Heather Anne

Yesterday—when I went to sleep at 10:00 p.m. for the fifth night in a row—Amy decided it was time for an intervention. She said I hadn't stopped moving since I left my job on Friday afternoon. Which: correct, actually. We emptied out an entire bedroom to make room for our new home office, hauled off loads of stuff to Goodwill, spent a whole day at IKEA. On Monday and Tuesday I caught up on all the housework and errand-running I've been behind on since, oh, 2005. (Who knew we had so many cereal bowls? When they're all clean, there is no room in the cabinets.) Amy instructed me that today I was to rest, to indulge in my guilty pleasures, to utilize the remote control, to familiarize myself with channels besides Cartoon Network and ESPN, to eat peanut butter out of the jar, and, under no circumstances, was I to take a call from my former office. I told her I needed to write on account of I have a May 1 deadline and she said, "Not tomorrow. Tomorrow you do nothing."

When I woke up (late!) this morning, I had a nice breakfast of Cheerios and then stared at the wall for half an hour, trying to decide how best to do nothing. I took a bubble bath, read a book, strapped on my Kelty pack and hiked Margaret around the neighborhood at a nice European pace, folded some clothes, unloaded the dishwasher. But then I realized those weren't nothing. All those things were at least a little something. What I needed to do was something entirely pleasurable with no redemptive value whatsoever. Empty calories of entertainment, that's what. Then I had an idea, an awful idea. Heather Anne had a wonderful, awful idea.

I drove to the grocery store and bought a pint of Ben and Jerry's Double Fudge Brownie ice cream. I came home, opened up my laptop, and called up YouTube. Pam and Jim. Bette and Tina. Lois and Clark. Josh and Donna. I spent two entire hours eating ice cream and watching YouTube fan videos. Oh, marvelous television couples, falling in love again and again to REO Speedwagon and Journey and Joan Armatrading and Celine Dion. It's like all of the fun of an old mixed tape without any of your own personal angst!

"Oh, my God. You are SO drunk."

"You have enormous value to me. You have absolutely no value to Eastern Europe."

"Here. Quick. Slip under my cloak of boringness. No one will even notice we're gone."

"Who's asking: Clark or Superman?"

What I am trying to say—I guess—is that today I spent the day eating ice cream and swooning, which isn't really nothing, but you can't exactly make a career out of it either.