Here’s how it went down: About two months ago, we got our housing assessment from Fairfax County, just one county over from the home of Manassas, what NPR deemed Ground Zero of the housing crash. ( Actually, it could have been more than two months ago, because Robert, knowing my well-fed Money Issue Monster, didn’t tell me the bad news until I asked.)

We were officially underwater.  Our town home, bought in 2004 for 325K, had lost $75K as easily I lose socks (and wallets, cell phones, etc.). We owed about $10K more than what the county assessors thought it was worth.

The  system was in back its favorite place: squarely against me (Yes, I was taking a global financial crisis personally). Had we not aggressively paid down our mortgage, writing bigger checks each month that required on our 15-year, no-ARM-twisting loan? Had we not resisted the temptation of a cuter neighborhood with cuter houses full of nooks and crannies and built-in bookshelves, because the bidding wars were as ridiculous as the plumbing was one flush away from budget-busting overhaul?

Didn’t matter. We were surrounded by a glut of unsold homes. Glut. Glub. Glut.

Suddenly, I was part of the news I’d been editing for the past three years. The Washington Business Journal was my vantage point during  the bubble pumping.  There I rolled my eyes as our reporters wrote about a former Best Western being razed for $7  million  penthouses in Rosslyn, a concrete neighborhood of Arlington that’s biggest selling point was a view of Georgetown. I saw dozens of renderings of  retail-on-the-bottom, condos-on-the-top developments on sites home to gay clubs and wig stores in S.E. Washington, pitched on a Field of Dreams business plan in anticipation of the new Nationals Stadium. I protested way too little, writing one puny editorial retaliating against an easy target: McMansions.

And then I got a front row of the fallout, working on AP’s Finance Washington desk from November 06 to July 07, constantly seeking synonyms for “meltdown,” as in mortgage meltdown. (Rot was my favorite.)

But as much as I held the evidence in my hands, I was shocked to become a victim.

The day after getting the news, I checked my Facebook page and noticed a friend had posted the Times’ article about a fisherman’s poet gathering. There, bailout analogies overflowed, lifeboats were in short supply and many thought the wrong folks were being tossed lifelines.

My head swimming with the assessment figures, I responded immediately on her page with my own fishy finance stanza.

Then I noticed the Times wanted readers to submit their own takes. I threw my lines in.

A kind editor promptly threw it right back, because I’d used a curse word. He suggested I rewrite and resubmit.

I did and thanked him for cleaning up my language and meter.

My poem become  an Editor’s Selection and Readers’ Recommendation by the end of the day. Here’s what pulled them in:

My house assessment makes me wish
that maybe I should just be a fish
For a grouper, “being under water” is no trouble
they’re free from the torment of the housing bubble
But as much as I carp about my sinking house and 401(k)
at least I won’t wind up served with a nice Chardonnay.

— Amanda L., Falls Church, Va.

Shamelessly and full of glee, I forwarded the link to my mom, my sister, my friends and even my first J-school prof I’d just friended on Facebook!

I hadn’t thought of my mortgage once.

The next day, another e-mail from the same editor. They were compiling some poems to publish in the Sunday Times and wanted my permission, hometown and full name.

I could barely sit still and tried to focus on the word “consider” in his e-mail to anchor myself and not get too hopeful.

Didn’t work. I even imagined how  I’d update my Facebook status on Sunday. At least I didn’t run out and buy the paper first thing that morning. Robert, always my most loyal fan, did. But I waited until I finished working out to open the Week in Review section.

As soon as I saw the mess of poems they’d gathered, I knew mine hadn’t made it. I joked it off, made one more poisson play of words — something about the editors having some bad fish. But getting cut from the Times felt worse than finding out how much our house wasn’t worth.

Two weeks later, the bank denied our refinancing. This time, the news came without a big splash. I’d let myself calm down and believe my husband’s reassurances that, unlike those underwater who’d continue to sink, we would continue to pay down our mortgage every month and weren’t planning on moving anytime soon. And maybe there was some poetic justice in the appraiser’s verdict — I’d make such a big, public deal of it, using it as a grist for my metaphoric mill, maybe I deserved to feel the full force of denial.

