Today I turned in my senior essay which, for the sake of argument, should mean I could stop going to classes and still feel like I'd finished college more or less. So, with my newfound faux-freedom, I ate some very cheese-heavy nachos, ran an errand for my boss, ran into my TA twice in the span of an hour, and the second time awkwardly avoided having to make small talk by walking in an erratic manner down Edgewood ("it's harder to hit a moving target). And soon I think I'm going to nap.

Conclusion: Being done with my senior essay is 50% the fantasy of an 8 year old, and 50% what I dread about my future.

In a poll of the entire men's club lacrosse and rugby teams - what, you thought you were special? - I've concluded that practically no one really objects to feminism, at least not so passionately that they will go on the record (or respond to an email about it). Which is probably good news. Especially for feminists. And women. And laxers.

On the down side, I've also determined that attempts to create the illusion of journalistic balance involving emailing entire sports teams by looking up their facebook group and retyping everyone's name into the BCC line not only piss you (or rather, me) off, but also make you feel dirty and unethical.

On birds...

Right now, as we speak (aka as I type and probably not as you read, unless you read within the next hour) I am cooking a chicken. Not some chicken. A whole one. A little one, but a whole one.

And about twenty minutes ago I had my hand inside the chest cavity of said chicken and was removing the "giblets," which look far more like actual internal organs than you'd probably hope of you were going to be groping around in a dead animal's chest cavity to locate them. Or if you weren't willing to swear you'd gotten them all.

After molesting dinner and tearing out what appeared to be a tiny set of lungs, I was standing over my prey and seasoning it with my various spices from a list my mom emailed me (with an apology that she didn't have any amount recommendations, because it's not a proper recipe - p.s. why don't we have marjoram when we have SO MUCH chili powder? WHY!?!?) I began to think that moments like this help to explain why we never liked my step mom.

Which is to say that whole birds remind me of Thanksgiving which reminds me of food and family which reminds me of how my stepmom was (presumably still is) an awful cook, and how this would have likely disposed us (me) against her, even if she hadn't broken up my parents marriage (which she did).

Other strikes against her:
Her cats were unfriendly
She was obsessively neat
She wore spandex (after it was cool and before it became cool again)
She dyed her hair
Her mom was weird
And, finally, that no one in our extended family seemed to like her (ex: I just realized that she may have been banned from Thursday night dinners with my grandmother. Or she refused to come, which is probably equally damning).

So, all evil step mother myths aside. This one was probably doomed from the start.

Revelations, 10:30

So over the weekend I decided that I'm not going to start "work" (aka career, aka real life) until September 2008.

The impetus is three fold:
Fold one, I have the chance to go to the Olympics in August, and I don't think the kinds of jobs I'm looking at include 2 weeks vacation after less than a month of work.
Fold two, everyone I know is stressing out so seriously about consulting jobs/TFA/other jobs that have conventional time lines, that I think I might do well to just check out of the job market, rather than stressing so far in advance (especially as Lisa - my supervisor at MTV - said there was no need to apply more than two months before my desired start date).
Fold three, I've spent pretty much the past five years (estimating conservatively) trying aggressively to get ahead and make all the right career moves, and now that I'm on the cusp of that big move, I realize I may be happier with a less high powered job. But I have to sort that out.

So it'll just be scamming the grant committees and the parents, at least for another couple of months.

The Unfortunate Permanence of Impermanence, or Vice Versa, or the Total Opposite.

As a result of various (in camera) discussions last night, I have spent a more-than-usual time thinking about what it means to have exes. Specifically, these three things:

1) Endings, past, the inevitability of change, the instability of the world. (ie: How is this thing that I thought was so important years ago now allegedly "over"?).

2) The seemingly contradictory persistence of things apparently dead and gone (ie: Why do we still think about our exes? Why do they still call us? Why do they still haunt us? Why do a boyfriend's exes still haunt me even though I never met them because they're no longer part of his life and will never be part of mine? Why won't my exes stop trying to be a part of my life?).

