New Friends

Tags

adulthood, driving, friendships, geography, life, living, moving, new york, NYC, relationships, teens, wine

Making new friends is awkward, touch and go like learning to drive a car as a teen. Already uncomfortable in the skin you’re in, slamming the brake when you know you shouldn’t, but you’re scared, so you do, this is how it goes.

Making new adult friends is this but with coffee, cold from the afternoon, still in hand as a prop. It’s this with wine in plastic cups like Dixie, like the teeth-brushing rinser-outer cups for me and my brother, but see-through and bigger. More room for more wine for the silences.

But I’m new here so making friends is what I’ll have to do, always slamming on the brakes with Dixie cups of wine.

Home: A poem

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city, home, New York City, NYC, poetry, travel, urban, writing

She stopped at every corner,
snapping photos of the street signs,
individual cobblestones beneath our soles,
bricks in each building,
making history of address labels on wall street skyscrapers,
capturing her traveling soul in photo,
escaping home.

No Makeup Saturday

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alex trebec, beauty, entertainment, fashion, female, friends, hair, life, makeup, style, women

I wish it were Monday. No make-up Monday has such a ring to it. And Mondays are a nice excuse for anything. You know, people have heart attacks on Mondays more than any other day. Alex Trebec knows this for sure.

The point is, today’s a day to get ready the regular way. Jeans-n-boots, my favorite t shirt, with pencil sketches of the band Cream on the front. New gray jacket from H&M, mustard seed necklace, wedding and engagement bands. My hair styles are simple, but there are lots of them. I never like to wear my hair the same way. All my friends know that I’m the best nonprofessional hairstylist they know. I don’t know how it happens; but it does.

And then only lotion on my winter-chapped face. Out the door. You see, I’m often caught in the white lie that I don’t wear any makeup. Ever. And, to be fair, no one ever actually calls me out on this, but I know that when I say it, it’s only a half-truth. I wear exponentially less makeup than everyone I know. Except my girlfriends, Sarah and Charissa, they really don’t wear any. Not in the half-truth way. They may not even own any; you’d never know, pretty faces. Even my little sister, ten years my junior, (parental-style digression diverted) wears more makeup than I do.

For so many reasons, one of the primary being that I like sleep far too much to spend so much morning in front of the mirror, I don’t invest in all the accoutrements that the female population create a market for. Some cover up, a bronzer that has lasted me 6 years and sometimes a touch of nude eye color. The end. But today, the end is the beginning. None.

The circles under my eyes that have puffed up from crying for my best friend, for my girlfriends all 800 miles away, for enduring change and working too much, they stay gray and deep. The pimple that just mysteriously appeared on my right cheek is red from my rubbing it, and it stays red. Bummer for anyone who has to look at it. My eyelids are sort of veiny, I noticed the other day. And today, they remain such. My skin is a little flush in the winter, unevenly so. And tonight it remains.

I’m dressed and ready. I have my bag, my water bottle and a book for the train. I am makeupless and don’t feel self-conscious. Here I come, world. Look at me.

Things I Don’t Do: Return Phone Calls

Tags

Cold War Kids, communication, distance, friends, friendships, geography, letters, love, mail, pen pals, phone calls, post office, relationships, voicemail, writing

Note: See other items on a list of Things I Do or Things I Don’t Do here: Cook Dinner, Watch TV, Make the Bed

The conundrum of the phone call situation is that I do actually have the mathematical time to return them. But, considering what it takes to return a phone call: the geography, the headspace, the time commitment, the concentration to conversationally catch up, the mathematical time isn’t a great quantifying measure.  Returning phone calls is up there with serious commitments like getting married. So when I say I don’t have time or that I’m too busy, I don’t mean in minutes; I don’t mean that I’m flying around with my jet pack strapped to my shoulders on the run all day. What I mean is that I can’t sacrifice all that it takes to commit to a phone call. Or, to be real and raw, I won’t.  I value the now too much; phone calls don’t feel like right now to me.

It’s part of the reason I tried so hard and for so many years to brand myself as a letter-writer. Everyone knows. Everyone who knows even a little knows this about me. And they don’t write, no one does (Yes, Strongs, except for you). So I feel, even self-righteously (I’ll admit), totally justified in my ignored voicemails, when my mailbox is empty of your letter.

