In August every year, my job becomes very intense and stays that way until winter break, when I keel over and seethe with wassail-soaked hostility until just after New Year’s, when I have about two weeks to do all the things I put aside for four months because they didn’t concern money. Two weeks are not many. Then a new cycle of Find The Money starts in a fury that ends in early July.

This year, the work started a few weeks early. I expect to blog lightly for the next month. Please bear with me. My love is true! There’s a lot to talk about; life is very eventful. The eviction hearing thing is next Wednesday and I’m just freaked out enough that I sleep even less than usual. So I’m going to sign off and polish my nails a shimmering jet black. I may be frantic, but my manicure will still be fabulous.

Just under a year ago, a co-worker whose son has participated in Air Force rescue and recovery missions, asked my opinion of what was happening in New Orleans. At that moment, the levees had already broken, people were trapped and drowning. It was all quite unbelievable that our federal government, which until that time had a rather er reassuring manner of swooping in at times of crisis to minimize loss of life, did absolutely nothing. Didn’t seem to notice disaster was happening. Didn’t care. Did nothing.

My co-worker, also unable to believe what she was seeing on the news, was hoping for assurance from me – like I’m the Voice of Reason. It was the summer of 2005, when people were using the words treason and dissent interchangeably, and I don’t like to discuss politics in the office. This time, I broke my little rule. I told her what we were seeing on television was not a massive rescue being slowly organized, and it would take time. No, we were seeing the administration’s true colors: avarice, corruption, cowardice and a mind-blowing lack of human empathy.

The co-worker, whose life experience is greater than mine, spoke rather sharply about how rescues must be coordinated and they take time to mount and launch. I understood her problem. She believed in the willingness of soldiers, sailors, doctors and pilots to show up, face down the situation and save the endangered. If they weren’t there, they must’ve been on their way. There must be a reason for the delay.

This charming faith in the heroic people who do these dangerous and dirty missions for us is precisely the thing blinding people who shout “Support the Troops!” like those words mean anything, and I say they’re meaningless because nobody says boo when Bush cuts funding for the Veterans Administration. My co-worker turned on her heel and walked away, but as events unfolded calamitously, as attitudes were revealed in actions and inaction, she didn’t raise the subject again.

It has often been the cold comfort of those out of political fashion that no one four-year or eight-year presidency can so change the bureaucracy that it cannot be changed back, and even so, the middle class would remain largely unaffected. My co-worker was struggling with the idea that life in America had truly changed, and that she could not trust the government to act as it always had. I felt bad for her, knowing the people were willing but our leaders were not.

All day, a delicate mist has fallen over the parched and browning greenery, reviving trees, lawns and late summer blooms. This morning, I could not tell from inside the apartment whether that mist would feel gentle on the skin, but I laced up my sneakers, strapped the beach bag across my back and went out. Within two blocks, I was thrilled to feel this mist on my face and arms. The cool scent of flora drinking in the moisture it has craved is a sweet thing, and my heart sang. Then I turned the corner of South Second and Benner, where the scent on the breeze changed.

Thursday, I woke to the sound of helicopters overhead, which has become a sign that something dreadful is happening. Months ago, a firefighter in my home town died on a day I awoke to the sound of helicopters, and just over a week ago, helicopters overhead signified a bar I used to frequent burned down, taking half a neighborhood with it. The other day, when I heard the helicopters again, my heart sank. The Conservative Temple in Highland Park was on fire. The Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) and I got married there eighteen years ago. The temple is arguably the heart of this town, even as there are several other synagogues within walking distance.

Fires have different smells that tell the nose important things. A wood fire cannot conceal the scent of what kinds of wood are burning. An electrical fire has a powdery, metallic smell. A house fire combines the smells of burning wood and fabric with the acrid smells of melting plastics and metals. You know the smell of a house fire. I was in New York for a Supersuckers/Zeke show in late September, 2001. The cab driver took us as far south as the police barricades and said, “Now you get out and walk.” We weren’t near our destination. We said, “Walk?” He pointed: this way, that way, this way, over there, you’ll be fine. Everything was covered in a fine dust, and there were bits of paper everywhere. The dust required no explanation but the paper lying everywhere and floating on the breeze was startling. The paper we shuffled through had been sitting on someone’s desk, in someone’s files, when the Towers came down. Then we turned a corner and the smell of September 11th hit my friends and me like a baseball bat across the face: the housefire smell, intense and one might say loud, with the horrible additions of burned chemicals and a certain excruciating smell one might with reticence recognize as flesh-like. Heaven help me, I stopped in my tracks and turned to face it. I inhaled everything on the wind. A breath. Tragic history in fragrant waves. When I exhaled, I said, “Go in peace, sad spirits.” I said, “Goddamnit, I need a beer.”

