Look Any Our Car

Saturday, September 16.

It took three professional movers eight hours to extricate me from my life in Greenpoint. That’s just the items, natch. The heart and soul and complications will require a different kind of surgery.

Scrubbing in for the operation today: Claudia at the Metropolitan Oval diner.

Let’s go back for a minute to how harrowing it is to have your move take twice as long as you expected when you have a body-and-mind hangover and the movers are being paid by the hour. Also add in not having time to eat lunch. So a whole day of brutality on a breakfast sandwich and coffee from Dunkin Donuts.

But then, then. The pleasure of unpacking in a home with more closet space than I have ever had, even in the parental homes of my youth. The special moving-day treat of listening to only my five-star songs, which I usually ration out so I don’t ruin them for myself. The sweet-cute neatness of living across the street from some kind of “winter wonderland” made of christmas lights and giant glowing snowmen. And finally, the jewel in the crown of comforts that are making me intensely happy on a night when by all rights I should be kinda sad:

The Metropolitan Oval Diner.

I live next to the greatest diner in the world. I walked out of the house starving, hoping for a local non-chain but willing to settle for anything, Popeye’s, Subway, anything. And there it was, likely right where they put it when they built the development. Booths and mirrors and a counter to lean on while Claudia serves up sandwiches with the pleasant, distracted elegance of a forties starlet signing autographs.

What else could I order but “The Parkchester,” a specialty sandwich understatedly billed as grilled cheese with bacon, tomato and onions on a roll. Don’t let the modesty fool you. The Parkchester is A BACON SANDWICH, an inch thick of crunchy bacon sort of garnished with some cheese and tomatoes and a fried onions.

O yes. Welcome wagon not needed. Hello bacon sandwich. Hello Bronx.

Okay, I get it.  I get it!  I finally get why everybody likes New York so much.  For years I’ve been confounded by all this passionate hornblowing for a city that doesn’t especially stir me (not like Scranton, not like Red Hook).  But now I’m on board.  Not that I could explain it if you wanted reasons, but at least I feel it now. 

A wise Lorelei once pointed out to me that your first two years in NY are pretty much guaranteed lousy, which in retrospect was true though I didn’t notice at the time.  The three years intervening were good: Greenpoint, girlfriends, a quiet place for myself.  But it felt like that could have happened anywhere (and been cheaper!)  But today! 

It’s been coming on for a while I guess - maybe since the day I went to Shea for the Mets playoff-clinching game in September, and since then the flashes of orange and blue and baseball conversations with strangers haven’t hurt.  And I’ve been walking more.  I’ve been feeling the city a little more, getting into the swing of it.  But today!  I accidentally woke up early so I decided to walk to work, and it was perfect.  Perfect weather, perfect morning light, perfect music, perfect New York.  Lavender in somebody’s yard to rub my fingers against.  The diner where we used to drink during desperate lunch hours at my old job.  A dressed-up old couple on a tandem bicycle pedaling laboriously to Queens.  A guy pausing on the bridge to contemplate at length a pair of thong panties that had been left there. 

I don’t even think any of those little treats had anything to DO with how I felt about New York today.  I’m not the kind of girl who likes a place because, you know, it has colorful characters and funny old buildings and thong panties hanging from the metalworks.  New York has a lot more uncharming stuff than charming stuff.  But today it was feeling like home, and like a solid place.  I think we have come to an agreement, the 5 boroughs and me.  Respect.

I realized as I was writing this that I’m two days shy of my 5th anniversary of moving here.  Maybe that’s how it works: You wake up one day, five years later, to find out that New York has turned into a real boy.

While I was walking I figured out what I’m going to be for Halloween.  I’ll be wearing, in order: the ashes of a fire, a tiny carboard box, some play-dough, something made of nylon, an eagle, a Boondocks comic strip, a green crayon, a tiny map of the Great Lakes, a scale model of the Taj Mahal, a handful of coffee beans, the arms of the county of Kent, and the business end of a green pencil.  Now that is civic pride!

love

If ever you find yourself of a Sunday afternoon sitting around thinking, “maybe my favorite baseball team will clinch the division title tomorrow”, it is highly recommended that you order tickets immediately, because THE BASEBALL GODS WILL REWARD YOU. And when the baseball gods reward you, they reward you with the eardrum-damaging, vocal-chord straining prize of 50,000 overjoyed fans all feeling the very same feeling that you are feeling inside yourself. Except maybe those fans are also feeling more drunker feelings than you, also.

Let’s go Mets! 06 all the way.

It has become a personal goal to leave Pret a Manger with as little paper/plastic as possible.  Easy, you might think, but one must wage a war of constant vigilance against Pret’s well-intentioned employees, who seize any unguarded opportunity to grab your meal and wrap it in more layers than you can count.  A muffin, left unguarded, will leave Pret with a waxed paper sleeve, 4 or 5 napkins, and a paper bag with tiny adorable handles.  (Now imagine a salad.) This morning I made it out with only the muffin itself and two napkins, but only because 1. I did not, at any time, set my muffin down on the counter, no matter how difficut that made it to get out my money; and 2. I responded to the cashier’s concerned, "are we out of wax bags?" by responding politely but firmly that I do not like to take one.  He handed me the napkins with my change and since I was already navigating the encounter one-handed I did not have the strength to argue, but my resolve grows daily.

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge that Pret’s napkins are recycled, the only "R" of the three that they seem to want anything to do with.

