A Brief Look at the Men of Greenwich

Devoted partner has been known to say that stereotypes exist for a reason: sometimes they're accurate. As a disliker of stereotypes, I won't regale you with all those that exist for the type of affluent protestants that have traditionally inhabited Fairfield County - especially since I live with and love a traditional inhabitant of Fairfield County for whom only a small number of those jokes apply - but I will say that I have noticed a distinct, shall we say, reservation surrounding the men of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Flirting is a skill which, like bike riding, is easy enough to have its basics remembered after a period of disuse, but which requires practice to attain former levels of proficiency. As a member of a devoted partnership, I flirt less than I used to. See also: I don't work in a big office where men and women freely speak with one another. Therefore, I will freely admit that my flirting skills are experiencing a state of atrophy and, as such, sometimes remembered devices of flirtation will escape at less than opportune moments. Still, I consider such lapses my psyche's way of letting me know that it thinks I should flirt more lest the skill escape me completely.

I ride the train with a dizzying number of well-kempt (if oft poor-mannered) gentlemen daily. These men would, in another environment, be considered my wheelhouse. Since an early age, I did exceptionally well flirting with the over-40 crowd. But there's something about these suburban men that I don't quite grok. The very few conversations I have had on the train (itself a bit of an anomaly) have been of the "I'm looking at the floor" variety, smile-less, and conducted with all the finesse of a demolition. I once joked with a female acquaintance when we had entered a popular bar that, no matter what, the oldest guy in the room would be the one who eventually tried to chat me up. Thirty minutes later, the joke was a prophecy. So what is it about these older gents that prevents chattiness? I need the practice.

Then take this past Saturday. Devoted partner and I were at Whole Foods being very domestic and shopping for the week. Since every man in Greenwich on a Saturday morning is wearing a Polo shirt and there are a finite number of colors of Polo shirt, it wasn't long before I turned to a complete stranger at the meat counter to inquire which meat looked best to him. Before I could manage the question, however, I noticed that it was not devoted partner, but another be-Polo-ed gent. I smiled and said (perhaps with less grace than I would have in peak form), "I was about to ask you which kebab you preferred and then I realized I'm not going home with you." Ok, not my best, but certainly cute enough for 9:30am on a Saturday. The look on this poor man's face made me think that I had said something far closer to: "I'd like for us to worship satan and then carnally know one another." I didn't even get a smile.

And I'll admit, it does a little damage to a girl's self-esteem. I've been paying more attention to grooming and hygiene - a slightly embarrassed smile isn't too much to want in return; or a chuckle. I don't want to assert definitively that the men of Manhattan are one way and the men of Greenwich are another, so I'm asking you, gentlemen, to cut a girl a break. Who knows, you might enjoy flirting with me at the checkout line from time to time.

Oh, You're One Of Those People

Those people that have jobs.

When we moved I was very enthusiastic about joining: the knitting circle, the French conversation club, the bridge group, the scuba dorks, whatever. I was ready to be a joiner. To meet my new neighbors and learn their mysterious suburban ways, buy girl scout cookies from their children, and trade casserole recipes. Except no one told me that the first rule of Greenwich:

Working is for other people.

Now, while husbands may be included in the subset of humanity known as the workers, women certainly are not. Why? You may ask. Oh, ok. Because if you wanted to do ANYTHING in the town of Greenwich you would not also be able to have a job. Knitting circle: 1:30-3:00pm. French club: 11:30-1:00pm. Devoted partner and I wanted to take Spanish class at the high school in the evenings. Yes, well, I don't know how many people you know who are able to be out of work and sitting in class by 5:30pm, but the only ones I know are unemployed.

But the final straw came yesterday when, at 4:00pm I went to Town Hall to get our beach passes. Leaving aside, for a moment, that the amount of documentation needed to get a beach pass dwarfs both the documentation needed to buy a house or, say, gain legal entry to Libya, and come with me to the sign that typifies why I don't think we'll be living here for the rest of our lives. Greenwich Parks and Recreation. Open Monday - Friday 8:15am-3:45pm.

Imagine, for a moment, that you and your living partner are both gainfully employed. Chances are 9ish is the time of day you start being employed. If, like EVERYONE in Greenwich, you work in finance, chances are 9ish is when you are finishing your 4th cup of coffee. Greenwich is approximately 22 miles from Manhattan, or 45-60 minutes to Grand Central by train. People work in Manhattan. When, pray tell, is one supposed to get one's beach pass? Should one take a day off work to do so?

Ahhhhhhhh. Wait. Now I understand. If I am one of those deeply disturbed women who chooses to work despite my husband's massive, throbbing paycheck, thereby preventing me from doing those household chores that Greenwich deems to be daytime chores, I must encourage my domestic to do those chores for me. I send Consuela to Town Hall armed with a dizzying array of personal information and 60 bucks and she gets us our beach passes.

Right?

This is how the rest of you did it?

Feedback and Follow Ups

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Originally uploaded by reallyct

I am trying to embrace small-town living (and by small-town, you should understand me to mean fewer than 3 million people or so). When I saw that there was something called Art on the Avenue in Greenwich, I knew I wanted to go. Local artists' work being featured in local stores and an opening night schedule of festivities featuring live music? Love it. And certainly that was what was on offer last night. But it was lacking for me. There was no feeling of community. The streets, while populated, were not packed, and people were guarded, insular, and unsmiling towards strangers. As devoted partner (sadly at work during my perambulations) said later, Greenwich is a bedroom community and, as such, not a TV-ready suburb of neighborhood pool parties and town hall dances. This evening of purported festivities merely highlighted the differences between my perception of all non-urban environments, and their reality.

I mention this here because I had waxed rhapsodic about the feel of Scarsdale. But Scarsdale is also a bedroom community and while the lady at the knitting store in Scarsdale was nicer than the lady at the knitting store in Greenwich (I later discovered the reason: the Scarsdale knitting lady reverse commutes from Manhattan), the vibe of the street wasn't that much different. So I told devoted partner that for our next move, I'm thinking the south where it is possible that the small-town community shtick that I think justifies not living in the center of the world exists.

Nut-allergic Ed and I ate dinner together on Wednesday - our annual fete-ing of me by him to celebrate how long I have been alive - and he commented that in my anti-special-needs-food post I made no mention of litigation; that is, I didn't mention that the reason people pussy-foot around the nut-allergic, especially when those nut-allergic are children, is that should the child have a severe allergic reaction to the smell of peanuts somewhere in its vicinity, the parents would surely sue. He's right. I didn't mention it. Mostly because I hope those people are consumed by righteous fire, but also because I was being idealistic.

What the parents who crusade for peanut butter-free schools don't seem to realize is that the trading floor on the NYSE won't be peanut butter-free. Eventually, when there's no one left to threaten with lawsuits, their precious little angels will emerge into a dangerous world where peanuts exist. Their workplaces will have peanuts, their public transportation, the streets they walk down. So one of two things will happen: they'll adapt or they'll drop dead. I don't see how preventing the inevitable helps anyone. I know if you have that severe an allergy your life probably sucks, but might I suggest going to a special school, like other people with severe physical disabilities do?

Finally, Aidan wrote about women and lingerie this week. I knew she was going to because we had briefly discussed it, but I was not prepared for the response. No one, but no one, was on Team Yelena. Of the 29 comments left on the post, mine was the only one that advocated fancy things. All the other women were of the, "I'll wear baby-vomit stained yoga pants cause they're comfy and I dare my husband to not want to make it with me," opinion. That's partial hyperbole, but none of the other commenters thought nice undies were a necessary component of a well-lived life. This made me really sad.