But I didn’t regret writing the poem. Despite the bank’s refusal, it let me rework my mortgage on my own terms.

Unfortunately, for the both the future of newspapers, and for my preference to shortcuts, I can’t link to these articles because they are no longer live or Facebookable, MySpace-friendly, able to be Dugg up or Googled.

So I will paraphrase myself in honor of Barbie’s 50th and because I’m getting old and like to look back to my glory days of bylines and mortgage-free living. Also I can’t stop thinking of Barbie, thanks to Kristin Wiig’s excellent portrayal of leapord print, honey-nut Cheerio-colored hair Barbie. (And since I’m feeling sorry for myself why not try to exist in the same creative space of ol WunderWiig.)

The irony is thick …

Do I ever actually read what I write?  Talk about distancing yourself from the subject matter. I was likely on my way to the gym while interviewing Emme. I do think it’s funny that Emme and Barbie do the one-name thing. Emme was nicer on the phone. This is from February 2002

The hottest doll at last month’s International Toy Festival in New York doesn’t have a super-spunky kid sister, a townhouse or a shiny pink sports car. But she does come equipped with something Barbie doesn’t have: hips.

Emme, the plus-size model who made it more than OK for cover girls to be a size 12, is bringing an industry not known for positive body images up to size. Tonner Doll Co. last week introduced a toy created in the image of Emme.

The doll’s designer, Robert Tonner, would rather talk about the beauty of Emme (the person) than the messy issues surrounding feminism, Barbie and eating disorders. Tonner, a former Bill Blass designer and doll collector, said he created the Emme look-alike after being swept away by the model’s appearance on a talk show. If he’s out to make any statement, it’s more “Emme is beautiful” than “Big is beautiful.”

But, the Barbie versus Emme comparison is hard to ignore. For 50 years (WHOOPS!), an impossibly proportioned figure has reigned in the fashion-doll aisle. So when a size 12 joins her on the shelf, it’s got to make some waves. And, the life-sized Emme is anything but silent on the subject: “Barbie needs some new friend.”

Emme was the first model to speak to these issues before a congressional subcommittee and the chair ambassador of the National Eating Disorders Association.

“Yes, it is just a doll, but it’s a chance to open the doll industry to the idea of inclusiveness,” Emme says. “Don’t you think that girls who play with dolls would include all types if there were any available? They’re not the ones who think all dolls should be blond, blue-eyed and thin. That’s introduced to them.”

Heidi Klum would have thought of this eventually …

Pervy old men, feminists, crocheted doily-owning doll collectors and regular moms were shocked when Mattel executives, seemingly inspired by a Victoria Secret Super Bowl ad, decided to create Lingerie Barbie, for “collectors.”  That’s one too-curious curio cabinet.

An unadorned Barbie nurtures a girl’s imagination

8 January 2003

I played with Barbie. A lot. And until recently, I wasn’t ashamed to admit it. I welcomed the gasps and verbal double takes: “You? The one who just fired off a letter to Augusta, the one who hasn’t worn pantyhose since 8th-grade graduation, you played with Barbie?”

I’ll admit, the plastic permanently perky one doesn’t offer much in redemption just by looking at her. In fact, what I liked about her was what she didn’t offer–a context. That was up to me to provide. An afternoon with Barbie was like a blank page. I had scenes to set, stories to develop, dialogue to write, plots to twist and yes, some synthetic hair to braid. Barbie was this writer’s first real subject.

Mattel has been weakening my argument of “doll as creative tool” with every Wedgwood Barbie, ‘N Sync No. 1 Fan Barbie and Burberry Barbie it releases into playtime. The recently released Lingerie Barbie delivers the final blow. The problem isn’t just the creepy scenarios her garter belt, teddy and stilettos conjure up, but the fact that she leaves nothing to the imagination.and become “estranged daughter living in the city.”

