I'm recovering from a Mom visit, during which she spoiled us with new clothes and some PHENOMENAL eats! I'm hoping all the walking we did evened it out. It was so much freakin' fun, despite the heat. NYC didn't get Spring this year. We jumped right from Winter to Summer. There are worse things that could happen, I suppose. I've been to Central Park nearly every day for a week and I'm back in love with this disgruntled bitch of a town!
Logan and I were on our third honeymoon two weeks ago, before Logan started working as an Associate Producer at Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? (I am REALLY proud of him!) He gets to travel a lot for casting purposes and we're already trying to figure out how I can tag along (Chicago in July!) More importantly, we need to get enough money saved up to go to Europe for a few weeks before Baby Season hits. (I hear it lasts about 18 years.) And probably more important than all of that is moving. I cringe over that word because I've done it so many times now. I've had more homes and jobs than anyone I've ever met (Army brats included.) And then I went ahead and married someone very similar to myself. We're moving together for the second time but this time, we're movin' on UP!
We're looking on the Upper West Side - the REAL one. NOT Washington Heights (a filthier term than "moving!") I have hated few things more than our year in this neighborhood. It wasn't planned - we had an apartment in Fort Greene through a friend of mine but everything went haywire as soon as we arrived. So we scrambled while staying at Nat and Chuck's as they vacationed in France. Their building doesn't allow pets so several times a day we had to travel aaaaall the way from West 184th St. down, down, down into Brooklyn to walk the dogs. TWAS TORTURE!!! All day we apartment-hunted, walked dogs, and sweated our faces off. Our apartment hunting had the fantastic timing of occuring during a heat wave. I don't know how we did it, but we managed to find a decent place after about two weeks of this madness. We didn't have jobs - just savings. It wasn't easy finding a place we were sure we could afford. But we did. It's big and lovely, has a park outside (which I can't enter alone unless I'm in the mood for a lil' sexual assault), and it's along the water with a lovely view of the Bronx. Poor Bronx. It's next to Yeshiva University, incredibly cheap, and surrounded by a culture that I'd prefer to live very far from at this point in my life.
So we're looking on the Upper West Side! I still don't have a job but my Amazon sales are bringing in an alarming amount of money on just my short story stuff. I'm about to publish the first book I ever FINISHED writing. It's a Young Adult novel about vampires. I don't feel like revealing more than that yet, except that WOW! I WROTE A BOOK! And now I know it isn't nearly as difficult as I told myself it'd be.
Two weekends ago we were walking the girls along the rapey little park on the hillside of our street. Logan has flushed out several lovable quirks in the girls that make me love all three of them more than I thought possible. Since Winter, the girls have forgotten what birds are. So when they see them now they get all amped up, barking and lunging even at the filthiest of pigeons. Logan will take their leashes and run at top speed up and down the sidewalk, clearing all the birds present and sending lice and vermin into the air. Tis magical.
This weekend when we crossed the street to the lil' brick wall shaded in all those fresh trees, Daisy spotted a nearby critter and lunged for it. I never worry - the birds always fly away before she can reach them. But this time the little guy didn't take flight. Daisy could have caught it, but lucky for me, that is not her nature. She just pranced around it barking her raspy, high-pitched puppy-like bark (I rescued them from breeders who had Daisy's vocal cords zapped, producing an adorable yet pathetic bark.) She'd found a baby bird! We have about two dozen stray cats in the area, several arrogant raccoons, and many speeding cars. The little bird couldn't quite fly and I knew he/she wouldn't make it through the night with so many villainous mammals in our hood. I left the dogs with Logan, raced back upstairs, dumped out my sewing box, grabbed a kitchen towel, and came back downstairs to rescue it. Logan had run into a yorkie who's fallen in love with Dolly (too bad for him that she's a total lesbian with no interest in boy dogs.) I tried shooing the little bird into my box but ended up scaring it under a parked van. And that's when it really got good.
Logan traded places with me. I held the dogs as he tried chasing the baby bird out from under the van - for an HOUR. While watching cars speed past him I couldn't help wondering if I'd be widowed over this. Then I thought about that chicken I'd eaten for lunch and felt really stupid. Eventually I took the girls back upstairs, got the box's lid and returned to help Logan. We broke off leafy tree branches and brushed the little guy back toward the sidewalk. Logan came down quickly with the box, catching him/her. The little guy emitted an indignant, "CHIRIP!" just as the box plopped down around it.
