Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed To Read The Internet

It starts, innocently enough, with a link on facebook. Then I read one article which links to another which links to another which gets me to this.

And then I get all aggro again.

"Real Bodies Unite is appealing to all those women fed up of being bombarded with unrealistic imagery in the fashion and beauty industry, by launching a global campaign to raise at least 10,000 signatures for the use of body diversity instead."

Flashback: the year is 1991. A certain young feminist author with a hot, new, provocative book comes to talk to our eighth grade class (yes, I just outed my age). She talks to just the girls in the class about how Vogue and, I don't know, Beverly Hills 90210 are forcing us to hate ourselves and how we look and how those are the reasons we have poor body image. A certain student in the class raises her hand and politely (ok, probably not that politely) asks the feminist author if she is smoking crack. How on earth can a magazine make us do or feel anything we don't want? Vogue doesn't make this young lady feel bad about weighing 150+ pounds at 14 - she feels bad about her weight because she looks bad. Objectively. Whether or not Anna Wintour exists. It is possible that said young student is forcibly escorted out of the room and counseled by a teacher to maybe stop with the talking because the feminist author's message will be important to some of the student's classmates and she shouldn't ruin it for everyone.

20 years later and this theory has become widely accepted and a cottage industry.

It is neither the anorexic model, nor the agency that employs her, nor the magazine that prints her, nor the designer who hires her, who is at fault in the tiresome lady-body-image debate. We, the ladies. We're the problem.

Yup, I said it. Wanna be taken seriously, ladies? Accept responsibility for your own complicity in this. Reading the Real Bodies Unite mission statement (which I sincerely hope was written by a teenager, otherwise I cannot excuse the poor grasp of the English language) would have you imagining that the media (capital-M, lowercase-M, whichever) puts thoughts into your head. Thoughts you can't un-put there. Like Son of Sam and his dog. She/we are powerless when the media speaks. The thoughts are unthinkable. Good thing it's only telling us to hurt ourselves emotionally and psychologically, otherwise the courts would be jam-packed with defendants saying "Glamour made me do it."

Even as the crusaders admit that they know the representations of women in the media are "not real," they seem powerless to separate fantasy from reality. Herein lies another gripe: designers don't design for "real women." (For real we should assume heavyish.) Sadly, there's a Freakonomics problem here: heavy women aren't wealthy. Only wealthy women buy designer clothing. Ergo, designers have slender women modelling their clothing. Take a look at the society pages and you'll notice that those women (possibly real, even) are similarly sized and shaped to the women in the fashion magazines. If you are 300 pounds, statistics suggest you do not have $7,000 for a dress. Why would the person selling a $7,000 dress care if you identify with his model if you're not the intended audience any way? The $7,000 dress is a fantasy just as the model is. Why isn't there a movement whose mission is to compel couture houses to make dresses that cost $70? After all, by the same logic, it's unfair to the rest of us that they don't. That we expect women to understand that ownership of a $7,000 dress is a fantasy, but ownership of the body modelling it shouldn't be, is a leap I am unwilling to make.

Women in fashion magazines, movies, television, are professionally beautiful. Being beautiful in an unattainable way is their job. They work every day to be that beautiful. Were that my job, I would lift more weights, clean my face on a regular basis, not consider exfoliation to be "a hassle," and never eat a carb. But since I don't get paid to be attractive, it's bread and sleeping in eyeliner for me. If you, personally, don't like their occasionally boyish figures or outsized busts, it shouldn't matter to you that you don't look like that. There is a serious disconnect between complaining about how unattractively thin models are and then complaining that the selfsame things you find unattractive about them, being unattainable for you, make you feel unattractive yourself.

Does anyone really, truly, honestly think that if there were women of all shapes and sizes in the media, that we women wouldn't find something else to be self-hateful about? Is it really that simplistic? Get a bunch of regular sized and lumpy chicks on the pages of InStyle and we'll all live in Utopian body satisfaction world? To quote the girl from 1991: are you smoking crack?

