also that my other friend is in the hospital with leukemia and I have to get back before -”

“No,” I interjected. “Too much information and, incidentally, all false. Never tell a lie if you can avoid it because that’s the surest way to be caught.” Tom really sucks at deception. He’s way too kind and honest. Not me. I know how to deceive because I am an expert at doing what I can to get my own way, especially if getting my own way involves escaping crazy hillbillies without getting murdered and buried under rusted farm equipment. “We’ll just say we’re leaving early and leave it at that. If she puts up a fight, then we mention the mold.”

Tom looked alarmed. “Do we really want to bring out the big guns so soon?” he asked, grabbing my arm to hold me back. But it was too late to discuss it further because we were at the front door.

“Hello?” I called cautiously. The door between the main room and the family’s part of the house was open, revealing it’s mysterious interior which was, naturally, covered in mounds of clutter.

Our hostess came out calling, “Come in, come in!”

“We’re leaving early,” I said, just like that.

“Okay, I’ll credit you the last night,” she said, just like that. ”How was everything? Were you comfortable?”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” we both gushed like total idiots, grinning and babbling about the lovely accomodations.

“I hope we’ll see you again,” she said kindly.

“Oh ABSOLUTELY!” Tom trilled as we slammed the door behind us and exchanged a look.

On our way home we stopped at that same hotel along the interstate. “Wow,” I said when we entered our room. “This is so NICE!” There was all this bare space and the room was so CLEAN!
“This is the best hotel room EVER,” Tom agreed.

And I’m fairly sure Theo shared our sentiment because not only did she not barf, but she stayed on top of the bed all night.

We are home safely, now, and already the memories of that room have dimmed. The wine rack is nicely stocked, and we spent a BANG-free night in our own bed. And we learned a valuable lesson: no matter how stressful or expensive it can be to do what you need to do to spend the holidays with family, spending the night stranded in an airport in Cleveland trying to get to them is still preferable to Christmas with the Clampetts.

Home Shopping for the Holidays

My husband and I are at that exciting time in our lives where we have reached such a level of comfort with each other and our positions in life that we are ready to ruin it all by plunging into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Yes, we are buying a house.

I have been practicing for this moment for many years. I have selected the type of home I want, the type of kitchen counter tops I want, the colors I will paint the living room... I just haven't actually explored the details of getting someone to loan me the shitload of money it will take to achieve my ambitions.

I never realized how much work is involved just to get to the point where you can start looking for a house. There are lenders to meet with - it's not enough to meet with just one; you have to meet with several to pit against one another so you can stand back and enjoy the bloodshed over a difference of a quarter point interest rate - and there are the endless reports to read about school zones, property taxes and crime rates. There are the types of loans to learn about and the Grown Up Vocabulary lessons that go along with them. There is the real estate agent search. In short, the world has conspired to suck all the fun out of the ultimate shopping experience by making it as time-consuming, frustrating and confusing as possible.

Tom and I sauntered into our first meeting with a lender with all the hubris of a couple with outstanding credit. We assumed banks would be falling all over themselves to give us the contents of their vaults. But while they were certainly more than willing to allow us to indebt ourselves to them for our lifetimes, they weren't quite so generous with their rates and quotes and various numbers. In fact, it started to feel uncomfortably like buying a car, which everybody knows is a slimy process that makes you want to scrub yourself down in a scalding hot shower afterwards.

We met the first contestant at a coffee shop down the block. He was a tiny Vietnamese man wearing a tie that was too large for him, giving the impression he was playing dress-up. We all shook hands and he plunged right to the heart of the matter by asking, "You eat bacon with rice?"

I just stood frozen with my mouth half open, trying to figure out a proper reply. I turned to Tom helplessly just as he said, "Yes, we're looking in Beacon Hill."

From then on, it was like the men spoke their own language and I just sat back completely baffled. One of my best friends is Vietnamese and when we were kids she had approximately seventeen hundred uncles who hung out at her house and spoke exactly like this guy. I never knew what they were saying, either - nor could I tell any of them apart to at least give a sense of continuity. I just smiled and nodded when they spoke to me. I had no idea what this man was saying to me but somehow Tom understood everything. I began to wonder if it wasn't an American/Vietnamese thing but a boy/girl thing, because it worked both ways. At one point in the proceedings, when I managed to kind of figure out what was going on, I leaned forward and asked, "Is the interest rate you are presenting today the final rate, or will that change?" And the guy adopted the exact same expression I had worn for the entire conversation, finally looking to Tom, who kindly translated, "Is the interest rate you are presenting today the final rate, or will that change?" The man looked immensely relieved and answered the question with a meaningless string of jibberish while Tom nodded in thoughtful comprehension.