As we walked inside the building Logan asked, "This isn't a baby pigeon, right?"
"Ew! No!" I replied, feeling like a hypocrit.
Upstairs I lined the box with newspaper and Logan forced a bit of branch in there, insisting it would make the bird feel more at home. I found bits of fabric and pulled apart cotton balls. The sun was setting and it was cold outside. Logan said when I was upstairs retrieving a box several different mama birds had fed our little buddy. My plan was to keep it on the fire escape so the mama birds could continue feeding it (we were wise about not touching it so that our stink wouldn't put them off.)
But it was too cold to put the baby bird on the fire escape since the sun was setting. So we covered the box and left it in the bedroom. Then we watched hours of extreme sports while I knitted Margot's birthday present until the sun started to rise. I don'tt know how we ended up on such a weird schedule. Outside the birds along the park began chirping. We peeked in on our little guest and OH, how adorable! Baby Bird was all tucked into his/her own little body sleeping under scraps of fabric! It opened its little eyes and caught me standing there lookin' a fool. But it seemed like it was getting used to me. By 5:30am we'd tied the box to the fire escape and taped an umbrella overhead in case it rained. We laid in bed listening to hungry chirps, checking to see mama birds feeding him/her, and fell asleep as I told Logan I need to be a vegetarian again.
When we woke around noon the baby was gone. I have mixed feelings about this. I know that a cat couldn't reach it. I know that the bird couldn't have gotten out of that box unless it could fly, so it must have flown away. I'm very optimistic the latter is what occurred. The wings seemed fully formed. Maybe it had already been capable of flight but stubbed itself and just needed a time-out. Whatever the case, it definitely would have been killed had we left it on the ground that evening. I witnessed enough horrible animal deaths growing up that this ending was welcomed.
We were all energized for some reason, despite our all-nighter and lack o' sleep. So we took the girls to The Cloisters and had "breakfast" under a tree on a blanket. When I sat down on the blanket, Daisy threw her paws up into the air leapt into my lap with such giddiness that I screamed in her face with delight. When you rescue a dog there is a constant sense of gratitude. I don't think I've ever loved anything more than the three mamals with whom I currently reside. Even when Logan and I start arguing and our tones change, Dolly jumps into my lap and licks at my face incessantly as though saying, "Let it go! It's not worth it! You guys love each other!"
She is SUCH a Virgo.
People react to our dogs - big time. I told Logan that I know how men with trophy wives feel. I'm always thinking, "Yeah, you wish you could handle my lil' beauties..."
Sometimes I think of this later as I rub all up on them. Much the way I do when gay men shout things out to my husband, such as, "Helloooooooo, Bright Eyes!" We had a waiter at Norma's this weekend who reacted as though the highlight of his life was waiting on Logan. He's always so sweet with men and women who flirt with him. I love his kindness.
A groundhog appeared nearby and amazed the girls (and Logan too.) An old man started rambling about wild animals coming so close to people is a sign that they have rabies. I told Logan, it's a sign that they live in NEW YORK CITY. I've yet to meet a wild animal here that freaked out over my presense. There's a skunk we run into rather frequently by Nat and Chuck's apartment. I think it would let me pet it, but Logan never lets me get close enough to find out. He makes fun of me when I stand on the corner warning pedestrians to cross the street away from it. He accuses me of wanting the skunk all to myself, but actually I'm an experienced skunk fiend is all! Those people would most likely scream and get sprayed.
We took the girls to the dog run nearby where they stole the show, even from the tiny 1.5 pound chihuahua thing and it's cohort Pomeranian friend who had her claws painted pink and was wearing a dress. A DRESS! For our dogs I have coats and sweaters (which I knitted) but a DRESS?! What does a dog need a dress for?! The same dog rolled up in a stroller - FOR DOGS! I can barely sit still long enough to paint my own nails, let alone those of my dogs. That's just bonkers. Of all the people with cute little dogs in the dog run, ours were the only ones adopted. SHAAAAAAAAAAME. And ours were the most dazzling. Recently I had a couple friends buy dogs and I can't help getting really pissed off by the excuses people make. "But I couldn't fiiiiiind the breed I was looking for!"
