Recovery Sunday

Here's the recipe to recover from a very tough week:

1. Sleep until noon. If you wake up earlier, pad into the kitchen to get ice water, and then go back to sleep. Make sure the velvet curtains are closed but the bedroom door is open so sunlight comes in but never touches the pillow. Feel free to drool and to sleep, smack-middle in the bed and kick the covers to and fro.

2. After waking properly, open the windows to let in the chilly pre-Superbowl air, and turn up the heat so it all co-mingles while you...

3. Scrub the bathroom and then take a long, hot shower. Slather on three different lotions and put on a soft new nightshirt and slippers. Dance around a little and then turn off the heat and close the windows. Consider donning a robe.

4. Put on trashy television on low (thank the God of small things for Law & Order SVU marathons and Bravo) and stack up earmarked magazines and local papers with shops, restaurants, films, dance performances and concerts for the week you'd like to pounce upon. Put the writing theory books within sight so that technically, you aren't ignoring them. Position a fleecy blanket close.

5. Re-water the wildflower arrangement that holds fragrant sweet pea, royal purple poppies, egg-yolk orange and white daffodils, strange antique rust roses, and bursts of hardened small berries, stalks tied together and thrust into a mason jar. Call the senders to say thank you for being great friends. Position them on the crystal stands on top of the coffee table that doubles as a fountain because your parents are just as crazy and full of too many ideas as you are.

6. Light four different fat candles and put those on the stands, too. Even better if they are Jo Malone and Archipelago, white and cream colored, smelling of linen and lemon and deep spice.

7. Microwave three mini-cinnamon rolls until they're gooey and have to be eaten with a spoon. Smash together with said spoon until the texture resembles mashed potatoes. Amazing, sweet, sticky, dessert mashed potatoes. Serve with a glass of red wine and more ice water.

8. Brush hair for a half-minute before deciding it can't be tamed today. Make lists of to-do for the week, allocate time to writing, sleeping, talking, walking, texting, cooking. Clean up kitchen. Put wine back in the fridge because the TV doesn't count as another person to socially drink with. Not yet, anyhow.

9. Blog. Take vitamins. Finish that wine anyhow (it was only a third of a bottle and someone is coming over soon anyway, say this aloud to make yourself feel better). Make the bed. Decide to buy more candles.

10. Answer the door when Annabella arrives, bearing gifts. Consider Superbowl picks and two different pools in the office and then realize you haven't even planned to watch the bowl at all. If Annabella doesn't say anything about changing Law & Order, then blame it on her when you both miss it because you're too busy gossiping.

Sundays are for rest, aren't they? No one can ever accuse me of not knowing how to rest...that's for sure.

Hope you are having a wonderful Sunday too.

I'm Having A Dinner Party...

I hosted a cupcake and champagne party that went smashingly. Now I have a real dinner party and the last time I did that I made a crazy amazing bouef bourgignon.

These are the same kids invited this time, I can't make that twice.

I did like how there was a lot of different stuff in one bowl, and it was rich and very winter-friendly. There was a whole bottle of wine poured in and it steeped the meat until it fell away from the fork. You could cut it with a spoon and the carrots were juicy, the potatoes sopped up with rich, buttery, runoff from the meat and vegetables and wine. Oh man, it was gooooood.

I'm thinking beef again (filet? rubbed with butter and salt and pepper and roasted?) or lamb (loin? marinated? crusted?) this time, with lots of stuff--I dunno, olives or sage or tons of garlic and lemon and crispy potatoes. But I'm not sure what I should make, and what would be big, hearty and delicious and not overpower whatever anyone else will bring. But still be the showpiece...

Any suggestions? I would be so excited to hear your crowd-pleasing dinner party mains!

I Am Going On Vacation Alone

This is frightening. No?

I have never gone on vacation without a friend or boyfriend. I can make fake friends easily, if this were a hostel situation, or a beach situation, but this is truly a no-alcohol, cell-phone-free, limited contact with the outside world vacation.

I hope to write around 30 pages of the new book. I also hope to get a massage every day. I think all they feed us is gruel. Gruel and barley. I will not obsess about work, school or my ex while I am gone. I will kiss no one. I will not stay up all night long watching "Breaking Bad." I will not bum cigarettes, I will not eat beef, I will not wear heels, I will not wear makeup, I will swim in the pool and I will read literature and I will go to sleep by ten PM.

I will paint in my mind, I will not read Gawker, I will not text rando people, I will not do what I will not do.

