Disappointed, trying not to be discouraged.

I'm trying not to be upset.
Today was my first weigh in since starting The (New) New Regime and after exercising every day but Saturday and eating really, really well and in moderation and some days not even hitting my points allotment I only lost two pounds.

What the [loudly shouted expletive]?

I know I know I know two pounds is a commendable loss.
I know it is a safe per-week loss according to all those reports from doctors I've been reading about in my health magazines all these years, but
that's it?

It's better than a gain, so there's that.

My plan is to continue on the same eating course I've been on, up my exercises - shooting for twice a day if possible - and upping my daily time on the Air Climber, even if I have to get up even earlier to do so.

This is that important to me - and my health.

Plus, like the good Joan Baez said,

"Action is the antidote to despair."

I'm sure the "despair" she speaks of is a lot worse than the "despair" I'm feeling this morning, but I'm sure she'd be glad to know her words came into my e-mail inbox at precisely the right moment.

Words to live by from Miss Marilyn.

Words to live by.

The following quotes are taking from the current issue of Glamour magazine. The issue celebrates the magazine's Women of Year. One section had some advice from women - some who've been past Women of the Year, some who were well-known, and all of them strong and inspiring.

These two quotes stuck out at me so much that I couldn't stop reading them, going so far as to cut them out and paste them in my - nerd alert! - Quote Notebook.

They're inspiring words that I think I'll continue to revisit when I need a little picking up and a little Power From Within.

"Cherish your solitude.
Take trains by yourself to places you have never been.
Sleep out alone under the stars.
Learn how to drive a stick shift.
Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.
Say no when you don't want to do something.
Say yes if your instincts strong, even if everyone around you disagrees.
Decide whether you want to be liked or admired.
Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here. Believe in kissing."
~~ from Eve Ensler's upcoming book "I Am an Emotional Creature"

"In life, sometimes everything falls into place, and sometimes everything just falls to pieces. The key is to begin creating with these fallen pieces. By improvising, you'll create something magical that might be the best thing you've ever accomplished."
~~ Tori Amos

Ramblings on ... about love.*

At least once a year, I ensconce myself within the fabulously glitzy world of "Sex and the City."

It's that time of year, as I have been smack-dab in the middle of 2009's visit for the last couple weeks. Like "Bridget Jones' Diary," it's something I turn to when I need some reaffirmations about my life which is indubitably less fabulous than my favorite foursome.

I identify with all four of the characters.

Like Carrie, I, too, write for a newspaper, have too many shoes (though not expensive or ridiculously sexy as hers, but I get by) and shit luck with men. I can be narcissistic.

I am sometimes bitchy and cynical like Miranda and so used to being the strong one and taking care of myself that it's hard to let someone else in.

I have my days where I am sometimes brazen enough, or feel thin enough from a particularly good workout that I think I am as slinky and sexy as Samantha, who says and does exactly what she feels.

And at the end of the day, despite all the bitchy narcissistic cynicism I sometimes pander to, like Charlotte, I let myself be hopeful and optimistic about love.

That it's out there.
That I'll find it one day if I just stay steadfast.
I'll hold that hand.
I'll have that arm around me.
I'll have those sweet things whispered in my ear.
I'll be loved for all the things I love when I look in the mirror - not in the narcissistic way that'll drown me, dear heavens no because there's a lot I hate still when I look in the mirror - but what I see behind my Guinness-colored eyes.

"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well that's just fabulous."
~~ Carrie Bradshaw on "Sex and the City"

Strength. An ability to love. An ability to laugh. An ability to enjoy life.
An ability to know myself. And like - even love sometimes - myself, just as I am.

"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love my parents. I love my brother and "sister." I love my friends. I love my job. I love AIM toothpaste. I love mint ChapStick. I love blue PaperMate pens. I love my bedroom. I love music. I love food.

I love seeing people in love because it makes me hopeful.
Maybe I love enough. Maybe I've loved enough to last a lifetime.
Or maybe I just haven't loved the right person yet.

Yeah. I love that thought the best.

*The writer does apologize for the deep thoughts and heavy romanticism. She's been inundated with engagements and weddings in the world around her.

