My younger-but-bigger brother turns twenty-one on Sunday. This blows my mind in ways I cannot describe without sounding maudlin. By the time I was twenty-one, I'd, well, I'd done a lot of things I'd rather not think of my younger-but-bigger brother doing. I'm delivering two pies to distract myself with images of him, five years old, eating half of a pie straight off the pie plate at my grandmother's house on Thanksgiving. Chocolate chip pie took care of today. Tomorrow will be banana cream day.
In other news of distraction, I counted the squares on our bedroom quilt today in an effort to perfectly center the blankets on the bed.
Despite the fact that I've long maligned public knitters (so grossly alterna), I've always secretly lusted after their ability. Especially since my grandmother died halfway through my crochet lessons. So I signed up for a beginners' knitting class at AC Moore next month. I guess it was mostly so I'd be able to make my own stuff like this. And a little more indie cred never hurt anybody, right? I'll still never bring my needles to brunch, though (ugh).
If you've already seen this, then I'm sorry. If you're in a sensitive situation, beware, there is sound involved.
Is it wrong to feel personally insulted when the yellow O chair arrives after a 12-week wait, freshly upholstered in tweedy Canadian goodness, and it's got an 8 inch gash right through the fabric? I am someone you can walk right over, apparently. Is it wrong to expect just one transaction in my life to proceed without incident? Have I built up some sort of tragic consumption karma, whereby everything entering my life will be missing knobs, scratched up just so, or otherwise defect-ridden? Oh, to have a focus. Something to get my mind off of all the gashiness!
First and foremost, it's really fucking cold out. Please, don't suggest that we "go for a walk," "visit a funky little town," or "move to California." We've tried it all. (Except California.) It was nice to see Felicia today. Well, it was nice to see her during the parts of the day when we were indoors, sipping hot cider, shopping for books, or eating ice cream (in a perverse way, frozen treats were far less excruciating than I'd anticipated). During the parts of the day when we were trudging around Providence in search of eats, it was not quite so nice. But if this is the price we pay to see Felicia before she heads back to Chicago (psycho), we'll accept that.
Side note to self: try to find out why Providence has thirty-four Japanese restaurants within a tolerable 9°F walk of each other.
If you want to visit, let's aim for a July timeframe, shall we? By then, the icicle on my nose will probably have thawed. My wool-turtleneck-induced acne will have cleared up. I won't feel quite so guilty when you call out sheepishly from the back seat, "Could you turn on my seat heater?" (There isn't one.) We might even be able to meet up at the beach.
On second thought, I hate the beach. And if you come now, you might get to see all-wheel-drive in action. We've got the spare bedroom all set up, and we're a short fifteen minute drive from the casinos! We established this tonight when we stopped to waste some money on the way home from Providence. That's another story. I hate that stupid animatronic old Mohegan lady with the bad mojo.
I'm totally down, and for all the wrong reasons. Please don't think this is a plea for sympathy. I'm a little mooshamoosh, or understimulated, or something. If I haven't called or written, it's because there isn't much to say. Also, I'm a horrible phone person.
So, a story.
My first boyfriend, Jamie, was four years old. He lived at number 39, I was at 63. We kissed behind a table in nursery school and our parents thought it was this big cute thing. We knew better. It was fate.
Years passed anxiously then, and Jamie and I grew more serious. When we were 9 or 10, he started pressuring me to kiss with my mouth open. I was reluctant. I suggested we teach his little brother more swear words. It was an effective distraction. We used a flashlight to make a strobe effect while we took turns dancing in his parents' basement, among the mirrored beer signs and lots of brown. Eventually, he got bored. He broke his ankle and called to tell me about it.
He was nursed back to health by Tracy (from the intervening number 43). We all rode bikes together when he'd recovered. She had a ten speed. I had a banana seat. She and Jamie could lap me, riding around the block. I was scared of the place where the ditch crossed the street. They would happily jump the gap while I hung back, dismounted, and lifted my bike across.
I persuaded Shelley (from somewhere around 50) to help me win Jamie back. She went at my cause with a fervor. But it was suddenly obvious one day, as I was making my bed after a sleepover, that I would never get him back. I was startled by the dull void of heartbreak, and I gave up. Weeks later, Shelley called with the exciting news. She and Jamie were girlfriend and boyfriend. She said he realized it was she that he had loved all along. We were all 12.
Marc had his first yoga class last night. Actually, it was "Yoga Fusion," whatever the hell that means. I think it means chaotic yoga, if you can picture that. I've never seen so many poses covered in a one-hour class. Instead of focusing on, well, anything, the instructor simply calls out a new pose about every five seconds. We went through some sun salutations at a reasonable pace, and then did some quick balancing and floor work. Yuck.
After class, in the car, I made an easily-misunderstood comment to Marc: "I couldn't look at you -- I was afraid I would start laughing." Sometimes I get all excited about the humor in a particular situation, at a time when humor is entirely inappropriate. I feel the blood boiling up in my face, my cheeks start twitching, and I can't, under any circumstances, make eye-contact with anyone who might be in a similar state, or I will totally lose it.
The earliest instance I can remember being afflicted like was at the peak of hormonal high school. I was riding in the backseat of my friend Chris' car after a homecoming dance. He had taken my other friend Heather, and the three of us were heading to TGI Friday's. I don't know how it came up, but here's the statement that set me off: "So, that's why the tip of my dad's nose is totally fake." I bit my lip and sat way, way back in my seat. A few minutes later, as the car was crossing the truss deck Patroon Island Bridge, I saw Heather's face in the sideview mirror. Her jaw was clenched, and there was a single tear running down her cheek. She saw me looking at her, and we burst into hysterical, unstoppable laughter simultaneously. When we regained control, Heather told Chris I kicked her seat.
If you want in on this year's valentine extravaganza, drop me an e-mail with your snail-mail address. You will receive in return 1 (one) custom-made valentine thereby ensuring that you will not go heartless this February. Please specify glittery and happy or glittery and cynical.
Please dispose of Christmas Trees by carefully throwing it over your balcony. This will prevent sap and needles from littering the hallways.
As if we didn't already feel like we live in a dormitory...
Also, from further down the column:
Earn $150.00 off one months rent when you refer someone and they move in by January 15th!
That would be Wednesday. Takers?
Regarding this, first, yay! Ikea's building in New Haven! And then, no, boo! Ikea wants to tear down the better part of an architectural landmark for, of all things, the parking lot. I Googled, but wasn't able to find the outcome of the controversy.
I have a spherical glass paperweight, the kind with the glass detritus suspended inside, a nature-store give-it-to-anybody sort of gift. I bought the paperweight two years ago, intending to give it to my boss. I had taken some flack from my co-workers for buying gifts in previous years, so that year I baked lots of cookies and made little cookie bags for anyone who had done something nice for me. I wrote little notes thanking each person for whatever specific kindness they had bestowed upon me, like helping me replace the toner in the copier, scraping ice from my windshield one night when they left before I did, bringing me a cake made out of flowers for my birthday, whatever. I was then overwhelmed by the feeling that my coworkers perhaps meant less intimacy by these gestures than I was acknowledging, and that made me throw the little heartfelt notes away, but I gave out the cookie bags anyway.
I bought the paperweight because once you've given your boss a gift, you can't really not give a gift in the subsequent years. Well, I suppose you could, especially if you and your boss had some disagreements in the intermediate year, if your boss wasn't Christian and didn't celebrate the holidays anyway, or if you weren't planning to be in the office on the days before Christmas. Each of these things was true for me, and yet, in the Christmas spirit, I figured I'd better get him something anyway because I knew he would casually drop onto my desk a gift card that his (nouveau-Jewish) wife would insist he bestow upon his employees.
