Liveblogging from NWK

Not sure that's actually Newark's code, but close enough. It's 5:15 now; my car came at 4; I'm a little bleary. I paid for some kind of airport pay-as-you-go plan so as to download a few 'Friday Night Lights' episodes for the flight, and might as well get a little mileage, (unintended but I'll let it go.) Nothing's open yet; there's this amazing cereal bar that opens at six, where (the menu tells me) they do custom blends of cereals! There's a list of "customer favorites" and there's this "Very Berry" deal that combines Fruit Loops, Cap'n Crunch Berry, and dried berries, to good effect one imagines. Anyway, I'm going to try it.

The reason I got here so early: I just have that expired 12-year-old Learner's Permit by way of ID, which means extra security plus a few forms. I'm starting to own the horribleness of the picture though, in which I resemble a nine-year-old troll and which neatly substantiates my teen-ugly-duckling claims.

I had all kinds of elaborate plans for getting the apt spick and packing efficiently, but a very trying extra hour at work (confidentiality, sadly) threw my plans off with a bang, and I was forced to eat both the steak sandwiches I'd packed by, well, five a.m. Besides the ID shenanigans, forgot about the little matter of suitcases and was forced to choose between one of the two vintage Lady baltimore hunter green suitcases which serve as my TV stand: a mammoth 2x4 deal filled with Christmas decorations, or a diminutive overnight case quite inadequate to the demands of a week's trip in sweater weather. Went with the latter; sat on it; it will most certainly pop open at some point in transit. However, will be unmistakable on the baggage carousel. Still, like the small scale of my arrangements.

Slim texted me some directions to the place, where I've been told to ascend to the garret and immediately ply some dog called Malcolm with a piece of cheese. I don't have a piece of cheese, but I guess I can find one before I arrive. The key is under a sandollar by a yellow flower in the third window box. In case you were wondering.

(Download progressing well, but it'll be close, for sure. I really, really don't want to have to fall back on this Iris Murdoch novel I'm plowing through, full of arid dialogues and remote interrelationships between asexual persons.)

Turns out Eloise will be in California, too, assisting with the olive harvest. So this weekend I'm going to join them in the groves and hopefully get a little EVOO out of the business.

Really want this cereal bar to open.

I was very difficult the other night and attempted a breakup. The attempt was rebuffed, and Slim very sweetly suggested we get married so he could support me, which is really neither here nor there. The whole thing gave him terrible dreams. Must be very good this week. He has some nice things planned. Hoping one of the nice things isn't some kind of surprise wedding - always possible with him. Not that I wouldn't do it, just to be a good sport. And my calendar's not that full, either.

xo,

Gossip Girl

Saturday

Because I work on weekends, my news is rather less glamorous than one might hope. I got up early in order to turn the (newly scoured) apartment over to the landlord and co. When they'd failed to materialize by ten-thirty, I hied me down to the basement apartment and rapped smartly on the door. This was in due course opened by a mammoth gentleman (they're all kind of mammoth and weather-beaten) who informed me that they'd all done "too much drinking lat night" to allow for any work; and that he was Joe ('I'm the one who speaks perfect English'), works the door at a club called 'the Fireplace' and that I should go by this weekend, because he'll hook me up because everyone in this building "is like family."

The building, fyi, contains the landlord, an Iraq vet called Bonecrusher, and the Polish family upstairs, who have a little dog with an extensive wardrobe of sweaters and coats. Oh, and me. Because I don't speak Polish, my contact with everyone's pretty limited. Well, I guess Bonecrusher's English is pretty good, but the landlord told me when I first moved in that combat drove him crazy. He's home all the time and watches TV non-stop. Sometimes I see him in the hall and we hug; I've brought him cookies a few times. Oh, and occasionally the family upstairs drops things off their washline onto my little deck. After an unfortunate incident in which the daughter walked in on Slim drinking coffee naked (inevitable; he's naked a great deal of the time, being from California), we devised a system in which we put anything of theirs in a basket in the hall.

There's a party tonight, but my apartment is so lovely and clean; and I'm too tired to brazen out being a shopgirl tonight and act like some kind of z-list 'it' girl and put on an outfit besides. I did all that stuff last week.

