Uptown Girl: Sundays, Sundae's and SuperRats

Ah, Sundays in New York City. Nothing could be more quaint, more celebratory, more exuberant, more delightfully ritualistic. The Sunny Sunday is every New Yorkers darling, an ungaurunteed delicacy that causes everyone to pause and admire things – displays in shop windows, each other, the weather, their hardboiled eggs that come perched on a miniature silver shot glass (I realize its not a REAL shot glass, but it looks an awful lot like one…) with a little spoon for cracking…these are things to be admired, to be cooed over, to be indulged. Why? Because it’s sunny, not too cold, not too hot, because it’s Sunday in New York and everyone is in such a jolly good mood!

While the rest of the nation is watching ESPN with a beer, sleeping in, making toast in their underwear, folding clean socks from the drier, sipping coffee over the paper, New Yorkers are speedwalking their strollers through Central park to get a good stroller parking spot in front of the carousel, gathering in small, loud quarters for the best huevos rancheros north of the border, bustling in and out of bakeries and shops without removing their sunglasses, descending on Bloomingdales like a flock of Juicy Couture velour bluebirds. And best of all, Sundays are the day for magnificent new york brunches. Fresh slices of warm bread, soft avacados, jiggly warm eggs, peach bellinis…oh yes. Brunch here is so heavenly that it might even be worth skipping church just to eat omletes—the pressed brie paninis will redefine the meaning of communion and the fresh mozzarella will give you an out of body experience. Not kidding.

My second Sunday in New York buzzed in and out like a perfect New York Sunday, leaving me footsore, delightfully full and dog tired. But first, the move in –

After collecting my (many) things that had been blown to bits all over Erika’s room and stuffing them back into my two suitcases, I held her strictly to her promise to help me cart them across town. I had insisted that with two of us we could easily get them through the subway – a little arm strength might even be good for our physiques! After all, my Dad had thankfully always taught me that whatever you pack (slash buy) you then have to be responsible for dragging through the airport or subway. The inherent meaning of this is don’t own more than you can carry. I think, however, that the message got a little twisted somewhere between junior high and my sophomore year in high school – because it just seems to always translate into a sweat-soaked me dragging my stuff up a public transit staircase, insisting under my (out of…) breath, ‘That new jacket, that is worth it. And that last pair of cowboy boots, those are worth it.” However, I think I internalized the message to the extent that I feel dreadfully guilty taking a cab. Like maybe I could morally take a cab if I was responsible enough of an adult to get rid of some sh*t and stop buying more sh*t. But until then, my punishment is hard labor in tight, stiff denim. I am grateful for the message, however, because I’ve reached new personal and physical milestones based on how far I will go to bring that grey jacket with me (it, along with the majority of my wardrobe will probably follow me into the grave). I realize this all sounds incredibly shallow, and believe me, it is. But if there is another thing my Dad always says, and a thing Ive learned well in New York – denial is more than a River in Egypt. I have a problem. So here is to self-acceptance. “Hello, my name is Kate, and I am here because I am a clothes-a-holic.” In any case, I digress…We made it all the way out the door of the apartment and into the elevator before I had been easily talked into taking a cab… Two bucks for the subway, one year off my life, and one off of Erika’s - 12 for a cab. It was a wash.

I LOVE my place. Well even more than that I love having a place. First my clothes moved in. Then I moved in after they did. I’m trying desparately to overcome the desire to domesticate – Buy a floor lamp, a dresser, a rub, frame photos, a bed. But since Im only here for 2 months I thought it best to resist all urges, buy an air mattress and sleep on the floor with the dust mites until a more permanent situation. I know right, how very practical of me! And so I bought a very nice air mattress and slept in a more or less empty room. I thought about adopting a pet plant to keep me company. But if I cant have a chair then I cant have plants either. Plus I don’t think I’d be a very doting parent at the moment. In any case it was my try at minimalism – temporarily. I stuck it to practicality on the way down and bought white sheets and a white comforter without thinking. The dust mites really love white.

The location is fabulous, the neighborhood quiet and lovely, the surrounding shops everything a girl could want, the park only a few jog-steps away. My roommate is wonderful and she comes with two other insta-friends, Tori (the one who moved out into her own place) and Jasmine. The second day I accidentally walked in to the apartment next store – door was unlocked and I got all the way into the living room before I realized the people sitting on the couch staring at me were people I did not know. And somehow when things like this happen, running into business that isnt yours or walking in to the boys bathroom and walking in on some guy at the urinal (this too has happened), these are the times when you need your motor skills the most. In retrospect, what I should have done, after walking into a stranger’s apartment, plopping my grocery bags in the kitchen, and coming face to face with 5 aghast strangers, was to say “ oh Im sorry, I just moved in next door and I picked the wrong door. How silly of me, haha! Im Kate by the way, your new neighbor! Nice apartment!” This is what I should have done. But oh no, these are the times when my wit and grasp of the English language completely abandon me. Instead of doing that, I hiccupped, gleeked out something like “Oop!” then some goggledy gook in awkward, “oh-f#*k!” pig latin that even I did not understand and made a dash for the door. Good thing my grocery bags were on the way out because I would have left them wounded on the front lines and ran like hell for the trenches.

