patience and safety pins.
in Funny Stuff, I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as apartment, armor, bathroom, buste, c est la vie, gist, green jeans, knight, knight in shining armor, new friend, pair, personal assistant, prospective clients, purse, replacement, safety pin, safety pins, sun, today
My zipper totally busted today. While I was out. Well, I was actually in. In the bathroom of a new friend’s apartment. And I was taking an extraordinarily long time in said bathroom. Because I kept trying to zip. up. my. fly.
So finally I just walked out of the bathroom and explained the situation to her. Though, seeing my fly open probably gave her the gist of it before I opened my mouth.
Enter: safety pin.
Have I mentioned that safety pins are basically my knight in shining armor? They are right now responsible for holding together: my purse, a pair of boots, and now my bright green jeans.
Who needs a personal assistant when you have safety pins?
“The good news is that a replacement zipper costs $10,” my friend told me.
And the bad news is that I’m out for the day and my zipper is busted and a safety pin is reflecting the sun from my crotch, I thought.
Oh well, C’est la vie, right?
I took pilates today with a teacher I’d never had before. And I happened to be waiting for the elevator with her before the class. And she kept hemming and hawing over the length of time it took for the elevator to get down to us. And then she got all frustrated over the fact that it was 6:30 on the dot and the instructor who was presently teaching in the studio had not yet finished. And then she got all mad at the lady giving a tour to prospective clients because she interrupted the pilates class (once it was well underway) by touring it briefly. All this to say: no matter how good the class was, I would have been less than impressed.
Because we are in a world that involves other people.
And they use the elevator, too. And they teach classes, too. And they have to do their job and give tours, too. And I think if we realize this (and if I realize this, because I sometimes get frustrated with the elevator and forget that maybe Suzie on the tenth floor needs it a little bit more than me right now. Maybe she’s got to go to the bathroom. Maybe she has a busted fly and–horror of horrors!–NO SAFETY PIN!) –well, if we realize this, then we start to practice patience. And when we start to practice patience, then all the good parts of life become much more accessible. Not that they weren’t there before in droves–but now we notice them. And, honestly, whether the good parts are there or not doesn’t matter as much, I think, as whether or not we notice them.
So, here’s to practicing patience. And realizing that we share the elevator with a whole building full of people who lead VERY! IMPORTANT! LIVES! too.
And, just to bring it round full circle, here’s to safety pins. Because they sure help when my fly has decided not to.
salsa and conversations.
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as bathroom, courage, dancer, dancing, Dang, different times, facebook friends, first names, harlem, kind, muscles, perfect sense, salsa, tonight, universal law, way, what the heck, whomever
Tonight was three parts magic and one part groping.
But the magic of beautiful friends and salsa dancing far outweighs the minor groping that occurred.
I think I danced for over four hours straight. Save for the many trips to the bathroom I took in order to stop dancing with whatever partner I was trying to gracefully get away from at the time.
“You know you can just say ‘don’t do that’ to whomever is dancing with you,” said each of my friends with me tonight, in varying words and at different times.
Or I can just go to the bathroom.
A lot.
“Would you like to be facebook friends?” one guy asked me, literally mid-dip. Which is a rather calculated time to ask, I think, considering if he doesn’t like the answer, he could just drop me. In fact, one guy almost did, and then proceeded to say “just kidding!” over and over again. Judging from the way his muscles were quivering, working so hard to just hold me up, though, I am pretty sure it wasn’t really a joke.
Oh, but the facebook friend request mid-dip.
I politely declined.
And then went to the bathroom.
Another guy offered to put a GPS in me. “Cause you’re a dancer in the city,” he told me. “I can protect you.”
Which makes perfect sense.
While you’re installing the GPS in me, why don’t we tell each other our first names? Since I’m gonna be your little helpless pet and all, you should at least know my name.
But I actually met a kind of somewhat normal seeming guy tonight.
Normal-seeming.
Ha.
Aside from being terrible English, what the heck does that even mean?
Well, I guess he didn’t offer to install a GPS in me and he didn’t try to grope me.
I know, what a prince.
But he is here getting his master’s degree in public law. Or universal law. Or something about law. Basically, he seems like he must have at least half a brain.
He lives in Harlem, too, so I told him that I had just been there for the first time this week.
“Great!” he said. “What were you doing in Harlem?”
“Taking a class,” I answered, somewhat evasively.
“What class?” he asked.
“…Um…Pole-dancing…” and then I explained that it’s a fun class and I normally do concert dance and blah blah blah why’d I have to mention that I’d been to Harlem at all?
When he asked for my number, I gave it to him. Like I said, he seemed sort of decent and all that.
“But I am not dating anyone right now–on purpose, I mean. I am not looking to date.”
“I’d still happily take your number,” he said.