I had to drive two hours into the desert to pick up my dogs because I wanted a specific breed too. Where there's a will there's a way. They weren't nearly as cute as they've become after being bred pretty hard, so the development of their fluffy coats was a sort of reward for my unconditional love. If you look at the statistics of pet sales and the number of pet giveaways, you'll see that it's not that difficult to rescue exactly the breed you want. (And now I'm feeling guilty about not wanting to bring a baby pigeon into my house.) I won't even buy pet items from a store that sells puppies. Nope! Oh crap, I am totally gonna go vegan again...
I've had a lot of pets, and I mean A LOT. It's only since I've entered my baby-making years that I've gotten this good at keeping up with their needs, and I mean ALL of their needs. These two aren't spoiled but there's consistency, organic dogfood, probiotic powder, fortified dog treats, frequent baths, and yes, hand-knitted sweaters. This weekend I realized I don't even need to have kids - I'm pretty satisfied with my perfect little dogs. I'm living for a summer of taking them to Central Park to frolic! I need to live close to nature - I realize that in my old(er) age. Things are going so well lately that it's hard to imagine leaving NYC (as we kept threatening this last winter.) I'm excited to see what happens with this first novel when I publish it. I'm not trying to get an agent either - just kinda coasting. I'm not opposed, but after reading about all the writers who are hitting the jackpot on self-publishing, I figured I'd jump on board. You never know. The book I wrote is good. I'm trying to make it better. Writing is the easy part - it's the editing that's hard. (I'm lying - it's ALL hard!) And now Logan is pitching TV ideas. Just reality, for now, because that's where he's working. But we've got some great stuff that we want to produce together someday. Sometimes I feel like the wife of a politician, knowing all the crazy secretive behind-the-scenes stuff that I now get to hear about so many shows and celebs. I feel like we're on the cusp of something extraordinary. Yes, money is fantastic, but there is NOTHING like a deposit in the bank for doing what you love to do. HOLY CRAP, it changes your LIFE! I am the happiest version of me that I've ever been.
On Friday night Mom and I saw a concert at The Beacon for Wavy Gravy's birthday (that guy is not of this world!) I can't get over some of the show stoppers who performed, but my favorite (always) was Ani Difranco. There is no one who wrangles a guitar like that lil' gal! Watching her perform, as always, I felt pure love. Love for everybody and everything, even when she's singing an angry tune. Mostly she makes me super excited about being me - about being here and being anybody with a shot at what I want out of this world. She crooned:
Logan and I were on our third honeymoon two weeks ago, before Logan started working as an Associate Producer at Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? (I am REALLY proud of him!) He gets to travel a lot for casting purposes and we're already trying to figure out how I can tag along (Chicago in July!) More importantly, we need to get enough money saved up to go to Europe for a few weeks before Baby Season hits. (I hear it lasts about 18 years.) And probably more important than all of that is moving. I cringe over that word because I've done it so many times now. I've had more homes and jobs than anyone I've ever met (Army brats included.) And then I went ahead and married someone very similar to myself. We're moving together for the second time but this time, we're movin' on UP!
We're looking on the Upper West Side - the REAL one. NOT Washington Heights (a filthier term than "moving!") I have hated few things more than our year in this neighborhood. It wasn't planned - we had an apartment in Fort Greene through a friend of mine but everything went haywire as soon as we arrived. So we scrambled while staying at Nat and Chuck's as they vacationed in France. Their building doesn't allow pets so several times a day we had to travel aaaaall the way from West 184th St. down, down, down into Brooklyn to walk the dogs. TWAS TORTURE!!! All day we apartment-hunted, walked dogs, and sweated our faces off. Our apartment hunting had the fantastic timing of occuring during a heat wave. I don't know how we did it, but we managed to find a decent place after about two weeks of this madness. We didn't have jobs - just savings. It wasn't easy finding a place we were sure we could afford. But we did. It's big and lovely, has a park outside (which I can't enter alone unless I'm in the mood for a lil' sexual assault), and it's along the water with a lovely view of the Bronx. Poor Bronx. It's next to Yeshiva University, incredibly cheap, and surrounded by a culture that I'd prefer to live very far from at this point in my life.
So we're looking on the Upper West Side! I still don't have a job but my Amazon sales are bringing in an alarming amount of money on just my short story stuff. I'm about to publish the first book I ever FINISHED writing. It's a Young Adult novel about vampires. I don't feel like revealing more than that yet, except that WOW! I WROTE A BOOK! And now I know it isn't nearly as difficult as I told myself it'd be.
