O, that evil, conniving New Year’s Eve. Long maligned as the most overrated holiday, it nonetheless manipulates seemingly rational people into making too many plans, spending beyond their means, and creating unreasonable expectations—year after year.

This December, the wiles of New Year’s Eve are being compounded by another equally persistent social force: Recessionists. Motivated by the emotional roller coaster that was 2008—from the election to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis to gas prices to Sarah Palin to, um, the Recession—these folks are pushing a New Year’s Eve agenda of extremes: either a) forget about New Year’s Eve and maybe you’ll forget 2008, too, or b) blow it out like there’s no tomorrow. (“Let’s Party Like it’s 1929” is a phrase so over-headlined, there’s a movement afoot to retire it.)

We’ve been through a lot this year, people. We need catharsis. Inspiration. A break. And – dare I say? – a drink! We deserve it. And just in the nick of time, a little thing called New Year’s Eve has come along to give us what we need.

So, this year, I am proposing something in between your run-of-the-mill, overrated 12/31, and that really sad, Armageddon Recessionist version: take advantage of it. Do what you will, but do something that is meaningful to you. Because, remember on Election Night, when everyone was saying, “This is a really big deal, right?” Well, it was. And just like Election Night, the passage of this year – this crazy, tragic, awe-inspiring 2008 – is a big deal. It merits celebration.

Here are some suggestions on making this New Year’s Eve one you’ll never forget:

1. Be yourself. If that means being BY yourself, singing Supremes hits into your hairbrush, so be it. If you want nothing more than to sit on a friend’s couch and watch Dick Clark, although you’ll have to settle for Ryan Seacrest, just do it. Find a rave. Kiss a stranger at midnight. Or kiss your dog at 9:00p and call it a night. But make it a uniquely YOU celebration, because even if this was your worst year ever, it needs to be acknowledged and put behind you.
2. Take matters into your own hands. If you put yourself into a New Year’s Eve situation that you can’t control – a friend’s house, a party, a restaurant – you can’t expect that person or place to deliver your perfect New Year’s Eve. So, make sure to deliver it to yourself. If a glass (or five) of bubbly is what you crave, bring that delicious bottle of Dom you’ve been saving. If you want to shake your moneymaker, offer the host your iPod. And if you want to play poker ‘til dawn, don’t let someone drag you to a karaoke party. Take control of your destiny.
3. Alleviate dress stress. The general rule of thumb is to wear something sparkly (or “sparkly” to you), and you’ll fit right in. But don’t take it from me; take some NYE fashion tips from an expert, like Jennifer Romolini from Yahoo’s Shine.
4. Reach out. New Year’s Eve is a night to connect. Even if you choose to pass the night on your own, elevate it above arbitrary by getting in touch with those important to you. Call your grandma, text your college roommate at midnight, or send your crush a groovy e-card.

And if you’re with friends or family…

5. …Give ‘em what they want. Since we’ve agreed that this year was a bear, we can also agree that everyone could use a little TLC on this night—so, make that your evening’s mission. Be forthcoming with compliments, healthy thanks, heartfelt comments, shout-outs, smiles, and smooches. You will get back what you give tenfold. And you need it as much as they do.

So, in conclusion (of this year and of this blog), do it up this New Year’s Eve. Make it your resolution to do something meaningful. Give New Year’s Eve its due; because this year, whether you gained or lost, you earned it.

this post can also be found at www.hiving.net/buzz

This is a story about practicing what I preach. Playing by my own rules. Specifically: the friendship rules outlined in the book I co-wrote with my Dad, The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if I took the time and energy to write a book about it, I’d have to be able to follow each and every rule at all times-– from #1 (“Reach Out to Someone You Don’t Know”) to #70 (“Let the Sunshine In”), right? As it turns out, that is much, much easier said than done.

So, I’m hiving in New York last week at a super chic fashion party on the roof of the Hotel on Rivington, where I feel about 20 years older than everyone there, 20 times less stylish, and 20 pounds fatter. My friend is 20 minutes late, so I am forced to stand in a corner with my glass of champagne and St-Germain Elderflower liquor (a cocktail I’ve been calling “The Sally” all summer, which the St-Germain folks call simply: “St-Germain avec Champagne”), staring at the gorgeous crowd. I think to myself, “Self? You’re supposed to be a friendship expert. Make some friends!” And with that, I head to a group of cute gals in the corner, who are the hired models for the evening, posing in retro bras and the “fine jeans” of the fabulous ADWA collection, which are meant to be worn as dress attire, fashioned after styles from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. They look really bored, cold, and in need of friends, too. So I say to one of them, “Are you guys the ‘60s era? I was told that the jeans on this floor were the ‘60s ones…”

I am met with blank stares.

