City Wendy

Friends In High Places

In addition to Drew, whose videos are cracking me up while he's gone, I'm lucky to have a bunch of creative, talented people in my life. Somewhere recently — on someone's tumblr blog maybe? Oh wait, here it is, on Sarah Brown's tumblr — is a list of "things that are still good." Like: "Friends who do really cool things, and you’re like That person I know, they did that." I seriously get to feel that way all the time, and it's great. Well, it's mostly great. I mean, if I'm being honest, sometimes it gives me kind of a complex. But for the most part it's really cool and I feel lucky I get to be friends with people who do and create such awesome things.

One of those people is my friend, Rachel. Rachel just got engaged to one of Drew's longtime friends from college, Bill (Hi, Rachel! Hi, Bill!). This is where Bill would want me to tell you that if it weren't for him, Drew and I would never have met. He introduced Drew to Meg, you see, the friend who eventually set us up on a blind date. So, thanks, Bill (and Meg, of course). Anyway, both Bill and Rachel are writers — he's a screenwriter who's up to some cool stuff, and Rachel is a novelist whose debut book, "The Sign For Drowning" was published in hardback in 2008 and in paperback last summer. It's a beautifully-written book about a woman who, after losing her sister at a young age, fantasizes that she's able to communicate with her through sign language, something that leads to a career working with deaf children and the adoption of a deaf daughter.

Besides Rachel's writing talent, one of the things I admire most about her is her discipline and ambition. She has a full-time job working with adolescent HIV prevention programs all over the city, she helps ladies birth babies in her side gig as a doula, and she still manages to stick to a demanding writing schedule. Currently, she's fast at work on novel #2. She talks about her writing process, literary influences, the business of getting published, and the challenges of balancing a day job and a writing career in her interview at the Barnes & Noble book club blog. Check it out.

Apples To Apples

Have you guys ever played "Apples to Apples?" It's seriously the bomb. I heard about it years ago and thought it sounded fun, but didn't get the opportunity to try it out until my last visit to Chicago in November. My friend Chad pulled it out and a bunch of us played a few rounds over several bottles of champagne. I liked the game so well, I put it on my wish list for Christmas, and when my parents got it for Drew and me, we immediately opened it up and my whole family played it for a few hours on Christmas evening and again the next day and again the day after that before Drew and I flew home.

Then, this past Friday in an effort to tackle at least two of my New Year's resolutions, I baked a big pan — well, two pans, actually — of lasagna, something I've never cooked before (!), and we invited three couples over for a little dinner party/game night. Side note: I used this lasagna recipe and everyone raved about it. I added a bunch of veggies and next time I'd add spinach as well and substitute fresh basil for dried, but all in all, it was a big success! Anyway, after dinner one of our friends, John, said he brought a game over he thought we'd all enjoy and it happened to be "Apples to Apples." The eight of us played all night and while I'm not convinced everyone loved it as much as I did, I know all the cool kids did. They know who they are! Anyway, I highly recommend the game if you've never played before. I think the perfect number of players is, like, 5 or 6, though you can make it work with anywhere from 4-8 people.

Speaking of resolutions, I'm just going to go ahead and admit it: I haven't worked out once this year. Not one time!! And you know what? I don't really care. I know I'm supposed to feel bad about that and all, but right now it just doesn't seem all that important to me. I've done some hand weight exercises at home and some sit-ups and stuff, but beyond that I'm totally unmotivated. January just isn't a good time to kick-off a fitness program. Maybe next month I'll be better. Maybe when Drew's gone I'll be more focused.

Drew leaves Sunday! I won't see him for almost a month! Wahh. And, you guys, I just found the perfect house for us to buy and I don't think it's going to work out with him leaving for six weeks. And do you know how hard it is to find a great place? At a reasonable price? In a decent neighborhood? It's been practically impossible! We've been looking for months and months. And I'm ready to move, like, yesterday! I don't know if you've picked up on it the roughly 1000 times I've mentioned it, but I am so over this neighborhood and ready to make a new home somewhere else. I'm a 33-year-old newlywed with with a biological clock that's about to explode and I'm in serious nesting mode and I've got nowhere to nest and it's driving me bonkers! Bonkers!

