Nightmare on Metro North

I’s been a vewy vewy bad blogger – sorry buddies! My massive whirlwind of a vaca is totes to blame. I promise to be more persistent now that I’m back! Here’s a nice long one for yas.

The theme of today’s bloggie hadn’t so much as crossed my mind 48 hours ago. But I should have known. Of course I should have known. I Secret-ed disaster to myself.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Ooooh la la Connecticut! My oh my Rhode Island! Wahoo, yipeeeee Cape Cod! Such an incredible week with ridiculously amazing people. Alas (I think part of me was positively off my rocker for even thinking this), I was kinda looking forward coming back to the city.

My lovely lady friends, Ri and Michelle, have found themselves some brand new digs in the EVills. Being the magnanimous/ stupendously-outrageously-indebted friend that I am (they helped me move last year – yep that's my old apartamento on moving day to the right), I offered to help them paint it.

Sure, I was pretty burnt out after my Tour de New England, but I opted to take the 8:30 am train Tuesday morning for optimal painting time.

Big.

Effing.

MISTAKE.
If there was ever a Metro North, Wassaic to Grand Central, cataclysmic-Perfect-Storm-of-goddamn-events, this was it. And I....I was in the eye.

Papa P dropped me off around 8:10. He had to go to work and I was perfectly content reading my book that I had no problemo sitting there for 20 minutes.

We left on time and were pulling into Harlem Valley-Wingdale, just twenty-five minutes away, when the train started showing sicky signs. But we made it out of that station. Slowly, yes, chugging along at approximately four-and-a-half miles per hour...then poof. We stopped. The lights went off. The air stopped blowing. The train broke down.

Half an hour went by. Forty-five minutes. An hour. An hour and twenty minutes. Sure, the lackadaisical conductor was updating us with “They’re ahhhhh sending out ahhhh mechanic now.” And “Looks like ahhhhh there’s gonna be ahhhh buses running to Southeast.” And “We’re still ahhhhh waiting to see if they can ahhhhh fix the engine.” And, my favorite, “We’re still ahhhhh waiting here.”

Really? Thanks.
The mechanics couldn’t do jack shit to the stupid electrical engine (clean air be damned, at least diesel engines were dependable!) Gah! And so we sat.

Now let me just say that when I go home to Connecticut, I usually bring one or two bags with me. However, like rabbits, those incestuous couple of bags duplicate and multiply and pretty soon I have four bags, five, to contend with on my trip back to NYC.

Five would have been manageable. I woulda been fine with five, sure. But of course, of COURSE, on this particularly unspecial occasion, I was carrying seven separate bags.

I was flustered, frenzied – yeah, it’s not like I had to get back to go to work but I did have a paint-date obligation to fulfill...and seven goddamn bags to carry.

A new engine came down the tracks and pushed us back 100 feet to the platform. Buses it was! I threw the three heaviest bags over my shoulders, heaved the remainders onto my forearms, and booked it. Booked it as fast as I could with scores of pounds of clothes, perishables, and bags-o-goodies from Targ.

There was a line for the bus but I was, oddly, optimistic. It was somewhat of an unusual experience for me, not being overly anxious. Not being in a particularly huge rush.

That should have been my warning sign. I should have known better...should have seen the ironic foreshadowing, should have realized that they Law of Attraction is not something to be taken lightly.

The bus was full. The nerve. The nerve of Metro North to send one measly coach bus to pick up three – THREE – cars worth of train passengers.

Overtired, overdrinked from the week, overweighed by my bags, overwhelmed, overanxious, overheating (wow, you can really put the word “over” in front of just about anything and it works), my eyes pooled and big, fat crocodile tears spilled over.

I snatched my oversized sunglasses, with some difficulty, out of my purse and called my mom. And, like the twenty-six year old baby that I am, I cried. Yes. Yes, there was snot.

