You've Got Zazz

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Since this is a long post, I'll just get right to the point. While I was not able to find the time to expand upon my viewership in some of the smaller categories, I successfully got through the "major" ones, namely picture, director, all acting, and screenplay. I will say that one of the primary differences in my picks this year in comparison to previous years is that the race is so much more unpredictable! I love that. It's been a great year for movies--the best we've had in quite some time--and in many ways it's anybody's game, with the exception of Best Actor and Best Actress.  Soooooooo let's get to it!

BEST PICTURE

THE BIG SHORT

It is no small feat to make a comedy about economics. It's a big enough accomplishment just to get a comedy nominated for Best Picture! The Big Short took an extremely unsexy topic and cast a bunch of sexy, funny people to make for a compelling, entertaining movie about the housing crisis of 2008. I went in to the movie with about a 2% understanding of the crisis and left with about a 20% understanding, which for me--an econ nitwit--is major. I loved the tone of the film, I loved the celebrity cameos, I loved the decision to break the fourth wall, and all the performances were great. I was particularly drawn to Steve Carell, who I felt was shamefully overlooked for a nomination.

BRIDGE OF SPIES

This is a classic example of terrible marketing. This looked like a boring prestige film, one in a line of Steven Spielberg films that feel epic but joyless, with Good Old Tom Hanks playing Good Old Tom Hanks. In reality, yes, Tom Hanks is playing that very typical Good Old Tom Hanks role, but he is great in it, and the story is really compelling. Mark Rylance's nominated performance was so subdued, so restrained, so quietly complex. I was also particularly enthused with this Cold War drama having just spent some time in Berlin immersing myself in the history of the Berlin Wall. This is not a film I'm going to think back on years from now as being particularly memorable. But it is beautifully shot, very well paced, and surprisingly not boring at all. I only wish they had given Amy Ryan something to do. Also, I kind of preferred the Jimmy Fallon Kid Theater version.

BROOKLYN

Another unfortunate example of poor marketing belying a wonderful film. The previews made it look like just another sappy coming of age story about a love triangle. In truth, it is in no way sappy, and the love triangle is not even the primary thrust of the film. Above all else, it is a lovely narrative about the immigrant experience, and about making huge life choices, something I relate to on a very personal level. It was a beautiful tribute to the American spirit, a love story to New York, full of charming performances and gorgeous camera work, and of course a stellar lead performance from Saoirse Ronan. I appreciated the little touches, like the fact that she kept repeating outfits (an Irish immigrant would not have packed that much clothing). But more than anything I loved the fact that they were able to create a film with real stakes and compelling conflict without hijacking the plot with extreme villains or carnage. It reminded me of Downton Abbey in a lot of ways, and was such a lovely surprise.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

I put off seeing this movie for a while. When people raved about it--people whose opinions I respect--I just kept pushing back, saying it looked like one long action sequence. They told me yes, that's exactly what it is, and it's FUCKING AWESOME! And so I finally relented just before the nominations came out, knowing it would be on the list, and wow. Just wow. I was right and they were right. It definitely is not the kind of thing I'm typically into, and it was literally one long action sequence. But I could not believe what I was watching, and I could not believe how much I liked it! Not to compare it to Avatar, because it's a much better movie, but both stand out to me because of their simplistic plots matched with extreme visual creativity. The style of filmmaking was akin to other intense visual experiences like 300, except that this was better and even more sophisticated. The makeup and attention to detail on the vehicles were staggering. And while the plot was simple, the feminist narrative was so refreshing, not beaten down our throats but still insinuated upon us in a fun, joyful, kickass way. I absolutely loved this movie, and it is deserving of every word of extreme praise it has gotten. I only regret not seeing it on the big screen!

THE MARTIAN

I'm not crazy into space movies that aren't Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey. This one was a lot of fun, and really centered on a kickass Matt Damon performance. I do understand why it was marketed as a comedy for purposes of the Golden Globes, because a comedic sensibility was really what set this movie apart from other space movies of late, which tend to be SO dramatic (Interstellar, Gravity). But I don't know that this film deserved anything besides a Best Actor nom. Very good and very entertaining, but not special. This slot feels more like a tribute to its success at the box office than anything else.

THE REVENANT

I totally get why this was nominated for Best Picture. It was a visual achievement, an acting achievement, a makeup achievement, and the bear was fucking awesome. But it was SO BORING. And while Leo is a shoo-in for Best Actor, deservedly, there are SO many other Leo performances that I found to be so much more compelling than this one, purely because the content was more interesting (namely his work in The Aviator and The Wolf of Wall Street).

ROOM

This. Movie. Is. ROUGH. It's not rough because it's graphic, as I thought it might be. It is just emotionally wrenching in a way that is not at all heavy handed. It feels real, it feels relatable, and it is anchored by stellar performances across the board. The choices the director made put you in the scene in a way that felt intimate and imaginative, drawing from the point of view of the little boy while still being grounded in a very heavy reality. Beautiful, perfect film, however punishing it may be. My favorite of the year.

SPOTLIGHT

In keeping with the above sentiment: ROUGH. But so well conceived. This is a classic journalist expose film in the vein of All The President's Men, with a topic that feels so sadly current. It is a quieter film than the others in this category, and also a tough one to parse out in terms of who is nomination-worthy. The Academy loves Mark Ruffalo, and I think Rachel McAdams got some attention by virtue of being really the only female in the ensemble, so those nominations feel a bit arbitrary. Not to say they weren't great, but I would have given the attention to John Slattery and/or the always delightful Stanley Tucci. This movie has a polish to it, a sophistication connected to telling a story honestly and with great attention to detail, allowing the actors to shine in the context of an unbelievable ensemble. Top notch, but not a winner.

Will Win: Honestly, I really don't know! I think they will give it to either The Revenant or Mad Max. Since that feels like a copout answer, I'll give it to Mad Max, which I certainly hope would take it over such a boring, boring film. I would watch Mad Max over and over again, whereas I will never watch The Revenant again.

Should Win: I think Mad Max winning is totally appropriate because of its unbelievable creative achievement. That is something to be celebrated. But if you're asking what I felt was the most meaningful movie of the year, the one that stayed with me the most, it is definitely Room.

Honorable Mention: Why was Ex Machina not nominated? It is a far more memorable, interesting film than The Martian. Additionally, while it is not a perfect film, I believe Inside Out was worthy of a slot. The screenplay was SO original and imaginative, the voice acting was spot on, and the animation was stunningly beautiful. It touched people in that Pixar way that few films can. Lastly, I would make a case for Anomalisa for a similar reason. While Inside Out was, to me, the greater achievement, Anomalisa was just so original, so thoughtful, and had an impressive attention to detail in terms of animation. I've never seen anything like it, and for that reason I believe it was worthy of a slot. While in years past I understand why the Academy opted not to fill all 10 slots, there was just no reason this year! There was so much great stuff worth recognizing.

BEST DIRECTOR

Adam McKay - THE BIG SHORT George Miller - MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Alejandro Inarittu - THE REVENANT Lenny Abrahamson - ROOM Tom McCarthy - SPOTLIGHT

Will Win: ACH I don't KNOW! I suspect they will give it to Inarittu, though he did just win last year for Birdman. If not him, I think it'll go to George Miller.

Should Win: George Miller. No question. I've just never seen a movie like that, and it worked because of his direction. Under a less talented helm, it could have gone really wrong. Never in the world would I have thought I'd be championing an action film in this way, but if Mad Max wins ANYTHING, it should be Best Director.

Honorable Mention: Big shout out to Adam McKay, whose choices to break the fourth wall really set this film apart. That is so rarely done well (nobody does it like Ferris Bueller, and it's the primary reason I am not into House of Cards), and the fact that he was able to make this film powerful but also legitimately funny is a testament to his sensibility. Yay comedies! Also...Room. ROOM. So glad to see it get this nom; this director had such a beautiful attention to detail, playing with focus and light and perspective.

BEST ACTOR

Bryan Cranston - TRUMBO Matt Damon - THE MARTIAN Leonardo DiCaprio - THE REVENANT Michael Fassbender - STEVE JOBS Eddie Redmayne - THE DANISH GIRL

Will Win: DiCaprio. Duh.

Should Win: DiCaprio. Duh.

Honorable Mention: This category is really underwhelming. None of these guys were BAD, but Trumbo and Steve Jobs were not good movies, and I felt that Eddie Redmayne was just a BIT overwrought in this performance. I think Steve Carell got the shaft for his role in The Big Short, but it's also hard to tell if he would be considered a lead actor or supporting actor, because it really is an ensemble cast in many ways. I also think that if Jennifer Lawrence's performance in Joy warranted a nomination (purely due to star power, which she has in spades), then Michael B. Jordan was equally worthy for Creed. That kid is a STAR. Normally I wouldn't necessarily say his performance was necessarily Oscar worthy, but he was certainly more memorable than freakin Trumbo! That movie SUCKED; Cranston was fine in it...but Oscar? No.

BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett - CAROL Brie Larson - ROOM Jennifer Lawrence - JOY Charlotte Rampling - 45 YEARS Saoirse Ronan - BROOKLYN

Will Win: Brie Larson. WHAT A PART. She was perfect, and none of the other roles even come close in terms of complexity, and in terms of what that role demanded of her.

Should Win: Brie Larson. No-brainer.

Honorable Mention: All these ladies were great. I did not care for Carol, but Cate is always perfect. 45 Years is such a quiet little movie, but Charlotte Rampling was sort of quietly epic in it. Saoirse Ronan would be my runner-up choice, because I haven't felt that passionate about a lead character in some time in terms of rooting for her and caring about her choices. And while I don't know, as I intimated earlier, if Jennifer Lawrence's performance was necessarily Oscar-worthy, there is no denying that she is fantastic, and lights up a film which is otherwise not so great. I would have preferred to give that slot to Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina, but I'm actually okay with nominating Lawrence since Vikander got the other nod, which she will likely win. A nod here might have detracted from that.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale - THE BIG SHORT Tom Hardy - THE REVENANT Mark Ruffalo - SPOTLIGHT Mark Rylance - BRIDGE OF SPIES Sylvester Stallone - CREED

Will Win: I really don't know! But I have a feeling the Academy will vote with emotion and choose Stallone.

Should Win: Tom Hardy, for sure. He was the most interesting part of the movie for me. He could have easily been SO over the top. Plus, he amazes me in general. I feel like I have no idea what he actually looks like, because he disappears so intensely into each of his roles. Like legitimately, if he walked past me on the street, I'm not sure I would recognize him. And I'm a pop culture FIEND!

Honorable Mention: Obviously Christian Bale and Mark Ruffalo are always great, and I did love Stallone (how could you not?!?), but Mark Rylance was the very complex heart of a film that could have easily upstaged him with its broad scope. He actually does have a shot at taking this, but I think they'll give it to good old Sly.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jennifer Jason Leigh - THE HATEFUL EIGHT Rooney Mara - CAROL Rachel McAdams - SPOTLIGHT Alicia Vikander - THE DANISH GIRL Kate Winslet - STEVE JOBS

Will Win: Not a guarantee, but I'm thinking they will give it to Alicia Vikander both because she was by far the best part of that movie, and because she was SO phenomenal in the FAR UNDERRATED Ex Machina, as I mentioned earlier. I am not so sure that I would consider her a supporting character, but it was smart to submit her here, because there is no way anyone is beating Brie Larson, nor should they.

Should Win: I'm comfortable with Vikander. All of the performances were good, but hers is the only one I would say is great, with the possible exception of Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Honorable Mention: I did not care for The Hateful Eight, but I really respect how committed Leigh was to that character. Such a great character! I only wish the movie wasn't so boring.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BRIDGE OF SPIES EX MACHINA INSIDE OUT SPOTLIGHT STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

Will Win: Spotlight. I think they want to give this film something, and it doesn't stand a chance in any of the other categories. Inside Out definitely has a shot, but I think they'll give it to Spotlight.

Should Win: Ex Machina! I know I keep repeating myself, but I truly cannot believe this movie did not get a Best Picture nomination. I would also be very happy with Inside Out taking this win, because even just hearing the premise of the film before it came out brought me to tears. It strikes SUCH a chord, and while I think there were pacing problems (it got a little caught in its concept at certain points, and certain scenes were drawn out longer than necessary), it is truly special. I would be equally happy about either of these.

Honorable Mention: I'm really surprised Anomalisa didn't get a nom here, particularly as Charlie Kauffman is certainly a bit of an Oscar dark horse darling. I think it was warranted more so than Bridge of Spies. I enjoyed Straight Outta Compton very much, but it's not better than the other nominees.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

THE BIG SHORT BROOKLYN CAROL THE MARTIAN ROOM

Will Win: Hard to say! But I'm going to give it to The Big Short, since it had the greatest challenge of any other film in terms of bringing dry material to life. It's possible they'll give this to Room, but I think The Big Short will take it.

Should Win: Definitely The Big Short.

Honorable Mention: I just loved Brooklyn. It had the challenge of trying to avoid falling into a mold, since coming of age stories are often a dime a dozen. But this one was just so special and lovely.

Well, that's all she wrote! Would love to hear what y'all think, and HAPPY OSCARS!

In my 8-bed unisex dorm room at my hostel in Amsterdam, I met quite a cast of characters. 

I chatted with a guy from Finland who helped me with my bed sheets, told me about Finnish and its lack of smalltalk (so intense and ironic considering the smallness of our talk in that moment), and did yoga for an hour in the morning despite chitchatting from the rest of the suite. 

I awkwardly avoided a strange dude from Sweden who came all the way to Amsterdam and yet barely left his bed. And I played Kings with a cute young guy from Saskatchewan and the pair of American girls, Kendall and Cameron, whom he'd befriended at the hostel and who had been traveling together for some time.

#MULTICULTURALISM

This pre gaming was to celebrate Kendall's birthday. When I asked how old she was turning, she shuddered at the question. "What, are you 30 or something?"

"Ugh, NO! Of course not!" She replied. I simultaneously grimaced and grinned. She was sweet.

Kendall was freaking out because she was turning that terrifying age of…23! 

I assured her that she was only now entering her best years, that her mid 20s will be much better than her early 20s, and that it feels amazing to not be associated with college anymore. 

Still, particularly as someone who works at a college, I could empathize. They graduated from Ohio State, and thus likely had the kind of Big 10 college experience that graduates long for years after finishing.

We drank together for a little while, and then at a certain point Saskatchewan and Cameron went to go "find cups." Those cups must have been exTREMEly difficult to locate, because they were gone long enough for Kendall and me to get to chatting.

She started to ask me about traveling alone. She was astounded that I would do such a thing, especially as a woman. This was not the first time I'd gotten this reaction. I met a ton of people--mostly guys, who I generally find to be more approachable--and I consistently got the same reaction.

"Why are you traveling alone?"

The short answer to this is…why not? And that's generally what I told them. "Can't a girl just be on her own?"

But for this, my official post-vacation post for a blog not known for "short answers," I shall lay out my reasons for the decision, the perks of the decision, and its challenges.

SERENITY NOW!

I began this trip having come off of spending nearly two weeks with 47 students and Israeli soldiers ages 18-21. In this particular context, however, it is more appropriate to refer to them as what they are: CHILDREN. Even with older Birthright groups, it's astounding how quick they are to become totally helpless.

It's understandable; they are slaves to an exhaustive itinerary over which they have zero control, and basically have to ask permission to do everything and need advice on everything from how much money to take out at a time to literally what to wear each day. You sort of have to treat them like children, and so they digress into children…except that they drink heavily, and think they're being really sneaky about it. 

And then they tend to get pretty slutty. No judgment, we've all been there.

Even after the trip when I spent the weekend in Israel I did not have total solitude,  as I was crashing on the couches of friends. This was lovely, and they are lovely, but I am someone who every so often just needs time to not talk to anyone. And so, the prospect of traveling alone in Amsterdam for four days (I stayed with a friend during the Berlin section) sounded like absolute bliss. And it WAS absolute bliss.

I DO WHAT I WANT!

