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copy-bratty

Tuesday night was Opposite Night at Casa Alex y Deb. Not exactly a planned event, it just sort of happened when Alex brought up again that maybe, maybe I could let him cook dinner once a week (this means he’s craving chicken and I almost never make chicken because, well, I don’t like it enough and let’s just not forget who it’s all about here) and I realized that meant I’d have to do the dishes and so I decided I’d instead do that thing where I rinse them and pile them in a large bowl of soapy water and get to them in a day or two, during which time we’d have too few dishes to cook with and just end up ordering Thai (my original purpose anyhow). Confused yet? Yeah, me too.

Alex, quick-witted one that he is, realized I was making fun of him and decided to say in his brattiest, poutiest voice, "I’m bored! We never do anything fun!" to which I responded all huffily, “Oh, we neeever do anything fun. Didn’t we go out for sushi last night? Have your friends over on Sunday? Go out with them on Saturday? That wasn’t fun? Okay, fine. What would you like to do that’s ‘fun’?”

Alex: I dunno.
Deb: Well, I can’t do "I dunno."
Alex: I just, well, I hate it when we just come home and watch the Daily Show and have dinner and go to bed!
Deb: Is it so bad if we don’t go out every single night? That we spend a night or two at home?
Alex: Hmmph! I just! You know! I’m bo-ored!
Deb: You’re going to have to learn to use your words.

It was frightening, really, the way we’ve got each other’s most grating traits down. I mean, he even had the dramatic sighing and pseudo-distressed facial expressions. Who taught him that!

Alex: I’m thirsty! Water?
Deb: Can you say please?
Alex: You never made me before! Are you trying to civilize me? I think you’re trying to civilize me, and it’s not going to work. Even if you did, you wouldn’t like me as much because I might get bored of doing irrational, tasty things like making pizza dough from scratch on a Wednesday night! [Ed note: Yes, I’d said exactly this to him minutes earlier.]
Deb: You didn’t say please.
Alex: Please. Can I please have some water? [Sneers.]
Deb: Yes.
Alex: I was crossing my fingers the whole time! Nya-nya!

Oh man, I mean, thank goodness getting married doesn’t necessitate you being a grownup, because Alex has had decades of practice at being the badgering older brother, and me, I’ve been bratty younger sister my whole life. Isn’t it great that we can feel so comfortable with each other?

Later, getting into bed, Alex fidgets, fusses, and then furiously shakes his pillow into a fluffier shape.

Deb: I do not do it like that!
Alex: Okay, then, cchrrrchrrr cchrrr
Deb: I don’t snore!
Alex: Sure you don’t.
Deb: I… I… I! MAAA HE’S COPYING ME!
Alex: [Smirking.]
Deb: [Glaring.]
Alex: …
Deb: …
Alex: I win.

March 31, 2006 | Comments (8)

it's hard out here for a blogga

Last week, I spent over an hour (also, over two) tickling myself silly with The Smoking Gun's collection of riders from rock, pop, and political stars. I couldn’t avert my eyes. Either the weekend in Paris had tapped out my (limited) high brow attention span for the week, or maybe these imperative demands really are the funniest thing ever, but either way, last week really didn’t get any more amusing than the oh-so-humble need for:

• 12 fluffy towels (Mariah Carey)
• Good soft toilet paper (Eminem)
• Carving station nights on Fridays on the tour and don’t forget the quart of fat-free vanilla creamer (Clay Aitken)
• Uncut vegetables, a sharp knife, and forty cigarettes (Sinead O’Connor)
• General Foods International Coffee in French Vanilla and Swiss Mocha, and yes, Doritos (Britney Spears)
• VERY IMPORTANT: one complete Sony Playstation with miscellaneous [though actually specified] 1999 sport video cartridges, also fluorescent lighting is not acceptable (this was all-caps)(Snoop Dogg)
• A large assortment of flowers, but no carnations (Elton John)
• Forbidding the use of the word “oldies” in conjunction with the band’s name or logo (Beach Boys)
• Fans will show up at 11 AM in every city to decorate his dressing room (Barry Manilow)
• The specification of cube shaped tissue boxes for Metallica
• Oxygen tank with mask (Joan Rivers)
• 2 boxes of Lifestyles or Ruff Riders condoms in the dressing room (50 Cent)
• A preference that catering staffers and pot washers are male (Janet Jackson)

Inspired by levels of prima donna I can only dream of one day attaining, I decided to create my own rider for when I go on those endless blogger speaking engagements. (I hear the invitations are in the mail, any day now, etc.)

