Seriously

-In exciting personal-professional news, there's a cover! 

-And in also-exciting poodle news, "Cooking With Dog" (Chef, that is... or Francis) followed me back on Instagram and, like, knows about Bisou! 

-Here's something I wrote about stuff vs. experiences, and why the latter aren't necessarily superior. 

-Also from the New Republic: Suki Kim's fascinating/depressing account of her journalistic book getting marketed as a memoir. Fascinating, to me, at least, because of the autobiography angle - everything has to be about the self these days, especially when written by a woman, perhaps especially the more marginalized categories a person falls into. Maybe - I'm now thinking of Dwight Garner's recent review of Nancy Isenberg's book, White Trash:

Ms. Isenberg is a professor of American history at Louisiana State University. Her books include a well-regarded biography of Aaron Burr. Her own class background goes unmentioned in “White Trash.” This study does not require the emotional accelerant of memoir.

And it's unclear, there, whether the implication is that Isenberg is or is not from the background she writes about. Which is sort of the point.

(I now want to read both.)

I was also reminded of Jennifer Weiner's complaint about Princeton not appreciating her enough. There, though, I wasn't entirely convinced - I wasn't clear, that is, exactly what the complaint was, and that it wasn't just a humblebrag about having serious-person credentials and being a massively successful novelist. Put another way: It's the sort of complaint I could imagine sympathizing with - the silly and stereotypically-feminine gets derided! - but... she never quite convinces the reader (or at least, this reader) that she was doing something courageous by attending her own college reunion and having to confess to merely being the famous author of popular fiction.

(Now Weiner I have read, don't remember which, only that this was in a book-having Philadelphia coffee shop.)

With Kim's piece, though, there's something else going on. I suspect that her willingness to call out the marketing of her book relates to that book being, as she notes, a bestseller. A cynical response would be that the book succeeded at least in part because it was marketed as a memoir, but that hardly negates her main point, which is that the book became something different - and opened her as an author up to all kinds of irritating criticism - once it got framed as it did.

What's so interesting here is that this isn't a case - as we're so used to hearing about - of a woman selling her secrets or "identity" for like $5 (or $0), so that a corporation might profit. Instead, there's a different sort of loss: She became an expert in something really impressive (North friggin' Korea!) and sells books, yes, but in her capacity as - in these critics' view - "a memoirist treading on journalistic turf, a Korean schoolteacher who sold out her students for a quick buck." This wasn't - again, according to her take on the matter - a case of a woman getting criticized for choosing a conventionally feminine approach to writing. It was a case of... nothing a woman writes wouldn't sell that much better if it were made personal.

The seriousness credentials are always there, hovering just out of reach. If it feels that way to a journalist who went undercover in North Korea, the hope for those of us who merely wrote dissertations on long-dead French writers, while stuffing our faces with flan, is maybe not that great. Which makes me want to say, so screw seriousness, but it's not as simple as that.

Peak shaming

There's online shaming. There's offline shaming. And then, in its own separate, amazing category, is poodle-pants-shaming.

The backstory:

I have a dog, a miniature poodle. Because the results are cute, and because she doesn't at all seem to mind this, and yes, because it gets cold, she has some clothing. Not, like, evening-wear, but a sweater and a jacket. And, fine, a parka.

Well! I was out just now with Bisou (again, a dog), both of us in our parkas. 16 degrees and snowing. I was wearing jeans. She was not. This is important for what follows:

At an intersection, a woman on a bike was saying something to me. I took out the headphone playing a Terry Gross interview with a woman who knows how to get children and adults alike to enjoy vegetables and said, "Sorry?" At which point the woman repeated what I thought she'd said: She was saying that they should include pants (I think she said "chaps"), I think as some sort of extension of the dog-coat, or maybe just that Bisou should be in pants. She was concerned that Bisou was too cold. I tried to explain about why dogs don't wear pants (the obvious), and why they're really OK without any (fur), but then the light changed and that was that.

