shows I would accept as Downton Abbey spin-offs

The third season on Downton Abbey ended on Sunday and along with it a...um, major plotline. I'm trying not to be too spoiler-y.

But seriously, if you haven't seen the episode by now, I have one question for you: Do you avoid all things on the Internet until you've watched each episode? HOW DO YOU DO THAT?!?! Sorry, that was two questions.

Also, on a scale of 1 to 10 {1 being "I think it's pronounced 'Downtown'" and 10 being "I once had a dream that I lived at Downton Abbey and when I woke up, I was depressed it wasn't true. Since that time, I've spoken in a British accent."}, I would put you at a -5 if you didn't make it a priority to watch the show on Sunday when it aired, preferably surrounded by British food, as I did.

There was a beef and barley soup and bacon-cheddar scones and a charlotte russe {"It would be a pity to miss such a good pudding." I really hope you know who I'm quoting there.} and a trifle and poundcake.

But I'm getting distracted with this thought of food: what I need to talk about now, post-Series 3, are shows that I would accept as Downton Abbey spin-offs. People should start making these immediately in order to fill the void between now and next January, when Downton returns to America {months after it returns to England}.

{I've heard it said that the British won't let Downton air at the same time in America as payback for that time we beat them in the Revolutionary War. And then again in the War of 1812.}

{But I've also heard it said that PBS is dragging its feet on making Downton air closer to its British run as payback for how most of us watch PBS only during the pledge drive when they're airing Anne of Green Gables. If we all started watching NewsHour with Jim Lehrer more often, they'd give us Downton sooner.}

{I should never be trusted with rumors. Or even rumours.}

Shows I Would Accept as Downton Abbey Spin-offs

Please, someone on the Internet, start making these right away.

1. Mr. Carson: Baby Whisperer: 30 minutes of watching Carson hold babies and talk to them like they were grown-ups.
2. My Work Wife: Carson and Mrs. Hughes flirt over ironing and giving sideways glances to young maids and out-of-line footmen.
3. They're Gonna Make It After All: Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore take on the world as single women in search of love at all the wrong carnival booths. At the end of the opening credits, Mrs. Patmore throws her cook's hat in the air, a la Mary Tyler Moore. Mrs. Hughes throws her massive ring of keys, but the shot freezes just before she tries to catch them, misses, and they fall on her head.
4. The Bachelorette: Daisy: She cooks, she goes on strike, she wears hats that look like muffins—and she flirts with all the wrong boys.
5. Monarch of the Glen: A show set in Scotland about a wealthy family living in a...Oh, that's already been made? Right.
6. How to Polish Silver and Look Surly While You're Doing It: This show is perfect for HGTV.
7. Slo-mo Shots of Guys Playing Cricket: Helpful for the American audience wondering what the point of cricket is. When do we yell out, "Sticky wicket!"? That is my main question.
8. Say Yes to the Sweater Vest: Companion show to "Slo-mo Shots of Guys Playing Cricket."
9. Hair Secrets from a Lady's Maid: O'Brien teaches you how to make your hair stylish and flattering. But the thing is, she has to do it for you. She's clearly not good at teaching someone to style their own hair. You can see that over the last three seasons, she's gotten better at doing her own hair, but no one can forget those original sideburns. If you want to be stylish, you're also going to have to put up with her soap habits. Just an FYI.
10. Have You Ever Seen Maggie Smith in Her Younger Days? This is really more of an idea I have for an entire cable channel. It would just play movies and TV shows of Maggie Smith before she was the zinger-filled Dowager. Every program would end with, "But, for real, did you see her cheekbones? And that red hair? And those legs?" The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie would air every day at tea time. Misguided passion and scones: what more can you want?

I have more ideas, but I just wanted to throw these out to get the ball rolling—and now you can, as Mosley would awkwardly put it, start "cherishing the ball."

{I think that now, by the way, is when we yell, "Sticky wicket!"}

christmas decorating tips

Should it fall to you to bring Christmas cheer to your office—much like Will Ferrell in Elf—I have several suggestions for you.

1. Hum, whistle, or full-out sing Christmas carols at any time. This is especially helpful if you're in a choir, as I am; it's extra practice time, and it's like an advertisement for your Christmas concert.
   
   You could say to a co-worker, "You know those same three bars of 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' that I've been humming during meetings and when we pass each other in the hallway? Come to my Christmas concert, and you can hear those three bars plus a lot more bars." They will quickly ask when and where.
2. Make sure you have wine during Christmas decorating. People will be less annoyed that you've put "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on repeat if you give them wine.
3. Leave a Santa hat around the office, kind of like Elf on the Shelf. Convince people that Santa has sent his brain, protected by his hat, to see if they're being naughty or nice. Tell them that if they wear the hat, they'll finally understand how Santa makes it around the entire world in one night. As a bonus, they will also instantly know all of Mrs. Claus' recipes for the best Christmas treats.
4. Immediately run to the kitchen whenever a new holiday gift basket is delivered from a vendor/client/friend. Tear into it like...a kid on Christmas. The phrase makes so much sense here.

Finally—and so important that it can't even be in the numbered list with all the other suggestions—make a fireplace out of construction paper. Ideally, you would do this one night while watching Christmas episodes of all your favorite TV shows.

When you bring in the fireplace the next day, spend a long time detailing the plots of those shows to your co-workers.

If you want, you can model your fireplace after mine. I made it last night while watching Designing Women—not a Christmas episode, unfortunately, so I hope I still have enough Christmas cheer to make it through.

