While I was too undisciplined to write last week, posted I think my personal favorite Secret Society of List Addicts list to date: quotes I thought were from the Bible ’til an embarrassing age. Keep in mind, I went to Catholic school.

NTKOG Year 2, #15: The kind of unanchored, pleasure-motivated creature of Id who pays no mind to Should or Ought, but builds her castle on a foundation of Want.

I am: locked in a constant struggle with my discipline, both as a writer and a human being. For the past year or so, I’ve emerged as the victor, thanks to a ceaseless cycle of early mornings, late nights, and forcibly cutting off my internet access after hours.

I am not: convinced it’s been great for my mental health. Let’s put it this way: near the end of the three-month MFA application extravaganza, I had no trouble getting a seat to myself on the bus. ’cause I was twitching and shuddering like an ’89 Honda going a hundred on the freeway.

The Scene: My apartment. My god, my glorious monk’s-cell apartment, night after night, for a week of personally mandated laziness. During the second week of the new year, I made a deal with myself: You don’t have to write. You don’t have to do laundry. You don’t have to socialize with humans. Just do what comes naturally.

It reminds me, actually, of my project during the year after undergraduate: I declared a moratorium on alarm clocks, and spent a year living by my natural clock. I’ve never been happier or more well-rested in my life, going to sleep at 9:30pm and waking up at 5:30.

During this week of laziness, though, I assure you I wasn’t waking up in the wee hours. Oh most verily not.

For the sake of comparison, my general weekday schedule before MFA applications started:

6:30 Wake up
6:45 – 8:15am: Jog or clean; shower; eat
9:00 – 5:00: I don’t even want to talk about it
5:15 – 9:00: Writin’ in the library, with a quick break for dinner
9:30 – 10:30: Goofin’ around for a bit before sleep

Compare that to the mental health extravaganza that was life during MFA applications.

8:27am: Wake up
8:30am: Leave for work
9:15 – 5:00: Ugh
5:30 – 10:00: MFA applications and story editing, living on a diet of cookies and soft pretzels to justify my non-stop cafe tables
10:30 – 1:00am: Back hme, last-minute MFA stuff, research, panic attacks, until the dreamless death of sleep

So. Yeah. I was doing super great for a while. Now that the applications are all in and the weight of the world is off my shoulders, though, I figured one week of utterly debauched laziness would reset my system. And every day, I discovered another thing that I thought I’d forgotten how to love.

Whole novels, swallowed over the course of one decadent evening! Spending hours cooking complicated meals and meditating on the wonders of food! Walking the two and a half miles home from work because, hey, I have nowhere to go and no particular time to get there! My god, some evenings I can spend an hour or more doing nothing but cuddling with my stuffed elephant, vacant of thought, just feeling warm and happy to be alive!

I also, of my own volition, finally washed the dishes that were stacked up from MFA madness. I don’t want to talk about how old some of them were. Like, we’re not talking calendar — we’re talking carbon dating.

The effect of this mindset was best captured last Sunday, when I thought to myself: My god, have I not left the house since Friday night? then remembered with relief, No, it’s okay! I went to the convenience store TWICE today! Oh yeah. The rest of you girls can save the prettiest valentine in the box for Atticus Finch, ’cause apparently I’m in the market for a Boo Radley.

The Verdict: Well, my “week” reprieve started three weeks ago, yet here I am, lolling around in my pajamas, eating chicken curry and contemplating rereading Calvin Trillin’s “An Attempt To Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing”. As great as I feel, I’m afraid we’re going to have to label this one a decided fail.

How is it that just a few days indulgence, following a massive burst of virtuous do-gooding no less!, can push us so far backward in our personal journeys for excellence? I’m filled with discouragement, despair, self-recrimination, etc., etc. Well, I will be. As soon as I finish this chicken curry burrito and lounge around in my pajamas a bit longer. Sigh.

What demons are you facing right now? And if your demons happen to be passing a supermarket, can they pick me up some soy milk?

NTKOG Year 2, #14: The kind of effortlessly kitchen-confident child of Child who, with nary a glance at her shelf of cookbooks (or, let’s be honest here, a google search of her favorite cooking blogs), whips together a gourmet meal. Or at least an edible one.

I am: risk-adverse to a fault. This might sound silly coming from the girl who thinks nothing of shaking her junk on a jumbotron or acing a blowjob class, but when it comes to goal-oriented pursuits like cooking, I need: 1) numbered directions; 2) hand-holding; and 3) uh, maybe half a Klonopin.

I am not: even getting into the cuticle-gnawing follies involved when someone gives me directions that contradict Google Maps.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton kitchen, too small for cabinets or counter-space, to say nothing of big culinary dreams. My kitchen’s so tiny that even throwing together an omelette is akin to building a rocket launcher in a phone booth. Still, I proceeded.

Following my New Year’s resolution to cook at least once a week, a few days ago I made a batch of sweet potato and black bean burritos; however, I rather bungled the shopping trip, which left me with sixteen tortillas, two sweet potatoes and three red onions that needed to be used, like, yesterday.

While I’m usually fairly awful about just letting groceries get fuzzy in my fridge, instead, dug through my shelves and figured out what I had: a tin of crushed pineapple, half a frozen can of jalapenos, infinite black beans — and hey, pork shoulder’s on sale at the Stop and Shop down the street! Perfect for modifying Budget Bytes’s to-die-for pork and pineapple burritos. (Do you read Budget Bytes yet? Everyone with a working oven, stomach and/or brain should be reading this blog.)

