I started getting into bread baking a couple years ago when I realized that there is NOTHING better than bread. Except maybe…no, nothing. Sometimes my results are great, sometimes my loaves something closer to a giant hockey puck, but the more I practice, the more consistently decent they become. In the summertime, though, my appetite for bread ebbs somewhat and I start to look for something new. A few weeks ago I made a sour cherry pie that was, I gotta say, a-mazing. Like, change-your-life good. And it wasn’t just me; other people’s lives were changed as well. The crust was tender and flaky, the filling was sweet and tart, and it was all made from scratch. It was so good, I wanted to build a summer house in that pie and live there until Labor Day.
My friends heaped on the compliments, and I loved every minute of it. “I can’t believe you can bake!” “This might be better than my mom’s!” Then down came the hatchet: “You’re so domestic!”
I almost choked. There is probably nothing more terrifying that you can say to an urban professional woman of my age, especially one who has recently moved in with her boyfriend and is very, very touchy about falling into traditional gender roles. We are non-traditional in many ways, aside from the whole living-in-sin thing; KBF (Kat’s Boyfriend) does not particularly follow sports and he reads fiction. We are equal wage earners. I can be a bit of a hothead, and a certain futon delivery man might suggest that I have a ways to go in the patience department. He might also point out that my language is not very ladylike.
But God help me, I love to bake. Does this mean I can’t be a feminist? Or do I now have to subscribe to third wave, Sex and the City-inspired, The-Pussycat-Dolls-Are-Empowering brand of feminism? This is stressing me out - I’m gonna make some cookies.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
We'll Never Know
The other night, as we were finishing a delicious pasta dinner, my boyfriend looked up from his plate and said, “Whoa!”
“What, what is it?” I said, grabbing the table and scanning the floor for cockroaches.
“Across the street.” He said, pointing out the window. I turned around and saw no fewer than twenty Hasidic men standing on the sidewalk across from our building, all gazing upwards a fixed point that seemed to be located just over our roof.
I should point out that our neighborhood, along with South Williamsburg, is home to one of the largest Hasidic communities (Chabad-Lubavitch, to be exact) in the United States. We live next door to a synagogue and across the street from a kosher bakery. Seeing roving groups of bearded men in long black coats and black fedoras is nothing new for us. But we are gentiles, so a few of their customs are a bit unfamiliar, and anyway, what in the hell were these guys all looking at? The longer we looked on from our fourth-floor window, the more black hats we saw running out of the synagogue to join the crowd across the street. There were a few young boys in their white shirts and yarmulkes, but no women.
My boyfriend suggested that we go up to the roof, and by the time we did, a fire truck was coming down the street. Things were finally getting exciting.
“Oh look, it's…"
"Driving right past.” No fire, apparently.
“It’s almost like they’re looking at the moon.”
“I don’t think they’re into that kind of thing.”
Moments later, a group of seven or so men took off down Bedford Avenue at a brisk walk and were soon out of sight. The rest milled around for thirty seconds or so before walking off in different directions at a similar pace.
“Man, I kind of wish I’d gone down there and asked.”
“We have got to learn Yiddish.”
“What, what is it?” I said, grabbing the table and scanning the floor for cockroaches.
“Across the street.” He said, pointing out the window. I turned around and saw no fewer than twenty Hasidic men standing on the sidewalk across from our building, all gazing upwards a fixed point that seemed to be located just over our roof.
I should point out that our neighborhood, along with South Williamsburg, is home to one of the largest Hasidic communities (Chabad-Lubavitch, to be exact) in the United States. We live next door to a synagogue and across the street from a kosher bakery. Seeing roving groups of bearded men in long black coats and black fedoras is nothing new for us. But we are gentiles, so a few of their customs are a bit unfamiliar, and anyway, what in the hell were these guys all looking at? The longer we looked on from our fourth-floor window, the more black hats we saw running out of the synagogue to join the crowd across the street. There were a few young boys in their white shirts and yarmulkes, but no women.
