Anything you can do, I can do better

Recently someone told me that I was not a good writer and that I could therefore not write a book. Well, as someone who has read a lot of books and happens to know a fair amount about the subject, I think I can safely say two things: anyone can write a book and I can do anything I put my mind to. Some may argue that these statements are exaggerations, but I am sticking to my guns. Ever browsed the new releases section in Barnes & Nobles? It is full of crap. Alongside the classics lie atrocities such as “Here’s the Situation: A Guide to Creeping on Chicks, Avoiding Grenades, and Getting in Your GTL on the Jersey Shore” by Michael Sorentino, beach reads about romance and infidelity and any book by Danielle Steel. These books do not deserve a place on the same shelves that provide a home to “Oliver Twist” and “The Great Gatsby.” That being said, anyone can write a book – it just may very well be a crappy one.

As children we are taught that we can do anything that we want and grow up to be whoever we want to be. Our future is ours to mold. We all have dreams as little kids: to be a ballerina or a fireman or the President. As we grow up our ideas change and we may decide that we want to do something else, but we still have the notion in our minds that we are capable of anything. The world is ours to conquer. Do you think Barack Obama’s parents told him he would never make it to be the first African American president? No. So why tell me I can’t do something as simple as write a book if that is something I feel I want to do. So, since this is a petty game, I am going to retaliate to your comment with this: I could write a book if I wanted. And it would rock. It would be better than your book… to borrow a line from “Annie Get Your Gun:”

“Anything you can do, I can do better… I can do anything better than you.”

Happy December to all - and to all a good night.

FroYo... Friend or Foe?

I LOVE FroYo. Love it. What is not to love? But does it love me back?
The search for the perfect FroYo is a a true challenge. Everyone has their personal preferences. I have gone through phases. Back in high school it was all about Tasti Delight . My friend Darlene and I spent many lunch periods trekking over to 92nd and 2nd to score a Tasti Delight treat for lunch. Very nutritious, obviously. Every flavor tasted the same, it was awesome. But over the years and after gaining exposure to the infamous Vermont Creemee, my love for good ol' Tasti D faded. Lately, I have been on a Pinkberry kick. Simple and delicious. Then again 16 Handles is pretty amazing too - you get to make your own FroYo! That place is dangerous though, every time I go in I end up spending at least $6 and eating a pound of junk food. Seriously, mine was a pound once, the lady was impressed.

So I ask again... FroYo, friend or foe? It is delicious and light, but yet still unhealthy. We justify eating it because it is fat free, but then top it with candy toppings that remove the nutritional value. It is a scam... kind of like diet soda. So should I be spending $5 on a treat that isn't actually healthy?

Hell yes, it is yummy. And it's definitely better than a lot of other crap I eat.

So I guess it is both friend and foe, my sweet little FroYo.

Life

Considering I refer to myself as a writer, I have been pretty bad at writing lately. Not just in this blog, but in life. I have not felt very motivated lately. Dog days of August syndrome? Or maybe just a general restlessness of life? I am not sure. The summer time has always made me happy, but this summer I am just not feeling it. Sometimes I think about what makes me happy. It is circumstance? Material? Love? How does one find the right balance? Even if we pretend that these things do not matter, we know that they do. It is hard to be happy if you are heartbroken or penniless or homeless. Even if we have everything we want there is always something that is missing. I certainly cannot say that I have everything I want in my life, but I have a good life filled with many great people. I think what is missing in my life right now is passion. I have always been a “late bloomer” so naturally I have yet to conquer the eternal question “what do I want to do when I grow up?” Well, at twenty-five I am certainly a good ways down the road to adulthood and I still haven’t figured it out. I guess that I need to figure out what I really am passionate about. My friend Lindsey is probably the most passionate person I know. She loves life and culture and is never afraid to express herself. Every time I am at her apartment she has just finished a new craft project and I leave feeling a bit envious of her creativity. I would say that I am a creative person, but not in the same way she is. It would take me months to create things that she can throw together in a matter of hours. I find that I quit things because I get bored or am afraid that they won’t come out right. She is able to grab the bull by the horns and just dive into a project. I need to try to do this more. After all, we only live once. So, in an attempt to get out of my boring end of the summer rut I have decided to make some life changes. I am going to explore my passions and hopefully find my way in world. First step? Broomball! My friend Airlie and I just signed up for a Broomball league. We will play once a week and meet some fun new people. Life changing? No. Fun? Yes. Second: new job. Plain and simple I need a change in my life. This is a little more complicated by the fact that I don’t know what I want to do, but any change is a positive one. Third: Language. I love to travel so I am going to take on learning a new language – I was thinking Spanish. Now that I have a plan to change my quality of life I have one thing left to do – enjoy the rest of the summer. It’s almost over.

Until next time my little chickadees.

I’m From BoCoCa… Bitch!

Yesterday my roommate, the lovely Miss Jennifer Seley sent me the link to an article from the newspaper AM New York called "You live where? Inside the neighborhood name game." It basically poked fun at the names that have been assigned to certain neighborhoods in New York City. There is of course the most famous neighborhood abbreviation SoHo – which stands for South of Houston street which has been around for years. In the past few years, however, realtors have taken this neighborhood "name game" to a whole new level by inventing new "catchy" abbreviations in order to boost popularity of certain neighborhoods. While some of these new names have stuck, like FiDi (Financial District) and SpaHa (Spanish Harlem - which I personally love the sound of - seriously!) - most have been very short lived. According to this article, some of these lovely new "inventions" include: MiMA (Midtown Manhattan), WaHI (Washington Heights/Inwood), ProCro (Prospect Heights/Crown Heights), BoCoCa( my "hood" - Boerum Hill/ Cobble Hill/ Carroll Gardens) and my favorite in the list- RAMBO (Right After the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) – I kid you not!!! First of all, this is not a neighborhood! Second of all, what did they expect people to say? "RAMBO! THAT’S BAD ASS I WANT TO LIVE THERE?!?" ... Yeah, didn’t think so.

