Eat the Damn Cake

My friend was on an elevator with some undergrads the other day. Both girls. One was saying to the other, “Wait, can you believe she’s actually twenty-six? She seemed like she was young.”

“That is so weird,” the other said. “I didn’t know she was so old.”

“That is really old. But she’s still cool, I guess.”

“I guess.”

My friend is twenty-six. She felt old.

Twenty-five is not old. It’s just the age when famous people start being younger than you. When you realize that a lot of the famous women in movies are twenty-two. Definitely pop stars. They might be sixteen.

(source)

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I painted one of my walls with chalkboard paint yesterday. Which is why I have black streaks on both knees, most of my fingers, and one nipple (OK, the last one is hard to understand. I was not painting naked. But maybe it was the bralessness that did it).

I want to write a book. But writing a book is turning out to be harder than I’d expected. Which feels lame, because there are so many people who are trying to write a book. And I want to be one of the ones who is like, “Oh, I just wrote a book.” Like that Twilight woman, who was like, “Oh, this amazing story just popped into my head and then I sat down with my laptop and two weeks later, I’d written five trillion pages, and that was Twilight!” (Or something like that.)

I decided that I needed a giant blackboard, to sketch my plot on. If I had that, things would fall into place. So I made one. But I have to wait two days to draw on it.

Some people go through life full of life. They are proud of themselves. They are content. I want to be one of those people, but I’m not there yet.

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I meant to write a post today, but then I got too excited.

Because I’m on A Practical Wedding! CLICK HERE! Thank you to all of the readers of this blog who kept suggesting that I submit something. You guys know what’s best for me.

I did not act particularly bridal during the wedding planning process (which you can read a summary of here). I never shrieked and jumped up and down. And I’m resisting the urge now. But the urge is definitely there.

And I am also in The Forward, with a piece about growing up both Jewish and homeschooled (so, like, weirder than everyone else). CLICK HERE! This is my first newspaper piece (The Star Ledger published a letter to the editor of mine, and actually changed my words. In ways that made me sound like I might not be incredibly literate. We’re not on speaking terms and they don’t count).

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The reason why I didn’t want to do yet another hair post was because I am afraid of seeming kind of obsessed. I think a reader left a comment to this effect recently. I didn’t read the whole thing, because I could tell it would be mean, and I’m a wimp. Actually, I think it’s because I’m a wimp that I keep cutting my hair in stages. I wasn’t brave enough to do it all at once.

My dad accused me of being obsessed with my hair when I told him I wanted to buzz it. He was kind of joking, but kind of not joking.

There’s only so much support you can expect, when you’re a woman who keeps making her hair even shorter. My brothers used to get buzz cuts, and no one really even noticed. But I suddenly realized that my desire to have the shortest hair possible makes me a little radical. Which is not my intention. My intention is to have the shortest hair possible. Because I love it.

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Yesterday, I got an email with the subject “Good Morning America.”

“Hi Kate,” it read. “Would you be able to be interviewed on camera tomorrow?”

Good Morning America wanted to talk to me about My Body Gallery, the site that I wrote this very recent post on. They wanted my thoughts. There’s a chance they’ve read THIS BLOG.

I don’t watch TV. I mean, I watch Hulu, of course. But not real TV. Growing up, we didn’t watch TV. I clearly don’t know how big of a deal TV is, somehow, because my first reaction was, “Oh no. I don’t want to be on TV. That’s scary. I’ll probably sound stupid and make weird expressions.”

Because I was ambivalent, I did the reasonable thing: I put up a Facebook status explaining to my Facebook friends that I wasn’t sure what to do.

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I have been eating a lot. A lot. And it bothers me that I feel guilty because of it.

Bear read a book called Good Calories, Bad Calories not too long ago. And he’s pretty sure that refined carbohydrates will be the death of me. It sounds like kind of a smart book, actually, but I don’t want to read it. Because I like killing myself with muffins. Not killing myself. I like eating muffins.

(source)

Bear doesn’t eat any carbs. Neither does my little brother Gabe, who is a diabetic, too, and who interns for Bear now, at Bear’s new job. Gabe comes and stays with us, and he and Bear talk about the world economy (it’s always depressing) and eat salad together. I am learning more about the world economy as a result.

My other brother, the middle one, put himself on a strict diet and workout schedule years ago, when he started college. He lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of muscle and he doesn’t eat any carbs. He also doesn’t drink diet soda, because of the artificial sweetener. He drinks water with lemon juice, which is actually quite good. His willpower is crazy. It’s more like a superpower. It can probably make him fly by now.

Neither of my parents eat carbs. My dad is a diabetic and my mom has cut them out of her diet (though she’ll have a piece of chocolate or a bite of my cake occasionally).

I’ve written about this before, but I need to write about it  again, because here I am, in my new apartment, eating carbs all day long, and feeling guilty. And writing about it on a blog called “Eat the Damn Cake.”

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This is kind of a rant. And it’s really judgmental. So stop reading now if you disapprove of ranting, judgmental people (I know I do).

We were at a little trendy restaurant in our little trendy neighborhood, and a family came in. The guy was wearing a cap and orange shorts and a plaid shirt with a neckerchief and pale blue loafers. He had a stylish beard. The woman looked displeased in her looping, soft dress with patches of fabric that only barely covered her breasts, no back, and enormous sunglasses.

(source)

All of that was fine, of course. They were stylin’. But so was their tiny, toddling son.

He was dressed in tiny corduroy pants and a tiny plaid shirt with tiny suspenders and a tiny neckerchief and a tiny conductor’s cap. He was sweaty and unhappy. We were eating outside and it was humid. He was squirming in his hipster-chic outfit, pulling at the suspenders as though he wanted to escape.

And I felt a wave of judgmentalness sweep over me.

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