As it turned out, the day I lugged the cookies and the paperweight into work for distribution, my boss was out because the boat he was building had suffered some kind of tragic ding. That was my last scheduled day of working before my vacation began, and so I took the paperweight back home. The week off made me forget about bringing the gift into work after the new year, and so it sat on a shelf, wrapped, for months. Sometime around March I noticed the gold box and decided to deliver the gift in order to gain some mid-year brownie points. I think I was due for a performance review, anyway.
I carried the box into work and left it on my desk. The first time I saw my boss that day was in a meeting, where he belittled me for something stupid. I can't even remember what bothered me so thoroughly, but after the meeting, I marched myself back to my office, closed the door, liberated the gift of its wrapping (and thereby its very giftitude), and placed the paperweight in a prominent location on my desk. I received several comments of admiration for the paperweight, and whenever anyone would ask where it came from, I just explained that it had always been there.
I just unpacked the paperweight again recently, and gave it a prominent position on the megashelves. Each time I notice it there, I smile a little. I left that job and that boss over eight months ago, and I still cringe when I think of his ridiculous anklebiter management technique. This year I baked no cookies, wrote no little notes of gratitude, and certainly didn't shop for an insincere gift for someone for whom I was rapidly losing admiration, and who never really liked me anyway. I've never not given a better holiday gift than that paperweight.
That was the diagnosis after 8 hours in the emergency room. I took 3 bags of NaCl, something for nausea, and 8 mg of Morphine, and then came home and puked some more. Happy holidays, kids. I'm going to take a few days off to recover.
I just spent 30 bucks to have a woman named Suitlana wax my eyebrows. Three weeks ago I abandoned plucking for the first time in over six months, and she yelled at me, and my forehead is now all blotchy. It was worth every penny.
In addition to finishing my Christmas holiday shopping, baking cookies, making candy, making little candy-filled ornament thingies, writing Christmas holiday cards, and generally getting it on with the festive moodiness this week, I'll be guest-hosting for a few days over at Ismat's site, The Text Obscured, along with he of the flippy hair, the inimitable Jason Royal and the object of my most sincere girl-on-girl crush to-date, Miss Sarah B.
Can you guess what I'm most excited about taking care of this week?
Ismat's off to Dubai and the motherland (which is where we've been telling the in-laws we're headed for the holidays, and which is, I'm pretty sure, somewhere far away and near Djibouti) and trusts the three of us to cover for her while she's gone. For a little while I thought it was just going to be me, and you know how often I'm able to come up with something entertaining to say here (still waiting, huh?), so you can see why I would be a little worried. Then I found out it was going to be this wacky houseparty with the two internet lovebirds and I suddenly felt much, much better.
(put the kids to bed now.)
Marc's former boss has fucked us up our collective ass, yet again. What is it with this world? What is it with this ass? What is it with the lack of insidiously successful revenge tactics at my disposal? We may have health insurance. Or, whee! We may not. We are left impotently muttering things like, "Oooh! I'd just like to... I'd like to... Oh, I just want to see him fail miserably!"
I've entered three stores in the last three hours and announced in each, "I'm looking for a screw." And damned if I didn't get the best service ever. One clerk even replied, "Oh, I better get Ed to help." No matches, though. Curse you, Sven!
The new mattress/box-spring set has arrived. The rest of the bed comes tomorrow. I can't help but notice as I languish on the ultra-comfy pillowy top that this mattress set is taller than our old platform bed with its mattress in place. Interesting. I'm wondering what sort of bed-fortress we're going to have once the rest of the arrangement arrives. Better get all the falling-out-of-bed tendencies out of my system tonight.
In any case, we've made significant progress. The 46 box shelving extravaganza has been de-boxed, assembled (with one small exception -- in typical Ikea fashion we are missing one godalmighty screw) and partially loaded. The 46 boxes have found their way to the cardboard recycling dumpster, conveniently located just outside the door and a quarter-mile down the street.
I even found time to make (make!) 120 holiday cards. I say "holiday" because I have a new Jewish grandmother-in-law of whom I am terrified. If anyone asks, that's just a pine tree on the front of the card, no religious sentiment intended, whatsoever. At the Post Office, the only stamps for sale behind the counter featured Mary and Jesus so I figured I'd better hold off until the snowman supply was replenished.
Yep, things are still frantic but the end is in sight. Why do I always move just before major life events and holidays?
clerk: So, are you using all this to stuff the stockings of your crafty friends?
me: Are you joking? No, this is all for me.
Details here. Basically, Mom's here, furniture building continues, I'm constructing Christmas cards from itty bitty pieces of paper, and it's like seventeen below zero outside. We're exploring Southeastern Connecticut shopping, I finally found a rowing club in town, Tony is alive, we're looking forward to some kind of Christmas party the husband's gone and gotten us invited to, and the little RX-7 is proudly running strong, more than I can say for myself.
I hate to go to a gathering empty-handed. Housewarming? I bring a pineapple. Birthday? At least a homemade card. And so it bothers me incessantly that each year my parents refuse to admit any shortcomings on the day before Thanksgiving. I've spoken to one parent or the other three times today, mostly to come up with a winter-weather strategy. Each time I've asked, "So, remember anything you've forgotten yet?" Each time the answer has been NO. They are simply too good at this.
We are bringing the following unsolicited items to Thanksgiving dinner:
1.) 2 dozen freshly-baked M&M cookies on a leafy plastic plate
2.) Creme de Cacao (my father makes kick-ass brandy alexanders)
3.) my mother's black sweater, with newly replaced buttons
4.) a bottle of cheap red wine, although my mother specifically requested Canei (yes you can!)
What are YOU bringing? Don't be a stooge. Come on, you've got to bring something.
We awoke this morning to the kind of snow that would make the entire state of New Jersey weep with fear. I was lying in bed when my snow instinct bell went off -- a sensory skill perfected during winter mornings in upstate New York, waiting, half-awake, for one of my parents to come into my room to say we were having a snow day. It is tripped by a curious muffled silence and the occasional distant creak of a footstep or car wheels. I can't see the parking lot or any roads from here, but the woods out back are coated in that beautiful whipped cream white, four inches at least and it's still coming down. You can keep your pansy wintery mix; this is fucking New England, baby.
There's nothing like meeting with a personal trainer to destroy any positive body image you might have had. I worry constantly about my body image, more than I worry about my actual body, mainly because my mother, and, for that matter, pretty much every woman in my life, has suffered her entire life from a negative self-image. My mother has paid out thousands to various businesses, so that they can sell her more information, more negativity, more crap than she knows what to do with, all of which tells her that she just needs to pay more money to be thin, without ever defining a healthy goal for her. Asking me, "well, how much weight would you like to lose?" makes me swallow back an angry, "none."
Would I like to be healthier? Yes. Lead a less-lethargic lifestyle? You bet; that's why I joined a gym, bucko. Look better naked? But of course.
But do I want to "lose weight?" Thanks, but not particularly.
Trainer: Well, what size do you wear now?
Me: Fourteen.
Trainer: What size would you like to be?
Me: (through gritted teeth): Ten?
Trainer: Let's really get serious about this... when was the last time you were an eight?
Me: When I was twelve.
In retrospect, he had some good points. I don't schedule my eating well. I rarely eat breakfast, and have a light lunch and a huge dinner. He insists this forces my body to store the food I do provide under the assumption that it doesn't know when the next meal will come. This makes sense. And I can't argue with the fact that I'm a lazy bum. Giving up the sports-centric lifestyle I've led my whole life has taken its toll. It's just that smarmy vibe that comes from anyone making their living off someone else's health. This was just a complimentary meeting, a "reward" for joining the gym, and facing the state of my health in any capacity always makes me feel like this. I know he can help me, and I know he didn't mean to make me feel "fat" or "sick," but he (or maybe just growing up through the eighties and nineties, watching my mother continuously dieting; being told lately that I have a "pudgy little belly" growing; watching E and MTV and the Victoria's Secret fashion show; feeling menstrual, stressed out from the move, and exhausted) did.
