Return of Saturn
Life has been full of excitement and ch-ch-changes. For starters…
I live in Queens now.
Yes, the life-long Brooklynite has packed up and been sent "up top" or "up north."* I must admit feeling a bit weird after re-leaving the nest…I’d been there since graduating from OC in 2001. I didn’t really prepare well, in terms of packing ahead of time (this makes me wonder how important so much of my life-s detritus could possibly be- the papers, mainly). My dad kept asking when I’d spend my first night here at the new place, whereas my mom was much more chill (but admitted her ambivalence to other people). Then again, my dad has been calling me at work and on my cellphone more than ever, it seems…enough for my coworkers to notice!
Couldn’t help but feel a bit sad myself, as I got ready to become head of my own, one-person household for the first time ever. I thought about how, when my mother left her home, it was to get married (not to mention the fact that she was younger then than I am now…actually, she was younger than I am now when she had me!)…then again, she was Catholic, and also didn’t have a doctoral degree…and it was the 70s. I digress.
My parents have of course been invaluable in this whole process, in spite of also driving me crazy half the time. But what else is new? I don’t want to bore you with the whole story, but let’s just say it’s involved a lot of shopping (Operation Target Storm was last weekend, took up a ton of time and energy, but at least was most likely more successful than certain other Operations with "Storm" in the title), furniture assembly, and discussions of temperature/humidity. Certain friends have contributed valuable advice and gently-used housewares. My grandmother has contributed the latest of a lifelong series of inappropriate/poorly chosen/useless gifts, but this has also been exchanged for housewares.
As I settled myself in to this new home of mine, I realized the full import of getting my own place. For the first time in my life, everything in my home belongs to me (hello, history of dorms and weirdly furnished rentals). Following that logic, if there’s anything I don’t like in this house, it’s my own fault and I can’t blame it on anyone else!
Well, except maybe the gigantor roach I spied on the kitchen floor last night. That cannot have possibly been my fault!
I’m messy, but NOT dirty- I clean anything remotely bacterial immediately, never leave food out, or any other materials that can grow their own ecosystem, etc. The downstairs neighbors/landlady/broker didn’t strike me as unclean, but I smell their cooking all the time (in spite of the air freshener I covertly put at the foot of the stairs) and wonder if they’re leaving food around. Shudder.
Side note: speaking of shuddering, I saw a girl on the train whose t-shirt definitely made me shudder. She couldn’t have been more than 18, tops, and had a sleeping toddler in a stroller with her. Her t-shirt said, "My boyfriend’s babymama can’t stand me." Nice. Go ahead and pop another one out…with any luck s/he WON’T be one of our students in 17 years or so… Like I said: shudder.
Moving on. The next section deals with my Return of Saturn in a different way. For those of you unfamiliar with astrology (not that I’m such an expert), the first Return of Saturn happens when you are about 27 or 28 years old, and is apparently associated with major life changes , important decisions, and more or less your arrival at personhood after prolonged adolescence of some sort. Mind you, I learned about this from an unusually friendly MidWesterner who worked at a dress shop. Other people have admitted to me that they believe in it, though. Regardless of what the stars may portend (and, honestly, it’s difficult for me to imagine that everyone born around the same as I was in 1979 -Mike B. and Ayca come to mind- has the same destiny), there have been some big changes in my life of late. And now concerning the birthday itself:
Okay Smarty, go to a party…**
my birthday party was on Friday the 13th, and as befitting a classy occasion, the theme was zombie, tiki, tropical-undead kind of affair. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Intimate gathering, intimate friends- I told people that if they couldn’t come, to send apologies and a piece of their brain.
For the second year in a row, an important aspect of the festive comestibles fell unceremoniously to earth…to be specific, I made a beautiful cake, and fortunately took a picture of it before leaving the house:
When I got out of the train station, loaded down with birthday-related goodies and accessories, disaster struck. My purse strap broke. I had the brilliant idea of using birthday candles to make flames around the cauldron, and actually managed to find some at a store! Unfortunately, when I arrived at the bar, it was locked. In juggling items and packages, I dropped my purse…and the cake. It didn’t touch the sidewalk, so it was still technically intact…unfortunately, it was intact in the form of a Jabba-the-Hut-like blob, with no recognizable picture anywhere except possibly on the aluminum foil I’d used to protect it. Le sigh. Needless to say, I made everyone admire the precious photo on my digital camera’s screen throughout the evening.
Well, that’s enough for now. I do have more I could say, but this is getting lengthy and I’m also worried that the internet signal I’m currently "borrowing" could stop working at any moment (which is what happened the other day).
Signing off, from Saturn (or Queens, whichever is closer)…
*those are jail slang terms for having to go serve out a sentence at an upstate New York prison, for those of you non-correctional folks.
** words of the estimable Young MC- an alum of my very own high school, incidentally!