I will be me, I will be alone. I hope. I make it. I will be here. Wish me luck.

What I will prepare for Christmas Lunch

As I am lady this year (damnit!) I am cooking for the family and will be making a filet of beef (slice it up to get the mignon) with gorgonzola cream sauce. Roasted rosemary potato wedge fries and roasted cherry tomatoes. Thinking about the balsamic onions too. But the whole thing is so damn pricey!

Asking the boy to pick up a Venerio's cheesecake and Mom and Pop to bring the wine. What to serve as bar snacks as I'm preparing? Olives in orange juice? Spiced nuts? I made a pretty great trail mix for a company party last week consisting of white chocolate chips, cranberries, chopped walnuts, almonds and milk chocolate chips. It was a big hit, but we all ended up eating that instead of some amazing baked brie in pastry, homemade butternut squash lasagna, artichoke and olive pasta salad, some incredible rillettes, and all sorts of pate (which I will no longer eat after reading a few articles). Sadly, I might give up duck as well. I love their quacking too much.

Details on the other party I went to, at the gorgeous home of the nicest editor of the best food magazine still on the market (lush mac and cheese, sliced pork, cranberry mayo) to come. As well as how this endeavor, courtesy of Goddess Ina Garten to come...

How to Make a House a Home

I am now living by myself on a tree-lined, sun-dappled block in Park Slope. There are old houses and artisanal cafes and food coops and the park. At night, everything is still, cars drive by quietly, couples walk together, dogs wag and the air feels clean. Inside my section of the brownstone, it's 90% decorated--all with my mother's antiques: French ash buffet, Persian rugs, lamps made of stone urns, gilded frames and old flowered prints. A big soft blanket folded on the couch. My desk is a marble table top over an iron base, there are fluffy towels in the bathroom and outside, my patio has a rattan chaise with a big square suede-like pillow tossed on it. It looks over the little garden, the blueberry patch and the mint plants.

The kitchen is eat-in, the dining room table looks outside and my bedroom is a little cove, painted sage-green. Cream drapes fall from the windows, the bed is overstuffed with white linens and a stiff dust ruffle. My favorite white lamp draped with the beaded pearl necklace and a lambskin rug on the floor. It feels like sleeping in a layered wedding cake, an igloo made of fur, a room at a Vermont bed and breakfast. It's the first time I've lived alone, and I made the smallest room my bedroom so that my office and TV and everything is away. For so long my bed was my desk, my workspace, my entertainment center, even my breakfast nook where I sipped coffee.

Now the bed is sacred. And the apartment too. I find myself bouncing around, playing with the dimmers, cleaning the windows, sweeping the wooden planks endlessly. My clothes are in closets, not hanging over chairs, my papers are in folders instead of strewn across the floor. It feels like a beautiful home, my parents' maybe, my great-aunt's whose house is all white and spotless. Here the walls are pale yellow (except for the bedroom), the ancient fireplace irons flank the mantle, and not only does everything feel so adult, it feels full of possibility and promise.

I wanted a gorgeous place to be for so long, to work, to create. I didn't realize how much I wanted it, maybe even needed it, until I was blessed enough to get it. If I can't get my books published here, get into grad school here, flourish my freelance career here, then there is no hope for me at all.

But today I am positive. I just got here, but it feels like home. Only when I stop and really think does it occur to me it took 27 years for me to find it.

Fish Camp

We take the bike out on one of the few summer nights of this year, over the bridge with the blur of lights and long strands of cars. We move through them, back and forth, swerving and me screaming, my bag banging against us both and my dress flying in the wind.

In Brooklyn we go to the fish camp and despite the inexplicably dim staff (why don't they usually have the back patio open on nice days? Who can say?) and tremendous wait and flat glasses of beer and not enough homemade chips for the vinegary ceviche, we wait it out in a corner wooden table that needs to be wiped.

Our name is called and we get to go outside at the long wooden tables with the hanging lines of little lights and the air heavy with pot smoke from the kids who live next door. We get crab claws with parsley and lemon, thick chunks of lobster tail on split rolls, shoestring fries and striped bass with chickpeas, and more and more flat beer. And we laugh with the old folks next to us who are joking over strawberry and marscapone sundaes and decafs and we're all talking about the pot smoke while our charmingly bespeckled waitress keeps calling it "marijuana clouds". So we order the bread pudding even though we're going to be sick and it's high with whipped cream and caramel and it could be the best thing we've ever tasted. It's worth the stomachache. All of it. Just like it always is...

