Sleepytime Tea Sandwiches

Ingredients

• 1 man to another at the restaurant in which I work, which, let's note, is located on 83rd and Columbus:
  "And, by the way, man, thanks for coming all the way uptown for this."

really

• 2 shoulders on either side of your body (not yours, silly) that you weeble-wobble between for an indiscernible period of time. = Subways 4 Lyfe
• 6.5 hours spent napping on a Monday
• 16 songs on Katy Perry's new album that prevent you from getting to bed by your self-imposed bedtime-- only because the last time you saw Katy Perry, she was in a tiger onesie & now you're convinced she can do nothing but inspire greatness
• A pinch of confusion: 

SCENE: A street outside of a coffee shop. A middle-aged woman (Nanny?) accompanies a younger woman with a stroller (Mom). Mom pushes the stroller towards the entrance. She calls back to Nanny?, who has stayed by the street. 

     MOM: Do you want something?

     NANNY?: Oh, no, I don't drink coffee.

     MOM: WOW! Well, you're a much stronger person than me!

Nanny? smiles in passive agreement. Mom propels the stroller into the coffee shop. Nanny? immediately pulls out a cigarette and lights it up. 

Oh. OK.  

• 8 hours of freezing cold, beginning at 8:30am and splashed with water, Gatorade, and 47 °F. The NYC ING Marathon was an incredible event to volunteer for with my step-mom and step-sister. Even more cool to rep the airline that continually makes me look much wealthier than I am (Holler at your Business Class to and fro London. Love me that cheese plate). Watched disabled athletes power through the 23rd mile mark on their cycles. 100% awesome. Experienced the last stretch of 26.2 miles for 50,000+ runners. Inspirational. Provided liquid betterment to a portion of the those runners. Satisfied-- to a point. Being straight out of Northwestern (Type-A Personality Utopia) and raised by 4 hard-working, middle-class Catholic Midwesterners, I abided by the established "no breaks" rule and did not stop. filling. the. cups. once. Nor did Sue or Mel. When I finally had enough of walking like a duck with my numb toes, I looked up and saw that HALF of the other United volunteers had left. WHAT. I WILL NOT BE A SUCKER. We left. Earlier, though, Mel and I did rock out a great Gatorade version of the song Cups. For which she thanks 4 years of Amherst High School Girls Basketball water cups and downtime.
• 484 miles traveled for 19 hours in Ohio for 1 driver's license for 0 cars. I am grateful for my new license, as I feel like an identifiable human once again. However, the lack of sleep + numerous extra, unrestful naps via travel were less than appreciated. It caused this incident on the way home:

In the 2nd to last row of a Big Plane (meaning, to me, one with more than 150 seats), I was attempting to fall asleep for my 1.5 hour flight. At some point in my drowsiness, I saw all of the seats ahead of me fill with... danger? The flight attendant was saying something -- notably not good-- over the intercom, and there seemed to be panic in the air. Something was just. not. right. Gradually, I realized what happened: someone in one of the exit rows had opened the emergency latch. What the WHAT? The flight attendant got, eh, a bit more nervous. I was so confused and growing increasingly scared-- though, let's note, apparently not scared enough to move any part of my body, wonder why no one was visibly freaking out, ask anyone what was going on, or really do anything about it at all.  

Well. That's probably because it didn't happen.

Instructions
I live off the 200-Dyckman stop. On the island of Manhattan, that's, as some people call it, "the top of the world". (And not in a good way.) To me, it's home. But it's also, sometimes, a painfully long subway ride. I'm (for once) not using painful as a hyperbole or off-handedly intense throwaway. Riding the subway can be physically painful for my eyes, my brain, and, eventually, my entire body. Why?

Because I have narcolepsy.

Haha. No, no, I don't. I'm pullin' your leg. I'm simply overly tired like the rest of the young, overachieving population. What I really need is to quit an activity and get some more sleep.

Alright. Seriously, though. I do have narcolepsy.

.... ? ...

Nope. I do.

Isn't that... like, where you steal stuff?

Uh, no. That's kleptomania.

You don't sleep?

I wish. That's insomnia.

Oh, so this is the one where you sleep all the time. No, way! Could you, like, fall asleep right now?

Ummm... I mean, I guess so. I mean, not right now. But I can fall asleep pretty much--

So would you, like, fall asleep in class?

Yes.

Ouch. Have you ever fallen asleep standing up?

Sort of.

That's weird. Have you ever fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation?

Yes.

No way, totally crazy! Have you ever fallen asleep driving?

Yes.

Oh. 

"Oh." That's much better than, "You're lucky-- I can't sleep at all!" Until you live with a sleep disorder, you most likely don't fully understand how you don't want one. Most people-- even my family-- don't see how it affects my life. Ask anyone I've ever lived with in college (where it developed), though, and they will give you a tooootally different answer. Probably akin to "she sleeps everywhere and I don't know what to do!" I like to lighten the mood/make fun of myself, but those roommates would probably not laugh at the mention of narcolepsy.