So I finally found this really adorable place, but the real estate agent said someone's already made an offer and he thinks another couple is about to make an offer and... well, this isn't the kind of place that's just going to sit on the market forever. It's awesome. It's going to be snatched up right away. And, okay, fine, we haven't actually seen it in person yet (we're going to on Friday), but I can tell by the photos it's amazing. It is! IT HAS CENTRAL AIR. It has a garage, too, which is funny because I can't imagine we'll ever actually have a car to park in it. Have I mentioned Drew doesn't have a driver's license? He doesn't. He's a Manhattanite, born and raised, y'all, and never learned to drive. And I happen to be a terrible driver and haven't been behind the wheel of a car in over two and a half years and can't say I have any desire to do it again soon. So, basically, our kids are gonna be kind of fucked. Well, except that they can turn the garage into a studio they can use for band practice with all their friends while Drew and I sit in our central air playing Apples to Apples with our friends while eating tasty lasagna!

Yeah, I'm not getting ahead of myself at all. You know, now that I think about it, I could probably stand to calm the mind a little with a yoga class or eight.

Walkin' In A Winter Wonderland

After 22 hours in transit, including one cab ride, a train, a monorail, one plane, a shuttle, another train, then another train, and then a van, Drew and I finally made it to my parents' house in Germany. It's cold here, and snowy — much how it was when we left New York. Side note: On Saturday night during the blizzard in NYC, Drew and I bundled up and went to a holiday party at our friends' place in Prospect Heights. It was a great time, made moreso, I think by the weather. You don't traipse across the city in a blizzard and not go home without having a really amazing time. If necessary, you pick up the punch bowl and down its entire contents in a span of sixty seconds — as one guest did — but whatever you do, you make sure you have an awesome time before bundling up and heading back out into the urban winter wilderness again.

One of my favorite moments of the night came at around 1 or 2 AM when we were walking to the subway to catch the Q train back to Manhattan. It was still snowing and these two girls were waiting for us at the end of the block. As we got closer to them, one looked at us and smiled and said, "Snowball fight?" So we had a snowball fight, the four of us, under the street lights late at night in the Brooklyn snow and it was perfect. When one of the girls slipped and fell and didn't yell "shit!" or "damn!", but instead screamed "I'm having so much fun!" I knew exactly how she felt. It was just that kind of night.

Anyway, all that snow made for some awful delays at the airport, which certainly affected us the next evening when we were scheduled to fly to Frankfurt. We ended up sitting at the Newark airport for NINE hours before we finally boarded our very late flight. NINE hours! For a while we hunkered down in the Heiniken Lounge — Newark's finest pub — where Drew nursed a $12 beer or two and I read through a couple trashy magazines. When we got tired of that, we moved to our gate where I discovered how sly Russian women pass the time when they've got a delayed flight.

First, they buy a bottle of vodka from the Duty Free shop — much cheaper than buying a cocktail at the Heineken lounge! Then, they carry it to their gate, spread out over  afew chairs, and wrap their vodka in their winter scarf and cradle it in their hands like so (see the woman in blue):

 

Then, when they think no one is looking, they take a swig:

 

This continues until the bottle is empty and they're good and drunk. Then, they discretely throw away the bottle and put their scarf back on like nothing ever happened.

Voila! Now they are much better able to handle sitting around in a freezing cold airport waiting for a flight that's seven hours delayed. I think I'll remember this for the flight home next weekend...

Love, Life, Thanks

I did one of those Tweet Clouds yesterday where Twitter users can see which words they tweet most frequently. Looking at the cloud, it seemed my top three words were "love," "life," and "thanks," which I liked a lot and seemed fitting, but on closer inspection I realized that my three most-used words were actually "wedding," "time," and "night." Oh, right, there was that whole six-month period this year when I discussed almost nothing else but my nuptials. Still, I feel pretty good that "hope," "happy," and "people" are among my top words as opposed to, say, "despair," "sadness," and "nobody." Also, Chicago was at the top of my list, but no New York, not yet.

