Dear Earth, Sorry I Drove To Work, Love Yelena

There were no parking places, I didn't want to miss my train, and 1010WINS said traffic was smooth sailing.

In retrospect I should have taken the next train as I had to make a special trip to the bank to get a roll of quarters and I will now be getting up every 50 minutes to re-feed the meter (I searched for quite some time, there were no spaces and I think I might rather give 10 bucks to the city in quarters rather than 40 bucks to a garage).

But perhaps the earth should thank me.

I took a small road trip with my brother and some friends over the weekend and was able to fill my gas tank for the first full time. It was embarrassing. Driving to and from the train station, the Whole Foods, and other assorted in-town travels net me approximately 19 mpg. In my tiny adorable Jetta that gets such good mileage. It is true, I really shift past third gear (though I might change that now), but 19 miles? I was a little crushed. After two days of highway driving however, not including this morning's foray into Manhattan, and I'm averaging, this is not a joke, 49.65 mpg. According to the fuel gauge, I would be able to drive 720 highway miles on one tank of gas. I don't quite know how this would be possible, and since, with the 2/3 of a tank I have left I'll be back to local driving, the theory will remain, temporarily, untestable, but wow!

Reviewing my driving, I don't think I did anything especially efficient - or anything intentionally efficient. Driving in the rain I used the wipers, had the air on occasionally, had the GPS plugged in, and went between 65-70 mph in mostly 5th gear, downshifting from time to time to pass, etc. Yet, at 3/4 of a tank I had gone 180 miles.

Devoted partner drives his car in a way I've always found strange: he'll stay in 5th gear until it's physically impossible not to. It's hard to tell if this has any positive effect since devoted partner's car is not in tip-top shape, but he says he does it to conserve fuel. I drive completely differently and match the driving to the gear. But now I'm questioning my strategy and considering asking the internet its opinion, even though driving 25 miles an hour in 5th gear feels really really lame. I just don't want to be wasteful.

Except, tangentially, I've noticed that now that I use the reusable shopping bags, I have no plastic bags I can use for trash. Is the solution to buy plastic trash bags? That seems wasteful also. And the paper bag I'm using for kitchen garbage right now is definitely the grossest option. Does anyone else have this problem? What did you do? Oh, and do you know if the driving the car in 5th gear all the time thing works?

Feh, must feed meter.

Last Gasp

We've put if off until the very last minute. We've come up with tons of excuses. And now we can't avoid it any longer. We have to return to our apartment for the wrap-up. There is only one task I know must be completed: the retrieval and return of our Time Warner Cable boxes (oh, Time Warner, I miss you so - you have no idea how much better Time Warner is than Cablevision; it would be like comparing apples to horse shit...). This is my task.

Devoted partner had work obligations that prevented him from partaking in the 2-week odyssey that was packing the house and I pretty well made clear that once we left the apartment I wasn't lifting another finger for it. There's some cleanup that should be done and, even though there's stuff we're simply not moving out, we should make it look like we tried. That is, if our neighbors haven't already broken in and stolen everything that wasn't nailed down; or if the mice have taken over and prevent us entry; or if the landlord hasn't already rented it to someone else.

I so don't want to go. Saturday is a time for fun. A time to make that cheesecake I want to give the neighbors, time to shop for lamps so our house isn't so dark, time to look into getting a work table for my prep kitchen. A time, frankly, for chilled wine and sex. Not a time to wade through militant mice and felonious neighbors on the way to figuring out why the local post office has forwarded exactly two pieces of mail in the three weeks since we moved.

This feeling of festering hate that wells up within me at the thought of four hours or so spent in a place I lived for six years leads me to believe that I have learned a valuable lesson: don't let it get this far. By the end of year two, I was ready to move on. So was devoted partner. We spoke about it in the abstract, complained about the good deal we currently had vs. the bloated rental market everywhere else; spoke about the ridiculous housing market and how if we were ever going to buy, now was certainly not the time as townhouses on our block were asking 3 million dollars - and I think I've mentioned how active drug dealings were done on our block. We just didn't do anything about it. I was still adamant about staying in Manhattan as opposed to shopping for living scenarios in Brooklyn, and I also didn't want to give up our space - devoted partner and I would never have survived in what passes for a one-bedroom in Manhattan.

