Posts Tagged ‘New York City life’

BlogHer Deflowered

Monday, August 9th, 2010

I’ve been reading blogs for several years, and each year around this time most of the blogs I read are all aflutter talking about BlogHer, about how much fun they’re having, about the cool products and goodies they picked up from sponsors, the great friends they finally met in person and those they made over the course of the conference. The more I heard about it, the more I wanted to be a part of the action. But I just had a little blog, a shy little internet presence chattering meekly in the corner, one that wasn’t updated very frequently, that didn’t have a large following, that didn’t really know what it wanted to talk about.

I didn’t feel I had a ‘right’ to attend BlogHer. I felt like a bit of a wannabe. I wanna write more, I wanna be a bigger part of the BlogHer community. I wanna meet more people. Wanna wanna wanna.  So when I found out that this year’s BlogHer would take place in New York City, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to make good on my ‘wannas’. I wouldn’t have to book a flight anywhere. I wouldn’t even have to attend the whole thing – I could just attend the Saturday session. A small obligation, really, one weekend day out of my life. So I registered.  And I took that small commitment as motivation to keep writing, to keep reading other blogs, and to keep seeking out the connections I wanted to make.

By the time I arrived at BlogHer on Saturday, the conference had already been underway for a day and a half. It didn’t take long though for me to feel right at home. I looked around at all the women playing on their smart phones, hunched over their laptops, reading their Twitter feeds and scrolling through their Google readers. This is the kind of shit I do!  These are my people! It was nice to feel I had entered an environment in which I ‘got’ the people there, and felt like they would ‘get’ me too.

I attended a few panel sessions, but I have to say I was somewhat disappointed. The panels are led by fellow bloggers, which of course makes sense, but…well… Most bloggers, I would say, are largely introverts. Isn’t that why we blog? It feels safer to spout off  from behind a screen to an invisible audience rather than in front of a live crowd with all their judgey eyes?  Many of the panel members I encountered seemed to be stumbling over their words, nervous in front of such a large crowd, not strong and confident with their delivery. Of course I get it. If that were me I think I’d be the same way. But I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I paid money to come, to hear what you have to say. Bring it!  And if you don’t feel that you can, hand over the reins to someone else.

My one complaint aside, what I absolutely LOVED about the conference was meeting so many smart, witty, warm people, people who are so compelling and funny and interesting online that you can’t wait to see them come to life in person. I was eager to  get to the Style Lush cocktail hour, where I could meet so many of the writers I follow online. I walked up, knowing no one, and was instantly greeted warmly and graciously by Jennie of She Likes Purple and Jonna of Jonniker. Within minutes, I met several more ladies–Angella of Dutch Blitz, SueBob of RedStapler23, Leah of AGirlAndABoy, AndreAnna of Modern Matriarch, Cass of CassJustCurious, Kate of Sweet/Salty and (my coughblogcrushcough) Linda of All & Sundry. Everyone was so friendly and funny and despite the fact that it was my first time meeting every single one of them, it somehow felt like I was standing, reunited, amongst a group of girls I had known since college.

I only had an hour to mingle with the ladies before I had to dash off for my train back home, but I am so glad I got the hour I did. I can’t be sure, but I have a feeling it was the beginning of many a beautiful friendship.  Thanks, ladies!

Tags: ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | 2 Comments »

Closing A Chapter

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Last summer we put our apartment on the market. With a baby on the way a one bedroom apartment, no matter how much we loved it, no longer seemed feasible. And while many of our neighbors begged to differ – “you could just put up a wall in the living room!”—we decided we wanted more. Sure, we agreed with our neighbors, nodded along with them as they described how to carve a tiny nursery out of a large living room, even stepped inside their own apartments as they showed us exactly how they finagled some extra space for baby. But behind closed doors we dared to dream of a yard, a barbecue, a driveway—all the trappings of home ownership that we felt we had earned and that we wanted our future family to experience.

We found that house last fall. It was perfect in every way that mattered to us. We set a close date for December and hoped to sell our apartment around the same time. Late November we got word that our potential buyer’s application had been rejected by our co-op board. If you don’t live in New York City, you may not know about co-op apartments. Count your blessings. In a nutshell, when you own a co-op apartment, you don’t own the actual property that you live in; rather, you own shares in the building. And so, anyone who seeks to move into one of these buildings must be approved by the co-op ‘board’—essentially a group of stick in the muds who have nothing better to do than fret about who left the pizza boxes in the garbage room, throw you the stank eye if you are three minutes late pulling your clothes out of the basement washing machine, and declare that the building is going to shit what with all the subletters coming and going. But I digress.