And only partly because I dream of opening a lingerie store (I thought I could get together with Kate, my most fashionable friend, and open a fancy bra/fancy shoe store and call it Tits and Toes). I maybe a holder of many minority opinions and sometimes this might make me feel supremely badass (i.e. Tom Jones rocks!), but when stared in the face with it, especially about something I feel passionate about, it kinda stings. I am forced to ask why am I so alone in my thoughts. These thoughts, however, did not make me abandon my quotidian habit of wearing supremely badass underthings. After all, today might be the day I meet Tom Jones!

This Suburban Thing Is Getting Out Of Hand

I think you know the evil elves have taken control of your brain when you visit other tony suburbs and think, "this seems a delightful place to live." I know because it happened to me this weekend. Devoted partner, who sadly must spend a lot of time these days being devoted to his job, was at the office, I was bored, the car had gas. There was a knitting store in a nearishby town I was interested in checking out so I figured what the hell.

I arrived in town and was immediately struck by how much prettier it was than Greenwich. Greenwich Avenue, the main shopping drag is a sorry amalgam of completely socio-economically mismatched stores (Victoria's Secret should not share real estate with Tiffany's), and most, if not all, of the buildings are new. It has, in all honesty, no charm. Which saddens devoted partner who remembers a time when it did. This time must have been very very very long ago since in the 15 or so years I've known Greenwich Avenue, it looked like this. This other town's shops were located in a lovely set of at least 50 year old Tudor-style brick buildings. There were independent shops and there was greenspace. I was briefly in love.

The knitting store was not nearly as snooty as some I have visited and I walked out with a project and time still left on my parking meter. The wine store was having a sale and had a favorite of mine. I joked later that while devoted partner is at work, I merely knit and drink. The best part about the town, especially for those who enjoy buying things, is that the train station is right there. You get off the train and you're in the town - which is true for Greenwich as well (and Port Chester) but there's just simply less charm.

Well now for the reveal which struck both devoted partner and my mother as hilarious: Scarsdale. As I know really nothing about anything, I was unaware that Scarsdale was a punchline for where rich Jews go to have lawns, but damn it, even if it's true, then bravo to the stereotypes for making a lovely town. For all of the stereotypes about wasps and how proper they are, they certainly managed to hose up their shining beacon of a town (unless I totally misjudged Greenwich and it openly invites the velour clad to its DAR dinners).

So now I think I'm going to have to spend some time reminding myself of the joys of Manhattan before I become a totally different person. Thank god the suburbs are nearly devoid of decent food because they do, sadly, have a number of other things going for them. Ok. Now I'm going to go drown in my shame.

Home Invaders

One of the most difficult adjustments I've had to make since moving from Manhattan is to reprogram myself in the area of imminent physical harm. The other evening as I sat upstairs I heard the garage door open and awaited the sound of devoted partner's feet coming up the stairs. About 3 minutes passed and I heard nothing. I first wondered if I had in fact heard the garage door open, and assuring myself that I had, decided, almost conclusively, that bad men had gained entrance to the house and were, at that moment, plotting my dismemberment. In truth, devoted partner had opened the door and then walked two houses down to talk to our landlady (making me wonder why he opened the door at all since he hadn't even pulled the car in).

Our landscaper is a nice guy; he overcharges us, but I think that's mostly the fault of our zipcode. Still, when I'm home alone and the truck pulls up and I see unfamiliar men puttering about my lawn, I do still imagine the possibility of being dismembered.

Recently, devoted partner has worked some late nights. And it's dark out in the suburbs. And things make noises. And I have seriously heard very possibly bad, breaking and entering sounds on these late nights.

But I know that while a lot of my paranoia will stand me in the good stead of self-preservation, the remaining bits are unattractively lunatic. So this morning, when the guys showed up to repair the leak in our water pipe, I opened the door, let them in the basement, and returned upstairs to take a shower. In the room with the fewest potential weapons (eyeliner and curling iron?). I finished my shower and got ready for work, knowing they would still be in my house. It is true, my landlady would be coming by, but she wasn't there yet. I simply trusted that a) they weren't planning to steal from us and b) even if they were, they were going to be sadly disappointed with what we had on offer. And I left.

This is how it's done in the suburbs. Which is pretty bizarre coming from a background where neither I nor my parents ever let our superintendents have copies of our keys.

I did however, just in case, wear my grandmother's ring to work today.

Stamford

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Originally uploaded by reallyct

I think that I will forever be a person with snobbish attitudes about what constitutes a city. I realize that I could use a different set of vocabulary to make things easier and transfer my notions of 'city' to 'megalopolis' thereby preserving the word 'city' for such places as Lincoln, Charleston, and Tucson which I am sure follow the dictionary definition. But I'm not really going to do that leaving me to call places 'town' that really are more than that. It's just that I don't even consider Los Angeles a city as it is more a sprawl than anything else and has never had a center. Hong Kong is a city; London is a city; Chicago is a city. You other places? I don't know what you are.

Stamford, therefore, is very much a town. A town that plays host to UBS and R(u)BS and some other glass menagerie dwellers. It has a couple blocks that could be called a downtown plaza, a shopping mall, and a host of undifferentiated condos. I have known of Stamford for many years because it was where devoted partner and I traveled when we had need of items Greenwich didn't provide. Devoted partner, a Greenwich native, knew the bars, the Mongolian restaurant (sadly defunct), and the various houses of ill repute. But we never spent much time in Stamford.

Recently, however, we have made a couple of forays that led me to a new found appreciation of the town. I don't know from whence it developed, but Stamford has some pretty spectacular architecture, from a strictly kitsch point of view. Take this, my favorite building in Stamford, the one I never feel I adequately capture. Does this not fill you with Saarinen JFK terminal bliss? Come on, look closer.

It makes me want to go out and buy tons of impractical furniture. It makes me want to paint things obstreperous colors. It makes me want to wear a white minidress. It makes me want to drive a vintage Jaguar. In short, if you can't tell, I love this building. One day, I might love it so much as to find out what's inside.

So when work yet again took devoted partner's Sunday, I decided to head on out to Stamford and practice with my camera a bit. I was shocked by one thing: the streets were entirely empty. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, the kind of Sunday morning which, in a city, would see young couples pushing strollers and people lining up for brunch. Stamford was so deserted that I found myself grateful that the people who were out and about were patrolmen. I had hoped to take pictures of people, something I am notoriously crappy at (why must you be so blurry, people?), but there just weren't any.

As I rounded the corner back onto the main drag, I was quite pleased to see church letting out as it at least gave me the opportunity to try to catch better people pictures (still failing, methinks switching to manual and jacking up my shutter speed might be the answer). But the people dispersed immediately. They returned to their cars without stopping for brunch or coffee or a leisurely walk. Whatever else was going to happen on this beautiful Sunday, it wasn't going to happen in Stamford.

And I think that's where I come to the problem of calling places cities. A city is alive all the time. Stamford may thump to the beat of the markets Monday-Friday from 7am to 7pm; it might even have some thumping on the weekend nights, but it doesn't sustain its pulse. Places like Dallas, which have a downtown business district, but where most people live in surrounding suburbs, are different. Life, the life that happens between families and friends, happens elsewhere.