Yes, those are framed pictures of Downton Abbey characters. If their pictures are on our fireplace, then we can pretend we live there. Or that we're friends with the Crawley family, and soon, they'll be sending us a holiday gift basket. I hope it has wine in it.

if only i were in Little Women: thoughts on cross-stitching

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."

Amy says that in Little Women, and perhaps because I've been re-reading that here and there, I've had a hankering to cross-stitch. {Meg would probably admonish me for saying "hankering," since it sounds so slangish and colloquial.}

This cross-stitch desire has only been intensified by how I'm also re-reading Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet, when staying for several days at Netherfield while Jane is recovering from a severe cold—

Sidenote: Do you ever wish you lived in the time where you came down with a cold and it was perfectly acceptable to lay in your bed all day, maybe even for several days? A person got a headache and down in the drawing room, everyone else was all, "Oh my, shall she ever recover? Shall we take her tea? Have the pillows been fluffed? Can she have a clear broth?"

And then they rang the bell and somebody would take it up to them.

I'm suspecting what is most appealing in this scenario is the part where someone brings me stuff in bed.

I don't actually want to live in the time when medical knowledge involved leeches and bleeding out the sickness; I'd rather just have a lady's maid who brings me stuff. Maybe somebody from Downton Abbey could pop over.

So back to my point: While Elizabeth is staying at Netherfield, she, at times, takes up her needlework. She then has very witty conversations with Mr. Darcy that make him smile as he turns away {lest he betray his true feelings by, gasp, smiling at her}.

You can see the obvious link between Mr. Darcy falling in love with Elizabeth and her doing needlework, and with an example like that, who wouldn't want to go buy embroidery floss right now?

No, seriously, who wants to go? Get in the car, and we'll meet at Hobby Lobby. I'm sure that's exactly like the store where Elizabeth went in Meryton to buy her thread to do her Darcy-attracting needlework at Netherfield.

Before we go, I'll research Little Women and Jane Austen cross-stitch patterns so that we know what we're buying. I'm sure that somewhere on Etsy, someone has made a pattern for that storm quote, and maybe it's on special today since it is Louisa May Alcott's birthday.

But wait.

{I'm going to Internet shout; prepare yourself.}

LOOK AT WHAT I FOUND.

I may love Pride and Prejudice and I may love the BBC production of the story, but never, under any circumstances, do I want something like this in my home.

Also, it would take me approximately 17 years to complete, and don't you think there's something accusatory in Darcy's eyes? It's like he's saying to you, "I'm a classic character from British literature and this is what you turn me into? Why couldn't you have gone for the much more mundane and obvious choice like the one below?"

I bet those eyes of Darcy follow you wherever you go in the room, and that has made up my mind: a Little Women cross-stitch project is the only way to go.

french enough for me

A few weeks ago—no, over a month ago now—when I was in Quebec, I picked up a French book at the airport. This may have been a desperate attempt to keep my French self happy as I left a cobblestoned, francophone area, headed back to the suburbs and the dare-I-say-it harsh tone of our wide-mouthed American English.

{If you disagree with me on this harsh tone point, please just watch any period piece from England and tell me if you don't wish you had a mellifluous accent like that.*}

I found a book by Philippe Delerm and snatched it up immediately, as if there weren't 10 other copies. Philippe is one of the French writers I can understand without too much thinking. He is, I mean to say, a writer I can read as if he were writing in English, and when I read his books, I sometimes have to stop to think: OMG, I might be bilingual. {If I'm really immersed, that might even come out in French.}

But really, it's Philippe Delerm bilingual, but I'm okay with that. I live in the middle of America and go to French-speaking areas, on average, once every year. In other words, my French brain doesn't get much use, although I'm forever telling myself that I should watch more French movies or read more French books or join a French conversation group.

That doesn't happen, though, when I get caught up in my very English life here, and so I use Philippe Delerm to make my French self feel better: At least you can still read this, I tell myself.

The thing about Philippe Delerm {besides that he's from Normandy, where I used to live} is that he writes in French about stuff I like to write about in English: brief snatches of every day life. Little descriptions of how the sun played off the roof on a walk. What the first sip of a coffee is like.

We are surrounded by insignificant-seeming moments, but Philippe Delerm shows them to us and gives them a glow of great significance. That's what I try to do in {some of} my writing and maybe that's why I can understand him so easily: we speak the same language, of a sort.

My new book by him is Le trottoir au soleil: The Sidewalk in the Sun.

Just listen to this:

On arrive là en fin d’après-midi, on fait une grande balade autour des champs qui encerclent le hameau. Le soleil commence à fléchir quand on revient vers la voiture. Il y a une petite terrasse de café. On ne resiste pas au plaisir de s’y installer. […]

La lumière est en vous aussi. Chaque seconde qui passe vous rive advantage à ce miracle. Un soir d’été. Comment partir?

Beautiful, n'est-ce pas?



*My gosh, I am so classist, but I'm trying to hide it in a footnote. When I watch English shows—Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility or of course Downton Abbey—I wish for the mellifluous accent of the upper classes. I would also like someone to bring me tea in bed every morning, but I would be demanding/unusual and request coffee. I would also be unpredictable and sometimes want it from a French press and sometimes from an Italian press.

on a treasure hunt {part 2}

So as we learned in part 1, there was this guy who followed me from one store to another in downtown Glen Ellyn—all to tell me I'm pretty. I realize the "following me" part makes it sound slightly stalkerish, but I promise it wasn't as creepy as it potentially sounds.

------

Treasure House Man: So...can I have your number?
Me: My number? Really? How about you give me yours?

