&

Shopping today. Checking out and the woman at the register next to me is trying to get the guy in the front of the line’s attention because she can take whoever’s next. I walk back to him and tell him her line is open, but while I’m walking, someone cuts in line. So then the guy yells at me, in a busy store in a really nice mall, about how stupid I am and now he’s lost his place in line and he doesn’t need any of my kind of help. I can’t let him cut in front of me because the other cashier has already started ringing up my stuff.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him. And then I turn around and say I’m sorry to both my cashier and the other cashier.

“Don’t worry about it,” my cashier says.

“No, I’m just that kind of person. I’m going to feel bad all day,” I say. And she kind of frowns at me, like she’s disappointed in me or like she disapproves of me.

Because I’m nice, people think I’m stupid. Maybe I am stupid. I deserve to be, as punishment, I guess somehow.

I should just gain all this weight back so I can just wear my old clothes and not need new ones that fit.

So, over on my favorite copyeditor’s blog (You Don’t Say), today’s post is about how many people are calling Sonia Sotomayor an immigrant, or a daughter of immigrants. She’s Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican citizens have been granted U.S. citizenship since 1917 (more than 90 years ago). Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

My curiosity with the use of the word “immigrant” though is this: Are the writers/editors misusing it to make her look like an outsider or to make her look like a person who overcame adversity to get where she is? And then, politically, how does this affect readers? When I read about immigrants or children of immigrants who have worked hard and achieved things, I think, “Well, that’s what America is all about. Good for him/her!” But people of other political leanings might think, “Ugh, another immigrant coming to take a job from an American!” (However, that’s kind of a difficult argument to make, since if you go back a few generations, excepting actual Native Americans, we’re all immigrants’ children.) (Plus, as mentioned, Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants.) (Plus, also, I mean, it’s not like a ton of people are qualified to be Supreme Court Justices, you know?)

I don’t like to get political on here. I’m more talking about how words have completely different connotations to people, and how we’re manipulated by them, for better or worse.

So, in the middle of this month-and-a-half of crazy traveling and people visiting and events and stuff to do, yesterday I decided to rearrange my bedroom furniture so it makes sense. The room is L-shaped, but the natural place to put the bed (in one of the L ends that isn’t where the closet is, is where the radiator is. But now that it’s warm enough I don’t need heat in my room, I can put the bed there. However, there are some unforseen consequences. The bed is now in between the wall with my nightstand and alarm clock and the glass door to outside. I’m really sensitive to light when I sleep, so I can’t face the clock (lighted clock face), or the door (streetlamp). I can’t wear a sleeping mask like I do on the weekends because my alarm clock has a flashing light instead of a buzzer or a bell. So I’m going to get a blackout curtain for the door and see what happens. The room though, now, feels twice as big. The bed used to be in the corner of the L, sort of blocking the two L ends from each other. I had to climb over the bed to get to the closet.

My 2nd problem is that now there’s a blank wall in my bedroom where the bed used to be, and I want a giant taxidermied fish to hang there. Anybody know where to get one secondhand?

So, last night I came home from the airport around 7:30, came in and got settled and then went to move my car to a non-illegal parking space. When circling my block, I saw what I thought was a kitten up against the curb on the side of the street. I parked, and got out to check on it, and when I got closer, I realized it was not a kitten. It was a very cute, brown, floppy-eared fluffy bunny rabbit.

I’m not joking.

I live on a pretty busy street, and I didn’t want him to get hit by a car, so my neighbor and I cornered him easily and I caught him in my jacket, which he immediately peed in. We got him into a cat carrier and gave him some carrots and he spent the night in my apartment. He’s incredibly tame, and will eat out of my hand, and when I open the carrier, he’ll rub his head against my hand. So, he’s obviously somebody’s pet rabbit, I just have to find out whose. My neighbor posted it on the Moms on the Hill listserv and I put it on Craigslist, and when it stops raining, I’ll put up some flyers.