Strategies include:

1. Not, at any time, setting my food down on the counter, no matter how difficult that makes it to get out my money.

2. Waving no frantically and saying "I don’t need a bag" the second the cashier’s hand moves for the paper products.

3. Filling out a comment card asking them to cut down on the paper waste (would fill out more than 1, but that seems wrong somehow)

4. Putting anything I can into my purse immediately after it’s been rung up.

and 5. Gently chipping away at the Pret employee’s resolve to provide as many helpful paper products as possible.  Basically this means that whenever I say I don’t need a bag and they say, "are you sure?" (beloved reader, they will do this TWICE, and also they will go and GET the wax sleeves and set them down on the counter in front of me assuming that I must not have realized I had the chance to shield my muffin from all the filth in the world), responding with an explanation of my reasons.  ("I just think it’s such a waste, you know?")

This has been going on for years, though, and I’ve more or less come to accept that Pret is synonymous with Incredible Quantities of Wrapping.  It’s impossible to be pissed because everyone who works there is super helpful and nice and sees showering me with napkins as a part of doing their job.  But the recent Never Relinquish Control of Your Muffin strategy is the best so far.  It bewilders them to see you standing there, un-wax-papered muffin in hand.  It’s not in a bag… but they can’t PUT it in a bag…  They will sometimes open a bag and hold it out as if I might like to put the muffin inside, but sometimes they will just stand there blinking, unsure what to do–and *then*, gentle reader, we make our escape, the naked muffin and I.

I love Judith Martin excruciatingly.  I begin this post as I am reading the introduction to her book, Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior–Gentle Reader, I never read introductions!–and by the second page, I am so overcome that I have to stop reading and go tell the internet about it.

Miss Manners does not approve of blogging.

But then, neither do I.

In addition to whopping doses of pith, charm and decisiveness, Miss Judith Manners Martin has the one quality that almost universally divides writers I love from writers I hate: she really seems to think that people are fundamentally decent, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to get sentimental about it.

Read her for yourself here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/25/LI2005032501837.html

love

when did chef boyardee stop being delicious?

The fire made it very cold in here. This is the second night in my life I guess that I’ve spent in winter in a house with no heat. The first time was much colder because it was in the mountains, but it was mitigated by jim beam and the fact that we were sleeping in a closet, which kept the heat in.

Tonight I am wearing socks, long underpants, Pj pants, sweatpants, long undershirt, nightgown, wool sweater, cotton sweater, giant sweatshirt, ski hat, hood, flannel sheet, bedspread, bedspread, welsh wool blanket double thick, throw blanket, tiny hawaiian quilt, fur coat, wool throw blanket. I am using two carpets for a curtain.

It’s cozy camp up here.

I always sleep sound in the chilly.

The building in front of mine has spent the past 2 hours being seriously on fire.

I woke up circa 2 to the sounds of yelling and glass breaking, which was the beginning of a lot of people (including a baby) escaping the fire via the fire escape.

Everybody was okay.

All three floors of the building caught on fire, though only the second floor actually had flames coming out the window. There was a lot of smoke.

The firemen came right away and kicked the fire’s ass with hoses and by throwing flammable objects out the windows. Now there are a lot of doors in the backyard.

My downstairs neighbor and I hung out and watched the firemen gut the building. Now I know what fire hooks are for. They are for removing the ceilings.

The firemen rule.

I’m starting a movement to make it so doing a crossword in pencil is seen as better, smarter, righter than doing it in pen.  So many people insist on doing their crosswords in pen.  But it makes no sense to me.  I firmly believe that the ONLY reason for doing a crossword in pen is vanity.  (Or not having a pencil handy.)

You do a crossword.  One of two things happens.

Scenario 1: You make mistakes. In this scenario, it’s better to be doing it in pencil.

Scenario 2: You make no mistakes.  In this scenario, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done it in pencil or pen.

So, it’s obviously better to do it in pencil!  Why would anybody want to do it in pen?  I can’t think of a single reason.  Apart from vanity.  Or a shortage of pencils.

Go on, give me some reasons.  But they’ll all be lies!  They’ll all be coverups for the secret vanity.

Now that that’s out in the open, doesn’t everybody feel relieved?  Now we can start doing crosswords in pencil, accepting our mistakes, loving ourselves as the fallible human beings that we are.

love

I love Red Hook. Not the ordinary kind of love like, “Oh, Red Hook is a pretty cool part of town.” It’s more like every minute I spend in Red Hook heals my soul like a soothing balm.

Being indoors in Red Hook is always great because my one Red Hookian friend is super awesome and it’s always a pleasure to see her. But it’s being outside there that does the magic. Tonight at 1:30 AM waiting for the bus for ten minutes in the Van Brunt quiet felt like all I’ll need to have a good and calm and happy week. At 1:40 when the B61 came around the corner I felt like it was too soon. To want a bus to be late just so you can sit on a bench longer - is a rare and special kind of love.

I am feeling down with New York these days. On the way home I counted establishments directly on the B61 route that I had spent money in. There were 32. Maybe I just spend too much money but I like to think it’s because BK and me are starting to have some history together.

In other news

On the iPod front

Recent surveys have indicated that almost everybody listens to their iPod by album. It seem like Random Shuffle devotees (like me) are super rare. This boggles my mind. In a way I feel like it’s some sort of weird symptom of technology that people have to have the perfect entertainment at all times. But I just don’t see how there can be as much pleasure in what you select then in the surprise and feeling of fortuity the RS provides. I mean I pretty much like every one of the 1400 songs in my iPod, so it’s not like a terrific gamble here.

Maybe if I were getting on the bus in Red Hook and put on an awesome album it would make for an awesome hour-long bus ride, maybe. But I don’t see how that could compare with the kind of amazing a bus ride is when you sit there and it’’s night and you’re looking out the window and are surprised by the wonder of Michael Jackson and then knocked out by the Dismemberment Plan and then remember all over again as the bus moves under the highway bridges how moving the Cranberries are.

Random Shuffle forever!

love