Want a great example? This photo. Oh, look, girls who also have rolls in their stomachs when they lean over. Bravo! But do you notice what these "real" women don't have? Here's a cursory list:

Cellulite
Scars from ingrown leg hairs
Any body hair whatsoever or the razor burn/waxing bumps to prove they ever had any
Thin hair
Split ends
Visible stretch marks
Wrinkles
Grey hair
Weird moles
Uneven skin tone
And so on, etc. etc.

Also these women may be non-thin, but none is fat. Also none is over 30. If you want to pay money to look at a non-thin-but-not-fat, over thirty woman with thin hair, stretch marks, scars on her knees from summer camp, broken blood vessels on her nose, and the remnants of a manicure from October, I'll start telling you where to send the checks. The women in that picture are no more representative of the rest of us than Kate Moss. They're merely 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss. Everything else remains the same (it should be noted that I have no idea if there are Supermodels anymore, and Kate Moss is the last one I remember who was very skinny - I realize Kate Moss is now well over 30).

So putting beautiful women 40 pounds heavier than Kate Moss, but whose skin, hair, etc. is equally airbrushed, who have spent the same number of hours in the stylist's chair prior to being photographed, in magazines, as opposed to only showing women as thin as Kate Moss will do absolutely nothing to improve women's self-image issues. And anyone who says otherwise is an imbecile.

A dangerous imbecile who is doing exactly the same thing to women as he/she claims the media is: reducing an entire gender to a group of mouthbreathers incapable of making decisions -good and bad- for itself. Oh, don't blame that woman for her poor self-image; the magazine made her do it. She couldn't possibly be expected to stand up for herself on her own. We need to change the magazines so that the poor thing can get out of bed in the morning without wanting to take a razor to her fat, hairy wrists.

These purported feminists are doing more to halt women's progress than any fashion magazine could ever claim to do. I don't want my raison d'etre as a woman to be perpetual victimhood, nor am I comfortable with the notion that until some third-party changes its ways, I will be unable to change my own.

There is a self-image problem that exists for women, but the hard truth is that in many cases it is created by women. We are the consumers and the judges of other consumers. Beauty as a status symbol is a tenet upheld by us all and no amount of media manipulation alone will change that. Belief that we are all equally beautiful negates the very idea of beauty. Admitting that beauty is both subjective and rare doesn't hurt the feminist cause. Attempting to deny subjective beauty makes us both naive and fatuous. The actual challenge is creating a hierarchy where beauty is not the only barometer of success for women. Ignoring beauty as a factor in how we evaluate others does nothing to broaden the scope of our evaluations; it reinforces a narrow view of worth in women. If we, as women, are only evaluating ourselves and others by their beauty, we're the problem. And we need to change. Otherwise, the magazines could print blank page upon blank page, and we'd still be no better off.

The Toughest Review I've Ever Had To Write

It's tangentially related to the honeymoon, but if you're truly more interested in photos of baby elephants (and who isn't) head on over to my facebook or flickr. Devoted partner and I are now proud owners of e-readers; he, a kindle, me, a nook. This has drastically changed the way we pack for trips as we no longer need to allocate 20 or so pounds for books. Prior to leaving for Corisca, I downloaded a pantsload of books to my nook so that the beach would not be boring. Consequently, we spent precious little time doing nothing on that trip, so my nook remained full. Part of this was my fault as I chose a 700+ page tome on the Algerian war which remained only half finished upon our return.

For this trip, I didn't need to add to my selections and, furthermore, the book I really wanted to read wasn't to be released until after we left. Sadly, the author's tour was also going to coincide with the trip and I would be unable to foolishly prostrate myself at the feet of my hero (devoted partner was less upset by this as I freely admit the carnal aspect of my hero worship).

So imagine my delight when, upon finally receiving internet access, I discovered the book was available for download. Oh, joy! I would be able to read the long-awaited novel whilst on the pristine beaches of Mauritius. But satisfaction delayed is often just as sweet, so I finished up with the Algerians first. Aside: yes, it was long, but A Savage War of Peace was also really really fascinating.

