Pumpkin Carvers

I met my friend Nancy last night for dinner and shopping in Union Square, one of those quintessentially New York nights out. We went to Zen Palate, a vegetarian Asian restaurant where everything looks like it could be meat, except you know it’s not. We both had the “Sweet and Sour Sensation,” which is essentially the same thing as the Sweet and Sour Chicken served at other Chinese restaurants, except made with soy. They redid the décor to look more upscale—low booths with pillows instead of chairs—but if you eat in the regular restaurant, you can still get 2 entrees for $20, so I don’t entirely get it.

Nancy and I have been friends for years, since we both worked at Penguin and she was my Nora Roberts book hookup. There are many things I love about Nancy—her spark, her fabulous, over-the-top, “make more heads turn than mine does” laugh, her creativity, the fact that we can talk about anything, the more outrageous the better. She’s one of the most fun people I know. We were in DC once, and she went back to the hotel early with our sick friend, while I stayed out. As I rolled into bed in the middle of the night, I accidentally woke her up. She turned to me and asked, “Hey pumpkin, did you have a good time?” and then fell right back to sleep. That’s Nancy.

But what I love most about Nancy is the way I feel when I’m with her. She makes me feel smart and witty and cute when we’re together, like people who aren’t with us are missing out. Maybe they’re just staring because we’re so freaking loud, but I think they’re a little bit jealous.

We were walking around last night, giggling madly and taking turns telling stories, when we came up with a new dating term. See, it seems one of her friends recently went out on a third date, and she invited the guy to her place. Third date. Staying in. The writing was on the wall. She bought wine, lit candles, put out crackers and cheese. And then told him her plan for the night—to carve pumpkins. Wait. Huh?

Nothing says “I can show you a good time” like pushing cozy domesticity WAY too early in the process. He, of course, trotted out the “I’m not looking for a girlfriend” line. Relationship over before it even started. We all know the bunny boilers, the “break up with me and I will make your life a living hell” girls. Well pumpkin carvers are the girls who give off such an air of desperation that they might as well be wearing a sandwich board that says, “I dream of picking out china patterns.” Pumpkin carvers. You heard it here first. Feel free to propagate it.

What I'm Reading

I’ve been reading the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum books. It’s a bit of a moral dilemma for me. See, I normally don’t believe in supporting any author who has played an active role in making one of my friends miserable. And she tried to get one of my friends fired a few years back. Every publishing person has at least one Very Bad Author. You see their name on an upcoming pub schedule and cringe, because you know that every bit of the process will be painful. My personal VBA, I’m convinced, sold her soul to the devil to achieve her fame. There’s no other way to explain why she has lost any shred of humanity. My friend Polly used to really like her work, but had to stop reading her after the second or third time I called her crying. For ethical reasons, I don’t want to like someone else’s VBA, but the truth is that she’s a great writer. She’s funny and sarcastic, and the books make me snicker out loud. So I guess it’s only fair. If you’re one of the people who’s been banned from my VBA, you’re allowed to start reading her again. What’s good for the goose…

My friends Tink and Carolyn did a reading at Borders yesterday. Carolyn read from her brand-new novel, Rain Village, which is about a girl escaping her abusive childhood by learning to master the trapeze and joining the circus. It’s beautifully written magical realism. I read it years ago in manuscript form and couldn’t get the characters out of my head, so it’s so great to see it published. Check it out.

Tink’s book, A Rip in Heaven, came out a few years ago. It’s true crime, about a tragedy that happened in her family. While they were on vacation, her two cousins were raped and murdered, and her brother was falsely accused of the crime. It’s wonderful, but not exactly easy to read emotionally. And as she said, “A pregnant woman in a sparkly red top crying isn’t exactly festive.” So she read from her novel in progress, about Irish gypsies, which sounds like it’s going to be great. I took the bus to the reading, one of my first adventures in carlessness, and learned a valuable lesson. People who take buses during the week are commuters. Once you leave Manhattan, though, people who takes buses on weekends are just poor. At one point, I saw another young, professional-looking couple on the bus, and it made me feel better for a second. Then I took a closer look, and realized I knew them, and they were going the same place I was. Sigh...