At the corner of South Third and Benner sits the temple. It runs the length of the block and caution tape dangles from every door handle and railing along South Third Avenue. The tape looks tired. Thursday evening, on my way to the family store, I saw police cars everywhere and people standing in the streets, just staring at the charred temple. On my way home, most of the people were gone but the Eyewitness News van had set up shop on South Third Avenue. Today, of course, everyone was gone.

On this block and for a block or two in each direction, the air smells like a house fire – sort of. There’s also another strong smell. Ever handle an old roll of cheap masking tape? Something about it changes over time, and it begins to smell a bit like smoke, but a peculiar smoke with a slight hint of plastic and brown sugar cure. One step off the curb and the smell is gone. I turn around to see if I imagined it, but there it stands: the temple, tired caution tape, a sad figure in a small town.

About an hour ago, I received an email from one of my international contacts for work. It was sent to me Thursday morning. All week, emails have bounced back to me days after I dashed them off. I wondered why everyone I knew was so quiet. So. If I seem out of touch, I’m not. For the time being, you might have to call me or talk in comments.

Just for fun, consider the extent and limit of your ability to observe. Before you pronounce yourself the Sherlock Holmes of your social set, imagine what I can only imagine with great difficulty: that I am not the Center of the Universe. I know! It’s a giant leap into space and back, but – just for this moment – imagine that something or someone else might be the Center of the Universe. Well, if there’s room in your brain for that crazy idea, there’s no end to your wild imagination. Let’s don our leopard-print space suits and go! I’m your Dr. Watson.

One
My co-worker was born and raised outside Boston. She has two grown children and five grandchildren. Her brother is in an adult community. Emily has perfect posture, her health is good and her recall must be nearly perfect, because her special talent is to catalogue the life events of the people around her and organize the connections between them. Emily remembers hearing my grandmother talk in Edith’s beauty shop about her little granddaughters doing ballet. Emily lives with a strict class hierarchy in her head and an almost magical ability to smile and say nothing overt. Her desk is never messy. Her clothing is this season’s. Unless you look closely at her rapid, economical movements and the clipped way she keeps her hands close to her sides, you might not observe that Emily was a stewardess in the 1960s based in New York City and has flown all over the world. Recently, she said to me, “Baghdad was a beautiful city, but I didn’t love Teheran.” Her manners are proper New England. In ten years, I have never heard her raise her voice.

What might be the ironic bane of her existence?

Two
I am wearing beige slacks, a spring green cardigan, green sandals, copper toenail polish, make up. My hair is a dark, healthy red. My raincoat is giant floral in cartoon colors, mostly pink and orange. The first person I meet at the door is Daria’s peculiar mother-in-law, with whom I recently did not have an interstate conflagration. As I walk into Daria’s house for Tyler’s, Tyler Too’s, Sandy’s, Tony’s and Sandro’s birthday party, Dad is sitting on a chair near the buffet table, which is a surprise. Daria has hired a babysitter because twenty children are expected at this party. Dad hasn’t been speaking to me since I accidentally spilled what the whole family knew and was keeping secret, though I didn’t know I was supposed to keep my trap shut, when I asked my fifteen-year-old sister, “So, how’s the whoring and the drinking working our for ya?” I was joking. It was a class trip and the kids snuck out in Paris and drank wine. Who wouldn’t? More important: who hasn’t?

Who spends an hour and a half sitting next to me in the living room?

Three
The drive to Daria’s house is over an hour from my apartment. I am listening to CSNY’s Helpless and burst into tears. Because I am both uncommonly beautiful and uncommonly vain, I finally stifle myself and do not crash my car, though I do miss a turn and drive miles out of my way. Because I am also brilliant, I figure out where I am and improvise a route to Daria’s house.

What is so tragic that after a year I still dab stray eyeliner?

Let’s review.

One
The ironic bane of Emily’s existence is that her children also love to travel, which means two of her grandchildren live in Alaska and three recently returned from a year in New Zealand. When the plane landed, I said, “Thank Vishnu, I can stop wondering how Emily’s mother used to complain.”

Two
Despite the fact that we hate one another, Daria’s mother-in-law sat next to me and tried to make conversation. I gave it a shot, then resorted to pretending she was an NFL mascot.

