I spent the second day of 2007 on my ass, specificially, my left cheek. It was my first good fall in derby; I wheel-locked with another girl while we we doing this drill where we lean as hard as we can against each other for 100 laps. Apparently, though, I do not wear a size large elbow guard because the minute my arm hit the rink, the pad slid off and I thwacked myself, and hard. Now, a day later, my elbow's doing this hot, throbby thing, which I'm hoping is fine.
I was catching up on Grey's tonight, and the episode in which the car salesman blows up his face by having a cigarette opens with my favorite Camera Obscura song. (They're coming to play here on Jan 26th, and I sure am going to be there, shaking my finger.) It's nice when your favorite things combine to create one magnanimous lot of good. A while back, I had a good routine surrounding the watching of Grey's -- watching med students have sex, vice versa -- but derby scrimages have monopolized that spot nowadays.
Rollerskating is a good way to remind yourself that you have quads. I'm also stretching a large muscle that runs up the inside of my right thigh; the only visualization I have for it is when you put up those 3M tacky strips, and to remove them you pull down that white sticky tab until it snaps and whaps your fingers with plastic.
I have no idea where I was going with that.
I'm a terrible skater and won't pass my Level 1s for months, but it's fun, still, and keeps me from working too late. I think it's important to be thoroughly bad at something.
Things with that dude are whatever. I'm feeling rather nest-y, so I'm bringing frozen grapes and thread to his house on Friday and we're going to watch Christmas cartoons and string yard garland and pretend that we're both not wishing we were doing so with a more permanent fixture in our respective relationships.
Hey, crafty folk, you should pick up the winter issue of Country Home and then check out the projects on their site for PDFs. I just learned I'm hosting x-mas here and these goodies may salvage my fest-less apartment. Will my mother ever be proud, seriously.
1) Date #2: Success. He's funny, tall, bald, a little devious.
2) Did I begin practicing tonight with the local roller derby? Yes. Just roll with it; I am. (yuck yuck) They're really sweet kids, and I've been having some trouble exerting extra energy at the end of the day. Even if I never learn to check some chick twice my size, practice has lots of fun drills.
3) Last night on Nerve I was reading about El Perro del Mar, and today Dave had their video on his blog, which I've nabbed for you, here. Thanks, Dave!
Super Nanny just told me, "Back, not smack." The places I could go with that.
I have television here. It's so incredible. In New York, I had a pact with myself not to get TV, so that I needed to leave my apartment to be entertained. (I didn't much take into account how the New Yorker could suck hours of your week.) I was convinced by coworkers, though, that freezing winters would have me idling on Main Street with frostbite if I wasn't careful, though. So, basic cable.
Is it tuna casserole and syrah weather? Yes, indeedy.
I found a great yoga studio. And then I went for drinks tonight with a (straight) dude from class. Sweet. He's cute and a former Brooklyner. He cooks, too. We'll see.
Do you know where that it? Look in the back of your embossed aqua New Yorker monthly planner for a map, find Massachusetts, and then drop your stylus on the southwest-most corner. You may notice it has an upside-down glowing rainbow triangle marking it.
Northampton is a town of 10,000 hard-working women and their stay-at-home husbands, plus 15,000 lesbian priests, and 5,000 townie Protestants who throw their fists in your face when you dare refer to the town as “Noho,” rather than its time-worn “Hamp.” (This faux pas I was schooled on on Day 1. More on this to follow.)
One main road runs down the center of town; another, Pleasant Street, bisects Main. I live on Pleasant, above a discount natural food and sundries store, which also sells half-off European comfort shoes and throngs of parkas. Daily, I stop by this store for dented cans of vegetarian chili and slightly stale bars of organic chocolate.
My apartment is a disaster; I will share photos soon. Built in the early 1970s when Northampton was in the middle of its downtown revitalization, it featured – as per the era – lots of espresso-stained wood, not of the West Elm persuasion. Dark beams cover half of the ceiling; no amount of incandescent light seems to be able to brighten this spot, making my living room feel not unlike the bunks I inhabited summer after summer at Jewish sports camp. I have a lofted second story where my bedroom and bathroom are; a tiny yoga practice space sits at the top of my staircase, under a skylight (definite plus). On my first floor, I do have 23-foot ceilings next to the loft, one adjacent to an exposed brick wall. But the dark wood beams, nearly-opaque-with-years-of-filth windows and a kitchen straight out of the Conner home make me sigh when I get home each night. A very wobbly spiral staircase – a feature I thought charming when seeing the apartment the first time – is a broken ankle waiting to happen. (I’m on drink No. 2 currently; I no longer worry about getting home from Union Hall in one piece – I’m just concerned about reaching my bed.)