The downtown is a utility, a place for work and shopping, but not a place for being together. So I don't know what to call it. There are people who live in Stamford proper, the neighborhood boasts these dramatically ugly, yet fascinating, round tenements and, as mentioned before, cookie cutter condos and rentals for the singles who UBS and RBS, but the areas surrounding both types of lodging were empty. And, frankly, that made me a little sad. Because the more I walked around Stamford the more I saw the twins opportunity and failure. The number of empty storefronts for rent and the number of cute places that were still open spoke to great potential.

The town of Stamford has done a great job with greenspace and gleaming sidewalks and buildings. I wanted there to be more cafes with outdoor seating and people in the seats because here I saw something cute just waiting to be realized. Last summer we visited the farmer's market that was in one of the squares and after my morning peramble, its problems were brought into focus: very few vendors, several not even selling their own wares, and fewer people in attendance. Stamford, for reasons a citygirl like me finds incomprehensible, doesn't make it as a hub. People who live in the area don't want to go there in their free time. They'll got for the Target, but they won't stay for long. It's not hip, it's not desirable. But, for me, it has certainly made a good argument for repeat visits.

On Bugs

Country living (for that is what I will call it even as people mock me for considering Greenwich, CT the country) has developed sympathies I never knew I had, and hierarchies I never thought existed.

As the weather has gotten lovely, I have noticed something troubling. Members of the outside world have been creeping inside. Specifically ants. Now, it's not actually very many, perhaps 5 in two weeks, and they're not congregating anywhere specific, and they don't seem to travel in packs. 5 single ants. Just hanging out. All five have met a sole-y end. I do not suffer ants in my house, however bucolic they might be.

In the past two days, however, I have seen two spiders. They have been permitted to remain even as they put up structural edifices that would make Frank Lloyd Wright jealous. Because here, in the country, spiders are good. Nay, spiders are awesome. Spiders are that which destroy ants and any other thing that I might not want in or near my home. The bigger the spider the better. I want to see spiders in webs trapping and digesting the hornets I have spied from time to time. May they live long prosperous lives feasting on the mosquitoes that would feast on me (and our lawn which can politely now be called a swamp is, I would assume, teeming with the bloodsuckers). Spiders are friends. They are my front line. They're out there, every day laying mines in the battlefield for mine enemies to fall upon. We're copacetic, man.

I'm not quite certain how any of our visitors gains entrance, but I do know that the spiders were there from Day 1. As someone who is if not bug averse than bug prefer-them-to-be-elsewhere, learning to live with my spider friends took surprisingly less long than I would have imagined. Certainly we had some boundary issues: I'm looking at you daddy long legs who descended in front of my face as I opened the door to the garage - not cool, but now we live in harmony.

Now I need to develop ways of targeting their activities in the areas that need it most (like that space beneath the front door that I saw the hornet fly into (though perhaps it was a spider lair which would be way cool)).

Reporting Live From Ice Station Zebra

With the supply of tea light candles and non-spoiled Jello Sugar-Free Pudding running low, we thought we'd take to the dark quiet streets to assess how local residents are coping with LightsOut2010.

Q: Many are saying that this is the worst storm damage to hit the greater Metropolitan area in 30 years. How are you weathering (chuckle) this storm?

A: Brains....brains....brains....

Q: I see. What are your thoughts on the response time from Connecticut Power and Light?

A: Must have brains....or internet updates....but mostly brains....short supply of brains....CP&L trucks no come to street....difficult to get brains....

Q: What about the new experience of having your home powered by exposed electrical cables as opposed to the underground ones you used to have back in your old apartment?

A: Con Ed brains, er trucks, everywhere....CP&L brains nowhere....Con Ed good....underground wires good....brains good....

Q: How have you spent these past few powerless days and do you find that you don't really miss the trappings of modern life?

A: Mother-in-law....so much mother-in-law....not allowed to eat brains of mother-in-law....need....warm....embrace....TV....

Q: And your neighbors, how are they handling the current power outages?

A: Locked in house....baseball bats....protect brains....neighbors on NY side of border....flaunt lights....TV....refrigeration....retribution swift must be....

Q: Now you're talking like zombie Yoda, tell us a little bit more about the day-to-day changes you're making?

A: House cold....Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwiches melted....toilet seat very cold....high likelihood of burning house down with candles....must set out in search of brains....

Well, there you have it. I think we can conclude that there is no earthly reason why in a country as sophisticated as ours there could ever be a good excuse, save the utter demolition of power stations, why 60+ hours would pass between lights out and lights on. As you can see, the total uselessness of the local utility company has turned some previously normal people into cable-deprived zombies. This reporter can smell the revolution in the air, though that could be the rotting brainless corpses strewn along the avenues, and urges those residents for whom power has been restored to remain in their houses, sensitive to the deprivation of others, and perhaps avoid using your outdoor floodlights throughout the night until this crisis is over.

Reporting live from Greenwich, let's send it back to the studio.

Snow Day?

I asked the conductor this morning if there was a chance the trains wouldn't run tomorrow (or Thursday for that matter) and he said, yeah, there's a chance.

This is one of those new things.

I remember the blizzard of '96 and the subways shutting down. It might be the only time, excepting the strike, that I remember subways not working (ok, and September 11th). Subways are more reliable than postal workers. Yet this train thing, I just assumed a little precipitation would totally short its circuits. After all, it's above ground (yes, I know, subways too are above ground in some places, I just don't go to those places) and runs on wires or something.

Also, will my street be plowed? How soon does this happen. We had that other snowstorm, but I think it was short, or at least short enough that by the time I woke up, our drive had already been plowed (Pablo rules!). Will there be enough traffic to make the main streets passable? Do people just flip out and huddle shivering in their houses? Do I have enough diet-friendly snack food?

Additionally, how is my house heated? I know it's gas, but does it need electricity to make the gas? See also hot water. Will we lose power? So things freeze and/or explode? Will trees fall on my house and/or the electrical wires? Will we, god forbid, not have television? See also internet and phone service.

Much like not every paying for water or steam heat, this whole navigating winter in a house as opposed to an apartment is fairly bizarre. I don't know if we're going to be out in the abandoned streets searching for stray cats to eat for dinner or forced to talk to one another by candlelight because we have no alternate entertainment (and don't scoff at me, you know that 1 hour of candlelight chatting is way different from 6 hours).

Or, much like the buttload of snow I was expecting on Saturday, this could turn out to be another false alarm designed only to fill 36 hours worth of news. Still, if you don't hear from me by Friday, please, send help.

Sounds

There is an old and well-worn joke about New Yorkers and their need for noise as a prerequisite for sleep. It's not entirely false. I, myself, am creeped out by silence, ask any of the people who have ever lived with me and they will note that I do not watch television so much as listen to it; the only place my iPod ever really gets used is in the kitchen; and once upon a time I needed the soothing sound of television to lull me to sleep. The house in Greenwich is obviously less noisy than the apartment in Manhattan.

Noises that city dwellers are accustomed to include sirens, brakes, hooligans, gun shots, loud music, and the gentle hum of traffic. Add to that the sound of dripping faucets, the upstairs neighbor flushing, the hiss and clank of steam heat, and you start to understand the background cacophony that is city life. There is a limit, of course. I remember being shown an apartment that was directly across from the elevated subway line at Broadway and 125th and looking at the real estate agent with what I hoped was a look that conveyed that someone could pay ME to live there, but that I would not be paying SOMEONE ELSE for the privilege.

