february's parting shot

From what Stuart likes to call my "high perch over the city" I can't see the Empire State Building. Which is interesting only in that most days, I can. The snow, falling so quickly and in such grey light as it does, is rather hard to distinguish from here. Even with all my lights out and staring intently out the window, I can only see the flakes if I squint and look closely. Otherwise, it's just a cottony grey fog that creates an eerie stage where some buildings still exist and some have fallen behind that curtain.

You'd think this was beautiful but all I can remember is how the slush feels under my feet, how horizontally the snow comes down Broadway, how my hair freezes in the mornings, how very grinchy this new fresh hell of winter wonderland makes me feel until I'm home safe and warm.

So fine. Here. I'll admit to being sick of snow unless it's prepared to do something for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with the blizzard roaring into full gear, settling her icy white petticoats, and staying a while, but only if that means that tomorrow morning, Michael Bloomberg will be encouraging me to stay home and my work phone will have that comforting automated message, "We are closed for the day". I'm even prepared to answer work emails tomorrow, make calls to California, if it means I can do it from our couch, wrapped in our quilt, with a pot of tea in the Brown Betty handy at all times. If this were agreeable December, or even quiet hungover January, tomorrow would leave me blissfully home-bound. But it's not. Tomorrow may be March, but today is still blasted February.

This is that home stretch of sickeningly boring snowy February, where we get about 6 to 10 inches, nothing drastic, nothing we can't deal with, and nothing to stay home about. It's the month that makes up for its shortened life span by dumping unwelcome unloved snow on us, once a week or so, just to remind us why we hate winter. It's snow we can't use an excuse for anything except bad moods and train delays. So we'll all wake up tomorrow morning, look out at the snowy wonderland we can no longer bring ourselves to be elated by, and complaining all the way, kick and slip and curse our way to our subways, hold the hand rail too tightly because the steps are never clear enough, hold our noses at the wet-dog smell of the subway on a snowy morning, and actually look forward to getting into dry warm offices. Who among us can even appreciate the white hushed beauty of it anymore, knowing it won't keep us home and it won't leave us dry? Not me. I've played in my share, and now I'm officially tired of it. Which means it's officially February. Even if tomorrow is March.

So I'm going to get out of here early, trudge home to Astoria, jostling my way among other annoyed or flustered New Yorkers, all of us wishing this was the first snow, wishing we still loved it, wishing it would up the ante and give us a snow day, or just wishing we were in Florida.

omg sjp!

So I'm never the person with lots of celebrity stories to tell, because frankly, I'm a New Yorker and we don't really STARE at people around us, but as I was leaving the New York Public Library after a post-work attempt to surprise Stuart by showing up (foiled because he had the same thought about meeting me at the office) I almost bumped smack tiny-to-huge-nose into SJP. She was tiny and adorable and I almost doubted it for a second, except that when the PR woman said, "Oh there you are! Welcome!" to her, I heard that adorable raspy girlish voice and I just knew it was her.

I mean, I'm far too cool to squeal about it so I just kept walking out the front door, but for a second there, my brain went, "Whoa! Carrie! Wait, is this a SatC episode? Did I suddenly become an extra?" and then I was seriously disappointed. Because THAT would have been wicked.

I don't really get off on celebrity sightings, and I'm really only posting this to have something light and airy for you guys to get through the weekend on - y'know as opposed to all the introspective tripe down there. But hey! OMG! SJP! I'll drop the jaded New Yorker thing for a mo' and say, that was cool.

(Unrelatedly, how much does the Buffy the Musical Soundtrack rock the very living face right off my face? THIS MUCH. Cmon, Greg, get with me. Admit it. Haven't you ever sort of yelled "BUNNIES!" under your breath because it's just too funny?)

self image

On December 19th, I threw my remaining three cigarettes down the toilet in our cozy little bathroom. Then, I burst into tears. It was the scariest thing I've done, but this weekend marked my two-month mark.

Which brings me to another terrifying benchmark - today.

Today, I started an entry about about I cannot bear that I cringe when I look in the mirror. I started to write about how I sometimes squint to avoid the parts of myself I don't like, how the gorgeous happy girl that I see in my mind's eye doesn't usually translate to the girl I hate facing in the mirror. I tried to write about this problem that's been pestering me for so long - about how if my dissatisfaction with my reflection is 80% mysterious self-loathing and only 20% actual legitimate weight gain, how do I go about shifting my perception?

I wanted to write about how this, too, can be a disorder - this inability to see things for what they are, instead morphing them into a huge hairy deal that requires breaking down into tears every time another pair of pants doesn't fit.

About how quitting smoking makes you gain weight, about how living a happy comfortable wintery life with your love makes you gain weight, about how I try so hard to really listen when the people who love me tell me how beautiful they think I am because it's difficult, see, to separate the impression you make on other people from the impression you make on yourself. And it's a tough lesson to learn that, ultimately, it's your own that counts.

So instead of writing about how sick I am of my reflection, of these extra twenty or thirty pounds that have invited themselves to stay on my tummy and hips, instead of writing how terrified I am to open myself up to the reality of feeling overweight, I decided to do something about it.

Actually, make that a "we". Stuart, for his own reasons as well as for reasons of being heartbroken every time he sees me break down in front of the mirror, has decided to join Weight Watchers with me. And looking back at Deb's first step, and her honesty that inspired me, I know that this could be a very good thing.