I was in Chicago a couple weeks ago. I wandered through my old neighborhood, danced and laughed with my friends, and drank champagne for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At Cafe Bong I sang my whole karaoke repetoire, hugged the owner multiple times, and left with a free Heineken stuffed in my purse. "I have to close now!" Jinny said at 2 AM, handing me the beer as a peace offering. "You drink it next place!" she said, pushing me out the door.

Earlier that day I walked along a street near Roscoe Village and felt a pang of homesickness. Actually, what I felt first was familiarity, and something deeper than that — comfort, I guess. That street near Roscoe Village, that street whose name I couldn't even tell you, a street I may or may not have ever walked along suddenly felt more familiar to me than anything else I'd experienced in recent months. It felt like home.

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Yesterday, by a combination of lucky mistakes, great timing, and some good old-fashioned sweet talk, Drew and some friends and I ended up in a most magical bar at the outskirts of Brooklyn, in Red Hook. The bar, Sunny's, is usually closed on Sundays, but the six of us or so were able to finagle our way in for the late afternoon into early evening. We caught up on each other's Thanksgivings, shared some leftovers, and listened to a college station on the small radio behind the bar.

Sunny's is a well, worn-in joint near the river with slanted floors, cracked red leather booths, and nautical-themed artwork and family photos on the walls. It's not a shiny place, but it glows. There's even a banjo made out of a bedpan in one corner. 

"I like your bar," I said to Sunny when he came back from having dinner with his wife and daughter next door. 

The booze had made me feel warm, but not yet dizzy, and I was in that zen-like spot between mindfulness and daydreaming. Everything, of course, was painfully significant.

"I appreciate that you like my bar," said Sunny, who has eyes like shiny marbles and a long, thick mop of grey hair on his head, "but when people say that, what they really mean is that they recognize something in the bar that they like about themselves. You like things that remind you of what you like in yourself."

Hope, happy, people, love, life, thanks. I guess he's right.

I Do Not Like Going Insane

It's been raining cats and dogs in New York for the last several days, almost ruining my BFF's visit over the weekend, but we made the most of it. Since I moved here a little over a year and a half ago, he's been out to see me 4 times, and every time he comes the weather is crap. It'd been so pretty and summer-like the last couple of weeks, I hoped it would stay nice for his visit and we could ride bikes and hang out in Central Park and maybe go to the Cherry Blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botantic Garden, and I could show him the New York I love. But, alas, it was overcast and rainy and we spent much of the gloomy weekend drinking wine and eating good food...which I guess isn't the worst way to spend a couple days.

My friend teaches elementary and middle school drama in Chicago and directs a school play twice a year. He just got done directing "The Music Man" last week as their spring show and as soon as he told me he plans to have the kids perform Shel Silverstein poems in the fall, I grabbed my childhood copies of "A Light in the Attic" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" off the shelf and we — he, Drew and I — spent an hour or so reciting and acting out some of our favorite poems. After my friend left yesterday evening, I had that old familiar hollowness I used to always get after saying good-bye to Drew when we were still long-distance and one of us had to go back home after visiting the other. I feel it, too, after seeing my family, or visiting my friends in Chicago, or when another season of "The Bachelor" ends and there's nothing to watch on Monday evenings anymore. So to take my mind of my sadness, I sat down and wrote a few Silverstein-inspired poems. I'll share a couple with you:

I Do Not Like It When You Leave

I do not like it when you leave

I get a headache you can't believe

The sky turns grey, it's pours down rain

I do not like going insane

Foot Fetish

There's nothing like a good foot rub

to heal what ails, there's just no sub

forget medicine — get your toes scrubbed, 

get 'em sanded and blasted and gently tugged

get 'em trimmed and filed and polished to shine

but I'm warning you — keep your hands off mine!

While my friend was here, we kept talking about getting a foot rub at the foot rub parlor down the street or maybe getting pedicures at the nail salon down the block, but for some reason we never made it. That didn't stop me from saying, "There's nothing like a good foot rub" every ten minutes, though, so that latter poem is in response to that. Oh, and neither one of us has a foot fetish, just so you know. I totally made that part up.

Anyhow, today is May 5th and it's a special day because:

It's Cinco de Mayo!

It's Children's Day in Japan!

