Scribble scribble / goody goody

I'm reading this love letter to the LUWS (lower upper west side, essentially the deservingly glorified basement of the UUWS) written a while ago by Nora Ephron on Lena Dunham's recommendation.  It's likely anyone who's caught more than a handful of episodes of GIRLS now considers themselves on first name basis with Lena or at least in kindred company with her character Hannah, and I'm no different...  But I skimmed Lena's piece on Nora earlier this morning and thought I'd read the phrase Goody Goody where actually it said "Scribble Scribble" the title of a collection of articles Nora Ephron had written on the media in the 70s.

And anyway... that got me thinking about my first love and subsequent heartbreak... the night when Nick B. came to tell me in Day Middle School's atrium that Mike didn't want to "go with me" anymore... the tears my friends and I shed for the remaining two hours of the dance we were at as we mourned the door to our childhoods' closing and the fact that none of us had yet been asked to slowdance with any of the boys we liked...the pink fitted sweatpants and DARE t-shirt I moped around in the next two days and the more socially acceptable green leggings and Limited Too sweatshirt I changed into before going to face my new reality at school Monday morning on my mother's insistence...

It would appear that I had been dumped due to the fact that my elementary school love had peaked the fancy of kissing-Gen, who would become one of my best friends and fellow nookgirls as the years went on, and that - as he told so and so who told so and so who told so and so - he'd had Nick B. break up with me at that dance because of what a "goody goody" I was.

GOODY GOODY?!

It still somehow cuts to my core.  Ha.

Luckily though, the pain recedes, and I have the advice Nora Ephron gave Lena Dunham: "You can’t meet someone until you’ve become what you’re becoming."

How on earth could I have known what I was becoming at 10 if I still don't at 27?

Furry Tailz

I'm off to my second to last Level 2 Musical Improv Class right now with this in my head:




Utter brilliance, amiright?

Goin to the chapel...

Usually I leave the mushy blogging to my mamadukes but I am all bursting with love right now having gone to my best friend from kindergarten's wedding last night where I got to see her start an incredibly happy "grown up" life with my 9th grade crush.

Most of Newton made it out to the best party of the year so far at the gorgeous Granite Links plus a handful of my best friend from kindergarten's and my college roommates.  Because yeah, that happened, and life imitated the art of all of those classic teen TV shows like Saved By the Bell, Boy Meets World and 90210 and we went to the same college AND lived together...

and I tell people this story and love it as much now as I did in the moment, but one time sophomore year on the Heights, my best friend from kindergarten and I were getting ready in the bathroom we shared on our side of our 8 man suite, putting mascara and blush on, blowdrying our hair and what not, and it occurred to me/us that what we were doing in REAL life was exactly what we had played years ago when we would pretend to be getting ready for date nights with our then non-existant boyfriends in our apartment we shared as 20somethings.

True to fact that night sophomore year we DID have boyfriends coming over to pick us up.  Of course, mine came and went, hers took the plunge and has been in it / is in it for the long haul since then.

But my gosh if they weren't both BEAMING last night.  Just so freaking happy.  And no less happy than they would have been if they'd gotten engaged and married 4 or 5 years ago when she was more than ready to run down that aisle with him.  It's a marathon not a sprint, and it's been entirely worth the wait. 

It's always always worth the wait.

Her sorellina made me cry with the toast she made at the reception... admitting to having to sneakily play with my best friend from kindergarten's barbies while we were at school when she and their bambina sorella were home and she made no bones about not wanting to have to wait long to be an auntie, you just knew there was so much love in the Quincy air and reverence for family and commitment and man, it was just the best. 

Bring on the next 4 in the next 4 months.  I can't get enough of these weddings.

27 things I'm taking or leaving

I'm basically obsessed with everything that is "our late twenties."  My late 20s specifically, but the collective late 20s too.  I've had conversations in the past month with a handful of my faves who all agree this is quite an amazing time of life.

I'm also reading Bethenny Frankel's book, which I found in the bff's little sister's room while I was house sitting in Westchester this weekend.  For the longest time he couldn't remember who he'd last given it to.

Anyway, as such, I've been introduced to her concept of taking or leaving it.  And I like it.  And I just cleaned out my storage unit FINALLY and have come across some remnants of my mid-twenties, so now I'm faced with this interesting opportunity to physically take or leave parts of my past.  Some are easy to discard, some I'm happy to be bringing back to the future.

Here are 27 things I'm taking into or leaving out of my late 20s.