What else is a single gal to do when she can't afford Jimmy Choos?

You say "child-less." I say "child-free."

"It is dangerous to confuse children with angels."
~~~~ David Fyfe

It's a well-known fact that I am not the most patient person in the world.
It may also be widely known that I can, in fact, err on the side of - gasp - bitchy.

But what might come as a surprise, especially considering I am a single woman who is past the age of 30, is that I am not a fan of children.

At all.

Sure, I've had good friends and coworkers who've had children and I've enjoyed watching those children grow up, but being a mom just isn't for me.

I often wonder, as I did this evening as I wandered through Target, how parents do it.
{Back story: Every single time I shop at Target I am surrounded by children screaming bloody murder. I don't know what the store does to them, especially since I am always pretty happy to be shopping there myself, but it's bloodcurdlingly ridiculous.}

"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic."
~~~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was so horribly noisy on today's trip I almost wish I had a Xanax to take.
It got me to thinking.
What would I do if I were a parent?
Does that inner anger I felt today go away when it's your own kid?
I'd like to think that I sure as hell wouldn't let my kids carry on the way I've been appalled to see time and time again.

I've been told that the pixie version of Nikki threw a tantrum or two, but it was something Mommalah never tolerated for longer than a minute.
Granted, I grew up in the days you were allowed to spank kids - which you should still be allowed to do, given the jerk kids I've seen in my day - but my parents took my brother and I out to fancy dinners and we never, ever misbehaved.
Not out of fear, mind you, but out of respect.
{But there is a story where Mommalah infamously dropped trou on my brother right in the middle of the Wyoming Valley Mall back when there used to be fountains. She sat herself right on the side of one and let him have it for being bold. He he. Never mind that there was one instance the dropped trou offender was me. That's moot.}

That's how we were raised. To be humans. To behave in public. To speak when spoken to. And that's carried over into both of our adult lives.

When I was 14, my parents got me my beloved dog, Zakk. A boisterous and bold yellow Lab who could have used a few spankings himself.

He saved me from myself. He taught me how to love and care for something other than myself at a very crucial point in my development, and that too carried over into my adulthood.

I nurtured and cared for Zakk until the day he died 14 years after we got him, exactly half of my life at that point, and I've nurtured and cared for sick parents, boyfriends and friends, so it's not that I am a cold-hearted bitch - which I suppose is debatable depending on our relationship.

I admit I've heard that "tick-tock, tick-tock" bellow maybe once or twice - and even have had names picked out since I was 10 like any good girl - but it goes away right quick. And to be quite frank, I never imagined I would love a kid as much as I loved my Zakk. He was my kid and his death devastated my family and I.

Every time I see a parent with a bad child, or hear an "Ethan, no. ETHAN. Ethan NO!" or similar, I cringe. Would I be able to hold back the scream I, an innocently-shopping bystander, want to let out at that kid that's not mine?

Or would I be the one cooing "Shh" and looking around smugly like my child was made out of gold? I shudder to think.

I raise a toast to myself - and anyone else who doesn't really feel like they're missing out.
Yet.