POWER SHIFT. Bam.

I like to think this was me being a modern day Elizabeth Bennet, not that she had a telephone, let alone a smart phone, but I think, given the opportunity, she would've told Mr. Darcy: "Can you call on me? No. But I'll call on you when and if I desire. POWER SHIFT. Bam."

She probably wouldn't have said bam.

Also, I may not get hit on all the time, but I know enough not to go handing out my number willy nilly. I mean, I once got propositioned in an elevator in Las Vegas; if I can make it out of that situation, I can certainly avoid giving away too much personal information in a shabby chic decorating shop in the suburbs of Chicago.

Treasure House Man: Okay, we can do it that way. Do you have a pen?
Me: Um, no.

I know: I'm a terrible writer. We're supposed to carry pens and Moleskin notebooks at all times, ready for when inspiration strikes, but I forgot, okay? I thought I was going armchair shopping with a friend, not arranging coffee dates.

Speaking of my friend, she spoke up here.

Elizabeth: I can help!

Oh, bless her. For many reasons, including that she laughs at the same things I do and loves France more than I do, but in this instance: bless her for her iPhone.

This was, actually, the first time I'd looked at Elizabeth during this entire conversation with the Treasure House Man. I was sure, as he said things like "pretty" and I said things like "robot," that if I looked at her, my eyes would grow big enough to be frightening as I tried to communicate silently: OMG, can you believe this is happening? Can you give me some sign that this is real? Do you think I should meet him for coffee? Is this bizarre or the beginning of a romantic comedy? Speaking of that, do you think there are hidden cameras around here?

We women might try to convey too much with one glance; despite the fact that we are very, very good friends, I don't think Elizabeth would've picked up on all of that. She probably would've looked back at me like this: Look at him! Not at me! What is wrong with you? Do you have something in your eye?

Treasure House Man: [Tells Elizabeth his phone number and she taps it in as a note. He looks at me the whole time.]
Me: [internal monologue] WHY IS HE STARING? Oh right, because he thinks you're pretty. Smile. Not too big. Yeah, smaller than that. Get it together, Walker.
Treasure House Man: So...it was good to meet you.
Me: Good to meet you, too.

And he walked out of the overpriced store.

Even before the door clicked shut, a woman popped her head around the corner. If Hollywood were trying to represent the perfect suburban mom in 2012—if they really wanted to make sure they got it right so that 50 years from now, people watching the movie would say, "Oh, I see what life was like back then"—they would film this woman.

Ballet flats, cropped pants, a wedding ring the size of Lake Michigan.

Not a hair was messed up, despite the fact that it was raining out and she was carrying a very trendy cloche hat: the woman can wear a hat and still have her hair look like the 2012 version of Donna Reed.

Slightly Unnervingly Perfect Glen Ellyn Mom: Oh, honey, I'm so flattered on your behalf! That was so amazing to overhear.
Me: Oh my word, I know! Can you believe it?
Slightly Unnervingly Perfect Glen Ellyn Mom: No! I mean, look at you! You aren't even dressed to be hit on!

By this, I assume she meant: You aren't even wearing a cloche hat and ballet flats, like me!

And it's true that I wasn't looking my best: I'd spent part of the morning picking up trash along the Prairie Path, the running path that goes through my town. Every year around Earth Day, there's a trash pick up day, and since I use the path so much, I like to help.

I'm so eco-friendly, but I wasn't exactly pretty clothes-friendly that day. I had on a puffy vest, people.

And a hoodie.

And tennis shoes. The tennis shoes are from France, though, I'd like to point out. At least part of me looked trendy.

I hadn't showered, I had on no make-up, and I'm pretty sure I had brushed my teeth.

Me: I know! Look at me!
Slightly Unnervingly Perfect Glen Ellyn Mom: Gosh, I'm married, but I might go next door to see what kind of compliments I can get.

You should probably leave your cloche hat here, I wanted to say. Clearly Treasure House Man is looking for someone with a less put together look.

-------

Elizabeth and I didn't spend much longer looking at overpriced decorations.

"I need to sit down," I told her. "We need to process this, debrief this, analyze this, and we can't do that here."

That was partially because of the Unnervingly Perfect Glen Ellyn Mom—and partially because everywhere you saw to sit down {paisley armchairs, teal wingbacks, floral loveseats} was covered in tea trays and trinkets, all arranged to look as if you'd just thrown the display together in your shabby chic cottage by the sea.

A bonus lesson from the day: I am not a shabby chic person.

-------

Elizabeth and I processed, debriefed, and analyzed in a cafe just down the street. That double shot of espresso very much calmed me down, and we came up with an action plan: I would call him the next day.

And that's just what I did—

The next day after a nap {to boost my energy because seriously, it was this gray, rainy weekend that sucked all my normal perkiness} and many pep talks {to channel that energy}, I called him, the man who perhaps was a treasure from the Treasure House.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone when your only point of reference for them is "Um, you followed me into a store in downtown Glen Ellyn and um, also, you think I'm pretty"?

It's a challenge, but he turned out to be a not-so-bad conversationalist. An excerpt from our conversation:

Treasure House Man: So, what are you up to tonight?
Me: I'm going to watch this BBC show called River Cottage with some friends. Do you know it?
Treasure House Man: I don't know that one, but I do love British shows, especially Downton Abbey.

OMG, HE LIKES DOWNTON ABBEY.

We probably should've made plans to elope right there on the phone; preferably it would've been an elopement to England, where we could spend our honeymoon at the real Downton Abbey.

Kidding.

Instead, we made plans to have coffee one evening after work.

