Venti mocha frappuchino: in Italian it means, up way, way past your bedtime.

Had Sarah and I not stopped for coffee on the way to her house last night, and had I not insisted on venti amounts of caffeinated bliss, I might have made it to bed before three o’clock in the morning. But then, where’s the fun it that?

We’d had big plans to get drunk with underage blonde twins (down boys), but when the DVD player broke, my copy of the 1961 classic, Parent Trap made a better coaster than it did entertainment. So we moved to Plan B: Drinking and talking and eating things out of takeout containers with chopsticks.

We do that really well.

Sarah reminds me of one of those songs that when you hear it, everything sort of quickens. You walk faster and maybe with a bit of a skip. You feel a little bit better about life and you put it on repeat so you don’t have to go back to the humdrum of the rest of your Walmart music selection. That’s right – Sarah is a Beach Boy’s song. Or Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life” or maybe (god forgive me) The Brady Bunch’s "Sunshine Day." And even after you’ve sweated through your work clothes on the hour-long train ride from Brooklyn, you’re still feeling pretty okay about the world, cause you got some Sarah stuck in your head.

So by the time I stowed my laptop and clicked off the lamp, I didn’t pay much mind to the digital numbers' glowing reminder of my bedtime infraction. Good news at work, Sarah for a song and some late night IM hijinks were more than sufficient insurance that Friday was gonna be an alright day. Even after only three hours of sleep.

At lunchtime in June, the lawn at Bryant Park was a maze of bodies. Justine and I sat in the middle of the maze, skirts bunched up at our thighs, trying to catch what sunshine we could in our hour of partly-cloudy freedom. She dug around in her brown leather bag for her cigarettes while I dug around in my brain for my sanity.

I was having A Day. I didn’t have it in me to be angry anymore, but there was still something in the pit of my stomach, eating at me. I felt weary.

Propped up by my elbows, I was reclining with my ankles neatly crossed – lest I expose my personal assets to a table of blue shirts a few yards away. Justine sat cross-legged next to me on the grass, smoking and chatting away as I zoned out, hearing perhaps half of what she said. I was staring into space when I saw the clipboard bobbing through the crowds. Oh god. What was it this time? An amazing spa package I can’t possibly turn down? Political campaign crap? Save the pigeons?

I wanted to scream, Fuck you, your spa, the politicians and the pigeons! I am having a crisis! But in the end, it took much less energy to roll to one side and ask someone else to do my dirty work.

“Justine? Please say something to make her feel bad about herself and go away.”

I don’t know what I was expecting. But by then, the clipboard (with perky volunteer girl attached) had stepped over outstretched sun-seeking limbs, dodged duck-duck-goose and stopped in front of us.

“Would you like to sign a petition to save parks in New York?”

Justine looked up at the perky volunteer and narrowed her eyes. She took a long drag of her cigarette then exhaled an equally long, deliberate column of smoke.

“No,” she said, her tone flat and humorless. “I just had an abortion and I’m very upset about it.”

I nearly swallowed my own tongue.

“No! She didn’t! Oh my god!”

What had I done? The volunteer gushed an apology and moved quickly on to the next cluster of sunbathers. I was left dumbfounded and in stitches. The laugh started in my stomach and ripped through my body. I clutched at my sides, choking.

“Justine, you can’t just say that!”
“You said, say something to make her feel bad about herself and go away. I did.”

Indeed she had. And believe me, I know just how wrong that was. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t love telling that story -- and that I don’t laugh just as hard every single time I tell it.

Sometimes I have dark fantasies about ending it all with one well-placed paper cut.

I’d use the good, thick stock. A quick, deep gouge in say, the jugular, and my head would slump forward onto the desk, filling my keyboard with gore. When they found my limp body hours later over a stack of bloodied TPS reports, then they'd be sorry for driving me fucking insane. Ah, yes. I can hear the mournful sobbing now.

Weep! Weep you slave driving bastards!

But back in reality, there’s no end in sight. Not even one at the merciful end of a piece of 80-pound cardstock. But there is email. And it’s the only saving grace in my day. Were I an AOL user, I imagine I’d equate that automatic you’ve got mail with a choir of angels.

The PWSWM (pictured below) perfected the art of the Rapid Fire Email. Witty exchanges flew between six computers with such speed that if you were down on your game, you were left for dead. Only the strong survived.

(clockwise: shiv, krissa, kate, me, biscuit & jen)

Ari and I resort to instant messenger like brevity in a staccato of emails to the tune of:

lol no way seriously? brb lunch

Someone else (who shall remain nameless lest she kill me) and I compose Victorian novellas in likewise lightning speed. For a girl who’s never read Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, she’s astoundingly good at descriptions of gray-eyed, moor-wandering, melancholy strangers. That shit is off the hook. You know, in the extra nerdy way.

