target

By popular demand....here is my very first blogless post:

I guess it really isn't considered travel tips if you live somewhere - but I thought I would give my sound advice to those of you who would like to visit New York and are inclined to go to Target in Brooklyn.

1. Make sure you decide to drive the mile and a half - it's actually quite close, but you never know how much you'll think about in the bumper to bumper traffic.
2. Get lost.
3. It's two levels - and you won't know where anything is, so go up and down the escalator a lot
4. People like to read at Target in Brooklyn - on the sample furniture. College students in rumpled clothes - perhaps to escape their roomates? Yes, they sit around and read.
5. Formulate a question...such as "Do you have those carts? You know, the kind that you carry laundry or groceries in? The kind that grama's use? They fold up...have wheels? Do you know where those are?" and ask many different employees - trust each one and search in sporting goods, home storage, luggage, kitchen stuff and laundry supplies. No carts. If i'm sending you this email, you are most likely from the midwest (or just NICE) and you will be polite - that doesn't really help.
6. That's another good point - Brooklyn is really, really big and this is the only Target. Plan on interacting with A LOT of people and be prepared....most of the stuff that you came here to buy will be out of stock.
7. Buy everything and wheel the cart out of the store. There will be a cop there who won't let you bring stuff to your car. Go get the car.
8. $7 parking!
9. Drive around, put on flashers and walk in to get the cart from the cop. There will be a few men standing there - don't worry, these are not target employees! They will "help" you push your cart out to the car and you'll need to pay them a couple of bucks.
10. Don't forget to find parking in the neighborhood and lug all of your shit down the block and up the stairs.

not recent and not in new york

Gracie is one of my mom's golden retrievers and she doesn't like to swim. Dave and I took her to the dog beach in Chicago during the summer. She's so damn cute. I want a dog.

chris moore

If you have ever met my dad, then you know he is a genuinely charismatic man. Jovial in a fat-free way. Congenial. Chatty.

My dad will be driving his bubbly 1949 Ford down the street in Libertyville, Illinois and with one choppy little salute out the window, ten neighbors are calling his name. He's a marathon runner with tons of energy. He also works in New York so I have hung out with him in Manhattan a number of times. He knows a lot of the locals...bodega managers, deli workers, bartenders, hotel clerks. Each time I go anywhere with my dad - and this is true even when I was a child - he talks to people.

Standing on an escalator at the airport he'll comment about how heavy someone's luggage looks. Waiting for an elevator, he'll ask if he can have a sip of someone's starbucks and chuckle. Going through the line at the grocery store and he's already telling somebody all about his kids in college....and oh! This is Kimmie....she's a first grade teacher, yeah...(laughs)...those little rugrats. It's amazing how complete strangers smile and joke with my dad - especially in the middle of the biggest city in the world.

Years ago, I used to roll my eyes and step back a few feet. Or I might have tugged on his sleeve....daaaaaad. Later on, I could settle down, knowing I was in it for the long haul. All of my siblings do this.

And then.....one day, all alone in NYC, I found myself making eye contact with some woman at H&M....wanting desperately to ask her opinion on a purse. Then I'm walking down the street on Rosh Hashana and I can feel myself ready to say 'Happy New Year!' to total strangers. Or even just waiting in line at the bagel place - I just want to turn to the person next to me and chuckle, 'Ha....bagels. They are so good!'. I have very few inhibitions about joking with old ladies behind the counter at the post office or telling the heavy lidded hipster behind the counter at the coffee shop that I've been 'locked out again! can you believe it?'
It's insane.

catskills wedding

We went to a wedding this past weekend next to the Hudson River. It was amazing...

1. The bride wore a gold dress and a feathered headdress.
2. The weather was perfect.
3. The best nyc r&b/funk band played.
4. At dusk, while playing old shoegazer, they set off fireworks. Yes.....huge, fourth-of-July-style fireworks. It was so cool.

blob

So last night I was running out to go to the grocery store for some dinner stuff....I was thinking - how about taco buffet? Refried beans, cut up tomatoes, shredded cheese, sour cream...I even considered hard shell tacos, but they looked supergross in the yellow box. As I was leaving, I noticed that the door didn't really close on it's own. Hmm. Doorknob is not working. Interesting.

I was able to leave eventually by slamming the door while unlocked and locking it from the outside. OK - Dave, it was way too easy for me to break into our apartment last week AND the doorknob is not totally working anymore, so let's use the deadbolt from now on. And call the fucking landlord.