I have a husband for whom assembling a modular shelving design purchased in 46 separate boxes is not a chore, but the highlight of a week that includes the biggest turkey dinner East Greenbush has ever seen.
I love orange. Anything orange, I'll take it. I'll put it on a high shelf and worship it in my orange shrine. I'll surround it with other happy little orange things, so it can feel the joy of the orange community. Hence, it's taken me a while to show any real interest in redesigning my (quite orange, you will note) website. I dread deserting Blogger; I so rarely find a company with such a nice orange logo. The only colors that come close to making me as happy as orange are taxicab yellow and sportscar red.
Years ago, when the time came to decorate a particularly beige bathroom in a peculiarly vanilla apartment, my mind naturally drifted to orange. Trouble was, there were no orange towels to be found. Anywhere! Really, try it sometime. Go to a store, any store with a linens department, and scan the racks... no orange! Melon, maybe. Seashell, to be sure. Coral? Of course. But never, never orange.
Until Ikea. A few days before the big move, we paid a preventative visit to Ikea. It was with a nod toward furnishing the apartment we'd seen but once, with dimensions we'd neglected to note, and a color scheme we'd never seen while blinded by the sheer giganticism of the place. We searched couches (blech.), beds (bah.), and dining decor (don't think so.), and concluded we'd outgrown the Scandanavian ways of our youth. Until we entered the cursed Marketplace, and began loading up the giant plastic bag with items of varying utility.
And then! In the corner! There! they! were!
At long last, my orange towels. With a pleading glance at Marc (more of a mauve man, truth be told), I rushed toward them. They were a little rougher than I'd hoped, with a ribby surface instead of the plush finish I'd imagined, but they were unabashedly, unapologetically, undeniably orange. Almost orange and a half. 110% orange, at least.
Which was a good thing, because they have proceeded to spew lint over half of the apartment. I've already washed them several times, and yet it continues. In fact, just now, in a mistake of creative laundry sorting, they managed to take the lives of both of my favorite wool mittens. A matching set, once of powder blue with cute hand-knotted red yarn bows, they now have an overfuzz of reddish orange that will have to be hand-picked away. Such is the price we pay for the ass-kick-orange bathroom I've always wanted.
I just left the apartment alone for the first time in two days. I was nearly broadsided by a light blue pickup truck as I turned left onto Route 1. He was running a red light and I didn't bother double checking the intersection because I was being blinded by the sun. He didn't even swerve. He just kept right on going in the left lane, completely oblivious to the situation. I turned into Dunkin Donuts instead of pulling up alongside him at the next light, because I knew my New York plates would have left me obliged to give him the hand.
If you've ever been a NY driver or encountered an angry one, I'm sure you know of the hand. It lies somewhere between a flip of the bird and a smack upside the head. It's the most powerful weapon in an urban driver's arsenal (I've been known to avoid eye contact, just to prevent transference of the hand), and as such it appears rarely. In certain circumstances, however, its use is unavoidable. Beware the New Yorker bearing the hand.
It's true, things have slowed down around here. The arrival of broadband, cable (mostly TLC, HGTV, Discovery, and the 7 omnipresent MTVs), a comfy futon and the complete unpacking of the kitchen have led me to a state of loungey lethargy. The main problem at this point is that, while the apartment is huge, we just have so many small things. Things that need shelves and drawers and cubby holes that just aren't available. Yet.
But we've got a plan. A monolithic structure of Ikeac proportion will be built, lightly sanded with a warm honey finish and a protective coat of varnish, with attractive wrought detailing and fine Scandanavian craftsmanship. We moved out of the city so we could justify buying a truck so we could go back to the city so we could buy Ikea furniture and actually be able to transport it out of the city, or something like that.
We're building, in the post-college, pre-grown-up way that only a couple of twenty-somethings legitimately can: with an allen wrench, an offering to Sven, the god of cross-supports, a poorly translated instruction sheet, and, hopefully, not too many left-over parts.
Futon here.
Futon big.
Futon curiously tall.
Futon first opportunity for multiple-sitter type sitting since, oh, I don't know, March-time.
Futon interim living room solution until couch and chair delivered. Then futon part of (hopefully) complementary furniture set.
Futon kicking ass out of sitting on broken Ikea chair.
We're here, finally. The movers, despite my efforts to screen, were more than slightly impaired. They completely misjudged the amount of stuff we have and it took them an extra trip with a van to finish the job. Actually, it was hardly that simple... but after much yelling ensued, our belongings were reunited.
Last week was incredibly busy. We have CT drivers' licenses. We have broadband. We have about 70% of our belongings either unpacked or in the general vicinity of where they belong. Marc made the observation that if we got rid of all of our books and CDs/cassettes/videos, we would have about half as much stuff. Our kitchen is incredibly well organized, thanks to me. Furniture (real grown-up type furniture! A couch! A chair! A dining room table! A futon! A new bed!) has been ordered and is in transit. We bought Marc his very own Subaru Forrester. (I'll stick with the Seven for now.) We've even traveled to Albany and back, testing out the all-wheel-drive in a bitter ice storm, all to see my brother play M. Jacques in Moliere's "The Miser."
Now, finally, it's Sunday night and we're beginning to settle down. We've just returned from Mystic Pizza and we're getting ready to watch The Sopranos on our cable-enabled TV. We caught last week's episode on Wednesday night; holy crap. Thank goodness we're finally rid of you-know-who.
There's so much more to say. I'm feeling pretty good. This is just a start.
We're packing. I swear. Anyway, before we go, here are some new pictures I've just uploaded. Mom's retirement bash! Crafty ladies make marble magnets and cheesy pumpkin goody bags! Halloween at the nursery school! The NYC marathon! That'll keep 'em occupied, I say.
Marc says they are too big. Are they? Are you seriously still using dial-up internet service? They take, like, two fractions of a second, now, on DSL.
The movers will be here soon. We had one last NY Italian dinner last night, then headed to Remote Lounge for an anonymous goodbye to the faces of this fair city. On one hand, I will miss being a New Yorker (again), but on the other hand I can't wait to get the hell out of here. I'm not sure if the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach is because we're both now unemployed, because we've been stirring up the dust in here for the last hour, or because I haven't eaten anything yet today. In any case, things will be quiet around here until Tuesday, when we're scheduled for the cable modem hookup. Already we will be reaping the benefits of rural living -- the cable guy could have come even earlier, but we had to put off the appointment because he was available before we would even move in. Average hookup delay in NYC: about 1 month. See you sooner.
I get a surprising number of hits on this site from people apparently looking for this post, "you know you're from the capital district when...". Well, I know my audience, so allow me to now present (yet another e-mail copied and pasted from my dad) this even-better list:
You know you're from upstate New York if:
1. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
2. "Vacation" means going to Lake George for the weekend.
3. You measure distance in hours.
4. You know several people who have hit deer more than once.
5. You often switch from "Heat" to "A/C" in the same day.
6. You use a down comforter in the summer.
7. Your grandparents drive at 65 mph through 13 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching.
8. You see people wearing hunting clothes at social events.
9. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.
10. You think of the major food groups as deer meat, beer, fish, and berries.
11. You carry jumper cables in your car and your girl-friend knows how to use them.
12. There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at the Stewarts at any given time.
13. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
14. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
15. You think sexy lingerie is tube socks and flannel pajamas.
16. You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, construction.
17. It takes you 3 hours to go to the store for one item even when you're in a rush because you have to stop and talk to everyone in town.