Eating. Badly.

I love the idea of cooking. How many times have I told myself if only I had the time I would be oh-so-European and shop for food on a semi-regular basis, walking the perimeter around local grocery stores or any isle of the nearby-Whole Foods, plucking fresh fruit and vegetables, a myriad of colors in my little bag (which I would have brought from home and would be very environmentally sound) as I sashayed through the isles: fresh-squeezed orange juice, house-made soups, pre-arranged cucumbers, carrots and celery, perfect for dipping in my newly bought tub of garlicky hummus (the one kind with the pine nuts is so good!).

Yeah right.

Now I'm figure the milk in my coffee is sufficient calcium supplement for the day. I'll eat a quesadilla and call the salsa "vegetables." I'll think because I have flavored throat lozenge, than it's really lemon. How did this happen? I spent my formative years reading the glossy pages of food magazines, eating my mother's apple cake and lamb chops, going out to spectacular restaurants and vacationing at lodges in organic lemon groves?

Oh right, I've got no money. Now that I've got the time to shop the way I'd like, I just don't have the funds. I read somewhere that in the recession, people are turning to canning. Canning? Really? I'm turning to takeout. It's not cheaper, but it's variety and those things take lots of ingredients while I can't buy a spicerack. I tell myself that it will all be different when I'm a grown up. But I'm 27! I fear that if eating and cooking well on a regular basis, on a natural basis no less, it would have happened by now. I mean, writing has. Going to the gym has. Relationships have, hanging out with my family has, stopping shopping unless I really need that coat (realized I don't), catching up on sleep on the weekends (nothing is as wonderful), and even doing laundry (not as much as I hoped, but it's a start) have all become routine. But feeding myself? Not yet.

I wonder why.

Minetta Tavern: Crispy Pork Trotters, Lamb Saddle and Grand Marnier Souffle...

Sure it's the most impossible reservation to get in town, but that didn't stop my more-than-lovely friend Emily from inviting me to be her date to Minetta Tavern's opening week. It helps to have friends from the food world...

From FOOD & WINE and my darling friend, who described what we ate better than I ever could:

"Even better, chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson (who, as alums of Balthazar and Pastis, are used to running popular restaurants) are already turning out some great dishes, including tender Berkshire pig's trotter mixed with mushroom duxelles and pork forcemeat that’s deep-fried and crispy. It’s a classic French dish that fits seamlessly with the bubbling café vibe. Juicy lamb saddle with belly meat intact is excellent, and so is a bright, billowy Grand Marnier soufflé flecked with orange sections."

Check out the rest of the article here and tell her she did a great job!

This Is Why You're Fat

Have you been here?You don't know what you're missing if you haven't! Hooray for America, even in times of recession, we can dream up new ways to be even fatter. (That second picture would be Krispy Kreme Donut Bacon Cheeseburgers, oh yes, you heard me).

Don't Let That Stop You

There was a time when I was paid to eat. And not just eat, but eat too much, pork belly, duck eggs, french fare, little chorizo tapas plates, spicy pickles, juicy turkey burgers and pad thais till the cows came home.

It sounds easy, it was actually hard: ordering things I didn't want to, clandestinely jotting down notes in a little pink moleskin, sizing up the hostess, assessing the crowd, casually asking about the materials used in a wrap-around bar, a banquette, a lush gathering of drapes. Don't get me wrong, I love to eat--I've asserted more than once I'm a fat person in a fairly skinny person's body (that's thanks to my trainer, and I can't imagine this body will last past 35 even if I go macrobiotic, so why not go bacon now?). But the work around eating, the assignments, the scoping out, that's not just a leisurely meal. That's work. Cool work, but work, I promise. There was calling of chefs, checking up with purveyors, grilling the manager on the wine list choice, demanding why the paella wasn't as crispy as advertised once I revealed myself behind the curtain I'd drawn. And then there was the new way to say tables, seating, booths and cubes. Figuring out how to describe ten mediocre bistros in a way that would give you, dear reader (of another place, not here, a place far more legit, where I had a great editor who would make me tear up because I wanted to do right by her so badly, this is a mark of a good editor--one that brings you to tears, I'm sure of it) is not easy.

Eating until I need to be rolled out of a restaurant is. Not ordering the cocktails (which are not covered, of course), until I have fully assessed the joint to my powers, that was another story.

