June 2005 Archives

I never did really post about our delightful visit from the Uborkites, or Karen and Pete as they're known in the real-and-more-important-world. And seeing Pete's recent pictures on flickr of Karen's hair in their back garden made me realize that I had things to say that I never did say. Isn't that life, the things you have to say that sometimes you never get around to saying?

I was nervous, I think, because our earlier meeting had been so brief and they're both so cunningly good at being guarded on their blog so I didn't know them like perhaps I know other people whose blogs I've been reading for an equally long amount of time. I was nervous that'd I'd be too flighty or loud, that our apartment would seem too cluttered or domestic, that New York would seem dirty and annoying in comparison to their beautiful and charming England. I think I was also nervous because lacking that outspoken affection that a lot of bloggers have and claim to have for their blog-friends, I really wanted them both to, well, like me. I felt very aware that I was the wife of the blogger they knew first, and felt the corresponding need to impress and the corresponding tummy-sinking feeling that I'd fail to do so.

Anything I could possibly have been nervous about is ridiculous in hindsight. I adored them both and it was one of the most singularly pleasant houseguest stays I've ever had the honor to enjoy, and I've had a lot of fantastic houseguests. At the end of Pete's first day, arriving at the cafe with Kate in tow, he sat down and said, "I love this city!" and it just warmed every possible cockle of my heart. He also did the most amazing thing - he helped me figure out the surprise slideshow for my Mother's Day gift that was giving me the biggest headache. Also he is SO TALL and I'm enormously fond of people that are that tall, just because they're unique and so different from me. Pete also has the easiest laugh ever. These are really qualities you should be looking for in the people around you.

My favourite thing about Karen was sitting in our two window armchairs in the living room with her, while the boys played endless rounds of Midnight Club on the nearby couch. I was tinkering with photos on my laptop and Karen sat in the immense leather armchair, dainty feet tucked under her and a few strands of hair routinely slipping out from behind her ear, writing calmly in a journal. No, that's not true, that wasn't my favourite thing. My favourite thing was how every time Pete would say something, even if it was just to the game or to Stuart or "gah!", she'd look over at him even if briefly, just to connect her eyes with his face and it was belovedness defined. My other favourite thing about Karen, though, is how intensely sharp and aware she is of the world around her. This self-assurance, which people normally think is obvious in louder, more attention-grabbing people, may not immediately come across from her gracefully quiet first impression - but damn if the woman doesn't have a mind like a steel trap.

On their last night in town, I caught them hugging, for no apparent reason other than adoration, when I met them at Lincoln Center. Pete has his long arms around Karen's shoulders and they were staring at each other in that way that you expect people to do in the first week they meet but there they were. Adoring, you know, to the exclusion of everything else around them. Even several years into their relationship, they still truly adore each other. This is something to be cherished, and I felt bad even noticing something as private as that, as secret as a letter.

It's funny how friendships form, how ease slides between people as quickly as offering a bite of a sandwich or laughing about a TV show. I never did thank them for that, and something about Pete's photos of his true love's hair made me want to, made me imagine them so poignantly standing in their lovely garden, and it made me actually miss them. So here it is. Thanks, Karen and Pete, for coming to visit the city and us. It was a beautiful week, we'll always have this lovely memory of your visit. And there will, I know, be other visits - just as easy, just as worthwhile, just as serendipitous.

1. Really excited about Stuart's new job. He's all, Stuart.Lastname@workcompany.com now! He's all official and shit! Cool.
2. My mom's birthday tomorrow. My mom, she may be cooler than your mom.
3. Shiv, she leaves us for two months this summer. I won't see her until I see her in a big poofy white dress. How crazy!
4. House, I command you clean thyself! No? Really? I have to do it? Seriously?
5. Going to a Brooklyn Cyclones game soon. WOO CYCLONES.
6. I'm a fairy! I'm a badass fairy! I get to be bitchy on stage! Why did I ever give up acting? This is awesome!
7. I'm wearing this awesome pink silk tunic that my mom lent me. Thanks, Mom!
8. Wow, there are a lot of exclamation points in this post. Sheesh.
9. I have spent a lot of time with Kate and Jen in the past few weeks. I have spent not enough time with Shiv and Biscuit, both of whom are deserting me for months on end. Dudes, what's up?
10. This weekend is my ten-year reunion with people I knew back in '95, in Kenya, where we all listened to Coco Jumbo and made out with each other. We are meeting first in NYC, then DC. Should be fun entertaining somewhat disconcerting all of these things.

I'm unabashedly proud. See also; profoundly relieved, extremely excited, and completely unsurprised.

Life, it seems, has a funny way of working out for us.

I'm sitting at a Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn, and I'm looking out the window after a particularly pleasing paragraph and the last dregs of my black tea. This dog walks by.

Let me clarify. A dog just WALKS BY. Midsized, got collie in his bloodlines somewhere, sort of mangy dog just walks on by. No leash, no owner ambling after him. Just a dog. And he's walking like he's got someplace to be. Like this happens everyday, dogs just walking down the sidewalk.

At least three other people on the street turned around to watch the dog go by.

Odd.

The funny thing about my outfit is that I am wearing black pants, a black tee, black ballet flats, and big dangly white earrings, but also Stuart's worn blue Oxford button-down over it with the sleeves rolled up because I knew it'd be chilly in the office and in the Starbucks I'm going to be holed up at writing tonight, and plus also because I look like an interestingly debonair French painter from the '60s and office whore that I am, I like to rock the "interesting creative type" look from time to time.

