A Life Of We

Monday, July 27, 2015

Crowded Sidewalks and Naked People

Meeting up with S in the city means either torrential downpour or super heat. This time, it was super heat, but that wasn't a big deal because we spent the bulk of our time in a movie theater, watching Trainwreck. The movie is really funny. We first swung by the AMNH really quickly with R where we found semi-supervised children running around near the pigeons, several of which flew away in the direction of my head. Good times. We walked over to the theater near Lincoln Center and after we got our tickets and visited with the Peanuts gang, I climbed up to the mezzanine, very excited as it was my first time up there.

Coming back out of the movie was when things got interesting. We stopped off at the bathroom before leaving the building, and outside the bathroom some older woman yelled at some other young women in the lobby that they were very stupid. Another woman who may or may not have known either party told the older woman that what she said was not nice. We are not sure what happened after that as we went into the bathroom, but when we were walking down the street a few minutes later, S was like, There's the woman who yelled. I was like, let's get away from her quickly.

We were going down 8th for a while and then walked over to 7th since S had to go to 6th. I shouldn't use "walk." I should use "managed to squeeze through" or "zigzagged around." The city was beyond packed. In addition to the annoying characters--I saw some Frozen characters who I haven't seen before--there were lots of people carrying signs. Bus tours. Comedy shows. Strip clubs. These sign people are always there, but on this night, there were more of them. For the first time, I saw the naked-painted people up close. I pointed one out, saying, And she's naked. And S replied, Oh, yeah, there are a ton of them around. It's the new thing. I suppose we can thank Rebecca Romijn and RuPaul for that.

Then we got to the heart of Times Square and bam! Gates! Crowds! Someone on a megaphone! More people with more signs but these signs were about nukes. Man, this was bad timing. We split there, S heading over and me heading back to 8th again. Neither one of us was about to navigate through gated ralliers and police officers.

I was one big sweat ball when I got to Penn and onto a train. I sat with a sigh, thankful for the air conditioning. The day had cooled a little into night, but not by much. I cracked open my book and dove in. Someone sat next to me. I shimmied closer to the window.

Then I heard, Excuse me?

I ignored it.

Um, excuse me???

My head was in a book. I was leaning far to the side. This interruption clearly was one of importance considering I was so clearly not in the chatty mood. I figured that whoever it was probably needed to ask something about the train we were on, so I turned a bit and said, Yes?

The man next to me--a very tall, somewhat large man in a baby blue seersucker suit-- held out the back of his hand in front of both of us, fingers splayed out. He asked, Now this is kind of random, but what do you think of people you just meet who bite their nails?

Okay, so this interruption was not of any importance at all and had nothing to do with the train and everything to do with being weird.

I answered, Huh, er, I really don't know. I turned back to my book as he murmured something about randomness.

When the train was pulling into my station, I closed my book, packed it up, and took my phone out of my bag to call my ride. I moved towards the front of my seat and looked around to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I stood as the train came into the station.

Now I was going to say, Excuse me, to get through. However, you'd think that someone not sleeping who is on the aisle seat might notice the person next to him going through the motions that indicate she's getting off the train. However, nothing was quite clear to Seersucker. As I was forming the words, he suddenly looked up and was like, Oh, you're getting off now?

Ah, Lady Sarcasm, you used to live through me for a long, long time. I've mellowed out quite a bit, but in this instance, it took all my willpower to not say something like, Nope I just wanted to pack up my stuff and stand over you for the duration of the ride.

He did get out of my way and I thanked him for doing so and he called after me to enjoy the rest of my night. And I did.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Any Place That Gives You Cotton Candy For Free Is A Great Place

I heard a rumor that Grillfire brings you cotton candy after you're done with your meal. Lover of all things free and avid fan of cotton candy, I reported this rumor to Eddie who looked up the menu and saw they serve steak and hamburgers, and he was in.

I had not heard that they serve you a pretzel before your meal. Guess what--they serve you a PRETZEL before your meal!

