Mama said there'd be days like this...

Some days, it's enough to make you want to smash your television (that is, if you are prone to rage, like me. And if your television actually belongs to you, not your roommate-- it is not a good idea to smash your roommates belongings... even if both the roommate and the offending property deserve it.)

I mean, when was the last time that you watched Carrie Bradshaw spend her Saturday popping in and out of 3 different Duane Reade's, desperately hoping that one of them would still have that life-altering Spring drug of choice, Claritin? Did she ever have to deal with surly pharmacy employees wondering why you could possibly want the box with the 50% more free (um, gnarly checkout woman, perhaps because I am going to be living off of this stuff for the next 3 months, and I do not have an unlimited income, and I will demand every single free pill that I can get. It's not like you're not gouging me already. And it's not like it's any harder for you to pull that box of the shelf instead of the other one. And finally, I would like to share with you a little saying that we from the midwest hold rather dear, and which this city could sorely stand to embrace: Because the customer is always right! And for that matter, I have every right to ask if you have the $.99 birthday cards. Do I look like I'm made of money? I'm going to wipe that sneer right off your face!) Lucky, lucky Carrie Bradshaw.

Likewise, did our intrepid friend Carrie ever, EVER, devote the remainder of her Saturday to hanging wet laundry around her 3 person, 400 sq. ft. apartment because some nitwit jammed the laundry card machine, leaving her with no way to dry the two soaking loads she had just done. Why, oh why, oh why, can't washing machines take change anymore? Did Carrie ever have to dry her clothes by hanging them off of every surface, chair and doorknob in the apartment, as well as laying them out on her bed (thereby preventing any hope of actually sitting anywhere in the apartment?) No, she did not. Lucky, lucky Carrie.

28 Days

I've finally had an epiphany. I finally figured out why I don't have a man in my life.

It's simple really. In fact, it really should not have taken me this many years of bad nighttime soap opera addiction to get to this point. But that's just it. For my addictions, there's no rehab. And rehab is where, apparently, women go to meet men.

I know. You're all thinking, "Duh."

I mean, how did this escape me? All those years of celebrity tabloid reading- have I learned nothing? All those hours with the OC, 90210, Desperate Housewives, and one day, during a routine re-viewing of Melrose Place, it hits me. I too could meet an alcoholic, sex-addicted yet hot enough to overlook these faults pro football player if I could just get to rehab.

Sorry, Grandma, I know that this is not what you had in mind at Christmas when you sat me down for the annual "When I was your age, I already had a husband and 3 children" speech and you told me to put myself out there. I know that you meant I should attend a singles' dance (do those still exist anywhere on earth outside the pages of "The Rules?") or volunteer at a hospital so I can meet a nice doctor (Clearly Grandma does not watch Grey's Anatomy, or she would know that hospitals are dens of iniquity, not places to meet "nice Christian men.") But I think rehab is the best option for me.

After all, rehab is like adult summer camp, and we all remember how the relationships flourished at summer camp. I myself snared one of Camp Takehee's most eligible sixth-grade boys (of course, if I were smart, I'd have never let him go. Depressingly, those fleeting few weeks probably constituted my last fully functional relationship. Listen up kids! It's all downhill from there!) The close quarters, the forced interaction, the lack of distractions- it's the perfect place to start! And you already have something in common. Sure, it's addiction, but no relationship's perfect.

And to top it all off, you get free time off of work! And it's (in most cases) covered by insurance! Who needs a spa when you can get an all-expenses paid 28 day vacation with plenty of vulnerable men?

So, Sandals Jamaica, cancel my spring reservation. Rehab is clearly the place to be!

The Real Miracle on 34th Street

In my life, I have seen many movies. For the most part, they have not been what are commonly known as "quality" movies. Many have been rather obscure/poorly-made/flat-out lame. However, of all of these, there have been very few that I have truly disliked. One of those? Miracle on 34th Street.

Now, say what you will, I'm not a bad person in general. I think it's nice that kids can believe in Santa, even though I never really did (one of my earliest memories is of me telling my mother that Santa Claus's handwriting looked remarkably like hers. She spun me some story about Santa not having time to address the gifts himself, and I was just like "Yeah, Mom. I was born four years ago, not yesterday.") And Maureen O'Hara is, in general, fantastic. And most movies set in mid-century New York have thriled me. But this one left me, if you'll pardon the pun, considering it's December in the Mid-Atlantic, cold.

I just didn't care. Whine, whine, whine, Santa Claus must be real. Whine, whine, whine some more. I do believe, I do believe. The USPS believes, so it must be true (because the USPS never gets anything wrong. For example, they have not been delivering my upstairs neighbors' mail to me for the last 5 months or anything. They are infallible!) Whatever, little girl. Whatever, happy holiday spirit. Whatever.

