Last year I was Piglet. Two years ago, I was the blonde one. The year before that, Holly Golightly. Tonight, we’re hanging out with Shana and watching the freaks disband in Chelsea after a good dinner and a rousing game of Clue, but Saturday night’s festivities were the part with the costume dilemma.
In college, I mostly ignored Halloween. In high school, I was a cat, a gypsy, and a cheerleader. As a kid, mom usually made my costumes because we were living in Africa so there wasn’t much to go on. I remember being a little red devil with an adorable foam trident, a southern belle in a yellow silk dress with matching parasol, and one year, a little Indian girl. Feathers and all.
When I was about seven or so, we were living in New Jersey. Mom must have had a cold or something, I remember knowing she wasn’t feeling well, so I presume she went with the luxury of being in America and able to buy me a costume. That year, Dad trick-or-treated me around the neighborhood, holding me by the paw of my Pound Puppy costume. I remember with some hilarity the solemn fear I had that my mother must have been deathly ill indeed, to not be able to sew me a costume. She laughed when I recalled it for her, pointing out that it must have just been a little cold or something. For me, it was devastatingly serious, though.
This year, it was four PM and I couldn’t decide what to do. Stuart landed on Arthur Dent as the path of both least resistance and most applicability, what with being English and obsessed with Douglas Adams. I still didn’t know. I was going to give up and just go as a photographer when the idea struck. We’d found this little pin at a thrift-store weeks back that said simply “Nixon’s the One”.
I got dressed all in black, blow-dried my hair stick-straight, lined my eyes in dramatic black liquid-liner, grabbed a black flashlight, affixed the pin, and went as the Watergate Burglary.
I had to explain my costume to exactly everyone at the party. About half of them laughed. It may not be on par with Holly or the little red devil, but I think it at least wins my most esoteric costume ever award.
Happy Great Pumpkin day, everyone.
You’d think I would have learned by now that unless my beverage is located to the top right of my keyboard and only accessed for one sip, then quickly returned to that spot, that I will spill it all the fuck over myself no matter what it is.
You’d think that knowing the exact spot to put it would stop me from putting it in the area between my arms, in front of the keyboard. You’d THINK, wouldn’t you?
Dear Mike*,
My name is Krissa and I’m one of your constituents. I live in Astoria and vote in the 22nd. And I’m a Democrat and I voted Democrat in 2001. It’s time that I tell you a few things, because I think you’d like to hear them. Consider this the extra sheet attached to my vote (if I decide to vote for you), as my caveat, my explanation, my extra space.
I’m not going to claim to be a political whiz. But I’m a naturally curious person and so I’ve followed your campaign and New York City politics with some modicum of commitment. Also, I’m a firm believer in the city stage as a good platform for democracy. People really care about their neighborhoods, Mike, as you well know, and while it’s easy to ignore what’s going on in Washington because, hey, NBC’s must-see lineup is so stellar, people don’t ignore what’s happening to their schools, their streets, their jobs.
Democracy on a city stage is a beautiful thing because it’s messy, it’s complicated, but it’s often triumphant. Or, it should be. If your constituents are willing to come to meetings to discuss their problems with their local councils and their borough presidents and their City Council, then you need to be the mayor that listens to them, and to all the corresponding bodies. I’ll bet it’s quite a din you listen to every day, Mike, and one of the reasons I’m writing to you is to tell you that I understand and appreciate that, and I think you’ve done a very good job of listening to people.
I also think you understand what it takes to run a city in that way. You’ve had to be tough in the past, cutting programs that you felt were bleeding too much money from a weak economy and hugely deficited budget. You’ve had to deal with NYC being used as a touchpoint for national politics but then getting ignored when it comes to paying the bill in aid and funding. You’ve faced down Albany many times, and your brother-in-party-and-little-else, Mr. George Pataki. You’ve openly disagreed with both national and state opinions, and I respect that, too.
I believe you do so because you understand that as Mayor of New York City, your top priority is here. Perhaps that’s why you went so buck-wild over the Jets/West Side Stadium debacle, Mike, and I will say I think that was a touch too far. Did you listen to the entire city’s population saying that given the odds of getting the Olympics, they didn’t want the stadium? They didn’t want it, man. Overwhelmingly, people thought it’d be too big a hassle, too big an expense, and too big a burden on a city just getting back to its feet. You didn’t listen, and I think you know that was a failure on your part, to your main clients – the people.
