I’m on my return flight home, although technically I’m not on the flight. I’m sitting at gate A-11 at the Detroit Airport, waiting to board my delayed flight to Tampa.
Oh, airplanes. Nothing seems to fascinate and irritate people more. My Delta flight from Buffalo to Detroit took off 50 minutes later than its scheduled departure time, which means when we landed I had to haul ass across the airport to catch my connecting flight to Tampa.
When I reached gate A-11, I learned that my flight to Tampa was delayed an hour-and-a-half, giving me time to order a sammy from Quiznos and watch the Factory Girl DVD I purchased a couple days ago from a grocery store in Buffalo. (You know how I feel about Sienna Miller.)
Filled with a sort of detached glee, I picked up a family-sized bag of Reese’s Pieces. I figured if I wasn’t going to make it home for Dancing With the Stars, I might as well make it a Blockbuster night airport lounge-style.
The guy who sat across the aisle from me on the flight from Buffalo didn’t share in my amusement.
“Fuck,” he griped as he approached the Delta desk and learned of our delay. “You’ve got to be friggen kidding me.”
I knew he had a suitcase full of thawing Sahlen’s hotdogs – a typical take-home for many native Buffalonians. Hot dog-lovers claim Sahlen’s makes the best hot dog, but it’s all intestines to me.
A brief rant before I board my flight to Buffalo.
If I were a Catholic granny, I’d use the word “miffed,” but since I’m not a Catholic granny, I’m going to use the word pissed.
This is going to sound so bratty, but I’m putting it out there anyway. I’m flying United. I never fly United. I ALWAYS fly Southwest because the flights from Tampa to Buffalo are direct and cheap. For this trip home (for Ro’s bridal shower) I booked through Travelocity because MANY MOONS ago I signed up for a Travelocity MasterCard thinking I’d accumulate enough points to circle the globe twice.
Wrong. Over the course of four years I barely amassed enough points to get from Tampa to Miami — until I transferred my Discover balance and earned a $100 credit toward one Travelocity flight, which is a pittance considering the people at Travelocity MasterCard duped me into signing up for this card. I would have never signed up if I knew there was a $30 annual fee.
$30 annual fee x 4 years = $120. So technically today’s NON-DIRECT UNITED flight cost me an additional $20.
Now, want to hear something even more irritating?
I didn’t want to check luggage. I like to travel light. (Most of the time.) So I shipped a box of stuff to my parent’s house. It cost me $25, but took a load off my back, so to say. I was so proud of this calculation that I called Ro last night to BRAG about it..
“WHAT? YOU’RE NOT CHECKING A BAG?”
“Nope. I like to travel light.”
“You’re crazy.”
She was right.
This morning, the kind folks at United informed me that my tiny suitcase was too cumbersome to carry on. Irked, I wheeled it back to the check-in counter, where I was promptly charged $25 for it.
$30 annual fee x four years + $25 USPS shipping + $25 luggage fee = $170.
Oh right. Plus the cost of the flight: $220.
$390.
Even more aggravating, we’ve since boarded and I’m sitting next to a woman whose carry-on luggage is bigger than mine and currently shoved into the overhead compartment. Lucky bitch.
___
PS. Do not EVER sign up for a Travelocity MasterCard. It’s a sham.
Most of the time I take what I do for granted.
I think it comes with the job, or at least eventually it does. In the beginning, I used to get high off the fact that people told me things for no good reason other than I was a reporter and they were being asked questions. I won’t get into the psychosis behind why people feel compelled to reveal so much to a complete stranger because journalist-turned-egomaniac Chuck Klosterman did a pretty good job of exploring the subject in the first chapter of his latest pop culture manifesto, Eating the Dinosaur.
I’ve been interviewing people since I was 16 years old, documenting their triumphs and tragedies and the minutia in between, trying each time to make it seem as if I wasn’t a reporter but a fly on the wall. Hopelessly unobtrusive.
The goal of a feature writer (most of the the time) is to render a story from the advantage of having observed a person in their natural environment, which to be honest, is an advantage few journalists have. The construct of the natural environment is perverted by the mere presence of a journalist, so unless you’re reporting undercover (or an amazingly gifted reporter freelancing for Esquire and best friends with your subject) the people you interview are usually hyper-aware of the fact that what they’re saying will be quoted, misquoted, interpreted and misinterpreted.
For some people, being interviewed and written about is the ultimate validation. For others, it’s painful. Some people would rather retake their high school SATS than sit down with a reporter and answer questions. Other people can’t avoid it. It comes with their job. They’re in positions that people want to know about. They do things that are interesting. They create things that are clever or participate in things that are entertaining.
Mostly, these are the people I talk to.
