Life Lesson #43: Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good holiday break!

As I sit here typing, I’m filled with the warm sensation that is very often associated with the holiday season. It could be the space heater I have blasting under my desk. Or the fact that I just scored not one, but two umbrellas from my company’s holiday luncheon (Note that I’m pretty sure the umbrellas are supposed to be our Christmas bonuses). Or the dramatic increase of sugar in my bloodstream.

I’m going to go ahead and bet my holiday fuzziness on the insulin spike; a direct result of eating my weight in cookies. Well, maybe not every single pound, since I also hit the hot buffet at our lunch as if it was my last meal of the year. But pretty damn close.

I’m also a teeny, tiny bit hung over.

Last night, I dragged myself to a very different kind of holiday fiesta (as in drunk versus sober). The bar where I work on the weekends threw their employee party. I was hesitant as I don’t necessarily love the place and often feel as if I’m trapped in a cage with rabid monkeys. Not to mention the manager and his friend (who likes to think he’s a manager, but I know the deal) who give me a hard time no matter how many people I get to come or how many times I hit the register.

But in the spirit of being good natured and giving people another shot, I decided what the hell? Oh; and it was free. I arrived at about nine, an hour into the four hour open bar and food spread.

Mayhem had already spread in just sixty minutes. While this should come as no surprise to me, given the usual Animal House the place seems to turn into on a Friday night, I was taken aback regardless.

The crew of young, cute, and usually ugly-uniform-clad waitresses had taken this opportunity to dress in their best Slutty Mrs. Claus costumes. I’m not gonna lie: I kind of liked it. There were a few versions of mini capes and skewed hats, as well as five-inch red heels and serious spandex. But similar to the conforming affect their all-black work attire gives, there variations of holiday cheer were too indistinguishable for me to tell one apart from the other.

Good thing they were too drunk to notice.

“Hi Pennyyyyy! Yeaaaa, you’re here! Merry Christmas,” one girl cooed as she wrapped her cape around me to give me a hug. I think her name is Jen. Or maybe Christine?

“Oh yea, Penny’s hereeeee! Come do a shot with us from this side of the bar,” Mary (or maybe the other Jen) squealed.

“Oh my GOD, you are not going to believeeee how many shots we’ve done already,” Julia (?) gushed.

Um, you’d be surprised.

For these blissfully wasted ladies, attempting to hold on to drinks while shaking their butts to a horrible mix of carols and contemporary music led to several glasses crashing on the dance floor. Each drop was met with giggles and a very tall Santa’s Helper tottering over on her heels with a broom in hand.

“Woops. Here we go againnn,” she managed in-between hiccupping, holding on to her beer, and brushing the broken glass under the buffet table.

Around this time, I decided I needed a quick shot and a large vodka.

The manager, best known as The Champion of Car Bombs, had on a ridiculous red pimp-like cowboy hat with white trim and Elvis sunglasses. I was greeted by him, or should I say his thighs, as he came up and humped me as I stood at the bar.

“Yea baby, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” he yelled before lifting me in the air.

“Um, Merry Christmas? What’s up with the cowboy hat?!” I asked in bewilderment.

“Its Christmas baby, broke-back mountain style!” he answered before galloping off to hump his next innocent victim. He was quickly distracted by Santa’s Helper as she bent over to pick up a large chunk of glass.

“Hey, let me get another shot,” I asked.

Suddenly, I was face-to-face with the prize winner. The dude with the Nacho Libre stomach, who manages to get drunker and drunker every time I see him, was clad in a Mrs. Clause mini-dress.

To be honest with you, I don’t really even know how he got the thing to fit. All I know is that he didn’t leave much to the imagination when he got up on the bar and did his rendition of Santa Baby for us.

“Penny! Merry Christmas! Come give Mrs. Claus a hug,” he said, wrapping his fur trimmed gloves around my back.

“Wow, you are in some serious need of stuffage,” I managed as I laughed at the perverseness of it all.

“Yea, well unless you let me borrow some of yours, this is all I got. Let’s do a shot,” he said as he grabbed me back to the bar.