I also just finished Disobedience by Naomi Alderman. It’s wonderful, literary fiction set in an Orthodox Jewish community in London. The main character is a modern, bisexual woman living in New York. When her estranged father, a respected rabbi, dies, she goes back to the community she fled years ago. It was smart and illuminating and just in general wonderful. I loved it for the writing, but also for that “peek into another world” aspect, the same way I’m always fascinated by books about the Amish.

On the First Day of Christmas, My Sister Gave to me…

Despite the fact that we spent our childhoods trying as best we could to make each other’s lives miserable, my sister Jean is my best friend. She’s the next one up from me agewise, and was almost 8 when I was born. (For those of you doing the math at home, that will make her 40 in 6 months. He he he.)
Ours was not normal sibling fighting. It was a 15-year battle. We did dishes together after dinner every night, and at one point there was a rule that we weren’t allowed to speak, look at one another, breathe on one another, or cross to each other’s side of the double sink. We were vicious. Before she got married, we got in a fight so big that she threatened to kick me out of her wedding and I suggested she try the personal ads to find someone else to wear the dress. Not our best moment. But some time before she had her first son, we started to realize the other was tolerable. By the time she had her second son, she made me his godmother. By now, we’ve reached a state of complete codependence, if that word can have a positive connotation. Despite an intense fear of big cities, she surprised me by showing up for my 30th birthday last year. We email daily, and talk nearly as often.
And every so often she does something so incredibly sweet that I almost can’t believe it. Today was one of those days. Jean made me an advent gift. For the non-Catholics out there, advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Jean gave me a big Christmas gift bag, filled with 24 individually wrapped presents—one to open each day in December. But wait—there’s more. Each gift was wrapped in Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper, my very favorite. And once I unwrap the presents, there’s a little post-it note stuck to each one with a note from her. She did this for me a few years ago, and I still have the Post-Its saved, they made me that happy.
I opened the first gift today, and it was a copy of her Kathy Mattea Good News CD (her very favorite Christmas CD), and a note that said “I hope you derive as much joy from this as I do!” And while I undoubtedly will, it can’t even compare with the joy I derive from her.

Christine, Fashion Guru

I got a very weird, but very nice, compliment on the train this morning. I was holding on to the pole and reading (my default commuter position) when someone tapped me to get my attention. It was a 40-ish, heavyset woman, who asked me where I buy my clothes. Now, having been fat since some time around birth, I’ve spent my whole life learning to dress down my weight. I remember being in elementary school, and the other fat kid in my class would wear tight shirts. I would ask my mom, genuinely appalled, “But why? Why would he do that??” I was 8.
But when I slipped over to the dark side 4 years ago (also known as “Plus Sizes”) it created a whole new challenge. Now I had the double adventure of dressing down my weight while having this tiny little pool of stores I could shop at. Not good times. Bad times. Plus, buyers and designers seem to think that anyone my size should also be old. If you want anything in mumu shape, with lace overlay, or in mint green, you’re in luck. Young and fashionable? Not so much. Where were the clothes for the 30-something who was screwed with bad genetics and a fierce love for ice cream?!??!
So I totally felt this woman’s pain. And that fact that she liked my clothes enough to want to duplicate my style, of course, made her my friend for life. I gave her stores, departments, brand names, directions. That’s me—making the world more stylish, one fat woman at a time.

