last day

Erm, I guess you can see I wasn't all that crazy about nablopomo.

More tomorrow. Busy snuggling nano.

in case you missed autumn where you are

Jen, I'm looking at you.

quick, quick

What sort of vegetables does one dip into a cheese fondue?

socializing

One of my favorite things about having nano in our life (other than, say, his rollicking adorability) is the whole dog/park-socializing thing. Who knew so many people in my neighborhood were friendly? I didn't, not until I started dragging a ten-pound ball of cute around on a red leash.

We've met an elderly chihuahua dame with speckled fur like a palomino; she wears pearls around her neck and nano is be-smitten with her. We've met a big old boxer/pit mix named Maddie who's gentle as a lamb with nano. We've met two labs named Marlowe and Beckham and their athletic owners, one of whom is in law school. We've met Kenzie, an extremely adorable Shepherd/collie puppy with enormous paws that spent quality time on nano's head.

Of all nano's shynesses, and they are legion, other dogs are not amongst them. He spent most of Thanksgiving weekend politely keeping a three-foot berth from my incredibly patient family, all of whom are good with dogs. He's put up heroic resistance to most of our house guests and everyone on the street who literally cannot help crouch down and coo at his extreme cuteness. I explained to a friend that I suspect to nano, we are all like the Empire State Building, and when we crouch down and think we're making ourselves less intimidating, what we're actually doing is mimicking a controlled demolition of the Empire State Building.

But nano is good with other dogs. And I am good with other humans. So when we meet fellow park-goers, there's this wonderful little repartee where I socialize with the human and nano exchanges butt-sniffing protocols with the dogs.

I'm grateful for that. Not the butt-sniffing per se, but feeling like I'm part of my neighborhood, thanks to the little ball of cute on the end of the red leash.

flotsam

Here it is again, another evening winding inexorably until midnight, and me whining that I have nothing to blo for napomo. Today I worked for over ten hours! Today projects bested me and deadlines fuddled me! Today, Stuart had the day off and updated me throughout the day on nano, and the cute things he did.

Today I ate little reese's peanut butter cups to stay sane while I shuffled and re-shuffled the week's priorities to make room for bigger, loomier projects. While I sat there I thought about the turkey, and my family, and the crunchy yellow leaves in the park.

There isn't a moral here. Shoo! Sometimes a crappy day is just a crappy day, not a box of chocolates. However, I will award special points to 9pm onwards, where Stuart made sure there was dinner (reheated Brazilian from mom, thanks mom!) and a glass of wine and magazines and an adorable dog waiting for me, and then we watched a scary Doctor Who episode and then I curled up with some long-overdue Grey's Anatomy. Oh, Shonda Rhimes! But also, oh, Stuart! You are both awesome.

(Stuart is awesomer, obvs.)

late night haiku

drinks and dinner, late.
nano, he has to pee, bad.
responsibility!

me!me!

For Thanksgiving weekend when no one is reading blogs anyway, a rare meme! Mayumi, god love you, this is the only one I'm doing! But I'm doing it. And I'm not tagging anyone. Kids! Getoffamylawn etc.

So! The Seven Things You Didn't Know But Probably Did Because I've Probably Resorted to This Cheap Blogging Trick Before Meme:

1. My heart catches every time I change lanes, no matter how many times I've checked the blind spot.

2. I eat nutella with the tiniest coffee spoon I can find. If none is available, I actually eat it with the handle of a spoon so I can take tiny, tiny amounts at a time. This never actually stops me from snarfing a third of the jar in one sitting.

3. Quiet people make me exceedingly nervous. They are surely judging me!

4. I bite my fingers. No, not my nail. The cuticle and surrounding area to the nail. It's disgusting! Let's never talk about it again.

5. I sleep like a chalk-outlined dead body. Stuart would like me to point out that I also pivot in place by launching my body into the air and turning. With a pillow between my knees. This makes him insane.