3) Revelation (ie: How much do you tell your current boyfriend about your past boyfriend? What circumstances might necessitate telling? What circumstances mean you should never ever tell? What do you do with an ex that is present even though you don't want them to be? Why do I want to know about your exes if I know it will likely be upsetting? Why do I want you to know about mine?)

And I guess the question at the heart of this matter is really: How much perspective to we have about what (or who) is really significant? If we ever have any, when do we get it?

The pain in my back has, generally speaking, subsided to the status of non-issue. And, of course, it's pathetically thrilling to be able to do normal things (I'm sitting upright! In a chair!) and even slightly beyond normal things (I went to the gym yesterday! For a whole half hour!). Sure, things are still a little tight and it catches me off guard on occasion (say, if I try to stand up suddenly), but more or less I'm back to normal.

Except that it's still too uncomfortable to do things that seem he althyand nice and not that physically demanding. Like jogging across Elm street when the light changes and there's four lanes of traffic whizzing towards you. Or cuddling. And then I get frustrated (I almost used the second person, as in "And then you get frustrated" but the whole point is that the experience isn't generalizable) and snappish at the person implicated (in this case, the drivers of all the cars who are trying to run me over or the able-bodied students skipping joyfully out of harm's way or the co-cuddler who is half-asleep and thus half-oblivious to my squirming).

And so the saga continues. No cuddling. And greater reliance on the good graces and brake pads of the people of New Haven.

My evening gym trip today was plagued by my sudden awareness that New Haven isn't quite as safe as I'd felt it was (that is, of course, only considering my post first semester freshman year feelings, because way back when I pretty much believed I was going to be mugged by people who turned out to be docents at the art gallery and classics professors). Surprisingly, this has nothing (or very little) to do with my off-campus living situation, as comparatively few of the recent crimes have taken place outside the Yale bubble. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the crime rates off campus have stayed status quo, while on-campus residents appear to have been plagued by increasingly bizarre and horrific trespasses.
Now when I walk down Howe, I wonder if I will be bludgeoned by teenagers (all between 5'3" and 5'7") with milk crates.
Now when I jaywalk across "the most dangerous intersection in the world" (ie: the corner of Elm, Whalley, Dixwell, Tower Parkway, and Howe, right by the Shell station and El Amigo's) I wonder if I will be struck by a hit and run driver.
And while I'm on the elliptical machine, trying not to think about my back spasms or my homework and focus on the episode of "Lost" on my iPod, I worry that someone is scrawling death threats in blood on my walls.

Today's To Do

Things I absolutely, no questions asked, should be doing today:
Seeing "Darjeeling Limited"
Eating healthier since I can't go to the gym because of my back
Reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Finishing Housekeeping
Finishing a draft of a short story for my fiction class


Things I have done today:
Taken a cold shower because our heat isn't on yet and for some reason the water also wouldn't get above lukewarm for the first twenty minutes of my shower
Gone to Guitar Center
Been asked if I played the guitar
Been asked if I sing
Been encouraged to learn to play any instrument, "even the recorder"
Laughed sheepishly
Eaten at the Pantry
Written about four pages of my short story, all of which did more to derail the plot than progress it
Started adding all my old movie reviews to External Reviews on IMDb
Finally received a George Foreman grill in the mail that it's inexplicably taken me about a week to obtain
Debated quitting the gym entirely
Quibbled about edits to a piece, which is usually not my style

Day two of recuperation.

Things that help:
Walgreen's brand Heat Wraps
Showers
600mg Ibuprofen (basically three Advil)
Laying in bed

Things that do not help:
Homework
Brushing one's teeth
Going to a fiction class to sit in a hard chair and your intelligence is insulted by a fellow student who said she "just didn't want to" develop her story past two unconnected sketches about ants
Fruit flies

Things that do not help as much as you'd think:
500mg Methocarbamol (a non-habit-forming muscle relaxer, allegedly prescribed to me by "Dr. P. Martinez" who I never saw, ditto "Dr. Barbara Kinnane," who is apparently the radiologist who discharged me).

