The Future Is Unwritten

Joe Strummer sort of took me by surprise this year. In an attempt to connect with a friend who claims to be The Clash's biggest fan, I tried to wade through his biography Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, and failed. It was slow, and terrifically dull. It was all about his art school buddies and living in squats, and his history with his first, failed bands. Rather than the exciting, kinetic, thrashing energy of The Clash, the book dwelt on Strummer and his transformation from John Mellor, son of an English diplomat, attendee of boarding school, and brother of David, who killed himself when Strummer was eighteen. Which are all important life events but like, hello? London was calling! Mellor, who went by the name Woody and then Joe Strummer, was a young man who, by all accounts, could charm the yellow off a bee with sheer charisma, and led The Clash to worldwide renown. He was, as the kids say, the shit.

His band changed the face of music in the 2oth century; drawing its sound and fury from reggae, the Sex Pistols, the Zapatista movement, and the fuck-the-rich ethos that grows from squatting in abandoned London council houses, The Clash shaped a generation of young punks into belligerent, intelligent listeners. The band ultimately imploded, starting with Strummer's ill-starred disappearing act that muffed the first leg of the Combat Rock tour, and ending with the ejection of Topper Headon (for heroin addiction) and Mick Jones (for what the California courts might call "irreconcilable differences"), and Strummer had what are widely considered his wilderness years.

I love the concept of the wilderness years. To me, the notion that someone has so much damage that he (or she) has to quit, commit social seppuku and just up and leave, is incredibly potent. Strummer had kick-started a new sound, a hugely influential band, and his own misery. The next logical step was for him to disappear. Strummer was relatively young when he first stamped his name on the music scene - "White Riot" charted in the UK when he was 25 years old, and by the time he had turned 27, London Calling had been released. Ten years after their first show, the band had eaten its own tail.

Think about that for a second. Put yourself in Strummer's shoes. Boarding school must have been tough - Redemption Song mentions that, while he was in school, Strummer saw his parents about once a year. Living in squats must have been rough, although the book and The Future Is Unwritten, one of the many Strummer documentaries produced since his death in 2002, both point out that the squat lifestyle led by a lot of England's youth at the time was a community of politics, not poverty. But then to go from this left-behind feeling, to being the frontman for one of the leading musical acts in the world, must have been really effing weird. Living out of hotel rooms, performing music for aggro crowds around the world, being 32 with a mohawk...come on.

Think yourself into that situation for a second. Leave your wife, your shitty job, your lease, you fridge full full of wilted celery and beer, and put yourself in a hotel room in Osaka in 1982, stoned on adrenaline and Jamaican green. Think about how disconnected you might feel, from your friends, your kids, your closet, your shower. Think about how your boyfriend smells, and think about not smelling that for six weeks while you sing songs for strangers in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and the traditional breakfast is rice and fermented soybeans.

So who can blame Strummer for lying low for a while? He settled down, had a couple kids, did some soundtrack work, along with a few movie appearances, and tried to put his head back together. Normalcy, after a decade of being in The Clash, would have been...weird. But for those of us who aren't internationally acclaimed fathers of rock, the concept of "wilderness years" falls flat. With few exceptions, our psychic damage - and make no mistake, fame and fortune are damaging - is just the regular, normal, fucking up that we all engage in. But I admire him for taking off. It speaks to a level of self-awareness that most people don't have, and getting out of the limelight, for the most part, is a killer move. And then the best part is, he came back.

His later-life project, the Mescaleros, were a much mellow, worldlier-sounding band than The Clash. They were nowhere near as high-profile as his youthful ensemble, but they produced a sound that fits with Strummer's disappearance, his breaking and eventual rebirth as a musical figurehead. Instead of a young lion, the Mescaleros gave him a chance to be a statesman of rock, incorporating the sounds of his ancestral homeland and the reggae that helped shape The Clash. And that band couldn't have happened without his wilderness years.

When I say Joe Strummer was a late bloomer, I don't mean he took a while to get started. The Clash were a game- and genre-changing band, and their out-of-the-gate influence was transformative. But it took a bite out of Joe in a big way, and his real bloom, his flower, his relaxation and his fun, seems to have come with the Mescaleros. And that, friends, is amazing. He gave himself permission to keep trying, to take a break, to give himself the kindness of a new start, and it paid off.

