Hey there, blackbird.

On days when I am missing my guitar, I stop into the local music store where George, the owner, tolerates me as I pull acoustic guitars off the walls and play them, without ever intending to buy anything. George knows this. He knows I'm new and I'm poor and I miss my guitar, which is undoubtedly falling apart in my sweltering storage unit in Vermont. I'm kicking myself for leaving it there. I haven't played in a long time, and when I chose to move without it, I never anticipated that I would miss it this much. I need an outlet and I need something here that feels intimately familiar and mine.

George is a middle-aged man of average build with wiry gray hair, a no-nonsense face, and very kind eyes. He worked as an engineer of sorts for NASA when he was younger and got to travel all over the world. But he wasn't happy, and so he decided to give it up in the '80s in order to buy a music shop in Astoria. He said it was a long process to become declassified, but that he never regretted for a second choosing to go in the direction he did. When I look at him, I can't picture him working for NASA. But I also can't picture him playing the bouzouki, which, apparently, he does. 

The other day, I was perched on a stool somewhere in the corner of the store, plucking away at a guitar when he said, "Your playing is quite lovely, by the way."

"Thanks," I replied self-consciously. "I wish I could read music."

He looked up from the guitar he was restringing and asked,
"Can birds read music?"

That made me smile.

"Don't get shot five times in the head!"

Cute. Can you run in them?

This was the goodbye I received as I left my sister's apartment at 11 o'clock on Sunday night. Thanks, sis! I'll try! That's love. Apparently, my wonderful, peaceful, little neighborhood has experienced three murders in the past three weeks, the last of which was a 41-year-old man who was shot five times in the head. Five times. In the head. Isn't once enough? Anyway, as he wasn't robbed and he had been arrested multiple times since 1987, authorities are thinking it might have been a targeted shooting, possibly related to drugs.  However, that doesn't bring me much comfort as I'm trundling the 15 or so blocks home from the N train at midnight, house keys jangling from my nervously clenched fist. However, I suppose I can take minor solace in the fact that the sheer number of people in New York City reduces my likelihood of getting attacked, at least compared to the slimmer females in the non-strategic footwear who obviously make easier targets (I'm sorry, but it's true. The wolves pick off the slowest sheep). On the flip side of that coin, though, more sheep means more wolves. I guess it's all relative. And so I'll keep my wits close and my pepper spray closer, and for the time being, that should be enough (unless someone tries to shoot me five times in the head, of course).

While I'm on the dark topic of mortality, I must mention that I saw the greatest birthday card in Papyrus a couple weeks ago. On the front was a cute picture of a puppy wearing a birthday hat. The message read: "In dog years, you're dead!"

I think that's hilarious. Is something wrong with me???

As I haven't had the chance to write in a little while, this entry is going to be kind of like a life casserole (Gross). A life casserole that got ruined the first time I tried to write it two days ago because when I hit the "publish" button, the computer gave me a "log in" screen, which clearly meant that two hours of reflective writing had been lost to oblivion. Great. Since then, my cell phone died, I bought and then returned a really abrasive alarm clock, and I got a truck load of fresh produce for really, really cheap. But that's not what I feel like writing about right now. So instead, I'll write about what prompted me to change the title of my blog.

Recently, as I was walking home from my internship, I spotted a very tiny Asian woman, who was walking toward me on the sidewalk. She was wearing an incredibly cute dress. I, a lover and collector of dresses, was feeling amiable and so I decided to brighten her day a little with a random compliment. 

"That," I said, radiantly smiling, "is a super-cute dress!"

She stopped.

"Really? You think so???" she replied happily in a thick accent, smiling back. "Thank you! That is so nice of you!"

At that point, I was feeling pretty good. But here is the conversation that ensued. Interpret as you will:

[HER]  "I actually custom make dresses!"

[ME]    "Oh, really?"

[HER]  "Yes. Let me give you my card!"

[ME]    "No, I'm sorry. I'm actually kind of between jobs right now. I don't think I can afford a hand-made dress.