Then I went on to describe how not being able to afford all those “accessories not included” stoked my creative juices and turned me into some kind of miniaturizing engineer — turning ever Merlin (an early handheld game) into a single bed for Skipper and every pizza-holding-up-tray into a mod end table. I also used my soap opera skills to cast one Barbie into several roles, announcing at the start of playtime that the Barbie with matching shoes would be playing the role of “aspiring journalist” today and “estranged run away in New York City” the next. Then I reloaded and took Mattel to the mat again.

But now, I know that by living outside the Mattel company town, I freed my dolls from a life defined by hair salons and high heels.

Today’s Barbies don’t have it so good. Or maybe they have it too good. Barbies have cell phones, low-rider jeans, bridal gowns, Capri pants, in-line skates. They go to mini mini-marts, decorate with IKEA-inspired furniture and drive SUVs. If she wants to be an ice skater, Coca-Cola majorette or train attendant, Mattel’s wardrobe department has her covered.

Or, if Barbie wants to try the world’s oldest profession, there’s a pair of stiletto heels, a garter belt and negligee waiting for her.

But I was justified in my fear that it’s stoked those embers of juvenile-desperation. I want you to pay attention to the version of me I’m concocting for show.  As soon as I post any status update –  which really should be “Amanda is seeking approval and connection without responsibility”– I log back in furiously to see if anyone’s commented on it. And it reminds me of opening my locker after lunch to see if any notes had been slipped into  it.

But I’m not going to jump on the crowded anti-Facebook bandwagon, because it does keep me connected, especially now that I no longer work with 10 to 13 of my closest friends whose dirty thoughts, inappropriate comments, hugs and smart, smart commentary always kept me in their orbit. Now that my giggle-snark-embarrasing story circle is down to three, I need Facebook to throw me back into the middle of the newsroom. Of course, newsrooms are pretty empty these days, so maybe I need a new metaphor.

I have seen some people take their 25 random things and post them on their blogs, which I feel is a bit too copy-and-paste parasitic. So, instead I’m going to copy and paste Exhibit A in the case for how online reveals are replacing real-life meet and greets. ( A dynamic I can’t help but like ==or at least be used to. As a writer who often meets people after they’ve read her stuff, I’m used to the “you’re not as funny in person” reaction, so I’d rather entertain you in copy and slip out early in person.)

Anyhoo, I’m about to attend a very fun little get-together, with a friend whom I met when I became a fan of her column. When that column was killed, I whined and moaned in the comments field, which turns out to be a great way to start a friendship. Turns out, the next job I got after that was where she used to work and that’s where the overlapping REAL LIFE became increasingly evident.  We’ve  share friends, bosses, mastheads, maybe even a Zip code (or at least a Faixfax Co. commissioner), but we continue to connect mostly online. She’s a brilliant Facebook updater, so I’m a bit nervous about coming face to face with her. I digress.

Knowing that she was pulling together disparate strings of her life for this party, this FB friend asked that we all send 1o random things about ourselves to the group. After reading mine, she wrote back the word I crave like oxygen: HILARIOUS. And she challenged me to use one sentence as the start of an essay. So I’m posting them all here as pressure to write that dang essay and to see if you know which sentence is the essay kindling.

1. Growing up, instead of playing ‘house,” my friends and I played “Truckdriver Wife.” I blame B.J. McKay and his best friend, Bear.

2.  The thing I remember most about my dad’s funeral is that someone gave me Princess Leia braids during the service.

3. I’ve been chased by a goat and a goose, bribed by a kitten, bucked off by a pony, but only bitten by a dog.

4.  Delivering pizza in high school was super easy, lucrative and liberating, until that old guy came to the door without pants. It was a glass door.

5.  Six coworkers had a crush on my husband, including me, before he was my husband. Two of them are dudes.

6. I really love my dog but you don’t have to. But I’ll tell you, sometimes he knows exactly what I need before I do.

7. At age 10 or 11, I went to two Rick Springfield concerts and sent him a letter, asking him to marry my mom.

8. What I miss most about Chicago: improv class.

9. The act I’m most proud of doing is the one I wish I’d never had to do.

10.  I interviewed the White House director of communications before she was the director of communications. I asked about bridesmaid dresses and mascara. I interviewed the mayor of D.C. before he became mayor. I asked  him what he wanted for Christmas.