But we could have done something else. We had a lot of good excuses why we didn't move: paying an exorbitant broker's fee to move into a place like the one we were already in seemed a poor waste of money; what if the new place proved worse than the existing place?; remember what our friends are paying for their places; and so on. But we should have found something that didn't make us so irretrievably miserable and resentful. We would have been happier. His shitty job would have seemed less shitty if his home wasn't also so shitty. Ditto my shitty job.

The thing I like so much about this new place, even though it too is temporary, is that when I come home, I like what I've come home to. Sure there are boxes in the hallway that need to be broken down and as mentioned above, it's a little on the dark side what with the lack of lights, but when I get home, I'm happy this is the place I get to call home. And I'm going to remember that this is a feeling worth having and worth sacrificing a little for.

The Eye of the Beholder

I have been accused of wine snobbery. Perhaps it's the circles I travel in. When I upped the price I was willing to spend on a bottle of wine to, on average, $25, I was met with uncomprehending stares. When partial cases started arriving at the house I was queried as to why such lengths needed to be gone to. When first one wine fridge and then a larger wine fridge came to live with us, there was some snickering. I was ok with this because my drink of choice is wine. It's what I like to drink with my food.

I know nothing about wine. Except what I like.

I go to a restaurant, they bring me a wine list, I barely glance at it. The sommelier or waiter returns and I tell him or her what I'm ordering, and that I like unusual wines. I don't care where they're from or what color they are, I want something different, something that really goes well with the food I'm eating, something I'd remember. 80% of the time I have perfectly enjoyable wines I would never go out of my way to find again. The other 20%? Well, that's where we run into trouble. For the other 20%, I will expend boundless energy and time to tracking down more of the wine. Snobbish? I don't know. Obsessive. Yes.

But I've never thought much of wine ratings. What one person finds tremendous I might not, and, as I had to tell a wine shop proprietor recently, I would never spend more than $30 on a wine I had never tasted just because someone else liked it. To me, that's just stupid.

Yet, when confronted by art, another fairly subjective medium, I have the feeling that there is capital-G good art and capital-B bad art. Which is ridiculous because I know no more about art than I do about wine which means good art is art that's good for me. For a couple of years, we took the easy way out decorating our walls. I've gotten more proficient with a camera, we take trips to pretty places, and some of the 45 million pictures I take are frame worthy. This was fine in an apartment, but we seem to be working with a lot more space now, and our walls are starting to look a little bare.

But I can't afford ART art, and I wouldn't want to buy bad art.

No, wait, I don't care. It's what I like that's important. So, I've started browsing the artist's democracy, Etsy. For a couple hundred bucks I could help a struggling artist out, get several pieces for my walls, and it doesn't matter if the art isn't good because if I only spent 60 bucks on it, I can throw it out when I tire of it and not really care.

Well, now I feel liberated. I bought three bottles of wine on spec and didn't like them, but I was only out $60, so they'll do. Imagine treating art the same way! I'm going to put together a slide show for devoted partner so we can agree on things, but this will be my contribution: we will have stuff on the walls that is unique and, possibly, cool.

Keeping My Rage In Check

I recount a brief moment, from time to time, that demonstrates how close my insane is to the surface; I think the moment is humorous, others might find it disconcerting. Regardless, I think it's an apt example of the kinds of things that put me in a murderous frame of mind considering how insignificant it it. I was in Chelsea Market a couple of years ago buying, I don't know, fancy cheese and Meyer lemons. I also got myself a nice big baguette. I walked to the exit and opened the door as a man was walking in. He breezed right by me nearly touching me as he did so.

For a brief moment I thought I was going to beat him with my baguette.

This is true. I had even gripped the baguette in a battle posture.

I don't like when people don't observe the rules of polite society. Polite society states that thou shalt let someone out of a door prior to thou attempting to get in that door. People who do not observe this rule are cretins and must be defeated by bread-waving lunatics. Or so I believe. Even on my lucid days.

