Oh Irony.

Question: What is the appropriate punishment for a slacker-blogger who has simply abandoned her blog for no good reason?

Answer: Send her to a Blogging Conference where she will have to explain to everyone that she used to have a blog once, but that she is monumentally lazy and preoccupied and her blog fell into radio silence.

This is how my life works: three weeks before I am given the chance to attend a conference about blogging--I stop blogging. When I think of the fact that I'll spend two days being the only person at the conference who doesn't actually have an active blog, I get a little twisty, anxious feeling in my stomach that can only be quelled by wine, or bowls of sugar cereal, or bowls of sugar cereal doused in wine (not really that last bit--or not yet, anyway).

But today I am biting the bullet, re-entering the fray, grabbing the bull by the proverbial horns (can you tell I've been reading Lonesome Dove and having cowboy dreams?). I'm going to SLOG ALL OVER THIS THING. Watch your shoes. You might get slog on them...

Last night, some friends and I played Life, the board game. It had been at least fifteen years since any of us had played, but oh, did we remember it. Libby used to cheat to ensure she got to live in the Tudor house. I used to stare at the board, wishing hard that I might land on every "Baby Girl" or "Baby Boy" square, thus filling my little minivan with adorable babies. Times change. Now, Libby wants the Modern Victorian house and I am happy with my one quiet, well-behaved child.

For the first twenty minutes, we mostly lamented the new, cartoony images on the much-busier game board. Why, we wondered, does everything have to change? Why? Then, we got down to playing. It was way more complicated than any of us remembered. Clearly, as children, we'd only adhered to the rules that interested us. Now there are "Share the Wealth" and "Long Term Investment" opportunities. Now there is the "Spin to Win" gambling feature. And, because we are older, and understand the extended rules, we feel compelled to follow them.

See how much Life is actually like life?

As we played, we tried to understand what Life is meant to teach the young children who play it. There are obvious lessons: you will buy a house; you will have a family; you will have a career; you'll make money and you'll pay money. In the end, you'll retire to a big mansion and count your money, and if you made enough of it, you are the winner. Twisted.

But there are other lessons, too. Lessons that resonated especially powerfully to people in their late twenties. Namely, that Life is Random and Absurd. For instance, of the six of us, only Andrew ever had to pay taxes. Two people found buried treasure and collected 500,000 dollars. Kelsey landed on every tile that said she'd won a television dance/singing/game show contest, and raked in the dough. Jacob lost his job as a veterinarian and became a hair stylist. He made the least money but lived in a mansion. He also had to do the only real work of the game, as our banker, which is--of course--a job he didn't get paid for at all. Libby made the most money but lived in a double-wide. Poor Paul, just because he had the highest salary, got sued by anyone and everyone who landed on a Lawsuit square.

And with each spin of the wheel, we waited helplessly to see what sort of hand fate would deal us next. Half way through, Kelsey suggested we double whatever number we spun, just to move across the board faster. So we did, and soon we were tearing along, jumping all sorts of milestones without looking twice. Babies, car accidents, Nobel prizes. We spun and spun again. We raced one another to retirement. And when we got there, we had piles of money and we were all exhausted.

Life seems to reduce the whole experience of a person in the world to a series of purchases, payments, and required milestones. The game offers a few choices, but eliminates most. It forces your hand. Across the board there are stop signs that demand you to stop, to marry, to pick a house or a career out of a pile of limited options. So, the lesson is that life is random, and absurd, and it is sometimes about choice but it is mostly about chance. But if you think too much about that stuff, it will leave you feeling tired, tired, tired.

Luckily, there are good friends, and there is champagne, and there is plenty to laugh about when--in make believe--your friends discover buried treasure, win Nobel prizes, buy homes they can't afford, become veterinarian-hairstylists, get sued again and again, win game shows, or fall way, way behind because they are physically incapable of spinning anything other than a two.

I've missed you,

Kendall

What Color Is Your Now What?

I have just returned from seeing Julie and Julia, and now I'm blogging about a movie about blogging. But, while I thought seeing the movie would motivate me to blog, it actually made me feel weirder about this whole thing, if that's possible. Here's why: it highlighted, once again, the importance of a theme (in this case, being saved from despair by cooking several Julia Childs recipes a day--unfortunately for me, cooking shoots me directly to the profoundest depths of despair).

Also, the movie does not sugar coat the fact that blogging is narcissistic and, well, weird. Especially this kind of blog, my blog, which is shaping up to be little more than a weird trip through my brain.

