Avert your eyes

Buttermilk fried chicken, sour cream and ricotta chocolate cake. The fridge is full for my imaginary ten child family.

The cooking continues, the descent into madness deepens. The hurry up and wait game, that's not under my control either. There are promises of jobs, but no jobs, there are hands extended with glittering assignments that would be perfect if only that restaurant didn't just close, that band just didn't break up over depleted funds, that boutique design startup with the cute pleating whose parents' just cut their talented but precious children off.*

And while all that happens, the government cheese is drying up (some issue at the unemployment office because of...what's the word, oh yeah recession) and my traveling tendencies start kicking in. It's an addiction, and it's not pretty. Especially when there is no no no no money at all to take it!

So, don't think about it, keep making cake, keep watching videos of kittens falling asleep, keep ordering Vietnamese hot and sour soup, keep scrubbing the floors, pick lint from cushions, refold quilts, neatly write and rewrite to-do lists and scratch through tasks done with a satisfying stab of a red pen.

Catch up on movies, Aliens, Body Heat, King of New York, Dressed to Kill, classics and eighties thrillers, melodramatics, period pieces, arthouse pleasers (do not see "Nightmare" even though it was on the IFC circuit and On Demand with a really great trailer), see Coraline 3-D and then go all the way back beyond rentals to the Free Movie Channel on Demand (Friday the 13th 2 anyone?)

Read. Read until I feel like writing. Conversely, write. Write until I feel like reading.

Stack magazines. Cancel magazine subscriptions. Stare longingly at old issues of Oprah, Real Simple, Time Out. Rinse and repeat.

Make green tea like it's going out of style. Try peppermint to mix it up.

Lose iPod. Try not to freak out. Find it, realize all the music is at least a year old and bemoan lost status as the go-to friend for music.

Tape every show I used to miss, without abandon. Sleep until 11 AM without abandon. Start flossing on a regular basis.

Avoid haircuts, nibble nails and put on woolen socks to cover three month old pedicures, knit badly, take lots of hot showers and keep going to the gym, wear a scarf because it's very very windy outside and try to ignore the texts of people I really want to go play with who have warm weather dreams, the South, the West, my pregnant friends in pretty places, and all the rest. It's winter in the city, it's deep in the recession and I'm a cheery person, so to save my sanity and my dreams, I'll bury myself in busying myself, or else we all know where that leads: Nicaragua and beyond...

*Damn you parents! Take care of us until we're forty!