14 Hours and Counting...

In a mere 14 hours we find out our fate for the next 4+ years. As I previously mentioned, this is annoying. I say annoying because it certainly doesn't rank as terrifying, only Immigration Services qualifies as terrifying. I figure I'll sleep 6 of the next 14 hours so really I only have 8 hours more to sweat this thing out. So what have I been doing?

I did indeed attempt to research "good" neighborhoods in the North Bronx. I'm not sure such a thing really exists. Perhaps there are less bad neighborhoods but people usually qualified these by saying you pay close to Manhattan rent for what includes 24 hour bodegas, laundromats, and drug dealers - basically hell. Fantastic.

I have surfed the web. Why is the only trash news out there about Dancing with the Stars? Who cares about D List celebrities doing the foxtrot? Not me. I just want to know if I'm going to have to move and they can't help me with that.

I found www.kottke.org. Yes, apparently old news, but it made me happy none the less. There's a link to an article about how home owners have been scammed by the National Association of Realtors. This did a little to lift my spirits since I've long thought I wasn't a loser for renting. Yay me!

I received our annual statement summary from Citibank. This made me sad. Last Sunday I spent hours evaluating our 2007 spending with the good intention of creating a budget. I pulled every record of every nickle the two of us spent. Simply terrifying. I made a pie chart. Became more depressed by the large chunk that accounted for our cash withdrawals and charges to retail stores. Perhaps there's something to that theory my work husband has. Every time he sees something new I've purchased he tells me, "You need to have kids so you stop spending money". We can now add this to the Pro list for having children (right up there with tax deductions and a good excuse to leave work at a reasonable hour).

I received an Easter package from my mother in law. The post card was in German until she realized I wouldn't be able to read it so she wrote "I forgot to write in English" and continued in English. Too funny. Again I am thankful that she has truly superb taste. While in Paris she picked up the most delightful little clutch. Perhaps I can use it to carry my MTA card once I move to the hood.

Today is actually our 4th wedding anniversary...sort of. We got married in a scary civil courtroom in the burbs (before our church wedding 6 months later). It was somewhere between the bullet proof glass (umm, is that really necessary in the suburbs) and the holding cell for prisoners. We celebrate appropriate to the level of the occasion. Every year we go to Wendys. He says if it's good enough for John Edwards and his wife, it's good enough for us. I'm partial to the Froste and french fries. Husband happily passed out on the couch from crappy carb overload. This is why I've been bored and pulling out my hair for the last 4 hours. Do you think they have a Wendys in the hood?

I can't take it anymore, I'm off to will myself to sleep. Fingers crossed for which ever option will eventually allow me to retire early and watch daytime television!

Most Excellent News

The residency clock is slowly winding down and today we found out that my husband matched with a program. VERY exciting news. This process has to be one of the most annoying things I have ever experienced. Never in my life have I experienced such waiting, waiting and more waiting. I know you're all thinking...where are you guys going? Staying in Philly? Moving to Jersey? What happened to New York? You know what, welcome to the club. I wish I knew.

Match Day should be called Universal Torture Young Doctors Day. They tell you that you have a job but they won't tell you where. Who ever heard of such a thing? You don't find out for three more days. I think this counts as cruel and unusual.

Last week I started poking around at house listings near the hospital in Philly just for fun. BTW, you can seriously waste hours looking at these things. I am superstitious so since I've done this I will probably end up in New York. Perhaps I'll go look at rentals in New York to even out the playing field...

At the end of the day I suppose it doesn't matter where we end up. All the choices have pros and cons. Actually it's all a pro for the husband, but I am selfish so we will make this about me for a second.

New York: Pro - new city, new places to explore, possibly a new job. Con - moving...again and this time it will require real movers, not being able (or interested) in owning a home there, expensive, having exactly three friends in the area.

Philly: Pro - not much change necessary, can keep job I like most days, can afford house, near family and friends totalling more than three. Con - been here a looooong time (there must be a rule against this somewhere), have to move again anyway (which is like a half con if I move to a house we own), would need to buy a car

Jersey: Pro - I don't actually have to live there since he can take a train, can keep job I like most days, may not need a car. Con - there aren't enough hours for this one.

Stay tuned for more news later in the week when the sadists decide to tell us. Please reassure me I do not have to move to New Jersey.

Theories, Stereotypes and Observations put to the test....ok, not really but play along

Yesterday my partner in crime and I packed up the contents of our double wide and vacated our offices for greener pastures. The moving company forced us to leave early so we went to the bar. The cast of characters from last week's holiday party were partially reprised at our local watering hole.