But the catch: I decided not to let myself look at the recipe. Like, at all. Instead, let me present you my own recipe for:

Cleaning Out The Refrigerator Pork and Pineapple Burritos (with a huge nod to the sainted Budget Bytes)

Ingredients:

• A few-pound pork roast with bones and skin and weird shit in it because even after four years of university education, you’re not smart enough to look for the word “boneless” on the wrapper;
• A few or, like, infinite cans of black beans
• Two cups of shredded cheese, the some forgotten garlic Laughing Cow in the back of the fridge for when you run out.
• Two big cans of crushed pineapple in juice
• Can of jalapenos. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes.
• A few sweet potatoes shaped disconcertingly like limbless guinea pigs.
• Sixteen tortillas with a sell-by date set for tomorrow
• Various spices
• Proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy (ie: garlic and onions)

1. Like twenty hours before you want to eat (which for me, is literally. any. time.), cut the netting off the roast. immediately grab a handful of pigskin and gag convulsively. Continue gagging while you plunge your knife deep into the roast and shove in peeled cloves of garlic.
2. Spice rub. You need a spice rub. Panic; fight the urge to google; think about what tastes like Mexican food. Cumin? Garlic salt? Chile powder? Paprika? Oh for the love of pete, put back the cinnamon. This is a beginner-level course.
3. Rough-chop the onions and stick ‘em all around the roast, then seal up the whole shebang in the pot of your slow cooker and refrigerate it for eight hours. You could consider sleeping during those hours. Or browsing cooking blogs and getting irrationally angry about sanctimonious militant vegan dickbags.
4. Once the roast is totally marinated, stick it with a few cups of water in the slow cooker on low for eight hours. Wish you’d thought to buy bell peppers. But how many more bell peppers need to cruelly die before humans realize the atrocity of their — oh my god I hate vegans.
5. Woohoo! The meat’s done and your apartment smells gooooood. Use tongs to shred the meat off of the bones and into your biggest skillet. When you’ve gotten off as much meat as you can, dump the contents of the slow cooker into a colander and pick through the bones, fat and skin for any more usable meat.
6. Be sad about the holocaust for a little while.
7. Dump a cup and a half of water in the skillet with a packet of taco seasoning. Give the whole shebang a good stir and let it get thick and bubbly over a low flame. Whenever it looks like a good thickness, just turn it off and let it chill.
8. Scrub the sweet potatoes, then wrap them in saran wrap. Plunge a fork as hard as you can into them every inch or so. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Stick ‘em in the microwave to bake (eight minutes worked well for two medium dudes).
9. Halve the onions and chop them into strips. In your second-biggest skillet, heat a few extravagant turns of oil over medium-high heat, then drop in your onions. Toss the strips to make sure they’re all oiled, then let them cook for ten minutes without agitating them all that much. The burn is good! The burn is where the flavor comes from! Try hard not to imagine the smoke detector going off; open a window just in case.
10. Open and rinse like six cans of black beans. The world’s most perfect union of fiber and protein.
11. Chop up jalapenos and pineapple. Reserve the pineapple juice in a plastic bag because it feels like a susie homemaker thing to do. Immediately drop the plastic bag.
12. Wait, frig, your neighbors can totally see you through the open window. See, this is why you shouldn’t cook naked. At least put on a bathrobe or something.
13. After the first ten minutes have passed, throw some salt on the onions to help pull out the water, and maybe a sprinkle of sugar to help start caramelization. Lower the heat after a few minutes if you’d like, and while you finish everything else, just give the onions a poke every once in a while. Let ‘em get dark and sweet.
14. Skin the sweet potatoes and mash ‘em in a bowl.
15. When everything’s done (I personally check for onion doneness by picking out strands and tasting them. When they’re so delicious I want to lick the spatula like a lollypop, bam, done.), stick it in bowls, take a few photos, and wait for Tony Bourdain to send you fanmail.

Things! Things I made! Things I made without a recipe! (Let's ignore the fact that the only things I actually cooked here were pork and onions. I still had to use my mad knife skills!)

Aww, it seems Mr. Bourdain’s being coy. Guess while I’m waiting, I might as well actually assemble the burritos.

In honor of my attempted culinary upgrade, I even learned the proper way to fold burritos. Way easier than I'd imagined! Just pile yo' fixin's a bit bottom of center, fold the right and left sides in, then roll from front to back. Bam.

The Verdict: Hey! You know those obnoxious cooks who, when they give recipes, ignore the measuring cups and instead give aggravating directions like “a pinch” of this and “a soupçon” of that! BAM! I’m totally one of those annoying dudes now! I prepared edible food, all by myself, and did not have a crying panic attack while deviating from my inspiration recipe!

Heck, I was so high on my newly faked culinary prowess that I used the reserved pineapple juice to whip together a coconut/pineapple dreamcake! (Okay, okay, it was from a mix. Still.)

Granted, this was a lot more work than walking to the pizzeria across the street, but I think I made enough food to last me a few days…

Uh, that takes care of my lunch plans. For 2011.

NTKOG Year 2, #5: The kind of casual superhero who, promenading the streets of a night, notices a stray kitten clinging to the highest tree branch and punches it down.

I am: more mild-mannered than Clark Kent, only because…

I am not: extraordinarily good at doing anything that’s actually useful to other people. Writing? Sure. Calculating tips? As long as it’s not an end-of-night bar tab. Righting wrongs and doing good deeds? Dudes, my cape is at the dry cleaner’s.

