Eat the Damn Cake

So, a belated happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I’m back in Manhattan, where you can hear traffic from absolutely anywhere, and people wearing frighteningly stained blankets walk alongside people wearing Bergdorf Goodman, and I live in a little pale yellow apartment with Bear, a lot of diet soda, the cookies he always brings me, and a toilet that is happy to run for hours.

We spent a week in California, by the bay. Is it The Bay? It sounds that way when people say it. By the bay, where you can look into the distance and see more than five hills at once, and the eucalyptus trees hang their bark in dramatic, tired strips, and homes that belong to people who are now my family nestle against hard inclines. I didn’t notice any running toilets. Or at least, they politely stopped after an appropriate amount of time.

I suddenly have a much bigger family, and suddenly I was eating turkey with them. And sitting on their couches, and laughing at their jokes, and opening their refrigerators without asking. Continue Reading »

I have a beautiful engagement ring. It’s not from Tiffany, but it looks like it might be. It’s not the ring I pictured having, but I like it. I didn’t picture having a ring at all, until it became clear that Bear was going to propose. Mostly, it became clear because he said, “So if I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?” And I burst out laughing and said, “Of course I would!” And he sat there looking stunned and then said, “You would?” And then added, “Wait, that didn’t count. I’m going to do it for real.”

When it became clear that he was going to do it for real, I called my best friend Emily and we talked rings. She even sketched some for me. We agreed on one thing immediately: no diamonds. They weren’t my style. Way too fancy, the wrong look. We thought citrine would be better. I didn’t know what citrine was until we started looking online. I loved the color. A gentle shade between orange, brown, and yellow, that looked like it might be warm to the touch. We looked at rings that were interesting and creatively done.

(OK, that’s a little bigger than I was anticipating…source) Continue Reading »

Homeschooling was a failure for me. I had suspected as much, but I didn’t realize it fully until just now, as I sat at the table, trying to write yet another thank you note. Bear and I turned out to be more popular than expected, especially with our families. So now I’m writing lots of thank you notes. And by lots I mean about one hundred thousand. And my hand hurts so much that I had to stop. Which is why I’m typing now.

We all know how important penmanship is. It’s the mark of a well-educated, cultured, refined person. You can tell everything about a person by one glance at a note they’ve written by hand.

“Ah! What a lovely, elegant, beautiful woman she must be!”

Or, in my case, “Oh dear lord. Lock her up before she kills again!” Continue Reading »

It was inevitable. Eventually, there were going to be photos. And I was going to have to see them. And my opinion of myself on the day of my wedding was going to suddenly change.

It was also inevitable that due to all of the mornings I wake up in the city, I was going to be woken up at some point by the incessant, unrelenting pounding of a jackhammer. That was today, and naturally it stopped as soon as I gave up completely on sleep. But first it did this thing where it’d stop for a minute or so. There’d be this sudden, blissful space of peace. Like the world had settled under a soft blanket. And then, BAM. Bambambambambambambambambambambam! Just when my mind slipped back into white nothingness. I began to think, dimly, that we were having a kind of dialogue. The jackhammer was mostly just swearing at me, and calling me terrible things I can’t repeat here. I was mostly being pretty nice.

And to turn this all into a neat little metaphor, photos are a little like that. There are these soft spaces of quiet where I begin to imagine that I actually look the way I look in the mirror, to myself, on a good day. Or the way I feel when I’m grinning. Or dancing. Seriously, when I put on music and dance by myself (which I would never really do, of course, cause that would be weird…), I feel like I look really, really hot. My body moves in such cool ways, and I think things like, “Who could resist this? And THIS? Yeah, that’s right.” And “Damn, girl! Make that booty go!” And I do. Make that booty go, that is. But I do not want to see myself doing it. Because I know what would happen. I wouldn’t see a sex goddess, or Salome, but a nerdy Jewish girl who is obviously trying way too hard. And who doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with all the junk in her trunk. Continue Reading »

The first time I called Bear my husband was on the phone with Roberto, the sound and lights guy from the venue. I was asking him if he’d seen Bear’s blood kit. A little black bag with the blood machine and the test strips, the finger pricker*, a syringe, and a vial of insulin.

“I think that we—that my husband—forgot his blood kit.”

“You said it,” said Bear, from beside me. He was driving. And laughing at me a little. “Nice. The first time. Remember how the first time you called me your fiancé was to the computer repairman?”

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

“What?” said Roberto. “Can you hold on a second? Wait– I’ll call you back.”

He didn’t call me back. Which was fine. Bear could stick his finger with a needle. He kept telling me how he’d gotten really good at it. I kept averting my eyes when he did it. We were on our honeymoon. We drove through the Hamptons (well, some of them, anyway), and out to Montauk. Everything was closed. There were no celebrities or really rich people to be seen. But then, the really rich people have a habit of disguising themselves as not-so-rich people in windblown rustic couture in that area. So who knows.

“Ground zero, baby,” said Bear, “for the Pottery Barn revolution!” Continue Reading »

I threw up on my wedding night.

I don’t know where to start the story. Which is why instead of starting, I got some pizza, looked through some photos of friends of people I am friends with on Facebook, and watched an episode of Castle on Hulu. Then I clicked open a blank Word document, and here I am. Typing and looking at my hands on the dirty keyboard. Chipping turquoise nails, gold wedding band. Because I’m married. And when you don’t know where or how to start, the best thing to do is just start.

The world wants to ask me, “Does it feel different? How does it feel?”

And my answer is, “It feels different.” Continue Reading »

(source)

I always get this sense that there are a lot of people (probably most people in the world) who know how to do things better than me. They were born knowing. They’re innately good at life. I think they probably handle most situations involving pressure better. And situations involving lots of people. And situations involving messy food. And in thinking this about them, I am probably like most people. But that doesn’t prevent me from imagining them, whoever they are, dealing with whatever it is that I’m dealing with, and doing that gracefully, while also sending the last, perfected chapter off to their editor at Random House, squirting symmetrical dollops of wild mushroom mousse into whimsically tiny homemade puff pastry shells, and French braiding their thick, shiny hair with whichever hand is free for whichever moment. I do not have any relationship with Random House. We’re not even casual acquaintances. I am not French braiding. I am sitting on the couch, sliding backwards into anxiety. I have a mixer, from the wedding registry, but the box fell off the couch and landed upside down, and I haven’t checked to see if it’s OK, because there’s no room on the counter for it anyway, and I’m intimidated by the stack of cookbooks I suddenly own (from the bridal shower). Continue Reading »