Farewell, Sweet Nicholas

I’m not ashamed to admit it. Nicholas was a Toyota. And I loved him.
My dad first bought Nicholas in 1987, the winter I was in sixth grade, when he finally sold his orange VW bug (dad wasn’t one to change cars lightly). In high school, I learned to drive standard on him. When I went away to college, dad and Nicholas came to get me every time I wanted to come home, and then brought me back at the end of the visit, 800 miles round trip. My dad would drive to Long Island to get me on Saturday morning, we’d eat lunch and then get right back in the car and drive back to Rhode Island, and then do the same at the end of the trip. And when I moved to New York for good in 1998, my parents gave him to me. Since then, he’s been my most loyal companion, and more importantly, a symbol of a lot of good things in my life—independence, freedom, my means to see my family whenever I wanted to. We took him to the mechanic this weekend while I was in Rhode Island, only to be informed that one of the wheels wasn’t actually attached anymore, and was only being held on by the weight of the car. If I had hit a big enough pothole, it could have fallen off. (Which, needless to say, has made me seriously question the three mechanics who saw him in the past 6 months and didn’t catch that. Thanks.) He had 226,000 miles, and was just six weeks short of his 20th birthday, so I really can’t complain. But there were still a lot of tears this weekend. I’m working on convincing myself that a car is a self-indulgent luxury in New York (which it is) and that I’m enough of a New Yorker that I’ll be fine without one (which is debatable). We’ll see how I do. My guess is that I’ll make it to spring and then cave when beach season comes around. The thought of having to take public transportation after a day at the beach makes me die a little inside. (Me? Melodramatic? Nah…)
In other news, the Christmas season in midtown, as beautiful as it is when you’re just walking through it, takes on a whole new feel when you work here. I love Christmas, love, love, love it. But even I have my limits. (Something that could be debated, I concede, by anyone who’s ever seen my apartment decorated for the holidays). Cartier has this giant display with a jewelry box that opens and closes and plays Christmas music VERY loudly. Pretty to look at. Not so much fun for my friend Jen whose window is directly above the box. And the tree lighting is tonight here in Rock Center, which means that everyone and their grandmother is swarming through today. I’ve taken refuge in my office, and didn’t even go to the concourse for Starbucks. My window overlooks Sixth Ave, but the offices on the Plaza side of my building were actually vibrating a little during the rehearsal this morning, it was so loud. My office, for now, is still a safe haven. But all that will change once the holiday street performers start. Their 6-song repertoire is great the first time, but starts to wear after an hour or 6. And I can’t lie, Celine Dion’s The Heart Will Go On, played on the pan flute, brings out the ugly in me. Two Christmases ago, my friend Aimee and I made a cop check their permit to make sure they really had a right to be there. They did. Bastards.

The Food Network Made Me Do It

I’ve long contended that the Food Network is the single biggest contributor to my weekend productivity. See, I like television. I like to cook. But I LOATHE the Food Network. Rachael Ray’s voice goes right through me. The Everyday Italian chick is so skinny she looks like a bobble-head doll. In general, I think cooking shows are about as interesting as watching paint dry.
So on Saturdays, I get up early and catch up on my DVR’ed shows for a couple of hours. When my roommate gets up, I share the remote out of a basic sense of fairness. She inevitably puts on the Food Network, and I can’t get out of the living room quickly enough. So the main drive behind my Saturday cleaning and cooking? Not responsibility. Getting away from the television.
Jodie was away this weekend, and my theory was proven without a doubt. An object at rest stays at rest, particularly when that object is me on my couch. The only thing I had to do that was pressing was some cooking for the week, and making a pie for a party I was going to on Sunday. I did those things. But not until 10 pm, when I had been on my couch for 13 hours.
The bad news? I’m disgustingly lazy. The good news? I watched the entire Band of Brothers miniseries on demand, and it was the best television I’ve ever seen. At points I was sobbing out loud.
I also had my book club this weekend, and we discussed Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It’s that kind of great narrative nonfiction that even I can enjoy, which is saying a lot since it’s nonfiction. It’s about the working poor in the United States, and the author went “undercover” working at a number of low-paying jobs—working at Wal-Mart, as a maid, as a waitress, and serving food in a nursing home. It was really interesting, really well-written, and also really uncomfortable to read in a lot of ways, since social class is something Americans just don’t talk about. I loved it, and would recommend it.

A Confession

I have a confession to make. It’s my dirty little secret, and I’m not proud of it, but it’s time it comes out. Here it goes. I can’t make coffee.
It doesn’t make sense. I consider myself a domestic person. I can bake. I’m a good cook. I don’t sew my own curtains like my sisters do, but I could in a pinch. I can’t keep a plant alive, so not so much for me and gardening, but I’m great with kids. And this one, basic domestic skill—brewing a drinkable pot of coffee—completely escapes me.
For a long time people made excuses for me—“If you had a better coffee pot, you’d be fine.” But when Jodie moved in, she came with one of those fancy, expensive coffee pots with a timer and everything. And my coffee still sucks. So badly that I’ve been banned from making it. Same coffee maker, same coffee, and yet somehow it tastes totally different when I make it. She was on a business trip this weekend, and I made a valiant effort to make some for myself. I didn’t have to throw it out, which for me is a slam dunk, so yay! But yes, I can’t make coffee. Go ahead and scoff. I deserve it.