The sun was shining, I was in a new bright traffic cone orange bikini, and a man was bringing drinks to my deck chair. I was ready. Umberto, I come for you and your brilliant new novel, The Prague Cemetery.

For those who are possibly unaware, I own all of his books. Even the lengthy, of interest only to doctoral students of semiotics, philosophical tomes. I have read Foucault's Pendulum no fewer than 20 times. I even own a copy in Italian, a language I neither speak nor read. I am smitten by the kind of puppy love that only makes sense when it begins in adolescence. For his last book tour, I brought him chocolates and a 10-page, quite stalkerish letter (still waiting on a reply). My smitten is unwavering.

So, I cannot even begin to explain how devastated I was that this new book...oh god this is hard...is a steaming pile of, well I won't say excrement, discarded notes from all of his actually good books. Literally. As a reader of all of his books I could actually envision him going through old notebooks from 30 years ago and gathering up the stuff that wasn't good enough then and combining it to make this mostly unreadable novel. And not unreadable due to complexity or snotty vocabulary. Unreadable in its lack of plot, lack of character development, lack of interestingness, lack lack lack! The Prague Cemetery has none of the oomph. It feels so mailed in that I briefly wondered if it was a joke. A horrible joke perpetrated at my expense (narcissism, I know). I simply don't know what happened here.

The book is about the development of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which isn't a bad idea for a book. For the first 100 or so pages, one could almost imagine that there would be light at the end of the tunnel (that is if one were so enamoured with the author as to think he could do no wrong). The protagonist has no redeeming qualities, you don't care about him or his story, and you wonder where his mental diarrhea comes from and how it can be so uninteresting. And then it just goes on and on and on. The epitome of sound and fury signifying nothing. Furthermore, the virulent anti-semitism one would expect from a book on this subject just rang so hollow because you could tell Eco's heart wasn't in it. And, unlike Stephen Colbert, he couldn't amusingly fake opinions so radically different from his own.

Upon finishing, and I did finish, I was overwhelmed by feelings of WTF? Why did you write this book, Umberto? It didn't seem like you were interested or invested in it. It read lazily. And you're not lazy. You're meticulous and brainy. I know you're a little pissed off that a no-talent hack like Dan Brown made like he invented Templarian mysteries, but that doesn't mean you should start phoning in your own novels. I wait upon these new tomes of yours with baited breath. I mean have you seen what my other options are for reading these days? And, let's be honest, you don't have that many books left. Would you really be happy if this was the last work you left us?

I'm not going to go overboard and say this ruined our honeymoon and the reason is, it just wasn't significant enough to do anything but leave a bad taste in my mouth (which I washed out with rum). It just made me sad. After plowing through J. Maarten Troost's Life on Planet China and Too Close to the Sun, a biography of Denys Finch Hatton, I had to start on Name of the Rose just to get the taste of Prague Cemetery out of my mouth (rum-soaked though it was). I hope we can reconcile soon. A small book of your essays would help.

Everyone else: if a die-hard fangirl like me can find nothing good to say about this book, you should probably leave it on the shelf.

Selfless Service

I want you all to think of me as a giver. Someone who will go above and beyond the strict call of duty to make your lives better. To help you with this, I have sacrificed myself for the greater good.

I have TiVo'd a fair percentage of the new fall shows so that I may better suggest to you which you should TiVo.

Applications for sainthood on my behalf may be initiated at any time.

There was some pre-recording winnowing based on some highly scientific criteria: most comedies suck. Comedies with Tim Allen in them suck especially. Not worth trying.

I will not, repeat, will not watch supernatural shows. So the new show that's like Lost meets Jurassic part meets, dear god I'm already bored, didn't make the cut. Also I don't plan on watching any of the shows that deal with fairytales or vampires. Wouldn't do it when I was a tween myself, don't plan on doing it now.

So, with one exception, I made a study of the season's new hour-long dramas and here's what I found:

I like cop shows.