But yesterday, heaven seemed quiet. No you’ve got mail all afternoon. Even work-related email was sporadic enough that I was getting a little twitchy with a box of heavy stationery. Then my gmail inbox grew by one.

{insert angel chorus here}

Not only was the conversation was a welcome distraction, it produced the following, which probably saved me from insanity and certain death:

Dutch: blah blah blah….LOL (which means fun in Dutch).
Heather: Pshah. What do the Dutch know?
Dutch: Uh, EVERYTHING. We started the city you live in. We invented the CD. We invented Nutella and love. So there.
Heather: I Googled it. I can find nothing that says the Dutch invented love.
Dutch: Google isn't always perfect. Clearly it missed this academic masterpiece:

love and the dutch

Work may have gone on for a few more hours (it was a twelve-hour day), but the effects of out-lasted the grind. I was still laughing this morning. 'Cause, you gotta admit, that shit is very much off the hook. You know, in the extra nerdy way.

I once dated a man that couldn't say my name.

Strike that. He could say my name, but either he was simply too lazy to or he'd over greatly estimated the charm of his accent. And sure, what girl wouldn’t buckle at the knees every time her Irish lover called her sweetly…

“Hey, Hedder…”

Hedder? Sounds like a dirty job on a porn set, if you ask me. David’s stubborn bastardization of my name was not the only point of contention in our six month relationship. He wore really bad sweaters. I didn’t like sleeping at his apartment. And then there was his pint-fueled temper and my emotional distance.

Yeh just got too many of dem walls up, Hedder.

After a few (or seven) pints, my otherwise charming fellow tended to lose not only his charm but his sense of decorum. One night at a bar in Cambridge, I distinctly remember a bouncer stepping between us asking if I needed some help. David had drawn himself to full height, blind drunk and raging about one thing or another (probably all those walls I’d foolishly left up around him) and I was pinned against the bar, silently crying.

Not one of my fonder memories. But yesterday afternoon when a friend lightly suggested that I “write about… hangovers and love” the first thought that popped into my head was of dating David. The worst of the hangovers in those days wasn’t just about cheap vodka. They were laced with cried-out eyes and a runny nose. Mornings spent with my head buried under the pillows, cell phone turned off and the house phone manned by mina bird roommates.

She’s not here right now, may I take a message?

I have some really nice hangover/love memories, too – mornings after spent sipping Gatorade and reading the Sunday Times, diner food and dirty talk or lazy hours of oversleeping and playing the alphabet back scratching game.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of those first.

Walking up Second Avenue just now, a gust of wind caught my skirt and up it billowed. In a flash, I threw a hand to my backside only to find it in contact with flesh. I looked around at the crowded sidewalks and I knew that I’d just graced a few dozen people with my bare tush.

My first inclination was to be mortified. But really, a bit of ass is nothing to be embarrassed about -- especially in New York where you’re treated to much, much more on a regular basis. So, instead I decided to be deliriously entertained by the whole event and just stood there on the sidewalk laughing.

In the end, I think my petite burlesque made much less of a scene than my laughing fit. But because public displays of mania are also something you get used to in the City, I was not at all surprised when no one seemed to pay me a bit of mind.

God, I love this town.

“This is a tradition in Argentina,” she said. Marina’s voice was light, like a whisper, and heavily accented. She leaned in, sweetly kissed both of my cheeks and then tugged gently at my earlobes. “How many years are you?”

I smiled. “Twenty-seven.”

“One, two, three…” she counted as she pulled at my ears, alternating right to left. Tug, tug. “four, five…” She reached twenty-seven, stood back, smiled again and said, “You have a happy day.” Then she went back to work.

I stood still for a moment, hands over my ears, smiling, maybe even blushing. It should have been weird, I suppose, having a coworker I don’t know well touch me like that. After all, ears aren’t one of those frequently-manhandled body parts. They’re intimate. Which is what that moment was -- unexpectedly intimate and sweet.

If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear over the few years I’ve been writing here, I tend to be narrowly focused. Molehills are my mountains. I take small moments, hold them up to the light like film negatives, over-study the details and pick at their significance. I’m obsessed with meaning. And I realize that perhaps the little things mean too much to me. The tenderness of a simple birthday wish, for example -- why is it compelling? Because it was so real.

People sometimes talk about life in terms of milestones – graduations, birthdays, marriage, babies. When you’re seventeen, you’re waiting for eighteen. College is much less about learning than it is about simply graduating. And when you’re dating, you’re waiting to meet The Right One and settle down. So much waiting. I guess somewhere along the line, I decided that I can’t be an “I’ll be happy when…” person. I’ve learned that I’m not a bigger-picture person. Even if I want to be.