The funnier thing about my outfit, though, is that it'd look a thousand times better without the pants because i am wearing frilly black underwear with white polkadots and a bow on the bottom and nothing says "interesting creative type" like NO PANTS.

that it's a word play, a joke, and I could tell you but I think it'll be more fun to see if anyone figures it out. If you do, send me a note to krissa at gmail. If no one does, I'll explain it in a week or so. Seriously, though, you won't think it's that funny so don't stress your pretty heads about it too much.)

I've decided I want to learn Welsh. I've been casting around for my next language and I think the answer is Welsh. I mean, the subject line for this post means "It's raining, so hold my hand". THAT'S ACTUALLY TEXT FOR A WRITTEN LANGUAGE, guys, not my usual keyboard spasms. Who wouldn't want to learn THAT?

"What languages do you speak?"
"French, Portuguese, and Welsh."
"Welsh?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Hsmef sfdw sdefle skfgjwfdkje*."
"Oh."

*this is actually gibberish. but you wouldn't know it, WOULD YOU.

Also, this morning on the subway, I sat next to a very pregnant Italian woman. She was talking animatedly to the man standing above her, holding on to the subway bars. I could see her wide gold wedding band but I couldn't see his, so for their entire jovial conversation from which I understood words like, "Francesca" and "cosa" and "perché", I wondered if he was her husband, and hoped he was because they were so cute, but you know, whatever, it's New York, one should never assume, right?

So she got off at 5th avenue and he waited until the next stop, left hand jammed in his pocket the entire time and I kept my eye on it like a HAWK and then as he was leaving the train, he pulled it out long enough for me to spot the matching wide gold band and I have no idea if it's because the day was young and nothing else really exciting had happened but I was really glad to know that he was her husband.

It's hard to blog these days because everything I'm about to say either ends up sounding rehearsed and stilted and like it came straight out of a can labeled "Things That Are Both Introspective and Yet Simple" or it's going to get too real, too un-photoshopped, and there are only some people that want to see the un-photoshopped versions.

I could blog about the wonderful day we had on Tuesday, with tennis and beer and laziness and cheese on toast. Nope, it'd just seem like it came out of the can with the label, where I'm all, "look at the harmony and simplicity, isn't it divine?"

Or I could blog about how Stuart and I are learning the edges of our disagreement maps, we're in the Here Be Monsters territory where we're starting to learn each other's weaknesses and while most of the time our better impulses lead us away from the napalm shots, sometimes we cave, sometimes we're not the best people in the world. But nope, parents and real-life friends read this who'd then start asking about the state of our marriage, offering unsolicited advice, or just ... I don't know.

I could blog about pressures at work, trying to find new avenues for my creativity, trying to see the middle road between the huge highway signs that say BOOORING and the one that says SELL OUT. About looking for freelancing gigs and trying to keep this space pure and alive and fresh and about learning to spend less time criticising other people's writing and more time making my own better. But that's job related, isn't it, and there's an embargo on that.

All around me, I'm seeing blogs falling to the wayside. Either I'm just not interested anymore, a writer has gone in a direction that's no longer what it was when I first started reading, or they've become peppered with too many links and not enough content, or - more gracefully than quitting - they've just quietly stopped writing. And I think, that's the way to go. Why am I still here? But it's because I love this space. I love that every now and again, it's an immediate receptacle for an inspired idea, a funny conversation, the need to rant.

I don't want to give up blogging but I've just written an entire entry about how I can't see the forest for the trees. How can I get more personal without essentially telling people to not comment to me anything they read about, or without vetting it with Stuart first? How can I still blog if it's just going to be pat, neatly-tied-up-with-a-catchy-moral tidbits that bore me on other sites?

You guys, sadly, aren't even the ones to answer those questions. I guess I am. And that's the other thing - comments. Why do I have them? If I really just wanted to write, wouldn't it be easier if I knew I wouldn't have people's immediate reactions? Wouldn't that mean I'd just write, get it out, and forget about what people thought of it because I would be deaf to their opinion? Or would the loss of the instantaneous connection of commenting actually make me lose interest in something I was convinced I would lose interest in two months after I started, in 2002?

Oh, look, I just found some lint in here. Fascinating.

You wouldn't believe it but we broke another frisbee. Well, since Frisbee is a brand, we broke another flying disc. Well, the first one was called TecDisc and this one was called Professional Flying Disc.

I can't tell if it's because we're absolute utter crap at throwing flying discs or if we really need to stop buying two dollar frisbee knockoffs.

Maybe it's just that after an hour of tennis, the sixth time in ten days, we're both fucking superhuman.

Nah, it's probably the cheap disc.

This weekend I:

- stood on a six foot ladder and helped clean out gutters.
- got a little nauseated at the sight of Stuart's cut hand where he sliced it opening a bottle of beer.
- ate two steaks, both New York Strip, both done to perfection.
- sprayed a high-power hose in the air repeatedly, only to enjoy the tiny rain shower two seconds later.
- played with and broke a frisbee.
- taught Stuart how to make 'smores.
- bought two dresses for two weddings we're attending this summer.
- found the perfect summer nightgown.
- drove along the highway listening to Fleetwood Mac with the windows down.
- played an hour and a half of tennis.
- found a decent bikini.
- played with a german shepherd.
- had a beautiful dinner with Stuart.
- decided we needed to do a canal-boat vacation in the Norfolk broads.
- turned down a cupcake.
- stole Stuart's sunglasses a lot.
- nearly fell down the stairs holding a cake.
- didn't eat chips and salsa.
- slept a lot.