It occurs to me that the models:
a) don’t speak English;
b) have been instructed not to speak or smile;
c) think I’m crazy, 20 years older, 20 times less stylish, and 20 pounds fatter than I should be to be talking to them; or
d) all of the above.

I repeat my question and elicit a shrug from the porcelain doll with the glossy red lips. The others turn and strike new poses.

But I tried, people. And guess what? This story provided my “in” to conversation with other folks at the party, who commiserated with my feeling old, laughed with me, and gave me their business cards. Rule #8 from the book says “Be Vulnerable” and suggests a little self-deprecation can go a long way. So, I guess I did follow one of my own rules successfully.

And I practiced what I preach.

What would happen if I tried to follow my own rules every day? Watch this space…

]]> http://blog.sallyhorchow.com/playing-by-my-rules-model-behavior/feed/ 0 http://blog.sallyhorchow.com/o-facebook-how-i-poke-thee/ http://blog.sallyhorchow.com/o-facebook-how-i-poke-thee/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:00:49 +0000 Sally http://blog.sallyhorchow.com/?p=108 O, Facebook. How I love thee. How to count the ways? I could write a poem with all the two-letter words I’ve acquired in my vocabulary. I could recount the number of hours and days filled with nothingness before Facebook gave me Funnest Person Contests, Groups and Fanships, Pokes and Posts. I could tell tales of all the fun I’ve had ignoring friend requests and deleting boring people from my list.

I could update my status.

Instead, I bring you herewith three things that have gone down in the last 24 hours thanks to Facebook:

1. I made up a NEW rule of friendship: Reunions with old friends must remain just that. No matter the circumstance for the original break-up or losing touch, the reunion must remain a reunion. No need for dredging up the why and how of a lifetime ago, especially when that lifetime largely involved illegally drinking cheap beer and listening to the Violent Femmes. Exhibit A: Seeing Chris and Betsy Lowenstein again (thank you, Facebook Friend Finder), right back here on the beach in Nantucket. It was a reunion full of joy and catch-up, meeting babies and spouses, and comparing dog photos and heel injuries. I don’t know if I pissed them off sometime in the 80s, but they didn’t mention it. That was awesome.

2. I tried Jerk Chicken for the first time. I didn’t like it, but that’s not the point. In July, when my friend Ellie suggested that I might love the fried chicken at the Rotary, I put it on my Nantucket FOOD TO DO list. It’s a long list, so it’s taken me until now to get there. And alas, when I did, I was told that the fried chicken would not be ready for “23 more minutes.” I could wait 15 minutes, but not 23, so I figured, “When in Rome” (the Rotary is owned by Jamaican folks), and thusly chose the jerk chicken with a side of plantains. It was gross, but doesn’t it look pretty in the picture? Thanks again, Facebook Friend Finder. (No Ellie, no jerk chicken.)

Jamie Ranney

3. I appeared on Nantucket Local 17 TV. Attorney by day, local TV celebrity by night, Jamie Ranney is also an old “boyfriend” of mine (when we were 13 and “boyfriend” meant sitting on a bench together on Easton Street two nights in a row.) We were reconnected through…wait for it…yep, Facebook, and he invited me to appear on “The Jamie Ranney Show,” which is a terrifically low-gloss, “Wayne’s World”-ish production that shoots from the basement of a house on Barnabus Street. I took my turn on the infamous orange couch immediately following Nantucket Harbormaster Dave Fronzuto’s interview about the state of squidding, scalloping, and sailboat moorings. If people turn the channel when I start talking about friendship rules, LA v. ACK culture shock, and my jealousy of Jamie for having his own show on Nantucket, so be it. Because, as Jamie so astutely pointed out, “You know you’ve made it when you have your own blog and your own website.” And after being on Jamie’s show, I KNOW I’ve really made it. Thanks again, Facebook.