The Scene: The chaotic streets of Allston/Brighton, only a few weeks after the city-wide menace known as Moving Day. And if you’re from a city too smart to observe this horrifying tradition, a word of explanation: because the population of the greater Boston area swells exponentially when all the college kids come back, sadistically brilliant landlords have set something like 90% of leases in the city to start and end on September 1st. In theory, this allows our nine-month residents to move into new abodes at just the right time, and leave a solid three months on their leases to sublet when they move back home or take internships over the summer before coming back. In theory.

In practice? If you ever want to see a seventeen-mile traffic jam consisting exclusively of U-Haul trucks, well, get thee to Allston/Brighton on September 1st.

One of the many harrowing upshots of this citywide menace is that furniture stores, hardware shops and big-box sundry emporiums (love you, Target) are nigh unbearable for the week or so following the universal move — leaving many apartment-dwellers to camp out with the bare necessities for a few weeks, then spend the last half of September lugging purchases into their new homes.

Even now, it’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to, near midnight, watch a dude struggling with an oversized Target bag or IKEA bookshelf, broadcasting that particular animal scent of despair that accompanies all housing woes.

So, last week, I decided to focus my (utterly non-existent) spidey sense on one of the few demographics I know I can help: dudes carrying heavy stuff. Y’know, no big deal. Just avenging physics.

Came upon my first opportunity while dragging myself home from my sister’s last Monday, near 10pm. As I shuffled along the main thoroughfare connecting our apartments, noticed a woman — mid-thirties, sweatsuit, hair coaxed into the type of extreme frizzball that can only signify a short, intense period of physical duress — apparently attempting to wriggle her body through the crack between her apartment’s double doors while lugging two boxes full of anvils.

In my mind? Swooped up to the stoop invisible, a force of nature, swung the door open, then disappeared into the night before she could turn her head and even flash a smile of acknowledgment.

In actuality? Turns out if you’re going to suddenly appear behind someone well after nightfall, you should, uh, give them verbal warning from a few paces away. Yeah, I don’t know, dudes. It’s not like there’s a WikiHow on this.

For the next few days, when I saw people on their stoops in my neighborhood, struggling with door handles through armfuls of boxes or grocery bags, flashed up behind them (after giving sufficient warning!) to grab the door. Such a little thing, but the kind of thing I’ve never been socially forward enough to do.

Then, on Friday, the excuse to take things just a little further. As I dashed downstairs to the convenience store, noticed a girl in my foyer struggling with two boxes of unassembled bookshelves and a small coffee table. She was one of those girls who, y’know, accidentally-on-purpose wears a translucent shirt to work, who has thoughts about bronzer, who, ten seconds after meeting you at a party, compliments your hair and then touches it. Not the kind of girl I know personally, is what I’m saying here.

And over the course of my short life, I’ve seen many things that touch my heart. Summer sunrises, babies laughing, the works — yet still, there is nothing in this world or probably the next that I find quite as compelling as seeing an extremely beautiful girl in distress, mewling like a kitten at her own helplessness. Ironclad don’t-talk-t0-neighbors policy be damned. Finally, an opportunity to fully utilize my newfound social proactiveness?

Asked if I could help her move them anywhere; she cautioned about fifteen times that the boxes were extremely heavy, and offered to go halvsies on the lifting; I laughed with gentle scorn, then let her step aside as I carried the boxes into a neat pile in front of the elevator.

Which was broken.

Cue twenty minutes of lugging increasingly heavy boxes up to the entrance of her fourth-floor new walk-up, after which, one quick thank you, and back I flew onto the streets, ready to receive my next assignment. As long as it didn’t require any heavy lifting. ’cause, I mean, ouch.

The Verdict: Hee! That was super fun! I think it’s bizarre that — based on my own experience, conversations with friends, and the occasional email related to this blog — most of us suffer this universal paralysis when it comes to stepping in and helping strangers with something minor. Counter-intuitively, we’ll sometimes hold ourselves back from helping a dude because we’re afraid of what they’ll think of us. (Like, oh, I don’t know, “what a helpful person!”?)

Presumably, after a few more years roving this occasionally hostile earth, it’ll sink in forever: people are kind. People are good. People want to give and receive love, even in disposable one-bite doses, like catching a heavy door or showing off your strictly average upper-body strength.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an extra set of bedsheets I need to sew into a cape.

NTKOG #243: The kind of diligent delegator who dispatches dull chores to a full-on life coordinating team so she can get back to her grueling schedule of gin baths and composing sonnets about Hugh Laurie’s calves.

I am: probably the least important person in the world. How many admin-chattel do you know who command full domestic staffs?!

I am not: financially flush enough to pay for convenience, even if my time were worth it. Paying my laundromat twenty bucks to fold my delicates? Um, yeah, if I want to go without lunch for a week.

The Scene: The glory of the mo-friggin’ internet, loves. A few weeks ago, I received an email about a site called TaskRabbit. Basic gist: the service is offered in Boston and San Francisco, and hooks up people who need to get stuff done with Runners who bid to win the assignment.

Kind of like Craigslist, but all of the Runners are background-checked and the tasks tend to run more toward “pick up my dry-cleaning” or “help me pack to move,” rather than “let me clean your apartment while you blow cigarette smoke on my face and denigrate my sexuality.” Which is a slight bummer, only because my apartment’s kind of a mess.

