August 31, 2002
twenty two happy birthday,
happy birthday, me.
and since none of you have sent me happy birthday wishes.... well, that's what the comment section is for, isn't it !
cheers,
k
August 29, 2002
area woman asserts, "good
area woman asserts, "good time had by all." in related news, it's november in august.
lots of kisses and hugs for everyone who was at ma petite fête d'anniversaire. the following cool cats showed up to celebrate with me: wiley coyote, the hilariously cruel cruellittleman, the notorious w.a.n.g., the luminous maybo, claire so fair, kurtMD, and a few other charming folk.
bitherbee and smosher turned up early to make me cupcakes, pink frosted ones [pictures forthcoming, flood] and when the party was really a-swingin', smosher and his trusty bassist, steve, played me a greatest hits medley of all my favorite josh dillard rockin' tunes. he played "help" and "checkered vans" and "20/20 hindsight" .... he rocked out our living room.
and today, i woke up with absolutely no voice and torrentially pouring rains outside. i got soaked on the way to work and my feet are still cold. it's 65 degrees here in the naked city - i need a coat. i'm thankful though, because texas this weekend will be really, really scaldingly hot. feh.
and yes, cats, remember - i'm leaving tonight for texas. and you should all call me on saturday to wish me a happy, happy 22nd!
in other news, the delightfully wicked erwin and i have hatched yet another vacation plan*. we're considering ditching europe altogether (portugal and ireland were in the works for a few minutes) and instead, we're going to california next march! we're going to fly into san fransisco, hang out with friends and generally feel very hip indeed, and then rent a car for a few sunny days and trek down the coastline to los angeles, which should be smoggy indeed. but erwin has an uncle there, and friends that live north of san fran and i have an old friend from kenya who lives downtown.
why, you ask, i am forgoing the plan of going to europe? well, it's expensive. second, all destinations in europe involve, well, complications. and i only get one vacation a year, people. i'm going to make it rock the casbah.
so if you're going to be in california in march, let us know! we want friends!
cheers, and long live pink-frosted cupcakes -
k
* disclaimer: all of petithiboux's wildly fluctuating travel plans are... well, wildly fluctuating. in no way, shape or form, can she guarantee she will be going anywhere**, so don't get your knickers in a bunch. this is just her escape mechanism, okay?
** amendment: of course, when she makes plans with the fantastic erwin, they almost always happen, and they always rock. so, that said, cali here we come!
August 28, 2002
childhood, revisited. floodtide's most
floodtide's most recent entry, charming as ever, concerns his recent scurry to own the books of his childhood - cleary's Ralph books, and the great Ramona books.... flood is so right, as per usual.
I have friends that make fun of the fact that I love the harry potter series, or that i still cry when i watch charlotte's web or thumbelina. to them i say, feh. as a child, i didn't have a lot of continuity. i was constantly moved around. beth might say it's highly unusual [and she does] but i started reading when i was roughly 2 and a half. and i haven't stopped.
as a child, i devoured louisa may alcott, roald dahl, c.s. lewis, george macdonald. i read the narnia chronicles about once a month. when we went to the british museum, when i was 10 or 11, i recognized the story behind a set of roman spoons found in Leeds because of a short story Dahl wrote in The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar. my mother tells that story to this day.
I read greek mythology backwards and forwards. i read through dinners with business partners of my father's, i read on planes, i read in cars, i read on the beach and while walking down the street [okay, i still walk and read. it rocks. try it sometime.]
when i was 12, i moved on to the classics, because i was living in africa and there were no bookstores, really. i read Anna Karenina and Animal's Farm [but didn't "get" it]. I loved the Jane Austen novels and hated the Choose Your Own Adventure ones.