Ok, more specifically. Even though I can pinpoint nothing about the new show Unforgettable that is especially, well, unforgettable, I have now watched three episodes. Yes, I was initially drawn in by the less-hot guy from Nip/Tuck, and then immediately put off by the show's subplot - the lady detective with the fiery red (not real) hair is a cop because someone killed her sister and she needs to find out who he is. Yet, despite that incredibly lame device, the show is certainly not unwatchable. It's a formulaic cop shop and I have never seen a lady detective show that much cleavage, but formulaic cop shows work more often than not.

Things that don't work? The Playboy Club. I watched through the second commercial of the pilot episode before turning off and erasing. Apparently I was not alone as I think the show got canceled. If you missed it, you didn't really.

But back to cops. Maria Bello's show, Prime Suspect is better than Unforgettable but worse than your typical Law & Order, original recipe. I'm pleased that even though the promos made it seem like her wearing of a hat was going to be a major component of the show's plotlines, it isn't. Yes, she wears a stupid hat, but it's ok because they don't mention it much. She's a little one-dimensional, but I am willing to give it time - maybe she develops a character other than the wiseass lady cop. Some of her wiseassitude is amusing.

Another thing I discovered (a shock to you all, I know) is that my nostalgia addiction might have bad side effects. Naturally, I mean of course, I mean was there any ever question, I chose to watch the new Charlie's Angels.

I made it through 1.2 episodes. It's really really bad. I mean really bad. Not as bad as the Playboy Club (by approximately 5 commercial breaks), but bad. I'm not recording it any longer. Some reasons it's bad. The angels aren't ex-cops, they're ex-felons. And they're really unmemorable. I know these are attractive women, but they're kind of like cereal box attractive. They aren't interesting enough looking or acting to hold my attention. They're good right until the milk starts to go all chalky, and then they're not so good anymore. There's no charisma and, since I just checked, the guy who voices Charlie pretty much sums up the lack of charisma: he's the older guy from Alias. In other words: no one. His voice isn't interesting and neither is he. John "muthableeping" Forsythe was amazeballs as Charlie. This guy is just a voice on one of those speaker phone jobbies no one in your office can use properly. Also, and this is a truly personal pet peeve. If you are going to wear $1000/pair shoes, you should know how to pronounce them. For the record: Louboutin is pronounced loo-boo-tan - where "tan" is pronounced like tan - like the thing you get from lying under the sun (obviously if you are French, you don't quite pronounce it like that, but for a transliterative purpose, it's close enough). I don't know what a loo-boo-tawn is, but I assume it comes from the same place a moo-lawn rouge does.

Then there's Pan Am for my nostalgia of times that never existed. It's middle-of-the-road watchable while being simultaneously stupid. The subplot device used here is that one of the stewardesses is also working for the CIA. I don't know why the show needed that except, oh, wait, I do, the rest of it is merely an advertisement for vintage Pan Am handbags. The banter isn't cute, the vintage outfits aren't either. It's a really poor imitation of the Mad Men mystique, but I don't know if it would be as bad had Mad Men never existed. That being said, I don't hate the show, but if it went off the air, I wouldn't miss it.

Now the nostalgia takes a turn. I didn't start watching the OC until it was, I believe off the air. I don't even think I really liked it, but it grew on me, kind of like riding boots. And I like Rachel Bilson. So even though nothing about the promos for her new show Hart of Dixie said that I would enjoy it, I tuned in. And you know what? It's not bad. It has the basketball player from original 90210 who Brandon had to tutor for the teacher whose wife he was sleeping in, but then the basketball player becomes a good guy and a friend of Donna's. And I've always liked him. And I think Rachel Bilson is really cute. This is not a good show either, but it's bad in a good way.

I let one comedy slip in because, I don't remember why, except I like Christina Applegate. Up All Night with her and Will Arnett is awesomely poignant for me because it smacks of the kind of crap clueless parent I might inevitably become. Devoted partner likes it less. Probably for the reasons I like it a lot.