6. I laugh really hard when I fall down and get really quiet when I'm angry and rail against stupid grammar mistakes while using LOLcatspeak and, well, and other contradictory things as well. I also enjoy being a hypocrite, like mocking a trend until I decide I like it or making fun of something and then coveting it ravenously (hello, iPhone). Somehow, all these things bother other people more than they bother me since I see no reason to be consistent about the small stuff. Please! I'm already consistent on a macro level.

7. I thought Larry King's name was Larry King Live until I was about 10 years old. I never realized polar bears were so named because they are found at the pole or that Slytherin is also, like, slithering. I like to think that my brain is too busy with serious issues to figure these things out. Other people disagree.

Bonus Thing! Apparently, re-reading the last two, 8. I disagree with other people a lot.

autumn walks

Nano would like to put a bid in for the pack to move to Providence, immediately, so that he can spend all his available time in this park. Which, you know, is right across the street. Need he say more?

No, he thinks not.

for which we give thanks

Today I am grateful:

For a family full of immigrants around the table, enjoying the all-American splendor.

For words from far-flung friends.

For crisp sunny walks with my pack.

For nano and his ever-widening circle of confidence.

For my mother and father and brother and all the ways they made me, and continue to inform me.

For quality sappy television on this most awesome of holidays.

For sharing Stuart's sense of humor so acutely. Junk mail pinatas! The Britney/Barcardi Float! Spinging!

(For Stuart, obvs.)

For turkey and stuffing and different potatoes and two kinds of dessert and the tryptophantasticness of it all.

For missing the dog show every year because of cooking, and for knowing it will be on the next day.

For a holiday without too much fanfare and just enough food and family to go around.

For you! and YOU! And heck, even you.

homecoming

Coming to Rhode Island is always a peculiar brand of wonderful. I love my parents' home with the sort of delight that only comes after your family has lived in dozens of homes for the past few decades and you know the true meaning of settling down.

It's also - did you know this? - beautiful here. The crispness of the clean air, the wide boulevards, the riotous fall colors, the sweet wooden houses. Providence's East Side fulfills every single inch of my rigid aesthetic boundaries. It is very simply beautiful without making any challenging demands, like New York does. New York asks you to love it in spite of the grime and the grit and the damage. My parents' neighborhood embraces you with pastel wood patios and original details and ginko biloba trees.

My parents' house is all familiar furniture, airy doorways, bright glass windows. Everything is a memento, everything smells fresh and clean and in its right place. There are tiny bite marks on the coffee table - I put them there when I was a toddler. There is a painting I made, hanging in my father's study, of a palomino horse with no dimensionality. I remember the smell of the book from which I copied the horse. In my ten-year-old mind, I named her Isabella. I was sort of obsessed with horses.

I love New York. But when we come to Rhode Island, I can see some watercolor-dripped future where we live in a tiny vibrant city in an old, wide-streeted neighborhood with wooden houses and ginko biloba trees and a PT Cruiser.

I'm not sure if I've made my peace with the conflicts between loving the city and relishing this easier, prettier and slower life. Maybe one day, I will. But I guess it's Thanksgiving and we spent all day cooking in the kitchen and introducing our dog to a new place and it's been such a good day, so I'll just be thankful for both worlds.

suck/rock vol 2

Suck:

Being cranky all day and then realizing it was ladyreasons.

Crappy internet at home.

Being stuck in traffic for seven hours from New York to Rhode Island.

Having to re-interpret nablopomo to mean "If I haven't gone to bed yet and it's 1 AM, then it's STILL THE TWENTIETH."

Rock:

Nano exceeding all our expectations about his car-riding abilities by napping happily on the backseat with Stuart the whole way here.

My mom (I have missed her!) and her delicious soup when we finally arrived.

My dad and his patience with the "project of a dog" he met today.

A new coat.

Stuart (always).

cozy evening

Sometimes you're too busy living life to blog it.

And by living life, I mean, Cuban takeout and Doctor Who on the couch with my two favorite lads.

this weekend has gone to the dogs

Our internet connection at home has been inconsistent and spotty all weekend, but it manned up enough for me to give you this gem. Brought to you by the same snuggle in yesterday's photo. Warning, cute paws-to-face moment might cause squeeing.

moment of zen

Someone asked me last night why I would ever want a dog.

