A Day in the Life

Where in the world is Natalie?
 
My poor blog has sat empty since August, one lone picture of a blue man gracing the front page. As I wrote here, I was hired for a new job over the summer.

Since I signed eleventy billion confidentiality clauses and contracts, I'm going to call my current company Credit Dauphine. I am employed there as an editor, and it is a surprisingly intense amount of work. It has been an adjustment from my stay-at-home days. In addition to a new schedule and job, I continued freelance writing on the side, and kept up the usual balance of friends, family, a marriage, and time for myself. FitC sat quietly in the backseat. This month, I added NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to the To-Do List, and it's been a joy. I'm still working on finishing, but even if I don't make the goal, it's been fun to work on a novel again.

A recent trend in the blogosphere is to do a photo essay of an average day; taking a photo every hour and chronicling what the blogger does during a random day. It's been a long time since I've shared anything, and I thought that an average day in my life would be a good way to go. I can't promise this will happen again, or if I will even have another moment to blog this month. But it's a hello, a how-are-you-I'm-fine-see?, a day to let you know that I'm thinking of FitC, even if I can't really do much about it.

And it was a very typical day; nothing really grand or unusual happened. One day last week, Jamie brought me cronuts. That was a good day. And earlier this month, I managed to write a huge chunk of my NaNoWriMo story in one go. That was pretty exciting. Oh, and last week I saw Cyndi Lauper and took a trip to Wilmington, N.C. But Tuesday, November 19th, was just a normal day. Come join me.

7:20 a.m.: My alarm goes off. I ignore it, like a true American.

7:50 a.m.: Whoops. I'm running late. Time to get dressed, make coffee, ponder the universe. I get dressed in a super hurry and discover later I'm not quite that put-together since the tank-top I am wearing as a camisole under my sweater is way too long. (British English translation: My vest under my jumper was in a bunch.)

Things That Happened Today On Twitter

"Everything In My Closet Is Slutty Or Casual: A Journey Of Inappropriate Work Attire, An Autobiography Of Every Morning at 7 A.M." By Natalie

Chapter 1: Why is this shirt covered in cat hair?

Chapter 2: It's not TECHNICALLY strapless, so it works, right?

Chapter 3: Why do you own so many pairs of shorts? You don't even wear shorts. Except the purple ones. But not to work. Don't put those on.

Chapter 4: The many ways in which your ass can no longer fit into those pants you have owned since 2003.

Chapter 5: Did you shave your legs? You didn't. How not-shaven are they? Eh, that dress is long enough.

Chapter 6: Sitting in the middle of your floorobe sighing and checking Facebook will not get you to work on time.

Chapter 7: Define skintight.

Chapter 8: Didn't you wear that Monday?

Chapter 9: Damn it, just throw something on already. No, not that.

Chapter 10: How the many vows to buy appropriate work attire will be forgotten by the time you finish your morning coffee.

Chapter 11: Doing it all again tomorrow as if it were a grand surprise.

(Email me at flaneurinthecity at gmail dot com if you want to follow my personal Twitter. Maybe one day I'll actually use the flaneurinthecity official Twitter account. After I buy a proper pair of trousers and a sensible shirt.)

Adventures In Unemployment

(September Edition is here. February Edition is here.)

Un, Under, Over Edition

First came the Un. Unemployment, the gift of soft pillows, of endless cups of tea, the quiet mornings of empty driveways and empty homes. It can be post-apocalyptic to walk suburbia during a workday morning. Row after row of houses abandoned for 8 hours every day, 5 days a week. The first time around I was in a city neighborhood, and there was always noise, always people. Seventh Street, Plaza-Midwood, Elizabeth. I could walk them all day and never be alone. This time it was just me and the small brown birds, the occasional rabbit, and once, one cold, foggy morning, three white-tailed deer clacking across the sidewalk to greener backyards.

Then came the Under. I worked, but not enough. An article here and there. Under-the-table editing for a bit of spending money. A contract position that was underpaid but steady for a few months. A blog post, a photo, a blurb. It was sometimes exciting, sometimes dull. All the while, I looked for full-time work. I was digging holes in a desert looking for a spring.

Multiple résumés, cover letters, inquiring emails, applications. Smiling through well-meaning advice from employed family and friends ("Have you tried Monster.com?"). Submitting writing samples, portfolios, editing tests. And more than once, squeezing into a business-appropriate pencil skirt and high-collared shirt, my feet in heels, clacking across marbled lobbies into office towers for interviews that would lead to nowhere.

It seemed an Over was ever just out of my reach. Work harder. Ignore the sweat and bleeding palms and dig deeper for a bountiful well. A field of holes was behind me; cracked dry earth ahead. Keep digging, keep scraping, keep going. Is that damp earth? No.

