Conquer My Mind

Makes Me Happy

2012-02-11T18:29:00.007-05:00

I'm actually accomplishing the February Photo Challenge, though sometimes that means posting a bunch of photos at once that meet the criteria, rather than one per day. And sometimes that means posting a picture of the moon instead of the sun... Making myself follow through on something is the whole point though, so I guess I'm succeeding.

All three of the kind souls who read this blog have most likely already seen all my photos on Facebook, so I'm not going to post them again here. Some of them are kind of ugly anyway. But today is different. I took this photo of my desk after reading that today's topic was "Makes Me Happy." I immediately looked up an thought to myself, "Why, this Tibetan butter tea makes me happy, I think I'll take a picture of that!" And as I prepared to do so I realized that it was sitting amidst a bunch of other things that also make me sublimely happy...

National Geographic - If you know me at all, you know I love animals and nature and words and pretty pictures, and also that I am a nerd and obsessed with my own idyllic childhood. Therefore National Geographic is one of my favorite things in the entire world. I've subscribed to it since I was perhaps 10, thanks to my encouraging parents, and I look forward to it every month. Even though I can now read it on my iPad as well, there's some sort of magic about that yellow rectangle promising hundreds of beautiful pages within that just can't be replaced.

Butter tea - Have you ever had Tibetan food? Unless you are my neighbor and have tried Cafe Tibet, I'm guessing the answer is no. If you ever have the chance to, however, I recommend the momo and/or sha baklap dumplings, and lots and lots of butter tea. Mmm... There is nothing like this hot, salty, savory drink to get rid of your chills. Apparently in Tibet it's actually made with yak butter, but due to the limited population of yaks in Brooklyn, this is less than authentic... But delicious nonetheless.

Black pen - My mother got me addicted to the Pilot Precise V5 rolling ball pens when I was just a kid. They bleed easily, though, so I've stained many shirts, sheets, purses, and carpets by leaving them uncapped thoughout my life. It's worth the risk though. One day I made the switch from Fine to Extra Fine and never went back. They are the only pens I will ever use, as they facilitate my cursive handwriting rather gracefully...

Postcards - I was trying really hard for the first week of February to mail postcards to friends and family as another kind of challenge, and I did okay for a little while. I've fallen behind, even after I bought some weird Wild West-themed cards, but luckily I just unearthed some beautiful ones I bought in Ireland, so I'm motivated all over again. I also finally decided who is going to receive the postcard of "The Peaceable Kingdom," so that makes me sublimely happy. I had to save it for someone who was a serious animal lover. She will be quite pleased, I think...

My Computer - I got this MacBook for my 21st birthday. It needs some serious work and I worry that its days are numbered. Is it possible to feel affection for a piece of technology? Apparently so. That's all for now, I don't want to jinx it...

Sir Reginald le Crocodile - I found good old Reggie in high school after he was discarded by some uncaring child, took him home with me, and promptly scared the hell out of my cat with his ridiculous squeaking. He has traveled across the country with me on the dashboard of my car and lived with me in many apartments throughout my college years. He's been in Brooklyn ever since and spent the last few years keeping watch from atop my TV, until we cancelled cable and packed it away. Now he hangs out with me every day and helps me write. He's a rather dedicated little reptile...

Photo of Baby - I guess because I grew up an only child, my little dog Baby features more heavily in my memories of childhood than any other creature in the world. I will most likely never get over her loss and I'm certain that no dog will ever come close to replacing her. This photo was taken by my dad just a few days before we had to put her down and in it, you can see my shadow as I stand just outside of the frame. I was never too far from her in her last days. I think she looks rather noble and accepting of her fate, even though it came too soon. I'm glad I could be with her when she left this world.

Photo of Mema's house - Another photo taken by my dad is of my great-grandmother's house. The view from the back was the one we all knew the best, and he must have been standing right near where there used to be a few wooden swings hanging from the limb of a maple tree. It's a view I remember well. Pearl was 99 when she passed away and she left a long legacy of kindness and goodness and beauty and warmth that continues to inspire her family and anyone who knew her. I can never eat an apple pie without comparing it to Mema's... They're just never as good.

Much like all the trinkets on my desk at work, I guess it's the little things in life that make me happy...

Hands - Day 3

2012-02-03T17:38:00.002-05:00

So I cheated. These are not hands, it is just A hand. But it's MY hand! Isn't it pretty? While taking this photo, however, I realized that when I look at my hands as they type away every day at work, I see more than just fingers flying over keys. I see wonderful people, too.

That silver watch? That's from my lovely grandmother. My ring is from a hippie store I used to work in with a sweet girl named Lisa. The pink flowered box was bought in Mexico by Julia. The elephant traveled with April from India. The Buddha made its way through my old workplace and was finally handed down to me by Amanda. The painted fairy was a craft from my little sister Leah's birthday party, which my friend Christina also attended. The miniature filing cabinet always reminds me of Angela (so organized!). Even the dark purple nail polish I have on today makes me think of Heather. Just beyond the frame of this picture are memories of other friends and experiences that are now manifested in little tiny objects. And all of these are just within reach every day. My hands are happy.

Words - Day 2

2012-02-02T16:09:00.005-05:00

The topic of Day 2 in the February Photo Challenge... WORDS. Conveniently, this is a subject with which I am rather familiar and deal with nearly every moment of every day.

Words that comprised my experience today: Coffee, development, website, gala, Twitter, cookies, pro bono, teen parents, design, peppermint patties, strategic plan, jurisprudence, policy, toys, deadlines.

Cannot wait for Friday.

February Photography - Day 1

2012-02-01T13:36:00.010-05:00

I'm going to take up this challenge and try to post a photo every day in February, preferably both on here and Facebook. So here is Day 1 - Your View Today.

Although this is not technically accurate, because my view generally consists of my computer screen and files in rainbow colors and lots of tiny desk ornaments and wall calendars full of deadlines. But this is the view from my office window... Although it's not even really that, because if I look straight out my window I just see another building directly across the street. Lame. This is my view if I stand at the window all the way to the left side and sort of lean and press my face against the glass. It's a long way from my previous view of the ships of South Street Seaport... But I suppose having no good view keeps my mind on my work, right? Right...

How long can I keep this up? Only time will tell... Though I must say, February resolutions are way more fun than New Year's resolutions! Mailing postcards and posting pretty pictures every day is so much easier than exercising...

White Street

2012-01-27T10:15:00.011-05:00

Walking down the same street nearly every day, I have come to appreciate its subtleties. I will likely never hang out on this street, never stop in one of its establishments. It doesn't seem to have any bars or restaurants I'll ever frequent and I don't think there is even a place for me to grab a cup of coffee. I simply pass by. Although I traverse just one block of White Street between Broadway and Church on my morning walk, there are things I have come to expect.

When I turn onto this street, I immediately look into the side window of a Chinese business on Broadway that sells paper supplies and decorations in fabulous shades of red and pink and gold. Across the street there is always an endless supply of rugged yet creative types in work boots and stocking caps, hauling film-making equipment on and off of trucks of all sizes. Further on, a grocery truck can be found pulled onto the south curb with little room to pass, its drivers rather friendly to female passerby as they unloads their wares. Just below Franklin Place, construction workers converge beneath scaffolding, their conversations shifting between English, Polish, and Spanish but their cigarette smoke smelling all the same. With their blue and yellow umbrellas folded, hot dog carts are rolled up the middle of the street towards Broadway by their bearded owners wearing taqiyahs. The sloping architecture of the Synagogue for the Arts shelters children's playthings and discarded pamphlets in its courtyard. Young men with assymetrical haircuts and young women in tights and big scarves, their clacking heels telling me a block in advance that they will ascend the stairs to the Flea Theater. The glowing charisma of Let There Be Neon that beckons with a lounging, hot pink feminine outline reminiscent of gritty, windowless, male-only establishments.

This morning the street was strangely quiet, as many New York streets tend to be when it rains. Everyone is just in a hurry to get inside and they scurry about with their umbrellas up and their heads down. But the rain wasn't falling in those few minutes I walked on White Street today. The air was uncannily warm for January, muggy and thick and seeming able to absorb any noise that might emanate from the street, and yet, none did. No one spoke. No carts rolled. No heels clacked. The street was suddenly, inexplicably, utterly unfamiliar to me and I felt a bit lost. I looked up at the soaring lofts with their zig-zagging fire escapes and wondered, "Who lives there? What goes on in those buildings?" It seemed I saw the retro yellow ARC sign for the first time and finally acknowledged that it was a record shop. I wondered to myself who thought that synagogue architecture was a good idea and thought perhaps I should look up the Flea Theater and see what was playing.

It baffles me that a street you think you know so well that it has taken on mundane qualities can suddenly become strange and mysterious just because of a slight change in weather. The light casts new shadows and the air feels strange in your lungs. You see something new and different in things you've seen a million times and you realize that you will never know everything about this city. No matter what you think you know, you realize, you are still a stranger. You are still alone. And yet somehow, you are perfectly at home.

World Wide Word Web

2012-01-23T22:23:00.012-05:00

Sometimes I think I should take a hiatus from the Internet. My head is filled with so many words, pictures, links, ideas, stories, names, events... Just words, words, and more words, every minute of every hour of every day. It seems I can't ever read enough New York Times articles or get through enough McSweeney's stories or laugh at enough hilarious animal photos or appreciate enough of the thoughts of the countless creative people in the world... There just isn't enough time.

My email inbox often gets terribly overwhelming. I do my best to communicate with friends and family regularly. But personal notes can get lost when there are floods of appeals from organizations asking me to sign a petition and donate money and take action and show up at an event and sign another petition and then they send me a thank you email for signing it, and oh, don't forget to give money! MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, ASPCA, American Humane Association, GEMS, the Brooklyn Museum. My inbox is also jam packed with all the fun and exciting things I can do, buy, see, do, eat, buy, do, buy, buy buy! Groupon, NYC Daily Deals, Living Social, The Bowery Presents. Things I love. Causes I support. Experiences I desire. Communications that are scrambling my brain...

Oddly enough, raising money for a cause and managing communications are in my job description. So I can't ignore the Internet completely. I can't just make the words go away. My work day consists of sitting at a computer and type, type, typing away about children and parents and families and lawyers and social workers and family court and abuse and neglect and sad stories and happy endings... Email is unavoidable. I get Google alerts that I can't ignore. I need to know what's going on in the world and the country and the city... I need to know what's happening in the courthouses down the street and in the government buildings in D.C. and in the offices down the hall. These things are not expendable.

But what about the rest? Perhaps I need a break from the emails, the sites, the blogs, the news, the feeds, the banter... I felt a serious sense of relief yesterday when I cleaned out my friend list on Facebook without remorse and walked away 30 individuals lighter. I also felt a sense of accomplishment when I reorganized my Google Reader into three categories and then alphabetized them all. And instead of feeling finished, it made me itch to organize my bookshelves into fiction by author and nonfiction by subject. So many items to read, so many people to meet, so many ideas to acknowledge, so many things to learn, so many words to try to cram into my head... SO LITTLE TIME.

The best lesson I ever learned is that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. So you should just keep learning and reaching for as much knowledge as you can attain. But I suppose the more time that passes, the more you realize how little time there is... You have to accept that you can't learn it all. I sure as hell can't read it all. Perhaps I just need to disconnect completely. Less Facebook? Sure. Ignoring the more fluffy stuff in my Reader? Done. Unsubscribing from a few email lists? Probably necessary. Writing more instead of passively reading? Now there's a thought...

I suppose I could just read more books, though not surprisingly, when I'm not reading things on the Internet, I'm reading a book instead. And I end up reading a hell of a lot of books. But goddamn, even that stresses me out, because with every book I finish comes the realization that I'll never read them all. There are simply too many words in the world. And I don't know where to begin. I also don't know where to end...

I guess right about here is as good a place as any.

Apparently This is an Annual Thing

2012-01-09T21:38:00.013-05:00

Around this time last year I wrote this post. It was a follow up to this post from the year before. I guess every January I have to look back at my life and wonder, "What the hell happened? And what the hell am I going to do now?"

2011 was a difficult year and I'm glad to see it gone... It was very stressful, but it wasn't all bad. Looking back I have quite a few lovely memories...

I went snow tubing!
My bar closed. This was extremely depressing and I miss it terribly.
I went to Boston to visit my very first friend from college. Hanging out with him and his awesome friends was probably one of the best weekends of the year. Nothing but love!
My boss left my organization. The Development Department consisted of only me for a few months.
I went to Maryland to babysit my sister for a few days while my very lucky parents went to France. She and I get along splendidly when my parents aren't around, it's really amazing...
I organized a few events for work all by myself and did quite well, if I do say so myself.
I went to the beach A LOT over the summer. AND I LOVED IT.
Nick finished his pre-med program FINALLY. And he got an excellent score on the MCAT. We started pondering potential relocation to other cities for med school...
Then he and I went to his cousin's wedding on Long Island and had a blast with his ridiculously fun family.
I went to Ireland with my family for two weeks. It was so beautiful and is truly a magical place, but the weather is horrific. At least I took a lot of excellent pictures. 1,400 of them to be exact.
I got a new boss and he's awesome!
Nick and I went to my cousin's wedding in Michigan. Our complete debauchery made it clear that we are still extremely immature and no one should invite us anywhere.
That same weekend we ended up stuck in Detroit because of the hurricane on the East Coast and realized that Detroit is truly the city that God forgot. I hope I never have to go back. EVER.
My beautiful mother turned 60 while we were in the armpit of the Midwest (sorry, Mom). To cheer her up I made her an amazing photo book of her life. I am such a good daughter! Even though I slacked off so I had to give it to her at Christmas. Oops.
I turned 26. I went to see my favorite band Beirut on the night of my birthday, which was absolutely magical. Then I tried to have a birthday party at a bar and just ended up depressed. I'm old!
The aforementioned first friend from college came to visit NYC and since he is politically active and silly things like that, we went to Occupy Wall Street for a little while. It was interesting enough, but we soon left for beer and burgers, because we have our priorities straight.
I had a very successful gala for my organization which was about 100 times better and less stressful than last year. I actually got drunk afterwards! It was GREAT!
I went home for Thanksgiving and kept things fairly quiet and only hung out with one friend. And I'm grateful that he's such a good friend after literally 13 years.
That weekend my cousin had her engagement party. It was so incredibly lovely that I had to have 7 glasses of wine to deal with the beauty of it all. I don't want anyone to grow up but I think I'm okay with this...
I went home for Christmas. I saw my best friends and both of my wonderful grandmothers and realized how very lucky I am. I got an iPad that I'm pretty sure my sister tricked my dad into buying. Good job, kid!
Speaking of my little baby sister, she turned 13 and it has absolutely traumatized me. I keep looking at the picture on my shelf of me holding her when I'm 17 and she is 4 and I can't believe where the time has gone.
An old friend and his darling girlfriend came to New York on December 30th and we saw one of my favorite bands from college. It was the perfect way to end the year.
I had a very quiet New Year's Eve with lovely people, just the way I wanted it.

On the schedule for this year....

I will attend four weddings in June, July, August, and September. Oh. My. God.
In October I'll go to a family reunion of my mother's side of the family.They will be Irish. They will be Catholic. They will be crazy. They will be drunk. There will be hundreds of them. And they will all look like me. This will be weird.
Hopefully I will visit my best friend and her boyfriend in Florida and watch them revel in the early days of cohabitation. Hopefully I will do this soon, while it's still cold in NYC but nice and warm on the gulf coast...
I also hope to visit this crazy lady and her girlfriend in Raleigh and see an old friend of my parents' as well. And I'll wonder once again why I don't live in the South because everyone is so nice and the weather is splendid.
I will also try my very best to head west to see if "Portlandia" is an accurate depiction of a city that is called home by a dear friend from New York, an old friend from high school, new friends from Bonnaroo, two aunts I haven't seen in much too long, a number of tiny cousins I've never met, and another cousin who was a little girl the last time I saw her and is now a gorgeous teenager. Wow.
If all goes as planned, Nick will start medical school in the Fall. After many months of contemplating the merits of other US cities, I realize I am terrified to leave New York. I am crossing my fingers that he gets into a school in the city so we never, ever, EVER have to leave. Please please please please please!
Hopefully I will finally buckle down and apply to grad school. I know I want to do an MPA, but I'm again considering if I should pair it with an MSW just for the background knowledge that would entail. I don't want to be a social worker anymore, I know that for certain. But I am interested in the experience... Luckily I know that the MPA is where it's at for me, hands down. I just really need to work my ass off this year in my new role!
I also need to save tons of money so I can FINALLY go to France and/or Germany like I've been talking about because I need a goddamn European vacation.
Also I was reminded last night by a very good friend that I had always planned to go volunteer in India. He told me I should probably do it before I have kids. Thanks for the advice, buddy. I said I'd check out Central America...
I think we're going to get another kitten. YES!!!!

Life is too short. I hope you've stopped reading by now. Good night.

A Sense of Accomplishment

2012-01-07T19:13:00.013-05:00

With these words, I have ensured that I have not broken my very first New Year's resolution! AMAZING. I have already broken others that weren't written down, like getting to work on time every day and bringing my lunch rather than buying it. But since I didn't write them down, they don't count. Duh. So I'm pretty much on the right track in this first week of 2012. You can stop applauding now.

Or keep it up if you like, because I've had a very successful week filled with exciting, grownup accomplishments! You will be very proud to know that:

I went to work. And I did important things.
I went to yoga for the first time in months.
I didn't eat banh mi, not even once.
I painted my nails a weird color. And I liked it.
I downloaded nerdy word games on my iPad.
I sat through an entire football game with my boyfriend and his friends without complaining or making rude comments about the corpulence of the players. This was managed by accomplishing the previous two activities simultaneously.
I went to the Museum of Chinese in America and learned all about the hardships faced by Chinese immigrants throughout the years. I'd like to go back because I didn't get to finish seeing everything before it closed, but now I know who Bing cherries were named after.
I cleaned my kitchen multiple times after the boyfriend made dinner (using food that I bought at the grocery store! BONUS!). And I cleaned it at other times when he didn't even cook, like today! I EVEN SWEPT THE FLOOR. I'm pretty much a domestic goddess.
I caught up with a dear friend I hadn't seen in far too long and we conceived a new plan for our book club. BECAUSE WE ARE GROWN UPS!
I went to see not one, but TWO movies. This is big news, because I never see movies. I saw "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "My Week With Marilyn." Go see them. They are both excellent. And I didn't stuff myself full of popcorn til I was sick, I actually practiced restraint! YOU GUYS, THIS IS SERIOUS.

In other news, even though it's Saturday and I had planned on doing NOTHING all day except maybe (MAYBE) cleaning my room and petting the cat and not talking to anyone because my boyfriend is working all day and night, I actually left my house. I forced myself to stop watching "Portlandia," even though watching it is another accomplishment in itself because I kept meaning to and I never did before. Yay! I made myself take a shower and put on actual clothing and shoes and I went for a walk around my beautiful neighborhood and drank in the sights and enjoyed the fresh air and unseasonably warm temperatures. It was lovely. I even saw a puppy! Her name was Peaches.

To recover from all this activity, I got a coffee and sat on a bench and talked to my mother for a long time and then got a delicious bagel to take home. On my way back I ran into an old friend who was visiting with his adorable little boy, who after a year of living in England HAS AN ACCENT. He told me he was "three and a hoff" and I nearly peed my pants. Then I came home and cleaned my kitchen (again!). I took off my nail polish. I talked to another friend on the phone and got the scoop on his love life. Now I'm here. WRITING.

Wow. I'm so proud of myself.

This probably won't last. My life tends to follow a trajectory much like the one pictured here. Doing stuff is HARD. But tomorrow I'm going to try again to be a grownup who does things. I'm going to wake up early, go to yoga, go to a musem all by myself, clean my room, and then be social by seeing a few friends play music in the neighborhood. Dear god, at least I am going to try. I AM GOING TO DO THINGS. Or not. I don't know. Maybe I won't do any of those things. I still have plenty of time to just give up and shut down altogether.

I think I'll go watch some more "Portlandia" now. Or perhaps I'll just browse the Internet! FOREVER...

The Obligatory New Year's Resolution Post

2011-12-31T15:28:00.008-05:00

As you can probably tell from the title, this is going to be boring. But that's pretty much what my blog has become, seeing as I NEVER post anymore. Without further ado, here are my new year's resolutions in no particular order.

Blog more. Perhaps a goal of once a week is attainable. Yes, let's try for that...
Read more nonfiction and news. I've already begun this one with "How We Die," which is beautifully written and very interesting. And I am going to finally buckle down and get subscriptions to The New Yorker and The New York Times online.
Play more guitar. Mostly as an excuse to sing, and also it's therapeutic.
Make long overdue doctor's and dentist appointments. Four for me, plus one for my cat!
Continue thinning out my wardrobe. I really need to get rid of more things.
On that note, buy fewer things. Unless I really need them for work or something. And then I will continue to fix up things I already have and try to only buy designer things at Housing Works.
Eat better! I used to eat spinach for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Let's try that again. I pretty much just need to not eat delicious banh mi EVERY DAY for lunch.
Exercise. At least twice a week. Right now I do NOTHING, so anything is an improvement. No gyms, though, because they are awful and I hate them and I refuse to go. I will run, take ballet, clear my head with yoga, use our pull up bar at home. I can do it!
Along those lines, lose a few pounds so I don't look terrible in my cousin's wedding pictures this summer. If I actually do the previous two things, this shouldn't be too difficult. I hope...
Work my butt off in my new fancy big girl job, because guess what, I am getting a promotion! This also entails negotiating a decent raise.
And while I'm getting the big nonprofit bucks (hah!), I should probably try to get my financial life in order. It's in shambles right now. I need to find a new bank I think.
So once I have all that in order... I need to save serious money.
And while we're saving things, let's save the whales.
And the trees.
Let's save the ozone, too.
And also puppies.
Last but not least... Save Ferris.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dream Dogs

2011-11-10T15:08:00.026-05:00

I had a dream last night about being back in my childhood home, running around with two of my dogs. These animals are now deceased, but playing with Baby and Allblack in my dream was so real at the time, it was like I got to visit with them again. It was wonderful.

I was somewhat conscious that it was a dream, because I remember really appreciating the fact that these dogs were dead, that I was a child again, and that eventually it would have to end but that I should enjoy it for now. I don't really even recall what we were doing, just that Allblack (as usual) was being goofy and neurotic and was terrified of a thunderstorm... And Baby (as usual) was being adorable and sneaky and prancing around like she owned the place.

Baby was just that, my baby. I picked her out of a litter when I was 6. She was a little mutt, half purebred Cocker spaniel, half godknowswhat, but we assumed some sort of terrier mix due to her feisty nature. She was little and yellow and long-haired and floppy-eared with white feet and freckles on her nose. She was adorable and awesome. Totally fearless and terrifically fierce. She was the alpha female 100% of the time and wasn't afraid of other dogs, no matter how much bigger they were than her. I once watched her go after a Great Dane when she was just a puppy. The larger dog was unfazed, but she had set a precedent of domination that she would uphold forever.

My dad used to refer to her as "The Bubs" or "The Bubbers," although her official name from my 6-year-old brain was Baby's Treasure. I'm sorry, it's true. I was a weird kid, but I was lucky enough to have an amazing dog to grow up with. When I was 18, I had to put her to sleep due to a rapidly growing tumor in her stomach. I was holding her when it happened. I felt I owed her that much. She went long before her time and I'm still broken up about it. She was officially my best friend and the dog to which I will compare all other animals for the rest of my life. Yup, Baby was just that cool.

Allblack was a different story altogether, and a sad one at that. He was rescued from a neglectful situation by my dad when I was about 9. He was at the time around 5 years old, we're really not sure. Or maybe a vet told us but I just don't remember. I do remember that he was a painfully skinny, scraggly, shy black Lab with a skin condition, a voracious appetite, and a fear of raised hands. He had essentially been abandoned by his owner, who owned the house next door to my friends but had moved out and left his dog behind. Allback (or Spike, as he was called back then) used to roam their neighborhood looking for food. While he mostly stayed away from us kids, we were scared of him because he was a stray and we didn't know what to make of him. I didn't really pay him much attention.

Then my dad came to pick me up from my friends' house a few times and, having lost his black Lab (the original Allblack) a few years before, took note of the poor creature. One day my dad knelt down, put his hand out, palm facing up, and coaxed the dog to come over to him. He got the story from my friends' mom and decided that he'd take the dog home. We learned that he had spent an entire winter, one of the coldest that Maryland had ever seen, chained up on the back porch. He was only saved because the little old ladies who ran the post office would walk over to bring him table scraps. When we got him to the house, Baby quickly asserted herself as the alpha dog and we gave him some food. I have never seen a dog eat so much, so quickly.

Within a few days, my dad heard the owner was home went down the road to talk to him. As the story goes, he knocked on the door, told the guy he had taken his dog home, the guy got a little defensive until my dad made it clear that he was criminally neglectful and that he did not deserve to own a dog, and finally the guy handed my dad the dog's collar and feigned regret. He apparently said, “I’m really gonna miss him,” to which my dad retorted, “No you’re not.” Spike was officially rechristened Allblack II and he was our dog from then on.

Allblack was a beta dog if there ever was one. Hell, he may have even been an omega. He was totally submissive to Baby, to all other dogs, and to humans. His lack of training in his first few years was evident every time we tried to get him to sit, lie down, stay, etc. He was not dumb, but he was definitely a bit damaged and neurotic to the point of being obnoxious. He was also extremely gentle, so he was one of those dogs that a kid like me, totally comfortable around animals, could never be fearful of again. He never quite got "drop it" through his head and I would have to pry his jaw open with my little hands to retrieve whatever potentially harmful object he had scooped up hoping for a snack.

A few years later we adopted Max, a middle-aged yellow Lab, from some family friends. He too was totally beta and together he and Allblack were generally known as "the big dumb Labs." Oh, they weren’t completely dumb and they were sweet and slobbery and just wanted to be loved. They were also totally neurotic and submissive and couldn't quite get basic commands through their heads, and they were both petrified of thunderstorms. I remember being home alone at some point in high school during a raging storm, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor trying to comfort two huge, drooling, whimpering Labs as they both tried to crawl into my lap. Baby just dozed calmly through the whole thing and kept looking at them with a judgmental glare.