With all that it’s given me, I have something to give back to Facebook: its newer, more European pronunciation. FAH-CHAY-BOOK. Learn it. Love it. From the Italian-sounding Facia (could mean “face,” but doesn’t) and the, well, English, for “book.” First introduced into parlance by one Eduardo Braniff, FAH-CHAY-BOOK is sweeping the nation. Listen for it on “Gossip Girl” this fall. Then immediately go back to original pronunciation and never admit you ever used this one.

Poke.

I’ve always thought there was something extra romantic about a civil wedding ceremony. I love the utter f-u to the Martha Stewart and Conde Nast-induced stress over the stuff you had never heard of before planning a wedding (fondant, georgette, bustle, e.g.) I love the quick in-and-out, nobody gets hurt simplicity. And I especially love that it breaks a wedding down to its most crucial element: making your commitment official. Legal. Lifelong.

(Of course, I love a party, so my own wedding was the rager of a lifetime, with, yes, some of the above b.s., and no, not in a courthouse. No georgette, though — no white dress, even. But many tears of joy and excitement.)

Since the gay marriage ban was lifted in mid-June, conveniently in time for the summer wedding season, gay and lesbian couples in California have been rushing city halls for their turn at the altar – before the ban is potentially reinstated in November, when Proposition 8 returns to the ballot. There’s a tick-tock hysteria about it, which is fun for some couples, but a nightmare for others – particularly those with one commitment-phobic partner running out of excuses not to clip his/her wings.

And by God, there were wings a-clippin’ last Thursday at 3:05p, when I arrived at the Beverly Hills Courthouse to witness the civil ceremony of our friends Bonnie and Kim. Gay couples – and some straight – lined up 2×2 like Noah’s Arc before the flood.

What does one wear to a lesbian wedding, at 3 o’clock on a weekday afternoon? You dress up, I figured. A guest should honor the occasion and the couple, while trying not to upstage them (which is hard not to do, when the bride arrives in her very best cargo pants and a cleanly pressed shirt.) I chose a bright tweed skirt and an orange blouse. Daytime, but not too businessy, and not too frilly. Our friend Eduardo, dressed in a fabulous linen suit, was immediately mistaken for 1/2 of a betrothed couple. His penalty for dressing up, I suppose. Oh, well. Everyone was feelin’ the love at the Courthouse.

You’d think that my romanticization of courthouse ceremonies would mean that I had attended one or two — and not just seen them on TV. But I hadn’t, and my expectations were low: a long line, a teller window, grabbing a nice old lady nearby as a witness. I was so excited for Bonnie and Kim to have this kinship with the rest of us married folk — to finally feel normal and regular in a world which often made them feel like outcasts — that suddenly I realized that the cool, f-u part of a straight couple choosing a civil ceremony might seem like a cheap, second-rate option when it was your only one. I worried that they would miss out on (ok, the less important, but nonetheless wonderful) parts of a wedding that make it special, like…flowers. So, I brought the brides two hand-tied wedding bouquets, dressed in my Thursday afternoon finest, and hoped for the best.

I was right about the long line and the teller window, where Bonnie and Kim waited for a good half hour with their carefully filled-out paperwork, nervous that they wouldn’t reach the front before their 3:30p call time. Meanwhile, we, the entourage of 10 friends and relatives, sat on adjacent benches comparing the digital and video cameras we brought to record the occasion, wondering why none of the other couples in line had dressed-up friends, too, and if we would miss the big moment in question while we sat cluelessly nearby.

But it turns out that the good people of the California court system (or of the Beverly Hills version, anyway) have a lot of respect for the vestiges of wedding tradition. Bonnie and Kim – and all the other 2×2 couples – were afforded a real live ceremony, which would prove much more special than I would have ever thought:
At the appointed time, we were instructed to follow a smiling, statuesque, robed woman (“Gospel singer or judge?” someone wondered aloud) into a small room appointed with folding chairs facing a podium adorned by a (fake, but lovely) white floral altar. The door closed – laminated “Please Do Not Disturb: Wedding in Progress” keeping the riff-raff out – and a 5-minute-long, wonderful ceremony ensued. The robed goddess, Judge Nancy, turned out to be an orator of grace and warmth, laying the significance and the promise of marriage onto Bonnie and Kim like a warm blanket. She asked them to acknowledge that marriage is “not entered into lightly,” and that it is “about lifetime partnership.” And then, by the power vested in Nancy by the State of California, she pronounced them “Bonnie and Kim, spouses for life.”