I think this pretty much sums it up.

you can't always get what you waaa-aaant

You know what I truly love?

Yoga.

I know. Do you hate me now? Did you just lump me with people that wear too many natural fibers and talk about their chakras? Hey! People that wear natural fibers and talk about their chakras! Please don't be offended and egg me, seriously, I love hippies. I'm just, you know, not a hippie in any way. I recycle a lot and buy organic dog food and that's the full extent of my hippie-ness.

Except for yoga. I love yoga! And don't tell me I'd love pilates although I'm sure I would for its exercise-y properties but that's not why I love yoga. I love yoga because most of the time, I am wound rather tightly and running on pressure steam. [Let me interject by pointing out that I am not high-strung. My dog is high-strung. Thoroughbreds are high-strung. People who cannot deal with the tiniest of setbacks and collapse under pressure are high-strung. I do not collapse under anything, in fact, I excel under pressure. So be ye warned about calling me high-strung as I have a friend who did so and I still haven't entirely forgiven that friend although I mostly have. I am just tightly wound, IS ALL.]

Wow, that was a long aside. Where was I? Oh, right, yoga. I love yoga because it is the one thing that makes me take long, slow breaths and feel like I am walking on fluffy rainbow clouds for several hours afterwards. In college, when I first discovered yoga, I was living with my best friend Beth. One evening after a session, we were having dinner or doing homework, or just hanging out, and she repeatedly asked me if I was alright. I finally asked WHY she was asking, and she looked at me, baffled, and said, "well... you're just so.. QUIET."

See, I was insulted by that because for one, Beth is basically my sister, and two, she was right. I feel centered and calm and loosely-knit after yoga. I don't usually feel centered and calm and loosely-knit unless it is a weekend and I have done my writing that week and the house is clean and we're lounging on the couch and there's coffee and maybe even some french bread and cheese for breakfast, that's an example of when I feel like I do after yoga. There are others of course, most of them involving picnics or wood fires or Buffy.

So I don't like yoga for exercise. I don't even like yoga that is slanted towards exercise, at gyms with mirrors and perky teachers. I want the fullblown hippie effect - the bright clean mirror-less space, the music, the incense, all that talk about my SPIRIT and my MIND/BODY connection. I love every single touchy-feely minute of it.

Of course, I can't afford yoga in New York. Which is where I like to lay the blame when I'm full of anxiety nerves and negative toxins, because obviously, if I did yoga, I would be floating around all the time and also very rich and successful, right? Heck, I might even get taller! SHUT UP I MIGHT.

This post has no point. It's Friday. I'm a bundle of nerves. I thought I'd let you know that if I did regular yoga, I wouldn't be. The end.

suck/rock vol 1

Things that have sucked today:

Walking the full mile back from our new vet in the pouring rain because two buses stopped for me and then WOULDN'T LET ME ON because I didn't have a carrier, even though I was holding my ten pound dog tightly in my arms. Hi, MTA Bus Driver? The bus driver on the way TO the vet's office let me onboard with just a warning to get a carrier next time, so it's obviously not a rule-break that's going to get you immolated. I'm narrowing my eyes especially at the one driver who wouldn't even open the doors to let me explain that please, my dog was shivering violently from the rain and I was soaked and I only needed to go three more avenue blocks. Human decency! What's it good for.

Coughing up $60 for Advantix instead of Frontline. Man, next time I'm going for frontline and mosquitos be damned.

nano yelping with fear when the anal glands were expressed (such a nice vague word for it) directly after the the rectal thermometer was deployed. Not a good day for nano's ass, I think.

Getting mud and rain all over my new coat from repeatedly picking up nano to cross the street as drivers on that side of my neighborhood obviously hate dogs and want to run them over in crosswalks.

Hey! Guys on the corner of Fort Hamilton and 36th! When you "bark" at my dog and I spin around and ask you to please not do that and you continue to do it? You're being assholes! Which, I mean, was probably your goal when you woke up this morning.

Hitting five successive delis to use the ATM and call a car service only to find three non-working ATMs and two ATM-less delis and then being only 3 avenue blocks from home after all, so instead of a nice warm cab, finishing the trek with the heaviest bout of rain yet.