Strange, seeing as it's one of "those" words that people find, well, funny. When I tell people I have narcolepsy, they normally think I'm kidding. And there's usually a smile on their face. Perhaps because it's kind of a... "hip" condition. (No, nothing is wrong with my bony hip, nor is that hip to be referenced in quotes. This is the cool neat super fly In-Style Magazine hip.) Everyone I've ever told has never met a person with narcolepsy before-- heck, I've never met a person with narcolepsy before! 

This all used to not bother me, until I read this last month: Narcolepsy only affects about 1 in every 2,000 Americans. That's 200,000-250,000 people-- much more than I originally thought! I read this in an eloquent & engaging memoir by Julie Flygare, a woman diagnosed at age 22, right after graduating from Brown & in her first years at Harvard Law School & and a huge overachiever. My. Current. Hero. So, spoiler, she didn't become a lawyer. Big woop. 'Cuz she did become a writer (a la, the book) and narcolepsy advocate. I realized that there are thousands of people, young and old, who actually fall asleep face first at random times of the day and have vivid hallucinations upon waking-- there's even a national conference! I didn't have to hide in my sleep infested closet anymore, and I don't have to joke about it.

Let's be honest, though: this is still my blog. I'm not gonna be dreadful. No one wants that. So, please, enjoy: a proper, non-mimicry explanation of narcolepsy in a not-so serious series of pictures. 

I've fallen asleep twice while writing this, even though I have a stimulant to help me stay awake. That's because narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder in which the brain loses the ability to maintain normal sleep and wake states. AKA, my REM sleep cycles are CRAYZAY!
*In my overnight sleep study, I was able to fall asleep after a full night's sleep for five 20-minute naps, 1.5 hours apart, within an average of 4 minutes each, and then enter into the last stage of REM within 2 minutes. It takes the normal sleeper 80 to 100 minutes to enter REM. It takes me minutes. 



I never knew other people actually had these symptoms (because they're kinda weird, when you don't know they're symptoms), but here are these suckers: 

- Periods of extreme daytime sleepiness
- Hallucinations while falling asleep or waking, sometimes jarring-- thus, my illogical airplane prankster above!
- Sleep paralysis upon waking or falling asleep, during which an individual is awake but cannot move-- thus, my lack of heroism in said airplane above!

* Cool neurological explanation time. This will fascinate you: Your body paralyzes itself in the last stage of REM, so you don't actually fight that lion or actually run off that cliff to avoid the ninja clown in your dreams. This usually goes unnoticed by normal sleepers because it occurs only when they're fully asleep and entering the REM stage at the appropriate time in the sleep cycle. Aw, but it's not fun to be appropriate-- mine happen during hallucinations, either when falling asleep or waking up from a nap. It's generally only vivid images of my roommate knocking on my door but I'm unable to get up or even carrying on a full conversation with me that I can't answer back to. It's frustrating because you feel like you're in a straightjacket; it's annoying because it's hard to tell what's real and what's not.



Narcolepsy symptoms usually start appearing between ages 7 - 25, but many people experience symptoms for an average of 3 - 5 years before receiving a diagnosis. I was known as the morning monster in my house... forever; that was never not existent. Probably should've invested in some armor for my poor mother, who got thrashed at in the a.m. for YEARS. My sister's favorite stories of our youth involve us sharing beds on vacations and me squirming around like a lost serpent all night.









Most primary care doctors ain't gonna get it. They're not familiar with the symptoms. I spent years saying, "I'm tired all the time", then, "interestingly, sleeping 8 hours a night isn't helping at all, contrary to your belief ", then, "listen, foo!, I fall asleep within 5 minutes of sitting down and I was sleeping before you walked in."

Honestly, I have no idea how I got through college. OK, whatever, I totally do-- I was mean to my sleep cycles and learned how to half-aamp; or bullsh#*... everything. All I wanted to do was drink excessive amounts of coffee and pull a series all-nighters like all the healthy people.

I'm more tired than you. No, please, don't hate me, and I hate to say it I really do, but unfortunately that's what I spent 24-hours in a sleep clinic last December to be statistically able to say. Take a crack at this baby: people with narcolepsy's daytime sleepiness is comparable to how someone without narcolepsy would feel after staying awake for 48 - 72 hours straight. 

Nope, yeah, you know, it's uh... OK, clearly Condescending Wonka here still doesn't get it.

Sure, this happens a lot: 

but the Top 5 Most Common Places Anna Sleeps are:
1. My couch
2. Amidst travel: cars or airplanes (immediately), or the subway
3. In class (or any sort of seated instructional setting)
4. A desk
5. My bed (gasp, NO!)

#5 refers to attempting to read & waking up 2 hours later with all of my makeup, clothes, and lights still on. I digress: The point is that I don't fall asleep anywhere interesting because I don't really do anything all that interesting. You want me to fall asleep at the Taj Mahal? Give me a plane ticket, a book, and a chair and wait 5 minutes.

