today i was alexander with his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. except, well, my name isn’t alexander. but it was a cranky-baby kind of day.
so when i stood in line at the deli to get the BLT i was convinced would fix everything, and i checked my wallet to see if i had the requisite four dollars and twenty-five cents and found myself lacking by a dollar … well, i did what any tough street-smart gal does:
i burst into tears and ran into the street with my face buried in my hair.
i’m not sure where the tears came from. as kate said, when you’re broke, tiny troubles look like monster trucks. i’m only hormonal one day a month and kids, today was it.
so what did i do with my measly three dollars? well, i defiantly bought a frappaccino at starbucks. i knew this wasn’t a BLT. hell, it wasn’t even lunch. but damnit, i sat outside and sucked it down and sniffled my way through a number of depressing ed harcourt songs. the sunny patch i sat in managed to become shady within three minutes of sitting down and this made me cry again. reasons i kept crying:
even the sun thinks i’m a brat and has run away… ed harcourt makes me think of stuart… stuart could make me stop crying… stuart isn’t here… i hate my outfit… the sun hates me… ed harcourt would probably hate me…
etc etc.
it’s amazing what nonsense reasons you can find to silently wail about behind sunglasses when you’re looking for them. but after i drowned my tears in fake chocolate coffee products, i pulled myself together enough to go back into work. a few phone calls with mom and stuart later, i’d sorted out my waily weeping idiocy enough to laugh at myself.
but when i tried to leave the office after work, i discovered i could barely walk. the newspaper i was holding on the elevator was trembling in my hands. i needed to eat. immediately. or i’d faint. shaking, i walked to the quik-e-rob in my building. shaking, i bought a candy bar. shaking, i dialed up the Boyfriend for Life.
chatting and eating a candy bar five minutes later, i realized nothing is really as bad as it seems in the heat of a hormonal, hungry, mini-meltdown. the sun doesn’t hate me, i don’t hate my outfit, ed harcourt doesn’t even know me and a BLT wasn’t going to make or break my day.
of course, going over to a certain fishbowl to munch on delicious bacon sandwiches, juicy mushrooms, and an entire bottle of reisling? helped too.
the lesson? it seems all those greek grandmamas were right. nothing gets solved on an empty stomach. when it gets bad … eat something. it’ll get better.

this is my monster. she has no arms, a pink bow, a curly q tail, FABULOUS SHOES, and is ALL STYLE AND TEETH.
(and she wuvs you berry much.)

okay, i realize that on a certain level, this was the coolest thing that’s ever happened?
but kate moving in with me for two months? is seriously runner up for the following reasons:
10. five words: Two. Month. Long. Bachelorette. Party.
9. putting both beds in one room and using the other as a MASSIVE CLOSET.
8. drunk joint blogging.
7. shoes. shoes. SHOES.
6. going out on Jean Mini Skirts of Style and Doom Stunning Sprees.
5. TROIKA NIGHTS.
4. did i mention the shoes?
3. sitting on the floor of the living room, surrounded by liquor bottles, MAKING UP DRINK NAMES AND THE DRINKS TO GO WITH THEM. i’ve already decided there needs to be a “Troikasm”.
2. having one of your best friends magically turn into the world’s most flexible roommate who’ll crash at your pad in the months between old-roommate-leaving and new-roommate-of-love arriving.
1. agjnfajfnasfSHOESkasjgnaskjdfnDRINKSsagjnskjfgMINISKIRTSksjfns
kjfndKATEKATEKATEOMGKATE.
that is all. let the mayhem begin.