I kinda look like a bobblehead in this picture.

We split it. I had the portion that Eddie accidentally dropped into the honey mustard.

Then we had our meals as we dined a la Hawaii--meaning at the open window. He had a burger with fries and the fries came in a cute little basket, the same kind of basket his fried mozzarella came in.

It's the little things that make us happy.

He always calls me a cheap date because I don't eat much and never get expensive things, but this time, I got pesto chicken, which was twice the size of his meal and twice the price. It was worth it because not only was it delicious, but it was enough for lots of leftovers.

When we finished, we looked at the dessert menu, and he was disheartened that they didn't have lava cake. Apparently it's available at other locations. We settled on splitting the mini brownie sundae. I'm scared to see what the regular size sundae looks like because the mini sundae was colossal, and it had mini M&Ms in it and a big brownie and cream and ice cream and I had a decaf and it was way too much for us and we ate it anyway.

As with all our dates, we were done in about 40 minutes. We've discussed this phenomenon. Eddie figured out that we have such a quick turnaround because we don't drink. We don't get pre-dinner drinks. We don't drink during dinner. We don't get post-dinner drinks. All that takes time. We get right to the good stuff.

The server brought us our check. There was no cotton candy. I was stupefied. I was feeling down because I'd believed the rumors and had been duped. This was a sad sad day. As I was taking Eddie on a date because he's so great, I put my credit card in the little bill holder and pouted. The server came back and informed us that I had a cool card but they didn't take Discover (my discover card has sunglasses on it with the reflection of an American flag--I'm so dope--yes, I just said that). So Eddie then paid with a different card of his own and I told him I'd give him the money for it later because otherwise he was taking me out on my date for him and I pouted some more.

But then. THEN. Upon returning the bill, the server asked us to fill out the comment card. More importantly: SHE BROUGHT US FREE COTTON CANDY. Um, how do you make a gal happy? Ask Grillfire.

I couldn't wait to eat this entire thing.

I practically skipped down the street when we left. Belly full, I still ate it. Eddie had some, too. Because when you get free cotton candy, you have to eat it. It was delicious. Because it was cotton candy.

We passed by some kids coming out of some other shop on the strip. They were eating ice cream. They looked at me and screamed COTTON CANDY!!!! Because ice cream you can get anywhere. Cotton candy? Means you're special.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Avengers, FAO, and More In Humidity

Big city summer plans, just in time for humidity so thick that the air is eatable and every street in NYC has a different smell and in this context, it's smell with a negative connotation. On the upside, July days like that offer the opportunity to play Name That Stench or Who Smells Like That? However, S and I did not play those games. We wandered through odor after odor, from midtown to uptown to across town and back.

The Avengers exhibit at Discovery Times Square promises to be an interactive fun-filled time. For only $27 a person! Not for us, though. I'd won tickets from one of LIRR's Twitter contests (I was one of three who entered, so "win" here is subjective), so we went for free. And I'm really happy I didn't have to pay $27 dollars because the exhibit was only semi-interactive. And there were a lot of rules like don't eat anything, don't drink anything, and don't take any pictures. And so we didn't do any of that.

Sort of.

We fully participated in the interactive portions. Before that, though, we were ushered into a room to watch video about the different agents of SHEILD, but for some reason, neither of us could see the screens very well. We could see the ones across and upside down from us and each other's from the side, but not the ones right in front of us. I thought that something was going to jump out at us at some point or the room might fill with fake smoke or flashing lights. None of that happened.

We tested our physical and mental abilities against those of Captain America. We were both worse than Captain America in reflexes and grip strength, and I was much worse in grip strength than S, but we were pretty even in arm-pedaling (I don't know what the test was for--we had to pedal with our arms like patients in Physical Therapy do). Also, there was an activity that tested our reaction to pictures like puppies and evil criminals by reading our skin and pulse, and we both sort of flatlined. Finally, for no real reason, we both stepped on the interactive scale and got weighed and measured, though I'm not sure why we needed to do that since we know Captain America is like 6 feet tall and we are not.