Did I mention walking in the rain? For a mile? That sucked.

Things that have rocked today:

The two McDonald's employees who were totally cool with me, drenched, carrying in my drenched dog to get a cup of tea and a snack and even encouraged me to sit in one of the booths and try to wait out the rain. McDonald's employees, you are both cool when it comes to bending the rules for one unhappy-looking lady and her tiny well-behaved dog. Unlike MTA employees.

The coat IS machine-washable, after all.

Getting home and cozying up on the couch with nano. Yay for still being his beloved human even though having one's anal glands expressed is, to put it mildly, unpleasant.

The breathtakingly beautiful foliage of Green-wood Cemetery which I would have missed completely without today's walk.

Good, strong, empire-building Tetley tea. By the potful. On the couch. With good moody music (Rilo Kiley, Rufus, Sufjan Stevens, oh I am an indie tool on rainy days) on the ipod.

Generally being alive, healthy and happy, as I kept reminding myself when the billionth truck drove by on Fort Hamilton Parkway and splashed me and my dog uncaringly. Healthy! Happy! Alive!

I think that just about balances out nicely with maybe a small victory in the Rock column.

sevitzed

Does "Sevitz arrived at my house" have the same effect as "the dog ate my homework"?

Blog-friends are so 2002, I know, but I still love his visits.

movie review haiku

Hmm, the Brothers Grimm;
Terry, those special effects?
Worse than the accents.

mister bridgett

I told him he should wear hoodies under his winter coat more often. Because mwrowrr!

today with nano

Today in the park, nano met two chihuahuas, two pomeranians, a pekinese, a boxer, and a lab, and he loved each and every one of them. He bounded gaily up to them, exchanged butt sniffings, even let one owner stroke under his chin.

Today he also spent some quality time with Suma, the giant schnauzer puppy in our building. Suma loves nano. Suma loves everything, really, she is the sweetest dog you've ever met but to nano, she must look like a horse breathing fire and wielding doom. Probably because she likes to pat him on the head with her massive paws. I think nano lives in terror of Suma which is a pity because Suma wants to be his bride. But today, nano tolerated Suma's sniffles and whines for a few minutes until his tail went down and he begged asylum between my feet.

Today he also discovered the big rope-ball we bought him before he came home which terrified the stuffing out of him three weeks ago. The rope-ball, it is the size of his head, no lie, but he still ran after it and carried it proudly in his mouth, even dropping it at my feet because fetch and drop is the one thing nano is learning quickly. He let us sleep in until 10:30 and then, when it was glaringly apparent how badly he had to pee, he showed us by sitting on his wee pad. And although he peed a little when I snapped the leash on, at least it was on the wee pad!

Today he pranced around the apartment at our feet and brought toys for us to throw and really enjoyed every treat he got for every good bold little moment. He happily flopped on the floor of the bedroom while we tidied and snuggled on the couch while we drank coffee. He didn't shirk any corner on his walks, or start at a single leaf. He even jumped through piles of them. When we walked up to the big stone gates of the park, he started running forward and wagging his tail so hard, the whole back end shook.

Today, when we came home from an errands trip into the city, he behaved as though he didn't recognize us, slinking behind the armchair and quivering. But we gave him space and left him a rawhide in his bed and after 15 minutes he was calm enough for us to be-sweater and be-leash him and head out happily for a walk.

Today was a very good day for nano and his humans.

milestones

I realized today that of all the things with which nano is still struggling, walks are not one of them. I can say with some confidence that nano is the valedictorian of walks.

Only marginally related: our dog eats mini-Greenies in under three minutes. Is there some sort of award for this out there?

autumn in brooklyn

Late afternoon, Sunset Park

opening the floor

It's Friday and we went to an intensely loud and awesome concert last night and I am duly wiped out today. So! Who wants to offer me advice on the following topics?