After several beverages we decided that going to a few gay bars would be a good idea. We eventually landed at the Tavern on Camac. It took me 10 minutes to realize that there are several stereotypes about gay men that seem to hold water. Gay men knows show tunes, Judy Garland songs and Christmas carols. Here I am standing in this piano bar (and I acknowledge that perhaps that has something to do with who was actually in the bar) and these guys are singing along to songs I have never heard. How does that happen? Is it like the twins separated at birth phenomena? I may have been the only one in the bar who could not sing along. (ok, so I'll point out that my friend Rich also couldn't sing along. It pokes holes in my theory so I conveniently left that part of the story out.)

Theory 2 put to the test: If you put a gay man and a high school girl in the same room and see who can create more drama and bitchiness, my money is on the gay man. There was high drama in that bar. Everyone knows everyone elses business. Everyone is also talking about everyone elses business...in front of everyone. That one is a whore, that one is cheating on his partner, I hate that one, etc. I learned my one friend used to date some guy and now he dates another guy and everyone apparently knows them both. I watched some random guy start talking trash on my friend's partner. Then his partner walks out and the guy starts double cheek kissing him and gushing all over him. I haven't seen bald face trash talking like this since 8th grade.

Here's one I didn't know about but I am officially making it Theory 3 - these guys have Spidey ears. They hear everything. It's no secret that I have an ongoing monologue in my head. Sometimes my inside voice comes outside. Most people don't hear me since I'm usually only loud enough to make it to the ears of the person next to me and no further. I've always attributed it to the pitch of my voice. Quite often it has that phone sex operator quality and not screeching wild monkey (yes, that's what most women sound like to me). Well, let me tell you something. When I made fun of the shirt on the guy 15 feet from me, he turned around and actually said "oh no, you didn't". My sense was that he was either non violent or my friend's partner carried more social weight than he did. So I was spared the nasty cat fight over the shiny blue iridescent shirt.

There is one other explanation for this particular episode - I was drunk and didn't know how loud I was. Our house guests last weekend will swear that the girl I was making fun of in the diner heard me. You know what, I hope she did. There's a point in all of our lives when we need to learn that no one wants to see that half masticated pile of french fries in your mouth. Shut it. Chew it. Thank you. I will own that one with pride.

Observation 4 - Not all gay men are hot. Disappointing. When I was single I was convinced that all the hot ones were gay and they were off in a club somewhere appreciating each other's hotness in the absence of females. I am happy to report to the single ladies out there that they've got it just as bad as we do. Yes, there was some dude clearly pumped up on roids dancing with himself in the mirror. Rumor was that he was some kind of porn star. My only concern was his close proximity to my suede bag in the corner because he looked a little lubed up. (I can't imagine suede and lube would be a good combination.) Generally speaking there were a few nice looking guys but many were just average guys of all ages that I would not date, even if I were single and they were straight.

It was indeed a fun night despite the fact that there was a set of awesome 80's songs played exactly at my departure - I might have considered going back but I had been drinking for more than 9 hours - my bed was calling my name. Rich says he's going to take me to Sisters for the Wednesday night drink special - 10 drinks for $10. 10 drinks is exactly what I need on a Wednesday night - especially if I plan to be surrounded by women in flannel. But I hear they have good music and dancing. Let's hope their hearing is poor so I don't have to worry about getting my ass kicked. Something tells me the chick in flannel won't be as forgiving as the dude in the iridescence.

One Fire, One Flood & a Nice View without Locusts

I'm sitting on my balcony doing a little work and I thought, "wow, I have a great view". In all the years I've lived in the city, I've never had a balcony or a view. I feel compelled to share.

With the exception of West Philly, which we'll leave out of this discussion since it's more or less a wasteland of slumlords and hookers, I've always lived in fairly reasonable apartments. It started up on 19th & Pine when I lived with Kelly. That was a great place, high ceilings, his & her's sinks and a wonderful location. The guy that lived upstairs smoked a lot of dope and professed to be an acupuncturist, but it could be worse. (Of course I can say that because he set fire to the building after we moved out).

My next city apartment was with my husband at 13th and Walnut. We were diagonally across the street from Woody's and so we experienced Techno Night on Wednesdays right from our couch. Our first Memorial Day weekend there we found a squatter in the empty apartment next to ours, called the cops and watched the good 'ole Philadelphia PD bust through the door. This guy must have been about 300lbs of solid muscle. When they finally did lease that place it was to a guy who we swore was running a meth lab. He never hung curtains, just black trash bags in the windows. He was nice enough, but his "friends" were a bit loud at strange hours of the day and night and I think most of them had Tourettes. Post wedding we didn't fit anymore so we decided it was time to start looking. It did have huge beautiful windows that I could stand in but the "one butt" kitchen was significantly lacking for two people who like to cook. Plus, it caught fire.

