City Wendy

Tredding Lightly

Sometimes I worry that my life is going to move too fast here in NYC, that once I start working fulltime and get caught up in a busy career and creating a new social circle and getting more and more comfortable in the domestic life Drew and I have started building, I'm going to start losing parts of myself. I worry about changing. I worry that I'll let the pace and edge of the city chip away at me so that a year from now, five years from now, maybe 10 years from now, the fabric of who I am will be shaped differently.

This is something that's been on my mind for a long time--since well before I moved here. In fact, it's been my greatest fear about making the move to NYC and one that I addressed pretty frequently in therapy before I left Chicago. I mean, there were different topics: how my relationship will change me, a new social circle, a career change, the possibility of starting a family down the road... But the common theme that connects them all is this fear of change--mainly inside myself. I like who I am. I want to grow and learn, sure, but I don't want to become a different person. I want to stay me, just better.

So, one of my oldest and best friends is coming to visit on Sunday for a few days on his way from Chicago to Connecticut for Thanksgiving and this will be my first test. It'll be the first marker by which I'll be able to measure if and how much I've changed. It's only been 7 weeks, so probably not much, right? But seven weeks, seven weeks is the longest we've gone without seeing each other in over 7 years. Seven weeks is about the longest I've been away from the midwest in over 13 years. A lot can happen in seven weeks. Maybe I'm different now?

It's the same way I felt when I started college back in '94 and I moved to the states for the first time and everything was so new and different and I was young and impressionable and everyday I felt a different emotion. Only now I'm 31 and not so young or impressionable, but I still feel the wave of emotions. It's not as intense in this second month in New York as it was the first, but I still vacillate on a near daily basis between loving it here, feeling cramped and claustrophobic, missing Chicago, and thinking that this is the most exciting place I could be--both physically and mentally--and I can't believe how lucky I am. In so many ways, I still feel like that gawky, insecure 18-year-old who tred on her new life so cautiously, afraid to step too heavily and find it was just a dream. It's like I'm caught between wanting to embrace everything the city has to offer and afraid if I do, I'll break something. It's like wearing a big bag strapped across your shoulders and wandering through a gift shop with little china chotchkes everywhere and holding your breath and crossing your fingers you don't knock anything over as you manuever through the tight and crowded aisles. That's how it is in my new life. I'm looking around and everything is so pretty and new and shouting to be looked at and touched, but I'm still trying to figure out the easiest way to get through without making a mess.

So yeah, basically 18 all over again, but without the great skin and perky ass.

Home is where the rug is

Today is one of those super busy days I have a lot going on, so I'll just leave you with this:

We bought some rugs yesterday. Everyone was happy with our choices and how much homier our apartment immediately looked--especially these two.

And then my heart exploded.

Three Things...

I'm loving right now:
1. Millport Dairy Sharp Cheddar cheese with sliced Asian Pears (purchased today at the Farmer's Market up the street)--oh my god, so good!!
2. Lip Venom Lip Plumping Lip Gloss (if interested, use code 'FF2007' at Sephora for a 20% savings on any purchase online!)
3. Fattening up for the winter

that are always on my mind:
1. My next meal
2. A song of some sort
3. "I should be doing something productive"

New York has on Chicago:
1. Efficient transit system
2. More entertaining overheard conversations
3. New York has Drew!

Chicago has on New York:
1. Beaches
2. Room to move in Trader Joe's (seriously, has anyone here tried shopping at the Union Square Trader Joe's in Manhattan?? It is INSANE! You basically have to get in a check-out line the second you walk in. The check-out line then weaves in and out of the aisles, so you can shop as you wait in line! I've never seen anything like it before.)
3. Better bike routes

I miss about childhood:
1. Summer breaks
2. Getting excited about Christmas
3. Lower alcohol tolerance

I'm excited about right now:
1. Project Runway starts tonight and for the first time since the series started, I actually have cable!
2. Out-of-town company next week
3. Miles just learned how to high-five

that are guaranteed to cheer me up even on the worst PMS-y days:
1. a bunch of orange roses, pink dahlias, or any color rununculus from the bodega
2. a sudden windfall of cash
3. a Magnolia cupcake

