2001-03-26 - 12:42 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Some weird classic-rock song with lots of strange echoing percussion noises.

Sometimes after we've used the VCR, Poindexter turns it off, leaves the TV on channel 3, and leaves the room. I'm usually on the computer (as I am now) so it takes me a while to notice that it's QVC.

Have you ever watched this? It's freakin' weird. There's some woman on there modeling bracelets and she just rambles on and on and on. She's rambling about the goddamn gift box you can get it in. And "See how nice it looks next to a watch, if you want to wear it with a watch." There's another woman who just sits there wearing things and never says a word.

And they take calls from alleged "callers" who sound like they're plugging the product. They're probably not real callers. "I just want to tell you it's a great bracelet to wear with your bathing suit on spring break."

??

Now they're discussing the host's eye shadow?! Oh, I see, they sell makeup on QVC too. Hm. Her features are perfectly symmetrical, I think. That's pretty rare.

It's fascinating. Not the show itself, but that it WORKS on so many people. I want to know who those people are that are racking up tens of thousands of dollars in credit-card debt watching QVC.

So I am reading Duany/Plater-Zyberk's Suburban Nation and tearing my hair out.

If you have ever experienced the slightest dissatisfaction with traditional suburbia, are exasperated by the fact that there's usually only one route to the grocery store, so if there's traffic it's unavoidable, and if you think that places like Georgetown (DC), Princeton (NJ), Alexandria (VA), or Charleston (SC) would be ideal to live if they weren't so frickin' expensive, read this book.

Heck, read it anyway. It has pictures. The whole story is in the pictures, really.

There is nothing in this book of which I wasn't already aware. I'm spending most of it nodding my head. But it brings it all to the forefront, and I go outside and see how my development got some of it right but not all of it and want to strangle the developers. Poindexter's threatening to hide it so I can't read it anymore.

When I am flying across this country in a plane, and I look down and see the pods of cookie-cutter houses and the 6-lane highways lined with parking lots and box stores, I'm astonished at how much of it there is. Why is this kind of suburbia so ubiquitous? Places with traditional neighborhood design are incredibly overpriced, so there's a huge demand for this sort of thing, yet no one builds that way. Part of the problem is the zoning laws, of course, but why are the zoning laws so ubiquitous, then?

I feel a little better, though, realizing that although my location isn't perfect, it's a lot better than it could have been. I am within a 10-minute walk of a park, drugstore, post office, library, hardware store, specialty shop, florist, and bakery. I live in a high-density development that did a reasonably good job of creating a pleasant streetscape.

The drawbacks that are irritating me: all those places I can walk to are the traditional island surrounded by a sea of parking, or they're in an ugly strip mall; some of the streets are too wide; the development is still a "pod", completely separated from the rest of the area; there are "holes" of blank walls in some parts of the streetscape; the neighborhood is too yuppified -- there is no lower-middle-class housing here. As for the location itself, I'm surrounded by busy streets with heavy traffic and no buffer zone between the sidewalk and the street. Walking to the library is unpleasant. Walking to the other places requires that I cut through a place the development doesn't really want me walking, or doesn't understand why I'd want to walk there.

I want to move to a city. I am GOING to move to a city. Dammit.

Occasionally when Poindexter and I are joking around and he's pestering me and making me crazy, I tell him if his behavior doesn't improve, I'm going to move out (note: this does not mean I would divorce him) and get myself a studio in the city. He believes me. Doesn't make him quit the peskiness, though. He'll just come with me.

Actually, we were talking about maybe Poindexter getting some kind of short-term (less than 1 year) contracting job in a city we'd like to visit. There's one available now for 6-9 months in NYC. He could take a sabbatical from his current job, which is slow right now.

The big thing, of course, is overcoming our inertia, plus the sheer fright of starting a new job. Although it would be much, much easier to do this if the jump in salary pays for the lodgings in the contract job, in which case we only need to bring our clothes and a few essential pieces of furniture with us, and won't need to rent out the house.