We left that meeting no wiser than when we started, but several inches of paperwork wealthier.

Over the next few weeks we met with more lenders until we had acquired enough paperwork to wallpaper our entire apartment. We felt fairly confident at this point that someone would lend us some money although we were still pretty unclear as to how that works, exactly. But nevermind the petty details. On to the fun part - the realtor.

I imagine realtor school would go something like this:

Instructor: "KAREN! What did they teach you in Make-Up Application 101? I can actually SEE your facial features. And those shoes! Somebody get me the tape measure! What are those, three inch heels? Higher, higher! You should not be able to breathe in this atmosphere. We want those stilettos to SING on the hardwood floors and Mexican tile. At this point, I think you really need to ask yourself if you're cut out for this business."

Our real estate agent obviously passed real estate school with flying colors. And she was gorgeous, which just makes sense. You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars based on what an ugly person tells you.

So what we found out in that first meeting is this:

1) We can afford a house that is 700 square feet in a nice area of town. Who builds such small houses anyway? Why not just carry around a tent or live out of your car? You can buy a Hummer for less and get more closet space.

2) We can afford a large house in a slum. We saw a house for $470,000 located in a ghetto. The cars on the block were all that matte kind of paint and the windows were blown out and taped over.

3) We can afford a nice house in a different county than the one in which we work.

4) We can afford a small-but-liveable house in a semi-decent "up and coming" neighborhood which would require updating the kitchen and bathrooms last installed around 1948.

After the others, option #4 seems like the best bet so that's what we're targeting. We start officially in-person house-hunting next week. However, that hasn't stopped me from already designing and pricing new kitchens online, despite the fact that we don't know if our house will HAVE a kitchen at these rock-bottom prices of four hundred grand.

You can't have everything.

Me and My Lipoma

Hurrah! The tumor has officially been diagnosed as harmless. In honor of this event I have written a song, to the tune of "Me and My Llama" which some of you may remember from Sesame Street:

Me and my lipoma

Me and my lipoma

Goin' to the doctor today
Seems a little crazy
Guess you're just too lazy
To carry a lipoma all that way
Me and my lipoma

Jumped out of our pajamas
And ran off to the doctor today
Me and my lipoma
Me and my lipoma
The doctor says not to worreeee

Yes, it's just my lipoma and meTell me if you feel afraid
Remember just to whisper softly into my ear
I won't leave and go away
You know I'm gonna be right here
Hanging out on your backAll you gotta do is keep track
Make sure he don't take over
It probably will not hurt me
And I can tell that I'll be okayMe and my Lipoma
Jumped out of our pajamas
And ran off to the doctor todayMe and my lipoma
Me and my lipoma
We went to the doctor today
Yes, it's just my lipoma and me

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da....
'Cause after this we'll go on out and play...

Me and my lipoma
Me and my lipoma
The sun is bright and now we are free
Yes, it's just my lipoma and me

The original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgkYHhG18uc

I TOLD You I Was Sick

So the other day I was at the tit n' toot doc getting an annual check-up when she discovered a lump on my back.

I don't know what she was doing back there. I wanted to shout, "Wrong end! Wrong end!" Maybe she isn't a very good tit n toot doctor or maybe she's just far more thorough than others I've been to. In any case, because she had the authority to check me for venereal disease, not to mention the bravery to stick her face where she does all day every day for a living, I naturally took her word for it that this lump on my back was something I should get checked out by a doctor familiar with the other end of my body. Also I think it's just human nature that if you are wearing a garment made of paper that is specifically designed NOT to cover you up, your vulnerability makes you believe anything said by anyone who comes through the door, even if they are just another patient suffering from dementia who wandered into your exam room by mistake.

I of course immediately assumed I had cancer and started sweating so profusely through my paper gown that it began to disentegrate. It is a well-known Jewish trait to always assume it is cancer, even if there is no lump present. Even if you are perfectly healthy, chances are you have cancer. And if you don't have cancer, you better start worrying about it now, because it will happen any day. But by no means should you discuss cancer in a normal tone of voice. The word should always be stage-whispered ominously lest God should hear you and get any ideas.