my new york city shines at midnight. leaving a bar, or club. warm kisses and hugs exchanged with friends, phone calls tomorrow promised. and there i turn, on a heel, and stride off into the embrace of my singular city.
walking to the subway after an evening out carries a special sort of independant exhiliration. i am alone with my thoughts, my seamless forward movement through a quieted city. there are little embedded twinkles in the dull pavement that sparkle against the grapefruit-colored glow of streetlamps. almost as if the gritty city is winky saucily at my legs.
a friend and i were discussing the thermodynamics of the city – how the more active jumping dashing molecules of humans there are in the city, the more energy it seems to suck from you. but my silent night walks homeward are like the city giving me back a shred of that precious life-energy it so greedily sucks from my hectic daytimes. so when i am alone, my walk changes. i move a little slower, my hips swing more, i am more at ease in my body without having to be aware of friends or destinations or whether my lip gloss looks okay. i prance a little for the insatiable city, flash a little leg, smile at the buildings. thank her for this sparkling pink moment of midnight calm.
and while in these moments i savor my independence, my competence, my daily triumph in this most trying of places … lately on my night walks i have indulged a certain delusion of completeness. because as i enjoy my solitude, there is someone i imagine waiting in our snug wrought iron bed. even under the pretext that his strong arm wouldn’t already be slung over my shoulders, i still pretend that his warm body could be waiting for mine, to sink into that spooned embrace. i do not sleep the same without him. and if i can’t come home to him yet, at least on these quiet walks i can delude myself that i am. coming home. to him.
independence and my affair with this city have their beauty. but our bed is half-empty, and my solitary walks have lost their edge now that i’ve found the perfect walking companion. coming home won’t be the same. until he comes home. to me.

i got home from work at three and just woke up from what has become my obligatory after-work-friday nap. and wondered, when did i get this easily beat-up by mere weeks?!

i was in a particularly spoiling mood today. when i came down off the subway in astoria, i saw that my local florist was selling carnations on the cheap. now, usually, i hate carnations. but there’s something about that startlingly fake shade of pink carnation that brings out the girly-girl in me. so a bought a dozen, flirted, and got three for free.
then, on my errand run in my favourite brasilian flip-flops, capri-cut-offs of my sacred holey jeans, and my dad’s old polo… i did it again. i treated myself. again, to something pink. only this time, i heeded the ice-cream siren and steered into carvel.
the thing about pink this time, thought, was part of a larger adoration for strawberry ice cream. i think it started when my parents and i spent our summers traipsing around greece. anyone who’s been to greece and eaten ice cream knows what i’m about to explain – greeks do not know how to make strawberry. it’s not that rich ballet-pink creamy goodness of a haagen daaz or a breyers. oh, no.
rather, it’s this insane acid pink, like your jellies in the eighties, like those bike streamers you loved. it’s pink like little girls seem to always intrinsically understand pink to be. and it takes like strawberry gum, not actual strawberries. it’s sweet and cloying and … pink. and as a little girl, i simply could not get enough of it.
as i grew older, my taste veered more towards the real strawberry ice creams. so when i ordered my two-scoop sugar-cone of pretty-princess-pink carvel, i was wary. i started licking as i flip-flopped my way home. but my world shifted a little. my pace slowed. i cared less that i was wrapping my tongue almost obscenely around the cone. when the rumpled old greek men asked me to marry them from the streetside cafes, i laughed instead of scowled. my hips swung less but my flips flopped more and i actually scratched my nose with the back of my hand.
and then i realized it. it was the ice cream. far from the true tangy creaminess that is authentic-tasting strawberry ice cream, this carvel pink palooza was… fake. it was … sugary. it tasted like… pink.
it was like running crookedly down cobbled streets. like holding my cousin’s hand the friend way, not the love way (cupped, not laced). it was like hot pebbles on your feet and belly-flopping into a wave. it was like the smell of old relatives homes, the papery fineness of their hands as they held my bronzed cheeks, marveled at my eyes, and called me koukla mou. it was like sitting in my dad’s lap and having him teach me all the letters.
it was crazy mountain roads with my goddess of a mother in the driver’s seat, yelling competent insults at greek drivers and inventing games for me. it was the way she took care of everything and sometimes turned her eyes when i sucked on sugar cubes before lunch. it was quince jelly, keftedes, and volvic. it was my first bee sting, sunscreen making my cotton dress stick to my butt and gluing my legs to the car seat, it was only ordering french fries through half of crete.
it was cocking my head on video cassette to explain yet another ancient temple. it was pointing out which field best suited a reentactment of persephone’s snatching, and then reenacting it. it was taunting poseidon to send bigger waves, listening to an echo bounce at epidaurus, asking the oracle at delphi, tracking the minotaur at knossos. it was scratched knees and jelly bracelets and a polka dot bikini and a lifelong fear of jellyfish.
it was believing that if you yelled “OREGANO!” just loud enough off a mountain, the wind would blow faster. it was that kind of magic.
move over, petit madeleines. take your riviera, marcel. this was pink. this was ice cream. this was greece. this was summer.
this was childhood.