And now I find myself emerging from the subway station on 34th Street outside Macy's every morning. At 8 am, I emerge from the ground into the just-spreading light of another cold, cold day, and I think, "You know what the real Miracle on 34th Street is? The real miracle on 34th Street is that so far (knock on wood) I have managed to make it the 5 blocks from the subway to the office every day without being trampled, pick-pocketed, or reduced to yelling at the tourists to get OUT OF THE WAY!" It's just Macy's for crying out loud. You can see one in your local mall back in Des Moines or Tulsa or whatever fly-over state you came from. Look, it's the Empire State Building. Yes, it's tall. And yes, it's lit up for the holidays. Whoopee! Now get your nose out of your Fodor's Guide to NYC and KEEP MOVING. Or I will not be responsible for what I do.

Silver Bells, Silver Bells...

It's Christmas Time in the city! I've been looking forward to this since the day I first dreamed about moving her. Christmas is a magic time in New York City, I was convinced. People rush around with carrier bags from all the best stores, wearing darling, brightly-colored, matching hat and scarf sets with their lovely double-breasted 3/4 length coats and supple leather knee-high boots with heels that never made anyone take a nose dive into a snow bank after slipping on a patch of ice. No matter how many times I found this happening to me back in the midwest, I was certain that New York had some sort of magical force field around it which kept everyone upright no matter how horrendous the weather and the slippery the sidewalks.

Then I moved here and learned that the magical force field had a name. That name? Hollywood.

Sure, it's easy to stay upright when your filming on a soundstage in sunny LA. Oh, wow, yes, I am freezing, but my darling little pink peacoat is plenty warm enough (Don't fall for that one. Some girl in my office showed up convinced that she was going to make it through the winter with just such a coat, because that was what she'd seen on TV. Oh, honey. Much as I'm generally not a good person and don't mind seeing idiots get what's coming to them, she was so earnest, I couldn't let her go. I just pointed her in the direction of the Century 21 winter wear department and tried not to laugh.) Oh gee, look at all this slush on the sidewalk that will never be shoveled or removed, but that won't ruin my shoes or soak the bottom third of my trousers because I have Production Assistants pretty much carrying me around this soundstage to keep me looking just as pretty as a picture!

In real life? I soak my foot in a puddle just leaving my apartment buidling. Great, now my socks are wet, despite the winter-guard I sprayed on my boots (waste of $8.50, right there. Thanks a lot, Duane Reade.) I nearly slip and have to grab the handrail for dear life climbing wet, slushy stairs out of the subway. I walk underneath the ONE tree on Seventh Avenue just as it decides to let loose all of the water droplets that have been building up on its leaves. I stop short to avoid narrowly trampling a group of asian tourists giving the peace sign in front of the Empire State building, and wind up wearing a lovely splash of my morning coffee on the front of my coat (thank goodness it's black! No pretty colors for the smart midwesterner!) By the time I get to the office, I look like I've trudged through Opposite-Day Hell (you know, where everything is reversed and Hell is cold and snowy and full of slushy sidewalks, and fire and brimstone are actually starting to sound pretty nice by comparison.)

And yet I'm supposed to relate to pretty little Carrie Bradshaw in her weird pink tutu and feel camaraderie as she gets splashed by the bus in the opening of SATC? No thanks. I know the truth about those Production Assistants there to help her stay cute. And until I get my own PAs, I'll just continue to say "No thanks, Hollywood, you lying, lying liar."

To Universe, with Love

It's probably a really good thing that I've got nothing against crass consumerism.

I braved the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade this weekend. If I did have anything against crass consumerism, I'd probably have dropped dead. Wave after wave after wave of product placement, advertising characters disguised as children's entertainment, and floats bearing the likes of Dolly Parton. Nothing like kicking the holiday season off with it's true meaning: warbling Christmas carols sung by half-drunk has-beens (seriously, has any singer in their prime ever put out a Christmas CD? Answer: no. Not that this diminishes my love for the Barry Manilow, Jessica Simpson, or most especially, Amy Grant Christmas CDs. I'm just stating the facts) and massive consumer debt brought on by product placement and children's entertainment.

Sounds like the hap-hap-happiest holiday since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny [bleep!] Kaye!

But did any of this dim my enjoyment? Not really. Not even the crowds and the tourists could dampen my spirits (and it was especially entertaining to watch this one extremely loud, obnoxious tourist woman being escorted away from the parade by the police after pushing one of them in an effort to secure a better viewing location for the two sniveling brats she was hauling along. The good officer did not take kindly to this. Myself and my fellow parade watchers clapped. The rude woman spit. Yes, honey, clearly that is going to help your case. Enjoy your time in the tank! See you next Thanksgiving!)

I can't explain why I liked it. Is it that no amount of viewing on the old black and white TV in my grandparents' basemetn can prepare one for the real life spectacle of this parade? Is it that barring the above mentioned crazy woman, there's a feeling of camraderie so rarely felt between New Yorkers and out-of-towners, as for a brief few hours we share sidewalk space without rancor? Is it simply that after years and years of being so far from all of it, but knowing how badly I wanted to be in the thick of it, I finally was? That feeling that maybe my seven-year-old self had not been crazy when I told my grandfather that someday I'd be in that crowd waving at the camera, and suddenly, it was true? It was one of those hit-me-in-the-face, hey-I-really-live-in-the-city, whoa-this-pretty-cool moments.

So for that moment, that opportunity, for all the triumphs and obstacles, pain and joy, and for every bittersweet, ambiguous, exciting, life-defining moment that led to that one, today, I am giving thanks.

