The Zaftig Chronicles

Damn, Mail-to-Blogger! Whenever I write a post via my cellphone, Blogger screws it up. So when my posts are one big blob of messiness, blame Blogger (and my clumsy fingers). I like to take advantage of all the things blogger offers; I just wish I could do it better. Bear with me, please, as I become more adept at blogging.

It's Sunday, which means it is time for my introspective drive through the North Shore . I've filled little Ziplock bags with tart green grapes, honeydew, and strawberries. Today I'll listen to 80s music, eat my fruit, and reflect on my life. Get out today and take time for yourself.

It's Friday, and I'm at home, online. Just two minutes ago, I received an email from a reader of the blog, asking if I am at home for Friday. "Where the hell are the Friday Night volumes?" the reader wrote. Well, I was under the impression that chronicling my Fridays was something I'd do when something interesting happened. Nothing interesting has happened -- unless you count applying cream to my feet or watching Rome  On Demand (I worship On Demand).  So there, I've given you my Friday night. No dating, no sex, and no fun. Wait, I take that back; I actually liked tonight. I ate strawberries and yogurt for dessert. It's fun to be in it alone sometimes. That's all for now. Jan will be here soon, from visiting Henry, and we'll most likely finish off a bottle of Diet Coke and the big bag of gummy bears stashed in my pantry. Tomorrow is grocery shopping, prayers that Rita isn't too harsh, and living.

According to Him, I have trust issues. He discovered this while propping his feet on my desk, and dipping into my bag of bagel chips. This is getting interesting.

I admit, I've faked orgasms, but not in the way most people think. When I fake it, it's more like forcing my orgasm to happen. So it's more like for real faking or "fraking" -- fraking is making an orgasm happen when it's apparent my partner is not going to do it for me. There's an art to fraking, which I'll get to later, but for now let me illustrate my last fraking episode. I use my experience with Kevin back in March of this year. Kevin and I had been seeing each other for about a month, when it was time to hit home base. The night began with dinner, wine, the usual. Then we headed back to my place, where we proceeded to eat each other alive. Ten minutes after entering my apartment, my bra straps were snapped; a lone Jimmy Choo, kicked off in the throes of passion, sat on my window's ledge. My underwear and my VS stockings were pretty much the next day's garbage. Atmosphere, he was giving me atmosphere -- ripped clothing, passionate kisses, ...

So, we had the duck, along with a really delicious orange sauce. The sauce was so good, we asked the waiter to make us a "doggy pint" to take home. Already, the sauce had dressed a chicken that Jan roasted, giving the skin crackly, crispy perfection. Fried mushrooms have pretty much soaked up the rest of the sauce. The sauce is truly food porn. Okay, about our date: Well, it was like last time, only with better food and a therapy session thrown in.  It started off simple -- "What can I do to you tonight?" he'd asked before the complimentary white wine had even arrived. "Nothing," I replied, "I'm just here for the duck." Dinner continued. First was a pine nut, romaine lettuce, and orange wedge salad that came with a tangy lemon and sesame seed dressing. Then it was a perfectly cooked roasted duck with the orange porn sauce, and the best tasting xiaolong bao  in all of Chinatown. Dessert was mango pudding. After we'd spooned the last of...

Okay, here's the thing -- I'm completely swamped; both at work and at home. I'm too swamped to blog coherently either way.  (Not that I ever did.)  Jan is going to be staying with me for at least another week, and I will be on supportive friend duty. But when things become less stressful, I will resume writing on here. I promise to return with goodies.

Thanks for your kind emails, but I'm fine. I'm just taking a break. Jan's partner is in the hospital, and I'm hanging out with him to offer support. Blogging will resume shortly. Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

One of my favorite things in the world. I like my falafels piping hot on a bed of cous cous, hot sauce, with lettuce, and avocado on the side. I don't really like my falafels in a pita, because I think it dulls the falafels' flavor. The restaurant where I get my falafels from (sorry, there aren't many falafel stands in Chicago) also makes a falafel burger. I get them sometimes with their delicious yogurt sauce. But the mouth fuck I get from the veg-balls can't be compared.

Because blogging lets me be free. I get to explore the exhibitionist in me without the consequences. I get to tell my side of things, whether someone is listening or not.  Someone once said that blogging is akin to leaving your open diary on the kitchen table. I partially agree. But I think blogging uses a different language, a language that is more freeing, while writing in a diary is more formulaic -- we jot down what we did today or what occurred; it's more like a personal log book. But blogging is more introspective -- at least personal blogs are. It's not good enough to just say what we did, because the format of a blog draws out the impetus behind our actions, almost like how a therapist can extract the hidden depths we never knew we had. And that's why I think blogging is more like a therapy session amongst our peers. People reach out to us; they empathize, sympathize, and criticize our situations, and we take from it what we will. So I think blogging is more akin to...

I know people read this blog, but for what reason? I've disabled comments because I don't like what it invites, so there is no open dialogue to engage in. Are you all reading to get a good laugh? I like to think not. But there is so much negativity spewing from keyboards across the world, that it's almost enough to make a girl hate all of this shit. So why do I bother? Brooding. Just brooding.

Sister is here. It's her eyes -- they look normal. Healthy. Thoughtful. Full of life, dare I say? I like her like this.  She came this morning, bearing lattes and donuts from a bakery near my house. I happily accepted, but Diana -- still here from last night's man-dishing fest -- declined and got the hell out of Dodge. Diana doesn't like my sister; she thinks she's as toxic as a moldy basement in July. And she can be. But I think this weekend is going to be fine. I'm going to be here for her. I'm going to be a doting little sister. I'm going to be happy. And so will she.   In other news: I checked my email, and He has sent me a "Date Proposal" for next Friday. "How about we go to __________, have the duck and end up looking out at the city below from you know where. I'd like to do it again. Use that same shower gel, please. And he couldn't tell me this at work, face to face?  What the fuck are we doing here ?  I've yet to repl...