It's my mom's birthday!! (Happy birthday, Mom!)

and, it's the 3rd anniversary of the day I met Drew (we met on a blind date)!

However you spend the day, I hope you have a good one.

Feeling Hollow

I just dropped off my other visiting friend at Port Authority a few hours ago and now after a week of hosting and socializing, I'm feeling more melancholy than relieved to have some time to myself again. I probably need alone time more than most people, but it's always a bit of a let-down to get it in exchange for saying good-bye to someone I won't see for too long. It seems I always get this sort of hollow feeling after saying good-bye to people I care the most about: my family, my friends in Chicago, I always felt like this after a weekend visit with Drew when we were still long-distance. It's a wonderful thing to have people in your life who enrich you and lift you up and remind you you're never really alone, no matter how lonely you might feel from time to time, but it's such a pity when the company of those same people is more rare than you'd like it to be. I just wish I could hold all the people I love in my back pocket and have them with me as much as I wanted. I wish hellos weren't always followed by good-byes.

Tripping

I think I've had more to drink in the last week than I have in the last few months combined, and y'all, that's saying something. Since Friday, I've been hosting two best friends from college and we've totally regressed to college-like behavior, which basically means drinking all day, staying up til 3 or 4 am and then sleeping til noon. Well, they've been sleeping til noon — I've still been getting up at 7 and then working for several hours before we head out and do it all over again. Between the drinking, we've also walked all over this city, covering most of Manhattan and a good chunk of Brooklyn. We've met up with other former college friends and acquaintances who live in the city — some of whom I hadn't seen in over 10 years, and last Saturday I even threw my first rooftop soiree in honor of a friend's birthday. I'm pretty sure it was a success, but mostly because the rich people on the roof next door were having one of their big parties and we got to enjoy the sounds of the jazz band they hired, which serenaded us for at least a couple of hours. I learned what I need for the next rooftop shindig I throw, like, you know, some lights and maybe a cooler so people don't have to run down 3 flights of stairs ever 20 minutes for a refill. I couldn't keep the candles lit to save my life and since the solar lights I'd ordered hadn't arrived in time for the party, we spent most of the night talking, drinking and dancing in the dark...a somewhat dangerous combination when you're five stories above street level. Add a particularly steep and scary staircase, and you're really playing with fire (oh, but if only we could keep a flame going!), but I'm happy to report that disaster was avoided and everyone seemed to have a good time. And it was great catching up with old friends. Especially since they kept telling me what a great place I have, which Drew is really more responsible for than I am since he lived here for 14 years before I moved in, but whatever.

Anyhow, one of my friends left yesterday afternoon and the other leaves tomorrow. After that, I have five days before I fly to Beijing. FIVE DAYS!! Holy cow. I had all these grand plans for the things I'd do while Drew was gone and I had some time to myself, but the most I've gotten accomplished is painting my toenails and buying a money pack for the trip. And drinking my weight in gin, of course. Oh, and I bought new glasses! With a 50% off coupon courtesy of my sister who works part-time for Lenscrafters. Dudes! Glasses are fucking expensive. Even at 50% off, I still paid over 300 bucks for a new pair! I hadn't bought new glasses in years and the last time I did, I was totally cheap and got the least expensive pair I could find. Hence, they looked super dorky on me and I always waited until I totally couldn't stand wearing my contacts a second longer before putting on the nerd glasses. Hopefully with the new ones, I'll wear them a bit more and give my eyes a needed rest.

I tell you what — I'll definitely be them on the flight to Beijing since it's, like, SIXTEEN hours long. In coach. I'm going to die. I got some anti-anxiety meds from my doctor and I'm hoping they keep me from clawing my way out of the window. I don't do well in small spaces....particularly when I've got someone's knees shoved into my back and a tray table nearly breaking my ribs every time I need to eat. Did I mention the flight is SIXTEEN hours? But on the upside, Drew's working on scoring tickets to some final events of the Olympics AND we get to stay in a totally macked-out hotel in Beijing while I'm there. I bought a language book recently and so far I can say, "Can I have a lime in that?" and "How much for a pedicure?" Basically, you guys, I'm ALL SET.