I have now lived here about three weeks. You may recall that I was summoned here to work on a new parenting magazine that focuses on messing with kids’ brains so that children stay quiet and sweet and pretty. Just kidding! Who likes too-cute kids?!
Mine is a really awesome position with the exact amount of responsibility that I’ve been after for years, working on both the print and web properties. The staff is smart and au currant and really has vision for a pub that can cut through some of the malarkey in the marketplace right now. I’ll not wax corporate ever again, but it’s a damn good magazine and you should pick it up, if only for the gorgeous photography and holy-shit-ha-ha fun writing.
If all I ever did was assign and edit and write for 18 hours a day, taking a breather to eat some really great veggie food (of which there are many options here in town), I could be sated. But seeing as how my office is literally 40 paces from my front door, I’ve cut out nearly three hours of exhaustion a day just trying to get to and from where I needed to be. I am now charged with finding ways to fill that time with productive, social, healthy activities. I say healthy and mean Things That Make Me Sweat – not healthy as in Won’t Engage in Sinful Activities. I’m wholeheartedly looking for sin; I just don’t know many folks here yet with whom to engage in any debauchery. I have one really awesome and very busy friend from Drake who’s convinced me to drink with her and some yokels at a local veterans’ club (I am now a card-carrying member, thankyouverymuch). I also have palled around with some girls from work; they all are sweet and funny and willing to hand me my ass when necessary – my favorite trait – but they all have boyfriends or folks who’re thumb-wrestling for together-time.
I do not know how to make friends in a new town, but I’ll learn; it’s just hard right now. Spending time alone is really hard but gratifying for me; I fight enjoying it, but realize later that I’ve done everything in a day that I wanted to, like drive to Vermont to look for buttons for an old coat or go to his really incredible old mill/ bookstoreand that it’s been a really good one. I don’t know where this need for people comes from; maybe I’m just a true extrovert. But it’s all going to be fine.
I'm going to the veteran's club now to appreciate our war heroes, drink $1.50 wells and learn to hustle pool from a 65-year-old shark named Stanley. This, you see, is my new life.
And here we are, T-minus 40 minutes until pack-that-shit-up-and-move-it-on. Lordy, there is something sacred about a team of folks boxing up your life while you hand out cold drinks.
I am nervous, but also kind of giddy. Northampton's like going to camp and never coming back. With baby magazines!
La Nance has graciously offered to drive the Trail of Terror and Tears with me tonight, following the truck up there. That girl does not fuck around in the friend department.
I took a jaunt to Vegas this weekend, where the Walters cavorted over all-you-can-eat sushi, Blazing 7s slots, and lots and lots of free watery drinks. Even better than escaping New York City while pretending your entire life's about to change is doing all of that after you win $300 in nickels and then high-tailing to a schmancy massage table while a cute chick rubs herbs and mud into your thighs and douses you in oil. Mmm.
I am in Des Moines, Iowa, where I've just completed 30 hours of doula training, after which I will deliver the four babies I'm requried to in the next four years, and never doubt my committment to it. Weekend crisis labor management, here I come. Yo.
Des Moines is as innocent and uncomplicated as ever, I suppose. I love every person in this town, and I mean that. Today, I sat with one of my favorite couples as they decided for over an hour as to which Halloween candy to pass out to ensure themselves on neighbor-kids' Cool lists (Bottlecaps and Nerds, yes; Whatchamacalits and M&Ms, no). This does not happen in New York. My grudges here have nearly subsided. I am ready to move it on.
And I will do this in Northampton, Massachusetts, where I'm moving in the next 10 days. I have quit my job and committed to another at a new child development magazine put out by Disney. and for that I am truly grateful. I'm looking forward to laundry in a home I love, with space to stand on my head and not eat with my knees in my chest. I'm excited about counter space, three walls of windows, walking to work and lebris16. I have no idea what I'm about to get into; I know what I'm leaving and I am half-remorseful, but I'm also eager to get a little closer to what I know I want (and away from what I know I don't). Brooklyn peeps, let's play huggy, etc., before I leave. More TK.
Except instead of mountain dew it was green jello shots (wha?) and there was a fair amount of Dance Dance Revolution played. The show we were all there for was rad, and it was super fun to see the kids all together again. I've heard there are some inappropriate pictures floating around, so I'll have to scope those out.