I can’t stomach the idea of looking down the road, trying to divine how it’s all supposed to turn out – trying to figure out the next chapter of my life book. I can’t see that chapter. I can’t touch it and I can’t count on it. I can, though, collect these vignettes and dwell on things like rows of strawberries and extra long hugs and earlobes tugs. I have to. Otherwise, I feel like I might always be waiting for the Next Big Thing to happen. And always being more than a little bit afraid that it won’t.

There’s frosting in my cell phone and baby brownies from the Fat Witch Bakery on my desk.

Oh yeah, baby. It's my birthday. Even my mom remembered this year, which totally makes up for standing in line at the DMV all morning.

Gettin' old tastes like cocoa and that's okay by me.

“Belgian waffle with strawberries, two pieces of bacon and orange juice, please.” I order without picking up the menu.

“And coffee, yes?” The waiter smiles. I nod.

He probably wonders, as I do, why we bother to go through this ordering process. It’s always the same. Same table in the corner by the window, same order. Same hefty supply of Equal and one refill of coffee so I can sit and people watch while the syrup soaks the bits of waffle I’m too stuffed to finish.

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I’m having breakfast at the diner across the street from my apartment. I’m eating by myself, like I always do on the weekends. Usually this is my Sunday morning occupation, but today, I know I won’t leave the house at all unless it’s to sit, spacey-eyed and watch butter pool in waffle squares.

The waiter, whose name I should know by now (I will remember to ask next week), brings me my waffle and then leaves me alone to think. Everything is gorgeous. The strawberries are not piled on, but arranged in rows of shiny red, two layers deep. Even the butter pats are carefully placed in a semicircle around the syrup pitcher. That’s diner waiter speak for, I secretly love you. The overly generous tip I always leave says, I secretly love you back.

Today I’m feeling alone. It’s not the same thing as lonely, which can sometimes just happen to me. Lonely sends me scrambling for my cell phone. Reach out and touch someone. Alone, on the other hand, is on purpose. I relish feeling alone. I eat all by myself and nap so much that I out-nap even the cat. I am a rock, I am an island.

I spent yesterday feeling too connected, too concerned and too human. I suppose that this is how I recover. I disconnect, wrap a band-aid around my glowing ET finger and refrain from too much human contact.

My exchange with the waiter doesn’t count -- I think, in part, because of its simplicity. We know exactly what we expect from one another and as long as there are fresh strawberries in the kitchen and a few extra bucks in my wallet, no one will be disappointed.

It might sound as though there's a metaphor or two in there, but right now, I’m really only talking about breakfast.

I still love you.

That’s what Ben tells me when I haven’t written in a few days. It’s his way of prodding, gently. It comes from a few months back when in the middle having a minor taking-myself-too-seriously crisis, Ben interrupted our late evening conversation to say, “I still love you.” Just like that. No expectations, no requirements, whatever whiney-ass mood you’re in, I still love you.

This morning’s “I still love you” came with a picture, its file name an extension of the message:

thismuch.jpg

And there was Ben, younger and… hairier (sorry, B), standing atop a mountain, arms out-stretched. Thiiiiiis much, said the reach of his arms. I replied “you’re cute” and finished getting ready for my day. At first, it got me smiling. And then, it got me thinking.

“To the moon and back!” Was what my father would say when asked, “How much do you love me, daddy? How much?”

To the moon and back!

And here’s where I get sentimental.

Last weekend, while it was freeing in a way, was also very difficult for me. See, I’ve always understood that when two people share anything – whether it be a sandwich, an entire childhood, a kiss – it’s never going to mean exactly the same thing to both people. And when you’re talking about a shared relationship – a whole collection of varied experiences – the discrepancy between what each person takes away from it can be huge. And I had always assumed that I had assigned much more meaning to my relationship with J than he had. More than I should have. More than a reasonable amount of perspective should have warranted.

Turns out, I was wrong. But the damage was done and what years of feeling foolish does to you… well, it’s not easily undone. But it is what it is and I’m sure everyone involved has learned something from it. Look at me being so pragmatic. Talk to that feeling in my stomach though, and it’s much less cut and dried.

What do I mean to you? It’s not something we’re cool about asking each other. It’s something we’re supposed to read between the lines, figure out through the context of conversations, emails and facial expressions.

You make my life better.
I think you’re funny.
We are temporary.

An unreturned phone call and sideways glances may read, You’re replaceable. While a tender pat on the head from the same person can say, To the moon and back.

Body language, rarely as accommodating as a mood ring, doesn’t always tell you what you need to know. And because, once we leave childhood, we no longer allow ourselves the naiveté to ask, How much do you love me? so much of it is left to guessing and intuition and sometimes even hope.

