Overall wellness
Stacy and I have been BFFs LYLASs since we were six years old. It's an extraordinary thing, knowing someone for that long who isn't family, and knowing someone that well. I think I was never fully aware of how rare such a friendship is until I hit 28 or 30 and people would be flabbergasted when we'd tell them we've known each other since 1980. (And then they'd say, "I wish I had a friendship like that," which would make us feel slightly sad for them but admittedly lucky for us. I admit to a gratifying smugness, which I'm not proud of but there you go. It's okay to pat yourself on the back over something like a 26-year friendship.)
We've lived in different parts of the world for large chunks of time, so when she moved from Brooklyn to Chicago last November, it wasn't so much the basic idea of once again setting up camp in faraway cities that was the bummer. It was more that the ideas we had of what our friendship would be like as adults would likely never come to fruition. When we were in high school, we talked about living next door to each other and knitting booties for our grandkids together. But seriously, who were we kidding? Neither of us knits. And don't even get us started on the "kids" thing. And for some reason, I always pictured some rural setting with dusty wood and yellowing leaves and rickety greenish rocking chairs and dirt roads and Forrest Gump darting past us, running out of his leg braces. This would never happen, as I would never live in Alabama. Along the lines of Anne Who Is Awesome's musings on our former coworker, it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
So we're doing what one does when one is faced with the repetitive life theme of things not turning out the way you'd planned: We're kicking ass as best we can. Case in point: her visit to NYC this weekend.
The bonus of Stacy now living in Chicago is that it's guaranteed that whenever she comes back for a visit, it's going to be the most I Heart NY experience. So this past weekend, we stomped some favorite grounds in Brooklyn, shared the most ridiculously tasty blackberry-and-white-chocolate dessert at a Hell's Kitchen patisserie (when was the last time I ordered a dessert that wasn't chocolate-chocolate? other flavors DO have a purpose, Marla), and headed to the Town Shop on Broadway and 82nd Street to buy bras. I can proudly say that for the first time in years, my breasts are properly housed. O, I adore thee, buoyancy!
Our makeshift picnic in Cobble Hill Park was a potpourri of deliciousness from Middle-Eastern shops on Atlantic Avenue. We were talking about all the yummy ethnic food to be found in the neighborhood, and she said her husband felt weird going into one of the local shops.
HER: He thinks it's run by al-Quaeda.
ME: Well, al-Quaeda has really good bread.
HER: Seriously.
After we parted ways on Sunday, I had various things to do around Union Square. It was a divine day — sunny in the 70s, a fine break after two weeks of pissing rain. I picked up a late lunch at Zen Palate (mmm, Sesame Medallions) and sat on the grass
in the park for hours. There was much people-watching to be done — a beyond-irate fellow screaming to absolutely nobody that if they touch his wife and daughter, he will kill them; a troupe of masked, make-upped vixens
slithering along the park's paths in some kind of silent, choreographed mimicry of the "We are Siamese if You Please" ditty from "Lady & the Tramp"; etc. etc. and so forth. But my favorite was this guy who can best be described as Biz Markie's doppelgänger: He walked by wearing ginormous headphones, singing at the top of his lungs to a song that sounded familiar. The closer he got, the more clearly I heard, "Somebody tell me / why I work so hard for you." Dude was jamming to WHAM! and it pleased me to no end.
On Saturday, Stacy told me a story about one of the first business trips she had to take at her new job: She was sitting on the plane next to a coworker, a man she barely knew. She takes Chinese herbs every day like clockwork, and when he saw her pour her stinky leaves (seriously, they smell like feet) into a cup half-filled with hot water, he asked her what she was doing. "I take herbs," she said. "What for?" he asked. Knowing that any reason she could give would certainly be none of his business — if it was arthritis, it would be none of his business; if it was because the herbs made her hair lustrous, same thing — she said, "They're for my overall wellness."
That will now be my reason for doing absolutely everything. Marla, why did you spend so much time watching capoeira demonstrations
in Union Square that only the left side of your face is sunburned? Why, it was for my overall wellness!
We've lived in different parts of the world for large chunks of time, so when she moved from Brooklyn to Chicago last November, it wasn't so much the basic idea of once again setting up camp in faraway cities that was the bummer. It was more that the ideas we had of what our friendship would be like as adults would likely never come to fruition. When we were in high school, we talked about living next door to each other and knitting booties for our grandkids together. But seriously, who were we kidding? Neither of us knits. And don't even get us started on the "kids" thing. And for some reason, I always pictured some rural setting with dusty wood and yellowing leaves and rickety greenish rocking chairs and dirt roads and Forrest Gump darting past us, running out of his leg braces. This would never happen, as I would never live in Alabama. Along the lines of Anne Who Is Awesome's musings on our former coworker, it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
So we're doing what one does when one is faced with the repetitive life theme of things not turning out the way you'd planned: We're kicking ass as best we can. Case in point: her visit to NYC this weekend.
The bonus of Stacy now living in Chicago is that it's guaranteed that whenever she comes back for a visit, it's going to be the most I Heart NY experience. So this past weekend, we stomped some favorite grounds in Brooklyn, shared the most ridiculously tasty blackberry-and-white-chocolate dessert at a Hell's Kitchen patisserie (when was the last time I ordered a dessert that wasn't chocolate-chocolate? other flavors DO have a purpose, Marla), and headed to the Town Shop on Broadway and 82nd Street to buy bras. I can proudly say that for the first time in years, my breasts are properly housed. O, I adore thee, buoyancy!
Our makeshift picnic in Cobble Hill Park was a potpourri of deliciousness from Middle-Eastern shops on Atlantic Avenue. We were talking about all the yummy ethnic food to be found in the neighborhood, and she said her husband felt weird going into one of the local shops.
HER: He thinks it's run by al-Quaeda.
ME: Well, al-Quaeda has really good bread.
HER: Seriously.
After we parted ways on Sunday, I had various things to do around Union Square. It was a divine day — sunny in the 70s, a fine break after two weeks of pissing rain. I picked up a late lunch at Zen Palate (mmm, Sesame Medallions) and sat on the grass
in the park for hours. There was much people-watching to be done — a beyond-irate fellow screaming to absolutely nobody that if they touch his wife and daughter, he will kill them; a troupe of masked, make-upped vixens
slithering along the park's paths in some kind of silent, choreographed mimicry of the "We are Siamese if You Please" ditty from "Lady & the Tramp"; etc. etc. and so forth. But my favorite was this guy who can best be described as Biz Markie's doppelgänger: He walked by wearing ginormous headphones, singing at the top of his lungs to a song that sounded familiar. The closer he got, the more clearly I heard, "Somebody tell me / why I work so hard for you." Dude was jamming to WHAM! and it pleased me to no end.
On Saturday, Stacy told me a story about one of the first business trips she had to take at her new job: She was sitting on the plane next to a coworker, a man she barely knew. She takes Chinese herbs every day like clockwork, and when he saw her pour her stinky leaves (seriously, they smell like feet) into a cup half-filled with hot water, he asked her what she was doing. "I take herbs," she said. "What for?" he asked. Knowing that any reason she could give would certainly be none of his business — if it was arthritis, it would be none of his business; if it was because the herbs made her hair lustrous, same thing — she said, "They're for my overall wellness."
That will now be my reason for doing absolutely everything. Marla, why did you spend so much time watching capoeira demonstrations
in Union Square that only the left side of your face is sunburned? Why, it was for my overall wellness!
posted by Marla at 3:21 PM
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