It’s 35 degrees out and eerily beautiful in St. Petersburg, Fla. I walked the pug twice today, exhaling hot breaths slowly and deliberately, staring at the way it hung in front of my nose and floated away. A ghostly cloud of carbon dioxide. It was as if I’d never seen my breath before.
I wore long johns today under a pair of running shorts. I wore a scarf all day inside the house and an Oliver Twist hat to the grocery store. Joe’s cheeks were rosy after our afternoon bike ride and my morning coffee burned going down like whiskey or an iodine injection before a CAT scan.
The bay was calm, flat and gray and people buried themselves under layers of sweatshirts and scarves, tossing tennis balls to their dogs in the park, jogging in place to stay warm. My ears turned red and hard when we were pedaling, but when I tried to pull my hood up under my bike helmet, the helmet wouldn’t fit, so I pedaled through the prickliness.
It was gloriously cold out, but if you’d have met me when I was 20, I promise you I would have cursed the weather with a furious fist. Western New Yorkers may be a hardy bunch, but we’re nothing if not expertly dissatisfied with the weather 300 days of the year. The weather, among other things, is what makes us exotic. How creatures can live comfortably in sub-zero climates blows peoples’ minds. What kind of creatures would choose to live this way with such utopian options south of the Mason-Dixon Line?
Of course now I miss the tundra (in small doses anyway) and as I lie here in bed listening to a Florida news station blow a perfectly chilly 40-degree day out of proportion, I can’t help but summon my inner grizzly bear.
“Cover your plants, folks. Remember to bring your pets inside. Farmers are working overnight to save their crops from the cold. Don’t forget to turn the heat on in your car before your morning commute. Some bay area students will have to dress extra warm tomorrow. How one Largo middle school is coping without heat. Next: more tips on how to stay warm in an arctic freeze.”
One Tampa news station posted these actual tips: Wear multiple layers of loose-fitting, warm clothing. Do not use charcoal or other fuel-burning devices indoors, such as grills that produce carbon monoxide. Stay dry and in wind-protected areas.
PUT ON A PAIR OF FUZZY SOCKS AND GET OVER IT. For criminy’s sake, it was so insanely hot in October the only pumpkin I was ever proud of rotted two weeks before Halloween.
—
PS. Dragon Mohawk hat by Bella Hats. Visit Bella’s Etsy shop. She’s a violinist from Grand Rapids, Mich. who homeschools her children and makes an adorable product.
The man with no hair who you see in the freeze frame of this YouTube video is my sister Heelya’s boyfriend Brian. He buzzed his head last week. He says it’s his new Chris Daughtry look. Joe filmed this little segment, among others, on Christmas day as we milled about our house cooking dinner and opening presents before Joe’s parents and siblings arrived for what would be a grand feast in the backyard. (To my family and friends back home in New York: yes we ate dinner outside under the carport in our backyard. It was warm and even a bit humid. Yes, I said humid.)
Before I explain the significance of this video, I should first point out the significance of yesterday.
Yesterday was my first Christmas together with Joe. Sure, it was our first Christmas as husband and wife, but it was also our first Christmas together, logistically speaking. I’m always in Western New York with my family and he’s always in Tampa with his, so the fact that we could celebrate under the same roof, much less the same state, was pretty awesome. I was so grateful for that.
It was also the first time in 16 years that my father has spent Christmas with his parents –– my Oma and Opa, who spend their winters in a retirement community about an hour south of me.
Now, add PK, who also lives in St. Pete, and Heelya and Brian, who live in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and you’ve got a whole bunch of Kurps together for Christmas who might otherwise be scattered up and down the east coast. It was wonderful. Our house was loud and crowded. When Joe’s siblings arrived, followed by his parents and grandfather, it got even louder and more crowded in that colorful bustling warm-energy way. I loved it. Ain’t no Christmas without a ruckus. As I shimmied past pairings of people in the hallway and the living room, carrying trays topped with cheese and veggies, guacamole and hummus, I couldn’t help but think of my Nana and Papa’s Christmas Eve gatherings back home in New York.
(I should also mention that this was the first time ever that my mom didn’t spend Christmas with her parents. Nana: I know you’re reading this. I thought of you the entire night, and now that I have one Christmas dinner under my apron I can finally fully appreciate all those years you hosted Christmas Eve at your house.)
Anyway. Joe and I decided to set up a long table Last Supper-style under the carport in our backyard, which turned out to be a genius idea. My dad strung lights and my mom and I crafted pine and berry napkin ring holders out of garland. Joe fired up the deep fryer and from scratch made better mozzarella sticks and chicken wings than any bar and grill I’ve ever been to.