A brush with the famous

There isn't that much to do in the part of NJ where I live, but today there sure was something - a dog show! With poodles! The toys were very early in the morning, so I didn't actually see them, and the miniatures were... one dog, which I suppose must have won that competition. But the standard poodles, my goodness! That was the show to see. (Photographic evidence in the usual place.) The dogs themselves were pretty spectacular, and then whoa, a celebrity poodle-handler! Westminster winner Kaz Hosaka was there, which maybe isn't all that surprising if he lives in Delaware, but watching him in action, it's clear he's some kind of poodle-handling genius, which, as someone who is not that, I find impressive.

The dachshunds were adorable, but I didn't get any good photos. The cutest of the bunch was a longhaired miniature black-and-cream that some woman was holding in one of the tents. How it rated in terms of breed standard, who knows. There were also very nice and fox-like shibas, but only in crates - didn't see them compete!

The show itself was part typical NJ-area fair (fried food and gyros), plus opportunities to buy exquisite grooming equipment, including something called a "competition table." It turns out you can bring your own non-show dog if you're just going as a spectator, which would have been good to realize, maybe, but Bisou would have probably found some way to break the concentration of her hairspray-coated counterparts.

Throw-pillows

Allow me an unpopular opinion: There's nothing wrong with buying your dog a Halloween costume. Note: I have no plans to do so - it's not for personal reasons that I say this. (Bisou only wears couture; if she can't have that, which she can't, it's a rain/snow coat or nothing at all.) But... how exactly is it ethically different to put money towards a pet's costume than towards, say, home decor? We're not meant to be outraged at the throw-pillow industry. Why do pet outfits inspire such furor? Why do they inspire the whole that-money-could-be-spent-on-something-noble narrative?

Presumably it's for a few different reasons. One being the tremendous (and, I suspect, largely baseless) fear that people are confusing their pets for human children. This behavior is meant to represent the ultimate in decadence. While - to repeat - I don't think there are too many pet owners who sincerely view their pets as human beings, the notion that we would do so taps into various anxieties. The birthrate! Narcissism! Facebook-employee moms defrosting their eggs as a retirement present!

Another is, paradoxically, the same as the outrage inspired by parents who put their babies or toddlers in designer clothing. As if that's somehow spoiling the kid, when it's clearly about what the parents want to see. (Again: the throw-pillow analogy. Not that the child is a throw-pillow. But the choice of attire for the child too young to have an opinion... The Baby Versace jumpsuit or whatever is the throw-pillow.) As if certain outfits are somehow too fancy for a dog, as if they are, you know, for the dog.

But then there's the really obvious objection, which points to the dogs-are-roll-in-the-mud-animals vs. dogs-are-domesticated-pets divide. There are people under the impression that it's dog abuse to interfere with a dog's... dogginess, or something. That even interventions that in no way harm a dog - i.e. putting a silly-looking outfit on said dog - will somehow humiliate the creature. This is the attitude that would shudder at the hyperstylized photos that make up much (but not all) of Japanese poodle Instagram. When, I mean... why can't the very same dog be both? Why not a run in the woods and then some posing for a photo? One of the things you're supposed to do with a dog is train him/her/it to sit on command.

"Mobility"

-There is a dog in Japan that looks exactly like Bisou. Not as in, another gray poodle. Exactly.

-The housing changed the locks into card-entry, for the same reason as they came in and replaced our furniture - subsidized academic housing has its quirks. My husband's ID works to get into our apartment. Mine does not. I now have to enter through the back door (no innuendo intended!), which still allows a key. I'm sure it will all get resolved soon enough, but just, as they say, saying.

-Comfort-chic is so-very-now. According to a fashion expert, "[T]his season it’s about freedom and mobility." Flats, sweatshirts, etc. This - as I've said before - is a mixed blessing. If comfortable shoes are "this season," we can anticipate that next season will be a return of those horrible platform-plus-stiletto Louboutins, and the associated trend pieces calling such shoes (choice feminism! sex-worker-inspired!) empowering. Give it a couple months, and "mobility" will be so last season.

What where when why how?

So Bisou was scouted as a model, and was supposed to appear in an Italian magazine, but then the issue appeared, and... nothing! But maybe this will appear elsewhere? Readers, do any of you have any idea what the shoot may have been for, or may ultimately have been used for? My mother took this photo of it as it was happening and... we're more or less stumped. 

Chanel, it seems, but what? An ad? Editorial? Bisou evidently had to stop chasing squirrels for several minutes for this to take place, and she demands answers.

