In Attempt to Block Spam, I Deleted All Old Comments

Not my intention. Sigh.

Add comment November 29th, 2009

Lucky Me

While I’m not one to necessarily go around claiming that there are two kinds of people in the world, I kind of think there is something to the notion that certain people are just lucky (and conversely, some of us are not). I don’t know if people are born lucky or if they are karmic-ly being rewarded for past hardships but I’ve always sort of felt that there are people who walk through the world with slightly surer steps than the rest of us, and those people seem to encounter a lot of good fortune. When I was younger and much more foolish I might have said that Yes, there are in fact two kinds of people in the world: lucky and unlucky, but nothing is ever that simple, now is it?

I can think of a few people in my life who fit this ever-so-vague criteria, and I’m not trying to downplay any strife these individuals have faced, but from my point of view, their lives have been a little less fraught with drama, a little sunnier, a somewhat easier fit and a little less peppered with indecision. To an outsider, they seem lucky.

I certainly have never considered myself lucky. I have a wonderful life, but there have been missteps and mistakes, misdirection and missed signals. I sometimes (okay, most times) feel like a bumbling fool, doing the best I can and over-analzing every step of the way. I’ve been hurt. I’ve made wrong turns. I righted myself (I hope) but there have been many What The Fuck Am I Doing moments. (Moments? If you listen hard enough you can probably hear those closest to me guffawing at the idea that my WTFAID crisis are mere moments.) I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past few years and I suppose being able to grow and gain perspective is quite lucky, now that I think about it, but I’m not the chick who walks through life with a sunbeam shining down on her always-well-coiffed head. I’m not the happily ever after type. I don’t find a $100 dollar bill in the cab I just climbed into, I don’t stumble onto amazing apartment deals, I don’t win things.

BUT YOU GUYS I DID I WON SOMETHING, SOMETHING AMAZING. I won a contest, a lovely little contest that I read about on Whoorl’s site and which completely spoke to me, and I knew as soon as I heard about the details I would enter, even though I never expected to win. But I did. I wrote about going to Paris at a time in my life when I felt spectacularly unlucky, and now – two years later and a million miles from where I was, emotionally – I am being given something wonderful.

And I feel lucky, sure. But not nearly as much as I feel thankful. OH HEY LOOK AT THAT, IT’S ALMOST THANKSGIVING.

And I am thankful for so very much, including all of the delicious fortune which has brought me to this place in my unlucky, unlikely, sometimes surprising and perfectly imperfect life.

ETA: I’m not trying be to evasive by not mentioning the contest or prize, just not sure how much I can say yet BUT it was a writing contest and I won a trip to Hawaii, so you can see why I am so giddy!! Also, you all know that I am calling myself unlucky with my tongue firmly in my cheek, right? Because this life of mine, I like it very much.

1 comment November 23rd, 2009

Dear Internet,

…I’ve been neglecting you.

Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m fine, I’ve just been distracted by, oh…this:

Happy Autumn internet! I hope you are well. I promise to write more soon, but in the meantime, go read Doxie (who is back) and The Trephine (who I just discovered), because whenever I start to write all I can think is that I’d rather just go read their sites, sometimes more than once.

KIT, internet, miss you lots!

Add comment November 20th, 2009

Dog Tired

I’ve never been a good sleeper but in the past six or seven years I’ve become a downright bad sleeper. Getting a dog probably contributed (because there have been all manner of sleeping arrangements, from crates to the floor to my bed to under my covers to back on the floor to pacing around the apartment with clicky-clacky dog nails and collar-jangling racket) but I’ve always been a light sleeper. I do not remember the last time I slept through the night and I know those of you with children are probably all, BISH PLZ but I’m just laying the facts out there: I am a shitty sleeper.

Last night I woke up around 4:15 in the morning to the not-so-unusual sounds of Tuesday, doing her passive aggressive ‘Oh, am I making noise? Why don’t you let me on the bed where I will be SO MUCH QUIETER’ thing. She was making a sort of smacky-licky mouth noise and sighing loudly and seemingly trying to get my attention in what I assumed was a ploy to get me to invite her on the bed. And thus a battle of wills ensued.

And [spoiler], she ended up on the bed, because I am weak. But she was still not relaxing, and was shaking and panting and seemed to be having a canine panic attack. That’s totally a thing.