I didn't really plan that extensively for the trip. This became particularly evident when I arrived in Amsterdam having packed only shorts, tank tops, and dresses in the 50 degree, windy, rainy weather. 

I knew I wanted to…partake in certain vices. I knew I wanted to rent a bike at some point. And I knew I wanted to see tulips, the Van Gogh museum, and the Anne Frank House. But beyond that, I just sort of spread my wings and went where the wind took me.

I unfortunately missed tulip season by a week, so instead I opted for windmills. On day one of my trip, I saw an ad in the lobby of the hostel for a 6 hour excursion in the countryside to see windmills, and so I went. It also turned out to be a trip to a cheese factory and a wooden shoe factory! It was mostly old people on the trip with me as we bussed to Zans Schaas and Volendam and then boated to Marken. I was happy to chill with old people, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed in my generation, who tend to write off these kinds of experiences as "too touristy" and instead opt to party as much as possible.

I WAS a tourist. Why would I not want to do touristy things? (Says the former Disney employee.)

Plus, when you do touristy things, you are able to see so much of a place in such a short amount of time, which can help peak your interest in things you can explore further on your own time, which is what I did after my bike tour in Berlin. (By the way, I highly recommend Fat Tire Bike Tours! http://berlin.fattirebiketours.com/)

I bought wooden shoes. And I got lost biking for 2 hours just to buy cheese. And I didn't have to explain my choices to ANYONE, or justify why I wanted to, say, visit Electric Ladyland, the Museum of Fluorescent Art (whose curator was basically The Dude).

I went to a live sex show by myself, and I went to a peep show by myself. Is this weird? Maybe. But I was in Amsterdam! When in Amsterdam, do as the…prostitutes do? Being alone should not be a reason to not do things.

Having said that...

DON'T BE STUPID

There are certain things you don't do as a woman traveling by yourself. Yes, I went to the Red Light District; no, I did not party alone at a bar til 2am. First of all, that doesn't even sound fun. But more importantly, it sounds like the beginning of a Law & Order SVU episode. 

I experienced a lot of things in Amsterdam, but not so much the night life. I would love to go back with a group of friends, or perhaps a lover, and be able to check that out.

LEARN TO BE LONELY

I won't sugar coat it, and I didn't for Kendall: it can get lonely sometimes. Most of the time I love being by myself, and that me-time is really sacred for me. When I don't have it, I get ornery. 

But every so often, mostly at night when people are going out partying, it's natural to start to wonder what it would be like to experience a place with friends. When you find yourself in your hostel while others are out, it's easy to hop on the wi-fi and sort of seek out that interaction from people who are familiar to you. Loneliness, as it turns out, is a symptom of being alone even when you're in an amazing place doing amazing things.

But that's part of it. You learn to be lonely. 

You experience yourself in that moment, what kind of thoughts you're being plagued with. And you try to understand those thoughts, to understand how you could possibly be feeling anything but amazing in this amazing city. And when you start to dissect that, often with the help of a glass of wine and a journal, it becomes really empowering. You meet a version of yourself that you might never have met before, and you get to the core of who you really are and how you cope with things. It's special. Embrace the loneliness. Write about it. Look back on it years from now and think about how much you cherish that time.

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

I haven't done a ton of traveling with friends, but when I have, I don't recall encountering a whole lot of new people. If you cast your characters before the trip, then those are the characters that will appear in the play that is your vacation.

But one of the most interesting things I found traveling alone in Europe was just how many people approached me to talk, and how many long conversations I engaged in with complete strangers who I will never see again. 

While taking selfies in the park, I suddenly found myself in a conversation about philosophy with a stranger who was teasing me about the selfies and asked to join me. 

(I wish I could say we hooked up, but I never heard from him again. Alas; selfie game not strong.) 

I had a coffee with an old man working for the tourism bureau who had offered to take my picture and then asked to survey me about my experience in Holland. He enjoyed the conversation so much that when I asked where a good coffee place was, he insisted on treating me. 

My bike tour in Berlin included people from English speaking countries around the world, and I got to know an awesome chick from Canada and a darling older couple from Britain, who as it turned out had been at the same biergarten as me the night before.

Granted, part of this is that I'm a naturally chatty person. I chitchat with everyone from the nurse taking my blood to the mechanic I pass on dog walks to the bank teller. And many times it was I who started the chitchat, particularly at coffee shops. Feeling lonely at a coffee shop? Find a table of people and ask them for a light. 

9 times out of 10 they'll invite you to sit with them, especially if they're a group of young guys and you're a lone young girl. That sounds a lot creepier than it turned out to have been. But really, I found guys to be much less intimidating and much less insular.

I met people from Holland, Germany, Canada, US, England, Australia, Scotland, Finland, Serbia, Israel, Brazil, Ecuador, Poland, Sweden...it was incredible. I felt like such a citizen of the world. And I'm not so sure it would have been the same had I been traveling with a partner.

Kendall thanked me profusely. She was so relieved to hear me share my experience, my reasoning, and my attitude toward travel. She told me she'd been having fun on this trip (they had already been to Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, a few other places), but that traveling with Cameron had been more focused on partying than she'd necessarily planned. Cameron was going home after this, and Kendall's boyfriend was going to be meeting up with her in two weeks. She wanted to spend those two weeks alone in Scotland, to unwind and reflect and "work on her writing." 

She told me that all her friends and family thought she was crazy to want to do that. I told her they will be the best 2 weeks of her life. Git it girl.

I'm not saying everyone will like traveling alone. I'm just saying that everyone should try it at least once. Whether it's for you or not, you will not regret it, and you will learn more about yourself than you ever could have imagined.

Several people have asked if I had a summer romance. My genuine answer is that I had an incredible summer romance…with myself.

https://www.facebook.com/andrea.levine.376/videos/vb.5102367/10104216855494632/?type=3&theater

Selfie Game Strong.

I guess it's a little played out to turn 30 and feel like you're ready to dole out life lessons. 

I feel like I've seen 100 thoughtcatalog pieces of that ilk, and by "I've seen" I mean I've scanned past them on my newsfeed, rolled my eyes, and not read them.

I don't have anything life changing to say about turning 30. But I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been on my mind hardcore these last few weeks. I've been told by others "you're young!" And it's not that I don't feel young…but I work at a college. These kids are YOUNG. 

So while I do not claim to boast unending pearls of sageness, I do feel that the main difference between these college students and myself is that I have acquired and digested a certain amount of wisdom that they have yet to attain.

 And so I started thinking…what do I wish I would have known when I was 20?

On People

1) Girls, stop hating on each other.

Seriously. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I have been guilty of it in the past. For some reason, girls have this irrational tendency to put down other girls. Sometimes it's blatant, but sometimes it's so subtle you don't even realize you're doing it. 

I find that it happens most often in relation to boys (i.e. your boyfriend flirts with another girl and it's HER fault, not his) and in relation to body image (i.e. she's so skinny, she must have an eating disorder). 

But my BIGGEST pet peeve is when I hear, "I just don't really get along with girls; I only have guy friends," as if that is some kind of currency of your degree of down-ass chick-ness. 

That's like saying, "I just don't really get along with people with brown hair." It's an absurd, sweeping generalization that is offensive, and that doesn't make you sound cool. As a woman, I really value the male friendships and the female friendships in my life. My advice is to have a lot of both, and to appreciate the advantages that each of those offer.

2) People don't change.

Ever. When you come to peace with that, you will be a happier person. Pick the good ones to spend your time with. Pick the ones whose baggage you can handle, because it ain't going nowhere. 

Choose people to keep in your life who understand they are imperfect, who understand you are imperfect, and are satisfied with your mutual imperfection.

I'm not saying people don't improve or strive toward greater things, or vice versa. But if you go through life trying to change someone, you're fighting a losing battle. Fight the urge. Especially you, ladies! People. Don't. Change. 

Can't stress it enough. It's not a bad thing, it's just reality.

3) You just do you.

It's really easy to constantly compare ourselves to others, and to bug out if we feel like what they're doing is what we should be doing. This is especially a problem for emerging adults. I see it all the time with my students. They have such pressure to know exactly what they want to do when they graduate; they have to get this internship or that internship, and it usually has to be in New York. And if that doesn't work out, they should probably join the Peace Corps or something. Something MEANingful. 

But what they don't understand is that sometimes you just get a job. You take a minute to figure it out. And then you do something for a while. Maybe it's the perfect thing, and maybe it sucks. But you have all the time in the world to try another thing that maybe is the perfect thing, or that maybe will also suck. 

The point is, NO ONE HAS IT FIGURED OUT. Where I thought I'd be at 30 is not where I am at 30. But when I look at the people who have what I thought I'd have, I realize that they're also just figuring shit out. 

Pushing yourself is great. Trying things is great. Being hard on yourself? Not so great. Let other people figure their shit out, and you just do you. And then you can have a drink together and laugh about the fact that we're all just totally confused and rolling with it.

On Appearance

1) Real women have curves.

Let me clarify: all women are real. This just seemed to be an apt film reference for the wisdom I am about to impart. Not all women have curves; these women are still real. (This woman has curves.)

I have been self conscious about my legs my entire life. Pants don't fit me, boots don't fit me, and when I looked in the mirror all I ever saw was legs legs legs. I was a dancer for 7 years, still they didn't get smaller. 

I've run two half marathons, a triathlon, and numerous other races, and they still have not gotten any smaller. Losing weight in your legs is just not a thing. It took me a long time to be at peace with this reality, until eventually I started to realize two important things:

(1) I wasn't exactly receiving many complaints from the opposite sex.

(2) There is NOTHING I can do about it. I've had these legs since I came out of the womb. So why worry about what I can't control? There is plenty of other stuff to worry about. No need to add to the list.

Having said that, let me reiterate that pants are the enemy, and I hate everything about them.

2) Caring about your appearance does not make you superficial.

I used to date an outdoorsy-type guy who would lovingly tease me about the fact that I did my hair every day. He had a point; we met at summer camp, which is not exactly a bastion of attractiveness. But I argued to him then and will continue to argue now that when I feel attractive, I am more successful at life. 

Rare is the day I leave the house without makeup on, and despite the fact that I work in an extremely casual environment, most days I make a point of dressing up for work. 

You carry yourself differently when you feel attractive; why else do you think women wear high heels? Not because it's fun, but because we KNOW it makes our asses look amazing, and we like to have amazing asses. 

You can tell me it's superficial, and that's fine. See above advice ("you do you"), recognize that it is harmless, and enjoy the view.

3) Exercise gives you endorphins! Endorphins make you happy! 

Fitness is your friend. You will look better and feel better when you adopt a fit lifestyle. BUT, don't let it make you go crazy. 

(Do as I say, not as I do.) 

Just as it's important to have a healthy relationship with food, it's important to have a healthy relationship with fitness. Make it a priority, but don't make it your life. Because it can be a very slippery slope.

On experiences

1) Travel often. Travel alone.

I recall a night in Haifa, where I was traveling alone, I approached a Lebanese restaurant in the German colony and asked for a table for one. They asked, will someone be joining? Nope, I responded in Hebrew. Just me. It was awkward at first; you feel that knee-jerk reaction to grab your cell phone and act like you're attending to something important. But then…it was amazing. Liberating, really.

Traveling with a buddy is fun. Traveling with a group is fun. But until you have the experience of traveling alone, completely on your own terms and on your own schedule, I feel like you haven't really experienced travel. 

It can be intimidating to be alone with your thoughts, but once you face that and realize you are okay, I promise you will look back on those moments as some of the greatest of your life.

2) You will have many soul mates in your life.

I really believe this. I have to believe this. The thought that there is only one person in the world for every person in the world is just intimidating and depressing. It's bad math!

I can count at least 5 soul mates in 30 years. Some are still in my life, some are not. Some were romantic, most were not. But we put such an onus on finding "the one" that we lose sight of the fact that we've probably found many, many people who were "the one" in one way or another. There are other things that have to fall in place in order to find that one you're supposed to be with forever, but in the meantime I take comfort in the fact that I have had incredible people in and out of my life for three decades.

3) Everybody's life looks better on Facebook.

I wrote a whole piece on this once. I am guilty of this on both sides: my Facebook makes my life look way more exciting than it is, and I look at other people's Facebooks incessantly and it often gives me anxiety. 

This is definitely another do as I say not as I do, but it's still important perspective to maintain as we find ourselves in the realm of the overshare (says the girl doling out life advice on her tumblr blog that links to her Facebook account). I recognize that I make the choice to curate my online persona because I want to put out a certain image of myself, and I own that.

It's okay to put shit out there. But know the consequences, and know that everyone else's life is about as interesting as yours: selectively interesting at best.

I've been freaking out all month about turning 30, but now that my birthday is just days away, I am starting to take comfort in saying goodbye to my 20s. Because as weird as it is to leave them behind, I feel pretty done with them. They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. They were epic, they were exhausting.

They were important.

If I could go back and talk to my angst-ridden college self (and oooooooh was she angst-ridden!), I would tell her that the best is yet to come. I can only hope my 40 year old self will be able to say the same!

It was down to the wire, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it work, but I did it! As is my self-imposed tradition, I have officially finished viewing every film from the 8 "major" Oscar categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

I should qualify that it's not entirely self-imposed, this obsession I have. As a child, my father sat down all of his chickens (at the time, five of us) and forced us to view every movie that had ever been nominated for anything (we never made it past 1939), as well as any movie that, according to this book he has, SHOULD HAVE been nominated. Sometimes this felt abusive ("DAD. PLEASE don't make me watch Le Grande Illusion AGAIN just because I slept through part of it!"), and sometimes it was just absurd. ("The Dancing Pirate" should have been nominated for Best Song? THAT'S why we're watching a movie called THE DANCING PIRATE?)

On a side note, I ended up watching Le Grande Illusion in a film class in college and, as it turns out, it's actually phenomenal. Way to be right, Dad!

I have inherited many wonderful qualities from my father, but perhaps most notable is his penchant for list making, and for assessing and analyzing our passions. People like to scoff at awards ceremonies for their often political and sometimes questionable need to recognize certain films over others, and many decry the notion of placing objective value on something as subjective as art.

But those people need to lighten up. Because it's fun! And because when you are forced to compare one piece of art to another, it allows you to really dissect what compels you as a consumer of art. And THAT, to me, is everything.

If you don't catch this reference, (1) click here (2) stop what you're doing and watch Annie Hall because it's better than all of this year's movies combined.

And so, without further ado, I offer my picks, my predictions, and my honorable mentions. I write this as I listen to The Beatles--a band on which my father raised me--on the boom box my father gifted to me.

BEST PICTURE

AMERICAN SNIPER

I came into this film intrigued by the extremely well-edited preview, and by the controversial stories I heard about its politics and about the portrayal of its lead character. I avoided reading reviews of it and, as such, did not know the ending coming into it despite it being a true story. I entered the movie expecting propaganda, but was pleasantly surprised to find that to not at all be the case. I do feel that the central villain--a rival Syrian sniper fighting in Iraq--was a bit of a caricature, and I think it might have been more powerful and less cartoonish to make him an entirely faceless presence. If you're going to have it be one-sided, that's a fine choice, just be one-sided. That aside, I found the movie quite compelling, most notably because of the always compelling Bradley Cooper. That man is electric. This was such an understated role compared to his other Oscar nominated performances, and my heart just grew so large for him. I also reject the notion that it portrayed him as a man conflicted about war. This was a man affected by war, but he even says that he is only haunted by the men he couldn't save; in no way does he show any remorse for his actions, which felt honest to me. I found the direction quite strong; every shot was clean, sophisticated, and showed a lot more restraint than I would have expected from a movie about war. I liked this film a lot. But, as you will see to be the trend in my reviews, in a stronger year this would not have made the Best Picture cut.

