I Just Want to Say: Gargling Salt Water

They just opened an amazing store across the street from my apartment. This is the kind of store you can go to every single day, and walk out of with a sizeable bag, feeling like you just bought something you absolutely need and could not have gone another day without. The store they opened across the street from my apartment is a brand-new, gorgeous (that's not an overstatement) Duane Reade. This Duane Reade has a smoothie bar and a nail salon in it. It has all the perks of a normal Duane Reade, mixed with all the glamor of the marble-lobbied Trump Building which houses it. Oh, and did I mention it's open 24 hours! How amazing! This new addition to my block is one of the (slowly amassing) reasons I will be sad to leave my 'hood come fall. Sidenote: when I was young(er) and living on Long Island, the radio stations my parents listened to would always play Duane Reade commercials, with that catchy little slogan: "Everywhere you go! Duane Reade!" I had never seen a Duane Reade in my life, so I (naturally) wondered where these people were going that they saw Duane Reades everywhere. I could not understand why a radio station that broadcast to the middle of Long Island would advertise that a place is everywhere you go, when it was actually nowhere I went and really served me no purpose for the first 24 years of my life. I thought that jingle would do better on Long Island for the Gap or Dunkin' Donuts or Wendys, or, in the later years, even Starbucks. But then I moved to the city and saw that Duane Reades are basically NYC-centric competition for CVS and Rite Aid. I never really had a preference among the three of them, but now that I live across the street from my very own 24-hour luxury Duane Reade, I don't think I'll be stepping foot inside a CVS anytime soon. It's the first thing I see when I step outside my door in the morning, and it's the last thing I see before entering the revolving door into my building at the end of the day. Now it really is "everywhere I go. (Duane Reade!)"

I recently read a book by Nora Ephron entitled, "I Remember Nothing." Small Asian Friend and Lady Friend both could tell you that this is an appropriate name for a book I would be reading. (Actually, they would tell you it's more appropriately the name of a book I should have written, since it describes me well.) While the book didn't make me "laugh out loud" in the same way Tina Fey's did, it made me smile on the subway a whole lot, and I found many of her self-announced quirks endearing (likely because I find I have many of those same quirks) and enjoyable to read about. I'm going to share a detail about one story in particular that made me smile on the subway (which probably made those around me on the subway somewhat uncomfortable). Nora talks in one chapter about chicken soup. The chapter's title is "I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup." She names a few of her chapters in that manner, beginning with "I Just Want to Say:..." I like it a lot. Anyway, her chapter on chicken soup is one short paragraph long and talks about how she always has chicken soup when she feels a cold coming on and then inevitably gets the cold anyway. So, she questions, is it the chicken soup that causes the cold? I have often wondered the same thing about that old home remedy of gargling salt water when your throat begins to hurt. When I was a child, I got strep throat once or twice a year, and whenever I felt the beginnings of it, Pops would tell me to go gargle with salt water. I always did (the obedient child that I was), and I still always got strep throat. I decided to refuse to gargle for most of my older teenage years and throughout college because I realized I knew better than to listen to the parents and doctors who were obviously getting kickbacks from the salt industry. Last Friday, I felt the beginnings of a sore throat. Lady Friend and Pops both told me to gargle warm salt water to make it feel better. Outnumbered, I figured, fine, I'll gargle the damn salt water. Today I went to the doctor. I have strep throat. Nora Ephron and I clearly have more in common than our ability to forget things. That's all I'm saying.

Happy Birthday to Me (and America) (in that order).

I am writing this post on a flight home from a glorious weekend (plus one day!) in Cape Cod. (Sidenote: should the appropriate preposition there be “on”? Or maybe it’s “at”? I don’t think one can be “in” a cape. In fact, I’m positive one cannot be “in” a cape – unless one has gotten oneself into a tangled mess with Clark Kent in a phone booth, but that’s obviously not the type of cape I’m talking about -- and that’s not fun for either party. Okay, fine, I will just forget it and carry on.) Boston Brit and her family welcomed me out to the Cape for a terrific weekend of all things non-work-related. I slept as late as I wanted every morning, went for longish hilly runs, ate delicious food with more people at one table than when my entire department eats lunch together (dinner parties are fun!), and paid more than I pay Starbucks every morning for a much more flavorful and refreshing iced soy chai than Starbucks will ever be able to make (at least that’s what I told myself while paying $4.50 for a small plastic cup filled most of the way with ice – but yay for small business!).

