Mistakes

-going to kickboxing class last night. I can't move my arms hardly at all today.

-not buying French Milk (by Lucy Knisley) sooner. I have to ration myself. I want to read it constantly all day, and it's making me homesick for Paris, but I am saving it for before-bedtime-only. I am also getting to sleep later than I should be as a result, but c'est la vie.

-eating three cookies after making myself a healthful dinner of pasta with sugar snap peas and avocado-tomato salad. Foiled myself again!

-wearing my hair down today. Muggy.

-fuming over my missing New York Magazine yesterday when it didn't show up on my step, silently accusing my downstairs neighbors of thieving it. (It arrived today.)

-not going to see Neko Case last month. Ughh.

-staring too long at this baby I saw in Club Monaco on Sunday. She was maybe probably somewhere around 2 (fuzzy baby hair, dimpled elbows), and she was sitting in her stroller watching a movie on her mother's iPhone, holding the little phone just so and watching the screen with undivided focus. I was flabbergasted. I stared.

-buying French Milk (even though it was on sale). I need more books like I need a hole in the head.

-friending my fifth grade boyfriend in a fit of boredom over the weekend. This hasn't technically become mistake material yet, but the potential is certainly there.

Speaking of old time friends, tomorrow I'm meeting my childhood best friend for coffee. We've been BFF since we were 2 (fuzzy baby hair, dimpled elbows). We've been friends for over twenty years. Yow!

Have good nights, all.

About time

It feels like ages, doesn't it? Feels like I've been out of the country I've been away from here so long. Here's where I've been:

-work

-New Jersey

-upstate New York for a lovely potluck in the mountains

-having my first fiddle lesson

-work

-walking in Central Park

-lying to Kate about having been to a certain reading, but only for the sake of a birthday surprise!

-sipping a Honey Dove at the Dove Parlour (which makes me want to wear a feathered hat and carry a lace handkerchief)

-work

-listening to Neko Case's Middle Cyclone on a loop

-watching my fiddle teacher and her band, the Dolly Sods, play an awesome set at Pete's Candy Store under the marquee lights

-in Florida for my wee sister's college graduation, dodging lizards and eating oranges like it was my job (they were AMAZING; I brought one back for my foodie friend Allison and she wrote me an email from work: "It tastes like a flower!")

-seeing Jeffrey Eugenides interviewed at B&N for the re-release of The Virgin Suicides (what a delightful man; completely natural and kind and game for any question thrown at him; I'm jealous of the sods at Princeton who get to call him Professor)

- having my second fiddle lesson; I can now play "Twinkle, Twinkle," a few scales, and two very touch-and-go arpeggios

-reading Amy and Isabelle (highly, highly recommended, even if the only bits you read are her descriptions of the woods; plus, having read Olive Kitteridge for book club and then watched it win the Pulitzer last month, reading A&I  was like reading a first draft of OK, or peeking into Elizabeth Strout's notebook of story ideas--it seemed like all the seeds for Olive were there in that first book)

-doing some long, long overdue spring cleaning

And to top off that cleaning job, I'm now going to walk to Home Depot and buy some household items, including plants. See you soon, I promise.

sleepysleepysleepynap

I can't seem to stop taking pictures of sunrises/sunsets. This was the view out my window sometime last week; it looked like an extremely slow explosion was happening somewhere out over Flushing Bay.

I'm at my parents' house for Easter. (It might never stop being weird to say "my parents' house.") Last night when I got home, my dog ran to the door all wiggly to meet me with my mom right on her tail, paper towel in hand, because somehow there was a big blob of yogurt between Maggie's shoulder blades. Today the fur is standing straight up like a mohawk, or like she's really pissed. She is so awesome. 

My sister's still at school, so I have to entertain myself. We used to have a tradition of sneaking out of Easter dinner early to go see a really terrible movie (this year I absolutely would have dragged her to Hannah Montana: The Movie). But everything is out of whack this year. Easter dinner is today, just me, M, & D, and I'm probably going to fall asleep on the couch watching Brideshead Revisited somewhere around 9 o'clock. 

But it's totally worth it because I made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and with Amy gone I can have thirds and fourths and fifths until I collapse. 

(Get it? Carrot cake? Har har har har.)

April snow showers

It's been snowing on-and-off all morning, which isn't utterly unusual for early April I guess, but it's certainly unwelcome. Easter is supposed to be about spring. And it's on Sunday. Get with it.