Poodle privilege

My mother took Bisou for a walk in Central Park this morning, and Bisou - fresh off NJ Transit - was, it seems, 'discovered,' in the way that sometimes happens to waifish Estonian 13-year-olds. Which is to say, she made her modeling debut. For a big-name Italian magazine, it seems. No spoilers, but let's just say there's photographic evidence. Pictures of Bisou with a human model and what may very well be next season's it-bag. This really happened. As for whether it will appear, for this we have to wait until September.

City dog

Since I didn't feel like being the last (wo)man standing in Princeton, Bisou and I have taken a trip to see what the bumper stickers would call her grandparents. (Hadley Freeman would maybe agree?) This isn't her first experience of being a city dog, but it's my first seeing her as one for more than, say, an afternoon. Thoughts thus far are below.

Pros:

-If you have a fluffy little dog, you will have to converse with every other person walking a fluffy little dog. Given the area, that is a *lot* of people. Women of a certain age, but not exclusively. And... it's kind of nice! They say that people are friendlier in the country/suburbs than the city, but the thing is, there are actually people around in the city, so even if a smaller % of them are chatty, there's so much more chatting going on. Plus, being on my home turf, I must give off a vibe of familiarity. Even to socialite-seeming women! Who are oddly not put off by my choice of years-old Gap-nightgown-as-dress. Maybe it's the vaguely-Chanel-looking thrift store bag I'm using until my regular bag is repaired, but you'd think these would be exactly the women who'd know what's what in that department.

-A far, far longer walk is feasible when there's actually stuff to see. With all due respect to nature. The deers, etc., are great, but relatively infrequent. Whereas glamorous Italian tourists (who don't talk to me, obvs) are pretty much everywhere here.

-Thanks to those first two, headphones are not needed. I'm way behind in my podcasts, and thus extra-prepared for NJ Transit being useless.

-No ticks!

Cons:

-There's so, so much on city streets for a dog to surreptitiously ingest. I'd like to think so far, so good, but who can say?

-The dog run is a nice idea and all, but walking Bisou to the run, as vs. driving her there, means she's exhausted by the time we get there. And while I'm sure Bisou wouldn't be the first poodle to ride the crosstown bus...

-A country dog has certain... requirements, having to do with the need for a patch of grass.

In descending order of importance

-I suppose as a not-black American, I'm supposed to have a contrarian take on Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations." But from what I could tell, reading it quickly late last night, it seems quite reasonable. Yes, other groups in the States, including my own, have faced racism, not just abroad but here. But anti-black racism is the racism in this country; if you doubted this, a good place to begin would be Coates's article. Or N.J. Transit. The only objection I could see having to the overall idea is if, on the whole (as much as this can ever be assessed of any group), African-Americans themselves find the idea off-putting. Anyway, curious to know what WWPD's readers, whatever your origins, thought of the piece.

-Banana Republic is for peasants. This was the not-all-that-between-the-lines message of Alexandra Jacobs's Critical Shopper column. I remember a scandal a while back, when a different Critical Shopper fat- and class-shamed J.C. Penney. Here, it's a bit of a different angle - Banana Republic is, after all, a somewhat expensive store. How expensive I couldn't say - like Jacobs, I haven't shopped there in years, but from what she writes, my guess is, she didn't just switch over to Uniqlo when that cheaper-and-better chain became a possibility. (Actually, we sort of know this.) But Jacobs's grievance seems to be with - for lack of a better term - mall stores:

“The Heritage label: what does that mean?” I asked one associate, who was talking smack about her boyfriend as she listlessly folded a stack of capri pants by the so-called concierge desk. 

“What do you mean?” she said with a blank look.

Horrors! That, and there's vanity-sizing. Of course, the question at this point is, compared to what? At this point, it's all mall stores, many lower-end than BR but others higher-. Basically anywhere you're going to get day-to-day clothing in Manhattan has a branch in at least one New Jersey mall. If you're a bit more fashion-y, maybe you choose J.Crew or Zara over Banana Republic or Ann Taylor, but these are the stores in even the most fashion-y parts of New York (ahem, lower Fifth). So this isn't even a YPIS of Jacobs - I'm genuinely curious where, if not stores like Banana Republic, anyone shops for most items.

