Sunshine is Sickening

You know what? I’m positively sick to death of all this sunshine.

I’m plain old tired of going out for margaritas after work.

If I have to say “On the rocks with salt, please,” one more time, I think I’ll die.

No, I do not want to sit outside and enjoy a “beautiful” sunset at Boat Basin. And sunrises, psshhh, they ugly!

I do not want to sit on the sunny lawn at Gramercy Park and suffer sucking down a Shake from the Shack.

I would not like a burger and fries alongside an ice cold Corona at The Frying Pan.

No thank you Stuy Town Park and your fountain-spritzing-breezearrificness.

No, no, no sun! I’m sick of you making me go outside and face your death-grip-like rays!

I hate you!

I hate you for turning my skin a golden bronze.

I hate you for making my face freckley like I was ten years old.

I hate you for giving my hair blonde highlights.

I hate you for forcing me to walk around in dresses all the time. I miss sweaters and jackets and boots!

I hate you for strong-arming me into donning my Wayfarers. And Aviators. Incessantly.

I hate you for making me swim in pools and lakes and oceans, gross! It’s not OK, you hear?

I hate you stupid sun and all your stupid shining! Just go away! Goddamn you, why you gotta be ruining my summer?!?!

Ugh!

(Here’s hoping reverse psychology works on that gaseous glowing planet know as the sun. And of course, its grey cloud cronies. Assholes.)

Summertime and the Livin's Stressful Easy

Well I think everyone concurs – it hasn’t been a great summa weather-wise so far. (I count summer as Memorial-Labor Day…duh.)

However, if there’s one thing that bugs me MORE THAN THIS STUPID, EFFING RAIN – it’s that summer weekends fill up before Memorial Day even hits. It’s ridiculous! Outrageous! Annoying! Anxiety-inducing!

And yet…and yet…there’s no avoiding it.

It’s practically laughable.
A few of us were sitting around a couple weeks ago, trying to pick a Sunday for some extracurricular activities (the nature of which shan’t be mentioned, I leave it up to your creative little minds…but you should totes be jeals).

There we were, going through the calendars on our iPhones (so gross), and it was positively preposterous how each of us has something to do, somewhere to be, every single weekend.

I do not tell a lie.

It’s so frustrating how you look forward to summatime all year round – especially after this miserable winter/spring – but with every weekend mapped out and no time for spontaneity and leisure, it’s gone in a POOF! Ugh!

Now. I want ya’ll to know that I’m NOT complaining by ANY means. I’m deeply grateful and suuuuper pumped that I’ll be spending a few long weekends in Cape Cod, Charleston, SC, and “down” that most lovely Jersey Shore.

And, of course, let’s not forget about the ole country home in CT where there will be some camping – or should I say “glamping” – trips and boating excursions and shopping jaunts (please, Papa P!!!)

Oh, and I LOOOOOOVE summer hours at work. There really is nothing better than getting out at 12:30 on Friday afternoon.
So no, I’m not bemoaning the busy factor. But rather the fact that there is something to do every single weekend, then summer is over. O-V-E-R. Before it’s even “officially” even begun! 

Wamp wamp. 

Why can’t it be summer all year round? Why do we have to pack a year’s worth of merriment and revelry and debauchery into three short months?
It’s so unfair!!!!!

[Insert snot-dripping sad face.]

If it Ain't Rainin, Don't Jinx it.

Now I know I complain a lot about the weather. But really, how could I not? It’s just so unfair! It seems to rain five days out of every week.

And now the stupid weatherman is saying it’s gonna – you guessed it – rain for the next three days.

Perhaps I should be a weatherman. Or, rather, a weatherwoman (I’m so PC!!) I think it’d be a fairly simple vocation – “Mostly cloudy with a couple of showers and a thunderstorm possible.”
What a tough job, to come up with simple variations of the same exact weather predictions.
Totes ridic.

That’s why it kills me, sticks a dagger in my heart and twists, when I see people holding their open umbrellas when it’s not raining.
Yes, the sky may look threatening. There may have just been a few droplets falling from the clouds. But no, it’s currently sans drizzle – so WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HOLDING AN OPEN UMBRELLA?

It’s like they’re taunting the rain gods or something. It’s outrageous.

Haven’t you people, you faux-rain-umbrella-holders, ever heard that saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

Well, if it ain’t raining, don’t jinx it! Trying to navigate a New York City sidewalk is difficult enough. It gets even more challenging (and über frustrating) when umbrellas are thrown into the mix.

So really people, you’re really going to whip out your stupid black umbrella when it’s not even drizzling????
Please, STOP inviting a downpour with your obnoxious, overeager preparedness. We don’t want it to rain. We hate the rain. So why oh why oh WHY are you tempting Zeus? He’s a selfish a-hole who likes to make us poor commoners woebegone on a seemingly daily basis.

Stop it right now. Stop opening your umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh every g-d time a black cloud appears.

It’s not raining! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Yet.

Stairs are Simply Satanic

Stairs, stairs.
They’re good for your heart.
But the more I climb,
The more I fall apart!

I was never one to run up and down staircases as a means of “working out”. In fact, stairs are pretty much the bane of my existence.

It’s fairly ironic, then, that I am forced to climb up to my fourth floor apartment multiple times a day.
Don't get me wrong, I love my old-school walk up. My building complex has an adorable Melrose Place feel to it. There’s even a small little fountain with turtles and fish chillin (chillin except when Ri feels the need to pick them up)! I would never exchange it for a cookie-cutter doorman/elevator building. Not in a million.

