Subways, Rain, Mucus

level five rapids!

When the sun came up this morning and I finally stopped moaning from ear/nose/throat torture, I decided to go ahead and be an adult and go to work. (Momentous occasion, this.)

By the time I got downstairs to the street it was raining giant, sloshy buckets. I courageously made it to the subway where four inches of water met me at the turnstiles. Luckily I had on my super fashionable wellies and so I was prepared for the worst, but the man behind me wasn't, and he yelled out "Aw hell no, I'm going HOME." And that alone made my morning all worth it.

At this point a nice old man bravely waded through the water and probably ruined his grown-up leather shoes. He was really cute. I have this thing for old men. Maybe it's a sickness?

But it was to get worse. There was water spilling down the stairs to the platform like a waterfall! A level-five white water rapid! I could have gone down those stairs in a canoe!

Once the rain stopped, the heat came. Like a hot towel. And now I'm home again. (Fascinating stuff, this!)

This afternoon we are going to pick up some boxes at our friendly neighborhood UPS store and start packing up our lives. A week and a half, that's it. Today I sat down with Peter Pan and explained that a lot of changes were coming, but that Mommy and Daddy would be there and that the flight wouldn't be scary and that he'd get to meet Uncle Monty. He is going to love Uncle Monty. And we would love for always and forever. I don't know how much it helped things for him, but I feel much better now.

Ten Things

I just watched 10 Things I Hate About You, which was on at the same time as How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days, and which is essentially the same movie, except that one is based on Shakespeare and the other one isn't.

I forgot how much I loved this movie when it first came out. And now I live in the same neighborhood as Heath Ledger, but I have never actually seen Heath Ledger or his girlfriend Michelle Williams, though practically all of my friends have, and they all tell me this and it always makes me grumpy, because I know in my heart that we were destined to be best friends, Heath and Michelle and I. We were meant to get together to watch Monday Night Football, and The Holbs and The Heath would eat chips and Michelle and I would eat fresh strawberries and we'd gossip about her other celebrity friends. Like Katie Holmes, definitely.

There is still time, but only two weeks, to meet Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams and casually begin this life-long friendship.

We’re here, guys. We’re ready!

Flattery

Today as I was walking down the stairs of the Fulton Street 4/5 subway station, a guy on his cell phone interrupted his conversation to invite me on a romantic tryst. He was short and strange and leering but it was sweet!

I bought a pashmina off the street today from my favorite street vendor. I don't know his name, but I imagine he is called Barney or Willis because you see he wears a safari hat every day. He is short, and I decided I loved him when I bought a white pashmina from him a few months back and he asked me if he could have my skirt. He explained that his wife would love it and he wanted to hang it as drapes for a surprise for her birthday, and strangely I found all this to be quite charming. It was fun, in a mentally unstable kind of way.

When I wanted a black pashmina just the other day he had to dig into his bags to find one, all the while telling me what a complement it would be to my "striking olive complexion" and "Are you Mediterranean? Because you look so exotic." Hah! No I'm just boring. But every day when I walk past him I remember it, and isn' tit silly how even the most off-base and ridiculous compliments can make your day so much better.

Sticky.

It is a gloriously humid Friday! New York in June, what’s not to love?

I want to tell you about New York in June, will you let me? (Please?) It goes like this:

You step outside. Simultaneously you feel AND smell the heat. You smell everything in a two-mile radius. Everything smells. At the bottom of my building there is a grocery store called the Garden of Eden, and they put their fresh fruit out on the street, and when you walk out of the building you smell this crazy smell of warm, ripe, partially rotting fruit. You smell the garbage on the corner, you smell the hot dogs in the cart. You smell the perfume of the woman in front of you and the body odor of the man behind you. You smell the exhaust of the cars and the drippings from the window unit air conditioners. You can smell the cement.

Your skin feels like it has been misted by warm broccoli water. You walk and you can feel the heat of your body steaming your clothes from the inside out, and the heat of the city steaming your clothes from the outside in. Very soon these clothes become a second skin. Sticky. Your feet are sweating; if you are wearing sandals your feet are already covered in street that you will have to wash off before you get into your clean white sheets for bed.

You reach the subway, and as you descend into the bowels of the tunnels the air grows more warm, more still, more full. You fish for your MetroCard in your bag and you swipe it at the turnstiles. They click and you push through. You weave through the throng of humanity coming in, going out. You smell dirty clothes and hair spray and gold jewelry. And then, you wait. The back of your knees begin to sweat, you feel a little trickle down your spine; your hair has fallen flat. Your eyebrows begin to sweat. The subway stinks. Urine. Feces. Smoke. Grease. Oil. Doritos. Doritos? Doritos.

The train comes and with it comes a woosh of hot air. It cools your sweaty skin and you ready yourself for the battle to come. The doors open and you go in after they come out. You hug your bag to your body as you twist and turn to squeeze in. You brush up against skin. “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.” Boop-Boop.

The train rocks back and forth. It is air-conditioned in the train but it isn’t much relief. The train is packed. Standing room only.

The train comes to a stop and you prepare yourself for the brakes, but you’re still not prepared for it and you jerk a bit as you try to stay steady. The doors open. This time you fight to get out.

You push out through the warm metal of the subway turnstile and you walk up the stairs. With each step the sun gets brighter, hotter. Your thighs start to burn. You get to the top and the sidewalk is bustling. You move quickly and dodge and weave through the tourists, you walk quickly but not too fast, you are a part of a living, breathing organism.

We have taken to running the air conditioning only in the bedroom where we keep the puppy, the lucky duck. The effect of this is that when we come home from work we walk into a stale, hot, terribly uncomfortable living room. We put down our laptop bags and take off our uncomfortable shoes. We undo our buttons and then open the door to the bedroom. The blast of cool air that meets us and the change in atmosphere we feel is like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door of her black and white home to reveal the lush, technicolored world of Munchkin Land. It is like we are leaving the pits of hell and emerging, lifelike and wondrous, into the clouds of heaven.

Sushi!

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight the Holbrooks had dinner at Nobu. A $270 dinner at Nobu.

We had a toro tartar in a wasabi soup with caviar and an Asian peach on the side to "cleanse the palate." Yellowtail sashimi on mustard greens. Red snapper and sesame oil. Then lobster tempura in a cream sauce with shitake mushrooms. And black cod in sweet miso sauce with foie gras. (I had foie gras today!) And THEN the sushi platter, and THEN the chocolate souffle and the green tea ice cream. And THEN they had to roll me down the subway steps and onto the platform. $100 per person, plus tax, plus tip, plus the fun of Oh this is Tribeca! and seeing Robert DeNiro's apartment across the street! and “Is that an Olsen twin?” And I think it was.

In two months we will move to Idaho, where the only raw fish to be found will be the raw fish we have catch in the river with our own bare hands and eat like bears, and we will remember when we are feeling sad, Hey, remember that one time when we went to Nobu? And we had all that great food? And we were in the cultural center of the Universe? And we lived there? And it was great?