My Home

"...it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist...I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." Garden State
--

Maybe it was the finality of it all, our last Christmas in our house, the house I grew up in; maybe it was that my brother and his wife are going to have a baby and I'm going to be an aunt. maybe it was the fact that my dad allowed/asked someone else to do the dishes and as I stood there at the sink washing away lasagna noodles and salad dressing, I realized that you really do miss out on a lot of the action when you're the dad; maybe it was the comments my mother made about her mother. or her grandmother; or my dad laughing so hard he cried, which reminded us all of his mother. our beloved grandmother, who we all miss most at Christmastime; maybe it was because it was the first time in four years we were all together on Christmas, where one of us wasn't overseas fighting a "war" that shouldn't be, or in California with his in-laws, because last I checked we aren't old enough to have in-laws are we; maybe it was because for the first time ever in my life I left my house on Christmas day like my brothers used to do when I was little; maybe it was when I left my parents for bed and a quiet house; maybe it was because I have to work the day after the day after Christmas or because I spent the day after at Target and the mall with my sister-in-law shopping for maternity clothes, and clothes for my best friend's daughter who turns two in just a few days; maybe it was the air, still and crisp and clear revealing a universe of stars that the smutty NYC air masks; maybe it was the rain that came later, beating down on my skylights like pebbles; maybe it was a freshly cracked book that I already can't put down; or the solitude in my apartment when I arrived home; maybe it was the candle I lit to warm the air with hints of vanilla. or the hot shower I took where I wasn't afraid to sing really loud; or maybe it was when I folded my laundry and sat mystified by my hospital bills; maybe when I called home to say "I got home safely, talk to you soon" or when my brother pulled away and I pictured him and his wife watching me fumble to find my keys to get into my walk-up; maybe when I checked the mail and it fell out onto the floor in an awkward obtuse pile; maybe when I received my "own" Christmas cards from my cousins, brothers and friends; maybe when my parents said thank you for coming out and for such a special Christmas; maybe it was then that I realized I had somehow become a grown up. that this city is my home and my house is just a place I go to visit, and soon that house will just be a memory, part of the distant past.

maybe that was the moment I needed; the moment I had been waiting for; the moment I knew I could move forward with my very own life in partial clarity.

Old Man Winter Please Bring Me:

Continued off-the-wall days at work thanks to my new espresso addiction
Cobalt blue walls, orange accents
Duke in the Final Four; tickets to the Final Four (from my boss!); tickets to Spring Awakening
A black and white printed scarf, preferably handmade
A spin instructor certification card; a gig; 100 great playlists
More red days, more pink days, more pounds lost
Dodgeball Champions!
Another spa/massage day
Motivation to start training for the San Diego marathon
A birthday card from afar, a birthday card from my favorite
A call from my brother that says "We've been reassigned to Virginia!"
More design blogs than I can read, more inspiration than I can manage, ideas brimming at all hours of the morning
A cactus for my office window
A two-foot tall brushed metal letter "A"
Crisp. New. Black. Sharpies. Both fine and medium point.
A Birthday that comes and goes and doesn't matter but is fun as hell, regardless
ONE huge blizzard that dumps 4 feet of snow on Manhattan and then the next day it's 65 degrees and it all melts (aka a repeat of 2004) AND a trek to Central Park to photograph nature's stillness before it all turns to snirt

The Future of America

When I don't wear my iPod to work in the morning, which by the way is almost never, I usually remember about twenty seconds into the subway part of the commute just why it is that I wear it day in and day out almost without fail. Now that I finally sucked it up and bought the world's greatest headphones (after my 10th pair of Apple ones broke) I have no reason to skip wearing it, unless, like this morning the battery is completely DOA. Today's subway ride was complete with a car-full of elementary school students from the Bronx and here is some of the hilarity that ensued in the seven minutes that I shared a space with them. I also heard something almost as funny once I got on to 42nd Street.

Kid to teacher: Yo Mr. Spignelli, are you a polyglot?
Teacher: Um, I don't think so.
Kid laughing: You don't know what a polyglot is; you haven't seen that commercial for that dictionary; yo that shit is mad tight.
Teacher: I don't have a TV.
Kid in shock: How come you ain't got no TV, it's the greatest invention of this decade.
---
Me to kid: Where are you going on your field trip?
Kid: Um I don't know (shouting to teacher) Yo where we goin anyways?
Teacher: I told you when we got on the train.
Kid to friend: Yeah but it's not like I be listening.
Kid to me: We're going somewhere to look at some shit, it's probably old shit.
---
Salvation Army volunteer ringing his bell and talking into a microphone:
"For one dollar, the price of your morning coffee and your hamburger for lunch, you could help someone today."

