29 or the revolt

I think they’re on to us.

They use to be so content-- blissfully unaware in their drug-induced stupor, emerging only one week out of four into a zombie-half-wakefulness, begging for chocolate, Google-ing puppies in baskets, and occasionally making me cry for no good reason.

But I don’t think I can trick them for much longer because lately. . . lately, they’ve been waking up, announcing their presence, coursing with impatience, becoming increasingly insistent in demanding more than pictures of puppies, and making me cry for what seems like a very good reason.

My ovaries have been going through the motions, faking it for more than a decade. I started taking birth control in the spring of 2000, ostensibly to clear up my still-teenage skin and to regulate my unpredictable periods. So I haven’t ovulated since I was 18, when Bill Clinton was president and we’d never even heard of Survivor.

And suddenly, or not so suddenly, after years under our strict regime, we fall out of step at the sight of a tiny foot. We Google our egg supply’s rate of decline. We feel womanly in ways that are embarrassing.

I just turned 29. Ted celebrated by taking me to one of my favorite restaurants on the Lower East Side; the universe celebrated by seating us next to a toddler singing Old McDonald where we were waited upon by a tall, blonde, and beautifully pregnant woman. And I felt old.

Because 29 is so close to 30, impossible to ignore, impossible to pretend it’s mid-20s and impossible to pretend there’s all the time in the world. And maybe all those years of forcing my hormones into hibernation has just been pushing snooze on my biological clock, and maybe if my ovaries are trying to wake up, maybe it’s time.

There was a short list of things I made, once, of things I needed before I was ready: The walls I’ve got, in Brooklyn of all places, where people come when they need space for a stroller. The health insurance is taken care of. And I’m pretty sure I’ve found the person I want to do it with. There was that time my mom laughed at me when I told her I’d rather have a washing machine than a baby. Well, I’ve got my washing machine.

My body, my choice? My education, my career, my bank account, my city, my boyfriend, my Better Judgment. . . It’s not my body that is making this choice.

I keep chemically regulating, shutting down, postponing. But at 29, the math is hard to ignore, and so is the hollow yearning that makes me feel like one of Those Women. Women, not girls anymore.

And I’m sorry I cried, sorry I got impatient, sorry I wanted more than what we have right here, now, in this apartment that feels like it chose us. I’m greedy for a lifetime of things, but most of all I want you. It’s that that makes me feel ready, and that that makes me willing to wait.


~beatrix


p.s. I do not recommend leaving this tab open on your computer for at least a week like someone might have: http://nymag.com/news/features/69789/

it was worth $12.99

I warped the cutting board already.

~beatrix

tear quota

“Why?! Why don’t you want me to have my cutting board?”

It’s not like I wanted to make a scene in the kitchen chairs section of Ikea; it just felt necessary.

It was $12.99 and I needed it and I know we have cutting boards already, but I’m tired of my broccoli all falling off of them because they are from the tiny-kitchen days. (How quickly things become nostalgic from a cozy, white, fold-out sofa across the bridge.)

Once my Aunt Stacy told me she cried because she wanted some kind of floor in her bathroom that my Uncle Mac said wouldn’t work.

“What did Mac say?”
“Nothing. But I got the floor.”

I thought it was silly at the time, but I might have cried for this cutting board. It’s kind of like all those tears I might have cried for lonely nights or boys who didn’t call back have to go somewhere.

And I love my new cutting board. My broccoli doesn’t fall off and it even almost fits in the sink.

~beatrix

the most wonderful time of the year

Do you think one day we’ll say, Remember that time we bought a menorah and a Christmas tree?

It’s one first for each of us.

He got tinsel, colored lights, and a Mets ornament. I arranged the candles so they alternate, blue and white.

Happy Holidays, guys.

I go with C-h-a-n-u-k-a-h, to emphasize the CHHHHHHH.

Yeah. . . if you aren’t Jewish, spelling it with the C can look a little pretentious. But I guess I can learn to spell it your way; I have a menorah.

~beatrix

what you give and what you get

It was a sad story. Really tragic, I thought when the show was over.

The cool, calm voice of my mother, embedded in my head, replied, It wasn’t a sad story. She went back to her husband and her life. She went back to her family. She did what she should do.

Years after it happened, my mom told me that one day she put my four-year-old self and my baby brother in our old brown station wagon and drove away. My dad was working, either at his regular job or the rapidly failing business that once-friends had abandoned to him. She left forever, but she had no cash and knew the credit cards wouldn’t work. She was running out of gas and didn’t want to end up, embarrassed and un-pitied, at her parents’. She didn’t know where else to go, so she went back home.

It’s the stuff Oprah’s Book Club is made of.

I don’t remember it.

It’s not a sad story, it turns out. It’s a story about responsibility and obligation and enduring.