The Hulk room showed how Bruce Banner's brain is different from the Hulk's brain. Spoiler alert: The Hulk's brain is green. At least that's what the visual was, and we could click on touch screens to read the fake science of it all and look at fake microscopes to see fake differences between Banner's blood and Hulk's blood, but the most exciting thing for us in that room was realizing we were on a security camera and figuring out where the camera was so we could wave. I would have expected some sort of jump test or punch test.

The Thor room showed what seemed to be a hologram of his hammer. S asked me, Does he not have a real hammer and it just appears like that? I answered, No, he has an actual hammer. So the hologram was lost on both of us as were the three screens of fake planets and exactly what we were supposed to do with them. And as we passed by the costumes--and we saw a lot of real costumes which is kinda cool--I realized that I actually know a lot about Thor, or at least more than S knew. I was all about Loki and evil and brotherhood and the aforementioned non-hologram hammer. Impressive, I know.

The Iron Man room was a nice way to end things because it was interactive again. First, you can make a fake element by mixing real elements in Tony Stark's lab. Mine came out to be something like Faronium. Basically, they take whatever last name you give them at the beginning for your Agent ID Card (oh, yeah, we were supposed to be agents in training) and they add -ium to it to make the fake element. Then we stood in front of green screens and got to see what we'd look like in the Iron Man suit. That was kinda cool because we could fly and shoot things by moving our arms. Mostly, however, we made Iron Man really musical by flapping our arms all line-dance-like. We also got to aim at things with our eye balls and control a program by blinking, but for some reason, my blinking did not work. Finally, we could control the Iron Man arm by putting our own hands over a sensor and moving it so that the arm would do the same thing. It kind of worked.

And that was it. Since we couldn't take any pictures inside, we did our best super hero poses outside.

We took a walk to Central Park and found our way to FAO, which is closing for now. I'd never been there before, but it was pretty much what I'd expected based on what I've seen in movies. Toys everywhere. A section devoted to candy. We got macarons in the end, but first we played The Big Piano.

We hadn't actually planned on playing The Big Piano, so we had to do it barefoot because we had no socks. As S said, in this situation, we're the gross ones. Since we'd been walking all over Manhattan in flip flops and it was raining on and off so that there was mystery moisture pooling at every curb, I'd already developed a strong case of city foot anyway, so it didn't matter to me.

Then we pondered, was this called The Big Piano because it was in the movie Big, or was it The Big Piano because it is actually big and then was used in a scene in Big, not necessarily because of the name. I mean, with Zoltar only one floor below, you've gotta wonder.

From there, we went off to Koreatown so S could get the dish she likes, and the women in the restaurant supplied us with super tall glasses of ice water while we waited. This glass of water was much needed as I was pretty sure I was going to keel over from the heat. When we left, I realized that I needed a bathroom because of the ice water and the previous bottle of water I'd gotten on our walk (from the 7-11 in which there were two police officers, one of whom called me "ma'am" as I let them go ahead of me. because I'm clearly an old lady) and the closest bathroom was a public bathroom. Now I've seen bathrooms in parks, but this was midtown. Was this really something I should be doing? I braved it since the other one I could think of would be in Penn, and since I'd decided to walk back to Bryant Park for their Word For Word poetry series, I couldn't see going the few blocks in the wrong direction when this bathroom was right here.

It was clean! Phew!

It also had these. I don't tend to take pictures inside of bathrooms, but I had to. Can someone tell me what these are please?