One night we came back from an evening out to find the lobby gutted. We could see clear through the building wall to the neighbor's toilet. Apparently Philadelphia Management had brought in PECO and some electrician to do some work. The fire started in the basement and came up through our wall. Aside from giant sooty fireman handprints on the wall and the fact that it smelled like 4,000 girl scouts had a campfire in there, our personal items were fine. A good dry cleaners and three days later we were gone.

We moved down the street a few blocks to a first floor apartment on 13th & South. We thought it would be far enough up on South that we wouldn't get the crazy noise on Friday/Saturday night. Instead we got all the people walking to the craziness. They knocked on our windows, rang our doorbell and got into fist fights in front of the house. I've never called the cops so much in my life. It did have two bedrooms but it was like living in a concrete box. Since we couldn't keep our windows open we never had any light. I think I suffered seasonal disorder while living in that place. About 6 months after moving in, my husband was up late one night and heard a funny noise. He had just enough time to unload the bookshelf and move the furniture before the ceiling let loose with about 40+ gallons of rain water from our upstairs neighbors balcony. He was nice enough to not wake me up through this fiasco so I discovered our trashcan in the living room collecting water the next morning.

It was at this point that I started making biblical references about waiting for the locusts to get us next.

As previously mentioned my landlord decided to sell that place and that is how we ended up here. For those of you who aren't jumping in your cars/onto planes/throwing on your running shoes to come visit, I thought I would entice you with our new view of the city. We haven't seen any locusts but there are a lot of crickets here....

I think I’m getting old.....

So we've moved and unpacked (mostly). The thing about unpacking is that you get to review your entire life in a few days. I just opened up a box of crap that I haven't touched in probably four years. The stuff inside perhaps more. It somehow managed to move with me all this time and I never saw a need to do anything with it. As it turned out it was a bunch of pictures, cards and things from college and high school.

It's amazing when you think about it. Although I graduated almost ten years ago from college, it seems like yesterday. Perhaps it seems that way because I've kept in touch with so many of my close friends from those years.

My father once told me that the friends I had in high school won't be my friends once I'm an adult so I shouldn't make such a big deal out of all of the drama. Perhaps it was his way of telling me to look at the big picture. In some respects what he said is true, but I still have a handful of girlfriends from grade school and high school that I see more than I see most other people. They're visiting for brunch tomorrow, two of them with their children. I can't imagine my life without them. We are, of course, very different people who lead very different lives now but something about the time we spent growing up together keeps us together. The boyfriends we've lived through, the stupid things we've done and somehow managed to come out alive or at least without any permanent damage and the raging wars we've had between the four of us. The letters we mailed each other while we were in college (yes, letters….email didn't really exist until later in our college careers) were quite humorous.

It's also impressive the amount of crap I've kept. I know what I was thinking when I kept it. I wanted to remember small pieces of the life I led, how I felt at that exact moment in time. Sometimes the reality is shameful, sometimes happy, sometimes a bit bewildering. I don't think I would want to go back but it's nice to remember because it helps me understand how I ended up where I am today.

I am notorious for not remembering anything. My friends like to tell stories about things I did, I rarely remember them – maybe I was drunk, maybe I just have a bad memory (I would like to think it's the former). Perhaps that's why I save things; the moment I look at a picture or read a letter it all comes flooding back. I went through a picture drawer and started sorting. I can't believe that in the four years I spent in college I only took less than eight to ten rolls of film. I can only guess it's because film and developing was expensive (yes, film and developing….digital cameras came after college). I wish I had more, then again, maybe I don't. Perhaps the memory in some cases is far more glamorous than the reality forever recorded in a picture. My one college girlfriend recently said to me, "I remember we looked good in college but when I go back and look at pictures I think we look kind of beat-up.". I would guess it's all relative. Of course we look much better now, that's what having a job and money will get you – regular hair cuts and color, massages, pedicures, facials, real make-up, better clothes, etc. I think we looked pretty good for people who drank heavily four to five days a week, didn't sleep and ate like shit.

One of my closest friends just moved to London with her husband and I'm quite sad. I know I'll get to see her more than some other folks she left behind, but as she put it, "it's not the same as just stopping by for a drink.". It's hard when people move away but the beauty of this electronic age is that you can keep up to date with people very easily. Email, webcams, digital pictures, etc. But is it the same? I know basically what's going on with my friends but we're not necessarily making memories together. We're not creating the stories that we'll tell in ten years or at least not with the frequency we once did. Are we just maintaining the status quo? Maybe this is what the next phase of our lives is about. We get married, we have families, we start to create our memories together as a family and we let outsiders in every once in awhile.