Who knows, maybe I’ll regret it, like countless times before.
Or maybe not, I guess.
Scintillating debate, I know.
“Since you’ve already been through just about the worst thing you could imagine,” one friend said to me tonight, “What are you still afraid of?”
She asked this with kindness in her voice. It was the kind of question your teacher might ask you when she knows you know the answer, but it would do everyone a world of good just to hear it out loud anyway.
“I guess getting hurt again.”
“But you also know that there’s really nothing you can do to keep that from happening,” she pointed out.
And yep, I know this.
“And actually? I was hurt terribly, but I am okay.”
“Right,” she said. “So then, live with courage. The worst has already happened and you’re still here, still strong. Live with courage instead of fear.”
Okay, then.
No, seriously, YES.
And then I got home and talked to Betsy.
“I think I am gonna pick someone I don’t care about at all to care about.”
It had taken me all of five whole minutes to forget about living with courage, you see.
“That makes absolutely no sense, Jess.” said Bets.
“No–it does. I will pick someone I don’t care about at all to be in a relationship with–then, when he leaves or doesn’t call or whatever–I WON’T CARE. Perfect sense, see?”
“But you wouldn’t ever do that–you’d never get in a relationship with someone you don’t care about.”
Dang it all, she’s right, folks.
Dang it all.
Anyway, salsa was magical.
So are my friends, by the way.
friday night.
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as access, banana, bathroom, big mistake, cab, cab driver, cabbie, dominican music, eighty six, exit, fool, girl, home, kind, Leão, mistake, morning, nobody, nope, order, Palenta, privet, random place, six cents, Spalenka, Times Square, traffic jam, train, Uh-oh, way, wonderful girl, wrong way
I just bought a banana from a random place in Times Square in order to gain access to their bathroom at 2:30 in the morning. And nope, I didn’t even eat the banana. But it was eighty-six cents well spent, I can tell you that. I just took a cab home because I was too [...]
crab bisque everywhere!
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as accident, bathroom, cat, crab bisque, crab morsels, dessert, direction, freezing, gift card, glass of wine, good reason, kosher, last time, moment, momma cat, rags, reason, sweatshirt, time, waitress, while
It is very late and I am very tired and I smell like a crab. Yes, that’s right: a crab. There is a very good reason for this. The waitress, she was carrying a huge bowl of crab bisque, but then she stopped carrying it. Instead, she dropped it and it crashed all around me [...]
news, some of it downright frabjous.
in Loved Ones, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as amin, bathroom, cinnamon rolls, concert, Darby, dough, dubya, Frabjous, GRE, hit, home, kid, kid rock, leftover dough, loaf of bread, math portion, nephew, plenty, rascal flatts, sad news, show, those guys, tonight, way
Tonight we: pulled this golden loaf of bread out of the oven. I say that like it was a surprise, but we suspected that it would happen since we had put it in there and all. But then we proceeded to eat it. It was truly delicious. Frabjous, even, which has been the new hit [...]
thoughts and a song for you tonight.
in Funny Stuff, MP3, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as bathroom, Fair Hill, God, Guy, hold ups, Jesus, Shane, song, time, uofd, warm weather, way, weather, weather baby, weather reports
I think that I like weather reports very much because, in a way, they are a small glimpse of what my life will look like in the future. And yes, I realize it’s the very near future–and a faulty prediction at that. But, still. At least when the ladies gather round me in the church [...]
i’ll be in your eighties cover band, sure.
in Funny Stuff, photography
as bathroom, belly, curling iron, fairy, flock of seagulls, hair, hairspray, nice, reunion tour, second cousin, time, way, wedding singer
Some mornings are more glorious than others. They all start the same way, mostly. I generally get so hungry that I am reduced to opening my eyes. Nice and slow. Maybe even one at a time. But about being hungry–every morning I wake up to a belly that acts like I’ve never put anything in [...]
for nothing.
in Thoughts and Feelings
as angry aliens, bathroom, Benjamin Moore, benjamin moore paint, California, Darby, Jason, Monica, Ollie, orange, paint, paint store, skinny girl, something, toilet seat, way
My parents, they live all the way upstairs, on the second floor of this house. And I live in the basement. You know, among the dogs, severed hands, and angry aliens with stumps on the ends of their arms. But I have a bathroom down here. Something to which I affectionately refer to as mine. [...]
the real purpose of socks and other questions
in Funny Stuff, I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as aisle, bathroom, God, mundane questions, part, refrigerator, rotten meat, stewardess, time, tiny bathroom, way
Sometimes I look at my socks suspiciously. And before you tell me to just relax because socks are non-entities after all, that I should let them off the hook in terms of motive or really anything sinister, let me tell you why. When my feet are cold–which is often enough, especially in the winter–it feels [...]