But now I live in a calm suburb, cloistered from the noise of people doing things. On the bright side, I do not have to find ways to block out my superintendent's infinite loop of the same six really crappy Spanish-language pop songs; on the less bright side, I'll admit, it's creepy. Fortunately (and anyone who has ever looked for suburban real estate will proceed to shudder in horror), our house is in the approach path for Westchester County Airport. Yes, I know, I'm a freak. Strangely, given the complaints I have heard about such locations, I don't hear the planes most of the time. I guess our house is far enough away that if any other noise is present, one doesn't notice (or this ONE doesn't notice), yet at night, especially in the winter when, thank god, the crickets are on hiatus (I hate the sound of crickets. HATE), that gentle hum of jet engines is calming.

Consider the alternatives: our house, as I guess all houses do, creaks - for no good reason; even when the heat is off, the sounds of the heat remain, and they're not the familiar hisses of apartment steam heat; the toilet will burble periodically - not because someone has used it, just because.

A couple of weeks ago, I had this conversation: "Babe, when I pulled into the garage this evening there was an armadillo with a rat's tail in our driveway. Is that normal?" "That's an opossum." Great, so now a giant rat is my neighbor. Now all outdoor noises are the rat. I go to bring trash out and I am in constant fear that the rat of unusual size will be waiting for me. Not that I long for our old neighbors, the mice who shat everywhere and chewed things, but really, a rat the size of an armadillo?

Don't even get me started on the honking of the non-migrational Canada geese which are, apparently, endangered meaning that taking potshots at them with the pellet gun is verboten (see also, running them over).

So I will take the sound of a jet gracefully descending in the night. It conjures thoughts of travel - always a good thing - and reminds me that even though I am surrounded by geese and massive rats (to say nothing of the presumed animals that live in the attic: bats, ferrets, hornets), there is something normal out there. Something built by man in his noisy period that burns kerosene and, one hopes, occasionally sucks a Canada goose into its turbine.

Traffic Laws

The first time I sat behind the wheel of an automobile it was on the corner of 87th Street and 3rd Avenue. I was 17. I learned to drive on the upper east and west sides of Manhattan with a driver's ed teacher. I took my driving test in Queens. Until I was 21 years old, I had never driven on a highway.

This is what it's like to grow up in Manhattan.

But I liked driving and, after a summer driving around Europe, I was pretty decent at it. Highways? No problem. (Unless speeding is a problem.) Paris at rush hour? No problem. It's kind of like Manhattan driving but with circles. The one area where I had both little experience and little talent was suburban driving for the simple reason that I had never done it.

So I won't lie, I was a little apprehensive about being a daily suburban driver. But, like with many other things, after you do it enough, it becomes second nature.

Almost.

You see, there are rules I have never had to learn and so I might be committing a variety of ticketable infractions on a daily basis.

This morning, it snowed. Now my brain knows that during precipitation, you turn your lights on. However, my car has daytime running lights. Are those sufficient for inclement driving or do I need to turn on my night lights? Would I get pulled over and given a ticket for failure to do so? Could I plead ignorance of the differences between daytime and nightttime lights?

Similarly we have a number of unfamiliar stoplights in town that I am fairly certain I am not using correctly. The configuration is thus: one red light atop two sets of yellows and greens, one of the greens is a turn signal. While the red light is still illuminated the green turn signal light will also go on, signaling that cars in that specified lane can turn. Ok. Fine. Easy. However, what happens next is incredibly confusing. The red light will go out; the green turn light will go out; and the other green light will go on. Now I know this means that cars in the non-turning lane are now free to go. But does it mean a)that cars in the turning lane are also free to go provided there are no oncoming cars or b)cars in the turning lane may no longer go. I happen to believe that the latter explanation is stupid as it would allow cars in the turning lane a mere 10 seconds per light change to participate in forward movement, so I assume the former. And I don't know if I'm just biding my time until I get a moving violation (don't even get me started on the scenario when it's a right-turn signal at an intersection where cars CAN go right on red. What the hell is the point of a dedicated turn signal when cars in that lane can pretty much go WHENEVER there's an opening?)

The stoptionals I engage in on a daily basis? These I know are wrong, but my neighborhood is generally empty and I really don't feel compelled to come to a complete stop at EVERY corner when a slight 5 MPH pause is more than enough to ascertain if cars are coming in the other directions. But these others... I won't lie, I get a little stressed out.

So if the Greenwich and/or Port Chester cops are reading this (as I know they are huge fans), if you see me break the law in front of you, could you please cut me some slack and understand that even though I now have a CT driver's license, it should, in no way, indicate that I am fully conversant in your ways. After all, while there are many of your mores that elude me, I am fully aware that the speed limit in Manhattan is 35 MPH. And that's not nothing.

Water Politics

Ah, summer camp, my first encounter with the others - people mostly like me who grew up in a strange netherworld known as suburbia. You were a fascinating bunch, most especially because you found me such an anomaly: when not asking if I was your counselor (I wasn't) you were inquiring after my safety in the dangerous streets of New York. And yes, while the Koch/Dinkins years did have their share of, well, crack, I found your wide-eyed disbelief that I had never been a victim of a violent crime charming. I thought you all were so sheltered...

Now devoted partner, a suburban boy himself, has a theory about New Yorkers which I have heard so many times (and find so boring and "look at me, I watch science documentaries") that I cannot believe I am about to repeat it, but here goes: New Yorkers are like deep-sea creatures; perfectly at home in an environment that would kill normal underwater creatures and unable to survive anywhere else. Blah blah blah. Ten years that boy spent in Manhattan and still asked me questions about which subway line to take (whereas I have perfectly adapted to my new environment if you don't count asking him to check my tire pressure, go into the attic because it's gross up there, and being indignant that the people who pick up our trash want to be PAID for the service - that's what municipal coffers are for).

But I am learning that my sophisticated urban upbringing sheltered me from what I fondly refer to as reality. I know my suburban friends will bear with me as I share a fascinating thing with my city friends: hot water runs out!

I'm not talking about when your landlord posts a notice in the elevator telling you that they are working on the boiler and there will be no hot water from 10:00am-4:00pm; nor am I talking about some bizarre confluence of events where, if you flush the toilet while the kitchen sink is on, the hot water will temporarily disappear (or appear with vengeance). No, I'm talking about taking a shower and suddenly noticing the water is getting colder; adjusting the temperature and realizing that you have a finite amount of hot water, and it has run out.

And I'm not taking what I would consider superlong showers. After all, I have to wash my hair with shampoo twice, condition, wash the rest of me, wash out the unmentionables, finger comb my hair, and then rinse everything. Also, there's that 2 minutes at the beginning of the shower when you are adjusting in the temperature and reveling in the warmth. I reckon I have about 8 minutes with which to do this. It's not a lot of time. I remember growing up, my mother would always complain about how long I spent in the shower, but those were the "learning about your body" years and she should have damn well understood. This is not about that.

This is about, occasionally, wanting a leisurely shower, perhaps with devoted partner, who mumbles something about the temperature of the boiler, but I'm really not listening because HOT WATER SHOULD NOT RUN OUT! God help me the times I have forgotten this and gotten in the shower while either the dishwasher or washing machine was running.

Now, to pull this back around, I am reminded of summer camp, where, from time to time, there was no hot water in the showers. I don't remember why this was, but my guesses range from we were in the middle of nowhere and I'm surprised we had clean running water to begin with to it was an intentional deprivation by the rulers of Zionist summer camp to remind us that our ancestors spent 40 years wandering the dessert where, presumably, a shower was an undreamed of luxury. What I do remember was putting on my bathing suit, packing up my toiletries, and heading to the cold water pump where I, and several friends, would tip our heads upside down and wet our hair under the freezing cold water in order that we could wash it. That sort of shenanigans is fine for 14-year olds at sleepaway camp, but not at all fine for 32-year olds who (again, apartment dwellers, don't flip out) have to PAY for water (like garbage, apparently it is not free).