And just like a million other California civil ceremonies before this one, and many more to come, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

K + B = hitched!

Declaring a staycation is kind of like declaring a period of celibacy when you’re really just having trouble getting any – it’s a pre-emptive strike. It’s shooting the finger at the working world with your 1987 “Don’t bother me; I’m on vacation!” bumper sticker. Except that no one notices the difference between a person getting a hurried latte at the Coffee Bean and a person ordering a glass of wine at lunch. Especially in L.A., where everyone could be “producing” or waiting for a call-back or silently fading from fame. Or staycationing.

So, while no one has noticed, I’ve seen the John Lautner show at the Hammer Museum, followed by a fantasy, “what’s-my-dreamhouse?” session of drawing. I have shopped for new iPhone applications at the iTunes store, discovering one called Shazam, which was perfectly constructed for all those times I heard a great song in a store and wanted to know what it was. I’ve seen 5 movies in 5 days, eaten popcorn at each, and reconfirmed that the Arclight’s is the best. And I’ve wandered into – and subsequently participated in – a belly dancing exercise class, replete with a ching-chang skirt, music from “Dreamgirls,” and instructions like “Pull-it-in-and-shake-it-up. In…and up. In…and up.”

A report out yesterday said that Americans drove 12.2 billion fewer miles in June than the same month a year earlier. With gas prices still soaring (I’m sorry, but coming down to $4.29 from $5.15 does not impress), we canceled our planned road trip to Colorado this week. But the real reason had nothing to do with gas; I was enjoying my staycation too much.

Next week, I’ll be taking another before-summer-ends vacation. After all this activity in my staycation, I will likely need one. And oh – you’ll be able to tell the difference. Because, ironically, on vacation, I’ll likely be writing a whole lot more of these.

O, the pageantry. Nothing gets me more than the first notes of song at life’s auspicious beginnings. Turn to me as the lights go down in any theater, and when the overture starts, you’ll find my eyes spilling over with anticipatory tears. The Oscar telecast. The National Anthem before a game. My niece’s piano recital. It’s such a strange, involuntary, sentimental impulse, like someone has reached inside my heart’s memory and pulled up the most pure, childlike excitement through my throat and my nose and eyes. It literally takes my breath away sometimes if I think about it too much, and then the tears can turn into embarrassing, unruly sobs – a total inappropriate mismatch for the significance of the event. I mean, the Olympics are exciting, but it’s not like I have some special connection to them. No matter—I’ll be glued to the tube next Friday night during the Opening Ceremony. Hell, I’d tune in for the opening of an envelope, if they played a soaring John Williams theme song. (N.B. For a good cry, play any song in the John Williams oeuvre.)

On occasion, there’s a legit reason for my waterworks. Like, my wedding, for example, when the obvious life-changing circumstance (not to mention the first few notes of “Prince of Denmark’s Waltz”) provoked immediate tears.

Or when I was on the Today Show. Actually, it was the lesser Weekend Today Show, but it had the same music cue (thanks again, in part, to John Williams) to do the trick. Having grown up watching the show (and having continued to watch it, despite the fact that I’m clearly not in their target demographic, and I hate Kathie Lee Gifford), I was very excited when my Dad and I were invited to be interviewed as part of the promotion for our book, The Art of Friendship: 70 Simple Rules for Making Meaningful Connections. That morning, I was fixing my hair in the mirror when I heard the violin music kicking off the show’s broadcast on the TV in the other room. Let’s just say I had to redo my make-up before heading off to the set and our interview with Lester Holt. See? Even the lameness of Lester Holt on a Saturday morning, and I was swept up in the excitement as if it were Matt and Meredith on a Monday.

Movies on the big screen do it for me, too. This week, we took a field trip from Nantucket to the big city of Boston to see “X-Files 2: I Want to Believe.” Though not a former fan of the TV series, I did have a vested interest in seeing the movie (and, potentially, getting choked up about it), because my Dad has a cameo appearance in it, around minute 40. (A diligent personal promoter, my Dad had “hinted” enough times to enough people in the film business that he would “make a great butler, judge, or bit actor” that one of them — Chris Carter, the “X-Files” director — finally bit. Carter graciously wrote the part of “Elderly Gent” into this latest movie sequel, replete with a page of dialogue and a full scene to perform with Mulder and the others. The chilly Vancouver shoot was the highlight of my Dad’s year.) Well, wouldn’t you know, when the lights went down in Theater 9 of the AMC Loews Boston Common 19, I couldn’t help but get a little teary with the thought that I was going to see MY DAD in celluloid. His “Elderly Gent” performance merited every emotion – but by the time he appeared, I just stared in dry-eyed wonder. He was great!

