Perfect Brooklyn weekend

Friday, 7 p.m. – Jeff refuses to eat cabbage or beans again and claims I might be trying to feed him spoiled food. [Disclaimer: We are not as poor as this makes us sound.] So instead we go to a pub around the corner that serves pizza, except it turns out it isn’t greasy pub pizza, it is more like The Wedge, except I doubted the menu’s claim that they use “only local produce” since their special involved asperagus. But it was good. The pumpkin beer was good. As was the other beer the waitress brought me by mistake.

Friday, 9 p.m. – Walked home arm-in-arm. All three blocks.

Friday, 10 p.m. – I’ve discovered Breaking Bad and it is amazing.

Saturday, 12 p.m. – I eat the cabbage. I don’t die.

Saturday, 1 p.m.  - Farmers’ Market at Grand Army Plaza. I’m chatting with my new little farmer friend about animal fat when she has to stop to help another customer. I look over her shoulder and see none other than Ted Mosby! I’m such a bad fan I don’t even know his real name, but How I Met Your Mother is one of just a few shows that Jeff and I really watch. It is the new Friends, people – no one talks about this enough. But Ted was RIGHT there with a small film crew and he looked right at me.

Saturday, 4 p.m. – I came home from errands to find the house clean! Or almost clean. There was a tense moment when Ellie mistakenly sat on Jeff’s laptop, and apparently Jeff hadn’t eaten since breakfast (the beans, man! the beans were still good!), so a small hissy ensued. But then all was well. Plants were watered. Laundry was finished. Order.

Saturday, later: More Breaking Bad. Very good stuff.

Sunday, 11 a.m. – The schnauzer and I go on a little morning walk, but I had This American Life on my iPod and the day was perfectly crisp, so we just kept walking and walking all the way to the park, where people had balloons and picnics and there were squirles. Ellie would like me to mention the squirrels again. Squirrels.

13th St., October 1.

Sunday, 12 p.m. – Cafes and people. Brownstones with gas lamps and mums on their stoops. Crisp fall air. And I’m so full of wanting something that is all around me and also too separate, and I can’t decide if I’m very, very happy or more than a little sad.

Sunday, 1 p.m. – Back at home, a great life talk evolves. Also, we are out of peanut butter.

Sunday, 2 p.m. – The life talk evolves its way right down to a German cafe next to the peanut butter shop (aka grocery, but we have priorities). There is spaetzle and sauerkraut and good coffee and sour cherry tort.

Sunday, 10 p.m. – Lots of reading. I know this isn’t exactly a literary discovery, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is an awfully fine book.

More Fuzzy Bussiness

I’m not sure if I like the turn this blog is taking–this isn’t what I had in mind. First the gorilla, then Elmo and now … more Elmo. But though a series of links I stummbled on kottke.org today and found (first) this beautiful piece of nostalgia:

I’ve always held a special soft spot for Mister Rogers because, once, when I was about 4, my mother helped me write a letter to him, and he wrote back. There was no autopen involved in this, let me assure you. If I was a good blogger I would show you that letter, which is tucked away safely in my childhood scrapbook. But I brought no such nostalgic luxuries with me to NYC. That’s another thing I’ll write about soon – what was brought, what was stored and what will forever remain a mystery (box of raw beef, it is you I speak of).

Then, on the same website, I saw this:

I was certain at first that the preview would reveal a sordid backstory–a man who turned to the soft interior of a red muppet to cope with his raging cocaine addiction and mild Asperger’s. But no. And thank god.

This all brings me to several points:

1) If you have been hung up for years on the fact that your mother didn’t breastfeed you, stop. The real question is, “How early were you exposed to PBS?” Seriously. I think there are studies.

2) I said it last time, but now I really mean it and I’m including a link: PBS deserves some money.

3) All of this is timely and relevant because Jim Henson would have been 75 last Saturday. Google even honored him with a Doodle.

4) It is further relevant because Sesame Street has been on my mind a lot since moving to New York City. My conception of NYC and urban life was shaped, not by Sex in the City, but by Sesame Street. The very first apartment Jeff and I looked at was on Union Street between 6th and 7th Ave., right in the heart of Park Slope and a stone’s throw from the Park Slope Food Co-op. We sat on the stoop of the brownstone waiting for the realtor while friendly young people walked by carrying baskets of flowers and walking their dogs. I looked and Jeff and I said, “This is Sesame Street–we could live on Sesame Street!”

President Street, Park Slope. The house on the left recent sold for over $3 million.

It turned out we couldn’t. It seems there are a lot of complications the muppets don’t go into, like rent stabilization regulations and out-of-state guarantor problems. But no matter. We found a place not too far away that is much nicer, and on a regular basis I still feel like I’m living on Sesame Street. I even have my own muppet.

Fuzzy goals and objectives

I’m not great at setting solid goals for myself. For the better part of two years, my goal was to quit my job and write a book about pudding. I also have visions of sitting on the porch of my farmhouse at sunset, animals … somewhere. In that version of the future I wear skirts a lot and hang my laundry on the line. Light pours through the windows in the still afternoon.