the cheezballs were expected to last until the nuclear winter, because it was a brand that nobody liked. this massive tub was herculean, intimidating, brazen… and slowly being eaten by beth. she didn’t even live with us. she came by about twice a week, and in that delicate way, with narrow, porcelain hands, beth slowly, determinedly started eating the cheezballs. when the tub was defeated, we teased her for months. she denied she’d eaten the whole thing over the course of that year, but she grudgingly – and not without a hint of pride – admitted to about two thirds of it.
this is my favourite shirt in the world. I have asked erin to bequeath it to me in her will and that’s a good reason to stay relatively thin. texas does not actually have the right to secede from the union, but merely the right to split into four states. this disappointing reality did not stop erin from wearing her tee in new york city when she felt particularly homesick or derisive of new york snobberie. while I am generally amused by the idea of texan independence, what I love the most about this tee shirt is the exclamation point.

it was one of those kenyan days that’s made for exploring. we were staying at this hillside bungalow hotel, surrounded on all sides by the rolling green and trickling streams of the aberdare foothills. my friend was far more outdoorsy than I, but he promised a good ramble and I followed, always game.
we found this stream after scrambling through bushes and wire fences. I sat across the river, bare feet dangling in a shallow twinkling stream, as he stood motionless. the sun glinted off the filament of his fishing line and sent sparks of light from the silver reel.

i’ll be house-sitting with stuart over at uborka for the week and while we attempt to be considerate houseguests, i came up with something for you all to look at in my absence. every day i’ll post two images from my massive and cherished photo collection. these aren’t meant to be impressive feats of photograpy – they’re meant to recall a moment, tell a story. for each image, i’ll add one hundred words of text explaining or remembering. i hope you enjoy. and for the strong of constitution, head over to the uborgy. should be… interesting.

i know the exact date of this picture. well, not the date. it was taken the first day i wore my doc martens. i was wearing that plaid flannel shirt that made me feel tomboyish, and a patched pair of levis. marnix took the picture, after laughingly adorning my hair with leaves.
what’s remarkable about this photograph isn’t the leaves, or the tough-girl shirt, or the docs. i hated this photograph at sixteen. i thought i looked simple, with that half-smile. but time changes everything – now i see beautiful youth, which doesn’t particularly need to smile too much for anything.

me:”it’s not like i need to make a Big Hairy Fuss over the whole thing.”
stuart: “well, no, you could make a slightly LESS hairy fuss over it.”
me: “like, a Fuss that grew a long luxurious hairy pelt for winter?”
stuart: “sure, but now he’s a molting Fuss.”
me: “because it’s spring. and he’s just come out of hibernation.”
stuart: “exactly.”
me: “i’ve grown quite fond of this cute shedding Fuss.”
stuart: “so have i.”
and so, the Fuss was born. that’s him you see there, coming into the blinking sunshine after months of Fussy hibernation in his Fuss-Nest. those are his little Fuss-hairs, around his feet. i suppose that worm is his neighbor, but i’m not quite sure.
and thus was this Fuss was lovingly drawn for me. turns out, the panacea wasn’t chocolate. it was the Fuss and its creator, all along.