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)

I found Birdman refreshing and original, until a friend brought it to my attention that it bears a striking similarity to a film that I LOVE, Black Swan. Still, while I see those parallels in terms of narrative construct (artist slowly going mad with thoughts of failure, succeed or die, talking to oneself, hallucinating), I do think that this is still a very original film, and I appreciate its dark sense of humor regarding art and artists. The film primarily follows four characters (nominees Michael Keaton, Ed Norton, and Emma Stone, as well as Naomi Watts), all desperate for attention, manifesting that desperation in very different ways. I loved the winks to Keaton as Batman. I loved the jabs at theater snobbery. I loved the quick dialogue, which walked that line of being Sorkin-y but didn't fall prey to the ol' "LOOK HOW SMART WE ALL ARE" Sorkin curse. The performances were controlled and grounded even as the premise was over the top. I liked the way the camera work paralleled the experience of taking in live theater, giving the effect of one long take with no breaks in scene. I will say that I don't know how outstanding I would have found it if not for that camera work. But that choice WAS outstanding, it WAS unique, and I really, really enjoyed Birdman. It stayed with me for a few days, and I dig that.

BOYHOOD

While there were other films I enjoyed this year, to me, Boyhood is the only one that really matters. (Well, and Selma. But we'll get to Selma.) Boyhood is the only film of the bunch that people will still be talking about years from now. This, of course, can be largely attributed to the remarkable feat of filming the same characters over 12 years. But the film doesn't rely on that choice to be great. It's honest, it's simple, and it accomplishes so much with so little. Director Richard Linklater manages to build suspense even in such a quiet, evenly paced film by teasing all the calamities that COULD happen, but don't. Because that's what it feels like to grow up; it's not all melodrama, but the drama that does happen can have a major impact, even if it is seemingly small. I loved the faux profundity Eller Coltrane's character espouses at the end. It was such a cheesy last line, and it so perfectly encapsulated how emerging adults think they are so DEEP and TORTURED. He's not deep, and he's not tortured. He's just a kid, figuring it out like the rest of us. It is incredible that Linklater was able to capture something so simple but so specific and so powerful in a 2.5 hour movie. I found it absolutely riveting, absolutely perfect. Boyhood is the rare film that, despite its generous length, I actually wished was longer.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

This is a super Wes Anderson-y movie. That's not an insult; I tend to like Wes Anderson movies. I even love some of them. I wish that Moonrise Kingdom had come out this year instead of when it did, because I loved it so much more than this film. But The Grand Budapest Hotel has the advantage of coming out in a weak year for movies (Moonrise Kingdom did not enjoy that luxury: Life of Pi, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour…ALL GREAT). The look of it is staggeringly beautiful and creative, just like all Wes Anderson movies. The performances are good. But it was very frenetic, I found it to be unbalanced (they could have cut out that 80s plot line altogether…or was it 70s? I don't remember, I saw it a while ago and the movie really didn't stay with me), and I just really did not connect with anything happening in it. The biggest compliment I can give this film is that, as I mentioned, it is super Wes Anderson-y. But maybe that's what's wrong with it, too? I give it a meh.

THE IMITATION GAME

Let me preface this by saying it's not that I hated this movie or thought it was bad. I did, however, find it to be one of the sappiest and most formulaic films of the year. Who wrote this dialogue? Who talks like this? How do you manage to make such an interesting story SO SAPPY? And I'm not just talking about the through line of "the people no one imagines anything of do the things no one can imagine," though that line was tired the first time they said it and was EXHAUSTED with every repetition that followed. The interrogation scene, where he's all "let's play the imitation game…" WTF? So cheesy. Additionally, I love Benedict Cumberbatch. LOVE HIM. But to me, this was him being Sherlock if Sherlock was less cocky and more awkward. It was a good performance, particularly at the end when the movie got really sad, but beyond that I was distracted by how Sherlock-y it was. I really, really do not understand the fervor behind The Imitation Game…and by the way, that is a terrible name for a movie. Bad screenplay, fine movie, serviceable performances, NOT BEST PICTURE.

SELMA

Along with Boyhood, this was the only film of the bunch that I would call riveting, and one of the only memorable films of the year. Beautiful acted, beautifully filmed. There was some controversy regarding the portrayal of LBJ as sort of a demon, but I think that it's largely unfounded. For one thing, it's a movie, and I think it's fine to take liberties; beyond that, I really don't think they portrayed him as a bad guy at all. He was representative of a larger systemic problem within American politics at the time, and I think the film did a fine job of making that clear. The filming of Bloody Sunday was shocking, but maintained a balance of showing a lot without being graphic to the point of exploitation. And the performance by David Oleyowo is a snub that I am still reeling from, even more so now that I've seen all the other Best Actor performances. Incredible performance (from everyone, but mostly MLK), important film, very deserving of this nomination but not the win.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

I loved a lot of things about this movie, but really this is a movie about one performance. When you're portraying a real person, it can be really easy to turn it into more of an imitation than an actor's interpretation (see: Foxcatcher…actually don't see it, it's creepy). But Eddie Redmayne absolutely transforms; as Hawking slowly deteriorates, Redmayne manages to achieve a staggering degree of nuance and subtlety. I also give major props to Felicity Jones as Hawking's wife, Jane, in a far less showy but still impressive role. Beyond those performances, I don't know how exceptional I found the film to be. I liked a lot of the camera work; the cinematographer played a lot with focus in really beautiful ways, which to me was a nod to Hawkings' shifting perspective as his condition continued to worsen. Really, my only problem with it was that it was very, very slow. But I did like it very much, and was really excited to see Owen from Boardwalk Empire in the movie! Best picture? I don't know…again, it's a weak year, so maybe. But a must see for Redmayne alone.

WHIPLASH

Whiplash is great because less is ALWAYS MORE. It's a tiny little movie with a very simple premise, but asks very complex questions about what it means to be great. Does one have to choose between happiness and greatness? If so, which is the right choice? Whiplash boasts two incredible performances, a nice showing from Paul Reiser, and of course really cool use of jazz music. What I liked most about the movie was that the main character was not at all sympathetic. We watch as this aspiring musician takes horrific abuse from his teacher/mentor, J.K. Simmons, and we want to feel bad for him and root for him. But as we continue to watch, we see that Miles Teller's character is just as jaded, just as self centered, just as soulless. It's great to have passion, but at what cost? I love the simplicity of the movie, and it's one of the few this year that I really thought was great. I'd say it deserves the nomination but definitely not the win…it'll get that for Best Supporting Actor.

Will Win: Boyhood. Possibly Birdman because it's winning the top prize in a lot of other awards ceremonies, but I think Boyhood will take it. Should Win: Boyhood Honorable Mention: Nightcrawler was original, it was entertaining, it was super creepy, and I really loved it. 

I also don't understand why Unbroken got no attention. It was so well done and an amazing (TRUE!) story; methinks it suffered Angelina backlash, which is stupid, because it's riveting.

Those were the two Oscar-y movies that I felt were snubbed.

But I also want to add that there were two movies this year that I left feeling way more passionate about than anything above besides Boyhood, and those were Chef and Big Hero 6. 

These were the movies I insisted my friends see. These were the movies I was smiling about long after watching them. While they're certainly not the type of movies that get Oscar attention, I do think it's a real shame that no love is given for just sheer entertainment value. (Some would place Guardians of the Galaxy in this category, but it was just okay for me.) 

Is that not worthy of Academy attention? I suppose not. But that's kind of sad, and that's the reason a lot of people don't care about the Oscars.

BEST ACTOR

Steve Carell, FOXCATCHER Bradley Cooper, AMERICAN SNIPER Benedict Cumberbatch, THE IMITATION GAME Michael Keaton, BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Eddie Redmayne, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Will Win: This is close! Redmayne or Keaton. One is more of an achievement, the other is a beloved veteran actor who in many ways got the role of a lifetime. I think they'll go with Redmayne. Should Win: REDMAYNE. But I LOVED Michael Keaton, and I LOVED Bradley Cooper. Honorable Mention: Take off Carell and Cumberbatch, put in David Oyelowo (SELMA) and Jake Gyllenhaal (NIGHTCRAWLER). I love Steve Carell, but the makeup did all the acting here. 

I watched footage of the real John du Pont and yes, it's a great impression.

But Oyelowo's performance was FAR more sophisticated than a mere impersonation. And Gyllenhaal's creepy, sadistic sociopath was FAR more interesting to me than Cumberbatch as Fake Sherlock.

BEST ACTRESS

Marion Cotillard, TWO DAYS ONE NIGHT Felicity Jones, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING Julianne Moore, STILL ALICE Rosamund Pike, GONE GIRL Reese Witherspoon, WILD

Will Win: Julianne Moore. This is her fifth nomination, she is beloved, she is respected, she is wonderful, and she nailed this performance. She always does! Should Win: Julianne Moore. I just got back from watching this movie as I write this, and it's responsible for my waxing poetic about my father at the beginning of the entry. This movie was extremely difficult for me to watch; it follows a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's at age 50, and my father suffered a stroke at age 56. The tragedy was different, but many of the symptoms are similar, and her experience resonated in a very powerful way. With this hitting so close to home, the movie upset me very much, but I was also so grateful to Julianne Moore for such a poised, restrained, heartbreaking and beautiful performance. She brought so much dignity to an affliction so often bereft of it, and I appreciated that so, so much.

Honorable Mention: WHAT a CATEGORY! ALL of these women were extraordinary. Were I to give it to anyone else, it would be Reese…

...but I really loved every single one of these performances, and ALL of them deserve their nominations 100%.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Robert Duvall, THE JUDGE Ethan Hawke, BOYHOOD Edward Norton, BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Mark Ruffalo, FOXCATCHER J.K. Simmons, WHIPLASH

Will Win: J.K. Simmons. This is the most predictable category. He rocks, he has always rocked, and I'm so glad he's getting his moment!

Should Win: J.K. Simmons. His part was really the most Oscar-y of the bunch, and he nailed it.

Honorable Mention: Norton and Hawke both rocked for complete opposite reasons, with Norton completely over the top and Hawke very understated. I loved both performances very much. Ruffalo is always great and I will always support nominating him for anything, though I don't know that this particular performance screamed Oscar to me. Honestly, I thought the most memorable performance in Foxcatcher came from Channing Tatum. And as far as The Judge, WTF WAS THAT CROCK OF SHIT MOVIE? I don't care if it's The Great Robert Duvall. 

That movie BLEW and everything about it was terrible. I'm actually mad at the Academy for making me see it. I don't know who I would put in the slot instead (Tatum was more of a lead actor than supporting), but this movie deserved NO RECOGNITION.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Patricia Arquette, BOYHOOD Laura Dern, WILD Keira Knightley, THE IMITATION GAME Emma Stone, BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Meryl Streep, INTO THE WOODS

Will Win: Patricia Arquette. I do think you could argue that she was a lead actress (in many ways I felt the movie was more about her than about the boy), but this category gives her a better shot at the win. She really brought the heart to the movie as you watched her struggle to make a better life for her children. 

I'm happy with this pick, but… Should Win: Laura Dern. I'll admit that I'm biased because she's Dr. Satler from Jurassic Park…

...but wow, what an elegant, radiant performance. The movie in many ways hinges on her performance as Cheryl's (Best Actress nominee Reese Witherspoon) deceased mother, as the plot follows Cheryl's life as it spins out of control due to this loss. The audience feels that loss so deeply because Dern is so divine in this role. DIVINE!

Honorable Mention: Emma Stone was great, definitely earned the nom, but not the win. I tend to roll my eyes at Streep nominations these days, because it starts to feel like they nominate her solely because of her Streep-ness, but this wasn't a strong year anyway, and I did love her in Into The Woods. I have a lot of love for Keira Knightley in general, but this performance was just fine. Far from Oscar worthy (through no fault of her own…BAD WRITING).

BEST DIRECTOR

Alejandro G. Inarritu, BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Richard Linklater, BOYHOOD Bennett Miller, FOXCATCHER Wes Anderson, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Morten Tyldum, THE IMITATION GAME

Will Win: Inarritu…I think? Or Linklater. I think Best Picture and Best Director will be split between these two films, I'm just not sure what will go to whom. I'll stick with Inarritu. Should Win: This is a tough call, but I'd give it Inarritu for the one-long-shot thing. That was cool, and memorable. I'm obviously fine with giving it to Linklater because Boyhood was my favorite film of the year, but if there's any category in which Birdman deserves recognition, I think it's this one. Honorable Mention: This is a race with two horses, but it really should have included a third horse in Ava Duvernay for Selma. She didn't have a shot to win, and I don't think she deserved the win. But she deserved the nomination CERtainly over Miller and Tyldum, and likely over Anderson as well. I'd also throw in Clint Eastwood for American Sniper over Miller and Tyldum, and I'd even throw in Angelina Jolie for Unbroken!

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, JR. & Armando Bo, BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Richard Linklater, BOYHOOD E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman, FOXCATCHER Wes Anderson, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Dan Gilroy, NIGHTCRAWLER

Will Win: Probably Birdman, possibly Boyhood. But I think it'll go to Birdman. Should Win: Probably Birdman. But I'd love to see Nightcrawler take this! (It won't.) Honorable Mention: I didn't love Foxcatcher, but I did find merits in the screenplay. It shouldn't win but this is really the only category that I think called for a nomination. Additionally, The LEGO Movie got an obvious snub in the Best Animated Feature category, but it was probably my favorite original screenplay of the year. Where is the love for comedies, Oscar?

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Jason Hall, AMERICAN SNIPER Graham Moore, THE IMITATION GAME Paul Thomas Anderson, INHERENT VICE Anthony McCarten, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING Damien Chazelle, WHIPLASH

Will Win: I hate to say it, but I think they're gonna go with The Imitation Game since it's not going to win anything else. BUT THE SCREENPLAY WAS THE WORST PART OF THE MOVIE. Should Win: I want to say Inherent Vice should win because it was a creative screenplay and because my understanding is that Thomas Pynchon novels are notoriously dense and difficult to mine. The problem is I have no idea what the movie was about, so perhaps that's the fault of the screenplay? So with that in mind, I'd say Whiplash, but I really don't care about any of these screenplays. Honorable Mention: UNBROKEN. Great movie, so snubbed. Deserved this nomination over really every other one here.

Follow my live coverage on Facebook, if you dare, and HAPPY OSCARS!

It started with a text, as many a millennial drama does.

But first, context.

I live for crucible moments, and as I journey through the last few remaining months of my 20s, I've started to act with more intention in regards to seeking out new experiences and learning new lessons. You could call it a bucket list, but there isn't exactly a list per se. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of these moments as they occur, and an openness to seeking them out.

I've tried a few things recently that I won't mention here, but about which I have written at length for my own records. I long to create a time capsule of these moments, each of varying degrees of craziness, and I don't want to forget how riveting each of them were. These things are of the "I can't believe I did that" or "I've always wanted to do that but didn't know if I had it in me" variety.

But not all bucket list items arise from planned experiences, and not all bucket list items arise from positive experiences.

Saturday night, while on the way to a friend's house before heading out to a birthday party, I busted a tire. Was the culprit one of New Orleans' notorious potholes? A nail or giant rock in the road? One of the usual suspects?

No. It was the aforementioned text. It was about nothing important, nothing that couldn't have waited until I reached my destination. Because it can ALWAYS wait. I was texting and driving, like an ass.

I'm lucky all I hit was a curb. So that's one lesson, but that's not what this story is about.

Fortunately, I was close to my friend's house, and I made the decision that the tire could wait til morning, that I was not going to let it ruin my night. I took a few minutes to beat myself up about it and then stopped worrying about what I could not control. The bag is still on the bus.

I spoke with my friend about how I might need to call Triple A, or at least consult a male friend. And she said...no! It can't be that hard to change a flat. We should do it together! Make it an experience! Inspired by her girl power, we resolved that We Are Woman, Hear [Us] Roar.

The next morning, after brief consultations with boys, we got to work.

I was told to loosen the lug nuts before jacking the car. I didn't really know what this meant, but upon watching a step-by-step youtube video, I discovered that not only did that advice make perfect sense, but that this didn't seem to be an impossible task.

(See what I did there…Step By Step…)

Ladies, I'm about to share a secret that will change your life.

