Another Awkward Week [6.28.13]

What’s up, June Bugs?! How was everyone’s week? Mine was hot and busy. Exciting stuff. Here’s a blog tip: just complain about work and the weather and you’ll be famous in no time.

No. Oh, but the good news is, I’m not currently chugging any sort of laxatives so you will not be forced to sit through yet another monolgue about my intestinal problems.

I’ll spare you that much.

It wasn’t’ just the weather steaming things up this week, newz-wise this week was hot, hot, HOT! From Wendy Davis standing up to DOMA shutting down to something involving immigration to that voting situation…yeah,  I’m that asshole who who only pays attention to 43% of the news and really then only if it applies to celebrities, uteruses (uteri?), super foods or the gays. Otherwise? Doesn’t really enter my brain space. Am I proud of this? Not really! Am I doing anything to amend it? Also, not really.

Can’t win ’em all. At least I admit my shortcomings and never pretend I know it all. I’ll tell you this, though:

Yesterday afternoon, I had the immense pleasure of sharing an elevator with two colleagues who were enthusiastically swapping stories from their recent same sex weddings. Each were married within the last year, here in New York. One couple had been together twenty years. The other married on the exact date of their twenty-sixth anniversary together. Twenty Six! That’s a lot of years, my friends. Their excitement, their shared joy over making these decades-long relationships legal in the eyes of the law – it was palpable and beautiful. It filled the elevator. I was but a fellow passenger, lurking in the corner of the elevator but I was honored to eavesdrop on such a happy moment. Can you imagine it? Twenty-six years!

I don’t now anyone could exit that situation still not seeing that love is love is LOVE. I’m not saying that all the haters should be locked in an elevator with a bunch of happy homosexuals (gay^2!) but, actually, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Ok WHAAAT are we talking about? I really should do my best to write these things not at 6 AM.

Let’s move on and  take a look at what was keeping it awkward this week:

This Apartment:

It’s mine! As I mentioned, our lease is up at the end of July. One of my roommates found a great new place with overlapping leases, so she already moved out…and with her went all of the furniture, save that one chair and the TV stand. She also took the kitchen knives, the teapot, the toaster, the coffeemaker…basically all of the elements that make humans slightly better than say, goats.

We are living in the lap of luxury over here!

I did buy some new sharp knives, after trying to saw through a leftover party sub with a butter knife, but until we move … in over a month…we’ll be furnitureless. Totally comfortable.

I’ve considered using the space for the following:

• Art studio
• Yoga room
• Skatepark
• Ball pit
• Gigantic writing office

But mostly I’ve just spent a lot of time laying around the floor, drinking rose and watching old episodes of New Girl. Oh and a few cute living room picnics, too:

I guess we’re making a little romance out if the situation.

#barf

This Bagel:

Sunday we went upstate for a going away party for some pals who are headed to Hollywood to become famous reality TV stars (or something) and grabbed bagels at Grand Central before hopping on the Metro North train. This bagel shop, you guys. I don’t even know where to begin. Grand Central Station is, as far as I know, one of the busiest commuter hubs in the entire country if not universe and I’d imagine that a lot ‘o bagels are made and sold and eaten up in that joint. WELL, maybe they are so busy during weekday that all their top workers are on M-F and Saturday & Sunday is when they staff all of the like, recently released mental patients and small children and minimally trained monkeys.

I am not exaggerating when I say that it took us 15 minutes to order two bagels. And, I know, this is starting out to sounds like some kind of super cliched, Jerry Seinfeld, NYC-centric bad standup routine – Whattaya gotta do to get a good baygel around heya? – but I think anyone would agree, this was a bad scene. There were three people working behind the counter – a cashier, a guy doing something with the pastry ovens and another guy who was solely responsible for taking the bagel order, getting and toasting the bagel and slathering it with cream cheese. Easy peasy, right? Apparently wrong. I am not sure this man ever saw a bagel before that morning. Or been to a restaurant. Or interacted with a human being. I’m actually hoping he’d recently awoken from a long coma.

We went back and forth, a vertiable poppyseed edition of Who’s On First:

Me: Everything toasted with veggie cream cheese please

Him: Everything?

Me: An everything bagel

Him: An everything bagel?

Me: Yes, toasted, with veggie cream cheese

Him: Toasted?

Me: With veggie…cream…cheese

He toasts it, takes it out, turns to the crowd: Did someone get an everything bagel:

Me: Yes

Him: Did it have cream cheese?

Me: Yes, veggie

Him: veggie cream cheese?

Me: Yes. An everything bagel with veggie cream cheese

and on and on and on and on, him repeating the same scene with other customers in line. It was ridiculous. I then opened my bagel to realize that it was actually the top of an everything, the bottom of something else – as you can see, they don’t fit together, and the cream cheese was just one blob right in the middle of the bagel.

Yiiiikes.

Ok I know this is like the pinnacle of first world problems and this guy probably has a family to support or something and is doing the best he can and I should just be grateful to live in a land where cream cheese comes in multiple delicious flavors but srsly: Whattaya gotta do to get a good baygel around heya?

This Honey:

Stolen from the continental breakfast at our hotel in Michigan oh…a solid month ago. When faced with free food I am basically your depression-era grandmother shoving dinner rolls and balls of tinfoil into her pocketbook. I go nuts. So obviously I had to fill my purse with tiny portable honey packets in case I ever found myself with a cup of tea and no honey and obviously I then left them in said purse for over a month and then OBVIOUSLYYYYYYYYYYY one of them broke and now I have honey all over the inside of my handbag.

But I still have four perfectly intact honey packets that I got fo freeee so yeah, I’ll say it was worth it.

These Eggs:

Remember that time when I was seeking advice on hardboiling eggs? WELL thanks for all of your tips, friends, but I’ve come up with the perfect recipe. And it goes a little like this:

Get two eggs and put them in a giant pot that you borrowed from your boyfriend because your roommate moved out with all of the normal sized pots, cover the eggs with some water, put on the stove, turn the burner to medium, go sit in the one chair in the living room, catch up on your mommy blogs, wander back into the kitchen somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes later to top off your wine and eat some strawberries, realize the eggs are burning away on the stove, pour them into the sink, burn your hand on one of the eggs because OF COURSE something that has just been boiling for a half an hour is going to be hot and then…repeat.

Literally repeat. Do the entire thing again, thus ruining two more eggs, bringing the ruined egg total to four for the night.

Disaster. I don’t know what has gotten into me, I am just destroying food left and right you guys. My diet pretty much only consists of eggs and smoothies and yet I can’t go three days without screwing them up.

HALP!

This Sign:

Spotted on a nice evening walk right in the heart of Park Slope, one of Brooklyn’s most charming neighborhoods. I’m a little bit confused…to whom is this sign directed? Animals? Are Park Slope puppies SO perfect and advanced that they can read ‘no pooping’ signs? Is it for squirrels? For HUMANS? Are people pooping on trees all up and down Park Slope? I NEED TO KNOW!

Annnnd I’ll leave it there this week. This post miiight not be the greatest but we shall overcome. You know what they say: why write well when you can ramble on like a lunatic?

I’m off to PA this weekend for a reunion with my college roommates – one of my gf’s and her husband bought a HOUSE so I’m going to go see how real adults do things. And what are you up to? I hope it’s momentous and spectacular but please don’t pee (or poo) on anyone or their flowers!

xoxo Liz Ho