Living Arrangements

I'm not going to lie: I'm basically an overgrown sixteen-year-old, except that I'm also pretty short. So I'm pretty much a sixteen-year-old, full stop. I still have the same vague aspirations as I did then ("write frooferies for a living, make out with boys, and have cool clothes"), the same taste in food (sushi! And cookies), and some of the same actual clothes (a grey skirt that gets shorter and longer depending on how it's zipped - it sounds like it's a cousin to those pants with the zip-off legs, but I assure you, it's much cooler than that).

The threshold into adulthood can be defined any number of ways - some folks think you need a kid and a mortgage for that; I disagree - but, for better or worse, I feel like I'm getting there. A huge part of it is getting a day job, one with a commute and CPP deductions. With that comes a shift in schedule that aligns me with more of the world around me. I actually see the sun now! And I use an alarm to get up. (Okay, in theory I use an alarm, but in reality, I'm so totally stressed about both the job and the waking up early that I'm waking up at, like, 6:00 a.m.) I'm starting to feel like, with my little business skirts and my phone extension, like a business-meaning human.

But there are going to be other steps towards Real Live Adulthood, and I have a feeling the next big one is going to be living arrangements. I've long believed that human beings need both privacy and community, but too much of either isn't good for me. I lived alone for three years, and by the end, I was lonely and bored of myself (I'm not really that interesting, yo). I liked being able to pee with the door open, but the trade-off of not coming home to anything or anyone weighed on my soul. I didn't even have a houseplant. The flip side of that is the four years I've spent living with lots of people - between twelve and fifteen housemates. Three of those years, the fifteen of us shared one kitchen with one stove, and three showers. Looking back on it, I can't really remember how we didn't all go totally mad. Good thing students have low hygiene standards.

One of my favourite ideas is that of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the notoriously hot/cold couple who lived in neighbouring houses that were adjoined by a catwalk. Similarly, Helena Bonham Carter and her beau Tim Burton live in side-by-side cottages linked by a throughway. Both arrangements fill me with delight. Like, the chance to both live with your beloved and have your own kitchen? Amazeballs. But that seems like it requires loads of money, and unless the banks start taking winning smiles as a form of currency, I have no down payment on those kinds of dream houses.

Instead, I've been focusing on co-operative and co-housing models. I know most people go from their parents place, to living with some roommates, to maybe living alone, to living with a partner - this is an acceptable trajectory re: housing. But I've noticed that a lot of my people aren't doing that, and that's okay. I know a few couples, both common-law and married, who have elected to take on housemates in addition to their spouses. Some have done this for financial reasons, since housing in downtown Toronto can be wickedly expensive. Other have done it for community reasons - wanting to live with friends and family is, I think, a deeply rooted tribal urge. It's the reason my globe-trotting parents ended up settling within an hour of their parents' homes, and it's the reason even long-established residents of Canada still talk about their birth-country as "home."

Co-op and co-housing might offer me the best of both worlds: a chance to have my own private space, and a larger community in which to contextualize myself. As I get older, I want to share my spaces with those I care about - friends, lovers, family - and keep the rest of the world somewhat at bay. Friends of mine recently went through an elaborate process to find a new housemate, and it turns out that no-one can be absolutely perfect for any community's needs, even if that community is only five people strong. But splitting the difference, accepting flaws, and providing safe and private spaces to escape Julio's gargling sounds, or Mona's habit of leaving the kitchen counter soaking wet.

As I get older, I need to think critically about what I need from my living arrangement. I have plenty of time left in my little third-floor room, but eventually I might not want to live with total strangers. But finding that balance of private and group can be super challenging. It's going to be more than painting walls and stocking pantries - it'll be finding out what I need to live a well-arranged life.

Kochany Classic Movies

While movie dates are the typical arena for courtship, I've been less fond of them in real life. I once made the mistake of going to Sin City with a potential beau; I loved it, because it was mean and violent, noir-ish and very sexy, while he emerged from the theater green and sweating. It was not a love connection. Even when both people are equally interested in the movie, it doesn't make for a really satisfying romantic experience: there's that blocky arm rest, which derails all cuddly moments; there's the investment of what feels like a ton of money into a two-hour chunk of time, so we had better like it, dammit; there's the fact that I pee every ten minutes and the return to a darkened movie theater, to someone whose face might not etched in my brain, is the epitome of social awkwardness; and, when faced with the comfy alternative that is throwing on DVD and making out on the couch, movie dates start to look downright bizarre.

