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old beach towns and angry monkeys
My weekend included two of my favorite things on earth.
Coney Island, Brooklyn
The Bronx Zoo
building a makeshift alex
Items I have requested a healthy supply of as it becomes evident that my husband's business trips will be neither infrequent nor terminating any time soon.
- Jar opener (Alex: Have you had to open any jars since I’ve been gone? Deb: No. BUT I NEED TO BE PREPARED FOR EVERYTHING! Alex: I’ll get you flood boots.)
- Dishwasher or Disposable Dishes. I mean, he totally knew this was coming. I can cook elaborate meals or clean dishes, but doing both is just cruel.
- A Sheet Thief, so my highly refined Sleeping Sheet Death Grip doesn’t weaken
- Background Noise of the Snoring Variety
- Reminders that 11:30 is an excellent time to go to bed. It seems without him, I’ve gone back to my insomniac ways. No, that’s not true - I can sleep, I just don’t. I’ll get really busy doing something – baking, organizing, doing something craftsy – and it will not even occur to me that I should be sleeping. Last night I looked up at 1:11 AM and realized I’d completely forgotten to go to bed again. Of course this is Alex’s fault.
- A personal grammarian. Maybe it’s just because I am writing all the time now, all the live-long day, but I keep hitting these Walls of Dunce where I cannot remember even the most basic grammar or spelling. Usually I just IM my husband, because he, unlike a copy editor or any other sane individual, will not make fun of me. “My brain just farted and I can’t remember. Is it effect or affect?”
- Reminders to chill the eff out. A typical evening is me saying, “Alex, I just saw this recipe for fresh gnocchi with a whole roasted tomato sauce and homemade ricotta!” and Alex responding, “Or, we could just order Thai and go to bed early.” I so need this voice around before I start my next weekday night project.
- Content. Things get really quiet when he’s gone and I run out of ideas. Please don’t force me to look inside myself for something to write about.
- A Houseboy (Alex: No. Deb: Please. Alex: Maybe a housekeeper. Deb: Only if he’s cute.)
I suppose this is the point that I should say that while this list has been fun to write, it’s not going to make up for a missing husband. We are more than a sum of our parts, you know, and even a ten thousand item list couldn’t make it seem that he was here. But then I think, a dishwasher, houseboy, jar opener AND a grammarian? Oh, just try me.
hang up and run to me
My Alex is away this week on his third business trip this calendar month, and to say that I/we find this trying or saddening is like saying I kind of enjoy baking and then writing about it – there isn’t a single page in this archive that could render either of these anything but understatements. His year-long project of implementing some one-zeros in multiple one-zero locations is coming to a close, and he needs to go to different test sites to make sure that the ones, and yes the zeros, are lining up just right and troubleshoot if a one or zero falls out of place. (This is my explanation of his work and I’m sticking to it.)
In the time that he’s not going out with strangers or ordering room service while finding silly notes I’ve tucked in corridors of his suitcase, we talk on the phone to stay in touch. Problem is, we’ve almost never talked on the phone before, and as it turns out, we are just horrible at it.
Deb: Hi.
Alex: Hi.
Deb: So, your flight was okay?
Alex: Yeah, not bad, only a little delayed.
Deb: Your car this week?
Alex: Not bad.
Deb: Work okay?
Alex: Mm-hmm. And you?
Deb: The usual.
Oh, man. It’s like a blind date. With two shy, awkward people that don’t even like each other. At home we never run out of things to talk about. How is this happening?
Deb: Did you order dinner?
Alex: A sandwich. You?
Deb: Salad.
Alex: Anything good on tv?
Deb: I’m watching Big Love. Eh.
Alex: Lost. It’s pretty good.
Deb: I’m going to… wash the dishes now. Talk in an hour?
Alex: Ok. Bye.
I spent the entirety of high school with a light blue phone attached to my head and now I am beginning to suspect I might have tapped out my lifetime supply of phone conversation before twelfth grade.
Deb: I stubbed my toe.
Alex: I’m sorry.
Deb: …
Alex: …
It’s sad because I miss him so much, but there’s nothing to say. He’s not here, I’m not there, and these little wireless devices are doing nothing to fix that.
Alex: I’m going to bed now. I’m exhausted.
Deb: Are you staying in a Heavenly Bed? Wakka chikkka wakka…
Alex: Yes I am.