I don't readily drop the band info into conversation, you know. Some folks seem to think that bandliness is next to godliness, and I really don't want to be mistaken for one of those people, you know. There's more to me than just my talent, you know. There's so much more. Honestly, you think you know, but you have no idea.
The first band was called Street Beat. We were alternately known in some circles as Street Beet, depending on who assembled the press package. We had a brisk, poppy sound, and our lyrics were replete with references to the toys we wanted for Christmas (I was hoping for my two front teeth; my cousin Brian just wanted a harmonica), the power of love and how we desperately needed to get back in time. Yes, we were a cover band, and our instruments might have just been old wood from my uncle's garage, but we painted frets on those boards and decorated them with sequins and yarn from my grandmother's sewing box. As you may have deduced, we had only two records to lip sync to, but my cousin's house had an outdoor power outlet and we would blast those two records far and wide, set up staging out near the street and wait for "traffic" to drive past. Once, a driver threw a tennis ball at us as he passed. We fought over that ball for three hours.
Next there was the Bloomingdale Bombers, actually just the next generation of Street Beat, formed when Brian and his sister Kristy moved further down the street and decided they didn't want to play with me or my brother any longer. Our sound was lighter, more "easy listening." This was because my cousin owned the record player and all Matt and I had was a battery-powered radio with the dial stuck on my parents' station.
I left the Bloomingdale Bombers for personal reasons. I won't get into them here, but I will mention that there are no lingering feelings of animosity among former members of either the Bombers or the Beat. In fact, we look back on those years fondly, except for the question of who ultimately wound up taking the tennis ball home. My musical career wandered a bit, through years of piano lessons and a brief, embarrassing stint with an actual guitar, crafted in Korea of the finest polycarbonate/ABS blend. Then there were the H years, and my time spent with Alternachiquita (AKA Big Ass Funky Girl Band, a name we dropped after noticing the ambiguity regarding the actual sizes of our asses), a band crafted from the "hype first, play later" school of music. I don't remember much about the 'chiquita, or maybe I'm just blocking out that cover of Rock Lobster.
Full story here. "New York's comic book alter-ego Gotham has its Dark Knight in Batman, but it turns out the real city has its own caped crusader. Lotharios everywhere, beware, because Terrifica, scarlet-costumed avenger and protector of women, is on the prowl on the city's party scene."
But the character I'm really interested in is Fantastico, Terrifica's arch-enemy. Ladies, look alive!
Note: I fixed the link.
I seem to have developed a minor digestive allergy to (wait for it) alcohol. It's the common thread in three recent bouts of gastrically distressful nights. Today (yesterday) was Marc's birthday. We were supposed to go to his parents' house for a special dinner and cake, but then his sister came down with mono, so we decided to cancel. So the extended in-laws and we headed to the only hip restaurant in the Bronx, Tosca, where I helped myself to a complimentary apple martini (Marc's cousin is a waitress there and knows the bartender). And now, here I am.
Does anyone ever successfully execute an amicable departure from their job? When I quit back in March, everything was all, "what can we do to keep you?" and "let us know if you need anything," for about a day. Then it was more like, "what exactly are you accusing us of?" and "I don't really think we should have any more contact after you leave." This made for a pleasant final three weeks, as you may remember, during which I would cry myself to sleep and spend my days in a sullen stupor until the whole deal finally culminated with a forced, somber farewell party with a couple of sincere friends, a few professional acquaintances, and a bitter, evil, former boss who croaked out some quasi-enthusiastic compliments when pestered for a speech as jaws around the room dropped. After all that, I managed to leave with a smile on my closed mouth and my dignity intact.
As Marc prepares to leave his job, I see the same thing happening. He's on the phone for hours at a time, defending his professionalism and ethics, and I just want to grab the phone and protect my husband, screaming into the phone on his behalf, "do you have any idea who you're speaking to? This is the most sensitive man you will ever have the pleasure of working with. He sat up nights wondering if this or that was the right thing to do and the right way to do it." Marc made his own professional contacts and has executed a deal independent of his former employer. And while that's precisely the sort of employee that it sucks to lose, his courage has made him fierce and I don't see him caving in to these ridiculous accusations, not any time soon, anyway. He may be sensitive, but he's not exactly the sort to cry himself to sleep at night.
It's all coming together. We were approved for the apartment (not a simple task, since we will both be technically unemployed when we move). I think I've finally identified a legitimate mover (not a simple task, since they all seem to be whacked-out scam artists around here). We finally made a dent in the thank-you note mountain (not a simple task, since we're both, um... whacked-out scam artists).
Now, if only I could manage the simpler stuff, like not scheduling hair appointments for when I'm actually supposed to be working... for my mother-in-law...
I totally forgot that she asked me to work this morning until late last night. Is my Halloween costume finished? No. As a result, I will be a chef today, and a bat tomorrow. Luckily, I've got the chef hat and apron just kicking around. Yeah, I'm that kinda wife.
I'm so messed up about this whole daylight savings time business. My other half has changed all the clocks, so it's not that... I've just lost all concept of what time it should be. Like right now, it's pitch black out, and I only realized thanks to the Channel 7 TrafficCam. Sunday was the longest day of my life. And my watch is doing something weird, something like advancing five-seconds at a time.
Incidentally, if you're all homesick for NY, I wouldn't recommend clicking the traffic link. You'll totally tear up.
When I was seven, I could finish Atari Adventure with my eyes actually shut. (This is the real reason I still read Metafilter.)
I have a phobia about vomiting. I know what you're probably thinking, and you're right, this doesn't bode well for my frequent tendency to vomit. First of all, I'm not good at the actual act of retching. What I am very good at is lying miserably still in bed, praying for respite from my discomfort, and in the process prolonging the bellyache. I just can't initiate. I can't, er, bring it up. I also can't fake-burp, and I'm pretty sure the two go hand-in-hand. And to add misery to misfortune, I can't do it in a toilet. There's something so awful about the walk to the bathroom, kneeling on the cold tile, hanging my head where my ass should go, and waiting for the rain. So I arrange for the presence of a bucket, or a garbage can, whatever, with a double-bag, placed bedside whenever I retire with a burning belly. And when it finally comes, I am snuggled from the waist down under my blankets, and I never miss the target, but it isn't a pretty sight. I vomit with my entire body. I puke from the mouth and the nose, and I weep. If I've been specially attentive, I've procured a box of tissues and a glass of water ahead of time.
A Hard Know to Think is moving to http://punkly.com/know. See you there in five minutes!
(Please update your bookmarks... I don't know how long this blogspot site will be around.)
I don't know if you noticed, but Halloween is coming up pretty soon. Here in New York, Halloween has a different name, and that name is October. The freaks have got their, um, freak on, and have been parading around for weeks. Maybe this contributes to the excitement in my classes, I don't know. Maybe it's the way that their parents have been promising them an unlimited supply of candy for just one day. Whatever is driving these children to harbor such manic urgency about the upcoming holiday, I want to get me some.
I can't mention anything remotely Halloweeny (bats, witches, ghosts, the color orange...) without several children screaming back at me. These are good kids, normally quiet and reserved, patient, sharing, and kind. When it comes to Halloween, however, they are like rampaging elephants in a crystal factory. Next Wednesday and Thursday at the school are not going to be pretty.
I worked three "full" days this week, and I am exhausted.
But not too tired to take a moment to wish Nicholas a happy birthday. I would like to chime in with Marc here and say that Nick is a great guy. An all-around super brother-in-law. He really does have everything. He's a successful architect, a social butterfly, and he's funny like a John Cusack movie. And, ladies, batten the hatches, he's single! If you're in the New York area and you're interested in meeting this handsome bachelor, just let me (or Marc) know. You must be stunning, confident, and a laugh riot. And since I know most of my readers fit these three categories, I figured this was a good place to advertise.
