Avoidance

No, that title doesn't refer to my relationship with my blog for the past three weeks or so. I mean, we did sort of have that fight, and I still maintain that the blog was the one who promised to return the lard and chain saw to the hardware store after the electricity project failed, but that's behind us now, we've agreed to disagree. The real reason I was away for so long was that I was moving apartments, going from the 2000 square foot three bedroom in Bedstuy to the one main room plus bed alcove in the Columbia Street Waterfront district, or Cobble Hill, depending on who I want to impress. I lived in that Bedstuy apartment for a year, and in many ways it was tits: close to subway, laundromat, and grocery store, across the street from an awesome neighborhood bar, LOTS of space (my bedroom was the size of my whole apartment here), and two--count em, two--cats. You've heard of them before.

But there were also two--count em, two--roommates. Roommates who smoked with the windows closed and didn't ever clean the kitty litter box. So I packed up my dowry and boogied on down to the waterfront, where I am crammed nicely into a Rachel-sized apartment, rent-stabilized, pre-war, crazies included. Mom says that it reminds me of the Fort Street Mall crazies in Honolulu and that's why I feel comfortable here.

Oh, avoidance--that's right, I had a theme going. Today is Thanksgiving and I'm avoiding the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. There comes a point for every New Yorker when the thought of famous events--New York City Marathon, Thanksgiving Day Parade, Village Halloween Parade, New Years Eve, St. Patrick's Day--fills one with dread. The sight of metal barricades lining a street becomes a portent of doom and I go into bunny survival mode and look for the nearest wooded thicket in which to dive. The crowds, the police on horseback, the screeching PAs--and no one is even allowed to throw candy from the floats, though strangely I think throwing candy at marathon runner is still okay.

So today, I'm in avoidance mode. I'm staying in my apartment and watching Mom bathe her cat in the sink over the video chat feature on Gmail. For these small things, we are grateful.