And good things, good decisions, I'm starting to learn, are a little terrifying. I'm terrified about being really open and honest with Stuart (and the, uh, internet) about my body image, because I've got this immature notion that talking about feeling overweight will lead to other people seeing me that way. I'm terrified that what seems to work for everyone else will categorically not work for me. I'm terrified to admit that I'm unhappy about something, to suddenly get branded as someone "fixing" something about themselves, rather than the carefree, happy-go-lucky Krissa that other people so often see. Mostly, I'm terrified of my historical lack of strong willpower, that's lead me into everything from bad-choice relationships to that last bar at 3 AM. I'm terrified of admitting there's a problem and standing up to fix it.

But when I told Stuart, on a whim on a lazy Sunday morning, that I couldn't believe I was this afraid of quitting smoking, that I couldn't believe I'd just said, "maybe I'm not strong enough for this", well, there was no turning back. Once I'd admitted being that scared, there was nothing to do but try it, but face it, but DEAL with it.

So, here I am, dealing with it. I figure, everything else about life has gotten easier, more manageable, with Stuart at my side. Why not this? I figure, this is the rest of my life I'm looking at. And while it's a little exhausting to imagine dieting for the rest of my life, it's just as exhausting to imagine avoiding reflective surfaces and cringing at photographs.

And mostly, I figure spending two and a half months learning how to eat smaller healthier portions seriously beats the ever loving FUCK out of crying in front of the mirror from now into eternity.

bacon and espionage

Last night was amazing in the way that nights like last night are amazing if you've lived in New York long enough (because if you've lived in New York long enough, you've had weeknights that end at 3:30 AM when you finally leave the tenth bar of the night and pour yourself and your stilettos into a cab and you seriously keep it together in the swerving dodging car and drunkenly text people and by people I mean exboyfriends and you're so drunk and exhausted when you get home that you barely notice your roommate has that weird stinky guy over and even though you hear him ANSWER HIS CELLPHONE while he's having sex with her, you just don't care because you're stumbling to the bathroom to throw up roughly seven cosmopolitans and in the morning, you realize that there's a slow trail of your clothes and belongings from the front door to your bed and WHAT, you've never had that night?!)

So last night was amazing in the way that can only really been amazing if you've been in that bar/cab/bedroom. Because Stuart met me at the subway station at 6:30, after my post-work coffee with Kate, and we walked to Key Food where, for some reason, I wasn't in my usual run-around-by-stuff-Type-A sort of mood. We wandered up and down the aisle, we danced around in the deli line, I squealed when I found my favourite pickles, and after 20 minutes, we left with everything we needed for BLTs.

That's right - we went home and made bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches on baguettes. Only mine had cheddar and mustard and his had salad cream. I drank two glasses of a mediocre bottle of medoc, and Stuart experimented with some boutique IPA. While he cooked the bacon, I did half the crossword in New York Magazine, and then while I cleaned up, he did the other half. Which means our cooking-cleaning conversations, from kitchen to dining room table, went something like this:

K: "Dude, I can't get this one. Blowgun missile, D something something something?"
S: "Uh, dart."
K: "That was obvious, huh."
S: "Yeah."

S: "Oscar winner, '76, '84, '98? It's something, A, C, K, something, I.."
K: "something, ACKI, something..?"
S: "Oh, Jack Nicholson?"
K: "Yeah, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Terms of Endearment, and As Good as it Gets."
S: "Whoa."

K: "Kruschev's first name?"
S: "No idea."
K: "Nikola?"
S: "Doesn't work."
K: "NIIII-CO-LAAAAA."
S: "It's not Nikola."
K: "OH, NIKITA."
S: "You sure that's not his wife?"
K: "Shut up."

After dinner, we watched Alias and during the commercials, I talked his ear off about last season's cohesive plotline that's FINALLY come back to roost (can I get a what-what for Sark reappearing? WHAT-WHAT.) and told him all about the Rimbaldi plotline and why Sloane is such a bad-ass turncoat. I watch Alias not just because it's a decently good show and Michael Vartan is HOT and I love the daddy-daughter plotlines, but also because I have lost Buffy and my soul deeply misses the sight of girls kicking serious ass so Alias is all I have left to hold on to, damnit.

So the thing about making BLTs for dinner and watching Alias and doing the crossword is, it's the kind of thing you can do in any city which begs the question, if you live in New York City and stay home on winter nights to eat BLTs and watch Alias, do you really deserve to live in the city? And what I'm saying is, I need to be able to shun the drunken bright lights and stay at home with my baby and eat BLTs and watch Alias and do the crossword, because I know that if 2 AM rolls around and I need to throw down, I can go to a club. Or, you know, order Thai. Whatever.

So that's what was amazing about last night.

Plus, homemade BLTs rock my face right the hell off.

The Great Equalizer, or, Our Flight Is Delayed So Here I Am

I'm generally an incredibly ethical person so it may come as a surprise to some of you that I'm using a wireless network from the Continental President's Club but I'll tell you what: Continental switched our pre-assigned seats so we're not sitting next to each other anymore and so I'm going to ROBIN HOOD THE FUCK out of this shit.

DAMN, man.

but the yellow rose of texas is the only gal for me

Yellow Rose of Texas is what my Texan grandparents called me when I was little. That was my song, they said. Even finding out that it was probably about Santa Ana's kept woman hasn't diminished how much I love hearing it, because it makes me think of Poppa and Deedee, and my real Texan roots.