1. Excited peeing is the current challenge in the Brigouras household. nano has apparently decided that lo! he is too good for the weepad, he don't need no stinking weepad! Which is great, hurrah for quickly understanding the awesomeness of walks, nano. Except that when we get home, little dude, you get so excited that the minute we start to snap on a leash or collar you tinkle tinkle little star all over whatever it is you happen to be sitting on. The books tell us not to yell at you like we would if you were, say, CHOOSING to pee on our floor. The behaviorist said your bladder is strained and you need a midday walker in addition to your two small morning walks and two longer evening walks which I, as your human, think is counterproductive as you're not quite ready for a total stranger to come into the house and snap a leash on you and drag you outside and besides, your humans are not made of money, nano, you'd better get that in your head before you start coveting blinged-out sweaters. Besides, if your bladder is all that strained, why not use the weepad?

So I am doing what we all do in times of crisis. I am turning to the learned internets and soliciting their opinions. Do not be judgy or rude to me as I will cry and unicorns will fade into blackness, man. Have you ever dealt with an excited pee-er?

2. Knitters! I am a humble rookie in your ranks but I've just discovered that making scarves from pima cotton instead of wool prevents that eventual letdown I feel when I actually FINISH a scarf and then find that I don't actually like wearing wool scarves all that much. What can I say, I'm a cashmere snob. But pima cotton is a delight to work with and I just made the loveliest scarf for myself and I'd like to make one for a friend with a new skein, but here's the thing. I want to know how to seed stitch or rib and every time I try and follow the instructions I find, my work looks like a freaking mess. How do you switch from a purl to a knit in the same row?! I don't understand. And do you start from the cast-on, or do you cast on a single purl or knit row and THEN start switchbacking? I don't get it. Help me, frenzied knitters of the internet.

See? Instant interactive content brought on by probing questions, with minimal work by your exhausted webmistress. What can I say, I never promised you a rose garden. Petit Hiboux: Testing Your Patience and Abusing Your Kindness since 2002.

conversa interruptus

I boarded a jam-packed F train at 14th to find myself jammed right next to an adorable HipsterCouple. The girl, with long lashes and a babyish pout, is looking up at this blue eyed guy with a chiseled jaw who is categorically not looking back at her.

For a second I think, maybe this isn't actually HipsterCouple at all. Maybe she's just a gawking stranger thrown closer than normally acceptable to some eye candy. But no, she leans in a little a tilts her chin back in an attempt to catch his eyes. Eyes which are sweeping back and forth almost sullenly along the car, even meeting my indecent staring as I try and suss out the connection.

So I let my eyes linger on the poster behind his head, drooping my eyelids just lazily enough to seem like I'm actually staring at nothing. It's amazing the capacity New Yorkers have to Not Stare at someone and still not miss a move. And I don't have to be an expert non-starer to get the vibe that HipsterBoyfriend is one pissed dude.

Girlfriend is still swaying near him, looking up, looking away, looking up again. She's not even holding on to anything, I think, maybe she's hoping if she stumbles he'll reach out? Looking up again, she speaks.

"It was only eighty-nine dollars."

Still without looking, Boyfriend manages to acknowledge she spoke. Mostly by rolling his eyes. He's rolling his eyes above her head! What was eighty-nine dollars? Is it this eighty-nine dollars the source of this odd non-verbal fight? Why is this the only thing she says? Does this explain his frostiness, or is it just a complete non-sequitur that nonetheless makes sense to the boyfriend?

I cast about wildly in my brain for a logical explanation. She spent too much on a purse? She borrowed money from his wallet? She's explaining an expensive dinner that an ex-boyfriend paid for? WHAT'S only eighty-nine dollars?! Or, god forbid, are they not in a fight at all? Is this just the way this prettyboy behaves, like, all the time?

I wait in vain for a response. About 90 seconds later, when I get off the train, he still hasn't answered. Sometimes riding the subway in New York tells you too much about the total strangers around you. And sometimes, tantalizingly, it tells too little.

you suck!

Here are some things that are annoying about the subway. And by "things that are annoying about" I mean "people that are annoying on". I notice them all the more clearly because other than these sucky people I really enjoy my daily subway rides. So sucky people, I just want to clear the air.