But the stairs...the STAIRS! Perhaps I haterate so much because I insist on running up those steep son of bitches as fast as possible – seriously, why prolong the misery? (No matter how much I amore mi apartamento, I'm still entitled to a good dose of complaining.)

Unfortunately, stairs are everywhere. And have been for millennia. Yes, they’re a good invention (you Machu Pichu peeps so smart! You Great Wall builders so brilliant!)

However, no matter how convenient, they’re still a pain in the ass.

Literally, a pain in the gluteus maximus.

It is a truth universally acknowledged...(a little Austen, anyone?) that if you do not pay attention to your butt, no one else will. Therefore I do, much to my chagrin, force myself to take the stairs when traversing floors in the office, or clambering out from underground Subway stations (which in my mind resemble the gates to Hell).

I know space is limited in New York City, but wouldn’t it be grand if, instead of those upwardly slanting steps of doom and gloom, there were nice sloping inclines – ramps, if you will.

There would be no panting, no sweating, no sore muscles, no swearing. And you’d still be working that derrière!

Stairs are evil incarnate. You fall down them, you get hurt. You climb up them, you get winded. You trip on the way up or down them, you break your wrist. They’re slippery, dirty, dusty, creaky, creepsters.

Can someone get an NYC civil engineer on the phone?

Soggy Ensalada Saga

I’ve loved salads all my life. And salad fixings. Carrots and yellow peppers and cucumbers and grape tomatoes and red onion and feta cheese and artichoke hearts and hearts of palm and salt and pepper croutons and OLIVES. Especially olives!

When I was a wee lass, I used to put black olives on my fingers and gobble them off one by one. My mom was paranoid and dismayed and called my pediatrician when, soon after an olive-eating-extravaganza, she went to change my diaper and...alright well that’s just TMI.
Needless to say, I likey de lettuce deliciousness. Perhaps not as much as Kelly, who used to order salads for dessert. I wouldn’t take salads over sweets. But I do consume their “healthy” scrumptiousness on a daily basis.

So I’ve found it quite troubling as of late that all greens (for the most part), no matter what brand you buy, but especially Earthbound Farms, are gross and soggy and wet and wilty.

I’m quite nostalgic for the good old days when bags and containers came sans condensation. It’s not fair! It’s a given that, these days, bags of romaine and arugula and field greens and spinach and baby romaine are going to contain waterlogged, slimy lettuces because their casings are covered in water droplets.

Am I losing my memory? Well, yes, but for reals, yo! I don’t recall greens ever coming that way. There never used to be precipitation in the packages…and now it’s perpetual. Interminable. Eternal.
You’d think that, in these modern times, soggy lettuce would be an impossibility. I know, I know – the produce is transported in A/C then when it gets out into the hot weather and goes back into the cold, the dew forms. Or, more likely, the lettuce was simply bagged when it was still wet.

But seriously. Come on!
There’s nothing worse than those little red romaine greens that turn brown and slimy and poison the other lettuces with their muddy, mucky ooziness.

Gross!

I’ve tried all the tricks. Wiping the sides of the bags and containers with paper towels. Leaving the paper towels in the packaging to absorb the droplets. Putting them in plastic bags. Storing them in the produce drawer only.
But no matter what, the bags and the plastic containers always, always find a way to perspire. To sweat. And, of course, to drive me crazy.
Sure, I get sick of picking through every single leaf that ends up on my plate, checking for wetness and wiltedness. But there is, unfortunately, no better way.

I suppose I’ll just have to don my Green Goddess cap and come up with an invention that will put an end to the ick factor.
STOP THE SOGGINESS.

Smelly Smoke (à la Campfires)

There are few pleasures in life greater than sitting with friends around a campfire. Making s’mores. Drinking beers. Listening to music.

All is well with the world when you’re tipsy, singing at the top of your lungs, and stuffing you mouth with chocolatey-melted-marshmallow-graham-cracker deliciousness.

That is, of course, until you wake up in the morning REEKING of fire (with a side of headache from the booze and tummy ache from eating fifteen s’mores).
Why does enjoying a nice campfire go hand in hand with stinking like smoke for a week? I’ve had the exceedingly grand opportunity to be present at not one, but TWO campfires in the past few weeks.

One on the rooftop of an apartment on the Lower East Side (ridiculously amazing), and one at my country home.

I don’t know what was up with the flames from the first fire but boy oh boy. Tried washing the stench out of my hair day after day and it JUST WOULDN’T GO AWAY!

Luckily the fire aromas in the country didn’t stick to me like Velcro. Perhaps the wood was different. Or all that open air made the smoke disperse more evenly.

Whatever the case, it is a FACT that bonfires leave ya stinking. It’s so unfortunate! Your hair smells offensive for a least a week – no matter how many bottles of coconut shampoo you go through. Your clothes need to be washed immediately or face ruination. Even your sheets absorb the unbearable, foul, fetid smoke! And that’s just from sleeping on them!


Ugh.

Why can’t there be a better way to enjoy a fire? Why do the vaporous fumes have to be inherent?
Smoke burns your eyes, makes them tear up. It makes you choke and cough (which isn’t good for the ole vocal cords when you’re belting out Kumbaya!) But most importantly, it makes you smell. And it’s not a nice smell!

Can someone please invent smokeless campfires? They would be oh-so-convenient. Life changing, I daresay!

Alas, I suppose that's highly improbable.

At least, at least there is a teense bit of redemption. For friends that frolic around fires together, stink of smoke together.