Moving Day

Today is Moving Day. As I type this it is about 1 in the morning and I am scrambling to scrub out my kitchen. I was the first one to move into the apartment two years ago because Laura was still in Chicago and Johnny was at Burning Man. It was two years ago today that I moved all my stuff into the living room and then camped out for a week so I could clean up much the way I'm doing tonight. Circles and cycles and all of that.

I knew I'd be too busy to actually update today so instead I prepared this list for your reading and viewing pleasure.

The Top Five Things I Will Miss the Most About Living In Jamaica Plain

5. Java Jo Coffee House. Located at the end of my street, I never have to travel any farther for a fabulous meal. They have the best iced chai tea lattes in the city. They use healthy and organic ingredients whenever they can. Their turkey avocado sandwiches are heavenly but my favorite breakfast snack is the "I Hate Egg" : cream cheese, bacon and avocado on a toasted bagel. Some days I ate all three meals there. Guys, seriously. Where am I going to eat now?


4. Forest Hills Cemetery. Located at the opposite end of my street (the dead end leads into the cemetery), this is one of my favorite places in the world. It's not just a cemetery, it's an outdoor art museum and cultural center. Once a year there is a Japanese Lantern Festival that people from all over Boston turn out for.
There is a gorgeous pond in the center, but if you explore hard enough you can also find a waterfall in the newest section of the cemetery. It's slightly hilly, perfect for roller blading around. You may remember from my birthday last year that e.e cummings is buried here. I will miss this secret escape spot.

3. Jamaica Pond and The Arboretum. I may be cheating by listing two favorites here but both Jamaica Pond and the Arboretum are amazing places to go to people watch, forget about city life and enjoy some fresh air any time of year and each one is walking distance from my place. I love sitting by the pond to see if fish will jump out (they do!) or counting turtles along the sides of the path. I love the way the Arboretum smells in the fall when all the trees are changing color, and I can't get over the view of the skyline from the top of Peter's Hill. But my favorite part of the Arboretum is probably the bonsai collection... I could sit there for hours.




2. My Apartment. I can visit Java Jo's and the cemetery. But I can't come back and hang out in my place. Sunning on the porch, sitting on the roof to read or write next to our big Japanese Maple, or having traveling friends stay in our spacious living room, this apartment has worked out really well for almost all our needs. It was an awesome find.


1. And of course, my roommates, Laura Clark and Johnny Blazes. What more can I say? They made the last two years more exciting, memorable and glittery than they otherwise would have been. And although this move has provided us with a chance to pursue new things, I will always look back on the times we shared fondly .


This is Laura. And a seal. The seal doesn't live with us so I won't miss it as much. But I'll still probably miss it a little.

And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor...

I hate clothes shopping at the mall.

Sometimes I forget that I hate it. And I try to go do it. Then I remember. I dislike dressing and undressing all my winter layers. Never a place to hang my coat. And nothing is my size. Nothing.
The trip becomes time consuming, and frustrating. I somehow have never eaten enough before I go, and somehow always have to use the bathroom. I get claustrophobic and I can't make good decisions, and nothing fits anyway so I'm really just choosing between which whatever looks less ridiculous. It's a waste of time. I'd rather be doing almost anything else.
Thrift store shopping is different.

In general, I do all of my personal shopping in thrift stores, which surprises no one who has ever seen me in person, I'm sure.
I like the idea of recycled clothes and I always have. I like to find "finds," like the time I bought a Betsey Johnson dress for $8 and found out later it was worth $400. Even in Tokyo, I went shopping in thrift stores. I don't like to spend outrageously on what I wear. That way I can buy things that are more important to me. I'm happiest wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.

However, I needed dress pants for my shows at Improv Asylum and I have never successfully found nice dress pants in my size at a Savers. Plus IA gives us a wardrobe stipend to make the spending easier. So today Laura and I set off to the Cambridgeside Galleria.