Maybe this is the point where I should introduce my Texan grandparents. No, not my Belgian/Irish grandparents or my Greek grandparents. They, sadly, have all passed away. These are my Texan grandparents, and they shall henceforth be known as Poppa and Deedee. As you can tell if you know elemental genetics and/or math, Poppa and Deedee aren't my real grandparents. Maybe not everyone is lucky enough to get a third set. I am.

Poppa and Deedee have known my parents since right before I was born. Sixth generation Texans, and fourth generation Aggies. Poppa got a Purple Heart at Normandy. Deedee bore him four sons, a couple years apart each. Their sons started having sons. So when my parents met them in Argentina, in 1980, and my mother had a baby girl, Poppa and Deedee went nuts over me. When my mother took to the hospital five months later, Poppa and Deedee helped look after me. And since both Dad and Poppa worked for Exxon, our lives intersected in Texas. They called me their "only" granddaughter. I soaked it UP.

My whole life, then, Poppa and Deedee have considered me one of their grandkids. Every year, no matter where we were living abroad, they sent me a birthday care package with colorful fun clothes, great little accessories (my grandmother understood the value of a good purse to a ten year old) and candy. When I stayed with them, in College Station, they'd take me to nearby attractions (tiny ponies!), Poppa would walk me to the playground. When I needed help on a WWII project in the eighth grade, Poppa generously offered to be the subject of my biography. They gave me a "Texan Passport" that I still have, with an option to check "Aggie" or "Longhorn". They checked "Aggie". They sent me a sweatshirt, once, that said "FUTURE AGGIE" on it, and joked that I was going to marry their grandson, Jason. I totally wanted to, too, when I was eight and he could walk backwards and I was pretty sure that he was the greatest thing I'd ever seen.

I never knew my real grandparents, either side, very well. But I knew Poppa and Deedee. And for someone with an already dwindled number of frequently-seen family members, they were the best fake grandparents I could have asked for. They're getting older, these days. Poppa isn't moving around a lot and Deedee is having surgery soon. But when I call to update them on life, to chat, to see how they're doing, they still exclaim happily to hear from me, still call me "Christina" with that beautiful Texan twang, still tell me they love me, and still call me their first granddaughter, even though now they've got two real granddaughters and a GREAT granddaughter.

So, while I'm looking forward to our trip to Texas for a variety of other reasons - showing Stuart around my teenaged stomping grounds, introducing him to some of my best friends in the world, the better weather and the big highways and the great IHOPs and everything - what I'm looking forward to the most is seeing Poppa and Deedee again. Introducing them to my wonderful husband, hugging them a lot, helping my grandma in the kitchen and listening to Poppa's old stories about Texas A&M.

I'm looking forward to being their grown-up first granddaughter. Even though she didn't go to A&M and she didn't marry Jason, I know they'll be pretty happy to see how she's turned out.

follow my lead

I've gotten to the point of busy, one day before my vacation, where I keep putting down the much-beloved Ticonderoga pencils that I always use, then forgetting where I put them, and, having neither the time nor the inclination to look for them, I just take another brand-new pencil out of my pencil jar and sharpen it and get back to work.

This means that I'm running through pencils at the rate of roughly one per hour.

It also means I'm finding the missing ones in really strange places.

Like my back pocket.

WHEN I SIT DOWN.

Seeing without Optics

Stuart and I went to Central Park last night, to take our first look at the famed Gates. We'd both felt a little disappointed to see so much of the project on the news, and it detracted a little from seeing them live for the first time. But as we wandered our familiar path through southern central park, even my New York Jaded Badge faded a little. This wasn't tacky performance art in the Village, or pretentious high-minded nonsensical abstraction and/or conceptuality (look, I work at an ART PHOTOGRAPHY magazine, I know from conceptual). This was, in the spirit of Christos' other pursuits, art because it can be done. Art because it's there, and fun, and a challenge, and because it'll even briefly change the way a city's denizens look at their familiar surroundings. And as such, it's a miracle of success and awe.

For our entire one-hour meander, we followed underneath the mesmerizingly simple yet beautiful Gates. The whole time, we kept taking almost fruitless pictures of them with our tiny Olympus Stylus Verve. And finally, at the end, when I begged Stuart to take away the camera and withhold it from me no matter how desperately I begged for "just one more" (think Odysseus, sirens, tied the the mast, etc), I realized the downside to New York Gatesmania.

The cameras. O, the millions of cameras. As if the digital age didn't already level the photography entrance playing field, projects like the Gates are hell on photohgraphers. I stared at the endless rows of orange heading into the dusky night and I realized, there are going to be MILLIONS of photographs of this project. And maybe one in a hundred will be strikingly original or exciting or different. If that.

It's not that the project isn't worth photographing. It is. In fact, to the true photographer (you know who you are) it's almost impossible NOT to photograph it. The striking color. The play of shadows, both straight-edged and billowing, that the frames and the fabric provide. The familiar landscape dotting with the startlingly unfamiliar Gates. It's almost a compulsion to people like me, and my fellow photographers both amateur and professional. You can't NOT take the camera out and try just one more shot, just one more angle.

But all those photographers? Taking all those pictures? At all those angles? Does that leave any room for originality? Is the photo worth it if two hundred people have two hundred almost identical pictures? I stopped and spoke with one young photographer toting a serious Canon EOS-D, as he shot away at the Gates that cross the stone bridge. He agreed with my hypothesis, noting that his photography professor predicted this would be one of the hardest projects he'd ever shot.