I scheduled it for just before Bible study {always smart to have a defined timeline when meeting someone for the first time}, and now you can start placing bets on whether:

• I had such a wonderful time that I skipped small group
• I had such a terrible time that I lied and said that small group was at 7:00, or even 6:45. No, I am not above using the Bible to get out of uncomfortable situations.
• I had a magnificent time but still made it to small group, where I wasn't able to focus on the Gospel of Matthew because really, what's the Gospel in comparison to a guy who makes his own custom tools in the shape of robots?

I'll tell you the answer soon enough.

edith wharton, get out of my life

This must've happened to you before: you learn a new word or hear about a TV show or read an article on an obscure-sounding topic on page D13 of the Chicago Tribune—and then suddenly, that word or TV shows or apparently-not-obscure topic is everywhere in your life.

Did you simply glaze over all of it before because you weren't familiar?

Or, in some odd universe coalescing way, is this word/show/topic now being served up to you on a silver platter, ready for your consumption?

That second question holds a twinge of conspiracy theory in it, and I apologize for sounding suspicious of...the universe.

{Parenthetical Justification for Suspicion: In a world where Google dominates and tracks our every {Internet} move, it's hard to avoid going down the conspiracy theory/someone is stalking me route sometimes.

Example: at work today, I looked up a news story about Senator Mark Kirk {R-IL}, and not too long later, the ads on my Grooveshark were all about asking for donations for Rick Santorum. I hit re-fresh, and they were about donations for Newt Gingrich. In my Google-why-do-I-let-you-know-everything-about-my-life distrust of the Internet, I'm convinced the ads were a direct result of the search.

End Parenthetical Justification for Suspicion.}

I ask all this because I'm going through this experience with Edith Wharton right now.

It's not that I recently heard of her—oh, no.

When I was in middle school, my parents took me to visit her house in Massachusetts, the Mount. I remember seeing her big writing desk in the upstairs sitting room—big windows, lots of light, overlooking the gardens—and thinking that I'd never stop writing if I had that kind of set-up. Or maybe I'd just have very literary-looking photographs of me taken.

The Mount: I would also throw excellent garden parties if this were my house.

Through high school and college, I read several things by her, including her short story "Roman Fever," which has such a twist of an ending that you actually gasp and sit dumbfounded for several minutes afterwards.

If you lived in the Mount and you read that story, you would be forced to take a walk in the gardens {carrying a parasol}, focusing all the time on your breathing and how beautifully blue the sky is, in order to recover from reading it.

So, Edith has been part of my life for some time, but she'd been relegated to the back recesses of my mind, the way things that you did in middle school often are.

Last week, though, she came back.

I was sick and had just finished a book. Standing at my bookshelf with my head tilted, reading the titles to try to find something, anything, that would take my mind off the thumping headache and my self-diagnosis of tuberculosis, I came across my Edith Wharton section.

Edith Wharton? Images of the Mount and me gasping violently {to the consternation of my roommate} after reading "Roman Fever" while curled up in my dorm room bunk bed floated past.

Yes, I could go for some Edith Wharton, I decided, but not any of these that I already own. The next day, when I mustered enough energy to make it to the library {I live half a block away from it, but getting there did involve me changing out of my sweatpants}, I checked out The Buccaneers.

Should you be a visual person who'd like to know what kind of book you're dealing with, here's what it looks like. Now stop judging a book by its cover.

{Parenthetical Downton Abbey Disclosure: This book was recommended for people who like Downton Abbey, and as we know, I'm way beyond like when it comes to Downton.}

In the little sick nest I'd built for myself on the couch—out of Kleenex, antibiotics, pillows, a cuddly pug, and a wool blanket from PEI—I remembered why I like Edith Wharton so much: She makes you feel as if you were in on a delicious secret. And that secret is well-dressed and has a house on Fifth Avenue.

I couldn't stop reading Edith all weekend. The Buccaneers is about American heiresses who go to England in the 1870s to use their Papas' wealth to buy themselves a husband and a title. I assume you're all thinking of Cora Crawley in Downton Abbey now; if you aren't, I obviously haven't done my job of talking about Downton enough.

Yesterday, I made it back to work, and this was waiting for me on our office's Book-a-Day Calendar:

Look closely. Or, you know, click on the image and it will be blown up. Not in the TNT sense.

The Book-a-Day Calendar was telling me to read Edith. I'm way ahead of you, buddy, I told it. Or would have, should I be the kind who talks to paper products.

And then today, Twitter taught me this: Edith Wharton was born 150 years ago today.

Okay, I get it, universe: You want me to pay attention to Edith Wharton.

Or marry an English duke, since she often wrote about that.

I'm sure the message will become clear by tomorrow, when Google will start showing me ads that have to do with visiting the Mount or buying a writing desk to place in my sitting room. {Joke's on you, Google: I don't have a sitting room.}

In conclusion: Happy birthday, Edith Wharton!

jane austen did prepare me for: downton abbey and entails

As you may recall, I went through a little "obsessed with Downton Abbey" phase in the early fall. {This little "I heart fanfic" confession may help you remember that.}

And by "went through," I mean: I'm still in the phase; I'm simply hiding it better.

Okay, I can't lie to you.

By "simply hiding it better," I mean: if you've talked to me at all in the last month, you'll know that I'm obsessed with the show Downton Abbey.

I'm just not good at putting up a facade, which, if I were a real member of the Crawley family, posh aristocrats that they are, would be a very unfortunate trait.