After Dad’s movie, we were off to watch the Red Sox play the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Seeing Fenway Park for the first time – with the “Green Monstah” and that bastion of baseball history — was truly one of “life’s rich pageants.” But after the requisite hot dog concessing, by the time we found our seats, the first inning was well underway. Thankfully, we missed the National Anthem.

One can only take so much pageantry in one day.

I’ve never looked at aesthetic services as treating myself. When I was 12 years old, upon sight of my first pimple, my mother promptly enrolled me in a series of appointments that would distort my image of a facial until well into my twenties. There was no “spa” whatsoever in Millie’s Facial Firm of Dallas, Texas; zits were serious business. It was solemn and sterile, like a hospital ward with the most terminal of patients. And the white-haired aestheticians were Nurse Rached-esque, with rubber-soled shoes and cold objects plinking on aluminum trays. After applying me with electrode mummy masks and stinging solutions, the facialist-du-jour would look down at my pre-teen skin through glasses with an extended magnifying shelf, roughly pinch my skin with her rubber gloves until it felt like it would bruise, dig hard into a bad place with a metal extractor, and then disgustedly (but, also, triumphantly) show me the results, as if forcing me to look at the dirt up close would keep me from ever letting my pores fill up like that again.

This torture continued on a monthly basis, until I was 15 and could finally escape my mother’s clutches – and, therefore, Millie’s Facial Firm – by fleeing to boarding school in far-away-as-possible New Hampshire. It wasn’t until faced with the adverse effects of sun exposure and aging that I begrudgingly tried a facial again. Now I go regularly to Tony, a warm, wonderful gentle-man at the Face Place in Los Angeles, who kindly fills me in on Hollywood gossip to distract me during the dreaded extraction period. And I never have to look.

Yesterday, I got a facial from Emma, a gorgeous and shockingly young Irish lass at J. Parave Salon in Nantucket. A far cry from the Face Place or, thankfully, Millie’s Facial Firm, and the Nantucket WASP answer to the gossip-mill hair salon in Steel Magnolias, J. Parave Salon is the kind of place where white haired ladies with leathery, tanned faces and the visiting summer folks in worn-in shorts and polo shirts squawk weather observations to each other from side-by-side manicure stations. Emma turned up the pan flute/wind chime music to drown out the noise in the other room, and began what was obviously an attempt at a spa-like facial. Poor thing didn’t realize, as she tried to massage my temples in slow, gentle circles, that the facial was not about relaxation for me. Despite the years of distance from the evil Millie’s Facial Firm, a facial – and the manicure, and the pedicure I would get after that, were utilitarian exercises for me. Upkeep.

She did manage to capture my attention by performing what felt like an amazing science experiment: after applying three layers of foamy lotion to my face, a mask hardened on top like paper mache, and went from refrigerator cold to burning hot to the touch within five minutes. It came off in almost one piece – but not before Emma caught me in close-up, Norma Desmond-style, as if going through endless machinations and contraptions to ready myself for my big comeback (or, oops: return.) Norma would know what I mean about “Personal Hygiene Day.” All that stuff is work work work! And preparation!

I encounter way too much media about stress-reduction and taking deep breaths and Om and Namaste. This morning, I grabbed for the Kashi granola bar that I keep handy for on-the-run occasions, and for the first time, I noticed that the bar is called TLC – not for what you’d think, but for “Tasty Little Chewies” – and the side of the box says, “At Kashi, we know there’s a time in the day when we need to take a moment to give ourselves some tender loving care…So, we’re offering you a great-tasting snack…” Now my in-a-hurry breakfast is supposed to be champagne brunch. My Personal Hygiene Day is a Spa Day. What next? A massage, to relax?