My personal struggle with moments like this is the fear that I'm not experiencing the moment at all. That I'm not taking advantage of the saffron-wrapped gift that Jeanne-Claude and Christos have given the city. That if, like the photographer himself said, so very few of the images we make of such a simple yet alluring subject will be the sort of originality and uniqueness that makes us want to frame the moment, why did I have my camera out? Why couldn't I stop taking pictures of the breezy carefree fabric and the symmetric beauty of a row of them?

Of the images we took, there are seven that stand out, and even those seven are merely duplicates of thousands of other pictures out there. But here they are, testaments to having been there - not testaments to having enjoyed it. Those moments, thankfully, live in my mind and can't be blitzed to death with flash and photoshop.

See The Gates. And when I say "See the Gates", I mean, take my advice. Go, but leave your camera behind. You'll thank me later.

nice work if you can get it

Now that it's no longer Valentine's Day and that sappy banner has been taken down, I'm free to tell you about our night (HA LOOPHOLE GREG HA).

But before I do, I should say that my last three valentine's days were spent

2002: with a tumultuous (read: crazy) ex boyfriend
2003: watching a guy (that had 24 hours prior told me how VERY much he liked me) hook right the fuck up with his ex-girlfriend who'd dumped him a month before
2004: having a lovely dinner with Biscuit but returning home to sit on the couch, nurse my bloody feet (stilettos + february = BAD), eat popcorn and watch the Princess Diaries on TV because all of my nearest and dearest were getting wooed and laid

so it's not entirely surprising that I'm dubious of the value of such a holiday that encourages people to wear stilettos in winter or go out with exactly the wrong guy or hang out with exes and put yourself in the risk field for Pity Sex.

That said, this year was rather different, and even though that takes away my oh-so-trendy cynical edge for complaining, I am clinging to the fact that Stuart and I did very little differently from any other romantic night in, and we didn't buy each other expensive gifts or enormous flowers. We cooked four different amuse-bouche type dishes for each other, spending two happy and messy hours in the kitchen, trading bits of each other's meals and making up new delicious ways to eat bread and olive oil.

Then we settled onto the living room floor to drink champagne and eat our treats, and we spent several happy hours lounging around, listening to Ella and talking about love.

I think my favourite moment of the night, though, was when Stuart came out of the bedroom looking very dapper in a button-down, tie, and slacks, and then immediately tied on the "I Don't Do Dishes!" apron and got cooking. That was pretty much the hottest moment of 2005 so far.

love, see: family

To illustrate a point (and just in case you think that I think that I'm made of solid gold), here are ten things I've done in the past 24.5 years that I'm really not proud of.

1. When I was six or so, I threw my only public tantrum in a Macy's in New Jersey, because I was desperate for their Christmas Snoopy. The problem was, my mother had already bought it for me and put it under the tree, so she had to say no. I sat down and cried. My mother, as I recall, used the "start to walk away" tactic, which worked suprisingly well.

2. Every couple of years, we got a new dog. Every couple of years later, the dog passed away. Every time we got a NEW one for me, the deal was I'd take care of it. I'd feed it, I'd wash it, I'd walk it, I'd be its owner. And every time, my parents found themselves taking care of a dog because all I ever wanted to do with it was play. I now know that my parents aren't even really dog people, and they only got them time after time because I loved dogs so much.

3. My brother Luiz, to my memory, has shown displeasure with me exactly one time in the history of ever. I must have been about 10 or 12, during one of our summer visits, and I was bugging him to take me to McDonald's on our way to something important. He turned and said, "CHRISTINA. Stop it. We'll go later." He doesn't even remember it, that's how tiny the moment was. And the only reason it sticks in MY memory is because that was it. Just that once. If that doesn't deserve sainthood, I don't know what does.

4. In the eighth grade, I lost my english textbook. Later that day, I found another one underneath a lunch table, so, knowing that Mrs. Lacy was going to check books that afternoon, I took it and wrote both my and her names on the front inside cover. That was construed as forgery. I was sentenced to two days in In-House Detention (CDC, they called it in Texas) among the common class-skipping dope-smoking car-scratching criminals of my middle school. I was terrified when my dad found out from the principal. He reacted with surprising cool and even took me a long soul-searching walk along the bayou, trying to figure out why I'd done it instead of just telling them I'd lost the book and asking for the money for a replacement. My only explanation was that I didn't want to get in trouble, which seemed ironic in retrospect.

5. My main chores, when we lived in the US, were to clean the surface of the pool, feed and pick up after the dog, keep my room clean, and empty the dishwasher. I complained incessantly about every single one of these tasks, and could frequently be found hiding in my room reading a book instead of doing them. I don't know how my parents put up with me as a teenager, actually. All I ever did was flirt with boys, read, and complain.

6. My parents were constantly bargaining with me for the good grades they knew me capable of. One weekend at the boy-crazed age of sixteen, I was under our family's version of "academic probation"... I would only be allowed to see my boyfriend if my math teacher signed a note saying I'd done well that week. So on Friday, knowing that Mr. Wilson would do no such thing, my friend Marnix forged the note. On the following MONDAY morning, my mother handed me the note over breakfast, correctly pointing out that Marnix had forged that, and that while she'd let it slide for my free weekend because, "clearly you were SO desperate that you'd do something this obvious," but that I'd have to tell my father all on my own and face the consequences. Faced with a trembling confession from his daughter, my dad went surprisingly light on me and told me not to lie again. Unfortunately, I'm sure I didn't learn. Yet.