I do think, however, that you’ve brought the various accomplishments of prior administrations to completion – the crime rate is better, the hospitals are too, we’re fairly dealing with the homeless again – and you’ve worked to correct some of the class and racial tension that has existed since then too. You’ve built upon the good accomplishments of your predessors without taking on the divisive agression of Guiliani, for instance. You’re assertive and bulldoggish when you think something needs to be addressed, but you’re not vainglorious, and you appoint good people to help you do your job. Some people who know more than I do about the education system say it’s getting better there, too, but I don’t know as much about it and it seems really complicated.
I’d like to see you, if you’re reelected, pay more attention to the gay-marriage issue, because while it’s not your decision to make – that’s up to the state – it is something that a lot of your people care very deeply about. I’d also like to see you work more with the MTA, because I think our subways are a very weak point in this city, both on a day-to-day basis and on a safety level.
Basically, Mike, I might very well vote for you because while I have my disagreements with you, I can see how hard you’re trying, how committed you are to the city, and how willing you are to put party politics behind you and work with anyone and everyone that will help you get your mammoth tasks done. I cannot say that I see the same dedication to the right-now issues in your opponent, and he doesn’t seem like the appropriate mayor for today, for New York in the 21st century. Or, even, if he’s mayoral material at all. He has had a lot of time and my natural party inclination to prove that to me, and he has failed to do so, which speaks volumes with the leg up he has, being a Democrat and a city politician (neither of which you were).
Please know this is a difficult decision – I am a staunch Democrat. My father says I’m a one-issue voter, but I disagree. There are many reasons I am not a Republican. I am not a Republican because I do not agree with their stand on social issues, I do not support the exaltation of Christianity in our national decisions, and I do not like the Bush Administration. I am not rabid about this, and I understand that there are good Republicans out there, but I have avoided voting that way because of my disagreement with their platforms on the issues I care about.
Know that voting for you is fraught with cautious trepidation. And I’m not the only one; there are many New York City Democrats that are willing to – again, cautiously – give you a second chance to keep fighting the good fight for what the city needs. Consider that a great honor, Mr. Mayor, that so many dedicated New York City Democrats are considering voting for you, in spite of your party affliation. It is a compliment to your committment to New Yorkers first, parties second. Keep that in mind, Mike Bloomberg. If you are re-elected, think of the city first, continue quietly working for those day-to-day successes, and be strong about standing against your political party if it’s for the good of the city.
If you can do that, Mike, I think we’ll all get along fine.
Best of luck,
Krissa
* caveat: I am veering from my strict regime of never writing about politics because the upcoming mayoral election (hee hee I wrote “erection” at first) is very much at the fore of my mind. I think I am not alone in this, many New Yorkers are struggling to understand the race and their options. If you completely disagree with me on every level, may I suggest simply telling me you disagree, in polite terms (May I suggest: “Dear Krissa. I disagree with you because of ______. Sincerely, ______”.)
Know that I will not delete anything, nor will I argue back, but if you are rude or agressively violent, ranting on for pages and pages, or completely off-topic, I might just close the comments. Please do not use my comment box as a place to attack people. If you have something to say, say so without being rude or off-topic or personal. Thank you so much, darlings, I know we can get through this together.
There’s some work being done around these woods. Some new banner action, so brilliantly designed by miss sohosally that it doesn’t even need a tagline. Some new colors, floating through for approval and consideration. Some new content, maybe, this week, even.
Hoot!
Update, 10/24, 1PM: So we’ve (by “we’ve” I mean, “biscuit”) rejigged the banner to nestle over the top of both the sidebar and the main text body, except for in safari and firefox, apparently, and we’re (again, biscuit) still working on it! Patience, mes amis!
Dear Stuart,
Last night, we arrived home from our trip to Florida, chattering and flipping through the mail as we came up the stairs to our apartment. We put our bags down in the bedroom and went around the house, switching on lights and turning on computers and yelling down the hall what we wanted for dinner from our chinese takeaway.
There was some kind of happiness in that apartment, I tried in vain to pin it to a wall and study it. It was some resounding contentment with how very much our home it was, how perfectly normal it was to walk around in it with you and talk about chinese takeaway and what’s been happening on the internet in our absence.
We do lots of romantic things, you and I. We take long walks and make each other dinners and meet each other for drinks after hard days at work and read from magazines while the other showers. But something about coming home from traveling last night seemed like the most romantic thing we’ve ever done, only in its total normalcy.
A year ago, we stood in front of a judge and swore under the state of New York and the laws of this nation to love, honor, and protect each other. Privately, we also swore to fight each other’s battles with grace and cheerfulness, to be each other’s first resource for love and understanding, to be compassionate and fair and to always make the other smile, even if we’re fighting. We agreed on a lot of things that day – that we’d have children together, foster each other’s dreams, grow old together. We also agreed to never fight to win, only argue to understand. We agreed to consider each other’s needs and desires above all others, we agreed to share the chores of a life together – everything from deciding on graduate school to washing up after dinner.