Well in such economic times, sadly the restaurant writing has temporarily (I hope!) dried up. They've slashed and burned across the boards, all the great food mags, all the great food sites, they need to keep their high paid talent and cut the lowly staffers and permalancers (that's me). I get it. In times like these, people can't eat out as much. Great places are shuttering left and right: the unbelievable fried green tomato, southern fried classics and Jamaican jerk chicken restaurant in Chelsea will go this week. The neverending (we had wistfully said once over lattes with rock candy stirrers) gastropub brunch spot where they didn't shove you out the door and still had market fresh ingredients every damn day has already closed its doors.

And when the work dries up, the solace is found in meeting in dimly lit places, cocktails and small plates and commiserating. Except we have no money, we have no new places and our old favorites are gone, and yet, we've become addicted to the rich life that we led. It's a spoiled brat problem. And my friends and I are suffering from it. We're back to our first few months in the city, canned soup and skipped meals, which isn't bad, in fact it's a damn decent way to live. It's proud. If only we hadn't eaten to near gout proportions before. If only it hadn't been my job to see every new place and go in, and eat every damn thing there. If only I hadn't been lucky enough to taste it all, in New York, in the first place. I'd feel less addicted now, and far less foolish, drooling over the fancy people and their fancy meals, just like I had when I was twenty...

It's the Stupid, Economy

Well after being gone, coming back to the cold weather and the cold job search is a ruder awakening than I'd prepared myself for. Sure, I knew it was bad...but so bad that a generally undomestic person like myself could be found with four resumes crumpled in her bag, sloshing coffee on her only pair of gloves, running to the next futile appointment, stopped short in front of the venerable Soho knitting store Purl, imagining a life inside?

Where a rainbow of colors and textures, soft knits, nubby wools and dyed cashmere bundle together, sweet-faced girls who can't wait to help you with the next stitch flip their handmade scarfs over their perfect sweaters, patrons huddle with their hot chocolates steaming on the shelf as they click together bamboo needles, and every time the door opens it's some happy new mother toting a sleeping baby and a wagging dog who's just dying to find the newest pattern for a two-toned hat...

This is paradise. Pure, unadulterated magic.

Thank you, New York City, the governmental powers that were, and the magazine industry. You have officially made me insane. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a scarf to knit and a coconut shrimp recipe to master.

Will write for food and sanity whenever anyone will have me. In the meantime, domesticate! Are you doing anything uncharacteristic in this crazy economy?

Review

When writing a restaurant review, I have learned my editor adores neutrality, abhors cliches (though does not consider the word 'fashionista' a cliche, which as we all know, rises the bile in my throat like nothing else--oh sorry, we're talking about food here, I retract that) and generally likes to get a feel of a place without a laundry list of how the place looked or the menu. Mark what stands out, be imaginative with language, but honestly, what is another word for clientele? Crowd? Patron? Diner? And there friends, is the trouble with restaurant reviews. Well, one of them anyway.

I looked at a random sampling of five that I've written and are on the magazine's website for all eternity. In three I say some variation of the word "elevate". Damn.

So when I go to a vegan coffeeshop that's blasting "ironic" music (Foo Fighters--though I'll contend anything from the late nineties isn't far enough gone to be ironic, early Nirvana = OK. Late Foo Fighters = Dear God No.) and serving weak coffee in "ironic" cups that were funny eight years ago (you mean you didn't graduate from Talahassee High, class of '83?) I try to keep an open mind.

I'm a food lover. A huge food-lover. Groomed at food magazines, I revel in every seared scallop, every crisped bit of pork cracklings, the richness of a buttery croissant or the heft of roasted root vegetables (especially when they have some sort of Parmasean crust). I love sushi, miso, coconut curries, meaty cuban sandwiches, crunchy fried chicken, cool rice pudding. All of it. I am an extremely fat person stuck in a thin person's body (this people, is why I have a trainer).

Now when a vegetarian crosses my path, hell I've even dated some, I don't get overly discouraged. Macrobiotic raw food? Pure Food and Wine on Irving makes delicious plates of thinly sliced vegetables layered between a garlicky pesto and gobs of the freshest tomato sauce I've ever had. It's vegetarian, then vegan, then macrobiotic and not even cooked. And believe me naysayers when I tell you it was amazing.

So when I was assigned this vegan coffeeshop, I was not at all irritated (leave that for the friend I opted to bring along). I imagined vegetable sandwiches and awesome salads. Or at least, really hot coffee that was sustainably grown.

