Love and Pastries

It's really hot. But you already knew that.

These lovely people got married. (College Sweethearts!)
It was a really pretty event and I was glad to have been invited. The groom, because of Title IX, was my softball teammate on the Women's team for a while at Purchase College before the baseball team came to fruition.
The bride is from a French background and many guests had made the trip over the Atlantic to take in the nuptials. It was really fun to hear all the pretty French words being thrown around. It really seems to be an impossible language to understand.
The French relatives and friends were quite the bons vivants you might say. The Frenchies made the event very high energy which was great because after viewing it all, my wedding will probably be quite boring. Mark and I will have to rethink inviting a lot of heavy drinking friends just to up the festive appeal.
Also, we've suddenly realized that we both have completely different ideas of what our wedding should be like. Which kinda freaked me out! I thought we'd both be 'let's go casual'. Reasons being we're not really fancy-pants people and the fact that the more casual wedding means, at least to me, more budget conscious. But apparently Mark is into the highly structured, fairly formal wedding. WHA?!
Are you as surprised as me?

After one and a half months of deliberation and unnecessary anxiety I've finally decided to register for a recreational, 2-day baking class at the Institute of Culinary Education. As soon as camp is over I'll spend two days baking sweet and savory breads, tarts, and pastries. In my dreams I discover I'm a natural in a kitchen baking bready treats straight from heaven and decide that culinary school is my future. But I'll probably just spend hundreds of dollars taking classes and loving it (I hope) but still spend my days flailing around pretending to be interested in early childhood education.

So Best Wishes to Samantha and Congratulations to Mario. At the wedding I said Congratulations to Sam knowing there is some archaic rule about what you're suppose to say to each member of the married couple and knowing that solely because I hadn't looked it up, I was fairly sure I was saying the wrong thing. I know in the end it's only total asses who really care about that stuff but still...tradition must live on!

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

It's hot as balls today. We're already prepping ourselves for the inaugural use of the $$Air Conditioner$$. It's very fitting since we got our ConEd bill today and it progressively goes higher and higher. It could be because our fans have been running non-stop but it's still frustrating because we don't turn on any lights until it's so dark in the apartment that the birds stop eating out of their dishes because they think they've been put to bed.
Our bills are estimated because they "never gain access" to our meter that hangs inside my cabinets but I can assure you they never knock on the door either. Next month I'll just submit my meter reading and hope that I've been overpaying long enough that my bill is smaller. But I doubt it. I can still hope.
It's not so much that I'm cheap it's more that we don't have very many paychecks coming our way for awhile and those that are coming are more like...small reminders of what money is but not enough to really do any comforting.

Hold on! I hear a breeze.

Today we decided to go wild and finally use our Zip Car membership. We zipped up to Tallman State Park where my parents use to take my sis and I for a dip in a state pool, some trees, and ample bugs. Mark and I used my parent's never-been-used already-needs-tightening tennis rackets for about an hour.
It was interesting because Mark took lessons when he was still a growing boy and never liked it and I've never played. I've swung a racket. Once. With Brad Cohen behind the Purchase Gym. It swung straight into my kneecap and I limped for days.
So today Mark ran after balls I attempted to hit while standing on a decrepit court in my bra and a pair of shorts. It was actually quite fun. We hit up the pool for a quick cool down, drove over to Palisades Mall for some impulse buys at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (all items have since been deemed 'to be returned') and then zipped on back home.
It was fun being able to ride around in a car. When you're all comfy in a clean and speedy vehicle you can almost understand why so many people continue to drive instead of shoving their bodies into the filthy, slow, steel earthworms we call the NYC Subway.

Thanks for Checking In!

I emerge from the depths of blogger death. I'm walking away from one light and stepping towards another. The light of a laptop screen. I had nothing going on. I wasn't working at the nursery school. I wasn't cleaning poop in Super Hero pants. I wasn't sobbing myself to sleep because of my lack of direction (I hate you PMS. I love you hormone therapy).

I still have no direction. My arms are still flailing wildly in the sea of career and fulfillment. My summer has been filled with the life of Nature Counselor tid-bits. Everyone asks me what kind of bug is this? The answer is I don't know.I've smelled like campfire for 2 weeks. My legs, my only attractive feature, are scarred with bug bites. I'm broke.

