to clear the smoky air….
yes, i am no longer an active smoker. this does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that i am a NON SMOKER. i hold my stance that smokers are more fun than nonsmokers. as such, i will be calling myself:
a Non-Smoking Smoker.
that is all.
p.s. BOY do i want a cigarette right now.
Archives for the month of: August, 2003
sliced and diced
i have no blackout stories. here’s why.
tuesday, 8/12: cigarettes: 10 showers: 1 food: slim fast shake for lunch. had i known i wasn’t going to eat for three days, i would have had a steak. went to work. promptly came home at 3 with pains in belly area making me walk like i had to poop severely. cab driver back to queens must have thought i was going to have a baby in his car. wish it HAD been a baby – at least with babies, the pain is somewhat worth it. got home. took peptobismol. promptly retched peptobismol. scratched head and thought, hmm, rather ironic, no, throwing up belly-calming pink stuff… let’s call mommy. called Personal Physician [mother]. mother made soothing yet panicked noises and threw around words like “appendix” and “burst” and “surgery” and “ER”. convinced patient to drag self to dreaded purgatory known as emergency room. hung up phone. cried cried cried, wailed like starving infant, heaving racking sobs. realized unlike infant, no one would come when i cried. shook off tears. went to ER. cried a lot at the ER. was ignored a lot at the ER. mom and dad show up at 11. throw up more stuff, entire bottle of liquid grossness required for CT scan, to be precise. sleep, fitfully, while Mother wages crusade against unfeeling devil-people of the ER to get me into a private room.
ED NOTE: FUL CAME TO VISIT ME IN THE ER AT LIKE, MIDNIGHT. I REPEAT. FUL. VISITED ME. BECAUSE HE WUV, WUV, WUVS ME.
wednesday, 8/13: cigarettes: none, woe woe. showers: none. food: none, unless you count the incredibly painful needle sticking out of my arm and connecting me to a bag of “food”. which i don’t. jason came by and brought flowers. was deliriously happy to see jason. then had surgery. laperoscopy, to be precise. doctors/nurses/aides all of foreign persuasion. while i am open-minded et al, it’s annoying when i can barely understand directives/diagnoses/etc. laperoscopy left me with three holes, a groggy brain, weak legs, a tube in my nose, and yellow skin. wasn’t allowed to get up, and was thus subjected to ignomity of bedpan. on the plus side, there was morphine. rah rah rah.
thursday, 8/14: cigarettes: YOU KNOW I DIDN’T HAVE ONE. showers: none, and hair was starting to form sculptures. food: none. well, food was EATEN, it was just promptly thrown UP again. thursday sucked. ate jello – threw it up. took percaset – threw it up everywhere (even on beloved teddy bear. poor teddy). i mean, PERCASET! i threw up every celebrity’s favorite painkiller addiction! a little part of matthew perry DIED when i retched that little green pill. only highlights of day: jason visiting and tons and tons of loving phone calls from people all over new york, america, and the globe. blackout only affects me insomuch as ful and shiv cannot come visit, and i don’t have airconditioning or TV. slept well that night, probably due to copious amounts of morphine. mmmmm morphine.
friday, 8/15: cigarettes: baahhhh. showers: eww. getting stinky. food: finally held down the jello. still, all i’ve had to eat is jello, for crying out loud. this is the day i decide that hospitals absolutely suck. my new roommate is nearly catatonic and her machine beeps all the time, fit to make me crazy. i eat jello. woo HOO. i stop taking the morphine. walk up and down the depressing hallways, clutching my swollen belly and taking china-doll, fragile steps. hair disgustingness is reaching catastrophic states. beg Foreign Doctorman to send me home. barely understand Foreign Doctorman’s response. highlights include: being visited by beth and josh, mom giving me a washcloth-bath, and catching an hour of buffy on TV. lowlights: STILL BEING IN THE HOSPITAL, feeling silly being a grown woman and being washclothed by my mother, Beeping Catatonic Roommate’s little moany noises.