[HER]  "You're just going through a change right now! Things will get easier. Here's my card, just in case."

This would have been a good place for our interaction to end. But it didn't. Employing the expressive art of hand gesture, she added, nice and slow and very emphatically, because it was crucial that I understood:

"I don't just make dresses for skinny people! No, no. Not just for skinny people! Skinny dresses are easy! I custom make for people like you too! Also very important!"

People like you.

For a second, I almost said, "That sounds like something my mother would say." And then I thought I might add to the Astoria death count. And for a brief second, I had a feeling I might break down in a horrifying display of hysterical tears right in front of her. But there she was, standing before me, very skinny in her adorable sun dress and smiling, like she was doing me some great humanitarian service. And so I grit my teeth and grinned [grimmaced?] broadly. "Thank you so much!" I gushed and accepted her stinking card. 

Now, the logical part of me says that her English just wasn't quite there enough to say with tact what she was really trying to say. After all, implying that your customers are great, ponderous sea mammals is... well, it's bad for business. And it goes without saying that I'm not quite big enough to need custom-made clothing yet. But then again, it was also suggested to me that her forwardness might have been a cultural thing or that she said "custom made" because all of her dresses were custom made. It's just that these ones in particular were custom made for people like me. Whatever that means.

But why spend tons of money on custom made dresses when people like me can buy trash bags, burlap sacks, and maternity moo moos for less than half the price?

Thanks, anyway.

After many weekends of watching bad cable TV, reading books in restaurants, and going out for drinks alone, I've decided that enough is enough and have turned to finding friends on the internet. This may seem desperate, and maybe it is a little bit, but all I need to do to remind myself that it's a perfectly sane course of action is recall a conversation I had with a couple of my fellow interns a few weeks ago. 

[GIRL] What do you mean you smile at people on the subway???

[GUY]  Yeah, that's a little weird.

[ME]     God, well it's not like I ogle them with an absent smile on my face. If I accidentally make eye contact with someone, I smile politely and break it. 

[GUY]  What do you do if someone talks to you?

[ME]     Um, acknowledge them?

[GIRL] OMG! What if they're a murderer?

[ME]     I doubt murderers frequently approach me on the subway.

[GUY]  But it's weird if anyone approaches you on the subway! 

[ME]     What's wrong with friendly conversation?

[GIRL]  Erm, with strangers?

[GUY]  Yeah, if someone I don't know approaches me, I automatically assume they're weird or trying to sell me something. I'm instantly weary.

[ME]     How do people make friends?

[GIRL]  I go to college! 

[GUY]  I already have friends.

[ME]     How do I make friends?

[BOTH] Oh, huh. Good point. I don't know. 

Well, guys, it seems I have found the answer: Craigslist. And if that makes you feel a little crusty and gross, it's okay. Sometimes it makes me feel that way too. But I have found that, upon weeding out the porn, hair weave advertisements, and clearly illiterate people, the "w4w" link in the "strictly platonic" section of the personals actually leads to some real people! So far, friend fishing has led me to four friend dates, two of which have been with the same person (ooh, getting serious)! And guess what? They've all been fun meet-ups with normal people like me. Although I do prescribe to the saying that "normal" is just a setting on the dryer...

Anyway, I think life should be approached with humor and an adventurous frame of mind. And if I get stuck sharing coffee with someone who is truly strange, creepy, alarming, off putting - or hell! All of the above - then I guess it will make all-the-better a blog post for the next time around. 

I'm no faker.

Asparagus, when dropped into boiling water, almost immediately turns a gorgeous and vibrant shade of green. Artichokes, on the other hand, are nature's horticultural straight shooters. After a few minutes of being submerged in boiling water, they just look dead. I like that. That's honesty. If I were a vegetable, I'd want to be an artichoke - tough and spiny on the outside, lovely, layered, dry, and green. Tender and soft on the inside. Of course, I love to eat artichokes, and if I were an artichoke, I wouldn't want anyone to love eating me. Nor would I want to be submerged in boiling water. But if I were, at least I'd go with integrity.

