November 21, 2011

My grandpa passed away today.

Last Monday, the nurses at his retirement home found him in his apartment with a broken hip. After emergency surgery, it was obvious that his heart wasn’t up to the recovery process. My mother called this morning to tell me they had decided to take him off life support. It was clearly the best decision, and I know he would have wanted it. So when my phone rang this evening, and my mom’s picture flashed on the screen, I knew.

It’s not a tragedy. In fact, looking long and hard at it, it’s a blessing, a good thing. My religious views are muddled, but I’d like to think that somewhere his soul is reunited with my Grandma’s. He was tired. This is not a tragedy.

I still feel sad, like I’ve lost a dear friend whose company I always enjoyed. The world feels a little bit less without him in it.

Hey, I’m awkward!

I felt so stir-crazy after my GRE was over. I was all but rocking back and forth in the corner of my room muttering the definition of words like obsequious and numismatics. “Overly submissive and eager to please” and “Coin-collecting” for those of you intrigued. Come Friday, I needed to get out. I had a stitch and bitch planned with a friend who recently learned to knit, but I needed something a bit more. So after hours of stitching, bitching, sharing a bottle of wine she brought back from Npa, and listening to Prairie Home Companion (a.k.a. soundtrack to the best knitting sessions of your life) I headed out to meet up with Gian.

He wanted to do something divey, so I suggested Subway Inn, which is a dirty bar across the street from Bloomingdale’s on the Upper East Side. It’s sketchy sketchy sketchy, and right up my alley.

May I preface this story by saying that I was ENTIRELY sober. I consumed that half bottle of wine over a four hour period and was not drunk.

So Gian and I walk in to the bar. I look over at him to verify that he is in fact looking around and nodding. “This’ll do,” he solemnly stated.

We look around for a booth or a table or bar stools, but not much is available. It’s a rockin’ Friday night after all. We see a table in a dark corner underneath a speaker and decide to park there. It was dark. Gian sits down on his side of the table and starts taking off his coat. I go to sit down. What happens next is a story of SOBER confusion.

I lean to sit, I lean farther, farther. There is no chair there. But things have been set in motion that cannot be changed, and my butt plummets to the ground, as I make a noise something like “Woah, woah, woah, waaaaaaaaah!”

I am now sitting on a dirty bar floor, very confused and scrambling to get up. I slap my hand on the table and slowly pick myself up, no doubt completely red. Gian is trying to not laugh at me. “Where did you go just now?” I grab the chair that is sitting on his side of the table.

“It’s dark. I thought there was a chair. There was NO chair. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I am trying to gain my composure and ignore my pained behind. “Did anyone see me?” I ask him.

“Just those people at the bar,” he points to the bartender and a group of women laughing hysterically at me. I pull my fur hood over my head and lower my forehead to the table.

“I am so embarrassed I want to die.”

Moving on to Saturday! Brian and I had a lovely day. Brunch in the West Village and fantasy shopping in SoHo (pretending we can afford things we absolutely can’t.) We met up with Gian to watch the Husky Football Game and then took him on more fantasy shopping. We ended up in a shoe store where I tried on these ridiculous shoes.

They are all the rage in New York right now, but I am way too tall to wear them. They made me as tall as Brian who is 6’2″. I had a couple of awkward stumbles in them at first, then I started doing laps in them, pretending to catch a cab. The salesperson was nice enough to give me a matching bag to make the scenario more realistic. Everyone laughed at me which is fine, because I was in on the joke this time. Or maybe that salesman was hoping to up his commission.

Not this time, buddy. This girl is a starving writer who can’t afford Ho-shoes.

True Confessions

Okay, Interweb, I have to get something off my chest. This is a secret that I have kept my entire life. I have NEVER told anyone this. Are you feeling special yet?

It was so top-secret that I actually kind of convinced myself that it wasn’t true. But it is, and I’m not afraid to say it.

I, Chrissy, like…………MATH!!

I have been gung-ho the last week studying for the GRE which I took this afternoon. (My Chrissy-brain hurt now.) In studying, I mainly focused on the verbal reasoning preparation, seeing as I am applying for an MFA and math skills are absolutely not necessary. But I had dropped precious dollars on that GRE prep book, and I figured I may as well look over some of the “Quantitative Reasoning” questions.

It was frustrating at first. I found myself consistently throwing my pen up in the air saying things like “Confound it all!” and “This is so rebarbative!” I was practicing my vocab.

I haven’t taken a math class since I was 17, and I simply couldn’t remember how to find the circumference of a circle or what the formula for permutations was.

Like any good Type A girl, I started making lists of formulas and practicing the ones that I was rusty at. Before I knew it, I was having a blast solving all those problems. I felt so proud of myself.

Perhaps this secret is a two-parter. Because not only do I like math, I’m actually ALSO good at it. I’ve spent my childhood academic career pretending to hate math and finding it difficult. Truth is, there is something reassuring about being presented with a problem and having a straightforward way of solving it.

The other night I could feel an anxiety attack coming on as I was trying to fall asleep. My mind was racing, my heart pounding, I couldn’t breathe, tears were bracing themselves behind my eyes. I shot out of bed and started pacing, melting down. I saw my GRE book in the corner, picked it up and did a set of math problems. The emotions and fears that were overwhelming me slowly subsided as I lost myself in algebra and geometry. It’s almost as if I shut down the right side of my brain for a while. Like a computer overheating, I turned it off, let my left brain take over until I was calm enough to deal.

So there it is. I don’t know why I was so ashamed my whole life. Perhaps I didn’t want to be considered a nerd. But come on, I was as big a nerd as they come growing up. I remember being in Trigonometry in high school and sitting next to a gorgeous upperclassman who would ask me for help in class. I would eagerly oblige, but throw in a lot of “but I’m not sure” and “who knows if that’s right, though, this stuff is so confusing!” Twirl my hair, pretend to be a dumb girl. So silly. And now? I’ve come to embrace my inherent nerdiness. As an adult, I’d much rather be a nerd than cool. Maybe it made me feel less deserving of the title of writer that I’ve been holding so close to my heart for years. Writers shouldn’t like math!

This one does!