Just before Columbus Day, we tried to teach the kids at the nursery school about Christopher Columbus and his three ships. The emphasis was on Columbus' bravery, his importance to the history of the United States, and, since we live in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, his ethnic background.
To illustrate the mechanics of "sailing," we had the kids build little boats by sticking a coffee stirrer into a bar of Ivory soap and affixing a construction paper "sail." We created a miniature "ocean" using giant plastic tubs that we filled with water. The kids put the boats in the water and blew on the sails to send them across the ocean.
Of course, giant plastic tubs, when placed in the context of a three-year-old mind, really do look like oceans, and their hands, arms, and faces represent giant monster appendages just ripe for the dunking. So we pushed up sleeves, stepped back, and let them have at it.
While they were splashing around, we provided various examples of "obstructions" that Columbus may have encountered during his sail, such as rocks, ice (bergs) cubes, ... wadded up paper towels... orange candles... crayons... pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down. This gave us a great opportunity to discuss with the children the concept of density, or relative water displacement. Do you think the rocks will sink? was followed by a resounding chorus of YES and a couple of timid NOs.
During the morning session, I was lucky enough to be teaching in the adjoining room, and was privy to dialogue led by my (genius, seriously) cousin who was "in charge" of the lesson:
Teacher: So, which do you think is more dense? The rock? Or the candle?
Children: THE CANDLE
Teacher: Really?
Children: THE ROCK
Teacher: That's right! That's because the ratio of the mass to the volume of the rock is greater than that ratio in the candle. Understand?
Children: HEY, THIS ROCK FLOATS! HA HA! LOOK AT THIS FLOATING ROCK!
Teacher: That's because that rock has air bubbles inside, effectively removing some of the mass. It is less dense than the other rocks.
During the afternoon session, however, I was switched to the (now completely waterlogged) "ocean room" to lead the lesson for the second group of kids.
Kate: So, which do you think will float? The rock? Or the candle?
Children: THE CANDLE
Kate: Really?
Children: THE ROCK
Kate: That's right! That's because I got this special floating rock from the moon. Most rocks will sink, but I brought back this special floating rock just for you guys.
Children: YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE MOON!
Kate: Then explain to me how this rock floats, smarty-pants! (with that, I dropped the rock in the water and watched as their faces lit up.)
Children: WOW! I WANT TO PLAY WITH THE MOON ROCK! GIVE ME THE MOON ROCK! CAN I SEE THE MOON ROCK NOW?
Which teaching method is better? You be the judge. Personally, I think a three-year-old is a lot more likely to remember that most rocks usually sink in the context of their teacher's moon rock not sinking, but maybe I'm wrong and a more complex definition of relative density was the way to go.
One of the more pressing jobs on my to-do list is finding movers. We're springing for the cost of movers because we're both so sick of relocating that we can hardly stand to discuss the actual details of the job. And since I'm supposedly the world's worst packer (what's wrong with packing books in a box meant for dishes?), we're going all out and hiring packers, too. This gives us the additional luxury of living this relatively calm lifestyle until the last minute, without having to add to the box-farm that we're already cultivating in the living room.
Is there something seedy about movers? A few burly men show up at your house, early in the morning, remove all of your possessions, pack them into a big truck, and drive away. You stay behind and sweep up, pack up your unmentionables and your aerosol cans, jam them into your tiny trunk, and hope against hope that when you arrive at your destination, those same burly men will be there with your same burly pile of worldly goods. My last roommate lost a desk chair in a move. How do you lose a whole desk chair? Yes, there is something decidedly seedy about the entire process.
So I called three moving companies just now. One is in Brooklyn, and guarantees their estimate. This is an option I was specifically seeking, since my last moving bill came to about 1.8 times the estimated cost. (My movers also appeared lacking the knowledge that they had also been hired to pack -- but that's an even sadder story.) They'll call me back tommorrow to arrange a time to come for the estimate.
The second was recommended by some of Marc's co-workers, and sports nothing but a Westchester area code and voicemail. I may never hear from them again. We'll see.
The third I found in the phone book. The intriguing, androgenously-named "Helen and Sons" specializes in domestic-abuse moves and offers discounts to senior citizens and veterans. I was told, hastily and via speakerphone, that a pack and move for a one-bedroom apartment, Bronx to Connecticut, will run me $580 (about one-fifth the cost I expected). Period. "No visit required?" asked I... "Nope, $580," replied Helen, or his son.
I don't know what I'll do. I guess I'll wait to hear from the other two, or at least the first one, and see if their estimates are even in the same ballpark.
I'm still trying to learn the spousal lingo, but who knew I'm going to work on the bills meant I'll be under the covers in the dark...? It's been a stressful week around here, and he does need some sleep, but I'm totally going to wake him up in a few minutes. He can sleep over the weekend.
I can finally stop being all playful and coy, and just put it out there: We are moving to Groton, Connecticut.
Marc's leaving his consulting company, and becoming an independent consultant. He's been working for his old boss for more than 5 years, so we wanted to make sure he didn't find out from anyone other than Marc. That's why I haven't been able to post about it, just in case. The link to our photos floats around (they are mostly here) and he could potentially (if he was really nosy) have wandered his way over here.
We'll be leaving New York, sadly, around November 15th. We applied for an apartment in Groton last weekend, and we should know this week if we've got it. It's the kind of apartment I've lived in several times over the last almost-ten years or so, and the kind of apartment that I always say I'll never live in again. But this time, it's in a place where we can actually afford to have more than just the teeniest-weeniest ground-floor hovel. And it's just for a year, after which we plan to buy something, somewhere, maybe, if we like it there. Otherwise we'll pack it up and move on again.
Will I work there? Who knows. Options include a nuclear submarine plant (no thanks), a pharmaceutical plant (can you say carpool?), and some other equally possible but not likely scenarios. I plan to look, but I don't know what I'll do. Design jobs will be hard to come by, I think. I'm considering getting certified to teach Math or Science (or maybe just Pre-K). Connecticut has a program where you can obtain your certification without getting a Master's degree, if you've already worked.
I'm not making it sound too great, but the truth is, I'm really excited about going. It will be nice to spread out in our gigantic apartment, see stars, hang around with suburbanites, and get that feeling of release that comes from moving out of New York City. I love that feeling, even though I love living here. I also love that the last time Marc and I shopped for an apartment together, we were defying our parents and looking for the cheapest two-bedroom in the East Village. This time, instead of accomodating our roommate Andrew in the spare room, we'll be housing visiting parents... take that!
I suppose this was inevitable. I don't see that paint job as an option on BMW's "build your own" website.
There is an event. Visualize a fire truck passing on the street. The lights are flashing, but the siren is silent. You (you are our protagonist, for now) face away from the street, toward a window. It is night. The window is reflective. The facade of the building catches the light from the truck. The image of your face is reflected in the window.
Do you
a) turn around and look at the fire truck?
b) watch the reflection of the truck passing?
c) watch the reflection of your face as the truck passes?
d) look away, watch your shoes or the bushes, etc.?
We'll see if Marc is brave enough to wear his Realtors Suck tee shirt tomorrow as we go apartment hunting.
I can't say anything else about that now. Except that he says the shirt is dirty, which sounds like a convenient excuse. Wouldn't a punk wear a dirty shirt? He is also standing next to me now.
2 excerpts from an old journal, inspired by Sarah B.:
1-31-91 Moral question:
Now that I'm mad at S., should I ask her for the $3.00 that she has owed to me for 3 months?