Finally, do you know what Julia Childs and Julie Powell (the titular characters of said film) have in common? Amazing husbands. Seriously wondrous husbands, revelations of the male persuasion, who are understanding and patient and encouraging and blah blah blah. Now, if you thought I was about to complain about my own lack of husband, or even affectionate boyfriend, or even cute orange cat to meow at the oven when my boeuf borgnone (sp?) begins to burn), you'd be wrong! I can accept that this will be an aimless and narcissistic blog, but if it becomes a whiny blog, I will find a gun and I will shoot off both my big toes, and then blog about it--and that's a promise.

Because something I've got, that nobody else has got, not even Julia Childs, something that I thank my lucky stars for everytime I think about lucky stars (which happens, mostly, in the shower where I've got a window--and how luxurious is that?? A window in your shower is about as good as it gets, even if it is cracked and lets spiders in--and I shower at nighttime looking out at the sky where there are often stars, so now we're back to lucky stars, see I knew where I was going even if you started to wonder) is my friends. God, they're brilliant, my friends.

So yesterday I was thinking about my friends when I was struck by a very important idea (a V.I.I if you will): my friends are not only funny and accomplished and kind-hearted and attractive (really, freakishly good looking), they are also--down to the last one--smarter than me. Not just book smart, or street smart, but the deep-down, emotional-smart that leads to fulfilling lives full of good relationships. I thought first of the friends I had already talked to that day--definitely smarter than me. Then, I thought of the friends I was about to talk to at dinner: so obviously smarter than me. I widened the net, hoping I would come up with one friend--from college? from those four months I spent eating my way through Spain? from the summer when I pushed carts of printer paper from one copy room to another?--who I was smarter than.

Nothing doing.

And I felt really bad, really despairing, for about a half a second. Then, I started to feel really, really good. Because, what better than to be surrounded by, practically drowning in, wisdom? Wisdom that people will give you, for free, because at some point you convinced them they should be your friend!

Now for the best part: these brilliant friends aren't that worried about me. Sure, I call them and I ask, "What am I doing with my life?" or "Where in the world should I live?" or "What job do you think I should do?" And they listen, and they ask probing questions, but they don't seem too worried that I won't figure it out. And they're brilliant, so if they're not going to worry, I'm not going to worry. Too much.

Andrew says, "Are you above reading self-help books? Because I'm not above reading self-help books." Then, he recommends What Color is Your Parachute? and another book called Now What? And even though he is six hours away, I just want to hug him through the phone because he is a super-smart guy who happily cops to reading self-help books, and then genuinely recommends them to a friend in need. So I'm going to read them! I'm going to find out what color is my now what!

Katie tells me about the conversation she had with her s.o., Scout, ("significant other" for those of you who don't speak blogginese fluently) at brunch:
Scout: Why doesn't Kendall have a blog? She needs to have a blog.
(When Scout says "needs," he means, "for her professional development she needs to have a blog," and not "the world needs for her to be blogging." He didn't mean that at all.)
Katie: I think she thinks she is not funny or interesting enough to write a blog that anyone would read.
(Katie is entirely correct in her interpretation and knows me too well.)
Scout: But she wants to be a writer, right? So doesn't she kind of need to think she is funny and interesting enough for people to want to read?
(Touche, Scout, touche.)

To summarize: I am not Julia Childs, I don't have an orange cat to meow warnings at the oven, I still don't have a theme for this blog, but I've got brilliant friends who don't worry too much about the fact that I don't have much at all figured out. I'm persevering with the blog--so far--and my parachute is about to get colored. It all puts me in such a good mood that I'm going to conclude with this:

Breakfast! Here's how you make it.
Step One: Buy Yogurt-Burst Cheerios on the cheap from Winco.
Step Two: Add Soymilk (or regular milk if you're one of the loonies not yet on the soy-wagon). In the voice of Homestar Runner, "Apply liberally" (pronounced "Appwy Wibewawwy").
Step Three: Reheat the coffee you made yesterday. Or the day before. It's hard to remember, but regardless, a minute and twenty seconds in the microwave makes it good as new (thanks, Mom, for this trick).
Step Four: Consume while reading an old library book covered in mysterious stains (try to avoid direct contact). I've chosen Portnoy's Complaint. It's dirty (and I'm not just referring to the cover stains).

I think we can all agree that I'm really hitting my stride with this blogging.