By that point both D. and I were both awake and trying to reason with her; yes WITH OUR DOG. She jumped off the bed and was pacing the bedroom in a total frenzy, which is when D. got up and flipped on the lights. Tuesday was totally spooked and acting strangely and in my 4am mind I decided it was one of three things: she had seen a mouse, our apartment was haunted, she was the harbinger of some natural disaster about to strike.

The mouse seemed the most likely, especially when she started frantically nosing around under my dresser and so D. got on his hands and knees and looked and looked and finally went into the bathroom, grabbed a wad of toilet paper and went back under my dresser. “IT’S A LITTLE BUG,” he said. “A TINY LITTLE BUG.”

Tuesday remained unconvinced that the threat had been taken care of for a solid half hour after that. She paced, she checked the perimeter of the apartment, she panted DIRECTLY IN MY EAR, she whined, she got up on the bed, I got down on the floor with her. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Eventually she calmed down.

At then we dozed off for a brief nap before getting up and getting ready for work. BECAUSE OF A TINY LITTLE BUG. Ah, parenthood.

Add comment October 21st, 2009

Raising a Glass

Although I am far from a minimalist, I am not someone who enjoys Stuff. I purge my closet (too) frequently, I hate clutter, I strive for tidy and organized spaces. (Strive = constantly stacking and re-stacking things on coffee table; obsessively wiping down kitchen floor with Method wipes) I am not a gadget person. I don’t collect anything. And I hate shopping.

Less than a philosophy I’d say my minimalist tendencies are a result of inertia and status quo: I am all about making do. Sure, it would be nice to have a food processor/coffee maker/full length mirror/iron/curtains on living room windows/pair of rain boots/drawer dividers in the bathroom/new lip gloss but whenever I start to think how useful those items might be, I swing right back to, ‘Eh, but I’ve been doing fine without them’ (up for debate: the full length mirror). “Eh” is a powerful argument. “Eh” is hard to top. “Eh” usually wins.

“Eh” coupled with the 300 square feet that was my last apartment meant that when I left my Brooklyn condo, I did not take much. I took just enough to Make Do, and then I bought six green bowls at Anthropologie. The end. I gradually furnished myself with additional odds and ends (a rug! a replacement for the 2qt saucepan I missed so much! a toaster!) but my distaste for Stuff and general belief that there are only five kitchen essentials (chef’s knife, Microplane zester, 4qt saucepan, one big fry pan, wooden spoons) plus the fact that our current kitchen is OHMYGOD SO VERY SMALL has kept me far away from Bed, Bath & Beyond and the like.

But there was something else going on. I hate to even write this down but somehow, somewhere I got the notion in my head that: “That’s What You Do When You Get Married.” As if anything I bought pre-marriage was disposable and that post-marriage I was supposed to exist in some sort of spartan purgatory with my refugee silverware and four plates. It’s bullshit. Total bullshit. Even so, the idea of furnishing a home for myself seemed frivolous.

Which is not to say, Hey! Everyone go buy a $300 stand mixer! but rather that gift registries are not where kitchens are born and if I need a toaster or new mattress or if I want bright green towels despite the faded grey ones working just fine, I can buy a toaster or a mattress or bright green towels. There is no minimum occupancy for a home: if you live somewhere, you have a home. And you should be comfortable in it, whatever that means. If you live alone, you are just as entitled to steak knives as the newlyweds among us. If you and your roommates want to have a martini party, buy the damn martini glasses. If you happily live with your partner out of wedlock, you can still have nice things. They just might not come with wrapping paper.

A friend of mine is moving out of an apartment she’s shared with a roommate and into a sweet little space of her own, and when she told her roommate the news, the roommate understood but then started to panic as she realized that most of their Stuff belonged to my friend. “But what if I need to BLEND something?” she asked. “Well,” my friend answered, “Aside from the fact that I’ve never seen you actually use our blender, you’d probably do what I did: go to the store and buy a blender. They are $50. You’ll be okay.”

Independence is not the same as spending power and I hold to my Less Is More mantra of home furnishings (my rule: if something comes home with me, it should either perform a critical job or be something I love.) (I have broken that rule more than once, like for a coat rack which I now loathe and which does a job, sure, but is hardly essential when you consider that we have a coat closet and that coat racks become blights once they are actually covered in coats and so now that coat rack has created more of a problem than it solved and every time I look at it, I get angry.) but I think it’s ultimately unhealthy to live in a state of permanent temporariness. Which is not a thing, I know, but living in tiny rental apartments or with roommates can sometimes fuck with your head and make you feel as if you’re in limbo and that should never be the case. Live where you live. Get what you need. Enjoy it.

