The pound of rain roused me last night. I smiled half-awake, rolled over, and returned to slumber. Nothing makes me sleep more soundly than knowing that I am warm and comfortable inside when it is wet and cold outside.
You know you’ve lived in NYC when…
-You recognize that black shopping bags are from bodegas, farmacias, or dollar stores.
-You scoff at the prices of bootleg dvds in midtown, because you know how cheap they are in Chinatown.
-You can no longer distinguish among different models of cars. Instead, you lump them into the transportation category “not my legs or the train.”
-You call the subway “the train.”
-You hang a shopping bag from your doorknob and call it a trashcan.
-You never run to catch the S shuttle from Grand Central Station to Times Square.
-Hundreds of people bumping and writhing against each other reminds you of your morning commute to work, not a mosh pit or nightclub.
-You could not live without an ipod.
-You can doze off on the train, and wake up at exactly the right stop.
-You can name five places to get pizza in your neighborhood.
-You always drink soda through a straw.
-You have pushed and pulled a heavy cart of groceries or laundry at least three blocks away from where you live.
-You see a person sitting butt-ass naked on the sidewalk and the first thing you think is, “She must be cold.”
-You walk up more than five flights of stairs a day.
-You have the option of getting your laundry or groceries done and delivered by a stranger who doesn’t speak your language.
-You regularly pay $1 or more for a can of soda.
-In a day, you can walk the length of a marathon in heels…and do it again the next day, too.
-You have worn Nikes with a pencil skirt and stockings.
-You find youself saying “stockings” instead of “pantyhose.”
-When you go into a fast food restaurant, the cashier asks, “To stay or to go?”
-People at the post office, stores, etc. expect customers to wait “on line” instead of “in line.” (This still baffles me, as there is no physical line on which to wait).
-You know people from New Jersey are inherently weird and people from Connecticut are inherently white.
-Though you grew up in Texas, you now use the word “schlepped.”
Not to be missed
Being here isn’t just about making new connections. It’s also about trying to maintain old ones, despite the distance. This isn’t easy and I miss a lot of the people I used to see daily or at least more regularly than I do now.
Fashionably stuck
You’re not a real New York woman until your pointy-toed, stiletto heeled shoes get stuck not once, but twice, in a grate on the sidewalk.
Soul train
Even if you’ve never been to New York City, you know what the people there are like. Right? They’re rude, aloof, liberal, and fashionable. Right?
Trying to appease my dad with a story about a midget
A conversation with my dad:
My Dad: Your blog has gotten boring.
Me: How?
My Dad: No one wants to read about how you and your friend got diarrhea! We want to hear about New York!
Me: But…we got diarrhea in New York.
My Dad: Go to an art museum and then write about it in your blog.
Playing the game
So much of success in life depends on knowing how to play the game. If you know how to play the game, you probably feel it’s kind of innate. You might not remember, but you learned it somehow. If you are too smart/creative/free-spirited to buy into the idea of playing the game, but you somehow completed a college degree and pay taxes, guess what Thoreau? You play the game, too. Suck some marrow out of this one.
F-words
“Future” is probably the dirtiest f-word I can think of right now.
The best pizza in NYC
It’s no coincidence that you feel the loneliest when the temperature drops and there’s no food in the house. These are only two lines on a laundry lists of defeats, a list with such entries as “not enough phone calls,” “nothing good on TV,” and “people eating in a cafe, all seemingly happier than me.”
Gimme gimmick
Today Bobby and I were walking down Fifth Avenue and saw a homeless man with a sign that read, “Brad and Angelina are having a baby. I need money to get a present.” We laughed.