This morning I woke up with major puffiness. So I pulled out some cucumber pads that have been in my fridge for about two months, on reserve for a day like this. I cracked myself up by wondering if they had pickled. Yeah, my mind was a little warped this morning. After about twenty minutes of trying to de-puff my eyes, I decided I needed to go back to bed and rest more. Thanks to my getting to bed at 3 A.M., I had to use one of my telecommute days, which is a step above a personal day. I called the office and told them I'd be working from home today. It went over well. This afternoon, I called the office to find out about a deadline, when this happened: "He wants to talk to you," said *Grace.* "He says he needs to ask you something." "Okay," I said, trying to sound as casual as possible. I had *Grace* transfer me to his office. "Zaftig?" "Yes." He laughed. "Just wanted to hear your voice." Mind games. Mind games, I tell yo...

It's Zaftig time when the cheap bottle of white wine emerges, lavender candles are lit, and the Portishead CD makes it into the stereo. The phone is unhooked; the cellular tucked away; the lights are off; and it's just me, wine, music, my laptop, and my thoughts. Tonight is one of those nights -- where the weight of my life presses heavily onto my mind. Sister just called and cried for an hour. She wants to stay with me for a few days. I don't want her to. I DON'T want her to come here. It's a cutting honesty, but it's honesty. She wants to saturate me with blackness, and I like pink and blue. My life is shades of baby pink and blue, with flecks of gold thrown in for glamour. I won't have these colors in my life with her enveloping and suffocating black strangling everything. It will crawl my walls and settle above my head, eating at me, sucking me in. Inward I will go to become a shell, a zombie. She wants me to become her. I can't. I WON'T. Life i...

And I'm wholly pissed about it. There's not much going on with Him. It appears we're both in the middle of some kind of crisis caused by things starting to get real. Feelings are blossoming. Our thoughts are invaded while standing at the Chinese restaurant waiting on comforting wonton soup. We're beginning to smell each other when neither of us is around. It's getting real. It's getting complex. It's getting human. So, being the fucked humans we are (and we humans sure love complication), the best thing is to pretend we're just casual. Nothing's happening here, right? Just fun...right?  Relationships like ours won't work. We'd be great sexners (new word alert!). Our sex would be intense and tantric, and we'd wake up in the morning and do the whole Ann Sather thing, but with better, more tart apple juice with our breakfast. I'd order bagels and onion & chive cream cheese, read the paper and talk about my formative years. We'd ...

I want a dog. I want a chihuahua. Aren't they so cute? I've been on the hunt (admittedly half-heartedly) for a toy dog, and after looking at pictures online, I've decided the adorable chihuahua is the dog for me. All the others were mostly hairy terriers, ugly pinschers, and funny-looking malteses. I was looking at some adoption pages, and I ran across a few ads about  dogs on prozac ! Depressed dogs? Now I've heard it all. Also, there were dogs with diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. I'm truly shocked. But I guess to someone who has grown up with dogs and animals, this wouldn't be such a surprise. But I come from a family that has intense fear of anything not human, so having a pet was out of the question.  I think being friends with Jan and Viv, who both have five dogs between them, has helped me with my animal fear. Viv's beagle is just so adorable, but a little too big for me (and beagles aren't considered big dogs). I don't like big dogs -- whi...

We're all just tiny specks in the scheme of life. We're not that important.

I have a distaste for drama queens. And "Heather" is one. The ASAP message was for one print that had the wrong background. ONE PRINT! Something so simple to correct. I was embarrassed for her. She answered her door with her hair a mess, and looking like she really loss sleep over this simple error. "Glad you came. I'm a wreck about this," she said. "I brought them home Friday, but I just looked at them this morning. Come in. Come in." When she showed me the glossy prints, I was expecting to see something terribly wrong, but they looked the same. "I don't see the problem," I said. Fidgeting, she ruffled through the correct ones to the one with the problem. "Here." "Oh, it's just the background. Is this the only one?" "Well, yeah." She genuinely looked shocked that I didn't go into a major breakdown over ONE PRINT. "It's not like we have to do a whole run again. This one can be fixed quite qui...

This morning, on my way to pick up the Sunday Tribune, orange juice and croissants, I realized just how free I am in the world. I literally had to stop and get ahold of myself on the street. I was near tears. An unbelievable feeling of euphoria swept over me as I was walking. I'm free. Free! If I wanted to spit on the ground, I could. If I wanted tea and apples, I could get them. If I wanted to go back to my apartment and have a vibrator-induced orgasm, I could. If I wanted to just be, I could. Free. I tell you, free. How could I ever be envious or jealous of another human being when I'm free. Free to do whatever I want to do with my life. As I get closer to my 30s, I think these epiphanies will occur more often. And I like that. So I bought my paper, juice and croissants and went back to my apartment, where I noticed a message waiting for me on my voice mail: Zaftig, call me ASAP! I got those runs back. There's trouble." It was "Heather" from work. I called ...

Men. Eyeliner. Muscles. Bad bleach jobs. Swollen lips. Beautiful blue eyes (Leto). Terrible acting (Everyone!). Unnecessary trembling to convey emotion. Trite. Clichéd. Rhys-Meyer and Leto should be lovers. Farrell sucked. Stone's an idiot. Night wasted. Diana unhappy. Jan very unhappy. The horror.