-A rabbit has taken up residence on the patch of grass outside the living room. Squirrels are in mating season. I don't think the poodle can handle this.

How Isabelle Huppert got her groove back

-In New York, Bisou learned that she had gotten a nice haircut "for New Jersey." This has to be the best underhanded compliment ever.

-And back in New Jersey, I watched "In Another Country," a movie that one is probably supposed to discuss in terms of cinematography, but I will be WWPD about it and mention that what's most interesting is that it chucks two romantic conventions: that the woman must be young (or younger than the man), and that if one party in an opposite-sex romance is to be East Asian, it shall be the woman. The movie's about various women played by Isabelle Huppert going to Korea and falling in and out of love with a bunch of Korean men. Most notably, each of these women gets her groove back with a lifeguard who spends much of the movie running, shirtless, to the shore, "Baywatch"-style. Although the main message is a more predictable one: if you're going to be a woman of a certain age, be French.

-You know how "health" advice is always euphemistic diet advice, as in how to lose weight? I believe I've managed to transcend this with the following suggestion for how to eat one's vegetables/use up the vegetables purchased with best intentions: tempura. Dust them with potato starch (if some is on hand; not sure this step is necessary), and dip in a batter that's a mix of all-purpose flour and seltzer. (Someone online recommended Diet Dr. Pepper in place of the seltzer. I would not do this.) Fry the vegetables (I used eggplant, asparagus, and carrot) in a mix of peanut and sesame oil. For extra carbs, serve with rice.

Reading Maupin through a Savage lens

There are no more "Tales" for me - I finally read my last (technically the second-to-last, but I'd read them slightly out of order) of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series, Mary Ann In Autumn. The storytelling is just fantastic, as always, and that much more moving if you happen to be a dog person, with a small poodle curled up at your feet as you read. (But fear not - nothing that upsetting happens to any dog!)

I knew from Twitter or however else that Maupin and Dan Savage are, if not friends, people familiar with each other's work. Savage talks about Maupin's concept of a "logical family" as vs. a biological one (i.e. you move away from your small-town family that hates you for who you are, and find friends in the big city who become family), and then, in this latest (well, latest-for-me), the late-middle-aged Michael explains that he allows his early-middle-aged husband Ben to have sex with other men because that's the "price of admission" (a Savage coinage, I believe) to be with this much-younger, good-looking, kind, and generally flawless man.

The novel - well, one of the major plotlines - ends up reading like a Savage Love opening monologue. We have on the one hand Mary Ann, whose marriage to a Republican has fallen apart after she's caught her husband cheating with her "life coach," and on the other, Ben and Michael, whose only rule is disclosure. So evolved! The straights - and this is pure Savage - have so much to learn from gay men! (Or maybe not exactly the "straights" - now that I think of it, there's only one straight woman among the numerous main characters, and that's Anna Madrigal, an elderly transwoman who'd had a wife and kid in a previous life. Female sexuality is fluid in these novels.)

It might have been an interesting exploration of what changes in opposite-sex relationships, i.e. of what happens when "monogamish" converges with age-old double-standards, or how, as long as it's assumed that men cheat for variety but women only when unhappy in their relationships, the double-standard is maintained. But instead we learn that Mary Ann cheated as well, so never mind. The only concession to gender, in this context, is that Mary Ann (as a representative of Women) gets chastised for not enjoying a particular sex act that gay men (according to the novel) always do, and not the one you're thinking of. Anyway, fiction! I'd better write my own if I want it to make my arguments about society.

Belated New Years Resolutions

-Pitch an article every morning, work on mysterious and exciting writing projects every afternoon.

-Do said afternoon work somewhere other than the apartment, which is full of distractions:



-Learn how to parallel park. Like how to actually do it, not just for a road test, or with someone walking me through it.

Japanese canine dreamscape

Heaven is indeed a place on earth. It seems to be somewhere in Japan, but is at any rate wherever Flickr user koumeno-osanpo is taking these amazing photos. Life seems to involve frolicking in a springtime field with longhaired dachshunds (sometimes in Breton-striped shirts!) and a little gray poodle. Also meeting up with other similar lap dogs (including more dachshunds, more poodles) in other bucolic settings. Also visiting Japanese cafés. There are also fluffy cats, kittens, strawberries, sheep. Pasta. A deer. If this all sounds overly cutesy, it's... surprisingly not. It's some kind of aesthetic perfection.

