fickle on freckles

hypocrite! 

i just came across this quote from Julianne Moore, while doing research for a project at work. and i think it's obnoxious: 

"I hoped my freckles would go away. They didn't. They're still here. I still don't like them, but they don't loom as large a problem in my life any more because I have other things that are more important."

she still doesn't like them? what the hell? isn't she, like, the face of a few make-up companies? hasn't she been nominated for a million awards? didn't she get to be on 30 Rock for a ton of episodes despite a god-awful attempt at a Boston accent? how dare she not like her freckles! they made her what she is today!

it just drives me crazy when people hate their freckles. i think we're the lucky ones. who wants a plain ol' boring complexion? every March, i eagerly await the first warm, sunny spring weekend when i can get finally outside and let the sun coax my freckles out of hibernation. i feel more like me when my freckles are in full bloom. 

i feel sad for you, Julianne Moore. even writing all those Freckleface Strawberry books has not taught you to embrace the traits that make you unique. and that should loom large as a problem in your life. 

mbm

brain. is. useless.

this was an exhilarating and exhausting week at work. sorry for my lack of updates but i was seriously snowed under. and i wish i could be witty or thoughtful or clever and write something of substance but i've written so many words this week—and many revisions of pretty much all of those words—that i'm spent. finally out of things to say. i guarantee it's a temporary affliction. 

happy weekend!

mbm

i still love you though new york

i'm in a cab right now on my way home from a long but pretty cool day at work. i was just gazing out the window at the rain-swept city and had a flashback to the times i used to visit my cousin Erin here. i was high school or younger and she wa living this glam life in my favorite city. i remember hopping into cabs with her, especially at night, and not being able to take it all in fast enough as the cab down Fifth or up Madison. i thought it was a magical place, the spot where EVERYTHING worth knowing about happened. i take it for granted now; hell sometimes i even hate it now. but remembering it just now, the way my un-jaded self saw it, warmed me back up a little. at least i know for sure: wherever i wind up in the future, New York will always be with me.

mbm


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my grandpa's cactus

continuing on yesterday's theme of grandpas and interesting things happening... i remembered on my walk this morning something i've been meaning to write about for a couple weeks.

at our wedding last November, my dad gave a welcome toast to our guests. it was memorable and impressive. (you can read a little about it here.) the main hook in his speech was—what else?—an expanded analogy. he spoke of a cactus my Grandpa Harry dug up from his yard in Tom's River, New Jersey years and years ago (more than fifteen for sure) and brought to my parents' house. since then, it has sat in a battered terracotta pot on some stones in the backyard by the pool. it has never been cared for, other than by Mother Nature (i.e. when it rains, the plant is watered; beyond that—nothing). it basically just sits there and acts like a cactus. but every summer, long after every other plant in the yard has bloomed, the cactus produces a rather large and glorious yellow flower.

my dad has long compared me to the cactus flower. in my late adolescent and early adult years i gained a reputation as being a late bloomer. (i prefer a roundabout way of doing things rather than quick and direct. if life is a highway, i'm typically off getting lost on some side roads, a self-imposed detour.) anyway, my dad had mentioned to me many times that he thinks i'm like the cactus flower: i may have bloomed later than most, but when i bloomed, i bloomed good.

 so he worked that into his wedding toast (and wound up giving our guests an impromptu lesson in botany) and it was lovely. and very sweet. and—i dare say—sort of true. i'm not saying i'm some gorgeous yellow flower, but i don't think i've suffered much for blooming when i was damn well ready.

anyway, we were sitting in the hot tub over Labor Day weekend talking about life (per the usual) when he told me that this was the first year since the cactus arrived that it did not bloom. considering that the plant was never purposely cared for previously, it's hard to say why there was no bloom this year. my dad—who is not typically a believer in other-worldly, fateful kinds of things—thought the coincidence was uncanny. since the cactus bloomed last summer, i've gotten married and other significant life changes are right around the corner... perhaps it's done blooming, because i bloomed?

my Grandpa would've been 90 earlier this month. and come January we will have been without him for fifteen years. i'm always talking to him in my head, though, and while i wish so much he was still around, i still feel pretty close to him. maybe he's been watching this whole journey of mine and kept the cactus blooming as a sort of inspiration. maybe he's thinking that now i've taken over for the cactus?

i don't know, but it's definitely peculiar timing. and, at least for me, comforting to think good ol' Harry is out there somewhere keeping an eye on things.

