Inspired by this post at Shel­ter­rific, I just baked four dozen cook­ies. But mine are really weird!

In the top photo you’ll notice that my cook­ies look par­tially raw. Which is what the recipe says might hap­pen. Still, it goes against all my bak­ing intuition.

In the sec­ond photo, note that I have three dif­fer­ent degrees of cook­ies. The ones in the back are nearly ined­i­ble now that they’ve cooled, while the mid­dle ones seem a tad under­done. The cook­ies in the fore­ground are a lit­tle too crunchy for my taste. None of them are just right, though, and for a baker who feels that choco­late and peanut but­ter are the build­ing blocks for, well, just about any­thing, this will not do!

What’s some­thing you bought, know­ing it was a total waste of money?

I have owned some remark­ably adorable-but-impractical shoes. The most egre­gious exam­ples have been sold on ebay, but only after hav­ing been worn a hand­ful of times–and get­ting tons of compliments.

Soon it will be Christ­mas Day and I’m jonesing for win­dow dec­o­ra­tions — just like the ones I used to know. Thank­fully, Fred Flare comes through with this awe­some slideshow of city spirit. How genius are the Bar­neys win­dows? I salute you, Simon Doo­nan, as always.

I find a way to not do a lot of things. Like this week it dawned on me that I like to dec­o­rate for the holidays–and after pur­chas­ing this, I am now kick­ing myself for not mak­ing Our Own Very Spe­cial Hand­made Chris­mukkah com­plete with pom-pom yarn wreaths and the cute trees, and not col­lect­ing a par­tic­u­lar color of vin­tage orna­ment. OK, there were no pho­tographs of crafty meno­rahs, but I could’ve worked some­thing out. So now I’m gaz­ing at other people’s totally cute Christ­mases and expe­ri­enc­ing a des­per­ate sense of longing.

I guess I can start mak­ing my pom-pom wreath for next year.

Thirty-one came and went with­out too much trauma–in fact, it was kind of nice. Kelly Sue and I were ladies who lunched, Ryan and I had a quiet night since we’re hav­ing our offi­cial birth­day din­ner Mon­day and my fam­ily cel­e­brates tonight.

But I am sud­denly aware, maybe even hyper–aware, of the fact that I am no longer 21. Actu­ally, 21 seems very very near (Remem­ber that time we were walk­ing up Avenue A at 4am and we saw Mark Ibold and I decided we should fol­low him?) but awfully far away, like those were scenes from some­one else’s life. Or a movie. A slow-moving bio­graph­i­cal tale that fol­lows our hero­ine as she stum­bles through attempts at romance and career advance­ment while tak­ing advan­tage of par­ties with goodie bags and open bars. It’s not the most inter­est­ing movie, but there are some funny parts.

They’re lit­tle reminders: the fact that my stack of CDs at Love Gar­den is no longer an indi­ca­tor of release dates and hip­s­ter­dom (I’m a good six months behind on every­thing, not to men­tion I get really out­raged when I browse the used sec­tion and find per­fectly good things–the entire career out­put of Polvo–there. Who would sell Polvo? Who?). Or that I find myself start­ing sen­tences about how I don’t under­stand what the kids are into. I like going to bed early. Just some­one stop me if I pull out the mom jeans, OK?

Must. Get. Every­thing. Paid. For. By. Insurance.

Hence, what bet­ter time to have a pro­ce­dure where some­one else’s gums are grafted onto mine, since appar­ently I have the gums of an elderly per­son? You know how it’s annoy­ing when the den­tist is all, “So, been on any vaca­tions lately?” and you’re like, “Um, your hands are in my mouth, ass­hole, so I can’t really elab­o­rate on my tour of Peru?”

OK, the peri­odon­tist was doing the same thing–about books, no less–while half of my mouth was numb and my lips felt about twenty feet thick. Even if I’d wanted to talk, I couldn’t. I left the office with one side of my mouth all droopy and weird, with a giant piece of gauze stuck in for good mea­sure. The effect was very…ugly. Then Ryan and I spent last night look­ing at my mouth and get­ting grossed out by it.

Am I the only one who feels like Char­lie Rose is a dum­b­ass when he talks about/to artists? We had last week’s episodes saved up, includ­ing one with Lucian Freud’s dealer and an old friend (John…Richardson? the art his­to­rian who’s writ­ing the multi-volume Picasso bio?) and seri­ously, Char­lie was ask­ing these TOTALLY inane ques­tions. At one point he said some­thing to the effect of, “So…there’s a list of col­lec­tors who always are look­ing for Freud’s paint­ings?” No, both of your inter­vie­wees have only called Freud The Great­est Liv­ing British Artist like, fif­teen times, there­fore, the gallery sends dudes with sand­wich boards out onto the street to adver­tise that he has work for sale.

I mean…

If you’re an artist of any stature (ie, highly col­lected or respected like Freud), your work is sold before the show is hung. I don’t know this by per­sonal expe­ri­ence or any­thing, but come on, Char­lie! I would like it if you could at least act like you know. For me, anyway.

What’s your favorite heart­break song?
Sub­mit­ted by esta86.

I could answer a ques­tion like this all day and then some.

“Mallo Cup” by the Lemon­heads: Here I am out­side your house at 3 am/Trying to think you out of bed

“Grudge Fuck” by the Scud Moun­tain Boys (yes, there is also a Per­nice Broth­ers ver­sion of this song, fyi):
I would give any­thing to make it with you just one more time/I’d give you every­thing I owned (hey, no one said this shit was pretty)

“Let it Die” by Feist:
The sad­dest part of a bro­ken heart/Isn’t the end­ing so much as the start

Give me another 30 min­utes and I’ll post another dozen.