(Details to come…)
Douchebag. June 7, 2007
This is a sad excuse for a post (the work! It has accumulated up to my eyeballs!) but I just ran out to Starbucks to get my daily 4pm-ish “here, Starbucks, here is $4 for a cup of coffee now GIVE ME THE GOODS, DAMN IT, I need to stay awake until six” caramel macchiato.
I was waiting on line for the drink when I noticed a man standing in front of me: tall, salt and pepper hair, distinguished. Casual clothes, but the buttery leather boat shoes were a dead give away that he probably owns not rents - in both Manhattan and the Hamptons.
Near the drink pick-up station, Starbucks has a basket filled with children’s books that have been donated to charity. While I have not donated to the basket (I give in other ways! Like to the saxophone player at the 59th Street Station!), I do sometimes notice the books. Especially the one that always sits on top - a bright yellow cover, something about baseball.
Apparently the book caught the eye of Mr. Distinguished, as he picked it up and began to flip through it. Okay, I thought, just killing some time before he gets his drink. Maybe he has a kid and besides, this line IS monstrous.
But then, to my utter shock, he casually slipped the book under his arm, where he was already holding a large file folder. The file folder mostly obstructed the book as he grabbed his drink and slipped out the door.
I, ungraceful under pressure as always, just stood there - jaw dropped, eyes wide. Now, of course, I want to punch myself in the head for not calling him out. For not even saying, “sir, are you going to put the book back?”
WHO STEALS FROM CHARITY? WHO STEALS FROM A CHILDREN’S CHARITY - CHILDREN WHOSE LIBRARIES PROBABLY HAVE ONLY ONE DOG-EARED COPY OF CORDUROY WITH MOST OF THE PAGES MISSING?! WHO STEALS FROM CHARITY WHILE WEARING EXPENSIVE LEATHER BOAT SHOES?
I just lost a little faith in humanity.
No dying. June 6, 2007
This is just pointing out the obvious, but I’m the irrational one in the relationship. I’m the one who, late, in bed, after Stewart and Colbert and some fooling around, will blurt out “you can’t die!” followed by some tears and some sniffles, apropos of absolutely nothing except maybe the onset of my period.
I’m emotional. M is a solid consoler. It works.
He came home last night around 1am. I woke up to his arms wrapped around me, him watching me sleep.
“Hi there,” I said, willing myself to wake up and enjoy a few minutes with my boy.
He put his hands on my face. “I love you. I just think you should know that,” he said with such seriousness that it startled me.
Of course - me being Ms. Gloom and Doom - I got suspicious. “Why? I mean, I know that you love me, of course I know that you love me (I recently found out that you bought a diamond, you fool - Ed. Note), but why, what’s wrong?”
M launched into a story about how he got to talking with a colleague of his. The conversation turned to plans for the weekend and the colleague mentioned that he has a charity tennis tournament to attend. In fact, it’s his charity’s tennis tournament.
“You started a charity tennis tournament?” M asked. “Good man.”
“Well, my wife died twelve years ago. I started a charity in her name.”
It hit M so hard, that conversation.
“Clink.” He was lying on his back; I was curled up alongside him, my face buried in his neck. “It’s just - this guy had plans, you know? Plans with his wife. Who ever thinks that the person you’re going to marry is going to die?”
Then, borrowing from me and one of my many emotional outbursts, he said, calmly, “You can’t die. OK? No dying.”
I promised that I would do my best.
It’s hard, this love thing. The fear of it all being taken away is the price paid for allowing yourself to fall. For me, for a while, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I let trust issues overwhelm and overtake and I was sure that it would all be taken away not by death but by someone else - someone thinner, prettier, more successful.
Now, not so much. Now it’s more about God, the Universe, Whatever reaching down and ruffling a smoothly laid out life, a life with concrete plans. A life that does not work if one element - the most important element - is missing.