With a letter, I can choose my geography and a comfortable headspace. I can start the letter on the train, where the cell phone towers can’t reach, and stop when I arrive at work with minutes to spare. I can finish when I get home, listening to Cold War Kids in my stereo speakers and eating an apple at the desk. I can take a walk while I deliver your letter, I can make an appointment, or call my mom (my mom does get calls back; don’t fuss, it’s different). I enjoy writing in a way I do not enjoy the labor of calls, especially calls back, when I’m on the guilty end of the exchange, so stuck and jailed by my phone call obligations. If these nuances could just be public about the weaving and knitting inside of me, I would never have personal, only professional, voicemails.  In the meanwhile, I make no sincere apology about this thing I do not do.

Things I Don’t Do: Make The Bed

Tags

bed, bedroom, home, hotel, household, husband, laundry, life, linen, logic, relationship, sleep

Note: See other items on a list of Things I Do or Things I Don’t Do here: Cook Dinner, Watch TV

I do not make the bed. Except on the rare occasion when the sheets and the duvet cover are all clean and everything smells like bounce freshener sheets which compels deep within me this irresistible urge to be wrapped up tightly and covered with cheese (yes, much like an empanada), except that the cheese is bounce fresh linens and all of this is happening on my bed.  When the ends of the sheets are gripped by the mattress bottom, they tug my down snugly so I can’t escape.  The comforter and the pillows pile on top of me in a perfectly made bed, making a cave that I could sleep in for days.  Ahh.

When the bed does get made, I compulsively hotel-tuck the corners of the bed sheets, though I do not do it well, and it’s only a night or two before the sheet is shamefully hanging on the ground from my big toe.  I do not, 361 days out of the year, make the bed (don’t worry, I wash my sheets more often than quarterly). I see no point in making something that we are planning on jumping in, in just a matter of hours, to roll around in and mess up again. It’s a silly cycle. No one needs my bed to be made.  My husband’s not a bed-maker; I am not a bed-maker.  We are both, conveniently, bed messer-uppers, so there should be no fussing or turn-taking.  Only sleeping and reading and snuggling and no making of any kind.

We come out of crumpled sheets and go into crumpled sheets and they are always comfortable and sometimes clean-ish. That’s quite enough in this household, thank you.

We Danced: prose poem

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apartment, city, dance, dreaming, food, kitchen, New York City, NYC, prose poem, subway, urban

My fingers slipped in his grasp as he flung me gently from him in our kitchen big enough for only two. We clenched fingertips, olive oil and garlic clove residue holding us together while he led me twirling back into his embrace, wrapped up like a ringlet curl. His whisper tickled my ear, which he kissed, and my neck. Then we danced. To no music, we danced. Starchy bubbles cracking from ziti tubes, we danced. Wiping the kitchen titles with our socks, we danced like this until the subway grumbled and screeched and announced my stop and the end to my half sleep daydream. I walked home with light feet in the misty rainfall.

Things I Do: Watch TV

Tags

Christina Applegate, comedy, drama, entertainment, hobbies, life, love, Mulder, Mya Rudolph, relationships, Scully, television, The X-Files, travel, tv, Up All Night, Will Arnett

The last time I watched a television series, I was in high school. I watched The X-Files alone every Sunday night because none of my friends were remotely interested in the Fox drama. Clearly–I was so brilliant to understand the paranormal investigations and subtle humor, and they were so remedial to find the expertly designed one-hour drama uninteresting–clearly.

And so, with pride, I asked my secretary (Mom) to hold my phone calls, and make no plans (my schedule was pretty open at 9pm on a school night) during the airing of The X-Files. I watched for maybe four seasons, keeping track of the character development, noticing the ways Mulder was always, unbelievably, right, yet Scully’s skeptical and logical opinions were necessary and balancing for Mulder and for the show. I was definitely obsessed

I’ve never been, not now, not since, much of a television junkie. I don’t often get caught in front of the TV for hours, or mesmerized with a channel, watching show after show. No Oscar watch-parties for me, no DVR recordings, and a lot of HBO-based conversations that I’ve faked my way through.  I just can’t think of a time since The X-Files when I planned any part of my life around a television show.

On the plane ride home from our honeymoon, my husband and I had pretty much exhausted our onboard resources. We’d finished our books, read the in-flight magazines, finished a crossword puzzle, nibbled on the snacks I’d packed and listened to our ipods. The television was showing 30Rock, which my husband thinks is very funny so we plugged our headphones into the armrests. Afterwards, a new-ish show came on with Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Mya Rudolph; lots of names we knew, and a catchy roll of opening credits which kept us plugged in until the landing powered us down. I laughed aloud on the plane, embarrassingly, watching this young couple try to be cool parents.