It was an ocean, it was vast and salty on my face, there was an old man building a boat and there were animals swimming by in pairs. Where was once a desert was suddenly a deluge. I was asked to edit a magazine for the summer while the editor-in-chief was on maternity leave. I was asked come in to do some temp work at my old job at the alt weekly. I was asked to write several articles for more than one publication on topics that interested me and were a pleasure to do. I was asked to submit my portfolio for a corporate job. I was asked to send in writing samples for an uptown gig. Swimming, floating, the tidal wave had finally, finally come in. No more vigils on dry, infertile sand.

But then, just as swiftly as the waters came, the course turned. The magazine I was to help edit for the summer folded after only one month of work. My weeks of temp were up. Word came that the corporate job decided to not hire anyone for the moment. The uptown gig fell through. I was alone again with my shovel, muddy, tired, and thirsty. I couldn't remember the taste of fresh water, and the sight of greener backyards. What next?

The only thing to do was pick up and keep digging. The last of the salt water on my face may have been tears. They were well-earned. When I walk the mornings, the houses stand at attention, faceless windows fitful for human bodies. My desktop overflows with résumés. I keep a spreadsheet of all the job applications I've submitted; the final count since the start of the new year reached 173. I've long lost count of the interviews.

It is June, and the sun shines, and the birds sing, and the rains come late afternoons. My desert story ends not with a tidal wave, but a tiny trickle. After a month of worry and walking, the corporate job which previously decided not to hire, called. If I wanted it, the job was mine.

Here now, in the waning green month of June, comes the Over.

To Walk After Midnight

I want things I cannot articulate, laid out before me like a garden of red peppers, now barely seeds.

Walking in suburbia after midnight is walking in the land of cats and small beetles, open windows and blue lights of TV screens. The smell of honeysuckle by the creek. Darting insects under sandaled foot, the sidewalk white and winding under streetlights. I think of cities. I think of Paris in Autumn, the taste of apple pastries. I think of rain in a city I have never seen, the long fogs of Seattle. I think of London, I think of home. I walk through writer's block, I walk through excessive adjectives, I walk through damp grass from the day's thunderstorm and try to make it into a metaphor. I walk slowly, the lights of passing cars my only human contact. A cat eyes me warily from under a mini-van. The houses share walls, share street space, share small squares of grass before long lines of cars. We are jammed up on one another in the middle of nowhere, anchored by a suite of big box stores and a bus stop. I think of Oakland Avenue, of late night walks down 7th street. I think of Roehampton Lane and the stretch of darkness between the council houses and the sole shop open later than 8 pm. I think of other Natalies, other women to walk alone on late night streets and never make it home again.

I tell myself that it is OK to be tired, to crawl into bed with damp hair curling from the moist air, to write tomorrow. Tomorrow may be kinder, brighter. Tomorrow there may be bright red peppers to wash in the sunlight streaming in from the kitchen window.

"Dummy," I tell myself. It is tomorrow. It will be what I make it.

Adventures In Unemployment

 February Edition

(September Edition is here.) 

Wake up when husband gets up, even if that means insomnia only allowed for two hours of sleep. I sit on the stairs in my blue nightgown as he puts on his shoes. Here is the space of our day: work, errands, brief meals, and back again to blue gowns and warm pajamas. I kiss him goodbye at the door.

Drink coffee that is a lukewarm cup of sanity.

Open the blinds and catch the winter sunlight.

Look at crochet patterns on Pinterest. Stumble upon this image:

Imagine myself saying to her: "No, baby. It was never crochet or music or whatever that saved your life. You did. You were the strength. Your fingers may have woven a pattern from bits of yarn, or your heart may have felt the song, but you were the one to pull yourself up. Own it. And know if you slip and fall, you can do it again."

(Yes, again and again, as many times as a stitch is needed.)

Mid-morning the phone rings and it's a job agency. It's one of four agencies that call occasionally, and at each agency there is a Shondra, a Debra, a Marta and I never remember who is with what agent.  It doesn't help that the numbers are saved in my phone under the titles: "That Job Place," "Job Me Maybe," "Job Me Maybe 2."

It used to just be, "Agency," but my purse had a nasty habit of calling people, alphabetically, when I wasn't aware (and my poor friend Amanda received most of those muffled purse calls). Now all my contacts under A are titled: "Aaaaay here's your voicemail," "Another voicemail," "And yet again because AAAAA."

It's Shondra this time. She asks if I have a job yet? Of course not. Will I speak with so-and-so company? Of course, yes. I'm leaving in about 2 hours to do an interview for a magazine article I'm writing, but until then, I'm free, I'm free, call and ask me anything. Email my resume, my writing samples, a cover letter. Never heard back. No email, no call.

While waiting, realize the decision to follow the board Men In Kilts on Pinterest was a solid one.