After a few deeps breaths, I got myself together, left my plethora of bags, and went to ask a mechanic what the deal was. Metro North had the impudence to call back that stupid broken train to Harlem Valley-Wingdale, the one we had gotten off of fifteen minutes earlier, to pick up Those Left Behind.

So silly. So atrociously, preposterously silly. WHY COULDN’T THEY JUST BRING US ALL THE WAY TO SOUTHEAST IN THE FIRST PLACE????

Sure, there’s laws about riding on “broken” trains and shit, but whatever. They had a perfectly good engine pushing the train. Why make a girl cry, yo?

About ten of us limped into Southeast station with a “Ha, HA!, you selfish little bus-takers! We win!”, then got on our very own “special” train to take us from Southeast. I felt like a VIP. It was positively amazing...for ten minutes, till I heard them say we had to transfer at North White Plains.

What? WHAT? To compound the idiocy, the illogical whirlwind of nonsensical stupidity, the frustration of train to bus to train to train, we had to take (yet) ANOTHER train from North White Plains to Grand Central.

AND of COURSE it was a goddamn local train stopping at Scarsdale, Tuckahoe, Botanical Gardens – every stupid stop we Wassaic-ers usually bypass. Ugh! Four different trains. Four! When the conductor asked me for my ticket on that last leg, I gave him my best pout-scowl. He saw it was from Wassaic, looked at me, then said, “Just wanted to see where you were coming from. You’re OK.” Really, buddy? As if you’re doing me a favor by not punching out one of the trips on my 10-Trip ticket? How kind. How very generous.

Five hours later, I finally arrived in New York. Goody, goody gosh darn gumdrops.

But what perhaps irked me most about this experience - aside from the neverendingness of it all – was that no one offered to help me with my gazillion heavy ass bags.

“That’s a lot of bags you have for all these trains!” one man had the gumption to say as he picked up his briefcase and squeezed by me. No shcnocky Sherlock.

Oh wait, I lied. Actually a middle-aged man caught my dress bag from falling completely off the seat.

But other than that, not a single finger was lifted. Not one. And my heart sank along with my slumping, weighed down shoulders.

Chivalry, and my love for Metro North (for their dependability, their timeliness), are both, indeed, dead.

Faux Fall

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe summer ends with the Fourth…and those who are Labor Day holdouts.

I, unfortunately, belong to the former school of thought.

Why everyone doesn’t feel that the Fourth is it, I know not. (Especially with those Fashion Gods controlling our every fancy - “Fall Arrivals are HERE!” Umm...it’s still July. Thanks.)
So yeah, I’m generally the pessimistic, gloomy defeatist that everyone (especially Kelly Cobb) yells at when I start complaining how summa is already ova. Wham, bam is practically September!

However, this year I’ve been trying something called optimism on for size. I’ve been reminding myself that I still got lots of vaca left – the entire month of August. Atlantic City! Rhode Island! Cape Cod! I’m really trying to remain fairly upbeat about it.

And yet…my quasi cheerful/cynical nature was caught off guard by Mother Nature the other day when, on my walk to work, I noticed a scattering of leaves on the sidewalk.

Anger bubbled up in my veins and my downcast, lackluster eyes noticed nothing but more dead leaves. And more. And MORE.

Really? Really???

I’m sorry you have bipolar disorder Mama Natch but come on. It’s not autumn yet!!! Why you dropping dried leaves already? As if I need another reminder that we’re spiraling downward toward coldness!
WTFssss???
Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

What I find most puzzling and paradoxical is the fact that it has been a ridiculously wet spring AND “summer” and therefore there should be no reason those stupid leaves have shriveled up and died.

Why they so confused? It’s not your time, buddies!
I know I been complaining lots about air conditioning and back sweat this week, but there have been quite a few days this month that have felt more like October than August.

It’s just downright mean.
The gusty winds, the gloomy skies, the cool temps, the dead leaves everywhere.

I mean, really. Come on.