I guess a thunderstorm is what did Allblack in. I was about 16 and he was getting old, with hip dysplasia, cataracts, and the beginnings of deafness. During a bad thunderstorm my mother went outside a few times calling to him, trying to bring him inside since she knew he would be scared, but she couldn't find him. Sadly, he ended up wandering a mile away from our house and was hit by a car. The guy was nice enough to pull over and call the vet, who of course had to put him down. It was not a good way for him to go, sad and scared and alone in a storm. For all his suffering, though, I'm glad my family was able to give him a good home for most of his life. He deserved it.

This post was supposed to be short. It was supposed to be about a brief, fractured, yet sentimental dream. But now I can’t stop thinking about my dogs and how it felt to be running around with them, to touch Baby’s fur one more time, to give Allblack a well-deserved scratch behind the ear. I miss my dogs. Perhaps one day I’ll have one again, but for now I guess I’ll just have to make do with memories.

A Hopeful Millennial Rant

2011-10-22T16:48:00.017-04:00

A lot has been written about my generation in recent years. We are growing up, but only into "emerging adults.” And we are more screwed than any other generation in modern history. Yes, I am a Millennial. I am of a demographic that has apparently has been spoiled, coddled, overindulged, endowed with inflated self-esteem and a debilitating sense of entitlement. We have come to expect the best and assume that everything will work out in our favor. If you read my last post, that assumption is generally true. Because you know what? It will.

We know that because we're special, right? Our moms and dads and teachers and guidance counselors and soccer coaches and piano teachers and camp counselors and career mentors and SAT tutors and academic advisers told us so. I'm not a fan of all the names we've been called, but I find it funny that those who say we are so spoiled and entitled are the ones who did the spoiling. As far as the coddling and indulgence and entitlement, well, could we really help it? We were told we could do anything we wanted basically from conception. Women and blacks didn't have to fight for equal rights anymore (just equal pay), so therefore, anyone can be president!

We were the biological products of the prosperous 80s, missing out on all the bad hair and shallow music but reaping the benefits of prenatal vitamins and public education. We blithely marched to our Gifted & Talented programs and learned about self-esteem and why drugs are bad and how babies are made, all within the safety of schools that had plenty of crayons and books and playgrounds for everyone to share. We were the cultural products of the 90s, the children of the Internet and Nickelodeon and Disney. We were thrilled to hear that we've got mail, that messages were instant, that information was unlimited, that no question could go unanswered, and that we were constantly connected to millions of kids just like ourselves, who despite different time zones still knew all the words to catchy American pop songs. We paid attention to Clarissa's explanations and truly believed we would inherit a whole new world, which, I suppose, we have.

But it's not the world we expected due to forces completely beyond our control. And apparently trying to do something about it makes us whiny and entitled. Why do you think we expected this fanciful world of plenty in the first place? Because people told us we would! And if that world wasn't perfect, we could make a difference! So while half of us waste away without full-time jobs and move in with our parents and struggle below the poverty line, we have to accept that this is just a phase we're going through. We'll make it through, because what other choice do we have? Call me crazy, but I think all that "you can do anything you put your mind to" talk has really paid off. We actually have hope.

Really though, what else is there? It's one of the little things we can still cling on to and the only thing we've always had. Remember Obama (the 2008 model, that is)? We got excited about politics for the first time in a long time, because we had seen our country attacked and seen our economy turn to shit and seen our classmates come home without arms and legs due to wars that we didn't start and seen rich old white men in power for too long. We didn't get excited because Obama was black, we got excited because he was different, he was unique, he was new. And everyone is different and unique, remember? Free to be you and me? And unlike all the people who wanted him to wave his magic wand and make it all better, we knew that things would take time. Even though we grew up enjoying instant gratification, we knew that while the previous generations still reigned supreme, things would stay largely the same. So we still hold out hope.

We are hopeful because we grew up thinking the world was a lovely place to live in. We think it's weird when people are unnecessarily cruel and judgmental. Remember equal rights? Well, we always had them. We don't remember the fight for blacks or women because we grew up in their stead and just expected equal treatment. So my generation does not look down on women and blacks and gays as second class citizens--because we never did in the first place. That's why we couldn’t care less, regardless of our political or religious beliefs, if two gay men get married. We think that's pretty normal actually. We want them to marry, in fact, because we're practical and with half of us being the products of divorce, we'd rather families just be stable because it saves a lot of therapy and sad song lyrics and money in the end. Also, married people are more economically secure, so they can pay more taxes. Which means that we can provide more social services, you know, for things like that public school education that most of us benefited from and got us into the colleges that gave us the degrees that now we aren't using because of that economy that the older generations took a wrecking ball to and screwed us royally. Jerks.

In these dark and difficult times, there is still a feeling of togetherness. We're all in the same boat and we know it, because we see it in each other every day. Remember Facebook? We have always been inextricably connected, but one day in college suddenly our worlds fit onto one screen full of little blue boxes. We can now share our lives and hide our selves and unite in the present with those we knew in the past and suddenly it seems like everyone's lives are really fun and exciting! And hard. We share our daily activities and our favorite song lyrics and our differing political beliefs and what we had for breakfast and these new shoes we want but can't afford and our bargain vacations and our third world volunteering and our soul sucking jobs and our search for fulfilling jobs and our desperation for any jobs and our desperation in general and our yearning to succeed and our hope and our hope and our hope in the face of it all. We share and share and share because we have a network of people who get us, who know us, who are us. So what that our parents and their friends are on that same network now? We will share anyway. We have no shame because we are proud of who we are and what we’re doing and we something to say. Even if it's not always important (and it usually isn't), well goddamn, 900 people hear us! That gives us hope!

I am proud of my generation for the fact that we’re us and we're okay with being US. We're hardworking and lazy, motivated and apathetic, family-oriented and tradition-bucking, isolated and interconnected, directed and confused, yet we are fucking HOPEFUL. Most of us are doing what we need to get by and expecting the best and just having faith. We're tired but we're optimistic. We're accepting of our fates but we know we can still shape them in the end. We know we're lucky if we’re employed. We know we're lucky in general. I just hope others can see that.

The Old College Try

2011-10-18T14:00:00.006-04:00

This past weekend I celebrated a "substitute Homecoming" with friends at our alma mater, Fordham University. Since we weren’t able to make it to the actual event this year, a friend organized a special trip instead. We were graced with an amazingly perfect autumn day that also turned out to be part of Parents' Weekend, when parents of students are invited to check out where their money is going. It was awkward and hilarious. We started the day with freely flowing mimosas, rode the Metro North, browsed the bookstore for maroon gear, enjoyed drinks as real adults at Dagger John's, ate wings at Howl at the Moon, devoured sandwiches at Tino's Deli, filled up on pitchers and bad 90s music at MugZ's, and finally headed back to the city. Unlike the days of old however, instead of going back out after a full day of partying, we found ourselves exhausted by midnight and asleep by 1 a.m. Yes indeed, we have gotten old...

I loved my college years and will always look back on them with love and affection and surprisingly few regrets. But college was not perfect or painless and I'll be damned if I ever start referring to it as, "the best years of my life." I like to think that the best is yet to come. College was, on one hand, a dream world... but it was tough at the same time, and not just academically. It contained a lot of personal changes, extreme highs and painful lows, unnecessary drama, crazy all-nighters, debilitating hangovers, and a serious sense of dread as graduation approached and you realized you were no closer to knowing what you wanted in life than the first day you set foot onto that lush green campus.

Still, compared with the “real world,” college life was grand! And making difficult decisions was just too easy! Ordering pizza at 4 am? Of course! Skipping class because it was just TOO NICE outside? Obviously. Choosing to buy vodka instead of food because your bank account didn't allow for both? That's simple! Risking your life by climbing on a roof just to watch the sun rise? Why not? Writing a paper you had a month to prepare for in four hours the night before? DONE. And then getting an A on it? YES!

Of course, there were serious things, too. Like debating the merits of Sartre vs. Kierkegaard vs. Heidegger vs. godknowswho... Or comparing literary children of nature with accounts of feral children because you developed extremely bizarre interests... Or tracking dialect changes and vowel shifts because you were suddenly going to be a linguistic anthropologist... You know, things that really prepared your for the real world. This was the essence of college.

In the end, I guess the real beauty was that those years were full of endless possibilities for the future, the present, and hell, even the past. Don't like your major? Change it. Don't like this class? Drop it. Don't like your name? Well, no one knew you in high school anyway. Just kidding. I actually didn't do any of those things. Yet looking back I realize that we were very young and very carefree and simply had faith that everything would work out in the end despite the pointless classes we took and poor decisions we made. In fact, we ASSUMED everything would work out. And as far as my classmates go, I think most of us are doing just fine, though we’ve taken a few detours and hit some bumps in the road. Like the economy, for instance. You know, little things. But in the end, regardless of things we did or didn’t do or said we’d do and couldn’t or didn’t even try to do or never expected to do in the first place or never could have predicted or were completely beyond our control… Well, the kids are all right. Really, we are. Thank you for asking. Now please, give me another beer.

Blogger's Block

2011-09-23T10:07:00.008-04:00

This post is for Angela. She sent me a link to Seth Godin's blog post called Talker's Block. And she said... (and I quote)...

"sometimes you dont write on your blogs for like a hundred years then try to catch up all at once and my eyes get tired because you right epic posts. you should read this and then be inspired to write every single day!! and shorter!!"

My dear, this is for you.

Because it's true. I don't write anything for months and then suddenly here I am talking about weather and jewelry. So epic, right? And probably obnoxious. Sorry. It's because I've made a new year's resolution of sorts. Rather than starting January 1st, though, I'm using the beginning my 26th year of life to actually write more. I'm not just writing on this stupid blog, I promise. I mean, REAL writing. After all, NaNoWriMo is coming up and I told myself I'd get on that boat, dammit, if it's the last thing I do. Of course, I have very low expectations for myself...but expectations nonetheless!

Anyway, taking the advice of Mr. Godin, this is my attempt at simply writing and not worrying about if it's bad, just creating something rather than nothing. And judging by the history of this blog, I'm a big fan of nothing. After all, "zero is perfect and without defects."

So you've just read my short, more than zero, possibly defective, but maybe even better than bad, blog post. Are you happy, Angela?!?

Seasonal Confusion

2011-09-21T16:38:00.012-04:00

It's fall in New York City and we all know what that means... Confusion!!! In a place where everyone has to walk everywhere all the time, you have to be outside a lot and this means... Preparation! And since no one quite knows what the weather is really like until we get outside from our sixth floor apartments or what it could become later because the weather report is a lie, we over-prepare and end up lugging umbrellas and jackets around when we don't need them and freezing or soaking when we don't prepare enough. So we prepare, dammit. But we don't always have the same ideas of what this preparation entails...

You see a ridiculous amount of variation in dress during this in-between seasons time. I have waxed poetic about fall and weather before, but it never ceases to amaze me, fall after beautiful fall, spring after glorious spring... Shorts and sandals next to long coats and sweaters. Sundresses continue to abound while new leather boots are suddenly everywhere. And EVERYONE is wearing a goddamn scarf. Including me. Still, I find myself flabbergasted while trying to get dressed in the morning.

"Wait, I can't just wear a dress and flip flops? Uhh... Maybe things should match, kind of. Shit, I have to wear SOCKS? This is ridiculous! Gah, I'm late now! SOCKS!"

I get flabbergasted at the various details involved and try to find the simplest solution possible. Top, bottoms, shoes. Jackets and scarves and belts can go to hell! I should only be required to wear three pieces of clothing, dammit, it's still summer! Right?!? I end up in a navy blue sweater, houndstooth pants, and brown Oxfords. I catch a glimpse of my rather masculine reflection in the subway windows and realize that my autumn attire makes me look a little less than straight. I decide that maybe I should try harder to still look decent even in this confusing time. Just because I have to wear pants doesn't mean I need to dress like a boy, right? I can still be pretty in pants??

Then I get on the train and see girls who look like models who probably actually are models wearing perfect pants with perfect boots and perfect jackets and perfect scarves and they have actually ACCESSORIZED in addition to wearing more then three items of clothing and then I really feel shitty and inadequate.Then I see them taking off the jacket because it's too hot and I feel a sense of victory.

I get off the train and follow too-high heels up too-high steps and feel happy that I chose to wear manly shoes. I won't fall down, no I will not! And I walk down Broadway in the cool rain and see a middle-aged woman wearing flat black knee-high boots with OPEN TOES and I completely lose faith in humanity and decide to just stop trying. Yet I feel strangely elated. Everyone is apparently just as confused as I am, except that they actually spent money trying to look fashionable and failed miserably, and I look like crap for cheap! Woohoo!

New York, thanks for reminding me that I will never be fashionable and that I will always be confused about my wardrobe. And thanks for reminding me that your finicky weather and endless sidewalks and large supply of beautiful people will never, ever remedy this. But also thanks for also having an endless supply of people who are even worse dressers than I am. In a crowd of eight million, I don't look so bad after all.

Things

2011-09-15T00:01:00.007-04:00

It's 12:01 a.m. and I should be in bed. Not just IN bed, but asleep. Not reading, but sleeping! I could have just curled up with a book (right now it's Run River by Joan Didion), but noooo. I felt the need to express myself.

I accomplished something on my list from the other week. I sorted through my jewelry! I got rid of a ton of stuff and filled an entire shoebox of things that I never wear and will soon send them off to my dear friend. These are not terrible things. They are things I used to love. Things my mother used to love. Thing I never wore. Things I forgot I had. Things I can't believe I ever bought in the first place. Things I got as gifts so I have an excuse for not liking them so I shouldn't feel bad about getting rid of them. Things I don't like. Things I don't need. Things, things, things. Now I've gotten to the point where I've repeated the word "things" to the point that it sounds weird and has lost its meaning. And I'm not just talking about jewelry now, am I?

I mean STUFF. Whew... For the most part, it's just that I don't have time for all of it... I don't have space for these things... these objects... materials.... I don't have physical, mental, or emotional space. There's only so many things one can be attached to, but how to choose? It's hard, so I don't choose. I cling. I have a difficult time letting go. I'm a hoarder! No I'm not, but I probably could be. I watched a show on animal hoarding tonight and, among other things, it made me want a bunch of tiny kittens and birds and puppies. That's NOT the point of the show. It made me think of my deceased pets and I got sad. Moving on...

When I was cleaning up my dresser and getting rid of stuff and forcing myself to throw away bobby pins rather than save them (but you always need them!) because they were mixed in with clothing tags and those little plastic things that clothing tags are attached with and dirt and other random bits of stuff, I thought of my childhood bedroom. It was always a mess, but it was my glorious mess. Much like my room today, except that I share it with a guy and he probably hates his life. Anyway, at one point in my childhood I decorated my window with CANDY WRAPPERS. This is not a joke. Someone gave me a pack of some sort of delicious, fruit-flavored, European hard candies that came in these magnificent little classic looking wrappers that made me feel like I was picnicking in the Italian countryside or sitting in some little Parisian cafe. So I saved the wrappers in a box and stumbled across them a few years later and finally one day, flattened them all out and taped them down the side of my window in "rainbow order" of course: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. And that's where they stayed until I moved out of there at age 17.

I look on my bookshelf and see books that I have owned for years, books I never really had an interest in reading since I got them as gifts or secondhand, and then one day decided to pick up... and I loved them, so now of course I can't let them go. And still, there are books I have owned for years and I still have no interest in reading. It's just that I hope one day I will. And so I think I keep all of these things for hopeful reasons, thinking that one day this piece of clothing will suddenly come back into style or I will shrink down to fit into it again (they've both been known to happen), that this piece of jewelry I never wore will suddenly seem beautiful (it's also happened), and maybe one day I'll actually light that candle or put flowers in that vase or draw in that sketchbook or put that picture in a goddamn frame. More likely I won't. But the hope is there.

And until that hope dies, as it thankfully did for everything that sits in that shoebox this evening, I will be mired in things. In stuff. In materials. In confusion, mostly... But at least I will always have something to read. Or wear. Or give away... Which is probably the best hope for me at this point. Any takers?

Listless

2011-09-06T23:22:00.005-04:00

I am not an organized person. I have a jumble of things in my head that need to get done and sometimes I do them, sometimes I don't, and the tasks just hover there in non-list form waiting desperately to be listified but forever resigned to their drifting, cloudlike existence. O, the agony!

But then she made a list. And so did she. So I thought, "I can do that! I make a list! I will make a list of things I need to accomplish! And then I will accomplish them! Because I made a list!" But I am a procastinator, and so the longer I go without making a list, the longer I go without completing the things on it. Damn.

Anyway, here goes...

1. Write on this blog more. Because I need a creative outlook. And besides, just look at it! I redesigned it and now it's pretty! So I should put words on it! Pretty words!

2. And in order for me to write more and not have my boyfriend tell me to stop getting lost in the blogosphere instead of cleaning and/or doing anything productive... I should clean my apartment very thoroughly. This is very necessary and only sort of got done this weekend... Oops.

3. Part of cleaning my apartment will be to FINALLY organize my clothing and jewelry. This will entail getting rid of a lot of stuff I don't wear and use. And I mean A LOT. This will be a huge endeavor and I'm not excited. But it's time to clean house. This will also entail getting a lot of clothing I've acquired over the years hemmed so that I actually wear them.

4. And in order to wear some of the pants I bought maybe two years ago, I should probably shed some pounds that I picked up because I got ridiculously lazy this summer after going to Ireland and eating nothing but meat and potatoes and then not doing a damn thing about it... Veggies!

5. Speaking of Ireland, I need to upload the something like 1,200 pictures I took while I was there. Too bad my dad has the camera and memory cards and this will not be as easy as I thought and it will also be a huge time suck.

6. And because my summer travels also sucked my savings account pretty dry, I need to get my finances in order. My economic life is in shambles! Sad face.

7. Also because I need to fix up my economic state, I need to finally be a grownup and get a credit card so I can have a credit score. This is now nonexistent. Sad. I am a failure at adulthood.

8. Speaking of getting a credit card, I should buy less stuff! I've actually been very good about this recently. I didn't even buy any shoes this summer! Oh wait, that is a lie, I bought a pair of gold flip flops from Housing Works to wear to a wedding and then realized they are uncomfortable and slippery and that I already had three pairs of gold sandals. Dammit. But they were $10! For charity! From Banana Republic! And in great shape! Still, no more buying crap, only quality things for good prices. Or better yet, just don't buy anything.

9. Speaking of charity, when I was rolling in tax-free, whiskey-induced dough, I started making monthly charitable contributions to a number of organizations, mostly those that help cute kitties and puppies and abused children. I realize now this is stupid and if I'm going to make a donation, I should just pick one charity and actually make a real difference. So I will consolidate these donations into one or two. Like the American Humane Assocation. They encompass EVERYTHING I believe. Down with child abuse! Down with animal abuse! Up with animal therapy! Up with scientific research on the human-animal connection in order to make positive policy change! For puppies! And kids! YES! Also now I'm poor. Sad face again...

10. And since I work for a nonprofit that I really like a lot, I should probably work my fucking ass off to be really awesome and be super duper professional and finally apply to graduate school for a Master's of Public Administration. Shazam!

There. That's my list.

Let's see if anything actually comes of it.

Lilacs

2011-08-23T23:17:00.005-04:00

Three moons have waxed and waned since my last post. And after one more, I'll have celebrated my birthday. This is the first time I'm not terribly excited, but I guess that's a lie because I've been thinking about it for a week and wondering if/how I should celebrate.

There was an earthquake today. As I stood outside my office building in the midday sunshine wondering what would happen in a real emergency, I realized hundreds of thousands of others throughout the country were doing the exact same thing.

I was recently Ireland for two weeks. It was beautiful and wet. Hopefully I'll have pictures soon. I can't even begin to fathom the ancient history on that tiny little island.

I am exhausted but thought I should put some words on a page. Or on a screen. Or in a box. Or on a fox.

I have lilacs on my mind.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

2011-05-22T17:17:00.005-04:00

I am writing, goddammit, it it's the last thing I do. Which it probably won't be, because the Rapture did not occur yesterday. Yippee!! Anyway, I just read through most of my blog posts from the last year. (The last fucking year!) And what have I done for the last four months? NOTHING. I mean... not actually nothing... I went to work... and to some other places... I saw people... sometimes I ate food... I did stuff... But as far as this stupid blog... NOTHING.

And today that is changing. I have been too long in an uncreative rut. I haven't been able to write. I haven't drawn a single doodle in the corner of a page. I've had dreams, yes I have, but no crazy otherworldly post-apocalyptic movie-like stuff that's worth even talking about. Just mundane topics like adopting a kitten... which is not happening in real life (but in dream world it's damn cute). And most frustratingly of all is that I CAN'T EVEN READ. No seriously, I haven't been able to pick up a book in weeks. What does reading have to do with creativity, you ask? A LOT. I have only been able to read nonfiction. UGH. I can only take so much fucking Harper's at a time. I can't even get into "The Crying of Lot 49" because apparently reading comedic memoirs by Tina Fey ruined me. Bitch. (Just kidding, Tina, you're magificent.)

Ok but seriously, I think the only reason I'm writing is because I'm on my fourth glass of wine and it's only 5:00 and I need some sort of creative outlet because my boyfriend is taking an MCAT practice test and I have to be quiet. And this was nice up until this moment, when I realized, "I don't want to watch 'Weeds' anymore and I don't want to clean my room!" Because I am a child like that. I've had a good day though. I did yoga. At 10:30 in the morning! ON A SUNDAY. That is a very serious accomplishment. And I bought bagels so I could make my favorite weekend treat, a toasted everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and tomato slices loaded with salt and pepper. DELICIOUS. Then the boyfriend and I watched one episode of "Mad Men" (depressing!) and then I had a little spa day with a Queen Helene mint julep face mask (retro!) and an olive oil manicure (refreshing!) and an experiment with hideous dark blue nail polish (depressing again!) that I'm too lazy to take off (surprise!) and think I should just pretend I like (dammit!). But then I decided to camp out on the couch and just WATCH TV BECAUSE I CAN so that brought me back to "Weeds" on Netflix and then I realized I had half a bottle of Sonoma wine left over and now HERE I AM.

Note how my punctuation and capitalization just goes buck wild.... None of that quiet contemplative philosophical bullshit to be found here, people! Hell no, let's not talk about books when we can ramble about NOTHING. And about how I have NOTHING to say. Ok that sounds depressing, and it's really not, I'm just, like I said before, in an uncreative rut. And getting words on a page feels good. It feels like breathing deeply into a yoga position, like this morning. It feels like taking a giant bite of a bagel laden with your favorite things in the world. It feels like taking a long, slow sip of wine and feeling it warm you through and through. It feels like looking out your window and seeing nothing but a glowing, opaque, gray sky and thinking, "I'm okay with the clouds, because I have nowhere to be, nothing to do, and I am perfectly content to stay inside and type, type, type away..."

Perhaps I'll resuscitate this stupid blog after all. I mean, hell, it's been four months. Seems like I ought to give it a shot, right? Well, here's the beginning. Cheers.

A Look Back... And Forward

2011-01-29T12:52:00.017-05:00

A year ago, I wrote this post about my plans for the next few years. It's interesting to see how my priorities have changed and how differently things have ended up than I expected. In May, I went to the Virgin Islands with my cousins as planned and had an absolutely fantastic time. In June, I got a new job. In July, I did not go to Chicago, nor did Nick and I go on vacation in August. In fact, because of the new job and my lack of vacation time, the only places I've gone since then are home to Maryland for random weekends and for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and maybe once or twice in the fall to Nick's parents' house just north of the city. But I had a wonderful summer complete with wine tours and weddings, celebrated my birthday for pretty much the entire month of September, had some great times with new and old friends, and watched the leaves turn brown...

In November, I planned a huge event for work that made me crazy but made me drop 5 pounds and gave me a lot of confidence in myself and my career move. As a reward, I had a staycation with my mother in a fancy boutique hotel, and we went to museums and consumed loads of wine and coffee and great food and truly had the best weekend ever. Thanksgiving came and went somewhat quietly and helped me reconnect a bit with old friends.

Then the world somehow segued into winter... Snow fell and I got sick. I went home for a week over Christmas. This trip was wonderful and filled with family and friends. It made me realize how lucky I am to have such amazing people in my life, though by the end of the week I missed Nick desperately. I worked at the bar on New Year's Eve, which was tons of fun and helped my bank account exponentially. I did not achieve my savings goal for 2010, but it was a bit lofty anyway. I got farther than I expected and I am in no way destitute. I am still working hard, though, and buying less.

And now here I am a month into a new year, and I feel that I have been relegated to this wintry city for too long. I've been going through the motions of life, working, reading, drinking, eating, watching my weight go up, getting fed up with work, getting fed up with my career, getting fed up with who I've become and what I want to do and what I've forgotten I want to do.

But there is hope. I started babysitting again, which is good for my mental health and for my wallet. I've been researching graduate school extensively and I think I've finally figured it out. But I can't act on it yet since it's not time for applications and I have to be completely sure in the first place. I've decided to take that NYU class on the psychology of dreams that I've been looking into. And I'm going to a training session next month for the Brooklyn Public Library's "Reading Troubadour" program, in which volunteers go to public health clinics in the evenings to read to children, pass out free books, and talk to parents about the importance of reading. It seems like a good hands-on program that covers most of my interests--helping low-income populations, working with children, and improving literacy. We'll see where it takes me.

At this moment, though, I just need to go somewhere. I'm itching for travel. I'm itching for something different, even for a day or two. Getting out of the city for half a day the other weekend to go snow-tubing helped. But it just made me itch more. So I made a plan to visit my friend in Providence, where he is in a graduate program at Brown. I haven't visited him in the two years he's been there, and now that it's his last semester I'll head up there on one of my only upcoming three-day weekends, Presidents' Day. Realizing how pale I am now and how beautifully bronze I was last summer made me long for sun and sand, so I've made a vow to visit a very dear friend in Florida as soon as humanly possible, possibly March or April.

