Category Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

Different, Nay, Special

Posted by katie ett on December 4, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under everyone's married but katie, living in new york sucks so hard
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I’m under the impression that everyone thinks the way they live their lives is superior to the way everyone else lives theirs. I’ll tell you all day long that I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to live a quiet life full of children and pets in Hell, Michigan, but the truth is that I’ve made the decisions I’ve made BECAUSE THEY ARE THE BEST DECISIONS. And I’m guessing that everyone else feels that way, too. (Except for women who had abortions in college, because everyone knows that all women regret that.)

But I sometimes forget that everyone’s walking around in a bubble of life-choices-related superiority, and thank god I have my dear great-aunt to remind me. When I was home last month, my sister and I went to visit Crazy Aunt Dorothy (or CAD™) between our three family Thanksgivings. My sister is clearly the favourite with her, a fact that I didn’t realize until recently. I live a 10-hour drive away from home and visit anywhere from six to nine times a year, depending on how often Cassie clicks on my blog ads and earns me money for plane tickets. My sister lives a mere three hours away in Kentucky and visits half as much. I assumed that this made me the most beloved great-niece, but I guess it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, because my great-aunt couldn’t get enough Joanie.

And Joanie is great. She also has a husband, a house, a cat and a dog, future plans for children, classic fashion sense, shiny hair, and a job at the university. A SMALL-TOWN GREAT-AUNT’S DREAM. But I’m the one who does all the work! I’m the one who comes home for a week at a time and sees her multiple times and goes shopping with her and eats her German chocolate cake when I don’t even like German chocolate cake. Our great-aunt and -uncle talk nonstop about how wonderful Joanie’s husband is, how he’s “such a character” and “such a catch” when–and I’m not exaggerating–he spends 95% of his visits with them messing with his iPhone and hoping they’ll leave him alone. Meanwhile, the one time Kamran came home with me, he let them teach him how to play The Official Card Game of the Great State of Ohio™, Euchre, and then played all afternoon with them.

JUST SAYING.

Anyway, on this visit, Crazy Aunt Dort announced that she had bought something so cute and went to the back of the house to retrieve it. She emerged from the room where they keep her scrapbook collection and his pocketknife(!) and rifle(!) collection with a plastic bag and announced to me, “I’m going to give this to Joanie, because she has a house.” And I was like, “EXCUSE ME? I don’t have a house? I have a house that we pay $3000 a month for! I have a house in the most important city in the world! My house is better than Joanie’s! It has a doorman and a gym built right into it! What do you mean I don’t have a house?!”

And then we all sat awkwardly silent for a second before I laughed and said, “Juuuuuuuuust kidding.” And I kind of was kidding, because I’m not going to fight my darling sister over a ceramic turkey napkin holder, but as I sat watching her and CAD talk about it, I did feel sort of lonely about my life choices. I told myself, “I don’t need to define my success by my great-aunt’s approval of me,” but of course I want recognition that I’m doing okay. I want her to be like, “You are making different choices than most Ohio-bred women do, but they are the correct choices for you. You have always been different, nay, special.”

When I talked to my BFF, Tracey, about it later that night, she said, “Aunt Dorothy just doesn’t even understand what your life in New York is like.” And it’s true. She can’t imagine what it’s like to live in an apartment instead of a house and to have a boyfriend of six+ years but feel no need to get married and to love a job that might not guarantee me a billion dollars. I mean, this is a woman who once told me that Kamran’s easier to love because he makes money. She later told me that she hopes I meet a nice boy like my sister did, and then clearly remembered Kamran’s existence again and had to assure me that he’s a nice boy. She never asks about my job, because she doesn’t understand what I do. She doesn’t care which movies I’ve been in, because she doesn’t have a DVD player. She doesn’t care about the amazing restaurant I went to or how lucky I am to have an awesome roommate or which magazine did an article on me. Ugh.

I don’t need anyone to think I’m doing it better than they are, but I wouldn’t mind if they just didn’t think I was doing it wrong.