I mentioned all the reasons I normally hate shopping. But the size thing is the biggest one. Even in a no pressure situation -no goals, no time limit, an empty bladder and full stomach in a thrift store, if I can't find anything that fits, I start to get frustrated.

I'm too small for women's clothes, even the petites usually. And I'm all the wrong kinds of shapes for most youth clothes. These hips don't lie and do not fit into high rise tapered Gap Kid jeans.

It's so inconvenient to buy nice new things that I'd rather just as soon not. But pants to perform in are a necessity. When I asked around, a similarly sized friend of mine recommended Express specifically for their small sizes. I found that she was correct, and also received wonderful customer service.

As I was looking for more pants to try on at Express one of the saleswomen approached me and asked if she could help. I usually say "Thanks, I'm just looking." Because that's the truth. I love to look. But today I said "Actually... yes. Is there anything smaller than a zero?" "We have a couple of 'zero short' pants." She happily picked out two different styles and asked if I'd like her to prepare my dressing room while I continued looking.
That never happens at thrift stores.

Although the pants are 'zero short,' they still need to be hemmed. But all the XS tops I tried on fit me really well. At a lot of other stores, even an extra small is too big for me. Plus, getting these pants was so pain free that I almost don't mind the extra step of having them altered.

I'm not in any hurry to switch from Boomerang's to Forever 21 anytime soon. I'd like to travel some more and can't afford to keep racking up cute knit sweaters that I can't wear in Mexico anyway. But it's nice to know that a retail store exists with friendly and accommodating sales people where I can count on at least some items being in my size.

Ten True Stories About Laura Clark

I like this game. Happy Birthday, Laura!

1. Laura lived in Chicago. Chicago, which she reminds me on a weekly basis, is a better place than Boston because of its bike lanes, grid system streets, and lack of hills.
1a. Laura rides a bicycle.

2. As part of riding a bicycle Laura used to deliver sandwiches for Potbelly's in Chicago. Bike couriers are some of the most bad ass people I know. Laura is no exception. She even has a tattoo.
2a. It's the logo from Umass Amherst's sketch group, Sketch 22.

3. Once, when we were both living in Amherst Laura and I had dinner together and then tried to go to Bart's for ice cream. We met a man who claimed that he was the inspiration for the movie The Matrix. He carried around a photocopied resume in tiny tiny font of all the movies he had supposedly written or been a part of including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and ChaRly. He told us he could tell the future. He had a large wooden stick with him and also "special" water that could enlighten/purify anyone who drank it. Of course, Laura and I drank the water. Then we spent the better part of the evening babysitting each other in case something happened. Nothing did. But that is the kind of person Laura is. She drinks the water.

4. Laura also has synesthesia. We've agreed that "5" is the meanest number.

5. Laura writes for and performs in The Dowry which is a four person sketch troupe she co founded with her man Paul Barner. The two of them started off just by writing sketches together for a class, and now a year later, The Dowry (different link this time) has became a house team at Improv Boston!

6. I can credit Laura with introducing many new things into my life that I embraced fully, including but not limited to: quinoa, The Decemberists, Girl Talk, Imogen Heap, The Wire, avocado, guacamole (I didn't eat guacamole until Laura's guacamole dip and still prefer it to anyone else's), and singing in hawkit (sp?).
6.a Blood oranges did not catch on for me. Laura loves the concept of blood oranges enough that she almost once bought really expensive soda just because it was blood orange soda.

7. Laura's mom once showed me an old home video and one of the best parts of the video was 5 or 6 year old Laura demanding that the camera be turned back to her so she could do interesting things like sing a song and dance. If I had the video I'd post it here.

8. For my birthday this past year Laura prepared a pancake breakfast for the two of us. She had to get up at the crack of dawn to do it since I leave for work at about 6am. She was up before I was and greeted me smiling and singing. As I recall, they were the best pancakes ever. That is also the kind of person Laura is. She makes the pancakes.