Considering my former-socialist self had a nervous breakdown just getting a $30 pedicure, what could be more anathema to my soul than making dudes fight over how little they’ll let me pay them to perform menial activities for me?

Just the same, I don’t have the kind of scratch to justify asking people to swing by CVS or spring my clothes from the dry-cleaner for real actual money. Instead, I tried to come up with three tasks based on simple criteria: 1) they had to be things I actually need done, but 2) can’t do for myself and 3) might make a good story.

After ten minutes of brain-storming, I had come up with my first two assignments: “Accompany me on my morning jog! Say encouraging things!” and “Role-play an old flame during a completely platonic, non-embarrassing role-played closure talk!”

I assumed I’d get one or two half-hearted answers over the next few days and started to go to bed, when my phone lit up and skittered a few inches across the floor — and then didn’t stop. Turns out half the men in the Greater Boston Area want to pretend to break up with me on the benches in front of the Boston Public Library. (Ouch, Boston, I thought you’d have to at least date me first.)

Not five minutes after posting the two most bizarre requests in the world, my phone was deluged with response after response — dudes willing to cater my heart’s strangest desires for practically no money.

After assigning the first two challenges within minutes, I got a little cocky and assumed I could sneak any tasks past the crack Runner crew. In my hubris, wrote a post requesting someone to give me a lesson in rapping and/or beatboxing. Not quite as successful as the others. I got a few offers, but wasn’t happy with the credentials-to-dollar-per-minute ratio. For $80 an hour, I’m more than happy to keep rhyming “hater” with “AC Slater” when I’m drunk, thanks.

Instead, paid a MFA student $5 to make me a kickass jogging playlist. And scoff all you want at the other two tasks — replacing my daily mix of showtunes and decade-old ganster rap was a straight-up necessity.

The Verdict: When I first told The Ex about this, he pointed out the types of tasks I was assigning were a little “dance, monkey, dance!” and after he said that, I was concerned I’d feel guilty asking people to do menial thing for me. But I was pleasantly surprised to find all of my interactions perfectly guilt-free — primarily because the Runners know exactly what they’re getting into from the gate, and are allowed to set a price on their own time.

The tasks I ended up choosing were, uh, on the silly side, but let me vow right now: next year, when the time comes to pack up my apartment and lug furniture down three flights of stairs, dude, TaskRabbit, I’ll be calling you. Plus, in defense of the tasks I chose, until I have the capital together to open my Friendly Jogging Buddy And Break-Up-A-Torium, there aren’t all that many credible resources for lots of the strange, useful things that we need done on a daily basis.

Okay, okay, so I didn’t exactly need those things, but, look, having your most esoteric whims catered to is the very essence of luxury. And given how cheaply my tasks were done, this might just be the only luxury I can afford. Plus, hands-down the most fun $25 I’ve ever spent. I only regret I couldn’t come up with more brilliant tasks. What bizarre, hilarious but still semi-useful tasks would you assign?

Note: I received a $25 gift certificate from TaskRabbit with the understanding that I’d write about my experiences, which is pretty sweet of them, ’cause I’m pretty sure they assumed I’d use the gift certificate in a normal way instead of paying strangers to break up with me in libraries.

Over on List Addicts, stuff I know you’re supposed to do but, look guys, I’m just never going to. And at the charming Red Boots, I contribute to the Dear Sixteen Year Old Me letter-writing project with some advice I only wish I could have given myself back in the day.

NTKOG #241: The kind of obnoxiously chipper Suzy Homemaker who, of a quiet summer evening, knocks unbidden on a neighbor’s door with a tray of baked goods and an open heart.

I am: a pretty socially anxious dude. It takes me years of regular hangs and heart-to-hearts to upgrade someone from “acquaintance” to “friend” — to say nothing of that first leap from “stranger” to “acquaintance”.

I am not: even great about keeping social plans that I wanted to make. As The Ex will attest, 95% of my pre-going-out ritual consists of praying to Dionysus that I will get canceled on.

The Scene: The hallway of my apartment building, ungodly early one morning last week, bleary-eyed because the incessant baying of a neighbor’s hellhound had kept me up half the night. I’m a headache-prone dude, and when I first signed my lease, I only asked the landlord two questions: “Are there no-pet and no-instrument policies? Are they enforced?!” So you can imagine the virulent pre-7am torrent I was about to loose when the beast’s owner happened to open her door at the same time I headed out for my jog.

What the frig do you have in there? I wanted to ask. A great dane? A friggin’ coyote? But just as I caught the woman’s eye, she yanked on a leash, and out scampered a toy pomeranian half the size of my palm.

I don’t know what the national record is for an irate, sleep-deprived twenty-something melting to the floor and covering an entire dog with air kisses, but I’m willing to bet I beat it by a margin. Once I remembered there was a human in the hall, straightened up and introduced myself to said neighbor for the first time in my eleven months here.

To her credit, despite my blatant attempt at dog-poaching, she responded warmly and immediately told me that she and her husband love to meet people, and wouldn’t I drop by sometime to meet them properly? They’re home most nights!

Ha. Sweet gesture, but, c’mon, who in their right mind would ever take anyone up on that? As a compulsive maker of insincere plans (you’re the best dental hygienist ever! we should go see an opera together!), I flashed a big, fake smile and told her that maybe I would.

