When it's too cold to play outdoors...

Thank goodness for Sex and the City reruns! Yes, I have the DVDs, but that requires too much effort. I must stay warm under blankets!

Yo! annaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Another new season of The Look for Less came out this past week! Yoanna in the House, Yoanna in the House! Oh, yeah....! You are sooo much more fun than that stuffy, uptight blonde, what's her name! And, we like it when you go to Brooklyn!

I can't help it. I love "House Hunters" on HGTV! And these people are able to get such great, cute places. I'm sooo jealous!!!

Our love is like a red, red fish

Welcome to the family, Valentine.

A Blizzard of Inactivity (for Michellephant)

8:50am. Get out of bed for weekly conversation with Mother.
10am. Watch weather report on tv.
11am. Write about weather in journal and how much you look forward to the day inside.
1130am. Make Mr. H a hearty breakfast; he must go out in the storm.
Noon. Spend an hour convincing friend you think going to the movies in Manhattan is not the best idea for the day.
1pm. Take shower; it hasn't stopped snowing, so just forget the gym for today.
2pm-5pm. Go through stack of fashion magazines from the fall season, it's obviously over.
3pm. Eat food you wisely stocked up on from Saturday.
5pm-9pm. Do homework for acting class, which involves reading old letters from Mr. H (pleasant) and old high school yearbooks (unpleasant).
9pm. Look at casting notices; what better time to stand in line at open calls than the dead of winter?
11pm. Feel guilty for wasting the day away. Go to bed and hope for better progress tomorrow!

A Love Poem for Valentine's Day

For My Lover, Returning to His Wife

She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you and cast up from your childhood, cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February and as real as a cast-iron pot. Let's face it, I have been momentary. A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor. My hair rising like smoke from the car window. Littleneck clams out of season. She is more than that. She is your have to have, has grown you your practical your tropical growth. This is not an experiment. She is all harmony. She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy, has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast, sat by the potter's wheel at midday, set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel. If you glance up, the children are there like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling. She has also carried each one down the hall after supper, their heads privately bent, two legs protesting, person to person, her face flushed with a song and their little sleep. I give you back your heart. I give you permission— for the fuse inside her, throbbing angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her and the burying of her wound— for the burying of her small red wound alive— for the pale flickering flare under her ribs, for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse, for the mother's knee, for the stockings, for the garter belt, for the call— the curious call when you will burrow in arms and breasts and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair and answer the call, the curious call. She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.

--Anne Sexton, Love Poems, copyright Anne Sexton 1969.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

- Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin

I remember, I remember
How my childhood fleeted by,
The mirth of its December
And the warmth of its July.

- Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Life - I am both of your directions
Existing more with the cold frost
Strong as a cobweb in the wind
Hanging downward the most
Somehow remaining
those beaded rays have the colors
I've seen in paintings - ah life
they have cheated you...
thinner than a cobweb's thread
sheerer than any -
but it did attach itself
and held fast in strong winds
and singed by leaping hot fires
life - of which at singular times
I am both of your directions -
somehow I remain hanging downward
the most
as both of your directions pull me.

marilyn monroe

101 Excuses for Not Going to the Gym, Starting with Monday

Monday: My legs are still sore from dance class on Saturday. Better rest them.
Tuesday: I'm going to a seminar tonite. It's for my career!
Wednesday: I really need to work on my monologue tonite. And I have to have Chinese!
Thursday: My aunt died. Damn it, I'll cry on the treadmill and everyone will stare.
Friday: Caved in and had a beer at happy hour. Then I needed to eat at French restaurant desperately.
Saturday: I'm going to dance class instead!

I always loved the rain.

And then you kissed me in a storm.

And I was never the same.

Your real duty is to preserve your dream.

Amedeo Modigliani

A Reason to Hate Technology

For the past several years, I've used a PDA instead of an old-fashioned address book. I can carry it with me everywhere, and it also stores my scheduling. When people pass away, you don't scratch away their name in your address book. But with a PDA, the name can just be deleted. Is there a reason to keep the old address and phone number? Perhaps it is nice to remember it. Or perhaps it will just sit there and stare at you, making you sad.

Nuttin' like Nutella

I can't believe I spent 30 years on this earth before becoming acquainted with Nutella. And we were introduced in the most divine way! On a warm panini shared with a girlfriend at the lovely restaurant Ino in the West Village. Ah....!