I guess it’s back to counting the seconds till Mellowcreme Pumpkins, long sweaters, and tall leather boots for this stick in the mud.

Pump Up the Jam Air!

Now it’s fairly funny and not just a little ironic that my AC has been decidedly AC-less.

Perhaps it read my last blog.

I’m so quick to judge though (surprised?) Maybe my body is just not used to “summer”. It’s been so unavailable that when the heat finally reared its ugly head, I suppose I just wasn’t ready for it.

To put it plainly: I’ve never sweated so much in my entire life as I have these past couple of weeks. Vulgar, but true.

It’s disgusting!
If I could click out a couple hundred sticks of soft solid antiperspirant and take a bath in it, I would.

For reals though, I think my air conditioner heard that I was talking shit about its brethren and decided to not do its job properly.

What’s up with that? Either there’s too much AC or not enough. Never a happy medium.

And lately mine has been the latter.

I left it on last night while I was out for the evening (unheaaard of...again: I hate you ConEd!)

Alllllll I wanted after a long day of working/cooking/laundering/cleaning then going out in this stinky, soupy, sweaty heat was come home to a nice cool apartamento. But no.

Drafts from the subway grates blow cooler than my AC.

When I got home – can you guess? – MY APARTMENT WAS STILL HOT.

I’ve mentioned the size of my apartment many a time. So we all know that it ain’t that big. That’s why I don’t understand why oh why oh why it has such a difficult time keeping cool.

Why are you dysfunctional, AC? Why don't you get it? Why do you insist on punishing me? You've got enough BTUs to do a stand up job! Stop being selfish and needy and wanting more!

It’s an evil, ne’er-do-well of a technological temperature system. Like the wood stove in “Home Alone”.

And I…I’ve had to endure the unthinkable – I’ve learned to sleep without so much as a SHEET covering me. How crazy is that??

Come on AC! Pump Up the Air!

Spittin' AC's

Ahhh. Summertime. And the livin’s easy.

Well, at least there’s been a week or so of summertime. And my livin has certainly been easy - what, between my days off and my gym’s pool. Throw some Billie/Miles/Nina/Ella/Louis on the iPod and wham bam, thank you ma’am, I’s in heaven.

Heaven isn’t always a pretty, pretty picture though. Sometimes there’s melting snowman makeup faces and dripping popsicle back sweat.

No, no. No one likes a sweat ball.

And that, my friends, is why God invented air conditioning.

Who doesn’t love them some AC? It’s the best invention...well...since fire I suppose.

When summer hits, we all sacrifice our paychecks to the ConEd gods to keep our AC alive. Who can sleep in the heat? Who can eat in the heat? Who can LIVE in the heat?

No. Hot apartments just aren’t acceptable.

However, with the refreshing cold air, so too comes the not-so-refreshing drops of water.

My GOD, as if we city-dwellers don’t have it bad enough.

Ugh! Rain pouring so hard from the sky it seems like the world is going to end. Muddy, mucky, stinky street soup flopping up the backs of our legs, staining our white dresses. Crazy cab drivers splashing puddles all over us.

Noooooo. We have to have all sorts of Chinese water torture thrown our way.

It’s happened to everyone. And if it hasn’t happened to you, then you’re one lucky SOB.

There’s nothing worse than getting spit on by wayward, unruly, RUDE air conditioners. OK, well there are worse things but still...it’s so unfair!
Is it raining? AGAIN??

Was that bird shit?

Did someone just hock a loogie out the window?

Is someone pissing off the fire escape??
Oh no. No, no. It’s just a stupid selfish air conditioner who’s so mad that it’s working overtime, it just has to spit on you.

As if!

I suppose (realistically) that it's impossible not to encounter drippy air conditioners. Especially in this humid, soupy city. But come onnnnn inventors!! Why can’t you come up with a dripless AC unit? Why can’t you create a catch-all spit collector?

Bleh!

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.)