I don't know what power source creates the hot water, but environment be damned, I am considering amping that shit up. I have been very content to live as old-timey folks do, you know, in a house and not a sturdier structure like a building, but I shall not take to boiling water in all available pans merely so there is enough for the washin'. There. I have said my piece.

Nopropos: I have always been a fan, but sheesh, Bob Barker is AWESOME! Suck it, Japan!

Why I Hate Your Teenagers

Back in the good old days when I was a youth, before smoking bans, before Giuliani, we city teens had it good. Five bucks and a face that looked at least 16 got you a six pack of beer; the same five bucks, were you intrepid enough to wander uptown, bought you a bag of mild narcotics - most probably oregano mixed with a hint of THC. You bought your substance of choice and enjoyed it among friends in the comfort of someone's apartment (because there was always someone with an absent or absent-minded parent). Perhaps you ordered a pizza. Watched a movie. You know, kid stuff. In this way, the majority of your weekend nights were passed, the only difference being the number of people around you and the location (ok, our location was 9 out of 10 times the same location, but I will protect our hostess's identity - it is entirely possible her lovely parents still don't know what we got up to in their spacious home). We weren't bothering anyone, and none of us grew into a felon or even an antisocial member of society (including me).

I knew of a place called the suburbs - it was where camp friends lived. In these places, it was rumored, drugs and alcohol were both more taboo and more difficult to acquire. Also there were the twin problems of either being too young to drive, or driving while intoxicated and thereby killing yourself, your friends, and the innocent. The excellent movie Heathers also taught me that teens in the suburbs either tip cows, participate in date rape, or kill the popular kids. The suburbs sounded like no fun at all.

But then I met devoted partner and his tales of teenage antics sounded familiar if a little less vehicularly safe and thought that perhaps I had been too harsh on the suburbs.

I take it all back. You suburban teens are a bunch of maladjusted glue-sniffing f^$^&ktards!

What kind of meth-addled mouth breather steals a hubcap off a car parked at Stew Leonards? Really? I want to know. First of all, Stew Leonard's parking lot did not appear to be a happening location for a Friday night. I saw no groups of future WalMart greeters necking by the dumpster or trading their parents' prescription medication by the shopping cart stands. Stew Leonards is a family place. So either you little shits stole my hubcap while your parents were guzzling down free samples of cheese loaf (in which case I am going to revert to my earlier stance of requiring sterilization as part of the Senate health care plan), or you little shits cruise the Stew Leonards parking lot on Friday nights looking to rip off unsuspecting yuppies.

Furthermore, you obviously had time to do more damage, why didn't you take ALL of my hubcaps? Better yet, why not smash the window and steal my GPS? - that thing is at least worth money - you know, the stuff you buy whippits with. Yeah, I remember it used to be funny to steal the door lock casings from taxi cabs, back when those things were analog and made of metal, and I see that was wrong now, but I never, in my wildest idiocy, would have stolen a cab's hubcap!

So I hope you had at least a half hour of laughter over the theft of my hubcap. And then I hope you contracted herpes. Yeah, I said it. For the 50 bucks, plus or minus, you cost me, I have wished on you an incurable disease. Wanna know why? It's not that you stole from me, it's that you stole from me in a stupid manner. You stole something useless, which leads me to believe that you yourself (selves) are pretty well useless, so it's not like herpes will really decrease your value too much. Also, you seem to have a lot of time on your hands, time I think you should be spending remembering when to take your daily cocktail of anti-herpes medication.

Parents, I think it's quite clear that having normal teenagers who drink cheap beer and smoke cheap pot is infinitely preferable to having idiot teenagers who steal people's hubcaps from supermarket parking lots. Harvard has a long and storied history of admitting pot smokers; but I'd be willing to bet the number of hubcap thieves matriculating there is statistically insignificant.

In the meantime, that burning sensation is my vengeful god dealing on you!

The What in What Comes Next

As I looked out the basement window this morning and saw water pooling at the edge of our yard, I turned to devoted partner and said, "you know, I'm glad we didn't buy this place. If we ever do buy, we should make sure our yard doesn't become a swamp when it rains." Devoted partner smiled knowingly at what he termed my "honomer" mentality.

I thought it would be a radical change, the kind from which my personality might not recover. There was a chance that I would have sat in the corner with a copy of my Zagat rocking slowly and crying. Instead, I re-took up knitting.

I also thought the residents of my new home would be way more mock-able. Sure, I am, by leaps and bounds, the fattest woman I see and one of the few who needs to work, but their eerie thinness and leisure has not made them into monsters. Few, if any of them have elbowed me in the face at Whole Foods. And yes, all of the gross stereotypes one can make about the lamentable manners of inner city youth while on public transportation have flown out the window in the face of the lamentable manners of the Skull and Bones set I take the train with. But overall the Greenwichians seem mostly human. If very very very homogeneous.

So where does that leave me and this site that I had hoped would be a scathing referendum on suburban life in a rarefied locale? Aidan asked me yesterday how I was feeling about the move and the blog and it made me realize I could either, stop blogging as frequently and only when something that adheres to the original spirit of the site occurs, or continue blogging just about every day but work a little less hard at trying to make it all about this momentous move that, like much in life, when taken in stride isn't such a big deal at all. As of now, I'm opting for the latter. I like writing and I like that from time to time people read.

That being said: street lights are important. They let people know when to stop and when to go. It has been explained to me that towns don't like street lights for some unconvincing reason that involves not wanting cars on the streets, but cars will be on the streets anyway and having traffic guards all up and down Greenwich Avenue telling you when you can and cannot walk is not only annoying but, for a New Yorker, somehow wrong. Also, I'm pretty positive a light is cheaper.

On Returning

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Dive 7 - Oil Slick LeapDive 7 - Oil Slick Leap
Originally uploaded by reallyct

In one of the many joking conversations I find funny and devoted partner finds less funny, I said that I didn't want to get married while we were still living in our Harlem apartment because coming back to that place as man and wife would be unspeakably depressing - the threshold being ruthlessly guarded by legions of mice, drug dealers, and the perpetually drunk and underemployed. I think this also made coming back from vacation deeply depressing. Imagine: you've just had at least a week of relaxation, amped up quality time, and fun and when you get home it smells funny, you worry your neighbors have broken into your house to steal your flatscreen television, and the elevator is out of service...again. The plunge from ecstasy to agony is acute.

Coming back from vacation to real life is never something to look forward to, I find, as one who aspires to being on permanent vacation, but pulling into our driveway yesterday and finding our house free of vermin and indigents made the process of devacationizing less traumatic. Devoted partner looked askance as I collected some inexpensive, but kind of tacky, tchotchkes (blogger knows this word is fake (or Yiddish) and has proposed "crotchless" in its place) souvenirs, but upon unwrapping some of them this morning and locating places for them, I was reminded of how different one feels about one's silly things when one doesn't mind looking at one's surroundings. Yes, I picked up some silly trinkets (and I will be photographing some of them presently that I may open myself up to ridicule), but for the first time in our relationship, we have a home instead of a mere abode, and those silly trinkets, memories of a very enjoyable trip, deserve a place next to our serious things.