When we asked my sister what she wanted to do for her twenty-third birthday, she replied, "The same thing I did for my eleventh birthday: see Toy Story." I had forgotten that it's sometimes hard to corral five adults into doing the same thing at the same time. I was excited: movie events like the long-awaited third installment of a wildly successful, childhood-defining, technologically ground-breaking don't come along every day (or do they?). I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since, what, Zombieland?

I've seen more movies this fall than I have in a long time, courtesy of a new beau who digs cinema and likes to see new movies on the big screen. I saw Tron: Legacy with this guy, along with Back to the Future (!!) and Black Swan and Seven Samurai. We tried to see a movie New Year's Day, a tradition that dates back, in my family, to the Stone Age (the 1960s), but we only got as far as the Chinese food part of the Chinese-and-a-movie part of the agenda before we realized that we had seen everything and/or had zero interest in movies like Marmaduke.

My family is pretty firmly in the let's-rent-a-movie camp; my parents watch a lot of movies (or, in my dad's case, "watch" a lot of movies: his eyes are closed and he's snoring away) on the couch, with blankets tucked in around them and a big bowl on popcorn between them. Family Christmas traditions when we were younger included a yearly family sleepover in the TV room. Snuggled together, with Tim Allen transmogrifying into Santa Claus on the television, wired on cans of Coca-Cola and wearing matching flannel snowman pajamas, my family felt very much like a unit. I think this is a product of spending my middle-school years marooned in Manotick, an amenity-free village on the outskirts of Ottawa. A teeny library and a couple video shops were the only source of filmed entertainment - going to the movies meant a trip into Ottawa proper, a journey my parents were loath to make in the wintry, icy months.

Plus, when I was a kid, movies = magic, for sure. I think this is mainly because my main source of cinema was the Disney vaults, a place that gifted me with Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Aladdin, and Robin Hood, and Fantasia (a movie that my toddler sister had be be escorted out of, screaming, due to scariness...too many brooms is a frightening thing). As I got older, I began to realize that not every movie was a good movie; most kid's movies aren't dreadful, but a lot of the schlock that's produced for teens and young adults is virtually unwatchable. Growing up was definitely bittersweet, at least for my film-buff side.

Now, I read reviews for flicks I'm never going to watch, stream documentaries, buy second-hand movies, and occasionally rent something. My parents, when I'm home, always offer a movie night, although their tastes have changed over the years and I'm not always interested in the latest German depress-a-thon. I love cuddling up in a movie theatre, or on the couch, to watch something fun, or thought-provoking, or just entertaining. Because that's the bottom line, past dating and family nights and all that jazz. Movies are supposed to be fun.

Forty Words For It

It snowed last night, and everyone is losing their everloving minds. It's like no-one in Toronto has seen snow before, and while I'll give it to the babies who were born in the summer, most everyone else is familiar with it. It's like every year, the snow falls, and every year, we're all like, "Whaaa...? I don't...oh, help us!"

While I'm not wild about snow, per se, I do enjoy a good arctic blast winter. I like being cold. Not indoor cold, which is more like clammy and makes me feel all crazy and nerve-wracked when I put on, and then take off, my sweater 800 times a day. That kind of cold is often a by-product of stress, anyway: the body's desire to flee or shout subsumed into sweaty palms. But outdoor cold, when you're bundled to the point of warmth, but not sweating and uncomfortable, is really enjoyable. Over the Christmas break, I walked out onto the frozen beach of Lake Huron, outfitted in big Sorel boots and a couple warm scarves (among other things - I'm not some sort of erstwhile polar bear dipper) and thought to myself, "Hey, this is pretty great out here."

I'll admit to not really being one for winter outdoorsiness, although I do enjoy a vigorous round on the snowshoes and have tried snowblading. I used to claim that winters were best spent in front of the fireplace, hot chocolate firmly in hand, catching up on your trashy celebrity gossip and listening to the dog fart. But now I'm more interested in romping around in the briskness, especially after a good night's sleep.