Three
Must I choose one horrible, unnecessary tragedy?

As Corinne moves toward me, I turn off the vacuum and rack my brain for verbs to describe the unusual motion of her approach. Is she hobbling? Slithering? Sashaying? Climbing the side of the building like TV Batman? As she steps through the store’s back door, her weight rests on a foot and both hands on the doorknob. She shifts her hands to a railing that leads downstairs to the stockroom and pulls herself a step closer. Her hands shift to the jewelry counter and she takes another step. With each step, she also shifts which shoulder and which side of her face faces me. I’ve turned off the vacuum because I must know why my much-younger sister appears to be giving me a silent film version of The Eye. Then she says magic words.

Corinne: I’ve discovered frostbite hurts.

I swear to God she said this yesterday, when everywhere in New Jersey it was August. I’m all a-twitter.

Tata: Your theory intrigues me! How will you support it?
Corinne: I had a plantar’s wart removed and the doctor freezes it off. The he digs out what he’s frozen. I’ve been going for weeks. See?

She points to an ordinary BandAid on the bottom of her foot that does not at all make me think of polar bears and icebergs. This is disappointing.

Corinne: Usually, the doctor says, “This is going to pinch” and it does or I don’t feel it. Sometimes he says, “This is going to hurt” and it does. But today, he didn’t say anything. And I would’ve been fine except Tippecanoe was sitting there, asking, “Does it hurt a lot?”
Tata: Scientific curiosity. I like that boy!

He is sitting at the counter, playing video games and squealing, “Kill him! Kill him!” and “I stabbed him in the head, yay!” This is a moral dilemma for me. I appreciate a young man’s introduction to knifeplay but think it should be done the old-fashioned way: in person. The disconnect created by the floral-scented store full of gorgeous things where Japanese flute music sets a peaceful tone and the gloating seven-year-old was too much for my tiny brain and required Hoover therapy.

Corinne: This time…anyway, I couldn’t scream.
Tata: I don’t see why not. He’s busy stabbing things and they’re not screaming properly. When the doctor stabbed you, you should’ve hollared at the tops of your lungs. For Science!
Corinne: I would never have thought of that in a million years.

Speaking of things I think about all the time, this is exactly the kind of public art project I loved doing and miss now.

In this time of finger-pointy-name-callingy-unfunny-y-repressive Eeeeeeeeevil, I see that I haven’t been using my brain for Good to the full extent of its powers. I apologize. I thought blogging was the most I could do and maybe it has been – but it is my revolution, and why am I not dancing?

This morning, my co-workers can’t say enough about how I look.

Beth: You look like candy!
Nina: Your toes are perfect! And that ankle bracelet! Where did you get it?
Tata: I think my friend’s cousin made it for me.
Nina: You’re so colorful!

Yep, I’m wearing an outfit that would cause Siobhan grave concern: cropped pants in a tawny print, apple-green sandals and a vivid-pink cardigan that this morning motivated men I’ve known for decades to murmur, “Pink is my favorite flavor.” So, I join the parade of people enjoying the view. The top button’s unbuttoned and I’ve spent the hours admiring my cleavage, which is way more portable than internet smut.

In fact, I’m so near Me, I break into a sweat every time I think of it. My charisma is inspiring. I am mesmerizing! I may need bodyguards to protect my many admirers from themselves, much as accountants could protect people from this thievin’ polygamist:

They allege she went from from one spouse to the next before they realized she had cleaned out their bank accounts.

McConnell has already pleaded guilty to attempted forgery and intent to defraud for writing bad checks to her former husband, Richard McConnell. Those checks were drawn on an account belonging to Len Battaglia, who she married before McConnell.

I have never before felt such a need to slap nametags on people I’ll never meet. Let’s try this again, and speak slowly so I can read your lips!

“From our view, it’s pretty straightforward,” Macomb County assistant prosecuting attorney Michael Servitto told CourtTVnews.com. “She married Mr. McConnell and then married Mr. Rice without obtaining a divorce from Mr. McConnell beforehand.”

But defense lawyer Robert McClellan is expected to argue that, because his client was already married to Len Battaglia when she married McConnell, her marriage to McConnell was invalid.

“Since the marriage to Richard McConnell wasn’t a legal marriage, she wasn’t guilty of polygamy when she later married Mr. Rice,” McClellan told the Macomb Daily in 2006. “It’s more correct to call her a serial monogamist.”