My boyfriend suggested that we go up to the roof, and by the time we did, a fire truck was coming down the street. Things were finally getting exciting.
“Oh look, it's…"
"Driving right past.” No fire, apparently.
“It’s almost like they’re looking at the moon.”
“I don’t think they’re into that kind of thing.”
Moments later, a group of seven or so men took off down Bedford Avenue at a brisk walk and were soon out of sight. The rest milled around for thirty seconds or so before walking off in different directions at a similar pace.
“Man, I kind of wish I’d gone down there and asked.”
“We have got to learn Yiddish.”
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Road to Recovery
It could easily be argued that there’s nothing left to say about Lindsay Lohan. But that argument is wrong. There will never be enough said about her, until something else shiny or borderline tragic passes before my eyes and I forget about her completely. But for now, as much as I try to fight it (or not), I am obsessed. And it scares me. So as of today, I am entering Lindsay Rehab. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit reading TMZ and watching VH1 clip shows entirely – that would be like asking an alcoholic to give up cigarettes and coffee – but it’s time to set some boundaries. Here are my twelve steps:
- Admit that I am powerless over Lindsay. And Sweet Jesus, I am.
- Come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore my sanity. I think it may be Victoria Beckham.
- Turn my life over to the care of Posh, purchase steel-enforced corset.
- Make a searching, fearless moral inventory: Delete mp3 of LiLo’s 2004 “hit” “Rumors” from my hard drive, purge closet of leggings.
- Admit the exact nature of my wrongs: subjecting friends and loved ones to extended monologues, wherein I dissected the various missteps of Lindsay’s career, declared my desire for her to Get Out of My Face, then talked about that crazy interview with her in Elle magazine last year for another twenty minutes
- Allow God/Posh remove these defects of my character. Also: 15 pounds.
- Humbly ask God/Posh to forgive my shortcomings…until I can get to Mystic Tan, anyway.
- Make a list of all the people I’ve harmed with my addiction. First and foremost: my own hair. I never should have grown you out to look like LiLo in Bobby. I never even saw that movie.
- Make amends. Um, am I crazy, or does Lindsay owe me an apology? A text message would be adequite (did I use that right?).
- Continue w/ personal inventory. Really delete “Rumors” from hard drive, not just from iTunes.
- Improve conscious contact with God/Posh. Reread The Extra Half Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between, pout.
- Carry this message to others: If you see Lindsay, tell her I’m still waiting for my apology.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Be It Ever So Humble
I feel as though I’ve been taking a lot of jabs at my new apartment lately, and it’s not entirely fair. Like many people my age, I’ve lived in a lot of rentals since I left my parents’ house at age 17, and I can honestly say that this is the first one that I can actually see myself occupying for a long time. My first apartment was a furnished two-bedroom in Ann Arbor that was adjacent to a lumberyard and boasted views of the University of Michigan stadium, a.k.a. “The Big House.” Some Saturdays my roommate and I would sell our football tickets to scalpers and try to make out the scoreboard from the kitchen window. The remaining days of the week, the marching band would practice at a nearby field, so we always knew ahead of time that the halftime show would feature a medley of songs from feature films, such as “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. This number was particularly memorable for several reasons, but most of the time the tuba was just the soundtrack to our days and I never really noticed it much.
After college, there was a brief stint in Hoboken, New Jersey, which I typically omit when telling Crazy Apartment stories with other New Yorkers. It’s not that I’ve become that provincial – I actually really like New Jersey (Tenafly, holla!) – but for me, Hoboken was like an entire town made up of fraternity row. And every bar was the basement at the Beta House. So many ribbed cotton sweaters. So many shiny black shoes with buckles. So. Much. Tanning. And the puka shell necklackes! I think I have PTSD from the puka shell necklaces. I don’t care if you are a native Hawaiian and speak fluent Samoan; they will forever scream “date rapist” to me.