With S pointing me in the right direction, I headed off to the Bryant Park Reading Room as she headed home to bake. Sitting in the park offered me some time to relax and write down some ideas that have been floating around. I usually write when I go to poetry readings. I'm usually inspired. This was not exactly inspiring. The theme was supposed to be humor, I think, but I didn't think the poems the first guy was reading were funny. He referred to genitals a lot, and then he cursed a bit. It was not my thing. But then Tony Hoagland took the mic. I'm a fan. Every time he has an article in The Writer's Chronicle, I dive in and read through and cut it out and save it. Some times I assign it to my poetry classes. I've read two of his collections (gave them 3 stars each on Goodreads!), so I was looking forward to this. During his reading, I don't know if he's changed his style or content, but I realized that I wasn't enjoying it. I left after he read, opting out of listening to the third poet. It was time to go home and take a long shower, getting rid of the city foot any other maladies I may have picked up on such a soupy smelly day. Soupy smelly days are the best.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

My Poor Car

My car is small like me. Also like me is its ability to take a punch. Okay, I don't know if I could take a punch, so this punch is metaphorical. It's a strong little bugger. I know this because yesterday when I came out of teaching my dynamic yoga class, all relaxed and joyful, I walked down the street where my car was parked and saw from a distance what looked like paint scraped across the front fender.

Yep, someone had sideswiped my car pretty hard. I took pictures immediately of my car and then looked around all kinds of helplessly, wondering what I could do. I mean, it was parked. There was no note.

Seriously

My car is bleeding.

Then I realized that the car parked in front of mine was red. And the paint on my car was red. Walking around to the passenger side of this red car, I saw my white paint all across the rear door and fender.

Persons in this picture are taller than they appear.

Nice face

This driver clearly did not know they sideswiped my car because when you do such a thing and you don't leave a note, you drive away as to not be caught. This person did not drive away. Instead, they crammed the red car into a space in which it did not fit behind another car and in front of a driveway. I was on the other side of the driveway with about three feet of wiggle room in front of me. This person, clearly, should not be driving. Or parking.

I called Eddie because that's what you do. He told me to call 911. I was like, It's not an emergency. He was like, Call anyway and apologize that it's not an emergency. I called 411 instead and they connected me to the local precinct directly.

As I started to explain the situation, the man on the other end of the line stopped me and asked, Do you think this is the police? I responded, Yes because 411 connected me to you. He said, I'm not the police and I've been getting these calls. I said, Apologies to you and you should get in contact with 411.

So I called 911. They took my info and soon enough, a squad car pulled up. I explained to the police officer what happened and then asked hopefully, Can you do anything?

He said that it was difficult to file a report when both cars were parked but he did some police investigative magic to see if the car belonged to anyone who lived on the street. No luck. He took my info, though, and filled out some paperwork. He told me he used to be in insurance and explained what would probably happen.

He took another look at how the car was parked and said, I'm also issuing a ticket for blocking a driveway. The car's rear bumper was hanging over the driveway. See? The space was totally too small. He offered, It was probably someone in a rush for the train.

I responded, But this is two hour parking! If you come back, you can issue a parking ticket, too.

I was joking. Not really. I was steamed.

Then he took a moment and said, You're lucky she didn't drive away (he'd ascertained the name of the owner).

I said, All she had to do was leave a note. But I guess you can't leave a note when you don't know you hit a car.

He handed me my stuff and said the report would read that her car clearly hit mine and he could attest to it. I thanked him and drove away. He backed up his car to where I had been parked and began to write her ticket.

Namaste

Thursday, July 2, 2015

How We Learned To Dance: Top 8 Movies That Influenced Our Moves

After I got two articles accepted by The Mid, I was on a writing tear. Then the rest of my articles got rejected. Apparently, the site is developing into something that is not within my writing style or content variety, meaning it seems to be shaping up into a site about parenting and how nostalgia can influence parenting. As we all know, Eddie and I have nothing in our home that we need to keep alive aside from each other--no plants, no pets, no children--so the parenting edge is not in my wheelhouse. Instead of keeping my rejects locked up on my laptop, I present you with this outstanding nostalgia-provoking list. I know I left some out (like Grease 2--let's bowl, let's bowl, let's rock n roll), so feel free to fill in the blanks.