Recycle, take the time to sort and load the car with the plastic bags and paper bags with rope handles to drop-off in the proper bins by the grocery store.

Freelance work: Wear grown-up clothes for interview. Forgot to paint nails, feel self-conscious. Interviewees always stare at the hands writing their words.

 
Tweet to world: "Oh, what, you don't own a vintage velvet blazer made in Japan in the 1970s? I feel sorry for your life choices." (Do not add #swagger, but feel as though it is justified.)

Text to Matt: "The cute barista girl just gave me 50 cents off my drink! Flirting?! Are we flirting? I can't tell!" (No. Probably not.)

Buy: Milk, bread, soda, the flesh of a poor pink trout from the butcher, a box of Muesli on sale.

Realize that in suburbia, backward and forward may be the same.

Realize that if I did have a 9 to 5, I would desperately miss the freedom of sitting in the car until the song playing on the radio ended; the same way I now desperately miss the rush and bustle of working full-time.

If there is a balance, it isn't found in blog posts.

Unload the groceries, clean up the kitchen, inspect the small, curled spiders that dwell in high corners.

Crochet with thick blue and beige yarn until Matt's car pulls into the drive. Rumor is that those stitches may be the start to a bold new life.

A Different Kind Of Love Song

My darling Ashley (I See!) sent me a Jane Austen scarf for my birthday last month, and she is featuring it on her blog today. It's basically one of many love letters I write to Ash, turned blog post.

Once upon a time, if you had sat me down and told me one of my best friends on this planet was going to be a blonde sorority girl who was obsessed with Southern vampires, I would have never believed you. Because, 1.) I wasn't too keen on the whole Greek system in universities, and I usually had very little in common with the girls who joined and 2.) The only true Southern vampire is Lestat, thankyouverymuch. But when Ashley and I met at a graduate meet-n-greet at the Southlands bar at Roehampton University, it wasn't just friendship. It was fate.

In fact, it was fated from the moment I was preparing to leave for London. You see, when I get a little tipsy, I tend to talk about one subject in particular. Any guesses?

(The answer is always David Bowie.)

And if you get me flat-out drunk, I'll most likely start on about The Man Who Fell To Earth. Which caused this exchange between Mr. B and me before I left for London: True Story. (If you don't click the link, here's a hint: It's about David Bowie's penis.)

At the graduate meet-n-greet, Ashley and I were sitting next to each other after a few glasses of free wine. The evening was winding down, and most of the other students and future friends had already left for the night. We were both a bit buzzed; me in my black high-heeled boots that were pinching my feet and this blonde whirlwind of energy who spoke a mile a minute and who, when she smiled, seemed to be smiling with the whole of her body -- a genuine, heart-on-her-sleeve smile that was a mini flaming sun.

When we became friends, it was instant. It took two little words to unlock a beautiful, bickering, blessed friendship that gave me a sister-in-arms and fellow flaneur.

"So." I spoke, my mouth soft with wine, "Do you like David Bowie?"

You know the rest.

Artistic representation of Ashley and me.

In Bossypants, Tine Fey has a chapter titled, "I Don't Care If You Like It (One in a series of love letters to Amy Poehler)" that opens this way (thanks, Google Books!):

“Amy Poehler was new to SNL and we were all crowded into the seventeenth-floor writers’ room, waiting for the Wednesday read-through to start. There were always a lot of noisy ‘comedy bits’ going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can’t remember what it was exactly, except that it was dirty and loud and 'unladylike.'

Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said, 'Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it!'

Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him.

'I don’t fucking care if you like it.' Jimmy was visibly startled. Amy went right back to enjoying her ridiculous bit.”

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's relationship is one that envied until I met own little blonde dynamo. One who is brave and sweet and will look a jerk in the eye and give them the hell they deserve.  One who, despite my being a bit older, I kinda want to be when I grow up. That's my Ashley.

I've mentioned before that I was lonely in my youth, and one of the most surprising things about adulthood are the friendships I have made that would have caused Teenage-Me to cry with joy. It's my only "It Gets Better" moment: As an adult I have made many real, true, honest, life-long, loved friends that I can't possibly deserve but somehow have. And I am so, so thankful for each and every one of you.

Once upon a time, a loud, Southern, feminist brunette and a blonde, Northwestern, sorority girl met in a bar. And became friends for life.

"Let's go on an adventure!" Ashley and Natalie ride a magic turtle.

A Short List

The things I say I am afraid of in order to hide my real fears:

• Insomnia

• Mice feces in the food at Cracker Barrel

• Red nail polish on beige carpet

• Beige carpet, in general, because vacuuming is a pain

• Finishing a really good book

• The nonexistence of unicorns

• Turning left into traffic onto Highway 51 anywhere in the stretch between the 485 interstate and Rea Road

• Bullet point lists

This Is 32

Birthdays are big deal when you hit 18, 21, 30. What's with 32?