Deb: BUT IT’S NOT AS HEAVENLY AS SLEEPING NEXT TO ME! Is it?
Alex: Heheh. Not even close. I miss you a lot.
Or, they're not most of the time.
April 27, 2006 | Comments (15)
i'm a dancin' man and i just can't lose.
Last night, my newly-reunited husband and I went to Jocelyn’s awesome stained glass exhibit opening in Brooklyn, leaving early because we’re old and married, and also, because we’d already had dinner.
All liquored-up In the cab ride home, I informed Alex that I’d seen a recipe on a food blog this week for homemade Oreos, and I’m telling you, his eyebrows shot up so far they nearly landed on top of his head. “Oreos? You know how to make Oreos?” Oh woman after his already-spoken-for heart! Cue the cab dropping us off in front of Gristedes at 10PM so we could pick up ecstatic ingredients. At the register, Staying Alive came on the loudspeakers and I saw him, I saw Alex tap his foot. Then, the right finger pointed out and crept horizontally across the room; that’s right, I’m talking to you Streits Matzo, I’m talking to you, overripe bananas. He assumed the overbite.
And I swooned, people, I swooned. That’s my man, turning the beat around at Gristedes on 8th Avenue at 10:15 PM. That’s my man, unable to keep the rhythm inside him. There’s never going to be anyone as perfect for me as he is. So, I went home and baked him Oreos.
April 23, 2006 | Comments (33)
how the other half sweats
I had a couple friends over for dinner and Sopranos last night; Dan came over properly armed with a bottle of wine, but Julie, Julie brought me a week-long guest pass to the Reebok Gym, and demanded I meet her there tonight for something called a "class."
Apparently one night not long ago, probably as a result of some of the aforementioned wine, I waxed poetic about my desire to just once in my life work out at this place that was, at least when it opened a few years ago, the most expensive gym in the city. I mean, what does $188 per month with a $1200 initiation fee look like? Is it weak that I was so curious? Are the saunas lined with imported wood? Do they steam Evian to open your pores? Does someone follow you around mopping the sweat off your brow with an Egyptian cotton towel? Or, are you actually paying for someone to do the workout for you, because believe me, that would be the kind of gym I’d never make up excuses to avoid.
I’m sad to say it is almost all none of those things except the price. Don’t get me wrong: it has six floors, a foyer, and thick towels in endless supply. The café sells grilled salmon, the showers are huge, and the hairdryers in the locker rooms are more expensive than mine at home. But the steam rooms? Still smell like chlorine. The bottles of water? An arrogant $3. And not only did they not attend the Pilates class for me, they removed not a single one of those professional gymbos from my line of view.
[This would be the point when I am supposed to tell you that although I’ve never done Pilates in my whole life, I joined an advanced Pilates class in a gym already packed to its gilded gills with Type As. That, while I’ve done a lot of crunches in my life, I’ve never done 25 straight minutes of horrible, inhuman things like lying on my back and proceeding to lift my legs straight up, touching my feet down behind my head, and back to the starting position in a measured and controlled manner. Repeatedly. And that I feel strongly that you will benefit from viewing a diagram. So yes, while this would be the time that I should share with you all of these stipulations, I really don’t want to because then I might not get as much sympathy. And my abs are going to need all the sympathy they can get tomorrow.]
So, to sum this all up because, well, I hear I’m supposed to try that once in a while, I’m not sure that the other half sweat any differently from me, and by presumption you, but they do get to do it in nicer attire. Also, into better towels, onto flawless wood floors, within marbled-walled bathrooms, and they kinda seem to be skinnier and in more sculpted shape than I am. But, that’s okay, you know, because this homeless man once hollered at me than I had “hips like a black woman” and I wonder how many of them would have been flattered to hear that. Or shook them all the way home to her walk-up apartment.
April 18, 2006 | Comments (14)
six for six-thirty
- Last night, leaving very late from the seder at my parents house, I couldn’t get over how wide the sky was above the street I grew up on, how nested the houses looked on their stone-lined lawns, and how comforting the soundlessness felt. I don’t remember any of this growing up. I also don't remember there being a Ta-Ta’s Pizza or South Wind Chinese Restaurant on the way to the train station, which is too bad, because we would have enjoyed that a lot more in high school. Or so the theory goes.
