The New Yorker

So I survived Trial By Cleaning My Office which basically consists of sorting through three enormous laundry baskets filled with credit card bills, vendor receipts and hysterical pleading notes from every nonprofit I've ever donated money to in more flush times – damn! did you know the entire marine mammal population on the planet is going to be extinct unless I pony up $30? I'm a powerful bee-ach!

Plus about fifty unread copies of The New Yorker.

I love The New Yorker passionately. It's the only link I have to my real life, that parallel universe in which I live in a tastefully appointed coop on Manhattan's upper West Side, shop at Zabar's, console Salaman Rushdie over Padma's loss every time I run into him at a cocktail party (though I will confess I never pass up on the opportunity to dis his nostril hairs when I'm alone with friends.)

I never actually have time to read The New Yorker though. Except when I'm cleaning my office where it's clearly avoidance behavior. ("Oh, Citibank. So what if I owe them $7,000. They can wait! Look! David Starkey doesn't think that portrait of Lady Jane Gray is authentic!")

Which brings up the same question every year around this time: should I renew my subscription?

The New Yorker apparently wants me to. The end of the year is always the most furious game of chicken.

We will let you renew your subscription for a mere $46 a year, they write. That's only $1 per issue!

I ignore them.

We will let you renew you your subscription for a mere thirty-seven dollars a year –

I tap my pencil.

We will let you renew your subscription for twenty-five dollars a year –

Bingo. Who knows. I could always acquire a gerbil who needs frequent cage liners…

In other news I am off to Soquel this morning to buy a fabulously expensive skateboard at rock bottom prices from the used sporting goods store there. Why the soon-to-be-13-year old Number 2 Son needs a fabulously expensive skateboard is beyond me since really all he seems to do is sit in his room and play video games unless I'm screaming at him to walk the dogs or go to his karate class. But a fabulously expensive skateboard is what he asked the Birthday Fairy for and a fabulously expensive skateboard is what he shall get.

This gives me the opportunity to drop in on Annie and trade National Enquirers (which I do read) for Observers.

I like not reading The Observer too though it really doesn't have the same cachet as not reading The New Yorker.