 *This one is a joke.

Here's what I hope people gain from learning about this I'm not gonna lie odd disorder: it is just that-- a disorder. Something one can't fully control. Last December, when my roommate was helping me fill out my Symptoms Checklist to prepare for baby's first big trip to the sleep doctor, I looked at one of the symptoms and then jokingly proposed to her, "violent upon waking?" She looked at me with stern seriousness and said, "Actually, we are scared to wake you up from your naps. It's like you become a completely different person." She suggested I go ahead and circle that one. 

When my eyelids waver mid-conversation of a late-night gal chat about your traumatic first pimple, please don't take that as my not caring. If my head nods up & down to a noticeable degree during that staged reading & your first New York gig, please know that I am totally still proud of you and your ability to breathe in this must-covered basement. And when I begin to slur together words between turns of Parcheesi and accidentally mutter something like "computer stars", which has nothing to do with Parcheesi or anything we were talking about, please stop the game and shake my face, because I'm babysitting you and that makes no sense.

I care. I want to be awake. I like you. (Probably.) My brain just has other plans. Kind of like the new iOS7. 

(Did you get that. I hope so.)

Am I afraid of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea?

Yes.

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Fruit Universalad (or The One with the Bacon)

Ingredients

This week, we have a few guest chefs who were kind enough to share their favorite kickers:

• 82 degrees Fahrenheit, AKA the average monthly high for the month of September in Atlanta, AKA your first full month of classes in grad school, AKA torture (?)
• 24 hours of driving in 4 days + 8 hours in 2 days + 1 car tow to a remote location 10 miles away + 1 additional car tow by "those people"(the people who don't like their jobs)
• 24 hours spent on a bus between DC and NYC in 2 months
• 1 BLT: "Big Love Triangle" (I must say, never in my life have I ever heard this acronym, nor did I understand it the first 5 times I read it)-- actually, it is more of a tridecagon. A Big Love Tridecagon. Can't really get much worse than that, shape wise. 

  

  If you think I wouldn't put this result for "tridecagon" up,
  you're kidding yourself.

I don't think anything can beat a BLTrid., as far as deliciousness goes, but a Fruit Universalad does need at least a few more colorful ingredients to make it pop. 

• Generous tastings of goose, quince, and pure raw milk (not all at once)

  

  Quince: yellow apple-pear

• 1 day of babysitting spent comparing the Into the Woods and Into the Woods, Jr. soundtracks 

[Conversation during 'I Know Things Now':
Me: Wait, wait, wait-- why did they take out, like, 16 bars in the most interesting part of the song?   Child: Maybe there was something inappropriate in it.   Me: No. Well, maybe...   Child: Maybe it was--   Me: There can't be anything inappropriate in it. Let's check.   (watch on Youtube, with the child watching the lyrics on the screen)   Child: Nope. Thank goodness.]

• 30 min. of an after-school religious education session overheard, in which the young teacher attempted to calm the girls so deeply concerned with the idea that priests can't get married, followed by a great nod to young adult literature:
  
  Conversation explaining how there are 4 books in the Gospel, brought to you by the driest, sassiest Bible teacher ever:
  
  Teach: It's kind of like how there are 3 books in The Hunger Games. You guys have read The Hunger Games, right?
  Girl 1: YES! I LOVE THOSE BOOKS!
  Girl 2: (quietly) My mom won't let me read them.
  Girl 1: THEY ARE THE BEST! WHY WON'T SHE LET YOU?!
  Teach: It's OK. I can understand why your mom wouldn't want you reading them yet.
  Girl 1: BUT THEY'RE SO GOOD.
  Teach: It's not that good. Don't worry, it's not like they are the pinnacle of literature.
  Girl 1: What?! It so is really impressive literature!
  Teach: Compared to other classics? No.
  Girl 1: Yes it is!
  Teach: Well, one day you'll actually read a classic. And you'll see that it's not.
  
• 1 narcolepsy memoir attempted to be read by a person with narcolepsy, but only on a steadily moving quiet train
  
• 5,602 busses (give or take, most likely give) in New York City's MTA system. On one of which your wallet was left. Dropped. Stolen. Does it really matter? (yes.)
• #$*&@ minutes spent on phone with banks, DMVs, and credit report companies
• *&@!# hours spent fretting about your identity, and not in the cool way
• 9 months of extra valid time that Northwestern accidentally added to your student ID card that you were using to still get student discounts, now GONE!! 

Instructions

People everywhere have weird things happen to them. Everyone's life has the possibility for a memoir. Some may sell better than others, but... 

I got a new walk from my PT last week. So it makes my butt muscles hurt. Who cares! I'm standing tall, using unfamiliar muscles, and I feel like I'm walking in someone else's shoes. Since gaining my new posture, I got to spend 2 days on a farm in the Berkshires. I officially started hosting at a legit Upper West Side organic mom restaurant. I made some new, non-Northwestern friends. And I finally sat in the audience by myself at my first theatrical production at an NYC private school, which what small-town girl can say is not their #1 goal post-graduation.