And, simply, this is the way it goes now. Up All Night is our show. We don’t have need for a cable package because we can watch Up All Night on the internet (for now) without any illegal activity (thankfully). Wouldja loogit that…we have a TV show.

(a) Eyw, we have “a show” or (b) Yay, we have “a show!”  (not sure which to choose)

My adult self has never had a show, but I think I’m happy to have this one. It’s about a couple roughly our age, in roughly our stage of life, having hilarious arguments not unlike some that we’ve had, feeling things I know I’ve felt and laughing about it in the end, because they are oh-so-in-love, also, like us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Embarrassingly, we also have The X-Files, because my sweet thinking-about-me husband purchased the first season on DVD and has been enduring it with me. It’s so nineteen-nineties, of course, but I still like the plots and the Mulder-is-always-rightness of it, just like I did a decade and a half ago.

We have two shows. (Woot?!) I value them. I will make time for TV. Wow—the things you thought you’d never say.

Our Lottery Fame

Tags

crossword puzzle, crosswords, life, lottery, lottery winners, money, thrill

We’ve won the lottery!, I said.

I had never won the lottery before, and neither had my husband. Right before, silver shavings falling in my lap, I could feel that it was coming as the moments of knowing for sure grew closer and closer. The inside of me bubbled over, refused to calm and stay contained. I knew we would win. I scratched the silver away and needed an “A”.  The corner was blank, and then I saw the apex…an “A”!  We reached the precious moment together and he showed calm, but insisted on collecting the prize himself. His way of naming and claiming the fortune, I reckon. It’s for sure–we had won the lottery.

It happened while we sat in our pajamas, still in bed in the afternoon, having to answer to no company while the sun breaks through the curtains, having scheduled no appointments or deliveries before lunch. We can sleep comfortably on our pending wealth.  Right before we won the lottery, we were reading torn paperbacks, each our chosen own.

I suppose, though, the winning actually happened, when we bought the ticket at the corner store. When the person before us and before them and before and before purchased each of those tickets in order to give us our perforated winning edges. No matter. Once we turned in our scratch-off crossword puzzle and collected our fifty dollars, we were epic lottery winners and nothing can ever change that kind of fame.

Things I Do: Cook Dinner

Tags

chicken, cook, dinner, enjoyment, food, garlic chicken, life, love, marriage, New York City, NYC, relationships, things i do

Someone should tell me that myspace isn’t a trendy social network anymore (see below).

It’s not even that I’m oh-so-totally-obsessed with taking pictures of myself. I have no emo photos with sultry eyes at the camera, thick gray eyeliner drawn to my ears, bangs in my face, bathroom mirror in the back, bra strap curling off my shoulder. Eyw, gross. It’s just that there’s only two of us and I want life to be frozen and framed like only photographs can.

I hate “welcome back” posts in the blogosphere. I just realized that I actually hate the word blogosphere, too. Eyw. We shall focus on the positive. I do, apparently, enjoy the blog more than I recognized. Catharsis, practice, brainstorm—something about it just works.

I like to do a lot of things. Herein begins a list of things I do, which is really just acting as a footbridge to cross to the more important list of Things I Don’t Do. A Shauna Neitquist book that I’m reading piecemeal, leisurely, has me talking all this inside out list-making nonsense.

And thus, I cook. We cook. We eat dinner (obviously…like you). Fish and chicken, beef stew, tofu. We let the crockpot simmer all day, we cook dessert before dinner, we eat while we heat, do dishes and play, grind vegetables and fruits to a glass full of of juice (and do dishes again).

The night we made garlic chicken and sweet potatoes from an internet recipe, I bought a whole chicken because I’m usually pretty great at following directions. The recipe never said anything about a head. It said whole, but it didn’t say head.

After defrosting the chicken, the visible breasts, thighs, drumstick legs, and wings, I lifted it from the sink and the head flopped down from it’s neat little place tucked under the chicky. The chicken hit the sink with a splat when I let it loose from my hands. I ran from it (in case?) like a tiny little girl.

I guess I’m not great in high pressure situations. When the smoke alarm went off a few weeks ago, I ran around the apartment, flapping a towel furiously overhead and shrieking “What do we do?” in what was once a whisper. You can imagine how helpful that was for clearing the smoke. Much like opening a window would have been.

Chicken heads and smoke alarms included, we shall continue to cook. Beware. (…or come over?)