Here are some others in the same vein:

• Thou shalt not insinuate one's self in front of those who were there before you in any manner of line whatsoever (this includes being at the end of the line when a new register opens up and then sprinting to be the first in line at the new register - think about it; it demonstrates such poor breeding)
  
• Thou shalt not enter a form of mass transit and fix one's self immobile in a manner that prevents all people behind you from gaining entrance simply to preserve the "good spot" for one's self
  
• Thou shalt not, when the subway door ends up directly in front of someone else, attempt to push that person out of the way enabling one's self to gain access to the subway first
  
• Similarly, thou shalt not, upon exiting the subway, attempt to get out of the subway prior to the people in front of thou who are also attempting to get out of the subway
  
• Furthermore, thou shalt, upon exiting a door, entrance way, stairwell, crossing a street etc., never simply stand in the line of entrance/exit simply thinking, or congratulating one's self on having made it that far. Stopping in the middle of a thoroughfare invites people to shove you maliciously. Much like thou wouldst in thine car, pull over to the side of the road if thou needest a breather.
  
• Thou shalt not obstruct a free seat in a crowded form of mass transportation with any of the following: feet, bags, coats, umbrellas, pets, instruments, strollers, bicycles; those items did not pay to ride mass transit - your fellow passengers did

These are good rules. These are rules designed to improve society. These are rules I occasionally wish had been enforced by the iron hand of Mayor Giuliani. Failure to comply with these rules create far more societal damage than squeegee people.

I'm an official commuter now and am able to avail myself of two separate modes of mass transportation daily: the Metro North Railroad and the New York City Subway. Certain malfeasance is more detectable on each of these modes of conveyance. Anyone who has ever commuted during rush hour on the Metro North Railroad will notice that in the three-across seats, people sit in positions one and three and then, as if by silent agreement, pack as much crap as is humanly possible in position two to prevent a third passenger from sitting there. Were this to happen only in a small fraction of three-across seats, one could chalk it up to a few bad apples. But if you ride this train between the hours of 4:00pm and 8:00pm you will notice EVERYONE DOES IT. And they do it in such a way that, for many years, I was embarrassed to ask them to move their shit. After all, there were other people without seats who didn't seem to make a big deal out of it, so why should I. Then I remembered I paid to ride this train - paid just as much as those jackholes hoarding space and that it was practically my duty to remind them of their douche-ishness while simultaneously getting my ass in a seat.

You should see the looks these people give you. I think it's made worse by the fact they're all upper middle class and wealthier. You'd think that good breeding would follow socio-economic strata, but nowhere is this proven more wrong than by the shitsack in the custom tailored suit with the $45,000 watch who moves his briefcase for you to sit down with same resignation generally reserved for Sophie's Choice.

That was my commute home last night though replace the man with a woman who did the "feigning sleep" maneuver to avoid sharing. I wasn't buying it. She hated me.

This morning, the infraction was committed on the subway, by one of the many commuters afflicted with Hurry Syndrome. Hurry Syndrome is most often recognized in drivers who cut in front of you only to get to the clearly visible red light/traffic jam sooner. The subway was pulling into the 86th street station and I was standing directly in front of the door, every bit of my body language indicating I would be exiting. When the doors open, a guy literally three people behind me start barreling forward. For a split baguette moment, I nearly elbowed the guy in the sternum, so surprised was I by his sudden propulsion. Instead, and less feloniously, I wedged my hips in such a way that to pass them, he would have needed to also buy me dinner, and exited the train first. Apparently Hurry Syndrome guy wasn't much of an athlete as, even though he did manage to exit directly on my heels, he was no where to be seen on the upper level of the station; meaning he was hurrying hurrying so he could wheeze up a flight of stairs, most likely blocking the paths of all those behind him.

I am reserving my rage on behavior while using mass transportation for another time, simply because airing all my crazy laundry at one time seems inadvisable if I'd like any of you to continue reading.

Asininity

Once upon a time, in the latter half of the 20th century, aided by the work of Alan Turing, a magnificent device was invented. And I'll give you a hint, you're using it right now. Dreams of flying cars aside, here in the 21st century, computers power things. Pretty much everything. If it is vaguely electronic or could be vaguely electronic, there's a chip somewhere doing something. Fear this if you will, but unavoidable, inevitable, blah blah.