With my mom’s help, we cooked turkey and ham, mashed sweet potato yams and set out a salad bar. Rosey made corn casserole and Joe’s mom made lasagna. Oma supplied her signature chocolate butter cream cake and so many cookies the tray collapsed when we cleared the table. Three pugs attended the celebration: Cubbie of course, Uncle Homer (my parent’s pug) and Owen (Heelya’s pug), who sadly was suffering from a ruptured ear drum and spent the night with his head cocked lamely to one side.
I wrote this the day I returned from my honeymoon and never posted it. It’s for you romantics.
…
It was important to Joe that we go on our honeymoon the day after our wedding. One momentous thing followed by another momentous thing. Wedding then honeymoon. No lag time between. He called it “getting shot out of a cannon.” There would be immense build up, followed by drunken well wishes and champagne toasts, culminating in a spark that when lit would launch us into the autumn horizon like a rocket, propelled by a combustible mixture of red wine and roses that no amount of romantic lollygagging through Upstate New York could or would encumber.
So here I am at 3 p.m. on September 25. Back in Florida. Back on my couch with the pug by my side and Joe asleep in the bedroom after insisting he cover most of the 23-hour drive from Buffalo to St. Petersburg himself.
We had built fires in the woods near Montréal, Québec, ferried our car from Plattsburgh, N.Y. to Burlington, V.T., purchased armfuls of produce on the side of the road and then washed it all down with champagne beside a waterfall. When Joe suggested we drive straight through the night, I didn’t protest. What was one more adventure in the month of September? We were in such a bliss bubble on our drive home that even a blown tire in West Virginia seemed cute. Well, to me anyway.
All the clichés about time and how fast it goes are true. I didn’t fully grasp that until now. Sometimes when you step outside of your body and take a second to swallow a moment, you can see the slow-motion passage of time. One fat molecule freeing itself from another fat molecule like liquid taffy. Gelatinous time.
About two months ago, Joe turned to me and asked, “You wont get depressed when the wedding’s over, right?”
“Depressed? No. I’m looking forward to getting my life back.”
I was up to my waist in wedding planning and work. Luggage-sized bags had formed under my eyes and inside these hollow caves I carried a never-ending to-do list of tasks.
“OK,” he said, smiling, knowing full well I was full of shit. “Just checking.”
Three months have passed since that conversation and now I’m doing laundry and unpacking suitcases, giggling to myself as I separate the various memories from the last three weeks into a cardboard box that I will save forever. Wistful already.
Despite getting only two hours of sleep last night, the bags under my eyes are gone and in their place is something new. I can’t really describe it because part of me thinks it’s purely psychological, although Joe, in his usual Joe-way, tried to describe it three nights ago in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“You look wife-like,” he said.
“Wife-like? Oh God. Really?”
“Why are you acting like it’s an insult?”
“I don’t know. Because wife-like sounds so matronly.”
“Well, if matronly is beautiful. You look matronly.”
I think it was then that I blushed, and when I blushed the space under my eyes filled with something warm and dewy. I noticed it this morning when I walked into the bathroom and saw that he had unpacked all the hotel toiletries we collected on our honeymoon and arranged them on the vanity as if we were still on vacation.
This picture is five years old. I am 22 years old here. Fresh out of journalism school and a new hire at The Osprey Observer, a newspaper that no longer exists. I look bitchy in this picture. Cold and sinister. Actually, I don’t look like myself at all. My hair hasn’t been this long in five years and the Blueberry iMac I’m using expired shortly after this picture was taken. I’m wearing a pink button-down shirt from the Goodwill that I just recently donated, among other things, to The Salvation Army.
The Osprey Observer, though now defunct, was published by the same family-owned string of community newspapers I currently write for.
The guy who took this picture, his name is Adam. He married my friend Kat who also worked for the paper. They live in Laramie, Wyo. now and I miss them like hell. When none of us had families or spouses or boyfriends or girlfriends to spend holidays with, Kat and Adam would host dinner parties at their home in Bradenton. There’s this beautiful scene in the movie Funny People that reminds me of these dinner parties. If you’ve not seen the movie, rent it when it comes out. Netflix it. When you watch the scene, where a group of young aspiring actors gets together for Thanksgiving dinner at an apartment in L.A., you’ll know what I’m talking about.
My eyes are narrowed and my lips are pursed in this picture because Adam liked to say things that would piss me off. There were these little grommet holes in our cubicle walls that if you stared through them, you’d see into your neighbor’s cube. This was how I first met Adam: through a shared hole in our cubicle walls, his one eye peering suspiciously at mine like two office-dwelling Cyclopes.
I knew nothing of Adam, but I certainly knew Kat. My editor had mailed me a stack of Observers prior to my move so I could get a better feel for the paper. Her byline was everywhere. She had written a story about a chef on Longboat Key named Marcella Hazen that I read a dozen times on the flight from Buffalo to Tampa.