Fact: I fell off a horse yesterday night, spent four hours in the Yale-New Haven emergency room with a seventeen year old Caucasian male named Charles who had ingested "a lot of mushrooms."

Fact: As such, I spent much of today in bed, catching up on work, watching "The Incredibles" and recuperating.

Fact: It was nice.

Wild Speculation: I will feel slightly worse tomorrow than I did today, but I will make myself go to at least one class, because I can not reasonably permit myself more than one day of utter laziness, even if it doesn't really count as laziness because I'm injured.

Why is it that the cars whose bumper stickers I approve of are always shitty as hell?
Are liberals inherent poor?
Or do they all have bad taste in cars?
Or would you only put a bumper sticker on a shitty car because otherwise you'd be worried about damaging the paint job?
Or is it just that the kind of person who puts "Keep abortion legal" bumper stickers on their car (though not necessarily all the people who believe in safe, legal abortion) have shitty cars?

Also, since when do so many people go to the Outer Banks? Or is the "OBX" sticker now stock when you buy the Eddie Bauer model of the Ford Explorer/Expedition?

After a brief jet lag/move-in/scene production night hiatus, I'm back - more in the geographic sense, ie: back in New Haven, than in the blogging sense, as I wasn't properly gone in the first place.

Partially because I'm trying to be good and patient (which is, frankly, a trial enough on its own), and partially because I feel like my integrity rides on it to some degree, I've spent the past hour or so seriously listening to music.
The feat, unto itself, sounds rather unimpressive, since I listen to music more or less all the time: when I'm walking to the gym, when I'm at the gym, when I'm cleaning, when I'm trying to avoid cleaning, etc. I'm basically the poster child for the oft-lamented "ubiquity of the iPod" ("But Daddy, I want an iPhone NOW!"), but that has as much to do with anti-social, interaction avoidance (see also: my sunglasses) as it does with artistic appreciation.
What makes this particular endeavor more significant, however, is the lack of the "when," which is to say, the complete absence of other distractions. It's hard. I'm clearly failing, as I write this, because I'm writing this. But whatever. It's hard. And it would be harder if I hadn't just hooked up my (reasonably not awful/tinny) speaker and were instead trying to listen on my computer's small, unreasonably tinny speakers.

I like having my own place. I should have moved off campus years ago, except not because I probably wouldn't be living in this room, which I really like and feel "at home" in, had Felicia and I hastily scrambled for a (probably faux-luxury, almost certainly overpriced) apartment before junior year. Perhaps my outlook will be slightly less rosy, however, next time I have to pay a utility bill or scrub the bathroom tile.

The problem with nauseating privilege

Is - of course - the nausea.
I was thinking, today, as I climbed out of my car and walked past the putting green and the bag rack and the members lounge and the banquet hall and the entrance to the pool en route to the gym, that I can't really justify my anti-country club sentiments in any rational way.
Because, in theory, I'd really love access to a place that has a pool and a gym and a bar that only has my friends in it. In theory, that'd be almost ideal enough to warrant the expense.
I think that what really brings it down is the golf. And the golfers. And the fact that they're almost all middle-aged men.
It's not the privilege that irritates me, but the privileged. Perhaps myself included. And also the leering. The leering is kind of a problem too.

In other news, it's back to the Have after a visit to the cardiologist tomorrow (perhaps reasonably, my mother has decided that my tendency to pass out unpredictably is the sort of thing we should look into, though I kind of feel like I don't have time for a heart condition so I'd rather not know). I'm pretty psyched, since basically everything I have to look forward to is there and I put my life on hold in a serious way when I came home on Friday, ostensibly to see my family, but apparently just to catch up on my TV watching. Which I've done. Pretty thoroughly. In case you were concerned.