There's a meat recall on; good thing I just had frozen peas and canned tomatoes for dinner! oh, and a Kozy Shack. Shak? Inquiring minds want to know. Oh, and apparently the Big Apple Circus is back in town.

Update

Well, now it's three plus months later. In the intervening period, I've embarked, rather against my will, on a relationship with a thoroughly unsuitable boy. (That same cheapskate.) I'm sure his lack of respectability will become manifest in the coming days - for now, suffice it to say that I have major qualms about the whole endeavor. To say nothing about having become the creepiest sort of serial monogamist.

I live in Greenpoint now, with the ever-present threat of pogrom hanging over me, Damocles-sword-style. The landlord (who has a decidedly rapey air) informed me this a.m. that he "needs access to my apartment" tomorrow morning. I must obviously give things a thorough clean. Luckily, have strung a large length of bark cloth across the entrance to the "bedroom" nook, affording me some minimal privacy. Why have I never seen an electric bill, by the way?

Guess where I am now? Cafe Grumpy. Besides having a really gruckimish name, Cafe Grumpy is the closest spot with IT. It's big and airy, has a book exchange and hawks patrons' art. Music's kinda all over the place, too. Not really my scene (as we say), but it's the setting for more than its share of Missed Connections and I'm angling for one. I've been making eyes like crazy but a quick check of Craig's List has returned no dice for either "Cafe Grumpy' or "Glasses." While we're on the subject, how come no one in the waiing room at my shrink's office will ever meet my eyes in a conspiratorial fashion? I'm forever twinkling at people.

('I Walk the Line' is playing now. I hope Slim is being true to me in San Francisco. I daresay; he is a rascal, but very good-hearted. Well, now that we've established that we're not in an open relationship, anyway. Which I thought was fairly obvious but which his father described as a "classic error of judgment" on his son's part. Anyway, I got a funeral's worth of flowers out of it, plus the loss of three lbs in tear weight, give or take. But that was some time ago. Some day I'll tell you about it. Gosh, we have a lot to catch up on! Did I mention that GK4 (my former fiance) and I are simpatico again? Or that British David has moved here for the nonce? Readers of my Paris blog will doubtless rejoice.)

I got a haircut yesterday. (Must remember to change my facebook status to 'is newly shorn' although in fact trimmed and shaped is more accurate.) Monica, the hairdresser, does a terrific job, even if Maeve thinks she was born a man. (I don't think so. Maeve is my brother's flame and a good friend besides.) I learned two things about Monica yesterday: 1. she was married before. 2. she loves Nascar. She and her boyfriend went down to Georgia, devil-fashion, so's he could be grand marshal of a race. (I wasn't clear on a lot of details, but that's okay.)

I just took an antidepressant. Delicious!

Maid in Manhattan

Okay, Brooklyn, but whatever.

So I hired a cleaning service to get the sublet spick and span before Anita comes back on Sunday, and this maid has turned out to be a major pain in my ass.

She's now in her (pay-by-the) fifth hour of cleaning, and has done 1 room. When I went down to open the door for her, she eyed the five flights askance and announced that she wouldn't be able to carry her suitcase of supplies upstairs. So I did it. And yes, it weighed like 20 pounds. Good thing, though, as I still made it five minutes ahead of her, and she was wheezing and winded by the time she made it.

"Are you going to the store?" she asked me after about an hour.

"Why, do you need me to get you something?" I asked, thinking she needed some cleaning supplies or something.

"Yeah, a slice of cheese pizza and a soda," she said.

"Um, okay," I said, with a sinking feeling.

"And when you get the pizza, make sure to put on plenty of hot pepper. And cheese. And oregano. And garlic.

"So, all the toppings," I summarized. "Okay. And what kind of soda?"

She specified Pepsi. And lunched, one assumes on the clock. Certainly on my dime.

"Do you smoke cigarettes?" she demanded after another hour.

"Why, do you want one?" I asked. "I have Camel Lights."

"I only smoke Menthols," she said. "Here's three dollars. Get me a lucy of Newports. It's my birthday."