A non-scholarly reading of Erica Jong

I just finished Fear of Flying. And... a problem with reading a book about one's own life (if published a decade before one was born) is that in a sea of similar, the moments of difference are all one ends up noticing. And Isadora Wing, Erica Jong's narrator/protagonist, isn't me! Really! I know that detail by detail, it seems like maybe, but no. Really. But because certain seemingly idiosyncratic facts are so similar (and the author has some lovely poodles!), I found myself almost resenting the (many!) places where Wing didn't behave as I would in a given situation. Which is, let's be clear, by any definition, the wrong way to read a work of fiction. But I couldn't help it! Page after page of my own life story, and then something unfamiliar, and thus jarring.

Anyway, to return to a more reasonable (if not all that literary) reading, as with any iconic book, you're living in the world already very much penetrated (seems appropriate) by its ideas. So the ideas themselves seem old hat. (And I defy you to read the first few pages and not picture The Bob Newhart Show, at least aesthetically.) But you have to remember they were new at the time, or at least to assume they were - literature grad school has a way of teaching you that there was always something similar written before the supposed first instance of whichever topic or argument.

To press on with this improper reading, one thing I couldn't decide what to make of in the book was that Isadora is - according to Isadora, at least - not just horny for men, but spectacularly attractive to men. There's her physical appearance, but also a sensuous quality that draws men to her everywhere she goes. (No "bitchy resting face," I suppose - amazing for someone who took the subway to high school!) Every man tries to sleep with her; many succeed, with her enthusiastic consent. Sort of the opposite end of the spectrum, then, from Lena Dunham's protagonist in "Tiny Furniture," who's also up for anything, but who's not someone men want to have sex with. My guess would be that most young women fall between these two extremes - that is, that they'll generally be able to find someone to sleep with if that's their goal, but they won't inspire saw-you-across-the-crowded-room lust in absolutely every man they meet. If Isadora wants sex, which she quite often does, she simply steps outside and all-the-men are waiting.

Which... gets to the question of how female beauty relates to female heterosexual desire. Do women desire men, or just being thought beautiful by men? At first it seems like Isadora's in the first category, but the more we hear about her lovely hair and ass, the more we may wonder if it's the latter.

And then you have to wonder about the liberation promised. Isadora's in an unusual situation. Partly it's that family money has made it so she's never financially dependent on a man (although she does also work - sentences here and there suggest she lives off some combination). For her, leaving a husband means sacrificing a bourgeois identity, but not a standard of living. Which is huge - even the so-called privileged middle-class housewives Friedan, etc., were talking about generally didn't have that option.

But it's also that, although she experiences occasional romantic disappointment, she never desires without being desired. She's able to rely on passivity as a way of bringing in new partners, and is stunned to realize, at a fairly mature age, that when she pursues a man who's not that into her, it doesn't go as well. (Although she's still kinda-sorta pursued by the man in question.) But for most of the book, because she's such an outlier, liberation is a simple matter of saying yes when a "good" girl would say no.

Tooth and nail

-Nail art had its day, and its day is, evidently, done. Nails may now return to the realm of skincare and haircare, where we are to seek out the appearance of 'health.' The fun days of glitter and neon for adult women are over, and now the trend is adhering to the dress code of some corporate law firm we don't even work at. I know because I read it on Into The Gloss, and because even before reading that, I'd painted my own nails a sheer pale pink. But if nail art brings up all kinds of appropriation issues, the "nude" nail has its own set of minefields. Specifically: "nude"? What's "nude" on one complexion isn't on another. Nail polish isn't the same as concealer or foundation, and a pale beige may look great on dark brown skin (although a dark brown polish may look not so amazing on pale beige skin). But yes, "nude" - acceptable for describing the color of something - nail polish, shoes, etc. - you yourself are wearing, maybe, but not for describing the color something is in the abstract.

