pickling red onions has become one of my favorite things to do.  partly because i know that i'll get to eat them later--on a salad with goat cheese and walnuts and what could be better than that!?!?--but also because making them is one of those rare tasks that is incredibly simple but feels really sophisticated in a domestic kind of way.  somehow having a jar of homemade pickled anything in the fridge feels incredibly satisfying.  and now that i've written all of that down, i realize how this is exactly the kind of thing one should not declare in public.  not unless you want everyone under the age of twenty-five to start snickering.  i can see my 12 year-old's eyes rolling.  kill me now, she'd be thinking.  if that ever becomes one of my favorite things to do, i will know it's time to go.  yep.  that's me.  not really caring about the shame i should be feeling.  that's me going to put on the kettle and unscrew the vinegar.  didn't i say something about a precipice?

image found here
  

i am on the edge.  teetering on that precipice of mid-life.  it is exhilarating and horrible, both.  cookies and milk taste even better than they did when i was young.  working hard at crafting a fictional life, falling in love with people who have already died, becoming young enough to remember young.  i see t's hands on his guitar and i wonder if there is a girl out there, the girl who will love his hands first, the way i loved the mister's first.  i was looking for metaphors, even then.  

do you listen to the sound the disposal makes as it whirs?  is there a small shriek every time a leaf turns loose of its hold on the branch and falls to the street?  are you clean on the inside, or filthy?  the sky was cloudy and gray when i saw two people shooting drugs in their car.  it was just one time.  you could be a star.  bring your friend.  no, not her.  the hot one.  we reek of trouble.  do you want to call your mom?

recently, there were some black moods.  angry, hateful, disgusting.  the funny thing about moods, is that they're catching.  more contagious than the flu, i think.  so i won't say who started it, but suffice it to say that, at one point or another, we had each become afflicted.  this got me thinking about the antidotes to a black mood.  we should each have a bag of them, and use them just like medicine.  my bag includes:

• make cookies
• a walk
• music
• lock myself up & work
• an outing to the bookstore
• an episode of the office, 30 rock, or curb your enthusiasm
• lock myself up & read
• a hot chai
• new pajamas
• scrabble, pente, or cards
• car talk

you?  i tried to get everyone to make their own bag because when you need it most, you often forget what in the world you could do to make it better.