The Circle's Round

Years ago, before moving to New York was even on my radar, a friend of mine who escaped to the city right after college told me that she'd never felt lonelier than she did in New York. I thought I understood what she meant, and through the years as I heard similar sentiments from other people who'd spent time here, I really thought I got it. After all, I'm an empathetic person, I've moved to new cities and started over plenty of times, and I've certainly been lonely before, so I could understand what it would feel like to be lonesome in New York.

But experiencing it now, I finally understand that I really didn't get before. The loneliness here, it's different somehow, and I can't understand why or really put my finger on what exactly makes it different. But it's just what I've heard before — what I'm sure you've heard about life in New York — that there's nothing like being surrounded by people all the time to make you realize how lonely you are.

I guess I don't really know how to talk about this without seeming like a jerk. I had a built-in best friend when I moved here, a handful of college connections, and I've been really lucky to have met lots of awesome people since moving. So it's not a lack of people in my life, and it's not that I don't see potential for some great friendships, because I do, but it's just in the absence of the friendships I'd spent years cultivating before I moved, these new ones still in their infancy seem so, well, young. And I'm suddenly struck with just how long it takes to create deep, meaningful friendships — the effort and time one has to invest to have those, and I guess in New York, time seems to be the currency we're all clamoring for more of. Everything just moves faster here — or is it because I'm getting older? Or that I share my life with someone now? I don't know — whatever it is, it seems like each day, I get about a third of the time I did two years ago. And with so many activities and events and things to do and see vying for my attention — and everyone else's attention — sometimes it's just so hard to find the extra hours to invest in building relationships...even when that's what I really want.

I guess this all really came to a head this weekend when my friend Matt and his boyfriend were in town. Matt's a close friend who has this fantastic energy and always makes me feel like a better, funnier, more charming version of myself when I'm around him, which is truly a testament to him more than me. Spending Friday night with him and our respective boyfriends — having champagne on our rooftop and then hitting Korea town for an awesome dinner followed bykaraoke — was so  easy. There weren't any surface getting-to-know-you conversations or awkward mismatches of humor — partly because we were drunk singing all night, but mostly because I was with people who really know me — a luxury I just don't get to have very often and one I forget how comforting can be.

It's nice to have people I can have brunch with and meet for happy hour and go shopping with, but I can't help craving something more and feeling impatient for the kind of bonds here that I have with my friends in Chicago. But, anyway, as far as "problems" go, this is a pretty good one. I've got potential for some great friendships here and as I invest time in building them, I've always got my best friend right beside me. My trusty old laptop. Oh, did you think I was talking about Drew? Yeah, he's pretty good, too.

SWF seeks GM

So life in New York is going well — I'm making friends, I have work I enjoy, I'm taking some fun classes, am close to the park, the apartment is coming together, I don't even hate the neighborhood as much as I did at first, and yet, something is still missing and last night on the way home from dinner, it finally occurred to me exactly what that something is.

"I don't have any gays!" I said to Drew out of the blue as we shuffled passed 48th and 9th.
"What?" he said.
"Gays! I don't have any! I've always had lots of gay boyfriends and now I don't have one." I wailed.
"Well," he said gesturing to our notoriously gay neighborhood, "If you don't have any gay boyfriends yet and you live here, you're definitely doing something wrong."
"I know!" I said, "but what? I'm not putting myself out there enough? I'm not putting enough effort into my appearance? I don't seem approachable? What is it? Why don't the gays like me here?"
"Maybe you should go hang out at Therapy. By yourself." Drew suggested.
"Oh, my kind of gays aren't going to be at Therapy on a Friday night!" I said, "They're gonna be at dinner parties!"
"Oh, I know!" I said, snapping my fingers, "I could place an ad! It could read: 'Straight White Female seeks Gay Boyfriend for bike rides in the park, flea market shopping, Sedaris readings, and brunch. Must like karaoke, decorating, and dinner parties! Bonus for green thumbs and a love of cats.'"
"That's pretty good," Drew replied, "You should do it."
"Or..." I said, "I could just call up an old college acquaintance who happens to be gay and see if he wants to grab a beer sometime..."

