As the coldest day yet of the season, I set about to try and stay warm…turns out that it was not as difficult as I thought. First, upon realizing that my apartment probably would fair better if I did not have a window open (not even the teensiest of cracks), I promptly shut it. Then, I set about to put on my usual weekend television programs…breakfast in bed on soap net. Yes, I’m one of those people. Sadly, it was not on this morning, like it was not on yesterday either. So, I channel flipped and found a Kate Hudson movie that I had never heard of, which was entertaining enough.

For a while now, I’ve been in the mood to bake cookies. I had had a recipe that a coworker had given me a few years back that was really good, but I wasn’t sure if I still had it. So, in the dark of my living room, after I had raided my “recipe drawer,” I sat on my floor in front of the television and went through the little recipes that I had, realizing that most of them, I had never actually tried. I found the coveted cookie recipe; thank goodness I actually have a habit of printing such things out, so I set it aside.

Last weekend, I had done a mass amount of food shopping, since I had possession of my father’s car, a lot of which are perishable. I had purchased the ingredients to make my famous split pea soup, so I decided to make my bed, get out of my pajamas, and get into the kitchen. While the film The Family Stone played quietly on my television, I set about chopping vegetables and throwing my soup together…also while chatting on the phone with Z, our usual weekend pastime regardless or not if we are hanging out.

After my soup was done, I picked up the cookie recipe again and studied it. Realizing that I only needed two ingredients and could easily walk to the store and purchase them, I threw on a sweater and vest, and headed out…oh and I put on my cute gloves. By the time I came back the only thing that was frozen were my hands.

I set the butter and cream cheese in a bowl to thaw and got the rest of my ingredients together, impatiently waiting. When it was finally soft enough, I preheated the oven, popped in my Christina Christmas cd and started mixing by hand…I am not one of those people who owns an electric mixer, although perhaps I should be. My second favorite thing about making cookies is eating the dough while waiting for them to bake…my first is the delicious fragrance that wafts into my apartment.

There’s nothing that puts me in the holiday mood more than singing along to Christmas music and making cookies, a tradition carried from childhood. I even managed to cook a little whole-wheat pasta for dinner while I was at it. Now, after all the dishes have been washed and the cookies put away, I am sitting on the couch contemplating what to actually do with all of them…surely I cannot eat them all :). Oh, and did I mention that I am pooped?

Words fascinate me. They’re the way we express ourselves, albeit not so well at times, but could you imagine life without them? Sometimes I joke and say that I didn’t major in English, I majored in words…because that is my true love, that is why I love literature so much, because I love words. Who else would ask for the “Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary” as a Hanukkah gift two years ago? And yes, I am serious. I am staring at it sitting on my shelf right now. It has literally every word in the English language since its birth, from the first recorded use to, sadly for some, the last. It is by far one of my most cherished possessions…yes, I did just say that about a thesaurus.

I am constantly in search of le mot juste (French for, the right word). Friends will attest to this…and so will my mother. Sometimes I feel like it takes me forever to write down one sentence because I get stuck on finding the perfect word for a thought that is circling in my head. It’s not that I can’t write, it’s simply that my brain sometimes cannot fathom using the “wrong” word, so if I’m at work I surf the online dictionaries and thesauruses, and if I’m at home I use the real ones until I find the word that I am looking for. Other times, simply making a cup of tea helps. The soothing aroma and warmth that it brings is sometimes enough. (And by the way, if anyone was wondering, my tea bag quote today says, “empty yourself and let the universe fill you,” interesting, right?)

I am not alone in this though. The author Gustave Flaubert spent his whole life in search of le mot juste as well. He constantly tormented his brain in search of the perfect word, rejecting clichés, as he believed that the essence of a great writer was his originality. Most, if not all of Flaubert’s published works took years for him to complete because of that and he was never completely satisfied by anything that he did. His novel Madame Bovary, for which I am currently awaiting its arrival, took him five years to complete.

So what is it all about? Why do writers like Flaubert and the likes (oh, and me) constantly search their brains, picking them apart for one teeny little word? Because finding the right word can be like finding the perfect pair of shoes or electronic gadget…or having sex; when you find the right word, that word that conveys perfectly what your mind is formulating, it’s euphoric.

I seem to be noticing a pattern of late…not everyone likes Billy Joel. I am astonished at this. Having grown up with his music and loving him, I thought that everyone else loved him too. I remember when he came out with his last album, River of Dreams. I remember my dad coming home and putting the title song on and replaying it over and over again until I could not get the lyrics or the music out of my head. It was 1993 and I would have been eight or nine at the time; there was definitely a lot that I did not understand then about Billy Joel’s lyrics, but I still loved him. Listening to his songs now as an adult, I can see more why the adults of my childhood loved him so; he wrote about his life and his feelings in ways that were entertaining and yet still made you feel (and reminisce about your own past).

