Summer Love
August 22nd, 2007
First of all, y’all have excellent taste in celebrities. Alan Rickman. Yes yes, I might drool for him. Gabriel Byrne! Oh yes, please. Thank you.
In other news, and this is hardly news worth even mentioning, I’m tired. Bone tired, the way one can only get after working so much you’re not sure which way is up, and I’d like to point out that there seems to be little end in sight to the tiredness, and to the never-ending work and agony, and I’m trying to enjoy it, really I am, but there are days when I just want to throw it all into a fuck-it bucket. The unfortunate thing is that it’s not in my nature, because dammit, I can’t turn off the Capricorn. I can’t. I am responsible! I will do my best! No no, I WILL BE THE BEST DAMMIT AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.
Capricorns understand this. I know you do.
However! I’ve been meaning to mention that I’ve been wearing an eye mask to sleep, and to say it’s made a world of difference is a global understatement, because an eye mask changes the world! And it makes it darker, and blocks out the flickering of the television and, when combined with earplugs, ensures that I will remain completely oblivious to a home invasion and will likely be stabbed to death within weeks. Yeah, um, I’m wearing an eye mask to sleep. I suppose it’s the closest I’ll ever get to Greta Garbo, although it would be vastly improved by the addition of a peignoir.
Anyway, as a distraction, Adam and I were talking about our days living in the city, and once in a while I wax nostalgic about my apartment in the North End, or that little shithole we had in Cambridge, and I think gee, living in the city was great, and boy howdy, do I miss it. And I do — I miss Boston a whole lot — but I miss the same things I would if I were merely living in the ‘burbs in Massachusetts. Small grocery markets, and local restaurants and the ability to walk anywhere and everywhere for anything you need within moments. A local dry cleaner. Cheap nail salons. Indian take-out. The Falafel King.
Winter.
Oh, the city winter. I miss watching the flakes come down softly against the street lights, and I miss the cotton-like crunch of the snow against my boots as I walked home from work each evening. I miss bundling up and taking a walk near the waterfront and eating dinner at a cozy restaurant with twinkly lights and warm bread.
Oh yes. City snow beats the pants off of suburban snow, where it gathers in giant wet puddles and mucks up the idyllic scenery by creating a universe of gray slush without the comforting mosaic of warm storefronts and tiny restaurants. So yes, I miss the city a lot, and more specifically, I miss winter in the city. And then I remember — or, more accurately, Adam reminds me — of the innumerable inconveniences, like trying to squeeze a week’s worth of groceries into a Black Paw backpack, and praying that your ice cream doesn’t leak before you get off the T, because the nearest Stop ‘n Shop is eleven miles away. I have far too many memories of wheeling — yes, wheeling — my groceries in a suitcase up the hill from Johnny’s Foodmaster, the three packages of chicken I’d crammed into the bottom leaking salmonella-infested juices onto the asparagus, and more importantly, into the fabric of the suitcase, which would now be used for groceries only, because no one needs chicken juice in their thongs, they just don’t.
But you know, the sad truth is that as much as I miss the city — that feeling of connectedness, and the wonder that is winter in a busy city — I’m a suburban person, and I’m not sure if there’s a more uncool admission. I might as well announce that the Olive Garden is my favorite little Italian bistro, because boy, that chef can whip up a good canneloni, just like mom used to make! (Um, it’s not, by the way).
But I like being able to put my groceries into my car and drive them home to unload them in the safety of my own garage. And while I think strip malls are hideous, I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t secretly revel in their convenience, because having a Mailboxes, Etc. on every corner does, in fact, make my life easier, I’m sorry, it just does. And I want to hate Target — I want to pretend that I realize that it’s all cheap and useless and distracting and a waste, a colossal waste — but the truth is, I am enamored with its luscious red shelves and ample parking. And that makes me a sad, sad consumerist asshat, and I’m really, really sorry.
But honestly, above all else right now, I miss winter. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a day of snow — just one day of beautiful, quiet snow, so I could stay inside and eat soup and light candles and stoke a fire and snuggle up with a cup of real-live hot tea, instead of the iced that I’ve been making for so long I can’t even remember when I started.
Anyway.
Look, I know this is crazy and irrational and snow sucks, but did I mention it was 97 degrees today and my dog won’t poop in this heat because her bowels are sealed shut from the humidity? You’d miss winter too!
Happy Wednesday!
*Why yes, it is Justin Timberlake, why do you ask? While I still don’t think he’s attractive, I like him, and you are owed that admission after my cruel, cruel words against that godawful Delilah song.