I'm thankful for this year:
1. a great circle of healthy friends and family
2. slipper socks
3. cold stone creamery right around the corner

Plastic

You don't have to be a big hip-hop fan, or an admirer of Kanye West at all to feel awful about the loss of his mother. And it's not like other famous people haven't lost a parent before, but this time it seems particularly sad, probably because Kanye's mom was so young (58), and we know they had a really close relationship, and because she died in what seems like such a  tragic and perhaps wasteful way. I mean, whoever really thinks about dying from complications during cosmetic surgery?

I'm sure a lot of people are going to tsk-tsk the cosmetic surgery industry, will count this as one more reason to just embrace what nature gave you, to quit obsessing about being perfect and to accept your body the way it is right now. Just last night I saw Jamie Lee Curtis on Access Hollywood or something like that preaching about how wonderful she is because she's aging gracefully the natural way (nevermind that she's actually had plastic surgery!) and thinks people who have plastic surgery look like freaks and that no one ever looks better.

And while I agree that plenty of people in Hollywood and elsewhere have gone way overboard on the plastic surgery trend--that they do indeed look like fucking freaks--not everyone who has plastic surgery is a mess, and not everyone looks like a freak, and I'd even say that in some cases, plastic surgery is a really healthy option, not just for mental well-being, but for physical well-being, too.

I think it sucks that Kanye's mother died from plastic surgery, and I hope that her tragic death encourages people who are considering surgery for themselves to really think about the risks and to get the 'Ok' from their doctors first, but I hope it doesn't deter people who are in good health, whose risks from surgery aren't greater than average, and who really believe plastic surgery is what they need to live happier, healthier lives from seeking it.

One of the two procedures Kanye's mother was having when she died, is a procedure I had myself 12 years ago when I was 19. I wasn't just unhappy with my body, I really could not imagine living the rest of my life looking and feeling the way I did. The image in the mirror didn't match the image I had of myself in my head and I knew that no amount of diet, exercise or weight loss was going to change the fact that my tits were the size of basketballs. So I had reduction surgery and I got rid of 2/3 of each boob and I immediately felt better. Gone were my neck and backaches, clothes actually fit me, and guys looked me in the eyes for once when they talked to me. I've never for a second regretted my decision to have surgery, I've never looked back, and if I have a daughter who inherits my body and wants to have surgery like I did, I will support her wholeheartedly. And if she doesn't want to have surgery? If she wants to keep the body God gave her with its basketball-sized tits and endless backaches? Well, I'll support that, too. I happen to know the brand names of some very good bras.

Unsolved Mystery

First of all, thanks to everyone who played along with the last post--it's been really fun to learn a little about all of you and see where you're reading from and a bit of what your lives are like, for a change. I'll have to do more of those interactive sorts of posts in the future from time to time.

Now on with a new post:

One of the things I like about being with Drew is how well he balances me. Like, for example, I'm pretty impulsive and left to my own devices, I'd probably buy everything that seems fun, regardless of the fact that I'm unemployed and my savings is quickly dwindling. Drew, on the other hand, likes to really think things through before making a purchase and he has taught me the value of the 24-hour-rule of shopping, which has certainly cut down on my trips to the return aisle at stores.

Since I made the decision to stay at Drew's place permanently, we've both set about making his bachelor pad a more suitable home for a couple, which has meant, oh, cleaning, among other things. We've also decided we need rugs --at least three of them just for the main living area, which is a big loft space that encompasses the kitchen, dining and livingroom areas. Now, if it were up to me alone, I'd just run to the nearest home decor store, pick out three rugs that vaguely complement each other, and I'd plop my debit card down, without a second thought. But now that I'm making decisions with Drew, I'm forced to do responsible things like think about the consequences of my actions and consider certain needs and restrictions, like Drew's allergy to wool and the fact that we aren't made of money. So even though we found a rug for the kitchen area at Crate and Barrel over the weekend that we both liked and that cost less than $30, Drew suggested we go home and think about it for a day before we bought it. Back at home, he even went so far as to measure our floor and make tape outlines of where we might like our rugs to lie, so we'd know the dimensions we needed:

Pretty smart, right? Now we can make what they call "informed decisions."

