Under (Lousy) Pressure

After the horrific cab incident and the perfectly terrifying turd-spawn scrub-down (yes, that means you have to read my last entry), I just needed to rinse off.

I was sweaty and sticky and all I wanted was a shower.

Actually, all I wanted was an outdoor Cape Cod shower. At my friend Sarah's house.

There’s nothing quite like showering outside. It’s risqué being au natural, yet lovely being in the midst of nature. Hearing the birds chip. Seeing the squirrels leaping around the trees. The warmth of the sun on your face, the cool air.

But arguably my most favorite part of that particular outdoor shower was the pressure. The pressure!Sarah thought it was quite funny how I raved about the pressure. What an odd thing to be obsessed with. Easy for her to judge me, though. She's not the one with the poor pressure.

Brat!

It’s seriously something I’ve always taken for granted. I didn’t realize how much good water pressure meant to me until it was taken away. My last few apartments all had great pressure – this one…not so much.

Don’t get me wrong – I think ya’ll know how much I love my apartment. And one of my most favorite parts about the apartment is my bathroom.

The sheer size of it (it’s fairly large for NYC). Three huge, HUGE mirrored cabinets (that are filled to the brim, obviously). Fancy Hollywood-ish light bulbs. The cutest toilet seat in the world.


The one glitch in my perfect oasis of a bathroom is the shower head.

It sucks.

The worst water pressure in the universe! Wimpy, woosey, half-assed streams of water just kind of…fall…out of the pipe.

It’s like a dozen or so guys got together for a pissing contest. And no one won because they were all weak.

OK, that one’s kinda gross for a simile about showering, but you catch my drift.

I don’t understand why there isn’t a shower head regulation. Why don’t they all have good pressure?

Perhaps Janet Leigh was really screaming because the shower pressure was just terrible!

Ugh. It’s so not fair. It’s so stupid. It leaves shampoo residue in your hair and soap in hard to reach places. You don’t get that Dove-soap-squeaky-clean-feeling with poor pressure.

There has to be a better way! Or else I’m moving to Cape Cod so I can use Sarah’s shower every single day.

Not-So-Sweet Homecoming

As much as I hate returning from vacation – especially a Cape Cod vacation – there’s something about coming home to New York City that always makes me smile.

Generally it happens while driving by Madison Square Park or Washington Square Park. The windows of the cab are rolled down. The pink summer sun is glinting off behemoth buildings. The lazy inhabitants are lounging around enjoying the outdoors, enjoying life.
Hell yeah, this magnificently overpopulated city is pure, unadulterated, concrete paradise.

And hell yeah, most of the time (I’d say 99.99%), the thought of returning to my 12 x 14 apartment initiates an involuntary grin.

Most of the time.

Last night, however, was that .01%. Last night was a nightmare.

Generally when I’m traveling from Connecticut I carry no less than six bags. It’s quite mind boggling how I never bring anything home but always return with 50 pounds of goodies.

And so, I rarely don’t take a cab. Last night was no exception.
My bag sitch was fairly bearable (coulda subway-ed it), but I was just plain exhausted after driving for four hours and training for two. So I hopped in a cab. And I was confused when, instead of heading downtown, the cabbie headed up. We passed 42nd Street; 44th Street; 46th Street.

Finally I got up the nerve to say, “Umm...where are you going? It’s Sullivan and West 3rd.”

Unintelligible mumbles ensued with lots of “Noooooo miss, nooooooo.” I told him to go down Broadway and get on 5th Ave but no. He wanted to take the FDR. Really? Really?? The FDR? I’m sorry, I live on the west side, not the east side. REALLY????
But I bit my tongue. This was the part that made me smile, my homecoming. I rolled down the window and looked out at this marvelous city that is my home. And the meter creeped up. $9. $11. Avenue D – Avenue D – $15.

He took Houston and went right on Lafayette. I know the non-grid streets of the Village are far too confusing for some people. Cab drivers, however, have no excuse. They should not be confused. They should know.

He hesitated on 3rd and I politely barked, “Turn left…please.” $17. My blood was boiling at this point. I was passively aggressively sighing, hoping he would notice the bitchy undertones of the heavy breaths.
Just call me Passive Aggressive Parry – “I’m sorry, but this is kind of ridiculous. Cab rides from Grand Central are $9. Not $17!” He knew he was in the wrong and, magnanimous cabbie that he is, said he would charge $2 less and stopped the meter. I said fine.