The thing is, I don’t even really spend time with people I like in Boston. I moved here in part to recuperate from flapping my social butterfly wings ragged. So when I set up shop in this city on the hill, I had one simple goal: don’t make any friends. Just don’t do it. And 95% of the time I’m totally thrilled with the decision to spend virtually all of my free time alone in my head, writing the literary zombie-pornos that pass as the building blocks of my fiction career and making conversation with my Roomba. And then there’s the five percent of the time I long for the old days of triple-booking brunch plans and non-stop hang-outs.

I’m not saying I lack for significant social contact. But I am saying that two nights ago I gave a birthday card to my favorite convenience store cashier. So there’s that.

Flash forward to yesterday evening. Heard the neighbors arrive home from dinner, bickering adorably, and thought to myself, “God, how awful would it be to force myself to actually go over there?!” And when I have a thought like that, dude, I just have to do it.

Loaded a Tupperware tray with half a batch of chocolate-orange dinosaur muffins (god bless insomnia baking) and nipped over to the door before the reasonable part of my brain could talk me out of it. Though it occurred to me just how weird the situation was when I knocked twice and then listened to them confer in alarm for a full twenty seconds before the door cracked open.

“Uh — hey. I met your, uh, wife the other day and I just made, like, too many muffins the other day, so I thought I’d drop some off? If you like muffins? Neighborly gesture?”

The dude was way less weirded out than I would be in the same situation. He waved me inside, called his wife to the door, and she bade me to sit down on their lumpy, pale blue couch.

We chatted briefly about the building and our mutual fear of the super, and just when I started to think, hey, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad — dreaded silence that we half-heartedly tried to chip away on all sides.

Weather? Humid! Sports? Sox! MBTA? MBTAre you friggin’ kidding me?!

The stilted ten-minute conversation sounded like a round of clues in the “Stuff Banal People Know About Boston” category of $25,000 Pyramid. Mercifully, we were all saved when the dog ran up to the couch and issued a tiny, perfect sneeze. We all gurgled adoringly over the palm pom, who ran around the coffee table in a display of manic friggin’ cuteness — after which, thankfully, enough time had passed that I could leave the museum of social anxiety once and for all.

As I waved goodbye, the wife called out: “You should come by again sometime!” Definitely, I smiled. Definitely.

The Verdict: Eeeeeek. Humans are underwhelming. I’m just going to glue some googly eyes on my Roomba and call it a day.

Do you guys ever hang out with neighbors? Can it actually be done? Should it?

NTKOG #240: The kind of unabashed glamour puss who spends half the morning primping before she deigns to run to the convenience store across the street.

I am: the lowest-maintenance person you’ll ever meet. As in, 95% of the time I am growing out my armpit hair. On purpose.

I am not: opposed to other people going to extraordinary lengths to look gorgeous – in fact, I’m glad they do it, as it gives me something to look at on the bus. I’ve just never felt the urge to go there myself.

The Scene: A perfectly ordinary lazy Sunday, with a hint of pizzazz. After my morning run (week six, baby!), took stock of myself in the mirror: drenched with sweat, PMS acne clusters dotting my cheek and forehead, dark circles under my eyes, erratic tanlines, squishy bits, body hair – to your average glamorous girl about town, I looked like a down-market Picasso. So, I set to work changing that. All of it.

At 10:30am, I hopped into the shower, armed with an arsenal of clay-based microscrubs, scented soaps, fresh razor, and nerves of steel. On a normal day, I spend a quarter of an hour getting ready: shower essentials, comb through the hair, dry off enough to throw on clothes without them sticking, then out the door, ready to electrify the world.

By a quarter hour into my GlamorBot primping? Tsh, I’d barely even shaved one leg.

I was halfway through my Empowering Ladies playlist by the time I’d finished all the hair removal (damn you, toe knuckles!). Afterwards, scrubbing, soothing, moisturizing – I was exfoliated within an inch of my dang life. (Seriously, have you ever exfoliated the inside of your belly button? If you haven’t then, uh, don’t.)

And that was just the pre-show! Afterwards, played some Peggy Lee and flipped through all of the candy colored silks and chiffons and laces in the “don’t even think about it” section of my closet, before settling on a black lace cocktail dress that wasn’t totally inappropriate for daytime.

Then the eye shadow, how it glimmered; the earrings, how glitzy. If I did this every day, you’d have to fucking commit me.

After a solid hour and a half of work, took a deep breath and looked at myself – made-up, coiffed and perfect sartorially attended for the first time in my life since, I kid you not, senior prom.

Quick twirl in front of the mirror, then met my eager eye and I looked – good. I looked, y’know, perfectly nice. Pulled together and even a teensy bit stylish. But I felt kind of underwhelmed.

Still, I reckoned, maybe when I ventured out into the world, I’d begin to feel that glossy halo I always imagine around Girl With Great Shoes And Store Credit Accounts. Ran to CVS, took myself out to a decent lunch, and spent a while perusing the sale bin at a book store and, dude, nothing. No one treated me differently, I didn’t feel any more or less confident about myself. It was just a normal Sunday with the only exception being that I was wearing a dress I was afraid to get grass stains on.

Eventually I gave up on the whole glamour game and walked to the Common, where I threw myself down on the ground (grass stains be damned!) for an afternoon of writing. At one point, before I packed up to head into Starbucks, the light was such that I caught a reflection of myself in my MacBook screen.

Glasses on, make-up melting down one cheek, grass in my hair, shoes kicked off – an hour and a half of primping totally undone, but it was the first time that day that I looked at myself and felt great about what I saw.