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
27 Comments Add your own
1. Jamie | August 22nd, 2007 at 6:42 pm
That’s so odd, I have been really craving both winter and the suburbs lately. My favorite part of a city winter is when it REALLY gets to snowing, and everyone holes up inside. That means I can take a walk in my neighborhood with no horns honking, no cars, no noise whatsoever – just streetlamps and the peaceful humming sound of the city breathing.
2. Jennifer | August 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Well I’m a Cancer, not a Capricorn, but I totally understand the need to finish what you’re working on, be responsible, not let the team down. In fact, it is that (more than the golden handcuffs) that keeps me exhausted at my damn job right now! And I keep saying, “after this project is over, after next month’s business trip, after the end of the year… I’m going to throw it all in the fuck-it bucket too.”
Fuck-it bucket: I like that! I’m going to totally use that.
3. Jess | August 22nd, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I was born in Massachusetts and lived there for four years before my family moved south, and then I lived there for another four years during college, and now that I’m living in DC, I have to say that I do not miss the New England winters at all. I don’t miss the wind, or the cold, or the days on end where the temperature never gets above zero.
But I do miss the snow itself (although not the gross molasses mixture that my school’s facilities crew spread on the paths before snowstorms), and I miss that quiet, muted, abandoned atmosphere that comes after a first snow. And I’m realizing that I haven’t ever really experienced a real, big, city snow. It snowed a bit here in DC last year, but not enough to stick. I would love to experience that overall hush right here in DC where everything is usually so busy and loud.
4. -R- | August 22nd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I am a suburban person too, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I like working in the city though. I get the best of both worlds: driving to the grocery store and having a backyard, but also walking down the streets every day with lots of different kinds of restaurants and such.
5. Daily Tragedies | August 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Oh, the list of things I want to drop-kick into the fuck-it bucket grows by the day. But, I too have this wretched inability to not do my best Every! Single! Day! even without warm, fuzzy, re-affirming results.
(Sagittarius. I thought it was just us.)
6. metalia | August 22nd, 2007 at 9:54 pm
JONNIKER! I MET GABRIEL BYRNE! He’s my one and only “major” celebrity encounter (as opposed to a sighting):
About 7 or 8 years ago, I was on a wretched date with this guy, and the guy had diarrhea.
Why do I know that he had diarrhea? Because he announced it.
On our first date.
Just to give you an idea of what I was dealing with.
Anyway, we were at the movie theater in NYC (seeing Gone in 60 Seconds, at his request, which again gives you a little insight into my plight). While he was in the bathroom dealing with his gastrointestinal issues, I heard a lovely and charming voice, and felt a tap on the shoulder, as one Mr. Gabriel Byrne asked me for the time. I told him, he smiled charmingly and thanked me. It was only as he walked away that I realized who he was.
“Mr. Byrne!” I shouted after him, “I loved you in The Usual Suspects!!”
I’m smooth like that.
Needless to say, he made a weird (but charming!) face and walked on.
Sorry for the long comment, but I had to tell you!
7. TwoBusy | August 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 am
It’s not winter, but the past 5 days in Boston were all in the mid-60s. True story. It felt like fall, and was glorious beyond imagining. Of course, tomorrow it’ll be in the mid-90s and humid, but still…
8. Tessie | August 23rd, 2007 at 5:34 am
Thank god someone had the balls to say that The Timberlake is not attractive. I couldn’t agree more. I would like to know who started this rumor, because when I look at him, and then I look at K-Fed, I see…pretty much the same skinny, scraggly dude.
Although I love me a little “Dirty Pop”.
9. Christine | August 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 am
I think, maybe because I live in a city and grew up in the ‘burbs, I always miss snow in the suburbs. It was better there. It didn’t turn into black mush within two seconds, and I swear to G-d the smallish town I grew up in, in NJ did a better job plowing all the streets (dinky ones included) than they do here in Philadelphia. Jebus, they suck here at plowing. The most dangerous city in the country, Camden did a better job. And so Philly has ruined my concept of city snow. Although all those years visiting Brooklyn every weekend didn’t do much for my concept of city snow either. I miss suburban snow. And sledding down the hills at the foot of the high school. Oh, and lightening bugs.
Really, I LOVE living where I do. I can walk just about everywhere. A cab ride to the airport is only $26 and I only have to cross my streets for a cheese plate and wine…but sometimes I just miss my space.
10. Danielle | August 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 am
Jonniker,
I live up here in Mass, and the past few days have had me aching for winter. It’s been COLD. In August! I’ve actually had hot coffee for the first time since April!
And it’s had me all excited for snow and winter, even though I’ll be severely bitching by January.