• Aveda Hand Relief lotion
  
• A skinny mirror
  
• And while we're at it, cellulite cream
  
• Wireless internet on a laptop with Firefox, please have Pink Is The New Blog on screen when I arrive
  
• Pilot Precise V Rolling Ball Pens, two black, one red; Extra Fine
  
• A top-bound notebook – Deb is a southpaw
  
• Perrier, lime wedges
  
• Yoga mat
  
• Unscented, untinted, unmedicated lip balm.
  
• Flexible Fabric Band-Aids, Neosporin w/Pain Relief, lint brush, screen wipes, air can (these things found in messy desk drawer)
  
• Chocolate, no less than 62%
  
• Tulips
  
• Gourmet Magazine
  
• New York Times, gutted of its Sports and Auto sections, thank you

But sadly, this was the best I could come up with. No male masseuse? No specification on the size of the ice chips? No all-caps, misspelled demands for “cartoons” of low-pulp orange juice (thank you Public Enemy)? Isn’t there anything that will cause me to claw eyes, hurl breakable objects, flare teeth, and break contracts?

• No artificial sweeteners in my tall skim no-foam latte?
• I’m really fond of La Cucina Olive Oil and Coriander hand soap?

God, I’m going to make a terrible diva.*

* And yes, my husband disagrees.

March 28, 2006 | Comments (17)

paris detox

One of my favorite things about coming back from a foreign city is how ungrounded I feel in the days that follow, and how hard I work to cling to it, kind of the way I try to will sleep back to me when I wake up at 7:30 AM on a weekend or try to not eat anything for a long time after an excellent piece of chocolate.

When my ears tune in on two people walking down the street, I perk up when I hear English, until remembering that yes, we speak that here. Feet look different: heels are high and stiletto-ed, colors are more muted, few Velcro strapped trainers. Nobody carries two baguettes wrapped in a small square of brown paper, speaks on the phone in the subway, girls’ nails are polished, their faces more made up. Everything is bigger here: the height of the buildings, the size of our portions and cars, the heaviness in which extras are piled on; everything is better packaged for your ease – but the brightness in flavor of mesclun, butter, eggs, milk, tomatoes all suffer for it. Stores are noisier, employees less warm, buildings look boxy and artless, and everyone walks down the street eating and drinking instead of ducking into a café to sit down with a bottle of sparkling Evian and a tiny, mighty coffee.

As the days pass, I become increasingly convinced that I’ve been placed in the wrong country at the wrong time and I only want to go back, until I rejoice that the scaffolding is finally off the Flatiron Building, pass a line at a coffee cart and smile, or the otherworldly smell of street meat slips into my consciousness, and I become certain again I couldn’t live anywhere else. You know, unless you asked nicely.

***

Last time we returned from Paris, all I wanted was French food, tiny tarts, crusty bread, lightly dressed salad greens, endless Côtes du Rhône. This time, my tastes have shifted to Italy: Tuesday night, Ang and her big dog came over and I made a fresh pizza crust (yes, again) topped with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and paper-thin slices of red onion. Yep, just got hungry again.

Wednesday night, I made one of our favorite dishes on earth, loosely adapted from here, but I highly suggest you forego most of their unnecessary steps and just roast the largest cherry tomatoes you can find and peeled cippolini onions with olive oil and sea salt until they’re drippy and dark (about an hour), toss them with canned beans (I used butter beans, usually I use cannelloni), slivers of basil, and eat it with some crusty, garlic-rubbed bread, salad, white wine, and that Sopranos episode you missed in Paris. Make sure not to miss a lick of those drippings that collect in the bottom of the roasting pan: they will permanently alter the way you perceive tomatoes. We enjoyed this dish so much, I broke my “ew, god, I can’t stand eating the same thing two days in a row” rant to do exactly that last night. There are no leftovers.

***

Finally, the story I promised about the crazy dessert Julie insisted via email that we order at L’Enoteca restaurant in the 4th arrondizement: the Corleone. I’m not going to beat around the bush here: it’s made of eggplant. I think Julie assumed our French wasn’t proficient enough to translate “l’aubergines,” but sadly for both of us, we were. Had we not been able to, we might have ordered this baked vegetable, saturated with amaretto and honey (my best guess), covered with shaved chocolate, and accompanied by two triangles of ricotta ice-cream decked with bits of candied citrus rinds without inhibition. But we were terrified. With help from the liberating effects of wine, we cut through the black skin (still intact!), loaded our forks with nervous smidgens, braced ourselves for something wrong in every sense of the word, but found ourselves intrigued. Then appetized. Then nearly finished.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time since we’ve returned Googling “dessert + eggplant” and come up with astonishingly limited information. I’ve learned that eggplant desserts are not unheard of in Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco, however, they have different-sounding flavors. Reference to similar-sounding recipes in both of these cookbooks. In fact, the only thing I found that sounds almost precisely like what we ate is in this review for a restaurant named Azalea that just happens to be in midtown. Dare we seek it out? I’ll keep you posted.