"Excuse me, S., woud you bring in the $3.00 that you owe me because after this, I only plan to speak to you in dire emergencies, like, if the school was burning down and you were trapped inside, and even then, I'm not sure I'd help you because that would be like seeing you rot in hell, which is exactly what would fulfill my fantasies, but anyway, I wouldn't want you to forget or anything, because then it would be like I was giving you money, which would really be awful." (pause for breath.) "By the way, I'd like it soon, because I might want to do something with my real friends."
1-15-91 In an hour and a half:
President George Bush is going to declare war upon Iraq.
There's something about a man who'll drag himself out of bed at 5 AM to swat a mosquito and present the bloody evidence of success to his wife, who is cowering under the covers, trying to perfect a hermetic seal around her bite-prone body.
I keep feeling like I can look up the future on the internet. Like, a search on Google for "Maryland shootings" should bring up the identity of the sniper. Or, "Iraq threat to U.S. nuclear" should let me know if Iraq is a real threat to the United States. Or, "bad haircut Kate 2002" should let me know if I'm going to look back on these days and wonder what I was thinking (I'm in the middle of an awkward phase).
Have you ever signed a non-disclosure agreement? Do you remember the terms? How about a non-compete clause? I was recently handed a contract to read over for a friend, and it contained both. At my last job, I signed an agreement regarding the ownership of my intellectual property without thinking too much about it, and then pretty much forgot about the whole thing until I started reading stories of part-time writers being fired left and right for having weblogs with silly stories about their co-workers. As far as the non-compete clause goes, I think it's a pretty tough thing to require of an engineer. There's not much hope of advancement within the technical departments of many small companies, so people end up moving up by moving on. What do you think?
me: Okay, we're going to color some pictures of words that start with G!
child: Oh, ugh! Do we have to?! I'm so so tired!
me: What? Come on, why are you so tired?
child: My new baby sister is nocturnal.
"It's like... I dropped my ice cream cone. And then you picked it up, and stabbed me in the back."
me: Bats are nocturnal. Who knows what nocturnal means?
child: Well, I know it's not a turtle. It's a bat.
1. Try to get paintbrushes that are all the same color. Children will not believe that the color of the handle will not make a difference. And they will all want the pink one.
2. That little girl with the look of Lucifer in her eye? She is going to dump the dirty water. Then she's going to paint the wall. Finally, she is going to attempt to paint you.
3. Yellow paint will stain your cuticles. Green and blue will stain them worse. All of the colors mixed together will create the worst stains of all.
4. Blot the painting before you hang it to dry, unless you like the spattered look on your floors as well as its aftermath as it is tracked happily through the room.
5. When washing the children after painting, be sure not to neglect their arms, faces, ears, necks, legs, feet, and stomachs, as the presence of paint in some of these locations will be more difficult to explain to the parents.
My two-year-old niece learned how to say my name before my husband's, his brother's, or any of the names of her other aunts or uncles except for two. Jealousy reigns. To be fair, it sounds more like "Tate," but the last T is emphatically present and accounted for, and we heard it at least 20 times, very clearly, during last night's visit. To paraphrase Lester Burnham: She's the niece I've always wanted, and now I've got her. I RULE!
Last weekend Marc and I joined the other Marc and some other Bronx Science recoverees for Spirited Away (that link has sound, FYI). Once I got past the fact that the audience reminded me of a hipster graphic novel convention, the movie was hauntingly wonderful. The Japanimation thing isn't really my scene, so I can't really vouch for how it compares to other films of a similar genre, but according to the website, it was the most successful film in the history of Japanese cinema, so, you know, it would probably fare pretty well compared to all those other movies. I was totally sucked in, and haven't really been able to get it out of my mind. It was beautiful, in that slightly-fantastic-yet-realistic way, and the story was completely engaging. A young girl, Chihiro, and her family get lost while searching for their new house in a new community, and happen upon an ancient Shinto shrine slash bath house to the gods. I think I lost a little bit of the story for not knowing the cultural significance of a lot of the god characters, but that didn't keep me from getting wrapped up in Chihiro's plight as she fought to save her parents (who are turned to pigs for their gluttony) from the evil sorceress who runs the bathhouse and runs the fantastic other-world environment. Highly recommended.
Photos from Puerto Rico, now up in the photo section of punkly. Marc wrote a pretty concise summary of the trip here on his weblog.
When we watched Say Anything on DVD last weekend, Marc commented that the scene where Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) is teaching Diane Court (Ione Skye) to drive stick, and they decide to switch places, and instead of getting out of the car, they climb over each other in the middle, was the most erotic scene he had ever seen. In the Director's commentary (with Director Cameron Crowe joined by Cusack and Skye), Skye comments that if the two actors hadn't been dating other people (Cusack had supposedly just "fallen in love," I'm guessing maybe with Lili Taylor??, and Skye was solidly in with Anthony Kiedis at the time), that would have been the night that they'd have gone home together.
Of course, throughout the rest of the commentary, as Crowe and Cusack talk about how brilliant they are, Skye spends most of the time gasping and exclaiming, "Uh! That is so great!" Once in a while, and I think you can imagine the Cusackian glances they're giving her, one or the other of the men throws in a, "and there's the beautiful Ione again..."
Here's a great little snippet of conversation where they try to engage her...
CC: How did you prepare for this, Ione?
IS: Just... I really, you know, I just... isolated, you know, I... uh... I just, you know, I really just, uh... focused. I mean, I knew, this was it, this was the big...
She is then, mercifully, cut off.
1. If I ever do a book tour (and I think I shall, yo, right after I, um... write the book...), I'm cutting the 92nd St. Y right out of the agenda. Sure, the Kaufmann Concert Hall (which I've come to think of as the Blah Blah Auditorium) is swanky and boasts a glowy blue curtain and charmingly random name-dropping along the crown of the room (Ex.: David Moses Einstein), but it's really not the scene I'm going for. If I'm planning a thoroughly degrading kiss-up to this bitch of a city and know that my patrons are coughing up the dough for my "evening with the author," I'm heading straight for either a) Cooper Union's Great Hall (in which case I'd arrange for an accompanying art exhibit prepared entirely by engineering students, but that's really a whole other dream I can tell you about later), b) the auditorium at Washington Irving High School, c) the Beacon Theater, or d) the Metropolitan Museum of Art roof garden. Got it? See you there.
2. When I get there, there's clearly no better choice for Author Introducer (although I suppose it's of dubious necessity since shouldn't a "writer" be able to come up with something clever along the lines of self-introduction?) than the soon-to-be esteemed American novelist, Tony. This became increasingly obvious as we both stifled giggles during the weak back-of-the-book introduction by some graying head of a department from, you guessed it, Princeton University. Incidentally, everything Tony mentioned -- also true.
3. Not only is it not uncool to bring multiple books for the author to sign, it seems to be imperative. I brought two and handed one off to Marc, figuring I wouldn't mind if my copy of The Red Notebook was signed with something clever like, "To Marc, who actually carries a red notebook everywhere he goes, including to my signing, although he refuses to take it out of his bag (you silly boy): It's brilliant to witness this kind of zest for life emanating from a true New Yorker. From one city boy to another. I'll always cherish this moment. Yours, Paul Auster," while my copy of The Book of Illusions would be signed with something along the lines of, "Kate, oh Kate, thank you for bringing your own pencil. That was clever in the most indulgent way. Please don't steal my legions of fans. Couldn't we share? Remember me when we are old... Fondly, Paul Auster." Luckily for the two-hundred people in front of us in line, who seemed to be carrying at least six books each, all anyone seemed to get was a hasty "Paul Auster," incidentally signed with a pen he told me was (I'm paraphrasing) "just fine... I found it on the floor," when I offered up my pencil. I was planning to give him a bookmark I made with the word integrity scrawled across the top, but I suddenly second-guessed myself and hid it in my palm as I reclaimed the book he proffered. I say luckily, of course, because I've heard that an undesignated autograph is more valuable on ebay than a personalized message. Well, Mr. Auster, you've selected your storefront carefully.
