If you need a pick-me-up during the day, I suggest taking a look at the “Arts & Crafts” section on Craigslist. It makes one laugh with glee over bad art for sale and weird crafting kits that should perhaps be tossed into the garbage or offered to a neighbor kid instead being advertised for $4. Is it just me (of course it is!) or would it seem very excessive to drive to the suburbs to retrieve a sock puppet kit for $4? Sock puppet… kit? Sock… Puppet… Kit. What have we come to?

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This is my newest acquisition, a wonderful doll friend. He is a psychotherapist. That’s all I know for now.

Please vote for his name by commenting.

1. Dr. Oliver Cuddles

2. Mr. Frank Chow Chow

3. Herbert Brandywine

Another Wednesday rolls around…

Item! There is a little shoe repair place in the basement of Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis. I know because I was sent there when the sandals I bought there broke on their second wearing. A little rivet came flying out, causing the gladitor-like straps to go wonky. Sigh.

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Big doings over the weekend as The K and I celebrated 6 years of marriage. Well, not such tremendous doings but we marked the day in a way that was special for us. Last year, for our 5th anniversary, we went out to California and had a lot of fun – we saw a blue whale, we traveled by boat through “pod” of dolphins that numbered in the thousands, we hiked, we went to wineries, we saw Tommy the Clown and watched him teach a master dance class.

This year we loaded up the hound and went to Lake Maria State Park, which is a beautiful place to go hiking because it has “Big Woods” and many ponds plus Lake Maria (with some docks that are great for dogs). Maybe it’s because spring has been crappy but being outside that day was the one thing I really wanted. It was warm, breezy and sunny.

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It’s been a strange week in the world of work for me. Resignations, heated e-mail exchanges, accusations, etc. Thankfully, none of this directly involved me. I am but a bystander to the action and I have to admit that it’s good to be the (confused) onlooker. When I’m directly involved in exchanges of this nature, I don’t sleep for days. As I was heading in to the building this morning to see what new, indignant e-mails had cropped up overnight (four new ones!), the piped in music in the hallway was “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys. There is something hilarious about this song set in direct contrast to extreme disharmony.

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I made some half-assed promise to myself that I would “get more exercise.” So this is the workout I’m calling The Reebles Bad Day Workout. It’s just enough effort to make you feel like you did something and to work out the unseemly aggression you’re feeling after spending the day with complete morons. But it won’t over-tax you. There’s no running, biking, boxing, etc. You don’t even have to go outside; perfect for days when there’s a 40-mile-per-hour wind and blowing rain.

Here’s what you need: tennis shoes, some clothes you can move in, some 5 lb. weights (heavier if you are buff or not completely weak in the arms and unable to do even one pull-up).

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At the end of April, actress Mia Farrow embarked upon a hunger strike in order to call attention to continuing troubles in the Darfur region of Sudan. She pledged to fast for three weeks, only drinking water, to draw media attention to the plight of refugees in Darfur, where welfare agencies have been exiled and essentially barred from helping to care for and feed the refugees. She chronicled the experience through videos posted to YouTube. In one she says, “Of course, I don’t expect that me on a hunger strike is going to do that much. But if it provides a news hook for newspapers so they can talk about what’s really important, then that will be worth it.”

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This season of Real Housewives NY culminated in Jill’s charity “function,” which we’ve been hearing about every episode.

First, let me say how shocked I was by their low ticket sales five days out from the event. They hadn’t even broken even yet. Actually, this is comforting since it’s the same way a gala event I had to plan this year went, although we had at least broken even on ticket sales prior to the event. I just figured that, with all the fab people they claim to know, they would have had many more than 170 people.

And, as often happens on committees, some members did next to nothing and some got really pissy about how things should be done. Alex, for example, hadn’t even invited anyone as of the final committee meeting. Her excuse: I was busy. Too busy to send out an e-mail or ask four or six friends to go? Yes, this happens all the time. I bet anything that she could have told them exactly what dress she was planning on wearing but somehow inviting guests had slipped her mind. Later, she made a point during her “camera talk” time to say that she and Simon had called some people and got a few to go. Yeah, right.

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It’s official. I can’t stand the word “eponymous.” If I hear it used one more time in reference to an album, particularly on hipster radio, I’m going to implode. Yeah, we get it, but can’t you just say “self-titled?” My favorite example is on Wikipedia: Bad Company’s first album Bad Company released in 1974 is another example that also contained a track that was a Rock Radio favorite of the same name, “Bad Company“. “Rock Radio” is capitalized on Wiki; I didn’t do it. Did “Rock Radio” become a proper noun? I guess R.E.M. still has the final word on this very pretentious word with their album Eponymous from 1988.

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Lorna Martin, the author of the memoir Girl on the Couch, had a reasonably “good” life. She worked as a writer for the Observor. She had a loving family and a group of girlfriends. But when she found herself involved in a love triangle that was threatening to become a love square, she decided to begin psychotherapy in order to get down to the bottom of things.

While I tend to think we are just about one block away from the end of Memoir Street, another one always pops up that catches my eye. I wonder, “Is there anything new to tell?” And in this case in particular, “Is there anything new to tell us about therapy?” As mentioned before, this is not a book about what we would refer to as “mental illness” but more about the feeling and position in life of being blocked. Or maybe it could be better described as feeling as if you are forever waking up in the middle of the woods with no idea how you got there and even less of an idea about how to get out. It’s confusion wrapped up with lack of perspective, ingrained habits, runaway emotions and bad memories. And yes, it’s very real, even if it lacks a name like manic depression (perhaps Martin defines it best through the use of the term “normal neurotic”).

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