Posts from January, 2010
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Year of the Tiger
I never understood why the Chinese would want a snake or a pig or a rabbit or rat or ox to serve as the annual animal representative, but this year I think it’s a lovely thing to have a mascot. It’s time to bite back in the year of the tiger.
Tony is totally going to help me out this year — “You’re Grrrrreat!”
This is my year. New decade, new spirit. (Don’t call it a comeback) Chew off big projects. Finish up some old nibbles. Get a little violent in my pursuit of happiness. (I don’t mean violent-violent — just aggressive. And not aggressive-aggressive — just fierce. And not fierce like I’m going to bite you, except maybe I will.)
It’s going to be my year of home improvement, from the micro on up. Files will be organized. Emails returned. Surfaces polished. We’ll pack up our life into boxes and move across the bridge to leafy Brooklyn. We’re going to make a home within those new walls, and make friends with a whole new community. And ride bikes to the park. We’ll install cabinets and paint surfaces and grout tiles. We’ll make closets and organize wardrobes and make sure we like to wear everything in them. We’ll color-organize our books and hang pretty things on our walls, and welcome breezes in through our windows. We’ll plant basil and tomatoes and parsley, and I’ll cook tasty things and we’ll be grateful for everything we have.
I’m embarking on a new business, creating at the same time a slightly and drastically different life, and planning to focus on improving everything the word home means to me. My city, my block, my family, my friendships, my marriage, my professional life, my creative pursuits, and the walls within which all those things reside.
Like it or not, home is where your stuff is. But I’m learning that stuff means more than the junk in your closets and the television on your wall.
GRRRRRRREAT!
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Losing Weight in Seven Simple Steps
1. Decide it’s time to leave your current place, and begin your Apartment Search eight weeks prior to the end of your current lease.
2. Rush around the entire fucking city because you have a self-set deadline of just-before-Christmas, when you’re setting off for a Exhausting Big Fun Roadtrip.
3. Return home, exhausted from said trip, to find that the place you had your heart set on won’t actually work, due to the technicalities of an agreement and the practical difficulties of interacting with…… humans. Start your search all over again, only this time just four weeks before the end of your current lease (which most NYers call normal, but which I call insane).
4. See a bunch of crappy apartments, getting your hopes up with each one that the end of this fine torture may be imminent. Wander the streets in 5 degree weather, waiting out in the cold for always-late brokers to show you said crappy places.
5. Don’t eat anything after Step Two. Immediately expel anything that you do swallow. Rail thin yet? I thought so.
6. Break down after Day Nine of the search. Buy yourself an entire cake. Eat it.
7. Sorry, did I say Losing Weight? I meant Losing Weight And Then Putting On A Bunch More, bitches. Here we go.
More when we have a place to live again…