In the end, I gave him $15 – so unlike me, but no tip for him! He must have had another major I-messed-up moment because he tried to hand me $3 back. I told him to keep it and walked away. He tooted and I turned to see him waving the bucks in the window, mouthing “Thank you.”

FDR fiasco behind me, I trudged up my never-ending stairs. Opened the door, turned on the lights, went into the bathroom. And of course – Of COURSE there was a goddamn ginormous cockroach right there on the floor – dead.

I lost it. I screamed. Tears filled my eyes. I whined. I shouted. I winced. Why oh why oh why was this homecoming so horrific? I’d had such a lovely, lovely Cape-cation and I return home to rotten cabbies and rotten bugs rotting away in my bathroom.

Not only was the miserable swine belly-up, but it looked like it spawned a turd of baby bugs or something.

Ew, it was either a egg-nugget or a for-real poop (omg just looked it up, it WAS an egg, GROSS). And some disgusting powder crap.
UGH. It was so so so so so so so disgusting. I flushed the bug, and the turd spawn, swept n’ scrubbed the entire perimeter of my apartment, and set out twelve fresh traps.

Deeesguuuusssstinnnng.

Lesson learned? Homecoming, you ain’t always so sweet.

Picture (NOT) Perfect

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. Hell, we all still do it.

Yet whhhhhy do we insist on consistently embarrassing ourselves? Why do we pose the shit out of pictures?

The second someone brings out a camera, the game faces go on. The picture taker flips some invisible switch and immediately the picture takees light up, faces beaming, grins plastered on, like some horrendific misplaced dolls from Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride.

There are few things in life funnier than watching people readying themselves for and posing in a picture.

Belieeeeeve me: I have been one of those people. No doubt I’ll continue to be one of those people. But – and here’s the but – at least I’ve come to realize how silly it is.

This fascination/obsession with having the perfect picture is perfectly hilarious.

Do I have any food in my teeth?

How does my hair look?

Wait, let me put lipgloss on!

As if the picture-perfect-prep isn’t bad enough, in this age of digitized photographs there’s then the ability to view instantly. And, of course, delete.

Redo. Delete. Redo.

My arm looks fat, redo!

Ew, let me stand in the middle, retake!

Gross, my eye is half closed, take another.
Redoredoredoredoredoredoredo.

Enough already!

It’s a picture. One picture. A single minnow in the vast damn ocean of frozen images.

There are tons of photos out there – and undoubtedly there will be tons more in your life. I alone have 1,150 tagged of me on Facebook. OUTRAGEOUS.

Those are precious momentitos lost posing. Hair fixing. Gloss reapplying. Deleting and redoing.

Take, for instance, this video of me and my fam on Thanksgiving (sorry, FB won't let me embed). We wasted an entire eight seconds looking pretty, posing for the cam. Let’s just figure out a tad of how time consuming this ridiculousness is:

Eight seconds times 1,150 pictures is two and a half hours.

Two and a half HOURS of your life wasted on picture posing.

Gah!

Stop wasting time prettifying. Bring on the candids!!

Living à la Suitcase

I’m venturing to the lovely Cape of Cod (best potato chips in the land!) tomorrow so there shan’t be any bloggies for the remainder of the week. Hopefully I’ll have nothing to complain about, seeing as how this will be my third vacation in almost as many weeks.

But unfortunately with traveling, so comes packing. And there’s nothing worse in the travel-related arena (besides flight delays and air turbulence) than packing.

I’m certainly no pro. Fo sho. In fact, I’m a fairly horrific packer. I don’t have Kelly Cobb’s ability to plan outfits so far in advance.

Nor do I have Mary Rita’s uncanny foresight to bring along a different pair of shoes for each and every moment of the day.

And I surely do not, not, not have Shannon Solheim’s undoubted knack for the science of a suitcase. I’m sure her packed luggage looks like a mini California closet.

I hate picking out what makeup to bring. Eye shadows, lip glosses, eyeliners. One small bag is just such a far, far cry from my three-drawered-Sterilite full-o-MAC n’ Nars.

And the jewelry...the JEWELRY. Ugh! Last night I spent an hour - one hour - trying to untangle one of my necklaces. Which, in the end, I decided not to bring.

(However, I will say that recently I came up with the brilliant innovation to seal the clasps of my beloved necklaces into the zipper of a Ziploc. Keeps them from getting tangled! Amaaaaazing!)

But - and this is the queen of all queens, the biggest pain in the old arse that I dread about living à la suitcase: the wrinkles.

Why do clothes have to get wrinkled when they’ve been folded nicely in a suitcase? It’s so stupid. It’s so unfair! I can only carry so much wrinkle spray when I’m on the go, hellooooo!!!