Bigtime Bus Touching

Posted by katie ett on November 29, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
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This morning, I was sitting next to a woman in a big, puffy coat whose bus reading pose also included her elbow sticking out halfway into the seat next to her, so I’m sure part of me was hanging off my seat into the aisle, but I was still surprised when I found a woman standing in the aisle pressed against me. She boarded the bus and stopped right beside me, which was fine, and then she backed up into me to let someone pass, which was fine, but then she stayed backed up.

There was no one on the other side of her, and in fact, there was no one else in the aisle with her at all, so she had all of this room not usually found in New York City, and yet she leaned her whole side against my shoulder. And then she moved and leaned her belly against me. And then she moved and leaned her back against me. This wasn’t casual, accidental touching but full-on intimate bodily contact that lasted several stops.

Read the rest here! (Not because I’m a total jerk but because I get paid based on my views there.) (Not that I’m not a total jerk.)

Two at a Time

Posted by katie ett on November 13, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
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Things are a little crazy in downtown Manhattan right now post-Hurricane-Sandy what with the 1 stations closed indefinitely, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set up in Battery Park, and random generators buzzing on street corners to keep work lights glowing. When I got to my bus stop last night for the first time since my office lost power two weeks ago, the ticketing machines were dark and had signs taped on them that said, “Machines are down. Board the bus.”

There were plenty of people waiting at the stop, but that’s normal for 5:30, and I had every expectation of a nice, quiet ride home. Incredibly, two buses pulled up at once, and while half of the crowd went one way, I went with the other half toward the second bus.

We all ambled toward the front entrance, forming a single-file line. Of course I could’ve passed the older women in front of me what with my powerful hind quarters, but I am a lady and chose to stay back. But just as the woman in front of me was slooooowly making her way into the bus, this girl in the generic black coat/black skirt/black tights/black ballet flats work uniform of anyone who’s graduated from college in the past five years came out of nowhere, annoyedly huffed once in my ear, and attempted to cut me off and board the bus at the same time as the older woman.

Now, I understood that this was not the type of bus where you have to stop and pay once you’re inside, but the only time I’ve ever seen two people try to enter the bus at once, it resulted in an all-out physical fight. So I did what any woman with a purse stuffed to the gills with ten pounds of wallet, Kindle, keys, and lipstick would do, and I thrust my arm out to block the door with it.

Read the rest here to earn me wealth and power!

NBD, Hurricane

Posted by plumpdumpling on November 2, 2012 – 1:15 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
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Ugh, you guys. The hurricane basically didn’t affect me at all, except that the area around my office got flooded and has no power, so I’ve been off work all week. Which is amazing, except that I feel like such a slug. I have a maternity session, an engagement session, and a wedding to edit, and I keep my Photoshop laptop at work. My grocery delivery service canceled my healthy, low-carb order this week, so I’ve been eating nothing but delivery food, and it’s not like I’m going to have a salad delivered when there are burgers and nachos. I’m as many as fifteen posts behind on some of your blogs. The Halloween candy is running out. I may have to clean a toilet or something to make up for having electricity when half of the city doesn’t. WOE, people. WOE.

No Free Rides

Posted by katie ett on August 16, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
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Watching people get escorted off the Select Bus Service buses for not paying their fare is a real joy in my life. Waiting at the bus stop next to someone who’s being written up for not paying her fare is even better, I discovered this morning. The fare inspector had politely led this woman off of the M15 SBS toward Houston Street this morning while I was stuck looking for one going all of the way down to South Ferry. I got to listen in as she pretended to dig through her purse for the receipt she should have grabbed from the fare collection machine at the bus stop wherever she boarded uptown, muttering to herself, “This is the first time I rode this bus.”

I wanted to be like, “Lady, get your story straight.” Either you know how to ride the SBS and you got your receipt, or you’re totally new to this and have no idea what receipt the inspector’s talking about. There is no “this is the first time I’ve ridden this bus, and I didn’t know to get a receipt, but let me comb through my bag in case I happened to pay my fare while sleepwalking and my somnambulic body somehow knew to hold on to it”.

Read the rest here! Please and thank you.