I recently read the cover story of Philadelphia Magazine about over-parenting. While I doubt I will ever have the money (or the bad sense) to over parent as it's described there, the basic idea still applies. People are making their children their world and losing their own lives. Perhaps our parents didn't have time to cart us around to fifty thousand activities because they were busy having cocktails with the neighbors. They were still making their own memories. I recall being dropped off at stuff a lot. I remember running wild around the neighborhood with all the other neighborhood kids. My parents hardly ever came to my high school sporting events. Guess what, I'm not emotionally damaged and I probably have a better relationship with my parents than most people. We actually like spending time together. I think I am the person I am because my parents gave me enough rope with which to hang myself. I was allowed to screw up my grades, my college applications, my health, my relationships…geez, perhaps I am somehow damaged? But through all of this they continued to drill into my head the things they thought were important. Be someone that keeps their word, honesty is important, work hard and respect yourself, respect your elders, be thankful for what you have because other people don't have the luxury of the things you take for granted, don't spend money you don't have, life is not a destination; enjoy the journey, get an education so some man doesn't leave you with four children working as a secretary on welfare some day…I think I just channeled my mother for a moment there….

Here's my point, and this is best said through cliché, I think they were trying to teach me to fish. Not that I don't still screw up on a daily basis, but I like to think that they gave me a good foundation based on their own success and screw-ups. I only wonder if I'll someday be able to attempt to parent the way they did. Growing up I always knew that if I screwed up I would be grounded or cracked with the back of a hand. That'll put you in kiddie court these days. Then again, like everything else, I'll have to figure it out when the time comes.

We're moving into Communist Housing

Once again my grand plan has been foiled. I should start by saying that I hate my current apartment for a variety of reasons (it used to be low income housing, it's on South Street, it's on the first floor, the woman who moved in upstairs sounds like an elephant when she walks around in heels, people ring our doorbell and run away on an hourly basis, etc) but despite this I had hoped to stay here for another year to avoid moving into yet another Philadelphia apartment.

As many of you know we've avoided buying a house because we're not sure where my husband will end up doing his residency. I don't have the sort of luck that would allow me to magically pick a home in the right area. I know that if we bought it would be on the wrong side of town from where he ends up working or perhaps in the wrong city, thus making a bad situation worse. Despite the fact that I'm a mystery to some by my refusal to take on the responsibility of a house..."why do they continue to waste money in rent when they could be gaining equity in a home" I've continued to rent. Fear not, I have a plan.

That plan was slightly sidelined two weeks ago when we received notice from my landlord tell us he needed to sell his place in order to buy his new place in northern NJ. (I say, good luck selling former low income housing when it's empty in a depressed market when 5 other places are on the market on the same block…)

To give you some background, the last time we needed to find a place I'm pretty sure my husband wanted to divorce me (this could have also been exacerbated by the fact that the PFD had just used our apartment to ventilate our building from an electrical fire, but I won't revisit that experience) . Generally speaking, I have this unnatural anxiety associated with not having somewhere to live. I turn into a crazed person on a mission to secure housing. I freak out and yell at everyone until my signature is on a lease and then I magically turn into myself again.

So here we are, again, looking for an apartment. I have a long history of saying "I'll never move there". I was living up around Rittenhouse and I said "I'll never move below Broad Street"….then I moved below Broad. Then I said "I'll never move further South" and then I did. Then I said "I don't want to move north of Market" thus bringing us to today.

Looking for an apartment sucks. We saw some really rotten places. The funniest was the 3rd floor walk up that was in the roofline. My husband could only stand up straight in half of it. Then there was the place down in Old City, considered a "loft" by the leasing agent, considered "a stinking cesspool filled with 20-somethings in a dank alley" by me. Then there was the monster of a place that had a 3 story spiral staircase (would have made him throw up his lunch due to his problem with heights and me throw up from the cost of heating and cooling a 3 story useless space).

The 60 day notice in most leases was ticking and good property was disappearing so I finally gave in and agreed to look at the high rise buildings. The Drake with no closet space, The Museum Towers with kitchens from 1982, the Phoenix with odd support walls in the middle of your living room…. When finally some snotty leasing agent says, "well you could look at Franklin Town but it's pre-fab…if you're into that sort of thing". Hmmm, let's think about this. A building that was build for people to live in with every conceivable amenity and cement walls so you don't hear your neighbors. Not a hotel, warehouse or commercial space that was repurposed, but an honest to God facility intended to house lots of people with all the stuff people need to live. What a novel concept. I'm sold.

From the outside this place looks like Eastern Bloc housing. It's cement, it's boxy and it's ugly. Inside however it has a pool, sauna, steam room, gym, BBQ area, and best of all…it's 2 blocks from the second Whole Foods in the city and (wiping away a tear of joy) it has closets. More glorious closet space than I could ever have imagined possible.

I declare victory over the evil apartment search gods! Come visit us after August 1st – we have a second bedroom in a renovated pre-fab building with zero charm!

Yay for us!