In Kenya, when i was 16, I got a completely involuntary education in the greats of the 20th century, because again, no bookstores. I was so desperate for reading material [my mother says that when i was a child, if i didn't have a book, i would just read cereal boxes and billboards] I dug into my father's extensive hardback collection. funny thing was, i didn't realize at the time the caliber of great literature i was devouring like a hungry wolf. i read Styron's Sophie's Choice and The Arms of Krupp and Michener's Kent State and Halberstram's Best and the Brightest and Boll's Group Portrait with Lady. I read a fair amount of John Irving, too, my favorite always being Hotel New Hampshire [another point of connection between myself and the wonderful floodtide.]
What's my point with all this? for one, i could never see myself in the publishing industry. it's like, loving hamburgers with your heart and soul and working on the grill at macdonald's. reading is an escape for me, it's a safe haven. when i meet people that say, 'i don't read', a part of me looks at them like they're alien life forms. you don't read?! do you breathe?!
and the other thing - kids aren't reading enough. they're watching TV. they're watching MTV for christ's sake. they're not expanding their minds and vocabularies. they're not challenging themselves. they don't 'play pretend' as much anymore. i know this - i've taken care of my share of children.
and you know what? the kids i have taken care of? i've read to all of them, different books - with molly and emma, it was the narnia chronicles and they loved ramona. with kat and annie, we read a chapter of harry potter every night - they loved how i could do all the different voices. they couldn't wait until bed time. on rainy days, we'd cheat and read during the day, too. i read to them in the tub until their fingers turned into little prunes.
i even read to their baby brother, james. i read to him from the newspaper while i was feeding him, something my mother did to me. he would fall asleep much faster when he could feel my voice reverberating through the arms that held him.
i loved reading with and to the kids. and when i talk to them, months and years since i've seen them last, we still talk about harry, and ramona, and edmund and lucy, and hermione and dumbledore, and how silly dobby the house elf is.
that makes me feel like i've done my bit. it's one of my greatest accomplishments.
cheers, all - especially you, floodtide.
k
this is all that's
this is all that's left of the annoyingly long "krissa is amazed by small-world-phenomenon" posts, so she deleted it and leaves you with the following wisdom:
you can sing to my cat if you like*.
[*rock on, raychul.]
August 26, 2002
greek and donuts you
you know how everyone thinks that the diner in their neighborhood could kick everyone else's diners' asses? yeah, well, there's a diner in my neighborhood that would flatten all your diner contenders. it's called the blue sea diner and restaurant, and it's at the corner of 30th ave and 31st street, underneath the subway at the 30th ave NW stop.
the blue sea rocks for many reasons, chiefly: cheap coffee, fresh donuts made at 10 p.m. (late night donuts!), blue countertops, yellow tiffany lamps, surly greek wait-staff, and niko.
niko is this guy that works there. he's greek. he's 22 but he looks 30. he wears glasses and has a great smile. when i go in there, we chat. it goes something like this:
krissa: niko, are the donuts fresh?
niko: yassou*, what, you don't say hi?
krissa: yassou, niko, tikanis?
niko: kala, kala. etzi, come back in twenty minutes, the donuts gonna be fresh.
krissa: ndaxi. be back then.
niko: when you gonna let me take you to dinner?
krissa: tomorrow!
*yeah, the greek's phonetical. duh.
niko is a really sweet guy. we made a bet a while ago about something, and he said if he was right, i had to go to dinner with him. genevieve teases me and calls him my boyfriend. (you know, in that childish sing-song way).
but you know what? i think it's sweet. i think niko is sweet. i don't care that he asks me out every time i go in there. he's funny. and he's charming. and he's not really like anyone i ever hang out with.
so he can ask me to dinner. maybe i'll even go.
p.s. take note! no more stupid annoying ad at the top of the screen. i forked over my $12 dollars to pyra and blogger because it's an honest little company and that ad was really starting to bug me.
