air travel magic is dead

The amount of aggression on this plane from passengers and stewardesses alike, all stemming from overhead bin real estate struggles, makes me want to die a little. I'm glad I gate checked but there's still bad juju in the air.

airport blues

I'm freezing at the airport. In the moments where I'd normally be pondering my mortality, I'm feeling angry because the curbside check-in skycap yelled at me for not tipping him. I didn't know it was standard practice and now I'm mad because I was yelled at AND glad that I didn't tip him so take that. Things would be better if this terminal were warmer and had McDonalds. I'm sitting behind two tiny old Russian ladies with white hair who are propping up their cankles and speaking at a pace I can understand.

not dead yet

I've just experienced my last day in Los Angeles for the summer. This trip has been really grounding and good for my mental health - almost purely family time, quiet time, bagel time, and physical space as medicine for the daily trials. This last day, however, has been plagued by physical and mental torture. The morning began with my new apartment building backing out of giving us a place to stay for September 1st - four days prior to moving. The process of procuring and negotiating this apartment has been a real nightmare of being caught between liars versus liars for the past month, only to completely implode at the near-last second. I have affirmed in my mind that real estate is truly one of the most fucked up things about New York - may I never deal with it again.

After eating some insanity breakfast, it was comparatively soothing to go to the orthodontist, where my crumbling permanent retainer was yanked out of my mouth, the old glue painfully ground off, and a new retainer glued in. Afterwards, I donated some Missy's old lady diapers to the animal shelter (I bought them but she never wore them) even though I don't believe that any animal in the shelter lives long enough to need to wear them.

In the afternoon, my mom gave me a flu shot that hurt more than I'm used to and when she withdrew the needle I bled mightily down the arm, an actual stream flowing downwards and pooling in the crook of my elbow. My mom screamed, "Aaaaah!! aaaaaahh!! ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO BLEEDS TOO MUCH?!" and my dad was unhappy and ranted about how she didn't do it right and I couldn't stop laughing because it was so shocking and so fucked up. The way it spewed out was as if the head-bursting blood pressure from all my morning rage had finally found its exit. Later Ma came to me and said, "I'm very sorry. You probably won't die."

The evening became quieter. Ma, Pa and I went to Souplantation, where I ate all the favorite soups, salads, and carbs that I've been eating my entire life. On the drive home Ma was trying to come up with a Chinese name for baby Char. Every name she came up with we could turn into a joke by interpreting it as its homonym or changing the tone of one word slightly. You mean Bowl? Little Fish? Oh, Summer Shirt? Ma came up with a new one and tried to translate it for me. 

Ma: It means "prostate."

Me: PROSTATE?

Ma: Yes. Prostate. 

Me: Are you sure?

Ma: No..."prostitute"

Me: WHAT

Ma: No... ..."protest?"

Ma has traditionally rhymed my Chinese name with Fat Pig, but Pa came up with a new one for me today - Scarf.   

when we were in rhode island

When we were in Rhode Island, we were living a New England fantasy. We canoed across Indian Lake at sunset, stopping in the dead middle of the water to drink bottled beer, becoming trapped at times in beds of lilypads topped with yellow and pink lilies, only to free ourselves into beds of lotuses. We used our hands to splash water onto the lotus leaves and watched the beads roll off of one of nature's most water-repellent surfaces. We paddled by the island inhabited only by wild geese and blueberries. We were like Clark, Merriwether Lewis, and Sacagawea. We pondered the snapping turtles and eels resting in the mud below and watched thousands of small silvery herring jump out of the water to catch their evening meals under a ridiculous purple sky. The water was piss warm even through the night, and we waded and sunk our toes into muck and crouched on big slime-covered rocks that you could see through the clear lake water. For the first time it felt like I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing at that moment and had no interest in doing anything else.

We sat down to a lobster dinner that began with fresh watermelon martinis and grilled cherrystone clams. The lobsters, bought off a fishing boat that morning, surrendered peacefully and I ate mine from claws to tail and goop. We lied out at Sand Hill Cove, where the sand glittered and the water was a clear tropical green. Schools of fish visibly swarmed in the waters and I picked up crabs left and right and held them in my hands. The shore was littered with blubbery moms and tan, leathery old people rubbing themselves with oil and laying back in their beach chairs. We ate frozen lemonade and experimental burgers and then went back to the lake to sit around a fire pit in the dark. We laid on our backs on the dock as raucous frogs went wild in the trees and watched the Perseids going wild in the sky. We saw the biggest, brightest smears of stars fly by from all sides.

current favorite commercial

This JELL-O commercial makes me emotional, like I want to break out in a Salem-from-Sabrina-like sob and wail, Yeah! Being an adult sucks! Woeee

mama's indian kitchen

Last night Bagel had an earache so we ordered Indian delivery online to make him feel better. Shortly after placing the order, I received a call from the restaurant saying that I hadn't ordered any rice or bread with my curry or vegetables. I told the man on the phone that I didn't want any. He exclaimed, "NO RICE OR BREAD?! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO EAT IT?" at which point I agreed and I ordered rice. Good service. Really really good food as well - best samosas I've ever had. I also had chicken korma for the first time, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Order from Mama's Indian Kitchen in Culver City if you ever can.  

good body

This week I indulged in my last days of parental health insurance. I had my cervix swabbed, my arm vaccinated (against tetanus,diptheria, and whooping cough), and my blood drawn (an extra $10). I even got Sesame Street stickers. Below, the results of my blood test and proof of my impeccable health. Please excuse shitty cut/paste job - I'm not wearing my glasses. 