I recently got a message from another old friend that she'll be in NYC in early April, which makes me very happy. Then Easter will come and I can go home to see family, most notably my cousin who lives in the USVI and with whom I haven't celebrated a holiday in far too long. I'll also go home again in May to watch my sister for a few days while my parents are in France. I'd rather be in France, but they deserve to go. And then the summer will be here, and I can take the subway 20 minutes to the beach any time I want. Ahhh... In the meantime, I can look forward to a trip to Detroit for my cousin's wedding, a little vacation on Long Island for Nick's cousin's wedding, and a week in Ireland for my mother's birthday. Yes, there is hope.

As far as the long term, I'm pretty settled on getting my MSW and going on to be an LCSW. I would really like to do psychotherapy and counseling for children and families. I love working in nonprofits, but I realize I want to actually work with the people who need help, not just work for them. I am beginning to feel that my development work is shallow. It's not, but simply writing about about problems and pandering to rich folks and foundations to get funding just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I need to make a difference directly, and I need training and experience to do that.

One thing that has not changed in the last year is that I am still committed to an international volunteering trip, and I am seriously looking into a program. I may have to do that before I enter graduate school for a much-needed break. Nick and I are going to have to figure out where we want to apply to school, but if that ends up being NYC, I'll need a break in between working and studying. A few months to a year in a foreign country is probably the solution, which will give me the real hands-on experience that I've been craving. I do realize I'm probably just helping people to help myself. Well, aren't we all? I'm not a selfless person. No one is. Except for maybe Jesus or Mother Theresa. But at least in furthering my own experience and education, someone else will benefit, right?

Thinking about those people who really need help, I realize I truly have no reasons to complain. My life is actually pretty great and full of possibility. I'll stop writing now. And just keep living.

About A Boy

2011-01-24T15:54:00.015-05:00

Last weekend, while chattering endlessly in a wine-induced frenzy of women, the subject of blogging came up. Specifically, blogging about one's significant other. The catalyst for this discussion was the discovery of a too-much-information-ridden blog of the soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend of a friend of a friend. Her blog is on the website of a popular women's magazine, meaning it can be accessed by many, many people. She posted many intimate details of her relationship, including how she believed they were not in fact meant to be and that they would most likely be breaking up. And she included numerous pictures of them as a couple. Actual pictures. At least she used a fake name for the boy, but still. Real pictures! But I digress.

It made me realize that I rarely post about my own boyfriend, but when I do, it's not ABOUT our relationship, it's just that he somehow factors into the topic at hand. And though I rarely mention his name, I don't feel the need to use a fake name for him, because I don't post intimate details. His name is Nick. But it doesn't matter that I divulged this information, because I don't post pictures of him and I don't complain about our relationship. I don't predict the end of our relationship for the world to read about and I certainly don't discuss any personal details that he would be uncomfortable with anyone else reading about (right, babe? Whatever, you don't even read my blog!). To me, that is the ultimate insult. It's not only my private life I'm posting about, it's OUR private life. And as we build a life together, the last thing I would dream about doing is blabbering all about it on crazily public space like the Internet. Even though our life is really nice, not everyone needs to know about it.

With that said, I do feel kind of guilty realizing how little I blog about my boyfriend. There have a been a few posts here and there, sure, but nothing that really gushes about what a sweet, darling, adorable boyfriend I have and how much I love and appreciate him. Because I do. I really do! Nick is awesome, and I'm really lucky to have been with him for almost six years. Count 'em. SIX. We totally win. So here I go, writing about my boyfriend...

I'm not going into all the gory details, but I'll just say a few things. I've been with Nick for so long because he's my best friend. We know each other so incredibly well, yet can still remain a mystery to one another. And no matter how much we've changed over time, and no matter how much we expect to change in the future, we know that we're still the same people we fell in love with a long time ago when we were very, very young. And we think those people are pretty great. That's love.

We have gotten each other through some really rough and frightening times...the deaths of family members and friends, an emergency surgery with months of painful recovery, a near-collision that could have been fatal if not for good luck and quick thinking. We've also had some terrible fights that have tested the limits of our relationship. But in the midst of an argument, usually over something stupid that has been blown out of proportions, we can still say, "I love you," knowing that while we may not like each other very much at the moment, in the long run it really doesn't matter. That's love.

While we've made amazing memories together with friends and family all over the place, I'm still most happy when we're home alone, just being lazy and having no intentions of going anywhere or planning anything or calling anyone. Some of my best memories involve simply lounging on the couch, watching a stupid movie or show, giggling incessantly, annoying the hell out of each other, and just acting like little kids. He even downloaded ALL the Harry Potter movies for me, and last night we watched two of them. At his suggestion. That's love.

Nick puts up with my monthly existential crises in which I cry and can't figure out what to do with my life and let my insecurities get the best of me. He's always been particularly good at making me feel better and helping me see reason, and I always tell him he's my "cheerleader." I put up with his incessant studying (good!) and video game playing (bad!), depending on if he's in or out of school. And I tolerate his ridiculous degree of stubbornness and endless depths of knowledge about seemingly every topic under the sun (annoying!). I also put up with his gross habit of farting whenever he feels like it. Whatever. It's just what boys do. He puts up with my childish whims that probably verge on spoiled brattiness, but doesn't let them get too out of hand. When we buy a 2-for-1 toothbrush pack, he automatically takes the pink or purple ones so I can have green or blue. That's right. My boyfriend uses a PINK toothbrush so I don't have to. That's love.

Hmm. Nick's alarm clock is going off right now and I feel awkward writing about him since he's probably about to groggily stumble out of the bedroom, disheveled and scratching himself, and grumbling incoherently with the worst breath EVER. So I'm going to stop writing now and greet him with something along the lines of, "Hi, boyfriend! You smell bad." That's love.

I Had a Dream

2011-01-18T11:09:00.010-05:00

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and I celebrated by looking at intricately painted mandalas from Nepal at the Rubin, and eating delicious pizza and pasta at Donatella. Thanks, Dr. King, for giving me a day off to celebrate the diversity of New York City. And for having a dream... Which brings me to my actual topic. Dreaming. Because I had some very bizarre dreams last night.

Dreaming has always been an important part of my life, because I have crazy vivid dreams that I tend to remember pretty well. I have intense memories of images and thoughts and experiences from dreams from many, many years ago that will stay with me forever. I have written stories based on dreams--maybe because I read so much and have to imagine so much in my head, I am able to do so in my dreams as well. I have had so many post-apocalyptic dreams that I sometimes feel that internally I am living in a bizarre dystopian novel or movie. I happen to love those kinds of books and movies in real life, so it makes sense. Perhaps I put too much weight on the meaning of my dreams at times, but I don't care. I love to sit back and dissect why I dreamed about a particular person or place or experience, and analyze my reactions in the dream and after waking. Sometimes I realize they're just a warped reflection of my day, a movie, a book, a conversation... But sometimes I really do feel as though I gain insight into myself from thinking back on the crazy things that happened as I was sleeping.

One part of last night's dream involved me driving my dad's car, and I was late getting to school, which was some weird boarding school. After school I had a concert to go to with a friend and I was wearing a pretty white tank top. Upon pulling out of the driveway, to my horror I realized I had not put on any deodorant. This was unfortunate. Luckily, another friend lived along the way to school and I stopped by her house. Only her mother and brother were home, because she was on a fabulous island vacation with a bunch of her friends. For some reason, it seemed that since she lived in Chicago, it was really easy to get to this tropical locale from O'Hare, which really didn't make any sense at all. I commented that I wished it was so easy to get there from New York, and her mom suggested I go somewhere else, a tropical island very close to the city. This of course makes no sense, but it did in the dream. Well, lucky for me, I found some deodorant amidst a bunch of other household crap. Only it was spray on and melon-scented, which was disgusting to me, but I used it anyway. Then I decided it wasn't good enough, so I went back home. Some weird shit happened that I don't remember.

Then I was driving again, quite late for school, and it was pitch black outside. This is the scary part, though it doesn't sound scary at all. I was wearing little wire-rimmed glasses that I suddenly realized did not have any lenses in them. Yet I was obsessed with making sure they were properly affixed to my ears, and I wound the wire arms around my ears to secure them. I guess I was on the phone with someone, telling them I should just turn around and have my dad drive me in the morning, since it was much too dangerous and dark to be driving. But I didn't. I kept going. It sounds stupid, but it was INCREDIBLY FRIGHTENING. Imagine driving a vehicle when you are completely enveloped in darkness and you're completely blind. I was simply using my imagination and memory to steer the car, and it was horrible. Then there were these ghostly girls riding bikes ahead of me, and they shed some light on the road because they had these glowing hoodies with weird white sparkly patterns and shapes. But then the shapes became so bright they were the only things I could see, and the road disappeared and I had to concentrate on these glowing shapes to lead the way. I realized I had to make a turn, and somehow asked the girls ahead of me to turn their backs so the glowing shapes would illuminate the road. I could just barely make out the lines, and was able to turn.

I continued driving in pitch blackness, terrified. And then I don't know what happened. I'm going to be brief about this, because it was terrible and unclear and I don't really want to talk about it. I was suddenly out of the car, hiding behind a weird cornered wall next to the road, desperate for bad people not to find me. But they did. And I died. And no one could identify my body. That was really scary, but oddly enough, this part of the dream I don't remember so well and was actually kind of quick and boring and more like a movie than anything. The most terrifying part was driving blind, not hiding from murderers. Or dying. Weird. Maybe because it didn't seem as real as the other part.

I had another dream, too, which involved being at college, which was more like a summer camp full of mean girls who I didn't know, and I got stuck with a bed in the corner of a huge common room next to a terrible girl who I really didn't like, while other people got cool rooms with dressers and posters and closets. I remember thinking, "The first time I went to college I had an apartment by this time." Apparently I was a junior in college, for the second time. I know, it doesn't make any sense. I called my old roommate from college to ask if she wanted to room together, wondering why we hadn't just planned that in the first place, then realized she didn't go to this school. And the dorm looked eerily like the cabins I stayed in when I was a camp counselor in high school. Ugh. Dreams don't make any sense at all.

I am not gaining a whole lot of insight from these dreams, except that a few things seemed to have a "Harry Potter" feel to them--being late for boarding school, for instance--and seeing as I've been reading those books nonstop for nearly a month, that just might have something to do with it. And I was getting all existential on myself the other day about needing girl friends, and maybe that's why the whole mean-girls-roommate-summer-camp-dorm thing came up. Driving? Dying? I really don't know.

I should use this blog to record my dreams more often. Not that they're terribly interesting, but it might help me remember them, seeing as I never seem to write them down anymore. I'm also thinking of taking a short class at NYU about the psychology of dreaming... It's only 8 sessions, but it might be a good thing to do. Anyway, I'll think about it. And maybe dream about it, too...

Book Roots

2010-12-13T21:16:00.010-05:00

I have been flying through books lately, but haven't felt that the quality has been quite what I should be reading. Most have been just fine (Oates, Erdrich), but some have been crap (Gaiman). Luckily, some have been awesome, and luckily I read three of those in the last week. Mostly because they were young adult novels and were very easy to read. But also because they were seriously, no joke, hands down, without a doubt...AWESOME. And had I read them when I was an actual young adult, I would have been even more obsessed than I am now, and that says something...

The books are "The Hunger Games," "Catching Fire," and "Mockingjay," a trilogy about a teenage girl living in a horrid post-apocalyptic society who is forced into fighting for her life in a reality TV show, and the revolution that eventually ensues... Craziness. I decided I wanted to read some young adult fiction since when I saw the most recent "Harry Potter" movie in theaters I vowed to read all the books by the time the last movie comes out in July. I think I can do it. It's written for children, come on. So I thought, while I find a way to get someone to buy me the entire HP collection (it can be used, it's cool, go buy it for me) so I don't have to wait for the next book from the library or wherever, I'll go ahead and read another YA series, because I felt like it might be good for me. And it sure as hell wasn't going to be that vampire bullshit.

Ugh, I saw one of those crappy movies with my little sister and wanted to puke, let's see, pretty much the WHOLE TIME. What a lousy, sniveling, pathetic little heroine. Quit whining over your pale sparkly boyfriend and get down with the wolf boy for Christ's sake. Thank God that "The Hunger Games" has a badass, horribly flawed young heroine who doesn't always make the right choices, kills people, reluctantly leads a revolution, does some terrible damage, and gets pretty damaged herself in the process. That's my kind of heroine! Katniss would totally kick your ass, Bella. I'm really glad I read those books and I am miserable that they're not coming out with a movie until next year. What the hell? That's ridiculous. Hurry up, Hollywood, get on this shit. Make it awesome.

So anyway, I loved these books now, and I would have loved them even more as a kid. I mean, LOVED. Why am I not 12 again? Oh wait, cuz being 12 sucked. But I digress... Anyway, I have always had this crazy fixation with dystopian societies. I blame 5th grade and "The Giver." Damn you, Lois Lowry, you ruined me. I have also always loved war stories and horrible tales of young people dying. I blame 5th grade again, for its lessons on the Civil War and our trip to Gettysburg where they showed us all the tools used in a battlefield amputation. Gross! I also blame my mom for taking me to see "Les Miserables" that same year so I became obsessed with the French Revolution as a 10-year-old. THAT IS NOT NORMAL. I also blame Anne Frank, of whom, for a short time in my young life, I believed myself to be the incarnation. That's weird. Now I am all grown up and just plain morbid.

Anyway, this post really has nothing to do with anything besides the fact that you need to give proper credit to young adult books and the power they have over young and old minds alike. The books I read as a young girl, like those of Scott O'Dell, Jean Craighead George, Katherine Paterson, etc. really shaped me as a reader and made me want to read more challenging literature. I mean, hell, I plowed through Shakespeare and Victor Hugo as a 5th grader. Did I remember much? No. Did I skip over large quantities of text? Yes. Did I expand my vocabulary immensely? Hell yes. Did I understand all those big words? Hell no. But I read them, goddammit. I read UP. And now, as an adult, I can look back and realize that it's okay to "regress" a little bit and read DOWN, to read books aimed at younger readers. They remind you of the person you were, remind you of why you are the person you've become, and they take you back to those initial questions and interests... They remind you of why you became an English major in the first place. Wait, you mean it wasn't to study the gradual flattening of dipthongs in Western Maryland dialect over four generations? It was to READ BOOKS?!? Oh my god, that's crazy. Why did I waste so much time??

So I decided that before I take on my silly Harry Potter challenge, it was time to read something respectable. And by that I mean depressing, dark, historic, and absolutely miserable. So I went to my bookshelf and after poring over a few Vonneguts and Hemingways and "Catch 22," I decided to go to the motherland of sorts, to 19th century British literature, that genre I completely disregarded in college to focus on Old English and Existentialism. So now I'm reading "Wuthering Heights." And miserable it is! Oh those Brontes, they were such lighthearted little ladies. Like me!

I'm baaaaack...

Laziness

2010-11-26T02:28:00.014-05:00

Last night I caught a snippet of Fran Lebowitz being interviewed by Jimmy Fallon. Let me clarify: I do not watch Jimmy Fallon. It was purely by chance late at night at a friend's house. And it could barely be called an interview, but I digress. I vaguely knew of Lebowitz. Just the name, really, and the fact that she was a writer. Nothing more. I summed her up quickly in my terribly judgmental and stereotype-loving mind. New York Jewish Liberal Intellectual Lesbian Writer.

Except for being liberal, we don't really have much in common. I am not a real New Yorker, I have only a vague notion of a religious upbringing, I am of average intelligence, I am straight, and I barely write. Then my mother and I were watching "Pretty Woman" tonight after all the relatives left, then started flipping channels. Again, allow me to clarify: I do not usually watch lame 80's romantic comedies, but sometimes it happens. It's acceptable now and again, I believe. Anyway, Lebowitz was on Charlie Rose, and this time, I actually listened to the interview. Then I Googled her. Then I felt better about not knowing anything about her since she has really only written a few books, which I do believe I'll read. And then I found this quote:

"I've never met anyone who even comes close to me in laziness. I would have made a perfect heiress. I enjoy lounging. And reading. The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. The number of alcoholic writers makes a lot of sense because if you're going to be face to face with yourself, maybe it's better that you don't recognize that person."

It was in this 1994 article in the New York Times. And it made me feel better, because while Fran and I may not have much in common, this quote pretty much summed me up, though I'm no alcoholic. It also mentioned that she's hypoglycemic, hence why she doesn't drink. I have diagnosed myself as such, yet I still drink. Perhaps too much, perhaps not enough. Brilliant. I have found inspiration.

I would have made a lovely heiress, too, Fran. If I had all the time in the world, I would just sip red wine and snuggle in blankets and eat good bread and just read Read READ all day and all night. I would probably write even less in that case, because I would be ashamed of my laziness. Perhaps that's why I don't write at all anymore, except on this sad excuse for a blog. Perhaps it's because I don't feel like I have anything to say. Perhaps it's writer's block. But you have to be a writer first to catch that terrible disease, and I don't think I qualify. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Now here is the part where I will compare Fran and myself. Can I call you Fran, Fran? Will you be the next female writer that I come to idolize for a few weeks or months and then discard? You will? Great, thanks. Anyway, Fran does not like avocados, which she equates to being the mayonnaise of vegetables. I absolutely agree, and that's exactly why I love them so much. She has gone through a decade-plus-long period of writer's block. I have not, but I feel like I have. It's not really the same. She smokes a lot. I try not to smoke, but I love it. Smoking is delicious and disgusting. Disgustingly delicious. Also, she thinks giving books to children is important. Duh. But some people are terribly stupid and don't think that's important. I dislike those people. I like Fran.

Now I'm bored with this post, and no one is going to read it because it's terrible. But if you do read this, ask me about Fran Lebowitz the next time you see me, because if I haven't picked up one of her books yet, then I just lied about having found inspiration. Don't make a liar out of me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Feeling Strangely Sane

2010-10-31T21:31:00.008-04:00

I am writing in a desperate attempt to fit in one more post before October officially ends. Strangely, today I would normally be hungover, makeup smudged, fishnets torn, wings bent, flowers crumpled, wand lost. I would be a sad little fairy trudging home after a night of treating and tricking myself into believing that Halloween could somehow last forever. This year was different. I didn't have a Halloween. I didn't even plan a costume. My favorite holiday of the year, where I get to play dress up as an adult, and I gave it up for my family...and for the country, of course. But really, it was for my mom. As I said, "I did it for the love of mom and country."

For months my mother has been talking about the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" in DC, led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I hadn't been that gung ho about going in the first place, but I agreed to so long ago that it seemed unnecessarily cruel to back out at the last minute...even after my train was three hours delayed and I had to take a miserable bus for five hours to get home, having had very little sleep two nights in a row, dealing with the insanity of every form of public transportation... But I made it. And it was worth it.

It was incredibly refreshing to stand in the middle of the amazing Mall on a beautiful day, surrounded by gorgeous architecture, immersed in comedy and music, and chatting and laughing along with

thousands of other like-minded (and unlike-minded) individuals. I still can't quite believe that yesterday I saw the Roots, John Legend, Cat Stevens (aka Yusef Islam), Ozzy Osbourne, the OJs, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples, and Tony Bennett (singing "America the Beautiful") all in one day, on one stage... I don't have the energy to turn this into a political rant, so I'm not going to. I'm just going to say that it made me proud to be American, proud to be among those with a sense of humor and a liberal attitude, and proud to be able to say, "I was there," whatever that will mean in 10, 20, or 50 years. Or on Nov. 2nd. Or on Nov. 2nd in two years...

What made it even more worthwhile was that at the very end of the rally I ran into a very dear friend of mine, purely by chance. My mom's cousin was passing out buttons, he happened to receive one, and that made him pause long enough to recognize my mom and for me to spot him and for us to hug and yell and for him to introduce me to his adorable new girlfriend. While we didn't get to hang out for nearly long enough, it was amazing to realize that in a crowd of thousands, in a big world filled with crazy people, you can still reconnect with someone you know and love. We both expressed, "Well of course YOU would be here today..." and it made me realize why we were friends in the first place. What an awesome place to reconnect.

Yesterday and today I saw so many great Halloween costumes, and I was definitely jealous... But I think that what I did was far more valuable than dressing up and getting drunk again, like I do every year. Hell, there's always next year. Instead, I helped my little sister throw together a costume from my old dress ups and she became a little gypsy in a skirt I used to wear myself, complete with a peasant shirt and scarves and red lipstick. Sadly, I couldn't stick around long enough to take her trick-or-treating around our little town. My own, grownup life called and I had to follow it back to NYC. I'm going to be sensible and go to bed, so I can get ready for a busy week of work.

Growing up sucks. Having to miss Halloween sucks even more. But what doesn't suck is spending time with the people you love the most, in a crowd of thousands who have ideas and thoughts and outlooks that you agree with, running into an amazing person who you realize you miss and really ought to go visit, and then returning to the lovely little life you've carved out for yourself with someone you really love. I will be a drunken fairy next year, I promise. This year, I'm just me. But I feel so much more connected with people like myself, now that I know that so many of them exist. God bless America.

Ladies I Like

2010-10-23T16:38:00.021-04:00

Every day I say to myself, "I am going to be a good little blogger and write something that isn't nostalgic, nonsensical, pseudo-philosophical drivel and I will not write a goddamn two billion word essay, I will just write a few lines of non-rambling, interesting material and put pretty pictures in it and people will want to read it and then they will think what a good little writer I am." And then I don't write anything. And then when I do, it becomes a nostalgic, nonsensical, pseudo-philosophical diatribe about water or noise or boots. LAME. No one wants to read that crap, but I'll just keep writing it anyway.

So instead, here is a list of a few bloggers I admire. They are all women, and their blogs are pretty ridiculously girly, so if you're a boy and don't like this stuff, go away. I am listing six, because that is my favorite number. Three ladies I know personally and three I do not. But I think they're ALL awesome.

1. The Lake Effect: This lovely lady has been one of my besties since we were adorable, obnoxious, zit-ridden, insecure pre-teens. Now we're grown up and we're not pre-teens anymore, but mostly we're the same. Only that she is a good blogger, and I am not. Also she lives in Chicago, which is totally lame, because I only get to see her occasionally...like last weekend! That was awesome. Hey Rach, you should move back to NYC! I miss you. Anyway, read her blog, because I love her with all my heart and you should, too.

2. A Day in the L ife: Another one of my dearest friends in the whole wide world, this girl is amazing in every way, shape, and form. She actually writes on her blog every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and her posts are actually useful and helpful and things that you want to read. They're short, they have pictures, and they get straight to the point. Whether she's waxing poetic about nail polish or voicing her concern for low-income mothers, she always has something good to say. Also we took shots of Jager last night and then stuffed our faces with chocolate, so if that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will.

3. Sweeter Salt: We went to college together and don't know each other very well, because we really only met after we graduated, but we have a weird boyfriend stalker issue in common so that means she's awesome. I just discovered that she had a blog this morning. Thanks, Facebook! And though she's only been blogging since June, her blog is consistent, interesting, has a purpose, and has great pictures. Also, she is apparently good at creating tasty food and cute outfits, two things women love, so if you're a woman, you should read it. And if you're a man, you should read it anyway because then you'll figure out what women like: Eating. Looking pretty. Done. Ok that sounds shallow, we really like other stuff like books, too, but work with me, people. And yes, that's a picture of a pug dressed as a lobster.

Ok now these ladies I do not know one bit, but I kind of feel like I do. Weird.

1. Hyperbole and a Half: I started reading this a few months ago at Rachel's suggestion, but within a week I had gone through every post EVER and now I've read most of them at least twice. She creates ridiculously amazing cartoons with some low-res Paint-type program

and They. Are. HILARIOUS. I wait with bated breath every week, drooling with anticipation for her next post. She doesn't post as often as I wish she would, seeing as her fan following is ridiculously huge and hungry for more hilarious cartoons, but it's probably because her posts are always really long and detailed and well thought out and FUCKING RIDICULOUS. I can't even explain to you how many times I've doubled over laughing and my boyfriend starts to hate me with a mad fiery passion because he's trying to study. It happens a lot. Way too often, really. I like her because she is a semi-irresponsible young adult (like me!) who has cool pet rats and two dogs (unlike me, sadly) and has serious ADHD (again, unlike me, not so sadly) but lives with her boyfriend in squalor (just like me!!) and so I like her. A lot.

2. Dear Baby: I've been following her for more than a year, which is crazy. This lovely lady has another blog as well, Stay Forever Sunday, which is also great, but I first heard of her through this baby blog, which she started writing when she found out she was pregnant.

Weird, I know. I usually wouldn't be into something like this, seeing as I am in no rush to have children and if I had one it would probably run away, but I creepily love her and read her blog religiously. She is basically the pretty, popular cheerleader who grew up to be really amazing and awesome and has a super hot, tatted up musician hubby and the most adorable baby you've ever seen in your life, and even though you want to hate her because she pretty much seems perfect, you can't because she's just so gosh darn cute. Everything she wears is adorable, everything she does with her family is adorable, I pretty much agree with everything she writes, and I wish that someday I will be a ridiculous MILF like her. I probably will not, because I never have been and never will be this pretty or cool, but I can dream, can't I? She might get your biological clock ticking sometimes and her posts can sometimes tug at your heartstrings a little too much, but mostly she just seems really nice and dear Lord that baby is cute.

3. Apocalypstick:I literally found her the other day (thanks again,

Facebook!) and now I'm obsessed. She is from L.A., a city I have no desire to live in or even visit, but somehow, I am intrigued by her. She's hilarious, opinionated, fashionable, self-deprecating, gorgeous, vulnerable, andseems a little crazy. I like this. We have next to nothing in common, except for a serious case of Quarter Life Existential Crisis (QLEC, it's really awful and someone should find a cure), but that's ok. She makes me laugh. I haven't gone through every post yet, because I just haven't had time, but since I have nothing to do until brunch tomorrow, I will probably just veg out and read through her archives. Everything I've read so far I've loved. LOVED. This morning I was LOLing (not a joke, I really was) at her Fashion and the Shining post. My other serious affliction, Study Buddy Boyfriend (SBB, which requires a cure called "graduation") then reared its ugly head and I had to click away because I was laughing too loudly.

On a side note, here are a few other blogs of people who are awesome, but my following of them doesn't make any sense at all. The list continues...

7. What I Wore: A fashion blog, which is weird because I'm not really into fasion at all. But I've followed her since (almost) the beginning and though I never take her fashion tips because I'm lazy, she is seriously amazing.