Post dated to Saturday, Aug 25: A Traveling Catalog

Number of delayed flights: 3
Number of missed connections (not the good, Craigslist kind): 2
Most consecutive hours of travel: 22
Number of American Airlines employees who believe that the word "xylophone" begins with a Z: at least 1

To cap what was already a fairly harrowing journey from Dublin, Ireland to Easton, CT (Kant family homestead) - during which I believe at least one and possible more than one American Airlines employee deliberately deceived us - Amtrak's entire computer system has been down for several hours, rendering it impossible for anyone to access train schedules, purchase tickets, or tell me what time to show up on the platform in Bridgeport (the poorest city in Connecticut, which is like the sparsest wing of the Taj Mahal).
On the plus side, I got here at 12:05 and there's a train at 12:31. On the minus side, it's now 12:38 and I'm still on a bench.

Post-dated to Dublin, 8/21

Neither hotel we've stayed in in Europe - not the present budget one in Ireland nor the suite in the four star airport hotel we inhabited for a night when our Berlin apartment's real tenants came home early (nor, come to think of it, any of the bedrooms of our apartment) - has had clock in the bedroom. Aside from being a general inconvenience and allowing us to keep very irregular hours, since wakeup times now depend solely on whether or not I actually get out of bed at 9am when I'm first woken up by the noisy people in the room next door who seem to like to have sex early in the morning (or they've discovered a swinging Dublin nightlife we haven't - more later), I wonder if this might be taken as some commentary on the ever-popular "difference between here and there."
The first inclination is to say they're more laid back, and if we were in the Caribbean that would probably be valid - remember those Malibu commercials about what life would be like if islanders acted, explicitly, like people in the States, and implicitly, like New Yorkers? - but since we're in Ireland, and since David probably wouldn't be here if it were the Caribbean, I'm more interested in reading this clockless state as a desire for the natural to trump ruthless progress/ Take, for a global example, the EU's reactionary opposition to GMOs, and for a local example, the bartender at a place called the Porterhouse where the Boy Wonder and I got drunk yesterday afternoon, who first mocked a customer for ordering Guinness in a brewery bar ("piss"), then mocked us for drinking Bulmer's cider ("piss"), then mocked me for not drinking beer (clearly), then gave us lots of free samples, and then alternated between telling us dirty jokes and espousing the chemical-free beer they brewed in house. Aside from a slight shock at encountering an Irish person who didn't treat Guinness like mother's milk (pretty much everywhere else has forced it upon us, though I should add that we both agreed - despite my beer aversion - that the Porterhouse's Oyster Stout was way better than Guinness, and David even went so fr as to say that his Guinness tasted watered down later that night), items 1 through 3 are pretty standard barman behavior - and 4, free samples, and part of 5, jokey bartender, would seem standard if Irish bartenders worked for or received tips, which they don't - but the love affair with organic beer came across as a little surprising.
Seeing as it was located in Temple Bar - which, as far as i can tell, is where the chamber of commerce or some similarly empowered body has decided to keep all the tourists, so they can't get lost or bother the locals - this wasn't a particularly rough locale, but I feel like, in the States, it's a fairly frou-frou New-Agey Blue State concept to equate "organic" with "quality" or - better yet - "healthy" or "tasty."

Brief Additions:
1- The fact that bartenders don't wake tips make me feel a little more awkward about the whole interaction, because it's like sitting across the bar from someone who desperately wants to be your friend, and is acting out this desire by providing you with alcohol.
2 - David left his wallet on a city bus, and in less than twelve hour it was located at the depot, short 100 Euro, but still with $20 American and all his IDs and cards. Per my father: "That's the Irish - too damn honest."