Two weekends ago we were walking the girls along the rapey little park on the hillside of our street. Logan has flushed out several lovable quirks in the girls that make me love all three of them more than I thought possible. Since Winter, the girls have forgotten what birds are. So when they see them now they get all amped up, barking and lunging even at the filthiest of pigeons. Logan will take their leashes and run at top speed up and down the sidewalk, clearing all the birds present and sending lice and vermin into the air. Tis magical.
This weekend when we crossed the street to the lil' brick wall shaded in all those fresh trees, Daisy spotted a nearby critter and lunged for it. I never worry - the birds always fly away before she can reach them. But this time the little guy didn't take flight. Daisy could have caught it, but lucky for me, that is not her nature. She just pranced around it barking her raspy, high-pitched puppy-like bark (I rescued them from breeders who had Daisy's vocal cords zapped, producing an adorable yet pathetic bark.) She'd found a baby bird! We have about two dozen stray cats in the area, several arrogant raccoons, and many speeding cars. The little bird couldn't quite fly and I knew he/she wouldn't make it through the night with so many villainous mammals in our hood. I left the dogs with Logan, raced back upstairs, dumped out my sewing box, grabbed a kitchen towel, and came back downstairs to rescue it. Logan had run into a yorkie who's fallen in love with Dolly (too bad for him that she's a total lesbian with no interest in boy dogs.) I tried shooing the little bird into my box but ended up scaring it under a parked van. And that's when it really got good.
Logan traded places with me. I held the dogs as he tried chasing the baby bird out from under the van - for an HOUR. While watching cars speed past him I couldn't help wondering if I'd be widowed over this. Then I thought about that chicken I'd eaten for lunch and felt really stupid. Eventually I took the girls back upstairs, got the box's lid and returned to help Logan. We broke off leafy tree branches and brushed the little guy back toward the sidewalk. Logan came down quickly with the box, catching him/her. The little guy emitted an indignant, "CHIRIP!" just as the box plopped down around it.
As we walked inside the building Logan asked, "This isn't a baby pigeon, right?"
"Ew! No!" I replied, feeling like a hypocrit.
Upstairs I lined the box with newspaper and Logan forced a bit of branch in there, insisting it would make the bird feel more at home. I found bits of fabric and pulled apart cotton balls. The sun was setting and it was cold outside. Logan said when I was upstairs retrieving a box several different mama birds had fed our little buddy. My plan was to keep it on the fire escape so the mama birds could continue feeding it (we were wise about not touching it so that our stink wouldn't put them off.)
But it was too cold to put the baby bird on the fire escape since the sun was setting. So we covered the box and left it in the bedroom. Then we watched hours of extreme sports while I knitted Margot's birthday present until the sun started to rise. I don'tt know how we ended up on such a weird schedule. Outside the birds along the park began chirping. We peeked in on our little guest and OH, how adorable! Baby Bird was all tucked into his/her own little body sleeping under scraps of fabric! It opened its little eyes and caught me standing there lookin' a fool. But it seemed like it was getting used to me. By 5:30am we'd tied the box to the fire escape and taped an umbrella overhead in case it rained. We laid in bed listening to hungry chirps, checking to see mama birds feeding him/her, and fell asleep as I told Logan I need to be a vegetarian again.
When we woke around noon the baby was gone. I have mixed feelings about this. I know that a cat couldn't reach it. I know that the bird couldn't have gotten out of that box unless it could fly, so it must have flown away. I'm very optimistic the latter is what occurred. The wings seemed fully formed. Maybe it had already been capable of flight but stubbed itself and just needed a time-out. Whatever the case, it definitely would have been killed had we left it on the ground that evening. I witnessed enough horrible animal deaths growing up that this ending was welcomed.
We were all energized for some reason, despite our all-nighter and lack o' sleep. So we took the girls to The Cloisters and had "breakfast" under a tree on a blanket. When I sat down on the blanket, Daisy threw her paws up into the air leapt into my lap with such giddiness that I screamed in her face with delight. When you rescue a dog there is a constant sense of gratitude. I don't think I've ever loved anything more than the three mamals with whom I currently reside. Even when Logan and I start arguing and our tones change, Dolly jumps into my lap and licks at my face incessantly as though saying, "Let it go! It's not worth it! You guys love each other!"
She is SUCH a Virgo.
