Is this irony...or stupidity?

I spent a lovely evening last night in Washington Heights, checking out my girl's new apartment and enjoying mofongo at El Malecon. I would write about what my impression of the neighborhood was, and yadda yadda yadda, but one of those random gifts from God happened--the ones where something so crazy takes place and you are just thankful to have witnessed it.

So we're at this restaurant, enjoying mofongo and albondigas (sp?), and we notice a man walking from table to table with a huge shopping bag full of perfume. He's trying to sell it to the other patrons--not us though; I guess he knew we didn't speak Spanish. This on its own is a little bizarre, as I've only seen men interrupt people's meals to sell roses, but I guess perfume is a better gift than a rose!

I notice the perfume salesman sneeze. I look up at him and he looks awful! His eyes are red, his cheeks are red, his forehead is red, he is sniffling and wiping away tears...he is clearly deathly allergic to perfume. People at the table are laughing, he's pointing to his eyes, nodding knowingly. I didn't understand their conversation but I guarantee it went something like this:

"Dude. What the eff? You are crying like a girl over that perfume!"

"I know, I know, I am allergic, but I have to make a living, no?"

"Mommy, that man is crying, hahaha."

WHY would you choose to make a living doing something that caused constant physical problems; problems that actually inhibit you from doing your job? (You can't really sell something when you're sneezing, can you?) I understanding hating your job, doing something just for the money...but this confuses me.

Snoring and Toenails and Spooning, oh my!

I'm an awesome girlfriend during the day, but as soon as the sleeping happens, Rob starts to have issues. Everyone's got their crazy sleeping habits I suppose, but I can usually fall asleep right away even if Rob is twitching like crazy (I once counted him twitching 25 times before I finally fell asleep) or shaking his foot (don't ask---ever since he was a kid he used to lull himself to sleep by shaking his foot---no clue why).

But I let these things go. I'm used to them. I fall asleep first now and don't get bothered by anything he does in his sleep.

Not so with this boy. My snoring and my toenails send him to the breaking point.

I snore. Almost every night. I'm usually oblivious to both my snoring and Rob's attempts to stop me from snoring but sometimes he tells me about them. He will hold my nose, tap my head, hit me in the back, shake me…whatever it takes. And I never notice. The other night though, I was having one of those very active dreams where I felt like I was awake, and all of a sudden in real life Rob put his hand over my nose and mouth, a la a criminal trying to silence his victim from behind before he drags her into a field and kills her. He's been doing this forever, and this was the first time I noticed, but immediately woke up, freaking out, thinking that he was trying to kill me. This was way scarier than the time he had a mini night terror and punched me in the back.

My toenails also prevent this boy from getting any sleep. No matter how gingerly I try to get into and out of the bed or move around, I and up scratching up his poor shins, and he FREAKS out. He never remembers this in the morning, but he has insanely violent reactions to this. I've been retaliated against many a time.

Two nights ago I nicked his shin with my big toe and was expecting to have to fight off his toenail-ed retaliation, but instead he sat up in bed and yelled "SPOON". So we started spooning and went back to bed. Phew. He remembers none of this.

The goal of this blog....drumroll please....

These are the topics that I think I’m qualified to write about and will force myself to do so as often as possible until I create a specialized blog (hopefully something I can monetize and use to become super-famous in the blogosphere).  But I’m new to this and don’t have any readers yet, so for now I’ll focus on:

 

1. My relationship:  My boyfriend and I are like a barrel of monkeys when we’re together, and have a great thing going.  We’ve been together since high school and have lived together for four years, but also manage to be fairly independent and laissez-fair when it comes to socializing.  I don’t think this is weird, but everyone I know does!  So maybe I can shed some light on what makes us work well together.  People are always asking about us (why we’re not married, does he really exist, etc, etc) so might as well throw it all out there.

 

2. My friends:  I think I am an expert listener.  I ask tons of questions, people tell me everything.   I’m just really curious about the human condition in general, what gets people going, what their issues are, nuances in their personality, etc.  And I was telling one of my best girlfriends this weekend that I want to tell some of my friends’ stories on my blog and she thought it was hysterical:  “So people confide in you, and now you’re going to tell their secrets to everyone??”  But that’s not it, though I will keep the sensationalist stuff anonymous.  I think I want to talk about my take on my friends’ experiences.  From a sociological perspective, not a gossipy one ;)  I swear!

 

3. Random occurrences that NEED to be documented:  Like the time that I saw two dogs wearing identical bubblegum pink parkas cross paths right in front of me.  When the cosmos line up like that, you need to tell someone!  Too many absurd things happen all the time not to write them down.

 

4. My career/expertise:  I’ve been in a similar industry for the 5 years since college and know what I’m doing.  Every job I’ve had has pertained to careers or graduate school admissions, and I’ve given over a hundred lectures on how to write personal statements, navigate the admissions process, personal branding, and blah blah blah.  I need to maintain my expertise in these areas if I ever want to expand beyond marketing and become a product myself (i.e. overpaid consultant).  And I’m learning that TONS of career-related blogs exist, so I need to get on the ball with this and be competitive.

 

5. Things I get excited about:  I tend to be pretty laid back, basically because I’m so blunt that nothing really shocks me, but occasionally I get really excited!  Usually this excitement happens when I’m telling friends about how cheap my most recent purchase was, finding the most amazing sushi ever, reading a really great book on human sexuality or economics.  So when I have these ‘omigosh’ moments, I’ll use this as a forum to share the info.

 

That’s enough, right?  For 365 blogs posts a year?  Haha, we’ll see…

The Pope Comes to NYC

The Pope’s visit to New York has left my boyfriend and me with lots of funny words to amuse ourselves with.

 

My favorite exchange:

 

BF:  What does the Pope use to connect two pieces of paper?

 

Me:  …A Pope-er Clip?

 

BF:  That’s a good one!  I was thinking Papal-er.

 

 

I love my boyfriend

Just received this email from my boyfriend. We are opposites:

"In other news, I’m all hyped up on black coffee. Here’s a quick recap of how I got this way.

1) Purchased tuna for lunch YUM!
2) Ate tuna in office with door closed
3) Finished lunch and realized office reeked of tuna
4) Sprayed cologne all over office to cover up smell of tuna (yes, I have cologne here)
5) Office then reeked of cologne and the partner working next to me made a comment about the smell emanating into the hallway (more like making fun of me than angry – he said he’d prefer the tuna when I explained why I sprayed it)
6) Decided coffee smell would cover up the cologne (not sure why I thought that)
7) Also decided that adding milk would dilute smell
8) Left open cupS of coffee on desk
9) Coffee smell did NOT cover up cologne smell
10) Felt compelled to drink my two cups of black coffee anyway
11) Did I mention I didn’t add sweetener to the coffee?
12) Cannot stop fidgeting SUCKS! "