As I said, the house was perfect. So we proceeded with the close while we started anew in our search for an apartment buyer. Did I mention I was nine months pregnant at the time? No? Small detail. The baby came in January, we moved into our new house, and all the while the apartment sat empty and unsold. We got a new realtor. We paid two mortgages. I quit my job and we went down to one income. We continued to pay two mortgages. The imaginary noose around our necks grew tighter and tighter. Eventually we got an offer. Accepting it was easy; fretting over whether this new buyer would pass the board was not. A co-op board can deny a prospective resident for any reason they wish. Google search unearths a Girls Gone Wild video you starred in in college? You’re out (or maybe, IN, in certain buildings?).

While we’ve had an accepted offer on our apartment for a few months, it wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that we were able to breathe a big sigh of relief. The buyer was approved! I think we were probably more ecstatic than she was. Yesterday Mike closed on the apartment. He handed the keys over to the buyer, but he said it wasn’t easy.

“She asked me what was wrong,” he told me as we talked last night. “I told her that we had had so many experiences in that apartment: we got engaged while we were living there; we got married, we conceived and had our baby…”

“That’s right,” I said, and thought about how that little apartment had been our home base for so many life milestones in the span of just four years.

He spied an engagement ring sparkling on the buyer’s finger. “I told her I hoped she had the same experiences.” I hope so too.

1036

1426

DSC_0196

Tags: ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | No Comments »

So Much Sun

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

This week the temperature climbed above 30 for the first time in three years, or some shit like that. No, it wasn’t actually three years, but it sure felt like an eternity since anyone was able to walk outside without fear of frostbite. And so, my winter baby is getting his first real taste of the sun. It’s going to be hard to quash his zombie ways. Drew reacts to the sun the way most people react to Richard Simmons, Dick Cheney and Amy Winehouse: he squishes up his face, shakes his head back and forth, and makes guttural noises of discontent. I suppose the smart thing to do would be to break him in slowly, but I am so starved for sun that I insisted on immersing us in it All Day Long.

We took a total of three walks today and considering that Drew eats every three hours, that means I hustled him out the door each time he was fed, burped and changed, without a minute to spare. At 7:30 I realized we were out of milk–and mama needs her coffee–so off we went in the Baby Bjorn to the corner store.

At 11:30 I heaved him into the stroller and we embarked on an adventure to the next town over. In the charming village of Pelham we strode past old fashioned hardware and stationery stores, mom and pop cafes with unassuming names like “Joe’s Coffee Shop” and construction workers breaking from picking up supplies at the nearby lumber yard. Pelham is the kind of village where the UPS guy stands around chatting with the owner of the pizza shop, where old biddies shuffle down the sidewalk with their walkers and men who look like they ride with the Hells Angels on the weekend hold doors open for those biddies. It’s unassuming and completely delightful, no airs or pretenses, just real people going about their days, frequenting the same family-owned stores they’ve been coming to since they were kids. It’s the kind of town I want Drew to appreciate, when he’s not fast asleep in his stroller, shielding his delicate eyes from the blinding sun.

photo(3)

Tags: , ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | No Comments »

What To Do On A Snow Day

Friday, February 26th, 2010

We’re snowed in here in the New York area. Again. I think we can all agree that winter needs to GO already, but since we have no choice but to deal, I decided to make lemons out of lemonade. Or, more accurately, mimosas out of Florida’s Natural OJ, among other things.

Four Steps to the Perfect Snow Day

1. Remain in your PJs

DSC_0408
2. Mix up a fun concoction

Mimosa

(Sorry, for the life of me I couldn’t get this picture rotated. Maybe I had too many mimosas??)

3. Bake cookies

DSC_0450

4. Capture the magic

DSC_0443

Tags: , ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | No Comments »

Dog Days

Monday, August 17th, 2009

This past weekend happened to be my birthday weekend, and while I had made no major plans for it and couldn’t enjoy a bottle of wine in celebration, I don’t think I could have scripted a more perfect itinerary than what it turned out to be.

Friday night was spent here:

The Time Warner Center is arguably the cleanest, most stunning, most modern building in all of Manhattan these days. I suppose that what I love about this place is that it has all the creature comforts of suburbia that I ache for from time to time: air conditioned comfort, floors lacking in litter, shiny glass, and architectural details that are not, in fact, charmingly post-war. We had a delicious dinner here, and enjoyed pre- and post-dinner cocktails here (I enjoyed ice water, vintage 2009). It was a perfect evening, and what I most enjoyed was how genuinely wowed my guests were by our surroundings. It’s hard to impress a group of cynical, jaded New Yorkers, but the Time Warner Center has the magic!

Saturday and Sunday were hotter and more humid than an ecuadorial tribesman’s armpit, so both days were spent whiling away the hours on our boat.

Some of us waterskiied.

DSC_0951

Some of us fished.

DSC_0990

Others of us enjoyed splashing around in the water.

DSC_0912

All of us had the genuine, gleeful smiles of children. Happiness, thy name is simple pleasure.