August 23, 2002
rollercoaster it hasn't been
it hasn't been a particularly good day. for a variety of reasons, my emotions have been playing uproarious see-saw games with each other. today was a kind of climax - i didn't get a lot of sleep last night, because vix and i were up late, talking about love triangles, and high school, and casual sex, and other traumas. and so today at work, volatile was where I was at.
and then, around lunchtime, right at my emotional top-off limit, this little slice of heaven was delivered to my desk, because her proud papa had some errands to run down on the 42nd floor.
so for twenty minutes, baby julia and i communed. i let her pull on my ear while i told her all about what it feels like to be 22, alone in the naked city, and putting on a brave face. she told me (in so many words) what it's like to poop on yourself. we communicated.
and the dusty corner of my heart that's been aching so for weeks on end, the ennui that has been troubling me, just vanished for a few minutes. she nestled into my lap and sucked on her bottle while i quietly looked up some words in the dictionary. she made a valiant attempt to pull out the page that started with hot flash, and later attempted to eat the page ending with ne'er do well (yes, that word is in the dictionary). she's going to be a smart cookie. i told her so. she smiled at me and chewed lazily on my finger.
and yes, i felt my ovaries kicking. duh.
but better than that, i was calm. for the first time all week. and that made me feel like crying all over again.
cheers,
k
August 21, 2002
allow myself to introduce...
i met someone new recently. this doesn't happen to me very often, as you all know, since i'm a creature of habit and i like all my old friends just fine. but i met floodtide through seastreet and while his living in Utah and being a busy actor over there prevents us from getting together and having hours of conversation over coffee somewhere in tribeca, we have been exchanging plenty emails and just talking about everything under the sun. Many a time in the past few weeks, he has been able to pull out just the right thing to say to get me to square my shoulders and smile.
so this is just a little mini-homage. thanks, you. you win the Cool New Friend prize for the month.
cheers,
k
and furthermore... some hilarity.
I answered the phone a few minutes ago here at work to encounter this conversation:
me: [insert name of Magazine-of-Employment here] -
him (french accent): excuse me, what time do you close?
me (stammering): close? we don't really close, we just go home. can i help you?
him: but what time do the doors close?
me: we don't have "doors". is there someone specific you're trying to see?
him: i want to buy some stuff for my kids. that's all.
me: your kids? i'm sorry, what are you trying to buy?
him: you know, shirts, pants...
me: are you trying to call a clothing store?
him: isn't this [mumble mumble] store?
me: no. this is _______. we're a magazine.
him: a magazine?
me: yes. i think you have the wrong number.
him: sorry.
for some reason, the whole staff was standing somewhere nearby while this ridiculously inane conversation was happening. we all thought it was hilariously funny.
cheers,
k
css trauma still trying
still trying to get my links to be bold. sadly, i am not very good at such things (audience, gasp) and am requiring the services of one cruel little man to patiently take me by the hand and explain this stuff as if explaining the concept of gravity to a five year old child. feh.
in other unrelated news, the smoldering victoria [see super-hot-babe to your right] has descended upon us like the empress that she is, for a few days, because she has an interview to become the next hip thing in the world, a title she surely deserves. so without giving too much away, be sure and send her encouraging vibes.
our own lil' genie is currently looking for a new job - if you have any leads in new york, anything at all, let her know, through moi if necessary.
and someone seems to still be having a good ole' time in a little place called estonia.
cheers,
k.
August 19, 2002
[ed. note] the sensible,
the sensible, no-nonsense, down-to-earth wing of petithiboux would like to point out that the flighty, fashion-crazy, urban-outfitter-coveting wing of petithiboux is currently wearing the following:
1 cowl-neck, gathered sleeve, black-with-beige-dots top from bcbg
1 a-line kick-pleat dark denim skirt
and
black sling-black pointy shoes.
sexy elle girls in the elevator, watch out. mama's got a brand new pair of shoes.
k
doing penance. well, in
well, in exchange for my marvellous weekend at home (puppy was played with, barbeque was joyously consumed) i am at work super early this morning, and will be arriving early/leaving late for the whole two weeks between now and my triumphant departure for Texas.