What I got was some of the worst stuff I've had. And it's not because it was vegan, it was because the flavors were all off. The pesto had no bite, the tempeh overpowered the soy patty, the greens in a salad arrived grimy and unwashed ("Like the clientele!" My friend joked.) It wasn't awful because it was vegan. It was just straight up bad food. But vegans have little delicious options in that section of the city, and the people who ran it were really interesting, and had a community thing going on. So I don't want to diss it. I mean, how can a bacon-loving foodie ever criticize these sweet folks? Maybe because the "chef's" experience before this was DELIVERING FOOD ELSEWHERE.

But still, I lament. I'm not a vegan, how would I know what good vegan food is? But I'm starting to wonder if it even matters. Because these were vegans who seemed to not enjoy food very much. And I think that if you are a vegan or vegetarian you should never be eschewed for not eating meat (it's delicious, but whatever). Having principles rocks. It's important. Not enough people go green and not enough understand that when done right, being vegan or vegetarian has an enormous positive impact on your body and the world as a whole. But I'm someone who enjoys food down to the smallest level. Salads simply dressed with lemon, freshly-squeezed juices, artisanal and organic breads--all of these things can be amazing. When a food establishment doesn't take the umbrella of vegetarian to mean they can just crank out food that...well, isn't up to par, is it?

Guess I'll try to keep that in mind while writing a review--the place just wasn't for me. And not because I'm not vegan. But because I don't like mediocre meals--vegan or otherwise...

Wishes

The weekend is shaping up to be one of those transitory sun-drenched squares. As the rays stream in, I'm struck lucky.

Just to be able to see it, be warmed by it and touched by a sliver of blue and white and yellow, even if it's through a smeary glass window on the 15th floor of a midtown office building.

It's Friday, and we get the best chances today, right before we're free. To take back the time that we gave away all week, and dream about all the possibilities that await.

I celebrate my own freedom by tying myself down with plans upon plans under the guise of relaxation, but who needs to relax when you get to live in Manhattan, you don't have a mortgage and your bank account is empty but there's so much more living to do?

Tonight I'm going to the Beck and MGMT show way uptown in that gold encrusted mosque they call the United Palace Theater, and then maybe to Brooklyn, tomorrow we're driving through the Berkshires for the colors of the leaves, and to see what's changed: to my prep school and the perspectives I had when it was all I could do to sneak out of my dorm and run across a green carpet lawn to an awaiting car in the dead of night to go to a party.

Then it's off to a upcountry greenmarket dinner that deserves dressing up and my best behavior back in the city, and then that sparkling dress traded in for Converse and stovepipes to meet up with the old friends at the old dive bar for a stomach-turning tournament of flip cup.

Sunday, it's brunch with my best friend, renting bikes to ride along the Hudson and getting back in time for sushi with someone else.

This is my birthday weekend, and I will spend it planning on how by my next birthday, I will have managed to move to Paris...you know me and my crazy thoughts...more on that later...and wishing that you have a great weekend too, because it's beautiful outside and we deserve it to be, because winter is coming but it's all we can do to forget when the sky is clear and so are our minds.

Treasure Hunt: Your Favorite Restaurant

I have a lot of jobs. One is to tell my roommates when the cable bill is due. My dentist says another one is to floss. In the office I have to pitch ideas about tech, style and perishable gifts, or write copy about Hawaii, or jiggle the coffee machine to get it working, or fashion a meal out of skim milk and errant M&Ms.

Oh right, and I have listsicle jobs too, like writing up places for other places, and other such vagueries.

Also, I review restaurants, about one a week. And I need ideas, people! Now most of the traditionally *best* restaurants have already been reviewed or have people far more adept than I already assigned to them, but I'm not talking about those. Who cares about what's so trendy, so over the top, so anything? I want to know what's good.

What you dream about as your last meal.

Your favorite haunt, hangout, place to get a snack or pizza or burger or even a nice meal that you've loved forever or maybe just discovered recently?

East Village and LES outposts always welcome (as they are walking distance from my apartment), but moreover, if you have lived in NY , visited the boroughs or just remember something great that you ate here (anywhere here!) and can tell me where, please let me know! If the magazine that shall not be named hasn't covered it, or their review of it is outdated, I'll suggest it to my editor.

And if you're not in NY, I want to know where you're eating anyway! What's the greatest stuff around you? If a friend was visiting your city, where would you tell them to go?

Have a great weekend, and cook up some ideas for me, won't you?