11. p|b | August 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 am
Living in Texas makes me crave all things quaint and nostalgic. I live in Fort Worth, which is a “big city with a small town feeling” but it’s still a city. I still go to Target to buy my groceries. I still drive my car to get a carton of milk at 7-11 where I also occasionally buy a DiGiorno Pizza and treat myself to italian food for under $7.
Since I have been old enough to appreciate winter’s, I have always lived in Texas. Which brings on a bit of an ache for a cool breeze. Hell, a COLD breeze. It gets cold here, but we get nothing for all the shivering we do. No snow. Just ice. Thin, slick black ice, which no one knows how to maneuver and basically makes any drive an hour long.
I’m rambling. But it’s all very true.
In the mean time I think that the Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill are single handedly killing America’s Culture. I went to Macaroni Grill with my parents. Because my mother had a craving for their new shrimp pasta which she saw on TV while catching up on America’s Got Talent. That’s right. Anyway my dad ordered a martini and they brought it out in a water glass, half full of vodka with a gigantic lemon, like a whole half of a lemon on a plate next to the water glass.
Not kidding.
12. winterwheat | August 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
“sad consumerist asshat” — that’s my phrase of the day.
It’s easy to miss winter when it’s a bazillion degrees out and the relative humidity is 110%. Stay cool, Jonna.
13. Jennie | August 23rd, 2007 at 9:36 am
Okay, first off, can I use this phrase if I promise to always credit you? “I just want to throw it all into a fuck-it bucket.” Because that phrase right there is GOOD.
Also, I’m a horrible Capricorn. HORRIBLE. I don’t know what sign is lazy and irresponsible, but I’m that one. And I’m a smack-dab-in-the-middle Cap, not an on-the-cusp Cap, so I really don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.
AND… does loving Target really make you an asshat? I had no idea! First I love the Delilah song, then I love Target (is it worse if I insist my Target be of the Super variety?), and also I drank the JT kool-aid years ago and am still going back for more. I’m like your lamest commenter. Easily.
Thankfully I have lots of vodka to make the lameness fuzzier.
14. Andrea | August 23rd, 2007 at 10:08 am
I’m not even going to politely ask, as Jennie above me did, if I can borrow “fuck-it bucket”. I’m just stealing it, along with a hundred other euphamisms you’ve coined. You Are BRILLIANT!
I too am a suburbanite. I like my lawn (well, not now since the heat ~ 100° today ~ has killed it all) and my drive to and from the grocery store and taking my kid(s) to my sister-in-law’s house for snow sledding because she has an acre of land and still lives in a subdivision and they have the best sledding hill there is.
However, I can’t help but feel guilty that a run to the pharmacy and then the grocery store and then to the bank requires I drive to each place and such errand-running contributes to the environmental problems we’re facing. I would like to be able to walk to the store. But the big city thing makes me wish for a coffee shop in which I can read/write unimpeded for hours and yet, even if I lived in a big city I couldn’t do that because hello! I have a child! I don’t get unimpeded ANYTHING for ten minutes let alone hours. So for me, location doesn’t matter. Though your description of winter in the big city is enchanting.
15. Heather B. | August 23rd, 2007 at 10:26 am
How exactly can I entice you to come to Massachusetts? I promise free vino and a bonus purchase from the Kate Spade sample sale. Oh and the fact that it’s not disgustingly humid right now.
COME TO MASSACHUSETTS… you know you wanna.
16. jonniker | August 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
Y’all I can’t take credit for the fuck-it bucket. Some dude at work started using it about a year ago, complete with signs for us to toss all of our bad juju into the fuck-it bucket, then Sundry used it when she came up with a fuck-it bucket for JB during a stressful time at work. Only hers came with candy. I wish mine was full of candy instead of bad juju.
17. Suebob | August 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
I am so not with you on this one. My family emigrated to California in the 1860s and I think the snow gene just disappeared over the past 4 generations. I fear snow more than anything else. It just freaks me out. It seems so…unnatural to live where the ground FREEZES. Like in a freezer, for God’s sake.
I was in a cabin at Tahoe at the end of April a few years ago and it began to snow little fluffy flakes and I PANICKED and yelled “We have to get out of here!! IT IS SNOWING!”