In other news, c seems to have found himself in the most beautiful of places - sadly, i know this only from his diary since email seems to be spotty there and i have only heard so little from him (yes, i'm publicly guilttripping you now, c). but it sounds heartbreakingly beautiful and calm, and i can only sit at my desk, in the middle of midtown, and alternately curse him and count the days until march.
yes, march. planning on visiting c in estonia with my generous tax return from uncle sam and a few days leave from my job. i was going to go to england, all set to go to england in fact, and rent a car and drive around the british isle with a choice travelling companion. but, well, as genevieve put it so succinctly, visiting london takes five days to do and six months to emotionally recover from. and going to estonia is new, and exciting, and something for my wandering heart to achingly look forward to. and whatever else c is, he's not emotionally traumatizing.
so as usual, i've started looking for tickets six months in advance, because i'm obsessive like that.
it's not that i don't like my job. i like my job. i just - well, there's really no getting rid of wanderlust. some people don't have it. i know people that are content taking one trip a year to see some beloved family, or perhaps disneyland (like a certain Ambiguously Married Duo is doing right now!). I am not one of those people. i feel i am wasting my life if i am not seeing new places and travelling all the time. sadly, i cannot afford to do this, so i don't.
that leaves me sitting at my desk, typing in random destinations into expedia ($1,400 to Fiji! Let's go!) and resisting the magnetic draw of my credit card to the "Buy Now!" button. [sigh.]
See you in march, c. hopefully i'll hear from you before then....
k.
August 17, 2002
running through my head.
we lay in the bed there
kissing just for practice
would you please be objective
Cause the other boys are queuing up behind us
A hand over my mouth
A hand over the window
Well, if I remain passive and you just want to cuddle
Then we should be ok, and we won't get into trouble
Cause we're seeing other people
At least that's what we say we are doing.
b & s
feels appropriate these days.
k
August 15, 2002
perma-linky-goodness! your erstwhile webby-neophyte
your erstwhile webby-neophyte petithiboux is certainly moving up in the html world. i figured out how to perma-link!
look, this is where i talked about conrad leaving! and here, I got really sweet comments from flood and erin.
Wow. I rock the html casbah. now, if i could only figure out how to make my links bold and not underlined... next time, gadget.
cheers, k.
oh, but do read the previous post. i'm so funny, i knock my socks off. witty commentary abounds.
incommunicati There are two
incommunicati
There are two things that make new yorkers a completely different species from the rest of the country. These two things are: housing and food.
One of the reasons I love this city is the pride new yorkers take in their chosen neighborhoods. What's really ironic about these eternal struggles is that most new yorkers live four blocks from that neighborhood they purport to despise. New yorkers care enough about their neighborhoods to engage in friendly fire about why greenpoint is better than park slope, or why murray hill is far inferior to gramercy park, or the fact that the Cup Noodle in times square is the last living vestige of the old times square and when it goes, i go.
New yorkers don't really communicate like other groups of people. It's not that age-old stereotype that new yorkers are assholes. far from it. we're just in a hurry. When a tourist near my work stops me and starts to s-l-o-w-l-y d-r-a-w-l a-b-o-u-t- w-h-e-r-e they're going, I have to restrain myself from offering to carry them to the fucking theatre unless they bloody talk a little faster.
We're not unfriendly. We're just picky. If you lived in a city with 9 million interesting people, you'd be picky too. People in the hinterland only have, like, five people in their towns. no wonder they're friendly. if they weren't, they'd die of boredom.
The other thing new yorkers get passionate about, besides their obsessive-compulsive banter about rent, doormen, and eat-in-kitchens, is food.
my friend james macnab once made the very valid point that the only thing new yorkers can communicate and connect about is Food And How To Get There.
You know you've heard it:
Guy A: I know this great deli up on ___ - you take the ___ but be sure to be at the ___ of the train and transfer to the ____ but be careful because at night it turns into the ___ and you're f__ed.
Guy B: No, No no - look, that deli stinks, for one, and even if you were going to go there, you'd take the _____ instead of the freaking _____ and then hop on the crosstown _____ and walk four blocks on the east side of street - but don't go to that deli, go to the ____ instead, and that's on the corner of _____ and W._____, so take the _____ until you get to _____ -
Complete Stranger Walking By: That's ridiculous, you should obviously take the ______ express and transfer to the local _____ but don't take the _____, besides that deli sucks. What you gotta try, this one deli on ____ two blocks from ____, been going there since i was a little kid......
ad infinitum.