7. In college, I ran out of my semester's allowance two months early, and had to ask for a loan. I paid it back with the money I earned from being a mother's helper that summer, and I think it was the first instance of me actually paying BACK the money I had to ask for to cover yet another fiscal irresponsibility.

8. I got a speeding ticket in Virginia in 2000, and didn't want to tell my parents because then I'd have to pay it and our insurance would go up. A year later, my father found the ticket shoved in the back of the Honda's glove compartment. Boy, THAT was a fun conversation. Y'know, to match all the other phone calls that started with, "Krissa? We just got another Bronxville PARKING TICKET NOTICE IN THE MAIL." Feigning innocence wasn't even an option anymore.

9. While at a friend's house in Providence, before my parents moved there, I found out I had a function to attend and needed a formal dress. I had about 200 bucks in cash on me for the entirety of my visit, on a Friday, and Mom told me to run to the mall, open a charge account, and buy something inexpensive. Well, after three hours of feeling ugly in absolutely everything I tried on, I found a chiffon black cocktail dress at Bebe that looked stunning. I didn't even care about the 178 dollar price tag. I didn't care that they didn't have charge accounts. I was so desperate to not hate myself in the mirror anymore that I bought it. And it meant that my mother spent three hours on a Friday, frantically running around Houston, trying to get that huge sum of money back into my hands so that I wouldn't be broke for the rest of the trip, on a dress she hadn't approved and would NEVER have spent as much on for some stranger's graduation. When I was stable enough to accept the criticism, she LIT INTO ME for that little stunt. The good news is, I got about three years' worth of mileage out of that beautiful dress.

10. I maxed out a credit card by 2002 and when the collectors came around a full year later, I was ready to strike a payment deal with them for the full amount - just over a thousand dollars. My mother knew about it because they'd called Rhode Island looking for me, and when I crafted the deal, I consulted her, asking that she not tell Dad because "he'll just get mad" and I knew I had to handle this myself. That evening, my father called and said, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse." She'd told him, and he offered to pay it off and then take checks-in-advance from me, to be cashed every month on a specific day until the debt was paid. I humbly accepted, and just finished paying him off in September.

The interesting thing I've gathered by writing these stories down is, my parents were both incredibly patient and incredibly fair to me, no matter what I did, which was considerable. These are just the surface sins, the petty annoyances, the stories I can remember, the stories we all laugh about now. I also spent a large chunk of the past decade being snarky, snappy, unavailable, and ungrateful. But if you ask them, and even if you DON'T, I'm the greatest person in the history of civilization. I'm their baby, the apple of their eye, and I'm not even sure I deserve their love half the time. And that's the thing about parents and love.

It's often how much they love you at your absolute worst, at your absolute most mistaken, misjudged, misbehaved. How much they repeat the same valuable lessons over and over again, and how much they don't go crazy when it takes you ten years to start exhibiting signs of having been listening.

The past few years, I think I've finally started to understand and appreciate the enormity of my family's love for me. I've started thinking of the right way to give it back, starting thanking them for their help, started accepting my share of the chores, started to participate as an adult in my family. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can start making up for all the time I spent being stupid and making mistakes that broke their hearts and drove them nuts.

But the cool thing about family is, it's not really about those things. The amazing thing about family is, they really mean it when they say "I love you no matter what."

Even if the "what" in question is all the dogs, the speeding tickets, the laundry I never did, the dishwasher I never emptied, the phone calls I never returned and the chores I willfully ignored, the bounced checks and maxed-out cards, and who could forget the FORGERY?

saint valentine in rehab

Instead of writing a long sappy post that would make you either squeal or vomit depending on your romantic predelictions, I've changed pH's dress and further banned myself from mentioning my relationship with Stuart or my newly-minted marriage. Consider today's layout change my junkie fix with romance and don't you dare complain or I'll post one of those doozies you're all so sick of.

Instead, today's pH is going to be an ode to non romantic love. Stay tuned. And pass me that box of Godiva.

second hand

In our continuing quest for two decent nighttables that will hold all of our books and mugs and eyeglasses and lamps and alarm clocks, Stuart and I stopped in to a place called Furniture Market on Astoria Boulevard, right where it makes a V with Newtown Avenue. After twenty minutes of looking at the major, useful pieces of furniture and not finding those shabby-chic bedstands of our very dreams, we got a little punchdrunk on knick knacks, tschotkes, and thing-a-ma-whatsits. Oh, and the who-za-ma-doodles.

I poked through the old Vivitars, Kodak Instamatics, and camera brands long since defunct. We saw an ashtray shaped like a coffin and I "oohed" over a swinging mahogany bassinet, just to mentally appease a Jen that wasn't there. Stuart spotted a 1980's gaming system I've never even heard of. There was a cassette tape of Lawrence Welk Sings The Classics, stuck among the wall-eyed dolls and dingy plush toys. It was a little creepy.

I picked up a device that looked like a cross between an old fashioned hospital blood pressure machine and something you'd use to home your robot.
Krissa: "Do we NEED this?"
Stuart: "What IS it?"
Krissa: "Look at this stuff... isn't it neat?"
Stuart: "Oh NO you don't."

I kept humming it, all through the store.

