Overprotected

I've decided I really need to get going with this tanning business. It's now officially summer, and I'm still morgue-quality pale. I know, it's shameful.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the luxury of a roof deck on which to drench myself in UV goodness. Like most amenities at my last apartment building, the roof deck was nice in theory and a little low-rent in practice. It had fake grass, lots of oversized wood furniture and essentially looked like the lawn & garden department at Home Depot. I haven't been up to the roof of my building now, but I suspect that it's probably not somewhere I want to be while scantily clad. That being the case, this summer I'm left with laying out in Central Park, where the trade off for real grass is being ogled by tourists from Minnesota. Ah, well, so be it.

This afternoon, during my regular Duane Reade run, I realized that I need to get some sunscreen. I'm a fan of the current trend in spray-on suncreen because it meets the needs of the independent sunbather quite well. Maybe other people are capable of oiling themselves up between their shoulder blades, but quite frankly, if I could bend that way, I would have more lucrative career options.

As it turns out, spray-on sunscreen is available in the following degrees of coverage:

• SPF 4 - probably just Pam cooking spray in a different package, no?
• SPF 30 -the new standard in bare minimum sun safety. Remember when just 15 was OK?
• SPF 80

Wait. SP5 80? Really? Have we really lost that much faith in the ozone layer that Coppertone is making what amounts to a spray-on shirt?

I managed to find a spray in SPF 10. I like to live on the edge of danger. Here's hoping that I'm not immolated on the Great Lawn.

How to be dead

Yesterday afternoon at work, Jenny and I were discussing how we would like to be disposed of after we're dead. As you do.

"I think I'd want people to eat me," she announced. "Like, you know, have a big dinner and eat me. They could have roasted Jenny or rack of Jenny or Jenny burgers."

This is extra awesome because Jenny is vegetarian. Her original plan was simply to be buried in her black & white polka-dot Betsey Johnson dress.

I had never really put all that much thought into specifics, although I definitely don't want to be buried. Or eaten, for that matter. Although for some reason, the indignity of being stuffed, dressed and put on display in an expensive box before being left to rot seems worse than having my remains marinated and pan-seared to be served with au gratin potatoes.

The preciousness with which dead people are treated has always confused me. We are, in the simplest terms, just sacks of meat with a temporary sparkle of consciousness. The whole ceremony behind the disposal of the meat-sack - whether it be to bury it, taking up (as George Carlin once said) valuable land space that we could put to better use, or burn it and keep the ashes on display somewhere to be revered - is weird and a little cultish.

So as these things go, the concept of being made into jewelry is no less dignified, I suppose. But really? Who comes up with this stuff?

What is a LifeGem®?
The LifeGem® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life, or as a symbol of your personal and precious bond with another.

So in fact diamonds could literally be your best friend, assuming your best friend is dead.

The whole site is completely bizarre - moreso because they are Totally Not Kidding - but my favorite bit was in the "how to order" section.

Separate out NO MORE THAN 8 ounces (about 1 Cup) of the cremated remains and tightly secure in a plastic bag or other plastic container. DO NOT send all of the remains unless you have chosen our additional scattering option or return option. We only need 8 ounces to produce all of the LifeGem diamonds on your order.

Just to clarify - they want you to MEASURE OUT a cup of your loved one's ashes, put them in a Tupperware and mail them off.

"Hey, I love your ring!"

"Thanks - all it took was one scoop of Grandma!"

When cups runneth over

OK, so I have a big rack. It's just a fact, not really a selling point. I didn't ask for it, I was gifted it by top-heavy maternal genetics. I've tried to give some of it back at least twice, but damned if I can come up with $17,000 for surgery. So I'm left with the task of reigning it in on a daily basis.

In general, I buy most of my bras online from UK companies. For whatever reason, the British are the champions of the naturally well-endowed - meaning that they make large bras for those of us who actually need support. I'm sorry to tell you, those girls with free-standing DDs? Did not come by them honestly. Shocking, I know. Two patches of fabric held together with string is not going to cut it for those of us without any choice in the matter.

There's at least one company that actually has a policy of only using models that are at least a D-cup, which I applaud. When you're packing a lot of business upfront, it's really hard to tell what a bra is going to look like when it's modelled by someone who probably doesn't need to wear a bra in the first place. Yes, I'm looking at you, Victoria's Secret.

So I'm all for the employment of bustier models for the sake realism. However, I was a little dismayed to be confronted with this when all I wanted was a new minimizer:



If she actually didn't pay for those, I feel sorry for her.

Necessary objects

There's not a lot of solid reasoning in the the kinds of things that I decide to hold on to, nor is there much organization involved. Things are stashed in drawers or boxes without much foresight as to whether I might eventually need to find them again. Not unlike the time that we accidentally closed up one of the cats in the sofa bed. Or maybe not like that at all, but anyway, fun with pets. As a matter of fact, I just opened my desk drawer and found not only the picture of myself in 7th grade that I had been looking for but also the pair of free socks that Virgin Atlantic gifted me on my flight three years ago. Point proven. And these are ugly socks.

When I was growing up, our house was fairly large with a basement and two storage rooms in the attic. Three, if you count my bedroom. Since we had the space, there was a tendency to keep stuff. I can't even say that it was because we are a highly sentimental family - "Oh, we simply can't throw away great-grandma's corrective shoes! It's like she's still here with us!" - since, really, we're not. There was a much larger air of pragmatism about the whole thing. Just because, well, you never know when you might need an adult-size pumpkin costume. Or the large, dead moth in a frame - this actually used to hang on the wall outside my room and the minute I found out that it was not made of feathers but had once indeed been a living, flying moth, it was banished. We kept things because, even though we might know in our heart of hearts that they were useless or inconvenient, we might need them someday.

In this grand tradition of practicality, I find myself downsizing how much stuff I have every time I move. One of the stone-cold facts about living in New York City is that you simply can't possess much more than the absolute bare minimum of shit. If you have two kids, you'll need to decide which of them you like more. This is the trade-off you make for living in the most glorious terrorist target on Earth. My last apartment was the approximate size of a handicapped bathroom stall, which meant that I had to make a lot of tough choices (for the curious, the framed moth didn't make the cut). In order to maximize space, I bought a trunk which I could use as a coffee table as well as storage for things that I felt like I needed to keep, except not in plain view of strangers. Just because, you know, they might come in handy. We'll visit the dubious logic of what those things were in a minute.

Although my current apartment is considerably larger, there are still plenty of storage issues, and I strongly suspect the layout was designed by people who don't own anything. As a result, we have our DVDs in the kitchen, the power tools under the sink, and my Calphalon skillet lives full-time in the broiler. You do what you gotta do. And often what you gotta do is get rid of something anytime that you buy something else.

Since I got home from visiting Mom for Christmas, I'm left with the thorny issue of what exactly to do with the four boxes of new stuff I ended up with. I spent a full minute seriously considering whether I could put the electric grill on top of the entertainment center and pass it off as modern art. I already had to beg her not to give me any more dish towels before they stage a revolution and secede the kitchen from the rest of the apartment. Unless I threw out my ironing board and two pairs of cowboy boots, I was going to have to put some more stuff in the trunk.

The trunk. What in the hell do I keep in there anyway? Ostensibly it's a weird kind of hope chest where I put things of value to be treasured by future generations. In addition to 15 years worth of journals and my clean bedding, I also found the following items in the trunk:

• miso soup bowl and spoon
• 8th grade salutatorian award plaque
• dice
• VHS tape of my 1st year film projects
• sheriff badge with the name "Wayne"

I just put the Virgin Atlantic socks back in there as well - I might need them.