I'm having a quiet moment in the kitchen. And yes, there's an artichoke on the stove [three little spiders crawled out while I was washing it - oh, good god, don't let me eat my way to a nest!]. And a plate of just-baked pre-made Tollhouse cookies on the table, the only straggling survivors to make it to the oven after my cookie dough binge three weeks ago. They look a little funky. I guess the dough WAS kind of old. But they taste okay. They're sharing the table with a glass of vinho verde.  I cleaned out the fridge today. Maybe after cookies, wine, and artichoke, I'll have blackberries. They're on the edge of going over.

Ooh! I think it's done! More to come later.

[EDIT: I'm pretty positive that I did, in fact, eat my way to a nest. There's no way to tell for sure, but on my last bite - yes, seriously, my last bite - I chomped into something brittle that broke in half and crumbled in my mouth. Upon spitting it onto my plate, I saw it was a pocket filled with a whole lot of little black somethings. Morbidly curious and somewhat horrified, I looked closer. But no matter how close I put my face to the crumbly atrocity, I just couldn't tell whether the little black somethings had legs. Either way, whatever it was, it was boiled for 45 minutes. So you can call it spiders. I'll call it protein. ... and no, I didn't put it back in my mouth.]

What did you say?

Today, after work, I went to the mall to find SOMETHING to decorate my bedroom walls with.
What did I buy?
Clothes.

New York City has taught me that retail therapy really IS effective. But it would probably be more economic for me harbor a hard drug addition. Joking. I don't buy THAT much clothing. But still. More than I should.

Today, in the subway, I accidentally made eye contact with some guy as I was passing him. Politely, I smiled. Autopilot reaction for me. Almost immediately after, I realized I was going the wrong way and turned around. As I passed him again, he smiled at me and I casually said "hi" and kept walking. As I passed, he said,

"And here I was thinking you were coming back for my name or number or something."
I smiled and replied, "Nah, I'm sorry. I have a boyfriend."
To which he responded: "Well, what's he got to do with me? I ain't gonna tell him!"

REALLY? Does that work on women? I mean, he had that response ready to go. I'd of had to pause to think up something sleazy like that. But there he was, sharp as a whip. I was entertained by this.

"It has everything to do with you!" I said, laughing. "I love my boyfriend! And my dignity!"
"Oh, I see how it is," he chuckled.
I smiled, waved, and told him to have a good one.
To which he kindly told me to do the same.

Things like this didn't happen to me in Johnson.

Just a little rush hour entertainment.

I have a dress. It's a blue dress that looks like denim, but is actually made of light, airy, breathable cotton. It has a scoop neck and drops loosely down to my ankles. It's probably one of the most comfortable things I own. However, my dress has a problem. Over the last two years, I've worn it so much that the button holes have gotten pretty loose. So, sometimes the buttons just kind of fall open. Usually only the two right over my crotch, though. Go figure. So no going commando in this dress. But, hey. It's only two buttons. And so long as I'm self aware, I usually catch them in time and everything ends up okay.

Yesterday, I chose to wear this dress.
Let's set the scene. It's 5 p.m. and I'm on the subway. It's rush hour. I'm standing, holding on to one of the poles, in a moving subway car. All the seats are taken. Beside me, a rhino of a kid - who looked to be maybe about 14 - was bobbing his head to his music. The train pulls in to Grand Central. The doors open and commuters trade places on the platform. Just as the doors are above to close, rhino boy (he was a big kid) emerges from his angsty tunes long enough to realize we're at his stop. "Oh crap!" he shouts. "Excuse me." Without giving me a chance to move, he stampedes past me, scuffing the bottom on his sneaker across the top of one of my exposed feet. It hurt. I resisted the urge to holler profanities. An older woman next to me shook her head in disapproval, assumably because of the panicked rhinocerous that crushed my foot. Kneeling down, I  checked for damage. Thankfully there was none. So I stood up, peeved but okay, grabbed the pole, and waited for the next stop. About 30 seconds later, I notice a guy looking at me.