I forebore mentioning that it's hard to come by "lucys" of anything outside of Europe or neighborhoods full of black people, and dutifully fetched the cigarettes. And a cupcake, since it's her birthday.

Now she's eating and smoking. And we're listening to KissFM.

Do I still have to tip her? Is $40 enough?

Love Actually

Well, not 'love' exactly, but certainly love life. I've been seeing a little bit of a guy who's very caught up in Confederate-General-in-Big-Sur-style schemes, which I can get behind. At first his cheapness irritated me, but then I got totally into it and we had the cheapest date ever the other day: a sixpack of PBR and $4 worth of fried dumplings in that park in Chinatown where all the old men play Go. We have agreed that we are both too raw to want to be in a relationship, which my friend Mike describes as 'a level of emotional maturity I can't relate to at all.' Since most of his 'relationships' seem to involve chicks he picks up at the laundromat, and since he was dressed like some kind of Israeli on vacation when he said it, I'm not surprised.

He has given me very good life advice, though. We've agreed I need to tone down my sharpness when meeting men.

"Well, at least I'm never boring," I said.
"Yeah, that's never really been a priority for me," he replied.

Musings

"I couldn't be friends with someone who didn't despise himself, at least a little."

Richard used to say that. I'm calling him 'Richard' now, exclusively. It's a little confusing, when I say something like, 'Richard and I used to go there..." or, "When Richard and I were in London..." in a way that's not at all bitter.

In retrospect, maybe it was a red flag, his love for the self-loathing. Hind-sight, as they say, is 20/20. But then, I don't even know what my real prescription is, only that the left eye is so much worse than the right that when anyone tries on my glasses they always scream and make a big deal out of it. In fact, whenever anyone wants to try them on (which they do, a lot, because the frames are so huge) I have to institute the condition, "only if you promise not to scream about how bad my eyes are. It's the contrast between the two that's so dramatic." And then they agree, but they always exclaim anyway. I guess it must be fairly dramatic. I don't know. I have no head for numbers.


I also don't like loaning my glasses out because the lenses are generally filthy. I don't know why; it seems to me I rub them on my skirt about twenty times a day. Richard said I touch the glass when I push them up the bridge of my nose, and I suppose my fingers tend to have a lot of butter on them, just as my buttons are always loose and my blouses stained and my heels worn and my shoes scuffed within hours of buying them. I've learned not to bother buying myself anything really good; the violence of my possession is very democratic. I can destroy a $500 dress as easily as I can something cheap from a teen store, and with remarkable dispatch. I have a certain tendency to throw things onto the floor, even if they're brand new and very fine. That's no comment on the garments; somehow I need to degrade things in order to feel comfortable with them, I suppose. It's not just clothes, either: books are grubby and tattered; CDs scratched beyond recognition, if not cracked;jewelry broken; any manicure is destroyed within moments. This last is mostly beacuse I need to root around in my purse quite a bit to find anything, and that's sort of the epicenter of the chaos, a sort of morass of junk and papers which is all covered with a mysterious and uniform layer of grime. "An ancient steak, a cactus, and a parliament of fowls," Richard would say.

Ar first people are amused by the chaos of my purse and the execrable condition of bills in my wallet, but I hate it about myself. It's impossible to fight the chaos; it's my natural state; but it's hard to live with, really. When I saw the therapist, she said it was to compensate for the rigid control I imposed on the rest of my life, the wages of being a "people pleaser," which left my muscles bunched with tension, my head pounding, and my body aching with exhaustion every night. I liked that theory, but as I was pretty sure she was an idiot, and had a lot of Joy-of-Sex style women's tomes in her waiting room, I didn't take it much to heart.

I always suspected that the therapist thought I was sexually repressed, and that this was the great issue. She also worried about my self-image.

"Well," I told her early on, "I guess if I had to put it into words, I think of myself as being like a dwarf. A hunchbacked dwarf. Syphilitic, with one of those silver noses."


"Well, most of these people are extremely conventional and not very smart," said my father afterwards. "Did you try to make her laugh?"

I said I had.

"I always did that, too. Once I sang the lyrics "Dog food is the king" to the tune of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." We are not a family that is easily understood."

Brevity is the soul of wit, said the petticoat to the camisole