As much as it's important to fully live in your city, your neighborhood, your skin, you should always continue to push the boundaries of your experience-- and a big way to do that is by taking a step outside of yourself. Perhaps in someone else's shoes. There might be a lot of things that you know, but... come on. I mean, do you really trust yourself that much? Maybe your life is naturally tridecagon-shaped and mutli-layered, many-sided, able to shine in whatever hemisphere's light you can imagine. If so, forgive me. However, most of us beings can't expect ourselves to know everything. Totes fine. That's what FRIENDS are for. And fellow employees. And kids you babysit. And people you visit on farms. And doctors you dislike, ridiculous MTA employees, friends' parents, kind bankers, bosses with beards, reservations for parties of 15, and people who steal your wallet. The world is out there for you to-- 

Wait. No. I'm sorry. I can't include the individual who stole my wallet. Whoever you are, out there with my precious license, CVS rewards card, and Forever 21 gift card? I hope you have made every attempt to mail that thing to me, and, in that case, I applaud you for your efforts. If instead you are a mean person whose actions are completely unbelievable to me and everyone I've mentioned this to, then SMITE. UPON. YOU. *Once again, though, if you have my wallet and are trying to get it to me, thank you more than all other things on this earth.*

[OK, karma really is a bit-- if you have my wallet and are the type that would normally be smited upon, it's still OK! Really! Just go ahead and forgive yourself-- I'll forgive you, too-- and package that baby up to send to the address on my ID. Google me. You'll easily find my email. I am sending positive thoughts your way in hopes that you'll have a change of heart. You can change. I believe in you. More than I believe in my ability to keep my purse shut, obviously.]

-- the world is out there for you to fill. Someone in my Playwriting Sequence last year once likened listening to the world around you as being a sponge: you soak up all the information, the overhead conversations, the visions of couples looking over their entire text message histories, & the snippets of Spanish caught from every passerby on your street, and you allow them to become a part of you. Be a sponge. Absorb as much of the weird stuff around you (and from your friends not around you) as possible, because hey. Wouldn't you rather be plush and spry than hard and shrivel-y? And even when you wring yourself out every now and then, using what you've learned to help your writing, social interactions, art, teaching, whatever, you'll still be a healthier sponge than if you had not gotten wet in the first place. 

As for the foreign ingredients up at the top: I understand that these may be hard to find if you're living in a city like New York or Chicago. First of all, it's primarily frickin' freezing up here, so good luck with that 83-degree weather. Second of all. Car? 

Thank you very much to my friends for submitting their ingredients, as well as my 4 best girlfriends from Ohio for having a 5-way Google Hangout to update each other on the different states (literally) of our current lives. It was interesting, eye-opening, and comforting all at once to hear about everything exploding and aligning with you all.  We may have all just graduated college, but there are so many factors that go into making your first year out what it is. New York, Chicago, Missouri, Atlanta, DC, Columbus. Service work, taking an extra year for another major, moving away from home for the first time, grad school, working for your dad, getting a salary & paid vacations, traveling the US, staying at home, having 3 jobs, living by yourself, living with nuns. Though my friends from high school, college, and now New York are all doing different things-- some vastly different, some just at different restaurants down the street-- we're all in the same place. Which is new. We're all babies. And we make up the Fruit Universalad that I hope is as delicious as a real BLT. (The one with the bacon.)

Next week, more on that narcolepsy memoir. If you're someone who likes homework/research/procrastinating on the interwideworldofwebs, check out the author's awesome webpage: Julie Flygare.

CHIC-OH-late Dreams

CHIC-OH-late Dreams,
aka Other Dessert Cities
(not and yes inspired by the Tony, Drama League, and Drama Desk Award-winning play)

Ingredients:

• At least 4 calls with a best friend in a different city to ask important life questions, provide a hearty listening ear, inform her you won't be flying in to stay with her that weekend, talk to on your walk home from work, speak the only words you've spoken to today, talk to on your walk from the train to work, recall your last five minutes since you woke up, breathe into the phone (WOW that sounded MUCH creepier than I intended it to be. I love when that happens.)
• 2 hostessing jobs that you signed up to train for-- on the same day-- on the day you were supposed to fly in to see your best friend (see above) and for your Homecoming (why, yes, your personal homecoming)
• 1 resume-- rather, 2 resumes, as the incredibly kind woman behind the front desk scanned more for you-- that you dropped off at an agency's office... without ANY contact info on it. [Holler, cover letter headers saving the day again, am I right?? World's #1 superhero!! I'm going to be a cover letter for Halloween.]
• 3 years, 2 Northwestern applications, & 22 seasons of Buckeye upbringing in the making: the long-awaited NU vs. Ohio State Homecoming ESPN College GameDay Big 10 blood battle. (Also known as the battle for your my heart.) Buckcat or Wildeye, an attractive mascot does not make. 