Also, I came home un-sad! A good date and some quality time spent with La Nance has helped.
Everything's about to change, and I can't say anything about it just yet, but will when it all unfolds this week.
I'm sure there are more infuriating things than waiting for ABC.com to finish streaming Lost in tiny segments, but right now, I just can't think of anything. If we live near each other and you have a TV, can I come over to watch it next week so I can avoid this nonsense? I'll bring wine.
Studying is fine. I seem to've left every tactic for absorbing new information back in the Midwest. Thankfully, I'm going back there this weekend to participate in a small Twin Cities dance party, followed by a lazy Sunday with one of my favorite ladies, followed by a TV on the Radio show, followed by a Detroit Cobras show, followed by a Tilly & the Wall show, all the while using my downtime to read about dangers of occipital posterior deliveries and some woo-woo labor visualization techniques.
I've not been to Mpls in a really long time. The Adulterer's sister has asked me to get a drink with her; it's up for debate still. Why she wants something to do with me now when she did Cousin Larry's Dance of Joy when he left me, I don't quite know. All my good people will be in town, so I can't imagine electing to set aside time for her, but I'm curious as to why she wants to meet up.
All of this planning and commotion falls during the week that marks the official end of my second year in New York, in this dinky, pretty apartment on this very stiff couch. I'm recounting this with a heavy heart, and I thought I'd be done with that already. Maybe it's the season, or maybe I'm on a down-swing, but I feel like I've still not made it all work for me here. I don't know what it would take, really, to make me feel like everything was jibing. My job is fine and my friends are great; I'm dating a little, I guess, but it feels fruitless, time after time. Met a guy at a party last Friday; tried chasing him because I was super-intrigued; has lead nowhere. Trying to snip the strings of pseudo-relationships I've been hanging around in for the past few months, and it doesn't feel good or settling or any of the things I'd hoped it'd feel.
And still, though, I feel the luckiest I ever have been right now. It doesn't make sense. I am thankful, thankful, thankful, and I'm still ... sad? I don't know.
This show is still not loaded; we're going on 18 minutes of load time, and I'm up to 04:01 of 43:09. Guh.
I'd like to say that this article validates why I've completely abandoned any sort of writing aside from that regarding babies, episiotomies, knitting, or advanced crochet techniques. I'd like to say that, but my mouth is full of the same $9 Reisling I drank on the couch while reading shitty fiction all summer, instead of writing anything I could file under PRIDE.
Hi, friends. It has been a while. Nicole C., you engaged thing, you, congratulations. It seems like only yesterday we were discussing our shitstorm relationships over XXL margaritas. Other Nicole, ow to that tat, but pretty!
I'm not going to run down all you folks, but I'll peep your posts soon and send some HPV-free virtual love.
I've been alternately loving the pants off/ trying to move the hell away from New York for a few months now, but, as per usual, I just vascillate, and nothing's yet been resolved.
I am listening a lot to a band called Final Fantasy. Lame name, great sound.
In the middle of next month, I go for a three-day, 27-hour intensive doula training in Des Moines, Iowa. A doula, if you do not know, is basically a birth bouncer, although Wiki can much more eloquently explain. I feel like this is another skill I'm going to sock away and not do much with, since I'm not quite willing yet to give up my day job to field babies luging out of wombs. If you happen to be growing a baby or know of one gestating in the tristate area, I need to deliver three by November of 2007, so get on my calendar, k?
Unanswered debacles, mainly of the money persuasion because, well, it's fall, and nothing says autumn like taking a loan out for "living" expenses: - Is spending $100 on a brilliant haircut that has the potential to augment this head for the remainder of my days truly worth it? - Should I sign up for these sanskrit classes I've been ogling for sometime now? - To spend close to half a month's rent on a coat is ridiculous, right? - Next book to read: Choke (Palahniuk) or Home Town (Kidder)?
Oh, oh, oh, I don't know what happened. I changed into a summer skirt and suddenly, the season was half over.
I had a party; sorry if we didn't get to air-kiss and you didn't get to sample my spikey lemonade. That is no euphemism. All I want in this world is a porch on which to entertain again and room for more than 45 people to rub up on one another. Two is the number of hand jobs I know've occurred on account of said party; if I've ever contributed to you getting laid, please let me know; there are lifetime quotas to fulfill.