There's something about second-hand furniture stores. Is it because each item, no matter how useless or hideous, once had a history with someone? There are canes hanging from the ceiling that other old Astorians had used to hobble down the street, walking slowly in front of another young woman like me. There are telephones that, in the mid-70's, were the height of modernity. There are coffee service sets that births were announced over, neighbors were gossiped about, and hard decisions were made. It's history, living in objects that are asking for another chance at life.

And then there's the bargain scavenger in all of us. Especially those of us with a shopping gene. I found myself digging through the accessories, training my well-accustomed eye, hoping to spot a gem that surely, the old proprietors couldn't possibly know the value of, like perhaps an old Gucci handbag, or a vintage Mary Quant hat, or even something from the heyday of the great New York department stores, like Bonwit and Teller or Sealfon's. We, those hardened shoppers, charge forward on the assumption that our lexicon of intrinsic value is more finely-tuned than the guy that slaps the pricetag on some box of purses or hats or shoes. Sometimes it works. This box didn't even have a gem, much less an outrageously lowly-priced gem.

The other funny thing about furniture adoption stores is the books they use to decorate the shelves and sometimes bring in a penny or two. A valuable thing to know about books is: just because the spine is old doesn't make it a classic.

"Think Smarter, Speak Better?" Stuart read aloud, as his curly head cocks sideways in the universal language of shelf-scanning. I ran my finger along the spines of about twenty attractively-packaged and vintage Reader's Digest Books. Charmingly old. Just as bad as they were when new.

It reminds me of that scene in The Birdcage where the books on their remodeled apartment shelves are all old and smart-looking, and up close they're just old Nancy Drew mysteries.

When we finally stolled into the late afternoon sunshine, I'd forgotten what we went in there for in the first place. Oh, right. Nighttables. Still, there was something refreshing about the clutter of tattered armchairs, splintering formica-topped modernist dressers, tables piled high with somewhat desperate china and lamps and popcorn machines, and the ugly paintings leaning against every available wall. If nothing else, it makes the entrance into our neat, well-appointed apartment feel even more like coming home. It felt good to look at the things we own, the things we chose and cherish.

Things that, in a few decades, will serve as someone else's second hand junk.

shall we blog?

I'm going to write down everything that's been going on. In a very Dear Diary blogpost sort of way. Bear with me. If I don't do it this way, I won't blog, and I know you want me to blog, don't you?

This week has been all food and rushing, until last night. On Saturday, in the beautiful warm afternoon, Stuart and I took a nice long run along the East River that finished with us deciding to have comfort food for dinner - baked beans, cheese on toast, introducing Stuart to the glory of tater tots, and cheap beer. Our superbowl watching happened down in Brooklyn with the Tribe, and while it was good to see everyone, I felt so out-of-sorts that night as to almost be unreal. I didn't even feel like the person in my body, much less someone anyone would want to talk to. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with friends and be quiet, but superbowls and funny commercials and great friends did warm the tiny corner of my soul that wasn't given over to moribund whining.

My father's birthday was Wednesday night, his sixty-fifth. For all my dad and I quarreled when I was a sullen loud-mouthed teen (and we did, with such memorable interactions as "money doesn't grow on trees" and "DUH"), he's one of my favourite people in the world. For someone that so many people percieve as intimidatingly quiet or abrupt, my dad is one of the most easily-pleased, humble people. Him and my mom arrived at 5:45, and Stuart and I had just started cooking the dinner I'd been obsessively planning for three solid days. Even though I was running around like a maniac trying to make this perfect dinner for him, and Mom was calmly and efficiently trying to help Stuart help me (who was already trying to calmly and efficiently help me, the saint)... Dad just sat down and turned on the Simpson's. He enjoyed the meal, even though he has a long-standing dislike of mashed potatoes which I'd forgotten about when I'd planned a menu of herb-butter roasted chicken and marscapone and vermouth-roasted-garlic mashed potatoes. That's my dad. He's the best.

So, incidentally, is my mother. You wouldn't even believe what she did but I left the photographic evidence at home so I'll have to just tell you - she made tons and tons of Ball Jars full of my favourite sauces and fillings for casseroles and pasta dishes, and put labels on them that say "Mom's Own!" and the cooking/preparing instructions. It's almost unbelievable - there are about twenty in our freezer right now. She just amazes me with her kindness and helpfulness and the wonderful thing is, she does it all to make OUR lives easier.

And then Thursday came around, and I was in a great mood all day because work was progressing quickly and we had a decadent evening of Fawlty Towers and Nothing Else Especially Not Cleaning Or Cooking planned, and then I found out about Mike. Which was surreal and terrible and shocking and it's still making me sad at little intervals of the day but mostly, it made me rush home to Stuart and hug him really hard at random points almost all evening, because life really is so very precious. How very special are we, for just a moment, to be part of life's eternal rhyme.

And so tonight, after mentioning that Mike had seen the movie at one of my favourite theatres in New York, Stuart asked me if I wanted to go on a proper date, with a proper gentleman, to a romantic movie. Alas, it's not at the same theatre as Mike saw it at. But it's in one of my favourite New York neighborhoods, and there'll be a stop at Dylan's Candy Bar for some yogurt covered pretzels that my date will buy for me, and we'll share a popcorn, and it makes me think, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So this weekend, with Jen moving and another Saturday run planned and Deb's engagement party and brunch with the PWSWM and a FreshDirect delivery ... this weekend is just going to be about life. Life, and love.

Have a wonderful day, all of you. And hug your loved ones a lot.