Unfortunately, something went terribly, terribly wrong between taping the floor and making any informed decisions on rugs. I came home from running errands this afternoon and discovered this:

Now, I don't want to point any fingers or accuse anyone innocent, but Simone and Miles were both looking awfully guilty upon my return:

I guess there will be no rug-purchasing until we get this mystery solved. And I suppose I better hold off on giving the cats treats today--if they are responsible for killing a man, I certainly don't want to reinforce that kind of behavior. Unless the man happened to be an armed burglar or a mass murderer or something like that, in which case, hooray, my cats are heroes!!

Your Turn

I'm tired today--too tired to even post pictures, and yet I still have to post something because it's November and I am posting every single day this month. But today, today I need your help, because I'm tired and I don't feel like being creative or thinking about some story to share or writing about my thoughts on anything like that. I want you to share something with me. I'd love to know a little about the people who read this site. Some of  you comment and I follow links back to your sites and learn a little that way, but the majority of you do not comment, have never commented, and yet I know you're out there. I see in my stats there are readers in Canada, Korea, Japan, France, and all over the states. So who are you?

If you would be so kind to just answer the three following questions so I can get an idea (feel free to invent and answer any additional questions):

1. Where do you live?
2. What's the weather like right now?
3. What was the highlight of your weekend?

and here's a bonus questions, just because:

4. Do you celebrate Thanksgiving, and if so, what are your plans for Thanksgiving next week, or what is your favorite Thanksgiving memory?

And, just to be fair, I'll answer the same questions:

1. Hell's Kitchen, Midtown, Manhattan, New York
2. It was a gorgeous, cool, crisp fall afternoon, but the sun is setting now and the temps are dropping a bit.
3. All of Friday night was pretty great. Drew and I met the friend of his at a place in the Lower East Side called Mama's, where we ate a buffet-style dinner, fed the juke box all night and drank lots of beer to keep warm. I really like his friend a lot--she reminds me of some of the girlfriends I miss in Chicago. Her boyfriend met up with us later in the night after he got off work and we continued drinking until we decided to go back to their place in Brooklyn where they have their very own karaoke machine! They also had a a whole plastic pumpkin of leftover halloween candy, a full bar, and a big bag of sun chips, and a doxen dachshund who waddles around the apartment carrying his food bowl in his mouth, so it was all pretty great. This afternoon's been pretty awesome, too--I jogged in Central Park, baked a pie, read the New York Times style section and nursed a White Russian while Drew did some writing. So, yeah, I guess the whole weekend was a highlight.
4. My sister's coming to visit for 4 days over Thanksgiving. And just before her visit, my friend Chad is coming from Chicago for a couple of days befcore he goes to Conn. for Thanksgiving, so it's going to be a whole week of guests and fun and exploring the city and I'm really looking forward to it!

Your turn.

(When you're reading the comments, make sure you click the little arrow at the end of each page of comments to take you to the next. I almost missed it!)

Stalk it Out

Ever since I moved to New York, I've been obsessively reading Gawker Stalker, just to see how close I might have been to running into Amy Winehouse, or Goldie Hahn, or that guy from American Pie on the street. It seems like I'm always just missing Claire Danes. And Chloe Sevigny. The other night I read Gawker Stalker right before bed and ended up dreaming I ran into Chloe Sevigny stepping out of the subway. She was wearing a lot of eye liner and carrying a starbucks cup and talking aggressively on her cell phone and she looked like she needed a shower. Stars! They're just like us.

It's not that I'm really obsessed with celebrities or anything. Mostly, I wouldn't even get all that excited about running into any of them, to tell you the truth. Except David Duchovny, of course.

