Category Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

My Doctor Don’t Know CPR, but He Knows How to Treat Me Right (Eventually)

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 9, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard, narcissism, why i'm better than everyone else
Tagged as , , , , ,

I step onto one of the elevators in Kamran’s building on Friday after work, and a guy in blue scrubs comes in after me. To me, his matching cotton uniform means the guy is too lazy to own real clothes, but I understand that the rest of the world assumes he’s some sort of “medical professional”. This woman slips in just as the doors are closing, so they open back up, and the three of us stand there awkward and silent while we wait for them to close again, because it’s super-rare for someone to talk to you in an elevator in NYC, no matter how cheerfully you smile at them as they enter.

She’s about my age. (Maybe a little older, because people my age can’t afford to live in Kamran’s building unless they have really morally-inexcusable jobs on Wall Street, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I return to my Brooklyn hovel.) She’s wearing a navy blue shift dress that looks expensive, she’s covered in chunky jewelry that looks expensive, and all of the bags on her arm are from expensive stores. I see her slyly eying the guy in the scrubs, and I think about how she probably thinks she’s really hot and deserves to date this spiky-haired dental hygienist posing as a doctor.

So we get to her floor first, and she makes this production of tossing her long blonde hair and holding her bags in her krelbows in that way women always do in movies when they’ve just finished a shopping spree with their friends and are now going to brunch at an outdoor cafe to drink mimosas and laugh at things not even they actually think are funny. She bounces off the elevator, the whatever-he-is looks after her, and for a moment, you know the two of them are totally mind-jerking-off about one another. But just before she’s out of sight, she loses her grip on her very long umbrella, and it gets caught on her I-swear-they-were-patchwork heels. She trips and almost falls down but catches herself, and I almost laugh out loud but catch myself.

And usually, this is where I would accidentally do the same thing six floors later, but I didn’t need to be all bumbling in front of this guy, because I had my own doctor waiting for me at home.

Or, well, he came home from work, like, 4 hours later. But I still felt awfully superior sitting alone in his apartment eating homemade frosting.

Dumpy Butt

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 1, 2010 – 12:30 pm
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard, stuff i like
Tagged as , , ,

I don’t mean to jab at anyone’s sense of style, because I live in granny sweaters, but I spent a lot of my time in NYC thinking, “It is so sad that she spent so much time and effort to look like that.”

Most interesting designs, I think, look wonderful in theory and terrible in practice.

But even I surprise myself sometimes with the things I like these days. Like t-straps and saddle shoes, which my mom used to force me into against my will when I was kid.

Even lately, I’ve found myself not totally hating the idea of things like harem pants, which appeared in jumpsuit form in this season of “Project Runway”, looked pretty amazing, and won a challenge to end up on a Time Square billboard:


photo by Modelinia

But last night, on my way to the subway, I walked behind this girl, who proved my “terrible in practice” theory:

But I applaud her for trying.

NYC is Toooootally Just Like L.A.

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 20, 2010 – 3:01 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, travels
Tagged as ,

I remember visiting my then-boyfriend while he was in grad school at NYU in NYC before I actually moved here. We were on our way to Panna 2–which is easily the best Indian restaurant in the East Village, both for its suuuuuuper cheap food and its crazy photogenic ambiance–when I saw this dog on the sidewalk. Its owners were dining at another Curry Row establishment and had tied it to the leg of one of their chairs so he could stand and watch them eat.

Coming from Ohio, I thought this was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen next to the butter cow at the state fair.

Last week in Santa Monica, we saw this dog doing the same thing:

Only this dog was TEN TIMES BIGGER THAN ANY DOG THAT HAS EVER LIVED IN NYC. Because L.A. apartments are ten times bigger than NYC apartments. And that is the only difference between the two cities.

Haha, just kidding.

Kamran and I were hanging out with his friends Gary and Diana one night and were talking about where we’re going to live when we inevitably move to the Southland, because while I used to put up a fight when Kamran talked about reuniting with his parents someday, I now understand that IT IS HEAVEN OUT THERE and that having lived in the two best cities in the U.S. would make me the best person in the U.S. Right?