Dear John

I don’t want to write about my dead best friend.

Would you? You try finding the topic sentence when the theme is “dead best friend.” We had just got used to using the term “best friend” without feeling like turf-claiming 10^th graders or MySpace nerds. We were no longer worried about what people at work would think, but still I felt a little squirmy saying it, like I was trying too hard to convince everyone and myself that you, the social hummingbird, had slowed down long enough to declare me best friend and make room in your crowded life for a housewife from Bailey’s Crossroads. But you had, on a hot summer day that was perfect for such adolescent pronouncements. It was a Thursday, early afternoon, and like two seniors skipping school, we were speeding down the highway in your ex-boyriend’s Lexus (the ex-Lex) with the Scissors Sisters blaring and the windows down to accommodate your cigarette and my wild- armed dancing. That’s when we decided that just because we rarely saw one another after 7 p.m. or out of work attire, our shared manic neediness, twisted sense of humor and soft, soft wounded hearts trumped any clubbing or happy hours. We joked about making a blood pact on the spot, but worried the pricked fingers might look weird at the publisher’s pool party to which we were already late. It was a thrilling tiny thing. At 33 and married, you really don’t expect to find another best friend so quickly and easily, especially when he starts as your annoyed boss. You most certainly don’t expect to lose one just as fast.

It’s been two years since you died two months before your (first) 39^th birthday and two months after your first marathon. The words of encouragement and votes of confidence keep coming: “You really should write about John.” “Just get it down on paper.” “You have such a way with making memories so real, so alive.” “Whatever you write will be good.”

Good? I want to scream, “How could writing about John’s death at 38 be good?” And while I know they mean well, they’re a bunch of liars: No matter how many newsroom dance-a-thons I describe in Britney-pelvic-thrust-level detail or CSI-like descriptions I give of calling the medical examiner’s office for autopsy results on what would have been your birthday, it still doesn’t seem real. I could recount every last second of that terrible weekend when your voicemail filled up and stopped taking messages and I, in a cruel irony, found a parking spot right in front of your building and yet those memories will be as dead as you were when I banged on your door that Sunday night, recoiling at the sight of two untouched Washington Posts piled up in the hallway.

It’s not as if I’m uneasy about pawning off my intimate, difficult truths for publication. My dad’s death when I was 6, my mom’s belligerent, violent and heartbreaking redneck boyfriend, arrests and addictions in my family, marrying my boss, my obsessive working out, delirious adventures in Skinnyland and dysfunctional family outings to Chuckie Cheese – they’ve all been coughed up for public consumption in just about anything with a masthead.

And it’s not as if I struggle with introducing you as the dead best friend. I’ve made plenty of those introductions. It usually goes like this: Casual work acquaintance: “Oh, is that your husband in the pictures with you and your mom? You look so cute together.” Me: “No, that’s my dead best friend, John.” That usually leaves them speechless. I know how they feel.

But the biggest obstacle? You. You were my toughest critic. You would have called me on the shameless, too-easy “Dear John” headline. “Not another father figure/men-leaving me-too soon memoir from Amanda,” you’d have thought – and said as much with one bored exhale. Stop using high school metaphors and get a new gimmick, you would have told me. You always said that’s all we needed to get a book deal. That kid who published all his junior high notes – a gimmick. All those nanny tell-alls and year without shopping/sex/TV tomes, gimmicks all of them. We had just seized on ours — a children’s guide to growing up redneck and were going to flesh it out over Twizzlers and the “Facts of Life” DVD you’d bought me for Christmas on the Saturday night of that weekend. But instead of deciding if “Buying cigarettes for mommy” was still a viable chapter, I was trying to ignore the thought that ran like a ticker around my brain as I did aimless laps around Target: Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

I was right. But your death as my gimmick? That has to be wrong.