Some very lovely folk visited from Providence and we dressed up like mermaids and pirates, only to slam lox and mimosas and join a bevvy of other sea-farers. Sometimes I think that living in Providence might be the answer to everything. I feel like these are the sort of kids who live in a real, non-hyperbole world.
I have a boyfriend who is attentive and well-coiffed and successful, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it in that we're not throwing each other into doors as ways to express sentiment. The Suitor is a charmer and we've Hamptonsed together and seen the Melvins (wha? am I 18?) and watched a puppet performance of Showgirls, and I've cooked for him, but just veggie burgers and eggs (so don't get jealous, ok). (Chances are, I've spread crudite for you, too.) No surprise here, but I've absolutely no idea where we stand on the relationship-goodness scale, so I'm going to pretend like he's as enamored of me as I am of Summer Fridays and clavicle kisses.
My job got better; my makings did not; my rent went up, up, up. I'm waltzing with the idea of moving, but am not entirely sure that living in minute squalor is the way to save a few mojitos' worth of cash. I'm in the process of cashing in on every sincere-or-not invite to make me dinner I've had in months. Don't say it if you don't mean it, kids.
Why am I 25 and haven't written a book, specifically not the one I've contested to write for over two years? Why'm I the last kid I know at 25 to ask that?
If I'm feeling angsty, it's only on account of the onset of three days of rain and an impending houseful of out-of-towners. We'll probably do a little midnight-handstanding, a little soaking in liquor, some bitching about what could have been/ what is. I'm not sure what it is about the ladies of Des Moines, Iowa, but they're the most with-it women I know, and they bring with them the smackings of both clarity and possibility, and I am soothed. It looks like many of my favorite women are running brain-first into trepidation of many varieties; I'm feeling like I've dropped the buddy baton. I oblige outright requests; my intuition is on the fritz.
Perhaps I'm the last person on earth to read Memoirs of a Geisha, but I'm about 200 pages in, and I'm not sure what it is that compells me to nearly skip train stops to keep going, but something does, and I'd like to invite that something to leave me the hell alone. How a white dude from Harvard wrote this gangbusters period piece, I just dunno. Nor do I have interest in learning about or seeing the film version of it, seeing as how there's nary a Japanese gal in the production. Hmm. Next up: finishing Peace From Nervous Suffering (Weekes).
If you happen to be listening to the home and family HGTV satellite radio network tomorrow, yes, that is me discussing the developmental benefits of letting kids make messes.
I'm listening assloads to the new Camera Obscura, which includes appearances by my three favorite musical accoutrments: hand claps, tambourines, trumpets. (Finger snaps follow tout a suite.) The Suitor and I hit the Bowery last weekend, flushed-cheeked and full of Cuban food, to see them. (Was my second time this year; whoa.) If you've not met your allotment for 2007 for Scottish twee, it's high time you got on it. Additionally, I'd recommend (and I apologize for the lame/tardyness of these titles):
A kiss for helping with those sites, friends. They were helpful.
Some big changes about to attack my everyday-as-I-know-it, but I'm not able to say much just yet. Ergo, thanks for that help, and I'll shout it all out when I can.
Trinidad and Tobago were magical, desolate places, and coming back to New York was hard. KJ, my travel bud, and I had the same difficulty sleeping and getting motivated and staying focused after the trip. And were we ever itchy!! (Sun poisoning? Bad burn? Who knows.) She has some amazing photos (hers is a real camera, not one purchased just to get underwater money shots), and so sometime soon, I'll have her pics to add to that gallery. These will include but will not be limited to a picture of the man who we rented for the day to drive us into the jungle, the woman who owned our Tobagan hotel who sure did want to rip our faces off, and the 61 year-old local KJ mounted on a kitchen prep counter after seducing him into opening his restaurant for us.
Mm, foreign ass.
Guh, the tribulations associated with getting laid in Brooklyn. Suffice to say, I'm off the sauce indefinitely.
Last night, I saw Joan Didion and WS Merwin read from and discuss the books for which they won their respective National Book awards. Didion is quite frail, but feisty: At one point, she made this snarky under-breath remark about the birds Merwin sees at his home in Hawaii, and the audience was rolling. Then she got up and read about the death of her husband and awful hospitalization of her daughter, and that shut us the fuck up, and fast.
When Didion read:
"Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them."
I sat in the audience and thought about my cats and the old house's spring-blue dining room walls and Ian's navy pillowcases and the tea lights Dean would burn, all for the first time in a long time, and cried a little and choked in agreement.
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