9. One night Laura and I "broke into" Plymouth Rock when it was under construction, and we had to climb a big stone wall to do it, and we did it anyway and we still didn't get to see the stupid rock because it was crated and and the crate was nailed shut and we didn't bring a crowbar, not having expected any obstacles between us and our first hand witness of our nation's most famous boulder.
9a. Laura and I don't plan well.
9b. Laura is my only friend who says, "OK" and gets her flip flops on when I say "let's drive to a beach right now."

10. Laura has an amazing voice. She doesn't sing for other people often, and sometimes when she does she acts goofy about it, but if you ever get to hear Laura really, really sing, (especially "Ave Maria" ) you will weep the tears of happy angels.
9a. She joined a choir here for a little while which was wonderful, but she left after their Christmas concert that year because comedy and sketch writing are the things she would rather spend time on. Girl has pipes and goals.

Bonus:
11. Laura used to scream while driving over bridges. I can not remember why. But that was basically my introduction to Laura. I drove to Worcester with her, Liz and Zach for a show at WPI. Up until then I only knew her as "Laura the funny girl from the sketch troupe who wrote the squirrel sketch I liked so much." As we went over the Connecticut River we all screamed at the top of our lungs the entire time to make it more comfortable for Laura. Sometimes now I wake her up from naps the same way.

Yay! Happy Birthday, Laura!

Storage Unit #198

Here are some things I found when Pim called from Florida and gave me the combination to "our" storage unit.

1. My spare car keys.
2. The bubble machine
3. The NCLEX prep material stuff I was trying to lend to Blake months ago but couldn't find in my basement. (It's ok, he passed the test anyway).
4. A box labeled "other people's stuff," that contained (among other things) a binder of music for a show I never did, Danny's mom's copy of "Life of Pi," Danny's copy of "Choke," which I borrowed around the same time, a deck of cards and some comic books. (Maybe Steve's?)

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My upstairs neighbor threatened, in printed word, to take our boots if he found them in the foyer again. And to not return them. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this grown man is threatening to steal my boots and hide them in his apartment.
If it weren't in all caps and bold I would have thought he was flirting with us.
I was going to hang the letter up with his other one from last summer but Laura says it makes her too mad. And I want Laura to be able to use the bathroom. Which is where we hang letters.
I'm over it. He has a lot of anxiety about the front hallway. I don't. So he wins just by caring more. It's way easier this way.

Coffee Shop

Last night Johnny, Laura and I were all home at the same time because I found out my student's improv show is next weekend. This almost never happens so to celebrate we walked to Java Jo's . That morning I had stopped there for breakfast (as usual on days when I teach) and to pick up a bagged lunch to bring to school with me. I noticed that the soup of the day was "Italian Wedding," and knew without the slightest hesitation that I would probably be back for dinner. So I was. This day has been brought to you by Java Jo.

As we sat at the table and talked it became clear that the large Latino man sitting nearby was not just talking on his cell phone. He was free styling in a low monotone. The free styling went on for about twenty minutes at a time, would be punctuated by something along the lines of, "please make them play that, homey, don't make me beg," and would begin again.

At first some of it was actually kind of good. Nothing like the stuff we used to "kick," at McClellan house parties, but hey, not everyone can be us, right?* The longer this went on the more colorful the language became and the less creative the content. Also, the volume increased and the flow got less cohesive. So we kept overhearing things such as, "Eff this, eff that, eff my effing gat. I'm not effing kidding." And "eff eff eff my n***** , pull that effing trigger." And "I'm hungry. Where's the food at? Do you have enough food to feed me? Do you have enough food to feed my crew? You don't have enough food to feed my team. You don't have enough food to feed this country. You don't have food to feed this town**. This town is going up."

Jen the Coffee House Girl had to go tell him to quiet down twice and eventually escorted him out. When he began walking I saw that he was drunk. I wondered if anyone was actually on the other end of his phone. Because sometimes in the past I too have pretended to be on my phone for various reasons. Just never that long.


* I am so sorry.
**At which point Laura and I made eye contact and I said, "a town is smaller than the country, he should have switched those," and Laura replied "you should go tell him that."