Last night two Sarahs and I went to Pacific Standard for some beer and fiction, a blue ribbon combination, let me tell you. I was about to order my silly wheat beer ("spicy with a hint of banana," said the menu) when I realized that I knew one of the guys sitting at the bar from MySpace. MySpace! (In my head I was going, Whaaaaaa?) Of course I had never met him, and of course I said nothing to him, but it felt slightly like finding a needle in a haystack, which is to say rewarding in a strange, small-world sort of way.

So that was my outing for the week. Quota met. Tonight I do laundry and buy jelly beans at CVS and cook some penne with feta and olives. It's a big night. I like Wednesdays.

Farewell March

I think you are my least favorite month. I'm really not sad to see you go.

April, on the other hand, is full of potential. Full of completely lovely days like today, including walks to the Central Park subway stop with Sarah, and hot dogs devoured in the shadow of the Plaza. Utterly gorgeous day and dog.

The evening, however, has been squandered on watching this trailer over and over. He is my dream man. Even dreamier than the one on the subway last night with the paperback stuffed into the pocket of his corduroy blazer. I'm not one for hyphenated last names, but if I had to, I would be Elizabeth Byrne-Gordon-Levitt. (Like I would drop my last name, pffffffffff.)

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but it will be rain tempered by a lunch at Thé Adoré, which I newly rediscovered and which I cannot stop thinking about utterly for one minute. I wake up in the morning and I think, Oooooh, can't wait for lunch! This has been approximately 5 days in the making. I couldn't last any longer.

It's the latest addition to my collection, a café for every day of the week:

Monday: Cupcake Café 

Tuesday: 71 Irving Place

Wednesday: City Bakery

Thursday: Thé Adoré

Friday: Madeleine

For cupcakes, bagels with lox, chocolate chip cookies, baguette sandwiches, and quiches, respectively. Never claim I'm not well fed.

Pigeonholed

As it turns out, there was an option e) I was the only former student there, and there were skits with rolling backpacks. Many people told me I look like my mother, which is one of those ambiguous comments like, "You cut your hair!" that I'm never sure if it's a compliment or a sort of apology.

There was a sheet cake, though, with strawberries in the middle, so it ended on a high note for sure.

And now I'm at home, and my mother has absconded with the only car, and there are three carpenters climbing all over the windows replacing sills and vents and whatnot, and I'm trapped! And Maggie is having a panic attack and panting and generally being an underfoot.

I have heaps of reading. Oof. I can't stop thinking of my dream last night: I had perfect bangs that were the perfect length and they were well behaved and lay perfectly flat and I was so completely happy. That was the whole dream. 

It's the simple things in life.

Ohhh, I just want to go for a walk but there are strange men all over the outside of my house. Trapped! 

Word of the day: damp

I forgot my umbrella today. Word to the wise: wool does not smell pretty when it gets wet.

All these weekends away. Going home this weekend for my...4th grade teacher's retirement party...

Here's some background: I moved right after 5th grade, so she was one of the last teachers I had in that town and I loved her. (I cried on the last day of school.) At 10, you don't really do a great job of keeping in touch with people. I haven't seen any of my classmates (or my teacher) since long before puberty.

Possible outcomes of tomorrow night, in order from best to worst:

a) People remember me, elementary teachers get drunk, hilarity ensues.

b) Only my 4th grade teacher remembers me (she did invite me, after all), I am forced to sit at a table with many middle-aged women whom I do not know, and I have to drive myself home so I can't, you know, get drunk.

c) Other former classmates are there and make me feel uncomfortable and square (worst nightmare), and still, I cannot get drunk.

d) No one remembers me. There is a DJ. I'm forced to dance.

All I know is that I'm bringing her a box of assorted macaroons from Madeleine, which should cement me in everyone's memories for good.

Here's some more background: It was in her class that I first read The B.F.G., and she read parts out loud to us and she did the most galumphous voice for the him. We staged a play, and I got to play Sophie. And we also read Bridge to Terrabithia and she had a plywood castle fort in the back of the classroom where we could go read on giant pillows during free time. And we collected golden tickets for good grades and general jobs well done and then at the end of the year we had a giant class garage sale in our classroom and we paid for things with our golden tickets. I remember I bought a stuffed bunny that was very realistic looking. 

I guess I don't remember that much about that year. I remember writing poetry, that was a first. We had to write anonymous poems and then tack them to the bulletin board and fill out a score card guessing who belonged to what poem. Stupid Sal LoBue told everyone which one was mine because he sat next to me and peeked, and I had to ask to go to the nurse so I could cry in private. (There was a lot of shameful crying in the 4th grade.)

Still. I'm nervous. I was heaps more charming at 10.