8. The Philosophie: A vegan/raw health nut and chef, which I have no interest in, but again, I like this! This blog gives lots of advice I never take but I read it anyway so at least I know what I'm doing wrong. I actually know her, but haven't seen her in years. Our parents were friends way back in the day. Hippies.

9. My Morning Chocolate: Another food blog! And I don't even like to cook. Weird again. But she's a Marylander and a great writer and we used to work together, so that automatically validates my reading of her blog.

10. What I Like: One of the first blogs I ever started following, because she is a New Yorker who is all fashionable and sophisticated in ways I can/will never be. Instead I'll live vicariously through her. But she's a really good blogger and actually posts good material.

Apparently it seems that a lot of the blogs I follow are about fashion and food, two things I generally don't give a crap about, but I guess maybe I do because I like to read about them. Maybe I should start dressing and eating better and actually be a grown up once in a while. Hmm.... Never mind about that. I'll just keep reading these blogs.

So I guess this turned into another rambling, nonsensical, two billion word post. Oops.

The Sounds of Silence

2010-10-05T21:52:00.006-04:00

I haven't posted for a while, and I really ought to try harder. I just feel as though I've had nothing to write about, though I have a million things to say. But these past few weeks I've been embracing being quiet. It started last week when Nick had a big test to study for and rather than escape the apartment like I usually do when a test is on the horizon, I just stayed home and had calm, quiet evenings with no socializing. And it was lovely. I made dinner, cleaned up, read, messed around on the computer, cuddled with the cat, and I did not talk. It was a bit frustrating at times, but overall it was strangely soothing. The quietness was something I haven't experienced in a while, something I rarely experience. I feel as though every evening, every weekend, every moment of my life is taken up by social noise, and sometimes it just has to stop.

After such a quiet week, the weekend threw me for a loop. I feel as though I talked nonstop Friday night, with some singing and drinking in between, of course... I was exhausted but I probably could have stayed up all night, blathering on and on. But on Saturday morning, I awoke to nothing but the sounds of birds and an occasional car, and the sights of sunlight and trees through the windows of my friend's home just north of the city. While I waited for everyone to wake up, I was amazed by the peacefulness. I just sat on the couch and stared out the window and drank in the silence, wondering how in the hell I would ever force myself to go back to Brooklyn. But I did. Rather than sleep on the bus, though, I stared silently out the window. I barely thought about anything, I just reveled in the sights of trees and pretty houses and the endless river and highway, and I ignored all the sounds. Once I was back in the city I was horrified by the noises and sights and people and the terrible things they were saying. Talk talk talk, chat chat chat, yell yell yell... Curse curse, blah blah, crowds crowds crowds! Shh...

While I would have gladly spent my Saturday night curled up in bed reading, I forced myself to go back out for birthday parties because I'm a good friend like that, dammit. Once again I felt as though I had entered a portal into another world, making my way on the subway to the East Village and then Union Square for one party after another, filled with laughter and talking and drinking and dancing and loud, loud, loud music. I didn't quite know what to make of it. The clatter of high heels on the pavement, the sloppy drawls of drunk college kids, the unwelcome cat calls emanating from every corner... No noise escaped my ears, it was so overpowering. I could hear people taking drags of their cigarettes. I couldn't hear myself think. I wasn't thinking, I was just acting, just moving, just going with the flow of a noisy city that didn't give me a choice, just carried me along in its tornado of sound.

Sometimes the noise of this city is overwhelming. Perhaps it's because no matter where you go, no matter how many noises you hear, now matter how many people who are talking and yelling and laughing and crying in your ear on every street and every subway car, everyone is still alone, confined in their own little worlds. We are interacting with so many different people at so many different times, and yet, we interact with no one. It's a very isolating feeling, to hear so much and see so much and still know that you're just one tiny speck among millions, all of us endlessly prattling away about next to nothing.

I'm escaping the city this weekend. There will be no cars honking, no subway announcements, no sirens, no chatter of people on the street who you don't know and you will only pass by once in your life. And if you pass them by twice you'll never know it.While there will be family and friends talking on and on, when I wake up in the morning I can have my breakfast and sit on the porch and revel in the quiet that I've been craving. And when I'm hiking, I will hear only the leaves under my feet and the wind in the trees.

I feel like I need to counter this post someday with something that praises the noise and insanity of city life. I love it, I really do. But sometimes I just need to escape into the silence. Surely you understand.

Autumn Awakening

2010-09-16T10:48:00.015-04:00

If 30 days has September, then today would be the official beginning of "late September." The first day of fall is exactly one week from today, and I will turn 25 on the last day of summer... Time is swiftly passing and the weather is steadily growing cooler. One tree on my street has decided to get a head start on the others and its leaves are already beginning to take on a rich red hue. I don't understand the rush, but maybe that particular tree is just an overachiever.

Though I'm hesitant to see summer end, there is an air of relief about fall that is akin to winter changing into spring... No more sweaty days where you long to to peel off so many layers of clothing that you risk impropriety. School kids are off the streets and back in classrooms, hopefully with commutes much earlier than yours. Friends who have been away traveling magically return with stories and photos. Wedding season thankfully begins to fade away, so that Facebook is no longer inundated with the obnoxiously requisite "jumping bridal party" or "bridesmaids lift groom horizontally" photo opps.

And best of all, shallow though it may be, fall means the beginning of a whole new wardrobe!! Before the misery of winter sets in and everyone tramps through the slush-laden streets in the obligatory black wool coat and black leather boots, you are free to experiment with the palette of autumn fabrics and colors... Houndstooth, herringbone, corduroy, tweed, and of course, leather... Mustard yellow, olive green, burnt orange, burgundy, and every shade of beautiful brown imaginable.

I can wear all the cardigans and sweaters I want without seeming like a psycho for owning a million in every shade. Jacket or blazers are a must, preferably in any of the aforementioned fabrics.... Scarves are finally an accessory once again for everyone, in every imaginable color, and not just for hipsters who risk passing out in mid-July by wearing a keffiyeh. And for your legs, the denim gets darker and gets tucked into possibly the best wardrobe item about cold weather... BOOTS!! Ahh, I'm dreaming about the possibilities right now... Boots with jeans, boots with dresses or skirts and tights, brown boots, black boots, tan boots... One boot, two boot, red boot, blue boot... Boots, boots, BOOTS! I wore my first boots/jeans/blazer/scarf outfit out last weekend and man, it felt good...

Since the weather started changing, I've seen people wearing everything from full winter coats to cutoffs and sandals...on the same block and on the same subway car. Apparently New Yorkers can't always agree what the weather calls for, especially in these times of transition. They'll figure it out. All I know is that if my birthday reflects anything about me, it's that I was born at the perfect time to revel in the weather of late summer and early fall. I love the lingering green of the trees and the crisp hint of coolness in the air. I love that when the leaves finally turn completely, they glow red and gold against a perfectly blue autumn sky. I love how my hair is suddenly frizz-less and plaid is acceptable in any form and it's okay to wrap yourself in scarves and how red wine suddenly tastes better when you've been the slightest bit chilled.

So goodbye, Summer. I'll miss you. You gave me a great tan this year. But you make me sweat. And so autumn, I love you. I missed you. You and I have always been great friends, and it's good to have you back...

Remembrance

2010-09-11T10:38:00.016-04:00

Everyone remembers where they were on this day 9 years ago. As my mother so aptly put it, "This is your Kennedy." She recounted to me her own story of that terrifying day when she learned the President had been shot when she was home sick from school. She said I would never forget, because it is one of those moments, one of those days, that will be forever trapped in your memory. A small part of you will always be that self you were when it happened.

I was 11 days away from turning 16, having just started my junior year of high school. As I gear up for my 25th birthday, I realize how this was such a milestone at the time. I remember how excited I was at the prospect of driving, how I was going to try for an editor position on the high school paper, and how my parents were soon going to depart for Kazakhstan to pick up the black-haired toddler who would become my sister. My school was in a small rural town, so set apart from the rest of the world, and we lived our lives in truly blissful ignorance of the outside world. At 16, not much else mattered. I don't remember what my first period class was, I just remember that when I stopped at my locker to pick up my books for second period, there was a strange anxiety in the air. Kids still laughed and flirted and yelled and chatted--I was one of those kids--but so many others hurried to class anxiously that it was plain that there was something amiss.

I first heard from a girl named Laura--our last names meant that our alphabetized lockers were right next door. She stooped to get her books with a harried expression, and when I asked what was going on, she looked up at me with a twinge of annoyance for not knowing what had happened, but also with great fear. I will never forget her eyes. I don't recall her exact words, but it was someting along the lines of, "Didn't you hear? Someone blew up a building in New York. It's all over the news."

In my Photography class, the teacher had already turned on the TV, and all I could see were soaring buildings surrounded by billowing smoke. I don't think the second plane had hit yet. Perhaps it had, but for me, the events of the day become more and more unclear, just fleeting images and sounds accompanied by a sinking feeling of dread and above all, confusion. All we knew was that buildings were burning in New York and no one knew why. Teachers herded stray students into their classrooms--the school was on lockdown. The principal made a tearful announcement telling us a terrible thing had happened and that we could keep our TVs on and to stay in our classrooms. When we learned about the attack on the Pentagon, just an hour south of our little town, we were truly terrified. But there are a few moments that stand out clearly...

CNN or some other news network reported that the attacks were the work of terrorists--Muslim terrorists. Most of us knew of only one Muslim student in our school. A boy at my work table, with anger and ignorance in his voice, said that this student was "going down." I immediately responded with harsh scolding, defending the poor teenager who had nothing to do with the tragic events of the day and who I realized with regret was soon going to be a target of misplaced hatred. Our school was at least 90% white, our town was small and conservative, and anyone who was different stuck out like a sore thumb--we didn't need a terrorist attack to single out this student even more. The boy who had made the remark immediately recanted, saying he was just kidding, but the damage was done. I look back on this now and realize that this gut reaction of a scared 16-year-old boy, and my strong defense of the only Muslim person I knew, a person I was not even friends with, was a premonition of things to come. This was my first inclination that while our country was united in grief, it would soon become divided along lines of race and religion.

I remember finding my best friend at the time and escaping with her to the bathroom, where we could find a little peace from the crush of emotional reactions occurring in the hallway. We had few direct connections to New York--she had a friend from summer camp who lived in Manhattan, I had a cousin who was a senior at NYU. Neither of us had any idea of the layout of the city, if there would be any chance that either of them would have been caught in the attacks. Luckily, Stuy High and NYU are not in the Financial District. But at the time, we just knew that the girls' bathroom provided a place to slump against the wall with a few other girls, I don't remember if we knew them well or not, and just cry. I did not like crying in front of others, and I felt a twinge of resentment for the girls who wandered the halls rubbing at their eyes and hugging their friends as if they personally knew people in the towers. I thought it seemed like they were doing it for attention. So like all high school girls in all high school movies, the bathroom provided solace, a place for emotions to come gushing out, until a teacher came and quietly shooed us out with pity in her eyes.

Later that day in Journalism class, my teacher seized the opportunity for us to really learn something about reporting, and we devoted an entire special issue of the paper to the attacks. This was a big deal at the time, and a therapeutic way for all of us to deal with the events in a strangely professional and productive way. I was given the assignment of writing the front page article, so I called up my teacher's cousin or brother or friend, I don't recall which, who lived in New York, and did my first real interview, getting all the gritty details I could about what it was like to be in a city under siege. I later realized that this assignment was a test, as I was eventually given the position of News Editor (which was to directly lead to Editor in Chief). With that, my 16-year-old ambition to be a high school newspaper editor was fulfilled, the same as it would have without the attacks. And thus life went on.

I don't remember the rest of the day. It was a Tuesday, so I was probably going to a dance class of some sort after school. Maybe I just went straight home with my mother, I don't know. But in the months and years following the attacks, I could feel the world changing, and I changed with it. This was probably my first real awakening to how the United States was viewed by the rest of the world. They didn't all love us or want to be like us or want to live within our borders--they wanted to kill us. The patriotic rampage began. People plastered their cars with ribbons and flags, they started hating the French, your love of God and country was questioned if you questioned President Bush (which I did, all the time), I attended a peace rally in Washington, D.C., and my graduating class joined the Army in droves and were swiftly deployed to Iraq. Then I went off to college in New York City...and I'm still here.

That day is still so clear for so many people--their grief and fear is real, and sadly, this makes Islamophobia strong. The mosque near Ground Zero has started a firestorm of both criticism and support. A Muslim taxi driver was recently stabbed because of his religion by a drunken 21-year-old white kid. Glenn Beck held a rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech," making a mockery of the civil rights movement and progress in general. A redneck Florida pastor threatened to burn the Quran, and actually received attention from President Obama and General Petraeus--now he says he won't do it. Speaking of the President, far too many stupid people believe that he's Muslim, largely because they want a reason to hate him.

Do you remember how hate and fear caused these attacks in the first place? Please, America, don't give anyone, anywhere, any more reasons to hate us. I don't want another day like this to stick in my memory forever, forcing me to forever be 16. This is a day I will never forget--no one will, though we might want to. We owe it to all those who perished and all those who lost loved ones to always remember. But I don't want to remember another day like this. Please let it remain the only one.

My Music

2010-08-22T20:02:00.012-04:00

On Friday night, I went to Jones Beach to see Crosby, Stills & Nash with my dear friend Janice. We were by far some of the youngest people who were there by their own accord -- as opposed to the teenagers and children who were their with their parents, some of whom looked rather bored and engrossed in their text messages. While I've listened to a good bit of CSN(Y) in my life, I'm no die hard fan; however, I was truly humbled to see these great musicians and to hear them harmonizing so beautifully after so many years.

They played a good many covers that night, like "Ruby Tuesday" and "Norwegian Wood." The one that brought tears to my eyes, unsurprisingly, was "Girl From the North Country," which was part of a set of "songs we wish we'd written." Maybe it's because I truly am a huge Bob Dylan fan, or maybe just because the harmonies were so amazing and the melody so beautiful to begin with, that I got a chill through my spine and tears in my eyes and wished it would never end.

These songs made me think long and hard about my taste in music. My top favorite artists include Bob Dylan, The Band, Bob Marley, Joan Baez, Van Morrisson... I also love The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Fairport Convention, The Doors... How many of these artists have died? How many are well past the age of retirement now? Though many still perform today, the music that I hold near and dear to my heart is from decades before I was born. Is it really "my music"? Then again, what does "my music" really mean?

Sure, there are more modern bands that I've loved since childhood like Nirvana, Sublime, and Pearl Jam, but even they were around when I was in elementary school. Hell, Kurt Cobain died when I was in fourth grade, and Bradley Nowell when I was in sixth grade... Yet I loved them. Then I grew up and moved onto bands like Phish and Yonder Mountain String Band, while continuing to discover even more Grateful Dead than I'd ever known existed. I was introduced to The Shins and Sufjan Stevens and The Postal Service by a good friend, which likely paved the way for me to discover some modern music all by myself. I now count Beirut and Arcade Fire and Dr. Dog and Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver among my favorites.

But the music that I still turn to when all else fails is those first few mentioned before, namely Dylan and Baez and The Band. Of course, I have only my parents to thank (or blame) for this, depending on how you look at it. In some ways, I feel like my adoration of the music of the 60s and 70s has hindered my discovery of new bands. When there is such a huge amount of amazing music that was created 20 years before I was born, there's a lot of time to make up. And since I didn't really even start really getting into music that wasn't on the radio until I was about 15, that's a full 35 years of incredible songwriting to cover! Only when the prospect of going to concerts came up did I realize I needed to know new music and I needed to know it now. Thank god for friends who told me, "Buy this ticket, go to this show" or I would never have seen bands like Moe or Assembly of Dust.

I guess that while the music I love the most is that of my parents' generation, it is still "my music." It's what I love, what I find solace in, what gets me pumped up and happy, or what calms me down and brings me back to earth. And while I do think I'm a bit lazy about finding modern musicians, that's ok. There are so many beautiful singers and songwriters that I will be fortunate to even discover a few of them. But I really ought to make an effort to see more of them in concert... Then again, I should also be fortunate that great bands like CSN are still alive and kickin' -- and playing truly amazing music. And I will most definitely go to see them perform while I still have the chance.

Adulthood

2010-08-15T19:27:00.004-04:00

Our futon broke last weekend. Rather, I broke our futon... I was sitting on it as I Facebook stalked my friends from childhood with my mom (no joke), and suddenly it just came crashing down. So we put the mattress on the floor in front of the broken frame, moved the coffee table over, and have proceeded to live for the next week like this is a perfectly normal and acceptable way to hang out in your living room. It's not, of course. Yet I don't really mind. It's nice to just kind of flop down on the ground, read, watch TV and movies, waste time on the Internet, and occasionally sit up to eat off the coffee table. It's like camping in my own home.

I really ought to be more grown up than this by now. I mean, on the outside, I seem like a perfectly responsible adult. I'm nearly 25, I have a boyfriend of 5 years, I graduated on time from a good college, I have had two full time jobs in the 3 years since school, I have held a second part time job for a year and a half, and I actually have a savings account! I have never worried about not being able to pay my rent or feed myself... I can even feed my cat! All of these mean that I am a responsible adult! Right...??

Then I look around my apartment from my little nest on the ground and I see bizarre things. A futon mattress on the floor is the first glaring clue that I am not a real grownup. And why is there an empty lemonade bottle sitting inside the plastic pitcher we use to water our plants? Judging by the multitude of dead and dying plants on our windowsills, perhaps it's because that pitcher doesn't get much use. There is an air conditioning unit sitting on the floor and a fan is sitting on top of that. Nick's boxers are for some reason crumpled on the floor by the piano. On a chair in the corner there is a pile of unread magazines about which I keep saying to myself, "Someday I'll read these...Someday..." Our ironing board is never used for what its name specifies, but rather as another surface where we can pile all our crap. Speaking of crap, my bedroom looks like a bomb went off around my closet and dressers. Yes, I have multiple dressers. Three to be exact. And yet my clean and dirty clothes, many of them folded carefully by the nice ladies at Big Apple Laundry, are strewn across multiple dressers and the floor, as well as on a kitchen chair which has been kidnapped by my room and held for ransom. We aren't just messy or disorganized. We're hopeless. Well, it's mostly just me. I am the guilty party most of the time when it comes to not putting things away or doing stupid things with food and clothing that don't make any sense. Nick's pretty good about being domestic. I'm more than hopeless. I'm a lost cause.

I looked at Facebook today and it seems that everyone is getting married. And I mean EVERYONE. Not my close friends, thank god, but about half of my high school class. Ugh. And they have children. LOTS of them. I can barely even keep houseplants alive, and I worry every day that my cat doesn't get enough attention. I can't even fathom what it would be like to be responsible for another human life. I'm barely responsible for my own life! In the last two nights I went to three different parties. Yesterday I didn't get off the mattress (it's not a couch anymore, it's a mattress) all day. I spent my whole day watching YouTube videos of kittens and puppies, reading about serial killers on Wikipedia, watching "Grandma's Boy," eating bacon sandwiches, and snuggling with the cat. Today, after waking up at noon, we spent most of the day waiting for some legendary pizza at Di Fara. That's what you do when you don't have kids. Serial killers, kittens, bacon, and pizza. All this and more in between drinking Bloody Marys and lots and lots of beer!

Good thing Rachel turned me on to Hyperbole and a Half. This little blogger makes me feel better about myself, because apparently we're just about the same age and she lives in squalor as well. Only she has pet rats, so I'm jealous. I held a ferret the other day and now all I want to do is go adopt some rodents. Anyway, this girl is hilarious, and while she is a famous blogger and I am not, she makes me feel like I'm not a total failure. Does it matter so much that my houseplants die? That my apartment is a mess and frankly, I don't care?!? Since I'm not married and living in suburbia with a bunch of kids, DOES IT MATTER?!?! Hell no. Posts like This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult and Am Adult help me come to the conclusion that the longer I can perpetuate this absence of real responsibility, the better. I have my life together for the most part, so who cares if there is a random teddy bear sitting in the middle of my living room floor covered in cat hair? At least I'm not on crack. At least I have a job. At least I have an education. At least I'm not fat. HAH. I win.

New York City enables the Peter Pan Syndrome to take hold and never let go. Here, it is perfectly acceptable, perfectly normal, to simply never grow up. To live life as if you will always be young and the future is only a dreamy destination to be arrived at someday, but that day is far far away. And the real world is only as real as you allow it to become during the work week, because when the weekend arrives, you're free. Free to drink and sing and slack off and stuff your face full of terrible foods, and wear what you want, or not wear anything at all. Free to not budget or plan ahead or worry about what your grandchildren will think, but just live in the moment and always, always go with the flow... And even during the week, there's always happy hour.

So does it matter that for the duration of writing this post I've simply been procrastinating the cleaning of my apartment, as I have planned to do all day and then promised my boyfriend I would do? Does it?? No. He knows and I know that I'll get to it eventually, when the motivation strikes me. Because right now, I'm young enough and free enough that I can do that. I can say, "I'll do it when I feel like it." And the world will not come crashing down. Everything will be fine. Because I am a responsible adult. Responsible for me, and only me.

Moon Shadow

2010-08-04T23:38:00.014-04:00

My cat is sitting next to me, snuggling with the remote control and purring away. Just a moment ago I leaned over to pet her and she swatted a claw-less paw at me. I said, "Hey, stop that!" She froze, then saw my still extended hand still hovering over her head and rubbed her little cheek against it as if to say, "I was only kidding. Please pet me."

The purring is what gets me. It's taken little miss Moon Shadow Stugalas a long time for her little kitty motor to start running at what I would consider a normal speed. After I found her on the street and brought her home with me nearly two years ago, she rarely purred. I've heard that purring it something only domesticated (as opposed to feral) cats do because it elicits the right response from their owners. Basically, it's their adorable and soothing way of manipulating us into petting them. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but if it is, my little Shadow eventually learned this tactic and started using it to her advantage. Since she rarely purred before, I'm mighty impressed with her.

Besides purring, she used to rarely let us hold her. While she was obsessed with following us around the apartment (hence the name Shadow...the Moon was added later) because she didn't want to ever be alone, she was not the most cuddly cat. In fact, she was not cuddly at all. About 10 seconds after we'd pick her up, she'd be struggling to get down. We finally started dealing with this in a way she could adjust to. Rather than force her to stay in our arms (tough love), we would set her down gently and give her a little stroke once she reached the ground. Eventually she was letting us hold her for longer and longer periods of time. It still kind of amazes me when I pick her up and she settles against my chest or shoulder contentedly purring away, and doesn't make any move to get down. Eventually I'm actually the one to willingly put her down. That's crazy.

I found the little devil on an October morning in 2008 when I went to move my car. She came scampering up behind me on the sidewalk, mewing adorably, and what was I supposed to do? She rubbed against my legs and followed me for about 20 feet. It was unbearable. I called my boyfriend and explained the situation.

"Uhh, hi sweetie. I found this really cute little kitten on the street and she's really sweet and skinny and she's following me and I'm going to bring her home with me and--"

"Put it back."

Needless to say, I showed up at the apartment 5 minutes later with the cat in my arms. I blended some lunchmeat with some cereal to make a wet food of sorts (which she ate ravenously), put some potting soil in a wash basin for a litter box, and ignored Nick's glares as I promised to take her to the shelter that night. Instead I went to Petsmart and bought toys after work, as well as flea shampoo. Then I went to Duane Reade and got litter and food. I came home to a pile of puke on the carpet and a freshly used litter box. I scrubbed her down in the tub as she stood there still and terrified, looking like a pathetic, emaciated otter. I picked the encrusted flea dirt from her tummy and rubbed her paws until they were finally white instead of beige and could feel every delicate bone in her tiny little body. I did the same thing the next two nights, and she only ever made one pathetic attempt to get out of the tub.

Two weeks later we decided to keep her officially. In that time we pronounced her the most docile and loyal creature we'd ever met. We took her to the shelter and had to leave her for three days so we could get free shots, a free vet visit, a microchip, and a minimal adoption fee. It was horrible. I literally had to fight to get her back since they deemed her "unadoptable" because she had shown "signs of aggression." I was devastated, but I cried and hung around long enough that they realized I was serious, then agreed to reevaluate her in the morning and go through with the adoption. I took her home the next night. I took her to the vet, who disspelled my belief that she was only about 6 months old. She was actually a year and a half, but was stunted in her growth. I was happy to have a tiny kitty and proceeded to furnish our home with all the silly crap that you buy when you get a new pet. It was like she was finally ome for good, though she'd been with us for about three weeks. And then her true colors came out and her real identity was born.

First, her name changed. She was soon renamed Moon Shadow due to my parents' belief that Shadow was simply not creative enough for a black cat. And because she had gotten her name due to her penchant for following us (underfoot always, meaning we tripped on her and stepped on her many times), it only seemed right to take my mother's suggestion of naming her for the Cat Steven's song... "I'm being followed by a moon shadow... Moon shadow, moon shadow." Thanks, Mom. Now I look like a ridiculous hippie every time I tell people my cat's name.

After weeks of thinking she was so incredibly docile, she suddenly became the rambunctious and playful, albeit somewhat frustrating, girl we came to love. Running through the apartment at 4 in the morning, attacking us as we walked by her, biting with no warning, staring at us creepily, rolling around on the rug, scratching the rug, learning to ignore us when we yelled at her for scratching the rug, then finally, scratching the rug just to spite us when we weren't paying attention to her. She used to literally scratch it and stare at us as we clapped our hands and yelled, knowing we had no other defense. I never did break out the spray bottle...I guess I just spoiled her. My little baby could be a tyrant at times, running along the back of the couch and swatting our hair, biting our ears, jumping on our arms with teeth bared. She never really wanted to hurt us, we realized, she was just trying to play. And she ALWAYS wanted to play. She just didn't quite know her limits.

Shadow has grown up a lot in two years. She is now much calmer, much more willing to just sit next to you and enjoy being stroked. We can hold her, listen to her purr, laugh at her antics when we break out the feather toy, smile when she gazes longingly at the mourning doves on the fire escape, chase her around the apartment when she gets into a hyper mood, and not get freaked out when she stares at us with her huge green eyes from far away, because we know she'll lose interest soon enough and go sleep on "her" chair. It was strange to realize one day thatshe had changed so much -- although she had been a fairly normal cat before, just a little hyper, she had truly become domesticated. It made me realize just how wild she had been from living the first year and a half of her life on the streets. I'm happy to say that will never happen again.