The German word for "Title" is "Titel"

I've spent a lot of time talking (with David, mostly, but with other people as well) about our shared desire to foster a "music scene" at Yale. The impulse manifests itself in different forms - the desire to publicize a magazine, or host a successful event, or have a place to perform, or to inspire an artistic dialog (match the converser with the aim for one point per correct pairing, with an extra point awarded for correctly matching the person to their off campus address) - but the most obvious explanation for Yale's apparent lack of scene seems to be a Catch-22: there's no scene to attract musicians so no musicians play so there's no scene.
What seems to complicate this, at least slightly, however, is the comparative challenges encountered by those who have tried to start a scene: throw a concert, you'll get double the attendance at the after-party. Invite Yale performers, and only their friends will come. Invite non-Yale performers and people won't come if they haven't heard of them, but will come but only to stand around outside smoking because the venue is small and hot and you didn't show up for the music anyway, you showed up for the scene, and the scene is inevitably out in the fresh air and the open space where it's comparatively quiet, at least quiet enough to talk without going half deaf from the goddamn guitar, which is a pain in the ass for the promoter who wanted there to be a music scene, instead of a stand-around-and-shoot-the-shit-and-have-a-smoke-not-so-far-from-the-music scene, which is so easy to foster that you pretty much do it by accident if you leave a bottle of Beam too close to your iPod.
And partially that's what's been so interesting about our nights out in Berlin: if you are from Australia and you want to play "original" songs that sound exactly like Oasis or the Verve in a smokey lounge you can and people will show up and listen. And if you want to play an accordion while telling a story about an incredibly fat man you encontred while waitressing and your "bandmate" wants to make sound effects with an iBook and a handful of large stones, there's an audience for that too - an audience that paid 5 Euro plus two more per drink and crammed into a small set of bleachers to give you their totally undivided attention for the whole of your 20 minute set. But no longer. Time limits are strictly enforced.

Patented Family Energy Saving Tactics

So my mom either hates the air conditioning or is trying to save money or is trying to save the environment. It's actually unclear. But whatever the case may be, the high for today is 96, I'm sweating so much it's making me break out, and even she's complaining (which seems a little unfair or unbalanced - opposite of Fox News - but whatever).
For what it's worth, here are the things that she believes will improve the temperature in the house enough to stave off heat stroke or homicide for another day.

#1 When it's hotter inside than it is outside, open the windows. Makes sense. Slight variation on what some people refer to as "a cross draft," basically meaning "moving air feels good."

#2 When it's hotter outside than it is inside, close the windows and the blinds. Makes a sort of rudimentary sense, until you acknowledge that it completely contradicts the idea that simply the movement of air will improve the comfort level (if not the actual temperature). Unfortunate side effect: I have to have my lights on or resign myself to sitting in the dark, and at night the house looks like a miserable fortress.

#3 Turning off the lights will cool the house. Probably true, but since we're in fortress-black-out-curtain mode I can't reasonably sit in the dark so my lights stay on or my windows end up open, rendering strategies two and three mutually exclusive.

#4 Other places will use their air conditioners whether or not we do, so why not go there? Completely and totally valid (and how I survived last summer when I didn't have the option of A/C). BUT since the places that tend to heavily air condition (malls and restaurants, also the car) also encourage, if not mandate, spending ones money, you inevitably end up spending money on something at the location you've visited in search of A/C, thus combatting any possible financial benefits of not using the A/C in the first place (note: based on the fact that you can easily spend more at a mall per hour than you would on air conditioning, though this is fuzzy math).

#5 Standing in front of the refrigerator will make you feel cooler. Yes. Again. Obviously. Unlike the rest of my house, the inside of the refrigerator is COLD. But four months ago, she was saying "Decide what you want from the fridge before you open it so you don't waste energy standing there with the door open while you decide." So standing in front of the refrigerator - while tempting - also wastes energy - which, if you recall, was one of the reasons we were not using the air conditioner in the first place.

It's not that I'm so pro-A/C, or that I don't care about the environment, or that I don't think there's probably some kernal of truth in all these concepts. But I'm hot. And it makes me resentful. And also skeptical. Like I'd like to have an energy specialist come in - after they're done curing global warming and the war in Iraq - to see how much money (and how much environment, quantitatively) we're actually saving, so we can make a rational, well-informed decision. Instead of an irrational, under-hydrated one. But then again, energy specialists cost money - and so the cycle continues.