For years I had been dying to see one of his concerts; I always said that the cost of a ticket wouldn’t matter…I would gladly fork over some serious money to see him live. Watching the Billy Joel/Elton John duet concerts from the company of my living room (the two grand pianos back to back) with my family just didn’t quite do it for me. Then, in early 2008, I learned that he was going to play the last concert at Shea Stadium. Seeing as how I live less than ten minutes away, I thought that it was fate. Sadly, within minutes of the tickets being released to purchase, they were sold out. When they added a second concert date I got my hopes up again only to still not be able to make a purchase. Then, a few months later, I went onto stubhub, and although I paid double the price for my seats, I had my tickets! I had always heard that when you see Billy Joel in concert it is either terrible (because he is drunk) or it is amazing, because, well, he is amazing. And it was ☺…amazing that is. The only other person I have any desire to see in concert is Christina, but that’s another story. 

I am starting to think that as much as I would love his music to be an epidemic, the fans that he is most beloved by reside in the quiet suburbs of New York, Long Island to be exact. I don’t know if it is because we feel he has roots with us, after all, he did grow up on Long Island and still resides there, or that we just understand him better because he is one of us, (and I am aware of my circumlocution, lol) and I know that us, Long Islanders are not his only fans, but it might be a good assumption to say that we make up a huge concentration.

Although, I do have many favorites, perhaps too many to count, “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” is definitely one of the great ones. Actually I know there are too many good ones to count. I was recently in the car with my father and a friend texted me that question and we were both at a loss, though we did end up dueting to “The River of Dreams.” Singing along to Billy Joel in the car with my father is almost as much fun as when we rock out to Queen, particularly “Fat Bottomed Girls,” where my father pounds the steering wheel in rhythm to the music. When I was in high school, as we were being shuffled to and fro, cassette tapes of Billy Joel would be the only thing playing in the car. Years later, my mother told me that that was because it was the only music we could all agree on, but I always think fondly back to those car rides.

Singers may come and go, but this Long Island girl will always be in love with Billy Joel.

I don’t remember when it was that I became so fascinated with quotes, but, I know that I have had this fascination for a while. I believe that quotes are underrated and should be appreciated more; a good quote can do a lot for a person. I know that for me, if something makes me smile, I want to quote it…and so I do. I have a mini notebook in a desk drawer at work, where I store all of my precious quotations. If I’m not at work, than I type them into my phone and add them in the next time I am. I wasn’t always this organized. I remember when I was an adolescent, I used to write many a quote on the backs of notebooks and I’m sure that I have lost a bunch over the years, but the point is that I am organized now!

As I sat down this afternoon with a post-gym cup of tea, I noticed that there was a quote on the tea bag. At one point I used to collect tea bag quotes…until they began becoming repetitive, then I gave up, so I had forgotten that they existed. The quote simple says, “The beauty of life is to experience yourself.” When I originally read that, it made me stop and think about it. It doesn’t say that the beauty is to experience new things, it says “yourself,” and I think that that is something that a lot of people forget. Life is about you and at the end of the day if a situation doesn’t work for you, you need to change it, because it won’t change itself. This reminds me of what Samantha said in the first SATC movie, when she found herself in a relationship that wasn’t working for her, she ended it with these words, “I love you but I love me more. I’ve been in a relationship with myself for forty-nine years and that’s the one I need to work on.” It sort of goes with my tea bag quote. It’s hard to admit, but I feel like it is something that most people don’t do; most people don’t live for themselves.

Recently, I have been obsessed with a quote from Kazuro Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled. “That’s it, that’s it! All the way, take it all the way! Hold back nothing!” If you had no knowledge of the context of it whatsoever, you could still understand it. This sort of ties into the two quotes above as well. It is also saying to transport yourself forward; to stay on that path no matter what, though, the definition of what that “path” is can be ambiguous. If the exclamation points are too much for you, you can ignore them, but I like them; I feel that they add to the power of what the quote is trying to say.

There is so much more that can be read into these quotes above, I was just skimming the surface to show how great they truly are (these particular quotes and quotes in general). And, if you didn’t think that I was a nerd already…I even have a dictionary of quotations sitting on a book shelf at home ☺.

After a weekend of non-stop shopping and driving, it’s nice to find myself in the comfort of my own home on a Sunday evening, drinking tea and watching movies…oh, and eating cheese :). It is freezing outside and, might I add, chilly in my apartment as well, hence the tea, although, I quite love tea in general, so, I would be drinking it regardless. Six months ago I was packing my belongings to move into the city for the summer with my sister…I cannot believe that it’s the end of the year already. Where does the time go?