4. How can an entire Burritoville just disappear? My first reaction before last night would have been: Does the fact that Burritoville is gone mean that it was never there to begin with? But now I just think the building was torn down. Do you see, Mr. Auster? You're ruining tomorrow's literati.
I'm an assistant nursery school teacher. Marc's mother owns the school, so I'm less an "employee," more a "recipient of piteous compliments." Today we learned the letter C, as in cat, cookie, and Kate. Well, we had to unlearn 'em that last one, but it sounds so much like cake, they were pretty resolved (in fact I am now known selectively as "Miss Cake..."). We also learned about autumn, the time of year when the leaves change color and fall off of the trees, when little kids go back to school, and when, according to Joey, "the whole family goes to the thing and then they throw the thing at the thing and then they win! ...Is it time to paint now?" This, of course, causes an eruption of declarations like, "My family goes to the church, and then we put the dog in its cage!" And: "Miss Kate! Miss Kate! I have a dog and it peed on the floor!"
I can't think of a better way to spend twelve hours a week.
Tonight I'm meeting Marc and Tony at the Y to see Paul Auster, my favorite writer. I read his most recent offering, The Book of Illusions, while we were in Puerto Rico. It's about a man who spends his time trying to distract himself from unfortunate events passed by becoming completely absorbed in the life and films of a silent films actor who vanished decades earlier. Auster's written several haunting novels featuring New York City prominently, and I've thoroughly enjoyed everything I've read by him. I'm pretty excited and I'm wondering if it's uncouth to carry three novels with me for him to sign...
Well, I just finished my first half-day of nursery school. Today I learned how to cover my mouth when I cough, how to sing the alphabet (several times, REALLY LOUDLY), and then we read a book about Peter Pan. I got paid. Just when I was thinking that nursery school is a whole lot better the second time around, some three-year-old told me she was going to kick my ass. So really, it's not all that different from Engineering, except that the metaphors by which I used to live have now all been realized.
Oh yeah, I have a job again.
I just saw a commercial for Ragu Rich and Meaty, and I actually heaved a little. It's meat, in a jar. Not just that -- according to the link, Ragu Rich and Meaty has more meat per jar than any other leading brand of pasta sauce. So, er... bonus.
I swear, I will not follow Push, Nevada. I will not post a link to a message board. I will not mention that there are a bunch of other cryptic Push-related websites around. Whoops, too late.
I owned a pair of Dwayne Wayne glasses, circa 1988. Everything I needed to know about college, I learned from A Different World. And truth be told, Denise Huxtable had the big hair I always wanted.
In response to the most recent round of questioning, we'll probably be in New York through October. No, we still don't know "and then what?" We would both like to stay in New York City (optimally) or New York State (also great). Unfortunately, Marc's company doesn't really have any standing contacts here. About 60% of my possessions are still in boxes, a direct result of the fact that our departure date has been pushed back one month at a time since June. This is finally beginning to create noticable stress for both of us.
I'm back. I came down with some kind of flu in PR, which I attribute to the nasty blanket on the airplane. My sunning was not deterred, however, and so I am thoroughly orange, which is as close to tan as I get. I look like this girl, Maureen, who went to my high school and used to apply this look with a brush. Plus freckles, and lots of 'em. My throat is still sore, and New York is still hot. I'm also still caught up in the ridiculous little soap opera I alluded to in my (forgive me) expletive ridden post in August. Today I spilled the whole story to a good friend, who advised me (I think in summary) that everyone involved is being just a little bit silly, which, naturally, I knew all along, but neglected to treat as such. Unfortunately it's too late to sit everyone down and warn them, and so I'm stewing, looking for a better solution or some kind of magical dissolution of the problem. As a result, I'm back, but I guess I can't say I'm really back.
The authorities are on to us. We're going to have to disappear for a while. We'll be back on Sept. 15th, just in time for The Sopranos' season premiere. Even the man can't keep the family down.
But don't fret! I'm leaving plenty of stuff for you to check out:
1. Some new weblogs I've been reading recently.
My friend Joe is always willing to put his ass on the line for a cause. He once called me his intellectual nemesis, so, you know, if you hate what I have to say, chances are you'll love him. Don't get too close, though. He sweats.
Marc's truth page, the weblog that eats itself for dinner. Go check it out, and then post a truth yourself. Remember, the people have the power. Or so I hear. This is not a guaranteed truth.
Mark and Marjorie are just looking for work somewhere other than here. Do you know someone in a foreign land that could hook them up, yo? Go let them know.
As always, I think everyone I link over there (<---) has something worth reading, so if the boredom is totally overcoming you, that's a good place to start.
2. Pictures aplenty! Karen gave us a huge memory card as a wedding gift, and lest she think it's been collecting dust, we've finally gotten around to posting a big ol' bunch of stuff on our brand new webpage, punkly.com. Check out our honeymoon! Or Erik's going-away party! Or our trip to Penn State! Or our big trip to New Mexico!
Truth be told, we're off to my parents' house for the weekend, and then Marc's got a couple of weeks' worth of work in Puerto Rico. I'll be accompanying him so I can snooze on the beach and catch up on some reading. I'm pretty sure there will be no internet access anywhere near us anytime soon, so I'm taking a mini-hiatus, self-imposed. When we return, this weblog will be relocating, and more pictures will surely follow. Happy Labor Day, everybody! See you in mid-September!
One of the reasons high school was so terrible for me (bear with me, this is not an acne story) was because I have a huge fucking mouth. In real life, I rarely keep my opinions to myself, as it absolutely pains me to do so. Life is too short to shut up; that's been my motto. In high school, there were very few people who appreciated my adolescent candor, and as such, I spent four very lonely years harboring a disdain for pretty much everyone around me, and voicing it to whomever was sucker enough to listen.
Once I grew up a little and formed some not-quite-so severe opinions, and moved to Manhattan, and surrounded myself with left-leaning hipster intellectuals, and discovered the internet, and stopped reading Catcher In the Rye, I realized that everybody loves me as long as I'm on their side. That's the way it goes, and that's perfectly acceptable. Still, even now as a grown-up, among people I believe have, like me, grown past the stage where they feel it is necessary to convey a hurtful story to someone despite the fact that it will be nothing but hurtful, sometimes my huge fucking mouth comes back to bite me in the ass.
And I really hate that, because it makes me feel like a horrible insensitive person, which I'm really not -- really, candor and insensitivity do not go automatically hand-in-hand -- and it makes me just want to start keeping my mouth shut, because sometimes when you call someone on what they truly are, it's just not worth the trouble. And so, here I am, with shitty memories of high school (which I thought were gone for good, you know, lesson learned, let's move on) rushing through my head, wondering if it's worth undoing some grown-up damage I unwittingly caused.
As much as I continue to appreciate the way Avril Lavigne is rocking the look I sported in high school (ten years ago isn't retro yet, is it?), isn't it time for a new song to hit the airwaves? I keep hearing that she's a phenom that's destined to be around for a while, and yet this same Summer hit is starting to drift into Fall...
We're trying to shape up 'round these parts. For me, that meant Ab Lab at the gym (ow), followed by yoga (om). Later, Marc joined me for a run in Pelham Bay Park, the park where the ladies on the track smoke cigarettes and tote cups of Pepsi. With ice.
The exhaust on my car is at just the right frequency to trigger the warning blip on some cars' alarms. I like to think, as I drive past, that the other cars are cheering my car on. Go! Whee! Wow! Or just, Hi!
I remember being disappointed when my front baby teeth fell out, since the right one was the perfect fit for slipping into a plastic straw.
There is a Limp Bizkit CD on the rack. I'm not sure how long it's been there.