One dollar! One dollar!! Last I checked the only thing you can get in this city for a buck is...um...wait, I can't think of anything; but it damn sure isn't a coffee AND a hamburger.

Key of F

I've sung karaoke all of two times in my entire life:
Once this past summer on a blind date, after we decided that 1 am was a good time to take shots and rock out to the hardest song ever in the history of the world to sing.

And

On Friday night at our office holiday party in Times Square after what seemed like twenty vodka on the rocks (oh and also, I never drink anything on the rocks but decided this was the night to start). At that same party I argued with my boss about something insane, he threatened to call my ex and instead called my better half and spoke to him to try to win his argument. We also made phone calls to the girl I replaced, who was, for the record, still at work because in CA, it was 3 in the afternoon! He fell down the stairs in front of our President and everyone is still talking about it. There's richer, much more crazy stories I could share, but I've learned my lesson from Dooce and am not going to say any more; I've got a dog to feed!

The moral of this half-ass story is: Karaoke is evil.

HR would so not approve

Once I discovered the glory of ordering whatever I wanted from the Office Max catalog and it magically appearing in my office the very next day, I ordered myself an over-the-door coat hook so I could stop using my windowsill as a place to hang err throw my coat. It was not until I actually received and tried to install the hanger above my door did I realize that our doors in this office are about nine times larger and taller than most regular doors. I had to get a chair to reach the top of the door and shortly thereafter realized that if I needed a chair just to hang the damn hook, that I was going to need some sort of ladder to hang up my coat everyday, and although they sell them in the catalog, I don't think admin would approve such a purchase.

The other day I was in my boss's office and I noticed he had a hook on the back of his door, one that blended in with the door and was of a normal human height, not the height of the giants who apparently built this office monstrosity. I asked him in complete disgust why he had a hook and I didn't and he said that I should have one too; had I looked? Then! Then I discovered that I had a hole for such a device, but no device in which to use. So I got my coworkers involved in operation help me find the "hook"...which was then [sort of] appropriately dubbed, [She] needs a shaft. She has a hole but no shaft! Later in the day someone found a hook in storage for the back of my door, and instead of handing it to me threw it at me from across the hallway and it rolled under the couch. After a few minutes of crawling around on the cold tile floor, they all came in to watch as I screwed the tiny piece of plastic into the back of my door. They giggled like teenage boys and make jokes about my new shaft and my hole, which then turned into jokes about other people needing to find a shaft, which quickly became jokes about...being gay. Yep, just another day in corporate America!

You May be Right, I may be Crazy

At my friends' Holiday dinner party Saturday night we had a discussion about married phrases, mostly song lyrics that stick in your head so much to the point where you can't possibly say one without the other. You know what I mean, like when someone says "how bizarre," and you just can't help but sing the next few lines, or more likely just bop your head and kind of hum that tricky beat because let's be serious here, nobody knows any of the words to that song except those two words: "how bizarre." Another prime example is "Ironic" because I swear every time in the last decade or so that I've said "Isn't that ironic," like when I was being totally serious and telling a story about something truly ironic, one of my friends just couldn't resist the temptation of "don't you think" and then launch into the chorus full of spoons, knives and rain on your wedding day. So while my friend was making dinner at said party, her apartment got really hot, so hot that I started to sweat. Finally I busted out a plea to open a door or a window or something because I was blazing, blazin' hip hop and R&B jams (but of course #11) Since apparently these friends had never been in my presence when I was blazin' I had to [try to] explain that although I am somewhat of a freak show, mostly it's in ways that you can't see or hear on a daily basis...with the exception of when I'm hot as hell!

Well now it's Monday and I'm back to work and to important deadlines. There was just some free food in the kitchen (the highlight of the day, for certain) and I had been between the kitchen at least 6 times heating up the food, forgetting my drink etc. That deadline is literally thirty minutes from now, and sure, I should be working and not blogging, but whatever, I got inspired to write. I was just about to dive into the salad when I realized I didn't have a fork. Since I had been to the kitchen and beyond 6 times already (and I'm on deadline) I figured I'd just look in my drawer full of goodies to forage for a fork. And wouldn't you know it, all I had was 10,000 spoons and a few knives.