No Big Gulps for NYC. 

 Teenagers totally don't dress like that.

Bring it on, 32. 

I'm waiting. 

Important Announcements

1.) There are only 2 sleeps until Christmas!

2.) As such, FitC will be a little bare this week. Unless I'm really inspired by something, there probably won't be a Weekly pic or a Friday Quote. Hope y'all don't mind!

3.) No, for real though, Christmas is the day after tomorrow!

In preparation, I've made Dulce De Leche candy, Banana Nut Bread and Peppermint Bark. All my Christmas treats involve a Ziploc bag and a hammer (crushed candy canes for Bark and crushed pecans for candy and bread), because I like to play Thor when I bake. All will be given as gifts and eaten on Christmas day, with a nice cuppa coffee or tea. What are your plans this week? I hope they are equal parts tasty and fantastic!

4.) It's not Christmas for me until this happens:

(To be fair, most of my major holidays involve David Bowie.) 

Happy Holidays, my fellow flâneurs! I'm sending love and good wishes to each and every one of you!

Ways In Which I Am A Terrible Friend

Alternatively titled: Adulthood! How do I do it?

Most of my bad friend moments come from lack of income. I really do want to meet you at the bar, or see your favorite band play, but sometimes there's only $7.50 in my bank account. Sometimes my only way to be there with you is to text love and send emoticon smiles.

Every year at Christmas, my friends Jamie, Sokha and I get together to have a Dirty Christmas party. It's Christmas, but with more booze and tasteless jokes. This year we wanted to try The Wine Palette or Cajun Canvas, two of Charlotte's drink and paint studios. You bring your own snacks and drinks, and learn to paint a picture. Fun, right? But even after suggesting it, I had to balk and back out when I saw the $35 price tag. I have markers and sketchpads at here at Casa B. We'll have our own drunk drawing party at my kitchen table.

Back in April, my darling Ashley had a birthday. I bought the book Downpour in advance to send to her in London, along with a Vampire Eric necklace and a birthday card. I also wrote her a nice, long letter and included a badly drawn little comic. I was set. Super Friendship Participate badge earned. I wrapped up the whole thing in brown paper and took it to the post to find it would cost $50 to send overseas. No biggie, I thought. Next paycheck. I tossed it on the floorboard in the backseat of my car. I ran some errands, drove home, parked my car in my driveway, and forgot the package in the backseat. That happened to be the night my car was robbed. (Broken into right in my OWN DRIVEWAY.) Of course, Ashley's package, with all its love tucked inside, was gone.

Over the next few months, my steady writing gig ended and I was back to paycheck begging. My other main source of income is a company that, while wonderful and lovely in all other aspects, was in a period of transition that meant they were notoriously late in paying freelancers. (Happily, this is a thing of the past and they are currently nothing but lovely and wonderful.) I easily found the book online, bought it again, and searched for something quirky to replace Vampire Eric. By the time I managed to find the right gift, I was in limbo with checks. Once again, Ash's lovely little package sat unopened, tucked safely in my closet.

No biggie, I thought. Come September, I have a big story due. I'll get a fat check that will cover both my bills and Ash's gift in one fell swoop. Dust off hands and whistle on. Friendship badge will still be metaphorically earned. Expect, of course, the check didn't come in time. My bank account was low from paying off other bills, and I still accrued late fees. When the big check finally came, it was eaten up by bills. Ashley's gift sat on my shelf.

Now it's December, and I finally, finally have another steady (albeit temporary) small source of income and have pinched together my pennies for the holidays. I can send Ashley a birthday gift! Finally! Bless her heart. She's waited so long.

Which is why, after months of waiting, I don't blame her in the least to see that her latest purchase was Downpour.

Don't worry. I'm still sending her something surprising. (But if anyone wants to buy -- or donate to FitC in exchange for -- a brand new, wrapped, hardcover copy of this book, it's yours.)

I hate to be a bad friend. I hope that my friends reading this will sigh at my hopeless, headlong, arms-flailing attempt at adulthood, but still forgive, as friends do. All I have by way of riches is love, and that I will give to you endlessly and freely.

Strangers On A Blog

There was a blog I followed last year written by a woman in New York City who was laid off from her job. The only work she was able to find was part-time at a gym over an hour and 1/2 away from her home, and she wrote about her commute, the patrons who would frequent the gym, the employees, the members, and her continuous work search. But over time the posts became more personal and she was writing about fights with her boyfriend and feelings of despair. Then one day her blog was gone. Deleted. I don't know what happened to her, but a year later I still think about this unfinished story. I think about how strange the world of blogging can be, how for a moment in time I was privileged to read the daily thoughts of a stranger whose face I didn't know. How there is a woman I could pass on the streets of New York, or share a ride with on a train, who I know so much and yet so little about.