The Verdict: I know there must be a reason that some women go through this torture every single day, but damned if I can figure out what it is. I think this probably has something to do with the fact that my body isn’t the source of my superpowers. In fact, I look at myself in the mirror, on average, three times a day, and the time I’m happiest about what I see is almost always the same: after my morning jog, hair up in a disgusting frizzy pony tail, shapeless tank top liberally bibbed with sweat and all of my skin flaming seventeen shades of fire engine. It’s not People Magazine cover material, sure, but for some reason, it speaks to me.

In fact, I think I’m breaking all the rules when I say this but, dude, I just straight up like the way I look. I have since I was a teenager. I’m not gorgeous or even particularly good-looking, and the laziest photographer would find a dozen things to PhotoShop in every quadrant, but I just don’t understand the insecurity the world seems bent telling me I should feel. I like my thighs, I like my belly, I like my stress-acne and the stupid toe knuckle hair and the fact that you could see me randomly on the street and just know I’m the kind of girl who’s going to breast-feed her own kids. I truly cannot understand on even the most basic level why anyone else would feel differently.

I like my whole package, and time and make-up are expensive, so fuck it. Not that kind of girl with a bullet.

That said, you other ladies are more than welcome to keep spending hours getting yourself gorgeous before work, ‘cause the rest of us need something pretty to look at on the bus.

NTKOG #238 & #239: The kind of entitled diva who, on the sheer strength of her winning personality (ha) demands you free her from the laws that govern mere mortals.

I am: getting better all the time about being direct with my needs, on the basis that it never hurts to ask. That said…

I am not: above the law. Especially laws of conduct.

The Scene: A few of my local jaunts where, after eleven months, I feel just comfortable enough to cash in my regular status for a few obnoxious favors.

Obnoxious favor the first (aka: NTKOG #238): Making a mid-afternoon sanity run to the big-box convenience store near my work, I set out on a mission for a Fresca, for me, and a bottled Starbucks Mocha Frappucino for Co-Worker.

Scanning the refrigerated beverage racks, though, problem: the six slots for Starbucks goodies were stocked in a Siberian-white blitz of vanilla, vanilla, nothing but vanilla. Were the errand for myself, no problem, I would have picked something else. But you know how we always need to treat other people than we do ourselves, so, come hell or high water, I wasn’t going back to the office ‘til I was clutching an ice-cold mocha.

The store was completely empty, so I walked up to the nearest employee and explained the situation. He walked over to the refrigerator to confirm, then gestured impatiently: “There are lots of frappucinos! Lots! Just take one of those!”

But – but I really needed mocha. Could he possibly check the walk-in fridge to see if there were any boxes of mocha waiting to be restocked?

He rolled his eyes so hard I could see the eyeball stems, but I grinned sweetly at him, until he unlocked the freezer, liberated a box of mocha, and handed me one – frosty cold.

You know the funny thing, though? As he rang me out, I troweled on the thanks pretty thick (and sincerely!). The next time I came in, far from eye-rolling, the same cashier asked me right away if they had the flavor I wanted. Over the last month or two, he’s been uniformly sweet and attentive and, yes, even braved the huge walk-in fridge a few more times to placate my demanding caffeine fix.

I’m not sure what this tale goes to show, but if he and I keep up our solid rapport, eventually I’m totally going to ask him if I can sneak into the fridge myself so I can reenact the walk-in freezer scene from The Goonies in there.

Obnoxious favor the second (aka: NTKOG #239): After a Friday night of Beaujolais and 30 Rock in the apartment, developed a sudden need for Fresca and Junior Mints, so headed across the street to one of the two convenience stores in my local homebase rotation.

This one, I’ll admit, I’ve tended to avoid lately for one simple reason: the owner always seems too happy to see me. Whenever I stop in for a dollar-fifty soda or packet of M&Ms, he fixes me with a look of liquid gratification so intense that I’m immediately wracked with guilt for not doing the rest of my shopping there. The day I told him I was quitting smoking, he begged me to reconsider, or at least to buy more sodas to make up the revenue difference.

Which it’s somewhat reassuring to know that someone else’s finances are shakier than mine, the situation has become too emotionally fraught for me to readily deal with.

Nonetheless, it’s open a bit later than my guilty-conscience replacement store, so in I traipsed, hoping to make my tipsy purchase with as little eye contract as possible.

And who knows how well this would have gone, were it not for one little problem: in my boozy urgency, I’d only managed to grab a one-dollar bill, instead of the fiver I’d placed on the coffee table for this very purpose. Like the genius I am, couldn’t even cover one item of the $3.25 purchase.

Usually I’d apologize profusely, replace the purchases and sneak out. But dude, this guy’s given me more guilt trips than my friggin’ mother – we have a history! Surely I could ask him for one horrible favor.

“Um, I grabbed the wrong change. Is there – is there any chance I could give you this one now, then run back with the rest of the money?”

I expected any mention of possibly shorting his register to spark a look of shock or scorn, but instead he beamed: “Go ahead! Don’t hurry yourself, just go home. You’ll pay me back next time you’re in here.”

Early the next morning – a bit blearly and hungover – dug up that elusive friggin’ fiver, slinked into the store and dropped it by the register. Maybe it’s hush money, but hopefully it’ll take some of the burn off of my quitting smoking.

The Verdict: Gosh, aren’t people nice? I’m usually afraid to be direct about my desires and strange requests when I’m in retail situations, because I don’t want to be any excess burden to the employee. Although if I think about it fairly, people come to my job and ask for special treatment all the time and – on those occasions when I don’t have much else going on, or their demeanor has struck me just the right way – it’s an honest pleasure to be able to go a bit above and beyond to help them.

