Friendly

I'm a crap friend. If you know me, you know this. You've probably had to hunt me down to have drinks or dinner. I ignored five emails in a row and then you left a voicemail on my cell phone saying, "please call, we're really worried about you and just want to know you're okay". Cheer up. I treat my family this way too. My mother called a couple weeks ago to say, "So I hear you're going to Ecuador?"

I had dinner with a friend this week and got to see her little girl for the first time in over a year. I think. That's the bad part--I can't even remember when I last saw her CHILD, and I love this woman. I really do. She and her husband are shining stars in my life. It's not everyone who will open up the sofa bed for you when you've stormed out on your husband in the middle of the night. And then call him to tell him you're safe with them. These are good people! They deserve better.

Why do I do this? Why do I disappear? Must need more therapy...or something.

Another friend I have--I've actually been seeing a lot of lately. The odd thing is, hanging out with this person tends to make me sad. Okay, maybe not sad exactly, but that's the first word that popped into my mind and that says something, doesn't it? We part after hanging out and I feel a little sad because I know it won't last. We'll just end up pissing each other off again and that will be that. Again. So I'm trying to be a good friend while it lasts, and a better friend to everyone else. I'm trying to answer emails as they come, to answer the phone instead of sending it to voicemail because it's "not a good time" and I'm trying to listen more. Because I'm hearing I'm a crap friend. And a crap sister.

What does my disappearance act and my friend that I do hang out with who makes me sad sometimes have to do with each other? I have no idea. All I know is that right now, thoughts are quite frequently swirling in my mind trying to come together and make some sense out of things. Why do you make me sad, but I want to see you? Why do you make me happy, but I never call you back? Oh that is just so wrong.

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Happy Labor Day

As I sit here sipping the last of this bottle of Château du Rouet Côtes de Provence Rosé (farewell summer!)I am faced with the idea that I might have wasted an entire holiday weekend. I did NOTHING. Seriously nothing of merit. (other than drink this bottle of wine which reminds me of a cafe that sits on a busy street corner, facing the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, and daydreaming about Paris is always worthwhile I think...)

Anyway, I did manage to get one item checked off the to-do list: I hung the four vintage costume prints I found at a flea market in Paris two years ago. I love these prints and nothing other than sheer laziness has stopped me from hanging them. You try to get shit done in an Upper East Side Co-op sometime. You can only hang pictures between the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday through Friday; it is impossible to get things hung without hiring someone to come do it for you when you're off busy working. We were let out of work early on Friday so I ran home and grabbed the level, measuring tape, hammer and nails and got busy:

Sorry for the picture quality, I should have scanned these before framing, then I could also work on the translations--there's some seriously archaic French going on there.

This sucks too, but the lighting gets close to what the bedroom actually looks like most times. It's a very dark room and I'm working with that, or at least trying to:

The lampshades are not fuschia by the way, they are red damnit.

Other than the hanging of pictures I also went out Friday night with Chris Burke! (carrying on the MySpace stories, I have "talked" with Chris more on MySpace than I have since we were both in middle school, trying to study for an Algebra test and not making out in Jennifer C's bathroom! I love this boy:

On Saturday Dave and I went to a Yankees game and then a pizza grilling party at Ben and Beth's in Brooklyn. Okay. Maybe the weekend was front loaded with Friday and Saturday activities. Sunday and Monday? Barely left the apartment. It was kinda awesome.

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In praise of MySpace and Facebook.

I think it’s pretty obvious that I enjoy the internet. I’ve met some really cool people via the crazy interwebs, hell in 1998 a bunch of people on the internet heard about my cat needing surgery and they all got together and sent donations for the poor thing. I LOVE the internet. But MySpace and Facebook? I have never really been a fan, until this summer. I still think MySpace has already rolled downhill and is probably dying down there, but let me tell you a little story…

My sophomore year at NYU was one wild and crazy ride. Even for me it was just too much. I moved into a shitty apartment on 2nd Ave and 18th Street. There was a guy who took up residence in the closet under the stairwell, someone called the landlord about it and she just started charging him rent. It was THAT kind of shitty apartment. The front door was always broken—anyone could just walk right in the building. We all fiercely kept that a secret from our parents. (please, Mary, don’t tell Mom!). The guys on the first floor almost burnt the place down one night when they passed out drunk and left ramen noodles boiling away on the stove. My roommate and I actually had a conversation before dialing 911.

“Is this a 911 situation?”
“I think so: there’s smoke, an alarm going off, and they won’t answer their door…yes, we’d better call 911”
”You do it.”
”No! You do it!”