In my own little blogging world, I write surprisingly very little about my daily life and self. The more personal posts come months after the fact, but yet you still read me, and I thank you for it. Because, You and I? We are not strangers. Not really. Here is my face, my hands, my words. Pass me on the street and stop to tell me your dreams. Stop to tell me the taste of the green apples of your childhood, of the small torn hole in your coat that lets your skin feel the bitter pleasure of the cold rainy afternoon. Let's not be strangers. I'll start.

Here is my day: It is quiet in the house. My husband is working from home today and when he does, I tend to stay sedentary, silent as not to disturb, nesting in piles of blankets and cups of tea. (On days when I am alone, I am a raucous One-Woman Broadway Show.) Two writers living in one house, we often retreat into our own spaces and worlds and greet each other in the evening hours as if it were a pleasant surprise; "Oh, hello! You're here too! I missed you today." We are only one wall apart.

Last week, I pulled all of our joint Christmas decorations and bits-n-bobs out of the hidden corners of storage to make the house shine. Matt calls the image on my matching set of Christmas mugs my Mentally Challenged Moose. Not all outcast reindeer were born with red noses, poor fellow. He keeps me company in my nesting.

In the late morning hours I am awake in bed and lost in thought. I write elaborate lists titled, "NATALIE. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER." Fail at the application when the day starts in full. To check off one thing on the list is an accomplishment worth celebrating. In the quiet of this morning I managed two.

I write long-winded sentences and delete them.  I have everything and nothing to say. I think of my father, my half-sister. The house smells of laundry, my sweaters drying over the stair banister. It is the first cold day in weeks. Have I forgotten how lovely the cold could be?

Later, I will commandeer the kitchen and crush long candy canes in Ziploc bags to make Peppermint Bark for my mother. It'll be the fifth or sixth batch made this month, the only Christmas treat I've conquered to perfection.

Later, Matt and I will share our bed, and talk about the ocean, the way sand crabs blink, and the small spaces between us will dissolve. If we are lucky the rain will be our lullaby, and if not, the distant sound of lone train whistles will lull us to sleep. In North Carolina, I have never lived in any place where I could not hear the sound of a lonely night train.

If I am lucky, sleep will come undisturbed. The things I do not want to write to you now, the things you may not know, become tide pools in my mind. It happened like this; my half-sister's child, a young man in his twenties, stepped into the ocean in November and never returned. We are not strangers on a cold beach, and the train we share rolls on into the night.

Here is my day, then; I wake and think of you; stranger, friend, reader, and wonder if you know that though this world is hard and rough to walk, it is worth the walk. I want to keep walking it. I want you to keep walking. There is still so much to see.

Small Reminders

My hairbrush is full.

A few years ago, I was in a car accident. Coupled with the jaw fracture and TMD that resulted from my chin becoming instantly and intimately acquainted with the steering wheel, were a host of emotional hurdles with my job at the alt weekly. The stress of missing work, anxiety over the whole ordeal, and an undiagnosed stomach issue on top of post-accident pain meant my body wasn't in the best shape. And exactly six months after this traumatic period, my hair started falling out. My kind doctor informed that for some people, stress and body trauma causes hair follicles to die. A few months later, new follicles grow enough to push the old ones out completely. It happens to women after pregnancy. Hormones make their hair shiny, and post-birth it starts to shed. I wasn't bald by any means, but my first gray hairs grew in place of the brunette strands that decided that the body they were growing on wasn't worth the stress anymore and peaced out.

I started shedding like a molting bird earlier this month, leaving long strands tangled in the shower drain and pillowcases, dropped on the kitchen counter and weaved on the sofa fabric. A joy for Mr. B to live with, I'm sure.

I pick them up in confusion and frustration. What's up, Hair? Why the sudden exodus? There's been no stress, no broken bones, no bodily harm. Freelancing isn't a gold mine, and unemployment isn't all roses and sunshine, but it's all an easy affair compared to my previous work experiences. My marriage is lovely. Mr. B is a prince.

It wasn't until I remembered to count back to six months prior that I realized the source of my hair loss. Oh. Stig's death. My biopsy. Of course. Bodily and emotional trauma, all in one fell swoop. (I wrote about it here, if you are a new reader to the blog.)

Like the seemingly innocent Facebook reminder that popped up telling me that Stig had a birthday, my hair is clogging my brush, is swishing down in my face to remind me. To make me stop. To give a pause in the early moments of my day and remember a dear friend.

You aren't forgotten, friend. I promise you that. My glass is forever raised to you.

S & N, toga party style.