We checked Zillow just for an idea of how much a 2-bedroom in Irvine would cost and found that for what the two of us are paying now, we could easily get 3 bedrooms in new builds with gyms and pools and parking.

I asked Diana if apartments in L.A. include dishwashers or washers and dryers, and she said, “You can’t find an apartment here that doesn’t have appliances.”

I die.

Why Life is So Great Right Now

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 30, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, everyone's married but katie, living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as , , , ,

1) Last weekend, I was out all afternoon on the hottest day of the year, and Kamran texted me at one point to say that he thought the air conditioner had stopped working. I arrived at his apartment later with a couple of iced coffees just to make fun of him and his overactive imagination, but no, there was definitely warm air coming out of his vent. We spent the remainder of the night sitting perfectly still on the couch, afraid that moving would allow the sweat rivers dammed in our hair to unleash on our foreheads. It. Was. Miserable.

Way wore than the night we lost power in my apartment, because Kamran lives in a studio with windows on only one side of the room, so there’s no way to create a cross breeze unless you open the door. And I wouldn’t have been entirely opposed to propping the door if New Yorkers weren’t so infamously curious about other people’s habitats; you know every single person who walked by would’ve stopped dead to watch us gnawing on ice as we watched Manhunter.

I texted my best friend, Tracey, about it, and she suggested I fly to Ohio and enjoy her central air. I also considered going back to my own apartment, figuring that a single wall unit for all 900 square feet was better than nothing, but I didn’t want to leave Kamran alone with his take-home law school exams. We went to bed around midnight, but Kamran woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like he was having trouble breathing and thinking we’d need to go to a hotel, which made me EXCITED. But then he remembered a box fan hidden in the back of one of his closets and aimed it right at us so we could at least not die during the night.

Two days later–after his exams were all finished, of course–his landlord graciously had a guy come and install a brand new unit with a timer and remote control so we never have to leave the couch again.

2) You may think of me as some huge important chef thanks to my starring role in Julie & Julia and my wildly popular food blog, but the truth is that about the most I do is heat up some hotdogs for breakfast in Kamran’s convection oven. But his oven went out in March, and we kind of didn’t bother to do anything about it, which means I’ve been heating up my hotdogs in skillets.

Skillets.

But early this week, when the new air conditioner went in, the landlord also sent him a new microwave. A huge one, with a light underneath to illuminate the stovetop, and a vent on top to keep the apartment from smelling like pigparts.

3) Last night, I met Kamran to go shopping for toilet paper (romantic!), and as we were leaving Duane Reade (a pharmacy that got its start in NYC at the corner of Duane Street and Reade Street–clever!), I realized that it was my chance to buy my favourite generic lipgloss, which I’ve been without for several months now but have been too lazy to walk an extra block to the Duane Reade for because the CVS near his house is so much nicer. I forget sometimes that the littlest things can make such a huge difference to my happiness.

4) I’m in Ohio for the weekend for my stepsister’s wedding! This means I’m the only one of the five of us kids who isn’t married. Last time I was home, I told my grandmother that Kamran and I are going to California to visit his parents early next month, and she said, “Oooooh, are you going to pin him down while you’re there?” And I said, “Um, haven’t I done that already? We’ve been together almost four years now. The only thing we haven’t done is move in together.” She didn’t like that.


And you?

Everyone Can See You with Your Finger Up Your Nose

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 8, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, why i'm better than everyone else
Tagged as , ,

I had to be at work early this morning for a meeting, and I expected that the public transportation would be less crowded, so I was annoyed when I decided to be lazy and take the bus to Grand Central and found that the usual load of people was still waiting at the stop after mine. There was one woman in particular who I just didn’t like from the moment I saw her. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was that made me want to ensure somehow that she lead an unhappy life–maybe her dour all-brown outfit, maybe her sloppy ponytail, maybe her chubby cheeks–but I was especially upset to look down from my throne at the back of the bus and see that she’d grabbed the last of the much-coveted single-person seats.

And then she started picking her nose.

(I’m sorry, but click here to read the rest. I hate to do this sort of thing to you, but one of my friends told me last night it’s the only way to do it, and I was just looking for an excuse. Looooove yooooou.)