So polygamy prevented her from being a polygamist? More interesting than anything else about the case is defense lawyer McClellan’s logic. I am very excited to see this kind of silliness set legal precedent – and so is Joe Lieberman.

“We are happy to have cleared this hurdle, so we can focus on bringing people together in Connecticut for a new politics of unity and purpose,” said Dan Gerstein, [Senator Joe] Lieberman’s campaign spokesman.

Lieberman lost the August 8 primary to [Ned] Lamont, a Greenwich businessman who criticized Lieberman for supporting the Iraq war and for being too close to Republicans and President Bush.

See, the thing that everyone could agree on was there was a primary election, but after that, all bets were off. The people of Connecticut were divided on who should run for US Senator. Democrats talking about who should support whom sounded like a Viagra-soaked EST convention. In the days leading up to the primary everyone agreed was a more or less ordinary civics exercise of a factual nature, a number of people behaved badly in front of cameras and microphones, such that I – remember what’s important, here, and nothing is more important than My Happiness – was bored and annoyed with Mr. Gerstein. In a factual sense, Mr. Lieberman lost and Mr. Lamont won but Mr. Lieberman will unite Connecticut by dividing his party in the November election. I am breathless with a desire to – as a bumper sticker I saw yesterday advised – Visualize Grilled Cheese.

The day after the primary, Lieberman submitted petitions to create his own political party and appear on the ballot.

A poll released last week showed Lamont gaining support in November’s three-way Senate race,[sic]

But the Quinnipiac University poll showed that Lamont still has an uphill battle against Lieberman, the 2000 nominee for vice president.

Lieberman led Lamont among registered voters 49 percent to 38 percent. Republican Alan Schlesinger got support from 4 percent.

That’s an improvement for Lamont, who trailed Lieberman 51 percent to 27 percent in a three-way race in a July 20 Quinnipiac poll. That survey of registered voters showed Schlesinger with 9 percent.

CNN routinely tests my patience with numbers from all sorts of sources that routinely contradict one another. It’s almost as if CNN dares me to ignore them. In any case, the fact to be extracted from this pool of speculative – um – speculation is that the guy who won may still lose to the guy who lost.

Look me in the eye and tell me: who should be sweating?

The budget crisis in New Jersey is very serious, much more serious than people who say “Cut my taxes” acknowledge. I am waiting for a phone call from one of the university’s vendors and I’m going to talk him out of $4000. I’ve got the facts on my side. I’ve got the desire to get him to agree, and he will. What I don’t got is the patience to wait another hour for this phone call. I have an attention span too short to ride this Tilt-A-Whirl. An hour ago, I’d been waiting half an hour but I couldn’t wait any longer to go – shall we say – powder my nose. I stood in the middle of the office and issued an order: I’m going to the bathroom. If my phone rings, answer it and sing Feelings until I get back.

While I wait for the court date to establish whether or not I’m evicted, which no one seems to believe I will be, while I wait for summer to end, for the students to return, for the month thousands of newcomers drive wrong ways on New Brunswick’s one-way streets, for even skillful blogging to make sense in a world where people say about bombing civilians “That’s just the way it is,” I wonder what I’m really waiting for. Am I waiting for a companion soul? For the real estate bubble to burst? For a two-for-one frozen duck sale at Pathmark? – Because that will never happen, but I think that about many things people generally anticipate.

Life has returned to the way it was last spring, only with greater humidity and pointlessness. I need a new reason to live, if only to learn some patience.

Blogger has thrown me out and trashed draft posts five times tonight. This afternoon, for hours, my work email was out. Blame it on sunspots, blame it on my special relationship with computers, blame it on the price of Skittles in Silicon Valley; the result is the same. I am not a trusting person. You and I can sit at this table and converse only so long as I can see both your hands. Don’t try anything. I’ve got ketchup packets and I know how to use them.

Mr. Breszny, eternal optimist, advises Aquarians:

It’s time for you to fall in love, Aquarius – though not necessarily with a person. You could swoon with infatuation for a place where your heart feels free, for example. You could dive into new music that liberates you from your past, or give yourself with abandon to a fascinating task that brings out the best in you. You might lose your heart to a mind-expanding mentor, a mysterious animal, or a thrilling fight for justice. It really doesn’t matter exactly how or what you fall in love with, Aquarius, as long as it incites you to break open the doors of perception.

Saturday morning, my phone rang.