mbm

a perfect 10

our first date, September 2000

last Thursday, September 9th, marked ten years that Michael and i have been more than friends. (you can read about how our romance bloomed here.) since it's not our official anniversary anymore, we didn't make a huge deal out of it—but it did seem to call for a nice dinner out.

that afternoon i told the hubster i was in the mood for pasta and he suggested Noodle Pudding, an (oddly-named) Italian place in Brooklyn Heights. my friend Sarah always raves about it but Michael and i had never been. i looked at the menu online and was sold (and also instantly ravenously hungry).

we arrived at the restaurant that evening and before we even stepped inside Michael was waving hi to a gentleman who was outside, standing maybe 15 feet from the door. i shouldn't have been surprised—we've been on vacation a thousand miles away and Michael has bumped into people he knows from the neighborhood—but i was nevertheless.

once we got inside and situated at the bar—there was a short wait for a table—i asked who the guy outside was. "he played cards with my grandfather," he told me. Angelo played cards pretty much every Friday night. i was actually in the car one time when Michael dropped him off at one of his buddies' homes. i remember how almost giddy he was to go get his cardshark on. i know he loved hanging out with those guys—most of whom, i believe, were about 20 years younger than him. but that was Angelo... everyone loved him.

anyway, the man Michael had seen outside (whose name, i later learned, was Bill) walked into the restaurant before we were seated. he'd just been taking a break to smoke outside and was actually in the process of eating dinner. turns out he is a frequent—and, apparently, very important—customer at Noodle Pudding. Bill was there with his wife and a few other people and was very excited to learn that it was our first trip to the place.

before he sat back down to resume his meal he grabbed the maitre'd and made sure he got us a good table. then he grabbed another waiter and told him he better treat us well, we were friends of his. then he said he'd order for us. he rattled off to Michael all the things he should try and then turned his attention to me. "what don't you like?" he asked. i umm-ed and stuttered and he said again, "what don't you like?" i finally managed, "i'm really in the mood for pasta!"

a few minutes later Michael and i were seated (indeed, at a nice table—i loved the ambiance of the place, the little quirky stringed lights hanging from the ceiling, the communal tables, the familial feel.) before we even looked at menus or ordered drinks, a plate of antipasti arrived, courtesy of Bill (who was sitting about five feet away). we went on to order a dish of olives and a heaping bowl of mussels in a spicy tomato broth for appetizers (our own selections) and some kind of fish (for Michael, i forget which kind) and tagliatelle bolognese (for me) as our entrees. we scarfed it all down in record time and it was all extremely delicious.

for the first time in perhaps my entire life, i was too stuffed for dessert. i looked at the menu and opted out (believe me, it hurt to do so). about three minutes after we told our waitress we were too full for anything else, two desserts arrived at our table. "this is on me," one of the waiters told us.

while we were still gauging if we actually had room for the treats in front of us, our waitress came over and said, "your dinner's on Bill." there was some confusion at first, after she walked away. Michael assumed she was referring to the desserts, but i didn't think so. "honey," i said, "i think he's paying for our dinner."

Michael flagged down the waitress to clarify things and she confirmed that yes, Bill was picking up our tab.

the thing is, Michael had really only met Bill at Angelo's wake back in June. and i'm not even sure i'd met him then. we were essentially strangers and yet, in that wonderful Brooklyn way, we were also not—we might as well have known him for years.

funny, quirky, in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time kind of things have always seemed to happen to Michael and me. for all the luck that hasn't gone our way, we've definitely benefited from serendipity more times than i can count. still, i suspected what happened that night was something more.

"you know what this is," i said to Michael as we poked our way through the complimentary desserts. "this is your grandpa's doing."

i mean, really—what are the chances that we'd choose a random place like Noodle Pudding, on the evening of our 10th anniversary, and then happen to see Bill outside, who'd turn out to be eating there—who'd turn out to be a VIP there—and who would be so generous as to pay our bill? it's just one of those things that i feel requires a little tinkering from elsewhere.

on our way out of the restaurant we thanked Bill genuinely and profusely. in my head and in my heart, i also thanked Grandpa Angelo. it was just the kind of thing he'd do.

mbm

it's technically satire—but so not

from The Onion. sadly, this is just a typical day of traffic around here.

