Sorry, you didn't win: these two dresses. Nor the Picasso top either. No indeed. Sniped at the last second. I was naive and didn't know that sniping existed. Yes, an old broad like me can still be naive about things. Kind of charming, no?

Of course I don't need any more clothing, but I've been giving into my worst impulses over the past month. A combination of stress and despair that left me in desperate need of a new frock or three. But my schedule made it impossible to hit the stores.

I just did a week-long run of a show, most likely my swan song, and finished editing a movie. I think I logged in about 900 hours of editing. But I found plenty of time to bid on fripperies while waiting for video to import at 3AM. I also found it convenient to guzzle hootch and make poor nutritional choices while doing so. Why rotate your addictions when you can combine them?

But these three above I lost. Oh, sour grapes! And how I am jonesing for vegetable prints, Picasso reproductions and giraffes. Sighs.

These two I snagged:













Now the vegetable print skirt was obviously a necessity. Clearly. Just look at those juicy eggplants and sturdy carrots. And it fits perfectly, much to my surpise. It is my first ebay purchase. Really. But now the seal is broken and I am out there bidding. Look out.

The dress has not arrived yet. I own at least two dozen Hawaiian frocks so this was not necessary, pas de tout, but I could not resist the combination of blue gold and white. Plus it was the middle of the night, the show was mired in tech problems and I just had to have something.

Now that I am retired from the stage I really don't know what to do with myself. I found a yoga studio that shares space with an OTB. I'm not kidding. Exacta and downward dog, now that's what I call a Saturday. I figure I could place my bets, then take a yoga class and then see if I won or not. (Though most of the fun comes from watching one's horse lose.) Then hit the flea market and top it off with a soak and a shvitz at the Russian baths. Now that I'm a private citizen, I might as well indulge myself, no? Live it up a bit. Focus on improving the quality of my life.

I've discovered that I am extremely lackadaisical about lunch. I work in Midtown Manhattan where lunch is generally both banal and expensive. I take the path of least resistance most days by going to a national chain (let's just call it Overpriced Sandwich) that is in the lobby of the high rise building where I work, simply to avoid traipsing around in the heat (or the cold)and getting really angry at the very slow-moving tourists who are clogging up the sidewalks. Horrors. And here I am, a snob who orders all her books from a local bookshop to avoid big box stores, who won't even try on a dress with a Gap label, who avoids TV like it's radioactive (etc., etc. ad nauseum) and I don't bother to apply this philopshy to what I eat. For shame. It's all or nothing, right? Or can I just be a sloppy hypocrite with a blindspot the size of an oncoming freight train? Can I just say that I've been busy, and I can't do everything and leave it at that?

Diana Vreeland ate the same lunch everyday she worked at Vogue: an apple and a shot of scotch. Now that sounds ideal to me (provided I had eaten an enormous breakfast, with eggs and toast and blueberry pancakes--I mean, I get hungry) but unfortunately drinking at one's desk is very much frowned upon these days. I don't know why, but that's how it is. I could pack a lunch, but the few times I have done so I gobbled it up by 11am and was hungry for more come 1:30.

Into this void steps Midtown Lunch, a blog devoted to finding better lunch options. But alas, most of them too meat-centric for me. Though I do enjoy eating things off catering trucks and roadside carts with dubious sanitary conditions, I find the food so heavy that all I want to do after lunch is nap.

What do you eat for lunch? How do you like it?