Over the course of writing this post, she has run around for a moment, eaten some food (in the kitchen), drank some water (in the living room), scratched the rug, rolled aroundon the floor, and now she is back next to me, stretched out and purring while her little tail twitches. And she looks so content. Someday she'll have little brother and sister kitties (and doggies!) to entertain her. But for now, she is an only child, a tiny little bundle of black fur and white paws that I am so happy to have. I think she's pretty happy to be here, too. I think she knows followed the right person down the street on that day in October...

Resurrection!

2010-07-18T11:55:00.007-04:00

I am a terrible blogger. It's been almost a month since I posted last, and I was asked recently by a friend, "Did your blog die?" No, it didn't die. It was just taking a nap while I... (get ready for a quick recap of the last month of my life):

1. Lounged on the beach and watched the Mermaid Parade with an old friend, my cousin, and her friends, and had a lovely little picnic.

2. Went to some wineries on the North Fork and lounged on the beach some more amidst the foggiest fog I have ever seen.

3. Started my new job and quickly became overwhelmed.

4. Lounged in a pool for a weekend drinking beer out of cans and watching beautiful fireworks from the roof deck of a mansion.

5. Worked some more, acquired more and more responsibilities.

6. Rocked out to some 90s cover bands and once again discovered how much I love my neighborhood.

7. Lounged around the house and did nothing while I was supposed to be cleaning.

8. Worked some more.

9. Got sick with a stupid sore throat and fever, in the SUMMER for god's sake.

10. Had my dad visit for THREE WHOLE DAYS while he was up in Brooklyn for an auction!! Amidst my illness, we did quite a bit of catching up... We ate some Filipino food and I introduced him to goat curry, he came to the bar to listen to jazz -- he was a big hit with all the guys and this resulted in him having a bit too much Jack Daniels, and then we took him and his country-folk employees out to a fancy Brooklyn dinner, where they were introduced to Pork Slap Ale. Awesome times with my dear old dad...

11. Went to hear the New York Philharmonic in Prospect Park. After getting terribly lost and nearly breaking up a few times, the Boyfriend and I eventually settled onto our blanket and drank wine, ate cherries and blueberries, and realized we actually kind of like each other a lot.

12. Lounged around the house and watched a lot of terrible TV.....JUST BECAUSE I CAN since I am a young adult with few responsibilities. HA!

13. Played bocce, drank delicious gin drinks, stuffed my face with meat at Yakitori Taisho, and was introduced to the new beaux of a friend, who I thought was very nice.

14. Woke up this morning....

So here I am. What am I doing? LOUNGING. I just read a lot of Passive Aggressive Notes and did some laughing on the inside. In my defense, I was somewhat productive, too. I just cleaned out my freezer. Why? Because the other day I filled a tall glass of water with about 6 ice cubes, getting ready for a nice cold glass on a hot day when, to my horror, I realized that my ice cubes SMELLED BAD. How the hell do ice cubes smell? Well, when your freezer is littered with the crap my freezer is littered with, it's easy. Here is what I found in my freezer:

1. Broken glass from a beer bottle... Explanation below..

2. Beer sludge all over the bottom and sides, from when I thought it would be a good idea to chill beer in the freezer... This was last summer. Apparently beer doesn't have enough alcohol to keep it from freezing, so it froze and the glass broke and we didn't really clean it up too well.

3. Rotten ginger. Ew.

4. Batteries. Why do we have 4 batteries in a baggie in the freezer? I don't know. We have about 20 of them in a box in my desk, probably melting, but whatevs.

5. A massive sheet of grayish brownish ice covering the whole bottom of the freezer. EW.

6. Smushed peas.

7. Southern Comfort left over from Chelsea's visit... in March.

8. Whisky, but in a vodka bottle -- time in freezer: 2 years.

9. Half a million of these little ice packs from when Nick had knee surgery (2 years ago) and all his medicine came in environmentally unfriendly styrofoam coolers with thousands of ice packs. For some reason we still have most of them.

10. An unopened bag of edamame. Yay!

11. How could I forget... 3 glasses full of BACON GREASE that Nick has been saving for months and months since he had an epiphany that the only respectable fat to cook stuff in was that of a pig's belly. I identified these as the probable source of the ice cube stench, allowed the fat to melt, and flushed it all down the toilet. Vengeance is mine!

I now have all 4 of my nice, clean ice trays filled with fresh water so that the next time I want to have ice water I don't have to hold my nose every time I want to feel refreshed. I feel like such a grownup right now. Since I cleaned my freezer, I don't have to clean my room, right?

Someday I will clean the fridge out, too, and I will tell you what I find. That is another post for another day...

New Slang

2010-06-20T11:44:00.005-04:00

I haven't exactly been keeping up with this thing, have I? Sorry to my millions (ahem, four) followers. There just seem to be too many other important things in real life to do that I just forget to sit down and wax philosophical about my observations and experiences and all that crap. Is it really that interesting anyway? Probably not.

I just finished writing thank you notes to the three former employers of mine who acted as references for my new job. If they were women I'd send them flowers, but what do you send a guy? An expensive and overpriced gift basket? Sorry, I don't have the cash flow to send three $80 baskets full of crackers and cheese and olive tapinade. So a note will have to suffice. I've already thanked two of them in person anyway. I really do appreciate their help, though. Starting this new job should be a breath of fresh air into my life, which from 9 to 5 on weekdays was beginning to feel stale and stagnant. Well, not quite beginning...it had been that way for a while. The only things that keep me sane are the lovely ladies who I shared my time there with, and they're what I'll miss most about my old place of employment. But I have to grow up and take on new challenges, figure out what the hell I'm actually meant to be on this Earth for -- and I knew I wouldn't find that where I was, no matter how many lovely conversations and shopping trips we have day to day.

Speaking of coworkers, one of mine got MARRIED recently (and she will soon be reading this post when she gets back from her fabulous HONEYMOON!)!!!!! Six other current and former coworkers attended, dragging along two boyfriends (one of them mine) and a husband. We had an AMAZING time at the beautiful wedding, and it was a really nice way to wrap up my time at The Organzation That Shall Not Be Named. Angela looked GORGEOUS in her gown and as far as I could tell, the day went smoothly and everyone was happy. At least that's what I thought, since all I could see when I looked at Angela were her teeth because she was smiling so much. Congratulations, little bride. You got wifed!

I've also been bopping around the city recently doing all those fun things you do when the weather is warm and everyone is in a good mood. We had a book club meeting in Washington Square Park, complete with gourmet snacks and way too much wine, and recruited two new members to the club... The book club has been good for me since it's made me stop being such a literary snob and just pick up something light and entertaining once in a while. Or to pick up an international bestseller that I'd previously snubbed and realize that it's a bestseller for a reason -- because it's awesome -- and then continue to read the next two books in the series. Sometimes it's nice to just kick back and be a normal girl, rather than reading all these harsh and depressing novels all the time... Then again, in between the book club books, I find myself gravitating toward stories about Prague Spring or Agfhan immigrants, so I don't think I'll ever change.

Let's see, what else have I done... I went to the Native American Heritage Festival in Brooklyn with this lovely lady and her boyfriend, where I watched some stunning Polynesian and Aztec dancers and bought some lavender body spray, a beautiful white linen dress, and brass earrings based on a design by the Moche tribe of Peru. Yesterday I went to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island and met up with an old coworker as well as my cousin and her friends. When I first went to the parade two years ago I vowed to march in it, and then last year I completely forgot about it... Maybe because the weather was so crappy EVERY DAY last June. Ugh. This would have been the perfect year -- the weather so PERFECT, but of course I completely forgot to check when the date was. Next year, I fully plan on gluing seashells to my nipples, painting myself glittery green, and donning a ridiculous wig and a sequined skirt and being the most fabulous mermaid I can be. How can I live in Brooklyn for so long and NOT take part in this incredible tradition?

I also rediscovered some old music on my computer that I had never converted to mp3 format after I got this new computer... So now I'm listening to Belle & Sebstian and The Shins again (hence the title of this post). Lovely stuff that takes me back to freshman year... Ahhh....

Ok I'm over this. Today is Father's Day, and I guess I really ought to have been writing about how much I appreciate my dad and all that. But I'm not going to bore you with all that. I love my dad and he's an amazing guy, and I think I'll just give him a call right now.

Then I'll clean this apartment and try to get back to writing some fiction I just started up again. Aren't you proud of me?

New Beginnings

2010-06-10T08:08:00.005-04:00

I am being a bit lazy this morning about getting myself to work. Why, you might ask? Aren't you a gainfully employed young adult with a full time job that requires you to be at work at a set time? Well, technically yes. However, this morning is different. This is the beginning of the day that I hand in my resignation to my employer of nearly three years.

In two weeks I will start a new job, working for what is essentially a pro-bono law firm for families with children in foster care. They aren't really a law firm, but it's easier to explain it that way. The new job will have countless more responsibilities than the current one -- it will be a lot more work for a little more pay, but it's really all about the experience.

I've been working in a stagnant office for too long, where innovation is squashed and challenging projects are few and far between. I'm young and energetic, and I need to get out there and actually learn something of value, actually DO something of value. Will the new job be perfect? Certainly not. There will be downfalls and disappointments, but at least I won't be bored. But instead of working in a bizarre bureaucracy where it matters more who your parents are than what your qualifications are (such is life, I suppose), I will be working at a place where people have actually gone to school for law and social work -- intelligent, educated people working for a good cause. Perhaps I'll actually be inspired.

Today is not exactly the first day of the rest of my life, but perhaps June 28th will be. Congratulations and good luck to me!

Wow.

2010-06-01T22:10:00.005-04:00

Here I am, back in Brooklyn, once again typing from the boyfriend's computer. How strange it is to be back here after 10 days! I'm tired so this is will be one of those boring, lame, let's-recap-my-weekend type of posts.

I left on the 21st to take a bus to MD, so that the morning of the 22nd I could fly down to St. John in the Virgin Islands for week of sun, sand, and lots of rum. Lots and lots of rum. I went snorkeling, jet skiing, did lots of lounging, ate lots of seafood, drank tons of fruity drinks, wore pretty dresses, ended up with a hellish sunburn, and came back with a heavenly tan. I also got to spend some time with my lovely cousins, both of whom were pretty much the closest thing I had to sisters growing up. Needless to say, we had an absolute ball.

Saturday brought me a bit closer to reality when I flew back to DC. Luckily, the next day I got to spend some quality time with Rachel and her boyfriend in Baltimore at the Brew at the Zoo, featuring tons of beer, local wineries, and live music. The elephants were pretty cool, too. Then we converged at Courtney's house for some sangria and pork barbecue, and once I had my wits about me I hopped back on the beltway and hopped into bed.

Monday was Memorial Day, which meant my family got a monopoly on my presence. I got to see some of their old friends and drink some more sangria, along with more delicious food, so I can't complain. Plus today is my dad's birthday, so we had a little cake for him last night and I gave him his complimentary book and cigar (to be used simultaneously, of course) from the islands. Finally today I made it back to New York, and now I sit finishing up some Indian food while the boyfriend studies, and I feel quite at home.

Easing back into vacation was the way to go, I think. After such a shock of being on a Caribbean island where the water looks like a perfect swimming pool, where the rum flows freely, and where shirts and shoes (and bras) are always optional, I needed some time to segue back into real life. And here I am again... and it is oh so real.

I'm ready for the weekend. Coney Island, anyone?

5/11/10 - 10:40 p.m. - Q train

2010-05-11T23:11:00.010-04:00

A good looking man. Had only someone told him. Do not stick your neck out like that.
Straighten your teeth.
Dress yourself in suits.
Do not wear cheap yellow t-shirts.
You could have been a movie star. A contender?

And thus it begins. My incoherent subway fiction party... intelligible? Illegible! Mostly, bad.
Snippets of people whose lives I do not know and who I will think of no more past the writing and subsequent reading of this illegible text.
Sad.
But there is a story behind him... a "guy" who could be a movie star but has grown up in a post-Soviet bloc town with no opportunities.
That's a lie because he doesn't even seem to have a trace of an accent. I don't know, I'm not close enough to tell.

"Be that as it may."
<--- Haha. Leather bracelet. White sneakers. Velcro shoes. Nose ring. Headphones. Blackberry. Bad handwriting. It feels ok to write. Good, even. ILLEGIBLE. Unless you don't listen to the reader. Joan Didion. Arm in a sling with a supportive lady friend. Lovely dark curly hair with a nose ring. Very large mole on head. Closely cropped hair. If I don't stop looking I'll faint. It is BAD. Oww... <--- Out of my line of vision. Now an old hippie man. Maybe. Gray messy ponytail. Adidas? Plaid on plaid. Book? --> James Patterson. Maybe not hippie, just lost.

I need to practice writing more like this, at least, when I am on a train... and slightly........

Thoughts move too fast and

WASTE PAPER.

2 stops left.

It's better to write on a ride like this than read.
Creative reflection and slight embarrassment.
Maybe editing needed and major revisions required that

WILL NOT HAPPEN

(DO NOT PUBLISH)

(EVER) = no motivation to get

better

(if possible)

Blockage

2010-05-10T19:00:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in quite a while, and I now have a damn good reason, besides laziness, of course. My employer, That Which Shall Not Be Named, has blocked all blogging websites. That's right, folks, Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress, none of these are accessible any longer through my computer at work. In my perpetually sophomoric vocabulary, this is LAME. Seeing as I probably spend (and waste) the most time on my computer at work, it would be nice to still be able to take advantage of the blogosphere to cut into the dull monotony of EVERY DAY of my work week. Alas, this distraction exists no longer, hence why I sit here writing on my boyfriend's computer... My computer cannot connect to the Internet because of our faulty wireless system, so here I am staring at a massive and horrid HD screen, typing on the worst keyboard EVER (seriously, babe, how do you use this piece of crap?), wishing I had my own little laptop to type on and wishing that Blogger would allow me to just copy and paste things in from Microsoft Word. This is again (alas), not to be. It is, however, LAME.

I am consumed with the lameness of this situation and can't even discuss what I was going to, which was, of course, books. I'm going to go distract myself with the boyfriend, who is currently cooking in the kitchen (!!!) and the beautiful new volumes that now grace my terribly disorganized shelves. Glorious.

Nature Girl

2010-04-30T13:32:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow morning I will leave this city of sin for the soul-cleansing purity of the country. My dear friend and I are driving to New Paltz, where we will scamper through the meadows and mountains and breathe some fresh air. I can't wait!

The city can be so stifling -- there is always pressure to be here or there and do this or that... For example, I'm going to some fancy club for happy hour and I have nothing to wear since I can't go home first as I had planned. This means I had to go shopping... Wahh, poor baby! Life is so tough.

If I was just in the country right now, I would be in flip-flops and dirty jeans and a t-shirt and that would be that. So this weekend, I vow to put vanity aside and just relax.

Goodbye, soul-sucking city. Hello, Zen.

My Library

2010-04-21T11:33:00.007-04:00

I just found an interesting little snippet in the New York Times. It cites a study proving that children who grow up in a home with a library have an academic advantage -- a three-year advantage, to be precise. Regardless of the education level of the parents, kids with access to lots of books at home are also more likely to finish college.

My first thought was, DUH. Of course kids who are exposed to literature and information will do better in school! When children are surrounded by the potential for intellectual exploration in their own homes, of course it's going to help them in school. I mean, would I have read Romeo & Juliet in fourth grade had the book not been on my shelf at home? Of course not! And would I have graduated college as an English major had the book not been available? Hmm... Well, most likely. I think nerdiness is just in my DNA.

The point is, this article further justifies my penchant for buying and hoarding books. I have always planned on having a library in my home. I simply can't wait for the day that, from the comfort of a big old armchair, I can gaze around the room and see books lining every wall, sunlight streaming in onto the pages of my current literary obsession. My goal to own every book I've read, and those I haven't read yet, is really just an investment in my children's education, right? Won't it be nice to say, "Go read a book. We have 2,000 of them," when confronted with a bored and bratty kid? And all without having to leave the house...

As much as I love libraries, and even as I start to consider more seriously a Master's of Library Science, I don't use them very often. I just got my first library card from the Brooklyn Public Library after living here for more than two years, but I have only been to the tiny library on Cortelyou Road. I have yet to explore the main building by Prospect Park, which I hear is sprawling and beautiful and I have only ever seen from the windows of a cab. Of course, I still strongly believe in the value of public libraries -- not everyone has the money or space or even the desire to own hundreds (or thousands) of books. Plus, there are plenty of terrible books out there, and who wants to keep those books around the house? So although I recognize the social need for libraries and may quite possibly make a career out of them, I still want a library of my very own...

As a child I used to get lost in libraries and never want to leave, but what I enjoyed even more was buying books -- I wanted to see my books sitting on my shelves, knowing that in the inside front cover I had scratched my name in childlike cursive. Sounds selfish, but I really just wanted to be able to revisit certain beautiful passages and interesting characters on a whim. I absolutely hated to return a book I loved -- it saddened me to drop a book that I had fallen in love with through a slot, knowing I was relegating it back into obscurity on the shelves. The only thing that gave me comfort was thinking of the others who had read that book before and would read it again.

In college I loved to wander through the Fordham library finding the strangest books imaginable. I could sit for hours in the linguistics section, delving deeper into the intricacies of language and mind, desperately trying to find some way of including my newfound text into the essay I was currently ignoring. I became an expert at finding books, and I can't tell you how many times I showed fellow students, often those I was tutoring, the magic of discovering what lay in those seemingly endless stacks and how to find exactly what you were looking for. The search itself was, of course, part of the magic.

Of course, I can't imagine that I would have this strong love for libraries and a strong desire to have my own had I not been surrounded by books as a child. Some of my earliest memories involve my mother reading to me -- apparently I requested Goodnight, Moon so often that she hid it from me for a while since she was so tired of it. While she read to me more often, I always loved it when my father did, because he was the one to give the characters distinct voices, as dads tend to do. We didn't have thousands of books or a terribly organized "library," if you can even call it that, but there were always books in the house for me to leaf through.

I also remember when we got our set of encyclopedias, before they were made obsolete by the Internet. I was so excited to leaf through the heavy, alphabetized texts, bound in forest green with gold lettering -- it seemed like I had all the knowledge in the world at my fingertips, and I would just read and read, mostly about exotic animals or historic women. Speaking of women, I also remember spying a copy of The Second Sex on the shelf, which terrified and intrigued me. Upon picking it up I immediately realized I had no idea what Simone de Beauvoir was talking about and quickly put the book back in its place.

I might buy a lot of books, but my new rule is that I buy only used ones. Therefore, the Strand is now my new best friend. And should I dislike a book so that I find no need to keep it on my shelf, well then, back to the Strand it shall go. I only really buy paperbacks (the more beaten-up, the better) because they're light and easy to carry and cheap, so that I don't feel bad when I dog-ear the pages. The only new books I have decided to buy will be The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which will be leatherbound, goddammit. And someday, I will purchase a comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, which I will need a magnifying glass to read.

And all those little paper books that I have read and loved and reread and recommended, I will keep forever. They'll stay on the shelves of my apartment, the shelves of my parents' home, in boxes if need be, and someday they will come out and sit permanently on shelves built just for them, and they will be beautifully organized. And I will give my children a three-year advantage on their less well-read peers, and they will never, ever be bored.

Embedded Water

2010-04-19T09:36:00.005-04:00

To continue an earlier post about the global water crisis, one of the BBC headlines on my iGoogle homepage today is "Western demand 'hogging water.'" I clicked on it and it lead to this article, which, while focused on the UK, says quite a bit about the consumption of the world's water supply by the West -- we use far more than our fair share.

The article brings up an interesting point about "embedded water," defined as "the water used to grow food and make things." Unsurprisingly, I never even thought about that. Of course water isn't just for drinking and washing, and of course many of those developing countries that have water shortages have to produce goods to sell to richer countries, and those products require water. Duh.

"Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints of water -- the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes to make that pint of beer." This statistic is going to haunt me when I pour pints for thirsty customers at the bar...

So now that I'm feeling thoroughly depressed and guilty for being born into a prosperous society that has water in abundance, I think I'll go get a nice cold glass of ice water. Maybe that will make me feel better... Apathy is really dehydrating.

Hmm...

2010-04-13T15:26:00.006-04:00

I have started and deleted no fewer than four blog posts in the past two days. I just started a new one a half hour ago, wrote a few paragraphs, and then saved it and clicked away from it because I was bored with it... Why can't I write? I certainly have a lot on my mind. I've started writing about Brooklyn, about literature, about food and health, about singing, about beauty... All good topics, I think... But let me clarify -- not beauty like makeup and nail polish, but about how lovely the world seemed the other day and how lovely I felt.

Perhaps that's why I haven't had the urge to write... I've been feeling all right for the past few days. Maybe it has something to do with enjoying good literature and eating better food that I can actually digest and having a sing-along the other night with friends and organizing all my jewelry and cleaning my room, and these are making me feel lovely. I even remembered that April 15th is in two days and I have to do my taxes -- I'm getting an early start this year! Right now, I don't feel the need to gripe about things via this blog. Not that I usually complain... Or do I? Maybe something will make me miserable in the next few days and I'll feel the need to wax philosophic and then you can read a rant about leaving New York and about water and puppies and all that crap, but for now, I'm feeling somewhat content and healthy and at peace with the world.

I'm also feeling good about the fact that I've decided with this blog post that I'm spelling out numbers now (except for dates and really big numbers), which from reading past posts I realize I haven't been doing. Stylistically, that is a big no-no, and I'm happy when I can modify and solidify my writing style. Perhaps I should go with AP style and only do that with numbers under 10...or ten... Yes, I'll do that. It's 10. If someone notices me writing something like, "2 days ago..." please make a comment and tell me what a bad English major I am.

That is all.

Country vs. City

2010-04-06T11:00:00.004-04:00

As I drove through the streets of Raleigh, NC on Friday afternoon, I thought to myself, "How could I ever live anywhere but New York? How could I ever be satisfied in a little city like this?" As much as I make plans to leave my beloved Big Apple within a year or so, I fear what lies ahead. I have lived in New York since I was barely 18 years old -- I've learned to drink and eat and shop and play and walk and run and scream and cry and laugh and love on these streets... These filthy, crowded, magical streets...

Where do you go when the majority of your most important experiences have occurred in the center of the universe? Where you hear 6 languages as you walk down the street, where you can have any food from any country at any time of day or night, where you never have to go to the same bar and restaurant twice (but you always do), where everyone comes to visit and gawk and then (thankfully) departs again, and where you can walk the same route every day and still be sure you'll never see certain people again in your life... I've discussed before how I love the anonymity of this city, so how could I ever move to a smaller place where people actually know your name?

When I travel, people label me as a New Yorker, and I know they will when I move away from here. But I'm not one by nature, only by osmosis... I'm from Maryland and I always will be from Maryland. As I walked tearfully through the house I grew up in on Sunday, as I gazed into the woods where the birds flitted about and the trees swayed quietly in the breeze, I thought, "How can I ever go back to New York?" As I prepared to leave on Monday, I just lay down for a few minutes and stared out the window, where all I could see were trees and sky, listening to the tuneless symphony of birdsong and wind chimes, and wished desperately that I could stay. I wished I didn't have to return to the insanity of this city, the constant noise, the constant chatter, the millions of words I don't understand, the millions of places to eat and drink and shop, the millions upon millions of people. How overwhelming it all is. I am not a New Yorker.

I'm not a country girl either, however, and especially not a suburbanite... As much as I would love to be home again, driving back country roads and spying wildflowers and deer at every turn, I'm not sure that's right for me either at this point. I just know that in North Carolina and Maryland, things seemed so small and plebeian, so behind the times, with everything moving so slowly... When I came back to New York I realized it all goes too fast, the future is in your face at every turn, everything is always changing and there is always something new and different and unknown... There is good and bad in both of these extremes, and I want both every day. But I can't have both -- that doesn't exist.

It will always frighten me to leave New York for good until I finally do it... But it always frightens me to come back and probably always will. Now that I'm here, I'm back in the swing of things. I went out to dinner and had a drink at the bar last night, and today I'm back to work after my usual morning commute... It all seems so normal. Hard to believe that only yesterday I was desperate to leave it all behind.

Cackalackin'

2010-04-01T14:17:00.010-04:00

I don't know why North Carolina is called North Cackalacky, but my friends who live there seem to refer to is as such. Southerners are weird... but they are also very hospitable and live in a lovely climate, so I'm glad to be going to good old North Cackalacky for Easter! Tomorrow I'll fly out of LGA to get to Raleigh by about 3:00 p.m., where I'll meet my mother and sister, settle into our hotel, and have a lovely dinner with my parents' good friend Nan, then visit with their other good friend Vince and his sister Peggy. I guess on Easter Sunday we'll drive up to Maryland, and then Monday I'm back in New York. A whirlwind of an Easter vacation, but I'm okay with that. My parents are pretty cool people, and I think their friends are great.

I was raised by parents who surrounded themselves with an eclectic crowd of folks... Musicians and artists and teachers and nurses and massage therapists and librarians... and then those who never really had a set career but just kind of floated through life taking the next job or opportunity that came to them. One of these is Vince, who for the better part of each year now travels around the country in the VinVan, camping in national parks and visiting Rainbow Gatherings. Occasionally he shaves his bushy red beard and gets a job working for The Man... And then he somehow ends up in a fancy hotel in New York City doing some sort of consulting thing I'm not really clear about, and then Nick and I go out to have Indian food with him in Midtown. Weird. I've known Vince my whole entire life and think he's pretty damn awesome.