Canadian winters are so odd, because they both isolate and unite us. I don't know how many conversations I've had with people about various winter-busting techniques: staying warm, avoiding black ice, getting one of those solar lamps, the best way to avoid windburn, routes to avoid (walking Toronto's Bay Street in January is like trekking along the bottom of a canyon, magnifying the wind factor and making a girl curse all the high-rise residents who want to live and work downtown). But at the same time, movement become more difficult. Driving becomes perilous, biking is downright dangerous, walking takes forever, the trains slow down, and the subway barely lurches along. I know I sort of go into hibernation mode, since social visits that might be an eight-minute bike ride away in the summer have turned into a 35-minute trek through the snow, or a half-hour sardine experience on the TTC.

It makes me wonder how other wintry countries handle the season. Like Canada, the Scandinavian countries have an impressive music scene, and Russia uses the months between October and March to perfect their sports. But it also more snowy a scene gets, the less socially scenic: the Northern Territories are rife with alcoholism and health problems. The much-derided Extreme Weather Warnings that get issued in Toronto (you know, the ones that cause the rest of the snow-encrusted province to scoff at those pansies in the 416) are for the purpose of getting the homeless and underhoused off the freezing streets and into a shelter, at least for the night. And it seems like people get meaner when the weather's extreme - and this is by no means a winter-specific phenomenon, as evidenced by heat waves and their corresponding rage waves. The grumblings about snow and salt and cold and BLAH increase through the roof.

The Inuit allegedly have forty words for snow, a concept that doesn't surprise me in the least. But for all the rest of us - the recent immigrants from Grenada, the life-long Torontonian, the transplant from Kapuskasing, the hand-holding couple currently falling on their asses on the ice, the kids skating in Nathan Phillips Square, the parent who needs to scramble for last-minute snow-day childcare, and all the other snow-loving/hating/tolerating citizens - need to get over the concept of "good" and "bad" for snow, and just accept the fact that Toronto winters are wild, sometimes beautiful, sometimes difficult, but always interesting.

Office Space

I've been going through a gradual adjustment period lately, one that's bringing me into the realm of the Adult©. I've been getting up early, making my lunch the night before, using my little glass Tupperware and toting my lunches off to the florescent-lit open-concept space where I spend my days answering the phones, stapling papers together, making small talk around the water cooler, and desperately trying to make my face look a normal face when my boss says, "Can I see you in my office for a second?"

There are perks to the office job that I wasn't expecting. I don't really have to think too hard about what I'm wearing - as long as it would pass muster at, say, a synagogue: elbows and knees covered, hair pinned back, flat shoes and only the merest touch of glitter eyeshadow. I have a schedule, the same one every day. I'm even starting get used to getting up early, and a small part of me even sort of...enjoys it? That can't be right. The Adult© part of me relishes my morning routine of cereal and a hard-boiled egg, even as the perpetual teenager in me looks longingly at my cozy bed every morning.

I mean, aside from the perky little paycheck, there are other bonuses to the office gig. I pride myself on staying organized - a clean desk and all my Post-It notes in a row. An job in an office lets that part of me shine through, and I enjoy the process of keeping a tidy computer and making sure my email inbox is cleaned out. It's a weird thing to take so much pleasure in, but it's also helping to make this position more tenable. Even when it's mundane and pedestrian, playing to a person's skills helps endear the job to a new employee.

To be honest, I sort of have a boner for office supplies. I adore labels, boxes of fresh envelopes, new pencils and bulldog clips. I like staplers with enough weight to kill a man in a roman noir. I like stamps that make a big blue COPY in the corner of the page. I'm starting to learn how to use the big photocopier, and while it's not a skill that's going to qualify me for anything other than an entry level job, it helps when I fantasize about making a 'zine at work. Office supplies are designed to streamline and easy-make the job, and I appreciate their functional designs and frill-free aesthetic.

Just like a black apron and nerves of steel are in a waitress's toolbox, being impervious to boredom and a drawer full of hanging files are the tools of the office drone's trade. Every job has its own thing - forklift drivers usually have those hefty gloves, celebutantes have pants full of other people's cocaine, go-go dancers have their big white boots, and hairdressers have their weird glass cyclinders full of combs and what I assume is Windex©. CEOs have expensive suits, and their underlings have telemarketer headsets. Feeling equipped to do a job, whatever that job is, means that folks have both the skills and talent, and that the people they're working for have provided them with the tools to do the best job they can.