And another thing: I’ve written plenty about your death, starting with the at-first glib and increasingly frantic e-mails I sent you Saturday and Sunday, already sensing you’d never answer. The note I left on your door, scrawled in Wet and Wild lip gloss because I’d optimistically forgotten a pen, thinking you’d answer the door, sheepishly apologize for ditching me for a last-minute trip to New York. I wonder if the police have that now or the condo supe grabbed it when he opened your door when we finally called the cops Monday morning. All the e-mails that day – to your boyfriend in India on business, your sister, your exes, your accountant, therapist, trainer, former editors and fans, two obit writers (with your hot, but serious Miami picture attached). And the follow-ups were the worst: No, we don’t know if it was suicide. No, I don’t think it was. Then the next night, when, in a coincidence you’d think “Six Feet Under” worthy, my husband told me he’d heard about an online memorial site at work (the benefits of being an AARP wife) and could help me set up a site. It seemed so maudlin and I joked about it being the online equivalent of those roadside crosses with their tragic teddy bears fading in the rain. But I loaded it with content and invited your disparate worlds to light candles, pay tributes and gush without worrying about me editing their exclamation points or bad poetry. That page also opened me up to what I think of as scab-picker e-mails, the ones that would come months and years later from people just learning you’d died. They’d been blissfully still orbiting Planet John, confident they’d run into you again at P-town bar, on a Brazilian beach or in a writers’ workshop. And then someone would tell them about the site and they’d come hurtling into my world, reminding me how I felt when I came crashing to earth.

I’ve started this letter three times now. I’m full of emotional specificity and apt metaphors at the beginning and then I get to here. And nothing. There’s no closing to tie it all up nicely or lesson learned. You’re still dead and I still don’t have the ending I want.

Who knew Minnesota politics would  provide the more lighthearted inspiration of my two posts today? Who knew I’d have two posts in one day, ever?

Al Franken beat Norm Coleman, proving that patience and a sense of humor can warm up even Minnesota. Or maybe Norm just looked a bit too much like Ken, as in Barbie kicked him out of the Dream House when he started doing Hair Club for Men commercials and selling Amway. Anyhoo, I’d mostly tuned out the tight race between the two because I was certain that  Kathyrn Harris has a cousin or an eviler twin in the Twin Cities who works in the election commission or dates a judge or something. But then, lo and behold, CityMouse was feeling a little snotty in the whiskers and asked us for jokes and/or sundry funnies to cheer her up. I offered this, which I heard from my brother-in-law, G.W., who in his BIG BIG heart and bigger grin reclaims those initials for good:

At a recent Al Franken rally, he led the crowd in this chant:
What do we want?
Patience!
When do we want it?
Now!

Godspeed in feeling Al better.

And wouldn’t you know it, Al waited it out and got the win … for now.

Here is the picture I should have taken after doing my first real Christmas shopping today.  (It’s of a rainbow — if you have better ones, please add them to the comments.)

Here is the event I should have gone to today before, well, doing anything else really. (more rainbow coalescing, here.)

But I did not. And I am sorry. I should have gone. No excuses. Instead I overslept and went running and forgot about the marches until I noticed the rainbow button of the girl behind me in line at the National Geographic warehouse sale at the D.C. Armory. It’s always good to see lots of rainbow buttons in the National Guard training gym and hers looked, at first glance, like mine. I have a rainbow Obama button.  I like Obama. I like rainbows (had one painted over my bed as a kid) and I like a whole lot of gay people. (So give me the button already, DNC volunteer, and quit staring at my wedding ring and that dude with his arm around me.) There for a while, I kept saying “I’m gay for Obama,” until I realized how 36-year-old straight white womanish in the suburbs it sounded of me. In my defense, I I got the line from a Dan Savage interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher” when two beefy Ohio State frat boys told Savage they were gay for Obama (If you’d like a clip of that interview, I’m sure the Ohio State Pike chapter has one).  Still, no excuse.

Anyway. Back to the other button. The girl behind me in line had on a People for the American Way rainbow button. I love that. First off, it’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance because the right wing crazie cooters have taken all those patriotic sounding names from us. And secondly, it is AWESOME and CORRECT. The American Way is away from the religion and state burrito we’ve been force fed for the past eight years.