In the town of Port Chester, population 28,300, at their train station (a train which, just for those keeping score, uses computers to operate), a person wishing to park for the day is faced with the device pictured above. It is a metal box with tiny numbered slots that you put your money in. Let me repeat that: YOU PUT YOUR MONEY INTO A METAL SLOT. Please also note the "jabber," the metal device you use to wedge the previous bill all the way in the slot before attempting to add another bill. Exact change is a must unless you consider the parking facility a charity in which case, by all means let 'em keep your change.

But I think what gets me is the 4-step instructions. As if there was some confusion as to how this sophisticated device works. The manufacturers of the parking payment box have done market research and determined that you are indeed this stupid. Stupid enough to need instructions for putting wadded up dollar bills into a slot - like no one here has ever been to a strip club before. (Point of information: I have never been to a strip club, but I watch a lot of television.) As I do not work in the lucrative stripping industry myself, I now need to hoard my single dollar bills - I found myself buying a piece of fruit with a fiver just so I could get the four singles I would need for the next day's parking.

What I don't understand is how this device, a legacy of what can only be - no I take that back. I can't imagine any scenario under which this device makes sense. It's so very very primitive and therefore to my mind Soviet. Comrade puts money in slot. Computer operated machines are for decadent westerners.

It also is dangerous in that I doubt anyone even checks the boxes. There are probably thousands of uncollected dollars waiting behind those slots and the powers that be rely on my fear of receiving a $200 ticket for failing to pay a $4 fee to compel me to stick my money into the slot each morning - or at least each morning until I get my permanent parking pass.

I just hope that the inventor of this parking fee collection device is not whiling away his days on a tropical paradise; this really has added nothing to civilization and, if I may, has set us back at least 40 years. Much like its partner-in-crime over at the mall who is a computer but one that doesn't accept credit cards, these relics of a bygone era demonstrate ably why progress, even only for progress's sake is far better than apathy of convenience (ooh, I smell a book title: The Apathy of Convenience - you read it here first).

It Lives in the Basement

I have not done my own laundry since college.

This does not necessarily mean I haven't worn clean clothing since college though I do admit, with much hesitation, that I have been known to buy new underwear rather than wash existing underwear. I could also give you the 101 rationalizations I fashioned to defend this indefensible position, reasoned arguments about the value of my time, etc. But the truth is, I don't like laundry and I don't want to do it and there are plenty of other people who will do your laundry for you for a price. A price I was willing to pay. My roommate of several years loved laundry. He'd pack up his bag of dirty clothing, his ipod, and his book and go spend a whole afternoon doing laundry; I would drop mine off and retrieve it at some later date. When he moved into an apartment that had a washer/dryer, it was a momentous occasion. I think he might have wept. When I discovered that our house had a washer/dryer I mentally added laundry to the future housekeeper's duties.

But we're not unpacked fully yet. So we haven't hired a housekeeper. And it's been two weeks. And the pretty hamper in our bathroom was starting not to stay shut. And there are sheets and towels. Crap. I'm going to have to do laundry.

In my defense, I am not really skilled at laundry. I lose things, choose inappropriate settings, overstuff the machines, generally behave like an idiot. This weekend was no exception.

I don't sort laundry. I think it's a ploy by Big Detergent to get me to do more laundry (horror of horrors) and to spend more money on its products. Besides, who actually has enough white laundry to justify an all-white load? Clothing is clothing and, as such, goes in the same machine with the same settings. Anything that needs that measure of specialization (delicate cold, fluffy warm, permanent press?!?!?) should be cleaned by a professional. I am only human.

I now own many pink t-shirts.

Many many more than I owned, say, on Friday.

But all of my clothing has been washed before. What possibly could have bled? Oh, you mean that towel we bought at Cape May that was stuffed into a random bag during moving and was in this load of laundry being washed for the first time? I meant every OTHER item in the wash had been washed before. My bad.