- Today, I had street meat for the first time. Now, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before, but from the age of 13 until I was 28, I was a dairy-eating vegetarian. Couldn’t stand meat. Then things changed, as did my palate, and meat didn’t gross me out the way it once did. For months now, I’ve walked by these street carts and were it possible, I’d argue that each time, the cumin and fried onion smell plunges into the very depths of my soul, wakening something essential, and I’ve known it was just a matter of time before I bored enough of my Sticks and Twigs Daily (salad) to make myself one with this obvious delicacy, kinda the polar opposite of vegetarianism. I enjoyed it so much I wonder if it’s really a slippery slope into picking roasted deer meat off carcasses with my bare hands out in the woods. My male coworkers told me this is a common response, but I think they’re full of shit because god knows you can’t get wireless out there.
- For Hurricane Margs birthday party tomorrow night, I’ve considered baking the following treats: iced and maybe filled cupcakes, two layer cake, brownies, meringues, and lemon bars. Fortunately, I’ve decided to forego all of these highly involved recipes to make something a coworker of mine calls Ewiht Athsr Usepirrs, or a name so offensive, I’ll let you work it out. I dare you to not succumb to the totally-about-to-be-showcased-in-Gourmet-magazine treat that is saltine crackers, butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips.
- Apparently, I can’t chaturanga dandasana for shit, and because it had to be yesterday that it was brought to my attention that I am not properly acting out the part of a peaceful crocodile, it is today that my shoulders a seized with a particularly sharp pain. Oh, yoga, how I love thee. We could be together for thirty years and you will still tell me my down-dog looks saggy and my cow face is jutting my ribs, but that my continued effort without achievement is a good thing.
- Speaking of the art of never getting ahead, I know I was all gloom and doom about my job last week, but I want to update that statement to be only moderately gloom and doom this week. In fact, I actually filed two stories today. Either the world will now stop cease spinning on its axis, or I will collapse from exhaustion clutching a bottle of bourbon. Oh please, please – let it be the latter.
- In other news, moments before this entry was published, a female Giant Spotted Forehead broke free of its chains, careening across the city, crushing all children, puppies, and kittens in its path. Also, I cut my hair short again.
April 13, 2006 | Comments (23)
if i get by, it's mine
I received an email from Heather Sunday afternoon with the subject line, "this [expletive] is ripping off your blog!" Indeed, an [expletive] had misappropriated one of my posts as her own, and I used this exact word - misappropriated - when I emailed the [expletive] and let her know she had a very limited time in which to pull the post before I made a great big noisy fuss about the whole thing, mostly because I’d gone on a long, sunny walk with my husband along the river and was trying to keep my mood elevated for as long possible. Within a few hours, the post was pulled, as were apparently a few others she had “borrowed” from others, and I swear, this story has almost nothing to do plagiarizing, as god knows the way I have been feeling about writing lately I could use a little petty thievery to improve my self-image. Nope, this is entirely about what the aforementioned [expletive] deemed worthy of appropriating.
***
I wrote this ghastly burst of Cringe-ready self-importance twenty-eight days before I met the boy who would later become my husband, in case this treatise doesn’t enough scream “single” from each of its two-thousand characters. Now married, it begs a revisit like a high school love letter, and I reread it with the same level of embarrassment.
At the time, the font of my discontent was my contention that along with the comfort that naturally evolves in a relationship comes a disregard for the small things, like flowers, sweet nothings, and a dutifully maintained appearance. It was as if you were no longer worth putting in the effort. As soon as boys lost their new car smell, I felt duped, and I wanted back what I felt I’d been promised.
Thank goodness I married Alex. Each weekend morning, we hurry to the bathroom to brush our teeth before wishing each other a good morning. Our hair? Combed! Before we settle in to our thirtieth viewing of Kill Bill or Harry Potter, we shower, and put on neat and clean loungewear. My nails? Always filed. His teeth? Always flossed. My legs? Shaved each and every day I’ve known him. Flowers from last week? Not in any way rotting in a pitcher on the windowsill. Thank god we’re able to maintain our high standards!