That's why the access to office supplies is so bizarrely thrilling - because it's so novel, I'm acutely aware of the fact that my employers have given me these tools. I mean, it's not like I'm whistling my way out the door with a ream of legal-sized paper in cornflower tucked into my messenger bag; I realize that the stack of file folders on my desk isn't a gift, just for me. But it speaks to the trust that a company has in its employees, to not waste and to use their money in appropriate ways. It's a new thing, to be entrusted with that, and it's sort of heady.

I guess I'll just have to wander around a Staples or a Grand & Toy as a civilian sometime soon, picking up index cards and making sure my three-hole punch is back from the shop. And incorporating some of that organizational flair into my personal life is like investing in myself, the same way a corporation does. And if and when I'm ground down by the monotony and futility of office work, I'll at least take the tools of trade with me.

Michael Cera, You Ruin Everything

This past spring, when I learned that Michael Cera would be playing the part of Scott Pilgrim in the eponymous flick, I shouted, "Michael Cera, you ruin EVERYTHING!" which my sister overheard and agreed with. Scott Pilgrim, I groused, should have been played by someone goofy, stocky, Canadian, floppy of hair and noodly of disposition.

And I was wrong. Michael Cera is all those things - okay, he's by no means "stocky," but he beefed up a little to play Mister Pilgrim, and it showed. Canadian, with enormous silly hair and a comedically confused demeanor, Cera is probably best known for his one-two punch of Arrested Development and Juno, both of which showcased his "acting style". He's famous for his stuttery, naturalistic delivery, which prompts some detractors (like me) to roll their eyes and say, "He's not even really acting," which is probably only partly true. In SP, Cera jumped around and amped up his delivery, turning up the dial from "guy you totally knew in high school" to "cartoon version of guy you totally knew in high school."

I was ambivalent-to-horrified by the decision to cast Cera in the Scott Pilgrim role, mostly because I had never been exposed to Arrested Development and had only really seen the hipster hype around him. Juno, while a charming movie, portrayed Cera as a desirable piece of ass. Maybe I've been out of high school too long, but I was like, "Seriously? That silly-haired boy I could crush with my bare hands?" and refused to be attracted to him. (Ellen Page, on the other hand, I would totally make out with in the back of a taxi.) And then I saw Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, which was execrable, and I decided that I hate Michael Cera.

The problem is, I was doing things backwards. I was seeing his most look-at-me projects first. These were movies designed to make Cera into A Star For Our Time - a generation's polite, nervous, stuttering equivalent to George Clooney. And again, I was like, "For realsies? That guy?" because Cera is more like A Steve Buscemi For Our Time, or should be: the guy who can deliver a certain type of nervous, twitchy performance, and who's second on the marquee. He's interesting, but not fan-myself gorgeous. He's a dude, a guy, a bud.

There was also a certain triumph to Cera's celebrity. He was a surrogate for all the non-gorgeous guys out there, showing the world that dweebs could still land the likes of Ellen Page and Kat Dennings - undeniable babes. He was an unlikely romantic hero, made even less likely by his auspicious start as the boy who loved his cousin on Arrested Development. He was an unwitting part of the Schlub Romance sub-genre of comedy, in which highly suspect leading men (Seth Rogen, Jack Black) were cast as viable romantic options for women like Katherine Heigl and Kate Winslet: pretty, smart women who, in the non-filmed real world, would brush those guys off without a second thought.

Anyway, I started watching Arrested Development a few weeks ago when I was laid up with the flu. Now, I don't know if this was the fever talking, but I wasn't thoroughly irritated by Cera. He was decked out in pleated khakis and dorky shirts, secretly in love with his cousin and refreshingly normal compared to his ridiculous TV family. He seemed like a sweet teenage boy marooned in a weird situation - in other words, comedic fruit ripe for the picking.

Seen in this light, the rest of his career makes a ton more sense to me. Of course his breakout role was in Superbad, playing the nebbishy good-guy foil to Jonah Hill's galumphing asshole. Of course he made the self-indulgent Paper Heart with his maybe-girlfriend Charlyne Yi. Of course he took on Scott Pilgrim, with its romantic entanglements X seven.

His likability has dropped with subsequent roles, bottoming out with SP, which is a shame, since that movie is arguably one of his best-made movies and definitely one of his most interesting ones. Hopefully audiences of the future will be able to see past the unfortunate Cera hype machine and appreciate the flick for its humour and style. But he still has pull with audiences, and if the long-promised Arrested Development movie ever actually gets made, he'll do a lot to repair the damage of Year One.

