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...
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Maryland, My Maryland
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.
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.
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