As my mother told me fifteen times a day growing up and I’m only now beginning to actually listen to, the worst someone can say is no. And, hey, sometimes you get a yes.

NTKOG #232: The kind of college honors graduate who — wait a minute — actually learned a lesson in kindergarten?!

I am: allegedly an adult, but still playing house at a pre-kindergarten level.

I am not: good at cleaning up after myself, what can I say? That, and most of the junk scattered around my apartment is totally kindergarten appropriate: chalk, fingerpaintings, googly eyes, plastic beads, and toy robots of every description.

The Scene: My apartment which, I realize now, I’ve often referenced but always refrained from describing in this blog. My reason? Sheer, unadulterated shame.

It’s mortifying to have to admit this in a public forum, but I’m an absolute slob. I mean, really beyond the pale. Up until a month ago, my apartment looked like Frank and Charlie’s in Always Sunny: plates, clothes, plastic bags scattered around, peppered liberally with broken glass (I have a thing about broken glass). After spending a year as the obligatory neat-freak zookeeper for four boys, I made a little deal with myself: “You never have to clean. Ever.” And, uh, I stuck with that.

To be fair, I think it’s hereditary. Ever since I can remember, my mother’s proudly displayed a refrigerator magnet that reads: “Dull women have immaculate houses.” Funny the stuff that sticks with us from childhood, eh?

I had a pretty simple routine: as long as I was spending my time writing, I didn’t have to clean up my apartment. Once it got so bad I had literal nightmares about it, I’d spend four feverish hours tidying. Repeat as necessary. (Hardly ever necessary.)

However, as part of my recent-ish monastic schedule, as well as a general desire to de-clutter my life, spent a full weekend a few weeks ago genuinely cleaning the ol’ place. In just six hours, it was downgraded from crackhouse to frat house. Six hours after that, it almost looked like a real apartment.

Then, to top off the transformation, I came up with the GREATEST CLEANING TIP EVER DREAMED UP BY MAN. I mean, this shiz is powerful. Patent pending, so don’t steal it from me:

After I use something? I put it back!

You guys, if any of you steals that advice and gets a book deal, prepare to feel my dang wrath.

It’s been a little over a month now, and for the first time in my life, I actually live somewhere clean. Not spit-shined, not hastily swept under rugs — actually, legitimately organized. (Sort of.) I like to think of myself as a young urban Lorax, except, instead of speaking for the trees, I’m just trying to protect against the desecration of their hardwood floor brethren.

To celebrate this extremely uncharacteristic lifestyle change, I am — deep breath — hereby giving you the grand tour of my apartment. A big deal to me because, despite the 900+ pages of blog prose suggesting otherwise, I’m a very private person, and rarely let other humans into my personal universe. Like, for context, before this month, only six people had seen my apartment. Four were out of town guests. One was my super. And now, all of you get to.

My front door and -- light of my life -- my Wall of Rejection, where I paste all of my rejection letters. As you can see, I've been busy.

Fun fact: I've had an Attack of the 50-Foot Woman poster in some form in every room I've lived, even temporarily, since I was 18. I want a nice lithographed copy as a wedding gift. If slash when that time comes.

Nichka couldn't be bothered to wake up from her nap for me to photograph the bed.

Wall across from the couch. I like that the Lenin / piggy bank arrangement is kind of an Animal Farm tribute. Although I guess the addition of my grinning monster bowl makes it a ... Great Monsters Of History thing?

My kitchen, viewed larger than lifesize. Note: there is literally no built-in counter space. That's what the tops of microwaves are for, I guess.

My messy bathroom. Or, as I like to think of it, the second bedroom. Heck yes, clawfoot tubs.

The Verdict: Huh. Turns out the floor isn’t just the biggest shelf in the house. I’ll admit I haven’t done a perfect job keeping this up since it was moved from active NTKOG status, but it’s nice having an apartment that can be made company-ready in twenty minutes instead of a week and a half.

Guys! I’m so excited by the response to the PO Box! I got lots of great comments and emails and, once I have a few days to make logistical calls, expect an email from me. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or aren’t sure if you might be interested (in using it, even if you don’t want to make a donation), then check it out here.

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, check out a few split-second decisions that tempt me on a daily basis but would undoubtedly ruin my friggin’ life.

NTKOG #229: The kind of self-confident master of her own domain who is good enough, smart enough and, goddamnit, will tell off a jerk who has it coming.

I am: kind of on the meek side. One of those people who convulsively apologizes just for walking in your path or — heaven forfend! — accidentally breathing on you.

I am not: meek because of any great gentleness or sweet nature. Perish the thought. I usually just have a hard time realizing when I have the right to be angry.

The Scene: My apartment, at a quarter past eight, booking it for the bus to work. Because I’ve been waking up early to clean my apartment, I’d spent the past hour or so attacking all the nebulous to-recycle junkmail and magazines that had accumulated in every crevice of my apartment. So I was feeling mighty accomplished to bustle out the door, carrying two full trash bags of rejected papers.

On the way out, ran into my super. “What day is it?” he barked at me.

“Wednesday,” I chirped, positively seething virtue.

“And do you know what day the trash gets collected?” he demanded.

“Uhhh, Wednesday, I think?” Not even nine in the morning and already, in the eyes of the world, I was faltering.

As my super stared at me with scorn and pity, I swear I could see the blood floating up like lava lamp bubbles to the swollen anger-vein in his forehead.