And you know what? I did.

Life Lesson #43: During the holiday season, I think we all get a little nutsy with buying gifts for our families, friends, loved ones, co-workers, the dog walker, guy who we buy our coffee from each morning, the mailman, the cousins you see every other holiday season, and that guy you pass on the street every morning but never say hi to. Well, I say this year, I’m going to slow down. Feel free to join me as I take a deep breath, bite into a free cookie (or glass of eggnog, whichever floats your boat), and enjoy the merry atmosphere. Soon enough, the festivities will be over, the decorations will come down, and we’ll be facing a few miserable months of harsh weather and no holidays in sight.

Side note: As a gift to myself, I’m going to be taking a blog vaca. I’ll be back on January 2nd, a full year after this all began! Who knows; maybe a blow-out anniversary edition in store? Although, I suggest you don’t get your hopes up. I’m slightly dizzy from this food coma and not really thinking straight.

Happy holidays everyone – and of course, thanks for the love!

Life Lesson #42: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me six times, shame on me.

I believe the clichéd phrase that means to inadvertently cause a problem for one’s self is to shoot yourself in the foot, no?

I think I might have done just that.

Not too long ago, I wrote how things were going well. And while they still are, generally speaking, I might have thrown caution to the wind with my number one thing to be excited about: getting an apartment.

Now, I’ve lived in some ridiculous places. I think the worst, hands down, was my first apartment out of college, down on Madison Street. No, not Avenue; Street. Never heard of it? Yea, neither had I. Wedged in between Chinatown and a giant low-income housing project, it wasn’t the classiest, safest, or prettiest of joints. But being fresh out of school, money was tight and standards were low.

Liberace, our other roommate (another friend from college) and I managed to ignore the blaring yellow BEWARE signs from the start, beginning with the sketchy guy who showed us the place. A mix between Kramer and an aging porn star, he didn’t even give us an actual lease to sign. Instead, he went to Staples and got one of those one page things meant to be nothing more than a contract for a doll house or something. To make it ‘official’, we all signed it in a bank. Although I’m still not sure how that made it official; maybe because they have security cameras?

Anyway, we moved in to our three bedroom digs that was actually documented as a one bedroom. The management company got away with this by leaving giant cut out squares on the wall between my room and the living room and Liberace’s room and our third roommate. Who, by the way, lived in a makeshift square that was simply built into Liberace’s room. I could imagine this is hard to visualize. So just believe me when I say it was totally illegal and very non-private.

Besides us three very poor and naïve tenants, we had what I believe to be ten or so furry rodents residing with us. Let me tell you; the set of balls on these guys were enormous! No matter the time of day, people in the apartment, whatever, these little bastards would come sauntering through the place. They moved so slow, we could actually catch them ourselves. On more than one occasion, someone would be cooking in the kitchen, a mouse would come out to check what was for dinner, and with the simple toss of a pot or bowl, we’d catch the little sucker.

Oh – and our neighbors! Besides the single mom and stripper next door, whom Third Roomie tried to get in the g-string of on a regular basis, we had the drug-dealing dude downstairs who had an alligator that sketchy Porn Star Kramer suggested we borrow when we complained to him about our mouse problem. And then there was the weird I-hate-the-world chick who hung – as in suicide style – a giant fuzzy Hello Kitty doll off the fire escape a floor above us. She actually put black ‘X’s on the poor thing’s eyes. Talk about freak.
I think the icing on the cake, when we really knew we were in No Man's Land, occurred during the Black Out of ’03. We were literarily the last neighborhood in all of New York to get our power back. The first night was spent on our roof with the cast of characters we called neighbors and my poor dad who got stuck downtown after work with no way up to Westchester. As blunts and forties were passed around, we made a vow to never speak to mom about that night. The second night was spent at South Street Seaport, where full power and air conditioning had been restored in order to keep tourists at bay. We drank ourselves into semi-comas and stumbled back to our bleak apartment, only to pass out in ninety-plus degree rooms lit by Santa Maria candles we bought at the Dominican deli on the corner.

