Yonder Paw

Drop off laundry service!  Gina – 1

Drop off laundry service shrinks favorite comfy sweatshirt.  Gina – 1, New York – 1

Temperature drops to 40 degrees.    Gina – 1, New York – 2

Apartment strikingly similar to inside of fridge. Gina works at desk wearing hat and gloves. Cats huddle together under bedside lamp.   Gina – 1, New York – 3

Landlord refuses to answer phone, clearly knowing all tenants in all 30 of his buildings are calling to demand heat.   Gina – 1, New York – 4

Heat comes on!  Apartment steamy and comfy.   Gina – 2, New York – 4

Heat stays on. All day. All the time.  Cats languish, panting, on floor.   Gina – 2, New York – 5

Gina figures out how to turn radiators off!   Gina – 3, New York – 5

It’s a close game.

We’ll keep you posted as developments occur.

Much was promised.

Although there was some effort to follow through,

it was … disappointing.

“I wonder,” Aliza mused, “if this is the kind of thing that gets cooler as it gets later.”

Hard to imagine.

Last week, in the 40s.  Thursday, 70.  Yesterday, 40.  Today, 65, but pouring rain.  Wait, no – it’s not pouring.  Wait, yes it is.  Wait, is it raining?  No.  Yes.  Wait … no.  Wait, yes.

Despite the inconsistency of the weather, it was really time to get out of the house.

The advantage of working from home is that, for most of the week, I can hide from the weather.  The disadvantage is that it’s entirely possible for me to not go outside for days on end.  As lovely as this place is, it doesn’t get a lot of natural light.  People warned me that would get depressing.  It has.

Time to go outside.   Lots of places to see round here.

Aliza and I explored DUMBO today.  It was nifty.

DUMBO is odd.  Nothing, nothing, nothing, sassy little children’s clothing store.  Nothing, nothing, nothing, super fancy chocolate shop.  Nothing, nothing, nothing,  spacious and  impressive bookstore slash art gallery.   Strange.  Not like Williamsburg, where whole blocks of hipster storefronts are tucked away amongst the empty streets – these places are isolated.  The streets are empty, but these shops are full.   Meanwhile, the trains thunder along above the $750-per-square-foot lofts, conveniently located beside the abandoned warehouse.

So, let’s talk about Williamsburg.

I get that it’s a running joke, the hepandsassy nature of this neighborhood.  One assumes that while a stereotype may be based in reality, reality itself will be, somehow, more manageable.  One assumes this with Williamsburg, and one is wrong.

I haven’t spent much time there, myself, and the little time I have spent was in the summer, when I’m visibly tattooed enough to stroll about without scorn.  But it’s nearing winter, and I’m cold, and not about to go bare shouldered through the streets.

I don’t mind, really, going to events alone.  Sure, I’d rather have someone with me, but for most things, it’s not so bad.  Weddings, even.

Unless, of course, I’m not going to know anyone at said wedding but the bride.

Unless everyone else at said wedding will know each other and not be particularly interested in expanding their social circles.

Unless I’ll be the only non-musician, non-artist, non-feather-clump-wearing person at said wedding.

Did I mention this wedding was in Williamsburg?

Everyone seemed to be in costume.  Flapper dresses.  Tuxedos and Converse.  Elbow gloves.  Dresses made of mirrors.  Pinstriped t-shirts.  Women roamed the space with clumps of feathers stuck to their heads – one had a tiny tiny top hat with feathers sprouting from the top.  (Apparently, these are called ‘fascinators‘.  Aren’t you pleased to know?)   It was Little Women performed on a Vaudeville stage with bobbed hair that likely takes a long, long time to style.  In my all-purpose-wedding-and-other-function Anthropologie dress I was like a three year old in her mom’s shoes: vaguely appropriate, but all, all wrong.

Even the walk from station to venue was awkward.  The carefully disheveled, ironically clad clumps of twenty-somethings all but stopped and stared as I passed.  I’d like to pretend this is because I was looking especially marvelous in my wedding attire, but, being as I had spent the past three days alternatively vomiting and moaning pitifully to myself, I am pretty sure this was not the case.

Citing my recent illness, I fled the reception as soon as I had managed to hug the bride.  Neither the F nor the G were running that weekend, so I took the train into Manhattan, another back to Brooklyn, and then a bus home, upon which I was grateful to be, once again, safely ensconced in the merely gentrified.

Apples, it turns out, grow on trees.

I mean, they really grow on trees – not at all like our childhood drawings of singular, festive blobs; these trees are aggressively appled,

to the point one feels guilty choosing a single piece of fruit, imagining the others heaving a collective sigh of disappointment and eyeing the decaying pile of dropped brethren that surrounds each trunk.