The Brita Pitcher Runneth Over...

When living with roommates in this day and age, the Brita pitcher is the new toilet seat. Wow, that's a delightful image, isn't it?

Now, other than my brothers and my dad, I've only lived with other women. And my brothers and my dad are, all in all (dare I compliment them?) pretty well-mannered. So the toilet seat troubles have not been much of an issue in my life. But if I understand the controversy so many of my peers are embroiled in, I can only imagine that it must be something like the altercations of the Brita pitcher.

I mean, really, how hard is it to refill the Brita? If you drink it, fill it. It's common sense. And yet, refilling the Brita is one of those chores to be avoided at all costs. Much like trying to see how much trash you can balance on top of the already full trash bag and daring your roommates to chicken out first and change the bin liner, the Brita pitcher game begins as soon as the water is cold enough to start drinking. You want to catch the Brita pitcher about 2 hours after someone else went to the trouble of refilling it. Any sooner than that, and the water isn't cold and therefore, isn't good, especially if you and your roommates are also engaging in a game of chicken over who will actually replace the filter in the pitcher, which really just means that the filter hasn't been replaced in 6 months and is really not doing anything to improve the taste or quality of the water anymore, but you continue to believe that it is and it's entirely psycho-pseumatic. But if you can happen upon the pitcher in that magical full and cold state, it's like nirvana. The next trick is to pour just enough of the water into your water bottle that you get as much as possible added to your personal stash (no one's going to open your used water bottle and steal the water from there) but still leave enough in the pitcher that you're not "That bitch who left 2 tablespoons of water in the pitcher so she didn't have to refill it." It's like that game your little sister used to play with the orange juice so that she didn't have to be the one to rinse out the carton and take it to the recycling bin. You want to look like you are far above the Macchiavellian mind games of the Brita pitcher.

But let's face it, you're not. I'm not. And I'm above most things, so if I'm not above it, than you are definitely not above it. And so, like the eternal toilet seat battle between husbands and wives, roommates since the dawn of time have been engaged in political battles of wills over the Brita pitcher, bitter enough to make the most hardened game theorist wince. And until we all finally achieve the Upper West Side doorman one-bedroom that we've been dreaming of (and the corresponding salary, which will enable us to spring for one of those nice Brita filters that attach directly to the faucet, thereby rendering any pitcher politics moot, not that there would be any pitcher politics, unless maybe you had a friend over to stay on your sofabed, because there would be NO roommates in the dream pad on the Central Park West) we will continue to ponder the unanswerable question: just how much water left in the pitcher is enough win the game?

It's Times Like These, a Girl Could Use a Dog...

In a city of eight million people, how is it possible that I feel this alone?

Am I living my life in an M. Night Shyamalan movie? Does no one see or hear me because I'm actually dead? Because I'm an alien? Because it's actually the year 3092 and I'm living in a weird, Disney-theme-park-like version of the year 2007, just like in that teen fiction novel that Lili and I both read on vacation that one year when we were like 12 and that old M. Night totally ripped off in the making of the very dull "The Village?" (the name of which he also totally stole from my frequent musings on my hometown... Mr. S, I'm still waiting for my royalty check!)

There's a severe lack of human interaction in my days. My work involves staring silently at a computer for 16-18 hours a day, broken up only by conference calls, which generally revolve around meaningless questions that make no difference in my life or work, so I take the opportunity as an authorized chance to nap for 45 minutes, rather than participate. I am surrounded, 24/7, day in and day out, by this teeming mass of people, but there's no one, no one in this city who would notice if one day, I just weren't there. We don't see each other here, not as individuals. We see each other as competitors, jockeying for sidewalk space, subway seats, restaurant tables, rent-stabilized apartments, the last cranberry cheesecake muffin, and a million other vital or not so vital pieces of our lives. We don't know our neighbors (although we know if they have a better apartment.) We don't know our co-workers (although we're happy to spread any gossip we might overhear.)

I'm okay with that. New York has always been a city of strivers. Ambitious, scheming people come here to make their way in the world, from John Jacob Astor to Kermit the Frog, and by nature, that precludes a lot of what Midwesterners would consider "being nice." But how do you meet people in an environment like that? Where do friends come from, if there's no free time, no common gathering point, and no energy to go out of your way to engage others? Is this why they say New Yorkers are unfriendly? I don't really think we are. I think we're just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the possibilities, the choices, and the sheer volume of people we face every day. How do you choose? Where do you start? And at the end of a long day, why risk spending time with new people you're not sure you'll like? I get precious little time to myself each day, and I know that a martini and a good book in my apartment will not let me down. The same can't be said for someone I met last week in a bar. Do I risk those few and fleeting moments to the chance that I might find someone whose company I just can't live without, or just selfishly grab that time and make the best of it on my own? Do I risk the ultimate high (having a fabulous time with a new friend), the ultimate low (wasting my free time sitting in a lame comedy club, not laughing, with some complete nutjob) or just meander along the comfortable path of a quiet night, a mixed drink, and an episode of Grey's Anatomy? It's a question to ponder... alone, in my few free minutes.