Oh, and The X Factor. Neither here nor there. I like Simon Cowell. I stopped watching American Idol when he left so I'll at least watch this season of his new show.

To sum up, on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is Baywatch Nights and 10 is The West Wing:

Unforgettable - 4; will watch at least one or two more episodes before making a final decision

The Playboy Club - 1; and now no longer anyone's problem

Prime Suspect - 5; if Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit is a 7

Charlie's Angels - 1.5; not quite as bad as The Playboy Club, but I'm no longer watching

Pan Am - 3; since my Sunday night schedule is pretty light, I'll let it have a couple more weeks

Hart of Dixie - 4; in some moods, maybe a 5

Up All Night - 7; it makes me smile and I really really like Christina Applegate

The X-Factor - NR; either you watch reality tv or you don't

Not yet rated - Person of Interest. We have several episodes on the machine waiting to be watched.

People Do Give You Funny Looks

I am no stranger to the strange looks cashiers give you at the grocery store. After all, I was the girl at Fairway with a case of heavy cream and nothing else. Come to think of it, I also got strange looks when I bought 6 pounds of duck fat and nothing else.

As of today, my crisper drawers are filled with 12 pounds of cream cheese and 9 pounds of butter and the walk of shame to checkout was significant. People do wonder what the hell you're planning when they see that in your hand cart.

After much trial and error and, given the cake-free zone in our house, disposing of failcake in the trash, the recipe for the wedding cakes is set. The test-freezing has been done. Now it's just a question of ingredient amassing.

What has been interesting is discovering just how much I already had in the house. It does, in fact, take a while to go through a 50 pound bag of sugar. I was able to make all of the test cakes without buying more cake flour. I have quart sized mason jars of vanilla extract just hanging about.

So in case you've ever wondered what it takes to make cake for over 100 people, have at it (approximately):

8 pounds of flour
9 pounds of sugar
8 pounds of butter
30 eggs
2 pounds of cocoa powder
1 gallon of oil
1 gallon of buttermilk
12 pounds of cream cheese
6 pounds of confectioner's sugar

and assorted smaller amounts of the minor ingredients.

When I look at it all together, it doesn't seem like that much, which is a boon to anyone who might be having a minor panic attack about making cake for over 100 people in the next three weeks (and then making chocolates). But then I realized that making one entire cake every day for a week pretty much dispenses with cake making and the chocolates can be done in a day.

But I'm glad I only have to do it once.

There Are, Occasionally, Things To Eat Here

I have been remiss in oh, so many things, but it occurs to me that as I have gotten more used to Connecticut, I have stopped talking about it. And things do change here from time to time. I now know which of the 3 Super Stops and Shops within short distance from my house is the one to shop at - Glenville, if you were wondering, always has my Kashi Go Lean bars in stock - I know that no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to rationalize getting Chinese food from the expensive places when the hole in the wall on Main Street in Port Chester, China House, is a) better and b) 1/3 the price, and I finally know that it really is faster to take the highway.

But it is food I wish to talk about, especially as people will be visiting from out of town soon. Lower Fairfield County (and Westchester County) is not a food mecca by any stretch of the imagination. Devoted partner (soon to be rechristened, hmmm, I don't know "devoted life partner," "legally devoted partner," "partner of legally mandated devotion") and I simply do not eat out often. Part of this is cheapness on our parts, but the better part of it is unwillingness to shell out money for substandard food. The "nice" places around here are, sadly, so much country club cuisine. The number of times I have typed "Stamford CT ramen" into google hoping to find something is embarrassing.

It helps that food has not been a priority of late, notfood having won out for nearly 2 years, but occasionally we want someone else to bring us food. Especially last Sunday when we were hungover. So, I thought it would only be fair to highlight some of the food we have enjoyed.