Adventures In Unemployment

September Edition

Realize that the guy who comes to mow the lawn on Wednesdays is here on a Tuesday.
Everything makes much more sense.

Think about writing a Young Adult novel about lesbian mermaids.

Realize that it would just be the plot of The Little Mermaid.

Realize that there are no new plots, anyway, so there. Lesbian mermaid and human princess.

Realize that mermaids may not recognize differences in human sexuality and all mermaids could be pansexual. Or asexual. Or fish-sexual.

Realize book idea would no longer by YA.

Think about dusting the bookshelves.

Think about mopping the floor.

Think about mopping the floor like Cinderella, with hot, sudsy water and bruised knees and singing.

Paint nails while thinking. (Color: Platinum Diamond)

Paint toenails. (Color: Same as above)
 
Think about baking bread.

Eat leftover broccoli and sesame tofu Chinese take-out.

Apply for a job on Indeed.com that already received a bazillion applications. Repeat until frustrated or sending applications to jobs already applied for 11 days prior. Repeat process on Monster and CareerBuilder just to be sure. 

Facebook.

More fucking Facebook.

Think about buying a lotto ticket and winning $200 million.

Realize that $200 million would probably be only half that after taxes were paid and wonder if $100 million is worth buying a lotto ticket.

Google the lyrics to "Rubber Ducky."

Try to decide whether it would be best to make a cup of tea or take a nap.

Wake up an hour later and check Facebook.

Realize that maybe during that nap there was a dream? Maybe you had a dream where you saw Paul McCartney walking down the street and you immediately dropped down into a exaggerated Wayne's World-esque "we're not worthy" bow and then maybe Paul McCartney said something like, Hey girl, wouldn't be on my knees on the street if I were you or people will get the wrong idea, but it was actually witty and clever? And did you really just dream about a Beatle making a blow-job joke?

Realize your subconscious made a reference to a movie you saw on cable 20 years ago and yet somehow your brain can't remember the periodic tables or your own phone number or the directions to the dentist.

Think your brain might have actually subconsciously remembered a blow-job joke that was in the movie and spend the next 20 minutes reading Wayne's World quotes on IMDb. (It didn't. And based on quotes alone, Wayne's World is a stupid movie.)

Realize you have wasted an hour on IMDb but now know more about former SNL cast members than Lorne Michaels.

Think about watching a few episodes of 30 Rock.

Think about clearing off the coffee table.

Think about the fleeting existence of life.

Think about coffee.

Realize that it is indeed Tuesday, not Wednesday, and that along with it being the night to take out the garbage and recycling for morning pick-up, this all repeats tomorrow.
 

Adulthood

Back in June, Sarah at Rainbow Reverie asked the question, "In what ways are you still a kid/teenager/generally irresponsible?" in her post 20 Ways In which I Am Not A Grown-Up. Her list was in preparation for the big 3-0 (a monumental number that tends to throw all of us for a loop). The ship has sailed on my 30-year benchmark (hello, 31!) but I strangely find myself no closer to complete grown-up-hood at 31 than at any other age. Why? 10 Reasons:

1.) I am writing a list of reasons why I am not a grown-up when I should be working.

2.) I stop for pizza after exercising at the gym. Which I eat on the drive home. By myself.

3.) Potato chips and ice cream ARE YES THEY ARE an acceptable dinner.

4.) In a side-by-side comparison of the summer when I was 15 years old and the summer I am 31 years old, not much has changed:

Natty, age 15: Watched Sailor Moon episodes, ate tons of hot dogs, ran around the woods with friends, lived at the neighbor's pool, stayed up late, baby-sat for $5 an hour in preparation for my first real job come Autumn.

Natalie, age 31: Watched Sailor Moon episodes, ate tons of (veggie) hot dogs, ran around outdoors with friends, lived at the community pool, stayed up late, wrote for 10 cents a word in preparation for a grand real job (or dependable freelancing) come Autumn?

Differences: All the activities at 31 included copious amounts of alcohol (hence the running-around-outdoors-in-the-dark), and when it finally came time to hit the hay, naked time with my significant other. At 15, hitting the hay meant a bowl of late-night cereal and Nick at Nite, before entering detailed handwritten pages in my various diaries.

5.) Once -- one singular time -- there was a rabbit in our backyard. Now every time I look out the window to the backyard I expect there to be a rabbit hanging out and munching on the clover.

6.) I wanted Matt to catch said rabbit and carry it to the local creek where my turtle friends live and see if they would race.

7.) I have turtle friends. Big as dinner plates. They eat hot dog buns and noodle casserole. (And apparently the neighbors take turns feeding them.) 

8.) No, really, I am procrastinating by writing this list instead of real work. We'll call it taking a break. This is not unprecedented behavior.