I’m still feeling the aftereffects, I guess, of the funeral. M is certainly still feeling the aftereffects of his conversation. This will pass, I’m sure, and we’ll go on floating through life, believing that it won’t happen to us because what other way is there to live? As much as the Culture of Fear is alive and kickin’ (“these are people who want to kill your families,” to paraphrase our president), I won’t buy into it for longer than a few chunks at a time. Enough time to reflect and thank God, the Universe, Whatever for what I have. But not long enough to stop me from living.
Blogger’s Quest for Domestic Goddess Status Continues. June 5, 2007
I’ve taken to baking. Enthusiastically.
This from a girl who, just a few short years ago, called her parents to ask them how to peel a cucumber. True story.
I don’t know what it is. Well, I know what it is: hi, sweet, delicious edible things, welcome to my mouth and my thighs! I love you!
But it’s also the process. It’s the mixing and the sifting and the spooning. It allows me to focus, a welcome respite from spending all day feeling like I can’t focus because there is too damn much to focus on. Some mornings, I just sit at my desk, paralyzed by what I have to do. I’ve always been a pretty darn good multi-tasker (*brushes shoulders off*), but this latest project has me drowning in a sea of things I have to do plus things my boss has to do but dumps on me. Most days, I tread water.
Baking is different. There’s a task at hand. You do one thing and then you do another thing and soon enough, you have created something. There is something to show for all of your hard work. Something delicious.
Speaking of, this past weekend I made Czechoslovakian cookies. I guess now they should be called “Czech Republic/Slovakia cookies” or we could just go with the easy, apt “MOST DELICIOUS COOKIES IN THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD.”
I’m a sucker for anything that requires a layer of jam. Combine jam with anything remotely shortbread-y and you’ve got yourself an enthusiastic devotee.
The cookies were amazingly simple to bake. In fact, the hardest part was not pulling them out of the oven early and shoving them into my mouth while I watched a DVR-ed Blue Crush. Because there’s nothing like, oh, cookies to make you feel better about not having Kate Bosworth’s body (her body in Blue Crush! Not her current Malnourishment Postergirl form.)
There isn’t really a point to this post. For that I apologize. I’m just sitting here at my desk (again, paralyzed! Too much to do! Only so many hours in one day! God, can you look into that? Thanks), dreaming of the cookies and what it’s going to be like to sink my greedy teeth into them when I get home this evening. This evening, after I finish up work and take a damn spinning class because baking - while lovely - requires things like butter and flour and cups and cups of sugar. And while my tastebuds may do a little dance at the aforementioned ingredients, my ass is over here, arms crossed, scowling, all “look, you BERATE ME every day and yet there you are, shoveling shit into your mouth. And it may go into your mouth, but GUESS WHERE IT ENDS UP BITCH. GET ON THE DAMN BIKE AND GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WORK WITH.”
And, as I’ve realized, I must obey the ass. Spinning THEN cookies it is.
UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE RECIPE:
Ingredients:
2 sticks of butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup jam (strawberry, rasperry, blueberry, cherry…I used strawberry rhubarb and I used more than 1/2 cup)
1 cup walnuts, chopped (chopped pecans can also be substituted)
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.
Cream butter, gradually adding sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time, blend well. Slowly add flour and then fold in chopped nuts. Spread half of dough into greased 8×8 pan.
Spread the bottom layer of dough with jam and then cover with remaining dough.
Bake for 1 hour. Cool completely before cutting into bars or squares.
Try and resist eating the entire pan.
NJ Transit is mean and wrong. And other things. June 4, 2007
Saturday morning I woke up at 8am and, not bothering to shower, put on an all-black ensemble. In heels, in the heat and sunshine, I moved through the throngs of tourists toward Port Authority.
The woman at the New Jersey Transit counter threw my change and my ticket and a few eye rolls at me as I asked, again, if she was sure about the departure gate and bus line, as I was pretty certain it was the 166.
No, she assured me with an exaggerated sigh, the 162. Gate 224. Another eye roll. NEXT!