As it turns out, changing a tire? Not that hard.

Yes, it involves very specific steps. Yes, you have to be very careful and very patient. And yes, it takes a moment to orient yourself to the task. But as we mastered each step, we felt such a rush of delight at our objectively minimal but subjectively masterful accomplishment.

We had so much fun getting our hands dirty, engaging our Pure Barre-enhanced muscles, and of course looking adorable doing it.

At a certain point a woman came over to us and watched. She didn't say anything at first, just stood there. We wondered if she was there to help or perhaps was seeking entertainment. When she finally spoke, she said she felt my pain, that she'd had two flats in two weeks. "Oh," we said, "so you must know how to do this." 

Nope. She'd had a man do it for her. Both times! How do you have someone fix your tire TWICE and never pay attention to how he's doing it?

She said she couldn't do it by herself since she had a really big car. We laughed at the presumption that while we as able-bodied women had the ability to lift a Honda Civic, an SUV would be a step too far.

For your information, changing a tire entails four easy steps:

(1) Prepare by locating your spare tire in the trunk. It will also come with tools: a jack, a wrench, and for me a little thingy to crank the jack. Find a rock or something to put behind the wheel diagonal to the busted tire. This is a safety precaution.

(2) Loosen the lug nuts. Lug nuts are the things that screw the tire onto the car. It's hard to loosen them when the wheel is raised off the ground, so make sure to do this first. (That's the advice my friend had given me that seemed really confusing out of context and actually was extremely easy to understand in context. So the lesson there is to not get overwhelmed by automotive language that is foreign to you!)

(3) Place the jack under the FRAME, not the BODY of the car. On my jack there is actually a picture of where you should put it. See! They made it easy! Who knew there were actually people that thought of this when they sold you your car?

Once it's in place, turn the screw on the jack until the car is raised high enough to remove the wheel. This is where you have to be patient. Unless you have a fancy jack like mechanics do, it can take a while. But it's a great isometric workout!

(4) Once the wheel is high enough, pop off the lug nuts and remove the tire. Replace it with the donut (the spare tire's nickname), replace the lug nuts, secure them as tightly as possible (more isometrics!)…when you think they're tight enough, tighten them more! You don't want a donut in the road! That's heartbreaking no matter which kind of donut you're talking about.

Reverse the jack, and you're good to go! Don't throw away the bad tire; sometimes it's reparable. I almost just left mine there, but it turned out they could fix the rim and all I had to replace was the rubber.

Sometimes the Michael Scott-ness is unavoidable. It was also my response when I received the text message tips from my friend. I couldn't resist.

He didn't seem too entertained by it.

But in later reviewing the events of the afternoon with a friend, it actually seemed like the setup for an amazing porn flick.

Think about it: two cute girls proclaim they don't need men to fix their car. They enter the scene in tight yoga pants, sporty tops, and tight athletic jackets. As the events proceed, they get dirtier and dirtier, remove the jackets, giggling the whole time at their accomplishments, asking a passerby to take a picture of them, all the while talking about jacking up and nuts and rims and rubber. Let your imagination soar!

But in all seriousness, we were positively joyful. Here we were presented with a problem, and rather than bemoan the situation or cower from it, leaving it to a man to fix for us, we seized this opportunity to have an experience.

We were extremely fortunate; we had nowhere to be, it was an unbelievably gorgeous day, the car was parked in a safe place, and the company was great. We knew we had backup Y chromosomes with whom to consult, so worst case scenario, we'd call a big strong man and watch him do it. 

Now, when this inevitably happens again at some point in my life, I might be in a much more stressful situation, but don't have to concern myself with the stress of being outside my wheelhouse. Cuz I dun done this shit befo!

This happened a few days ago, and I'm still beaming about it. Efficacy is one of my favorite words, and this is the perfect actualization of that. Here's something I never imagined I would do, took it upon myself to take on, did a great job, and realized that wow…there's probably a lot of other things I assume to be beyond me that I could easily take on. I smell more crucible moments ahead.

I have to admit something. I'm not proud of it, and it goes against a lot of assumptions you might make about me based on my line of work, and my "Big League Jew" moniker.

I hate the High Holidays.

Now, there are definitely some not-terrible things about it. It's nice getting warm "Happy New Year" (or in Hebrew, "Shana Tova") greetings from family and friends, often from people I haven't spoken to in some time who want to start off the new year spreading the love. I dig that. It's nice to have an opportunity to reflect on the year. I mean I have a blog for the sole purpose of reflection (and perhaps slight egomania), so I definitely dig that.

But I hate praying. I get nothing out of it. It means nothing to me. It's boring and I hate it.

I hate it under normal circumstances, but on Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (our Day of Atonement), collectively known as the High Holidays, the services are at LEAST twice as long as weekly Shabbat services. AND I HATE IT.

THERE. I SAID IT.

That felt good.

Some people have told me they like that it's boring. It feels like a marathon to finish, particularly on Yom Kippur when we fast for 25 hours as part of our observance. Some people have told me they appreciate the opportunity to sit in synagogue for hours and let their minds wander. I guess I get all of that. But it's just not my bag, baby.

Much of much of our faith is grounded in its connection to our history, and an understanding of how old this civilization and its traditions are and how powerful it is to be a part of that, to be continuing that. It's part of why there is such an onus on young Jews to marry Jewish. "We gotta keep this thing going!"

And--"continuity threat" aside--a lot of that I do respond to very deeply. The traditions associated with Shabbat and holiday meals feel special to me. The numerous symbolic foods and religious items (mezuzahs, shofars, menorahs) feel special to me. Speaking Hebrew feels special to me; I would probably never have learned how to do that if I wasn't Jewish. Even Jewish mysticism, despite a lot of it being a bit over the top and convoluted, feels special to me. And of course, Israel is enormously special to me.

But for me, the organized prayer aspect of Judaism is the hardest to swallow. Reading prescribed language to a prescribed melody with a prescribed choreography just feels like a chore, not a celebration of my Jewish identity.

I can't help but think…just because people having been doing things this way for thousands of years, doesn't mean I get anything out of it. I do like chanting from the torah, but honestly that has a lot more of a connection to my love of karaoke than my love of prayer. (I love a captive audience, even if it's in synagogue.)

My Rosh Hashana was spent schlepping torahs (sacred scrolls) and kippahs (little beanie hats you see Jewish men and sometimes women wear) and machzors (special High Holiday prayer books) around campus. It was spent picking up bagels for the guys who were leading services and coordinating who would get the torah when. It was spent tracking down our shofar blower and making sure he knew that for day 2 of Rosh Hashana we would be in a different location. It was spent learning two torah portions last minute to help out a first-time leader. It was spent welcoming 300 people to dinner and giving the bad news that no, they cannot have more Manischewitz at their table. 

This was quite stressful. But I would rather do all of this than sit in services for three hours. And it means something to be able to bring the holiday to my students.

On the other hand, my Rosh Hashana was also spent doing something else that was a much more spiritual experience than any moment of the actual holiday. Shortly after the insanity of the three-day holiday period I entered the insanity of the latest in my string of fitness challenges: my first triathlon.

I had always said "I would never do a triathlon," which made it that much more validating a choice. Part of this is that I have a deep-seated fear of open water...

and part of it is that it just seemed soooooo hard. But this race was in a pool, and it was a shorter version of a classic "sprint distance" race, with a 300 meter swim, 10 mile bike ride, and 2 mile run. This felt very doable.

Really, the run of my experience that weekend with prepping for my triathlon felt very much like a microcosm of a typical High Holiday experience. Friday was my last day of heavy training, leading into some light training and carb loading on Saturday.

This was like days one and two of Rosh Hashana. Then the morning of felt like the marathon of Yom Kippur. There was this mix between psyching myself about how hard it was gonna be while at the same time knowing full well that I was prepared for this.

But the race meant so much more to me than any experience I've had in synagogue.

The buildup was intense. I was so nervous when I arrived to the University of New Orleans at 6:30am, but couldn't stop smiling. It was such a learning experience, too. What were people wearing? How did people set up their stuff around their bike? Did they walk barefoot to the pool or don flip flops? Should I warm up or not risk tiring myself out? Should I eat another banana?

I think I must have gone to the bathroom about 7 times in the hour between checking in and race time. And of course, as soon as it started, I had to go again.

We began at the pool, where we arranged ourselves in groups based on how quickly we thought we'd finish. I stood with the "8-10 minutes" group, and was stunned by the number of women in the "under 4 minutes" section. We sang the Star Spangled Banner, and then someone led a prayer to Jesus (ooooooh New Orleans), and I just remember the whole time feeling a deep sense of camaraderie, and an intense sense of pride that I could count myself among this incredible group of women.

All of us had our ages written on our legs so that we knew who was in what category, and I was so impressed at how young all these older women looked, and by the fact that MOST of the women in the race were in their late 30s and 40s, and many were in their 50s and 60s!

The race started, and the women were sent in the pool one by one to snake up and down the lanes. With me being toward the back of the group, it was at least 45 minutes before I got in the pool. I seriously considered peeing in it to save time. (It didn't come to that.)

And I just felt blown away by these women ahead of me. They were incredible! Total beast mode. I was honored to be in their presence.

And then it was my turn. And it was really, really hard. I'd been practicing doing 12 laps in a 25 meter pool, but the psychological difference between that and doing 6 laps in a 50 meter pool is MAJOR. I was front crawling and breast stroking and doggy paddling and at times literally dragging myself by the pool ropes (which they said was allowed!) just to get to the other end.

It was…rough.

But I just kept telling myself…slow down. Don't burn out. This is an endurance challenge. You're only competing against yourself. Slow and steady wins the race.

I got through it, and there was no better feeling in the world than getting the hell outta that pool to what was supposed to be the easy part: the bike.

I started out with a smile on my face, because I love biking. It brings me zen. I set off slowly, dealing with a bit of wind, trying not to be frustrated at the 13 year old girl who passed me. And then I got some great momentum with the wind at my back. Seeing hills was exciting, because as hard as they are to ascend, the descend is so worth it. And then…I had to turn around. Whatever zen came into my soul was violently thrashed by those tailwinds.

But I reminded myself once more…slow and steady. You're in pain? Fine. Switch your gears. You just have to finish this. Can't go any further? Screw that. What are you gonna do, drop out in the middle of nowhere? You've still got a run ahead of you. Just get it the hell together.

At one point I approached a hill while fighting tailwinds and literally just yelled and cursed at the top of my lungs: FUUUUUUUCKKKK THIIIIIIS SHIIIIIIIIT! Another lady biked up and asked if I was okay; I assured her that I was fine, this is just how I cope with difficulty. I've always been like that: have a nice tantrum, and things will get better.

And I finished. On to the run.

I found out right before the race that we were not permitted to use music at all. This was upsetting, since I have always felt it to be an essential aspect of my success as a runner, but there was nothing to be done about it. Instead, I counted 60 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking, back and forth and back and forth. And I found that I was gaining speed. And I found that, finally, I was passing people. And I found that I was smiling. And I heard other athletes rooting for each other, and for me. And I kicked it up to 90 seconds of running. And I just knew I was killing it.

I ran across that finish line, heard them mispronounce my name (OnDRAYuh LeVEEN), and immediately started sobbing. Such ecstasy I have rarely experienced.

Organized prayer is meaningless to me because I feel there is no reflection of ME in the process. I'm reading someone else's words, doing someone else's choreography, and doing it out of obligation to something that is intangible and inexplicable. 

While there is something enriching about being a part of something larger, that feeling of connection can be accessed in so many other ways.

When I challenge myself to something I never thought I could do instead of something to which I feel a nebulous obligation, I feel like I am achieving, and thereby entering a new spiritual plane. You have a conception of yourself that is impacted by how you perform in this setting. THAT is compelling. THAT is connection.

I envy people who feel connected to prayer in a lot of ways. And I don't judge them. I'm in the "whatever gets you through the night" camp.

Let me start by telling you why I hate hipsters. I realize the irony of starting out a blog entry that is dedicated to calling out haters by throwing my own shade, but that's sort of the larger point of my goal of this post: hating on haters. Because hipsters are the ultimate haters.

Except hipster Mickey. He is adorable. He can stay.

I like a lot of things about hipsters. I like hipster clothing. I like hipster music. And they have the best taste in glasses. 

Plus, the hipster Disney princess memes? A delight!

What I don't like is the judgement inherent in insisting upon the superiority of a counterculture. I'm not saying you should like things because they're popular. But it drives me crazy when people hate something SOLELY because it's popular. It's snobby, it's ignorant, and it's hypocritical. 

It's like the term "sell-out." I've always hated that term. I certainly understand the origin of the term and why it is meant as pejorative...

…but it takes me back to when I was in middle school and blink182 all of a sudden shot to super fame. All of a sudden people stopped liking the very same album that they used to love because their videos were in heavy rotation on MTV.

"What's My Age Again" was a great song before it got popular. Then it got popular…and guess what? THE SONG DID NOT CHANGE. And as far as the term itself…isn't it the goal of the band to sell albums? Is a band only "legitimate" if they are unsuccessful?

The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books, because to me, it perfectly captures this phenomenon. It seems to me that Holden Caulfield is basically the original hipster. He spends the whole book calling out the "phoniness" of everyone around him, and by the end you realize that the real "phony" is Holden himself. He is a maddening character, because he is too busy judging everyone else to have any real sense of self. And the book is brilliant, because we all have a little of this within us. 

I bring this up in reaction to the backlash I have witnessed on social media in response to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I've seen people post articles about how it is narcissism veiled as altruism, how it is causing other charities to suffer, and perhaps the most ridiculous, how it is contributing to a drought crisis.

I'll start with the water complaint. First of all, I can guarantee that there is no shortage of water in Louisiana in the summer. It literally rains every day. So my conscience is clear.

But more importantly, how much water does it take to fill an ice bucket? A few gallons, tops. Out of curiosity, I googled "how many gallons of water do we use in a day?"

This was the result:

The average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water per day. On average, approximately 70 percent of that water is used indoors, with the bathroom being the largest consumer (a toilet alone can use 27 percent!).

Listen, I'm not saying it isn't a waste of water. But if all of a sudden you want to be an environmentalist, try taking shorter showers or flushing the toilet less often. Or fill an ice bucket and fly it to California if your heart is all of a sudden in such turmoil about the drought they are experiencing out west that you heretofore didn't consider for even half a moment.

The argument isn't REALLY about wasting water. It's about seeing something that's popular, wanting to shit on it because it's popular, and finding a cause to back that up. This, to me, is an ironic hypocrisy. People criticize the ice bucket challenge for contributing to a kind of bandwagon philanthropy, but how is all of a sudden caring about water shortage in California or Africa or WHEREVER not EXACTLY THE SAME THING? It's okay to care about water. But don't act like this was your cause, and that these viral videos are flying in the face of it.

As far as other charities suffering…why should this one be shamed because someone had an amazing marketing idea? As someone who works for a non-profit, I can tell you that a lot of the principles of a successful for-profit business can be a game changer for non-profits, and viral marketing is a HUGE part of that. This is no different than when celebrities have concert telethons in response to a natural disaster. They do it because it works! 

As far as the narcissism…listen, I'm not an idiot. I realize how plugged in I am, how much I post on Facebook, and I realize that this is inherently an act of narcissism. (I write a blog about my life, for Christ's sake. Obviously I have a bit of an ego.)

But like it or not, this is the way of the world, our new reality. I am part of a vast network of people who engage in this worldwide act of narcissism. You can bitch about it, or you can take advantage of it. Why not harness this plugged-in reality for something that not only contributes to a good cause, but is COMPLETELY HARMLESS?!?

Worst case scenario? Someone doesn't donate, and nothing changes. Best case scenario? Someone learns about ALS, a disease that many people do not know much about, and donates some shekels. There is no negative impact.

Maybe someone was scrolling through their feed and sees someone pour ice on their head. They see the hashtag #icebucketchallenge. They wonder, what is that? They google it. And now they've accidentally (if passively) learned something about ALS, even if they do nothing about it, ice bucket, donation, or otherwise.

