Why is it that my dog can remember every single thing she ever sniffed or ate off the street and the exact spot at which she sniffed or ate those things, but is constantly and consistently mystified by the vacuum? I may not pull it out every week, but I am not a total filthy pig, and every single time I roll it out she is surprised, then curious, then scared, then confrontational. Every. Single. Time. Just about the time I am finished vacuuming, she decides she is betterfasterstronger than the vacuum and starts to bark at it. Then I am done, she races around me while I coil the cord around the machine and she looks crestfallen when I wheel it back into the closet.
I had the vacuum out last night, cleaning in preparation for houseguests, cleaning ONLY in preparation for houseguests because lately I just don�t care whether my apartment is clean or not on account of it being hotter than Hades around here, if Hades� air conditioning broke and someone turned on a space heater and then lit a bonfire for some s�mores which EW sound disgusting on account of the aforementioned heat. It is too hot out. We�ve reached the time of year when the weather starts to feel personal, when every time you walk outside you think the weather sees you and laughs and is all, Hey you down there, yeah you, look over here�fuck off! I said, FUCK OFF, yes FUCK OFF BECAUSE YOU TRIED TO PUT ON A CUTE OUTFIT TODAY AND HA HA HAHAHAHAHAAAA FUCK OFF I WILL MAKE THE WHOLE CITY FEEL LIKE IT�S STANDING BEHIND A BUS. A BUS IN HELL. JUST BECAUSE I CAN. The weather also does this in February, with slightly different methodology. The weather can lick me and I don�t care if that�s too crass to say because today people AT MY WORKPLACE saw me with boob sweat and fat-roll sweat, so all bets are off. And when it�s this muthereffing hot out, everything slows down, people move in slow motion, doors swing open and shut slowly, heaving with all the water they are retaining, tables at restaurants turn slowly, kids half-heartedly kick soccer balls back and forth, wishing they could go inside and read a book or something, maybe that book about some kid named Harry who thinks he�s a fairy or whatever.
It is too hot.
The boob and fat-roll sweat was on account of me having to attend Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! thing earlier today, which is the hottest day I can recall since I took that trip to the Sun. The greatest thing about this Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! thing was that it was being held at a park in Dumbo, which in theory is a short walk from my apartment, meaning I could easily walk home after all the Corporate Fun was over. But, as noted above, things move slllooowwwly in the heat and that walk was incredibly unpleasant, and I might have blacked out for a bit in the heat, as there are several blocks I don�t remember crossing. But still, walking distance beats the A Train, hands down. The other great things about the Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! thing was that it ended at 3 p.m. It was supposed to last longer, what with all the volleyball and dancing and water balloon tosses that were planned, but DEAR GOD THE HEAT, so we ended early before people actually started to die. Because, aside from the two pretty great things about the Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! thing, there was one really bad thing, which was that it was held in a giant tent. With no fans. And no breeze, unless someone sneezed or farted. In effect, the giant tent functioned as a giant oven, and became one hot, steamy dry cleaning bag full of 400 employees who sort of know each other and are used to nodding amicably in the elevator to one another, not passing around napkins with which to mop up the boob and back sweat. The food at the Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! might have been good were the temperature 10 degrees cooler, but fried chicken and potato salad and burgers looked about as appetizing as the muck floating in the nearby East River. I had two glasses of bad white wine, played fake blackjack with fake money, won 3,900 fake dollars, waited until our CEO spoke and raffled off prizes, then dragged my sweaty ass home. I stopped on the way at the boutique I used to manage, and the owner, Jennifer, saw me and said, Oh Honey, what happened to you�
On my walk back home I passed a new Ben & Jerry�s store, right next to what used to be the cute and delicious independent ice cream store, which Kent and I went to on our first date (when it was also hot as balls). That closed long ago to make room for a hair salon, which moved from a few blocks over, in what is now a drugstore. A block away is the Thai restaurant that used to be a Ben & Jerry�s.
I passed the weird Brazilian headband store in what used to be the cute t-shirt boutique, the cute t-shirt boutique in what used to be the record store, the juice bar that used to be a barbershop and the Starbucks that used to be a dirt lot. On the way I bumped into Amy and Winnie, who informed me that a friend�s restaurant might be closing, which is terrible and disappointing but no longer surprising because that is just how it goes here and I think it�s safe to say I mark my time in New York not by seasons or holidays or years but by how many businesses I have seen rotate through different spaces.
The French restaurant on Court Street was take-out place with great scones after it was the place we never tried, which came after the Latin restaurant, which was after the time it was painted orange, and when I moved here it might have been a Chinese restaurant but I can�t remember. The empty place on the corner was a beauty salon. The sushi place on Atlantic was a spa, maybe, and a Mediterranean restaurant and before that it was several other things but when I first moved here it was a bagel shop, maybe the worst bagel shop I�ve been to, because as I recall, they were always out of bagels. The Waldenbooks which I thought was going to be a Gap is actually going to be a real estate office, the antique store is a diner, the furniture store became a pub became an Irish (?) restaurant. The park where we had out hateful Super Fun Annual Corporate Summer Event Whee! used to be a dirty vacant lot used to be warehouses and factories and will someday be condos or boutique hotels or bike paths or a giant supermarket or something truly hideous like a sports stadium. (I kid! Because the sports stadium is going a few blocks east, where it can cause lots of traffic! And displace people who cannot afford to move!)
When I moved here there were no chain stores and I was afraid to walk down some of the streets at night and the only people I saw on the streets were old Italian men in tank tops, fanning themselves with the sports� section. Today, the only thing I am afraid of is wearing the wrong outfit when I go boutique-ing and I passed an episode of The Sopranos filming around the corner.
Maybe less has changed than I thought.
(Not my narcissism! Still linking to site everyone else discovered months ago! Whore.