Today I am wandering home from the train after school. It's 6:30. Once again, I climb the stairwell to the second floor, attempt to enter my apartment and I am LOCKED OUT for the second time in one week because I don't have a key to the deadbolt! See attached photo of me eating a salad alone in the local coffee shop while I write my blog. (I think I even have a little blog of goat cheese on my lip....charming).

underwear bag

In New York, if you don't own a washer and drier....you have your laundry 'done'. I was initially opposed to this, because, honestly, I like doing my laundry and laundromats are kinda interesting. Plus, it's a little weird to have someone else washing and folding my clothes. My plan was to do it myself every other time...drop it off, then do it myself, drop it off, do it myself. Well, on a do-it-myself-day, four or five hours and 857 quarters later, I was totally annoyed. Our laundromat is not a "sit down and watch novellas while kids run around and shriek" laundromat. It's more like a "everyone has their laundry 'done' so all of the machines but one are being used by the laundromaters and you need to go home and come back each time you need to switch the load".

So the upside of this is that when we pick up our laundry, the super nice laundromaters have separated our clothes by gender - which is very convenient. But the best part is that they fold all of my underwear into perfect little squares and stick it in a tiny plastic bag.

sweats

Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up at 5:30 and pick out - what you think is - a normal, cute outfit. You get through part of the morning and realize that you are wearing something that is so annoying, totally uncomfortable and now, not cute at all. Now imagine, if you will, that you decide to make it an easy night and leave school at 5 pm instead of 7 pm....all you can think about is changing into sweatpants and drinking a beer. Let's just pretend that you notice - minutes before walking out the door of your classroom - that you inadvertently SENT HOME YOUR HOUSE KEYS WITH ONE OF YOUR FIRST GRADERS.

You know what? Not a big deal. Call the dad....oh, he's in Manhattan? Ok....get the keys tomorrow. Now - call the only other person who has a set of keys. Maybe his phone is dead? Maybe it's turned off because he's in class until 8 pm....won't be home until 9. No problem. This is New York! You have plenty to do. Work, clean up some more, work....take the subway home, wander to a corner store and buy a cheesey magazine, walk slowly to a pizza joint and get a beer, page through....chat with mom on the phone.

9:00....go home. The security door doesn't catch everytime, so let's pretend it's open and you can sit in the hallway on the indoor outdoor carpeting. What if? What if you tried to break into the apartment with a credit card for a half hour and nobody heard or cared? Except maybe piggie who pressed his fat face to the crack at the bottom of the door and cried. It's quite easy to break into an apartment with a credit card, I would think, especially if you had 40 uninterrupted minutes and a need to pee. And all you could think about was sweatpants.

I'm 34

We went out to eat at a shmancy vegetarian restaurant for my b-day and I ordered a "stone fruit sangria" - see attached photo....looks like a fetus, right?

This is piggie and his new friend, carry internet....dave's fat cat. They are in love.

our lovely bathroom

It was late one night and I was awake rearranging furniture for the 85th time. Hot, sticky and covered in cat hair and dust, I needed to take a shower. But wait, let's reminisce...

I am a homeowner. I renovated the bathroom in my house in Chicago. It's cute, clean, white and baby blue. It was not cheap. Now, I am also a renter. Our bathroom in New York is not cute, not clean, not white, and the only thing that's baby blue is the 3x3 bathmat from Ikea.

So there are problems with the bathroom. During our first week back in New York, the downstairs neighbor knocked on the door while Dave was taking a shower and told me that there was water leaking into her bathroom. She called the landlord and about 20 minutes later, the landlord and her husband showed up wearing terry cloth visors and carrying giant cups of bubble tea asking about the leak. With a brief "we'll take care of it ASAP" they were out the door. "Oh - and don't forget to cover that part of the tile wall with a garbage bag," they said.

The following week, nothing fixed, we noticed a large blob forming in the ceiling. Slowly it began to drip into our shower, the dampness spreading across the bathroom ceiling like sweat. Bubbles appeared in the plaster around the shower head, rust stains formed above us. We call the landlords again. They call the plumbers again. Two Danny's and one Tommy later, nothing has been fixed. They walk in, look at the water seeping into the wall, tell us it isn't a plumbing problem and don't come back.

Cut to one month later, I'm in the shower, garbage bag taped to one side of the wall, heavy bubble above my head, a light dusting of mold on the wall. I look up to see a small blob coming out of the ceiling. Not rust, not plaster, not a water bubble. It's a bit like gnochhi, actually, plump and beige with little ridges. I start to think....god, what if this is a larvae? What if this is a weird bug sack - and if I pop it, millions of bugs rain down on me? I get out of the shower, dry off and push on it with the end of a hanger while standing on the toilet. It feels stiff. I'm exhausted and wearing a towel. It's probably nothing. So I go to sleep.

The next morning, I'm moving around more furniture and I hear Dave...Eeeww! What is that? Kim! You gotta see this. I come into the bathroom and it is BIGGER. It is coming out of the ceiling....out of the ceiling and it's bigger. Gross, gross, gross...what is it? Bug sack! Bug sack! Dave stands on the toilet, pushes on it gently - awaiting the deluge of baby spiders.

It snaps cleanly in half. Growing out of our bathroom ceiling is a mushroom.