Lady who hugs and/or leans on the entire pole in the center of a crowded car! No one else can get their hands on the pole if you are snuggling with it. Are you lonely? Wait I don't care. There are four people standing right next to you and they are all involuntarily subway-surfing on their way home from work (which is hell on their knees) because you think that pole is your own personal subway pole, like maybe the MTA woke up one day and thought you might be the Queen. You suck!

Dude sitting next to me who is falling asleep! You have your head in your hands and your elbows on your knee and you slump towards me every three seconds and then jerk yourself away, all still asleep. A second ago, you actually leaned your elbow ON MY KNEE. Then when I not-so-subtly shove you off me with my shoulder, you wake up and give me the stinkeye. Dude, it's really annoying to have someone leaning on you and then jerking away every three seconds. Besides, you've probably missed your stop. I'll bet you actually live in the Bronx. You suck!

Creepy guy who stares at me from across the car and then turns to your friend to comment on something and then turns back to me with your friend this time. WTF! I am sitting here reading, I am not pole-dancing for you. I say pole-dancing because if I were pole-dancing for you, well, I feel like you'd probably feel entitled to stare at me, discuss me with your friend, and then stare at me in unison. Compare "pole-dancing" to "reading on public transport" and you will see that the courtesy standards for each are subtly but importantly different. There is no need to comment on whatever you're commenting on to your friend and then encouraging him to look at me and reply to your comment, whatever your comment is, and I'm offended even though I can't hear you because I'm quite sure it is not the modern cut of my herringbone coat or the stylish design of my shoes. Get some tact! You suck!

Teenagers on the subway who are engaging in your not-at-all subtle mating rituals and sitting on each other and then holding conversations across the subway car! You, there, girl, stop pulling your hair back so tight and why are you wearing fake nails you are all of thirteen years old where is your mother. Guy with the pants, guy, why are your pants falling off? Why are you hunched over and using foul language? The world is your oyster and you are all acting like douchebags. This is not your private subway car and even thought you are all amused by each others' antics, no one else is, do you see any of these taxpaying hard-working adults laughing at your antics? No. Teenagers, gettoffamylawn. You suck!

Oh, Hispanic middle-aged guys who get onto the train with your ponchos and your wide crinkly smiles and your instruments and your jangly harmonious Spanish ballads and sing for everyone, you do NOT suck. You can stay.

adventures in ownership

Hark! I have to apologize for something. Sometime in the last few smitten weeks, I may or may not have referred to myself as a dog parent.

I may even - this is in the spirit of total brash honesty, mind, NO JUDGIES - have referred to myself as mommy around the dog. Usually in reference to how you're driving mommy to drink.

But I've made the conscious effort to stop, because I'm not nano's mother. I'm his human. He's my dog, and I'm his human.

Oddly, not actually being his mother doesn't mean I'm not feeling these weird twinges of parental anxiety. I may not be nano's mother, but this is totally a very abbreviated, lower-stakes version of bringing home a helpless shrieking baby. Look, before we brought nano home, it took me forty five minutes of highly obnoxious snooze alarm to open a single eye, and trust me, I opened that one eye begrudgingly. Now, with nano sleeping happily in his little donut bed next to our bed, all it takes is one single toenail to hit the hardwood and I'm up like a shot. I'm talking about a nine pound bundle of fur taking a deep breath, and I'm awake! I'm awake! Don't pee! Does he look like he's going to pee? Nano are you going to pee?

It's also manifesting itself in the mistakes I'm making. I guess I always assumed that if the dog posed challenges, and by challenges I mean peeing on my original hardwood floors when I put on his harness after work, I'd have to control my anger at the dog. This seems normal, right? Dog pees = owner is angry with dog.