March 24, 2006 | Comments (18)

paris in forty hours, four thousand words

Friday, we arrived in Paris a little after noon, not too tired as we'd finally grasped that sleeping pills are not evil if they buy you an extra half-days vacation. We RER-ed to our hotel, which made our day by letting us check in a little early, nap a little, and shower. Around 3:30 we went to the nearest café to eat, well, not great food but hey, we was hungry. We took a walk up by the Seine, making to the Île de la Cité and Île de Saint-Louis, where we went to Berthillon for ice cream because Julie (who is from Paris) said it is the best. They were out of their famed marron glacé ice cream so we instead had their salted butter caramel ice cream, a flavor so amazing I’ll probably try to replicate it endlessly for the rest of my life. Salt. Butter. Cooked sugar. Salt. Butter. Damn.

Saturday, I woke to Alex peering into my face with a concerned expression as I had slept twelve whole hours on a weekend, something he has tried to train me to do for the entirety of our courtship, thus far, with no success until a day we really could have used an earlier start. We took the metro to Montmartre, walked up and down many old hills, and found Coquelicot (a bakery Clotilde has waxed poetic about) purely by accident. The bread, aroma, and entire place is decked in the kind of perfected adorability you’d expect from such a cute-sounding place. Later in the day, we stopped at Patrick Roger chocolates, David Liebovitz’s chocolatier of choice, for some tasty treats, and later to L’Enoteca for dinner. This was another awesome Julie recommendation – we had a great Italian (!) meal and even better wine. [It will take another entry entirely to tell you about the CorLeone dessert she insisted we order, but we promise, it's a good story!] On our way back to the hotel, we ducked in a photo booth in the metro and took probably the most decent picture I have ever seen of us. Wine’ll do that to you.

Sunday, again with the sleeping eerily late, we had a very late breakfast at Brasserie Balzar, a very old Alsatian restaurant with a terrifically loyal following (an entire chapter in Paris to the Moon is dedicated to the regulars staging a protest after the place was sold to a restaurant group, successfully demanding that they change nothing about the place). Despite priding myself on knowing enough French to make sense of most things, I knew not a word on that menu, and too proud to ask, just ordered a gratin. Oh, my. After “brunch” we walked all over the Latin Quarter, but dissatisfied with the touristy vibe, we walked back along the river. And walked and walked, with no purpose or plan, until we saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance and decided, why not? An hour later, legs so tired they were on autopilot, we watched the sunset under the Eiffel Tower, and took dozens of terrible self-portraits in the spot where we got engaged in December 2004. Yes, I know, retch.

Monday, our last day, it was drizzly and overcast but we forgave the weather after being so hospitable to us all weekend. We decided to go to the infamous Poilâne bakery – a very old bread bakery that makes a famous 2kg round loaf, as well as tiny, precious sable cookies called la punition. We bought an applesauce croissant for the plane, and a bag of the my coworkers are currently feasting on. Nearby was Pierre Hermé, a place where they insisted we take home three macaron each, when we only needed one. At the register we fretted that we didn’t have enough euros left when they pronounced that the macaron were free! Apparently, March 20th is the Festival of the Macaron at Pierre Hermé, or, Woot! Yeah, dawg! Some free shit! as we say in America. Full on macaron and tiny cookies, we had a final cup of café and sadly returned to our life on this side of the Atlantic. But I swear, we chased the sunset the whole way home.

Before I left for this vacation, I mocked the nay-sayers but mostly because I echoed their doubts. I mean, what were we thinking? One vacation between our wedding and first anniversary and we pick forty hours in a city that is an eight-hour flight away? But, the flights cooperated, our jet-lag was minimal-to-none, the weather was a delight, the hotel as cute as we remembered it, our French better than we’d left it, our food choices better informed and even more satistifying than last time, and our staunch belief in self-guided walking tours superiority over queues at museums reaffirmed. This trip rewarded our impulsivity, refreshed my bored mind with delicious vistas and taste-bud staining flavors, and pretty much did everything a great vacation is supposed to, with the added bonus of leaving me with enough vacation days to go somewhere more exotic later this year.