Devoted partner saved one of my pricey brassieres from the indignity of machine washing by recognizing it had accidentally been stuffed in the hamper, and then instructed me in the gentle art of realizing when the water pumps connected to the washing machine were or were not on, further reminding me that if I wanted the clothing to become clean I would have to do more than simply cram it into the machine and press 'start,' I would, apparently, need to make sure the thing was plugged in and that water was servicing it.

At this point I would like to say, in my own defense, that these are precisely the kinds of concerns one needn't have if one has others do one's laundry.

Then, an angel descended upon the house. My mom. We had my parents over Saturday afternoon and nothing made my mother happier than when I gave her permission to oversee the laundry. Her enthusiasm stemmed from the fact that she doesn't have a washer/dryer in her apartment and must go to the basement to use the communal washer/dryer, so this was an exciting experience as I believe I am the first in the family to have a washer/dryer. She happily padded down to the basement and made sure things were properly loaded, soaped, and dried. Then she, I'm not kidding, folded the dry stuff and toted it upstairs in the plastic bin we had designated for the job.

Yeah, I don't feel really good about myself and my housewifery.

Sunday, determined to vaguely succeed at this task, even if for the first and last time, I did two more loads of wash. Load one didn't want to dry. I think it went through 2 if not 3 cycles. Load two I gave up on and asked devoted partner to do while I busied myself with further kitchen unpacking.

After all, maturity is, in many ways, owning one's strengths and weaknesses.

Sometimes You Have To Wonder

WARNING: Long


We're missing some odds and ends. A side table here, a coffee table there, some lamps, floor coverings. The kinds of things we might one day invest in, but for now just need to have. Well I am a not infrequent Martha Stewart Living reader and I always see enterprising young things painting lovely old things lovely new colors. Then there was that article in the Times a couple weeks back about the couple that decorated their summer home entirely from craigslist, and you sort of see where I'm going.

I was going to surprise devoted partner by finding truly wonderful magical things on craigslist that were either good as is, or soon to be lovingly rehabbed by me (a person with no experience, eye, or artistic talent) into darling pieces we would treasure. Oh, and I wasn't going to spend more than like $75 on anything.

Come with me, oh ye who wish ye were more like Martha and less like me, and see what it is people sell. I'm not the first one to do this, there is a fantastic site at Item Not As Described which features truly awful items from the free sections of craigslist, but I want to spend money. Let's see what I can get. The parameters? I only looked at items in Fairfield County, sold by the owner, that had pictures.

We're looking for lamps. I don't like lamps in general, and I really don't like any lamps that devoted partner likes. I like lights. Sometimes I like chandeliers but only in an ironic way. I can be won over by sconces. Fortunately the following two lamps were discovered, both very much in the price range and, as you can see for yourself, funky. I'm funky. Funky can be good. I sang in a funk band in college. I felt like an idiot but there was definitely funk afoot.

FUNKY RETRO LAMP - $85


LARGE VINTAGE LAMP-FUNKY - $85


But now I'm worried this funk doesn't match. The first funk could easily have lived at my great grandmother, Nan Nan's right next to her bowl of spearmint leaves. Nan Nan's house smelled like old people which is about right as Nan Nan lived to nearly 101 making her, help me now math, 88 when I was born. And 88 in those days was different. Older. Smellier. I think Nan Nan would have liked this first funky lamp. I'm not sure my love for my long departed great grandmother makes ME like the lamp any better. Furthermore, I would be surprised, nay shocked, had Nan Nan paid $85 for this lamp when it was new. After all, she raised my grandmother during the depression, and depression-era people don't shell out that kind of money for ugly, I mean funky, lamps.

I'm pretty sure the second piece of funk was actually once owned by the art teacher at primary school. You all know this art teacher. She wore very big possibly hand knit sweaters, either hand knit by her or by the indigenous Chileans she had spent the summer with, the necklaces with the huge HUGE beads, and the reading glasses that had the artsy chain so they could hang around one's neck. I like to think that Ms. L brought this lamp back from Burma where armless orphans had assembled it with their feet and teeth and presented it to her as thanks for the summer she spent with them doing art therapy and sanitizing their water supply. Even though it probably took the orphans a bit of time to assemble these lamps, $85 is more than their entire village will make this year and, as such, might be slightly ambitious in the pricing department.