We were married at City Hall a year ago and we made all those promises. But the very best promise that went unspoken was the one where we’d simply be around each other, every day, forever. It wasn’t something we took for granted back then, only ten days in each other’s arms after six months of trial-by-fire separation at the very beginning of our relationship. It was a tough path we carved from meeting each other in Shiv’s living room to walking into the judge’s chambers together. It was also a path we carved joyfully, with confidence, and above all, with love. We were married knowing we’d never be apart from each other again.
And perhaps that’s what was so beautiful about last night – how very normal it was. Because every day since a year and ten days ago, no matter if we were in Florida, or at work, or at the doctor’s, or visiting friends, we’ve come home to each other. And of all the promises both lofty and mundane that we’ve made to each other, that we continue to honor every day, this is the one I love the most.
Thank you for marrying me, but more importantly, thank you for just being with me.
Love,
Krissa
| We’re in Southern Florida for one more night. We flopped about happily like manatees in the warm Miami waters today. One more day… I think that’s enough time to get Stuart into a mankini, don’t you?
More camera phone silliness over at flickr. See you bitches soon. |
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Bugger this for a lark, we’re off to Florida.
So I’ve been planning for weeks to buy my new brown Frye boots this week from my special discount place near my office, that has them for half price. Today, I came to gym/work only in my sneakers, intending to make the trek up 8th avenue to buy the beloved Fryes. At 11:15, with already wet sneakers, I could stand the suspense no longer and grabbed my umbrella, my wallet, and headed out the door.
I should have called first. After a five block trek in the driving rain, crossing streets that are more like shallow streams, and fighting with other people’s umbrellas and hordes of lost be-poncho’ed tourists, I arrive at the store to see the metal grate pulled down. They’re closed today. Who knew my buddies with the great shoe prices were Jewish. Seriously, WHO KNEW?
So there I am, with plans for tonight that involve a fair amount of walking through Brooklyn, in my sopping wet sneakers and soaked-to-the-knee jeans. I formulate a quick plan – who’d sell wellingtons or rain boots around here? So I start walking another ten blocks to the Daffy’s on 57th and Broadway. Daffy’s, I am sure, will have rain boots.
Daffy’s, it seems, has a discouraging dearth of rain boots. So, in a last ditch attempt at not getting trench foot and/or being miserable for the entire day, I go across the street to the Gap. Maybe the Gap sells rain boots. What do I know? It’s, at this point, my only option.
This is where the story gets funny.
Ten minutes later, I walk out of the gap with a pair of little boy’s tough-leather wallabees. Yeah, you heard me. Size six little boy’s shoes that have the lace across the top. Look, I figure, they’re not rain boots but they’re also made for the most destructive little tyrants on the planet – little boys. And anyone who’s making shoes for little boys is going to think to themselves, “will little boys sensibly wear rain boots or take taxis when it’s pissing it down?” And they will answer themselves, “NO THEY BLOODY WILL NOT,” and then proceed to construct relatively durable little-boy wallabees. This is the thought process I am relying on, right now.
This is where the story gets tragic.
As I step outside of the Gap and try to simultaneously re-don my trenchcoat and open my umbrella to the torrential flooding from the sky, a gust of wind rips around the corner and sends the metal pole of my umbrella on a direct and successful collision course with my forehead. This stunning achievement on the part of today’s weather meant I dropped my trench coat from the shoulders I was slinging it across. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle – INSIDE DOWN.
And then, because it’s only funny when this happens, a bus drove by and soaked my back as I bent down to pick up the jacket from the pond it was floating in.
At this point, basically, I can either give up, go berserk and rip my clothes off and go running down Broadway screaming until they either douse me in liquid nitrogen to put me out of my misery or lock me up in Bellevue for the rest of eternity, or I can Get My Shit Together And Figure Something Out.
I briefly contemplate the first option. By briefly, I mean, I stand there stunned, in the rain with a wet back, wet feet, wet legs, and a wet raincoat that was known as my last salvation from the wetness. I stand there for about two minutes. Two very long, agonizingly self-pitying minutes. I am fighting back tears that, like, long to join their people in the puddles on the ground.
So I do what any sensible person does. I fight my way across the street again, slip into Daffy’s, and buy the cheapest rain-coat thing I can find that isn’t a dreaded rain poncho. It turns out, it’s a brown puffy jacket made almost entirely of polyester and plastic, with a fake fur collar. It cost me twenty dollars and I will probably love it until the very last gasping second of Time Itself because I do not have to be wet everywhere, just everywhere but my torso.