So I have this house full of furniture. On the one hand, it's quite nice to have. Looks pretty, feels nice to sit on, makes it homey. On the other, that houseful of furniture is what keeps me from moving more often, which I would like to do.

I am obsessed with the crap in my house. I have inherited pack-rat tendencies from my parents, but I don't want to have all this stuff around. I struggle with it. I dream about trying to organize it and throw it out. Occasionally I have to just start grabbing things and throwing them away. But it's hard. I've been good, and thrown out a lot of stuff over the last year, but there's more I could get rid of.

But I still have trouble with some of it. I have two shoeboxes full of notes from high school, and they are really funny to read. I don't want to get rid of them. I have a ton of books, most of which are pretty silly books, but I like reading them.

If we ever settle down in a place that I love and never want to leave, I'm going to want all those books and furniture. Putting up bookshelves was the thing that really made our house look like a home.

Hm. Movers don't require you to empty drawers. Maybe the trick is to get everything except the books into movable sets of drawers -- all my miscellaneous small junk could go into an apothecary thingie with all the little drawers, all the linens into a hope chest -- so that when it's time to move, there's very little to pack. I could be stricter about putting out-of-season clothes in boxes, too, like my mom does. Hm.

Y'know how there are some people who have a drive to do something? Write, start their own business, make a million dollars by age 30, raise a family, whatever. They have this goal in mind, they have the talent, and their energies are directed towards trying to achieve that goal. If they aren't working toward it, they are dissatisfied and unhappy.

I am not one of these people.

I admire them immensely. It's amazing to have a worthwhile goal and work on achieving it. But me, well, I can't seem to come up with any really impressive goals. I work to live. I enjoy the work I do -- it's mathematical, and I really love math -- but it's not a defining point of who I am.

There are things I feel strongly about -- libertarianism and traditional town planning, for starters -- but if I were to devote my life to these causes, I would be wretchedly unhappy. The trappings that go along with them -- the politics, the frustrations, going back to school -- would make me so miserable as to outweigh any good I might achieve.

I have one big goal right now, and that is to live in a city or a traditionally-planned small town like Princeton. There are logistical considerations preventing from happening right this instant, but it will happen eventually.

Other than that, what? I like learning. I like experiencing each day. I like watching my bulbs come up. I like talking to people. I like walking and skating. I think I could be perfectly happy if my life stayed exactly the same for years and years as long as I was able to do those things. The "learning" and "talking to people" has limitless possibilities, after all, and the bulbs come up every spring.

When I was still living with my parents, I had a mental list of four goals. The first two were consciously articulated; the latter two were just floating around the edges of consciousness:

1. To live in my own place

2. To buy a roadster convertible

3. To kiss Poindexter at least once

4. To swim with dolphins

I've done the first three. The third turned out way different than I expected. The fourth I still intend to do, but I want to do it out on the ocean, not in one of those dolphin parks, so it might be a while.

So now I've got the fifth item on the list -- moving to a city/traditional town. Then what? Just enjoy? I can do that.

I haven't gotten around to finishing the E&P story, but suffice to say for now that Poindexter was ALWAYS in the back of my mind, growing up. Even as I went along, living life as though he didn't exist -- we didn't speak for years at a time -- he was always a kind of unfinished business. It was odd. I'd had a lot of crushes. I'm a crush-y girl. But most of them just passed on and I didn't feel like I was missing something important.

Poindexter, though, had to be dealt with. When I went out to California to visit that last time, when I turned 24, it was with the intention of either getting over him or declaring myself. I expected it to be the former. Usually once you get to know someone beyond small talk that you've had that kind of long-term schoolgirl crush on, they turn out to be quite unlike what you expected, and you get over it quick. If that didn't work, I expected my declaration to be met with him telling me he cared about me, but not "like that".

As soon as I got out there I realized, with the wisdom supplied by a best guy friend, many casual guy friends, and a long-term relationship, that he was even better than my imagination had made him up to be. I decided I had to declare myself, although it took a week to work up the courage. Even then, though, I never really imagined that he'd return the feelings or that it would work out the way it has.

Sometimes I look at him across the room and I still don't.

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