This was an especially relaxing vacation that, by virtue of how active it was, seemed far longer than a week, but I noticed our demeanors this morning were different as we prepared to return to work. Can I blame all of that on the fact that we slept on a big-boy bed and not a futon? Hell, we even made a pact to be unpacked before dinner tonight, a feat unheard of in our old life (unpacking was frequently a month-long process - a sloth I attribute to not wanting to admit we were home), but one that's almost mandatory in our new one because we are endeavoring fiercely to be more like functioning adults and less like pigs who happily frolic in their own refuse.

So the vacation is over and a month of busyness begins. We'll have to start remembering what day it is and what responsibilities we have and whose presents need buying, but I hold on to the hope that we will be retaining a little more residual vacation relaxation this time around.

The Worst of Both Worlds

I'm trying out something new. When people ask me where I live, I am going to stop qualifying my response with, "but we live three doors away from Port Chester" and instead just say "Greenwich." If someone chooses to imagine me in a 5000 square foot mcmansion with stable, so be it. In fact, people might be nicer to me if they thought I had an obscene amount of money, and I think one of those self-help fads suggests that you act as you would like to become and given I would like to become a person with obscene wealth, perhaps this is the first step.

However, admitting to others that I live in Greenwich catapults me to a demographic to which I never thought I would gain entry: B&T. I am now a member of the Bridge and Tunnel class. I must take a bridge to reach Manhattan. This was clear to me on Saturday night when devoted partner, Amy, and I finished dinner at Melon's and we walked to our parked car to return home. Not because we had to drive home - when we lived in Manhattan we would frequently take the car to Brooklyn - but because of the manner in which we hailed the cab for Amy. Back when I lived here, I was very conscientious about cab priority. I tried to never intentionally poach another person's cab because of the batshit crazy it made me when someone poached mine. And who were the frequent poachers? Bridge and Tunnel people, smacking their gum and teasing their hair while they wedged their spandexed behinds into my cab. There was a fine cold mist that had developed between downpours and the cabs were hard to come by. We staked out a corner so that we could find a cab going in either or two directions, and we waited. When a cab saw us, we heard the people across the street to our south yelling for it, and ignored them. When the cab pulled up, we ushered Amy into it.

This might seem normal to you. However, in my old life, I would have known whether or not the people to my south had been there before me and if they had, I would have given them my cab - call it my nod to karma. But now I just didn't care. I needed to get Amy into the cab so we could get into our car and get home. I couldn't tell you if we legitimately hailed that cab, or if we were cab poachers, but I do know that Manhattanite Yelena would have know the difference.

As I stomped around the neighborhood of my youth on Saturday, I realized that I did so with a sense of ownership coupled with the sense of disregard so often displayed by the visitor. I was the worst of both worlds. Unconsciously I was behaving with aloof entitlement (not to be confused with behaving as one or the other, which I am guilty of frequently), and this made me realize that transplants could be the most dangerous demographic of them all.

Imagine someone who knows where she's going and what to expect when she gets there AND doesn't care about making local enemies in the process because she doesn't live there? It's really a fearsome thing. I always attributed the rudeness of the out-of-towners to their indifference of how they were perceived BECAUSE they only came in once a week and the people they were rude to one night would never be people they saw again, whereas we who lived here ran a greater risk of running into our victims daily. But I don't live here anymore. I don't have to worry about running into people at the dry cleaners. I'm not sure this is a power I'm ready for.

Nopropos: first morning of singing civil disobedience was super satisfying, triggered by the third loud phone call in my train car.

What Makes a Pest?

Our previous domicile, due to a vast confluence of circumstances, was beset by vermin. Domestic partner, a science geek through and through, had an elaborate ecosystem theory of relationships, but all I knew was that we had mice and we had roaches; infinitely preferable to rats and waterbugs, but not nearly as nice as nothing at all. When our crazy next door neighbors moved out, there was a lull in the onslaught, but the continued presence of chicken bones in the hallway ensured a constant stream of new visitors.

I was a malicious and feared warlord. I treated the violators of our borders with a Ghengis Khan-like ferocity, and did enjoy their deaths. I am reminded of a SNL sketch for a roach motel that not only kills the roach but tortures it along the way. Chucking mice attached to glue traps out the window to, I fervently hoped, upset my super, was the only pleasure I derived on some days.

On our first day in the new house, I stumbled upon something I had, quite possibly, never seen before: a slug. I hear tell that slugs are pests that, aside from being icky, eat things homeowners would prefer were not eaten. But he was so cute, slimily meandering through our yard. I named him Harold.

Our house in general has, what I would venture to guess, is the single most sympathetic environmental conditions for the proliferation of spiders as can be found along the eastern seaboard. They are everywhere. Or the evidence of them anyway. Any unattended corner will soon find itself host to a web; see also shrubs, window frames. These are generally of the tiny spider/daddy long legs variety and I feel certain none of those we house is a threat to my health. I don't happen to like bugs (yes, I know, a spider isn't an insect), but I know that spiders are the best of the bunch. After all, they eat the other insects. So I leave them pretty much alone.

Yes, if they string up a big web somewhere I think is inappropriate: the kitchen, over our bed, in my shoes, that web will have to be destroyed, but I'm almost content to let them have the corner crevices on every one of our stairs. I hope that this forbearance is remembered during mosquito season and that my spider friends protect me from bites.

So when I see a pair of spiders presumably mating in our mailbox, or when one chooses the moment I walk through the garage door to descend, I try not to totally flip out. I mean, I flip out a little, but my composure if markedly more sincere than, say, when I see a hornet outside. Which, by the way, spider friends, I would be much obliged if you could see to.

I don't want to read too much into this, especially because I think being a nasty, sarcastic wanker is an essential part of my charm, but is it possible this suburban house thing is mellowing me? Ok, now I have to go find something to be royally over-the-top-ly pissed off about.

Process Stories

Janelle asked me over the weekend how I come up with what I write. It was an interesting time to get that question considering that I have been mulling over tone and voice and things of that nature recently. I have never been much of a blog follower. Oh, sure, I have a whole bunch of cooking blogs, but on the whole, I didn't read for style, only for content. Finding out that so many people I know are writing has made me take more time to read.

I'm not going to go through a long, drawn-out, introspective post because, what I said to Janelle, I'll say to you: I pretty much write this on the fly. I'll be in the bathroom, or on the train, or waiting in line for something, and an idea will crop up. When I get in front of a computer, I write it down, check for spelling and grammar errors, add a link or a photo, and bam. That's it. Not to say that I don't think anyone who takes the time to read what I have to write doesn't deserve a more well-though-out process, but sadly, I'm much better with off the cuff than with premeditation.

Sometimes, though, an idea will come to me and I won't remember to use it on a certain day. Frequently, it can be a timeless idea so I can just use it on a day when inspiration doesn't hit me while I brush my teeth.

Today is one of those days.

Once upon a time, I worked for an educational non-profit. Among the things I have retained from my tenure there was a report on how, at the time, there was not a single large bookstore in the borough of the Bronx, and how that had an impact on the educational opportunities for children living in the Bronx. I just thought it was inconceivable. After all, I grew up directly across the street from a sizable bookstore - didn't everyone?

Devoted partner once lamented the loss of a bookstore on Greenwich Avenue, a mom and pop kind of place that found itself redundant in the wake of Amazon.com. I couldn't believe there weren't other bookstores, a big Barnes & Noble on the Post Road. After all, the residents of Greenwich had to read. Even though I do the bulk of my book shopping on line, there are plenty of times I want to go into a store to buy things. And Manhattan boasts an astonishing number of bookstores, big and small.