Oh, to be Lady Mary Crawley with her icy, monied, landed gentry composure—that hides vulnerability and deep emotions and fears. She's got a lot going on under the surface, but that girl knows how to pull it together to get through a boring dinner with other icy, monied people.

If Lady Mary is staying up too late reading Elizabeth Gaskell novels and spending her every waking minute wondering if Mr. Thornton and Margaret Hale will finally clear up their misunderstandings, get together, and be happy in that wicked little town of Milton—well, you'd never know it from how she gets through those society functions.

I am not like Lady Mary in that regard.

As we've gotten closer to the Series 2 premier of Downton Abbey on PBS {OMG, IT'S ON SUNDAY! SUNDAY IS ONLY 2 SLEEPS AWAY!}, my obsession for this fictional family and their servants has come out more strongly than ever before.

Like just a couple of paragraphs ago: I was talking about these people as if they were real.

They're not real, Kamiah. I have to keep saying that to myself.

Also: don't talk about them as if they were your friends {or enemies} to real people. You are not a Crawley. You are not Lady Mary Crawley. Don't assume other people know who you're talking about, or that, when they find out you're talking about fictional characters, will have the ability to not laugh at you.

Or here's an actual email I sent to a friend after she admitted that she hasn't yet seen Downton, as I've told her repeatedly she should do:

WHY HAVE YOU NOT WATCHED IT YET?!?!! {Note: Downton, for some reason, brings out the shouter in me.}

I refuse to talk to you until you do.

Goodbye.

And there's also this for a sign: I was in a wedding last week, and when I went to the salon to get my hair done, I brought in pictures of publicity shots from Downton Abbey to help guide the hairdresser.

The last time I was in a wedding—in August, just as the Downton obsession {obsession is such a middle-class, depressing sort of word; I think I'll start referring to this as my Downton fondness} was beginning—I told the hair stylist to channel Jane Austen and/or Audrey Hepburn.

I casually threw out a reference to Downton, mentioning it lightly, as if I'd seen it once and was sort of intrigued by it. But then I totally blew my cover by talking a lot about having a lady's maid to the hair stylist. I still don't know if she enjoyed being called a servant, but I think the hair still turned out all right. You can see it here.

For this wedding last week, though, I was in full Downton fondness mode.

Of course I found pictures of Lady Mary Crawley; she's a brunette with long hair, too, so I figured that if I could get her hair right, then maybe I could transform into her. Not that she's real. Or I've ever thought about what it'd be like to be her.

Here's how it turned out:

The only thing holding me back from being Lady Mary in this picture is the incredible amount of skin showing. Well, and the color of the dress. And that it's above the knee, a length certainly not acceptable in World War I England. I guess the other thing holding me back is that I don't have a lady's maid. Maybe we can just assume she's taking the picture.

Oh, yes, I have Downton fondness.

I fully accept this and have become somewhat of a Downton evangelist/translator to my friends. When PBS started to re-broadcast Series 1 in preparation for Series 2 {OMG, SUNDAY}, I watched it with a couple of friends.

And it was at that point that I realized that Jane Austen did, in fact, prepare me for something: for explaining entails.

Until I had this conversation, I didn't entirely realize that a working knowledge of entails wasn't something that everyone had, just like we all have a general knowledge of the Revolutionary War or how we all agree that Saved By the Bell: The College Years was a mistake.

The conversation went something like this:
Friend Who's Never Seen the Wonder that Is Downton: Wait, why can't the snooty older one—
Me, aka, Lady Downton Explainer: Lady Mary. And she's not snooty. Okay, she is, but...No, I won't explain more on that right now. But wouldn't you be snooty if you'd been raised in a house that looked like this?

Friend: How did you get a picture to appear in our conversation?
Me: Because of Jesus and Dame Maggie Smith, who is, as you know, in Downton playing the feisty Dowager Countess. Let's try to focus. What was your question?
Friend: Why can't Lady Mary, who apparently isn't snooty, inherit?
Me: Because the estate is entailed to the next male heir. Now, hush, Dame Maggie Smith is about to say something witty and caustic and I want to see the look on your face when you hear it.
Friend: [after slightly smiling at Dame Maggie] But what do you mean, entailed?
Me: Like in Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice. Ooh, here comes Thomas the Evil Footman. Dang, I shouldn't have called him evil and let you make your own decisions. But seriously, look at him; he's brooding and dark the minute he walks on-screen. You would've picked up on your own that he's evil.
Friend: Just listing other period dramas isn't exactly helping right now. Why can't she get the money and the pretty house?
Me: Just think of Mr. Collins getting Lizzy's father's house in Pride and Prejudice or that weak half-brother of Emma Thompson's—I mean, Elinor Dashwood's—getting Norland while the mother and girls are sent to live in a drafty cottage on the edge of the ocean. Women getting kicked out of their houses was a very big plot point back in the day.
Friend: How is that possible in a country that had Queen Elizabeth I {not to mention II} and Queen Victoria?
Me: Um, those eras aren't covered in Downton, and I may have a degree in British literature and I may have lived in England for a little bit and I may watch A LOT of period dramas, but I can't know everything. What do you think I am, a historian magician?

Just suffice it to say: the entail for Downton Abbey—the estate, the title, the money—was written so that it can only pass to men, and sadly, the current Earl and his wife have the three girls. As you can see. In their pretty dresses throwing haughty looks at each other and dinner guests.
Friend: Wait, an entail is written?

It was at that point that I wished PBS had a pause button so that I could get into the details of inheritance law.

Sadly, it didn't, but I think my friend got the point, especially from the number of times various characters repeat lines along the lines of: "Oh, I wish we could break the entail, but alas, we can't!"

