By Corinne Flax

December 22, 2005

January Can't Come Fast Enough

My stomach feels kind of cramped up. Probably because I had to go and get a Mighty Kids Meal last night after we left the bar. Six chicken nuggets, small fries, and one small chocolate frosty later I felt greasily replete with food, my face lit with a smile that signified the contentment the food completely void of any redeeming nutritive properties brings. Of course now I feel queasy and gross, but last night I was happy as a pig in shit. I eat fast food rarely, and McDonalds isn't my first choice. I'll take Wendys or Duchess over Mickey D's any day. Last night was special though, last night was a McDonalds evening. Also McDonalds was the only place open at 11:25pm, which is just ridiculous. In the city everything is open all the time.

Yesterday was also a Manhattan day, just as the night before was a Manhattan evening. A friend of mine who has been living in the city for the last two years is moving to San Fransisco with her boyfriend. To celebrate they reserved the second floor of a bar/club called Kiun, and we all got dressed up and went to dinner. Wine flowed, candy was thrown, and at the end of the night we ended up sitting in the tatami room. There were about ten of us in there, dressed to kill of course. Everyone had on black except for my friend who's moving. She had on a green forties debutante dress and what appeared to be an actual fur coat. I wish we had taken a picture of her glowing greenly with the rest of around her like a flock of crows. We sang songs to her until the management came downstairs and told us we were bothering the other patrons.

When I woke up on Wednesday I was on a different side of the bed then the one I'd fallen asleep on. As I blearily focused my eyes I realized it was 11:00 which meant that my friend who I was staying with was desperately late for work. Sad to say she was just to 'sick' to make it in that day. Instead of working she and I walked around the city, marveling at the traffic. Yesterday was sunny and warm (warm for December) and everything just seemed to be marvelous. From the breakfast we ate at Odessa to the Gap we went shopping at later, everything seemed gauged to please us in the extreme.

The thing about yesterday is this a) it is gone now and I will never be able to have that sweet silly day again and b) yesterday was the last day I go to Manhattan as a visitor. When I return it will be as an apartment holder. Even if it's before my apartment is ready for habitation I will still be coming in to prepare my future home for myself. No longer will I have to carry my life in a bag on my back if I don't want to take the train home after going out. Never again will I wonder exactly what I would do if the person who's couch I'm crashing on wants to take someone home from the bar. Actually that's never happened, but I've always wondered what I would do if it did. The point is that is no longer something I have to think about. I'm going to have my own couch, my own bed, my own toaster oven. Or rather I'll be sharing the couch and the toaster oven with someone who I can't wait to see in a week and a few days. As far as I'm concerned January just can't come fast enough.

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December 19, 2005

I Love Bad Radio

I must confess, I've been listening to Howard Stern since I was 11, and now that he has left terrestrial radio I am sad. True, there will be a few weeks of 'best of' shows to listen to before his voice exits my life forever, but that is a slim consolation indeed. Of course technically I could buy a Sirius radio and pay to listen to Howard, the day I do that is the day I dye my hair blonde, straighten it, and change my name to Tiffani.

Truth be told it is not the brilliant content of the Stern Show which has kept me listening for over ten years. As funny as drunken midgets, guys with harelips, ethnic slurs, and fart jokes can be they have never been the true attraction of the show for me. The time slot, that 600am to 1030am time slot, that's what kept me listening. I listened while I got ready for school, listened as I commuted to work, listened while doing sit-ups before work, listened even as my mother told me the show was trash. I agree with my mother, the show is trash, but I still love it. My favorite segments on the show always involve songs or Robin Quivers doing the news. I also liked the celebrity segments. Ringo Starr who was really interesting. Did you know Ringo Starr lives in Monte Carlo?

So I am saying goodbye to something that I've been listening to since I was a child. Of course I'm not just saying goodbye to the Stern show, there's a lot more to wave at as it recedes into the distance than a smutty radio program. I have to say goodbye to the second grade class I volunteer in, say goodbye to the Sbux I work at, the many people I work with and for, the bars I've been frequenting frequently for the last year and a half, not to mention my room, my house, and the entire world I've been living in. That's a lot to say goodbye to. I never thought I could love Norwalk, this town that I am third generation in, but it has grown on me as the days have gone by. Leaving is not going to be easy, and moving in is assuredly going to be a pain in the ass.

Which brings me to this cheerful fact, I have signed a lease! In two weeks time, give or take a day, my sister and I will take possession of our very first apartment. I've sublet a bunch of times before, but this is the first time my name is on a lease. When I signed the lease I felt a thousand butterflies flying in my stomach, which was intense. Of course I can't just move in right away, there's always a lot of nitty gritty stuff to take care of in life. The apartment has to be wired for electricity and internet, I have to buy a bed and a couch, call up the superintendent and get some keys. On the fourteenth I register for classes and on the seventeenth they begin. I still don't know where I'm going to be working in Manhattan, and I haven't sold my car yet, but it feels good to at least know where I'll be sleeping in three weeks.

Until then it's clear that I have more then enough to keep me busy. My room is filled with the accumulated detritus of 24 years of living and collecting and it would take a back hoe to move it all out. This year is going to be an empty Christmas, my mother goes to Japan on the 23rd, and my two best friends are going to London and Paris for the holidays. I can't believe Leah will be home in just two weeks, I'm so excited to see her. It feels to me as if my life is holding its breath, waiting for the next two weeks to pass so that things can finally really get started up properly. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but when I find out I'll let you know.

P.S. Just wanted to give a shout out to my mom for coming into Manhattan on Saturday morning, and cosigning the lease with me. She gave up her last two dance classes before January for me, and I appreciate the sacrifice she made so that her daughters could have a home of their own.