House guests are often the subject of quote pillows. “Guests fill me with sorrow; here today, here tomorrow” is a relic from the ‘70s that lives on the fold-out couch in my parents’ guest house, which is now my Dad’s office, so no one really shacks up there anymore anyway. But when they did, and my parents would put nice sheets on that fold-out couch, arrange some freshly cut flowers, and show the guests around their temporary digs, I used to wonder to myself if the very un-welcome “here today, here tomorrow” message would negate all those kind, hosty gestures. But I guess by the time the guest sees it, they’re already a guest, invited or uninvited, so it’s too late. What’s he going to do? Leave? Apologize for still being there?

I believe that I was deeply influenced by the message on that pillow. Because, in theory, I love to be a host. I like to have friends around, and spend longer periods of time with them, and be warm and welcoming. But in practice, I’m just as stingy with my surroundings as the pillow suggests. This contrast plays out constantly, after a few glasses of wine. Some people drink and tell long boring stories, and others drunk dial ex-boyfriends. Me? I invite people to visit. A few weeks before leaving for Nantucket this summer, my husband busted me issuing grandiose invitations to at least three couples (some with children and pets, no less!) to fly cross-country and stay with us during our 3 week vacation. Blame it on Rosé: the next day, with a heavy head(ache) and conscience, I didn’t follow up with any of those couples. Now we’re in Nantucket, and I’m so glad I didn’t. The time is so fleeting here – I can’t be held back from my requisite beach reading, bike riding, or lobster eating because some pesky house guest has never been to the Whaling Museum, or wants to sleep in until 11:00a.

Oh, but I’m kidding. When guests get here – like our friends Laura and Henry, who have come to be the ONLY people we actually host while we’re here – I’m thrilled to receive them. They get into our groove (see Henry, right, enthusiastically wearing his guest gift, a Yacht Club visor, as he lunches at the club) and don’t demand that we do anything differently. We are all able to do what we like to do on our own, but do it together. And isn’t that what the best friendships aim for? They feel like relatives.

Of course, my sister has a quote pillow that says “Friends welcome; relatives by appointment only.”

Last night, I finally ended my arbitrary abstinence from the Juice Bar’s homemade ice cream –- one of the much anticipated delicacies of any Nantucket summer (along with Something Natural cookies and Provisions’ Turkey Terrific sandwiches) –- with a triumphant order: Mint Oreo in a Waffle Cup Cone with Chocolate Sauce. Even though the combo was exactly what I had been craving, I nonetheless found myself rationalizing something about the indulgence vis-à-vis my choice of mint. (Couldn’t you compare mint with that whole thing about spicy foods and heightened metabolism? Or: couldn’t performing the dual task of cooling off and freshening my breath negate the sugar and calories?) But then I just gave in and enjoyed every spoonful.

I get sexual abstinence – for teens and Catholics, I mean. It makes perfect sense, when faced with a consequence like eternal damnation or pregnancy, to hold off on carnal pleasure ‘til you’re in the clear. But c’mon — what’s to come of a little ice cream pleasure, once or twice in a hot summer…eternal FAT-nation? That’s what my mother thinks. On my wedding day, five years ago here on Nantucket, she overheard me on the phone with my friend Steph, who was kindly offering to deliver a celebratory Juice Bar ice cream-as-nuptial-nerve reducer. “Peanut Butter Cup, please!” I said, almost as thrilled for having finished my six-month wedding dress weight loss marathon as for the wedding itself. And then, in a moment that I know now was purely a final, fleeting maternal attempt to warn her youngest child of the evils in the world as she headed off to married life, my mother lovingly screamed, “Don’t get FAT!”

Geez. If Juice Bar ice cream made you immediately, upon ingestion, gain twenty pounds and bust out of your wedding dress, well then, I probably could be convinced to abstain.

But thankfully, it doesn’t. And I didn’t. On my wedding day, or last night.

Whenever I’m waiting in the longer and longer lines at the Juice Bar, I try not to think about my mother’s warning. Instead, I look over the high counter at the racially-harmonized staff of Jamaicans and Bulgarians and White Preppy College Students, prematurely angry and bored (and likely stoned), even though it’s only mid-July, and I think about Dede Welles, a suite-mate of mine my Sophomore year at Yale, who spent her summers scooping ice cream on Martha’s Vineyard. Even though Dede was ridiculously smart, well on her way to graduating Summa Cum Laude and later becoming a lawyer, she eschewed the resume-building New York summer job for her beloved one in the ice cream store. “People are so nice there,” she would say. “I mean, who isn’t happy when they’re eating ice cream?”