(Ew, and why do garments always end up smelling campy, even when you’re not camping? It’s a damp, pervasive scent that is inherent in all suitcases. And I haaaaaaate it. No matter if I’ve worn something or not, I always end up washing the entire contents of my luggage.)

Yes. Packing is a pain in the booty. There is such a fine line between over-packing and bringing enough “in case” clothes and products. Will I need a hair dryer? Or toothpaste? Or shampoo and conditioner? Will I really want to wear dresses every day? How many pairs of jeans?

A well-packed suitcase, in my opinion, should epitomize an apartment in miniature. And, really, who likes carrying their apartment around with them?

Not I.

But still, I’m pretty psyched about Cape Codding it for a long weekend.

Ahoy!

Paper Cuts are PAINFUL!

I’ve always been a very avid reader. Be it Little House on the Prairie or War and Peace, I love nothing more than to get completely lost in a book. That’s why I love my job! Duh.

But there’s one aspect of working in book publishing that I was in no way prepared for.
Das paper cuts.

And boy do I sure get a lot of them. They hurt, yo!

I’m a Klutz (got that? capital K!) Perhaps my big ole body never got used to its size, but I am forever crashing into things, stubbing toes, jamming fingers, whacking my head, tripping over my own two feet.

That’s why, I guess, it comes as no surprise that I attract paper cuts like human blood attracts vampires.

It’s simply unavoidable.

Whether I’m flipping through papers, turning the page of a book, ripping open an envelope, or filing a folder, those stupid pulpy fibers always find a way of slicing my finger open.

Never in a million trillion would I have guessed that a small little sliver of a wound could be so terribly painful. The stinging, the stinging!!

It’s like a needle being dragged back and forth below your skin. I’m wincing just thinking about it.

And man oh man, as if the paper-family cuts weren’t bad enough, my Klutziness has formed a new acquaintance. Plastic.

I was carrying my groceries home in a reusable Stew Leonard’s bag the other day (good kid!) Of course it was filled to the brim. As I went to shut my door, somehow – I have no idea how…blame it on the c-c-c-c-c-clumsiness – I sliced my elbow on the arugula container.

Really. Really?

And that sucker bled! I actually had to put a band aid on it!

Wamp wamp.

Wish I could ditch that jfkdahga Klutz.

Fruit Fly OUTTA Here!

Now everyone knows – or at least should know – that I have a very adverse reaction to all things creepy crawly. I shan’t go into further details, just read down a few blogs and you’ll see.

But a seemingly harmless little bugger (no pun intended) has really started to bother me as of late.

Yes, Drosophila melanogaster, I loathe thee.

Fruit fly, fruit fly, shoo shoo shooooo!
There just simply isn’t enough room in my teeny apartment (as much as I adore it) for those pesky little pests! My lack of separation between kitchen and bedroom is totes fine...until the fruit flies come a begging.
Seriously. I don’t understand why those pernicious little creatures have to weasel their way into MY apartment.

There are no lackadaisical bananas browning themselves for banana bread. No apples exposing their sweet, waxy skin in a come-hither-esque way. No strawbs or bluebs or rasps bejeweling my counter.

Why? BECAUSE I HAVE NO COUNTER!
Therefore I never, ever leave fruit out. Or food for that matter. No bread, no cheese. No tomatoes. Rarely a glass-o-vino

My abode offers no temptation for those wretched little scoundrels. So why oh WHY do they insist on lumbering lazily around? Especially around mealtimes? How do they know????It must be those ginormous, über vicious, crimson colored eyeballs (so scary!), because I highly doubt they have the olfactory glands of a hound dog. There ain’t no room on that body!

Where do they come from? Perhaps they fly under my door. Maybe my neighbor is a banana bread aficionado and his apartment is ridden with dark brown bananas. And because there's so many of their brethren over there, they fly on over to mine in search of mas bananas.

Or perhaps it’s my Warm Vanilla Sugar (2001, anyone?) hand soap. Or my pomegranate dish soap. Or my other coconut milk hand soap.

Maybe they're totes into peony/tuberose/coconut/Japanese blossom/grapefruit lotion (once a product girl, always a product girl).
But I suppose my one saving grace in this lose/lose situation is the fact that those little shits have a lifespan of ten days.

Hallelujah.

(Please, I beg you - for the sake of my sanity, don’t mention the fact that they lay eggs within the span of that week and a half life cycle. I do not want to think of more baby bugs growing up in my apartment.)