He’s a sweet bunny though, and so soft. If you’ve never petted a live bunny, I suggest you go find one and pet it immediately. It kind of takes all your problems away for a minute.

Uh huh. Zeppelin pun. Wanna make something of it?

So, yesterday, I went to my favorite coffee place for a latte before I drove out to IKEA to look for curtains (which I didn’t find). It’s a longish drive out to IKEA (about 30 minutes) and I was really tired/craving, so I got two lattes. They’re smallish, and I wasn’t eating breakfast so I felt like I needed the extra sustenence. Anyway, they wrote my name on both cups and, as it turned out, there were two baristas working and each made one of my two lattes.

One was nuttier, more densely coffee-flavored, roasty-tasting. Almost but not quite bitter. The other was creamier, milkier and a little more mild. The difference was small, and if I hadn’t been drinking them at the same time, I never would have noticed. Both were excellent.

Okay, so I hear about Pandora all the time and so today, I’m in my office, about to start on some heavy proofreading and editing, so I go to Pandora and tell it stuff I like in hopes it will play me some stuff I’ve never heard/never heard of that’s new and interesting and wild.

I tell it I like Okkervil River and Elliot Smith. It plays me: Iron & Wine, Pedro the Lion, Belle and Sebastian, The Shins, Radiohead, Wilco, The Beatles and Nick Drake. Songs I easily could have played from my very own iTunes. Songs I easily could have heard on various alt-40 radio stations.

I thought the point of this was to find new music? Um? Hello?

When people ask me why I don’t know a foreign language, I try to explain to them that I know English at least twice as well as a normal person, and that’s why I don’t feel like I really need to know another language. I don’t mean this in a braggy, self-righteous way. I mean this in a factual way. I know English because it is my job to know English. I am a professional writer/editor. This is basically the only requirement of my job.

I don’t know this stuff just so I can whip it out at parties and give people crap about their inability to use punctuation. I don’t know it just to look smart. I know it for a practical reason: people pay me to know it. People don’t accuse carpenters of being self-righteous about their knowledge of saws. Pilots don’t get an eye-roll when they talk aerodynamics or yaw. You don’t mock your doctor because he knows the difference between your ilium and your olecranon.

So stop thinking I’m a jerky snob for knowing how to use a semicolon. Or when you capitalize East Coast. Or when to use bad instead of badly, or less than instead of fewer than.

I need a new coffeemaker. Mine cannot make coffee anymore without dumping grounds and sludge into the pot. For the past five years or so, I’ve had this guy:

And it’s the perfect size to make 1 travel-tumblerful of coffee to drink in the car on the way to work and one little mug of coffee to drink before I leave for work. If I can find the same one, I’ll just get it. I’d love one of the new electric French presses, if they weren’t $100.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m sitting at my desk drinking very flavorful coffee that I occasionally feel like I need to chew. Gross.

It’s WFMU Pledge Marathon time again, baby. And to honor it, yesterday, the host of my favorite show co-hosted my other favorite show. It was a double whammy of awesome you can listen to right here.

Anyway, keep WFMU on the air and un-beholden to The Man by giving them your spare change. You know that old guy that asks for your change on the street? He’s just going to spend it on booze or at Starbucks. Give it to these guys to spend it on hi-tech radio stuff you don’t understand.

Read all about it on the WFMU site.

I’ve lost enough weight now that a lot of my clothes don’t fit, and I have to put on several things every morning to find something that fits and goes together. I wouldn’t care so much, except it adds time in the mornings I don’t really budget for. That’s right. I’m a last-minute waker-upper.

I get up at 7:30 a.m. to leave at 8 a.m. to be at work by 8:30 a.m. Out of bed, make coffee, bathroom, brush teeth, take shower, get dressed, pour coffee, dry hair, drink coffee, pack bag, leave the house. All of this can be accomplished in just under 30 minutes unless “get dressed” includes searching for pants I have kept since 2002 in hopes I could wear them again. Or trying on three gray skirts to find one that will stay up on my waist.