Nan (real name Nancy), I have also known for just about forever, and again, I'm not really sure what she's done for a living all these years, though she's retired now. She has always been an artist and photographer, and I remember for a while she was a teacher's assistant and shared hilarious stories about the crazy names the inner city children were cursed with (like Iska...pronounced Isaac. Lord.) In fact, when she moved out of her country house when I was in middle school, she gave me a bunch of old issues of National Geographic, which started my collection and which I still have. She always seemed so hip and otherworldly to me, like the coolest grandma in the world, only a child at heart... She has this short white hair and wears crazy glasses and funky earrings and is always working on some sort of art project or is taking beautiful pictures. Featured here is a picture of my dad that she must have taken in the '80s... He's looking remarkably like a hipster with his bushy beard and his overalls, but he was the real deal -- hippie redneck to the max. Anyway, I haven't seen Nan in about 3 or 4 years, and she's really a lovely person with a lovely daughter and a nice little grandson who I guess is probably a teenager now, but who I will always remember as a goofy, brainy little 8 year old. It will be nice to reconnect...

Part of the reason we're going down is to visit Nan, and part is because Vince's sister has cancer and doesn't have a whole lot of time left. My mother adores Peggy, so of course she wanted to spend some time with her. Peggy is a lovely person who has raised a bunch of kids and foster kids and grandkids, and who, when we spent Thanksgiving with her when I was 9, introduced me to "Gone With the Wind," and experience which I will never forget. I guess she's a true Southerner, which I can only pretend to be... Anyway, Peggy has this fiery red hair and penciled in eyebrows and the most pleasant accent I've ever heard in my life. The last time I saw her, I was home for the weekend and I proudly cooked up the best homemade brunch ever for my parents and all their friends -- I'm glad I could share my limited cooking skills with Peggy by making some damn fine eggs Benedict. I hope I'll get to see her at least a few more times after this...

While this will be a very non-traditional Easter, because I can't imagine in a million years that we'll set foot in a church or have an Easter egg hunt or even mention the words "rose from the dead," it will be absolutely wonderful to reconnect with the people who I really feel had a great impact on me during my childhood years and who I am lucky to still know as an adult. Growing up, I always thought of my parents' friends as my friends, too... Since I was an only child who had few friends to drag around with me, and very few of them had children, I did a lot of hanging out with the old folks. Sure I got lucky at many parties and got to run off with any kids who happened to turn up, or I got sick of the adults eventually and yelled at them to turn their music down once I decided it was time for me to go to bed... But for the most part, I was able to talk and eat weird food and it didn't really bother me. I really appreciated the people I was surrounded with growing up and I don't really remember there being any awkward transition between childhood and adulthood, though I'm sure there was. I sat around tables listening to crazy conversations and on porches hearing beautiful live music as a child, as a teenager, and now as an adult, and though the faces occasionally drifted in and out and sometimes I had friends around to share it with, not much changed.

I suppose people have changed quite a bit (and so have I), I just haven't been around much to see it. I've left home for good and I'm not turning back, but still... it's good to reconnect and acknowledge your roots. You can't forget where you come from or the people who made you who you are, especially when those people are pretty damn cool.

Friends

2010-03-31T15:17:00.004-04:00

I have never had a lot of friends... Acquaintances, yes. Fellow partiers, definitely. But friends? Not so much. I have, however, been fortunate enough to have more "good" friends than most -- good friends are those whose phone numbers and birthdays I will always remember, who I make a great effort to hang out with or stay in touch with if they live elsewhere, people who I have known for many years and will know for many years to come. It's probably because I really only have the energy for the real lasting friendships. I'm not good at spreading myself too thin for shallow social purposes.

This weekend I had a good friend and her girlfriend in town, and I really came to appreciate the length of time we've known each other, the hilarious and ridiculous memories we share, and the complete opposite senses of style we have... It made me realize that everyone I consider a good friend of mine is pretty unique and unlike me in many ways. Sure, I have many things in common with most of them. They're all, for the most part, middle class white kids from the suburbs who come from Catholic backgrounds, have had pretty stable family lives, and now work full time jobs or are in some sort of graduate school. Pretty boring, except that we probably bonded in the first place because of our bad habits and our liberal mentalities.

I realize, however, that I have individuals all over the place with whom I can share different occasions and events and memories and plans.... I have collected a circle of intimates who can and do mesh when the time is right, but who exist mostly in separate bubbles. Obviously, many of them overlap beautifully as I've grown to know them over the years. Some I've known since elementary school, since middle school, since high school, since college... Some I've only gotten to know within the last year. It's like a huge Venn diagram of multiple circles overlapping that eventually creates one huge circle with me in the middle, floating amongst them.

Throughout my formative years, I both envied and feared the girls who could maintain a definitive "group" -- the ones who gathered year after year on someone's stairs for Prom pictures and bought pages of pasted pictures in the yearbook and then joined sororities and did all that crazy social stuff. But that's just not me -- groups have always seemed so frightening, so constricting... Perhaps they were (and still are) an easy social outlet, but for me, I just don't have the energy or the extroversion to understand how the politics work and how to maintain those kinds of relationships where everyone is friends with everyone else and everyone is equally close and, and, and... As you can see, even the thought of it overwhelms me. I suppose I've just always been too much of a loner, too much of an only child -- I crave my space and I value my time. I want to be able to pick and choose who I share my space with, who I spend my time with, and usually this means I can really only handle a limited amount of close relationships.

Limited in quantity, I suppose, but not quality, and I think I do have quality friendships. I have always been fearful of putting "too many eggs in one basket" in a sense. I have done this in the past with friends and in the process ended up ignoring others. But I'm older now and I realize the incredible importance of nurturing the close friendships that I have had for some time and being open to new ones. And all the while I can recognize and appreciate the vast differences between myself and those I am really truly friends with, and love them for all their quirks and flaws and for everything we disagree on. I would rather have 3 close friends who are unlike me in a million ways than 300 who are exactly the same.

I suppose I don't really have a point to all this. I just appreciate my friends and I don't need a big group to do it in. I just love everyone for who they are, and that's that. So thanks, friends. I think you're all really nice...

Water World

2010-03-24T14:49:00.005-04:00

Having put down my book for now, I'm concentrating on all the magazines and literary journals I have lying around my apartment. I have subscriptions to Time Out New York, Harper's, The Sun, Slice, and of course, National Geographic. It's ridiculous that I have all this paper lying around that I simply don't read, so yesterday I officially replaced the book in my bag with my newest copy of National Geographic, the magazine I've had a subscription to since I was a child, the magazine I refuse to throw away, the magazine that I can safely say has seen me through the good and the bad and will forever be my solace and escape. Well, perhaps until today.

The most recent issue focuses entirely on water -- the dwindling supply of fresh water, the hardship faced by most people to get sufficient clean water, its significance in culture and religion, and the steps we must take to save, purify, and replenish our water sources. Working for a nonprofit, I have heard my share about the woes of the world and the humanitarian issues surrounding water supplies. But today I thought so much more...

What struck me this morning is how very integral water is to life -- we are made up of 2/3 water, after all -- and yet how in Western civilization we really take it for granted. Apparently the average American uses 100 gallons of water per day. PER DAY. And yet there are entire families in developing nations that subsist on less than 5 per day. This is shocking. As I've said in former posts, I would rather help animals than people, which is true, but the simple fact that I feel that way speaks to the unbelievable luxury that I have been born into as a middle-class American citizen -- I literally have the luxury of caring for animals. And what's more, the animals that I care for use and require the same water that so many people in the world have no access to... and yet I can fill my cat's water dish at any time of the day.

I turn on the tap and fresh, clean, drinkable water flows freely. Whenever I leave a water glass out for too long, I know I run the risk of the cat getting to it and contaminating it with her stinky little kitty germs, so these glasses usually get dumped. I try to pour them into my plants as much as possible, but still, I recognize that the waste is enormous. The simple fact that my cat has an endless source of water at her disposal is amazing, when you think about the people that cannot access fresh water. Pair this with the fact that I can keep plants that serve absolutely no purpose other than that they are aesthetically pleasing (though my basil and new aloe plant are useful), and these plants require water, then you realize just how accustomed we are to this abundant supply and how jarring it is that there are women and children who must trek for miles up and down mountains to bring just a few gallons of water to their homes.

The article follows a woman named Binayo, who at 25 already has 3 children (she's my age!) and must leave her 4-year-old son to care for his younger brothers while she climbs down and back up a mountain to fetch water 3 times a day. Her husband drinks beer with the other men in the village made of the water she brings -- clearly not only is there a serious problem with the water supply itself, but with the culture that allows this division of labor. In so many cultures, water and women go hand in hand, so the idea of gaining access to clean water is really a women's issue, as well as a children's issue. And those are issues I am very much ok with.

The amount of lives, especially of vulnerable young children, saved by access to fresh drinking water is unbelievable. The amount of disease and death that can be allayed by teaching proper hygiene techniques is astounding. Plus, when less time is spent having to trek to get the water, which is usually a woman's job, more girls have time to go to school and more women have time to grow crops and start businesses. When more women are educated and financially empowered, villages and nations grow economically, terrorism is allayed, and there is peace on Earth... Well, that's a stretch, but the benefits are pretty amazing. When you go about alleviating ridiculous work for women like hauling water, you change societies for the better. Just ask Nicholas Kristof.

Will water become my new cause du jour? Probably not. But it is something to think about the next time I take an extra long shower, the next time I leave a full water glass where the cat can get it, and the next time I make plans to do a long term volunteering trip where I plan on taking care of cute Tanzanian babies and teaching adorable Indian children the ABCs. Perhaps those trips will involve more hard labor of a pipe-building nature than I previously imagined...

Only time will tell. For now, I will read my National Geographics and other magazines from cover to cover. I will also recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be able to have this immense supply of paper and water at my disposal, how lucky I am to be able to bathe and watch my hands each day, and how unlucky I am that more and more I cannot turn a blind eye to certain global issues and will most likely be forever haunted by the realization I simply am not doing enough to help and probably never will. I talk (or type) a good game.

Quote of the (Yester)Day

2010-03-22T19:21:00.008-04:00

Upon entering my bedroom around noon on Sunday after deciding to go back to sleep for a few hours, I saw that Nick's eyes were open...

Me: Oh good, you're awake! Now we can cuddle!

Nick: You're abusive.

I laughed good and hard, then promptly snuggled up to him only to realize that he was once again fast asleep. When I reminded him of this last night he said he didn't remember the exchange at all. But he found it mighty amusing... Jerkface.

Spring Forward

2010-03-20T11:37:00.004-04:00

I am sitting in my apartment wearing shorts and a tank top. My hair is slathered with deep conditioner and wrapped in plastic wrap, and my face is spotted with a green mint masque. I just pained my toenails and I feel beautiful.

All 6 of my windows are open wide so I can catch any sounds and breezes that might float through. I have incense burning and I have watered all my plants. The road to springtime redemption has offically begun on this already delightful first day of the long-awaited season.

Nick and I just ate some eggs and toast with a big glass of milk, and now he's playing the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds." Soon we're going to go pick up two end tables from a neighbor who is moving to London, who has also offered to throw in a beautiful aloe plant as well as any other knickknacks we might find useful. Maybe we'll take some laundry to be done, partly as an excuse to stroll through our lovely neighborhood.

I'm going to paint my nails later, perhaps go out to eat, and then tonight I'm off to see "The Cherry Orchard" with a very dear friend.

Ahhh..... What a lovely first day of spring...

Blast from the Past

2010-03-17T10:25:00.001-04:00

I realize that I have not blogged for a few days, much to the chagrin of a certain someone (you know who you are...get your own blog!). But I suppose I actually do have stuff to talk about, so that's exciting...

On Tuesday, a friend of mine from 4th grade called me at 2:00 p.m. to say she and a friend would be in NYC in, oh, just about an hour. She was actually lost in south Jersey, had nowhere to stay, thought she could drive and park in Times Square, and thought she could make it a day trip. I said no, you drive to my apartment, park in my neighborhood, I will take you on a tour of the city, and that's that. So they did, and I did, and it was grand.

Jenny and I met in the second half of 4th grade at Pleasant Valley Elementary School after she moved with her family from Niagara Falls. We quickly became friends and were "BFF" through 7th grade...though how, I don't know. We were so unlike each other, and we still are. She was tall and drop dead gorgeous and tough as nails and amazing at sports and smart as a whip but not so good in school... I was average in looks, below average in athletics (though a dedicated little ballerina) and above average in my reading level and vocabulary. As far as I can tell, little has changed. She had more than a year on me in age, so I guess that contributed to her interest in boys far before me, though we still sat on the floor playing Barbies long past the age it was appropriate. We ran through the woods in dress up clothes pretending we were princesses or riding our bikes and pretending they were horses, and we sat on my porch for hours experimenting with hideous makeup until we looked like baby prostitutes... We played softball in my yard, went sledding down her giant hill, got our fair share of poison ivy on multiple occasions, and did a lot of walking up and down the windy mountain road that connected our houses for a good 3 years. She hid out at my house when her parents yelled at her too much, I hid out at her house so we could play with the puppies and bunnies that always seemed to be breeding there. We saw a lot of animal life and death together... I guess our love for animals and nature was really the thing we had most in common. By 7th grade, she had made a new best friend who I was (and I'm sure still am) terribly incompatible with, and that was pretty much that. We stayed in touch all these years, but hadn't seen one another since we were 16. Until Tuesday...

Jenny and her friend Wendy showed up in my neighborhood, I got them to a parking space, and as we ascended the elevator to my apartment, she did or said something that made me say, "You haven't changed at all!" "Neither have you!" she quickly retorted. And it seemed very true. We chilled out for an hour or so at my apartment, then Nick and I proceeded to take them on a grand and whirlwind tour of NYC. Dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Village, a walk through Washington Square Park and up through Union Square, the subway to Times Square, a long and horrible walk through that godawful place, then a walk to Radio City and Rockefeller Center, lots of pictures and window shopping, and finally Grand Central Station. For leaving Brooklyn at 6:30 p.m., I'd say we did a pretty damn good tour. We took the train back down to Union Square, got a few drinks at Park Bar, then went back to the neighborhood, stopped into my bar, and went home. It was exhausting and enlightening.

During those hours I realized how very different we are, were, and will always be. Jenny is married to what seems like kind of a lame guy who is in the Army and is a few years younger than her, but she has a 4-year-old stepdaugther who she has basically raised for the last few years who calls her Mom and who she is fighting to protect from her mentally ill biological mother. This is hard for me to believe, but she clearly loves this little girl with all her heart. It's really amazing the different paths we've taken... She's lived in California and Florida and New York and Maryland, still loves the outdoors like she always did, and goes hiking every day with her daughter and her dog, but didn't go to college and doesn't have a job, and is now living with her husband's parents in Virginia. She couldn't believe I could stand to live in a city and I could see the culture shock so clearly on her face... Most of our memories together involve my house and the woods I grew up in, and now our most recent memories involve this godforsaken city I now call home and have for more than 6 years. Insanity.

It's so strange to reconnect with someone who you share so many memories with but haven't seen in so long... But those memories are so distant and foggy that as they become clearer through more and more conversation, you wonder about the child you were and the adult you've become and can't quite figure out what happened in between. There's a huge rift in our friendship... We're the same as we always were, to some extent, but I don't know what we'll be in the future. It was amazing to reconnect with her, but I wonder what it has in store. Do we even have anything in common anymore besides a distant childhood in a world we've completely left behind? This sounds like the beginning of a bad novel that middle-aged women in the suburbs read. Ugh. I'm going to leave it at that and ponder this some more.

It's Friday afternoon... I'm done daydreaming and analyzing the past. It's time to move forward with the weekend...

Cervantes says...

2010-03-15T11:50:00.001-04:00

"The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings."

-- Miguel de Cervantes

Wordle 2

2010-03-14T14:20:00.000-04:00

Here is my last post made into a Wordle. What a wonderfully creative little tool...

Literary Slacker

2010-03-14T14:15:00.002-04:00

I've been a blogging slacker for the past few days... Clearly I am losing the Blog Challenge 2010 miserably. But I think I can be forgiven for not posting every day, since the sheer length of my other posts is just ridiculous. Brevity is just not my strong point, as I'm sure will be shortly illustrated.

Anyway, last night I went to BAM to see The Tempest, which was pretty damn good. Prospero was excellent, as he should be... Miranda was a little annoying, mostly just her voice I suppose... but her part really isn't that big, I realize. It's been a while since I read the play so I guess I gave the sole "major" female role a lot more credit than was due. Caliban stole the show, unsurprisingly, though since they cast a black man in the role all the lines just seem so terribly horrid and racist... However, Shakespeare might have actually meant it to be that way, since the character is supposed to be the son of an Algerian witch, the only "native" of the island... Ahh, the 1600s weren't exactly politically correct.

Regardless, it was good to see a Shakespeare play for the first time in a very, very long while. I really ought to do more culturally significant things like see plays, but I just don't seem to get around to it. Next weekend, however, I'm going to see "The Cherry Orchard," which I actually haven't read. I think the only Chekhov play I have read is "The Three Sisters" in my Modern European Drama class during junior year of college. How odd, since I consider Chekhov one of my absolute favorite writers. I can't remember if we read "Uncle Vanya" in that class or not... Oh well. I've read most of his short stories on my own, over and over again since early high school when I opened up some literature textbook and found "Lady with a Lap Dog" and was hooked. I didn't even know who Chekhov was or how famous he was, I just knew I liked the story.

That's somewhat similar to my discovery of Kafka around the same time. I found "The Metamorphosis" in probably the same textbook and was enthralled, and again, had no idea how famous Kafka was. I just knew that the story was absolutely bizarre and probably had some deeper meaning that my 14-year-old self couldn't quite grasp. I'm not sure my 24-year-old self even grasps it in the end. That's the problem with taking philosophy classes throughout college... You think you understand the underlying meaning and the real symbolism of all these strange literary works, because the professor tells you so, then you forget what you wrote for your essays and tests and you reread and rethink things years later and realize you don't actually have a damn clue and you probably never did.

The same with Shakespeare, though the deeper "meaning" is more just getting through the language and historical rifts than uncovering some underlying message. How easy it is to understand when you're sitting in a class with 30 other English majors who are about your same level of interest and intelligence, being told by the professor exactly what the lines mean and then arguing with each other about the deeper levels of meaning until you uncover your thesis for your upcoming paper, and then you really start taking notes... As I was watching the play last night, I found I could only really get about half of what was going on, just because I haven't been exposed to that language recently. On paper it's pretty simple for the most part, but for 2 and a half hours I found myself a bit lost.

I found this very ironic and somewhat disappointing, since I remember seeing "Romeo & Juliet" at the National Theater when I was in 5th grade, and since I had read the play over and over after I discovered a copy of the book in a box in the attic and saw the movie on TV, I understood every word. My father kept leaning over to me and asking if I understood what was going on, and I would nod and shush him, since I did understand, and I wanted to absorb every single word and action without interruption. I realized he didn't understand, however, so later I translated some lines for him later, with pride. Watching "The Tempest" I realized I didn't have the same familiarity or emotional connection with the text... But I'm not 10 years old anymore so I'd think I have a better understanding of Shakespearean language than I did then!

Once again, this makes me come to the conclusion that I have to read and reread and think and rethink all those literary works I've been exposed to, or should have been exposed to, and I have to do it every few years. From Shakespeare to Chekhov to Austen to Faulkner to Steinbeck (he's one of my formerly favorite authors who I haven't read in many years) I need to keep myself up to date. But I also need to read new works by new authors... And I need to sift through the past and read all those classics I never read in college since I concentrated more on the International Phonetic Alphabet and dialect change than great classic literature.

There's only so much time to read so many books, but I really need to be more conscious about choosing things of substance and not wasting my time with fluffy crap. Not that I ever do choose fluffy crap, but I just need to be selective and diligent and stop wasting my time. Except for David Sedaris, I am not allowed anything I would deem "light reading." Those days are over.... though I don't think they ever existed in my life anyway.

Right now I'm reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," having put down Joan Didion to resume at a later date... I really needed a novel instead of essays, and I'm reading it for my book club. The characters in it make me want to read more, anyway, especially more philosophy. There was a chapter on Husserl and phenomenology, though she advises to read Kant and Descartes first. NO WAY. I will draw the line there, because there's no point in reading great works if you're not even going to enjoy them. So diligence about reading also involves not pressuring myself to read mind numbing works of greatness.

Works of greatness, however, I need more of in my life...

Trains of Thought

2010-03-11T10:31:00.002-05:00

This morning on my morning commute on the Q train, I realized that I feel most like myself when riding the subway. I feel most like the person I am rather than the person I want to be or try not to be... I am serene and quiet, I am anonymous and completely within myself, and there is no one to bother me. When people see me, they see just another girl who lives in the outer boroughs and commutes to Manhattan, who unwraps her scarf slightly when she enters the train car and wraps it back up tightly when she exits, who slides her sunglasses up over her hair at the beginning of the ride and puts them back over her eyes at the end. I am an anonymous person with silly little rituals that no one notices except for me, because I am just one of the millions... And it feels so nice.

Twice a day, I wait in a specific location on the platform. In the morning, I go all the way to the back of the train to make my transfer to the L easier; in the evening, the second to last car is my domain so I am closest to the stairs at my stop. If there are no seats, which there usually are not, I try to snag a spot by the door on the side of the train where the door opens less often, where I can calmly ignore the comings and goings of other passengers at other stops. When they do open at Atlantic Avenue and Dekalb, all I need to do is shift slightly to let people in and out, though I defend my spot at the door so I can gaze out the window as we cross the Manhattan Bridge, because the southward view down the East River is to die for.

Nearly every morning I see the Brooklyn Bridge standing serenely in the morning light, the Statue of Liberty reaching up over the horizon, the cars moving slowly on the FDR, the boats plowing through the water, the seagulls swooping greedily, the buildings of lower Manhattan glittering in the rising sun... I have seen this view so many times and yet it never gets old for me. On the mornings I end up on the B train instead, the view is blocked since we're on the other side of the bridge... But I get to look northward instead, where I see much more water and have a decent view of the Williamsburg Bridge. But nothing compares with the scene from the Q train...

At night, going the opposite direction, the setting sun can often be brutal, depending on when you cross the river, but if you cross it late enough you'll see the Brooklyn Bridge lit up with its necklace of lights and the cars glimmering as they speed along. Manhattan at night is beautiful as well... from a distance, of course. Everything looks brilliant when you're far enough away... I prefer the mornings, however, when I feel the most calm. The day has not brought any stress or thoughts upon me yet - I am an empty vessel that the world is only just beginning to fill with sights and sounds that I still have the option of absorbing or ignoring.

This morning I was lucky enough to get a seat on a not-too-crowded car, which gave me the luxury of doing a bit more observing. Surrounding me were a multitude of characters... A Barbara Streisand lookalike read her People Magazine.... A skinny, long-haired man read his kindle in a leather case that matched his jacket... The crazy Haitian woman who usually yells at people to move out of her way was sitting quietly in a seat moving her lips in silent prayer... An aging, handsome hipster with salt and pepper hair wore Wrangler jeans and workboots most likely for no other function than ironic fashion... The preppie girl next to me with her iPod encased in hot pink played her music far too loudly for my taste...

I was reading my book, but every now and then I'd look up and simply observe for a few minutes. The subway gives me the freedom to simply sit and contemplate my surroundings if I don't feel like reading for every minute of my ride. Sometimes I am completely absorbed in the text so I don't notice anything going on around me, and other times I need to put in silent headphones simply to drown out the noise so I can stay absorbed... Many times I just put the book on my lap and look. I don't stare blankly, I don't gaze longingly... I just LOOK. I look at the people, at the books they're reading, at the colors of their iPods and headphones, at the roots of their dyed hair and the runs in their stockings, at the shoes they match to their belts and the way their wallets have made a permanent square in their pockets. I look at the people I see nearly every day, and quickly look away. Then I look at the ones I have never seen before, or at the ones I wish I could see every day, like the woman who dresses only in purple, who has every accessory in purple, right down to lipstick and eyeshadow.

Every person is their own unique character study, no matter how drab they may seem... And yet, at the same time, they are all just a mass of humanity being carried to and from various locations that I don't know about and don't care to know about. I can shut off my interest in people and they become an anonymous crowd, with me just one small and terribly insignificant part of it... The thing I love so much about New York, and especially about riding the subway, is that feeling of incredible anonymity and invisibility, and the irony of having that feeling when you're walking and riding amongst 8 million people. What a strange dichotomy. But for a person like me who prefers to be alone, who prefers not to be seen, who prefers to stay quiet and within myself, especially in the mornings, I love the subway and the social leveling it offers. No one is better than the other -- we're literally all in the same boat and none of us is special. We're all invisible.

At the same time we're invisible, we are constantly watched, constantly watching... We watch each other like hawks and ignore each other at the same time. We listen to each other's conversations and yet block out all sound. It's so much easier to think when you can tune in or tune out all the same, and no one will care. And so I cherish my therapeutic commute before the insanity of the day begins. Every day is full of deafening silence and blindly watchful eyes... And I like it that way.

Animal Wordle

2010-03-08T21:20:00.000-05:00

This is my first Wordle... And I am now officially obsessed. I made it out of my last blog post. How very interesting this little gadget is, and how reflective of my writing it's going to make me.

Animals vs. Humans - Round 1

2010-03-08T20:22:00.001-05:00

On the rare occasions I actually watch TV, I usually alternate between "Jeopardy," "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations," or some variation of "Animal Cops," be it in Miami or New York or Houston or whatever. Tonight I'm chilling on the couch after a light dinner with the boyfriend, and I decided I'm entitled to a bit of TV watching... So "Animal Cops Miami" it is. But on the commercial breaks, I clearly need something to flip to. Enter "Intervention."

This show makes me realize how I truly cannot stand people and their problems. They seem so trite, so meaningless... I'm sorry you have an addiction to prescription drugs, Mrs. Suburban Housewife. But there are puppies who have no food or water and are literally being eaten alive by ticks and fleas that are sucking their blood because their white trash owner couldn't take the time to be even marginally responsible... Could you spare some of your drug money to help them? Could you put down the bottle for just a moment and realize how pathetic you are?

I try so hard to care about people more than animals, but I just don't have it in me. I do care about children, I suppose, especially when they can't read or have been abused. A child who has been abused and who can't read is probably my worst nightmare. Women have a tough time, too. My sympathy, however, ends there, especially when it comes to people in the Western world who live in their fancy houses and feel the need to ruin their lives and their family's lives with their selfishness. I simply cannot get worked up over people's problems (especially self-made problems) when animals cannot fend for themselves, when we have created them as breeds to fit our liking, have created their wants and needs, and yet we starve and beat and neglect and torture them for no other reason than ignorance and cruelty and plain indifference.