someone posted a link to this story from The Onion on Facebook today and i just read it and it's making me want to start packing now. maybe it's the awful, relentless, stifling heat this week; or the fact that i was in wide open spaces only a few days ago and feeling so much happier; or maybe i'm just having a bad day. whatever it is, a big part of me wishes this would happen. that we could all quit pretending we LOVE living here, that the rest of the world is missing out by living where they live, and that we're totally wasting our money to live in cramped quarters. oh, and that part about the exhaust fumes seeping through open windows is so true. our apartment often has a thin layer of grime just from the BQE. IT'S NO WAY TO LIVE! 


mbm

(dis)orientation

the building on the right was my first
home away from home.

and so it's September.

many people i know are morose about the 'end' of summer (check your calendar, people—we've got three more weeks!) but i have always loved this time of year. i know i've waxed poetic here before about wishing i could go back to school—like third grade—but this year i decided to revisit one of the more harrowing back-to-school experiences i ever had.

starting college.

Michael and i took a little road trip over the weekend. i was in my usual spot in the passenger seat, gazing out the window at the gorgeous scenery of northwestern New Jersey and central Pennsylvania. at one point we passed a car driven by a girl who looked like she was college-aged, and her car was packed with stuff: blankets, boxes, a TV lodged in the front seat. considering it was the last weekend in August i figured she was moving onto a campus somewhere. and that got me thinking how it was almost exactly fifteen years ago that i was moving into Vander Poel Hall at Hofstra University.

oh. man.

i thought my transition to college would be easy and awesome. i had high hopes for myself and my new life. i was excited and enthusiastic and ready to go... until my parents pulled away in their newly-emptied car.

i have never done well with big life transitions—i've entered each one pretty much kicking and screaming. but this one really knocked me on my ass. i remember bits and pieces of my first semester of college and none are particularly happy. in fact, more than a decade later they still make me shudder. i just feel so much for the girl that i was back then. i'd spent most of my life in a smallish town going to school with the same kids every year. to find myself suddenly amongst a bunch of Long Islanders (no offense, but they were night-and-day different from my friends back home) on a pretty huge campus in a part of the country that was so unfamiliar to me, with no idea what i wanted out of life—i mean, holy crap.

i started out as a theatre major, which was my first mistake. i remember looking around during my first class—Production and Lighting or some such thing—and seeing people wearing 1) all black and 2) berets. this intimidated me. i remember thinking, is this what real theatre people wear? i was likely rocking my forest green wool blazer and jeans with a too-high waistline and one of my ill-advised Meg Ryan-style haircuts.

in other words: i did not fit in. at all.

the only thing that got me through the first week of college was knowing that i'd be going home on Friday for Labor Day weekend.

the rest of the semester was a nightmare. i had a roommate who had a long distance boyfriend and also a part-time job at TGI Friday's. she'd come home from her waitressing shifts at midnight or later—when i was already 'asleep'—and talk on the phone to her guy  for two hours. often times she was crying or fighting with him. most weekends she went to visit him, wherever he was, and while you might think that was a blessing, it left me with no one to hang out with. i think your first-semester-freshman-year roommate is your placeholder friend—the one who bridges the gap until you make real friends.

i had no bridge. making real friends felt impossible.

so i trudged through the days, mostly by myself. my favorite days were the ones when i took the train into the city and saw Broadway matinees. i would go to TKTS and buy a ticket to whatever, eat lunch at a diner in Times Square and then see a show. it filled up the hours and also my soul in a way it desperately needed. so far i hated college and i hated Long Island, but being able to take a train into New York City whenever i wanted was almost a fair trade.

i tried to do real college stuff—pep rallies and football games—but it all felt forced to me. despite our football team being pretty awesome, there were about twelve students who attended each game. i hadn't yet dabbled with the social lubricant called alcohol so partying was not an option.

i remember watching a lot of TV. and at one point, mid-semester, my TV died. or, rather, one of the picture tubes or something inside it died. i had to drag it to a TV repair place in Hempstead and live without it for two or three days while they installed the new part.

dear god.

one night over dinner during Christmas break i broke down and begged my parents not to make me go back. i'd thought it out and i wanted to transfer. Hofstra wasn't for me. they listened patiently and asked me to give it one more semester. if i was still unhappy, then we could look into other schools.

i think it was about two weeks into the spring semester when i met my soon-to-be best friend Kerri, got an awesome new roommate named Geev and switched my major to journalism. after that, i never wanted to leave.

all's well that end's well, i guess. but this story is the reason why, when September rolls around each year, i long to buy pencils and notebooks and a new backpack—all the supplies i'd need for another year in grade school—but i never wish i was heading to college for the first time. once was enough!

mbm