But devoted partner was right. From White Plains to Stamford is a desert of general interest book stores. There is a Waldenbooks in White Plains, but that's going to be small, like the Border's Express, now shuttered, was on Greenwich Avenue.

Recently, we went into the Borders in Stamford, a store that has been around as long as devoted partner and I have been together, and in which we have passed many a moment. Devoted partner needed a book, I didn't, so I looked for the table up front where the "Books You Should Be Reading" display would be. Confession: half the time, I like those displays because I've read their contents; the other half, I like finding something I hadn't yet read.

But this Borders didn't have that table.

I asked devoted partner about its absence and he said, quite assuredly, that only places like New York, where reading au courant fiction was considered a virtue, kept displays like that. Everywhere else, they weren't a revenue enhancer.

This floored me. Mostly because, contrary to my stereotypes, I haven't met a whole host of vacant people since moving. Sure, in the supermarket I can cast a sideways glance at the clueless, but most of the people, dare I say it, look like me. Which means I think they read books and probably like to be recommended books. Not so, claims devoted partner. My new neighbors read mass-market paperback fiction to the exclusion of other fare.

This seems a patently unfair generalization.

So, I'm going to try something different. I'm going to try being the optimist. Fairfield Countians, tell me your recent reads; complain with me that your local bookstore either a) doesn't exist or b) doesn't have that "Books You Should Be Reading" display. I know you're out there. Be not thou shy. Reading, while fundamental, can also be cool, and there must be something you're reading that is neither Nelson DeMille nor a story about teenage vampires.

And I want to know. Because I just finished a book on a recommendation and need another.

One Of Us Is Wrong

Remember a few weeks ago I said I wasn't a wine snob? I meant it. But devoted partner thinks I might be a wine snob, just not when compared with real wine snobs. I think he meant my brother. Who is way snobbier than I. And that's ok because, while I don't know what the ethical considerations are of waxing rhapsodic over a meal you got for free, please know, The Boy, that dinner Monday was stupid good - made even better by the truly amazing wines you poured. So devoted partner maintains that next to my brother I am a wine plebe, but next to the rest of the world's mouth-breathers, I am my brother. I am still deciding how I feel about this. However, it might be a necessary preamble.

Etienne takes me to a wine shop in Dijon each time I visit. The store is called Aux Vieux Millesime and I usually just ask the proprietor to make me a case of stuff he likes. Generally the bottles average 17 euros and I'll pick up one or two that are costlier - so we're not talking DRC here (fark, that makes me a snob, doesn't it? Domaine de la Romanee Conti, among the most expensive wines there are). I go home, we drink the wine, we sigh knowing that the wines I bought in a small shop in Dijon are unlikely to be available at the corner wine shop here. But I endeavor to find ones we especially like (and by endeavor, I mean I look online). We recently drank a white burgundy that was quite tasty and I looked for it online. Lo and behold, a wine store in Connecticut carried it. I bought some more.

Fast forward. This store now sends me tons of email about new wines and last night, one of their "wine consultants" called me to upsell me some stuff. Here's where it starts to smell of crazy.

He's very earnest, and sounds very young. Younger than my brother young. Young as in this might only be the first or second year he's legally able to drink wine. He starts by talking to me about a Rioja that, strange to say, I already own - my parents brought it back from a trip to Spain. Then he starts talking about a Bordeaux that Robert Parker gave many points to. At this point I stop him to mention two things: I don't favor Bordeaux, and I could give a rat's ass what Robert Parker thought of a wine. Since Robert Parker and I have never imbibed together, I don't know if we like the same things. His opinion counts very little for me when I go to buy wines. So then my "wine consultant" starts asking me what I do like. I tell him that, due to the wallet-unfriendly influence of Etienne et Pere, we drink a lot of Burgundy. He proceeds to ask me what I think of California wines. It is at this point that I channel my brother and say, "we don't do new world."

He then asks about Italian wines (leading me to believe Burgundy might not be his strong suit). I say I don't know much about them, but that we have had a lot of luck enjoying reds from the south and from Sicily (I refrain from mentioning devoted partner's favoring of Montepulciano as this will get us into a discussion my budget is not prepared for). He starts talking to me about a famous Tuscan producer who bought a Calabrian vineyard. And then it happens, he talks about malolactic fermentation. Ooooh, fancy winemaking term. Except he says malol'ay'ctic. I get trying to impress a customer by demonstrating a facility with "oenic" terms, but malolactic has the word lactic in it. As in acid, and the creepily named Lactaid for those who are intolerant. This slip up in turn makes me feel less generous towards the young man who can only seem to call to mind a southern producer who is actually a northern producer, making me wonder if he's reading from a script. He can't think of one indigenous southern producer to recommend?

We finally swing back around to Burgindy and now we're going for the ducats. He starts talking about a great deal on a Burgundy from a producer I've never heard of - which is NOT SURPRISING because I know like six wine producers total. He finishes telling me which wine publications gave it which ratings and then stops talking. He hasn't mentioned a vintage, a region, a grape; he hasn't mentioned what COLOR the wine is.

Me: Ah, and, where is it from?
Him: Burgundy.
Me (pause): Yes, but where (silence on the other end), what region? (More silence.) Ok, what color is the wine?
Him: Red
Me: Ok, and what are the OTHER WORDS ON THE BOTTLE?
Him: Oh, saynt (Saint or St.) George (Georges) vail (Vieilles).

Ok we're going to stop now. I've made my point and sounded like a huge bitch making it. Here's where we get to the critical examination part. I dig that French is a tough language and I don't expect everyone to speak it - hell, if you ask my French friends, they'll remind you I confused the words for condom and preservatives at the dinner table while trying to sound like I could speak in complete French sentences. I also understand that just because you work in an industry that is heavily influenced by France it doesn't mean you're an expert. My guy, my wine consultant, might be able to pick out Russian River Valley Zinfandels at 20 paces, but the fact that he doesn't know how to read a bottle of wine from France ticks me off.

For several reasons.

1. Let's pretend you are an art collector and a dealer, a French-speaking dealer, is trying to get you to buy a wonderful piece by Vansloh Omay. Do you buy it? Do you even know what he's talking about? (Pretend you're a French stereotype. Winslow Homer.) Would you buy a piece of art from a guy who couldn't even be bothered to attempt the artist's name? Wouldn't you think this guy isn't the expert he's trying to be? But let's be generous and assume that the dealer knows tons about Manet and Monet and Matisse, and nothing about Vansloh Omay; wouldn't a professional, upon learning that your tastes and his expertise don't match, ask you to wait a minute while he prevailed upon a colleague, who is an expert in your states tastes, to help you? Isn't that what good salespeople do? "I'm sorry, I actually work in the shoe department, but if you wouldn't mind waiting just a moment, I will get you the buyer for the linen department who can answer your questions."

2. The only only only reason I know what malolactic fermentation is is that I've read some books about wine. Not scholarly works, mind you, silly travelogues about people with much cooler lives than mine who go off in search of good wines from beautiful places and get paid to write about them. But, you see, it is only coincidence that I know what it is. Wine is not my job. If wine is your job, take 15 minutes and learn how to pronounce the things you plan to say to customers and what they mean.