"You're, um, shirt's undone," he said, almost apologetically.
Right he was! And not JUST over my crotch!
My dress was opened up like a science project or a peep show from right below my boobs to about two inches below my panty line. My underwear and fish-white belly were out there for the world to see! And how did I respond??
"Oh, GREAT! I'm FLASHING EVERYONE!!!" I shouted. And then I smiled demurely and sweetly said, "Thank you," to the guy, who laughed, as I hurriedly refastened something to the tune of 10 buttons. It was then that I realized the older woman MIGHT have been shaking her head in disapproval at my temporary nudity [laughs].

It was like being caught with your fly down, x100.
But, other than the period of time it took to redo my buttons on a speeding, jolting subway car, I was surprisingly unruffled. I was easily embarassed as a kid, but it takes a lot to undo me now. Being upset uses up a lot of energy. Really, it's easier to just laugh. After all, every embarrassing moment makes for a good story.

Don't Tell Your Mother.

The man who sells me my iced coffees from his little booth on weekday mornings smiles more in a two minute period then anyone I've ever met. I mean, seriously. He crams those smiles in. I don't know where he stores them because his job does not look cozy. He stands in what must be a 5' x 5' metal box just outside the subway in 90 degree heat, serving coffees and sticky buns to dark suited, hectically rushed business men and women as they scrabble to make it to work in their skyscrapers by 9. But there he is, every morning. No fail. Smiling. Real smiles, too. They make it too his eyes. Maybe they're the key to his success, because I can get an iced coffee for less than $2.50 a pop, but man, he just brightens my morning. Keep it up, coffee-booth man! Maybe tomorrow I'll ask him his name and commend him on his awesome service. Maybe he'll appreciate it. Hmm.

Today, at my internship, it was extremely tough to focus. Last night was one of those nights where I was awake every 20 minutes, checking the time. Have you ever had nights like that? When, as it gets later and later (or earlier and earlier, depending on how you look at it), you become gradually more and more anxious because you know the alarm is going to go off soon and you've gotten barely any sleep. It's a vicious cycle, really. Those nights are the worst. Anyway, working today was really tough. I got done what I had to get done, but I could barely stay awake and it was super challenging to stay on task.

Oh, and word for the wise: Just because a take-out lunch deal is $5 doesn't mean you should eat it. Chinese/Vietnamese lunch buffet where they don't let you sample the food? Not a safe bet. But sometimes life is a gamble. And today I lost. I'm pretty sure my egg drop soup (complimentary with the meal!) was just mucous. I didn't eat it.

After I left my internship at 5, I headed over to Long Island City. Jen's neighbors were getting rid of a whole bunch of really cool, antique furniture, art, and glassware and I wanted to see if I could dig up anything really cool. I was pretty lucky the night before, but this time, no such luck. Jen found a really great pair of shot glasses made of peach carnival glass. They're gorgeous and I'm envious. I don't even think I'd drink out of them. They're just... pretty. Really pretty.

While I was in Jen's neighborhood, I encountered world-class parenting. As I was walking down the street, a man - maybe in his late 30's - was walking toward me, heading in the opposite direction. With him were two little boys, twins, about four or five years old. I glanced at him as I was passing to see that he was already looking at me. Really loudly, he declared,

"Boys, now THAT is a Bee-OOO-ti-ful girl!"

I kept walking, mumbling, "Ha ha, yeah. Thanks?" as I passed. But as I continued on, I overheard him say, a little warningly, "Don't tell your mother."

Super. Teach 'em while they're young, dad.

Is being a psychic lucrative? Can I be a psychic too?