My apartment is coming along nicely except for the pests that are ruling my kitchen. No matter how much I scrub, wash, dry, put away. It's embarrassing. Disgusting. I want nothing but evil, skin destroying chemicals. I want to blow the fuckers away. Mark insists on natural things that involve flour and brown sugar and borax. Brown sugar sprinkled all over my kitchen. Yeah...brown sugar...that will make the nasty pests go away. I haven't bought the terrible chemicals only because I live on the top of a walk-up and whenever I remember my murderous tirade I'm not in the mood to walk up and down an assload of steps.

Anyway, here I am again. I hope you'll come by and read me.

My First Post From My Own Place!

Here I am in my new living room. It's starting to become home. I have my issues with it, don't get me wrong, but I'm starting to be comfy. My biggest issue with the apartment is the shower. As it sometimes just doesn't really exist. There I am covered in shampoo and soap enjoying a sunny morning with Mark and BAM the water disappears. I panic, I hyperventilate, I cry, I scream, I moan I knew I didn't want to live here. Eventually Mark goes downstairs to tell the super and in so many words we were told to deal with it. It's just like that here.

So every time I take a shower I pray. A lot. I enjoy the feeling of the water dripping soooo gently that it sometimes feels like someone is peeing on me. Goodbye lovely hair, goodbye volume, goodbye ever using conditioner again for fear that it won't ever rinse out.

Otherwise we've got all the modern luxuries (minus an elevator). Vinnie is here tormenting us with his high-pitched screams. He's so co-dependant that we're tempted to get a parakeet to keep him company. Should we name him Claude for Monet or Pablo for Picasso as Vinnie is for Van Gogh? I think we should wait until we're at the bird store and see if a Claude or a Pablo just make themselves available.

However I'm on limited speaking terms with Mr. Vinnie right now. For the past 6 months this bird has been madly obsessed with me. He went from never addressing my existence ever to coming out to my finger, sitting on my knee, trying to feed my finger by birdie regurgitation, and standing on my shoulder so much that it became scabbed and tender. But Mark ends his time at Trader Joe's, spends four full days home and suddenly it's Jamie Who? He won't come out to me, he attacks my finger, he's mean to me. I'm heartbroken. I feel like a mom the first time she hears her own child tell her that he hates her. It might be said out of anger and immaturity but it still hurts so bad.

But anyway, now I have all this stuff I need to do: unpack clothing into my newly attained clothes bureaus, reorganize the front closet that became a 'stuff everything in there' closet, get back into the swing of cooking because we can't eat out with our limited summer paychecks. When I was living with my parent's I had nothing to do, ever, that I sat and my waistband grew. Now I just want some time to dive into a project and I have tons to do: go to work events, go to summer job trainings, babysit, set up other summer job opportunities.

At the one job event I went to I was eating a small hamburger (no cheese, unkosher!) and I feel a hand grab me. The hand of Dr. Ruth, sex and relationship expert. There she was in the flesh and with her accent making a joke of her picture in the paper and how the blouse she was wearing then was the same blouse. She was holding onto me, as if it was just us two. Fun!

The last task I fear is learning how to grocery shop in a New York City supermarket. Sure, I grew up here, but I was never on grocery shopping duty here. The aisles are small, the store overcrowded, the products limited. I miss the Raley's of my California living. I miss the massive artisan bread section, the fancy cheeses, the hummus selection of more than just two flavors, the ginormously wide aisles, the free cooking magazine released each season, the overly friendly cashiers. I'm tearing up. I'm crying.

Anyway, if you're around: you're so invited. Come over!

Bringing the Bird

Hip Hip Hooray! I was given permission today to have Vinnie live with us in our new apartment.

Basically I told my realtor that I needed a place that allowed pets and he kind of shrugged it off and said there was a law that states once you have the pet in the apartment they can't make you get rid of it. Since I could tell this guy was a total crackpot I didn't trust him one bit. I ended up reading the rule that states that if your lease doesn't mention pets at all then you have a right to obtain a pet but if it states that you can't, then you can't.
So here I am, signing the lease and there is a section that reads No Pets and this massive clause that comes after it that hints to the fact that you have to have written permission but if it's discovered that you are harboring animals (especially dogs, this lease doesn't like dogs) they have permission to cancel your lease. So of course, I start to panic.