But no. I'm not angry with nano. I feel terrible, like I let him down. I feel like it's my fault, and to tell the truth, it is. We're still learning all the ways to trust each other in this house but in the meanwhile, every time I inadvertently scare him or do something that challenges his tenuous bladder control, it's my fault! I'm ruining the dog! He's going to end up flunking his GED and working at Hollywood Video! He'll date wildly appropriate older women and wear two types of plaid! He'll -

- okay, you see what I'm saying about non-parenting this dog. And yes, I am keeping some grip on reality; I'm not ruining the dog. It's just, I don't speak dog! I am his human, and he's a dog, and until a babelfish is introduced into this relationship, I'm trying to make life smooth for a creature who can't explain to me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. How can I tell nano that Stuart and I are reading everything we can get our hands on about shyness and submissiveness and excitement peeing? How can I translate "We'll get this right, dude, eventually" into Dog?

I told friends, when we came home with nano, that I think getting this shy, skittish little dog is the Universe's way to teach me patience, teach me to look at the world from a slightly less brash point of view. Maybe nano is here to teach me some humility.

So maybe if he teaches me like what life is like from seven inches off the ground, I can teach him to stop peeing on my couch. Hope springs eternal.

remember, remember

Krissa: It's the fifth of November!
Krissa:And yet another year goes by where we didn't plan a bonfire.
Stuart: Silly wife. Bonfires don't need planning.
Stuart: Just a book of matches.
Stuart: And an open mind.

with apologies to the catpeople

But no, I am not quite finished posting endless pictures of my dog.

Happy Sunday.

there's a first time for everything

I was reminded in my comments that I've never really blogged about how we ended up homeowners in Brooklyn. So here you go, Jaimie!

I don't know exactly what prompted Stuart and me to start house-hunting. I think it was partly dog-sitting for Dexter in Brooklyn and being so central to so many of our favorite places. Partly, my parents had been gently, gently, coaxing us into thinking about it, and by gently I mean, mom started emailing me realtor.com listings to consider.

But as soon as the new year ramped up, we almost inexplicably found ourselves seriously looking to buy an apartment. I think, ideally, we would have bought one in Astoria. But there were so few available there - the market in Astoria tended towards multi-family homes that make up so much of the neighborhood, and then a lot of new construction. And frankly, walking past some of those sites every day for four years told me everything I needed to know about my friendly neighborhood contractors and their practices.

So in the evenings of January, instead of vegging in front of Buffy, we started talking about what we were looking for in an apartment, what we thought we could afford (read: NOT Trendy Brooklyn), and what our absolute parameters were. And then, suddenly, we started seeing apartments - lots of them - that actually fit our realistic expectations. What are the odds? I don't know. I like to think we blundered into a good opening in the market, but what do I know about the MARKET?

Here's where it gets awesome. About a week into relentless online searches and calling realtors to ask about properties, my mom emailed us an apartment in Sunset Park that she saw on realtors.com. It sounded promising, promising enough to see in person anyway. We weren't feeling picky about that first weekend's roster of visits; we thought we just needed to get our feet wet in the home-viewing department.

So on a bone-chilling Saturday in late January, I met Stuart in Chelsea after a haircut and we took the subway to Sunset Park, for our very first apartment viewing. The walk down 39th street towards the park is a little industrial, and I was already ruling this out. We met the realtor in front of a tall, sandy-beige building and started the four flights of climb.

And the first thing I saw was the kitchen. The second thing I saw was the french doors. I think, a little bit, I was already sold. The realtor wasn't very good with a camera and her pictures on the site did the charm no justice at all. It was perfect.

We wandered around dazed by the smooth new tiles and the gleaming bathroom and the huge windows and the smooth eggshell antique-cream walls. This apartment? Was in our price range - a monthly mortgage costing even less than our monthly rent? With the smallest maintenance we'd seen yet?

We left the building stunned. We walked through the charming residential streets around Sunset Park itself and wondered if we'd lost our minds. How could we possibly want the very first apartment we'd seen? But Stuart and I are world-class experts at trusting our gut instincts, and our gut instinct was ringing like a clear bell. We loved it.

So we decided that night that we'd look at as many apartments as possible in a week. And by as many, I mean that Stuart and I viewed no less than twenty apartments in seven days. We literally saw nearly everything in our price range and some things outside of it. There were some nice apartments and some shit holes. And every single place we saw, we compared to what we were already calling "ours".