-Canine dental care is expensive, is the understatement of the century. There's nothing even wrong with Bisou's teeth, but they must be cleaned to keep it that way. And we left with instructions on canine dental care that seem geared towards turning this - once combined with the half a day that must go to walking, fetch... - into a full-time job. Daily toothbrushing (this had been on an every-other-day schedule, along with brushing) and some kind of gel you're supposed to put on your dog's teeth before bed. I have trouble believing the 80-year-old women one sees walking 20-year-old poodles around Paris go in for all of this, but just as American women don't get to enter into a healthy, wrinkle-free old age on the wine-croissant-cigarette diet, American poodles can't live on Camembert and market-scavenging alone.

Bisou moonlighting as another dog's tail.

Bisou in the springtime, striking a pose.

Bisou mid-yawn, a menacing sight.

Immediate post-turning-it-in goals

-Get dog groomed (check!).

-Go to supermarket (check!).

-Catch up on emails (getting there!).

-Clean the bath (hmm...).

-And the rest of the apartment (ehhh...).

-Cuddle with freshly-groomed poodle while watching the newly-available "Princesses of Long Island," trying not to view it through any kind of academic lens (no comment).

$330

-A man behind me on the train spent the entire, I mean entire trip on his phone to various parties, loudly complaining that a business deal he's involved in that he thought was confidential was in fact known by some other party. The gist of his grievance was that someone apparently couldn't keep things quiet. The irony of all of this was apparently lost on dude, but it at least gave me something to contemplate while transferring info from footnotes to the bibliography.

-Last night I had the ultimate Cheapness Studies anxiety dream. In it, I was in Lululemon, trying on shorts. I was in the store, in the dream, because, in this dream, I was an employee at a store (as if they'd hire me, given my yoga-skepticism), and therefore had some kind of discount. In any case, in the dream, I somehow accidentally ended up purchasing some shorts, even though they didn't fit right (just ill-fitting - not too big or too small; my subconscious's body image is apparently not the problem), and lo and behold, somehow after buying them, I learned that they were not returnable and had cost $330. Yes, it was an exact amount. That was the amount. For shorts! Would you believe it? I mean, you shouldn't believe it, because I just looked this up and shorts at that store are in the $40-$50 range. Not cheap, but not $330, either. But I was so upset that I had just spent that much on shorts I wouldn't even be able to wear, which was indeed foolish, or would have been, had I done so.

-There is - how had I not seen this? - a YouTube channel that is a Japanese cooking show "narrated" by a little gray poodle. Basically, it's as if Bisou had a cooking show. Which was how I got hooked. But the show itself is also kind of great, even after you get past the how-is-that-poodle-not-charging-at-that-salmon angle. (But how? Editing? Lots of salmon being treated off-camera?) It's on the one hand from-scratch, but on the other, completely unpretentious. It's not about getting the finest ingredients. It's largely about blotting every ingredient off with a paper towel, dusting everything off in potato starch, and having dashi stock ready at all times. There's even advice in one video to coat salmon fillets with sake in order to get rid of the fishy smell. Thereby acknowledging the reality of... ingredients, I suppose. The ones one might actually get at the supermarket. Well, the Asian supermarket. H-Mart, here I come.

Looming Deadline Studies roundup

No more thoughts on Civilization Studies, other than that if presented with the option of teaching a course on Poodles in Civilization, I probably wouldn't say no.

But a few scattered thoughts, before plunging back into Looming Deadline Studies:

-What's the deal with the dainty knuckle-rings hip women now wear? Wouldn't that be massively uncomfortable? I say this as someone who a) doesn't really wear jewelry, and b) occasionally tries to wear wedding band and engagement ring on different hands, because it does kind of look better, only to find rings in more than one location incredibly unwieldy. It took time enough to get used to wearing any rings, what with the fear-of-sinks it necessitates. And what exactly keeps a knuckle-ring on? Sleepy searching for answers tells me that nothing does - they fall off all the time. Which could be a lot of money down the drain. But even if they were of no value, they seem like this minute's drop-crotch pants - something whose faddishness is evident from the inevitable discomfort.