Okay, I’ll stop making fun of my that youthful thing I was three years ago, because I know I never deleted that post because I knew what I’d meant. What I don’t know is why the hell I dated boys that did not share my values or do the little things that were important to me, just because they were. Because mostly, mostly entirely, this is what it comes down to. If the relationship works for you both, morning breath, a dearth of flowers, and socks with holes in them aren’t going to be the deal breakers. And yes, I’m totally lying about the socks with holes in them.
caught a light sneeze
The last few days I’ve been a mass of possibly unsubstantiated but probably identifiable angst. At first I thought it was because I’d listened to Tori Amos on my way home Wednesday and realized that after ten years, I still don’t understand the meaning of half of her lyrics. Then I thought it was my sunburn making me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. But, I couldn’t sleep Wednesday night, wholly convinced that every noise against the skylight was someone trying to break in, yet even with my security blanket back from his business trip last night, I slept no better. On my best day at work this week, I’ve performed average, and you may think I am being hard on myself, but it’s eerily the truth since I’ve been promoted. While this isn’t really like me to be so not-seeing-the-big-picture of things, I’ll try to say something that is: I’m sure this is just a phase. We all hit spaces in our life when what we are isn’t adding up to what we’d like to be, and it means it’s time to make some adjustments. This I can do.
In the meanwhile, I’ve hunted, foraged, and gathered a series of pictures taken by strangers that sort of soothe and cheer me at the same time. I’d sum them up as bright or bold or calm, but that might ruin the moment. I hope they please you, too. (In addition, if you have Flickr Favorites collections, paste the URL in the comments for me. I’d love to see.)
April 07, 2006 | Comments (20)
sustenance
Of late, I've read two really great pieces by food writers about meals they’ve assembled in the absence of their significant others: in the first, Amanda Hesser's then-boyfriend, now-husband is out of town in a chapter of Cooking For Mr. Latte, and she finds ways to make indulgent meals with minimal ingredients and work. In the next, Julie Powell writes about an attempt to keep herself sustained, at least nutritionally, while separated from her husband last year. I’ve thought about both all too much this week as my Alex has been away on business, and I’m notoriously lax about constructing meals of nutritional value without the greater cause of the two of our waistlines. For once, I’ve taken this as an opportunity to not just mope.
Sunday, it started with a $5 mushroom. Yep, just one. Without a husband behind me at the grocery to all-too-rationally point out the possible irrationality of purchasing a fresh porcini mushroom at thirty freaking dollars a pound, I went for it. I sliced it thinly with an inner, white stalk of celery, an endive, some parmesan, and a mostly lemon juice vinaigrette. What I desperately wanted was a replica salad I’d had at an unassuming Italian restaurant a block from our apartment a few months ago that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. What I received, though, was something better: me, by myself, eating a ridiculously indulgent meal that I might never replicate in the company of another. A glass of wine, some bread, and a little dishwashing later, it’s been ages since I felt so smugly self-satisfied.
I was on a roll. Monday, I poached an egg and some asparagus, sprinkled them with a mustardy-viniagrette, tiny slices of goat cheese Ang had left at our place, and truffle salt (yet another purchase that made my husband groan, you know, until he tried it), and mixed a little green salad. Again, I was trying to recreate some cross between two dishes I’d had out at restaurants that were unexpectedly awesome, flavors I just couldn’t get off my tastebuds. And god, it was so good.
There’s something awesome about cooking for yourself, your own very self, a veritable feast. Being married and wholly smitten, I don’t spend a lot of time these days chasing things I’ve locked in my head that I’m not sure make sense to other people. I thought of something when we were in Paris a few weeks ago: I’ve spent almost 100 percent of the last two-plus years within five feet of a single person. It’s a sweet but almost terrifying revelation that you almost forget what it is that you did with your time when you were by yourself. Cooking for one and not caving to the Call of the Chinese Take-Out Menus these last couple days, I’ve gotten a piece of something essential and unintentionally sidetracked back.
Fear not, though, tomorrow’s going to be all about me reconnecting with old buddy Kung Pao. I can only be wholesome for so long.
April 04, 2006 | Comments (12)
sprung at last
Alex and I took a walk down to Battery Park on Saturday, when the clouds overtook the sun for just enough time to send us home. Sunday, sans-husband, now away on business, I walked up to the boat basin and then back down again, realizing about half the way home that I'd really have benefitted from a generous application of sunscreen, and this morning, the singe to prove it. Sunburn aside, this weekend was like tonic for my so-sick-of-winter-torment. Finally!