Mariage Frere

The luminary teahouse bears many things, not the least of which are the gentlemen sporting angular features and cream-colored linen suits, flitting around and giving disapproving looks when customers reach for Earl Grey. White noel displays and hand-blown glass teapots in the windows to the front, dim interrupted by skylights glinting off the glass cases of tartins in the back, and me between, having dragged my brother inside. He is irreparably bored and for the first time in the day, I shrug it off, promising I’ll design T-shirts with him later. We had finally found it,.

The tearoom itself is yellow and lovely; sconces and columns and curlicued framework, polished tables and the click-clacking of patrons, the scent of a six page menu of proper and lesser aromatics, crushed herbs, flower buds and essence. The cards are thick and the explanations precise. As usual, I understand next to nothing. But that has never stopped me.

Across the way, I point out, he can be buried in gold-plated potato chips on chains and neon sneakers. Though right now, I will do what I came here to do, and that is to act like a 40 year old British woman in a sweater set, who could stay all day, if only time and inspiration allowed…

Camp NY

Girls’ night is becoming more and more the standard and these days it feels like summer camp without the shorts. Loose hair instead of barrettes, juice boxes tossed for aperitifs, ants on a log have vanished and frisee salads appear as replacements.

I race out of the office instead of my parents’ kitchen, still with my bag whapping my side and my flip flops sliding around, to meet them downtown in a flickering West Village bistro, arriving late and excited and relieved as though Tuesday was Friday.

We drink too many glasses of wine and divide too few crab cakes at Paris Commune, contemplating New York and LA, reviewing weekend plans and downloading each other on the latest gossip, work and play. Shore houses, summer romances, tennis lessons, promotions; we all have something to share and envy here. And it prompts a Robert Altman conversation pace, everything overlapping, nothing resolved, as our glasses grow dry, the louder we exclaim, “Wait, what are you guys talking about?”

An adult in charge needs to shush us, but our waitress only encourages (probably so that she can reap the benefits of our overtipping to match our over-ordering). For us, the best of the summer week is at night, past our bedtimes, snapping phone photos and comparing sunglasses, making plans and taking initiatives, being aspirational because it’s who we are.

Everything has to be explained more than once, especially since she’s in for a visit, an ex-pat now part of that other city, so we can’t stop our questions. How’s the pool in the apartment? Is just it like Melrose Place? How much is there really the prevalence of smog/collagen/silicone/a thong-clad Lindsay Lohan? Is June gloom anywhere close to the humidity of here? Are all the men blond “directors” with mustaches and vans? We know it’s all a cliché, but don’t clichés start from some point of truth?

I’ve wanted to start a life on the west coast ever since 90210 aired, and we talk about what it might be like next year, if I end up making the move. But now I’ve become such a fan of the pulsating vibrancy of here, I’m not so sure. It’s camp in the city all of the time, and it’s getting pretty hard to leave, particularly since there is no bus to pick me up and tear me away from my friends and paltry paycheck that I spend simply to be with them while we’re still sort of young, and sort of glamorous…at least to us.

Crack, Back, Quack?

Last night I experienced an entirely new kind of…doctor…er…medicine man….er….well, he was a chiropractor (he was offering a free consultation, don’t they all? And this of course is what drew me in. I like-a the free stuff).

Never has a profession been more maligned (with the possible exception of podiatrist) than this man’s. Yet I love a yoga class which ‘opens’ my spine, a spa treatment which ‘kneads’ the muscles, and any man that says I need a weekly massage, heat therapy and deep stretching already has me a little starry-eyed.

Of course, he said that my posture was slightly wonky, just as I noticed his floor was on the exact slant that my so-called “misalignment” was. Hmmmm. Minus two points for possible shadiness.

Free bananas in the waiting room. Score! Plus one point.

Have to come back for the rest of my free treatment because the schedule didn’t allow for me to have it all at once. Hmmm. Minus one point.

The rest of my treatment involves a massage. Double score! Plus two points.

All after are at my cost and they range about $60 per treatment. I’m on the fence. I’m a person who apparently ‘holds all my tension in my back and shoulders’ and have angered more than one suitor by asking for a massage immediately after I exited the one he had bought me as a gift (in my defense, the masseurs always spend all this time on my arms and legs and hands and I just don’t need it there, but still, sorry guys, I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me, it’s like a drug—I don’t really like to be hugged and I hate holding hands but I love it when someone sticks an elbow in my spine—I’m such a weirdo*).

So, anyone have any thoughts about chiropractors? Love them, hate them? Is there anything to this at all? Is it the case that you go once and then you’re hooked for life?