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December 14, 2005

Tomorrow Tomorrow

I wrote a whole blog. A whole entire blog. And then I deleted it. Just like that I deleted the whole thing. I did it because it was boring, commonplace, whiny, and stupid. Not all of my blogs are the best thing I've ever done; they are by no means perfect. But this blog that I just deleted was dull, and dullness is worse then having a few minor flaws but being, overall, interesting. Every time I sit down to write one of these blogs I set out to ensure the entertainment of my audience, like Sbux I put the customer first, and my own convenience second. So there will be no dull blog today, only scintillating scraps of information will be passed on.

On Monday morning I found an apartment. I had a meeting with a broker named Lee at CitiHabitats, and he took me to see a few apartments in Harlem. Everyone told me that when I finally found the right place I would just know. While this seems ludicrous, I mean honestly, how can you just know? It is the case. I walked into the apartment on 126th and Lenox, and I just knew. I didn't know when we went into the building, or when we took the elevator up to the sixth floor, I didn't know when I looked at the dusty metal door to the apartment. When that door swung open and revealed what seemed like a mile of exposed brick with two built in book cases, as I took in the sheer size of the living room, the amount of counter space in the kitchen, the separation of the bedrooms, the three closets, that was when I knew. The more I saw, the more I knew. It helped too that the building is on the same block as the 2 3 and blocks away from the ABCD, and that the A runs express from 125th all the way down to 59th.

I haven't actually signed a lease on the apartment yet. That has to wait until credit checks are completed and I see the apartment one more time, to make sure that a few things are fixed, like the broken window. Counting one's chickens before they have hatched is a bad idea but I'm fairly confident the apartment is mine. (I mean ours Leah, the apartment is ours) So with shelter and education out of the way it's time for me to move on. By move on I mean move out. If it were summer I'd have a yard sale, but it's about 17 degrees outside and dropping. Does anybody want to come over and help me sort through the incredible amounts of crap I've been collecting for the last 24 years? I'll let you keep anything you like.

I've got until Saturday off from work which is really good, since I'm not supposed to life my arm up higher then my chest, move it farther back then my shoulder, or lift anything that weighs more then five pounds. I've spent the last three days in a Hydrocodone induced fog which I stepped out of only to meet with Lee. Lee by the way is absolutely fabulous and I love him. I almost didn't even keep my appointment with him, which just goes to show that I almost do stupid things all the time. Of course I actually do stupid things all the time as well, note the dislocated shoulder. I'm supposed to know by tomorrow whether or not the apartment is a go. I haven't even emailed my sister yet to tell her about it, because it isn't a sure thing yet, so she might read about it here first. That's funny, right?

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December 13, 2005

We always hurt the ones we love, especially ourselves

I'm not really sure exactly how to describe what's been going on with me since Thursday. My first impulse is to do my description as a bulleted list. With little a's, b's and c's neatly bracketed away like this a), b), c). That would take a lot of time and more organizational skills then I'm willing to admit possessing at this time. I'm going to start off with what's top of mind right now, and then I'll see where that leads me.

First off my shoulder is re-dislocated. Some speculation has been made as to whether or not it was ever 'really' back in place correctly, but whether there is any truth in that the fact remains on Thursday night I re-dislocated it. Thursday was the sort of day that can't end until something tremendous has happened, and three hours at St. Vincent's in the West Village was the cap to the day. T and I were walking cross town so she could go home and I could jump on the subway, and I went down hard, throwing my shoulder right out. I may in fact now possess a 'trick' shoulder.

The cause of my fall is hard to pin down. Perhaps it was the high heels I was wearing, maybe it was the beer I had with dinner, maybe I am just a klutz who has a propensity for falling down periodically. My shoulder didn't care why I had fallen down, it just cared that excessive force had been put on the already weak connection between it and my shoulder socket. In the emergency room, which we were luckily only two blocks from, they gave me Percocet and Morphine. These drugs did not seem to do anything for the pain, which was so strong I could barely move. T stayed at St. Vincent's with me for two hours, until my shoulder was back in place, and then she went home to bed. I spent another hour and half there, reeling from the pain killers and my exhaustion.

Thursday was, as I'm sure is already abundantly clear, a really long day for me. It was chock full of my going different places and being exhausted the whole time. At one point I missed a train because there was no parking. At another point I caught a cross town bus in Harlem. Other highlights included spending an hour in a Manhattan real-estate office, meeting a really rude broker, having drinks with AA* at Heartland Brewery, seeing The States play at Arlene's Grocery, helping a friend package cookies for her boss, and having dinner in the West Village. Top this all off with the fact that I opened the store that morning and you can see why at 2:30 am at St. Vincent's I was just about ready to curl up and pass out, morphine or no morphine.

Now it's Sunday and it's time for me to reenter the mad world of apartment hunting. I'm seeing one place today and about 30,000 tomorrow. I'm spending the next two days in the city, and then on Tuesday I'm supposed to go back to work. My arm has been immobilized in this sling thing for the last two days, and I've been doing not much except lying on a couch and enjoying my prescription pain killers. The thought of having to lurch around Manhattan with my arm in a sling and my coat buttoned up over it and the left arm empty and flapping around makes my stomach turn. I know there's no point in my being so self conscious about looking weird in my coat, after all we all know the city is filled with crazies, but I don't want to be one of them. Maybe the apartment today will be so great I'll say yes to it right away and tomorrow I won't have to do anything at all.

here's a quick plug for The States, my favorite local band ever!

www.thestatesonline.com

Send comments to: corinne@college-admission-essay.com

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