Behind that glare I am scared shitless. Although scared shitless is not an ideal place to be, it defines you and drives you. I remember driving back to my apartment at night and pinching myself because I couldn’t believe I had a job as a reporter in a town with a ballet, an opera, an orchestra, and a circus! I was a nobody from a town nobody had heard of, wearing my first pair of high heels, barely sleeping at night because my nervous system was so shot from the move.
My bones, my brain, my organs were in shock. I was a fish out of water, more determined to find my place than ever before. I’ve not experienced this kind of hungry ambition in years, which frustrates me because above all, I consider, or rather I considered, myself ambitious.
Stressed. Hectic. Busy. Chaotic. Overwhelmed. Exhausted.
Stressed.Hectic.Busy.Chaotic.Overwhelmed.Exhausted.
StressedHecticBusyChaoticOverwhelmedExhausted
Crazy how we often use these words to describe our lives. Crazy how we always promise ourselves it’ll get better next week. Or better next month. Or better next year. Crazy how life doesn’t bend that way, no matter how much we think the passage of time will make things easier.
Once the wedding is over. Once I graduate. Once he graduates. Once I finish this story. Once I lose 10 pounds. Once the baby starts to sleep through the night. Once I retire. These are just a few of the things I hear from people I know, including myself.
Once that happens something else happens. Worries and fears grow up with us, as do our coping mechanisms, which is why I think getting older is supposed to make us wiser.
On my kitchen counter is an index card I scribbled a grocery list on six months ago. It’s 3-by-5 inches of pure ordinariness except for one thing: six lines down, in the space between memory card from Radio Shack and butter, my best friend Ro wrote, “a 2nd residence in NY.”
Last April, she and my sister Heelya spent their Easter break at my place in St. Pete. I came across this card while I was cleaning my kitchen, long after they flew back to Buffalo. I was going to toss it in the garbage until I got to line six and read Ro’s note.
A second residence in New York.
Funny little Ro, I thought, sneaking in such a humble request on my grocery list. And then I stuck the card on my refrigerator and laughed and cried dumbly at once. The laundry was humming in the washer, three deadlines were hanging over my head, an engagement ring was on my finger and an empty container of cottage cheese was on the counter. Humdrum hoo-haa. Toilet paper, mustard and bread. Check.
Life is stressful and hectic, overwhelming and exhausting, but little things are what make one day better than the next. Often they go uncelebrated as we habitually explain to family, friends and coworkers that we’re busy, exhausted and overwhelmed, as we apologize for being late to work and apologize for snapping at our mothers and apologize for pissing off our husbands.
This post is in praise of little things, so many little things that I chose to focus on just one.
Well, maybe two.
The second little thing happened last night before I fell asleep. It was short and sweet and fleeting.
As I clapped* off the light in our bedroom, Joe asked: “Did you see me this morning out your office window?”
“In the driveway?”
“Did you see me blow you a kiss?”
“Oh no! Shit! I missed it!”
“That’s OK,” he said. “It’ll be waiting for you tomorrow. In fact, I think I hear it knocking on your window right now.”
“I hear it! It sounds jilted.”
“Yeah. Don’t forget to let it in.”
“I wont.”
And I didn’t
—
*Yes, we have a Clapper. I think applause in the bedroom is good for your ego.
Until I get my photos from kate backdrop Photographer Wendy, these random shots from my dad’s camera will have to do. Here’s me & Joe with my Oma & Opa on the top of HoliMont ski hill in Ellicottville, N.Y.
Joe and I with our brilliant officiant Zac Chase – the man who insisted I ask Joe out.
The wedding party and the perfect wedding veil– and what a party it was.
Joe played the guitar when I walked down the aisle. The song was one he had come up with (coincidentally) on the same night we met.
Papa and Nana with my cousins Reb and Erik. I love this photo. A lot.
My cousins Krystle and Cory are newlyweds too! They got married in Buffalo a month ago. After the wedding they drove us back to our suite in their yellow Hummer and 15 minutes later brought us back takeout from The Gin Mill. Cory, unable to find salt packets for our french fries, decided to swipe the bar’s glass salt shaker and stick it in the bag with our food. I’m forever grateful for this and thus plan to use the salt shaker forever.
MEN IN BLACK: Adam (my future brother-in-law), Zipper Boy, Joe’s brother Phil, and of course Joe.
MY GIRLS: Leilani, Rosey & Ro.
MY GIRLS, TAKE TWO: Yuuki, Heelya & PK.
This was the view coming up the hill.
This was the view coming down the hill.
And this was the view on the top of the hill: me, Joe, Grandpa Ra and Joe’s mom, MaryAnn.
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