Simple Pleasures

It's Easter Sunday and Drew and I had plans to have brunch this morning with our friend Matt and his boyfriend Ryan who were coming in from Chicago for the weekend. First by coincidence and then on purpose, Matt and I have had Easter brunch together for the last 4 or 5 years, so I was especially happy that he and Ryan chose this weekend to come visit. Unfortunately, Chicago didn't get the memo that it's spring now, and it dumped a shitload of snow on Friday resulting in the cancellation of their flight to New York. On a side note, can I just say, Oh my God, I'm so SO happy Drew and I no longer have to do that fucking cross-country commute to see one another anymore! Holy shit, that was for the birds. Every single time one of us had to catch a plane to see the other, my stomach twisted in knots. Would the flight be on time? Would our luggage make it? Would the weather hold out? In a year and a half, we each had so many delays I lost count and at least 5 flight cancellations between us. There were times I spent all day in the airport as my flight was pushed back hour after hour after hour only to have it cancelled finally at the end of the day. Oh, is there anything sadder than the extra 24-hours you have to wait to see the person you haven't seen in weeks? Is there anything worse than losing a whole day of being with him? I'm so glad we aren't long-distance anymore. So glad!

But I miss my friends and that's why I was so excited to see Matt and Ryan this week -- a little friend fix before I make my mid-spring trek to Chicago in May (I hope). But I guess it wasn't meant to be. Oh well, Drew and I made the most of the weekend, anyway. Friday night we headed out to Brooklyn for a raucous game of dominoes with a few friends and two humongo labradors. Seriously, there's nothing like the company of enormous dogs to make me appreciate how easy cats are. Nothing against big dogs -- they're quite nice and all, they just take up so much space! And they don't sit still for long. And when the pizza delivery guy comes, they bark so loudly, I swear, it's like the apacalypse is coming or something. Anyway, dominoes. Dudes, I kicked some serous ass at dominoes. If we'd been playing for money, I'd be filthy rich! I'd have enough money to cruise the South Pacific. I don't know what that means really, but it sounds expensive, and if we'd been playing for money Friday night, I could afford it! We also played darts and ate these awesome Kettle chips which I heartily recommend. And even though Drew and I are on a special diet I call "Lose the Ten Pounds We Packed on When We Moved in Together And Started Acting Like Every Day was Vacation Day," we are allowed to eat whatever we want on the weekends and since I invented the diet, the weekend starts at 4 PM on Fridays -- Awesome, no? -- so I got to eat all the Kettle chips I could stand Friday night, as well as drink all the beer I wanted when I had happy hour with Emily earlier in the day. Anyway, at dominoes night, someone asked, "Are you going to blawwg about this?" which I'm pretty sure was a thinly-veiled attempt to poke fun at all my dorky blogginess (bloggy dorkiness?), and yet, here I am blogging about it because that's what I do -- I blog about all the details of my life because if I don't, who will?

And then this morning Drew and I were at our brunch at one of my favorite places because not only is the food delish, but y'all, they have this brunch drink special where it's all you can drink for 8 dollars!!! I mean, that won't even buy you a single beer most places in Manhattan any night of the week and here at this place on a Weekend morning, you can have, like, 8 drinks for a dollar each. Or, if you're on a boring special diet where you're allowed to eat whatever you want on the weekends but really ought to keep it in check just a little, then 4 drinks for 2 dollars each, which is still a really good deal. And you know what made this morning's brunch even better than the drink special? Even better than making the first crack into the creme brulee we shared for dessert -- Oh God, is that one of life's simple pleasures or what? But better than all that was the sun, and having a window seat directly in it and getting so hot, my face flushed three shades pinker than normal -- or was that the 3rd Strawberry Bellini? It reminded me of that sort of hot you get at the beach when the sun's beating down on you so mercilessly and you just can't stand it a second longer and so you dive into the cool water and that moment -- that moment where you go from achingly hot to refreshingly cool is like one of the best moments in life. Except, I didn't have that moment at brunch today. I just had the hot and no cool, and that's ok, because after the cold, cold winter, hot was really the only thing I needed. That and a visit from my friends, but I suppose there's always next month. If Chicago ever decides to stop snowing, that is.