So, fifty bucks later and still wet-pant-legged, I sit at my desk with relatively dry feet and a relatively dry torso. My poor begraggled tan trench coat is hung over the chair and I’ve borrowed a coworker’s space heater to warm my jean-legs into a semblance of dryness. Until the ark itself floats by my 43rd floor window and beckons me to join, I’m staying right the fuck here.
And ordering lunch delivered.
N.B.: Other considered titles for this post include but are not limited to: “how to spend fifty bucks without even trying”, OR “a sopping advertisement for visa check card”, OR “how I completely forgot everything I ever learned in girl scouts”.
When little kids are toying with the notion of running away to join the circus or the dot-com boom or whatever, they have the almost genetically ingrained tradition of tying the cloth satchel to the stick, hoisting the stick over their shoulders, and soldiering bravely into the unknown.
It was sort of like that when we left our cozy, rain-washed tent on Sunday morning. We’d puttered about after breakfast, washing the dishes and rearranging the wet/dry stuff in and out of our tent. I’d lifted the heavy tarpaulin off the sides of the tent to air both rooms out, but we let it all down again before we left. Stuart had prepped and adjusted our rods and gotten the tackle ready. And off we went, rods on shoulders and water bottle in backpack and a small lunch and everything.
Well, we didn’t catch much for the first three hours, but I learned how to cast out decently far and got far too much enjoyment from reeling back in to really patiently catch fish. We’d found a tiny rock outcropping from which to fish, along the southeast perimeter of the small lake, and after not catching anything there for three hours we decided to move to the less picturesque beach where the locals were fishing.
I’d gone on a walk with my camera, whistling “You Are My Sunshine” and, morbidly, “Teddy Bear Picnic”, so that the bears knew where I was. I imagined the bears snugly watching television in their RVs, hearing my whistling and rolling their eyes, thinking, crap, we’ve got to go be BEARY now. After I misstepped and slipped in a tiny creek , though, and my already crapping-out hiking boots got even wetter, it was time to drag Stuart to the habitated part of the lake.
Actually, they called it a pond but it seemed a lot bigger than the ponds I’ve known, so I’m calling it a lake.
After another half-hour of Stuart’s fishing and my reading at the picnic tables, we decided to take a break and venture into town to find a bait-and-tackle shop and maybe a hot cocoa or two. The stop at Ed’s Variety Store yielded the following pleasant exchange:
“Where’s the nearest bait-and-tackle place that might be open today?”
“Oh, probably Walmart.”
So with a laugh and a nod in the direction of evil yet convenient megachains, we followed their directions to the as-unassuming-as-possible North Adams Walmart, where I got a hot cocoa from Dunkin Donuts and two camp chairs, while Stuart bought some heavier-duty bobs and weights and a mysterious spray meant to be like crack for trout.
I dropped him off at the lake and meandered back to the tent to make us two cups of warm tea in the empty Dunkin Donuts cups. See? Renewing resources, I thought. It was a little stressful lighting the camping stove by myself because I am crippled with fear by almost anything requiring small, volatile tanks of gas, and flames. So I held an oven mitt over my face while I lit it, because damn, yo, they can replace arm skin but I like my face, thanks. My neurotic precautions were unnecessary and I made two delightful cups of tea, got back into the truck which we’d resigned ourselves to finding incredibly convenient to have around, and drove to the lake.
Once there, I settled into the camp chair and three sweaters, while Stuart proceeded to catch sunfish after tiny, adorable sunfish, which he didn’t have the heart to kill and grill, so he slid them back into the water, somewhat cheerfully exasperated by the coy trout closer to the center of the lake, beyond the reach of his casting. Me, I even caught a sunfish, which means those little buggers were just gagging to get hooked.
When I started to whine about being cold, Stuart reluctantly gave in and we headed back to the tent to build a fire in the evening gloam and roast hot dogs, covering them in the packets of condiments I’d been stealing at every convenience store along the way. We told each other stories, asking questions about each others’ lives that didn’t know yet (“what’s the worst trouble you’ve ever gotten into?” “ever cheated in school?” “best camping story”, etc), and then sang our childhood songs while roasting marshmallows and polishing off the shiraz. My feet, which had been perpetually damp since we got there (trench foot, ahoy!) were toasted and warm and that may have been another pinnacle of the trip.
At bedtime, we put out the fire in the sprinkling rain, bagged our trash and put it neatly in the car, and snuggled down with books and flashlights until sleep stole over us both.
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