9.) On my office wall is a Xena: Warrior Princess calendar. It was my favorite Christmas gift last year from Matt. Proper grown-ups have calendars that feature stoic mountains with inspirational phrases. Or, you know, Doctor Who.

There's still a few months left of 2012 if you want your own! (Image via Amazon.)

10.) It seems when one reaches a certain age, swimming pool activity means sitting waist-deep in the water with a beverage in hand, sunglasses firmly planted over eye make-up, hair completely dry and body never getting wet above the navel. I am not one to shun various fun beverages, but my pool activity involves goggles and headstands and wet, tangled hair.

In all other ways, I'm sure I am a respectable and productive member of society. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go work eat Twizzlers and play on YouTube. As adults do.

We Didn't Break Up

I promise, we didn't.

I am walking up a steep lane to a small cottage nestled in thick bramble. The wooden cottage door is swollen shut, but I must get inside, for in this small hidden cottage there is a pale white-washed room holding a stoic oak table. On this table there is a blue ceramic bowl holding a bright red apple. Inside the apple is a seed, and carved almost imperceptibly on this small apple seed is one word, "write."

First, I must make my way up the lane, through the door, into the room. Sit at the table, study the curves of the blue bowl. Weigh the apple in bare, sweaty palms. Decide to take a bite. It's not an altogether unpleasant task, just takes time.

It's taken a solid two months, but I found the seed. Hello, dear Flâneur in the City readers. I missed you. What's new?

Badly Drawn Little Comics: Wild Saturday Night

Click to enlarge.

May this be a lesson to you all, kids. Don't drink and draw. Your beer bottles will come out all weird.

Saturday night with my husband, Matt. Wild times for nerds in love! Complete text for this badly drawn little comic below the jump.

Weekly Flâneur: Heroic

Captain America, Phoenix, some writer, Dazzler, and Batman. Click to enlarge.

I dunno, flâneurs. Sometimes, you're just walking down the sidewalk and BOOM. Superheroes. 

 Like, what can you do? Grab a shield and pose. Or duck, because bystanders usually get in the way during epic battles. Mostly pose, though.

N.C. Music Factory, aka Gotham, Charlotte, N.C., May 2012

A Twist of Metal

Tuesday

It started this way: Lucky Lefty, the boob I always liked the most, the one with the cute freckle and the one that rarely got in my way, has a lump. Only no one calls it a lump; the nurses walk around that word, the radiologist calls it a mass and a possible fibroadenoma. The first thing they told me: 1 out of 10 women are called back for a second mammogram following their very first. I am young. I’m not worried. It’s the ten-year rule that brings me in; my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the month after she turned 40. Her children should be tested for the cancer earlier; 10 years to the day. So here I go, early thirties and a mammogram.

The scheduling receptionist tells me I’m too young; wait until I’m 35. I want to tell her that it’s not like I’m doing it for kicks, but it’s nice to know there’s still something I’m still too young for.

The first mammogram appointment comes. I intentionally forget not to drink caffeine. Caffeine makes the breasts tender, but so do the 22 pounds of weight that compress them for imaging. A small percentage of women faint when this happens. Guess who’s one of them?

The second time around, I warn them. I may faint, with or without the 22 pounds of weight. Diet Coke at hand. There are two bright and cheerful nurses, one in training, to attend me. Like ladies-in-waiting for my boobs.

It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon, but the lights are dim and the walls window-less throughout the clinic. Good lighting to hide wrinkles. Good lighting to hide fear. The second mammogram is over quickly, and I am ushered into a waiting room. Still topless, a paper gown crinkling against the purse slung over my shoulder. If they see anything, they’ll do an ultrasound. No one says what they see just yet. When they come back for me, it’s down another window-less hallway into another wing. Radiology and Ultrasound.

In the ultrasound room, my boobs’ kind handmaids and I talk about The Bachelor (which I don’t watch) and I learn about Ben’s bad bachelor choices with That One Girl they don’t like. They cover my boobs with a warm gel and take a few test glances while we talk. My toplessness is routine, natural. The radiologist comes in and takes over. A mechanical wand slides through the warm gel on my breast and casts an image on a screen above my head. He points to a black mass. There it is. He doesn’t talk about reality TV, but about biopsies. I am scheduled for a needle biopsy at 8 in the morning Thursday.

My mother cries when I call and tell her. “It’s simple, Ma, I promise. Just a little needle. In and out.” It was different for her. They put her to sleep, cut her open. She cries, thinking that’s what’s going to happen to me. “There won’t even be a scar,” I assure her, though I have no idea. It sounds nicer to say.

I don’t want to call and tell anyone else. What would I say, anyway, if I called? I tell my husband in person, but no one else needed to know. Better to keep it hidden, just in case. Just in case it is nothing. Better to be natural, calm, speak of other things.