How does this sound? “Happy Paper Anniversary baby, and but watch out! A ringtail lemur has just joined our safari!”

March 21, 2006 | Comments (26)

purposeful aimlessness

Over the course of the last two days, I wrote an unusually worthwhile essay in which I talked about the half-life of satisfaction and the ever-presence of struggle, restlessness, impatience, and bit-chomping-at, and some awesome advice once imparted to me by a college friend. But then I woke up this morning, reread it, and was all “to hell with this! I’m going to Paris tonight!”

Because I am. I am! I am! I am! And there will be no existential, bleak drama on such a grand day despite the inherent French-ness of such a struggle. At least not until I return (“return” supposedly being Monday night but mind you, I have not actually made any promises that I will), and in the days between now and then there will be copious amounts of my five favorite things: chocolate, wine, coffee, street-wandering, and obsessive photography.

One of the greatest things my husband has taught me in his tenure as my Favorite Boy is the art of the unplanned vacation. The last time we went to Paris, we picked a different neighborhood each day, and loosely guided by a book of walking tours, burrowed our way through hundreds of nooks, crannies, and tiny cafes. We never had a plan, but we left feeling like we’d seen everything except for those time-sucking museums, troglodytes that we are. (Fine, we saw two, but quickly.) Had I been allowed to plan our trip, I probably would have bogged us down with Culture and Purpose. Yech.

This time, we’re armed with far more inspiration: there’s Ang’s favorite shop on the Île Saint Louis, David Liebovitz’s preferred chocolate shop, Clotide’s most beloved bakery, all of Julie’s favorite places to go in her neighborhood, and my great desire to visit Pierre Hermé. But, we’re not above burning this list to keep it from interfering with our need for aimlessness, or you know, the opposite of our day-to-day lives in New York. Which, you know, is kind of the point of a vacation anyhow, even a tiny irrational one like this.

***

In other news, things people have said to us in reference to this vacation:
“You go for the weekend? That’s crazy.”
“It’s cold there! Don’t forget your coat!”
“You come back with news for us, okay?”
“You’ll be so jetlagged, you won’t have a chance to go anywhere!”
“Wait, it was cheaper than going to LA? Really?”
“You’re going to have some News for us when you get back, right?”
“You set aside two days to go to the Louvre, right?”
“You’re supposed to go to Paris in the springtime! This isn’t spring.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if you came back with big, exciting news?”

And my response to each and every one:
“Pbbbffflt.”

***

[Photos from our last trip to Paris over here.]

March 16, 2006 | Comments (15)

this says pulp; i like some pulp

Last night, Alex and I had a dozen (dozen!) people over to watch the first new episode of the Soprano’s in like, three years or something awesome like that, and by awesome I mean if it were your job to show up for work only every couple years, you’d be all over that.

We had gabagoul, soprasetta, capicola, olives, lots of Italian cheeses including one provolone that I swear, permanently fouls the smell of your fingers, if you can imagine anything more repulsive than a room full of people sniffing their fingertips and reacting with disgust. Swearing I wasn’t going to cook “too” much, I made six pizzas, a big salad, batch of biscotti (and you seriously must try this recipe), and some tiramisu-type cream for strawberries. (I made the tart pictured for my father-in-law’s birthday on Saturday.) Julie brought homemade marron glacé which I immediately fell head-over-heels for and may need to have surgically removed from my claws, or my hips, whichever comes first. We also had a lot of wine but I’m pretty sure by now that goes without saying.

It was definitely the best Sunday night in ages, at the top of a week that’s only going to get better because it ends in Paris, in the middle of a month that has amassed greatness by bringing me warmer weather, a promotion, and six new freckles to boot. March is my new BFF. Or will be until she steals my new favorite shoes. (Which are, by the way, back in the closet. For now.)

March 13, 2006 | Comments (18)

in which i show the internet my drawers

I realize I’ve gotten, I mean given myself, sort of a reputation as a neat freak. This particularly hit home with me when Carrie commented a couple weeks ago that she used to wonder if I was secretly moonlighting as Julie Powell (best compliment ever, thank you) but that she realized I couldn’t be because Ms. Powell is an admitted slob.