And THEN I had a nervous breakdown and the university counseling center put me on Zoloft. (loved that shit) School was too much, working two part time jobs to help pay for school was too much, Dave was 500 miles away and what the fuck was I doing in New York anyway??? In the middle of all that there was a group of a friends I made while working one of those part time jobs at the Admission Office. Two of them are friends to this day—the only friends I have left from my NYU days actually. But this story is about this one particular guy. This guy was a senior and very much the big brother type. For some reason we became sort of friends. And then we weren’t. He graduated, I got engaged and never saw him again. We didn’t even exchange addresses. But he’s always been one of those people I sometimes wonder about, “whatever happened to…?”

(and while I’m at it--hello Johnna, are you out there???)

ANYWAY, I haven’t seen this guy in 12 years, then I saw him in one of those VH1 video countdown things (doing commentary) and googled him—found him on myspace and holy crap he remembered me too.

Seriously the last time we spoke was in late May of 1996. We were at a party on some one's roof in Greenwich Village--just past Bleeker St. Cheap beer and a view of the Empire State Building to die for. At the end we were standing on the sidewalk out front and as I was leaving he said (as I remember it), "Are you really getting married?" and I said, "Yes, yes I am". We looked at each other, had a long hug and then I walked home to 18th Street. Got caught in the rain and my pretty new sandals that I had bought especially for that party gave me blisters.

And every time I hear the song “Champagne Supernova” I remember that day.

It has been incredibly weird to get back in touch with him. But in a nice way I think. It's nice to be reminded that at one point in life you thought everything and anything was possible (even after a total psychiatric meltdown), and that there are people out there who remember you that way, and they DON’T know what an incredibly bitter, cranky old woman you grew up to be. We’ve kicked around the idea of meeting for a drink or a coffee. Is that a good idea? Do I really want someone who keeps talking about how “nice”, “little” and “sweet” I was to meet the me I am today? Hmmm.

Now how do you feel about Facebook ma’am? OMIGOD I have to tell you this one—some chick who was totally nasty to me back in the KVA days sent me a friend request on Facebook. I let it sit there for a couple of weeks while I thought about it. Came to realize that how I really felt was, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME BITCH? DO YOU REMEMBER THE HELL YOU PUT ME THROUGH??? Yeah. I’m not over the middle school torture. Sorry.

I clicked Deny. It felt so good.

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So excited!

After years of thinking about it, talking about it, researching it and obsessing about it, we put a deposit down this morning for a trip to the Galapagos Islands!

In early November we'll be spending 8 days on the Samba, this lovely 14 passenger motor yacht.

We're spending a bit more than we were hoping to for this--primarily for the itinerary. Most of the boats don't visit Fernandina and Isabela, the two Western islands, and we feel that if we're going to do this once in a lifetime kind of trip, we want to see it all. And that really narrowed down our options; all the "budget" boats stick to the Eastern loop of islands. Then we discovered that going with some of the cheaper options also means no hot showers and I had an ugly flashback to the London trip of 2005, and we just don't need to go there do we?

I don't think we've ever planned a trip this far in advance. Even my solo trip to Paris was thrown together about four weeks before take-off! For a trip to the Galapagos this is getting to be pretty last minute though, I understand most people book a year or more in advance. I was thinking of a waiting a bit more to see if the agent (we booked with the boat representative directly which involves paying for things via bank transfer or paypal and let me tell you, that is a nerve wracking thing to decide to do for this amount of money--but this boat and agency come highly recommended so I'm squashing qualms and just doing it) would lower the price as they had on some September sailings--but there were only three spots left for the time frame that works best for us, it seemed silly to risk someone else snapping up those spots.

Here's a map of the itinerary we'll be following. 94 days from today!

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Vacation Planning with the Gitzels...

Dave has booked a weekend at a very fancy, chintz-laden bed and breakfast (I'm so proud, I could cry) in Newport, RI. We're working on dining reservations, etc tonight and naturally we're taking suggestions from friends. I just happened to mention that a good friend of MINE is pretty familiar with Newport and that I could maybe ask for recommendations:

Me: “Robert’s going to Newport, but the week after we are.”

Dave: “Good”

Me: “What? It’s not like I’d suggest we all have dinner or something, we’re not going there to hang out with people we know. We’re going for other reasons...I assume?”

Dave: “Well yeah…we’ll be doing ooey gooey stuff. Or screaming at each other. Either way, no one needs to be subjected to that”

Point taken.

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Words

from Grey's Anatomy tonight.

"Don’t wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don’t."

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