Maybe someone posts a video doing the challenge and mentions nothing about ALS. That person probably looks pretty foolish. But let's check back in on our tally of people who have been harmed by this…

…yup, still zero.

I'm sure you've all seen people post about how much money has been raised by the campaign (it's a lot). This is absolutely wonderful. But my point is not to tell you why the ice bucket challenge is so great.

My point is, what is the purpose of wasting your energy shitting on something that doesn't affect you at all, and that people are having fun with? If you think the videos are annoying, don't watch them. If you're thinking, "these people are such phonies, they don't really care about ALS," take a moment to consider what the fuck difference that makes in your life, and remember that at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, *SPOILER ALERT* Holden Caulfield is completely miserable.

Still not convinced? Watch this video and TRY to hate on the ice bucket challenge. 

In sum, I will invoke the Conan quote that I have invoked before on this blog and will likely invoke again, because they are some of the wisest, truest words ever spoken:

Cynicism gets you nowhere.

I had every intention of posting on July 5th, which marked my one year anniversary in New Orleans. However, it didn't feel right being that I spent the 5th this year in Florida. And between now and then, I've gone back and forth about whether or not I was going to write a blog post about the war in Gaza. (I have wisely opted not to.)

Far be it from me, however, to miss an opportunity to reflect on such a major anniversary. And so, in the Jewish tradition of the bar mitzvah, I am celebrating 13 months in this beautiful city with some reflections on the year that has past, and what is to come.

1) "The New Girl in Town" No More

Being new has its ups and downs. Of course it's always hard to adjust to a new place, to have to master a new map, to try to make new friends (which can often be more intimidating than going on dates).

It made me feel special that people seemed to be so excited that I chose to move here, particularly from New York City, which has a lot of allure to those who have never lived there before. In addition to this natural conversation starter and attention getter, it's always exciting to discover your new favorite coffee shop, your new favorite bar, your new go-to convenience store. Every new street you drive down has its charms, whether it's the obviously charming boutiques and restaurants on Magazine Street or the "charms" (loosely defined) of the Chicken and Watermelon shop next to Jazz Daiquiris on Claiborne Avenue. 

(Actual places.)

I've had enough visitors at this point to feel like I have graduated from New Girl to Tour Guide...

...a role that suits me quite well what with my background in hospitality hard-earned from 6 years at Walt Disney World.

I definitely got a taste of this living New York, but it's different here. While many people probably know at least a few people in New York, I tend to be most of my friends' sole NOLA connection, whether we are close friends, friends who have lost touch, or even just acquaintances. So while a visit to New York might not have warranted someone reaching out to me specifically to show 'em the town, New Orleans is a different story. It makes me feel special to live here, to be the New Orleans Welcome Wagon.

It's nice to see a city, but it's even nicer to see a city through the eyes of someone who lives in it. And I think I offer a fresh perspective of it being that it's not exactly new to me anymore in terms of my familiarity with it, but it's still new enough that it excites me. And when you connect to a place so much and other people love it, it makes you feel that much more special for having that connection. It's kinda how I feel about my dog…telling me I'm pretty is great, but telling me my DOG is pretty? You've won me over.

Which brings me to my next item…

2) Dog Days Are Over

I mean this in the figurative sense of course, because my dog days have begun as of February of this year. One of these days I'll do a post solely devoted to my beautiful Khaleesi, particularly to detail the ways in which I project onto this dog. Often when I talk about her, a friend regularly asks…are you talking about Khaleesi, or about yourself?

(My answer? "Gam v'gam." Which in Hebrew basically means…yes to both.)

Like most kids, I grew up wanting a dog. This desire stayed with me until I lived with a rescue dog named Leia my senior year of college (I also lived with her owner). Leia's owner was…fraught, to say the least.

And while Leia was an angel, it was an in-your-face PSA regarding just how much responsibility dog ownership entails.

I knew I still wanted a dog someday, but not until I felt that I could really devote my time to it. A few years later I moved to New York, and pet ownership was completely unaffordable. Plus, I was in school and working constantly, with a crazy commuting schedule that never could have allowed me to devote enough attention to an animal. It was hard enough devoting attention to my friends! (New York is really lonely in that way. You have to, like, schedule appointments to spend time with anyone.)

But then I moved to New Orleans, where the living is easy, cheap, and dog-friendly. And I have never felt so enriched by a relationship with another living thing. I guess that objectively sounds kind of sad and pathetic...

...but I will say--straight from the heart--that having Khalessi has completely changed the quality of my life for the better.

Yes, she is a commitment. But she's an older dog, and she's super easygoing. She just needs food, a place to poop, and lots of love. I can take her to bars, I can take her to friends' houses…I even took her to the St. Patty's Day parade, and she was great. People come up to me all the time when I'm out with her in crowds to compliment me on how well behaved she is.

When I'm sad, she's there to snuggle in my lap, even though she's a little too big to be a lap dog (which makes it even cuter).

When I'm lonely, I can take her to the park and all of a sudden I have plans, and I'm not lonely anymore. And there is no greater feeling than coming home after a long day of work to her wagging tail and puppy licks. I literally find myself running up the stairs to my door the minute it hits me that I get to see her again.

Plus, it's nice to have a reason to go for a walk. What better way to start your day? (Exception: the month of August. Brutal.)

Khaleesi has been in several homes. And while it's sad that none of them worked out, I know they can't have worked out, because she was meant to be with me. 

3) The Benefits of a Small Pond

When I was a senior in high school, I vowed to leave Florida for "The Big City," rather loosely defined. New York seemed too big at the time, so I went with Boston, despite having never been there before. My sisters went to big cities, so that's what I was going to do, to shed the mediocrity of my high school existence and be fabulous and make sure everyone knew how fabulous I was. And this was before Facebook, where it's quite easy to pretend to be fabulous!

I went to Boston University for a semester, was miserable, and promptly transferred back to Florida. Part of why I decided to move to New York several years later was to give the big city thing another shot.

And I'm glad I did it, especially as a student. It's the best way to experience New York, because you already have a cohort and a clear direction, a clear sense of purpose: to finish your degree. But once that faded away, I started to see how negatively it was affecting me to live such a competitive lifestyle, to be constantly surrounded by people on the street, on the subway, in a Starbucks, but to have no connection to any of them.

Every time I went on a date, I had this feeling that the guy was thinking, "She's alright, but there's probably someone better." Even if he wasn't actually thinking that, it felt that way. This even extended to bars and restaurants…there was this constant debate of, "Do I go to a place I know I love, or do I try somewhere new?" Because there's always somewhere new to try. It's exciting, but it makes it really frustrating to make brunch plans.

What a lot of people don't know about New Orleans is that it's actually quite geographically small. The reason people don't realize that is that it's a city notorious for [Letting] The Good Times Roll, where there is always something going on. And it's made me realize that what I was looking for was not a BIG city, but rather a city with a big personality, a city with character. Not only is there always stuff to do, but there's this great feeling that everyone in the city is enjoying the same things that you're enjoying, that we are all enjoying it together.

I wouldn't say that I'm a BIG fish, but I'm definitely in a smaller pond. And that perspective is good for my ego, good for my peace of mind. That's not a small thing.

I don't know that I would be able to appreciate New Orleans in the same way if I hadn't struggled in Boston, if I hadn't longed to get out of Orlando, if I hadn't dreamed of NYC life, lived it, and then realized it wasn't working for me anymore. I know it's nothing new to say "everything happens for a reason," but one of the things I find helpful about having a blog is that I parse out for myself what exactly those reasons are. As I reflect on my year in The Big Easy, I am left with the feeling of…I'm supposed to be here. Right now, this is where my feet are planted firmly on the ground. Maybe it'll be short term, maybe it'll be long term. But however long it lasts, I'm grateful to have found my place.

The word of the moment is "omphaloskepsis."

"Omphaloskepsis is the practice of figuratively contemplating one’s navel as an aid to meditation or introspection, hence introspection itself.

It’s relatively new, having been invented by Aldous Huxley in his book These Barren Leaves in 1925. It turns up in only a few dictionaries and seems to be a word that survives more for the opportunity to show off one’s erudition than as a real aid to communication. If so, this article is a further perpetuation of its unreal status. It has been mocked:

A word meaning contemplation while gazing at the navel,omphaloskepsis would be of use only to a deipnosophist. And it has no more business appearing here than has deipnosophist."

The Careful Writer: a Modern Guide to English Usage, by Theodore Bernstein, 1965.

~taken from http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-omp1.htm

While "navel gazing" is actually a method of meditation, you will be more likely to come across the word colloquially as an expression of someone's intense self absorption, which puts them at risk of completely losing all perspective. 

(Note: navel gazing is unrelated to baldness.)

Coming back from any vacation is difficult. There is always an adjustment period. But when you come back from an experience that felt like it changed you, and return to a landscape of relative inactivity…this is not an ideal combination, and it has led to intensive navel gazing on my part.

The navel gazing was sort of an accidental byproduct of wanting to take action in the face of the potential spiraling that can arise from this kind of abrupt dichotomy of situations. I wasn't sure what to make of my Israel experience upon returning, but I knew the takeaway was certainly not that I should become cynical and/or precious about it. I'm a person who likes to deal with lulls and sadness by throwing myself into new things. The result, ideally, is to sort of manifest matters of the heart and mind into something more tangible, to move from grey areas to blacks and whites.

And so, I decided to explore what it might be like to become a hippie.

I've always said that I am incapable of meditating, that I had no ability to turn off my brain, and that it frustrates me to do something I'm bad at. It's been pointed out to me that meditation is a practice, a skill, just like playing an instrument. You don't just pick up a guitar and start playing Free Bird, you have to put in the time and take it step by step.

Particularly after reading up on Flow, and how it is achieved by succeeding at something that is challenging but doable, I decided to give it a try. I had nothing to lose, except for potentially a bit of crazy. Seemed like a win win. So I started by committing to meditating at least once a day for at least 10 minutes.

I tried sitting on my tiny porch, but was distracted by the sweat that inevitable ran down my forehead and chest. I tried sitting on my floor, but my dog would always crawl up and distract me with her cuteness. I tried sitting on my bed, but it was hard to sit up straight. 

Still, despite the inability to find and appropriate location, it wasn't so bad. I read a lot about meditation, and the most common misconception is that the intention is to turn off your thoughts. 

"Meditation is not about sitting in a blank state without thinking of anything at all. It's not about blessing out in a state of peace and openness. And it's not about struggling against your thoughts and emotions, blocking them, or trying to make then go away. 

…simply relax your mind. Allow your mind to be just as it is: open, spacious, calm, and yet completely aware. If you simply let your thoughts and emotions, or whatever arises, come and go without clinging to them. Just let go, relax, and remain in the pure awareness of the present moment. 

…the true purpose of mediation...is to introduce us to the unchanging, pure awareness that underlies the whole of our experience. The practice of meditation is to become more and more familiar with this awareness in every aspect of your life."

~taken from "What Meditation Really Is" http://whatmeditationreallyis.com/index.php/dare-to-meditate.html

As part of my commitment to exploring this new potential hobby/way of life, I attended a local meditation group, wherein we shared in roughly a half hour of guided meditation followed by a discussion of a chapter of the book they were reading as a cohort. I had a few struggles with this experience.

1) My legs fell asleep pretty much instantly. As the leader guided our meditation, he would say things like "try to accept any discomfort in your body and move past it," but it was a dire pins and needles situation. I kept trying to readjust myself but, again, struggled to find my "center." I'm supposed to accept the fact that I can't feel my feet? 

2) I found that the discussion, while on occasion tapping into some thought provoking points, sort of became a group therapy session. There's nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that it was dominated by two members of the group (which was almost entirely male…I found that interesting), and became less of a group experience and more of a personal airing of grievances.

It occurred to me that I was in the thick of a group of self-obsessed people, and it also occurred to me that the fact that I would even attend something with a focus on exploring my mind and my presence is inherently a function of my own self obsession. I was comfortable with my own self centeredness, but of course this made everyone else's self centeredness…not annoying, but a little boring.

3) I felt that everyone seemed to be there because they were going through something difficult in their lives, whereas I was there because I had just been through something amazing and didn't know where to go from here. I suppose one could argue that my difficulty was the fact that I was feeling the loss of that ecstasy. But I felt that the major theme of the session was to release yourself from all emotions, to let go, to never hold on to anything. And I wondered…where is the line between remaining unattached, and becoming completely detached? Presence is a wonderful notion, but in our quest for this centered, peaceful existence, where is there room for passion?

I felt a little like Zach Braff in Garden State. Only, ya know. Not a melodramatic hipster.

(Though I suppose not far off.)

So then, I tried yoga.

Like meditation, I've never been super into yoga because I'm bad at it. There was a time after a breakup once a few years back that I sort of dove into yoga classes, hoping it would help me cope with things, and I attended classes obsessively for about…oh…2 weeks? The novelty wore off pretty quickly; it was kind of like a medicine that you take so often that you start to grow immune to its effects.

But this time around I attended two classes that I enjoyed very much, mostly because they were low impact, and because the instructors had really soothing voices that triggered my ASMR. One such instructor shared that she would be offering a 3 hour restorative yoga and meditation workshop, and that we should bring our journals. In the name of open mindedness, I signed up. I figured this could be akin to the meditation session, except with feeling in my legs and no talking from anyone but the soothing voice at the front.

It was mostly an enjoyable experience, but I definitely came away with a few observations.

1) Sitting still is rough for me. Restorative yoga is about holding comfortable poses for anywhere from 5-20 minutes. No matter how comfortable I was, I kept having an itch, or a wedgie, or a hair out of place…always something physical distracting me from "finding my center." I suppose it was a physical manifestation of my non-stop brain activity. Or maybe I just need better fitting underwear? I mean the wedgies were OUT OF CONTROL, and I have NO ability to sit still if I have a wedgie. It must be rectified IMMEDIATELY.

2) Despite the fact that this was a very low impact situation with a focus on relaxation and renewal, in some ways it's a lot harder for me than physical activity. Running, for example, is terrible. I've been doing it for almost three years and it's hard every time; you start out on a run waiting for it to be over. But what's great about it is that once it's over, you feel an incredible sense of accomplishment.

With something as relaxing as restorative yoga, you kind of don't want it to end, and when you finish, you might feel relaxed, but I didn't feel so much accomplished as exhausted from the myriad of thoughts running through my mind. I didn't leave with a sense of satisfaction; I left feeling sort of…bland, I guess.

So…I went back to just working out like crazy.

This has always been my go-to way of dealing: becoming obsessed with my appearance. Part of it is that I'm bored and don't have a lot to do right now, so working out takes up that time. Part of it is that I crave the endorphins. But for the most part, as I've mentioned before, it's about control. The thought process is something like, even if I'm sad, as long as I know my body looks good, that's at least one thing I can reliably feel good about.

As much as I realize that this may or may not be the healthiest way of thinking, the fact is, there are worse things I could throw myself into than fitness. And again, in the name of this idea of challenging myself to something achievable but that takes work, I have decided to do my first triathlon in September. The running and biking I've got down, it's the swimming that's going to be the big challenge. But there is something very therapeutic about planning out a training regimen. It's the closest I've gotten to successful meditation: if I'm focusing on this particular goal, I do feel that sense of presence, with an eye toward the future. 

I have not completely succumbed to omphaloskepsis, because I haven't completely lost my perspective. I've been away from the situation long enough to see that maybe this wasn't a life changing experience. Maybe I just had a crush on a boy. Maybe I just desperately want it to mean something because it's a way of stretching out the experience for as long as possible.

I've been struggling with how I want to write about my trip to Israel. 

I've been FEELING A LOT OF FEELINGS. 

And a lot of those feelings are deeply personal. But I can't not write about it. The fact that I'm still at a point where talking about it brings me to tears give me all the more reason to just like, get it all out, man.

And so I'm going to talk around those feelings, and I'm going to talk about Flow. And then I'm going to talk about Kool Aid.

Ready?

