To save money on lunches this week I went shopping at The Food Emporium this morning, and to reward myself for being so frugal I thought I’d buy myself a donut. I used the self checkout and when it came time to scan my donut I pressed the button indicating the food had no barcode. I couldn’t find donuts anywhere on the menu. I went back and tried again. I looked all over the place. I took too long so the machine said “Please wait for an attendant.” Which I did. When I looked around and so no attendant in sight I cancelled the donut, paid for everything else, and left. But I stole the donut.

I thought about it on my walk to work, after all that I did trying to pay for the donut, I think I was entitled to having a free donut. I mean it was only 79 cents. Plus it wasn’t even that good. PLUS I gave half of it to Jeff Rosenberg. So anyway- if you’re reading my blog, God, just comment or whatever and I’ll go back and pay for it.

Back in May I moved from Brooklyn, where I had two roommates (Streeter and Sharon) to Manhattan, where I’m living by myself in a studio apartment. All in all, I’m really happy with my move. I like being close to work, and I like the privacy and coziness of my own apartment. There is one thing though that I’ve realized: no matter how happy you feel, everything you do in a studio apartment seems sad. This is especially true with cooking.

For instance, I had to stop making tuna sandwiches for dinner because squeezing fishy water out of a can all alone in an apartment just felt really pathetic. Even if I’m having a great time mushing mayonnaise and tuna together in a large bowl, it just seems really lonely somehow. Placing a solitary piece of cheddar cheese on a roll doesn’t help.

However, I do think I need to get over this false impression of sadness. In a way, avoiding meals like tuna is causing me to make even more depressing food choices… Like tonight, I just finished a dinner of cold, leftover Thai takeout and Cheez-Its.

It seems like every year around this time I start having nightmares about school. This is especially weird now since I haven’t been a regular college student for two years. Yet it’s always the same kind of dream- I’m in a huge school building for the first time, and I have no idea what my schedule is or where I’m supposed to be. Someone tells me I’m supposed to be in some kind of science lab class and that I’m late. Once I’m in the class the teacher always asks for a homework assignment I didn’t complete, a giant science packet. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what this dream means. I was a terrible student, and even worse when it came to science and math classes. Somehow, I was so traumatized by them that I’ve developed an irrational fear that I’ll have to return to them every year just after Labor Day.

One thing I’m thankful for is that whereas I used to cheer myself up after these dreams by saying “Don’t worry, school hasn’t started yet. You’ll finish that giant science packet on time!” I now can cheer myself up by saying “Don’t worry, you’ll never have to work on a giant science packet again. Now get out of bed and go work here.”

Amir and I just signed a photo of ourselves for the 16 year old sister of our coworker, Anna. According to Anna, her sister asked for a picture of us to put in her locker at school. I mean it already feels surreal to sign anything, but all that aside- I’m going to be in someone’s locker. And not as a high school student who is dating another high school student.

I’m going to let this sink in. This must have been how JTT felt.

We just pushed a new design for Jake and Amir dot com. Amir’s brother, Ben, did the design and Cohen did the coding. I’m really excited about the entire thing, and one thing in particular. That particular thing is my new blog (which the image of me on the sidebar links to) where I’ve started a collection of the strange things Amir says to me online.

I like giving Jake’s character a blog because it blurs the lines of reality even further. Plus Amir already has a weird blog and I wanted to keep up. I especially like this site though because every single post on it is something Amir has legitimately said to me online, in character, but not knowing it would ever be seen by anyone but me. He didn’t even know it existed until after I had been posting on it for a week. So yeah, check it out!

Amir just got new glasses, and we were all joking with him saying they looked stupid and that he couldn’t pull them off. Of course it was all good natured and Amir played along. But the whole thing made me think about one of the saddest things I can remember. Here it is:

In 5th grade I spent the summer at the beach and didn’t see a lot of my friends. When the first day of school came I wanted to make a good impression and look cool. My hair had been growing for 3 months (I was really into Kurt Cobain) and my parents bought me a huge pair of cargo shorts for the first day of class.

When I showed up, it was awful. Everyone laughed at my hair. People said I looked like I lost a fight with a lawn mower, which is a terrible joke, but 5th grade me didn’t know this. They said my shorts looked like a dress. It was a brutal assault from pretty much everyone. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore- and this is the saddest part- so I went to the bathroom and cried. It’s a horrible feeling, even to look back on, to feel so sad for yourself.

I realized I was acting like a girl from one of those teen movies, crying in a bathroom stall, so I got my shit together. Picked my head up and walked back to class. I avoided speaking with anyone for the rest of the day. I made a promise to myself that I would get a haircut. School ended and I was really excited to just go home when my friend Mike came up to me with some advice.

Mike, who hadn’t talked to me all day, said only this: “Get a haircut, change your shorts, and lose the tan.” So I replied- and actually I changed my mind, this is the saddest part- “I’m getting a haircut after school, I won’t wear these shorts again,” and then, defiantly, ” and there’s nothing I can do about my tan.” Mike nodded.

I wish I could go back and talk to the 5th grade Jake crying like a baby in the bathroom. I might not have been able to convince him that it didn’t matter what people thought about the way you look, I might have even agreed with everyone about the ridiculous shorts. But I’d be sure to tell him “When you talk to Mike later, just tell him to go fuck himself.”

My best friend from high school, Steve, bar tends at one of my favorite bars in New Haven. The best thing about coming home is walking into his bar (which is called Temple) and seeing Steve, no matter how busy he is, drop what he’s doing, reach into the fridge and slam down a Bud Light on the corner of the bar for me. It’s a great feeling for a ton of reasons which I don’t feel like I can accurately explain.

But as any diligent reader of my blog would know, I pretty much gave up drinking a few months ago. The first time I walked into Temple after that fact was a very hard thing to do, and stopping Steve mid cap removal was almost physically painful. Not because I wanted that beer, but because I was denying him a tradition which I knew he enjoyed as much as I did.

When I told Steve I stopped drinking to be healthier, and to be able to run, he was disappointed. This was a weird reaction considering most people I told were so supportive, but it was the reaction I expected from Steve. And I couldn’t blame him. For so long alcohol was the one thing that could always bridge the gap between our lives as they were growing apart. Giving up drinking suddenly didn’t mean giving up hangovers, it meant giving up shots of straight vodka with my best friend in a closed bar at 4:00 AM. We both felt that loss. I left the bar early that night, upset for letting Steve down, and upset because he could make me feel so bad about a decision that until that night had made me feel so good.

I went back to New York. I didn’t lose touch with Steve or anything, we were always going to be friends. I left Connecticut feeling shitty, but the feeling didn’t last long. A month later I came home and saw Steve on his birthday, and even though he said I didn’t have to, I insisted on having a beer. Still, it didn’t feel right. The one drink I had actually acted as a more visible reminder that I had given it up.

Last night found me walking through New Haven with my friends Rosie and Christine, heading towards Temple. I was excited and nervous to see Steve. I didn’t want to let him down again, but I didn’t want to let myself down by drinking when I knew I didn’t want to. We walked in, I saw Steve smile from behind the bar. He was pouring drinks for a group of people but he stopped and walked towards us. He pointed at Rosie and Christine and asked what they wanted, he reached into the fridge and put their beers on the counter. He reached down again, my stomach sank. But before I could say anything Steve slammed a cold bottle of water down on the corner of the bar. My best friend smiled at me, the strain was gone, and I felt at home again.