On Thursday I was watching the local news at lunch time and saw that David was at the writers strike at the Time Warner Center just up the street. I didn't even wait for the newscaster to finish the story before I threw on my tennis shoes, and a jacket, pinched my cheeks and ran out the door. I got to Time Warner Center in record time, but I still missed David. Well, I saw David Hyde Pierce, but that's not exactly the same thing. Not at all. I stood around for about 10 or 15 minutes waiting for Duchovny to come back. Maybe he was just taking a leak or something. But I started getting kind of cold and was feeling pretty much like an asshole just standing there watching the writers walk around with their signs, chanting things like "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Management can't write the show." I saw Tim Robbins there (wow...Tim Robbins at a protest? Next you'll be telling me Britney Spears has gotten a traffic violation). And Charles Grodin and I later heard Roseanne Barr was there, too, but I didn't see her. It wouldn't have made up for missing Duchovny, anyway. Not by a long shot.

I saw on Gawker Stalker this morning that he and Tea Leoni were spotted hailing a cab at 83rd and Lexington at midnight last night. Meanwhile, I was singing "Strangers in the Night" during kareoke in someone's livingroom in Brooklyn, so very, very far away.

I just keep thinking one of these days--one of these days, for sure--I'll run into David and we'll make eye contact and there will be a brief moment when the whole rest of the world will melt away and it'll just be David and me and we'll understand--we'll both get it--that if things had been different, we would have ended up together, obviously. I just hope I'm having a good hair day.

The Woman of the House

Yesterday in the comments section, in reference to my selling stuff on Ebay to make more room in the closet at Drew's place, Alyce asked: "Does this mean you won't be looking for an apartment of your own?"
The short answer to that is 'yes.' The long answer is 'yes, it does!'

Things have been going so well with the whole living together set-up, that Drew and I decided about two weeks ago to just make it a permanent thing. I think the conversation went something like this:

Me: You're happy with me around.
Drew: Yep!
Me: And the cats, too.
Drew: Yes!
...
Drew: Are you? Happy? Here?
Me: I am.
Drew: You wanna just stay?
Me: Ok.
Drew: Ok!

Then we met up with a couple of friends later that night for drinks and I blurted out, "Drew and I are going to live together!!" Our friends just looked at us for a minute, shrugged their shoulders and said, "Duh!" And pretty much, that's been the reaction from everyone else we've told.

Secretly, I had a hunch it would turn out this way, but I thought it wise to at least plan to get my own place until we were sure we liked living together. I didn't want to put too much pressure on Drew or on the relationship and having the safety net of keeping my things in storage in Chicago and staying at Drew's for awhile as I got adjusted and searched for a job seemed a good way to test the waters without committing to anything. But, despite my lack of enthusiasm for the neighborhood, I love living here with Drew and to move out and get my own place would almost seem like a step back at this point. Plus, I'd never be able to afford a place of my own in Manhattan. I'd get an apartment in Queens or Brooklyn and then we'd have a long commute between us and I just moved across the country to avoid a long commute, so...

It just makes sense. And! It turns out Drew's not so allergic to cats, after all. In fact, since we moved in, Drew's had zero allergic reaction to the cats at all. It's actually sort of miraculous or something. Unless he was lying about his cat allergies to begin with. Once a week, I rub the cats down with this special Allerpet dander lotion, and since it seems to be doing the trick, I have to highly recommend it. It won't, however, keep your cats from barfing every other day, so if anyone knows a trick for that, I'd love to hear it.

Anyway, knowing I'm going to be staying here has done a lot for helping me feel more settled. Now I just have to go about giving this place my feminine touches, which basically means getting rid of everything Drew owns and moving all of my stuff in. No, not really. Not everything has to go. The HDTV can stay. And the leather chair. And the sofa. And the diner booth in the kitchen. And maybe the bed. The old toaster oven taking up an entire kitchen cabinet? It's got to go. And the Charlie Brown book on top of the toilet? I'd like to see that find a new home, too, but Drew is fighting me on that one. I have to pick my battles, though, and there are some bigger ones, so we'll see...