saturday, 8/17: cigarettes: sigh. at this point, you realize, i’ve decided to just quit. showers: none until i get home to rhode island that night. hair has already formed revolution plan. food: TURKEY SANDWICH! new house doctor speaks fluent english, hurrah! has funny hairlip scar, but who cares? when he says i can go home after i eat solid food, i almost asked him to marry me. still walking like stupid invalid, still wearing stupid ugly gown, still being driven crazy by Beeping Roommate, but at least i get to go home! dad feeds me turkey sandwich from local deli, nurses laugh at my constant pestering for discharge papers, mom and dad have frantic near-arguments about how to arrange picking me up, and finally, i see sunlight and fresh air for the first time since tuesday. drive home to rhode island. get pampered. rinse. repeat.
c’mon all you haters!
ever since i decided to attend the hallowed halls of law school, my father asks me the same thing every time he sees me, pleased as punch with himself:
“what do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”
i beg of you, blogiverse. ease my joke-repetition-disorder suffering. there must be a million jokes out there about my venerated future profession. i mean, the only thing people make fun of more than lawyers are the IRISH. come on. mock me. take your best shot. FILL my comment box with the tackiest, most tastelessly stereotypical lawyer jokes you know.
this way i can provide my dad with some NEW ROUTINES.
“we’re SO not friendsters.”
i admit – i gave friendster a chance. at first it was fun, really. my little tribe of friends simply sat around at work, thinking of clever ways to compliment each other in the testimonials and searching for high school crushes. it was a disturbingly funny social experiment .. “look, how i ended up connected to Friend A through wholly-unrelated Friend B’s second cousin’s hairdresser’s lover!”
but friendster is losing its charm for me. without naming names, suddenly the only people in my personal network seem to be the very people i spent several years at sarah lawrence trying to ignore. they called themselves the A-Team and were a hyper-obnoxious roving posse of party. taken individually, the few i actually got to know were really a lot of fun, at least when you were drunk on a saturday night or discussing your hangovers in the library. but what drove me crazy about the A-Team was precisely that they’d managed to form a clique at the un-clique-iest school i could have attended. sarah lawrence didn’t have teams. we didn’t have sprit, or any pep. the only version of School Pride was “Hell, we made it out alive!”.
so where did the clique come from? first day of orientation for the class of 2002, no one knew each other. by the third day, they were like hyenas, about twenty of them, who had seemingly decided that in order to be on top of the college-heap, you needed to act as if there were people on bottom. and at a school like sarah lawrence, with very few rules, that superiority would have to be self-imposed. so they set about to be the loudest in the room, the nakedest at the parties, they sort of traveled, ate, and lived in herd-style, and then the crowning moment senior year was when they labeled themselves the A-Team. they didn’t make me feel excluded, they were never really rude to me, but they bothered me nonetheless, because they were constantly assuming they were having more fun than everyone else.
now that i’ve graduated, i don’t think about that group much. i’ve fallen in with a fantastic bunch of friends that i lovingly refer to as the tribe, but we’re not a clique. we always have a blast without trying to prove to the denizens around us that we’re better than everyone else. and now, suddenly, on friendster, there i am again, outnumbered as an individual against that herd of A-Teamers that annoyed me all four years at SLC.
i left sarah lawrence’s more traumatizing aspects behind when i graduated into the refreshingly normal real world. but excuse me if friendster suddenly makes me feel like i’m back at the pub, morosely eating my bagel and soup and trying to ignore the three shrieking girls who seem pretty drunk for a friday morning.
neither a borrower nor a lender be.
polonius was right, kiddos. so was my father, for that matter. money, among friends, always breeds contempt.
because when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, between your money and your friend, it doesn’t matter which one you choose, you’re going to lose.
valuable lessons learned? check.