I first studied the concept of Flow in grad school, where we spent a considerable amount of time trying to pronounce the name of the psychologist who helped to pioneer the scientific study of happiness, Mikhail Csiksgentmihalyi.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people find genuine satisfaction during a state of consciousness called Flow. In this state they are completely absorbed in an activity, especially an activity which involves their creative abilities. During this “optimal experience” they feel “strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of their abilities.” In the footsteps of Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi insists that happiness does not simply happen. It must be prepared for and cultivated by each person, by setting challenges that are neither too demanding nor too simple for ones abilities. Taken from The Pursuit of Happiness: Bringing the Science of Happiness to Life

My recent trip to Israel was a result of staffing Taglit-Birthright Israel for the SIXTH TIME. Not so long ago, I blogged about the experience of staffing for the fifth time. I listed reasons why I was over it, and reasons why I was still committed to it. I listed reasons for wanting to make aliyah (move to Israel), and then debunked those reasons, writing them off as needing to fill a void in my life that was now filled by New Orleans.  I am currently whistling a very different tune.

Because while the last trip was a positive experience, on this trip, I found my Flow.

I hadn't necessary LOST it, per se. Flow is about the satisfaction that arises from doing something at which you excel, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's staffing Birthright. It's just that I came into this trip thinking…I cannot believe I'm doing this AGAIN. I've been to Israel so many times, and I started yearning for an opportunity to travel elsewhere. And beyond that, I was coming off of not the greatest time in my life, starting off with my annual April doldrums and sprinkling onto that a horrible car accident. 

(Ten points if you catch this reference.)

(This is real.) I was…not my best self. But then the Flow came back. And I got lost in it.

I got lost in how it feels to connect with Israelis. I got lost in the joy of speaking in Hebrew, and in how readily it came back once I got there. I got lost in how happy it makes Israeli people when I try to speak Hebrew, how much they appreciate how hard I have worked on it, how interested they are to hear about my Hebrew studies and my Master's degree. I got lost in how everyone on the trip responded to my leading Kabbalat Shabbat services at the Western Wall, and I got lost in how open minded they were to participating. And, perhaps most powerful of all, I got lost in the sincere gaze, engaged conversation, and warm embrace of a truly kindred spirit.

On our last night, we stayed at the Bedoin tent…or as I call it, the Disney Bedoin tent, complete with gift shop, showers, and [secret] wifi network. As is traditional on this, arguably the most important night of the trip (the group stays in one tent, they bond, there are camel selfies, it's legit), we embarked on a night hike in the desert. We take the kids far enough to where we can't see any civilization, we gaze at the stars--something a lot of us never see because of the lights and smog of the big cities in which we live--and we then take about ten minutes to wander away and meditate in complete silence.

I've done this activity seven times. Many things on this trip get old. This does not get old. It's a profound moment. But this time, I was overcome. Because it occurred to me…

I drank the Kool Aid.

The ten days of Birthright occur in such a vacuum, and everything else sort of falls away. It's like one of Csiksgentmihalyi's research subjects said about the flow of figure skating:

"It was just one of those programs that clicked. I mean everything went right, everything felt good…it's just such a rush, like you feel it could go on and on and on, like you don't want it to stop because it's going so well. It's almost as though you don't have to think, it's like everything goes automatically without thinking…You hear the music but you're not aware that you're hearing it, because it's a part of it all."

When you are in this vacuum, you become part of a community, one that evaporates as soon as the trip is over but one that is so seminal to the experience. It's a community that forces you to open yourself up in ways that just can't be recaptured in any other context, nor should they be. And you're a part of this community because you are Jewish. This is a powerful thing; it makes people more interested in what it means to be Jewish, it makes people think about their past as a Jewish person, it asks them to consider what they want their future as a Jewish person to look like. 

The Birthright Kool Aid joke is essentially that you come back ready to make Jewish babies. A smart Jewish professional like myself sees that there is so much more to it than that, and the goal instead is to help our participants seek out Jewish life in a way that feels meaningful to them, that helps channel how they felt on the trip.

But for me, the Kool Aid has more to do with envisioning myself as an Israeli citizen. It all seems so possible, so meant to be when I am experiencing the Flow of leading a Birthright trip. And when you can connect this Flow to a person who brings it out in you…the feelings are overwhelming. Feelings of gratitude, feelings of intense adoration, feelings of the excitement of something fresh and rejuvenating. But under that sky, all I felt was confusion. Birthright is not real life, so why did it all feel so real to me? I've done this trip SEVEN TIMES. I should know better. And then I just felt stupid and childish. A hopeless romantic.

And then I went to Petra.

I first spent a day traveling to Eilat by myself. As much as I enjoyed the company I kept during the trip, it was essential to have that Me Time, even though Eilat is not that cool. 

But it was hard, because all of those Bedoin tent thoughts continued to swirl through my head. I felt such intense doubt and confusion at trying to decipher what I was to do with the intense feelings of ecstasy I felt on this trip.

Then I got to Petra. And as cheesy as this is to say…whatever, I'm not going to apologize for being cheesy. Cheese is delicious.

Everything on Birthright feels so important. So essential. So BIG. And then I witnessed Petra, one of the Wonders of the World. And I just felt so, so SMALL.

And it felt SO GOOD.

After the guided tour, we had lunch and then myself and the group I had adopted (three people also recently off a Birthright trip) took the intense hike 850 steps up to see the Al-Deir monastery. It was extremely physically demanding and thus extremely rewarding, its own brand of Flow. 

But getting to the monastery wasn't enough. We decided…why not climb to the top?

Irresponsible? Yes. Dangerous? Yes.

Life-altering? Absolutely.

And I sat there, legs dangling off of this ancient, regal structure, and I thought…I am awesome. None of my problems matter. I can do whatever I want. Think of what my friends are doing right now! And I'm doing this. I made this happen.

I got to the hotel afterwards, completely disgusting, completely sore, completely exhausted, and the happiest I'd been in years. I was greeted by a bell hop straight outta The Grand Budapest Hotel and handed a glass of fresh apple juice. 

I had a delicious dinner as the sun was setting and the Muslim call to prayer sounded in a nearby mosque. I had my first ever Turkish bath and came out renewed, blissfully ready to crash. But first, I forced myself to write in my journal. Especially considering the tidal wave of emotions I had found myself navigating before arriving in Jordan, I needed to record how I was feeling at that exact moment, at the end of what was unquestionably one of the greatest days of my life. I felt peace, I felt clarity. I felt like I MIGHT be turning into a hippie, and I felt fine with that. At least I'd be a hippie who bathes.

After Petra, I stayed a bit longer in Israel, three days longer than initially planned. When I booked the trip I was sort of disinterested in traveling around Israel post-Birthright (been there done that), but once there I had do whatever I could to soak up those feelings for as long as possible. It's like my dear friend/Birthright roommate told me when I was waffling about whether to shell out the money to extend…why make money if not to spend it on something like this? Seize the day.

There is so much more to tell about my time in Israel. And there is so much about it that is still so unclear to me. I really feel like everything happens for a reason, but I'm still trying to unpack what all of this means for me, what I am supposed to take away from this experience. Is it that I'm supposed to live in Israel? That Israel is the only place I will find a husband? (This is a very real fear. I never claimed my thoughts were rational.) Or was this just a reminder of how much I love Israel, how much I love Birthright? Will the relationships I formed be sustained, or were they only meant to be temporary? 

Perhaps the whole experience merely served as a reminder that cynicism is the enemy, and that it should be combatted at all times. 

I really don't know. I guess I really can't know. I just feel like…it all had to mean something. And as I begin my feeble attempts at a return to normalcy, the thoughts continue to overtake me.

The only thing I know for sure is that, for those three weeks, whether they be deemed fantasy or reality, I was my best self. 

And all I can do now is strive to be like that all the time, strive to achieve Flow, and learn to let myself enjoy a little bit of Kool Aid now and again. Because even the best of us need it sometimes.

When I was a kid in Jew school, I dreaded the two times a year when running was required, most notably the Mile Run. If you didn't finish the Mile Run in under 15 minutes, you had to do it again. I had to do it again on MULTIPLE occasions. It was the bane of my P.E. existence.

In March of 2012, I was so excited to attend a Jew school friend's wedding and see my old P.E. teacher so that I could proudly report that, in just a month's time, I would be running my first ever race, the Rutgers half marathon. She didn't remember the details about my Mile Run failures (somehow that just wasn't a lasting memory for her 20 years down the road), but of course she was proud.

In the last two+ years, I have run two half marathons, a 15k, two 10ks, and a four miler. I am exceedingly proud of these accomplishments, especially considering I never in a million years thought that I could achieve them. Truly.

I prefer to register for races over leisurely running, because running is not leisurely. It's difficult EVERY TIME. And unless I have a compelling reason to train, it's really hard for me to stick to it. I need that black and white in my life, and I need the added push of "you already paid for this!" It provides a controlled situation.

Really, working out for me has always been about control. Basically, I am Chris Traeger from Parks and Recreation, BRILLIANTLY portrayed by the always delightful Rob Lowe.

Chris joins the show at the end of the second season as an auditor who has come to solve the city's budget problems, and later becomes city manager. Despite being a firm leader, he is LITerally the nicest, most positive person on the planet. I phrase it that way because a large percentage of his lines (and 100% of his best quotes) involve the comedic use of the term "literally," a clever play on how the term has been reappropriated as of late to convey the exact opposite of its literal translation.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/living/literally-definition

For example, when you say "I am literally starving to death," you're probably just really hungry, and your life is not likely in danger. Part of the brilliance of Chris is that he is such an extreme character that when he says "you are literally my favorite person in the world," he probably means it.

So why do I bring this up? In addition to our mutual tendency toward hyperbole, Chris and I share an addiction to fitness, largely as a coping mechanism and as a means of achieving a degree of control over our lives. It's sort of a running (running…haha) joke on the show that Chris's constant positivity is a distraction from an underlying sea of existential torment. 

I started running because I felt a desperate need to achieve at something; I felt at the time like there was so little else I was achieving that felt fulfilling to me. Not only did I complete that first half marathon in much less time than I'd anticipated, but I have never looked better or more fit in my life as I did then.

I've been off my running game since moving to New Orleans. Maybe I feel like…been there, done that, bought the tee shirt (literally). Maybe I need to find something else to achieve. Or maybe I don't feel the same pressure to achieve in my new locale, at least as compared to New York.

I did, however, want to do at least one race in my new home, and so few weeks ago, I ran the Crescent City Classic, a 10k through downtown New Orleans and up to beautiful City Park.

This was more in the spirit of running a New Orleans race than about control, which was good, because I all but lost control during training. Between my the hot weather, crippling shin splints, and my self-prescribed Achilles tendinitis, I quickly abandoned my goal of beating my record of 64:42, with the amended goal of just finishing without wanting to chop off my foot. 

I should have known that a New Orleans race would be a whole other ball game. As I continued along my merry way, defying my injured right foot and soaking in the hip hop blasting in my ears, I ran past women pushing strollers and excited pedestrians handing out beer and liquor to runners. True to NOLA form, this was a race that prioritized letting the good times roll above all else.

I managed a solid 67:58, not bad considering my limitations and poor training.

Just a few days later, I lost control.

I was in a car accident, and it was horrifying. I'm not going to go into the details; I'll just say that it was not my fault, that I sustained some injuries, but that the pain is manageable (albeit unpleasant) and that I'm very lucky…it could have been a lot worse.

As a result of the crisis, I have been forcibly relegated to commuting by bike. It was initially distressing to be informed that I was not covered for a rental car. But then I took a breath, put on my big girl pants (figurative, obviously, because fuck pants), and accepted my situation for what it was. And what it was…wasn't so terrible.

There is something so zen about biking. While there is obviously a fitness aspect to it, I'm not doing it for that purpose. So it's not connected to that sense of control that I feel when I'm running, or when I'm lifting weights, or when I'm in a Pilates class. It's not about being in control of my appearance; it's about being in control of whether I sit around and belabor the fact that some bad shit happened to me, or take the initiative to bike the 10 miles to JazzFest and back.

It's about being in control of where I am and where I'm going. I think there's a metaphor there.

And by the way, I'm in amazing shape, having biked about 150 miles total since the accident. So, there's that.

Of course, my bike chain keeps getting off its track, which is a pain in the ass to fix. But for every asshole who rams through you car and drives away, there is a good samaritan who will drop what he's doing to help you fix your bike.

Biking through the city makes me appreciate every aspect of it in a way that I just didn't give the same attention to by car. I'm supposed to get the car back early next week, and honestly, it's a little bittersweet. (Only a little, though. I love that car.)

All this to say that, fitness is great, and discipline is great. But sometimes, losing a little control can be a blessing in disguise.

You've heard the phrase a million times. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Sometimes it's used as a metaphor, like for a Susan Lucci Emmy situation, or a Tampa Bay Rays World Series situation. Sometimes it's used literally, typically accompanied by a reference to the Katherine Heigl film "27 Dresses" (followed by me rolling my eyes in an effort to throw shade at the very notion of a Katherine Heigl film).

But DID YOU KNOW that the origin of said phrase is actually Listerine? (Not to be confused with that 90s classic, Glycerine.)

That HAIR. Grrrr.

That's right. Upon googling the etymology of the phrase, I found that it hearkens back to the following ad:

In 1925, one of the magazine ads used by Listerine mouthwash titled "Often a bridesmaid but never a bride" featured a sad-faced yet fetching young woman. The text touting the use of Listerine to combat bad breath began "Edna's case was a really pathetic one. Like every woman, her primary ambition was to marry. Most of the girls of her set were married — or about to be. Yet no one possessed more grace or charm or loveliness than she. And as her birthdays crept towards that tragic thirty-mark, marriage seemed farther from her life than ever. She was often a bridesmaid but never a bride."

That tragic thirty-mark? YIKES.

I have now been a bridesmaid 4 times. I am confident that the frequency of stops on this year's wedding circuit is unrelated to halitosis. I am also confident that the experience has been nothing like a Katherine Heigl film, but cannot really back that up being that the only ones I've seen (on principle) are Knocked Up and the DCOM classic, Wish Upon A Star. And being a bridesmaid was nothing like either of those films.

There is a lot that goes into being a bridesmaid.

There's the dress, the bridal shower, the bachelorette party, the day of getting ready, and the numerous emails and potential lady drama (Ladies? Drama? Who woulda thunk it?) in between.

I am not good at decorating, I am not good at Pinteresting, I am not good at accessorizing. My role in any given bridal party tends to be "Hype Girl/Switzerland." That is to say, I get people pumped up, mediate tense situations, and keep things chill. This often involves Spotify playlists, cheap laughs, and white wine. (Usually just a smidgen too much white wine. Will I never learn?)

I also take issue with the notion of being a bridesmaid having anything at all to do with struggling to become a bride. I see the two as entirely unrelated. I see it as an honor, a testament to the strong female friendships I have developed over the years.

And frankly, I've always loved a captive audience. I am a-okay with being up front at someone's wedding. It's not like anyone's looking at me, but an excuse to get my hair and makeup done, and a public display that I'm an awesome friend (and sister)? This big ego will take it.

Every girl growing up thinks about what she might like to name her kids. Now that I'm of a certain age, there is also that regular conversation of "who would I pick as my bridesmaids?" With four slots already taken by family members, it's gonna be a large bridal party. Let's hope my future mystery husband doesn't have any sisters.

Does Jon Hamm have sisters? I should look into that.

The fact is I have a ton of girlfriends that I would love to have in my bridal party, and that gives me so much happiness. In a world where we so often see girls hating on one another, I feel so lucky to have such loving female relationships in my life. Too many potential bridesmaids? What a wonderful problem to have!

I firmly believe that if you send positive vibes into the universe, you'll get them back. (I've tried the alternative, and I can assure you that negative vibes only lead to more negative vibes.) And I can assure you, there have been nothing but amazing vibes at each wedding I have been a part of.

So…I'm hoping that bodes well for my future of defying the old Listerine adage. But I'll be sure to keep my breath fresh…just in case.