Building a home with someone is a privilege for which I am thankful, every single day. I love coming home at night. I don’t mean to sound preachy and I don’t mean to sound smug. Building a home, period, is an essential delight, and it’s never the wrong time to start doing so. I remember a friend telling me, when I debated whether to buy four plates or eight after moving into my studio apartment, “Just get four; you’re going to end up moving in with a guy eventually and you’ll get new stuff.” On the one hand, she was right (I did move in with a man; ironically our dishes used to be hers as she moved in with new roommates who provided a fully stocked kitchen) but on the other hand, I really hate the “Wait until you are living with someone before committing to anything because it’s all just temporary if it’s Just You” sentiment. (I am a hypocrite, by the way: D. lived with a roommate and had hideous black dishes that I absolutely considered to be temporary for him as there was NO WAY IN HELL they were making the move with us.)

I just bought eight new wine glasses, is the short version of this post. Just because I liked them. (And because I realized that if more than two wine-drinking people ever came over at the same time, we’d be unable to put out matching glasses.)

Add comment October 14th, 2009

All the Small Things

I have had writer’s block for so long that I can’t even pretend that I have writer’s block anymore; I’m just not writing. I flopped and moaned and pouted my way through August and used, ‘But it’s August’ as an excuse well into September. And then suddenly it was October and have no idea where the past three months went but gone they are.

October is nice.

This was my first full season as a Red Sox (albeit by proxy) fan. I met D. towards the end of last year’s season and sat tensely next to him during the final game of the ALCS series, unsure of what – if anything – to say (I opted for nothing) and when the Sox lost to Tampa Bay we hopped on a plane and headed to Barcelona, which was a pretty nice way to spend an October week, post-baseball. This year I was at Fenway for opening day and in between that cold and rain-delayed afternoon and yesterday, I probably watched 100 games. That is a lot of baseball, and while I’m not necessarily a legit fan, I invested a lot this year (100 games! Maybe not a full 100, and maybe not all watched in detail, but still!) and went through my own ups and downs (the downs seem to stand out) with D. and the Sox and I have to tell you: it’s draining. By 4pm yesterday, I was drained. And a little sad; post-season baseball is fun. Even so, October is still nice.

A dear friend from home was in the city this weekend and I had brunch with her and her husband and her baby and we walked through Central Park and plopped the baby in leaves and took photos and ended up on the east side where we walked up to the Guggenheim and it was great for several reasons: I got to spend time with lovely people, I got a nice big bite of October, and I got to see New York through fresh eyes. I need to do that more.

My mother was also in town this weekend, and she texted me last night to say that Beyonce was on her flight back to California. That never happens on my JetBlue flights to Oakland.

My 8-week old nephew has my parents wrapped around his little fist. I had to laugh when, during dinner on Friday night my mother said, “Now, I know people say that all babies are beautiful, but they just aren’t. But Ronin! Ronin is – objectively speaking – a beautiful baby.” Objectively speaking, of course, as all grandparents do. (He is, though. And he has giant cheeks and wears special earmuff headsets when he goes to concerts with my brother and sister-in-law which are the cutest things I have ever seen, aside from a beagle puppy I saw one time who tripped over his own ears.)

My friend Laura had a baby on Sunday, the day before her own birthday. Her name is Margot and she lives in Queens and I need to go meet her soon.

I have eaten an entire jar of Nutella in the past week. I cannot get enough of wheat toast with Nutella and banana on it. And when I run out of banana, or bread, I’m content to just eat Nutella right off my finger, which I am shameless about dipping into the jar.

Some friends-of-friends are in a band and that band was playing on Saturday night so I took a break from my Nutella binge and D. and I went out for tapas and sangria and then walked over to The Mercury Lounge and every time I go there I forget how small it is, and perhaps this is just a sign on my age but I also forget how LOUD it is and it’s definitely a sign on my age that three songs into the second band’s set I was yawning and asked D. what time it was and the answer was 12:34 and I was like, OH DEAR MUST BE IN BED BY 1AM NEED STRETCHY PANTS AND A PONYTAIL ASAP so we stayed for a few more songs and then ducked outside where we both remembered how annoyingly hard it can be to find a cab at 1am on a Saturday night in downtown Manhattan. MY FEET HURT, D. said. I’M SO TIRED, I said. We found a cab, made it home and were asleep within half an hour but here is the saddest thing of all: I was tired for ALL OF SUNDAY. All.

