I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
Last week, I took some time off to do nothing special. Ever do that? Just stay home and think, “Normally, I’d be at work; most other people are at work,” and it feels amazing?
I did that for two days.
Actually, on Monday evening I went to a taping of Late Show with David Letterman and saw Alicia Keys perform. That’s technically special. She’s wonderful.
I also saw Toby Maguire. Yes, he really is that small.
Last night, a blizzard hit NYC.
Growing up in Texas, I could only imagine what “blizzard” meant. Snow falling cold and hard as bullets. Dagger-like icicles. Winds that cowed pipes and power lines.
Then I moved here with a down coat and a few sweaters, bought long underwear, and waited for snow.
When the first blizzard hit, I was wearing pointy-toed boots with three-inch stiletto heels. I hadn’t been tuned in to the news enough to hear the b-word, or else I’d have stayed in and kept a snow vigil.
A Christmas song for people who don’t care about Christmas songs:
Let me start by handing you a 32-inch wiffle ball bat (one that’s bright yellow and metaphorical) and saying, “Here’s the hard part of my head. Go to town.”
If you email me via the contact page, thank you! I’m sorry I can’t send you pictures of my feet, but thank you.
If you email me questions, I appreciate your trust in me. But I’m lame and sometimes I forget to respond and then months later, there’s almost no reason to answer. The question asked is now totally irrelevant.
I feel awful about this, and I’m working on it.
It might help if you tell me a question you have is urgent and your life depends on my answering it. Or maybe you people could stop asking such deep questions.
I mean, “What dental floss do you use, Amanda?” That I could answer easily.
Here’s a question from Jessica:
If it truly is the thought that counts, then I guess some people who have given me gifts over the past 26 years were cognitively challenged.
‘Tis time for my third video post wherein I discuss bad presents past.
Warning: May involve something related to puberty.
When I broke up with Cade, he left my apartment without hugging goodbye, walked down Central Park West, and disappeared.
For months, I’d look out for him as I walked around the Upper West Side. We didn’t live all that far apart - my feet must have covered his tracks myriad times. Then he started working at an office downtown near mine.
But we never saw each other again.
It’s raining now. If it were colder, it’d be snow, but it’s not. Just rain.
And I don’t even know you, but I miss you.
I get the whole online portfolio idea, I really do.
But putting most, if not all, of one’s potentially embarrassing social media in one place just seems a little too easy.
Stalkers used to have more of a challenge. It used to take skills.
My fiction instructor has compared my writing voice to those of others. She’s implored me to study them, so I can figure out how to work deeper and harder with my own characters and stories.
I’m exploring Amy Hempel now. These are the last two paragraphs of her story “In A Tub”:
When I heard R. Kelly’s new album features a song called “Be My Number 2,” I shrieked with glee.
“Tell me he’s serenading his turds,” I thought. “‘Cause I could be all over that shit.”