My friend Julie recommended Casa Villa. One night when, again, I could not find the taco truck open (the taco truck is awesome, but not even remotely healthy), we took a look at its location on the Stamford border. We did not stay. It was not the shiniest of locations and food was in steam trays, and it just sort of said "don't eat me if you want to enjoy tomorrow morning." Perhaps this judgment was premature. Last week Julie and I went to the nicer, shinier location, where comely waitresses with perfect command of English brought us yummy tacos and plantains. I was hooked. The tacos were really really fresh with lots of onion and cilantro. I was so smitten that when Sunday came, I schlepped devoted partner there as well where I discovered that an additional bonus is the presence of Mexican coke. My only complaint about the food is that the cooks are a little liberal with their use of salt, but the Mexican coke helps.

And let's keep going with the taco theme because Port Chester got a hot new place over the summer and I mostly believe the hype. Bar Taco is happening. We waited over an hour for a table the first time we went. The menu is limited and the process of ordering (golf pencils and a fill-in order card) is hokey, but what is served is pretty damn good. And the ambience, while also hokey were it plunked down in Manhattan, is nice for people who miss non-starchy eating environments. The majority of seating is outside on a deck which has a bit of Kennebunkport to it. It gets busy and noisy and some of the patrons would do well on reality tv but, again, beggars and choosiness comes to mind. In a taco-off between Bar Taco and Casa Villa, I'll give the nod to Casa Villa, but for a night with a group and the desire for liquor based potables, Bar Taco gets my vote.

And apparently, we like food made by Spanish speaking peoples because for my birthday this year we tried out up-scale Lolita in Byram. It's Mexicanish, very dimly lit, and, I guess, good for dates or for drinks once hedge fund hours are over. The food was good. Not great. Good. But I have to reiterate that when in a food desert, sometimes good is great. Would the restaurant last five minutes in Tribeca or DUMBO? No. But there were no strollers which, believe me, is a godsend.

We also finally tried Layla's in Stamford late one night with Abby. Layla's is storefronty-looking, but serves very competent middle eastern food. I tried the falafel and the lamb schwarma and both pass with high marks. We passed on the hookah course, but it's there if you want it.

I'd like to give some props to the big bowl noodle soup we ended our Sunday hangovers with from Penang in Greenwich. It wasn't Ippudo, but it was warming, not overly salted, and under $10.

But the place in our neighborhood that is most craved, is clearly, and without peer, Burgers Shakes and Fries. Maybe it's simply that my body wants fried potatoes more than it wants any single other thing, but this is a good, grease-filled meal of excellence. I may have been originally swayed by the orange interior, but these people make excellent, as you like them, burgers. True, I've never managed to finish one, but I rarely eat an entire burger. The fries are my current local favorite and they are on the precipice of too salty - also known as perfect. They're also really really nice. Even when busy. And full of strollers. When it seemed like we would have to have a rehearsal dinner, I kept threatening to do it here.

So while I would love to find a place that does Dim Sum (good luck), perhaps some Turkish or Moroccan, and another Italian place (dear Tarry Lodge, you're my go-to for dinner with adults, but would it kill you to change your menu?), I will not dismiss, out of hand, all food options in our area. Most of them? Yes. But there's at least enough here to satisfy our 1-2x/month escape from the confines of our own home and the neverending grilled chicken served there.

Life After Fat

The time has come to admit that I am no longer, in any way, shape or form, fat. I can no longer make self-deprecating comments about my fat. It is now unseemly as opposed to just undignified. I must now humbly join the ranks of the not-fat who still have body issues. As in, I know I am not fat, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room to improve the quality of my midsection.

I'm being flippant, natch, but this is actually a rather difficult transition. I have been legitimately and certainly medically fat my entire adolescent/adult life. It was a fallback defense and a daily reality. The number of times I used fat as an excuse for something entirely non-fat related? Too many times to comfortably admit. It turns out that my shortcomings will now have to be rationalized via other means.