Oh, Downton, how I am obsessed with you.

I mean, am slightly fond of you and look forward with an appropriate level of excitement to Sunday evening when we shall be reunited.

a note about phlegm

Look, I'm going to warn you now: if you don't like reading about phlegm, this is not the post for you. Maybe you could try reading about my nerdiness via Downton Abbey if you'd rather not read about my very unladylike behavior I demonstrated along the Prairie Path in Wheaton today.

Last week, I actually took a half a sick day. I say "actually" because it just doesn't happen all that often, this taking of a sick day. I mostly say things to myself like, 'I mean, really, is it that bad? Can you still sit at your desk? Are you still able to focus your eyes? Could your cough be something of a conversation topic in the office because Lord knows we need something to talk about besides work?'

I have, after all, the constitution of a horse {assuming horses are very healthy creatures} and the work ethic of a protestant {because, well, I am one. Oh my, I just realized that when you talk about "protestant work ethic," you're totally insulting the Catholics who, in my experience, do work hard. I should stick with the "puritan work ethic" because I don't know any puritans I could potentially be insulting. And probably when puritans are insulted, they take it as a sign of God's favor. Persecution = favor, you know.}.

So I don't often allow myself sick days, or, as I cheerfully and judgmentally like to call them, weakness days or wussy days.

One of my fall projects, though, is trying to learn how to be kinder to myself.

I'm pretty sure this "fall project" is going to last FOREVER {who can learn to be kinder to themselves in one season?}, which means that it will be eternally autumn for me and doesn't that sound like bliss? To always have crisp nights and visual reminders of change around you at all times?

When I woke up last Tuesday with an "I can't breathe very well" throat, I decided to act on my fall project and take a half-day—after going to work in the morning to keep some projects moving along.

Stop judging my inability to slow down and just let myself be sick. Fall just started a few weeks ago, okay? Yeah, maybe I should've taken a whole day, but let's just let me celebrate the half-day victory. Sheesh. Cut me some slack here, people.

{Maybe being kinder to myself is making me less kind to other people around me. Oh my, I hope that isn't true.}

I was back at work on Wednesday morning in such a perky mood that my boss found it necessary to ask, "Are you this perky at home, too, when it's just you and the pug?"

Of course. Of course I am.

Of course I spent my sick day being perky to my pug. It went like this:

"Miss Daisy!" {said in a sing-song voice}

"It's sweatpants and orange juice time! No, baby, don't look so confused about why I'm home in the middle of the day and why I'm singing to you. Let's just cuddle on the couch and watch Anne of Green Gables, or ooh! We could take a nap!"

Yes, perky.

The truth is I was extra perky on Wednesday because 1) I was feeling guilty about taking a half-day {shut up, puritan work ethic!}, and 2) I was trying to fool my body into thinking it was better. As you may have picked up on, I'm going to Prince Edward Island on vacation this week, and I just had to get better. I did not want to be sick and moaning and being bleary-eyed in pictures at Green Gables.

If ever there was a time to be clear-eyed, it's when visiting a house with gables.

My body may have felt slightly better after its sick day, but I needed to marshal my emotional forces—my perkiness—to start feeling all better.

You're probably thinking—that's silly, Kamiah. You can't force yourself to get better, just by chipperness.

And to that I say: I'm all better now, aren't I?

Granted, this may have something to do with the fact that even when I was sick and clogged up, I went running anyway.

You can chastise me for this {how do you run when you can't breathe?}, but my view is that if you're clogged up with phlegm, there's nothing like a autumn morning run to jostle everything around so that you cough it up. What else was a fall morning made for?

Spitting into a pile of orange-gold leaves just feels right, you know? You feel like a real runner and a little bit like a cowboy or like someone who chews tobacco, which sounds like a terrible idea if you're a runner.

I do try to wait until there's no one else around me on the Prairie Path to do this hawking and spitting and coughing, but today, these two college guys snuck up on me. Probably I couldn't hear them because I was coughing.

I was just turning my head to spit this mouthful of phlegm
this expectoration of sickness
this need to be kind to myself

I was just turning my head to spit when they came flying past.

As I spit, I imagined that they were a little impressed with my distance and general rough-and-tumble girl attitude, spitting on the Prairie Path like that.

But then I realized that they're probably 18, and I maybe shouldn't be so worried about impressing them.

And then I coughed a lot more, which most likely decreased any attractiveness factor I'd built up.

But oh, did I ever feel good, spitting and running on the Prairie Path this morning.

things i said in vegas

Last week, I was in Las Vegas for work, and no, really I did work.

I can hear you doubting me, thinking that I let go of all my Midwestern roots and grabbed the proverbial bull by the horns. {That bull's proverb is: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Somehow, I don't think that matches well with other proverbs that generally encourage you to hold your tongue, work hard, and treat others fairly, even if they don't deserve it.}

I have no salacious, gossip-worthy revelations for you.

No confessions that I've been repressed my whole life and finally realized that—on the Strip at 4am.

I went on the Strip. Twice. Three times if you count my cab ride back to the airport.

And I spent both of those times saying, "Oh my, it's just so...so...bizarrely opulent."

I said this as I tried to speed walk past men handing me cards to strip clubs. Do not make eye contact, do not make eye contact.

Trouble is, when you don't make eye contact, you're more likely to run into one of those men as they step in front of you. Or you could run into any one of 317 people dressed up as Elvis. Or the guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow. Or the Wonder Woman—there were several of those, too.