Anyone else I speak to that Tuesday heard normal things. Like the recent email from Stig, planning to visit in August, wanting to know if North Carolina had waterfalls. We’ll go to the Appalachian mountains, I say, visit Sliding Rock.

But even through this, there were gnawing questions behind every word. If the lump in my breast was the Big C, was cancer, would I be able to slide down waterfalls? Stig struggled for years with dialysis for his kidneys, fighting the enemy within his own body, but still managed to travel and live in London. If I have to fight, the thing I must fight will be above my own beating heart. How the hell do I fight that?

Talking With Myself

Things I have said outloud in the past 48 hours:

• Said alone, in the kitchen:

"Stop it. Just stop it. You're spaghetti. You're not that important."

Quit with the boiling and the spilling. God. Now I gotta clean that up.

• Said alone, in my office:

"Would I sleep with Bruno Mars or not? I can't decide."

He would catch a grenade for me, but he also has a bouffant.

• Said to Matt:

"Will you buy me this hat with a beard on it? It's a hat. With a beard on it.
It's the perfect disguise."

Yeah, I'm still on that. But. Seriously. Hat-Beard!

• Said alone, in the car:

"You cannot set fire to rain, Adele! That is not how rain works!"

Girl, you're British. You should know this.

Cinderella

It happened so fast.

The swirl of my dress. The smooth slab of newly laid concrete under my bare feet. The breaking of the stranger's glass on the dance floor. The club was new, a renovated warehouse on the edge of uptown, the crowd small for a preview opening. My shoes kicked off to dance. My bare feet on cool cement. The glass. It was fast and inevitable.

I hopped to the edge of the dance floor with the aid of my friend Mags; perched myself on a raised platform by the bar. Before I could even look at my foot, he was there. Kneeling down in his good suit, cradling my bleeding foot in both hands on his lap, his handkerchief pressed to stop the blood. Maybe then. Maybe that was the moment I knew.

Last night we watched Manhattan. It was past midnight, me with a cup of Earl Grey, my husband with  a decaf coffee. We stay up too late. We watch movies at odd hours. It started years ago, when we were first dating. His house was a small brick rental, a dark cave surrounded by old growth. He didn't live there long. The entire back garden was a swampy mess of bamboo and mud. Once we saw a rat by the edge of the fence. But the house was clean, and the bamboo shaded the windows, casting a pale greenish glow in the afternoon sun, and the front yard had a swing hanging from a branch of an old oak tree, perfect for two people to share. On Sundays we would sleep late. Watch movies with coffee and unbrushed hair. Did we love each other yet? Were we, or weren't we? We watched Annie Hall in our sweatpants and sweetened our drinks with kisses.

At night, he'd cook dinner for me, while I prattled around his house. I'd kill bugs hiding behind bookcases and never tell him. He'd startle at the bang of my shoe. What was that? Nothing. I'd wash down the kitchen counters, make the bed. Kiss him goodbye at the door. Look back to the lit front porch as I drove away. My own apartment would be cold when I returned.

In bed last night I asked him, could you pinpoint the moment you fell in love with me? It was raining outside in short bursts, on and off. No, he says. I nest in the folds of our bed. Me either. Our bedside lighting was a wedding gift, with satin tan lampshades. Sometimes I miss the green of the bamboo shading. His body is like a radiator, and my feet grow warm next to his. I don't remember falling asleep, but I know I reached out a hand to scratch the space in between his shoulder blades. I reach out a hand just to feel him near me. 

My friend Mags and I called each other Gypsy Sisters. We were wanderers. She sat in my London flat and gifted me nail polish and suntan lotion from Doha. I took her for pints at the Black Friars pub and we watched a small mouse brave the carpeted floor for crisp crumbs. And years ago when she held my hand on the dance floor at the new warehouse club, I stepped on a piece of glass. I didn't feel any pain. Too tipsy.

He held my foot gently, as if it were a wounded bird. Flightless. Mags gave a sigh in my ear. Look at him! He's so sweet! His eyes raked mine in search of tears. None. I watched him in quiet fascination. He washed the cut with bottled water, stopped the bleeding. Searched for glass embedded in flesh. Worried.  I spoke. Don't get blood on your suit! He didn't care. His hands mentally grounded me against the sway of alcohol; his hands ceased the risk of infection. There's no scar. He found my sandals and worked the small clasps. Tenderly slid it on my injured foot. No more wounds tonight, OK? Gave me a hand up. Kissed me. Sent me back to dancing and to wandering with a rust-stained handkerchief for his troubles. Maybe then I knew. Maybe that was the moment, with Mags' sigh and my bleeding foot and a broken glass and Matt with both hands lovingly holding on to me in pure care and concern. It happened so fast. I knew I loved him. Maybe then.

I fell in love with him.