last moments of hatred

On a night when I needed to get up at 6:30am, I had to clamber out of bed at 3am to tell my idiot roommate, Artist, to turn down his fucking music. He started blasting jazz out of the large speakers in his bedroom to entertain his girl "friend" in the living room, who, by the way, showed up last night with 3 suitcases and looks like she'll be staying a while, of which I had no prior knowledge. The same girl for whom Artist entertained earlier in the evening at around 11pm with his electric guitar. Thankfully, I'm up this early because I"m leaving for Rhode Island for the weekend. I'm blockading the entrance to my room with suitcases and jaggedy open drawers and should probably booby trap the room floor with many forks hidden in the rug or something in case he tries to put her up in my room while I'm gone. I hope you have a horrible life.

uh huh hah

Katya went back to Los Angeles this morning. This is the first night in a week where I'm going to sleep by myself. It's weird. It'll probably be too comfortable. Today was also my last day at the midtown office. I'm going to miss the people I worked with. Too much leaving for one day? I had a chicken thigh for breakfast but I've been feeling very emotionally raw.

festive animals

sarah

A common book that the young people like to read on the subway in New York is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I often find this puzzling, because Nabokov is already so dense and challenging to navigate that I don't understand how anyone is making heads or tails of it while being jostled left and right, back-to-front, poked from the sides, and repeatedly fallen on by that girl who won't just hold the fucking railing.

Tonight I went to probably my favorite yoga class so far in New York. It was really soothing and I loved the teacher. I always worry that when a yoga teacher touches my face, she'll smear my eyebrows off.

moma and momo

Katya is a little cherubim napping in my bed. I spent all morning working at Swallow on a clickable prototype for work for user testing in Ohio this week and then Katya and I rolled into MoMa at 3:45p, which was packed. We saw the current Claes Oldenburg exhibit. (He made the enormous pair of binoculars that became the building that Bagel works in now.) “He was looking at American consumer culture and finding New World romance,” Mr. Dine said. I was so excited about The Street and The Store exhibit that I bought a poster AND a postcard. Then we had dinner at Momo's Sushi Shack and now we will rest, eat cheesecake and drink whiskey.

I'm having a good time but feeling sad and I can't decide if it's stress about finding a third for the new apartment, a ton a ton of work stress, or the fact that Katya's visit makes me miss home.

Here's an equally moody and miserable song:

Claes Oldenburg’s audacious, witty, and profound depictions of everyday objects have earned him a reputation as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This exhibition examines the beginnings of Oldenburg’s extraordinary career with an in-depth look at his first two major bodies of work: The Street (1960) and The Store (1961–64). During this intensely productive period Oldenburg redefined the relationship between painting and sculpture and between subject and form. The Street comprises objects made from cardboard, burlap, and newspaper that together create an immersive panorama of a gritty and bustling city. The Store features brightly painted sculptures and sculptural reliefs shaped to evoke commercial products and comestibles. In The Store, cigarettes, lingerie, and hamburgers all become viable subjects for art.

happiest move ever

Happy August! I just officially declared that I'm moving out at the end of the month.

No more
- having my drinking cups used as paintbrush washing cups and left standing with dirty paint water in them
- living in a drug den with people coming constantly to pick up
- being woken up by the TV blaring in the middle of the night
- being woken up by electric guitar being played plugged into an amp in the middle of the night
- listening to other people have sex
- having a revolving door of floozy girls in and out of the apartment every night/morning
- having no access to common space because of constant habitation of living room of roommate and girlfriend
- competing for the bathroom in the morning with roommate girlfriend / often losing the race and running late in the morning as a result
- having all of our toilet paper used for god knows what by OCD roommate
- no one ever buying toilet paper when it's clearly anyone's but my turn
- worrying that asthma cat will die
- cat vomit on my rug and the smell never ever coming out
- having all my beers stolen out of the fridge or my energy drink stolen off the table
- having every single dish, utensil, pan in the kitchen used to cook one extravagant meal and left in a pile in the sink for over a week
- clogging the kitchen sink with food even though it's a fucking sink and not a garbage disposal, continuing to use the sink until everything in it is standing in a pool of stagnant water
- dead mice everywhere
- apartment that smells like weed, incense, never-cleaned litter box, and dead mice
- being propositioned via text in the middle of the night for over an hour to the point of turning my phone on silent and locking my door because a roommate is "joking" about coming into my room / waking up to 15 more texts
- getting texts about how we "all need to be cleaner" from the person who makes the apartment a stinking garbage heap / aggressive text responses when i point out how much cleaning i do
- being sent a passive/aggressive/more aggressive e-mail for being in the kitchen drinking wine for 45 minutes while a roommate's DATE was happening
- room so small that i knock something over every time i turn around
- internet so bad that i can't watch anything without pre-loading it for 20 minutes
- fridge completely full of rotting food belonging to one person
- same person cleaning out the fridge randomly and throwing out all my food without asking
- living with someone who won't get out of bed to open the door for me when i'm locked out, even if it means i have to stay overnight at someone else's house because i can't get in
- having to let a roommate stay in my room while i'm in town so he can put up his parents in his room / not giving me more than a day's notice on this request
- living with someone who neglects to feed his animals, so that i end up having to do it because i can see they haven't eaten in two days
- living with males who prowl on my friends and blatantly look them up and down
- being the only one who ever cleans the bathroom counter, sink, toilet, or shower
- entertaining stupid conversations with blacked out drunks
- being pressured to not cook in the kitchen because it's summer and i'm going to make the apartment hot

FUCK YOU.
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