"If a child annoys you, quiet him by brushing his hair. If this doesn't work, use the other side of the brush on the other end of the child."
~~~~ Anonymous

A 'Fountainhead' of inspiration.

Not five minutes ago, I finished Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."

When I got home tonight, I had 30 pages remaining, and it took me almost an hour to read them - a turtle's pace considering how swiftly I strode though this most amazing book.

I just had to read slowly, even going back to read aloud, some of those pages because I didn't want to reach page 694.
I didn't want finish.
I didn't want to have to think about how this book affected me.

I'm still digesting it.
I want to talk to an architect.
I want to have just finished this book in 1943 when it was first published, and not today, when so much is wrong in people.
I want to break free from the mold, from the steel beams that surround me and my mind sometimes.
I want to go to New York City right now, in this slow drizzle, and see it as Wynand saw it, as Roark saw it, as I've always seen it: one of the most beautiful, inspiring places I've ever seen.

Instead, I think.
I flip through the book because I don't want to part with it yet, going back to some of the many passages that moved me.
Not only moved, but changed me. Maybe.

Gail Wynand to Dominique Keating:
"Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - the total passion for the total height - you're incapable of anything less."

Roark during his Cortlandt trial:
"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unharmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plan his food or hunt it."

From Rand herself:
"Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the end of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life."

and

"I am a Romantic in the sense that I present men as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth."

I feel empowered, but not in an annoying feminist bullshit kind of way, sakes alive no.
Just empowered in myself.
And knowing's half the battle right?

Sane person of a solitary nature.

"She talked to herself often, a habit of sane persons of a solitary nature."
~~ Truman Capote

Once, when I was a young Nikki, my father walked past my bedroom and heard the chattering of many voices.

He asked Mom if I had friends over and she shook her head, to which he then inquired who the hell was in my room with me, concerned about his precious youngest child.

“It’s just her playing with her Barbies,” Mom answered, proud that her daughter was so brilliantly imaginative and creative.*

Puzzled, my dad peeked in on me, and sure enough there I was happy as a clam in my imagination. I always gave my toys different voices as I played, and I could sit there for hours concocting story lines for them.

I guess you could say that I was talking to myself - something I still do, which I realized the other morning as I blabbered on about the strawberries I was cutting for my cereal.

{Blogger's clarification: I live alone. And I love - live even - to talk.}

I've always been able to entertain myself, be it lose myself in a book, my journal or just my imagination.

Is that weird? I'd like to think not - well maybe just a little. But I guess all creative people are a bit daft ...

*This is by no means an assumption ... my darling mother has admitted such on several occasions ... and not all of them were at my insisting at gunpoint.

Some things I love, in random order.

I love the rainbow array of my stilettos.
(introducing my newest addition: canary!)
I'm sure my back will hate me 20 years (or less) down the line, but damned if my legs don't love me right now.
What is more powerful than a sassy pair of leopard pumps? Or patent black? Or or or?
Nothing, my friend.
N o t h i n g!


I love that I can totally dress down on production day Tuesdays, since I am chained to my desk until the cows come home. I was so uber comfy today that I had to take a photo of my outfit this morn:

It consisted of:
- Jeans that are getting too big on me (yay!).
- A gray thermal shirt.
- My fabulously soft red cardigan cable-knit sweater.
- My Uggs which I know now I cannot live without, and consider them probably the most worth-it Christmas gift ever.
- A fleece leopard-print scarf since it was chilly in the morn.
- And natch, my bookish spectacles.

I love blue PaperMate pens and the pewter pen box I got as a gift from a friend. It's inscribed with a quote from one Ernest Hemingway:
"The writer must write what he has to say. Not speak it."

And I especially love Mint ChapStick. I have one at work, on my desk at home, on my nightstand, in the bathroom and in my purse. It's safe to say, since I am always within at least five feet of the green stick of minty goodness,
"Hello. My name is Nikki and I'm addicted to Mint ChapStick."

And I super, duper love when it's time for bed.
Ciao!

Last words.

My quote of the day e-mail included this nugget today:
"Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
~~ George Saunders, last words

Gasp. That's just grand.
(PS - The short story writer isn't still alive and kicking, which is even more grand!)

Another last word morsel I've always been fond of is
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
~~ Pancho Villa (1923)


But getting Saunders' "last words" made me delve into morbidity for a moment.
What would my tombstone (God forbid) say?
1. For one think, it would definitely have pepperoni on it.
2. Nothing, because I fully intend to be cremated.
3. Hopefully the memorial stone would have something quippy like the quote from writer/historian Hilaire Belloc:
"When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'"

Or perhaps something along the lines of what my favorite poet said before cashing in:

"I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record ..."
~~ Dylan Thomas (1953)

Either way, I'm not ready to have my words be ... final. I haven't even gotten them all down yet!

I'm nearly 32, but I don't even know who the hell I am yet. I know that what I do is, in some capacity, what I am on this planet for, but there much more I want to, and need to, do. Novels. Poetry. More writing, more, more, more!

As I read more of the fantastic last words at http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying.html , there was some romanticism, even at death's door, and I'm a sucker for romanticism.

Such as:
"I love you Sarah. For all eternity, I love you."
~~ President James K. Polk to his wife (1849)

Or:
"Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy."
~~ Charlotte Bronte to her husband (1855)


I fell in love with the sweetest blog this evening and it made me feel kind of bad about how much romanticism isn't in my life. Which is a bit ironic, considering how much I love love and all its trappings.

Even that diminutive jerk* Napoleon had romance as the Reaper waited sickle poised for him when he said "Josephine..." before up and dying (1821.)

Bah. That, and all the morbid thoughts, are enough to keep this unfinished writer up tonight. At least I'll be able to keep trying to be quippy ...

"I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis."
~~ Humphrey Bogart (1957)


* Nikki M. Mascali didn't know Monsieur Bonaparte personally, of course, but whilst researching for this blog, she kept picturing the Napoleon character in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" hogging all the water slides at Waterloo.

The week of the slug.

Have not exercised in days.
Since Sunday morning, to be honest.
Feel like a slug - a lazy, lazy slug.

How do those people who run 10 miles a day do it?
How do those people who go to the gym every single morning or evening do it?

I do well for a few days, and then have one day that just derails everything.

I'm really fascinated by how much I miss that feeling of accomplishment that comes with breathlessly stepping off of my Air Climber, but I guess not enough to drag myself out of bed this week. Arrgh.

But like Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day ..."

Show, don't tell.

"Writing well means never having to say 'I guess you had to be there.'" -- Jef Mallett, "Frazz" comic strip

Such words to live by ... rather, words to write by.

Recently, I read a concert review that was so dry and devoid of any emotion that it got me thinking about how people write - and how I write.

I'm a very nosy person by nature, so I'm always looking around or researching to the fullest extent to ask that "one question" no one else has ever asked someone before (wishful thinking I know, but I digress). I'd like to think it just adds a certain something, you know?

If I'm covering a concert, or reviewing a CD (as I am doing the latter this week so be sure to check it out at www.theweekender.com, you're welcome for the shameless plug), I want a reader to hear it like I did, or see what I saw when I listened. I want to capture every single moment and relay that.

I guess it stems from being a chronic journaler since the age of 17, where I'd capture nearly every single second of my day - who said what, what I did, where I went, etc., etc.

Or, it could be from my worrywart Mom who always told me to "get the big picture," meaning be observant of my surroundings - and keep myself safe, because as you well know, bad people lurk every where ... God forbid.

(Ahh, my auto pilot reflex phrase, another thing to thank Mom for inflicting into my daily life ...)

Word nerd.

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."
~~~~Mark Twain