Today, as I was crossing the street, a woman approached me.
"Excuse me, I hate to bother you," she started.
I had already taken it upon myself to assume she was going to ask for directions and took mental note of where I was. It made me feel a little important.
"Have you ever had a psychic reading?"
Oh.
"No," I replied, immediately skeptical.
"I just spotted you crossing the street, and there's something really interesting about your aura that just leaps out at me. You have great energy. I mean it! You're destined for great things," she said.
I smiled. "Thanks!"
And then she dropped the hook that was supposed to reel me into a consultation:
"But you have a lot of negative energy surrounding one aspect of your life that's holding you back."
"And which part is that?" I asked, now playing along.
She smiled sweetly. Very sweetly.
"Let me give you my card," she said.
Now, what I think she was probably trying to communicate right off was, "Holy crap! Look at that purple sun dress! You MUST be nonconservative enough to fall for a psychic reading! Ka-ching!"

She was wearing purple too.

____________________________________

Today was a day of goods and bads:

• - I must find somewhere to cram the massive white TV that is eating valuable space in my bedroom. Apparently it is a big selling point to its rentability and cannot be done away with. 
• + Good coffee served by a friendly person 
• + Air-conditioned internet cafe 
• - For some ungodly reason, the toilet had no toilet seat and the teenager who left the bathroom (after being in there for a VERY long time) before I entered had very clearly just been smoking pot with the fan on. I'm becoming so good at hovering that I could teach a seminar on it. 
• - Wasted two hours and $4 writing two very labor-intensive, impressive cover letters to jobs listed on Craigslist only to find out they were both "MAKE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME!!!!!!!!" scams. Fail. 
• + Was entertained by "psychic" 
• + Bought a set of wall hooks to hang my wet towels on 
• + Stopped into a guitar store just to play some tunes 
• + Found artichokes at 50 cents a piece! 
• - Lost my 30-day $90 MetroCard. It was still young. I am still grieving. 
• + Happened across a big, outdoor, private Italian party where a man - who was dressed like a lounge lizard from the '70s - sang traditional Italian music into a microphone with the musical accompaniment of a DJ. He had a surprisingly stunning voice. I hung around and listened to a couple songs. 
• + Went to a wine tasting and discovered a delicious wine from Portugal to bring to True Blood tomorrow night 
• + Found out that I can be compensated for the days I won't be able to use on my lost MetroCard 
• + Watched an episode of Big Love and enjoyed a delicious, if not odd, dinner of boiled eggs, an artichoke, and a sliced cucumber 

My room is starting to feel like a safe haven instead of a tomb, now that I have an air conditioner. Merely the change in air temperature seems to have changed the way I view the space and colors of my living space. Now it seems welcoming. Before, it was the last place I wanted to be in. I bought a notebook today. I feel tempted to keep a journal, even though I suck at keeping journals. Especially the written kind. And yet I am wary of the limitations and dangers of writing down my personal thoughts in a space that just about anyone could access if they really wanted to. Maybe I will just use it for to-do lists. I write lots and lots of those.

Now I think it's time for more Big Love.

If only the whole apartment was air conditioned...

I was talking to Joe yesterday and he made a reference to my "new life." And the phrase struck me funny because I don't quite feel like I have a new life. I just feel like I'm me, displaced. God, that sounds depressing. I mean, most of the elements are there. I live in an apartment in a neighborhood I really like. I've made friends at local haunts. Yeah, they're employees, but they still count [laughs]. I'm gaining a deeper understanding of the subway system all the time. I've even started walking faster, much to my chagrin. I don't have a job. So there's a puzzle piece I need to fit. But I do have an internship, which feels like a job, even if I'm not getting paid. Plug in another two days, and I have a 9 to 5 in midtown Manhattan. And a salary. I'd have to plug in one of those too. On the upside, rarely do I leave the apartment without something strange, interesting, or darkly humorous happening. I do glean joy from that. There were many days in Vermont where I'd leave the apartment and absolutely nothing would happen.

I guess that I feel like my life right now is made up of a bunch of pieces that don't quite fit together. Financial security would probably help eradicate that feeling, but I don't think it would fix it entirely.

... You know what it is? I think I just put my finger on it:
I don't really feel like anything I have right now is mine.