     In the years that I attended NU, all I wanted was for my school to play my Buckeyes. Naturally, they played them my absent freshman year and the year after I graduate. Regardless, I've been supremely pumped for 3 years & had even planned on flying in to the hallowed grounds of Ryan Field. Lo, I remained here in a city without a college football team-- but full of proud purple Wildcats, all centrally located in a few key places to watch the big game. And by big, I mean B1G-- College GameDay reporting on the Lakefill students drenched in purple waking up at 4am on a Saturday to be on TV big. This... was not what I expected. I don't know what I was thinking. This was going to be... hard. Let's just say that by Friday night, I was beginning to feel, for lack of milder terms... totally frickin' panicked. Or grotesquely shakin' anxious. Or, you know, probably just "confused" would suffice. What was I going to do? The Facebook statuses were getting increasingly intense and anti-Ohio flooded my Newsfeed, the public coverage of the game was growing rapidly, plans were being made. I was going to spend upwards of 3 hours with soundly and validly enthusiastic alumni of the fantastic university I just graduated from-- all bashing the (sorry, The) scarlet and grey I had supported since pre-birth. Again, I say: Buckcats. Wildeyes. Horrific possibilities. Like, the worst Neopets ever.       

The only OSU-fueled pressure I received came via a best friend and my immediate family, so, you know, casual. (I believe my father's words were "but this is where you were raised.") I obviously ended up screaming wild purple & gunning for the 'Cats. Can't say I wasn't tempted to locate the source of the approximately 3 OSU fans in the bar, though.      

Oh-- Northwestern lost, btw. As ESPN's Rece Davis put it, "I would never question Northwestern's academic credentials, but I do call into question its street smarts. Who schedules the Buckeyes for homecoming?" And as a fellow NU Ohioan confided in me, "We still won." 

Go 'Cats. Don't eat the chocolate. 

I SHOULD HAVE NEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCHED THIS: I dare you to click.

(Anyways, this inner allegiance turmoil must occur on the exact same day as: )

• 4,000+ Facebook photos of the Marr Family Lobsterfest 2013
  (It's exactly what you think it is. No. Wait. What on earth would anyone think that was.)

Instructions:
Where did I make decisions not to live? Oh, right, Ohio and Chicago. For whatever reasons, good or bad, those may be, that doesn't mean I don't still love those dang places (or, at least, parts of them/parts of Ohio/I love Chicago with all my heart). And this week provided a canvas for them them to pop up in every crevasse, for some reason. Whilst meeting my fellow hostess for the first time, we engaged in this quick conversation that anyone might steal for a prolific acting scene if they so choose:

She: Where did you graduate from?
Me: Northwestern.
She: No way! I'm from Naperville!    (city near NU)
Me: Oh my gosh! No way!
(chatter excited gobble chatter)
Me: Where did you graduate from?
She: Baldwin Wallace.
Me: NO WAY! I'm from Amherst!    (city near BW)
She: Oh my gosh! No way!

When you move from city to city, even only once, you're going to get homesick. What I haven't experienced until NYC was being homesick for two cities at once. You begin to think to yourself: Am I cheating on my home? Wait. Which is my home? Sing it, Luther Vandross and Kristen Chenoweth: we all know that a chair is not a house and a house is not a home when there's no one there to hold you tight. Well, you know what?! There are people I can hold tight and kiss goodnight in both places, gosh darn it! And now here, too! What were you thinking, Luther????

Here is my advice for those feeling tugged geologically: Be where you are. Exist as you want to exist where you are existing. You're not there. You're here. And you most likely have a lease and, unless you call your landlord again to threaten to not pay your rent because they're not providing you with hot water, then you have to stay on that lease. And you've probably met a precocious 11-year-old you've fallen in babysitting love with and gotten used to savoring the 1-2 times a week you see your friends in whatever weird way possible and thoroughly enjoy complaining and philosophizing about everything in the universe with your roommate. How could you leave now? A professor of mine always told us that you need to try a city out for 3 years before you make your verdict. Uhhhhmmm I might have to pass on sticking with this one in its entirety, but I do agree that a year is necessary.

IN THE MEANTIME. Call your best friend and Skype with your parents when you can. Download copies of Lobsterfest 2013 from Facebook, if only to share with your friends with the message "not fair". Visit your best friends in your city whenever you can-- because, there in your current city, they'll inform you that reading your blog makes them "sad". Apparently, it's not super fun for fellow 20-somethings working in the theatre world and living in NYC to read your potentially-leaning-overly-negative comments on struggles they're also going through... in which I took I away two things:

1. Do other people get hit by potatoes?!? Do they?!?! Seriously, this is an honest question and I want to know where else these culprits are hiding.

2. I need to get some other cities.

Thus, Other. Dessert. Cities. ATTENTION ALL FOLKS EITHER IN OR OUTSIDE OF NYC: A FANCY CALL TO ACTION!

I'm looking for ingredients from you. You are either one or more of the following:

- recently graduate

- living in a city

- recently re-located

- living in what you think is a city

- an actor

- in the entertainment business

- in a business you think is entertaining

- a chef

(wouldn't it be fun to have a real recipe?!)

