Dear Children.

Happy Valentines Day. I love you, even though you rarely respond to my emails.

I wrote to my mother to get confirmation of the recipe and got this in response:

"Are you accidentally writing to the wrong person?"

And then when I insisted that I remembered said eggnog very clearly, I got this:

"Maybe you're remembering your birth mother."

And finally, the concession:

"I'm willing to believe I made egg nog, though, because I felt it was my maternal duty to pump you kids full of protein and dairy, and back then raw eggs weren't regarded as a health risk. And I've always loved food coloring."

Lollo has a sort of grandmotherly role in my life, whereas my actual grandmother takes more of an angry older sibling or frenemy-like position. Whenever I see Lollo she tells me how beautiful I am and compliments my intelligence, my ingenuity, my figure and anything else that might be in my general vicinity. My grandmother, on the other hand, tends to only mention these things in me when noting how deficient they are, or if I had been lucky enough to be gifted such a trait, in pointing out how I've royally screwed it up.

The last time I was in New York, my brother and grandmother and I took an hour-long cab ride to Lollo's assisted living facility. After 45 minutes, my grandmother insisted we leave. As we walked out my grandmother said acidicly, "Get enough compliments in there?" I'm not sure if this is a sign that she genuinely believes that compliments directed towards her grandchildren are an awful thing, or if some small part of her realizes that perhaps she should be the one that thinks my brother and I are amazing. What's particularly nice about Lollo loving me is that as a non-relative, she doesn't have to. As we were getting back into the cab to take us straight into rush hour Manhattan traffic, I realized that if my actual grandmother were just a friend of the family, I would never make this journey for her.

Wisdom is meant to be passed down from generation to generation, wizened old women telling the offspring of their offspring knowledge they have picked up along their journey, secrets they have learned to lead a better life. On our last visit, I was confessing how I used the New Yorker as a barometer of my worth--the more I had piled around the house unread, the more filled with self-loathing I become. I rarely have less than three waiting insistently at my kitchen table, and have, at times, it pains me to confess, gone up to as many as eleven. I half-heartedly try and blame this more on the international mail system that often brings two or three of the weekly issues on the same day than any shortcomings on my part. Lollo raised her non-existent eyebrows at me and said in a strong Austrian accent, "Something I have learned is that you don't have to read every article of every New Yorker. I used to try when I was young. There just isn't enough time."

"Tonight Lina and I were talking about the old, old days when girls weren't taught to read, and she said, 'I'd die if I couldn't read! Reading's the best thing there is! If there weren't any books in the world I'd write a thousand pages!'"

Max: are you going to make out with [him]
Lina: i don't think so
Lina:i don't need men to make me happy
Max: you need them to make you unhappy

Yesterday's chat:
Lina: Can we talk about my favorite subject? (wanting to discuss an upcoming Amazon order)

Max: Which? Feelings, or boys that aren't interested in you?

Since I don't have time to update my page myself, I will just post copies of emails sent to me from abroad.

Here's one from my father, the poet, entitled 'The Marin County Fair":

the corn dogs actually advertised that they contained no trans fat obama was the only candidate with a booth
all the art was photographs of sea otters and bonsai
there was a group of mexicans dancing in native costumes with beer bottles balanced on their heads
the only big competition in the baked good were scones
there were about 600 people watching while a guy milked one cow

I wonder if he's right, or if I just haven't found the right combination of meds yet. I've bought five self-help books in the last two weeks, and I'm hoping that if I actually read them, I will become a normal person. Wish me luck.

I just got back from New York where I stayed with my brother for a little while. I would patiently wait until 5 am, once he was exhausted, and then bully him into talking about his feelings. He did not like this, and tried to punch me.

He did weigh in on my (many) boy problems. About one he said, "You know that the only reason you like him is because he doesn't give a shit about you, right?" He took a bite of the EggMcMuffin he had just made from the EggMcMuffin machine in his kitchen and turned away from the computer to face me. "One person always likes the other one more. That's just how it is." He turned back to the computer and began typing, and said as an afterthought, "He's a sleaze, anyway."

When did my little brother become a relationship expert, I wondered? What he said had struck a cord. I've long thought that there are two types of men in this world. Men that I like, and men that like me. There's almost no overlap. I know, I know, this isn't news. This has been the content of my incessant bitching for the last decade or so.

Oddly, it's also the content of one of my favorite (and oft-quoted) books, 'Of Human Bondage.' There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. If that's the case, how does anyone ever make a relationship work? I wish I could like the people that like me, but I keep dumping them.