The other reason I was pretty sure it was cancer is that lately I've had the audacity to be really, really happy. And everyone (Jewish) knows that you should NEVER allow yourself to be too happy and if you are ever unfortunate enough to become so you should do your best to look on the dark side, and blow out of proportion any little thing that might possibly be wrong with your life. Because being happy is the surest way for God or the fates or whoever is in charge to reach down a giant hand from the heavens, smack you across the face and declare sharply, "HEY! Don't go getting used to this!" Therefore it is best never to show happiness for longer than a few seconds and to immediately counter-act it with gross amounts of exagerated negativity: "My Lonnie just got into Harvard Law School! Of course this means we're going to have to hock the china that has been in the family for seven thousand generations to pay for such a thing. Through the desert, my ancestors carried this china only for it to end up in some shmaltzy second-hand store so my son the fancy lawyer can go to Harvard. Why do these things always happen to ME?"

I was on the phone with my general practioner within moments of leaving my gyno's office. He couldn't see me until the end of the week, though, which left four days for me to develop an ulcer worrying about my tumor. For the next several days it was all I could think about. I kept digging around in my tumor, reaching back between my shoulder blades like a double-jointed circus performer, hoping maybe to deflate it or encourage it to just dissolve back into my body.

"It's just like Love Story," I wailed tragically to my husband who was not humoring me AT ALL. "Where Jenny goes to the doctor because she can't get pregnant and they find out she has LEUKEMIA and she COLLAPSES in Central Park and then DIES." I clutched at Tom's lapels dramatically. "Promise me after I die you will write about this! You could make millions! An entire generation of little girls will be named Karen!"

Tom shrugged me off. "First, you didn't go to the doctor because you can't get pregnant. Second, you're not going to die. Not now anyway. It's not a tumor."

"It's not a tumor, it's not a tumor," I mimicked angrily. How could he not be sympathetic? How could he not be sobbing at the thought of losing his beautiful, young wife at the very peak of our lives together? "You sound like Arnold Shwartzenegger."

He just rolled his eyes. "Claiming you have cancer when you don't is an insult to people who really DO have cancer," he stated authoritatively. He knew he had just sent me on an all-expenses-paid guilt trip. It doesn't take much. I don't just take guilt trips, I take extended around-the-world guilt tours. I pack my little bag full of remorses and set off for months at a time. But lucky for me I can worry and feel guilty at the same time. It's a talent.

On Friday I arrived early to my doctor's office and sat bouncing my legs agitatedly while I waited. I intended to play it very cool when I saw him, to enter into this whole situation with a tragic bravery ala the little girl in the movie Six Weeks who wanted to be a ballerina and instead died at the age of 13 right after meeting Dudley Moore.

My studied poise lasted about thirty seconds into the exam before I blurted, "I'm not going to die am I? I mean, ha ha, it's not like I've picked out the music for my funeral or anything" (that was a lie - I had, in fact, already chosen "10,000 Miles" by Mary Carpenter, a song that reduced me to tears within the first two opening chords) "but I thought I should probably get it checked out just to, you know, humor my gynocologist. Ha ha."

After palpating the spot for half a second he told me the most miraculous thing I have ever heard: "You have a sxcoipeurfew tumor."

The only word I heard clearly was "tumor." I had a tumor! I had an actual, real-live tumor. Does this mean nothing bad could ever happen to me again? No! No, get rid of that thought immediately before the giant hand appears!

The doctor then went on to explain it was "likely" a benign and very common tumor which required no action other than to monitor it for changes, but then he had to go and ruin our warm and fuzzy conversation by saying the three worst words you can ever hear from a doctor: "It's probably nothing."

PROBABLY nothing. Well there's a ball I can really run with. My imagination can work overtime with that little phrase. I'll be up nights thinking what it PROBABLY isn't until I've visited the specialist he recommended to get a definitive answer one way or the other.

However, the odds do seem to be that I am likely not to die soon. Not of this, anyway. But that doesn't mean I may not get hit by a bus the second I walk out of the doctor's office.

One must never let one's guard down. Even if one does have a tumor.

The Rosemary Thief

So I'm working from home today and I think to myself, as long as I'm here I can get something really nice started for dinner. I have some lovely cuts of filet. But I'm big on marinating, and I'm VERY big on using rosemary in my marinade, and I am equally big on not paying $3 for a package of rosemary, most of which will go bad before I have a chance to use it, at the grocery store. Not when there's rosemary growing wild everywhere but in my kitchen.