I understand there are innocent people in the world who have had traumatic experiences that lead to addiction and depression and cause them to act out in horrible ways... But at some point there's just no hope for them, which is why I probably only really care about helping children. There's some hope still there, clinging on... And I do understand that at a certain point, there is no hope for certain animals. Some have experienced horrible trauma and cannot be rehabilitated, or they are dangerous to people...namely children... And time can be better spent helping others who still have a chance, so I do not disagree with euthanasia. The thing is, I feel that animals are and always will be innocent, and that's why I will always prefer to help them.

I feel we, as power-wielding humans, have such an immense responsibility to animals, so I would much rather put my time and money toward saving and helping and rehabilitating them. Thus, the only organizations I donate to are focused solely on those goals. I frankly don't trust the people my money might "help" to actually better their own pathetic and broken lives... Which is most likely why I would never donate to the organization I work for, as sad as it seems...

If faced with saving a baby and saving a puppy from a burning building, I would choose the baby, yes... humans do come first, especially the little ones. At a certain point, however, I feel that humans are just absolutely horrible and hopeless and just make me sick. So if I'm in a burning building and I'm faced with saving a grown human who was abused and traumatized and is therefore violent and dangerous, or a dog of the same nature... Well, I'll be honest. Yeah, I'd choose the dog... Look at all those dogs who were rescued from that cretin Michael Vick... They're therapy dogs, for fuck's sake.

I feel that there are simply not enough people in the world who have that soft spot for animals, so I might as well follow my heart and help where I feel I'm most needed. I can only be true to myself, right? And I know this is right for me, because I can read and watch and listen about horrible things that happen to people all over the world and throughout history and it can involve blood and war and murder and rape and torture and all sorts of horrible things... and somehow it just doesn't move me like it probably should. If I read even a sentence about an animal that is starving or abused or killed... Ohdeargod, I get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, real nausea of the worst kind. Even thinking about it, my hands are shaking and I'm just filled with rage...and sorrow.

I had to reach out and pet my cat for a moment just to feel better. Speaking of the cat, I picked her up off the street and knew I would have her forever... As much as she loves to scratch and bite and attack me as I walk by her chair, she's just amazing and adorable and if anyone ever did anything to hurt her I would probably kill them. Just looking at her little white paws and her tiny broken tail (I don't want to know how that happened), I realize I am so happy to have a precious little creature in my life who will never stab me in the back or steal my money or do drugs or hurt anyone...EVER. Animals are the ultimate, perfect friends.

I don't trust people who don't like animals... Obviously I want anyone who hurts animals to die a horrible death, but I don't run into them often. What I don't get is when I meet people who just "don't like animals." They make me want to run in the opposite direction. I frankly don't want to have anything to do with them. There is something that I feel SHOULD BE innate in people to be caring and loving and kind and that should extend to animals. And if it doesn't... Well, I think it's clear what would happen should we end up in a burning building together.

I got the blues...and greens...

2010-03-08T15:48:00.001-05:00

Today was supposed to be a day of extreme blogging. As I was reading "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" this morning on the Q train, I was inspired by the essay about self respect... I'll talk about that later though once I've read it in not such a tired, dazed by the world state.... Anyway, I had all these amazing thoughts about the amazing blog posts I would write and the amazing words I would use and about how amazing I was. Well, it's now nearly the end of the workday, I'm tired, and I'm really unmotivated.

Luckily, I got a new pair of boots today, so April suggested I write about those. That is shallow and I don't care. They are beautiful blue, like water, like rain, like the sea, like the sky, like heaven... They are super-soft vintage leather Aldo boots... IN BLUE. Ahh the amazing things you can find on Etsy. I don't even care if I'm shallow, because these boots are DEEP (blue that is). HAH.

Anyway, I also have blue fingernails, a blue sweater, blue eyes... and a scarf that has some blue in it but is really mostly green. And this weekend was the St. Paddy's Day parade in Hoboken, so I got to wear LOTS OF GREEN and today I get to wear LOTS OF BLUE. My life is pretty much complete.

It's amazing how surrounding yourself (or covering yourself, rather) in beautiful colors that you love can make you feel absolutely beautiful and wonderful. The amazing weather might have something to do with it, but that's another story. I think living in New York, the way I express my love for the colors of nature (blue, green, brown) is to wear them... Mostly because I like to look pretty, but also because they just make me happy. I just want my whole life to be awash in these shades...

This pretty much means that I need to move back to the country eventually so I can see these lovely colors in the fields and the sky FOR REAL. I need to travel somewhere lush and verdant. I need to swim in the blue blue ocean. I need... I need... I need to go home and clean my apartment.

Back to reality.

Blue

2010-03-07T15:49:00.001-05:00

In honor of the beautiful Spring sky, I am painting my finger nails blue.

Spring

2010-03-06T10:54:00.002-05:00

I chilled out and got some rest last night, so I'm feeling much better than anxiety-ridden yesterday. Nick and I watched "Shakespeare In Love," which, while it was entertaining and a cute little story, did not deserve to win Best Picture over films like "Elizabeth" and "Life is Beautiful." It was contrived, corny, and completely ridiculous. Sure it had great costumes, but I simply can't believe Gwyneth Paltrow won Best Actress over Cate Blanchett or Meryl Streep. Ludicrous.

On a good note, I'm going to Hoboken for the St. Paddy's Day festivities today! I have a little bottle of Bailey's to pour in some delicious iced coffee, because it's 40 degrees out and it's practically spring, so that clearly calls for ICE in my coffee. YES.

I think my shower has finally heated up (damn you, post war apartment building), so I'm going to go get ready.

Happy Almost Spring!

Ugh

2010-03-04T10:53:00.001-05:00

I really don't feel like posting. So here are 10 boring updates on my life.

1. I feel like crap today.
2. I had a really delicious dinner last night.
3. I have a new friend named Hannah.
4. I am in the end stages of a big work project.
5. I painted my nails today.
6. I am going to Minetta Tavern tomorrow.
7. I want a bagel very badly.
8. I am not religious.
9. I am wearing an $8 sweater.
10. I want it to be Spring.

Goodbye.

More Local Eats...

2010-03-03T11:33:00.001-05:00

Last night I went with a friend to our neighborhood's newest addition, The Castello Plan, a hip little wine bar. We went in expecting to get "small plates," but didn't realize just how small they'd be. That's acceptable, though, since the food was rather impressive... Here's what the Village Voice has to say.

We had melt-in-your-mouth mussels in white wine sauce, deliciously seasoned "sprats" (sardines) with a spiced mayo-covered quail egg, some incredibly delicious mushrooms stewed with sour cream and dill, and a really great charcuterie of boar sausage, lamb prosciutto, and some other incredibly fatty and delicious meat. And to top it off, we had a chocolate truffle (sliced like potatoe chips that keep falling apart) that you could sprinkle with either paprika salt, anise seed, or crushed almonds. Plus the last round of wine was on the house... Amazing!

We'll be back very soon to try the raw oysters, although I'm amused that they made a mistake on the menu. They refer to them as "Belle Soleil" but that's not right, as I thought last night but wasn't sure... It's Beausoleil, or Beau Soleil. Silly foodies, you don't know your seafood.

Anyway, when spring finally comes it will be extra special nice to sit out in their little side garden and down countless bottles of delectable wine. I can't say that I know anything about wine, but I know what I like and I think that's enough. Of course, we're bound to run into foodie hipster wino assholes at some point, but I can deal.

It's kind of frightening how hip Cortelyou Road has become, but I certainly don't mind. It's nice to have options when I want to go out to eat, which is more often than not, and to enjoy fine dining in an intimate setting without the Manhattan pretention. I'm not "local" enough in the neighborhood to be able to complain about gentrification... I AM gentrification, and I don't care. I like to eat good food, dammit, and if I only have to walk 5 blocks to get it, well then, I'm satisfied.

Here's what Serious Eats has to say about the evolution of Cortelyou Road.

Working Hard

2010-03-02T17:21:00.002-05:00

I'm stuck at work... doing work... I don't really have anything to blog about, but I do have "Ave Maria" stuck in my head because I got distracted for a moment and was gazing at the sweet little shrine to the Virgin Mary I have up on my wall next to my computer monitor. Lots of pretty little prayer cards. I don't pray and I'm not even Christian, but I love Mary. She's just beautiful.

So here for your viewing pleasure is a link to "Ave Maria" as shown in Disney's Fantasia. This might potentially be my favorite part of any movie of all time. It just gives me hope...which is what I need right now. You might need it, too.

Watch Fantasia's Ave Maria

Goodnight Moon

2010-03-01T22:18:00.003-05:00

I just got home to Brooklyn. I took a surprisingly relaxing, uncrowded, late afternoon train, during which I started and read almost half of "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" by Joan Didion -- this book is destined to become one of my favorites, I can already tell. As soon as I got to the city I cabbed it over to Cask for a Book Club meeting, where we somehow got very tipsy on only 2 drinks each. Hmm... Anyway, the next book we're reading is "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," which promises to be just lovely.

Speaking of books, I started to reorganize my bookshelf at my parents' house this morning, and I've vowed to reorganize the one in my apartment as well. I love organizing books... Nonfiction by subject, fiction by author... Beautiful. I also found my old copy of "Goodnight Moon," which will probably always be my favorite book in the whole wide world. Now I'm tired and must go to bed... So...

Goodnight, dish. Goodnight, spoon. Goodnight, cow jumping over the moon.

Maryland, My Maryland

2010-02-28T21:40:00.001-05:00

Well, I haven't posted in a few days, meaning I'm losing out to Rachel. Except that I'm in Maryland, and she's in Hawaii, so I really have no excuse. Also, she is in the midst of trying to survive a fucking tsunami, and is still blogging.

Life for me has been a little crazy. And by crazy, I mean it's been the mundane routine of suburban life that includes basketball, shopping, bad food, etc. But I'm going to recap it in a boring post right here... So if you don't want to read about my weekend, just stop. It's not that exciting, I promise. Save yourself.

Anyway, my parents were going to the Philadelphia Flower Show, so I volunteered (if you can call it that) to come down and babysit my sister for the weekend. On Friday I took the train from New York in the middle of a blizzard, luckily making it to Baltimore before it was even dark out. I took my 11 year old sister out for Indian food, which was kind of cute -- dinner dates with children are always interesting. Saturday I slept as long as I could until I had to take her to a basketball game, where she made 2 baskets and they basically kicked the other team's asses. We headed to Target to get a gift card for the birthday sleepover she was attending later, ate some Subway (gotta love the suburbs!), and then I proceeded to dye her hair. That's right, I put burgundy streaks in my little baby sister's immaculate, thick, long, beautiful black-brown hair. And they look damn good. She was quite proud.

I took her to the party in the early evening, picked up my charming little grandmother, headed to my aunt's house for dinner, where my cousin was home from college, found out the poor cousin has Celiac disease (gluten allergy), and then ate some really delicious home cooked food...sans gluten, of course. I love being home with family. You always eat so well and feel so wholesome and, well, full.... I spent some time talking to my grandmother back at her house, and that was really wonderful, as usual... I really appreciate the fact that I still have 2 very nice grandmothers and I know I need to cherish the time I have with them. Sooo... then I went home and was about to go to bed when my sister called me CRYING and wanting to come home. Some silly spat had occurred, but after calming her down and talking to the mom for a little, we determined she would be just fine to stay. I felt like a mom... big time. It was scary. Then I went to bed, where a cute little Cocker Spaniel and a fat black and white cat curled up with me. So cozy...

I woke up incredibly early on Sunday to do some work, which I was quite proud of myself for working on so diligently. I even went out for coffee and a breakfast sandwich (sausage, egg, & cheese on a bagel...nothing like New York, but oh well), then came back to "the office" to continue working. And that was only 8:30 a.m.! I don't remember the last time I was awake that early on a Sunday. I don't think those kinds of days happen in my life. So just about the time when I was supposed to start getting ready to go pick up Leah, my dad's computer crashed. That was helpful. And then it wouldn't turn back on. So I got frustrated, took my shower, went to get my sister, and took her to her basketball game. Where her team's asses were kicked. BADLY. I mean, this poor kid was crying by the end...

We both needed to chill, so we went out for Thai food... I'm trying to expose her to international cuisines... To bribe her into good behavior some more, I took her out to the mall to search for a "beanie" hat for her, and did some retail therapy on myself and got some impressive deals. Then I bought her a snowboarding game for her Wii. I am such a good big sister! We went to Borders, exchanged some books (Joan Didion, here I come!), then headed home only to find that my parents were back! My mom and I went on a book scavenger hunt around the house, because apparently when you live in a big suburban house you have 9 billion bookshelves and you can't find anything. Then you find stuff your daughter doesn't want and you make her put it in her suitcase, which will now be impossibly heavy. Thanks for the book about primates, Mom.

Oh, and from investigating the computer issue, I determined that the reason the thing had turned off was because my stupid fat cat had been stepping on it. I realized that right when it turned off, she had been under the table SITTING on the power strip I didn't know existed until later, so I have a feeling her extreme fatness made it somehow possible for her to push the power button, which is right on the top and relatives flat and easy to push. Ugh, the most cuddly, adorable, sweet not-so-little creature ever was the one that lost my work. Oh well.

Clearly, more work had to be done, so that was boring and I don't wanna write about it. We ate dinner (leftover beef barley soup!), watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics, drank some delicious Amphora wine, and I ditched the 'rents, and did some more crap for work, and then got bored, and here I am.

I will wax philosophical later about how weird it is to be 24 but to know so fully what it's like to be a parent in some ways, having dealt with my much-younger sister since I was 16. It's a trip. Literally. I mean, I have to take a trip to know what it's like. It will be nice to get back home to NYC to my own reality, which involves my own pursuits of happiness and selfishness and drunkenness and fun. But I always appreciate these weekends of suburban bliss, if you can call it that...

Mostly, it's good to spend time with my sister, as much as she might get on my nerves. She's a good kid, and she deserves for her big sister to buy her useless junk now and then and dye her hair and give her gum whenever she asks for it. And she even deserves to hear life advice from me even when she doesn't want to hear it. I'm just that good.

Ok I'm bored with this. Good night.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

2010-02-25T10:29:00.002-05:00

Ich muss Deutsch lernen... Meaning: I must learn German. Why? Because I need to explore the country where my family comes from, of course. My grandmother speaks fluent German -- in fact, she knew it before she knew English, although she was born in America -- but she never really taught it to her children. So my mother isn't fluent, and of course I barely know three words. Kann ich Deutsch sprechen? Nein.

Of course, regular old German might not even be that helpful in the region my family is from. Apparently there are crazy dialects in southwest Germany, most likely because it's so close to Switzerland, and in Switzerland there are an incredible amount of dialects. German, Italian, French, all muddled up in a million different ways for thousands of years. This poster from the region translates to, "We can do anything. Except [speak] Standard German." Ahh the things you find out from Wikipedia.

That's ok though... Though I'm not fluent in any language besides English, I pick things up easily and I'm very good at distinguishing slight differences in pronunciations, even in languages I don't understand, and German is incredibly close to English. I heard some lovely (and very blonde) German girls talking at an ATM yesterday, and though the word I could most understand was, "Sheisse!" (meaning "shit," of course), I could also make things out like, "My pin number isn't working," or "This machine is so stupid." Mostly because of the frustrated tone, and the fact that pronunciation and grammatical structure are so similar to English, I found I could follow their conversation surprisingly well.

Besides learning the language, I want to go to Germany mostly to explore Berkheim, from where the maternal of my family hails - the Baumanns. The town is located in the Baden-Wurttemberg region. The closest I've ever gotten to it is at the Holocaust Museum -- we found the town on a wall where they list all the German towns and all the names of the Jewish families who were from there. It was terribly haunting and it made my mother cry, even though our immediate family had been gone for years by the time that happened. For her, I think, it was just too close for comfort, since she'd visited there in the '60s.

Anyway, as far as where I'll go when I visit... Everyone, myself included, usually thinks of Munich and Berlin and Hamburg when they think of German cities, but the cities in the Baden region are Mannheim and Heidelberg and Stuttgart and Freiberg...and I will visit them! The Black Forest is also right there, which is supposed to be absolutely beautiful. What's more, Zurich is not too far to the southwest, so I have a plan... Fly to Zurich, travel northwest to Freiberg, explore the Naturpark Sudschwarzwald, head east to Berkheim, find my relatives, stay on Jim's farm, head north to Stuttgart, then north again to Frankfurt. Then I guess I could come home. When will I do this? Not a damn clue. But I have it all planned out on Google Maps.

The funny thing is, I just did a little bit of Googling and I found a site where I can trace my mother's family back, but only on her Irish paternal side, not the German Baumanns. I was able to go all the way back to my great-great-great-great-great grandparents, Mary O'Rourke and Patrick Delaney, both born in Ireland in 1770. Perhaps I should visit Ireland instead...

Raindrops on roses...

2010-02-24T11:29:00.001-05:00

I liked this so much I posted it on my other blog, too. I was just searching for a generic status update about the rain and this is how people responded. Hilarious. I love Facebook more than words can say.

On Top of the World

2010-02-23T11:49:00.000-05:00

This is me on the floor of Reagan Airport, about 5 years ago. Maybe someday I'll travel to all the countries I'm touching. Hopefully...

Travel Bug

2010-02-23T09:38:00.001-05:00

This blog made me remember that Nick has relatives in Denmark... His uncle married a Danish woman and he has 4 daughters who I think are in their teens, so that could be fun... So here are possibilities for free places to stay in Europe!

France - Visit Mom's cousin Sarah and her family at her chateau... It will sound pretty fancy when I can say, "I'm going to summer in the South of France." Ooh la la...

Germany - Stay at farm owned by Mom's cousin Jim. I have no idea where this is or if it's near any cities, but it would be nice. I know I also have German relatives in the Baden region but I have no idea who they are. I think one of them is the crazy cousin Maria who lost the house that had been in my family for generations. I should probably find it and buy it.

Ireland - Stay at condo in Connemara owned by Mom's cousin Peter. My parents visited there last year and loved every minute of it. There were sheep everywhere...no joke. I saw pictures. The landscape is beautiful and the local people are apparently the nicest, most welcoming in the world.

Denmark - Visit Nick's uncle and his family... Again, no idea where they live, but it would be great to do a tour of Scandinavia. Nick is part Swedish so I think they have relatives there as well.

I have never been to Europe, which saddens me greatly. Truthfully, I want to go to London the most, but I want to do that when I have a bit more money to spend, since I hear it's terribly expensive. I think I just want to go for the literary heritage... I feel like every English major should probably make a pilgrimage to London at some point. I need to pay homage to Shakespeare.

My travels involve a driving through and flying around a large portion of the United States, a quick trip to Canada, a week in Belize, and two weeks in Japan. More on that later...

Escape!

2010-02-22T16:07:00.002-05:00

Here is my life plan... Basically it's a long series of escapes...

2010
Now - Work my butt off and save a lot of money... Basically I can't call out sick from the bar anymore. Ever.
May - Go to the Virgin Islands with Taylor to visit Cara. Flight = Booked. Me = So excited!
July - Visit Rachel in Chicago for the 4th of July, or for the Pitchfork Festival.
August - Go somewhere cool with the boyfriend, if he has enough money. We were discussing Hong Kong. That would be amazing, but South or Central America is more likely. Europe even, since we have a few options of free places to stay.
October - Go somewhere during Columbus Day Weekend. I don't know where yet, but it seems silly to waste a perfectly good 3 day weekend.
The rest of the year - Keep working...

2011
Beginning of year - Work my butt off and save money so I can do lots of long-term volunteering projects!
May - Boyfriend finishes program and we leave NY as soon as humanly possible. Yay!!
Summer - Go to India for up to 6 months to do volunteering through some program I'm not sure of yet.
December - Come home for the holidays. Apply to graduate school, if I have a clue by then what I want to do.

2012
January - Go to Tanzania for 3 months of volunteering through the Ujamaa Hostel.
April - Come home for one hot minute, then go to either San Diego to volunteer with K9 Connection, and/or to Seattle to volunteer with Furrytale Farm. However, I'd also like WWOOF at some point.
July or August - Come home, then pack up to move to wherever the boyfriend gets into medical school and I get into grad school, hopefully the same place.

So that's my life plan for now. I don't know how much of this I'll actually do, or if it will be in this order, but it's good to have hope for the future. I know I need to get out of NYC, but I also wouldn't mind coming back eventually, and I fully intend on enjoying myself while I'm still living here. I just need to travel, I need to volunteer, I need to see new people and places. Escape is my only hope! I just have to do lots of research and save money to make it a reality...

The Myth of Perfection

2010-02-20T12:58:00.001-05:00

My entire life I've felt myself pulled along a track of feminine self-improvement that ultimately evades me. I remember in 6th grade, I would look at the 8th grade girls and think, "When I'm in 8th grade, I'll look like that." The same when I got to high school... The senior girls looked like grownups to me, tall and thin with perfectly coiffed hair and handbags that matched their shoes. When I got to that age, I still felt like a child, though I looked at the freshman girls that year and thought how young they looked, how incredibly awkward, and was amazed at how I still felt that way.

The whole fantasy was relived in college. As a freshman I had long, unbrushed hair and Birkenstocks were permanently molded to my feet... I was a funny little mess of pseudo-hippiedom. It was not attractive and I didn't care. And yet I still looked longingly at those senior girls, amazed at how put-together they seemed in their neat little coats and boots as they took the Metro North into the city to date law students or to go to their publishing internships, or when they were dressed in so-short dresses and too-tall heels to attend some fantastic party with beautiful people in a distant borough I had yet to explore.

I'm always thinking ahead to when I'll finally "get there." Where, you ask? Truthfully, I don't know. To the time when my skin won't break out and I won't bite my nails and I'll know what dress to put on for what event and I'll be able to attend a "dinner party" without feeling like I'm 40. And when my room will finally be clean and every day will be a good hair day. Maybe someday I won't pass out after a night of drinking only to wake up with my contacts still in and my bra still on, with mascara gluing my eyes shut and my skin tattooed with the imprint of the seam of my jeans. I know there are 24 year olds out there with perfect bodies and hair and nails, with their bank accounts in order and their college diplomas hanging on their walls, who are able to hold a martini glass with confidence, who can teeter around in stilettos all night and not cry from the pain. Where are these women and why am I not friends with them? And moreover, would I even want to be? Probably not. They seem pretty boring.

I haven't bitten my nails in 3 days, a feat I'm very proud of. I just got new highlights in my hair that I spent far too much money on, a feat that I thought I'd be proud of but really, it just seems vain at this point. Once again I've resolved that I'll work out more, or take a ballet class. Clearly, I'm still clinging to this myth that if I transform my outer self somehow, my inner self will suddenly become wise and confident and I'll know all the secrets to...I don't know what. Inside, however, I still feel like that 6th grade girl, gazing up at the 8th graders who seemed so old and wise... Only now I realize, they were only 14 themselves and wore way too much eyeliner and curled their bangs in horrible ways and didn't have a damn clue about anything except for AOL and Spice Girls. Much like the women I see on the subway every day... They might be older, wiser, richer... But I have the sneaking suspicion that they're still just as clueless as I am, even after careers and kids and endless dye jobs. So I feel that I will never discover the secret that makes one beautiful and confident and perfect, because those things don't actually exist.

I think that in reality, life is just one long series of small discoveries and surprises and changes that don't really lead to anything, just to more of the same delicious craziness all the time... More bad hair days and embarrassments and goals and failures and laughs and eye rolls and spills. There is no end of the road, it's just a series of curves, so that we can't see the destination -- because it doesn't exist. Along the way, I'll bite my nails again, my hair will look terrible, I'll make mistakes with money and makeup and alcohol, I won't have a damn clue what dress to put on, and my feet will hurt from too-tall shoes and I'll have to take a cab home. I'll probably never get to that place of feeling like a grownup, and I'll always look at women just a few years older than me and think, "When I'm their age, I'll be this or that or have this or that and everything will be perfect." Luckily, at this point, I'll know it's just a myth...it's just one that I will probably never stop chasing.

Whether the Weather...

2010-02-19T11:19:00.003-05:00

It's a beautiful day in New York City. It's mid-February and while snow still frosts the rooftops, it's warmed up enough that the deadly sheets of ice no longer coat the sidewalks at night. In fact, it's 40 degrees outside! It's practically summer...

In the 6 years that I've lived here, I have always been amazed at how resilient New Yorkers are when it comes to weather. It's amazing how quickly they (or we, I suppose) get used to the cold after complaining for a day or two, wrapping ourselves up beyond recognition against the chill... or how swiftly we shed those layers when the temperature rises a few degrees... or best of all, how the moment that a warm-enough spring day arrives, people flood every inch of grass of every park in the city, lounging on blankets filled with wine and weed and babies and guitars and frisbees like it's 1973.

On a day like today, you can gaze up at the blue sky with its picturesque smattering of clouds, feel the crisp wind in your face, and guarantee that there are people in this city who believe that today is the perfect weather for flip-flops. In fact, a college friend of mine used to staunchly refuse to wear anything but flip-flops until there was snow on the ground. I can't imagine how he avoided frostbite... Perhaps the excessive amount of alcohol flowing through his veins warded it off...

Anyway, I also love to see how people adapt to the weather in different ways - the moment it warms up a bit, men are out in t-shirts pretending they aren't cold. The moment the temperature drops a degree, they've have re-bundled themselves up in scarves, hats, and gloves. When it rains and it's above freezing, bald guys go without umbrellas. And when summer rolls around, the amount of skin you see can be simply fascinating... Suddenly the entire city unveils its hidden artwork in a web of tattoos and scars and cellulite and body hair.

I also love that once we are confident that spring has truly sprung, the women of New York suddenly bloom like flowers... We shed the heavy black and gray and brown and tweed and wool and suddenly drape ourselves in airy silk and cotton dresses every color of the rainbow. Even the umbrellas change from the standard black, mushrooming above our heads in bright floral prints, some with frog eyes or ladybug spots, some trimmed in lace...

Today's sunlight and relative "warmth" are a premonition that February is closer to its end than its beginning... That soon the subways will be filled with color again, once the city's residents have put away their standard black wool coats. We will begin to match the prim little flowerboxes that line the strees of the West Village... Then our colors will begin to clash like Times Square... We will transform from Brooklyn brownstones to Coney Island freak shows...