Next week's recipe is all about YOU. I want your ingredients. You've read the blog, you know what I'm looking for: a numerical value/approximation of an amount of something that has happened to you (it doesn't have to have been from this week) that could potentiall lead to a recipe for disaster. You don't have to give me a whole list of ingredients that tie together-- that's my job! Feel free to give as many ingredients as you wish, though! And if it's easier for you to just write me a short little story, please do! I'll transfer it into an edible form.

Capiche? You can email your ingredients to annaleighmarr@gmail.com or message me on Facebook. Danke!

I'll leave you with the spread I got on Saturday of the spread my family consumed while watching Ohio State win.

Don't Be a CocoNUT!! Meringue

Ingredients

• 3 potatoes hurled at your head from an apartment window (I'm not kidding), which cause you to stop, look up, and stare at the faceless being standing in said window. You move to walk again. They hurl again. You stop, look, stare again. You actually shout the words "don't throw potatoes at me!", because that is SO EFFECTIVE. And definitely not potentially dangerous. You move on. 
• 1 hookah, connected to 1 man, sitting on one subway bench seat, located directly next to yours. You see smoke out of the corner of your eye. You pause. You think. No way. You turn. You see hookah. You move on. (Oh, but first you roll your wide eyes and  dramatically grab your belongings. Only then can you move away.)
• 6 seats on a subway bench (these need not be associated with hookah):
  
  
  
  Sit on the edge seat of an underground subway bench. Blow your nose, and stand up to throw away your tissue in a nearby trash can. Turn around-- no, that's silly-- only semi-turn around and back your bum backwards into your seat. Begin to sit down. Free fall through the air. Congratulations. You've now hit the pavement; specifically, your butt has hit the pavement and your head has bumped up against the metal bars of the gate behind you. You pause. You look up, of course, to see if anyone saw you. They did. They care-- so you quickly shrug it off! You're totally fine! They stop caring. You sit on the ground. You don't move on.
• 10+ years spanning an age range of which you somehow manage to ride in a single audition/callback session. You get called in for the role of a child. You get asked to read for the role of her step-mother. You read for both parts. Everyone else around you knows this, including the taller, older women more (reasonably) appropriate for the age of the step-mother. They don't seem too happy with you. You stand on your tiptoes. You move on.
• 3 hours and 3 minutes past midnight, when you must awake to the clear & heavy sounds of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" coming from the window? the bathroom window? the apartment hallway? the floor? every pore of the ethos not withholding the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy? You pause. You check the time. You realize what awful lyrics are protruding into your brain. You also realize it's the first time you've heard the streets blast a song in English... You don't care. You go to the bathroom. You search the bathroom for the noise. Shockingly unhelpful. You return to your room, open your curtains, and proceed to execute the only rational option: "turn your music down!" Again, SUCH EFFECTIVE verbiage you shout. You move on.... Wait. Actually, after the blurred lines of appropriateness in playable popular music ends, all the music ends... you... you did it! You won! You sleep! This is awesome! That's all it took? What a nice surprise. Good night! (No one should ever tell you that this was merely a freak coincidence, and that you should've realized that "Blurred Lines" is scientifically proven as the only appropriate way to end a late September evening. Ride that fantasy high as long as you can. It's presumable it won't last for long.)

Instructions

Here's... here's what I'm gonna say about all these... mishaps: No one likes the ER! Stop trying to go there!

Emergency rooms cost a lot of money, as I found out two years ago when I got hit by a car near Northwestern's campus and then didn't go to the ER until the next morning thus refusing the free granted ER visit directly post-accident... not bitter about that at all... Emergency rooms cost you an arm and a leg (?pun?), a lot of time, and usually the respect/trust of your common sense from at least one important person in your life. What happens when you get injured in New York City? I thought having a 4-month stress fracture (unrelated to bike incident) with an addition of crutches on Northwestern's campus was bad-- New York doesn't even have cars! You see them, driving around, sure. But do you actually know anybody who actually has a car? That's right, NYC hires people to drive cars and make your taxi ride slower. You didn't know that, but now you do. That's called learning.

If you injure yourself in New York City, I imagine that you will continue on with life as normal, except you'd have to check which subway stops are handicap accessible (because not all of them are!!?). You will be allowed to feel 80% less guilty about using the free delivery service of pretty much everything everywhere, even if it's only two feet away from your building: apples, wine, cleaning detergent, restaurant fare, laundry, electronics, yoga,  your mother, the Titanic. You want it? You name it. Someone somewhere will deliver it to you. But mostly the groceries-- they'll really deliver the groceries. Freely delivered groceries from one of the bodegas 30 seconds away from your apartment front door is the sole incentive for putting yourself in direct lines of danger via potatoes, secondhand smoke, subway cement, feisty actors, and yelling outside your window at people a lot larger and more confidently active at 3am than you. This city is dangerous, but that is because it has so much opportunity. Well, Dangerous Ones, let's go-- as long as you don't get any further ideas about talking back to airborne potatoes in an unfamiliar area or screaming at people loving music in front of your apartment! Know thy limits. Break them when you're attempting to over-achieve at your job or in an audition, but... outside? In association with other citizens? When it comes to, at least, your physical well-being, exist in an invisible film of bubble wrap-- because we can't all be lucky enough to run into Hugh Jackman. 