My parents have been at the coast, odd for the middle of the week. My mom took a nap on a friend’s yacht and my dad caught the biggest fish she’s ever seen. She had to get off the phone so she could get back to shopping for beach houses before dinner.

It’s a story about rewards.


~beatrix

fall, and why maybe i'll write again

We’ve had weeks (months?) of take out containers and piles of laundry and I’ll-be-home-soons that turned into I’ll-be-home-in-time-to-fall-asleep-and-if-we’re-lucky-make-it-out-the-door-tomorrows. The run-downs turned into some sort of cold that started with a sore throat and ended with three days of intense nausea, which would have seemed unbelievable as a sickness if we hadn’t had identical symptoms. Thursdays have really been feeling like Fridays, and I’ve felt so threadbare as to be invisible enough for an automatic door at the grocery store close on me (literally-- it hit me in the shoulder) and to have strangers sit on me on the subway even more than usual.

Last weekend, we both had the same day off for the first time in ages, and after a day of apple picking with friends and watching movies in bed, I realized that, as much as I love his reassuring presence and the way the garbage disappears and clean laundry appears, I’d missed talking to him.

My busy season ended today; Ted’s is just getting starting. I left work at 3; he should be home before 8. I feel like celebrating being able to be a good girlfriend again along with the chill in the air.

I bought a six-pound butternut squash.



~beatrix

about sex and chores and other big news

He came home and took off his clothes and pressed against me.

I said, “What’s that?”, and he said,

“I’m reaching out to you.”

I said, “We can have sex if you wash the dishes after, while I wash my hair.” but he just kept searching my face with his lips.

And I dodged those lips and asked if he promised until he promised.

I came out the winner all-around.

We found a new apartment, ready in a few months around the same time we are. We’ve been faxing a lot of things, but cross your fingers that the prize for all the paperwork is a washer and dryer and some walls.


~beatrix

a snippet-- fill-in-the-blanks

A few weeks ago, over a 3-hour ham(and chicken- and veggi-)burger dinner with Ted and my cousin and his wife:

“. . . at our wedding.”
“Wait, so when is your brother getting married?”
“The 25th.”
“What? Of July? Of this month?”
“Yeah. They got a package at a bed and breakfast for nine people.”
“Wow. I would never be able to do that.”
“Oh, no. At our wedding we had people we just had to invite. . . .”
“Did you know that Dunkin’ Donuts has ninety-nine cent iced tea now?”
“Did you just try to change the subject?”

I’ll let you figure out who said what.


~beatrix

i am so happy for you!

My hobbies are cake, flowers, party dresses, etiquette, and paper products. And my job is full of fancy parties. I could pretend that I don’t love weddings, but no one would believe me.

And when I invited myself over to Harrington’s roof on Saturday night he said it would be perfect because I could give his wedding invite list (for a party 14 months away) a once over. . . and see YouTube videos of the cocktail-hour band. . . and see the photographer’s work.

And Cooper let me know he was proposing to his girl the next day.

And Prince Charming casually mentioned that he has been engaged for a month.

And that was going to be my blog post for today-- about how everyone is getting married and how it’s obviously a race and I’m losing and how I keep just accidentally Googling wedding dresses.

And then.

And then. . . .

Ted texted me to let me know that his brother. . . his little brother. . . is engaged. It happened last night.

And that’s it. If Simon calls to say he’s getting married, I will throw up.


~beatrix

two people in a studio is kinda nice, now that i think about it

Ted’s out of town all weekend, and I have the house to myself for two nights and three days.

I can do whatever I want.

I can eat baguette with tomato and hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise for dinner. . . again. . . without worrying that someone else will be tired of that. And I can eat almost an entire bag of chocolate cookies and watch that movie about childbirth that everyone else has seen. . . but not at the same time because Ricki Lake, naked in a bathtub, isn’t exactly appetizing. I can get up whenever I want and watch So You Think You Can Dance in fastforward and Father of the Bride and In Her Shoes (again) and drink coffee and call my mom from bed. I can braid my hair and unbraid my hair and braid my hair. . . until my arms are tired. I could even give in to my compulsion to cut hair. . . and I still might. I can Google diamonds and what kind of house we could buy if we moved where my parents live. I can leave magazines and bobby pins and chip clips and the remote in bed. I can take as long as I want to get dressed; I don’t have to get dressed until 5:30 if that’s what I want to do.

I guess there are trade-offs.

No one will turn off the lights when I fall asleep reading, and I’ll wake up at 4:38 with the lamp on. And no one will have park breakfast with me by the Peter Pan statue, and if I went alone, no one would protect me from the persistent squirrels. And I won’t have a dance party partner except for my reflection in the television. And I might even have to take the trash out myself.

~beatrix

p.s. i cut my hair. um, kind of a lot. i had my scissor privileges revoked regularly when i was a child.