Now, I hear the USPS might shut down Saturday service … I’m okay with that — as long as they continue five days a week.

But what I lament is the idea that people just don’t write old-fashioned letters anymore. We’re losing something — an archive of loves, loves lost, travels, penmanship, the ability to coherently write down our thoughts without the benefit of the backspace button or cut and paste rearranging of our thoughts.

How can you express real longing in an email?

I’ve written letters where tears plopped down from my eyes and blotched the ink on the page below, rendering a word or two or maybe several scattered over two or three lines — unreadable. But yet, so readable, right? Pretty hard to misread the emotion behind a tear-stained letter.

And, I’ve been known to literally seal (some of) my letters with a bright red lipsticked kiss, even spritz them with Chanel No. 5.

I doodle cat drawings and smiley faces and send my letters addressed to people I love with big bold color addresses on the front and call men things like “Joe–Master of the Universe-Smith” and “Simon-chef extraordinaire Jarault” — stuff like that. Women, obviously, get less flirtation in my envelope-addressing, but I write them all the same. Just don’t girlify their envelopes up like I do the guys’.

But I write to women friends as much as I do to men. And I still write to three college professors — one of whom maddens me (and I mean that affectionately!) by only corresponding via email and not giving me his home mailing address so I can stalk him in an appropriately literary fashion. I can’t write him at the university any longer because he’s long since retired. He’s the one who taught me about Shakespeare and yet I can’t write to him because he’s an email kinda guy now.

Ah, the vagaries of corresponding.

Didn’t Kevin Costner do a movie about delivering the mail in some future world — The Postman or something like that? Guess I’ll have to watch that.

In the meantime, I’ll continue my love affair with letters … and with the people who deliver them … and oh, yeah, particularly with the people who write me back!

Sheesh. Last night after I posted my “woe is me, I don’t got no fun” blog, I realized what a whiner I’ve turned into about this whole “365 days of fun” thing I got myself into for my New Year’s Resolution.

So, I’m going to quit whining about how I’ve frickin’ lost my mojo, or juju, or ya-ya, or whatever the hell it is and JUST DO IT. Read more »

I’m a sucker for the handwritten letter. For me, there’s nearly nothing better than walking to the mailbox in front of my house, pulling open the little metal door, and finding an envelope with my name scrawled across it. Read more »

Remember awhile back I mentioned that I’d been given a gift certificate to a local spa for Christmas? Well, I used part of it to have a foot massage, but then recently went back to use the rest of the certificate and have a reflexology treatment. This experience took fun to a whole new — and different — level.

I was a bit skeptical — reflexology? But my feet have been bothering me so much lately that I figured I’d try anything. Read more »

Two weeks ago, my best friend married his best girl. Married in Boston, but they came down to Florida for a post-wedding reception dinner. That was last weekend. I went up to Tampa.

And … contrary to everything I’ve ever known or thought I knew about myself … I cried like a frickin’ baby when he and his erstwhile girlfriend, now wife, re-enacted their wedding vows for the Florida contingent. Like a baby. And, believe me — and those of you who know me well know this is true — I NEVER cry. Not any more, at least. Not very often, at least. But for Brian … I cried.

Cried out of happiness. Out of something. I can’t lie and say that Oscar Wilde’s words weren’t ringing through my head — “A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” Maybe it was that idea — of optimism — that was making me cry. Maybe it’s because the cynic in me was thinking for a moment … maybe I’ve got it all wrong — maybe love does exist. Maybe you can take a flier on somebody. Maybe you can fall in love and maybe it will stick. Maybe Wilde wasn’t being cynical when he wrote those words (though I rather think he was) — isn’t it possible he was applauding the nerve it takes to walk that aisle a second time? I can’t imagine doing that myself. Believing in someone that much again.

So, maybe. Maybe that’s why I was crying.

But I know one thing: I was also crying because I love him. He’s the best person I’ve known over the last 17 years. We met at Bucknell.

He taught me about philosophy, in fact, he’s taught me more things than I can remember … and I’d like to think I’ve taught him something as well. We’ve been friends ever since the first night we met at a poetry reading. Friends. The kind that people don’t believe can exist between a man and a woman … but which, most emphatically does exist. At least for us. We’ve lasted. (That’s Bri and me in the photo … a couple of years back at a New Year’s Eve party I threw.) Through my marriage and subsequent divorce. Through his first marriage, and now this beginning his second.