Sure enough (gut instinct, I really don’t give you enough credit), she was sending me to Fairlawn not Fairview. Had I not been so short on time and so desperate to find the correct gate, I would’ve marched back to the ticket window (in the heels I was wearing, no easy feat) and shoved my finger toward the glass and told her that she almost made me miss a funeral and you know what? If I ever talked to anyone at my job the way that she spoke to me, I would be fired.
Of course I really wouldn’t have done so. But I like to think that I would’ve, had there been a spare half hour.
I boarded the 166 and begged the driver to take my $4.20 ticket, even though the fare was only $2.25 (Fairlawn is a great deal farther than Fairview). He shrugged and gave me the “ok, crazy lady” face and I took my place in the very first seat.
My uncle died. Except, he was only my uncle by marriage and I have exactly zero memories of him as he and my aunt divorced when I was young. There’s a photo, in one of my mother’s meticulously kept photo albums, of him in a while suit (a la Travolta), on the dance floor at someone’s wedding or christening. That’s how he has always resided in my mind. Uncle White Suit, smiling. In fact, I was surprised to peek in the casket and notice him wearing black.
He’s the father of two of my cousins, but he has been an elusive figure in their lives. He died suddenly - he had a swollen leg and some chest pains, so he drove himself to the emergency room, where he passed. My cousins - both men, ages 26 and 23 - were on the outs with him. No big blow out, just a general disinterest in including him in their lives. They’re bright and successful and well-rounded and attractive and they just couldn’t seem to fit their sporadic, drug-addicted father into their well-meshed lives.
Now, of course, they deal with the guilt. Guilt and death are the cruelest of companions. A friend of mine, a few years ago, was rude and abrupt with her father on the phone. He called in the middle of her studying for finals and she wanted nothing more than to get off the phone. He died later that night of a heart attack. He was 52 and ran 8 miles every day. She’ll never make peace with the fact that her last words to her father were, “Dad, really, I have to go, okay? Bye.” That she didn’t end with, at the very least, “I love you.”
The funeral was in Greek, which left a lot of time to reflect, as Greek words, in church at least, become background music to me. Like the classical CDs I used to put on while studying. I kept my eyes on the carpeted floor of the church, for every time I looked up I caught sight of my cousin - the younger brother - and his tears and watery cheeks had me subsequently gurgling and choking on sobs. I have never been a quiet crier.
My father’s birthday is today. Last night he and my mother and my sister and my brother came into the city and, along with M, we dined at one of his favorite Italian restaurants.
I didn’t want to bring it up, to hijack the conversation and take it from the Yankees and my sister’s post-graduation plans and my brother’s recent all-star baseball status to someplace dark, but I did. I said, “Dad, I know you don’t like doctors but if you die of something preventable, I will be pissed.”
And he nodded. And said that, with Uncle White Suit’s passing, he had made a decision to get checked out.
My father has always been healthy and spry and too busy providing for the family and caring for the community to bother himself with waiting rooms and blood pressure tests. But, frankly, I don’t want him to die. Not until he’s old and ready.
This weekend was filled with some great - truly great - moments (see: All of Knocked Up and my subsequent al fresco dinner with M on Saturday night), but the funeral hung heavy in the air, along with all that humidity. I was reflective and anxious and plagued by bad dreams and a restlessness I couldn’t exorcise, not even with a spinning class.
Rest in peace, Uncle White Suit. May you find in death the peace and happiness that eluded you so in life.
And, to all of you, always end your conversations with “I love you.”
10 Things You Don’t Know About Women June 1, 2007
My boyfriend has free subscriptions to almost any magazine that can be labeled “Male Interest” aside from, like, Playboy and Nascar Lovers and Men 4 Men.
They’re all free and unsolicited and sent to him by the publications because he is a Big Shot.