Just in time for making this old bachelor pad a home, CB2 opened a location in NYC this week. I dragged Drew down there and we bought a bath mat, a shower curtain, a pendant lamp and a coat rack. Afterwards, we immediately walked a couple of blocks to our favorite little Cuban resturant on Thomspon street and drank 5 mojitos (two each, but we split the fifth one because we're responsible like that) and ate dinner. The bill came to $26 and so we told the waitress we didn't think she charged us enough (because we're honest like that) (and stupid). She just looked at us, smiled and said, "It's happy hour!" Happy Hour! Where else in the country can you get five amazing mojitos and the most delicious Cuban dinner for two for $26?! I heart New York. I really do.

And with that determined, I guess I better send for my stuff.

Be My Guest

When did being a customer become such a terrible thing? When I walk into a store and look around and maybe try something on or ask a question of someone who works there and perhaps wait in line and then purchase something, I am a customer. I am not a guest. If I were a guest, I'd expect to be offered something to drink and maybe some bagel chips or ginger cookies or some cheese and crackers upon my arrival.

If I'm a guest, let's face it--there are a lot of very, very rude hosts these days.

Hey, speaking of guest, why don't you go visit my little ebay sale? I'm still trying to make some room in the lone closet we have and I realized that this stuff is just taking up space. Sorry, no cookies right now. I know, rude, right?

The Seams

There aren't many trees in New York City and you can't see the sky and the days are only different from each other by temperature and maybe humidity and not by light and color and the shadows cast on the ground, at least not where I live. And when the weather forecaster on the news says today is going to be a nice one, I wonder what that means, really. You can't see the sky.

I miss riding my bike through the tree-lined streets of Andersonville and Lincoln Square. I miss beers at the Hopleaf at 4 o'clock in the afternoon before the crowd, and filafel pitas from the Middle Eastern Bakery on Foster, and 4-leaf-clover hunting in Winnemac Park.

I had this friend back in Missouri who came to visit me in Chicago a few weeks before I left. He's just a year younger than my mother and has two kids now and a wife battling breast cancer. In college, I used to go to their place and drink tea or fresh fruit smoothies and listen to their stories about San Francisco in the late 60s. Sometimes Terry would play the guitar and Mary would cook dinner and I'd stay until late in the night and we'd sit in their backyard and drink champagne and listen to the crickets. Then Mary had a baby and I remember shopping with Terry for a Mother's Day gift just before I left for Chicago. The baby was almost one by then and I wouldn't see her again until she was almost three. Then they had a baby boy and 3 more years passed before I saw them again and then another three years went by.

Mary got cancer and lost her hair and lost her breasts and Terry called me from a payphone one afternoon after visiting his father in Ohio with the kids and said they took a wrong turn and were an hour outside Chicago and could they stay with me for the night. I found them a cheap, clean motel room down the street from me and they stayed two days. I met them at the beach after work and we built sand castles and swam in the lake and made fun of the lifeguards. Terry brought his guitar and the kids sang and I thought about how my life could have been if I'd stayed in Missouri. I thought about Mary and wondered if she ever worried about losing this.

After they left I sent them all a note and told them to come visit me in New York anytime. Terry called me back and said they hadn't made it to the east coast in over a decade.

The night I flew out of Chicago, Terry left a voice mail message on my phone and said if I hated the city, to come back home. And he said it just like that: "If you hate it there, for Christ's sake, just come home."

And maybe it's cyncical of me, but I hold that bit of advice tight like a security blanket. If I hate it, I can just go back. I can go back to the trees and sunlight and lake and streets where I can ride me bike. And so days go by and I check in with myself: "how am I liking it today?" I can go back, I tell myself. And everyday it's about the same: I don't want to go back.

I met a girl last week who told me it takes a full year after you've moved here before you don't believe you've made a mistake. But I've talked with people who have been here 2 months, 4 months, 6 months and they all say they're happy, that they like it great, that they're glad they came.

So I wonder if it's just what we tell ourselves the first year, to get us through. Because we can't see the sky here. And there aren't many trees. And in that first year, when you aren't secure in a job you love or a circle of friends and you don't yet know all the best places for Pad See Ew, you gotta tell yourself something to get through, because deep down you know the real mistake would be leaving too soon.

Or maybe I'm just the only one whose transition has some seams.