Since for me this site is all about me deciding which head clogging bits of personal information are worth protection and cradling within the ever-so-thick lining of my skull, and proceeding to dump the rest unceremoniously and haphazardly about the internet, it seems time to share a veritable blue dress’ worth of damning evidence. Be warned, like all my fellow obsessive-types, once I step out of my controlled/dusted/neatly aligned comfort zone, it all goes wildly ungrounded.

1. Second Desk Drawer, Work.

   You’d think this would be my dirty little secret, but I throw it open often and publicly. Oh, man, would a shrink have a field day with that one.

2. My Closet to Our Bed, The Area Extending From.
   

   (Read: half our bedroom) Alex calls me Imelda. I call him and tell him I’ve just fallen in love with another pair of shoes and will be buying them shortly, sucka. Of note, and hard to see in this dark picture, is a shoe rack inside the closet, an outstanding effort on my part a few months back to organize my shoes. The shoe rack is mostly empty. Enough said.

3. Gadget Drawer, Kitchen.
   

   Each time I bring home a gadget, my husnband rolls his eyes. “A pastry cutter? A microplane grater? A one-tablespoon scoop? When are you going to use that?” and then I proceed to wow him with my pastry cutting, micro-planing, scooping skills until he is either bored or happily snacking on something scooped/grated/cut. Oddly enough, I hate those jars on top of counters that logically hold all the utensils in one place. Why? They get dusty. Oh, of course, you say, thank goodness you've avoided such messiness! (Above this, btw, the most impeccable spice rack you have yet to encounter.)

4. Pantry, Kitchen.
   

   I was going to leave this out as I had just cleaned it out three weeks ago but behold! The amount of mess that has developed in such short time. Of note: baking soda, wide open to the world, those nasty leftover chips from last weekend’s blondies, everything else in sealed plastic bags for reasons I obviously do not want to discuss, empty canisters and bags of flour next to them, and lady fingers leftover from a tiramisu I made last year! Underneath and out of view, the most offensive display of paper shopping bags atop a virtual trove of fancy, unopened kitchen appliances (that we have no room for on our single 2’x3’ kitchen counter) such as a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, Fondue Set, Waffle Maker, oh, I have to stop because I hate me now.

March 09, 2006 | Comments (18)

when the world is cold, i will feel a glow

Yesterday evening, I got on the elevator with the kind of people who quietly groan that they have had to hold the door for you an extra two seconds, as you have irreparably delayed their trips home. I had a grocery list, a dreaded trip on the gym’s treadmill, an errand I wasn’t going to have time to run, a lingering sneeze and cough from last week, ten whole days before we go to Paris for half as many, and an obvious lack of effervescence to my Monday night. I put on my iPod and ignored them.

I have one thousand, one hundred, and fifty two songs on that Little Green Jobs Machine, but I swear that all that ever comes on is Morrissey’s Last of the Famous International Playboys or some Arcade Fire song I like, but not enough. I’ve got songs on there I haven’t heard once in nine months I’ve had it, and a specific one I haven’t heard in six.

Alex and I tore through dozens of wedding-ish songs before landing on one: there was Etta James, but At Last reeked to me of a kind of relief/desperation I didn’t feel; Bon Jovi’s I’ll Be There for You, but man, how I hate ballads; and Whatta Man, but lets just say it wasn’t exactly a “consensus.” We ended up going with likely the most over-used wedding song in the history of wedding songs, but I didn’t care because it embodied precisely everything I thought a first dance should: light, upbeat, classy, and I thought the singer was really, really cute. Unfortunately, after weeks of dance lessons, practicing, and endless repetition, the sound of its opening notes made us groan.

But last night, a single measure into the song, it fixed everything as I remembered three things I'd completely forgotten. One, our flaming dance instructor (who always wore purple shiny shirts, as if to emphasize the point and always smelled strongly of booze) fox-trotting my almost-husband around the dance floor. Two, huddled in the backseat of a cab after too many drinks at Jocelyn’s a week before our wedding, Alex and I took the song in one more time, he on right earbud, me on left. And three, feeling those many-hundreds of dollars of dance lesson go down the drain on the dance floor at our reception and of course, not actually caring a bit.

I have this theory that we go through life looking for transcendent experiences. It’s why we tuck secret ingredients in dishes, why we scan faces on the subway for a familiar one, why we slip a weighty song among thousands on a machine and hit shuffle. We want it to surprise us, we’re hoping it’s going to sneak up on us on some shoddy Monday night and catapult the same walk home, the same old drag, above and beyond our tranquilized expectations. This is what I thought about as I left walked home from work last night — how it’s impossible to avoid falling into some routine in life, but it doesn’t stop us from constantly looking for evidence of the salient, the exceptional — and I’m telling you, pretty much everything has been looking up since.