Why my dad should go to the Hair Cuttery...

There are some times I feel like I'm complaining unnecessarily. But then again, there are times when completely bizarre and uncomfortable things happen to me that don't seem as if they're within the realm of reasonable existence.

Example:
En route to the gym this afternoon, I called my dad to confirm that we were having dinner and going to trivia night with his friends, and he answered the phone, "So, you're getting waxed today at 3:30?" Not "Hi" - "you're getting waxed."
Which was true - I had made an appointment that morning at Spa Maison for a bikini wax since I'm going on vacation imminently.
But I try to keep such things between the aesthetician (aka "waxer") and myself. And maybe my mom. Or Kathleen.
Under most circumstances, I like to let my dad believe that I wear cute dresses under my cute dresses and never do anything more than hold hands with a boy (which is, of course, true - Hi Dad! Hi Sumner!).
It's not that he's super prudish - if anything, it's for fear of discovering how not prudish he is. On a Tuesday night most people's Dads are... at home? I'm not sure. But most Tuesday's my dad's at a bar (his or one of the two country clubs he belongs to). Which is fun, and exactly what I would be doing if I were a 50-something single man, and exactly what I'd be doing if I weren't - you know - in the library or the YDN building on a Tuesday night. But I'm the only person I know who is jealous of how their father spends his nights (and also the only person I know who has been mistaken for both the girlfriend of their father and the girlfriend of their teenage brother).

So it might make for some awkward dinner discussion.
On the plus side though, he paid for it and left a tip and probably we'll laugh about it, then sip our water delicately, then change the subject.

End Times

Although the contract I signed upon accepting my internship expressly forbids me from posting information about said internship on the internet - probably for fear of the inevitable "[Giant Multi-Media Conglomerate] Intern Tell-All" - I think it's probably within the realm of acceptable to reflect... just a little... in an un-Google-able fashion... Hi Sumner!

On the whole, the internship experience was surreal: It combined the usual menial labor (though all coffee and lunch retrieval was at the behest of "The Talent," not my supervisor) with the sense that I was being exposed to machinations and cog turning that almost certainly should have been off-limits ("pay no attention to the R&B singer in his underwear behind the curtain") with the unavoidable fact that I was not "living up to my potential." There was definitely too much time spent on thesuperficial.com, but what one apparently lacks in usefulness can apparently be made up almost entirely in "style points" (which is to say, enthusiasm, apple-cheeks, punctuality, efficiency and good phone manners). Scariest questions on the internship evaluation form:

#4 Did this internship help you better determine your career path?
No. I had a fairly well-defined (perhaps too well-defined, perhaps "narrow") career path in mind as of May, which this internship almost entirely flummoxed. The initial plan: print journalism in New York. The current plan: some kind of music and/or writing job somewhere in NY, LA, Austin, Nashville, San Francisco, or London.

#5 If given the opportunity, would you consider a full-time position at [Media Outlet that is a subset of aforementioned Giant Multimedia Conglomerate]?
Yes? Probably? I'd have some guilt about checking myself in full-time to the media outlet that some people (read: pretentious indie rock affiliates) credit with the downfall of pop music as we know it. But I also really like the idea of working in an office with reliable pay and fancy elevators with piped in news updates and real people who aren't flakey music industry types. And my parents would be thrilled.

And, as if the weight of the world and 8 hours of work and 5 hours of travel weren't enough, when I got to the gym I ended up nearly passing out on the elliptical machine because of a really horrendous "vasovagal reaction" (in layman's terms: dizzy spell with nausea and unpredictable temperature regulation as a result of critically low blood sugar). So I'm spent.

Small thoughts, masquerading as big ones

1) My mother is even worse at watching movies than I am, which quite possibly explains why I'm so bad at it. This evening, we attempted to watch "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (which, on its own, is a 2 hour and 15 minute movie, and which we'd both seen) and it took us from 5:30 to 9:30. I got a phone call, then she had to send an email, then I had to go to the bathroom, then she had to, then she wanted pop corn. And the thing is, it didn't bother me. But it did give me a nice perspective on why my movie "watching" style might drive someone (everyone) else crazy. (Please ignore the above if you have ever or will ever consider paying me for movie reviews...)