And this is how lifelong friendships are formed in new york.
August 14, 2002
is that with two
tell me something. okay. i understand that my last name is really confusing, nothing short of completely impossible to understand, the first time round.
But Krissa? okay, I used to think I was the only Krissa, ever. Then, i did this and discovered exactly how many krissas there are in this large world.
And yet, and yet, when i say my name to people on the phone - okay, I'll get to the point:
KRIFFA? I mean, let me emphasize that again, KRIFFA?
is that even a name?
C'mon people. I do not have a lisp. Clean the crap out of your ears and get it right, in a few years you'll be announcing it for such things as the Pulitzer, the Editor Of The World, and All Around Superwoman.
So get used to it.
Krissa.
see? that was easy.
six hodgepodge points of
six hodgepodge points of order.
1 my dear sweet roomie, lil viva, is an immensely cool person. i think i don't realize this very often, because i live with her, and thus am sort of immune to all the ways she is a rockin' babe. last night, i got home a little tipsy from knocking back cosmos with marky mark, and she got home five minutes later. we both stripped to our underwear, started chainsmoking and talking, and we talked for two hours about everything - our love lives, our flaws, our body image, poverty, our mothers ... it was awesome.
2 i saw paul from spin city (you know, the chubby one) on the upper west side yesterday, walking his two golden retrievers. i smiled at the dogs.
3 sarah lawrence has unceremoniously dumped me from it's email system. hence, all of you trying to write to ccavoura@slc.edu are getting your mail returned. there will be a mass mailer on the subject (sorry folks) but until then, just email me at petithiboux@aol.com.
4 i'm going home to rhode island this weekend. yay, mom and dad driving me back and forth for just one weekend. yay, being able to take my laundry home. yay, playing with kathleen and donna's new german shepherd puppy, noah (for those of ya'll that didn't know, tucker died a few weeks ago. sad.) yay, someone taking care of me, for a change.
5 also important travel news: for my birthday weekend (that's right, you heard me, birthday. saturday 31 aug. amazon wish list imminent), which is also labor day weekend, i have the distinct pleasure of travelling to the great Lone Star State for the whole weekend to visit with four of my favorite people in the entire known world - luiz the rockinest brother a girl could ask for, erwin the bestest friend ever and general 24-7 therapist, raychul the penguin spy and master of soulfulness, and mattchoo, elusive frenchman. This makes me very happy. I will eat magnolia's fantastic queso, go to lake travis and have margaritas at sunset, get stoned and walk to metro, go shopping at buffalo exchange, walk to taco cabana late at night, and generally recharge my batteries with some really awesome mind-blowing folk.
6 i forgot to shave my legs today, and i wore a skirt. eww!
that is all.
cheers,
k.
August 13, 2002
Vanity, Going UP! I
I am not a particularly vain or insecure person. Okay, okay, I'm vain. But I'm not all that insecure. Sure, I have my moments where I am reduced to tears when trapped in the dressing-room with a particularly hideous bathing suit. But I bounce right back - hence, seeing me on the beach this summer with my teeny-weeny brasilian bikini. See? I like myself fine.
But.
I work in a building that, outside from housing my illustrious talent as a junior editor, also houses a variety of hotty fashion mags. Like Elle. and Elle Girl. Fine, those are the only two.
And at said hotty mags, there are women who are my age.
And about half my size. And you know the worst thing?
I have to ride the elevator with them!
And they have the hippest clothes!
And the teensiest waist lines!
And their unrealistically pointy shoes!
And the hippest bored expressions!
Why, even their lipstick, purchased at a trendy soho boutique, mocks my mainstream clinique makeup.
Sigh. I am not a vain or insecure person.
But those 4.5 minutes a day spent in silent proximity to such tragic hipness is really starting to take it's toll on my self esteem.