I tend towards contentment, adapting some of the things I want to fit my circumstances, which is both good and bad. Despite my inability to fully commit to my objectives and articulate them, I realized some time ago that I know exactly how I define longterm success: If, when I die, they mention my passing on either Morning Edition or All Things Considered–and if the story has none of the subtle jubilation that accompanies the downfall of dictators nor the inevitability of solo-balloonists–then I will know (from somewhere in the great beyond) that I did well.

Today, however, I added another possability. While it doesn’t fully encompass success the way my NPR obituary will, it has the benefit of being pleasantly pre-mortem and awfully gosh-darn cute. Ladies and gentlemen, success is a guess appearance on Sesame Street.

This post has three sub-points:

1) I should really, really donate more money to public broadcasting as it so clearly plays a big part in my life.

2) Sesame Street on You Tube is a beautiful, time-sucking thing. It is like opening a small trapdoor to your childhood.

3) Is this particular clip great, or what? “Oh, that’s a big chicken! I’d check your feed for hormones.” Love it.

Two evenings

Last night I made an all-local dinner of stuffed cornish game hens, roasted carrots and green beans. While the birds cooled, we drank red wine and I read Hemingway to Jeff, who dozed off somewhere between the bull fight and the end of the snowstorm.

Tonight we ate leftovers, watched Modern Family on Hulu and had a small spat about sharing earbuds and wether or not earwax is more or less gross than other body “products.” I made a tiny chocolate cake in the microwave.

She’ll be coming ’round the mountain….

Last Thursday my friends (really awesome friends) helped me load all of our worldly belongings into a U-Haul. Then my friend Matt, Elliot Jean Schnauzer and I drove approximately 25 hours to New York City.

Ellie also thinks Matt is a good friend, or at least a really good pillow.

Facts about this trip:

1) Matt is a very good friend to have. I would recommend that you find him and make friends with him, but then there would be less of Matt to go around, so hands off!

2) Hours I drove: 7

3) Hours Matt drove: 18 (see item number one)

4) Our U-Haul had to be fueled up every 5 hours or so. Every tank cost about $100. You can do the math – I don’t want to.

5) Times we stopped to sleep: 2

6) Times we stopped to visit a brewery: 1

7) Times each of us had to pee during the last 5 hours of the trip: 5 (see item 6 for explanation)

8) I award Indiana the most beautiful state award because I like my states kind of flat and full of farmland. Matt likes Missouri. Pennsylvania was nice, too, and wins bonus points for fog and for offering the opportunity to sing “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.”

9) Total tolls: about $60

10) Things we didn’t have time to stop for: Vacuum Cleaner Museum; World’s Largest Rocking Chair; World’s Largest Gift Shop (with the world’s most annoying highway signage)

11) Times I felt compelled to explain that Matt is not my husband: 2

12) After a phone conversation on day 2 of the trip, I became vaguely concerned that it was possible a box of raw meat, peaches, maple syrup and mozzarella cheese had accidentially been loaded in the back of the truck, but thankfully that was not the case. This means, however, that someone in Oklahoma City took that box off my front porch before my friend could pick it up. Stupid thieves. I hope they didn’t waste the syrup.

Opportunity leers

One of the things I like about myself is the fact that I’m pretty darn good at recognizing opportunity and going for it. I also like that I don’t mind talking about what I like about myself, but that’s another story for another day.

I consider myself a pretty lucky person, but I think luck consists largely of having your eyes wide open to the possibilities around you, knowing what you want so you can actively call it to you and seizing the day when something interesting comes along.

So last week I was driving north on May Ave.—on my way to buy a GPS unit for Jeff’s drive to NYC—when I saw THIS:

Have you ever seen anything so full of promise and adventure?!?

It seems the wind had been sweeping down the plains and the poor gorilla at the auto dealership couldn’t stand up under the pressure. I knew immediately what I had to do.

Well, hold that thought, because what I had to do immediately was buy Jeff a GPS unit for another little opportunity we recently seized. The whole theme of this year has been big decisions, leaps of faith and hard work. Last summer we sold our house in the suburbs and moved into a rental in the heart of Oklahoma City, simultaneously opting out of the American Dream and participating in reverse white flight. I left my job of six years for a great new position that allows me to work from home. We even sold one of our cars.

So when we decided mid-summer that we would move to NYC, we were ready. And when Jeff got two teaching positions in NYC, we were ready for that too. The giant gorilla leering over May Ave. was a bonus.

It just so happened that three of my best friends were dining together at a restaurant nearby. And I had just enough time to call them, grab a camera and prepare for this rare photo opportunity:

I can talk about preparation and gumption all day long, but only sheer luck explains the fact that we were all wearing solid shirts in the same color family.

I’m not going to rule it out, but this might be the only time I blog about a blue, inflatable gorilla. Lots of thoughts about our local food system and what it means to be a neopioneer will follow.