Ill skip all the moving in part and everything that happened afterward because its boring and you wouldn’t care to hear about it. Ill sum it up in a few words- sweat, money, blood, more money, tears, then comfort food. Ok it actually wasn’t bad at all. But I needed an excuse for the comfort food. No wonder there are so many single gals in New York. Who needs a man when you can have any and every kind of the best food at any time and anywhere?

Before I end this incredibly long blog entry I will close with just a slightly more serious note. A job. I go to a “Church” here every Sunday called the Sacred Center – http://www.sacredcenterny.org/. Its not church in the traditional sense but instead a spiritual center, a this fantastic place using multiple religious beliefs, overall open-heartedness, tolerance and music to bring the community together. Ill write more on this remarkable place later, but during today’s session, I heard something that made me think – “Don’t go asking for the light when you think you are surrounded by darkness. The light is already there. Don’t keep asking and hoping for the perfect job, the perfect love, the perfect life, wondering why it has not come to you yet. If you were ready for it, it would be here already.” As I waited for the train back uptown I thought about this concept. Where IS my perfect job? Why will it not come to me, call me up on my cell phone and say, hello I am your perfect job, please come to work on me immediately.”
Now. This will seem like a jump but bear with me. While I have been here in NY everyone ALWAYS talks about the huge rats. These big, scary, dirty, nasty things as big as cats that haunt the subways. Everyone has seen what they think is the biggest rat in history. Everyone but me. They say if you watch the subway tracks while waiting safely up on the platform for the train (so you don’t have to worry about being close to them or anything) for long enough, you will catch a glimpse of these putrid, fanged, nightmarish Big Foots of the rodent family. Curious to see a rat (Ive never seen one you see, I had to ask my roommate if they were really black like in the cartoons), I always watch the tracks. And I’ve still never seen one. Not one big scary zombie rat. Not even a small rat. All I ever saw once, my eyes peeled, was a little fuzzy grey mouse. I know it sounds sick and kind of weird, but I wanted to see one of these famous rats! To me it seemed that they were completely fictional. But still, no rat ever presented itself to me like it did to all the other subway takers in new york. It was like Life, or maybe New York, was laughing at me, some mean, sick joke that somehow sent me on a visual rat-hunt. Well anyway, waiting at the tracks tonight, I quickly became bored waiting for my train. With the descent of boredom, I routinely began my usual rat-surveillance. For some reason, though, this time, in my head I said (party to myself, party to Life in general, partly to those stupid rats who thought they were being funny by only coming out for everyone else in NY and not me) “Ok this is it. I am going to see what a rat looks like this time. Bring it on, rats! You just go ahead and bring it on!” I squared my shoulders and faced the tracks decidedly. I soon became bored waiting again and quickly became absorbed in worrying about not having a job while observing a few people who were standing around waiting for the train. Not 2 minutes had gone by, when, as soon as I turned my eyes to the tracks, there was a big fat, ugly, brown rat. It stopped mid-track for a minute, as if to give me the analogous finger, then scurried off. I nearly jumped off the platform and uttered a muffled shriek, followed by satisfaction that I had finally seen one – without visible fangs, red eyes or talons. Just then the thought came to me – maybe it is I who is not ready for this job. Maybe it is I who is not squaring my shoulders, staring my future in the face and saying “I am ready”. And if this is the case, perhaps it is time to square up, acknowledge doubts, memories, fears and my distaste for being alone, and soldier on. Maybe if you are really going to do something well, you have to do it blind – one foot off the cliff before you can see what lies below. Whether or not you feel like it is the right thing to do, asking how far will you fall, what will you do when you get to the bottom, what will you look like after you splat on the pavement? At some point, you just commit and jump. Otherwise you might sit perched at the top of the cliff waiting to jump forever, looking back at your old life and swaying on the edge of two worlds. Maybe you have to face the rats of your future that haunt your fears in order to be able to get on the train to your next stop in life. Otherwise you’ll be sitting on that platform forever, rat-hunting instead of living. And maybe, just maybe when the rats finally pop out for a visit, they wont be mutant, fearsome creatures you so long expected to see.