To cheer me up, you should send me some tragically pointy shoes and a peasant skirt from Deisel.
K
and here come the
and here come the waterworks again.
what is wrong with me?
I don't even know this one and yet, today, meandering around the pages of the diaryland sect, I found his odes to the recently departed seastreet - i realized this stranger was the person who so desperately called my apartment, looking for seastreet, and I read this entry and then this older one (which mentions me!) .....
and well, there came the waterworks.
I guess he's really gone, huh.
When're you coming back, C?
cheers,
k
August 12, 2002
bold. simple. new. for
for some reason (perhaps earlier references to end of era) it felt like redesign day. i was getting tired of the blue.
there are a few little glitches to clean up. on the whole, i like it, don't you?
cheers,
k
August 11, 2002
one goes out, they
one goes out, they all go out.
you know how at a party, when you're all having fun, and then someone decides that it's time to head home, and then all of a sudden, there's this mass exodus and everyone's saying their goodbyes and leaving you all alone?
that's how i feel.
first, beth and josh have gone to california for two weeks.
and matt left for france for three weeks.
and conrad, well shit, he really left the party. and the continent. i know, i know, i mentioned this already, blah blah blah. bear with me, since ful gave him such a nice farewell and got me all teary-eyed (he does say NEVER MIND like that, ful).
I just never thought conrad would leave. i don't know, something about the whole tck* thing, we were on the same page about new york. we were both somewhat homeless, we'd been trucked around unwillingly our whole lives with mixed results, and we'd both gravitated to this city. we'd both made it our own. we'd claimed it, threw down our little stick-and-bundles and said, here. I'm staying right bloody here and no one can make me leave.it was the first home i chose for myself. him too. we were both proud of this adopted love we'd managed to form for new york.
and for all the umpteens of crap we've been through together, the early failed attempts at tenuous friendship, two crazy ex-friends (one more scarring than the other), the phoenix, nerve, fiction class, picking him up at the buttasscrack of dawn for class, getting coerced over IM into going to the diner at goddamn thirty in the morning, or macdonald's, sleeping in the same bed many times, smoking about a million cigarettes and talking about books for hours on end, playing four-digit scrabble tournaments, arguing over each other's ridiculous love lives.... for whatever reason, we've formed some sort of pact, like war buddies or something. we're honest with each other, even when it's hard to say, and we stay friends even when we want to kill each other. he's like a brother.
i guess i just never thought he wouldn't be here.
and of course nothing will change, and we'll talk all the time, and we'll still discuss books and we'll still make fun of each other's love lives and i'll still worry that he's eating enough and sleeping enough.
it just, i don't know. something's changed.
new york has somehow changed for me.
now, sarah lawrence feels like a really long time ago.
cheers,
k
*tck - for those of ya'll that don't know, it's "third culture kids": growing up in a culture that's neither our mother's nor our father's. you know. "i was in africa", that kind of thing.
August 08, 2002
whoa, it's been a
hello all. I'm sorry I've posted nothing in days, blame him for that. and now he's gone.
let me start over. i'll go backwards in time, for the sheer confusion of it. last night, there was a wednesday night hobnob at our apt. cool people like this guy and this other guy were there, as well as many equally cool people who, alas, do not have websites, like wiley coyote, kurt "doctor" marsden, mido "DoDo" tantawi, and other superhepcats. That party was fun.
However, right before that, this one left for good, in a cab from my front door, to trek to Toledo for a few days, and then eventually, Tallinn, Estonia. He knows I'll miss him. To pieces. It's been a long strange friendship and the scrabble has been mind-blowing. Thanks, Conrad. You'll be missed.
And before that, we went to this totally underage party in westchester to hear smosher play some of his fantastic tunes. Then we went to the malthouse with maybo-baybo and bither-bee and I met some woman who read my palm and told me I was going to have three children with a tall, fair-haired man in a practical profession. Huh?
And work - work. Work is driving me crazy.
That is all.
Cheers,
K