Complaining about being thin never wins you friends, though. So I’ll just shut up and continue wearing things that make me look droopy and sluggish.

Ten embarrassing ways in which I am disturbingly like Liz Lemon from “30 Rock.”

1. My fantasy vacation includes a turtle that brings me sandwiches.
2. If a guy apologized to me for smelling like frosting, I would marry him on the spot.
3. I occasionally take up and abandon knitting as a hobby.
4. People occasionally mistakenly assume I’m a lesbian.
5. 2-minute dance party is the greatest thing ever.
6. I buy cream soda in bulk.
7. I own, and wear, “work sneakers.”
8. I never wear flip-flops ever. It’s gross.
9. I would become addicted to a show like “MILF Island.”
10. I would buy all the hotdogs.

Three ways in which I am not:

1. I’m 27.
2. I don’t have a cool job.
3. Yeah, I can only think of two. I even fail at failing cleverly.

My mother does not know the difference between Will Ferrell (known for “Elf” and “Night at the Roxbury,” winner of a SpikeTV Guy’s Choice award for “funniest mo-fo”) and Colin Farrell (known for smoldering good looks and bad-boy antics, winner of a best actor Golden Globe for “In Bruges”).

I was telling her about “In Bruges,” which is hilarious, and how Farrell won a Golden Globe for it, and I think that’s great, because “Golden Globe Winner Colin Farrell” is not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear seriously. And somehow we got to talking about how good looking Colin Farrell is and mom said she didn’t agree, which I took in stride because mom and I never agree on who we think is good looking. And I said really? And she said, you mean the guy from “Elf”?

And I laughed and laughed and laughed. And then emailed her the wikipedia pages for Farrell and Ferrell. Hopefully she doesn’t get confused again.

A mac genius told me Saturday my powerbook will die any minute. This is bad news, especially since I can’t stand the glossy screens on the new Macbook/Macbook Pros. Of course, a non-gloss is available on the 17-inch Macbook Pro, but something about spending $3 grand I don’t have on power I don’t need just seems wasteful.

Plus I need to save my money for a hotel in Costa Rica. Seriously. Just disappear and run a front desk and clean rooms and sit in a hammock in the afternoon and drink big cocktails out of pineapples.

I’m sick of winter. I wish I was a bear so I could just sleep until springtime.

So last night, at the Container Store (which is exactly what it sounds like, if you’re not familiar), I’m in line and when I’m next, and shuffle down to the open register, the woman clerking it closes it and apologizes. I shuffle back to the line (which formed while I was shuffling, so those people in it didn’t realize I had been in line) and get in the back of it. The clerk woman followed me and said, rather sternly, “You were in the front. You need to get back into the front.”

I wasn’t in a hurry, and I didn’t want to be rude, and it wasn’t a big deal, and I tried to say all of these things to her, but she was really kind of hostily insisting I get in front of all these purchase-laden working parents. I didn’t. I stayed at my place in the back of the line (which was short, I was third) and she kind of muttered something under her breath I think was “If you wanna be stupid, fine, be stupid.”

“Polite,” maybe, some people would say I was being. “Appropriate,” I would say I was being. “Stupid,” yeah, maybe a little, but I wasn’t in a hurry, and other people clearly were. They had families to get home to and dinners to cook and I had to get home to eat leftover pizza and wrap presents. Not exactly high-stress activities.

And then, all three registers cleared at once and all of us in line got to go simultaneously. So I waited zero extra minutes. Being stupid. Or doing the right thing. Whatever.

Dad says it’s $343 if you punch someone in South Carolina to get out of jail (not counting if they sue you for medical expenses due to your punch, lawyer fees, etc.). There are some people I’d happily pay $343 to punch. Not that Container Store woman though, I’d just try to keep apologizing to her and explain that sometimes, yeah, I want to be stupid.

If you spend two days solid at work listening to Pavement albums, then listen to Built to Spill’s “Keep It Like A Secret,” you’ll feel like you’re still listening to Pavement.

Just sayin’.