He was saving her from falling after she tripped.
If that wasn't abundantly clear.

Also, bring a supply of Band-Aids everywhere! Some of these corner stores can store some pretty shady excuses for adhesive bandages... from the 1970s... do I wish I was kidding?

Also also, what's the #1 rule of safety from ny.com? "Finding a Bathroom". That should tell you something. That isn't even a rule-- it's a statement of a problem you're going to encounter. Watch out for yourself, pack Band-Aids, and install Charmin's Sit or Squat app.

A Local Recipe: Organic NYC

Our first celebration of an anniversary!!!-- I'm sorry, am I moving too fast? It's just a little anniversary, I promise, I won't make it into too much of a deal. Let's just have a small party, just the two of us?

Now, the 10th Anniversary is generally celebrated with tin and aluminum, representing durability and flexibility. We all know I have no interest in those things, so let's focus on the food-- New York City style. This week, I thought, 'why not focus on all of the things that I have grown to not hate about the good ole Apple'. And by "all of the things", I of course mean 10, because that's more kitschy and, let's be honest, I had a hard time coming up with 10. So, with our critical eye and pragmatic judgment leading the way, let's take a look at the 10th Recipe for Disaster: Organic New York City.

Ingredients

• 1 full jar of quality salsa that you shatter on the ground of the grocery store, expecting to have to pay for-- except the employee who sees you straight-forwardly assures you it's OK, you're fine, he'll clean it up, don't worry about it. Either he sees so many people come through this store, has been up working all night because it's open 24 hours, or needs to clean it up quickly before any of the city's happy bugs find the party. Regardless, you walk! (Shout out to the best grocery store in Upper Manhattan, hey there C-Town!)
                                                                                   
• 2 young actors: 1 very blonde actor teaching a fellow non-Indian actor how to do an Indian dialect, but whilst sitting a table in none other than a traditional Iranian tea house
                                                                  
• Thousands of possible locations to meet your friends that make the littlest but greatest of sense
  
                                                             
  
• $__ that you actually don't feel bad spending on a taxi cab, because it's to arrive to your babysitting job on time because you know how important it is for the family to leave on time that morning because you woke up late and took the wrong train. But you care. They're now like your family. And that's called being a nanny. 

  

  Oh? This is going to happen?

• Unlimited feelings in your tastebuds as you seriously savor every taste of any food that is not made by you and does not involve cereal grains

  

  And by "trail" you mean the subway lines and
  streets of New York, correct?

• A Planet Fitness gym, preferably located in a Spanish-speaking area. Where else will you be able to watch the closed captions of Univisión and be able to figure out via visual context clues and your basic understanding of Spanish that the main female character cannot date the cute boy in school who truly likes her because she's truly in love with Justin Bieber. "Pero yo amo Justin!" makes any workout worth it.
                                                                     
• Between 3 to 5 futons and couches across the island of Manhattan that symbolize how much your friends care about you, and how much they secretly don't trust your capability to take a single train to a location very near your apartment. In the kindest, friendliest way possible. 

  

  What trendy apartment near the ages of college
  does not have a futon? Synonymous with fashionable.

• Continuous feeble attempts to only partially hide what you write in your notebook on the train, or what you're stapling to the back of your headshot, because you hope that maybe someday the peeper sitting next to you is a big shot casting director-- or at least someone who knows a guy who is married to a girl who used to live with an agent who worked on a show with this one man who now folds the laundry of a casting director. Or Kelly Ripa. 

  

  If you don't know that this isn't Kelly Ripa,
  (I'm not even going to finish this sentence).

• Apprx. 1-2 times, every couple of months, that you get to feel this: in the rare occasion when a train actually pulls up as soon as you step down into your respective subway station (or even within 5 min.) at the 42nd Street station, your body and soul is transported to an elevation of joy, as if the gods are smiling down specifically on you, their chosen one.

  

                    

• 1 instance that is simultaneously the most annoying and yet honestly open, wonderful interactions you've seen: 

A couple, a little older than my age, is standing together on the train with the most PDA I've witnessed en route so far-- and, naturally, right in front of my seat. I repeat "gag me with a spoon" over a few times in my brain and plug my headphones in. Since my music is at a respectable and hospitable volume for a train with other humans on it, I am able to hear parts of their conversation. The girl takes out her cell phone and, scrolling through, searching for something, says (real sentences, but I can only pick out) the words "I wonder... wanna see if... everything we've said!" Oh my gosh. They're not. All of the things? No, they can't be looking through-- "I've always wanted to do this on Facebook, but..."