Sigh.

Add comment October 12th, 2009

Hand Me Downs

I flew to California on Thursday night, finally meeting my nephew: he is currently seven weeks old and weighs maybe ten pounds, although I can’t be sure. He likes to bounce and stretch and kick his legs. He doesn’t mind when the dogs lick him all over and he lets pretty much anyone hold him. He gets hot and sweaty really easily and enjoys looking at shadows on the ceiling.

When I was little, I was given a selection of Beatrix Potter story books and figurines. I knew that my brother has been rounding up some of our family’s favorite childhood books for my nephew, and my mother nudged me in the direction of a storage box, under the guest bed. The Beatrix Potter figurines were all wrapped up but I pulled out the little books. Some were inscribed with holiday messages in the careful caligraphy of my mother’s friend. Some had torn pages and yellowed scotch tape. Two had “HAPPY EASTER MOLLY! LOVE THE EASTER BUNNY, 1978″ written in my father’s printing inside the front cover.

I felt the tiniest of pangs when I saw the books; I had honestly forgotten about them but somewhere there is a part of me which catalogued those sentimental relics from childhood and sort of figured that they’d end up being passed along to my kids. I don’t think I’ll ever have kids of my own, and I’m pretty comfortable with that, but there is a weird phantom tickle which wonders, BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE WEE PINK THINGS AND TINY SHOES?

Which is neither here nor there, except that I understand why people pay so much money for baby clothes, toys, gear: IT IS ALL SO SMALL AND CUTE.

I gave the Beatrix Potter books to my nephew (or as my mother puts it, he is ‘borrowing’ them). He has been sleeping in a little wooden cradle that was built before I was born, and in which all of my siblings and I slept. My brother M. gave our nephew his copy of The Polar Express, and recorded a CD of him reading it aloud. Our family is currently trying to track down our original copies of Where the Wild Things Are, because the whole world done sold out of it.

It’s hard for me not to hope he grows up to be a bookworm (although a left-handed pitcher would also be cool).

I somehow managed to avoid any and all dirty diapers: when you eliminate that element, babies are pretty nice.

Add comment September 28th, 2009

Intro, Music

A few years ago my friend Emilie mentioned the book Birds of America by Lorrie Moore and was sort of incredulous that I hadn’t already read it (and everything else by Lorrie Moore) and so I went out and bought a copy of Birds in America and proceeded to DEVOUR it and upon finishing, ran to my local wee little independent bookstore (Sniff, I miss you BookCourt!) and bought – literally – every other book Lorrie Moore had ever written and while paying for them, attracted the attention of the sales associate who looked at me and was all, OH MY GOD I LOVE LORRIE MOORE I AM WRITING MY MASTER’S THESIS ON HER SHE IS AMAZING and then he and I started talking and he invited me to join him to hear her speak at The New Yorker festival that fall. I declined, but dove into the works of Ms. Moore and emerged as the biggest, geekiest Lorrie Moore fangirl possible, which is saying a lot because her fan base is rabid with adoration, as far as I can tell. It’s been eleven years since her last book (the dreamy, perfect Birds of America) and the aforementioned rabid fangirl base has been collectively adjusting their chunky frame glasses in anticipation of her latest novel, A Gate at The Stairs.

A few years before THAT, D. was living in Washington D.C., working as a journalist, and (in his words), ‘getting after it.’ A lot. “Getting after it” seems to involve primarily pot, booze and concerts (and one unfortunate and not completely corroborated lightning strike), which I suppose is par for the course of a twenty-something guy in the mid-nineties. Playing a large role in that era was the music of Sleater-Kinney.

Flash forward a decade(ish) to 2008 and witness our first date: the two of us perched on barstools and fiddling with our drink glasses – D. with vodka on the rocks, me with overpriced Italian wine – as we got our footing and our conversation gained momentum. I’ve not been on a lot of first dates (D: I’ve been on A LOT of first dates.) but during my brief singlehood I quickly learned the importance of having an arsenal of Miscellaneous Questions to discuss with the relative strangers one encounters in the dating world. We didn’t necessarily struggle for conversation (and were aided by a curiously familiar and intrusive barfly next to D.) but still managed to hit on some of those First Date Questions, things like, “Who would play you in a movie,” and “What song would play over the end credits in the movie of your life?” (The second one was mine; I love that game.) D. didn’t have an answer for the End Credits song question (Mine, at the time: Carry Me Ohio by Sun Kil Moon) but the topic morphed, eventually, to what our entry music would be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room (Mine, circa 1995: American Girl by Tom Petty, memories of Silence of the Lambs notwithstanding) which morphed into what our At Bat music would be (because D. has the baseball disease and therefore many conversations eventually come back to baseball).