Marc did a great job of recapping our weekend here, which is great, because now I don't have to write the snarky version that probably would have hurt some feelings in the long run. It was actually a great weekend, jam-packed with fun adventures, but we both wound up last night with a vague feeling of yuckiness. He did forget to mention that he bought some snazzy new shoes. It might have been the first time ever that we agreed on the snazziness of some shoes. They are old-manly, in a good, wallabee kinda way. Now that I have said this, he will probably hate them. That's the way it goes.
Hey, how do you feel about seeing girls kiss each other? Yes, that's just what I expected. Here's a great directory of girls kissing in film. Enjoy! (via saltyt.)
The webcam has moved here. More astute readers will appreciate the (as yet still in progress) implication of this statement.
-joe.
The way I see it, you never get the chance to be excited about it. Right now in New York, we are in the midst of a breaking heat wave. And when it's 11 o'clock at night, and the temperature has dropped below 80°F for the first time in more than ten days, and you feel an honest-to-goodness breeze for the first time in god-knows-how-long, you've just got to take a moment and appreciate that the best is yet to come. Because it always is. Foggy morning, huh? I feel Fall coming, here.
Sleep tight, kids, and rest assured that I'll continue to write about the weather. The difference between daily highs of 91 and 88 is enough to keep me going for months, at least. And otherwise, things here are pretty much same-old.
K Mart's new ad strategy is apparently to get a few hot guys together and have them dance around in their underwear. Which, I gotta say, is okay by me.
I happen to think it's pretty cool that I don't have to dial the 1-718- to get, in this case, Brooklyn, but also Queens and Staten Island.
Gather round, girlies, and let Auntie Katie tell you a story.
Late November, while relaxing after Thanksgiving dinner, I was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to go find a dress. I don't know what brought on this urge, since I'd actually been really dreading the girly fluffy lacey white aspects of the wedding for all of the three days since the engagement. My mother, sensing a rare bonding opportunity, offered to take me browsing the following day. The idea was to see what I liked, try on a few options, gauge prices, inquire about the cost and leadtime required for alterations, and to return home, full of knowledge and ready for a battle that was sure to last many, many months.
Early the next day we headed out to the local bridal shop, where I tried on four gowns in my own personal mirrorspace, my mother wept, the shopkeeper spoke quietly with a thick Italian accent, and I was told that I was a size 16. Apparently, bridal gowns run a little small. The fourth gown was what they call it. I called Marc, told him I was standing in a bridal shop, looking at myself in a mirror wearing the dress I would be wearing when I married him, and he gulped, (I'd like to think that he, too, shed a little tear at this point) and told me to go ahead and buy it. I was already one step ahead of him, since the shop had informed me that my dress wouldn't actually arrive for 6-8 weeks. We hadn't set a date for the wedding yet, but we were thinking February(!) or so. By the way, the sample dresses I had actually tried on were something like a size 6, and were each held closed in back with a carefully pinned white washcloth. Very tasteful. (Oh yeah, here's the dress.)
I should mention that most of our wedding was planned like this: you like it? yup, you like it? yup. great, we'll take it. Fortunately, we have relatively affordable taste.
Now, the next obstacle was my mother's dress. Here we shed tears of a different sort. The following day (we were really beat from the first whirlwind gown experience and rewarded ourselves with hours of Trading Spaces and a good night's sleep before venturing back out) we enlisted my mother's friend, Barb, and headed to her favorite source for middle-aged formalwear, David's Bridal. When we walked in, I was overwhelmed. I could barely hear the receptionist as she asked if we needed help. Fortunately, Barb was quick on her feet and told her we wouldn't be buying anything that day. Thereafter we were ignored.
Oh dear, sweet, Jesus. I am a big fan of Target. And I frequent Joann's Fabric as much as the next home-crafter. But a bridal superstore? That was too much. It was brides on parade, my friends, as float after float of layers and layers of satinesque, tulline, silkette, and pearlish sashayed past whimpering mothers, checkbooks in hand. I watched as "Bridal Consultants" perched tangles of veil atop cherry red faces and fluffed their cascading wares over fat backs crammed into sausage-casing gowns. "You look gorgeous." "This is the one." "You look like a dream." David's wasn't selling gowns, they were selling beauty. Well actually, it was more like they were selling beautiescent, or beautiesque. Closer examination revealed pulled threads, loose beads, splitting seams and ragged hemlines. Again, these were just sample gowns, but I was beginning to grow suspicious.
My mother, while I ogled the bridal three-ring of mirrors, had chosen three tastefully understated gowns for herself from the Mother of the Bride section. We proceeded to the "fitting corral," where we helped ourselves to a dressing room. I went in to assist my mother, and Barb held the (broken) door. My mother stripped, and then we heard a commotion outside. I heard Barb say, in her teacher voice, "But there's someone in there!" The door opened. My mother screamed. A store attendant reached in, grabbed the two dresses that were still on their hangers, and announced, "THIS room is reserved for a BRIDE." There were about fifteen people milling around outside, and they all turned to look into the small room, where my mother stood in her undies, with me, holding her dress up for her to slip into.
I'd like to say that at this point I dug deep down within myself and stood up for my mother, shouting back at the woman, or perhaps grabbing the dresses back or clawing the woman's eyes out. But instead, I meekly asked, "Can she at least get dressed first?" and closed the door. My mother quickly threw her clothes back on, growing angrier and angrier... We left the fitting room and the attendant greeted us with this: "You can't just go into a fitting room on your own!" I turned and watched my mother slowly inhale, adjust the way her purse strap sat on her shoulder, straighten her back and lean forward menacingly: "I will never buy anything here!" She grabbed a brochure from my hand and tore it in half, dropping it on the floor. She stormed past me and Barb, and quickly headed for the door, announcing the entire way for anyone who cared to listen, "I don't know why anyone would shop here. What a miserable experience. What a bitch. I hate this kind of place. This is insane." At the door, she gave one last loud sigh and pushed her way outside. Barb and I were a few steps behind, and I made sure to throw the remaining brochures at the receptionist's desk on the way out.
I don't know if it's the worst thing they could have done, but it felt terrible at the time. I would encourage any bride-to-be to avoid the place like the plague, unless you're looking for a funny place to watch ugly dresses parade past on bodies they don't fit.
on the "recently updated" list on Blogger: We Sail Tonight For Singapore. No, not us. Them. Yesterday Marc told me about this article about a delicacy in Singapore: snakefish! Just look at that face. So cute I just want to eat it up?
When I lived in New Jersey, I kept a running list of what was keeping me there, as well as what was driving me away. The list of fair attributes was usually short, but convincing: Erik, rowing, cheap gas, tax-free clothing, and tomato pie. The other list was longer, and updated frequently: idiotic drivers, expensive real estate, my former boss, the cost of auto insurance, jughandle left-turns, shore traffic, and the lack of parking at the train station. Sometimes I like to revisit that list just to make absolutely certain that nothing would ever take me back there. Today I added a new item to the list of reasons to stay away: Anthrax detected in preliminary mailbox test. I've probably dropped mail in that box myself, having once lived "on a street adjoining the Princeton University campus". I know that this kind of risk exists everywhere, but I can't help but breathe a sigh of relief and notice the big smile on my new NY State driver's license.
I'm going out to play tonight, making my probationary debut, co-writing with Tony Hightower for the fifth Spontaneous Combustion show at Manhattan Theatre Source. Tony's agreed to let me latch on to his comedic genius for just two days, as we whip out a script by tomorrow. The show premieres Sunday, and closes Tuesday. If you're in town, and interested in a wacky and unpredictable evening of "theater," I suggest stopping by. Tony says the tickets are somewhat difficult to come by, so it probably wouldn't hurt to call first.