2) I'm more or less packed for Germany, but I don't leave until Thursday night. I ruled out Tuesday as a packing day because I have a 15 minute appointment with a nurse at my doctor's office for a shot, and then that night am going to dinner and trivia with my dad. I ruled out Wednesday for more reasonable reasons. Sort of.

3) I'm only slightly less stressed about the prospect of my last day of work than I was about my first day. But maybe I'm just sad about relinquishing my Viacom ID/prox card.

4) I have not done enough "stupid things while I'm still young" things. Not enough one night stands (count: zero, depending on your definition), not enough tattoos (count: again zero), generally not enough excess. The trip to Germany was ostensibly going to be the (financially) irresponsible thing I did this summer, but even that panned out such that I seem almost frugal again. Not that I am complaining, or would even have reason to complain about the trip being spontaneously subsidized. But somehow not being $900 short makes me want to get a tattoo. A big one.

As an addendum to the previous post (/spirallingly self-obsessed lament) I should add two things.
Thing 1: Starting to blog (or starting to blog again) is the most obvious regression to adolescence
and
Thing 2: The demise of yester-blog is bound up in family drama and return to Horsham drama that I won't address for fear of perpetuating.

But, on the topic of family, here's a piece I'm conceptually working on (which is to say, something I wrote up at midnight on Thursday and may or may not drag out to revise and almost certainly won't submit anywhere, but which at least lets me say I'm "working" - which is also the beauty of a blog, I suppose).

For weeks in advance, I dreaded my high school graduation. Not because it meant the end of an era, not because I’d soon be leaving all my friends and embarking on my first experience away from home, not even because I’d have to give a speech in front of nearly everyone in my home town – in comparison the our dinner plans, public speaking was small potatoes. For the first time, in my entire life, every member of my immediate family – loosely defined, as it has always had to be, to include grandparents, step-grandparents, first and second husbands and third and fourth wives – would sit down at a table together and try their damndest not to kill each other between antipasti and entrees.

As I descended the stage, diploma in hand, and made my way through hoards of giant Irish Catholic and Italian families to my own giant, blended Presbyterian/Jewish/lapsed Catholic/godless one. There were certain potential problems – who to hug first? Easy, my mom was helping her parents to the car, so Dad gets first dibs – that I’ve been capably confronting for nearly all my life, while others – what will my boyfriend’s step-dad say to my step-dad while I’m hugging his mom and he’s hugging mine? – I was facing for the first time, armed only with the lessons I’d learned through fourteen years of joint custody.

As we sat down to dinner in a fancy, albeit slightly mobbish (who but the mafia could hope to understand our family dramas?) Italian restaurant, and then all stood up and sat down again so as my maternal grandmother would not be seated next to my dad’s wife, and then all stood up and sat down again so my left-handed step-father wouldn’t be perpetually bumping elbows with his right-handed father in law, my brother and I – as the only two assembled who really did call all these people “family” – tried to talk loudly enough, despite his stutter and my nerves, to charm our various relatives so no one had to wonder whose leg they were kicking under the cramped table.

With time – and wine, for those lucky enough to be of age, except my dad who doesn’t drink in front of my brother and I and his wife who he doesn’t let drink in front of my brother and I – things got easier and common ground was located, though it tended to revolve around teasing their newly graduated daughter/step-daughter/granddaughter/step-granddaughter/sister/step-sister about the presumably non-existent social life at the elite university she – which is to say, I – was going to attend that August.

By dessert, a wave of comfort (or intoxication) had swept over the group – it wasn’t the kind of thing we’d do all the time – or probably ever again – but it hadn’t been a disaster. Things made a certain kind of sense, and since we all made it out alive we swore Nana and Poppop would never have to pass the bread to my dad’s newest wife again.