So I talked to her about the rally and thanked her for going for all us lazy forgettable schmoes who get locked into their lives and little thoughts and forget that if you say you’re outraged about something you have to actually be OUT somewhere RAGING about it.

I was feeling all guilty and blecky about it until I walked out and saw a huge perfect rainbow over RFK Stadium (it’s kinda in the picture up there in the first line).  I’m going to take that as a sign. I just don’t care. God loves everyone under the rainbow. You get to see Jesus in a Slurpee. I get to see God in everyone and every couple. Hope is back,  ya’ll –  just like all the “g”s on the end of Sarah Palin’s verbs now that she’s off the trails) and I’m hopeful that this crazy Proposition will go the way of all those prepositions that the before-mentioned SP has used to field dress the English language.

I am digressing (and still obviously still digesting the bad piece of veep we almost got served). It’s what I do when I need to make a good point about a big important thing. I digress and I notice really small details and try to make them add up to nice case for errant points. To wit, coming home, we heard a tornado watch on the radio. Ominous? No! Tornadoes, at least when they’re still in the “watch” stage, are cause for all kinds of cliched but unstoppable Wizard of Oz allusions. Going out to walk the dog? Don’t put him in your bike basket. Need some ruby red slippers? No, I’m already dressed in technicolor mango track pants and lime green fleece. So I’ll fit right in, just let me and the dog loll about in the poppy fields for a while.

But of course what Oz gives us is the brightest of the Rainbow Brite pieces of evidence– not just the rainbow we’re all trying to get over (yes, you black-tied and white-shirted Mormons, these hues are for you, too), but also the scared little man behind the curtain trying to control everything through scare tactics, cosmetic wizardry and empty, fantastical promises of what it takes to get to the homeland.

Sound familiar?

I still don’t how or if my day of Christmas shopping, RFK rainbow-awing and button-tale swapping can be wrapped up without going down that cliched, yellow-bricked road into Liza Minneli Mama land, but if a storm comes, we need it and if we wind up way out of comfort zones (and light years away from still crimson Kansas) well, we need that too.

What we don’t need are any more characters without hearts, brains or courage. We don’t need any voters hiding behind the curtain, pulling the levers to rob others of what was theirs all along.

I exercised my right to vote in the community center behind my house where I go to exercise on crappy ellipticals when I don’t feel like running into anyone at the gym and can watch (and talk back to) America’s Next Top Model without the scorn of Beltway gym rates.

Unlike those trips, yesterday’s moves were not of the going around in circles and getting nowhere type. And the votes went to the model for the next America.

It was a week of cheering on winners at the Long household, not to completely mix matters of extreme levels of significance, but we watched the Steelers beat the Redskins at FedEx field on Monday and then watched pushed Obama into the victory column on Tuesday. It’s not the end zone, I know (now the real work starts, blah blah blah) but cause for silly dancing nonetheless and the inspiration for an e-mail that expressed the Long household’s support of “Terrible Towels, presidents with lots of vowels and dogs who howl! ” Pictures were attached of us at the game, me making an O and a victory sign with one hand, fingers crossed in the other (the pix was taken on Saturday Nov. 1! and Bark O’Beagle, who can now go back to being known as Beagle Bailey, or just Bailey.

But this country can never go back to the way it was. So woohoo on that exorcism and all the exercising of the vote.

Here’s the full post to which I responded. If you feel so inclined to share your fantasy bread-breaking list (I’m actually not breaking the bread — i prefer to keep the full roll to myself, President Clinton, you need to watch your carbs) do so on her site. She started it.

Make your vote count this election. And vote for a hairdo that looks like Sara Palin’s puff from her sportcaster days — that’s the only thing beyond gender and a weakness for men in parkas that me and the Wet n Wild Pit Bull have in common. Anyhoo, enough of this silly politics.
Vote # 8 in 2008.

Here’s the link:
Clearly, I’m the hair apparent!
Please vote. For me, not the Debbie (or is it Debi?) Gibson wannabe in the first pic or the others who look as if they’re going to an 80s party in the late 90s. Please forward to your BFFs and beyond.

Thanks and God Bless America