I'm not sure why I'm even posting this. Perhaps because blogging is the medium that brought some of these people into my life, so blogging is what I do when life takes one away. I had the honor to drink and laugh with Mike Wolf at this July's BABB, and to email infrequently with him. He passed away suddenly yesterday. When I found out, I just stared at my computer screen because inside the box in front of me, it's both startlingly surreal and then, heartbreakingly real. Unreal when I see his last bouncy, funny, just-like-Mike post, and then heartbreaking when I think about Lady Crumpet, Daniella, Ken, and Paul, and everyone else that knew him better than I did and love him very much.

I guess I have to tear myself away from the computer now, stop staring blankly at the screen wondering what the HELL, what it MEANS, what my puny heart and hands can do to help. I guess I should go home now.

Mike will most certainly, most deservedly, most achingly be missed.

baloney

It doesn't really matter WHY I burst into tears at my office (because believe me, before you start leaving sympathetic comments, you have no idea HOW many times a month I burst into tears at my office) but what matters is that I crawled under my desk and leaned on my ancient G3 tower to cry in peace, and I think I encountered half a sandwich under there that had morphed into some POWERFUL OVERLOAD OF THE BENT PAPERCLIPS AND PEN CAPS and I swear it was blinking menacingly at me while scuttling sideways in the shadows, AMASSING ITS REJECTED OFFICE SUPPLY MINIONS, and while I wanted to get a good cry out of the whole thing, I was a little too afraid, so I bucked up and stopped my nancy-pants whimpering and here I am, in the freedom of daylight and logic and sandwiches that don't become sentient and plot your grisly demise.

I know there's a moral here but I'm seriously at a loss as to what it is.

Simply Put, Indeed

See:

As a society, we recognize that the decision of whether and whom to marry is life-transforming. It is a unique expression of a private bond and profound love between a couple, and a life dream shared by many in our culture. It is also society's most significant public proclamation of commitment to another person for life.

With marriage comes not only legal and financial benefits, but also the supportive community of family and friends who witness and celebrate a couple's
devotion to one another, at the time of their wedding, and through the anniversaries that follow. Simply put, marriage is viewed by society as the utmost expression of a couple’s commitment and love. Plaintiffs may now seek this ultimate expression through a civil marriage.

See Also:

It is hereby ADJUDGED and DECLARED that the words "husband”, "wife", groom" and "bride", as they appear in the relevant sections of the Domestic
Relations Law are and shall be construed to mean "spouse", and all personal pronouns, as they appear in the relevant sections of the Domestic Relations Law, are and shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women; it is further ORDERED that defendant [City Clerk Victor Robles] is permanently enjoined from denying a marriage license to any couple, solely on the ground that the two
persons in that couple are of the same sex.

See also:
Lambda Legal's site for their indepth press release on today's monumental Hernandez v. Robles ruling, and more importantly, to download Judge Doris Ling-Cohan's full decision and read every single word.

"Simply put," she said. Simply put, indeed. Bravo, Your Honor.

Le Quiche d'Hiboux

Are you trying to up your snob quotient? Is there just not enough savoury pie in your life? Do you need a really good reason to buy that lovely Le Creuset pie dish? Do you not know what to serve at brunch, which is not quite breakfast, not quite lunch, but comes with cantaloupe?

Then it's high time I revealed my Fabulous Quiche Recipe. I'd link to the site except I have absolutely no recollection where I got it, and the recipe card is long vanished from my collection. So I shall have to recite it from memory, with my own flair for distracting commentary provided free of charge. Ladies? Gentlemen? Start your mixers.

For the filling, you'll need:

3 large eggs
10-12 fl. oz. of Whole Evaporated Milk (depends on the can size)
1 medium onion
roughly 1/2 pound of thick-cut bacon (about 10 strips)
2 cups of swiss cheese (shred it yourself, don't buy the shredded bag)

For the crust, you'll need:

Betty Crocker pie crust mix* and a dash of brandy.

*I'm serious. Look, you can make yourself a whole complicated pie crust from scratch, if you want. Roll it, freeze it, etc etc. But the thing about this quiche is, it's the kind of thing you effortlessly whip up in the morning, almost without planning it. So my suggestion is, use the Betty Crocker pie crust mix. Instead of the 1/3 cup of water, make that half-water, half-brandy. That makes the crust flakier. And instead of roller-pinning it out, just mush it together with your hands (in a BOWL, you dirty thing) and tear off little chunks, laying it in the pie dish piece by piece. Make sure it's seamless, but puckered and uneven. This gives a crunchier, flakier bottom. That pie crust, by the way, comes all the way to the RIM of the pie dish and then some.

To make the perfect quiche, you should probably have gone out carousing to some snappy club the night before, but a romantic jet trip to Paris won't be ignored. Whatever you did last night, make sure it was smashingly fun. Then proceed to:

1. Wake up a little earlier than you normally would on a Sunday. Slide your arm/leg out from under/over the delectable young charmer you usually sleep with/have just slept with for the first time (legal note: delectable young charmer not guaranteed with quiche). Make sure they don't wake up, but leave a glass of orange juice and about ten Advil on their night table. Chances are, they'll need it.

2. Enjoy your early-morning walk to the store. Yes, we know that early morning for you means "any time before 3". Enjoy it anyway. You're young(ish), have a full set of working appendages, and your clever brain. Plus, some random girl on the internet in New York loves you enough to share her ultra-special quiche recipe with you.