Apple picking, I thought, was the ultimate East Coast Fall Activity, and, as such, I’d been planning this excursion for a solid three months.  Anticipating something to that degree is rarely a good idea, as the actual event tends to fail to live up to expectations.

It was, all in all, a day with many moments o’delight.  I mean, it’s October.  Driving through the Hudson Valley in October on a sunny day is going to be nothing but marvelous, whatever the circumstances.

Baby animals, too, are just fantastic.  Who doesn’t love baby animals?

Who’s not going to be excited to see the miniature horse’s furry little mule baby?

The Boy, though, had a sore back, and was not, in general, feeling up to a Romantical Fall Outing.  A two hour drive and subsequent march over a muddy hill wasn’t, I suspect,  high on his list of Fun Ideas that day.

There was a great deal of Impressively Bad Parenting in the orchard that day, which is hard to picnic amongst.

Regardless, apples were indeed picked, and they taste good.  Although not, perhaps, good enough to make reasonable the four hours it took us to get the 50 miles back to Brooklyn.  (If a thousand or so people visit an orchard on a typical weekend day, one would think it would make sense to have more than a one lane road those 2o miles between the highway and said orchard.)

There’s something to be said, though, for how nice my apartment looks dressed for fall.

Today I walked past Kanye West whilst shoe shopping.

(Yes, I get excited when I see someone famous.  I readily admit this, as I’m reasonably confident it’s true about all of you.  I like the details of other people’s lives, and celebrities just hand theirs to me.  I may well end up one of those old women who hangs out her window with binoculars; for now, I read Perez Hilton.)

Kanye is the first celebrity I’ve seen since moving to New York, and that was exciting.  He was with that model girlfriend, all just strolling down the street, looking irked.

Things I Know Firsthand About Kanye West, Helpfully Shared:

1.  Kanye West wears sunglasses when it is pouring rain.  Thinking about it, I have never seen a picture or clip of Kanye without sunglasses.  I wonder if he’s disfigured in some way.   Maybe he and Michael Kors sit together at fashion week so someone can whisper to them what’s going on.

2.  Kanye West is tiny.   I mean, he is a teeny tiny short little man.  This, I suspect, is the reason he is so, so cranky.  I actually noticed and recognized his girlfriend first, thinking, “Wait, she looks familiar, isn’t that …“  Then I looked down a little, and there he was.

In other news, this expedition made me cranky, although not in a steal-your-thunder, I-am-so-much-more-important-than-you Kanye way.  I don’t like shopping,  I don’t like crowds, I don’t like being sweaty,  and I don’t like having rain-soaked shins.  Because I was in SoHO on a Saturday afternoon that was both thunderstorming and humid, I had all of these things.

Kanye seemed to be having similar troubles, since I saw him again as I wrestled my Aldo boot box back to the subway station, sitting at lunch, screaming at the two men in suits accompanying him.

I strongly suspect that if I had a gazillion dollars I’d be a lot happier about it than Kanye appears to be.

Keyword searches that have led readers here:

“brusquely”

“spot on broken pinky toe”

“wicked clown 4 life”

“stupid goodbyes”

“sad man”

“gay basement clown”

These make me want to do that 4th grade homework assignment -  you know, the one where you have to use the week’s spelling words in a story.  My protagonist, it seems clear, is a clown.  Perhaps a sad clown, living in a basement.  Unable to embrace his sexuality in a harsh, unforgiving world – a world which treads upon his pinky toe.

I wonder what these readers were looking for.  I wonder what they thought when they ended up with some piece of fluff about cupcakes and finger puppets.

Me: “I don’t know if I want the onion rings or the fries.”

Mike: “Mine come with fries.  You can have some of them.”

Later:

Me: “Those are impressive looking fries. I would like many of them.”

Mike: “They should be skinnier.  I prefer skinny fries with my mussels.”

Me: “Why?”

Mike: “I don’t know.  I guess it’s just what I’m used to.”

Me: “You always get fries when you get mussels?”

Mike: “Well, that’s how they come.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Mike: “That’s how mussels come.  It’s a Belgian thing.”

Me: “But … we’re not in Belgium.”

Mike: “But that’s still why.”

Is this one of those things everyone else knows about?

Mike does has a tendency to state strange pieces of trivia as though they are common knowledge.  He also has a tendency to be right, though.

I need confirmation.  Also, an explanation.   Anyone?

Discoveries this week:

* The women’s bathroom at Penn Station smells of yogurt.

* Mariachi bands occasionally leap into the subway train as the doors are closing whilst striking up a mariachi tune and this is startling.

* Working part time somehow means I have considerably less free time than when I was working full time.

* If you go to the same bar on a regular basis they’ll eventually bring you a free bread pudding.

On left: no smoking.

On right: no 80’s style boom boxes.

Center: No becoming an ice machine.

The subway authorities, they have their reasons.