a healthy outlook

it's always nice when my apartment stops looking like this:

yes, i am healthy again. also yes, i do throw dirty tissues on the floor when i don't feel well. the above photo was taken after i began to mend. the day before there were at least 40 more. i think it has something to do with embracing the disgustingness of being sick. or more likely, it has to do with the fact that my writing desk is in the corner and my garbage can is under the sink.

anyway...where was i. oh yes, i am (for the time being) healthy again! which makes everything brighter. and which, apparently, makes me feel like taking pictures of things that look brighter on my out and abouts.

so even though it's raining today, here are a few things that made me smile in the last few days.



if ever you think you're having a bad day, tell yourself,
at least i'm not sitting on a step decomposing



hard to tell, i know. but it's a hoola hooping contest.
the lil midget in the pink top won. no, no, on the left.
did you just squint and look?



the trees were this gorgeously yellow
all the way down the street. creepy man in
the park asked me which was my favorite season
and was suprised when i said spring and fall.
this is why i love fall, creepy man.

oh dear, christmas decorations going up.

scared? who me?

i win the Worst Blogger Ever award.

a hurricane (ok, tropical storm. erm, hard rain) passed over my city this weekend and i didn't take one picture. not one!

this means i didn't capture the "BRING IT! - NYC" that someone tagged on a boarded up coffee shop. or the sign at the bar that said "We'll be open NO MATTER WHAT! Come in for a hurricane shot." nor did i capture a picture of the storm swell that i saw in Queens, which would have shown a perfectly calm river, only an hour before the rains, with not a ripple in it.

what did i do? i fled my apartment in the early afternoon. i put plastic soup containers around the legs of my couch and moved all the electrical things into my bedroom. if it flooded, there wasn't much else i could do. out on the street, i immediately saw how skewed my vision was by my subterranean living. from my windows all i saw were ominous grey skies and rain, but out on the street? life!

every neighborhood i road through was full of people -- laughing, eating, drinking. all the restaurants i passed were slammin'. maybe in a few hours there would be total devastation, but in the meantime, New Yorkers were gonna enjoy their last bit of peacefulness.

it was a good lesson in "you experience life based on how you choose to experience life." one person's hurricane is another person's fiesta.

so after that initial bout of "do i stay and protect my apartment or leave and protect my sanity" it turned into a great day. i went to a bbq. met some great people. ate and drank my butt off. then watched a hitchcock movie and slept over at my friends. at night, their house got rocked by rain. in the morning, brooklyn was leaf strewn and beautiful. riding my bike home, i watched the first tentative people emerging from their apartments looking like i felt. awed.

we'd lived through something. something that turned out to be nothing. and now we have yet another "remember when?" nyc story and a lot more canned goods in the house because of it.

* thanks to all the sweeties out there who left me great hurricane advice and wishes of safety and concern in my comments. you guys are amazing! i felt so much better prepared and cared for because of it.

color me...

annoyed.

yesterday, if i was a little kid, i'd have stomped my foot.

what follows is my pictorial review of an annoying day. (be prepared. these are not: my car broke down then got hit by a bus type of annoyances. but this was my yesterday and i've got to blog about something.)

it began at lunch. in an effort to get out into the world more, i've decided to treat myself once a week-ish to a working lunch in a restaurant. i headed to a new french coffee shop in the 'hood. it's common for a nyc lunch to run the lunchee $15 to $20, but i shopped the outside menu. everything was well in my range of cheapness. between $4.50 and $7.95.

anticipation grew when i stepped inside and saw a sandwich that looked like this:

yes, folks. as you guessed, that's a sandwich covered in melted cheese with a giant delicious salad next to it.

in an effort to be, i dunno, adventurous? i went for the special. a tartine with avocado, fresh ricotta, pears and a black pepper honey. possibly yum-yum, right?

yeah. this was my plate.

for the record. those are two cucumbers at the bottom of the cutting board.

i'd never realized tartine translated as: toast with bits of stuff. lo and behold, check comes and it's the most expensive thing on the menu. had i known, i would have ordered the smoked duck over green beans. i would have ordered the cheese drenched sandwich. i would have ordered three things and not gotten to the price of my three triangles of bread. i wanted to cry, how can you charge $11 for produce from the bodega?!

instead i ordered a coffee and tried to ignore that i was as hungry as when i walked in.

cut to spanish class:

why do the people with the most inane thoughts always have the most to say?

we've begun class presentations about spanish speaking countries. same guy as above does the music of Uruguay and the first youtube clip he shows is of a japanese band with japanese subtitles. sigh.

cut to the other guy who simply needs to speak in english. when asked if he thinks all movies end happily (as one classmate had said), he answers (in english): "you're asking what kind of movies i like? oh, i like, kung-fu. actione. fantastica."

a. no that's not what we were asking. b. i'm pretty sure not one of those responses was spanish. at all.

sigh.

worse than any of this is the fact that the more effort i make at learning spanish, the worse i get. granted, when i speak spanish i say spanish words that keep up with the english ones in my head, so sure, the translation is bound to be off. the other night at work i was prattling on in my corrie spanish. when i finished speaking there was a stunned silence, into which my one friend said: "dude, that was terrible."

granted, said friend is the guy who when i commented that i'd gained a little weight and felt it in my belly, replied, "yeah, and you can also see it in your face." (i love having boys as friends.) but still...

last tonight i couldn't make it through one spanish sentence without realizing in advance that the entire thing made no sense. i left class feeling annoyed, dense, and popsicle like from the air conditioning.

what greets me out front of the building? the wall street bull. or, rather, tourists taking these kinds of pictures:

it's been the same since i began my spanish class. yes, occasionally tourists take pictures in front of the bull, but 9 out of 10 take pictures of themselves coming out of the bull's rear. or fondling his, uh, stuff. this tendency transcends all cultures. maybe that should make me feel better. last night, it just made me wonder what the freak is up with mankind?

maybe this is why writers write. without the mandated solitude, we'd be forced to be out in the world like normal humans and it would turn us into petulant, little tyrants.
 
back at home, i imagined the tyrant safely put away for the night. corrie would be annoyed by no one else that evening.

around 3 a.m. a beetle made it's way into my apartment. it careened around my ceiling then threw itself into a dusty corner. i found it with a flash light, rolled up paper in hand to squash it. but the little guy was too cute. he kept walking into the baseboard trying to find a way out. i got a glass and trapped him.

"i'll help you lil' buddy," i said, as i slid paper beneath the glass. "no worries." (yes, when i save bugs lives i speak like an australian cowboy).

or not.

lil' buddy's head made a terrible crunching sound when i accidentally decapitated it. his legs kept wiggling. i felt awful.

at least yesterday is behind me. i woke this morning to a text inviting me to a soulgasm dance party. whether that pans out or not, i'm making a point of today being the kind of day that you can color me: peaceful.