FEUD!
i’m starting to feel like the responsible party in the Great Newman/Howard Blogroversy of 2003. wait, that’s because i am the responsible party. however, as much as i love watching boys digitally-duke-it-out, i will not play maria to the warring tony and barnardo! i will not see this end in blood! so, rather than having to scoop joshua off the bar wall, or reattach greg’s head after joshua philipino-fighting-stick-smacks it off his head with that deadly umbrella…
i suggest a few alternative ways of solving the Conflict! since this is a matter of blogiverse-interest, i invite you all to offer up your own creative, bloodless ways of settling this intense yet thoroughly inexplicable feud:
1. a DANCE-OFF! ala grease, with big band action and throwing-of-girls. it’s not over until howard or newman has jitterbugged their way into the hospital.
2. a COOK-OFF! newman has made outrageous claims over dinner concerning his ability to make homemade pasta. but newman makes a lot of outrageous claims over dinner, and other places. can the young upstart really triumph over howard’s mad skillz with the grillz?
3. a MAKE OUT CONTEST! girls, i know we all like this idea. we can pick a handful of discerning blog-girls and each of them gets to make out with howard and newman for 30 minutes, then fill out a detailed report covering such vastly important areas as “tongue expertise”, “hand placement”, and “overall seduction capacity”. let’s face it, newman and howard are both dishes. this fight could really go either way.
there you have it. dancing, cooking, making out. all ways in which we’re sure renaissance men such as howard and newman are MORE than capable of. and this is a lot better than bloodshed, i mean, because we girls get to make OUT with them, right?
who’s with me?
the blog-boys of summer SMACKDOWN!
the players: joshua newman and greg howard.
the lowdown: i totally went out and caroused with both of them on separate occasions. and shook their hands goodnight, you pervs. because that’s the kind of blog-girl i am.
the evening in question#1:
i found joshua on friendster, and i put two and two together and realized i’d been reading his personal site for a while. i was amused and daring enough to fire off one of those friendster messages. the email flurry continued unabated until we decided to grab a post-LSAT class drink, somewhere in midtown. joshua suggested a hipster bar. i countered, only if we go there ironically. joshua agreed. there was some bantering disagreement about which side of the street we’d meet on. that was fun. it ended up being the southeast corner.
i arrived, frazzled from hours of LSAT madness and looking rather schleppy, i must say. i was rocking the vintage tee, weathered jeans, no makeup ensemble. joshua totally looked like dustin hoffman, even though he thinks he looks more like matthew broderick. we strolled to a bar so hip it barely had a sign. you had to ring a doorbell to get in. i gave my newfound friend a “you’re kidding me, right? i live in QUEENS” look. we had one beer there and traded war stories about blind dates. i decided to see what bar mr. newman would come up with next. he passed the test with flying colors, taking me to a rather seedy, well-lit piano bar called the russian samovar, where we drank fruit-infused vodka straight out of the carafe. we drank quite a bit, enough to start talking about all levels of strange, non-sequential things. we closed the bar. i threw down a $20 and we walked out, drunkenly stumbling out our goodbyes and sauntering in opposite directions.
the verdict #1: the next morning, in quite a daze at work, i vaguely remembered a handsom e face, just the right combination of humility and arrogance to make him interesting, and someone incredibly comfortable to talk to. not to mention, the dizzying effects of cranberry-lemon vodka on a nearly empty stomach. yes, i resolved. that was fun. that should be a repeating occurence. only with a better sodding vodka-to-food ratio.
the evening in question #2:
when i saw on his blog that the blog-luminary greg was going to be in the big apple, i quickly fired off an email of drastically accusatory proportions, threatening all kinds of bodily damage and maiming to his precious geese were he to NOT make plans with me in new york. this uncharacteristically HIGH level of violent coercion was not entirely necessary, since greg promptly replied that he’d be thrilled to play charming country-boy to my whirlwind tour of my favorite new york hot spots. we met up at his hotel and jumped in a cab heading downtown. we started at life cafe, drank three margaritas and talked about things like the brutality of corporate lawyers, my 401[k] plans, and boston. moving on to a little bar of infinite happy-hour fame, we really just knocked back cosmos and talked about greg’s real-life friends. then we totally hit up cloister cafe, one of my favorite hidden secrets in the east village, and finished off the evening with beers and conversations about sex, death, family, love, and various permutations thereof. greg gave me a cab ride back to my subway stop in midtown, where i tispily realized it was too late to take the train because my line stopped running to queens at midnight that week, so i jumped in a cab and fell asleep on the way home.