18. Sadie | August 23rd, 2007 at 11:08 am
Chiming in late here, but I must clarify that the ‘fuck-it bucket’ is actually brought to us thanks to David Sedaris, whose brother Paul (The Rooster, for anyone who’s read Sedaris) created it. In the back of my Amy Sedaris ‘cookbook’ there is a large photo of the Fuck It Bucket, full of candy, along with this handwritten prose:
“How to make a fucket bucket. Go get a 1 gallon paint pail
Fill it with candy, write Fuck It Bucket on it
‘when shit gets you down just say fuck it, and eat some motherfuckin’ CANDY
Paul Sedaris
The Rooster”
19. jonniker | August 23rd, 2007 at 11:12 am
Thank you, Sadie! I had no idea, but I’ll tell you, I am none too pleased with my coworker, who happily took credit for the fuck-it bucket idea, albeit it a mutation, when all along, it was David Sedaris, and I KNEW I’d seen it somewhere else, but I haven’t read enough David Sedaris to call him out on it.
But I was pretty happy to give Sundry credit for the candy idea, and fully thought it was hers. And I wish it was, because I actually like her better than Amy Sedaris. Le sigh.
20. whitney | August 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am
It was 104 degrees yesterday here in Atlanta and I was sitting in my car — without air-conditioning — in completely stopped traffic, at 5PM, honestly feeling like I was about to pass out. Or die. I hate winter, but at this point, I want it to come back SO. BADLY.
21. Lawyerish | August 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Didn’t they have grocery delivery in Boston?? No city-dweller should have to cram their ice cream and chicken breasts in a rollaboard suitcase, for God’s sake — worst case, you get one of those old-lady upright shopping carts, but grocery stores in cities should DELIVER. Has Boston not caught onto this concept?
I love love love city winter. Except for the giant slushy puddles on Day 2 of a big snow. You described it SPOT ON with the street light and the flakes floating past. Our block looks like a movie set when it’s snowing. I love it beyond all reason.
22. jonniker | August 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Ha ha, Lawyerish, you’re forgetting that they only had grocery delivery in the very pit-end of my years living in Boston. I moved to the suburbs in early 2001. The vast majority of my city days were, alas, Peapod-less.
23. Style Bard | August 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I have lived in the South End, Beacon Hill, near the Northeastern/Fenway area, and in Davis Sq. After living in FL. And I don’t like the city winters here with the merciless wind and the black ice on the roads and sidewalks, and the year I had to walk to the laundromat — uggh. Oh, and the 15-min. walks daily to the T. Even the year I used PeaPod on a regular basis didn’t cure my ills. Even with the shops and the stores and the waterfront…
But now I’m scared because I’m moving out of this worn city and into the North East suburbs. Winter with a car? Freaks me out! I’m scared of the mush and blandness, but I am looking forward to having Target again. And Ruby Tuesday.
Am I going to look back and miss Boston winters? Are the 4 feet of snow piled outside my new ‘burb apartment going to have me calling in to work for a week straight?
I’m really worried, I’m glad it’s been brought up in a forum where people can guide/soothe/scare me.
24. karamarie | August 23rd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I’ve been going around weeks wondering, “Man, isn’t it time for THANKSGIVING? Should I be Christmas shopping?!” Not because it is cold here but because I’m a dork. And obviously have no sense of what month it is.
Having moved from Wyoming to Iowa, I don’t know if I’ll miss the snow. The town I lived in didn’t bother to plow the streets, and everything was icy/snowy for weeks on end. I like snow a lot, but I doubt I’ll miss the treacherous driving very much.
25. Mauigirl52 | August 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I love the first big snow of the year. It’s so pretty and I love it if we actually have a snow day and are all cozy at home. But then after that it gets old really fast!
I went to school in Boston so I do have fonder memories of snow there than here in New Jersey where I have to actually drive in it and shovel it, etc. However, I do wish to eventually move somewhere with a temperate climate all year – not godawful hot, but pleasant. I’m thinking California or Hawaii. Yeah.
Fuck-it Bucket. I loved it and am going to label a bucket with that label and throw things into it. It’s a great metaphor!
26. Carolyn J. | August 23rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Bleah! Stop asking for winter – if you want it, come live by me and have it six months of the year :/
It’s been proven that TV’s in bedrooms are awful for your sleep hygeine. Sleeping with them on is terrible, because even a small flicker of light against your closed eyelids affects your cycles. Convince your man to move it on out.
27. jen from boston (but not for long) | August 25th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Dude, you’re making me cry. Not only do I get this, everything so spot on, but this was the post I was going to write today as I am moving from S. Boston (my home for over 5 years, prior to that, Newton) to my first house in the burbs..ON MONDAY- that is how impeccable your timing is here.
I’m gonna miss my Sidewalk Cafe and Cranberry Cafe, the drycleaners who know me by face, the #7 bus, walking to the pub/nail salon/eats. The TEN DOLLAR CAB RIDES to ANYWHERE in town. The fact that it’s a walk to the beach. And yeah, the snow fall, esp. when I look from my view and see the Pru or the park. It’s gorgeous.
Man, …
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed