Uhhhh...

One of the nice things about my current job is that I work with just four other people. Another nice thing is that, of those four, only one ever drinks the free coffee which our boss so kindly provides – leaving not only more coffee for ME, but more than enough coffee cups to go around.

This might seem like a small success, but I know what it is like to suffer over shared dishware in the workplace. Last year, I worked in an office that had approximately 25 employees but only ten coffee cups, and not only that, we also had a maniacal office manager who considered it part of her job description to harass us about washing the dishes at least 5 times a day – said harassment occurring via a progression of emails that began with a curt reminder and ended with Total Batshit Hysteria. (Usually we were threatened not only with the Terrible Shame of the Undone Dish, but also with "loss of kitchen privileges", as though there were no worse imaginable fate than having to bring in your own coffee.)

My new situation, MUCH better.

And since a) we have a coffeemaker but no sink, b) nobody is ever nearby and clamoring for my coffee cup, and c) I am really, really lazy, I am not exactly diligent about the post-coffee dish-doing. It is, after all, only my germs that are floating around in there anyway.

Of course, if I don't wash my cup at the end of the day, there's usually still a bit of coffee – maybe half an inch or so – left in there when I go to refill the next morning. Which (I have been telling myself) is not a big deal. Especially if I just pour in new coffee on top of it. It all tastes the same, and a couple ounces of leftover day-old coffee in a cup that's 90% freshly-made might not be optimal, exactly, but it's not that repulsive.

Until I realized that, if this happens every day for two weeks, the makeup of that half-inch of leftover coffee does not make it "day-old."

It makes it fourteen days old.

Yeah, I'm gonna go wash that cup now. And maybe throw up a little.

Maybe I should be using smaller words.

One of the nice things about blogging, as many who do it will tell you, is that it can facilitate real-life relationships. Case in point: one of my very favorite NYC friends and first-pick shopping companion is also the cultured voice behind Dilettantsia.

Unfortunately, not every reader I meet in real life turns out to be my new best-friend-forEVAH. Case in point: this weekend.

On Friday night I went to a party where I met another blogger -- a Blogger-with-a-capital-B, one of the ones who actually gained a loyal following of readers and parlayed it all into a book deal. After introducing myself and telling him I liked his writing, he said, "So, what blog do you write?"

"Pink india ink," I said, and then, feeling a little embarrassed, added, "But it's not, like, well-known or anything."
To my surprise, though, the Blogger nodded.
"Oh, that one? Yeah, I've read your stuff," he said.
"Really?"
"Yeah, some of it."

I was about to shriek with delight -- I mean, it's not every day that a Gawker-grade celebrity author tells you that they know your work, so to speak -- when he looked me up and down and said, "You're definitely NOT what I expected."

I blinked. "Huh? How?"
"You want me to be honest?"
This is not leading anywhere good, said my inner voice, at the same time as my actual voice said, "Sure, go for it!"

"Well," he said, "I would've expected you to be more..." and then, rather than finishing his sentence, he puffed out his cheeks and spread his hands several feet apart.

It took me a half a beat too long to figure it out.

"Wha... wait, fat? You thought I would be fat?" I stuttered.
"You told me to be honest."
"But... but... why?"

He just shrugged.



The entire exchange left me with a sense of general discombobulation that persisted throughout the weekend, and not just because I can't decide how I feel about it. (I have the sneaking suspicion that it was an obnoxious thing to say, but at the same time, I can't seem to muster the same indignant response that would have resulted if he'd said something like, "I thought you'd be hotter.") I mean, this is part of the deal when it comes to blogging; it's not as though someone has never formed a factually inaccurate opinion of me before, based solely on what's written here.

It's just that I had never stopped to consider that my blog might make me look fat.

Process of elimination

Last weekend, Brad and I headed down south to see his family. For some reason (most likely because we are both insane) we decided to drive.

Note to self (and anybody else) for future reference: spending more than 25 hours in a car over the course of 3 days is not a good idea. No, not even if it means that you get to eat Chick-fil-A.

However, doing the trip this way did offer one valuable opportunity: about halfway there we were able to stop off in Richmond, Virginia, which happens to be one of several locations on the list of "Places We Might Live When We Leave New York".

I imagine that a lot of New Yorkers have a list like this -- there are an awful lot of people here who see the city as a phase, one which they'll eventually grow out of. Unfortunately, at least for us, the makeup of the list is completely arbitrary and based largely upon either Brad's or my vague, unfounded dislike of certain states. For instance, in spite of having never spent any significant time whatsoever on the west coast, we both are highly suspicious of California. And Brad, although I'm pretty sure he's never been there, seems to have a problem with the idea of Vermont. And then, of course, there was this conversation.

Brad: What about Florida?
Me: No.
Brad: Why?
Me: It looks like a penis.

Which, of course, is utterly and completely reasonable.

But Richmond was on the list, having somehow made it through our arbitrary biases. And we did stop there. And, in fact, we quite liked it! Although I realize that a drive through the city + one hour spent walking in The Fan + one hour spent having lunch at a local pub does not a full impression make... still, all in all, we both left with a big, sweaty crush on Richmond.

The problem, of course, is that there's one down and many, many more to go. There are still an awful lot of places we haven't auditioned yet. Rhode Island, Georgia, North Carolina, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston -- they're all on the list.

So it was nice when, as we crossed the state line, North Carolina kindly gave us a reason to eliminate it from the running:




Hey, I didn't say it was a good reason. But if "vague suspicion" or "unfortunate-looking peninsula" are enough to merit some states' removal from the list? Then we are not about to forgive others for riding down the highway with a pig in a pickup truck.

Anyone who has a problem with pure, unadulterated, vomit-inducing romantic cheesiness might want to leave... now.

Because today, friends, we are talking about engagement pictures.

(Is anyone still here? Anyone? Bueller?)

Okay, look -- Not that it'll help, but let me go on the record as saying that, prior to last month, I would have laughed at the very idea of taking engagement pictures. I would have scoffed at anyone who dared suggest it. I may have even, at one time, snickered in secret at a friend's photo set and inwardly dissed the entire engagement-picture-taking enterprise as vain, silly, and inherently retarded.

Which it, um, kind of is.

But you know what? As an engaged girl, your sense of proper, enlightened, non-narcissistic behavior has this crazy way of going entirely out the window when your groom-to-be turns to you and says, "You know, before my brother got married, he and his fiancée took some engagement pictures." ...And then, just when you are about to demonstrate your totally proper, enlightened, non-narcissistic behavior by calling your fiancé's brother "vain and inherently retarded", your fiancé says, "I think it would be cool if we did that too."

To which you reply, "Why darling, what a lovely idea! I have always wanted to take engagement pictures!"

And furthermore, to your great surprise, this is actually not a lie.

Because -- and this is key -- your fiancé happens to be possessed of the sort of hotness that makes women's panties spontaneously drop to the floor when he walks into a room. And even if everything goes to shit between now and September, you will still have photographic evidence that you once had the love of a hot, hot man.

(And also, because back when you first got engaged, some of your blog readers demanded that pictures of the hot fiancé be posted immediately. So you see, dear readers, I was ONLY thinking of you.)

Well, anyway, we did it. Off we went to Central Park, where we had a lovely time frolicking around in the grass and mooning at each other whilst our even more lovely photographer snapped our picture and told us how nice we looked. And although the resulting images might be construed as condemning evidence that I am, indeed, vain, silly, and inherently retarded... well, we also look pretty hot. And if I can't post Pretty Hot Photos on my blog?

Well, then the terrorists have won.

So today I am proud to present not just my two very favorite engagement pictures, but also, for the very first time on pink india ink, A Picture of Brad, The Hot Fiancé.



Ladies, you can thank me later.

Drop and give me 20.

Some of you very, very observant readers might have noticed that, in spite of my occasional forays into fat-freakout-land, I never write about working out. I never have amazing stories about spin class instructors, or defective treadmills, or “gym crazies” (the hilarious topic of this favorite post from my friend Kate’s now-defunct blog).

This is not because I go to the world’s most boring gym; rather, it’s because I just don’t go to the gym, period.

My gym-free status came about in a complicated way. There were a good few years back there where I did exercise; I belonged to the YMCA, I took yoga classes, I stepped it out to workout tapes (yes, that’s right, tapes) in my tiny living room. I even took up running. Hell, I was an exercise QUEEN.

But then, I lost my gym membership card. And rather than doing the mature thing, namely paying the $5 that it would have taken to replace it, I was convinced that I would find it any day. Defiantly, I decided that I would simply not go to the gym until it turned up. It was a position I maintained even as the days went by with no sign of it, and even after my favorite exercise tape (a boot camp video by Crunch, whose workout tapes I love specifically because the background exercisers always include at least one obviously gay man doing lunges in a pair of cutoff denim shorts) was irreparably eaten by the VCR a few days later. I was a woman on a mission. Also, “Whatever,” I said, “I can always run.”

Which was true.
For a week.

Until the day that I went out for a jog only to find that everybody I passed on the street was looking at me… oddly. I thought it was because of my sneakers, which were a) purple and b) completely hideous, but then, after getting a mile away from my apartment with no idea what might be wrong, I happened to glance down and discover that the weird looks had nothing to do with my ugly sneakers and everything to do with the fact that my entire left breast -- the WHOLE THING -- had somehow freed itself from my sports bra and had been cheerfully bouncing around in plain view for upwards of ten minutes.

At which point I hid under the Williamsburg Bridge until it got dark, then snuck back to my apartment where I decided that, in light of recent events, God clearly was sending me a message, and that message was, “Do not work out.”

This was actually fine with me, because frankly, I have never enjoyed working out. And it wasn’t making me thin. And what’s the point of doing something you hate when you aren’t even getting rock-hard abs out of the deal?

So two years ago, I made a conscious decision to completely eschew any sort of formal exercise, choosing instead to believe that just walking to and from the subway every day will be enough make me skinny. (Ed note: It hasn’t, but... eh.) And I am no longer doing something that makes me miserable, which I think we can all agree is important.

All told, I was probably the happiest sloth in Brooklyn.

But then, last month, I read something about pushups: namely, how one’s ability to do them is a prime indicator of overall physical health and capability, and how old people are always shattering their hips because they can’t perform the pushup-esque motion of breaking their own fall, should they happen to stumble.

I told Brad about it. Naturally, his response was, “Can you do a pushup?”
“Of course I can!” I said. Except I started wondering – could I, really? When was the last time I had done a pushup? Not a knee pushup, but a real one?

I must have looked worried, because he suddenly demanded, “Let’s see you do one.”

“Okay,” I said. I got down in plank position, supporting myself with my arms and making sure my spine was perfectly straight. So far, so good.

“Ready?” said Brad.
“Ready!” I said, and with great fanfare, I carefully bent my arms and lowered my chest toward the ground. And then I pushed myself back up.

Okay, no. I didn't.

I certainly pushed myself back up on the inside. I mean, I tried! I really did! And my muscles certainly felt, based on the screaming protest they immediately sent up, that I was pushing myself up.

But this was in no way evident in what actually happened, which is: I held stock-still in my elbows-bent-chest-lowered position for several seconds, made a squeaking sound, and face-planted into the floor.

At which point I became concerned – not only because Brad was laughing so hard that he fell off the bed, but because, while I still hate exercise, I also don’t want to fall down and die just because I cannot do a fucking pushup.

I had to start small, of course. Most strength-building exercises are predicated on the exerciser’s being able to perform the activity in question at least once. At the beginning, all I could manage was Wall Pushups, later graduating to Dresser Pushups, and then Chair Pushups, and then Bed Frame Pushups. I have, if nothing else, become intimately acquainted with just about every piece of furniture in my apartment.

But today, all of that changes. Because today… I did FIVE pushups.

ON THE FLOOR.

I know this doesn’t make for the world’s greatest blog post, but damnit, I had to tell someone.
Would it help if I mentioned that they were naked pushups? 'Cause they totally were.

That bitch has SOME NERVE wearing white.

It was with great interest that I read this little vignette about two couples who, suffering from the oft-noted sexual dry spell that comes from being married-with-children, decided to spice up their lives with some seriously frequent fucking. In one case, they made a solid attempt to bone every day for a year.

Apart from making my jaw drop, it really got me thinking about my own sex life. (Note to my parents: I know you're reading this. You might want to stop here.)

Not that I'm going to launch into a graphic discussion about this -- the how and where and which orifice stuff is best left to the inimitable One D at a Time -- but my wedding is three months away. My chances of banging James McAvoy without committing actual, state-defined adultery are shrinking by the minute, and the outrageous dreams I'd been having have gone right over the edge from "slightly unsettling" to "completely absurd". (The latest cast of characters has included, in no particular order: the cross-eyed guy who hangs out in my neighborhood bodega, an extra from the movie "Elizabeth", and my dentist.)

But even more than that, there's this other little problem that's begun to loom large in my mind -- probably the result of my watching too many period dramas, set in times when premarital sex was a major no-no, in which people got married at least in part because it meant that they could share a bed. In those movies, people go home from their wedding and have explosive, ridiculous, pantingly urgent post-nuptial sex. Corsets are ripped off! End tables are overturned! Broad, manly backs with rippling muscles are scratched in slow motion! It makes sense because, if we are to believe the pretense, these people have never done it before. Their entire sexual relationship, pre-wedding, is pretty much limited to taking long walks in the countryside and furiously dry humping behind trees when nobody is looking.

Oh, my quivering loins! Damn you, 1800s, with your upright Puritan principles
and your seventeen layers of impossible underwear! DAMN YOU!

Brad and I, on the other hand -- and please, try not to faint with shock -- have Already Done It.

Which leaves the question: How does a couple who are living in the cohabitation-and-fornication-friendly 21st century go home on their wedding night and have oh-my-god-we-can-finally-do-this Empire Period sex?

Thus far, I have no good answer to this. Some married friends of mine have suggested we abstain for a month beforehand, which apparently worked well for them, but this approach worries me for a few reasons. First, I'm afraid that it will be too difficult -- that I cannot survive for a month without sex, and that if I somehow manage it, I will be so debilitatingly horny that I will completely cease to function, and would eventually be found running naked through the park in a sex-starved fugue state, trying to rub myself inappropriately on trees, benches, and picnicking families.

My second worry, at the other end of the spectrum, is that it will be too easy. Suppose we abstain from sex for a month and it's not a challenge whatsoever? Suppose neither one of us even suffers? What would that say about our relationship? What if it becomes later fodder for arguments in which one of us is upset about, say, the dishes being unwashed, and the other retorts, "Oh yeah? Well, remember that time we didn't have sex for a month? I didn't even MISS IT!"



While I'm not exactly comfortable ending this post with, "Hey, internet strangers, tell me your wedding-sex-preparation stories"... well, let's just say that I consider the comments below a prime venue for, you know, sharing.

Help a sister out.

Escalator rage: an open letter to tourists

Dear visitors to NYC,

We need to talk.

In between the receipt of your economic stimulus checks, the arrival of springtime, and the recent opening of a movie featuring the world's most idealized vision of New York, I understand that the city has suddenly become host to, how to put this, rather a lot of you.

Indeed, you are cropping up everywhere. I see more of you every day. You are standing confusedly on the subway platform with maps in hand. You are running across the street in gaggles. You are even, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, thronging to midtown Manhattan and clogging the checkout lines at H&M and Old Navy. (Would I be out of line, dear tourists, to suggest that you use your time in New York more wisely, perhaps by seizing upon the opportunity to shop in places that don't exist elsewhere? And in a part of town that does not so closely resemble the pit of despair?)

As a resident of this city, albeit one of its outer boroughs, I understand that New York has an incredible draw. It's one of the biggest, brightest, most exciting places in the world. And you, darling tourists, want to experience it -- of course you want to experience it. And because I can utterly relate to the desire to visit New York, particularly in vacation-sized bursts that allow you to return to a quieter way of life just when the crowds and noise start to make you feel like your head is inside a washing machine, I am generally okay with all of the little....er, idiosyncrasies that you bring to the city along with you.

For instance, I do not get upset when you wander in slow-moving clumps, oftentimes taking up the entire sidewalk, along busy streets where there is a lot of foot traffic. After all, people move very quickly here -- much more quickly than in other parts of the country -- and all that walking you've been doing has probably tired you out.

Similarly, I forgive you for stopping, all at once, in the middle of the sidewalk in order to crane your necks upward for a view of the very, very tall buildings. Sure, it halts the flow of pedestrian traffic in both directions and forces people into the street where they sometimes get hit by taxis and die, but then again, if you're from the cornfields of Iowa, you don't have tall buildings to gawk at. So when you're in New York, which does have tall buildings -- nice ones! -- you should look at them.

I don't even get mad when I run up against one of you clogging the subway entrance, ineffectively swiping an empty MetroCard and then hurling yourself against the turnstiles like a trapped insect before shrieking back over your shoulder, "It's broken!" Hey, I get it -- other parts of the country don't have a subway. You're not used to it. And I'm the first to admit that ours, especially, has a bit of a learning curve (and even then it doesn't work half the time.)

Dear aforementioned tourists, this letter is not for you.

But to the tourists in Macy's today -- the ones who were riding the wooden escalator up to the 5th Floor -- you, YOU GUYS, have some explaining to do. Because while other tourist faux pas can be explained away by ignorance of and/or a lack of familiarity with New York City's little uniquenesses, you have me baffled. I cannot even fathom what would cause you to ride up the escalator together, all TEN of you, and then, upon reaching the top of said escalator, take one step off and then just stand there mooning around like a bunch of cows.

Oh, my darling, darling, incorrigible little tourists. They do have escalators where you come from, do they not? You are aware, aren't you, that an escalator is a moving staircase which by its very design necessitates that people step off of it and continue moving, lest they create a horrific bottleneck at the top that threatens everyone behind you with the very real possibility of being sucked into the escalator? Because, and this is key, the escalator is a mindless machine which does not care that you have somehow found yourself in the menswear section rather than the perfumerie, and cares even less that you are sure you were heading in the right direction? Seriously, sweet tourists, FUCK YOU. It works the same way in Macy's Herald Square as it does in every other part of the country: You get to the top of the escalator, you step off, you move out of the way so that your fellow escalator passengers do not stack up like unruly flapjacks against your immobile, and, dare I say, rather ample posterior.

And if you don't, then at the very least you most certainly do not give a dirty look to the girl who, rather than be sucked into the ever-moving escalator vortex of death, accidentally brushes against your fanny pack when she attempts to step off the escalator herself. Because she may find herself briefly, or even not-so-briefly, entertaining the idea of grabbing you by the throat and forcing your face into that lovely jagged place where the escalator track meets the immobile floor and laughing maniacally as your eyebrows get sucked off.

Speaking hypothetically, of course.

Very best wishes for your stay in New York,
Kat

Dear Sylvia, I'm sorry.

Yes, I went there.

Uncomfortably numb.

Before Brad and I moved in together, we went through a sort of trial cohabitation period. It worked like this: I would spend Monday - Saturday at his place, then go back to my apartment on Sunday. I would get clean underwear, remind my roommates that I was still alive, spend one blissful night alone in a bed that did not contain a snoring, farting man, and then start the entire process over again on Monday morning. (It was a lot more fun than it sounds, I swear.)

Suddenly sharing space with a dude, especially his space, can be hair-raising. I mean, consider the number of Single Girl's Urban Legends about relationships ruined by the too-early introduction of a spare toothbrush in the man's bathroom; early pseudo-cohabitation is a minefield of potential faux pas. But while it took me a few weeks to stop carrying my contact lens solution in my purse, or to start keeping a change or two of clothes in one of his drawers, it was only two days -- the time it took me to have a single experience in Brad's shower -- before I came back armed with a CVS bag full of items which I installed in the apartment bathroom.

This, readers, was a BAD SHOWER. It was so bad that, rather than trying to make do with it in its current state, I was willing to introduce potentially relationship-ending items into it. We are talking about Serious Shower Badness.

The shower actually looked quite usable at first glance, a fact which made its problems all the more insidious. It was decked out with a beautiful array of shampoos, conditioners, body washes, soaps, and other skin-care-related items in various bottles -- all of which is highly unusual in the showers of Men Who Live Alone. Over the years I've accumulated a certain amount of experience in said showers, and they are generally stocked with two items: a) a bottle of shampoo, and b) a bar of soap. If you are lucky, the soap will be relatively clean and not covered with a raised-relief fresco made of stray pubic hairs. (Note: I was rarely lucky.)

The problem was that most of the lovely bottles were just that: lovely, utterly useless bottles.

They were either completely empty, or cemented firmly to the tub by a thick seal of mildew, or contained nothing but an inch of cold, scummy goo which would slide from their mouths like a viscous slug and immediately coat your fingers with slime. My first experience showering at Brad's was like a reimagining of the final scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in a shower setting: me, facing down twenty vessels of which only one actually contained shampoo, intermittently shrieking when one of the bottle-slugs landed on my foot. The only thing missing was a ghostly Knight Templar sitting on the toilet nearby and muttering, "She chose... poorly" every time I picked wrong.


So I am proud to say that when we did finally move in together, rather than have our new shower take on the role of Place Where Bottles Go To Die, I took over all soap and shampoo-buying responsibilities.

I am embarrassed to admit that last week, I got lazy. We suddenly had three bottles of soap in the shower, all empty, and no replacement available.

And I am sorry to say that when, at the grocery store that morning, Brad said, "I'm going to buy some soap," I did not run shrieking down the aisle to make sure that said soap was mutually acceptable.

Instead, I just assumed that the soap would be fine. Its label proclaimed its scent to be subtly refreshing ("It smells like peppermint," said Brad, and then, in a conspiratorial whisper, "it makes my balls tingle!") and so I got in the shower today, happily loaded a loofah with the minty-smelling suds, and proceeded to do my usual scrub-down. I was even enjoying the fresh scent and the cool, prickly feeling on my arms. And everything would have probably been great, except for certain, um, inherent differences between Brad and myself which became clearly evident when I went to wash my own nether-regions and discovered that the female equivalent of "It makes my balls tingle!" is an experience way beyond what one would call "subtly refreshing".

And if this isn't making any sense, let me put it this way:
I got out of the shower 30 minutes ago and I still cannot feel my vagina.