More on Lust

When we inaugurated the new R&R feature "Lustables" last week, we immediately received a torrent of e-mail (1's a torrent, right? I mean it's not like I said "torrents." Okay, shut up, I know what you're thinking.) Anyway, this flood of response makes us believe we've hit a nerve in the collective subconscious. Apparently you people have a whole lotta lust in your hearts as well, and R&R want to do everything we can to help you express your affection for material goods.

Matter of fact, we want to give you the space here to tell us about your new found objects of lust. So we're especially honored and thrilled to kick off this "share the lust" column with the offering of Alison Pace, hilarious and lovely author of If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend and the upcoming Pug Hill.

Alison has recently fallen in love with her new label maker, and well, I leave the love letter to her Brother P-Touch 55 in her capable hands:

At present, with the last proofread of my novel complete, the release of said novel exactly three and a half months away, and a proposal for my next book somewhere in the vagaries of the “I'm not ready to talk about it yet,” stage, I find myself in the unusual state of being between projects.

So in between emailing introductions and book information to pug meetup groups throughout the country –those pug people are a welcoming group indeed, and I salute them—I have decided to embrace the task of organization. First, I shunned the Hold Everything 1’ by 1’ wicker filing basket that up until now had been the epicenter of all that was organized in my apartment. Then I ordered from Staples a proper filing
cabinet that fit into my linen closet, and then, ordered my treasure of all treasures, the Brother P-Touch-55 label maker. Never again will I leave things in piles all over the place. Never again will the site of my messy handwriting irk me. The label maker arrived Friday afternoon. It’s really quite fantastic. You type on it as if you are text messaging, hit print, and a perfect label (complete with peel-off backing) pops out in any number of varieties of font size. And I swear I’d already decided to stay home for the night even before the label
maker arrived.

And five, six hours of labeling later, in addition to the regular, expected files, Agent, Publisher, Current Projects, Magazines (empty), Future Projects, I now have a spectacularly advanced system of files devoted to the historical fiction novel everyone keeps telling me I shouldn’t write. I have pulled out brochures from writer’s conferences that I had shoved under my bed and filed them. I am contemplating a file called Announcements on Publishers Marketplace That Upset Me. I feel that would be nothing if not productive. I have a Culture file, where my cousin told me it would be a good idea to save ticket stubs from films I’d enjoyed and Playbills from plays I’d seen. Why had I never thought of that? Come to think of it, I should make a Frank Bruni file, too. I have a Dog Stuff folder. I have a Keepsake folder. So far it has all last month’s Christmas cards in it though admittedly I may not to need to save every Christmas card I received. I have made optimistic files like Pug Hill: Press Clips and Pug Hill: Foreign Sales that I choose to believe are not jinxy. Rather than something prosaic like Bills 2005 (too bulky) I am now the proud proprietor of such organizationally sophisticated folders as Cash Receipts 2005; Receipts 2005 (Charged on Amex); Amex 2005; Chase 2005; Other Bills 2005. I did the same for 2006 and 2007, too. The idea of individual folders for Cingular, Vonage, Time Warner, Con Edison, Rent, Book Purchasing, calls out to me like so many sirens. But alas, I have run out of label tape.

I’ve ordered some more. I had to order more hanging file folders anyway. See, I didn’t like the way it all looked in the filing cabinet with all the clear hanging folder tabs. I ordered colored hanging file folders just so I could get at the colored hanging folder tabs. I know that to return the hanging file folders after removing, let’s say, just five or six colored tabs would be wrong.

The fact that when I was in yoga class yesterday and the guy in front of me had his two towels and water bottle behind him when everyone puts their two towels and water bottles in front of them (it’s just how it’s done) really threw me for a loop, and to tell you the truth I couldn’t get past it and kept crunching my neck looking up from my downward dog to see if maybe he had moved his towels to their proper place and to check that his stuff wasn't actually encroaching onto my yoga mat(which I would love to label though I’m not sure the adhesive would hold up) did set off an alarm bell or two. I wondered if maybe having something like a label maker when you’re a person like me is less of an express train to an organizational dreamland than it is to the bad place.

But maybe, as soon as my replacement tapes arrive, I can just take out my Brother P-touch 55 and label the bad place, and then I’ll know not to go there?

Want more lust in your life? Well write in and tell us about it! We'll pretty much post anything sent in within reason (and which won't land any of us in criminal or bad taste court).