Boston Brit is one of the best people ever to go on a vacation with (to her own house on the Cape). She is one of those people who needs to plan out her entire day before she goes to sleep the night before, but she is willing to do pretty much anything you suggest. You want to walk all the way to the one store in town to get your chai after she has just returned from a 20 mile bike ride? Boston Brit says, "sure!" You want to laze on the back porch all afternoon reading the most amazing book that has ever graced your finger tips (shout out to Tina Fey!)? Boston Brit says, "no problem!" It's pretty fantastic. So, yes, my weekend was (as I mentioned earlier) glorious.

Allow me to rewind a week and return to the weekend of my birth date. To celebrate the coming of my twenty-eighth year, I did what all New Yorkers do on their birthdays: I went to brunch with friends. (Note that New Yorkers tend to do this every weekend, not just on their birthdays, but they absolutely do it on their birthdays, whereas sometimes they will not do it on a given weekend day. Thank you for allowing me to clarify.) We went to Kitchenette, which I highly recommend if you are from the South or like big portions and biscuits (i.e., if you are from the South). The weekend also happened to be Pride weekend in NYC, and Lady Friend and I attended several Pride events including a reading of celebrity memoirs by celebrities (not those celebrities whose memoirs were involved) that really made me laugh out loud. We were confused, however, by the fact that this particular reading of celebrity memoirs was advertised as a special Pride edition. At first we thought it would be memoirs of gay celebrities. But the first reading was from The Situation's memoir (sidenote: has he even been famous long enough for him to have a memoir? That seems very silly.), so we decided that was not the way the classification worked. Then we thought perhaps the celebrity readers were all gay, but we googled the woman who plays the mother on Burn Notice (good show - check it out), who read several of the excerpts, and found out she wasn't gay, so we were very confused. We decided, in the end, that the chosen memoirs must have come from celebrities who stereotypically appeal to gay people (read: gay men). Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Cher, and Burt Reynolds all made appearances. Pride edition or no Pride edition, it was still a hoot.

Let's get back to my birthday. And birthday surprises. And the fact that if you know me at all, you know that I don't often purchase things for myself. I do an awful lot of talking about things I want and looking at things in stores and going back and forth as to whether to get a particular thing and leaving stores empty-handed. So, it should not be shocking to hear (read) that Lady Friend has heard (heard) me talk about lots of things I want. Like a yoga mat bag. And a running belt (not a dorky one; a small one that's nifty and spandex). And a new yoga mat. And the Tina Fey book, "Bossypants." (Shout out to Tina Fey!) All of these things are things I have wanted for quite some time and never bought for myself. Lady Friend (who is terrifically thoughtful, by the way) purchased each of these items for me in anticipation of my birthday and planned on surprising me with them during the weekend. The Thursday before my birthday, we went to Woodbury Commons, where I stumbled upon a Lululemon yoga mat bag for just $29! Of course I had to get it! I emerged from the store and found Lady Friend visibly upset. I hounded her to find out what was wrong, and she told me she had purchased a yoga mat bag for my birthday. GAH! The one I had bought was (obviously) final sale! And so began my ruining all of her surprises. A close call with a yoga mat, followed by a rant about how this one brand of running belts (which is nowhere to be found in Manhattan's running stores) is clearly superior to all other brands of exactly the same running belt, and the kicker, when I received her final gift (which was actually a surprise and very much something I wanted (shout out to Tina Fey!)) only to then open the gift my sister had mailed to me earlier in the week and find the exact same book. Sigh. I am not a bad person. I am just a difficult person to surprise. (Shout out to Lady Friend!)

In other news, I actually met people in my building today (well, on the rooftop). I am tempted to look back at all of my posts over the past two years and count the number of times I have mentioned other people in my building (I'll guess 3) and the number of times I've mentioned any interaction with such people other than a negative one (I'll guess 0, unless I count an interaction with Juan, the best doorman ever). But my interaction with these two guys was very positive. So I guess there's still hope for FiDi. Too bad I'm moving out in September. That reminds me- anyone who knows of a great deal on a one bedroom in any neighborhood of Manhattan other than the upper east side or any (non-scary) neighborhood of Brooklyn, let me know (if you haven't already taken it for yourself)!

Before I go, I will leave you with one more thought. Here's my thought. Actually, it's more of a question. Can someone please tell me when it became acceptable/fashionable for young otherwise normal looking women to wear high waisted shorts? I don't understand. I thought we were a generation of low rise to just under the belly button, no? Please, women of Manhattan, look at yourselves in the mirror before leaving the house. That's all I ask.