Which gets us to last week, when I saw a blurb online about Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and Lorrie Moore (the dots, they are about to be connected): in her new book, Lorrie Moore has a reference to Sleater-Kinney, and Carrie Brownstein – being of the rabid fanbase I mentioned above – had eagerly bought the book as soon as it was released and discovered the SK reference on page 27. She then blogged about it on her blog, and when I got home from work last Thursday I felt compelled to tell D., seeing as how two of our most significant pop/lit/whatever influences had collided out on the internets.

He started clicking back through her archives and came upon an entry in which she and her sister attended a sporting event and had the discussion, What would your entry music be, assuming there was always entry music played when one entered a room. Which became, What would your At Bat music be, assuming you were a professional baseball player. (You see where I’m going with this, right?) She opened the question up to her readers, in comments.

And that brings us to now, in which D. and I revisit that question which stemmed from our first date as re-imagined by Carrie Brownstein, with help from Lorrie Moore.

Ahem.

It was an irresistible topic, and D. wanted in on the conversation.
It continues on our newest vanity project; come visit.

Add comment September 16th, 2009

In Theory

My friend Kathy and I used to have what we called our Luge Theory which basically assumed that everyone has some area of brilliance (or at least extreme aptitude), and people lucky enough to have discovered that area of brilliance early in life (obviously) have a better chance than others at building a career (which I am using very loosely as one’s area of brilliance could be parenting or cultivating roses or painting or any number of Things which do not necessarily provide a livelihood) around said Thing, while others may struggle trying to identify where their talents lie, and in some cases individuals may not ever be put in a situation which allows that talent to reveal itself. I might be a world class luger, the theory goes, but how on earth would I ever know it?

Finding one’s niche is not easy (for most of us); it’s a process of elimination for those of us who didn’t wake up one morning with the itch to play violin or the desire to become a teacher or the uncanny ability to run really far and really fast.

(Well, duh, right? I mean, who doesn’t want to discover their most amazing selves and cultivate their most extraordinary talents?)

I don’t know what my Luge is (and I may never discover it) but I am not without abilities and talents of my own. I can cook meat to the perfect level of doneness, almost without fail. I am good with a wine list. I can string words together in ways that work. I can stop the DVR at the exact moment when Commercial switches to Show, every time. I’m good with babies.

My area of brilliance, however, is not in fashion. Fashion is not my Luge. I like clothes. I like clothes A LOT. I work in an industry devoted to clothes. I work with people who are good at clothes. I am not one of them. This morning I had a twenty-minute delay getting out the door because the first outfit I put on was a beige sweater worn over a cream colored bra but the bra was too light and the sweater too fine a gauge and the bra showed through the sweater but my beige bra was in the laundry and the other appropriate colored bras have lace which makes them too bumpy to wear under fine gauge knits and OH MY GOD it took me forever and ever to put clothes on my body and it’s not like my shirts were hidden and my pants were locked in a combination safe and I forgot the code or anything like that: I just suck at clothes. When Plan A fails, my brain goes blank. I am terrible at putting together outfits. I am great at identifying Fashion! and can spot trends and fall in love with ridiculous items and pour over magazines and all that but when it comes to my own damn self and my own damn body, I am hopeless and no amount of shopping and/or closet-purging seems to help. (I am fine when going Out; this particular affliction is specific to the everyday.)

I am good at shopping. I like to think that I have good taste (although, doesn’t everyone?). But I watch Rachel Zoe on television and I flop over on my bed in despair because while she clearly has found her Luge (and oh dear, how I love Rachel Zoe), the very idea of having to style people – to say nothing of styling oneself – exhausts me and gives me anxiety, similar to watching certain scenes in The Devil Wears Prada.

Which is why, if I ever win the lottery or rub the magic genie bottle, one of my purchases/wishes is totally gonna be a personal stylist. Done and done. And then I’m flying myself to somewhere icy and taking luge lessons.

Add comment September 15th, 2009

In Lieu of Writing…

Look, D. and my dorky habits and emails, documented:
Tuesday’s Paw

(Neither of us speak Blog Design, obvs.)

Add comment September 14th, 2009