Liberace and I sat on our fire escape for the third hot, sweaty, and eerily dark night in a row, listening to a tiny battery-powered radio. When the disc jockey from one of the local stations congratulated the mayor and local Con Edison crews for restoring power in all of Manhattan, we realized we had been completely forgotten. As garbage cans were lit on fire and riot like behavior rumbled in the projects across the street, I made a silent prayer that I had all my affairs in order and a nice pair of underwear on.

But that was years ago. And while each consecutive apartment has had its glitches (including a bar across the street with patrons who loved to have bar-stool fights in the street, a medicine-cabinet-turned-dirty-sex-motel for cockroaches, a Spanish restaurant below that played I’m Too Sexy at one in the morning, and a fire escape that, similar to the x-rated medicine cabinet, hosted a constant pigeon orgy), I feel that with each move came a slightly better environment. I mean, this is Manhattan, and problems are to be expected.

Nevertheless, things have gone too far at the current abode. A brief list as to not bore you with mundane details:

1. No hot water for, as of last night, the fifth time since I moved in. This most recent incident was met with the following comment from the super: You know, it’s winter time. This happens. To which I respond: Bull shit.
2. An attempt to fix the boiler that led to it smoking, the fire department coming and trampling through the apartment, and coming home to what I thought was a robbed apartment. Once I noticed the computer and television were still there, my next assumption was someone had to be hiding in the bathroom ready to kill me. When I called the woman I lease from, her response: Oh, I didn’t want to alarm you by telling you the fire department had to come. To which I respond: Because thinking I’m about to get raped is a better way to go about this?
3. We lost heat in the apartment because something happened to the chimney. Then the hot water became non-existent. Again. The super explained the situation as follows: Well, when the heat went out they realized the building needs a new chimney, but the workers tripped the wires to the boiler while they were installing it. So we have to fix both. To which I respond: The chimney is on the roof. The boiler; in the basement. Separated by five stories. Did a giant come to fix the chimney?
4. Centipedes. Seriously. I have giant, fuzzy, slow moving centipedes that come from god-knows-where and crawl on my ceiling. I notice them in bed at night. It’s almost like the ceiling is moving. Hansel will look at me and ask: What are you looking at? To which I respond with: The fucking biggest centipede in the world is about to crawl into bed with us.
5. The toilet is much like a rocking chair. At one point, the super must have tried to fix it by wedging a giant, now dislodged piece of marble underneath the base. A good friend from college who has been living in Amsterdam the past few years came to visit last week. After she came out of the bathroom she noted: You know your toilet is really shaky? It moves back and forth when you sit on it. To which I respond: Yep.
6. The brick wall behind my bed was wet last week. I have no further comment. But trust me; touch it and your hand will get wet.

Life Lesson #42: I know there could be worse things with the apartment, but I feel as if I might as well throw my rent money into a bonfire. There is just one too many problems for me to be okay with actually paying someone to live here. So while the place has its endearing qualities and I will miss my miniature size dwellings, it’s time to throw in the towel and start the search again. Because staying any longer would make me an asshole.

And even if I get the sickest place ever next time around, I’m staying mum. I don’t need it to come back and bite me in the ass three months later.

Life Lesson #41: Auld Lang Syne: When New Year's Eve Was Fun!

There are certain times when expectation far exceeds reality. And there are those moments that no matter how many times we are presented with the same set of circumstances, our hopes and impending disappointment are the same.

I’d like to throw New Year’s Eve into this bag of heartache.

I used to love this holiday. Probably because Grandpa Al set the bar way too high.

My first midnight-madness memory goes back to before my little brother was born. I had to be around four or five years old. My grandparents had been given babysitting duties of my older brother and me. Our fun little fiesta also included my Great Grandmother Marie, who had just come over from Italy to have hip replacement surgery.

Earlier that day, as we often did with Grandpa Al, we put on a play. He was The Detective, my brother The Burglar, and I, The Damsel in Distress. Because I was The Damsel, Grandma would paint my eyelids the most beautiful shade of blue I had ever seen, my cheeks an almost fluorescent pink, and my lips the brightest red imaginable. Because it was a special day, Grandma promised me I could keep my makeup on ‘til I went to bed. Hours later, as midnight approached, I still felt gorgeous. I probably looked more like a little white girl that had been sold into the sex slave industry.