-Are we or are we not about to be inundated with a plague of locusts? By "we" I mean the woodsy outskirts of Princeton, NJ, and by "locusts" I mean cicadas, lest there be any nitpicking (pun intended) entomologists among my three readers. I have - because obviously - Googled 'can dogs eat cicadas,' because if there's a swarm of "Biblical" proportions as they keep saying, there's no way a dog fascinated by dried-up worms (and, more appealingly, dedicated to killing every bug that dares enter the apartment) isn't going to dig in.

-I remain more pleased than I can even express that I was born in 1983 rather than, say, 1996. Why? Because my entire youth wasn't recorded. And this is, of course, relates to parental overshare - if parents can now know everything, they can also now tell newspapers everything. Then again, the parents who comment on the stories along these lines that allow comments, to chime in that their children (who are maybe 17-27 at the time) have never tried this or that run-of-the-mill substance or activity, suggests to me that we are, if nothing else, still at a point where children know better how to work those newfangled whosawhatsis phones than their parents do.

-The problem with this contrarian complaint about dogs being allowed everywhere is that dogs are not allowed anywhere. OK, they're allowed in dog runs, on the sidewalk, and - for reasons I don't understand - almost encouraged in Uniqlo. But they're not allowed in food establishments of any kind. And that includes a small dog hidden away in a carrier - if a dog is detected, you can't go in. Restaurants with outdoor seating might allow dogs, but that can't be assumed. And even in Europe, where dogs are a good bit more welcome, supermarkets? Forget it.

OK, except sometimes in Paris. But as I understand it, this was not allowed on multiple levels.

Report from the sticks

-'My poodle broke a nail' is not the world's greatest problem, but it's a slightly larger one than it seems like it might be.

-In which local food is bad for the environment: There's a great nearby farm that sells eggs. I drove over, in part for said eggs, in part to test my own navigational skills in farm country - vast stretches of what to me seem like undifferentiated green-ness. Navigational skills, check. But they were out of eggs. Drove back empty-tote-bagged.

A different nearby farm. Monty Python was right - llamas are bigger than frogs.

-In other farm-country news: there's nothing like your hairdresser finding a tick on your scalp to a) make you completely lose focus from the haircut in question (which, oddly enough, I now see, turned out great!), b) up the hypochondria quotient of what is generally one of your tamer beauty procedures, and c) make you feel very rustic when tossing the creature out of your hair mid-haircut. What I ought to have remembered is that one is supposed to save, not stomp on, the tick in order to properly identify it. What I did remember - well, realize on the spot - is that one must leave a >20% tip on occasions when your hairdresser must double as an entomologist.

How I stopped worrying and learned to function in suburbia

Thus far this weekend, Bisou has had one long woods-walk and one all-out woods-and-boulders hike. And her usual walks, because - permit a poodle-parent overshare - the canine digestive tract stops for no man. I also drove alone for the first time ever to the supermarket and back, and then to town and back. The most difficult aspect of solo driving is solo getting out of a parking spot when there's another car waiting to get in (I still think of them as cars, albeit cars with emotions, but not people driving) and a bunch more lined up behind, without someone else explaining when to go straight back, back, now start turning the wheel. So far so good, which I think means I can no longer claim I don't know how to drive.

Which is for the best, because I want to go back to Cranbury, NJ, to go back to the fabulous used-book store, and to check out the closed-on-Mondays consignment shop next to it, and the closed-on-Mondays coffee shop across the street. (None of this was MLK Day-specific. The town really is just closed on Mondays, except for the bookstore, which is instead closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) The car-and-ability-to-use-it really seems to be the difference between my being happy living here and baffled-urbanite-dom. It really wasn't New York snobbery, I promise, even though I wondered myself at first. I just couldn't go anywhere - not to the supermarket, not to anything beyond town, and even town was a production. While I could, in the pre-car phase, speak to the particularities of life as a trailing, dissertating spouse, and the effect that being in a "housewife" role, however superficially, can have on one's productivity, at least at first (ahem), I couldn't say much about what it's actually like to live in Princeton.

And it turns out, disappointingly, that I'm not one of those New Yorkers who could only ever possibly survive within X yards of Zabars. Or perhaps not disappointingly, given the bankers' playground I've left behind. Not sure what it says about the place I last lived that the Princeton Whole Foods strikes me as a relaxed, down-to-earth environment.