2 large off white lamps - $75


Fortunately, for less than the cost of ONE of the funky lamps, I can honor my other grandmother by buying these two lamps. My other grandmother was Jewish and lived in an apartment complex in Miami Beach with all of your Jewish grandmothers. The apartment was styled in whatever it is you call the style these lamps fit in, but she had dishes of seashells lying around the house, so these would have been perfect. Done.

Hand Made Book Shelves - $100


This has convinced me to take a photo of something:


In 8th grade we had to take pottery. I sucked. No, that isn't self-effacing, oh I'm sure you weren't that bad kind of fishing for compliments. I could not, for the ever loving life of me throw a pot and have it remain, well, pot-like. Instead I threw a ridiculous number of things that look like this. I'm not kidding, I have them all displayed in our living room, you should come over and look. Because I went to the kind of progressive, art-friendly school I did, the teacher, rather than tell me I was retarded, said she liked my non pot pots. I thought then, and think now, that they look like vaginas. Glazed vaginas. I like them a lot, but I would never have the balls to try and sell them. Especially not as, say, Homemade Ceramic Objet - $75; perhaps as Retarded Kid Can't Use Pottery Wheel Makes Ceramic Vagina - $2. So I don't know if I have it in me to subsidize someone else's retarded kid who couldn't handle wood shop.

LOUIS VUITTON STYLE VANITY - $195

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I have plenty to say about this piece. But you don't know what. You think you do, but you don't. This piece falls into a category I like to call Budget Madame X. You see there is a woman. A superfantastic woman who is the mother of a friend, the mother of a friend who is reading this, who has awesome, but totally eclectic taste. Think Louis XIV meets Miami Vice, but in a way so over the top and well thought out, that it works. I mean really works. Works so much that I, who would prefer all of my belongings to be angular, simple, and in a solid color, occasionally find myself staring at a seriously ugly piece like this and wondering what the non-KMart version would become in her hands. Since, I too would like to become a superfantastic woman in my later years, ugly pieces like these speak to me in a very particular way. They say things like, "but Yelena, you don't have a desk yet. You could turn this hideous vanity into something wonderful; something so Madame X aspirational." Then reality sets in, devoted partner comes walking by, reminds me that he knows Madame X, he grew up watching her decorate houses, and I am no Madame X. Sigh.

Brown Jordan Outdoor Furniture - $1200


Something I'm really quite partial to is being thought of as stupid. Sure, I know other people might not get off on it quite as much as I do, but there's something so delicious about the scenario in which someone wants to sell me a used item of theirs for more it would cost me to buy it new myself. You see, over this past weekend, devoted partner and I went to United House Wreckers in Stamford because they were having a patio furniture sale. We saw something that was, wait, exactly like this except it had an umbrella and an additional chair, for about $800. I feel kind of certain that a number of people scouring craigslist might have also seen the advertisements stating that UHW was having a huge patio furniture sale. Perhaps it's just poor timing on the part of the owners of this patio set, but I find it insulting to my intelligence. Either way, I thought $800 was too much for cheap patio furniture, so I definitely think $1200 for the same cheap patio furniture is excessive.

Wooden Picnic Table - Newly Repainted - $100


Similarly, I wouldn't have thought twice about this had the owner not pointed out he had freshly repainted the picnic table. By he, I'm assuming he meant his five year old, or the same kid who made the bookshelves, because this isn't a great paint job. And I can easily steal this same piece from any number of State Parks or summer camps and then poorly paint it myself.

leather chair and love seat - $40

Then there are times when you know that it's futile to fight. That even if you pay for them and keep them in your room, devoted partner will not go with you to pick them up, will not permit them to be loaded in or on top of his car. Will not spend any time remotely near them. You cry because these are POWDER BLUE LEATHER THINGS. Or as devoted partner just said, "you just like it because it looks like the elephant piano player from the Cantina scene." (Can't find you a photo of the thing, because of George Lucas's general douchiness no doubt, but you know the one I'm talking about.)

Strangely enough we might have found an item or 2 we'll actually buy. So craigslist is still good for something now and again. I just do fantasize about the house you get to decorate with all the kinds of crap above. Someone would probably consider it visionary!