“Then why are you putting your trash out now?! It’s already been picked up! What are you thinking of?!” As he lathered himself up to righteous wrath, he leaned his whole body into the doorway separating me from the staircase — and the world beyond, the one where I needed to get on a damn bus. And then he really launched into it.

A word about my landlord. Dude is, for starters, super-Soviet. And while he’s a generally nice man, because of some combination of my age and gender, he seems to assume my life is the epicenter of some moral depravity the depths of which he can’t even fathom. I mean, me! Sure, I may have cut a few lines of fleur-de-sel in the bathroom once but, dude, I donate to charity! I eat organic! I go to the library every friggin’ day.

Then again, this is the man who blames every broken thing in my apartment — from broken locks to leaky faucets to burned-out lightbulbs — on my “many gentleman visitors”. Like, heads-up, sir? The only man who’s been in my bed this year is PG Wodehouse. And seeing as how he’s been dead for forty years, something tells me he wouldn’t be too interested in my faucets, leaky or otherwise.

After the super had screamed “inconsiderate” twice, I put the garbage bags down and settled in for the long haul. When he started yelling so loudly that two neighbors poked their heads out the door to see what was going on, I pulled out my iPhone and hit the stopwatch.

Five minutes and thirty-eight seconds. For five-minutes and thirty-eight seconds, he accused me of being inconsiderate, ungrateful, lazy, a secret basement-hygiene saboteur.

Normal TKOG would have started apologizing ten seconds in and — in all honesty — probably be out on the street already. Sure, I did nothing wrong, but an apology is cheap and doesn’t hurt anyone. But, dude, is it so very wrong to admit when you’re not in the wrong?

Finally, when he’d reached the greatest swell of his rage, he paused for breath, and I cut in:

“Hey, you know how I pay rent every month? Well, if you want me to keep on doing that, you need to let me go right now so I can get to work.” He sputtered angrily, as I passed, then turned back: “And next time? You should probably calm the fuck down.”

The Verdict: Dude, I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever cursed at an actual (non-parent) adult. Crazy. Not that I’d do that part of it again, but the rest? Okay.

A coda to the story: a few days later, I ran into him in the foyer, and he apologized for losing his temper. And normal TKOG would be so thrilled by the spirit of reconciliation that she’d be practically heimleiching out all the apologies stuck in her throat. But stuck to my no-apologies rule.

“I understand and I accept your apology, but I think you’ll find I’m a reasonable person. Next time you want me to do something, please ask nicely.”

Frig yeah! No apologies! Not ever! Except, actually, still probably sometimes! Or even most of the time! But I think I’m going to make more of an effort to apologize when I’ve done something wrong, and not just continue my current path of ceaselessly apologizing just for being alive.

My apologies, but two posts today to keep us on schedule. For more correspondence-related thoughts, though, please do read today’s post proposing a communal PO Box for writing to inmates.

NTKOG #228: The kind of honestly-trying baby do-gooder who, having put her money where her mouth is, spends a little time for good measure.

I am: trying to do the right thing more often than not, but my attempts are often thwarted by my myriad personal failings. Laziness being chief among them.

I am not: even remotely happy about this.

The Scene: My imaginary Austen-style writing desk, on the heels of my week of sending birthday cards to various prisons. And if you, like I, are imagining one of those old-fashioned roll-top desk numbers with fancy scrolling and various cubbyholes, then may I let it be said: no cubbyhole was bursting more than the one filled with neglected correspondence from one source.

Save The Children.

After an inspiring encounter a few months ago, I started making monthly donations to this excellent charity. And while I’m always pleased to see my meager donation taken out of my monthly bank statement, I’ll admit, I’ve been an absolute beast about opening their correspondence.

Dudes send a lot of letters!

A few months ago, when I finally slashed open the dozens of envelopes they’d sent, it became apparent that they wanted more than my money. They wanted my time. Specifically, they had matched me to a specific donor recipient — an adorable fourth-grade boy in New Mexico — and wanted to make sure I was an active participant in their donor writing campaign.

Just think! they told me, With a letter or two a month, you could form a lasting, life-long relationship with a child who would truly appreciate it! A great idea. I’d get right on it. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

After two months, I’d still written nary a word to the little dude, and my normal routine would be to think, “Welp, I’m just an awful person” and recycle the whole reproachful pile of papers. Because after so many months, there were many great excuses not to continue.

Obviously the kid was doing just fine without me. How useful can I be to someone who doesn’t talk about Nabokov or Shakespeare? If I were a kid, I wouldn’t want the burden of writing to an aimless twenty-something. Since I’e waited so long, it would be awkward and maybe even offensive to start now.

But frig excuses and frig habitual self-loathing. Picked up one of the last few sheets of my extra-luxe resume paper and, in my best hand-writing, wrote a one-page note asking him about the desert and his favorite subjects in school, describing my first time seeing snow in Boston, telling him I hoped we could enjoy our future correspondence. Tucked in two sheets of stickers (jungle animals and anthropomorphized fruits & veggies) and, in twenty minutes, dispelled two months of guilt.

The Verdict: Isn’t it funny how simple and non-intimidating the things we fear are, once we actually get them done? And, in related news, I really need to invest in some sort of functional mail-sorter so I can stop inviting at least some of these endless excuses to my TKOG-is-an-awful-person party.\

Updates if and when I hear back from the little dude, though! Slash hopefully pictures of an adorably decorated envelope!