I don't think I'm Vegas' target audience. A random sampling of things I have said in Vegas:

• Is there some sort of Vegas clothing store that I don't know about? How did everyone else know what the Vegas uniform is? You know, just past your hips dress, impossibly tight, strapless. I don't own anything like that. I never want to own something like that. I wouldn't even know where to go for that.
• Is anyone else thinking of that scene in Sister Act, the one with the nuns running through the casino? I realize that took place in Reno, but as I stared at the flashing lights, I kept thinking of Maggie Smith, a disdainful Mother Superior at her best, calling Reno Sodom and Gomorrah.
• Why is it so loud all the time? I realize I sound like I'm 89 here, not 29, but when hotel room door clicked behind me every night, I relaxed. Quiet. Calm. Nothing clamoring.
• I don't understand slot machines. I'm a classic girl through and through: I just wanted a simple slot machine. Put in a quarter, pull a lever, three spinny things go around. That's all I needed. But there are Star Wars slot machines, I Love Lucy slot machines, Wheel of Fortune slot machines, and slot machines that just look like video games. All you have to do is hit a button, which takes some of the tangible fun out of gambling, if you ask me. Which clearly no one did before designing Las Vegas casinos.
• No, I will not go up to your room with you. A man on the elevator—another guest, I do believe—asked me to go to his room. I laughed in shock, which is the best way to handle being propositioned. And then I glared. The laugh-glare is a very useful response in Vegas.
• All things considered, I'd rather be watching Gosford Park. I'd brought my most recent Netflix movie with me, and when faced with the possibility of standing in line for two hours just to get into a nightclub {and I didn't even have the proper clothes!}, I thought longingly of my little bit of period drama.
• No, this isn't at all like the real Paris. Standing in front of the Vegas version of the Eiffel Tower, I realized that every part of Vegas I'd been to reminded me of the Champs-Elysees, which I never go to when I'm in Paris. The people. The gawking. The tourists. The slow walking. The noise.

• Your tomato salad is $27? That is better than your $65 lamb, but are your tomatoes grown in soil from the Garden of Eden? Is your feta from goats that trace their lineage back to the three billy goats gruff? Do the English cucumbers in it make me able to speak in a real British accent? And do they come with the ability to watch Downton Abbey when it starts airing in the UK this weekend—obliterating the need for me to wait until next January because I don't want to demonstrate that patience is a virtue?
• Why doesn't my room have a coffeemaker? My room on the 53rd floor was fancy. You could control the lights and the AC with the TV. You could make a spa appointment on the TV, too. There was a full-length window in the shower that went through to the bedroom: you could watch TV while you showered. {A lot centered around the TV in that fancy room.} The housekeepers replaced the CO Bigelow toiletries every day, even if you still had a lot left. {This means I came home with several bottles of lotion}.
  
  But try as I may, I couldn't find a coffeemaker in my room. This is, by the way, one of my favorite parts of staying in hotels: you can make coffee in your bedroom! I realize I could do this at home, but it doesn't seem as special to have your coffeemaker on your dresser along with your family pictures and the stuff you pulled out of your pockets last night.
  
  I looked in the closet. By the mini-fridge {being careful not to touch any of the snacks offered, should moving said snacks cause me to be charged}. I looked in drawers, even: maybe they hid the coffeemaker so that the room would look sleeker and more posh. I flipped through the TV options, thinking that, with such a wonder machine, perhaps it could make me coffee, too.
  
  No coffeemaker.
  
  When I went to the hotel cafe for the first time, I realized why my fancy room came without a coffeemaker: because coffee was $4.00. Just normal drip coffee. $4.00. Put a bunch of coffee-loving people in a situation where they've been out too late and yet still need to function during the day, and you will get lots of people paying $4.00 for coffee. Including me, although I didn't need coffee because I'd been out too late; I needed coffee because I needed some normalcy in my life there in Vegas.
What does it say about me that I loved the design of my hotel room so much, I took pictures of the wallpaper? It says, once again: you were not made for Vegas. But nice wallpaper.

slightly obsessive behavior

I have this incredible ability to do things repetitively/obsessively. It sounds like a problem, but I promise it's not.

It's things like being able to eat the same lunch every day for a week. My tastebuds do not get bored, and I do not stop craving whatever it is I made too much of at the beginning of the week.

In reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, that book on cooking and eating alone, I've become more assured that this isn't bizarre behavior. Many of the essays in that book involved confessions of what a person ate every day for {insert absurd amount of time here, such as six months}.

Left to our own devices, we crave routine and familiarity. Is that because we want to feel not alone and so we create a continuity of our own?

I don't know; I just know that I could eat a fried egg sandwich every night and still get excited for that first bite.

Or it's my ability to listen to one CD—or heck, even one song—over and over, always coming back with the same freshness, the same feeling that this is a power song for me.

I should not admit how many times I've listened to "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast. It's on my Broadway playlist on Grooveshark, and that's the third thing I do every morning at work.

Step 1: Put lunch in fridge. Most likely, it's the same thing as yesterday.
Step 2: Look at email. Ignore pressing things for just a few more minutes.
Step 3: Start pretending I'm on Broadway. Let's start with..."Belle."

So I am a creature of obsessive habit, something I've been reminded of in two ways recently.

Way the First: This week, my friends Brenda and Beth brought back into my life the Rufus Wainwright song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk."

It's on a CD that Brenda made for me a few years back, so technically, the song never left my life; I just haven't listened to it in awhile.

Hearing it again, I remembered how I laughed when I first heard it. Brenda has this slightly/very unnerving ability to choose songs that speak to that part of you that you don't speak much about.