That, at least, was certain, when she officially became my dad’s newest ex-wife (four, if you were counting) later that year. Suddenly, the blissfully un-balanced family dynamic was toppled, Dad was a bachelor again, and all those carefully planned “family game nights” (another staple of divorce, like “dad’s house” and “non-custodial parent forms,” that kids with so-called normal families never have to face) would suddenly be unbalanced. Sure, my step-mother and I had never been close, but who was left to field my dad’s suggestions that hairspray was rotting women’s brains and to relentlessly criticize my form when I was doing crunches on the living room floor? Who would Nana have to awkwardly pass bread to now? Who would hang up the phone when my mom tried to call my dad’s house? Who?

As it turned out, though, my dad’s divorce actually brought my family (or what’s left of it) closer together. Instead of a terrifying, once-per-graduation-or-birthday-at-best/worst prospect, family dinners – not just “mom’s side” or “Dad’s house” dinners, but honest-to-God whole-shebang family dinners – have become a reasonably regular occurrence. Sure, we still have some awkward moments – when my mom accidentally told my dad she loved him on the phone, or when my dad regales us with stories about how his girlfriend broke up with him when he asked her sister out – but for the first time in my life, when I say I’m going out to dinner with my parents, I don’t have to specify which ones, and for the first time I can refer to my family without feeling like I’ve slighted one-half of the familial squadron.

Maybe it would have been easier if my parents hadn’t gotten divorced when I was five. And maybe it would have been easier if I’d never had to split my time and my wardrobe between two houses. But sometimes having three parents has some perks, like 150% more funny stories over the dinner table, 150% more embarrassing memories from my childhood told to the boyfriends I bring home, and quite frequently 150% more money slipped covertly into my hand as I bid a fond farewell to my blended family – the folks who put the fun in dysfunctional.

"A vacation in being seventeen"

I came home yesterday from what, I suppose, qualifies as my first summer as a pseudo adult. Sure, last summer I was a pseudo pseudo adult - which basically means I was living on my own in a strange city, but I was living with a woman who had a kid of her own and who was, however dysfunctional, approximately the same age as my parents - but this is the first time I've lead a life that in any way resembles the kind of life I'd actually want to lead. The prospect that I could end up living like I did last summer in Boston - generally isolated, under-employed, totally without air-conditioning - is very real and very daunting, while the prospect I could end up living like I did this summer in Brooklyn - cramped into an apartment with two close friends and one indifferent stranger - is equally real and perhaps only slightly less daunting.

For the first time, the adulthood I dreamed of when I was twelve is actually accessible, but the very accessibility seems to rob it of the dreamlike quality - somewhere between writings checks for utilities and writing checks to my parents to repay loans, all the soft lighting and whimsical fog got swept away and I realized (with the help of an aforementioned roommate) that ultimately my life is still my life, and I'd probably still end up reading thesuperficial.com every day whether I were living in Horsham, in Manhattan, in the outer boroughs, or in a cabin in the middle of nowhere (perhaps the only exception being if said cabin lacked reliable internet access).

Which leads me to the real problem: If that's me as an adult (or pseudo adult) who am I when I'm watching "Mind of Mencia" at 11:30 on a Friday night in the bed I've slept in since I was two (not counting "Dad's house" nights and time logged in New Haven's Twin XLs) in a town I've lived in since birth (not counting a brief foray into New Jersey when my parents separated and, again, time logged in New Haven), fielding texts from ex-boyfriends and considering a trip to the basement fridge for a (hopefully-sedative) Smirnoff Twist (I'd like to say a beer, but still no) and wondering why my mom still forgoes our central air even though it's 90 degrees outside?

Maybe everyone - even real, legitimate adults with apartments and air conditioners all their own - experiences this disconnect when they come home, but there seems something particularly poignant about calling this place my "permanent address" at the bank, when - employment gods willing - I won't be living here past May 2008.