Eat the Damn Cake

I’m guest posting over at Get in the Hot Spot today, if you want to check it out. The post is called “How to Transform Mundane to Extraordinary.” Get in the Hot Spot is a productivity/personal development/general awesomeness blog by Annabel Candy, a woman who is really good at figuring out whatever she wants to figure out and then doing that and succeeding. Also, she’s lived just about everywhere in the world.

While I’m here: Un-roast: Today I love my ability to get happy really quickly, after having been sad just moments before. And my legs. They are really living up to the summer.

For anyone who is here from Get in the Hotspot, read about un-roasting here. And then sign up for Eat the Damn Cake, because, you know, life’s too short. You should have more cake in it.

The first time I went for a consultation with a cosmetic surgeon, I wore high heels. When he held the mirror up to show me where my nose had failed at beauty, I liked my face. I wasn’t supposed to. But just in the moment when I was supposed to hate my face the most, I thought it was beautiful. I thought that he must be thinking, “Why would this girl ever want to change anything about the way she looks? Oh well, I’ll make some money…” He probably wasn’t thinking that. Except the last part.

Maybe it was some sort of perverted little survival instinct. My brain was like, “HE’S GOING TO CUT YOUR FACE OPEN!!! QUICK! SELF-LOVE!” It didn’t work. I went ahead with the surgery. I’d made my decision. I felt empowered. Hey, being able to decide to change yourself can be very empowering. Penelope Trunk and I need to have a conversation about this, when I become famous enough to talk with her a lot. In her last post, she said she was obsessed with the idea of plastic surgery, but she’s squeamish, like me. Honestly, I’m not sure at this point what I’d tell her.

When he took the cast off my face, I thought I’d look completely different. I was so ready for it, I almost saw it. I mean, I did look different. I had giant bruises under my eyes. But I could see the new beauty, just behind those bruises. Continue Reading »

Yesterday, as you may have noticed, Cake died. Just like that, it was gone. As though it had never been here in the first place. I clicked on the usual link, and was flung onto a terrifyingly blank page, with an ominous little message at the top. It sounded bored, like it had said the same thing a million times. Something about rerouting. But the link that it suggested didn’t work either. I stared at it. It occurred to me that I might have just lost absolutely everything I’ve written on this blog. In which case, clearly, immediate suicide would be the only option. Continue Reading »

We’re moving this week. Into a gigantic, luxurious apartment. By which I mean, it has two rooms and a DISHWASHER!!! A dishwasher. I want to write the word again and again. Because it’s about to change my life. It’s about to make my life so much better. I can’t even comprehend the full extent of how much better my life is going to be. I will put the plates into the machine, with some special liquid dishwasher soap, and I’ll close the door. And then, in a bit, the plates will be clean. Like magic. And I won’t have to choose between writing another chapter of the book I’m working on and being able to eat with a clean fork. Because that’s not a choice anyone should be forced to make.

So I’m really excited about that. But I’m not excited about other things. And they are things that I’m supposed to be excited about. Continue Reading »

(image source here)

How much of your identity is based on your beauty?

This may be an impossible question to answer. Or your answer may change all the time.

The ideal relationship of beauty to identity for me might work like this, through a conversation between two people who know me casually (as most people do, because I’m so famous):

Person 1: That Kate is really cool, isn’t she? She leads such an awesome, interesting life.

Person 2: Damn right! She’s amazing. I wish I could do what she does. She’s got so much guts and personality it’s crazy.

Person 1: Yeah, crazy, man. Totally insane.

Person 2: I’m telling you, one day I hope my kids grow up just like her.

Person 1: Exactly. Everyone in the world should be like her. Continue Reading »

This is Sarah. You can check out her blog here. I am hoping that the photos from my wedding come out somewhere in the vicinity of how nice hers did. But even if they don’t, I’ll still think she’s awesome. Thanks so much, Sarah!

I recently got married.

Getting married is like winning the lotto. Photo taken by the lovely Mish at Eating Journey.

As you can see, I was really happy about it. Continue Reading »

Men are pigs. They just want to get laid. And then they just want to watch sports. We women have to dress up for them all the time, but they only want the really hot, young ones. Or so the story goes.

(image source here)

I grew up in Suburban New Jersey. I went to college in NJ and grad school in Manhattan, and now I’m living on the Upper West Side. I’ve read a lot about gender, and about current events, and about politics. And it’s clear to me that often, men are absolutely awful. They commit the huge majority of violent crimes. Something like 95%. They commit nearly all sexual crimes. When I see a group of them on the street, I feel wary. Once I was harassed by a group of them on the beach. For being a Jew. And for being a woman.

They write offensive messages to my friends on dating sites. They write offensive comments on the articles I publish in the Huffington Post. They seem to revel in anonymity, and they seem to be really angry about a lot of things.

But the truth is, I’ve come across a lot of men, and most of them are very nice. Even the Ukrainian bodyguard with the scarred face I dated whose friends were all in jail and who spoke softly into his cellphone at random times about “the business,” and mysterious “jobs” that he was always coordinating, despite never appearing to work himself. Even he was actually very nice. Continue Reading »