Voice: It’s the Frito Bandito!
Tata: Noooooooooooooooooo!
Voice: [Spanish Spanish Spanish] Do you know who this is?
Tata: I was just ironing my sombrero and handwashing my six-shooter. Of course, Peaches!

Scout is so butch I decided last month she needs a diner waitress name. No one has ever addressed her as fruit before.

Scout: What are you really doing?
Tata: Laundry. You don’t think glitter applies itself, do you?
Scout: Copycat! There’s a festival in Asbury Park, with some concentration on energy issues. Wanna go?
Tata: I’d love to but you’d have to carry me. I’m pooped!
Scout: You are? Okay, I have other errands. Would you be interested in going with me to Patel’s Cash & Carry on Oak Tree Road?
Tata: What is it?
Scout: It’s an Indian grocery store. Bring twenties.
Tata: I can be ready in half an hour.
Scout: Our first stop will be coffee so we remain conscious as we consider our purchases.

Half an hour later, Scout rings the doorbell that always sounds like a game show wrong answer. We get in her new car and drive back roads to a part of Oak Tree Road I don’t recognize. We’re in sprawling Edison, the giant town next to little Highland Park. Traffic in Edison is so bad I avoid it if possible and seldom drive there myself. Scout is not intimidated by things like traffic. On the way to Oak Tree Road, we stopped at the Quik Chek near her apartment for coffee. Sometimes, when you walk into a room you feel the temperature drop, and as we walked to the back of the store, I felt it. We poured ourselves coffee and a woman came around the service island, addressing Scout in very familiar terms. Scout was cordial but the woman was loud, with a little girl running around her feet. The woman went on and on about being fired from Quik Chek because she was pregnant. Scout finally said, “Look, I don’t think we know each other.” The woman talked on and on. Ordinarily, this would be my cue to say, “Darling, Grandma’s waiting,” or “Sweetheart, we’ve got to get to the party store before they run out of X-Rated balloons,” but the vibe in the store was strange, so I tugged us toward the cash register and paid for coffee. As we were leaving, the woman was still talking. So when we parked at Patel’s Cash & Carry, we hoped the Freak Magnet was set on OFF.

We walked around the store, looking at everything. Some items were familiar but many were not and this was very exciting. I can do this for hours. Scout found incense she wanted. I found bargains on tahini, chutneys and a garlic-ginger paste. Bags of golden raisins and shelled pistachios tempted us both but neither of us decided to buy. Then we turned a corner and found a glorious thing: ready-to-heat Indian vegetarian meals on sale for $.99.

I filled the handbasket with different flavors: paneer makhani, palak paneer, aloo mutter, dal tadka and channa masala. It would have been delightful to have an aquaintance with this brand (SWAD) before this moment, but I didn’t. It was a risk of only a few dollars, if I didn’t like the food. In another aisle, we found coconut oil, which is really good for dry hair. I used to go to botanicas in New Brunswick for coconut oil but forgot about it years ago. As we were walking to the car, Scout said, “Have you ever been to the Phoenician bakery?” I hadn’t but had always wanted to, so we drove there. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a playmate interested in just reading labels in grocery stores, which is a brilliant bit of fun now that I’m ancient and have enough patience to appreciate the elegance of refrigerating 32 ounces of anchovies. We read everything. I loved it and bought a few small things to satisfy my curiosity. I have to know what cream cheese spread in glass cups is! I may need dozens of grape leaves in brine!

As we approached the cash register and the four people behind it, standing shoulder to shoulder, I felt that temperature drop again. Everyone was loud and moving, then still and staring. Scout wanted me to try the triangular spinach pies, so I asked for a bag. Scout asked for four but the man at the counter said no. Two. We could clearly see other bags behind the counter. I was standing behind Scout when I heard her say without hesitation, “Two, then.” As we were leaving, I saw the master sound man from the bar. I’d thought he lived out in Pennsylvania but seeing him at the Phoenician bakery in North Brunswick on a Saturday morning pretty much ruled that out.

At dinner time, I cooked some basmati rice – which you can buy in enormous quantities at Costco, and I have – and microwaved the paneer makhani. I applied one to the other. I’m not going to say this tastes like paneer makhani you get at your favorite restaurant, but it’s pretty good. The portion is of a healthy size. For about $2, I had a meal I really enjoyed and I managed to stay out of a restaurant, where I could have spent $20 and would have been tempted to eat much too much. I am always thrilled when I find inexpensive ways to enjoy a much more espensive lifestyle and remain within my humble means. So far, this is a really luxurious and flavorful way to enhance my happiness. So maybe it is love.