I casually ask about the clause and the leasing agent (who was very nice) says that people in the building do have pets, the clause really exists because they want to keep people from bringing in highly aggressive dogs such as pit bulls and rottweilers. I understand that a pit bull can be a perfectly normal dog, if raised appropriately, but my neighborhood had (still has?) a bad pit bull/dog fighting reputation. So they created the approval clause because they want little old lady dogs in, scary gangsta dogs out.

So I start to really get nervous as moving day approaches because my first experience with the property manager wasn't a very positive one and I'm thinking I'm going to ask him to have a bird and he's going to say no. Just because he can. So we wait and wait and then finally I can't take it anymore and I email him asking if we can have a small, caged bird. Six minutes later he emails me: Yeah, small bird okay. Your welcome. (grammatical error his, not mine)

So, I'm thrilled. Vinnie isn't a barking dog but he's not a mute either. I'd be panicked about a nosy neighbor or a visiting super discovering him and caring enough to report his presence. But, alas, everything is slowly falling into place.

Now all I need is a bed...and a sofa...and a table with chairs...and a bureau. Or two.

It's Mating Season, No?

Goodbye Benjamins

Wow, it's been a whole month since I last wrote. Which means the few of you who actually stopped by to read have probably given up on checking in and I'm writing to myself.
Well, I don't know where to start. Mark and I finally rented an apartment. I finally got my nice sized kitchen and a view that doesn't consist of a brick wall two inches away from the window. The drawback is I'm on the fifth floor of a walk up and I'm on a not-so-charming street in my 'hood. But apparently I'm supposed to compromise so that's that.

Mark had a grump moment last week when we dropped $217 on a second lock on the door. He was reliving those charming moments in California where you rent an apartment for the rent stated, they give you your keys, and that's that. In NYC it's not like that. Apparently I forgot to mention that to him. Here in NYC you have to drop your deposit and first month like anywhere else but then there is all the spending that is really "New Yorkie".

There's the whole we want to pretend our building is secure so we put a mid-line quality lock in it and now we charge you $40 bucks just to get the key even though when you pay rent that technically means you're paying to get into the building so the key should be included.

But then it's NYC and you don't trust anyone so even though your apartment comes with a lock you need to go put another lock in your door and avoid giving a copy of the key to your super even though your lease states that you have to.

So that's another couple of hundred because I live on a not-so-charming street so I feel the need to get the higher-end key cylinder. But that's not really fair to my new street either because my parents live on one of the "nicer" streets in my 'hood and not only were we robbed once but people have been mugged in our building's vestibule a number of times during our residency here, the last one being only 2 months ago. So take that fancy streets!

But wait...more spending! You've got to buy a ghetto gate to put on your window that has your fire escape. I've noticed a lot of apartments in my current building don't have these gates on their window. It's my non-professional opinion that these are people new to the area, new to city living in general. They don't get why you would put a gate on your window. I agree, it's not aesthetically pleasing. But it's the secure thing to do, regardless of what street you live on. These fire escapes are welcome mats for the sketchy to come and see what you have to offer in your home. For my new apartment I felt it necessary to have a gate because my new home faces the back, therefore not so many eyes watching who's going in and what's coming out.

I did find a whole selection of gates that would be more appealing since they have more of a "decor" thing going but they are crazy-more expensive because they are custom made. I'm a renter, I don't need custom made. I don't want to invest in a gate that's not going to fit my next apartment. So I end up with your run-of-the-mill accordion gate but I'm thinking I'll paint it white and eventually I won't even notice it. I'll be to busy working my ass off trying to make money to pay for everything.

And what's the real kicker about all this spending to move? We signed the lease a week ago and haven't moved a single thing. Ridiculous.

But anyway...I'm watching You've Got Mail on cable. I love this movie. It's also fun just to see how dated it is. The beginning when you watch the two main characters waiting for their AOL to sign on. The sounds of the dial-up, the you've got mail voice, the shop girl who is thinking about having to move because she might lose her job. She's devastated she might have to move to Brooklyn. But nowadays in NYC people like her are clammering to move to Brooklyn...or Astoria.
I wonder what would've had to happen in my life to have moved me to a hip neighborhood in the outerboroughs. I wonder if meeting new friends or getting a good job in the city after college instead of heading out to AmeriCorps would have somehow led me to leave the tip of the A train line. Who am I kidding?! A good job! Apparently those aren't destined for my lifetime. HA!