1. My CD collection (because it's never been impressive, but it will also never get old)
2. My job as an agent until I've made an extra $30k/yr
3. and this hair product I got in Australia four years ago, because I have found nothing like it stateside
4. (oh those are all takes, by the way) my first leave is furniture I found on the side of the road, it's time
5. Also leaving any shoes that are uncomfortable 
6. And/or any shoes that can't be salvaged by the cobbler
7. Also any jeans that haven't been hemmed and are frayed at the bottom
8. I'm taking my BC crewneck sweatshirt, cause the things practically vintage
9. Leaving my college bf's high school sweatshirt - actually not even just leaving it, giving it back to him this weekend so he can give it to his current gf
10. Taking my Nantucket Reds skirt OBVIOUSLY
11. Taking my Nantucket Scrapbook (DITTO)
12. Leaving my yearbook in my parents' attic, sorrynotsorry, Mum, one of these days I'll clear my ish out of there
13. But not any time soon because I'm also leaving my storage unit for good (for now) - seriously, it's like $1200 a year I need for my friends' wedding fund
14. I'm taking my Broadway dreams and my plans to get a sitcom
15. I'm taking the book - in a new direction - but also into publication (is that the noun of publishing?)
16. I'm leaving my notions of getting an MFA in writing or acting although
17. I'm taking my LSAT prep book - just in case!  (My dad'll love that)
18. I'm taking certain phone numbers I think it's fun to keep in my phone "Special Friend's, the photog's, Justin Fender Like The Guitar's" and "Sally (my therapist in Boston)'s"
19. I'm leaving others that it's really not worth it or appropriate for me to still have a tap of my fingertip away
20. I'm leaving teenaged drama and angst
21. But I'm taking passion and my love of love and Improv
22. I'm taking my 26.2 Bumper Sticker - HOLLER BOSTON 2012
23. Taking this cute off the cuff list of 25 things my mom said there were to love about me on the envelope of my 25th birthday card

   24.  I'm taking the picture of all of us in The Nook on our last day of high school
   25.  And the nook girls, my BC roomies, a few of the other 18 roomies I've had since    

          graduating, my SATC-like NY friends, my 2 favorite co-workers, my sisterfriends 

          (my whole family of course), the bff, his brother, my ACK roomies, and so on

          (the friends who lift me up and lighten my days with laughter)
   26.  I'm taking ambition, pride, humility, gratitude, courage and "The Secret"
   27.  And I'm leaving regret.  Life's too short.  It's also only just begun.

Partyfail

I've made and botched my fourth foray into online dating.

Count it.

The problem is I'm agreeable, a conversationalist, patient and a romantic at heart.

Oh, and that I'm going to 6 weddings in the next 6 month.  3 of them being my best friends' (my best elementary school, high school and college best friends'), so I've got this gloriously heightened view of the importance of committed relationships in the lives of late 20somethings.

So for a hot second I entertained the idea of taking a boyfriend this Summer when a spark match struck up conversation with me and started to do his best to woo me.

I'm just not that into him though and just not that into dating someone just so I can say I'm dating someone.  Even if he is super sweet, successful, worldly and taken with me. 

So as I do my best to strip my texts of their coy nature and send this boy a clear message concerning my disinterest (he, who has made a habit of texting me before 9 on weekdays and before 10 on weekends, and who queried "how can I court you if I can't see you?" in response to my insane-as-usual schedule), I'm catching up on Game of Thrones, which is way more fun that making get-to-know-you conversation while folding socks and packing a suitcase (that was the winner 3rd date we "went" on) and re-defining "romanticism."

I like to fall in love with guys I'm friends with first.  I have no business swimming in the online dating pool.  That's a school of gourami and worse hypostomus punctatuss fish.

In the words of the wise song I sang in George M back in the day, "I wanna be wooed first, put me in the mood first, I need that old moon above.  She's taken my glove.  My hand someone's kissing, my parasol's missing.  Take back your 20th century love."

(I mean you sort of have to see the song in action to fully understand the significance of the glove and parasol bits, which are probably only in there anyway to fit the rhyme scheme, but the moral of the story is, what's with the rush??  The best is yet to come and always worth the wait).

A note from Nomadic Naugs

I spent 7 days in Boston before boarding the 11:59 megabus to NY last night and hopping on the first metro north train from Grand Central to Pelham at 5:35 this AM so I could cab from Pelham station to the bff's parents' house where I'm house and dog sitting for 5 days.

The pup was happy to see me bright and early, for sure,  but I gotta tell you - full time fun naugs might not be slowing down but the nomad in me's lost some serious steam since the days when I'd do there and backs for work and whatnot, and I'm more aware of the importance of pacing ones' self than ever.

Thanks Boston 2012.

I was on the go every day and night that I spent this last trip up to MA, and my final day there, I remarked aloud every twenty minutes or so, "I have to go pack my suitcase."  But fast forward to 10:41 following the celebration of the bambina sorella's graduation and I had still yet to go actually do it.