And I imagine we’ll continue to last until my dotage, at which point I fully expect him to support me and my book, cat, and martini habit for the rest of my years. Um, that might test our friendship … at long last. But only because he’s allergic. Not to cats, but to my relentless indulgence of their whims. (He’s already got a word for what he thinks ails me — anthropomorphimania.)

Maybe I cried because Brian has more faith in humans — more faith in love — than I do. (Yes, I admit, I reserve my faith for felines and birds, for the most part.) Maybe I cried because, underneath it all, I’m a big softie (though I doubt it) and I want to believe in people too. In love.

Maybe I just cried because wedding vows make people cry.

I don’t know. But I cried. And weirdly. Very weirdly … I was having fun at the same time.

After a dismal last week through Friday, then, came Saturday.

A friend, another writer in town, called and asked if I wanted to go on a walk. I jumped at the opportunity, despite my sloth-like mentality and went to meet her.

We walked, and laughed, and swapped horror stories about clients and writing projects and people and men. We yakked and gave each other advice and swore at the skies and it was …. hold on to your hats … a lot of fun. Just shows the power of a good girl walk ‘n talk.

I returned home, mood considerably brightened. And then had tremendous fun that night on a date. Read more »

Day three of my 365 days of fun … and yes, honestly, I’m surprised, embarrassed, and a bit saddened to report that it is evidently very hard work for me to have fun.

I spent most of yesterday organizing, prepping for the week ahead, taking time out only to admire the bluejays, tufted titmice, and cardinals outside the window at the feeder. But I did take the time to do what I thought would be fun: I went to Mandala Spa, with a gift certificate I’d been given for Christmas, and had a foot treatment.

It felt good, of course, and it was somewhat relaxing, I guess. But overall, I felt uncomfortable in my skin. Read more »

Was this a year, or what? I’m a huge fan of settling down on New Year’s Eve, putting on my retro shades, and looking back at the crazy, sweet, and just plain foolish shenanigans of the prior 12 months. And this December 31st will find me, a shot of Sambucca at my side, staring out the window forgiving my myriad faux pas of 2009 and plotting to do better in 2010. But in the meantime, I’m handing out my first annual “Naughty & Nice” awards for the game-changers, newsmakers, do-gooders, and the notorious, vainglorious, and utterly inglorious of our fair city and beyond. Read more »

“Bouncing is what Tiggers do best.” (A.A. Milne)

Ah, and Tiger Woods is bouncing right now. Bouncing in a slightly different way from when he bounced from his mistress(es?) bed to wife’s, but bouncing nevertheless.

Bouncing is what tiggers do — that’s all they know how to do. Because a real tiger knows when he’s got steak at home versus hamburger from the fast food joint down the street (a la Paul Newman) and apparently Tiger Woods is really just a Tigger after all — all bounce and no bite.

But he's still awfully cute huh? And I hear he's loaded!

Because, ergo, it takes bite, not to mention balls, to not f*ck around. That’s the easiest trick in the world, cheating. C’mon, it’s so passe as to be, um, passe. Show me a man who can keep it in his pants — not because he has to, but because he wants to — and I’ll show you a real tiger in bed. Non-cheaters, and yes, I think I’ve known at least one in my life, are better in bed because they know how to partner for the long haul, not for the tigger-conundrum of “Oh, I like everything I see and everything I taste!”

That’s what happens when you have no character. Everything looks good when you haven’t an ounce of discrimination in your bones. You go from tiger to tigger in the folding back of the bedsheets.

You bounce, and you tippety-toe through likes and dislikes and fancies and non-fancies, and the wives you wed but no longer want to bed and the women you wouldn’t consider marrying but don’t mind bedding.

But let me say this: I could give a rat’s arse about Tigger’s alleged infidelities. It’s all in a nation’s work, that, and we’re a nation of cheaters — whether actual fornication occurs or not, very few are loyal — to our wives, to our jobs, to our collective “values”, to the people who elect us to high office, to our communities, to say nothing of our disloyalty to our own selves. Day in and day out. We deceive ourselves into believing something about ourselves that our actions say, blaringly loud, is categorically untrue.

Here’s the only person I feel sorry for in this case: The Woods baby. That kid will grow up thinking “Sheesh, my Dad couldn’t even wait for me to be out of the womb before he hit it with someone not my mother.” Well, he or she will have plenty of money for therapy visits, at least.

And a word of advice to Tigger’s wife, though I know she won’t take it: Leave him, sweetie. Leave him and never look back and don’t take a dime. Take the kid and work at Mickey D’s if you have to. The schmuck’s not worth the two seconds it would take to cash his check.