3. Pick up all the necessary ingredients and pay for it in the legal tender of your nation. We at pH do not condone shoplifting for quiche.

4. When you get home, first and foremost prepare the pie crust. See above for reasons you shouldn't be too adventurous and make it from scratch. When the pie dish has been properly lined with pie crust, set that aside and preheat your oven to 375.

5. Chop the onion finely. If you have one, give it a quick run in the food processor. You don't want them too big - the word "diced" isn't out of place here. Dice the onions. While you're at it, slice the rashes of bacon into roughly 2 inch pieces, and grate out two cups of swiss cheese on a LARGE shred-setting on your grater. Now your ingredients are all chopped/diced/grated and in neat little bowls. That is, if you cook as systematically as we do here at pH. Which we heartily recommend that you do. This is called "being prepared", and you'll find any good girl scout knows how.

6. Throw the bacon into a non-stick frying pan on medium-high heat and pour yourself some coffee or tea. Feel free to substitute "coffee" or "tea" with "whiskey" or "champagne". When the bacon is starting to make its own grease, throw the onions in there with it. Turn to medium heat, until the onions have browned and the bacon is ALMOST crispy. That'll be about 5-7 minutes, in which you...

7. Crack three eggs in a bowl, and beat them, adding the shaken-before-opened evaporated milk. Here's where you can salt-and-pepper your quiche. We at pH, being snobs of the highest order, rather insist you use fresh-grated pepper and grated sea salt. But we'll politely look the other way if you don't. Set this mix aside. You'll want to give it another quick whisk before adding it to the quiche.

8. When the bacon and onions are suitably browned and near-crispy, take them off the heat. Now comes the quiche-making part. You're going to put down about half the cheese, at the bottom of the pie dish. Now you're going to add about half the bacon/onions (LIFT them out of the frying pan with a spatula or holed-spoon, don't put the grease in your quiche). Repeat again with the rest of the cheese, then the rest of the bacon. This way everything is nice and even. Gently pour the egg/milk mixture over the bacon/cheese, and slowly slide into the oven. Don't spill it everywhere or Mommie Dearest will yell at you, "THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS."

9. Bake for roughly an hour, or until the surface is nicely browned and a toothpick comes out clean. The top of your quiche should feel spongy and it should smell fantastic.

10. Serve to your delectable bed-mate and a gaggle of your dear friends, some of whom you may have met last night and are sleeping on your couch. A handful of suggested side dishes, which can be whipped up while the quiche bakes, your hangover dissipates, and your friends arrive/wake up: rosemary and olive-oil roasted baby red potatoes, cous-cous or pine-nut rice, a walnut arugula salad, or steamed broccoli covered in parmesan. At different brunches, we at pH have served our marvellous quiche with ALL these sides, to delightful acclaim and praise.

There. Quiche, in ten easy steps. Last of all, DO NOT FORGET THE ALCOHOL. For what is brunch without alcohol? It's like New York without Woody Allen, an England without her Queen, Japan without her geishas. We suggest anything that can be made in pitchers: strong bloody mary for winter, a nice fruity sangria for summer. For a slightly more refined alcoholic accompaniment, may we also suggest Bellinis or Kir Royales.

So who's making a quiche this weekend, then?

careful what you don't wish for

So, Biscuit made me do one of those chain-letter list things? Where you write down names of people you know, and song titles, and then the email explains which match up with which. It's supposed to be all "eerie" and "true" but it doesn't work if you're an idiot, like me, and you put down silly songs. Case in point? My "unworkable relationship" song was ISTANBUL, by They Might Be Giants, and my personal philosophy song was Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.

Well, you're supposed to wish for something before you reveal the matches to yourself, and I'm cunning like a fox (that's just been made Professor of Cunning at Oxford University) when it comes to stupid chain letters, so I decided to wish for something really retarded. Like a chinchilla. Chinchillas are retarded. So I wished for one, so that I wouldn't get bamboozled into forwarding this crap to twenty five people just in case I DID get a million dollars, right?

Well, it turns out, the email chain letter PROVIDED for people like me. It said, if I don't forward it, I'll get the OPPOSITE of my wish.

Which has left me rolling in the aisles for about ten minutes, trying to imagine what the goddamned OPPOSITE of a CHINCHILLA is.

A bear? A wooly mammoth? A really ugly guy with pimples all over his face and a penchant for serial murder?

Anything else ENORMOUS AND/OR UNCUTE!?

I'm sort of terrified now.

corollary

IF

i wasn't spending all day every day flipping between my phone, my email, my contact list, my rolodex, and thirty pages of notes on 100 different people while trying to not accidentally stab myself in the eye with the pencil I keep precariously tucking behind my ear

AND IF

that didn't make it impossible to hold a coherent thought beyond the 30 second phone conversations and repetitive email exchanges I've been having with 100 different people

AND IF

I had anything interesting to say to you at all about anything that wasn't related to 100 photographers and collectors and writers and agents and studio execs and editors and their egos

THEN

I'd blog

BUT

I'm not one of those awesome people (I'm looking at you, Jen) that can be busy at work and still find a way to blog

WHICH

doesn't bode well for my blogging continuity if I ever do anything serious like go back to school or have a baby

SO

I'm not entirely sure why you're here

BUT

I'm sure as hell glad you are

AND

you can say hi and tell me that I'm crap for putting so many blank lines in a post as to make it look REAL

BUT

you'd win far more favor in my heart by offering me another job cookies.