My kind of town (shut, up Chicago)

No wonder after I started this blog in November of last year I didn't really get down to writing until January. The holidays are killing me! I had visitors last week so get off my back about the lack of posts (you know who you are).

Last week my sister and her lovely girlfriend were in town and we spent the vast majority of our time in New York City. C, K's girlfriend, is from California, and having only been out east once, we made it our job to show her a good time to ensure many visits to come and in doing so I realized how very, very much I love New York City.

We took the easiest way possible to endear the big apple to anyone's heart and started with the food. Pizza, dirty water street hot dogs (they are amazing and I don't care how many studies they do about E. coli in that water, it only makes them more delicious), sandwiches (apparently everything in California comes with sprouts on it so the Italian combo we seduced her with was an entirely new experience), street cart kebabs, soft pretzels - no place has such diverse and amazing gustatory options in such a small land mass. Ellis Island was the best thing to ever happen to the stomachs of New Yorkers because I don't think Dutch food is all that tasty.

This melting pot of cuisine is the result of all the different people who call New York and its boroughs home. And all of this difference, packed onto one small island with few exit points has created the "Eh. Whatyougonnado?" attitude that radiates from its inhabitants. Nothing phases them - traffic, slow subways, the bum on the corner pissing on his own shoes - New Yorkers have made acceptance, and even generalized ennui, when faced with the bizarre, an art form.

This acceptance is what I think makes NYC one of the friendliest places on earth. Not that that's the general reputation. Most people think New Yorkers are mean, until you meet one. I have met several people who, after having visited, were pleasantly surprised at how affable Big Applites were. I suppose it's like the Parisians, except in their case the assholic rumors are true. But nothing makes me happier than chatting with the Pakistani kebab guy while he takes my order or being asked "Yo! Where you goin', honey?" by the construction worker I'm walking past. The latter gets the "fuck you"stare, but I'm smiling on the inside.

And speaking of "fuck you", this accepting attitude also comes with a side of brutal honesty. If you truly piss a New Yorker off, they will tell you. When it's bad, it's really bad, but at least you know here you stand.* Which should be a few feet back when voices are being raised by people near you on a subway car.

It's the general energy of the city that I love. We were in midtown with all the holiday goodness that entails - the tree at Rock Center, the windows at Saks, the crowds of tourists. It was hectic and crazy and wonderful. I actually enjoy the tourists, they are just so damn impressed with the city and excited to be there. It gives you perspective on what a wonder you have right in your back yard. Some folks dislike the commercial, mainstream, hub-bub and prefer areas downtown with a hipper vibe. I, personally, am an Upper East Side gal. Shocking, I know, but having worked there my entire professional life I feel comfortable with its pace and aesthetic. My affinity for a neighborhood is inversely proportional to the number of vintage shops. Vintage, translates for me to "other people's used shit" and no, thank you.

Regardless of which neighborhood you love, New York has something for everyone. I may not have been lucky enough to have lived in Manhattan proper, but having worked there and been born in the Bronx, my love of NYC runs deep in my veins. It is a part of me and I am even more convinced than I ever was that I can never be too far away. New York City is like the beating heart of the tri-state area and I feel lucky to be so close to such an amazing place.

I Heart New York.

*My apologies to Hubby for almost causing that fight on the 4 train, but that guy was blatantly taking up two seats balancing his check book on a crowded train to Yankee Stadium, for Christ's sake, and he needed to be told.

"You look like beef carpaccio! Veil down, I think!"

I just got back from what I feared was going to be a traumatic appointment at the dermatologist. While, thankfully, my days of visiting the doctor for terrible acne to get a refill of that weird cream I had to keep in the refrigerator (convenient as freshman in college, let me tell you!) I have entered a new house of horrors visiting said doctor to discuss how my face is aging. With my thirty-fifth birthday a mere nineteen days away (there'd better be plans, H) I decided it was time to stop using the hog-pog of creams I have been rooked into buying by various celebrity spokespersons and overly made-up saleswomen and get some professional help.

I arrived at the office and was shown to the exam room where I nervously awaited the doctor, distracting myself with feeding Little Man his twentieth graham cracker of the morning. A knock at the door and there she was, the woman who was sure to be able to see every teenaged trip to the shore when I was too embarrassed, and convinced if I just tried hard enough I'd tan, to bring sunscreen. She'd see my love of refined sugars and wine in each enlarged pore and those tiny, but disturbingly WC Fields-esque, veins under my nostrils. I was convinced she would shriek in horror as I told of my regular Oil of Olay usage and fickleness when it comes to facial cleansers, buying whatever is on sale at Target. But worst of all? I was afraid she would say I looked old.

Surprisingly enough, she said my skin "looked good" which I guess beats the, "There are purses out there with better skin texture" I was fearing. We discussed various creams and unguents and then she brought out the big guns. Was I interested in any procedures? I asked her what was available and she asked me, "Well, it depends what results you want."