I did try to grow my own herb garden once. I was delighted to watch the tiny little buds poke up from the soil. I told my friend it was like playing God on a very small level. And so, like Frankenstein for his monster, I was smited for daring to think such a thing in the form of a bunch of tiny, gross bugs that invaded and destroyed my young plants. Disgusted, I threw them all out and that was the end of that. So now I'm forced to steal.

There are numerous rosemary bushes growing randomly around my urban neighborhood. Apparently rosemary can grow just about anywhere, including in cement, as long as it's not under my jurisdiction. But I decided to aim specifically for the bush in the nearby preschool's garden. First because the fact that it was planted deliberately and by innocent children made it seem somehow more pure and less likely to have been peed on, and second because this bush rivaled the man who is in the Guiness Book of World Records for greatest girth. I figured nobody would miss a teeny tiny sprig, just enough to season my steaks.

I know it seems ridiculous to get this worked up over stealing some bits of plant but there are a couple of reasons for this. Wrong-doing just doesn't come naturally to me. I am way too paranoid and neurotic. Once when I was about five I stole a pair of Barbie shoes from my babysitter's daughter. I was up for weeks fretting that I'd go to hell. Plus there's the fact that people around here apparently take plant-stealing extremely seriously. The building next door to ours has these gorgeous blooming bushes - I couldn't tell you what they are - I can barely tell the difference between a rose and a daisy - and these nasty signs posted all over threatening incarceration and punishment up to and including death if you pick any of them. The preschool garden doesn't post threats but they don't need to. Who would be a big enough asshole to steal from preschool children?

The same asshole who, in an attempt to cure her self-imposed paranoia and try to get a little charge out of life, has developed a tendency to steal fake grapes from art emporiums. Don't ask.

I brought the dog along as a cover. Hum-de-dum just walking the dog and whoops! Accidentally cut off some of the rosemary bush with the scissors I just happen to have in my pocket. I'm not a thief by nature, I swear. It practically FELL into my hands and I didn't want to litter so I'll just take it with me...

(An aside: If I have no qualms about using the dog to help me steal herbs from children, I could be headed down a slippery slope. I'll be one of those white-trash women who use their baby strollers to smuggle food out of the grocery store. It's a short step from rosemary to an entire frozen chicken.)

I have to cut through a small park to get to the community garden. Theo, who does not understand stealth, started barking like a lunatic at a large German Shephard mix (she also doesn't understand size ratios) just as I drew out my scissors. My heart started hammering like crazy. A courtroom flashed before my eyes. ("But, judge, marinade is so DULL without rosemary! Anybody would have done it!") Hastily I shoved the scissors under the flap of my coat and started gazing around me in the most obvious and cliche display of wrong-doing. At least I didn't start whistling.

Once Theo calmed down, and I waited for a few pedestrians to make their slow way along the path, I pulled the scissors out again and selected a choice stem. As soon as I'd snipped and shoved it in my pocket I looked up to see several solemn-faced children staring at me from the park. It's very possible they were staring because I am so beautiful, or because of Theo, or because that's just what kids do. But it freaked me out and made me feel tremendously guilty. However, it's not like I could re-attach the stem of hot rosemary so I tried to just look like I had a perfect right to steal from the garden and started back down the path.

Which is when I saw the sign: "This garden is donated by the children of Sunshine Daycare to the community of South Lake Union."

Hurray! I'm not going to hell after all! At least, not because of the rosemary. But I can explain that thing with the grapes...

No Sex and the City

Everybody has dating tales of woe. I knew this when I was a youngster living in Arizona, but I also knew that the odds were even more against me. I was a fish out of water there, and the men I managed to dig up were few and far between. I had only one long-term relationship before I moved to New York City, and that was during college, and it was a complete disaster. He was a great guy, but our overwhelming personal issues were constantly battling for attention in what my mom termed "a buffet of neurosis." After a few more years of hunting and pecking, I finally came to terms with the fact that, regardless of the dating scene, Arizona in general just wasn't for me. So I took off for the great beyond to seek my destiny.

My very first date in New York City was with a Jewish lawyer. You can imagine my grandmother's delight. Fresh off the boat, and here I was already fishing from the most coveted pool. My uncle who, not coincidentally, is also a Jewish lawyer, set me up with with him, earning him major brownie points with the family.

Since I was still learning my way around the city, the Jewish Lawyer kindly met me near my office and took the reigns of our date. After a brief stop at the ATM I found myself staring up at the intimidating entrance to The Four Seasons.