Fortunately, my roommate at the time had made plans to move in with her boyfriend, leaving me free and clear to escape to Brooklyn. (I still feel a bit guilty about that, since he was a complete tool and it was obvious that they were going to break up before our lease ran out, but c’mon, I was being supportive. She was secretly dying to live in Manhattan anyway, boyfriend or no. Don’t look at me like that.) Three apartments and five years later, I finally have on-site laundry, an elevator, and adequate storage place. Like most New York renters my age I am a bit of a real-estate whore, but I know when I have a good thing.
After college, there was a brief stint in Hoboken, New Jersey, which I typically omit when telling Crazy Apartment stories with other New Yorkers. It’s not that I’ve become that provincial – I actually really like New Jersey (Tenafly, holla!) – but for me, Hoboken was like an entire town made up of fraternity row. And every bar was the basement at the Beta House. So many ribbed cotton sweaters. So many shiny black shoes with buckles. So. Much. Tanning. And the puka shell necklackes! I think I have PTSD from the puka shell necklaces. I don’t care if you are a native Hawaiian and speak fluent Samoan; they will forever scream “date rapist” to me.
Fortunately, my roommate at the time had made plans to move in with her boyfriend, leaving me free and clear to escape to Brooklyn. (I still feel a bit guilty about that, since he was a complete tool and it was obvious that they were going to break up before our lease ran out, but c’mon, I was being supportive. She was secretly dying to live in Manhattan anyway, boyfriend or no. Don’t look at me like that.) Three apartments and five years later, I finally have on-site laundry, an elevator, and adequate storage place. Like most New York renters my age I am a bit of a real-estate whore, but I know when I have a good thing.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Summer Daze
It’s summer in New York, and I’m officially over it. All spring I counted the days until Memorial Day weekend, but once that’s over and the next three-day weekend is months away, what have you really got? If you’re me, you’ve got sweat-coated, seemingly endless waits on a stifling subway platform and a neighborhood that smells like sour milk. As if it isn’t bad enough that it already smells like poop and stale beer virtually every day of the year. Don’t get me wrong: I love where I live. It’s just, when you’re walking down the street and you step a track from someone’s weave TWICE IN ONE DAY, it’s pretty safe to say that you’re not in the Hamptons.
And really, that’s what most people think New Yorkers do on summer weekends, right? (Go to the Hamptons, not step on pieces of hair, I mean). Even I have outdated fantasies of sleepy little beach towns with sun-bleached crab shacks and bait ‘n’ tackle shops, but from what I’ve been told it’s just like the Meatpacking District, only with Burberry bikinis. Even if you are a part of the junior hedgefunder set, you’d still be crammed into a house with 32 other people, most of who are probably boffing each other. But what do I know about such things? My idea of a great summer night includes a cold bottle of $5.99 champers and my 12,000 BTU air conditioner. And God help me if that ever changes.
I wish I had a beach house. I wish I had a pontoon boat and a wind chime and a hammock tied to two trees in the yard. While I’m at it, I also wish I had the ability to tan. But for now I guess I’ll just head down to Warehouse Wines and Liquors and start planning another summer weekend.
And really, that’s what most people think New Yorkers do on summer weekends, right? (Go to the Hamptons, not step on pieces of hair, I mean). Even I have outdated fantasies of sleepy little beach towns with sun-bleached crab shacks and bait ‘n’ tackle shops, but from what I’ve been told it’s just like the Meatpacking District, only with Burberry bikinis. Even if you are a part of the junior hedgefunder set, you’d still be crammed into a house with 32 other people, most of who are probably boffing each other. But what do I know about such things? My idea of a great summer night includes a cold bottle of $5.99 champers and my 12,000 BTU air conditioner. And God help me if that ever changes.
I wish I had a beach house. I wish I had a pontoon boat and a wind chime and a hammock tied to two trees in the yard. While I’m at it, I also wish I had the ability to tan. But for now I guess I’ll just head down to Warehouse Wines and Liquors and start planning another summer weekend.
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