And it's really not easy to get my head out of its fatspace. One great example: buffets. I used to worry that, in an environment where there was easy food access, people would notice when I decided to help myself: too early and they would judge the fat girl who couldn't keep her hands off the food; too late and I was tacitly admitting my fat and its control over me. Also clothing choices, as in, why is that fat girl wearing that form fitting outfit. Does she not know she is fat and should, therefore, be hiding that?

No one has much sympathy for the non-fat body dysmorphia. Glamour magazine no longer considers my body a protected class and all those cover articles promising the best jeans/dress/outfit for your body type, don't have my body type. And while I agonize over the perfect 12" measurement differential (possibly achievable) and the sad state of affairs that is my skin, I don't get to be all that vocal about it because after all, I'm not fat. I really shouldn't have anything to complain about - certainly not the fact that a pair of really tiny jeans I got 10 pounds ago are now loose.

Now I get the "you shouldn't lose any more weight" comments. Which, don't get me wrong, I understand come from a place of support, but don't do much for the lurking suspicion that there actually are some more pounds that wouldn't be missed should they suddenly go missing.

While on vacation, I ate foie gras twice without guilt. Also while on vacation we took some pictures. In all of them I can point out to you what still needs improvement, but as a farewell to the fat that was, I will share two with you.

You see when we went to Corsica in 2005 we took a lot of pictures as well. Including this one:


And while we didn't get the angle quite right, we went in search of the exact same location while on this trip to take the same photo:


Is the first picture rather embarrassing now? Absolutely! Have I delighted in looking at these two side by side ever since we got home? Yup!

So this will be among the last posts I write about my weight. I'll be losing a little more and toning what remains, but I can no longer pretend that this is a real issue that deserves attention. Please bear with me, in person and online, as I make the mental transition from fat to normal - if you've never been both, you might not understand that the brain takes some time to catch up with the body, but I assure you this is neither dissembling nor a pathetic compliment-fishing expedition. And if you hear me refer to my "fat" in the present tense, give me a couple of months before you yell at me. New body and I are still somewhat strangers to each other.

Perhaps I Suffer From Overexpediency

I've been trying to give money away recently. I know that in this economy, that might sound strange, so I'll say that I've been trying to give money away in targeted areas. Apparently, it's not as easy as one would assume.

Let's pretend you are a small business owner and someone approaches you and says, "I would like to hire your business. Here is what I need. Please put together a contract and I will sign it and give you money." In my mind, a reasonable turnaround on that request is 24-48 hours - at the very least, there should be some form of communication within that timeframe. Similarly, let's pretend you want to BUY A CAR. Does it seem like a week should go by without the dealer getting back to you. And when he finally does, is it odd that he is responding to a voicemail you left from two weeks prior and that, in the interim, you met and spoke with him in person?

I feel so conditioned by my own past employment to assume that any request made is already 24 hours late and that everyone plays catch up meaning the sooner the request is fulfilled, the better, but I'm having to rethink this.

(As an aside, it is humorous to note that when the dealer finally did get back to me, albeit with the "woah, didn't anyone call you?" excuse on his lips, he then wanted me to make the decision within 2 hours so he could pad his monthly quota for July. Oh, sorry, didn't quite do that, did I?)

The problem, however, with wedding vendors, for example, is that I (and el padre) are interpreting this lackadaisical method of entering into contractual obligations with us, as unsound business practices which, according to the wedding books, is not something you want in a wedding vendor (of course the wedding books have also counseled me to start my facial and mani/pedi reginmen SIX MONTHS before the wedding, so perhaps not all of their advice is gospel). Don't these people want our money? And can I be assured that if we give it to them they will show up and do the job they were hired to do? Would I be better off hanging out at Home Depot on the morning of the affair and hiring day laborers?

Or maybe I'm just not spending ENOUGH money. Perhaps if I was inquiring at the Ferrari dealership, there would be more handholding, buttkissing, and returning of phone calls. Perhaps if Joel Robuchon was personally catering the party, I could expect things to happen tout de suite!

Or perhaps I'm just too high-strung and this time lapse business is normal and I'm the weird one (well me and my dad). I'm just having difficulty getting my mind around this.