It's freaky, actually, listening to songs that make you wonder if she somehow broke into your journal, even though she lives in a different state. {And you don't have a lock on your journal, so maybe "broke in" isn't the right phrase.}

This particular Rufus Wainwright song hits me here: I, at times, have very little willpower. Mostly this is when faced with Oreos or some other cookie. So these lyrics—oh, how I relate to these lyrics:

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything, it seems, I like's a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

If I should buy jellybeans
Have to eat them all in just one sitting
Everything, it seems, I like's a little bit sweeter
A little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me

What was that old Pringles ad? "Once you pop, you can't stop"? Yeah, that's me and Oreos, which is why I don't normally keep them around. A little bit fatter, a little bit sweeter, a little bit harmful for me—in massive quantities.

No amount of running can help you avoid the weight gain from eating a package of Oreos a day. Not that I do that.

Way the Second: Did you read about me and Downton Abbey? You probably should. Slightly obsessed, yes.

What's the point of all this confession? Honestly, I'm not sure.

Do I want you to buy me Oreos or talk about Downton Abbey—all in an effort to test my will power? No, and that just sounds cruel and mean-spirited.

Do I want to be Belle? Yes, but that's beside the point.

Do I want to hear that I'm not alone in my very focused behavior? Maybe, just maybe.

star trek and downton abbey

Star Trek and Downton Abbey.

I am not suggesting a mash-up of those two—a la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—although I'm sure someone has thought of that. Somewhere on the vast distraction that is the Internet, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is sitting down to dinner in an Edwardian dining room as Carson the butler holds out his chair.

If you didn't get any of those references, that's all right. You don't really need to in order to understand what I'm about to say. {If you did get them, we speak the same nerdy language, and to you, I say: hello, dear friend.}

I'm connecting these two shows because of my own confession: I am a fanfic girl.

I have never admitted this before so boldly {even using bold typeface!}, and I feel both relieved and exposed {and if one of you comments about how you're a fanfic girl/boy, I will feel comforted and supported, too}.

Facfic—fan fiction—is when you take already-existing characters from a TV show or a book or a movie and imagine future adventures or more of a backstory or missing scenes for them.

Essentially, you so immerse yourself in this other world that you want more of it. Need more of it. Want to, perhaps, be part of it.

And so you turn to fanfic.

-----

Here's the deal: I've just finished re-watching Downton Abbey. I watched it for the first time back in January on PBS, and while I loved it {and even made my sister watch it when I was visiting her in LA}, when the season ended, I moved on. On into February and away from Lady Mary and Matthew and all the rest of them.

Until recently. My friend Brenda was watching it for the first time, and one day, she mentioned a little something about it.

A little something that propelled me into immediately switching my Netflix queue so that I could re-watch Downton.

Seriously, from the effect it had on me, you'd think Brenda was some sort of PBS/iTVsorceress, casting spells with a wave of a crooked finger—spells that make you forget all about other plans and real-life friends and your pug.

Just watch the period piece. Escape, escape.

And so I did. That part of my brain that allows me to completely immerse in what I'm doing to the point of repetition {be it reading all the Anne of Green Gables books or eating eggplant every night for dinner} was flipped on, and the rest of my brain was filled with Downton, much to my slight surprise and consternation.

You may have noticed Downton creeping in to my writing.

I talked about having a lady's maid and getting my hair styled every day.

I've mentioned English country dances, and there has been a decided bent of nostalgia in my writing of late.

In the same way that I imagined I was a princess when I was younger, I found my mind wandering to what my life would've been like if I had been born an aristocrat.

I wasn't born an aristocrat; I was born in Iowa to very good people but certainly no earl or countess. But here I was, reverting to a reverie-bound 12-year-old about something that was clearly not my life.

The turns my mind takes completely take me by surprise at times. I was daydreaming! About a TV show!

Having an active imagination is one thing, a good thing, but even I was surprised by my imagination's activity.

Now, all this makes it sound like I think you should grow out of imagination or out of losing yourself in a story. Of course I don't think that; the ability to lose ourselves in stories is partly what keeps us empathetic, I think, to what other people go through.

But I knew that this particular story had a strong hold on me when I found myself reading Downton Abbey fanfic.

My girly little heart wanted to believe that Lady Mary and Matthew would end up together. And my romantic self wanted to know more about their relationship, how it developed, what they were thinking.

Enter fanfic, which I started to devour, staying up very much past my bedtime to read what other people—people who were just as invested as I was in these other people's lives—had written.

11:30 and I wasn't in bed: I was on Chapter 10 of a Mary/Matthew story.

I was, at first, surprised at how easily I found Downton fanfic and how hard it was for me to stop reading, even when some of it wasn't all that well written {I have a low tolerance, usually, for poorly written stories where the characters say all the obvious things and no one seems all that real}.

But then I remembered Imzadi. It's this Star Trek novel written about the relationship between Will Riker and Deanna Troi {you know, from The Next Generation}. I read it when I was in middle school, and it gave me more of what I craved from the TV show: more details about why they fell in love and fiery interactions they had and headstrong decisions they both made.

{You may have noticed a theme to my fanfic interests: mushy love stories. Actually, I hope you noticed that because it's pretty obvious.}

On about Day 3 of reading Downton fanfic, I realized that I've been a fanfic girl for years. Ever since I first read Imzadi.

It was like I'd come full circle with a little sliver of my nerdy self. I suddenly didn't feel so guilty for my flights of fancy, imagination-wise. I was just being true to myself, my little fanfic girl self.