In the beginning of our relationship, when I was trying my hardest to prove that I am a girl who likes sports as opposed to a girl who likes sports because guys like sports, I used to lounge around in my skivvies and skim Sports Illustrated or ESPN Magazine because I thought that would expedite the process of going from “Girl M is Dating” to “M’s Girlfriend.” I was all, “who me? Oh I’m just hanging out over here in that underwear you love so much, reading about Barry Bonds.” (Note: it worked.)
Now that I’ve proved I can accurately define a balk and can name college basketball players from before I was born, I tend to gravitate towards GQ or Details or Complex (com-PLEX or COM-plex? The world may never know). My favorite is probably Esquire. For the articles, I swear! (The articles of delicious men, articles that just happen to be accompanied by shirtless photos of delicious men but WHATEVER. Details, details.)
In every issue of Esquire they have a “10 Things You Don’t Know About Women” page, wherein a scantily clad upper-B-list celebrity gives readers insight into the fickle mind of women.
Tangent: Do we really want those *nods head slightly in the general direction of
Hollywood* women speaking for all of us? I mean, they don’t eat anything ever and they do coke in bathrooms and they sleep with aging directors for parts. Not exactly the most accurate sample of the female population but, I digress.
The current issue features Minnie Driver, who spouts ridiculousisms such as (and I paraphrase), “if you’re going to say something about your ex on our first date, say something nice about her.” Really Minnie? REALLY? Because are you so secure with yourself and your curly hair and your kinda-big head that you wouldn’t automatically wonder if, since he’s saying nice things about a woman he used to date, he wouldn’t still like to, oh, BE WITH THAT WOMAN?
Anyway. The whole point (there is a point! I promise! Ok, there’s a sorta-point!) is that I thought we should come up with our own.
I’ll go first. 10 Things Clink Thinks You Don’t Know About Women:
1. We dress for other women most of the time. You may not understand why we’re wearing a floaty babydoll shirt that lends itself to “is it or isn’t it maternity?” scrutiny, paired with leggings and wedge heels that burn our soles by the end of the night, but other women do. And feeling stylish in the eyes of other women because we have mastered a trend (or five) makes us feel awesome.
2. We probably won’t shave our legs the first few times we go out with you. It’s insurance against going home with you. Four glasses of wine and a bucketful of your charm may weaken our willpower, but knowing that our gams aren’t smooth as silk is the strongest chastity belt in the world. (Granny-panties and lack of a bikini wax are also time-honored substitutions.)
3. We don’t talk about sex with our girlfriends nearly as much as you probably think we do. We mostly talk about shoes and Project Runway. Sorry.
4. Speaking of our girlfriends, a small part of us will always wonder which one you’d sleep with. We don’t ever want to know the real answer.
5. We secretly worry that natural childbirth will make us, uh, stretched out. You know where.
6. To paraphrase lyrics from a song I heard once, we’d like to see your eyes open up real wide the minute that you see us. Especially if we’re wearing an expensive, sexy dress and just got a $100 blow-out and spent $150 on new make-up. The widening of the eyes (as opposed to, say, “Cool, you ready to go?” with nary a smile) makes it all worthwhile.
7. We’ve already picked out baby names. We will secretly see if our favorite names mesh well with your last name.
8. Tell us if you like our hair when we let it dry naturally. We’re looking for any excuse to put down the straighteners and curling irons. Plus, it’ll probably get you laid.
9. Don’t ever tell us you “forgot to eat.” We obsess about every single thing we put in our mouths; people who “forget to eat” are therefore immediately suspicious.
10. If we were lesbians, we’d probably like to sleep with Jackie Warner from Work Out. Sorry if that kills any of your my-girlfriend-with-another-woman fantasies.
So now it’s your turn! I clearly don’t have the authority to speak for all women everywhere so, in the interest of sisterhood (or brotherhood! We don’t discriminate here at Such Great Heights), I’d like all of you to contribute. It can be one, it can be a whole other list of ten.
Soon, men will have no more questions about women. (Ha! Just kidding men! The fact that we’re shrouded in mystery is one of the best things we have going for us. Sorry.)