the verdict #2: greg is… there are few words for greg. greg is funny and greg listens and greg is totally a gentleman even though he will now tell me i’m exaggerating. greg was everything you all expect greg to be, with a great smile to boost. i would totally give greg a kitten. maybe several kittens. maybe i’d even give greg a blimp. i’m not sure. but ladies – he’s everything his adoring fans think he is, and he even picked up the tab.
FINAL PETIT HIBOUX TALLY: if i had to pick favorites between greg and joshua i’d have to run headfirst into a brick wall to avoid making the decision.
five for friday
five new york memories
1. winter 1998 – slipping in the ice with beth on prince street, our hands full of christmas shopping, both of us laughing too hard to get up.
2. fall 1999 – driving in manhattan for the first time, kate telling me to simply roll down the windows, turn up the radio, and drive by instinct. true advice.
3. early spring 2003 – otto’s pizzeria, watching the protest in WSq, drinks on hudson and cupcakes at magnolia with stephanie, ful, and jw.
4. spring 2003 – the whitney, hot chocolate in the park, grey’s papaya, and krispy creme donuts, with jw, talking and laughing and walking arm-in-arm.
5. summer 2003 – last weekend. friday night party for ful, saturday morning brunch at the mercer with stephanie and shiv, saturday afternoon barbeque at jeb’s. friends, beer, laughter.
five food+drink i couldn’t live without
1. black coffee – mornings, afternoons, evenings.
2. feijao e arroz – brasilian style black beans and rice. my soul’s food.
3. cupcakes – the universe’s answer to heartache, and a little piece of heaven.
4. queso – a nice warm bowl of texas-style queso, late nights, in austin.
5. beer – what better answer is there to a hot day?
five loves i’ll never forget
1. s – my sweet sixteen boyfriend. my first time. crazy, but loved.
2. a – my first serious boyfriend. not sure why i loved him, but i sure as hell did.
3. m – the only ex i still adore. funny. sweet. loyal.
4. mb – empirically, the best sex of my life, but the most unattainable man alive.
5. c – holds stubborn claim on my heart. still greatly loved, despite everything.
…and five i wish i could!
1. d – arrogant middle-school boyfriend for whom i was nonetheless smitten, leaving my friends with a lot of embarassing ammo to this day.
2. f – my first encounter with a living breathing asshole. scars fading but still evident.
3. s – one night stand turned horribly sour. left me with funny stories about having sex in my parent’s car, though.
4. mg – crazy. crazy crazy CRAZY. on the other hand, sex machine. like my mother famously said, “sometimes, you’ve got to fuck a scumbag.”
5. p – nicknamed by my friends ‘roly poly sensitive’. seriously the strangest blind date i’ve ever had.
five secret dreams for the future
1. become famously brilliant attorney fighting for gay rights, preferably working at firm like lambda legal.
2. write wonderfully inquisitive and thought-provoking book about my mother’s family in brasil. stories that shock and amaze. murder, incest, suicide and catholicism! avoid getting subsequently whacked by angry mob of family.
3. raise beautiful children in my parent’s house in providence. have martha stewart life i now mock all the time, but secretly want anyway.
4. start travelling right now and never stop ever. destinations include: fiji, peru, alaska, finland, siberia, nepal, mongolia, portugal, new zealand, and tierra del fuego.
5. invent something, win the lottery, or wed prince harry.
what are some of your favorite foods? exes? dreams?