What did I want? Well, I want to age. Not in the I-want-to-get-old sense, but I am a woman of a certain age and I think I'd like an appropriate amount of that age to show. At thirty-five I don't expect to look twenty-five, I just don't want to look forty-five. I would like people to think when they meet me for the first time "she looks good for her age". In today's youth obsessed culture I feel I have a responsibility to my daughters to age. What example am I setting for them if my actions tell them the best years of your life are when your face is still unlined and you can go bra-less without kicking yourself in the ta-tas? We have very few examples today of women who are aging gracefully and the resultant narrow definition of beauty is doing making women feel like their sexual selves end once those crows start leaving their tracks.

Sure a hit of Botox here and there would smooth out some of the lines on my forehead. And, really? Who would know? But I think it's a slippery slope. And I feel once you cheat time you have to pay the piper at some point. One shot of Botox turns into three or four and before you know it you've painted yourself into corner where your only choice is to keep going or have your face collapse and age thirty years over night.

One of the benefits of our youth-obsessed culture is there are no limits to what we can do as we age if we take care of our bodies and minds. But the drawback of the beauty culture that has developed is we have no appreciation for the beauty that comes with age. The marks on our bodies left by a life well-lived. Trite, but true. Sure, my frown lines are not the best example, but you won't see me getting implants anytime soon to correct the damage done nursing three babies. And my crow's feet are from smiling at my kids, laughing with my husband or squinting on a sunny day at the beach.

So, in the end, I bought some creams, got a retinol prescription and am contemplating a chemical peel. A gentle one, not the Sex and the City "beef carpaccio" variety. I'll see what happens and how my skin looks in a few weeks. Because not matter what happens, in a few weeks? I'll still be thirty-five and no cream is going to change that.

Jose Feliciano aka Marquis de Sade

I apologize for the long absence, dear readers, Hubby was out of town on business again and I had to use all of my energy to not hang myself in the basement.  He has since returned from his trek across the Himalayas with only a canteen of water to sustain him.  Or at least that's how he bills these trips before his departure, returning only to regale me with stories of the four hour train trip during which he spent not a single moment in his seat, but rather in the bar car.  Boo-fucking-hoo.  So now he's back and while it is nice to have adult interaction once again, I did notice the marked lack of eight pairs of work shoes by the front door and open saline bottles left on the bathroom counter for the baby to play fire hose with while he was away.  Perhaps he needs a sticker chart like the girls.  But instead of calling it his Big Boy Chart, as I do for the kids, I'll label it "Shit I Should Do Unless I Want to Be On the Business End of an Ass-kicking".  But I digress...

Speaking of apologies, let me formally apologize to the inhabitants of apartment #2 at 925 Park Avenue in Hoboken, NJ during the month of December, 1996.  Let me 'splain.

It was during that month I decided to host my first party in my first solo apartment.  It was a tree-trimming party and I invited the fifteen or so guys and gals I was working with at the time to join me in my shoe box of an apartment (seriously, you could prop your feet on the opposite wall when sitting on the couch watching TV).  We were all fresh out of college, barely making ends meet in these first apartments and constantly trying to prove how grown-up we were - and failing miserably.  In this vein, I decided my soiree would not have the usual cases of cheap beer and various snacks from Frito-Lay.  Instead, I was serving only cheap champagne and various finger foods I had read about in Bon Appetit.  Nary a plastic cup was in sight, I was, instead, insisting on only using stemware - a trait I still possess to this day and I keep a set of cheap "hotel" champagne flutes bubble-wrapped in a box that I pack in my suitcase whenever I am going on a hotel vacation.  Drinking bubbly out of a plastic bathroom cup is just depressing.

So the time of the party draws near and having set up the tree (or having paid the guy who helped me drag it home twenty bucks to erect my Clark Griswald-esque selection in its stand -  it almost poked me in the eye in the bedroom when I woke up the next morning) and after having spent the day making finger foods and cleaning glasses, my guests all arrive and we begin decorating the tree with a variety of ghetto ornaments crafted by the impoverished guests.  I still have the star made from a Sam Adams carton and tin foil.  It's in with our current Xmas stuff and it makes me laugh ever year.

Fast forward three hours and many bottles of Freixenet later, and things are getting a little out of hand.  My friend's boyfriend, who was the Fun Bobby of our group had already smashed three glasses, claimed control over the stereo, and thus began a two hour long constant replay of Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad with sixteen drunken idiots singing along at the top of their lungs.  Nice.

Thank you, former neighbor, for not coming down the stairs with a baseball bat after the tenth replay.  I did not, at the time, possess the manners or knowledge of apartment etiquette that dictates you invite all neighbors who might call the cops to your soirees to prevent such phone calls.  You were very understanding.  And please know, I am now getting my comeuppance.  My children are obsessed with this song and I swear, if I have to hear this blind guy sing "prospero año y felicidad" one more time at eight in the morning on the way to school, I will fling myself out of the van while it is still in motion.  Goddamn Dora.  I have them, mercifully, listening to the original, but it was that little bitch who turned them onto it.  If it was her version we were listening to I'd be dead already.  

I think I have been paid back in spades, no?