So a week later, we were back in Sunset Park with MK, the realtor. And we sat on the floor and talked about furniture, and commutes, and we just knew. We made an offer that night, a couple numbers less than the asking price, and were accepted immediately. Four months, two panic attacks over legal issues, and two (!!) coop approval meetings later, we moved in. We viewed the apartment on January 13th. We signed our papers on May 18th and moved in on the 19th.

I don't think this is normal, before anyone points out to me how stupidly lucky we were. We were stupidly lucky, dude. We hit the market the very moment sellers started to get anxious and interest rates started to dip. We had my incredibly real-estate-savvy parents advising us, and a doggedly awesome mortgage broker. We got lucky.

But we also took one look at this place and ourselves and were smart enough to see how well the two matched. And we've got a lot of experience at diving in to something when we know it's right.

So that's how we ended up in Brooklyn.

in memoriam

Today I received an email from my alma mater telling me the sad news that my political science teacher had passed away a few days ago.

I took three classes with Ray - a lecture in the first semester of my junior year and two seminars after that. At Sarah Lawrence, we didn't have a lot of lectures, and they were something the teachers resisted a little. Even though they were limited to around 50 students, a lot of faculty felt that they didn't fit in with the spirit of small interactive classes the school is known for. I took four different semesters of lectures at SLC, the required minimum, and Ray's was the only one that grabbed me and made me think almost as much as the seminars did. Mostly because of Ray.

I remember one moment in his lecture where he was talking about the socialist revolution and its failures in the U.S. and he looked up at all his students and pretty much threw his hands in the air, and said something to the effect of, "boy, I sure am wasting my breath on you people." He often accused us of being trend-commies, revolutionaries in name only, just trying on social justice until our real lives kicked in. In a lot of ways, Ray was a bitter, angry tirade of a man.

I realize this doesn't sound very respectful. It's perhaps not, but it is how he was. He was a relentless man, committed even through gritted teeth to explaining the other side of the coin to his students, the alternatives to the way he saw his country headed. I didn't agree with him very often but he was an immensely intelligent and diverse teacher. We read material in his class from every side of the spectrum, even if he was tearing down an argument minutes after explaining it.

Ray and I didn't see eye to eye, politically - I'm far closer to the center than he is, although still comfortably on the left. And I guess I do mean comfortable, because I never sensed he was. Which was impressive, in a way. It was impressive the way he kept his arms wrapped around ideals that would have been easier to let fall by the wayside, especially at affluent Sarah Lawrence in affluent Westchester. He was impressed by action, any action. He told me once that he held me in higher regard than my more socially-left-leaning classmates because I ran the paper with such ... well, dogged insanity. I guess he saw the same dogged insanity he knew in himself, and saw that I was pursuing passionately something that I cared about, something I knew would make a difference no matter how bitter it sometimes made me.

Ray showed me the importance of staying attached to the things you're passionate about, even when they jade you. I guess it never occurred to me to tell him that, because it rarely occurs to us to tell the teachers in our lives that their lessons are well-remembered. We take their wisdom and make our lives better for it and perhaps we get sort of far down a road they helped build for us without turning around and recognizing their contribution. It hits me hard since so many of my professors at SLC - for whatever else I can criticize about the school - were inspirations to me. I think perhaps I should tell them.

ERROR!

This is like going to the front of the room on your second day of school and having to admit that yes, your dog DID eat your homework, you swear.

I wish I could blame this on nano and say my dog ate my power cord, but I don't see a single chew mark on the thing and besides, nano's too busy scarfing down rawhides to bother with a boring tasteless white cord!

So no, I have no excuse, except that I sat down with fresh pencils and pocket protectors and a slide rule with my first day outfit on (not really, I am wearing scotty dog pyjamas right now) to write my first nablopomo post and LO! my laptop was on 17% power so I went to the kitchen where the power cord was plugged in and moved it to the living room.

And plugged it in.

And noticed, huh, no soothing orange light! No confident powering-up on my battery icon!

So I'm on Stuart's computer which, people, somehow, is designed for a tall person. I am not a tall person. So me and my iBook are going to the genius bar for a diagnosis.

Does this count as a post? It'd better. And speaking of better, I'll be that tomorrow.