My apartment isn't really my apartment. It's Kevin and Amelia's home, and as lovely as it is, nothing here is mine except for what's in the space I'm paying for. And even that is sparse. My internship was gotten for me by my old professor. It's not something I worked to get. The people I socialize with are on loan to me from my sister, and even though I have a lot of fun, everyone's a decade older than me. And they've known me since I was 10. Even younger, in some cases. The money I have is from a nest egg that I didn't save up for, but won in a court settlement when I was 13. A lawsuit that was filed by my mother when I slipped and cut my hand on a kitchen appliance. Don't get me wrong. I've worked hard to get to where I am, and I think I've done a damn good job, when all is said and done. But for some reason, I've been feeling like all of this is lacking substance as of late.

Like, "Good, Hilary. You wanted to be here. Now you're here. So what now?"
Maybe it's just NYC. I'm not the type who dresses everyday to be noticed and I can't seem to engage in the constant, cut-throat, rat race that everyone seems to be part of on a daily basis. Or maybe I just feel like I'm 24 and want to do bigger things. I wonder if there's a city out there with which I could fall in love...

ANYWAY.

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote in this blog. Life is definitely moving much faster than it feels like it has been. I want to look back on this blog somewhere down the line and remember the journey. So I'm going to connect all the major dots. But I think I'll do it in a bulleted format so I'm not up until 4 a.m. [laughs].

• After much effort, I'm finally hooked on HBO's "Big Love."
• Sam came to visit. We had a blast. I spent way too much money. We discovered a mutual love for Mexican food, which oddly, in our almost two years of dating, we've never experienced together before. We also discovered a fiery passion for Mojitos and frozen Margaritas. We went out to eat at Keen's Steakhouse for Sam's birthday, where he had a $25 glass of scotch and I ordered a $50 cut of prime rib, which was seriously 28 oz. and about the size of my head. Last hugely expensive meal for a while. It would have been nice to cuddle more, as we hadn't seen each other in a month, but it was a scorching 95 degrees almost all week and it was often too hot to even hold hands. But at least we had Jen and Santino's place all to ourselves. 
• Daelynn came to visit the day after Sam left. We also had a ton of fun. And I once again spent too much money. The two big highlights that stand out in mind were going to see Avenue Q, which was fantastic, and going to a gay bar for the Fourth of July. Neither of us are gay, and so I felt a little like an impostor. But the evening was a blast. Piano bar upstairs, complete with show tunes, $4 Long Island Iced Teas, and all the rainbow and penis art you could ask for. Pumping techno night club downstairs, complete with nearly-naked, muscly, tan, hairless man dancing on a 3 ft. roped-off block in nothing but knee pads and a camo-print banana hammock G-string. Hilarious. Priceless. Why aren't regular bars that awesome? Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.
• I started my internship. I like it, I think. I'm being told I'm a really good copywriter, which is great news. I was a little afraid I wouldn't be. Mainly, I work in advertising right now, which is funny because I just spent three years learning about the evils of the advertising industry! Yay! 
• A pigeon unloaded on me at Union Square. Thankfully, it did not land in my hair, or even on my skin. Also at that moment, a commercial was being filmed, some crazy woman was fighting with a passerby who was screaming, "Lady, don't f*#&%^$ touch me!" and a guy was crawling past on his hands and knees, asking if he could take pictures of people's feet. I <3 NYC. 
• I spent a good chunk of the day today in an internet cafe. It didn't serve coffee, the walls were stark and white, the floor was made of industrial tile, and the toilet and the bathroom had no toilet seat, but at $3 per hour, the price was right. I applied to be a food & wine freelancer for a website through Craigslist. I think I'll go back and do more of the same tomorrow. World: give me some friggan' money. Please. Thank you. 
• We've been in a heat wave and I've been in crisis mode. Don't ever come to this city when it's hot. It sucks. Walking out of any building in Manhattan feels like entering a blow dryer. It's just awful. Finally, I broke down and bought an air conditioner. Santino installed it, increasing the quality of my life by about 110%. Until I get a peek at the next utility bill [laughs]. 

I think that's about all I've got for now. I'm exhausted. I think I'm going to retreat to my nice, cool bat cave and catch some Zzz's.