I haphazardly threw together my clothes, work papers, and reading material from the bus ride to Boston and my pops drove me to South Station in the nick of time.

BUT THEN - here's where this "and then I found $20 sort of story" gets really good! - there was a DETOUR on the PIKE.... so we were cutting it uber close cutting through the Back Bay to South Station and THEN just cause it was thank kind of night THE ESCALATOR TO THE SECOND LEVEL OF SOUTH STATION WAS NOT FUNCTIONING.

So I had to haul my damn well traveled pink plastic suitcase up a flight of stairs in my gold flippy floppies.

And I was fine, cause the bus left 10 minutes late. But lords, lords, if that just is NOT the sort of stuff I want to be dealing with in my late 20s late at night.

Mirror Mirror on the wall

I'm definitely an old soul.

When I'd finally wrangled my angst into check, I started to no longer loathe working with the old ladies at the office of Lexington-Dermatology where I summer-(jobb)-ed for six or seven years, and I realized there was a limitless amount of joy to be gleaned from the stories my colleagues would share with me day in and day out about their tumultuous courtships and wild single girl adventures of yore.  Most of them were married by the time they were 22, but they'd still managed to pack some serious peaks and valleys into the narratives of their local lives.  None of them were from farther than a few towns away, so they mostly regaled me with the tales of life as they'd known it while young & healthy in Newton, Waltham, and Watertown... Before taking trips for their 35th wedding anniversaries to Europe or buying their summer homes in Maine at 40something, the farthest their travels took them were down the Cape, up to Hampton Beach, if they were lucky to NYC to see a Broadway show and if they were luckier yet, all the way to California to meet a crazy aunt who'd flown the coop and been living the high life out there fake eyelashes, gogo boots and all. 

One of my favorites from the office, Annette, passed away my senior year of high school and I lost a surrogate grandmother and gained a guardian angel I'm certain.  I grew close to the golden girls there, and they may still have driven me nuts with their learning curves when we'd upgrade to newer scheduling software on the computers, but they're some of the neatest and nicest women I've ever worked with.  And it doesn't strike me as strange at all to think of the friendships I'd formed with many of them 40 - 60 years my seniors.

Similarly, it no longer bothers me that my best workouts are always the ones I have rounding the circuit at Curves the Women's gym with the old ladies who spend 30 minutes huffing, puffing, and gossiping their way from machine to cardio pad to machine and so on each morning, afternoon, and night.  There are mornings - like this one - when I'm more entertained by the hour it takes me to run there, do the circuit, properly stretch and supplementally lift some freeweights, and run back to Elsworth, than I am even by the hours I spend watching SMASH on the treadmill or arc trainer at NYSC.  And that makes the dual memberships more than worth it.

Today as I was leaving, I saw the 5'6" husband of about a 5'1" woman who'd been on the circuit with me asking the other ladies whether they'd caught the games last night and giving her all on the handfull of machines she's able to do without hurting her back or knees - she was a looker but somewhat worse for the wear,  a cancer survivor I gathered from conversation she made.  This woman was probably in her late 70s, and her husband, in his Red Sox wind breaker, reading a newspaper, in the hallway just outside the door of the women-only fitness center, had to be up there as well.  He walked in with her and asked "all clear?" of the dressing room before going in to grab the folding chair he was sitting on in the hall, and he exchanged pleasantries with the ladies coming and going in the time his wife spent working out.  And she told one of the other ladies, she was trying to come every morning this week.

And as I left the little gym to set off on my run back to my parents' house (I'm in Newton to see the FINAL Naugler graduate from NNHS tonight at Conte Forum due to the same seemingly annual rain that sent the other 4 of us indoors for graduation ceremonies in '02, '04, '06, and '10) I'll be darned if I did't say a little prayer asking to someday have that sort of support.  A little cheerleader of a husband, who'd sit outside reading the paper to pass the time but really to make sure I was alright still working out into my 80s.

Amazing.  Adorable.  A long way off.

In the meanwhile, I saw Snow White and the Huntsman with my mom and dad two nights ago (after sending the bambina sorella off to her prom with Prince Jake, her bf) and *spoiler alert* the last scene was BOSS (an expression I have picked up hanging out with my little sisters and their friends the past few days).  Why? You ask. Because breaking the mold, this fairytale retelling did not wrap up with the princess & prince (or hunky huntsman Chris Hemsworth who's true love kiss woke her face up, or duke/best guy friend William who wouldn't lose her a second time) living happily ever after.  It ended with Snow White (a less annoying Kristen Stewart than I was expecting) being like, simmah down people, I've got a kingdom to run.  I'll get around to picking which of these dreamboats I want to spend the rest of my life running it with when I get my own ish together.

Sigh.

It's good to be back, blogosphere.