For years, I have subscribed to an e-mail newsletter that sends quotes of the day.
OK - at one time, I subscribed to several such newsletters, but have weaned myself down to just two.

And I don't just stop there: If I am particularly moved by some witty, well-spoken chap or dame whose wise words pop up in my inbox every morn, I will do a completely nerdy thing.

"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character."
~~~~Teddy Roosevelt (Nikki note: He is my 3rd favorite president.)

I will write said quote in designated "Quote of the Day" spiral notebook, one of three that rests n the corner of my desk for such deserving words.

"But why think abut that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"
~~~~Jack Kerouac

I do the same thing if I come across anything in the paper, online or in a magazine article I read. It's almost like an OCD thing - or another one of my OCD things I guess I should say.

I like having these inspiring quotes at my fingertips. I like the process of writing them with my blue PaperMate pen, feeling and hearing the words scratch the white lined paper. It's not unlike the feeling I get when I write in my journal. That tangible inspiration.

I like to think that maybe one day, maybe someday, someone will be moved by my own words, the way that I've been moved at any particular moment by someone else's.

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them."
~~~~Jane Austen

Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa ...

Wow, I knew it's been a while since I've blogged, but I didn't realize it's been this long!
I've just been in my own head lately, writing a lot of dark haiku/tanka, what I oft do when I am working through something that I just don't want to share with the world yet.

I guess it's like when the Talking Heads say in "Psycho Killer:"

"When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?"

I firmly believe that if I don't have anything to say, I don't.
(Now if only I could make that be relegated also to my mouth and not just my writing! LOL!)