I don't know if you noticed this about me, but I post on social media a lot.

I say that with a degree of cynicism and disdain that does not necessarily translate through this medium, so I will attempt to express those emotions through a gif that I probably use more than any other gif. 

While I generally avoid cynicism and disdain, this is a topic that brings it out my inner (and outer) eye roll, because I get a lot of snarky comments about it. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

I KNOW I POST A LOT. I'M THE ONE DOING IT.

I am, in true millennial form, extremely plugged in. I am also highly self aware. A+B=I AM AWARE OF THE FREQUENCY OF MY POSTS.

Yes, I had seven thousand posts about the Oscars, as well as most major live television events. Along with my affinity for social media comes an affinity for all things pop culture, and one of my favorite aspects of platforms like Facebook and Twitter is that they provide easy outlets for sharing my pop culture fascinations with like-minded individuals. 

The Oscars are basically my Super Bowl (I also posted a lot during the Super Bowl). I have a ton of opinions about them and make it a priority to see every nominated film. Of course I am going to have thoughts about the broadcast...this year, drunken thoughts, thanks to the intersection of Mardi Gras and the Academy Awards. Bad timing, Academy! (Or…great timing?)

As much as I enjoyed watching the Oscars with my family as a kid and with my friends as an adult, the ability to share the experience with my friends and acquaintances online has only added to the entertainment value of it. For me, at least. I can totally see why someone would argue the opposite. 

Despite being so transparent about my media habits, it really struck me just how married I am to the internet when I recently was without a phone for just under a week. Those of you who saw my old phone know that the hardware was in a seemingly dire state of disrepair for quite some time.

I wish I had a sexy story for how it got this way, but alas. You drop a phone a thousand times and nothing happens…but a thousand and one, man. A thousand and one is all it takes.

"It was a million to one shot, Doc. Million to one!"

ANYway, the software remained reasonably functioning (I used the term "reasonably" quite loosely), until I went on a ghost tour in the French Quarter on Ash Wednesday. My phone had somehow managed to make it through all Mardi Gras shenanigans, but alas, the tour did us in. I'm convinced a poltergeist must have followed me home, because upon leaving the Quarter it started spontaneously opening and closing apps, calling/Facetiming random people, and--creepiest of all--randomly playing brass band music. 

It was actually terrifying.

After lots of Sprint store bureaucratic nonsense that Thursday night, I was able to get a new phone (for an absurdly amazing upgrade deal of 99 cents…yes…CENTS), but only if it was mailed to me, and thus unavailable until Monday.

I almost had a tantrum about it (in fairness to me, this is a natural side effect to any given Sprint store experience), but then I had to step back a moment and remind myself that I was getting pissed about having to wait a few days for my 99 cent iPhone 5c. Talk about #firstworldproblems.

And so, I unplugged from Wednesday until Monday. And it was…eye opening.

My attention span was born anew. No Candy Crushing while watching TV. No instinctual Facebook/instagram casual scans when I had a free moment. And mostly no contact with anyone with whom I didn't already have plans.

Did I learn a lesson? I don't know. I mean again, I'm highly self aware. I know I'm too plugged in. I know that my attention span has been slowly and increasingly decimated these past few years of SmartPhone ownership. But now that I have my new and improved phone, I'm right back to my old habits. 

But it was nice. I understand better the appeal of unplugging on Shabbat, when Jewish tradition mandates that we are not to use any electronics.

Maybe I'll take more opportunities to leave my phone at home.

And then maybe I'll post about it on Facebook.

Having survived--nay, THRIVED [at]--my first Mardi Gras, I have been keeping a running list in my heads of Andrea-specific tricks of the trade.

1) These boots MUST be made for walkin', and for pourin'. 

My first parade was Muses, a night parade that falls on Thursday which is noted for being an all female parade in which they hand out single shoes, usually heels, that have been bedazzled in some way.

Many people go their whole life having never caught a shoe, but I was there with my fabulous, determined, and occasionally aggressive Israeli friend. Most people set up shop in one spot, but this girl is a runner. And oh, did we run.

Fortunately, it just so happens that I have one pair of old running shoes that is purple and another old pair that is green and yellow.  I managed to snag one shoe (a flip flop that I initially thought to be a mask when it was wrapped up…score!), and she snagged FIVE. 

Mardi Gras day was basically completely miserable. It was 30 degrees and pouring. I honestly didn't want to go to a parade at all…weather aside, being that I had been aggressively partying since Thursday night, by Tuesday I was just wiped out and kinda over it. But alas, I was hosting friends, and also it was my first Mardi Gras. I felt like I had to stick it out. 

Fortunately, I wore my galoshes. This gave me the opportunity for a primo spot on the route right in a puddle. Non-galoshed paradegoers wouldn't dare brave it! Win! On top of that, my galoshes are zebra print, which gave my outfit a hint of Mardi Gras zazz.

2) Theme your screams!

I really don't care much for parades in general, and for this reason was really confused as to why Mardi Gras was such a big deal beyond just drunkenness. What's so fun about a parade? The answer: swag. As in, how much useless swag (beads, stuffed animals, various tchotchkes) can I get? (Before)

(After)

I found that the best way to do this was a combination of eye contact and themed yelling. At first, I focused my bead begging on "IT'S MY FIRST MARDI GRAS!!!! I JUST MOVED HERE AND IT'S MY FIRST TIME!"

Once that got tired, I went with "CLOTHE ME! I'M SO NAKED! WARM ME WITH BEADS!" But as the parades continued, I found that I had the best luck with theming my screams.

The best example of this was when a Rolling Stones float passed. I just sang, at the top of my lungs and on a loop, "RAAAAAAPE MUUUURDEEEER! IT'S JUST A SHOT AWAY! IT'S JUST A SHOT AWAY!" (That is, the lyrics to my favorite Stones song, "Gimme Shelter.") I got some beads, and then the float passed. I then got a tap on the shoulder from a little girl telling me that the woman who beaded me was trying to get my attention. She beckoned me back to the float, and I fought the crowd in front of me to be gifted with a CRAP ton of beads.

A similar instance happened at a later parade at a winter themed float. I sang out the words to "Let It Go" and cheered for Adele Dazeem. Worked like a charm.

What did not work was yelling at celebrities. Quentin Tarantino was on a particularly tall float, and my friend just yelled "DJANGO UNCHAINED! DJANGO UNCHAAAAAAINED!" Not only did he not hear her, but if he had he would have likely just thought, "Yes. That was a film I made."

I had similar lack of luck yelling "I LOVE BO DUKE" at Jon Schneider. But I'd like to think he appreciated it, assuming he heard it. Which...he didn't.

#drool

By Mardi Gras day, I got super lazy and just yelled the names of the floats repeatedly.

I cannot stress enough how underwhelming Mardi Gras day was, at least from my perspective. How do people last that long?!?!?

3) Don't forget to pack a swag bag!

Again, I hadn't realized that the whole point of the parades is to get stuff, so the first day I just stuffed all my swag in my shirt.

This worked in a bind, but proved problematic when I came up with the idea of the "Booby Coozey."

It's a fun rhyme, and it works temporarily. But when you're running after floats and jumping around, that inevitably ends in beer down your shirt, made even grosser when you are wearing a feather boa. Beware the fickle friend that is the Booby Coozey.

Note: if you have forgotten your swag bag, have no fear...you can probably catch one. And remember, clear out your swag bag nightly so as to make room for more swag!

4) Start early, end early…also known as MY KIND OF PARTYING.

The first two nights of parades started at 6 and were done before 9. That meant I started drinking around 5 and was in bed by 11. GLORIOUS.

Over the weekend, we had a steady regimen of brunch-->liquor store-->parade. This meant we started drinking at 9, continued throughout the morning and afternoon, hit the night parade around 5 or 6, and again…in bed by 11. I repeat…MY KIND OF PARTY.

Just remember: pace yourself! Or, whatever, just do shots. It's Mardi Gras, dammit! The whole city is shut down solely for partying. Go for it; you can always go to bed early. HOORAY FOR GOING TO BED EARLY!

5) Beware bead injuries!

At a certain point I found a cut on my head. The origin is unclear, but were I a betting woman I'd say that it was from a flying bead. They don't weigh much, but the added velocity increases the weight to at LEAST 75 pounds. Plus, many are wrapped in bags with krewe-specific charms on them. These are the best beads, but also the sharpest.

I later found a mysterious bruise on the inside of my thigh, also of unknown origin. I wish I could say I had a sexy story to explain it, but I'm pretty sure it was from being hoisted on my friends shoulders, thighs squeezed against layers of beads. What's weird is that the bruise is only on one side! Curious.

6) Make new friends, but keep the old.

I can really only speak to the experience uptown, where I live and where most of the parades are. But in my hood, everyone is friendly, and you will encounter a wide cast of characters along the route. This even included a delightful interaction with a police officer, as well as an adorable dog for whom I caught a glow stick. But try not to lose the people you're with. It's a pain in the ass to find them, especially considering the inebriation level, and the fact that everyone in the crowd starts to look the same after a certain degree of bead coverage.

7) Don't move your car. Ever.

I have a primo spot on the parade route. Didn't even realize this when I found the apartment online before moving here, because I didn't realize that most parades are uptown. Unfortunately, having left work after 5 on day 1, that meant zero parking at my house, which led to me parking illegally around the corner.

However, should you be cursed with a parking ticket (because I couldn't park at my OWN HOUSE! MADDENING!), hold on to it for a bit. You'll probably have to park illegally again at a certain point (or at least, of questionable legality), so just put the ticket back on your car! Once a cop sees that bright orange paper, he'll assume his work is done, and the joke's on him!

8) Uptown is the best. No reason to ever leave.

We went to one parade downtown and it was a madhouse. It's one of the biggest and most notorious parades, but we just couldn't even enjoy it because there's nowhere to park, and because everyone goes downtown because they assume it's the place to be.

I was an uptown girl in New York, and I am an uptown girl in New Orleans. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. 

In sum, I had a lot of concerns leading up to Mardi Gras. Will I have to pretend to enjoy the parades to fit in? Will I have to drag myself to parades I don't want to go to just because I was hosting? Will I be able to keep up? This doesn't sound appealing at all!

I am so happy to have been so wrong.

Mardi Gras is the greatest thing ever, and possibly the most fun I've ever had in my life. Think about it…everywhere else in the world, people were going to work. Here, the entire city is shut down…why? For a made up holiday that is entirely concerned with enjoying life. It consists of short, intensive bouts of partying, and you can go to bed early without missing the party at all. Or stay out all night, if that's your pleasure.

I learned so much about this city in that glorious week. And there is nowhere else I'd rather be!

"The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of [Oscar] things!"

It's the most wonderful time of the year, folks! The time when Andrea draws upon her adolescent dream of being a film critic, before she attempted to be a journalism major and realized she hated REAL journalism. Fortunately, in our modern blogosphere, everyone truly is a critic.

And so, without further ado, having seen the films represented in every "major" category (picture, actors, director), I give you my Oscar picks. 

BEST PICTURE

American Hustle  

This movie was fun. That's really the best way I can describe it. I am completely confused as to what all the hype is about; it was not at all exceptional. Nothing about it screams Oscar to me except for the costumes. I loved the soundtrack, I loved the cast, I loved Amy Adams' cleavage, and the plot was cute...but in a stronger year I don't know that this film would have even been up for consideration. Props to Bradley Cooper (and his hair) for being consistently wonderful, but beyond that…meh.

Captain Phillips

Very well done, not necessarily my favorite but I can't find much to criticize about the film. It was perfectly shot, perfectly cast, and definitely managed to build the suspense despite the fact that anyone following the news already knew how this story ended. The best part of the movie was the last 5-10 minutes after (spoiler alert) the captain was rescued. Tom Hanks' performance in those moments warranted its own nomination, and props to Barkhad Abdi for making his first film appearance with guns blazing. 

Dallas Buyers Club

Good movie, GREAT performances. I've always been a huge Matthew McConaughey fan, but this film brought his chops to another level. I believed him; he disintegrated into the role. And it's hard to believe that Jordan Catalano managed to be such a convincing transgender woman. I didn't just believe the performance, I was charmed by it. Some of the pacing of the film felt a little unbalanced, but again, this was a movie about performances.

Gravity

Gravity is my "Avatar" of the year. That's not an entirely fair comparison, because Gravity is a FAR better film than Avatar. What I mean is that, while the subject matter itself is not exactly my cup of tea (few situations terrify me as much as the premise of this film…floating away into space is existentially horrifying and, had it not been Oscar bait, I would not have put myself through that horror), Gravity is a true achievement in filmmaking. I've never seen anything like it. The visuals, especially when coupled with a staggeringly compelling (and staggeringly not boring) performance from Sandra Bullock, made for a truly one of a kind experience. It didn't necessarily move me, and it didn't necessarily stick with me in the way that other films did. But Gravity is special. It will and should sweep the technical categories, and that in and of itself, to me, justifies a Best Picture nomination. Also, props to the director for the 91 minute run time! Proof that LESS IS MORE.

Her

When I saw the preview for Her, I wrote it off as hipster nonsense. Then when I realized it was Spike Jonze, I figured it might still be hipster nonsense, but I love Being John Malkovich and LOVE Adaptation, so it seemed more promising. I am surprised to report that I quite enjoyed the film. It was witty, it was original, and perhaps its biggest achievement is that it felt oddly plausible. I believed Joaquin's character would fall in love with computer program ScarJo, because I fell in love with her too. There were tons of great sound bites that I wish I could have paused the film to scribble down, quotes that spoke so profoundly on the nature of love while still managing to avoid cheesiness. My only issue with the film is that it was--you guessed it--TOO LONG! It wasn't even so unbearably long at 126 minutes (a bit much for me, but tame compared to some others), but with a film as slow-paced as this one, you feel the length that much more. The screenplay stood out to me more than the viewing experience overall, so I don't know that I would have nominated it for best picture (again, in a stronger year it would not have been nominated). But I liked it a lot.

Nebraska

Hands down, my favorite film of the year. No one is more shocked by this statement than myself, as I have something of a love-hate relationship with director Alexander Payne's work. (LOVED Sideways, HATED The Descendants). I did, however, have high hopes, since I love Will Forte and want only great things for him and his career, and because my father is the world's biggest Bruce Dern fan. Didn't want Dad's idol to disappoint! Nebraska is a very small film, an intimate portrait of a part of the country that does not get a ton of attention, particularly cinematically. It is not showy; it is as simple as the personalities it documents, and there is such beauty in this simplicity, particularly when conveyed through a black and white (really more sepia, actually) lens. Yes, it was a bit slow at times, and perhaps could have used some editing in the middle. But it has such heart, and despite the fact that my family situation is entirely different than the characters in this film, there were such universal truths that I related to on such a personal level. The movie, to me, is about aging, and about watching your parents age. It is heartbreaking, bittersweet perfection, with a career defining performance from Bruce Dern. I loved Nebraska so much I almost wrote a blog post solely about this love. Love love love.

Philomena

Philomena looked like a total snoozefest and I had no desire to see it. The only attention I gave it was laughing at how Leonardo DiCaprio referred to it as "Philomania" at the Golden Globes. I am so pleased to have been so wrong about this beautiful film. Like Nebraska, it's not so showy, and doesn't stand out as much as some of the other films this year. The story is simple with themes that are incredibly complex, and it manages to maintain a lightness despite a very heavy subject matter. No surprise that Judi Dench gives a wonderful performance, and I loved the juxtaposition of her sincerity and faith with the more cynical Steve Coogan character. Philomena won't win anything, but I'm glad to see it getting recognition. What a wonderful surprise.