And is it incredibly elderly for me to be so intent on straightening my 25-ear-old back on a weekly basis?

*Such a weirdo, in fact, that I also give my pets a massage every time I’m home after I saw a special on pet spas on The Travel Channel. They seem to love it as much as I do.

I might be obsessed in an unhealthy way. I think I prefer massages to sleeping and eating combined (and we all know I like-a the sleeping and the eating. And sometimes I like-a to talk in a really bad, cliched Italian accent in my head for no reason).

Sunday Rehab

When I went to Vegas for a bachelorette party, my last day was spent in a daze at the Hard Rock’s Sunday Rehab. It’s gained a joking celebrity on the claim of restorative properties for pool bunnies and thong-clad gamblers. A venue to soak up chlorine, somehow inducing the purge of tequila.

Of course it didn’t work. That was why it was so much fun. It was simply more incentive to drink again, get too much sun, flirt, spend too much money. All excused because all was "hair of the dog", figuratively speaking. It was most people’s last day of pink drinks, toned staff and promises of big money before flights back to flyover states, cubed jobs or strained relationships. You couldn’t just quit cold turkey. You had to ease out of a week of sin in Vegas, or anywhere else for that matter.

Most people got on their evening flights gin-drunk, half-dead from dehydration and shame. Long-term happy and short-term regretful that they had their one last hurrah when they should have been planning their upcoming week’s schedules.

Sunday rehab makes as much sense now as it did then; it offers an easy solution. You don’t have to be sorry for the fun you had all at once. As long as you believe, throughout the day, that you are tipping the scale from Saturday to Monday, you are condoned. I think this is why we start Sundays with brunch and end them with 60 Minutes (no comment on saying you’ll end an America’s Next Top Model marathon with 60 Minutes, only to keep on a few more hours and end it instead with Entourage and a fistful of Cheez-Its).

I enact this fun fallacy for my own Sundays not in Vegas. It should be the day for cleaning up the house, folding clothes, doing dishes, getting to the gym and dinners replete with whole grains and broccoli. But they never quite end up that way. I like to think I’m a person who follows many pursuits or at least half-starts a lot of things, but Sundays end up days that I waste with joy.

Yesterday, though hoarse from late-night karaoke and an ill-thought Colt 45, I met my new-roommate-to-be and oft-quoted blonde of this site and had brunch at Cookshop where the waiter described a dish as “chaotic”. We shared buttermilk beignets, mascarpone French Toast and philosophies on work and life (we’re still confused, but it’s fun to talk). We had a great celebrity sighting in Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and baby there.

Then we walked to Chelsea Piers and she decided she would have a bowling 26th birthday party (I pray for bumper bowling, but it might not happen). Being by the water, even if it was brownish gray and littered with splintered wood and lost soccer balls, was nice. We walked all the way down near the house of trapeze lessons, and then back up tree-lined blocks—pointing to all the pretty brownstones of which we will never see the insides. We fantasized about where our next apartment might take us and who we might become while in it.

I walked most of the way home, past diners and dates, tinkling glasses of Mimosas and happy friends and their wagging dogs. People were out to celebrate a nice day, that they were lucky enough to be outside, not working on a Sunday, to have people who wait for them or to have an extra dollar to spend on luxuries.

I went home and read a little, even put on workout clothes as if I would go to Pilates on a day I didn’t plan on it, before putting on that ANTM cycle 2 marathon and felt the evening stretch before me and the freedom it lent. I didn't write. I didn't fold. I didn’t do anything I should have, and that was what felt a little restorative. If not at the time, then now, in Monday’s hunch, in front of the computer…Sunday was rehab from this, and sadly, today is rehab from that…

Waterlust?

My tan is starting to fade, but back when it first started to form, I was dipped in the edge of the beach. I was buoyant in water--tepid and foaming green--watching cruise ships docked in the distance. The waft of vacation covered me like bubble film and I was so glad not to be on board; so glad not to have to pull away.

I felt like I belonged in the swells of the ocean. I love the sensation of a slow flapping dance to keep me afloat; I like to be weightless above animals unseen, fish darting around my ankles (and then screaming my head off when a foot is tangled in seaweed, forever convinced it’s a scale-covered monster that feeds on the flailing legs of girls…).