So, yes. This couple is going to stand in front of me on the train and read through EVERY TEXT MESSAGE THEY'VE EVER SENT TO EACH OTHER EVER. My eyebrows were probably very telling, especially as my eyes darted to the other 4 or so riders sitting in this tight enclave at the back of the train, to see if they were witnessing what I was witnessing. No. They were pretending not to listen (admittedly just like I was). By now, I'd paused my music while still wearing my headphones, seemingly not listening to the couple relive the birth of their relationship. Which is exactly what they did. 

"Here we go..." "This is going to take a long time!" "Good thing we're gonna be on here a while!" (Oh, joy.) "I wonder what the first thing we said to each other was. Probably 'Hi!' 'Hey, what's up?" They laugh. ..."Oh, here-- 'Sorry for running away so quickly this morning!'" "Oh, yeah, that was when you woke up, showered, grabbed your things and ran out of my apartment."... "When was this one?" "July 1st" (Oh my gosh, they've only been dating for like three months!)... "I remember-- this was that trip when you were in town for only a month."... In midst of this, they recounted, apparently for the first time, how they moved from being just friends to becoming a couple. Simply, one of them texted the other person for the first time, they decided to hang out, they hung out more, and then they dated. That's it. No fascinating story, rather a very obvious and natural chain of events that birthed the now loudly public and seemingly quite successful relationship they were in. 

They looked at that phone in mostly silence, smiling to themselves, the entire way from 42nd to 155th. At one point, they sat down in two open seats, right next to me (as it should be). Then, all of a sudden, the guy noticed that they had reached their stop. "This is us." "Oh! I didn't even realize." The train doors opened, they popped up together, phone still out, and left together. And that was that. Now, come on: you'd find this totally annoying at first, too. I hoped so strongly that one of the other passengers was going to share in my complete surprise that this was how these two people were going to pass their time on the subway. However, the longer it went on, the more I realized how cool it was. Normally, and those I've spoken to about this have agreed, if a person is going to do the read-through of all of the messages they've sent their significant other, whether on their phone or their Facebook or email, they're going to do it on their own. This act can be seen as, let's be honest... a little clingy! It's sappy! Sentimentality equates vulnerability. I'm not saying I agree with that, but that's how we're socially encouraged to look at it. What if the other person thinks you're too involved, serious, or even immature for wanting to do that? Keep it to yourself.   

Not. This. Couple! Yes, I'll admit, to the outside eye: I did think it was dripping with sap and soaking the surrounding air with their puppy love, BUT I have to applaud them-- because, you're right (I know you were thinking it), who cares what I think?! Albeit annoying to me, they shared an entirely open experience. Both of them seemed to enjoy it equally and didn't worry if the other would judge them for doing so. They were both pretty awesome together. And, thankfully, they left to be awesome together somewhere else. 

Instructions
What's there to say? There's a lot surrounding you in New York City waiting to be hated. There's a lot waiting to be loved. I don't enjoy living my life in such black and white terms, though. I choose to vacillate vaguely in the grayscale that most of the skyscrapers live in. To elaborate:

My mom recently gave me a bunch of old Prevention Magazines to take back with me to read on the train. I just read one in the bathroom (TMI? lemme know) with an article subtitled, "If you're looking for a hug, Caroline Myss isn't your gal. But if you're looking for a soulful reality check, you've come to the right place." It opens with a tale of Myss eavesdropping (my jam already!) on an 89-year-old mom and her daughter. The daughter is going on and on, not letting her mom get a word in, about who's divorced who and who looks terrible now and why, until her mom finally interrupts,

"You know what, honey? I don't remember those people. I don't remember a lot of things. Why don't you just remind me of what I loved? I don't have time to think of anything else."

Ms. Myss goes on to speak of the importance of no-nonsense truth over BS (short for Bachelor of Science, for my friends under the age of 13). She believes that negativity, namely letting it rule your life, is what's going to get you sick. That is not, though, an invite to live your life in black and white, aka negativity = sick and positivity = popsicle puppy pickle happiness over a pastel rainbow in the Gulf of Mexico. My favorite quote is this:

"That's total nonsense. If that were true-- if only negative people were ill-- we wouldn't have to fill prisons! Rapists and pedophiles and the Senate would be gone. There's no one answer for every one problem."

Gotta love the Senate. New York City isn't a place to live in the stars and sing "The Hills Are Alive"-- and not because you can't see the stars and there are no hills. You have to be realistic. Still, focusing on the darkness, what you hate, and all you fear is even more unhelpful. I'd settle for searching for a tall hilly area, or a roof, where you can see one or two stars, and hum to yourself a little "Edelweiss." Embrace the city's grayscale, if you think it has one, and learn to at least identify what makes this city unique. It really is unlike any city in the world, for good and for bad. Not all of your ingredients are going to be tasty, but they are, at least, full of stories.


(Yes, you may think of Abuela Claudia singing to Usnavi in Hundreds of Stories.)