People react to our dogs - big time. I told Logan that I know how men with trophy wives feel. I'm always thinking, "Yeah, you wish you could handle my lil' beauties..."
Sometimes I think of this later as I rub all up on them. Much the way I do when gay men shout things out to my husband, such as, "Helloooooooo, Bright Eyes!" We had a waiter at Norma's this weekend who reacted as though the highlight of his life was waiting on Logan. He's always so sweet with men and women who flirt with him. I love his kindness.
A groundhog appeared nearby and amazed the girls (and Logan too.) An old man started rambling about wild animals coming so close to people is a sign that they have rabies. I told Logan, it's a sign that they live in NEW YORK CITY. I've yet to meet a wild animal here that freaked out over my presense. There's a skunk we run into rather frequently by Nat and Chuck's apartment. I think it would let me pet it, but Logan never lets me get close enough to find out. He makes fun of me when I stand on the corner warning pedestrians to cross the street away from it. He accuses me of wanting the skunk all to myself, but actually I'm an experienced skunk fiend is all! Those people would most likely scream and get sprayed.
We took the girls to the dog run nearby where they stole the show, even from the tiny 1.5 pound chihuahua thing and it's cohort Pomeranian friend who had her claws painted pink and was wearing a dress. A DRESS! For our dogs I have coats and sweaters (which I knitted) but a DRESS?! What does a dog need a dress for?! The same dog rolled up in a stroller - FOR DOGS! I can barely sit still long enough to paint my own nails, let alone those of my dogs. That's just bonkers. Of all the people with cute little dogs in the dog run, ours were the only ones adopted. SHAAAAAAAAAAME. And ours were the most dazzling. Recently I had a couple friends buy dogs and I can't help getting really pissed off by the excuses people make. "But I couldn't fiiiiiind the breed I was looking for!"
I had to drive two hours into the desert to pick up my dogs because I wanted a specific breed too. Where there's a will there's a way. They weren't nearly as cute as they've become after being bred pretty hard, so the development of their fluffy coats was a sort of reward for my unconditional love. If you look at the statistics of pet sales and the number of pet giveaways, you'll see that it's not that difficult to rescue exactly the breed you want. (And now I'm feeling guilty about not wanting to bring a baby pigeon into my house.) I won't even buy pet items from a store that sells puppies. Nope! Oh crap, I am totally gonna go vegan again...
I've had a lot of pets, and I mean A LOT. It's only since I've entered my baby-making years that I've gotten this good at keeping up with their needs, and I mean ALL of their needs. These two aren't spoiled but there's consistency, organic dogfood, probiotic powder, fortified dog treats, frequent baths, and yes, hand-knitted sweaters. This weekend I realized I don't even need to have kids - I'm pretty satisfied with my perfect little dogs. I'm living for a summer of taking them to Central Park to frolic! I need to live close to nature - I realize that in my old(er) age. Things are going so well lately that it's hard to imagine leaving NYC (as we kept threatening this last winter.) I'm excited to see what happens with this first novel when I publish it. I'm not trying to get an agent either - just kinda coasting. I'm not opposed, but after reading about all the writers who are hitting the jackpot on self-publishing, I figured I'd jump on board. You never know. The book I wrote is good. I'm trying to make it better. Writing is the easy part - it's the editing that's hard. (I'm lying - it's ALL hard!) And now Logan is pitching TV ideas. Just reality, for now, because that's where he's working. But we've got some great stuff that we want to produce together someday. Sometimes I feel like the wife of a politician, knowing all the crazy secretive behind-the-scenes stuff that I now get to hear about so many shows and celebs. I feel like we're on the cusp of something extraordinary. Yes, money is fantastic, but there is NOTHING like a deposit in the bank for doing what you love to do. HOLY CRAP, it changes your LIFE! I am the happiest version of me that I've ever been.
On Friday night Mom and I saw a concert at The Beacon for Wavy Gravy's birthday (that guy is not of this world!) I can't get over some of the show stoppers who performed, but my favorite (always) was Ani Difranco. There is no one who wrangles a guitar like that lil' gal! Watching her perform, as always, I felt pure love. Love for everybody and everything, even when she's singing an angry tune. Mostly she makes me super excited about being me - about being here and being anybody with a shot at what I want out of this world. She crooned:
If you're not getting happier as you get older...Wiser words, never spoken. This is my current meditation on the subway, before bed, and always, when I'm in the park.
Then you're fucking up!
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