March 07, 2006 | Comments (25)

notes from this side of the convex glass

Oh man, I watched a lot of television this week.

• Paula Deen is making bread pudding with a dozen glazed Krispy Kreme donuts. I bet some cardiologist is sending her a cease and desist order. I forgive her though, because I just love the way she says dill (dee-yill) and olive oil (aw-liv earl). Also, because I bet if you forced me to try it, with threats of violence and all, it might be kinda tasty.

• I just watched one-eighth of an episode of General Hospital. Was I really addicted to this show for more than five years? OMG Robin Scorpio is back! With a teeny nose ring. So cute!

• A commercial for “The world’s first Sports Utility Vacuum” by Hoover. Stunning. Horrifying. Does this mean it uses an above-average quantity of nonreplenishable resources but you know, looks really cool?

• Cowboy/Cowgirl wedding. First time I’ve seen chaps outside Chelsea. On a girl, no less! Best. Wedding Story. Ever.

• Roll-up pizza! Pita pockets! Frozen breaded shrimp! Please don’t get me started on meals from a box because this is just one of those places in the where communication between me and the rest of the world breaks down. I’ll never get it. Then again, I hear there are people on earth who do not care for chocolate. I’m going back under the covers now.

• All these women screaming and hysterical with birth pain on A Baby Story are really freaking me out. I mean, how is this supposed to convince me that having a baby is a good idea? What, her epidural wore off? They do that? Oh my god. Back under the covers again!

• Mmm… Michael Chiarello… grey salt, spice grinder, NapaStyle™. Swoon.

• What is it with layered hair, heavy eye shadow, swishy dresses, and stilettos on What Not to Wear? Are they trying to make these insecure women into insecure droids?

• Ina Garten has inspired me to make barbeque sauce. That I do not particularly care for ribs or barbequed chicken is irrelevant. I love this woman and will make anything she does. (Update: BBQ sauce is a-m-a-z-ing. Make it!)

Sadly, this has been edited down from pages of notes. I’m nothing if not productive when oozing boogers. (Haha, I made you read about my boogers!) And mature.

March 03, 2006 | Comments (18)

haphazard halfaversary

Guess what Alex gave me for our Halfaversary this week? His cold! I mean, green boogies and phlegm? It’s a gift that would make our inner seven-year-olds proud!

This twenty-nine year old, however, is less amused. Day One I was at work, wanting desperately to go home but I had tickets to go see The Putnam County Spelling Bee with my mother and a friend that night. (Such a great show!) Day Two I logged twelve hours of sleep, six hours of Food Network, two of Dating/Wedding/Baby Story on TLC, and one of Martha. (Do I fit neatly into a demographic or what?) Day Three I up and showered, dressed, packed my gym bag and all sorts of hope, bundled, and walked down the stairs before finally admitting that I still felt 100% like crap. (This is me upon return to our apartment this morning, self-chastizing: look how ridiculous you are, all dressed when you should be in bed!)

And please, do not bring up chicken soup, because inspired by the New York Times spread on chicken noodle soup last week, I for the first time delved into this historic cure-all and made us a giant pot of yum. Alex was sick two days later; myself, five. Look, I’m not trying to lay blame – that would more accurately fall somewhere between clubbing, all-weekend-parties, and walking to work in 30-something degree weather – but when you get sick after a glorious pot of chicken noodle soup, you’ve got to admit that someone, somewhere is laughing at you.

Anyway, back to the Halfaversary. At Tabla with Alex’s in-laws, or you know, Mom and SantaDad, on Sunday night, Alex and I got to mathing it up. For example, we’ll need 72 of these to reach the joint levels of bickering and adoration reached by my parents; 36 to effectively raise a single child and be able to have them legal removed from our bankrolls; 40 to pay off a mortgage, 80 if in Chelsea; almost 60 that I have been on this earth; 5 of them that known Alex; 12 of them that I have been out of school so-please-don’t-ask-me-about-my-entry-level-job.

What we meant was, man, this Halfaversary is totally small peas and really irrelevant in the big picture of life but you know what? The hell with that. We’ve been married for six months! And as soon as I get out of my cocoon on the sofa, we’re going to celebrate, damnit. In fact, I’ve been stashing a nice pile of gummy tissues right here for you, baby.

March 02, 2006 | Comments (15)