The scenario: I am 24. I am wearing a suit that is, literally, held together with safety pins and purchased at the JC Penney outlet. I am new to New York City. I am on a blind date, which is enormously stressful in any situation, and I am sitting in the lounge area, in a big overstuffed armchair, of the Four Seasons. I am too nervous to order anything but a Diet Coke, and am confused when I am unable to sip through what appears to be a glass straw. Hey, I'm thinking to myself, A glass straw! Must be a classy-New-York kind of thing.

But after my face nearly caved in trying to slurp through the fancy glass straw, I drew back and realized it was actually a stirrer. Meant to stir the lemon wedge that still lay untouched and unnoticed on a dainty little plate to one side of the table. Apparently when you spend $6 on a Diet Coke, the lemon comes with.

Heh heh. Oops.

Luckily my date did not notice my faux-paus, as he was busy detailing the entire script, almost verbatim, of the most recent Seinfeld episode. He went on to regale me with further tales of Seinfeld which, while making for extraordinarily dull conversation, proved to be less dull than when he actually talked about himself.

That first date was also the last.

Over the years I went on many, many, many dates. I tried all sorts of dating techniques. Don't get me wrong. I did have a few long-term relationships in there. I dated one guy for a year and half, and another for almost two. I was in New York a total of six years, which means I spent less than half of them single. As I write that, it doesn't seem so bad. But that's a lot of Saturday nights spent alone in my apartment listening to drunk couples on the street having a raucously good time while I channel-surfed and ate Chinese take-out straight from the carton. On the bright side, I learned how to use chopsticks like a native.

The search for the decent single man in New York was, in my opinion, fairly accurately documented in the Sex and the City series. What wasn't so accurate, at least in my particular case, was the amount of sex the ladies managed to have despite all the weirdos they dated. Perhaps I was just a little more picky about who I went to bed with. Yes, I am pretty sure that's it.

I heard about a Temple on the Upper East Side that was sort of known for being a singles hot-spot. Rumor had it you could appeal directly to the Rabbi and she would personally set you up with someone. De-singling Jews is practically part of the religion. So I attended a service but all that talk about God made my skin crawl and I felt horribly out of place. There were hundreds of young people in attendance, all of them, I was certain, far more knowledgeable than me about this religion I was born into but never practiced. If I did manage to meet anybody this way I would be immediately denounced as a fraud. Faking religion to get a date is worse than stuffing your bra with Kleenex. I ducked out early and never said a word to anyone.

I went to a dating seminar, where you are given a number, and then they go around the room and allow each person to sell themselves for about five minutes. After that traumatic experience you're allowed out of your chair to mingle while drinking watery punch and eating cookies that taste like cardboard. Then you filled in the numbers of the people you would go out with on a bubble sheet reminiscent of the SAT. If your number was also selected by the ones you selected then you exchanged phone numbers and went on a date. I have to say, that experience was quite an ego boost. There were hardly any attractive people in attendance so I was, by default, pretty popular. The odds were in my favor. I felt for a brief moment like the belle of the ball, surrounded by horrifically shy, balding, short men who surreptitiously snuck up and thrust a business card in my hand before skulking off again. I got a couple dates out of that, but nothing earth-shattering.

In between relationships I tried online dating. There was a site all the girls in the office were talking about that was specifically for Jewish singles. I was still convinced that, although I was not a religious person, the cultural aspects of being Jewish provided enough common ground that it made sense to pursue the yarmulke-set. So I signed up and went on a series of the worst dates in history. The first guy never took his eyes off the Simpsons, which was playing on the TV above the bar where we met. I mean, he was like emotionally ill-prepared to do anything but watch television. When I tried to interact with him he appeared so irritated by the interruption that I felt like I'd plopped down uninvited in his living room.

The next date called me at 8:30pm one weekday night and asked me if I wanted to meet him in a few minutes at a coffee shop around the corner. What the hell? I thought. Why not? So I gussied up a bit and headed over. "You're spontaneous!" he said after we'd introduced ourselves and pulled chairs up to a table. "I love that!" He then proceeded to agitatedly beat out a rhythm on the table that made sense only to him while bobbing his head back and forth and darting his eyes around the room like he expected the police to burst in at any minute and drag him off. It was probably a pretty realistic fear since he was clearly sky-high on something. Later he confirmed this by leaning over to me and confessing in a whisper, "Before I came to meet you, I did a LOT of drugs." This was after I'd learned he was a doctor. A podiatrist, but still. I wouldn't want that guy touching any part of me, not even my feet.