When I was in nursery school, I took tap and ballet lessons. I got to wear a red leotard, sparkly silver vest, white gloves, and a red feathery boa for my recital. Today, while I remember the costume in detail, I do not remember one step. I never took lessons after that. Still, I love to dance. I dance everywhere. And, I can dance. So can you. We all can. Here’s why:

Dirty Dancing (1987)
Baby defied her daddy by sneaking around with Johnny Castle, and we all learned how to avoid spaghetti arms and find the rhythm by listening to our hearts: gu-gung, gu-gung. And who hasn’t dreamed of running and leaping into someone else’s arms to be lifted overhead in glory and awe when “The Time Of My Life” comes on the radio?

Lambada [The Forbidden Dance] (1990)
Baby wasn’t the only girl sneaking around. As kids, we want to see anything that’s forbidden, so this flick seemed like an obvious choice. It was a bit of a letdown since the plot of the movie was about a Brazilian princess coming to America to save the rain forests, but it did present some dance moves that were one level dirtier than those in the “I carried a watermelon” scene in Dirty Dancing.

Footloose (1984)
Ren McCormack wasn’t teaching just Willard Hewitt how to dance. He was teaching the world to dance. Why? Because: “what did David do? [what did David do?] David danced before the lord.” He appealed to the mean Reverend Shaw Moore’s own Bible, and then followed up with every teen’s reason to dance: “Let’s party!”

Can’t Buy Me Love (1987)
Dancing makes you cool. Or if you’re cool, you can do any kind of dance and everyone else will do it. Ronald Miller got cool by bribing the cool girl to fake-date him, and then he got even cooler by showing off his recently-learned dance moves he got from the local publicTV station by accident. Whether we ever repeat his African dance moves in public or not, we all have them in the back of our minds just in case an occasion arises.

Grease (1978)
The musical is a great way to learn how to dance because it’s got lots of dances all through it, and each one goes with a specific song, so we added a lot to our dancing repertoire all within the span of 110 minutes. Hand jive! Dancing on cars! Slumber party dancing and swooning! We’ve got it all.

Beetlejuice (1988)
Harry Belafonte’s chipper groove “Jump in the Line” is one of those songs that sticks around for days when you hear it, and the best way to cope with it is to just shake, shake, shake Señora, the same way Lydia Deetz did. Only her way was even better because she got to float up into the air and shake away, complete with backup ghost dancers.

Reality Bites (1994)
Winona Ryder shows off her dance moves a second time years later, and this time it’s not Harry Belafonte, but it is The Knack with “My Sherona” that gets everyone moving. Vickie Miner asks the cashier at the convenience store to turn up the radio and then holds out her hand to Lelaina Pierce, and what follows is some fantastically awkward choreography that taught us we should simply move with the music without caring about what anyone else thinks (a bit too late for Ronald Miller).

The Breakfast Club (1985)
We’ve watched this scene too many times to count, and even though it’s completely and outrageously near impossible, we believe that Andrew Clark can break that class every single time. The best pre-cursor to the awkward moves in Reality Bites, this dance scene is complete with balancing along a banister and hanging off of a statue. While we all have differences, we can all come together in dance. Even in the library where we’re supposed to be quiet. Even in detention when we’re not supposed to move.

So if you ever find yourself frozen on a dance floor, just think back to your favorite dance scene and set yourself free.

Friday, June 26, 2015

It's All Free Y'all

Some of these appear sideways even though they didn't look that way while I was uploading, and since I am of a lazy people, you can simply crook your head to the side, or if you are of a lazy people as well, not.

I don't even remember how or why I got this.

Free CVS coupon -- I usually get at least 40% off with coupons and deals there.

I. WON. This. Thanks Home and Living Magazine and Harrows!

Delicious. In recyclable k-cups.

"free" as in I took it home from a wedding

I have yet to try this but I'm excited to do so.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015