Not to discount the amazement of pools. I have so many happy memories of them: on the swim team in first grade when my nickname was “Killer K” because I had a furious backstroke which steered me sharply into the dividers at each side of the lane (right, left, right) and my kid limbs would thrash and I would hit one and then I would turn again. Somehow, this made me somewhat fast on certain days. Though I surely would have been a lot faster without this unique...er...technique. I still remember being small and cold in the early morning for practice in summertime, having to wear a sweatshirt until the very last minute (white with red block lettering, the sleeves hanging to my knees), or the startling crack of the gun indicating our jump in, or the shame of a false start--always my biggest fear--where a swimmer would expend thirty percent of her energy on a beautifully deep dive and pop her head up in triumph only to realize no one was swimming next to her, the coach shaking his head, the pull of weight to level herself back to the starting point and the slapping of chlorine drops off her body onto the cement.

At our last house we had a gorgeous pool flanked by gardens of roses and rocks that was shaped like a vintage Absolut bottle, edged with antique tiles and a florescent Miami light show at night which went from red to purple to blue to green to white. My friends loved it. I loved it. My parents barely used it. Then we moved away. Then I moved away, to the city, and the last pool I was privy to in this area was in Brooklyn for a Beirut concert and a hilarious game of dodgeball where there was a lot of hipster-on-hipster pounding.

It’s things like that—vacation, past houses and childhoods that shape my future wants. I want to be by the water: natural or in-ground doesn’t matter as long as I’m near blue. I want it more than anything else in a home: French doors, chef’s kitchen, acreage—all are secondary. I fantasize about water the way some people do about money or leather.

It’s a little weird…right?

Case in point. I was stuck in the airport for eight hours last Monday (as the perfect sendoff for my vacation) and I spent two of those gripping a luxury pool magazine, ooohing and aaahing at infinity edges, palazzo-inspired creations, lagoon meanderings. I couldn’t believe that someone out there had published such a book, like it was intended just for me, and when I had read it cover to cover I saw another magazine: this one only about islands. Have you seen either of these? Did I imagine them? They were truly great and I’m debating whether to look them up on the internet, and subscribe. I’m just a little wary. What will happen to me, when I extract them from my mailbox and a neighbor sees? Sexual perversions are one thing, but having a magazine about pools clutched under my arm as I cut short my conversation to run upstairs and feverishly flip through it on the couch without even taking off my coat and scarf might be too bizarre to forgive…

A Week's Work

I’m back from vacation and I am exhausted. How did this happen? When did relaxation turn hardcore cramming in of activities, beaches, sun burnt shots?

It was two days in, I think. When what was supposed to be recuperative turned in to far-too-much-fun-in-the-sun…

Things were crazy, wonky; up was down. Time was all wrong at points. I wore a bikini at night on a boat. At 6:30 AM, I wilted in a party dress, hailing a cab as ladies-who-lunch power-walked by. I ordered rum punch before coffee in the morning and no one even blinked.

I think about the free-for-all attitude I had in juxtaposition to where I am now, in two sweaters in the rain, spending no money but all of my time in front of a screen.

Highlights, in no particular order:

Heels dusted with sand, toes in water only lit by Tiki torches and moonlight

Snorkeling in the danger zone, back warm from the sun and a mouthful of saltwater

Beachside BBQs, ridiculously fruity drinks, losing one flip flop on a very long stretch of white and glittering blue

The first inkling of tan, the last day of burn

The steel drum version of Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound”

Bedroom eyes, Lucite heels, Platinum—all seemingly normal for Saturday nights

Getting invited to the VIP section to drink a bottle of champagne, leaving the VIP section because the guy got handsy, getting invited to the other VIP area to dance with the go-go girls, getting tossed out

Having long in-depth conversations on the following: Christopher Pike books*, displaced hipsters, what constitutes “vacation hot” (hint: sun-bleached hair and teeth, shades over eyes to hide a network of wrinkles, jobs as deckhands who never aim to be captains), the sadness of the setting sun, tactics for getting out of dancing with people who don’t understand the subtlety of tactics

How everything on a sunnier island is slightly 'off' (Amstel Light is Amstel Bright, outings are booked by shouting off a dock to a sleeping crew, etc.)

Enough sun block, new bathing suits

Gold sandals and terrific-bad 80s glasses

Ceiling fans, the absence of most other tourists, cover bands

Day-tripping, day-sleeping, night-running

Remembering moments the week after coming down and coming back

* I loved these. I cannot stress this enough. I loved these books more than life itself in my tweens after graduating from Judy Blume—who, by the way, seems to have only terrible novels now, not even good-sort-of-ironic-fun-terrible like Candace Bushnell in a deckchair, pages curled with salt spray, but terrible as in really awful.