Some people on Nantucket, apparently. I witnessed a beaten-down mother-of-three in an incident that could only be described as Rocky Road Rage, when she realized that hers was the only stopped-in-traffic of the parlor’s five stupid separate lines (which we all know in a perfect world would be better organized in a one- or two-line, bank teller-type/“I can help whoever’s next” configuration), and set to dragging her screaming children out of the place altogether. Then, there was the toe tapping and eye rolling that ensued when the guy in front placed a big order, and when I reached the front but couldn’t make up my mind. I’m sorry: when you’ve waited this long, and with a decision of this caloric gravity, sample spoons are of the utmost importance!

But it really IS hard not to be happy when you’re eating the delicious ice cream from the Juice Bar. Besides my minty fresh choice, I highly recommend (and will always go back for): Brownie a la Mode, Peanut Butter Cup, and Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. Do not try to get too gourmet – newfangled flavors like Ginger and Crantucket just aren’t what you’re there for. And DO NOT abstain from the fresh-out-of-the-oven waffle cookie cone. I mean: what of a few more carbs and calories at that point?

Besides, when it comes to ice cream, abstinence is seriously overrated.

Yesterday I had a rude awakening from my Facebook-induced delusion that I was good at games. I should have known better, since my childhood was plagued by maddening run-ins with the Pfeifers, my Mensa-certified, gaming relatives on my mother’s side, who, from Grandpa Blue to Uncle Bootie on down, barraged my every visit to Little Rock with word puzzle, maze, and card trick challenges that I could never solve before throwing in the towel in tearful frustration.

It turns out that Scrabulous – Facebook’s version of Scrabble — is a lot easier than old skool board game Scrabble, especially with all that delicious access to the Two-Letter Word List and FreeDictionary.com, so you can try out fake words way before your opponent would ever challenge you. My old friend, Ellie, and I tried out Scrabble on the beach outside her sister’s house yesterday, having played each other on Facebook Scrabulous to great success (I can’t remember whose success just now, just “success” in the sense of fun.) The lack of those online cheats was coupled by the pressure of a live opponent, waiting for me to finish my move. I hate that. I feel bad, she feels bad, I feel stupid. Plus, real life games require concentration. You can’t chat. And beachside, with an old friend, is about chatting.

Ellie and I had reconnected five months ago after a 10-year hiatus. I can’t remember why we had lost touch – we had been very good friends before, when we worked at “Conan” together in that first trying year it was on the air – but I guess some aspect of our friendship had gotten too intense, as it happens sometimes in your 20s, when you don’t know what you want or how to get it, and you end up blaming the people you’re closest to. Since our reunion as grown-ups, we had had a wine bar catch-up in the West Village, a dinner in Los Angeles, and now, time together in Nantucket. Of course, we had each other’s phone numbers, if we had wanted to call over the years, but we hadn’t – or we didn’t, anyway. And finding each other on Facebook seemed like a risk-free social experiment; you kind of softly lob the message/”friend request” out there, rather than the seemingly more confrontational phone call. When Ellie wrote back that it was the best thing that had happened to her so far on the site, I was surprised and so pleased, my heart warming like a freshman winning approval from the cool senior.

The beach chat between Scrabble moves was the most relaxed yet. I guess it takes 3 or 4 times to get back into a groove with certain people. (But how do you really get back into a groove, when the groove you were in before was that of two single, ambitious, angst-ridden, searching twenty-somethings? I felt myself darting around the fear of judgment, so palpable then and now, like yet another game I couldn’t complete.) So, it’s essentially starting over. You cover the broad strokes (“Did you watch ‘The Wire?’”), make assumptions about growth on both sides (“therapy”…”work”…”I try not to let it bug me when…”), and then just let the comfortable feeling of having known and respected someone before wash over you, like the kiddie waves at the shore beyond, teeming with the hope that all of it can be restored, without going too deep.

After many distracted, 4-letter moves, we opted to forfeit the game, folding it up back into the box — thankfully, with no digital score kept in perpetuity; just some unused, sandy Ps and Qs put back in their Mylar pouch.

But I’m pretty sure, if we had kept the score, Ellie would have been way ahead. It turns out I am not good at games.