accidents

There was a whole mess of traffic in Brooklyn and no left turns and it took forever to get on the bridge, and I should have been more terrified by what he said.

“They should just kick out everyone who isn’t from here,” he declared, before realizing that that would mean I’d have to go. “Except you,” he corrects.

“What if I got deported?”

“I might have to marry you.”

“Really?”

“I’d think about it.”

Another day in the same car but on a different bridge, I claimed to have not kissed that many boys before him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells me, “ . . . as long as I’m the last one.”

He hears it the way it sounds to me, not quite how he meant.

These things come out as accidents, I know. He’s as cautious with this thing as I am, maybe more so. But the scariest thing of all is that these things he accidentally says, they don’t scare me so much at all.

~beatrix

yuppie food weekend, or why you'll stop reading this blog

let's pick up where we left off, shall we?


I had a story to tell you about my weekend.

I was going to tell you how I met Ted after work on Friday to work on our summer fun to-do list. We took the train to Brooklyn to eat pizza at Grimaldi’s, which I think at least rivals Lombardi’s. It was early, so there wasn’t much of a line. We walked over to the water, where there’s an amazing view of Manhattan. Ted took prom photos there, and we saw a wedding party with the same idea.

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, into Manhattan. I’d never done it, and we were able to check that off the list. I feel a little sorry for Ted that he’ll never be able to see the city as a tourist. But, as he’s from around here, we did walk over so he could show me his high school. We walked a little more, and at Bleecker Street, I asked if he’d ever been to Cones for gelato. And he decided we should go right then, even though we were on our way to pick up pie. So I got to show him something, and we split a cone.

Up to 13th Street to pick up (but not eat) pie (not our usual yummy-delicious cookies) at Milk Bar, and we crossed another thing off our list. We’d had an entire pizza plus that gelato, so it went straight in the fridge. We stretched, Ted made a Google map of our adventure (about 7 miles of walking), we cuddled, and we fell asleep exhausted.

I was going to tell you how we woke up late on Saturday, and ate our Crack Pie before we (officially) got out of bed. I’ve never eaten crack, but I think this was probably even more delicious. We had coffee around the corner from Ted’s place while we waited the hour and a half for a table at Clinton Street Bakery. I decided that I want to be friends with the café’s French proprietress and that sometime soon we’ll have our breakfast there. I’m not sure yet if I’ll have an almond croissant or a pain au chocolat. Maybe I’ll just have une tartine.

While we continued to wait for brunch outside the restaurant, and the host called lots of parties of threes and fours who’d given up, we (jokingly?) tried to convince a couple to sit with us so we could have the table. Once we’d finally gotten inside and ordered, Ted mentioned them again. We both admitted that we were pretty sure if we’d sat with them we would have been best friends by the end of the meal. We were both a little disappointed at the missed opportunity (evidenced by regular checking to see if they were still there), but wholly satisfied with our meal. Ted had the blueberry pancakes, I had the banana-walnut ones (which are better), and he managed to clean both plates.

I was going to tell you how, as we pulled into the Ikea parking lot, Ted commented on the yuppie-ness of our afternoon in Red Hook. We browsed shelving and plates and those fun little fake apartments they set up. Then we went to Fairway, which is even better than the one on the Upper West Side, and it was pretty adorable to see Ted picking out plums and buying swordfish steaks and comparing organic cleaning supplies. I was going to tell you about a comical (and still quite unexplained) grocery cart mix-up.

We got home and played gender roles. Ted put together furniture while I made dinner, and it felt sort-of right. On Sunday morning, he finished the previous night’s salad while I ate cookies and watermelon and chocolate. And it was a good thing I had to pop into work for a while, or he might never have gotten rid of me.

Those were the stories I was going to tell. Then I realized that that’s not why you are here. There are no more weeks of making out with five different boys or skipping work because of date hangovers or surprise late-night visitors. The kissing is great, but it’s not shocking or controversial. I’m not even fighting this serious relationship thing anymore.

Happy is boring. This blog is boring.

You’ll probably quit reading, but when you check in, the blog will be all pictures of what we had for dinner and very serious discussions of dvd storage solutions. I should just quit writing and buy some cute aprons from Anthropologie.

~beatrix

diamonds, bridges, etc.

“They just got engaged,” my brother tells us, stage whispering and motioning with his head. Through closed teeth, “And it’s a craaazy diamond.”

I pretend to look at the how-to-build-a-gigantic-suspension-bridge plaques to try to get a look at the ring. The couple is young, probably younger than me, and the ring is huge. The kind of diamond that I always imagine snagging stockings and scratching soft baby cheeks. Who even wears stockings?

The family was in town, and the four of us were at the Brooklyn Bridge. Baby Brother is suddenly an expert on diamonds, further evidenced by his definitive “I like it” and “I don’t like it” judgments at Tiffany later in the weekend.

He confides in me that he’s helping a friend buy an engagement ring. Not a huge one, but a ring nonetheless.

The friend is proposing at karaoke. And I make my brother promise not to ever let anyone propose to me in a public place.

“I’ll say no.”
“I know. You’ve told me a million times.”


~beatrix