3. Because if I was a heavy, if I was some cigar chomping hedonist with a lower level completely devoted to my cave, and some scamp showed as little knowledge as this kid, I wouldn't shop at the store again! I would take my business somewhere I could feel confident. I don't trust Robert Parker to make my wine decisions for me, but I do trust wine professionals. Fully half of the wine I'm constantly searching for is as a result of being served something in a restaurant. I trust that at restaurants where I ask for a recommendation, the person of whom I am asking has TASTED the wine him or herself. So when the recommendation is offered to me it is because the wine has been enjoyed, quite possibly with something similar to what I'm eating. I didn't get the feeling this kid had tasted any of the wines he was suggesting.

Now I know I am making a mountain out of a molehill. I know this. I also know that in the two months I have lived in Connecticut, I have come across these types of lapses in knowledge and salesmanship. And this confounds me. I always assumed that Fairfield county was made up, in large numbers, of people who used to live in Manhattan. Those people were as snooty as I am and expected a certain level of competence from people. Does that expectation evaporate with greater levels of suburban air? Some of my neighbors (and I mean that in the broad sense) do have million dollar cellars, don't those consumers elevate the level of discourse? I don't like to think that I have moved to a place where people blindly follow wine reviews and the recommendations of purveyors who have never sipped what they suggest, because it implies a laxity of mind I am deeply uncomfortable with.

I have opted not to drive to the store and tell them this in person. But I am seriously considering telling my wine consultant the next time he calls. Not because I want to make him feel bad about himself, but because, as totally lame as this sounds, I want him to do better by himself. I'm not going to NOT buy wine from him because he's ill-informed, but there are going to people who will, and he should know why that is.

Project Charlie: The Legacy

See, some of you are laughing and smiling knowingly and others of you not so much. Project Charlie was the "kids should not do drugs" class we all took in school. Spearheaded by Katie, my best friend's mom (a best friend who isn't bestest enough to read this daily - I hate you Ed, see you at dinner tonight), Project Charlie attempted to convince us that drugs are bad mmmkay. I don't know how successful that part of the class was, but the part I'm pretty sure hit it out of the park was Project Charlie on drunk driving.

Yeah, we were a bunch of city kids for whom the idea of getting behind the wheel of an actual automobile was likely only if our dads lost sight of reality long enough to let us take their 911s out for a spin in East Hampton. It wasn't like any of us had access to a car that in a few short years we would need to drive regularly, but the lesson was imparted nonetheless. Don't Drive Drunk. Ever.

Driving drunk, in my memory, was akin to clubbing seals. It was something good people never ever did, but something we would encounter time and again. When senior year rolled around, the only reason I signed up for driver's ed was that I knew I'd be going off to college where everyone else was going to be driving drunk so I figured I should know how to drive myself home if I was the only sober person in a sea of drunks.

So I had a license long before I had a car, or even access to a car. Coincidentally, the weekend after my 21st birthday when a rental company would deign to rent me one of their fleet, I took the opportunity to drive to best friend Ed's house in Massachusetts for the weekend. I can't be positive, but it might be truth that until we moved to Greenwich, I had never had so much as a single drink in my system prior to getting behind the wheel.

Of course, this is, apparently, an untenable position to hold while living extra-urbanly. My mother-in-law and I once got into a multi-hour fight about our competing positions (I'm right by the way, just because calling a cab if you want to down two bottles of wine with dinner is inconvenient, it's still the right thing to do). So it was with trepidation, dear Jeff, that I asked you last night if you wanted another round. You had debonairly offered to pick up the first round and I didn't want you to think I was the kind of girl who tapes up your mild groin injury in 1994 and then expects free drinks for life, it was that we had enjoyed a beer with dinner, and I was certainly enjoying the bourbon I had just finished and... well, and in less than 90 minutes, I was going to be at the parking lot in Port Chester getting my car.

I don't know what it feels like to drive while mildly intoxicated. Based on what I had drank and how long it would be before I needed to drive I was fairly certain I would be on the right side of the law, but is DUI something I want to play the de jure de facto game with? I fervently believe in zero tolerance for DUI, and by zero tolerance I mean like zero for reals for serious. My intransigence probably contributes to mother-in-law fights as well as devoted partner fights, but considering that DUI kills completely innocent people, I don't mind being Giuliani-esque on the enforcement end of things. So this is an issue where I don't want to slide by on a technicality.

Whilst in the burbs, it's easier: 1 drink. 1 drink because when the drink is finished, I have to get in my car and drive home. I guess if I wanted to be a pill about it, I could make sure that I had 1 drink per hour and left more than an hour after the last drink, etc. etc., but we're getting back to letter and spirit of the law with that nonsense. 1 drink is easier. But if I'm having dinner or drinks in Manhattan, it becomes a little different. The hour on the end is built in - it's the time it takes for me to get home. I allowed myself a second drink based on that. And, truth be told, I felt 100% normal when I got into my car with or without the knowledge that home was fewer than 2 miles away.

But it made me consider, with anger in my heart, the following: upon entering the track at Grand Central I saw the beverage cart: the cart that sells beer to commuters for their train ride. WHY IS THIS NOT ILLEGAL? You are selling beer to people to drink while they wait to drive from the station to their homes. But Yelena, you say, drinking and driving is against the law, why would it be permissible to sell these drivers booze? I cannot answer that question, dear friends, because frankly I feel like the only passenger on the Logic Boat here. Putting aside my utter and complete disdain for the jackholes who can't wait until they get home to have a frosty Bud Light (someone help me out here - is it "cool" to drink while Metro Northing? do these guys, and they're always guys, have serious drinking problems? what on earth is the deal with needing, or frankly wanting, a watered down beer while you shuffle homewards?), don't these beer stands downplay the severity of drinking while under the influence? I mean, hey, if you're going to sell me a beer before I get in my car, that's tacit approval right there. I know some of you are more inured to this than I, but last night, as I wrestled with the issue of how much is too much, seeing people buy beer to keep them company during their harrowing 45 minute train ride, chafed me real good. Thank god one of them wasn't sitting next to me or the train ride might well have turned harrowing.

Nonpropos: I'm about to channel my father when I say I can't believe I paid $70 for a pair of jeans. I realize that every woman reading this now thinks I'm insane because the jeans they buy all cost at least double that, but I find jeans, like t-shirts, to be a utilitarian item of clothing and not a fashion statement; ergo, $8 t-shirts and jeans from The Gap. But it seems that jeans from The Gap are now $70. In point of fact I'm not complaining because I'm so flipping happy The Gap has decided to stock jeans again - it's been about 18 months of jeans that are only available in size Ethiopia and size Jerry Springer guest. I was so excited, the thought never crossed my mind to wait for them to go on sale. The jeans I currently wear have gotten so bad that devoted partner, a man who has commented negatively on my clothing maybe three times in twelve years, came out and told me my jeans were unflattering over the weekend - something I couldn't even begin to get bent out of shape about because he is absolutely right. I am wearing stretched out jeans a size too big ultimately becoming the poster girl for saggy baggy elephant ass; but as I mentioned, The Gap has not been selling jeans recently. So thank you, The Gap, I may have felt like an idiot buying something called Curvy Low Rise Boot Cut Stretch jeans while being simultaneously flabbergasted by your new sizes where you list a waist measurement (note to The Gap: your jeans come nowhere near my natural waist - the area they do fall near has not been 31 inches since elementary school so this number is, essentially meaningless; nowhere on these pants is there a diameter of 31 inches), but at least I am now wearing jeans that fit, that do not have holes in the buttocks, and that are destined to ruin an entire load of laundry when I forget to wash them separately.