I was just watching the film Eat, Pray, Love and I was thinking about how my friend Melissa and I had both started the book together, the day before we went to the theatre to see the film. I was also remembering how, despite the fact that it became a book that I loved, I never finished it. See, the book is divided into three sections, much like the movie, and the last section I just couldn’t get through. I’m not a religious person, and well, it was just a little too much for me. But, I wonder how much the ending from the film differs from that of the book, because it usually does. Perhaps I will pick it back up one day and finish it; right now it resides in one of my desk drawers at work.

Watching Eat, Pray, Love is like attending a therapy session. It makes you think about yourself more than you may want to at times. It makes you review your life decisions and decide if they were the right ones. It makes you think about the people that have come into your life and the ones that have left, relationships that have grown and changed with time and those that did not make it.

Live without regrets, that’s what I live by. I always enter into a new situation and ask myself, will I regret this if I don’t do it…if the answer is yes, than I do it regardless of the fears that I might be having. Live without regrets. If you can watch a movie like that and reflect back on yourself and say that, yes, I have made some decisions and they were hard, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if I could get through them, but that I don’t regret any of them, then they were the right ones to make. The things that I regret are not things that are in my control and therefore, shouldn’t be worth dwelling upon. That is easier said than done of course, but it’s not impossible.

A little self-reflection is good for everyone. For instance, why did I recently write a letter to someone, but never sent it. It has been sitting on my desk amidst a stack of papers for nearly a week now, addressed, stamped and sealed…but it’s just sitting there. All I have to do is place it in a mailbox, but I haven’t…and I may not. I don’t need to think about that for the moment though; it’s not time sensitive. Right now, I am just sitting on the couch with my tea (aka, a huge Eeyore mug that my father bought me years ago, that I was at first embarrassed to own, but it is the only mug I ever use now) and watching movies…although, I do have to finish my Vogue before the new one comes out…

Yesterday, my friend H and I played hooky from work in favor of taking my father’s car for a joyride and spending the day together shopping. Now, I didn’t really steal my father’s car, he’s in Florida right now visiting my grandfather and gave it to me to use for the week while he’s away. Right now, my father’s driving around in a Mustang, he literally just sent me pictures, and as much as I love his car, I must admit, I’m a bit jealous.

So, I picked H up from her place before noon and, after a pit stop at DD for lattes, we set off to our first destination of stores. H had to exchange something in VS, so that was our first stop. We must have been there for over an hour easy and though we both walked out with a little pink-stripped bag, I definitely dropped a lot more money there than she did.

Our next stop was Pier1 to browse and so I could look at the snowflake ornaments that I had been coveting online. I probably would have ordered them, but I had seen in the item description that they were five and a half inches in circumference and I figured that they would be better to see in person first and then decide after. It was a good thing that I hadn’t purchased them, because they looked nothing like what I thought they would and, very easy breakability. Alas, there will be no snowflake ornaments for me this year.

After briefly walking into a few other stores, we were running out of steam and decided to hop back in the car and grab a bite to eat at this delicious Japanese restaurant called Wild Ginger. It was only my second time eating there, H frequents there a lot, and the food was just as good as I remembered it to be. The one problem…I don’t eat fish or seafood, which is fine, but the Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood makes, what I like to call fake sushi, or as they call it, spicy chicken rolls. Of course the chicken is cooked, because otherwise that would just be gross and, might I add, highly unsanitary, but my point to this is that I cannot find this anywhere else. So, aside from that, I really do love Wild Ginger.

Next, we got back in the car and made our way to Crate & Barrel so I could pick up the ornaments that I had ordered from them. After walking the entire length of the store multiple times and after I had retrieved my box of ornaments, which although was big, was so light I swore that there was nothing inside of it although I had in fact viewed the contents, we walked back over to the register so that H could pay for her items. Midway across the store, I asked H what she had thought of this vase that I had been eyeing practically the whole time we had been there and she really loved it. There was no price so I asked a sales associate to help me and, when I found out that it was about half the price that I had thought it was going to be, bought it immediately.

We briefly attempted to go into one more store, but we were pooped and decided to retire back at H’s place for a while, we had in fact been shopping for nearly five hours at that point.

About half an hour later, I left H at home and headed down to Wantagh to have dinner with my Aunt and Grandmother, in heavy traffic and was jealous of H being at home. After good conversation and a nice dinner, I headed back out on the road for home and was so happy to see it that I vowed never to leave it again, but, it’s a good thing that homes are so forgiving, because I broke that vow already.

The first thing that I did last night once I was home, was immediately open up the box containing my vase to make sure that it had not broken. It emerged from what looked like a sea of packaging paper in perfect condition. I hugged it to my body, put it on my table and have been staring at it ever since.