I remember wearing a hot pink cone-shaped party hat with glitter all over it and hopping around with a long piece of silver streamer. Grandpa Al was wearing a complementary hat in green and dancing along to some band Dick Clark had just introduced. Grandma was passed out on the couch, her head bouncing up every few minutes, only to nod back down again.

I was too young to understand what the whole shebang was about, but that didn’t stop me from having a grand old time. I found great enjoyment in wrapping my Great Grandmother up in the giant silver streamer; running ‘round and ‘round her wheelchair as she clapped and blew on her noise maker. My brother was making snow angels on the rug, singing a ditty we wrote especially for her:

Noni Marie from Ital-y!

That’s pretty much the only line, come to think of it. But we were young. And its four more words than Paris ever wrote, and she’s on the radio! So whatever, we liked it.

When midnight passed and Grandpa Al made giant banana-split Sundays for us, I figured this was standard NYE tradition. My mom must have been diving into a giant scoop of strawberry ice cream covered in hot fudge too, as well as little boys and girls and everyone else all over the world.

I don’t really remember the next few years, but middle school and early high school meant spending my (then) favorite holiday with my ‘family’. I was not, in fact, related to these people. Instead, my fake ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’, aka faunts and funcles, consisting of my parents’ friends from high school and college. My fousins were their children, although closer in age and relationship to me than any of my real ones.

My godparents often threw these parties, and it was perfect. All the parents would hang out to eat and drink for hours in the dining room. We kids would basically do whatever the hell we wanted. Which included such memorable moments as:

1. Getting one fousin to eat all my godfather’s live goldfish.

2. Watching What About Bob? three times in one night.

3. Stealing a bottle of champagne and not being able to do anything with it since no one knew how the hell to open the damn thing.

4. Getting my dad to do an impression of Rick James.

The next great - and probably last - New Year’s Eve was spent in a bunch of hotel suites in White Plains. It was also the big 99 to 00 switch. No one knew what to do, and last minute, a bunch of us decided to just get some hotel rooms. It was freshman year of college, and since we were all used to enjoying the generally unsupervised high life on our parents’ dollar for the past four months, having to worry about house parties or not getting into bars seemed ridiculous. This was the next best thing.

We were all there; Madonna, Westchester, H.F.T., The One, Mico and Flower, as well as thirty or so other friends from high school. Other kids had the same idea, and the place was basically transformed into a dorm for the night. If the world was going to come to an end, at least I’d be going down with people who knew me best.

I think that was kind of the high point. The next few years are relatively unmemorable. Then just plain bad.

First year out of college, my boyfriend at the time passed out before midnight. I was so pissed I almost broke up with him right then and there.

By the next year we were broken up, and being it was a relatively fresh wound, I spent it hysterical and not nearly intoxicated enough.

Last year, a huge party led to a possible roofies incident, a massive couple’s fight, and several falls on the cold marble floor of a giant church that was rented out for the night. I put myself to bed by 1 am.

Which brings us to this year. And the inevitable, oh my god, what are we going to do, it’s going to be soooo fun has turned into, seriously, what couch can I park myself on, drink straight from the bottle, and wear my favorite sweatpants?. And it’s not just me having these sentiments. It seems to be pretty much everyone has had one too many NYE let downs and wants to just throw in the towel.

Life Lesson #41: I used to love New Year’s Eve. Because it was impromptu, silly, no unnecessary need to make sure everything turned out awesome. Huge plans weren’t made and massive parties were not orchestrated. It was just people getting together to have a good time, enjoy each other’s company, and maybe pull some pranks on one another.

So this year, I think I’m going to join Liberace at a low key party. No expectations for a brilliant evening or the best night of the year. What I might do, however, is put on a hot pink cone-shaped party hat with glitter all over it and tie Liberace up in a long piece of silver streamer. That just might ensure a successful evening.