So I guess all I have to say is… I’m From BoCoCa, Bitch!

I bet when my parents bought our house in 1981 they had no idea that it would ever become a cool enough place to take on a name like BoCoCa - too bad they didn’t live in RAMBO, maybe next time!

Tomorrow I will venture to Brooklyn for a friend’s birthday party, so In the spirit of being creative, I made up my own neighborhood name for the most hip one of all – WiBu (Williamsburg/Bushwick). Keep it on the DL though, or the hipsters might try to steal it.

It’s been real my friends.

Until next time, the "NoMad" gal. (It’s my current neighborhood’s name – look it up.)


Check out the whole article here: http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/you-live-where-inside-the-neighborhood-name-game-1.2817059

Love songs

I was talking to my friend Brittany yesterday. She is getting married in September and is overwhelmed with all the planning that needs to be done for the big day. I can only imagine how stressful that must be. There are a lot of details that have to be planned for a wedding. I am pretty indecisive about a lot of things, so I imagine I will have trouble figuring out what I want when (if ever) I get to that point. One thing I know would be important to me is the music. I always notice the music at weddings and remember what they played. It is easy to crank some Michael Jackson tunes to get the party going, but a truly good love song is much harder to come by. There are so many great classic love songs that are real crowd pleasers - "I Just Called to Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder, for example. For me though, nothing is better than the classic "At Last" by Etta James. That song gets me every time. Even the thought that someone could love another person enough to sing them that song to them puts tears in my eyes. It is genuine and sweet. You rock, Etta.

"At Last"

At last, my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Oh, yeah, at last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

Marriage

Apparently 2011 is the year of weddings. In the past month three of my good friends have gotten engaged. I’m very happy and excited for them and wish them lots of happiness. As a kid I dreamed of the day when I would be a bride. I imagined everything about the ceremony in my head – the dress, the flowers, the music – of course when you are seven years old you do not have the best taste and you think wearing a pillow case on your head as a veil is pretty awesome. I recall doing this several times in various fake weddings that my sister threw for me in the backyard or hallway of our house. I was pretty popular back then. I remember my first “love,” Teddy Deary. It was in Kindergarten at Grace Church School. We were totally enamored with each other, not to mention Beatrice Deary is probably the best name ever. I remember wearing a pillow case veil and one of my mom’s slips at our wedding which was witnessed by many beloved bears and other stuffed creatures. I am not sure what happened to my husband after that – we went on to separate schools for elementary school and lost touch, but I always wondered what happened to him. Maybe in a strange twist of fate we will find each other, perhaps we really were meant to be Mr. and Mrs. Deary?

Now that 1990 has long passed, I sit here 21 years later surrounded again by marriage. A lot of things have changed in my life since then. Aside from the obvious physical changes, my mind is now in a different place as well. As a little girl you love the idea of a wedding, but you do not know what getting married actually means. You look to your parents as role models and want to do everything that they do. As far as you are concerned you grow up, get married and have babies. Isn’t that how life works? So what does a child who grows up in a non-traditional household do? Do they have a different set of values or ideas about how they should live their lives as adults?

In today’s world the divorce rate is nearly sixty percent. Less and less people are getting married all together, and yet it seems that everyone I know is heading down the aisle. Not to say this is bad, I am very happy for my friends and I truly hope they have found long-lasting love. I just feel that society sets up these “standards” for how we must live our lives. We must graduate from college, get a good job and then get married and have children. These values are true especially for women. So if we do not reach these goals are we failures? What if someone doesn’t want children? As a twenty-five year old single woman I already feel the pressure to settle down. You always get the inevitable “who are you dating?” questions from parents friends and if you say no one they figure there must be something wrong with you. Well, maybe there is, maybe I don’t feel like dating a cookie cutter preppy guy who works fifteen hours a day and is still acting like a frat boy at 27. Pardon me for not be attracted to guys who treat you like a piece of meat. New York City is a toxic dating environment and I think us females should be given a little more credit for all that we put up with. I know I still have that seven year old girl inside me somewhere and I hope to be as happy and in love as my engaged friends some day. For now, I guess I will have to keep searching for my Teddy Deary, whoever he may be.

The Good Old Days

"I've these dreams I'm walking home, home when it used to be. And everything is as it was frozen in front of me. Here I stand 6 feet small romanticizing years ago... Well these daysI wish I was 6 again. Oh make me a red cape I wanna be Superman. Oh, if only my life was more like 1983 all these things would be more like they were at the start of me." - John Mayer "83"

On days like today where I am having a hard time dealing with things I try to think back to my childhood. I was always a happy kid and lived to have fun. The days before worry or panic, heartbreak or pain-- before you could ever imagine that the world you have always known could come crashing down. The biggest worries I had as a kid were deciding between Oreos and Nutterbutters as an afterschool snack or deciding what to do on my spring vacation. This is not to say that kids do not have hard lives- many of them do and it is heartbreaking, but I was fortunate enough to have a care-free childhood. I yearn for those days sometimes. Today especially. My parents are getting divorced and today (or perhaps tomorrow) will mark the official end. Although I have been preparing for this moment for the last four years, it (like most things) never really seems real until it is official. It is crazy to see how much can change during your life. It just goes to show how you never can know what the future holds. This is a scary thought, but also a good life lesson. I know everything will be okay, but it will never be the same again. I guess it will be a new chapter of life for all of us in my family. It is time to embrace this new phase and hope we all can find the same happiness we always used to feel.