Twelve Years a Slave

This is not a movie that you finish and say "Wow! I loved it!" This is not a movie I would really ever want to watch again. It's like, when would I be in the mood to watch 12 Years a Slave? That's like saying, "Hey, let's stay in tonight, pop some popcorn and watch Schindler's List!" Having said that, the movie is phenomenal. Epic. Powerful. Incredible performances from an all star cast, and an unbelievable breakout performance from (hopefully) Best Supporting Actress shoo-in Lupita Nyong'o. I'll never forget it, and it's an extremely important film. With the exception of the ridiculousness of Brad Pitt's presence in the film (he made the movie happen, so I guess I respect that he can do whatever he wants), it's really an amazing piece of cinema. I feel like it should be mandatory viewing in all high school American history classes. And Fassbender. FASSBENDER. Yes.

The Wolf of Wall Street

I begrudgingly watched this film, and I only say that because of its 3 hour run time. This goes against everything I love about film…aka MOVIES SHOULD BE 90 MINUTES. However…I. Loved. This. Movie. It might have been 3 hours, but it was never boring. I loved to hate these characters. I loved the debauchery. I loved Leo and I LOVED Jonah Hill, honestly thought Jonah stole the film. I don't think it needs to win any awards, but I loved it unabashedly. And I'm always happy to see Coach Taylor in anything, no matter how small the role.

Will Win: Everything I read suggests a toss up between 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. I'm kind of shocked that it's such a close contest, because I felt the former was far superior to the latter. Gravity is more crowd pleasing, did better at the box office, and is a technological masterpiece. But 12 Years a Slave is important, and masterfully acted and directed. I think it will win.

Should Win: SHOULD win? 12 Years a Slave. What I'd like to win? Nebraska, but of course it doesn't have a shot in hell.

Honorable Mention: I really didn't think this was a strong year for movies, but I felt that Saving Mister Banks and, surprisingly, Rush, were fantastic and deserved some recognition. Alas.

Were I to pare it down to 5 nominees, I would pick:

Gravity

Nebraska

Philomena

12 Years a Slave

The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTOR

Christian Bale - American Hustle

Bruce Dern - Nebraska

Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall Street

Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave

Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club

Will Win: Matthew McConaughey

Should Win: SO HARD! McConaughey absolutely deserves it, but so does Bruce Dern, and I just feel like while Matthew will get so many more amazing parts in his career, Bruce Dern is 78 years old. There are not a lot of Oscar-caliber roles written for burgeoning octogenarians. I know that shouldn't be a factor, but my heart is with my dad's pick. DERN!

Honorable Mention: WHY was Christian Bale nominated? I love him and all, but seriously? Over Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips? Even over Joaquin Phoenix in Her? I don't understand it.

BEST ACTRESS

Amy Adams - American Hustle

Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine

Sandra Bullock - Gravity

Judi Dench - Philomena

Meryl Streep - August: Osage County

Will Win: Cate Blanchett

Should Win: Cate Blanchett. No question. Cate is a goddess. I love that she's won an Oscar for playing Katherine Hepburn, because she is truly a modern day Katherine Hepburn…except she's better. Watching this character's fall from grace is absolutely uncomfortable and masterfully done.

Honorable Mention: I'm extremely impressed with Sandra Bullock's ability to carry this film on her own and make it not boring. And I'm EXTREMELY ANGRY at the Streep nomination. I feel like…did they even WATCH this crapfest of a movie, or just saw her name on the cast list and threw it in the mix? She's not even that good in it, because NO ONE IS WHEN THE WRITING IS THIS TRITE AND AWFUL. Emma Thompson was ROBBED for her amazing work in Saving Mister Banks. And did I mentioned I HATE AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY? #micdrop

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Barkhad Abdi - Captain Phillips

Bradley Cooper - American Hustle

Michael Fassbender - 12 Years a Slave

Jonah Hill - The Wold of Wall Street

Jared Leto - Dallas Buyers Club

Will Win: Jared Leto

Should Win: Jared Leto, but WOW this one is close. This is absolutely my favorite category, because I loved each and every one of these performances. Barkhad Abdi was absolutely haunting. I didn't love American Hustle, but Bradley Cooper was the best part of it. Jonah Hill came out of nowhere with a pair of prosthetic teeth to steal Wolf of Wall Street, which is no easy feat considering the extravagance of the film. And FASSBENDER. I'm actually really sad he has to go up against Leto, because otherwise this would be a steal. So unbelievably evil, which for me was made even more chilling by the fact that he is so unbelievably good looking. How can something so beautiful be SO VILE? But it's gotta be Dallas Buyers Club on this one. 

Honorable Mention: The academy got this one right. All five knocked it out of the park. Daniel Bruhl got some attention for his work in Rush, and I liked that movie a LOT, but Jonah Hill earned his place in this category.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sally Hawkins - Blue Jasmine

Jennifer Lawrence - American Hustle

Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years a Slave

Julia Roberts - August: Osage County

June Squibb - Nebraska

Will Win: Lupita Nyong'o. There's a chance Jennifer Lawrence could take it because everyone loves her, but I think the Academy will get this one right.

Should Win: LUPITA. Lupita Lupita Lupita. The most amazing part of an amazing movie. I loved Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle; she brought life to a movie that was too long. But an Oscar? I don't know about that. It's gotta be Lupita. And I cannot WAIT to see what she wears!

Honorable Mention: June Squibb blew me away. What a great part! What are the odds a woman of her age gets SUCH an amazing part. Major props to her. WTF JULIA ROBERTS. Did I mention I HATED THAT MOVIE SO MUCH?!?!? I will say that I hated Julia less than I hated Meryll. BUT I HATED THIS MOVIE.

BEST DIRECTOR

Alfonso Cuaron - Gravity

Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave

Alexander Payne - Nebraska

David O. Russell - American Hustle

Martin Scorcese - The Wolf of Wall Street

Will Win: Alfonso Cuaron

Should Win: Alfonso Cuaron. While my heart is with Alexander Payne and the subtlety with which he handled such a nuanced, charming story, no one accomplished anything close to what Cuaron accomplished in terms of innovation and excellence.

Honorable Mention: Spike Jonze should have gotten David O. Russell's spot. But it doesn't matter; this is just no contest for Gravity.

And just for funsies…

I saw the Oscar nominees for Animated Short Film, so I'll add my thoughts on that as well.

FERAL

GET A HORSE!

MR. HUBLOT

POSSESSIONS

ROOM ON THE BROOM

Will Win: Get A Horse! It's a Disney cartoon featuring old school Mickey Mouse. It'll get the sentimental vote, but for me was the weakest of the 5.

Should Win: Possessions. The animation was the most remarkable on this one, and it's the only one that stuck with me, that I was still thinking about after the animated showcase.

I also enjoyed Feral for its originality in terms of animation style, but I felt that it was a little forced in terms of attempts at depth and gravity and darkness.

Room on the Broom was cute and sweet, but about 15 minutes too long. Brevity applies to short films as well! Less is more!

Honorable Mention: In the animated film showcase, they showed a few honorable mentions, all of which I enjoyed more than most of the nominees. Check out A La Francaise for a good laugh!

If you've made it to the end of this blog, you must be as Oscar addicted as I am! I'd love to hear your thoughts, and can't wait for the red carpet fashion!

This has been, without question, one of the top 5 most emotional weeks of my life. I felt the height of love and the depths of heartbreak in such a small amount of time, and I write this in a state of complete exhaustion. But I have to get it out, because I'm hoping it will help me cope with the fallout I am currently feeling.

Last week at around this time, I brought home Skye. I immediately changed his name to Draper, because he was the handsomest man in the world. I mean look at that punim!

I decided to foster him for a month to see if it was a good fit. I felt like Daddy Warbucks.

They told me they didn't know a whole lot about his history, but that mostly he is just high energy and has tendencies towards food aggression. The first few days, he showed no signs of either. And for the record, even when it got bad, he never showed a single intimation of food aggression.

It didn't take long for him to bond with me. The trainer suggested I walk him around the apartment on a leash in case he reacted poorly to his new environment. But he was totally chill, just took it all in. His inner monologue seemed to be chanting, "WHOA! UPGRADE!"

He immediately took a shit on my floor.

I guess he was excited. But the potty accidents I can handle, and he took very well to the crate training.

(This is him trying to get to my flip flop, which I put on top of the crate to get it out of his reach. But I have to appreciate his commitment.)

He was a total cuddlebug. We Skyped with my parents that first night and he just sat calmly licking my face, the picture of doggie perfection. My parents started to reconsider their stance on pit bulls--though he's actually not a pit bull. But he's a bully breed, and they have reputations. He seemed to defy that reputation.

(OK...he's a little terrifying in this last one.)

I knew I was still technically fostering, but all I could think was...ain't no way I'm taking this dog back. I kept telling him, "don't worry, baby! I'll never leave you again."

(He's snoring on me. SNORING ON ME.)

Going to work was excruciating. I just wanted to be home cuddling with him. And I also wanted to make sure he didn't pee in the crate. He never did. He loved his crate and had no desire to mess it up.

Really, he only had accidents when I didn't take him out immediately after getting home. He had to learn my rhythms, and I had to learn his.

But then...it began.

On Tuesday, I brought my friend and coworker Karin over to meet the pup. Mind you, he no history of aggression toward humans, and had not shown a single sign of aggression since I'd known him.

Until he did.

He bit her. It was bad. She's okay, but it was scary. I couldn't stop crying, both because I was upset at what had happened and because I felt like I had postpartum depression or something. I had initially had his crate in my room because I couldn't bear to leave him alone at night. But that night I moved it into the living room. I couldn't be around him. Plus, we worked with the trainer that night, and rather than release energy and tire him out, it just made him that much more excited.

I barely slept. I woke up at 5am feeling so guilty at the thought that I might not be emotionally or physically prepared to handle this dog. But I thought...let's give it some time. Maybe that aggression was a fluke.

The rest of the week was full of ups and downs. Walks were challenging. Sometimes he'd be fine...he loved walking on Magazine Street, and in that setting pretty much did not get aggressive. But then, sometimes even on the same day, he would randomly get aggressive with someone for no reason. This morning, when I took him for his morning potty walk, there was a little old man next door planting flowers. Wasn't even looking at Draper. And Draper tried to attack him. He didn't come close, because fortunately I am strong enough to control him. But...it's a problem. The other night I had a friend come over and I couldn't even take him out of the crate to practice socializing, because he was barking uncontrollably and looked like he straight up wanted to murder this guy.

That was really the straw that broke the camel's back. Because he actually scared me that night. And furthermore, if I can't have people over...I mean, that's the opposite of what I want from a dog. Being a dog owner was supposed to make me more social, not antisocial or hesitant about being social because my dog won't like it.

The more comfortable he got, the more difficult he was around the house. He started chewing on my shoes and wouldn't let go, he chewed through my iPhone charger...these are normal puppy things and are not particularly surprising. But it was that on top of everything else...I just felt so exhausted all week, emotionally and physically. Ah, to be a mother!

Bad behavior is one thing. Aggressive behavior is something else. I wasn't confident that I could help him, and I wasn't confident that he wouldn't try to hurt someone else.

And so, Draper went back to the shelter today.

They totally understood. Before I brought him back, some ARNO (Animal Rescue New Orleans, where I got him) volunteers came by to check out his behavior. One told me that she had a friend who had similar problems with her dog, and that once they brought in a behaviorist, he was able to get better...

...AFTER FOUR MONTHS.

I'm sorry, but a week with this guy all but broke me. FOUR MONTHS? I have to be selfish about this. This is my first dog, and this is not what I signed up for.

I've been crying all day. The woman at the shelter gave me a long hug. They all understood. What kills me is not that I made the wrong decision, because I didn't. I just feel like I let him down, as silly as that might sound. I gave him a taste of the good life, and he was so attached to me because of it that he was in constant fear of it being taken away. And it's just so heartbreaking that because he got so attached and so territorial, it had to be taken away. He thought he was protecting me...uch. I'm crying now. It kills me.

The silver lining is that now they have a better idea of what he needs so that he can get better. And I can't give him what he needs. I just don't have it in me, no matter how much I love him. And I did love him, so so much.

I do want a dog. But I'm gonna need some time to recover from this emotionally. Now I know what I can handle, and what I'm looking for. I still have my leash, and I look forward to the day when I find the right little man or woman to don it.

Until then, I gotta cry this out.

I often joke that I'm a Birthright poster child (referring to the ten-day Israel trips that I have been staffing for the past few years), but I'm kinda not joking. Like, I have legitimately won a $300 Amazon gift card for coming in second in a Birthright Israel essay contest. 

I snuck out with the medic and his friend on my Birthright trip at the behest of several Israeli friends, who tried to reason with goody-two-shoes Andrea that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. When else are you gonna get the chance for a night out in Jerusalem? I caved and carpe'd that diem.

(Rebels in the back seat of Random Dude's car. I actually got really sick that night…KARMA.)

Fast forward to four years later, and I've had many a night out in Jerusalem. I've now been to Israel 8 times, 6 of which were on Birthright (once as a participant, five times staffing. FIVE. TIMES.)

(From my first time staffing. So young, short-haired and enthusiastic.)

I am often asked if I get sick of seeing the same sites over and over again, because each trip is mostly the same. Historically, my response is also the same. "It's different every time because I get to watch new people experience it for the first time, and it brings me back to what a profound effect it had on me. It's even more gratifying to give that experience to someone else than it was to experience it in the first place."

This response is understandably cheesy, but not inaccurate.

However…there is a limit.

If I never climb Masada again, it will be too soon.

I don't need to ever go to Yad Vashem (Holocaust memorial) again. I know that sounds blasphemous, but I've done the tour so many times I could probably lead it. (Not really…but kind of.)

Most of all, the trip is exhausting. The days are long and packed, the sleep deprivation is debilitating, and the bus rides…oooooh the bus rides. I am already prone to motion sickness…add a giant tour bus and winding northern roads, and you've got a recipe for disaster. I usually cope by passing out, leading to way more naps than necessary, none of which are particularly refreshing, all of which lead to grogginess that can only be cured by coffee…except I don't like the coffee.

But then of course, there are those moments. The moments someone responds to your Jewish identity activity with a profoundness you never expected. The moments when a participant who has been otherwise quiet expresses how much a certain site means to them. The moments when someone just LANDS a one-liner, and the whole group reacts and community is built.

And most importantly, the moments when a participant thanks me, tells me that my presence on the trip made it all the more special, that they were so glad I was here for their journey.

So I'm torn. There's so much about this trip that I feel like I've outgrown. But at the same time, I'm really, really, ridiculous good at this job, being the "mommy" of this trip. 

I believe in it. I understand the rhythms of it. I know when to be light, when to be serious, when people are connecting and when they aren't. I understand the educational opportunities, and I understand when not to worry about the educational opportunities.

I just…get it. 

Not only do I feel a responsibility to be a part of this experience, knowing that so many people who staff these trips don't necessarily "get it…"

…but also, it feels good to do something you're good at. Especially when you are showered with verbal validation that you are, in fact, really good at it.

The other element to this debate of "do I want to keep doing these trips" is that it's my free ticket to Israel. Coming off a schedule of constant Israel trips every winter and summer of grad school, it had been way too long since I had my fix. And every time I get my fix, I am met by the argument from countless Israelis (and non-Israelis who have "made aliyah," or moved to Israel) that I'm living in the wrong country, that I'm so much better suited to Israeli life.

For a while, I really bought this argument. There has been more than one phase of my life that has involved serious contemplation of aliyah. There are several reasons for this:

1) wanting a new start

2) a desire to achieve Hebrew fluency

3) potential for finding a Jewish spouse

But things are different now. Crucible moments in the past have led me to consider that move (my Birthright trip, spending a summer on my own studying in intensive Hebrew courses in Tel Aviv, post grad-school unemployment), but I can see now that a lot of that was driven by filling a void I felt in my life.

Now when I hear those arguments, they don't have the same impact on me. Because a recent crucible moment (realizing how much my job was killing my soul) caused me to move to New Orleans, and I've felt largely fulfilled ever since.

I don't need another fresh start. I'm in the thick of one. The things I've always wanted…I'm making them happen. Israel will always be the catalyst that started my rebirth, but I just don't need it in the same way I once did. It seems kind of sad, objectively, but I just don't feel that sad about it. I still love Israel, always will.

But for now, The Big Easy will do just fine.