Enough with the horrible metaphors. All I have to say is, no matter the weather, I find myself consistently surprised and delighted (and at times horrified) at the ever-changing wardrobes of New York, and today has given me hope for the unveiling that lies just around the bend...

The Challenge

2010-02-18T12:02:00.001-05:00

Thus begins Blog Challenge 2010, in which Rachel and I compete to blog the most. The only rule is that we must blog every day for a month, then reward ourselves with green beer on St. Paddy's Day. This will be interesting, since I'm pretty lazy about writing in general...although I consider myself a writer. Hmm.... Anyway, lucky for me, I mostly blog about blogging, so really, I could just write endless drivel about how I write endless drivel and really say absolutely nothing of substance whatsoever. Since I'm using correct punctuation and grammar, however, this might see like a really amazing blog post chock full of original thoughts and ideas and keen insights into life. Which is does not...

This kind of reminds me of the song "Hook," by Blues Traveler, in which he sings about singing about nothing, but as long as the song sounds good, you'll listen. That was a great song. Still is, I suppose. It will forever remind me of middle school and I how I discovered the wondrous powers of the Internet by finding the lyrics online, printing them out (probably not on recycled paper, as it was 1997 and we didn't think about those things back then), and listening to a taped (yes, a cassette) version that I had recorded from DC101 over and over and over again while reading the lyrics so that I could FINALLY learn the words to that really fast part. Whew. And guess what? I DID IT. And I still know them. How's that for accomplishment?

So I have now set out on what I hope to be the second major accomplishment of my life -- beating Rachel at the Blog Challenge. As I commence with my pathetic blogging about blogging, I realize that the only reason we're really doing this is because Rachel gave up Facebook for Lent (she's not even Catholic, wtf?!?) and so she really needs something to occupy her time. Come to think of it, this is probably a very good way of keeping me off Facebook as well... Though I'm sure it also greatly hinders my progress at work. That's ok, day jobs are overrated anyway.

My dear friend's shunning of the addictive cultural phenomenon that is Facebook makes me think... I'm pretty addicted to Facebook myself. How have I become so obsessed with voyeuristically peering into the lives of people who I really could have cared less about in high school, could care even less about now, and yet I find so fascinating?? Perhaps it's because some of these people are married, they have children, they own houses, they seem like grownups... Then again, some of them still live with their parents, they work at gas stations, they play endless video games... And yet again, some of them are attending prestigious universities and traveling the world and starting businesses and saving starving children, and really having quite a lovely time doing it.

It's really quite bizarre how self-conscious Facebook has also made me, not that I wasn't before. While I generally think ugly pictures of myself are hilarious and have no qualms about posting them all over the place, I still covet the occasional picture where I can shallowly say, "Wow, I look HOT." And yes, I do care what those silly people who are lame and boring, or who are intelligent and interesting, see when they look at my Facebook profile. Are they appalled? Are they jealous? Do they laugh at my misfortunes? Do they think I'm a shameless bleeding heart liberal who kills babies and hugs trees and terrorists? Do they think I'm pretty? And why the hell do they care?

I guess it's human nature -- we want to know how the world perceives us, and we do our best to shape the world's perceptions of us. We express ourselves in order to create an image, even though we'd like to think that . Sometimes it's therapeutic to know that there might be someone out their envious of us, someone who thinks we're really pretty and smart and special. And yet, it's also therapeutic to remember that you're just one in 7 billion, quite literally...so most of the world doesn't really give a shit about you. So when you post those ugly pictures, only about 0.000000000000000001% of the world is even going to notice, if that. You're barely even making a ripple...

But as small as my ripple may be, I do often wonder, who Facebook stalks me? Who blog stalks me? As far as blogs, I can safely say Hello Angela! Hello April! Hello Heather! Hello Rachel, my dearest competition! Furthermore, who stalks me in real life (besides the creepy but nice hat and scarf salesman down the street from my office who mutters, "Beautiful..." under his breath when I walk by)? Then again, perhaps he does it to all the ladies who saunter past. And he can't really be stalking me if he doesn't move, just stands at his post. I suppose I've answered my own question...real life stalkers: 0. I think I'm ok with that.

But what about the others... Who is looking at my Facebook pictures today and what are they thinking? Why do they care about me? Then again, why do I care about peering into the lives of people I barely knew years ago and know even less now? The eternal questions linger...

So much for blogging about blogging. I guess "keen insights into life" aren't so hard after all.

Last Night's Dinner

2010-02-17T19:28:00.001-05:00

Boy Cooks, Girl Eats

2010-02-17T12:02:00.003-05:00

I am a lucky woman...especially when I'm hungry. I have a live-in boyfriend who can cook like a professional chef and doesn't mind me hanging around the kitchen drinking wine and getting in his way and pretending to "help." My idea of cooking generally involves one or a few of the following: I boil some pasta or rice, steam some vegetables, open a can of beans, toss all the leftovers in my fridge into a tortilla, and call it dinner...or I pick up the phone and order Chinese. The boyfriend does not believe in my version of cooking and is generally content for me to boycott the kitchen altogether (except for breakfast on the weekends...I scramble some mean eggs), as long as I help clean up. Which I do...most of the time...

Anyway, because we're not too big on getting stressed out for silly Hallmark holidays, and I had to work at the bar on Valentine's Day, we didn't make our traditional romantic dinner until last night. We started this tradition many years ago back in college out of necessity, because we were poor -- we pick a main ingredient we wouldn't normally eat (we started with tuna steaks, then moved onto veal, etc.), we pick out an interesting recipe, we go shopping for all the ingredients together, buy a nice bottle of wine, then cook romantically all evening and watch a movie that isn't sappy, but interesting. I think one year we watched "Rosemary's Baby." How's that for Valentine's Day?

Last night when I got home for work, we already had all the ingredients waiting for us and we dove right in. I chopped stuff, drank excessively, and bitched about my family, while he did all the heavy lifting and allowed himself to be splashed with grease. How sweet! We ended up with heavenly red potatoes roasted in duck fat and simply seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley... Red cabbage and apples braised in apple cider vinegar... A huge (a.k.a. expensive) and very rare steak from the Brooklyn Kitchen, with a heavenly red wine, herb, and carrot sauce... and some "kick in the face" Chasing Lions wine. All this while watching "I'm Not There," which oddly enough for a Bob Dylan fanatic, I had not seen.

The meal made me think... I don't eat red meat very often, but when I dig into a really good steak that has been meticulously prepared by my boyfriend, I really appreciate the time and effort put into cooking it to perfection - or rather, the lack of time, since a really good steak shouldn't be cooked for very long. He decided 6 minutes per side would be just right. And it was...

I also appreciate the fact that an animal lived and died to make my meal. Thanks, Mr. Steer. I hope you had a nice life, I really do. I think everyone who eats meat has a responsibility to really acknowledge the animal that they're consuming -- that this was once a living, breathing creature that could feel hot, cold, pain, fear...and contentment. And the more I am starting to enjoy food, thanks mostly to my foodie boyfriend, the most I realize one needs to be responsible in their buying practices of animal products. Do I break down and buy conventionally raised chicken or eggs here and there? Yes...and it makes me feel irresponsible. Do I know every time that I go out to eat that the meat was raised free range, hormone-free, etc. etc.? No, and that too gives me a twinge of guilt with every bite. I can thank my boyfriend for making me more food-conscious and therefore more animal-conscious. Although it gets expensive...

I guess I can really thank my boyfriend for giving me a solid appreciation of quality food and home cooking...even though I'm still not terribly motivated to do it. I have tried many new dishes in the 5 years we've been together, and I've experimented with cooking techniques I watched my mother do for years but never understood, and now I can safely say I am what I guess is an amateur foodie... Although I'm guilty of bringing home a can of Chef Boyardee and a 6 pack of beer one night after the grocery stores were closed and I had a rough, long day at work.

Still, when I think back on great meals I've had in my life, I remember bacon-wrapped venison (which I ate as a child in the back woods but never though of as high end cuisine), roasted quail, and foie gras... Or Brussels sprouts, morrel soup, and tuna liver with edible flowers... Mmm... And I appreciate more and more that animals had to perish to give me my meal, and that the chefs who prepare them take great care in translating this life cycle into something truly memorable.

So thank you, dear, for making me see food for what it is: plants and animals that grow, die, and are recreated into exotic forms with fancy names...But more importantly, that give me endless pleasure while eating, and will continue to do so as I remember and talk about them for years to come.

Where's Michael Pollan when I need him?

Gretyl and Ludwig

2010-02-15T16:04:00.000-05:00

This is Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister Gretyl, as painted by Gustav Klimt for her wedding. I thought it was lovely. You might think so, too. I would like for someone to create a program that can turn your picture in to a Klimt-style painting. Picasso or Dali would be amazing as well. Does something like that exist already? Hmm...

Anyway, this picture came from the fact that since I need to read philosophy again, and I need to think about linguistics again, and Wittgenstein is a good place to start, I thought I'd catch up with him briefly via Wikipedia...which of course is terribly insufficient.

Tractatus, here I come.

Epic Fail

2010-02-15T15:17:00.002-05:00

Again, I fail at blogging. Ah well... I guess I have no choice but to press on...

I just read over all the things I posted in the past year and a half since I started this blog, and my how times have changed. I won't bore myself with the details (because God knows, I'm the only one who reads this thing...ever 6 months), since I know what happened in that time, but it is strange to look back on life since June 2008 and wonder how I got here. And where the hell I'm going...

In my last post I discussed my new healthy lifestyle that would enable me to shed 10 pounds by October and basically just eat more fruits and veggies. That didn't last very long. Now another friend is getting married in June and I made that same resolution last month. Again, not happening. I think the reason that I'm not putting too much effort into it is that I know I don't eat too much crap to begin with, and I feel pretty confident in myself and my body anyway. So fuck it, I'll try to work out more, and I'm eating more green stuff in general, but as far as setting weight loss goals? That's a bunch of baloney. Not that I eat baloney...it grosses me out. See? I'm already super healthy, right?

Anyway, I also posted about the bar I had just started working at, and yes, I still work there, and yes, I know many people now, and yes, I love it. Does it stress me out, does it exhaust me, does it drive me insane that I never get enough sleep and I have to deal with crazy people and then I have to go to my day job in the morning on 3 hours of sleep? YES. But the money is totally worth it, of course, and the awesome people I've met basically make the decision for me. I've become good friends with some good folks since last April, I've listened to a lot of great music, and poured a hell of a lot of beer, and I've saved some money that will help me out quite a bit in the future. So I'll stay.

Speaking of the bar, I was just working there last night... Thank God I didn't have to go to my day job today... Although I still woke up at 9 a.m. after going to bed around 5:30, so I guess my biological clock is (as usual) out to get me... But we had a lovely time taking shots of Blackhaus, making fun of a drunk couple as they made out in the corner (it was Valentine's Day), yelling at the regulars to get the hell out of the bar, and then coming home so my drunk boyfriend and I could order greasy diner food at 5 a.m. and play with our hyper and hilarious cat on the carpet for a while. Ahhh, life when you're 24. Such a waste of time and energy, but so worth it...

Since I woke up so goddamn early and needed to just chill, I used this nice quiet day to read about feral children, a longtime passion of mine. I watched a BBC documentary on Genie that oddly enough, I'd never seen, discovered a new confined child named Dani, who is absolutely fascinating, and resolved to finally break down and buy Susan Curtiss' thesis that you can only find for about $100... A horrid price, but worth it. I'll get it after I pay the next rent check. Unfortunately, I can't buy a DVD of "The Apple" because it's an Iranian movie that was never released on DVD in the States, so you can only get the British DVDs, which are a different format than U.S. DVD players. I'll have to search the NYPL instead. Silly continental drift.

So even after all the Blackhaus, I have still retained my intellectual and scientific pursuits that have stayed with me for so long. My freshman year roommate will never let me forget how many a night she would find me sitting up on the computer reading everything there was to read on feralchildren.com and most likely thinking, "Who the hell is this psychotic pothead that Fordham University thought would be a good roommate match for me?"

Oddly enough, we're still good friends, and although we don't see each other enough, I have the sneaking suspicion we always will be. As a matter of fact, we're going to see "The Tempest" in a few weeks at BAM, which I couldn't be more excited about. I can't wait to see old Prospero... What a guy. I haven't been to see a play in such a long time it's kind of disturbing. I really ought to. I live in the center of the universe with so many cultural events going on all the time, and my life seems consumed by trivial pursuits.

Another friend of mine from college (yet another fellow English major!) wanted to go to the ballet recently to either see "Cinderella" or "Romeo & Juliet," but unfortunately the discounted tickets were only available the one week I could not get my bar shifts covered since a coworker was out of town. The irony. Ah well, we will have time for such cultural events again.

Back to my day...I'd been getting drowsier, so stopped reading I flipped on the TV and as a guilty pleasure (or horror, I'm not sure which), I watched "Little Miss Perfect" about those psycho beauty pageant moms and their creepily made up daughters. Weird. That is a world I will never understand, but one of the mother-daughter teams inspired me to write a new short story. They were different than the others... She was an older mom who did not want her daughter competing in these glitzy pageants - the girl had done natural pageants before, which I suppose involved less makeup, no fake hair, no "flippers" (creepy false teeth), etc. But this little girl was determined, and she had such amazing stage presence and sparkle you just knew she would be a real performer someday, even though her somewhat dowdy mother was really not into it. They actually seemed like a healthy duo, with the mother holding back instead of pushing...unlike the overdone, overweight, trashy moms who grill their daughters on their routines while yanking their hair and applying false eyelashes, and forcing them into these ridiculous costumes and dances when the child really has no inherent talent, just a cute face. Sad. So yes, the natural duo was interesting... But I eventually had to just put it on mute because it was sucking at my soul. I can't imagine what I'll do when I have a daughter...probably make her take ballet lessons until she rebels, because I just love ballet... but forcing her into pageants? Now that's just sick.

While still reading and writing, I moved onto "Hoarders" on A&E, another ridiculously distrubing show but in a completely opposite way. Every time I think my apartment has gotten a little messy, I will think of this show and realize it's not so bad. And every time my apartment has gotten really messy, I will think of this show and realize I don't ever want to become like that, and I will CLEAN IT UP.

This has got to be the most schizophrenic blog post ever, and the most self-absorbed, but at least I'm writing again. I am going to try to do this as much as possible now... I really, truly am. And I'm going to advertise it to my friends, who actually do seem to follow my Tumblr blog, which is nice, so maybe if they read it then I'll be more encouraged to post.

Of course, I'll have to watch what I write... So in advance of anything I might ever post that could be construed in the wrong way, I'll just say...... Fuck you. I love you.

Again...

2009-06-16T10:33:00.001-04:00

So apparently it's been another 5 months since I last posted. I am terrible at this. But I'm going to give blogging another go by starting a new one! I know, probaby not a good solution seeing as I can't even keep up with this one, much less my (very easy) Tumblr account.

The new blog will be a bit of a personal project though, in which I endeavor to lose 10 pounds by October 10th (a friend's wedding). This is not just about weight loss though, because I'm certainly not overweight by any means. Would I like a flatter tummy? Of course...who wouldn't? In fact, that's part of my goal, to be able to feel comfortable wearing anything and not worry about the muffin top hanging over my jeans! But more than weight, it's about eating healthy and taking control of what I put in my body, because I haven't been very nice to this sack of bones and flesh for quite some time now. It's time for a real, significant, long term change.

Anyway, as for my life... It's funny, because I was reading the last blog post in which I lamented the fact that I had not met anyone in my neighborhood... Times have changed! A friend came to visit in April and we decided that 4:00 was a reasonable hour to start drinking (it was Saturday, we were hungover, don't judge). After downing a bottle of wine at dinner, we noticed that a corner bar had finally opened right near the subway station... Back at the apartment, we were thoroughly tanked and didn't want to go all the way into the city to drink more, so we thought, "Why not check out that new bar?"

Well, we did, we loved it, and being the forward drunkard that I am, I decided to ask the bartender and owner if I could try out bartending. They said yes, I trained for a few nights, and suddenly found myself with a Thursday night shift! I've been at it for 2 months now, and though I'm a bit tired at work on Fridays (I have a full time 9-5 job and I usually don't go to bed until 3), I couldn't be happier. Thursdays is a "jazz jam," entailing a lot of talented musicians who jam out to the music my dad always wanted me to listen to but I never really appreciated. I probably still don't appreciate it as I should, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

The best part is, I've suddenly found myself in the center of a really nice crowd of people from all walks of life. I know the guys who play jazz the best, since I see them every week, and most of them are really nice people in their 20s who live in the neighborhood. There are also many other characters who show up from time to time, such as Ron, who sits at the end of the bar drinking Coors Light on the rocks with lime, or Big Sean, who is a massive, outgoing guy who wears very tight fitting, color-coordinated cycling gear and drinks Corona with two lemons and Kosher salt.

Suddenly, I know people. I'm not a particularly social, outgoing person, but I can listen and I can talk, and I can open as many Brooklyn Lagers as our stock will allow. And the money's not bad... All in all, I'm going to stick with this gig for as long as I can...Great music, nice people, cash for the week, and the social scene of a small, diverse neighborhood in NYC. I like it. I think I'll stay.

Giving it another try

2009-01-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

It has been about 5 months since my last post. I am pretty pathetic. But I am trying once again.

This time I've started "following" Fuck You, Penguin, which is completely hilarious, and the Ditmas Park blog (I live there), and just today, a Kensington blog (I don't live there, but it sounds fancy and it's nearby).

Hopefully this will keep me more attuned to what's happening in my own neighborhood. I am not involved enough in what's going on, I don't know anyone besides my boyfriend (who I live with) and my cat, and I should probably get out into the community. All my friends in NYC live in other parts of Brooklyn, other boroughs, etc. and it makes things difficult when I want to just hang out here.

I feel very young in my neighborhood, however... Everyone seems to be the 27-35 crowd, and they're married, or they have kids, or this, or that. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are poor and 23 like me, but I just have to find them.

Right now, we're looking for a new apartment somewhere closer to the subway, closer to the restaurants and shops, etc. We're kind of out in the middle of nowhere right now. There's not even a bodega on the corner to run to... Well there is, but you have to walk east over to Flatbush and I don't like to do that after dark. 4 years in the Bronx and I'm still a big wimp. But anyway, hopefully we can find something that's a little more central, a little more neighborhoody, and has a view of trees, people, the street, etc. Hopefully.

I'm going to go eat some cereal.

I'm learning.

2008-08-26T14:37:00.000-04:00

I just read Mary Clare's blog and realized I'm not very good at this yet. But I will learn. Am I supposed to be entertaining? Who am I entertaining? Why do they want to read about me? Will they stalk me? Hmm. I'm learning, dammit.

Mom & Magda

2008-08-26T13:51:00.002-04:00

My mom came to visit this weekend, and she brought along my 9 year old sister. Well, 9 and a half, because fractions are important when you're 9 (and a half). We played the tourist game and went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, of which only the latter I would return to. The statue was pretty impressive, I must say, but after an hour of craning my neck to see her big old book and pretty gold torch, I was done. Basically after you've done the audio tour, paid a quarter to look into those telescope things to see Manhattan up close, and taken all the pictures you can imitating Ol' Lady Liberty herself, there's not much to do but stand in line for hours waiting for overpriced, greasy food and then sit down at an outdoor food court where overly tame pigeons and seagulls grapple for the fries in your hand. Bleh.

Ellis Island was pretty damn depressing, I must say, but I'd go back. Around every corner you'd read quotes and hear the voices of the immigrants reminding you that, "We had nothing, I had nothing, there was nothing, I left everything behind." So I could understand how my sister wanted to play her Nintendo DS (for those non-tweens out there, this is the modern day equivalent to a Gameboy) instead of reading about the torturous medical examinations and the screaming babies and the inability to understand anyone around you. But the building is beautiful and the photographs and recordings and artifacts are pretty cool. There's a wall outside with the names of people who came over, and although we knew that no one in our family had paid any funding for our name to be put on, we did in fact find our family name (maybe they're long lost cousins). Then my mother realized that her grandfather had already been in the U.S. for a few years without having gone through Ellis Island, and probably could afford to buy his wife and her sister first class tickets, so basically no one in my family went through Ellis Island anyway. Still, we found "The Geisinger Family" and pretended that we had a historical connection. And I realized I really like the name Geisinger and maybe I'll use it for something down the line, like when I'm not rich and famous but I just need to give some creepy guy a fake name or sign up for something online that I don't want to get spammed with in the future.

We also went to Coney Island on Saturday, which I've done a bunch of times by now, but my sister wanted to ride the Cyclone and my mom wanted to sit on the beach. I got a lovely little tan, and I escaped without going on the dreaded roller coaster. I basically started hyperventilating as we approached it, and it's a damn good thing I didn't go because my mom said it was horrible and bumpy and painful and awful. The next day, she talked to her mother (my grandmother) about the trip, who said that HER mother (my great-grandmother, the Geisinger who probably did not come through Ellis Island) had ridden the thing in the '30s and hated it. So I didn't feel bad about not going on, since my great-grandmother had been conned into riding it when it was new and had a horrible, traumatic experience. Maybe her spirit was conjured up during our Ellis trip and she decided to look out for me for a day and say, "Hell no, don't go." Thanks, Magda. You're a champ.

Scrambling

2008-08-20T09:59:00.000-04:00

I am absolutely scrambling to become a seasoned blogger. It's tough. But apparently it will pay off eventually. I don't write very often anymore, which is a sad, sad thing. I used to write ridiculous stories all day, every day, and very few of them (if any) I actually finished. Once the pen gave way to the computer, I would pour out my soul onto a computer screen. Now I'm uninspired. I can't think of anything creative anymore, so I can't write, so I can't do shit, can I? So maybe this blog thing will help me to get back into the swing of things. Maybe.

I guess I'll start with my morning. I decided to put The Band on shuffle. Brilliant idea, especially since I (finally) just finished my book (Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding), which took me far too long to finish. More on that later. I started off with "Up on Cripple Creek," then "Rocking Chair" just before the train came, then filtered through all the albums a bit, hitting "The Weight," of course, along with "Ophelia" and some other up-tempo ones. Then once I got to Union Square the song landed on "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," which was perfect for getting me hyped up for work. I think I need to pick up the guitar again and start singing some of these old songs I love.

I worked really hard on the guitar for a few weeks after a lesson with a friend, playing old songs like "Don't Come Home A'Drinkin'" by Loretta Lynn and "Cold Cold Heart" by Hank Williams. Great stuff. I am such a redneck at heart. What the hell am I doing in New York City? Anyway, I really failed after a few weeks and haven't picked up the guitar in months. I'm going to get back to it and it's going to be glorious. You just wait and see. Unfortunately I doubt I'll ever get to the point where I can play in front of people while singing. So maybe don't wait and see...

I've decided that this fall, there are going to be changes. Save more money, play more guitar, get a voice lesson or two, join a gym, take a ballet class, apply for other jobs, apply for grad school, figure out what the hell to do with my life. We'll see what I actually accomplish.

This job is killing me. It's just one frustration after another. I still have time to sit and do nothing, which is absolutely ridiculous, but then sometimes I have a huge amount of research to do and I can't have anyone bother me. But I need deadlines on big projects, not huge, open-ended assignments. And I don't need these teeny-tiny stupid assignments which take me 2 minutes and make me want to cry. And I don't need a boss who talks to me about inane things simply because there's no one else around to bother. Ugh. I think my 10 months in this place has drained my creativity. Hence why I need to get back to doing creative things on the side.

I wanted to take a pottery class last year so I could make cheap Christmas gifts. I didn't do it. Should I now? I keep thinking there will come a time when I have more time, more money. And then I realize that time will never come. Because maybe I'll get a job where I'm more occupied, and yes, I'll have more money. But then I'll have to go back to school, and I won't have any time or money. Then I'll get another job. And then the boyfriend will be in medical school and he'll have time for absolutely nothing, and I'll get a dog to keep me company...if I have time. And then we'll get married and have kids and have no time for anything, ever again. Wait a second. This is thinking way too far in advance. Disgusting. But basically, I have time now, I have no money, but I'm young. So fuck it, I'll just play some more guitar and try to enjoy life.

Inspiration?

2008-07-31T14:51:00.000-04:00

Having been re-inspired to take part in this new-fangled technological phenomenon called "blogging," I am now wasting precious time at the office to write this. Instead of writing I could be doing things I normally do at work, which include:

1. Conversing on Gmail Chat with people I see/talk to every day, some of whom are mere steps from my desk.
2. Reading the terrible, terrible Metro or AM New York newspapers.
3. Browsing the New York Times and trying desperately to pretend that I am up to date on current events and celebrity gossip, though I'm not even sure who the "ennifer" part of "Bennifer" is.
4. Eating.
5. Ignoring my boss. Oh wait! That's exactly what I'm doing. Weird.
6. Sudoku...though the "easy" ones regularly take me a half hour at minimum to complete.
7. Working. HAH.

Here I am watching my blackberries get moldy (6th Avenue fruit man, I WILL have my revenge), trying desperately to feign an interest in anthing remotely close to my job, and tearing myself away from the newly discovered blog, "What Claudia Wore."

Lunchtime is my only escape, and luckily I get to chat it up for an hour with some lovely young ladies around who are just as bored and frustrated as I am. Somehow the Babysitters Club came up yesterday, and we decided that it was awesome and we are in love with it and are creating a new BSC at the lunch table. I am Dawn...which is no surprise to anyone who knows me. But I'm also a huge fan of Claudia's wardrobe and her addiction to junk food. Unfortunately, I'm not an artsy Japanese girl with crazy clothing...in fact, none of us are, so I think Claudia will just be a ghost for a while until we have more diversity at the office. Anyway, I learned about this blog, am now a giant ridiculous fan, and that's that. I have to get back to reading it.

Now my boss is on speaker phone with his wife and I can very cleary hear her strong Queens accent which is absolutely stifling to my creativity. This is the signal to read someone else's mindless blather. Claudia, here I come...

Begin blogging sequence in 3...2...1...

2008-02-26T19:25:00.001-05:00

This is all very new to me. Let's see how this thing works...