I'm able to change my mind about people and things - Leonardo DiCaprio went from crush to object of disgust to respected actor, and I've come to like jogging. I think it's good to be flexible (although thinking it and living it are different things, for sure), and I try to think critically about my opinions - if they're based in fact or feelings, and how they change over time. I'll admit to irrationally hanging on to certain opinions (like, okay, I know How I Met Your Mother is sexist, stupid, horribly plotted and has Ted "Scenery Eater" Mosby...but I still sort of like it). Obviously, the stakes are lower when it comes to media and pop culture, but it's good practice for topics like "How I feel about Israel" or "Which of my friends I would eat first in the case of apocalypse."

I'll count myself as a former member of the let's-all-hate-M.-Cera group now. I'm fairly certain he wasn't expecting to become the generational emblem he was marketed as, and despite some career missteps, his choices have been decent enough. I'll defend the Cera I like - George Michael, Scott Pilgrim - and ignore the Cera I don't care for. My skepticism is fading. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spend some time with the Bluths.

Paydays Are Like Chocolate

I started working for a company a few weeks ago - after the desolate wasteland of my unemployment, I was ready to try new challenges, learn new skills, access new information and ensure all my TPS reports were filed, with cover sheets, in triplicate, on the appropriate desk. I was also ready to earn a paycheck, because girlfriends, my back account was empty. I felt like those cartoons that depict the concept of "poor" with moths coming out of my wallet.

There's nothing quite like the rush of payday, though, right? I've finally been around long enough to get some cash monies (okay, one automatic deposit), and all of the sudden, the day seems brighter. I can afford things like groceries! Granola bars, you silky bitches: I'm going to take you home and eat you. I can also afford things like new tights, and some work clothes, because I've been rotating the same five skirts for the past couple weeks and I think people are starting to notice. Maybe that's why nobody wants to eat lunch with me. Regardless, the feeling of, "hey, my time is worth actual money to other people" is very gratifying.

Back when I was a wee teenager and wore ridiculous JNCO pants along with my boss-mandated collared shirts to my job at the beachfront french fry stand, I used to get paid in fat wads of cash. It was like being a baby tycoon, especially since I was fourteen and basically a noodle when it came to income. What expenses do fourteen year olds have? I bought magazines and went to the Bulk Barn, where I bought gummi worms and disgusting lipgloss from Wal-Mart. Like, seriously. And I also saved for university: despite having a boatload of savings and a chunk of cash left over from my child modeling days, I managed to rack up twenty grand in bills from the venerable University of Toronto. But I loved getting paid in cash, since it was so immediate. There was no going to the bank, or mandatory five-day waiting periods while my cheques cleared. It was just there, ready to be spent.

After every famine there's a feast. I spent a long time in Winners last night, wandering the aisles, searching for work-appropriate garb I don't also want to burn. ( Quick questions: why is so much of that stuff made from that one cheap-feeling material? You know the one - H&M makes all their pants from it - but it feels like used plastic bags have been melted and woven together to create something that wants desperately to be considered a fabric, but is more akin to an allergic reaction.) I netted some metallic jazz-shoe flats and a vaguely nautical sweater; sadly, the sequined leopard-print hot pants weren't in the budget, even at fifteen bucks. If they're still there in a couple weeks, I might pick 'em up. I desperately hope they are, because although I fear them, I also love them.

Because that's the beauty of payday: it gives you freedom. My boyfriend likes to remind me that jobs aren't really designed to be laff riots with 100% freedom and continuous happiness - they are, he says, called "work" for a reason. Which is true. But, while jobs are designed for people to sell their time to their employers, work needs to do something for you as well - be it personal growth, or professional advancement, or even just the influx of money every so often. And money allows you to do other things: plan vacations, buy silly hotpants, go dancing, even just be free from worrying about how you're going to pay for your food and rent. In the future, when I build up a little bit of savings and am not running so much on fumes - even though I got paid, my months of unemployment have left things a little tight, and the squeeze is on for at least another six weeks - I'll be able to luxuriate in having disposable income. For now, I'm just grateful I'm not broke any more. Being broke makes a girl feel broken.