DSC_0907

Tags: ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | No Comments »

Strange Creatures

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

It’s news to no one that New York City is one of those places that ‘takes all kinds.’  In the space of one subway ride, you could encounter a toothless, shoeless homeless guy begging for change, a breakdancing dwarf, a six-foot tall Brazilian waif on her way to a photo shoot, and an enterprising middle-aged man in coke bottle glasses hawking AA batteries. It’s the beautiful disaster that makes this city so fascinating, particularly to someone like me who loves people watching, and loves to simply observe the world at large.

I work in a part of the city that lays claim to an even higher ratio of freaks than other areas of Manhattan. While the corporate drones have cornered Midtown—men in their button down shirts and slim dress pants, women in their stiletto pumps and tailored shirtdresses—the area around 14th Street is a region where the outliers are the in crowd.

A few of the people I encounter on a day to day basis…achingly artistic students at the Parsons School of Design, Jamaican nannies with their well-heeled, hipster charges, and concave stomached artist types who subsist on cup upon cup of the crack-cocaine level amounts of caffeine they consume at Joe, the painfully hip local coffee shop. These are the locals though; these groups don’t surprise me anymore.  They are the scenery, and only when I put myself in the frame of mind of a visitor to New York City, of someone who traveled here from more homogenous middle America (as I did several years ago) do I see just how disarming it all can be.

These days, the man who sits outside the deli yelling humorous, surprisingly bold lines at passersby is just another sound my brain transforms to city white noise.  “Lady in black, I KNOW you comin’ back!” he howls, with hopes for a smile, a laugh, and above all, a donation to his tin can.  On some days, the man is just another pest to ignore.  On others, he’s a needed ego boost from an unexpected source.  On the best days, he’s a smack-upside-the-head dose of perspective, a reminder that even when faced with a hard life, the hardest life, one can find reason to smile, to laugh.

To get past the uncomfortableness of encountering those who you’ll never understand and appreciate the rainbow of quirks, tics and eccentricities that this little microcosm of humanity brings to the party, is to see the more colorful side of life. When I think about it, I’m grateful for the man who walks up and down 14th Street with his pet cat perched atop his head.  What else would I have to ponder on my walk to the subway, besides the mundane details of my day job?  How does the cat get there? Is he declawed?  Does anything ever spook him and make him jump down?  Does his tail tickle the back of his owner’s neck?  And what of the woman who take her pet parrot for walks?  “May I take his picture?” I venture one day, consumed with the beauty of this exotic oasis in the urban desert. “Of course!” she responds with pride. “He loves having his picture taken!”

parrot

It takes all kinds.

Tags:
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | No Comments »

Summer Madness

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

By this time each year, DJ Jazzy Jeff and I have usually gotten reacquainted.  Since Jazzy and Fresh Prince released THE BEST SONG EVER, ‘Summertime,’ it has been, well, my summer jam.  In 1991 when the song first came out I would crank up my Walkman and Rollerblade up and down the street, feeling really cool.  As a teenager, when the song came on the radio I would crank it up as I drove my blue Chevy Cavalier station wagon around town, feeling really cool.  Today, I’m old enough to know I was not, am not, and will never be ‘really cool’, but I still crank the song up every time I hear that soft subtle mix.  This year, I’m still waiting for that opportunity.

jazzyjeff

It’s been raining here in New York for days on end.  And I know that sounds like an exaggeration.  Whenever there’s more than a few days of rain people immediately start saying things like, ‘God, I can’t even remember what the sun looks like!’  But seriously, people, the weather gurus proved it.  Of 21 days in June to date, it has rained for 17.

I thought I was one of a small group of people who get really affected by poor weather. But rain?  It seems to get us all down.  I’ve overheard a lot of people saying things like, ‘I can’t take this rain anymore!’  I have yet to hear someone say ‘Boy am I glad how green the trees are, thanks to all this rain!’

The thing is, in the Northeast, we wait about six months every year for sunshine and warm weather to return after what always feels like an endless winter.  In New York we eagerly count down to the day when restaurants finally slide back their big glass windows, throw some patio chairs on the sidewalk, and let us linger next to the hulking garbage trucks, dirty pigeons, and off-their-meds crazy people.  We can’t wait for this! To be one with nature!  To sip mimosas on a leisurely Sunday while we chow down on stuffed French toast, chomping away while a deranged person with Tourette’s syndrome walks by punching herself in the head and screaming ‘FUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS! THE SHIT!!’ so close to you that her spittle lands among the powdered sugar sprinkled atop your plate.  It’s downright serene.  And it can only happen in summer.

And yet.  The rain.  In just two weeks it’ll be July.  We’ve already been cheated out of some of the year’s best days.  Does Mother Nature plan to issue a real ‘rain check’ and make up for her transgressions by extending summer a month into fall?  I should hope so.  In the meantime, I’m gonna think of the summers of the past, adjust the base and let the alpine blast.

(9ecni4wt7d)

Tags: ,
Posted in Shesjustsayin.com | 1 Comment »