The third guy I met from the site seemed really great on paper. He worked as a writer for Comedy Central and his emails were hilarious. I agreed to meet him for drinks after work one evening and I was really hopeful about this one. But as soon as I saw him my stomach dropped. I hate to be the type of person who makes snap judgements based solely on appearance, particularly when up until I saw the guy I had nothing but positive vibes. But really, you can't help who you are attracted to, right? That's an old excuse for bad behavior but it also happens to be true.

The guy was very tall and very thin. I think he must have been self-conscious about his height because he sat hunched over to the point that his back actually bowed behind his head. Despite being in his mid-twenties he had the complexion of a boy tortured by acne. He was so sweet. He brought along a Cosmo quiz to break the ice, and he was very funny in a self-deprecating kind of way. Unfortunately most of what he said was accompanied with spittle, so that as the evening progressed I first leaned back in my chair and then started to ever so casually scoot further and further back from the table.

At the end of the date he handed me a piece of paper with several phone numbers on it. "I would really like it if you called me," he said hopelessly. "But I rarely get second dates."

I felt terrible about it, but he wasn't going to get a second date this time, either. When I told my mom about the evening she said, "What's the matter? You have something against spitting hunchbacks? This is how I raised you?"

She was kidding. I think.

After that I gave up on J-Date. I had met nothing but crazy people on that site which led me to wonder if perhaps that was a common trait among Jewish people, among men, among people who looked for dates online, or all of the above. In any case, that's when I met someone with whom I had a serious relationship for the next two years. Unfortunately, as much as I liked him, it wasn't meant to be and eventually we split up.

Shortly after that I heard from a friend of mine that my long-ago college boyfriend, the one with whom I grazed at the buffet of neurosis, was back in Arizona. So when I headed home for the holidays that year I got in touch with him and we agreed to meet for dinner. When we saw each other again after nearly seven years, the electricity was immediate and obvious.

In spite of that, this wasn't something I intended to pursue. First of all, been there, done that. Second, he lived across the country from me and I wasn't about to give up New York. Third, he was recently divorced and struggling through the inescapable emotional and financial residue that goes along with any marital break-up, no matter how amicable. Not someone any single woman should touch with a ten-foot pole. But compared with my dating history in New York City, he was Prince-fucking-Charming.

We continued to talk long-distance and before I knew it, I was hooked. He wasn't Prince Charming - I'd long ago given up the notion that any man was or should be - but he was my best friend and closest confidant and I was madly in love. Eventually it came down to either solving the long-distance problem or discontinuing the relationship. I spent many hours over drinks at various New York bars lamenting this decision. Despite how much I loved him, there was the fact that, well, I had a rent-controlled apartment in New York City. Plus he had been married before and had some baggage from his past that didn't sit well with me. His first wife was a tall, thin, very attractive woman with whom I had nothing in common which led me to believe he was either crazy for being with her, or crazy for wanting to be with me. But either way, he came out crazy.

While I debated what to do I started dating the Matt Damon Lawyer. I call him this because a) he looked exactly like a shorter version of Matt Damon and b) he was a lawyer. The Matt Damon Lawyer and I went on six first dates. What I mean by that is every date we went on never got past that awkward small-talk stage. We never grew more comfortable with each other or progressed to a kiss good night. There was clearly nothing inspirational to tap there, but he kept asking me out and I kept saying yes and I have a feeling we were both doing so for the same reason - we were both hung up on other people we thought less appropriate. Eventually I just gave up. Obviously I was in love with someone else if a lawyer who looked like Matt Damon couldn't do it for me.

But I wasn't ready to give up New York, Tom still hadn't finalized his divorce, and he was, at that time, fairly directionless in general. And yet the time apart was growing more and more intolerable. Over margaritas I detailed this to my friend Mark who was able, in his very Mark-like way, to boil it down to a sentence: "Listen, if you can talk and you can fuck, the rest are just details."

So I did it. I left New York for the boy, despite every feminist instinct screaming at my foolishness. I had to know. And New York would always be there, with all its crazies looking for dates.

As it turns out, I ended up marrying the guy.

The moral of the story? This is great...

Like Dorothy, I had to go to Oz to discover that what I wanted had been in my own back yard all along. I just hadn't been ready to recognize it till I'd journeyed through a land filled with drug addicts, emotional midgets and spitting hunchbacks (oh my) through whom I eventually discovered the ways of my heart.