And sadly, in interpreting our worth to the people we care about most, far too much gets lost in the translation.

“I can say this now because I’m drunk…”

J is sitting across the table from me, balanced on a rickety barstool, a pint of IPA sloshing over onto his hand. He had three glasses of water at the last bar. I know he’s not drunk, but I smile and nod him on. Who am I to stop a guy from getting something off his chest?

“You know I love Tricia. It…”

“…goes without saying.” I finish his sentence. Tricia is, without question, the best thing that has happened to him. It does go without saying.

“Exactly. See? That’s what I want to say. You know me.” J looks over his shoulder at his girlfriend and smiles. “I love her. And I’m in love with her. But you and I connected in ways she and I never will.”

I don’t know what expression my face is wearing. My eyebrows are raised though. That much I can tell. J reaches for my arm.

“You shaped the way I see… well, almost everything. Movies. Art. People. You know that, right? Remember that time you said…”

J starts recounting a story from three years ago. Something I said about a red Ferrari and I’m shocked by the level of detail in his memory of it.

“That’s how I knew you just got me.”

We’re both quiet for a minute. There’s chaos going on around us in the bar. I feel beer spill down into my sandals but I barely flinch. I’m sort of… blank. I hadn’t expected any of this (I’d for a birthday party, not a confessional) and I won’t even begin processing it until the next day on the train when I slide my sunglasses down and cry a little because I don’t know what else to do. Mostly because of what he says next.

“I was never good at showing you how much I loved you.”

On the train, I’ll replay that sentence and I’ll be overwhelmed, in pain, almost and slightly angry. My train ticket will say July 10 -- coincidentally the three-year anniversary of the blog I started to make some sense of our bizarre relationship. Three years will have gone by with me believing I chased him, tried to make him love me and assigned some huge meaning to a relationship that never had a chance of making it. Three years of feeling unappreciated and unloved. Unseen and unheard.

But then I’ll understand finally, somewhere in the middle of Connecticut, that he’d been hearing and seeing all along. I’ll understand that three years after a silly conversation about a red Ferrari, the memory of that night will mean a great deal to him. And I won’t have even thought about it in a very long time.

I had a very busy, very intense weekend. I went to Boston for J's 30th birthday. Gone less than twenty hours, I left Penn Station yesterday evening, stopping by Benjamin’s for dinner and some downtime. When this morning, I had still yet to blog, I sent him an “I’m too busy, will you do it for me?” email. I was kidding. But he took me at my word. And what he sent back was not only pretty damn accurate, but proof that even when I’m rambly, he’s listening.

My version will come a bit later when things calm down. But for now, Benjamin's interpretation. Enjoy!

You Can Go Home Again, Or, What I Learned On Amtrak

J always liked women with blonde hair. Big, fluffy, 80s blonde hair. So I did what I could. I got it highlighted. And it stayed that way some three years after we broke up.

Something changed in the salon Saturday morning.

"Can you remove the highlights?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm so glad you said so," Rene, my colorist, said in a thick French accent. "How attached are you to the ends?"

Five inches and $375 later, I'm on Amtrak Northeast Regional #74 heading to Boston. My hair is brown. And I am smiling. Out the window, the Connecticut shoreline is whizzing past. In the seat in front of me, two little Australian boys are asking about New York. "We didn't see any firemen, mummy. Why weren’t there any firemen?"

J picks me up at South Station. He puzzles a moment. "Something's different," he says.

"Everything," I answer.

Later that night, celebrating J's 30th in a stretch Hummer, J's girlfriend, Trish, turns to me and says, "Jonathan's so glad you came. And so am I."

J corners me in a bar later. He's a little drunk.

"I love Trish," he says. "But no one will ever get me like you did."

I am astonished as he recounts moments I thought lost forever. At least to him.

I stay sober. The driver doesn't know Southie, and I want to get us home. Trishe's 6' 7" brother in law hoists a bottle of Jaeger Meister, pouring it down his throat. I ask, "Can I hold that a minute?" When he realizes he isn't getting it back, he slurs, "I think Heather is cheating on me."

Riding the rails southward Sunday afternoon, I text Ben. "Dinner plans?" He quickly responds. "In Banana. Buying slacks. 6:30."

I buzz his apartment at exactly 6:30. He buzzes me in, and I climb the agonizing five flights. The door is open for me. Inside, Ben is reclining, Corona in hand, in front of the AC. He stands slowly, bone tired from his triathlon, and gives me a hug.

"Something's different," he says.

"Everything," I answer.

I’ve never been one to own a lot of purses (more of a shoe girl, myself). One perfect black handbag and I’m a happy girl. But a year or so ago, I was introduced to this site, and quickly scooped up this little pink silk number.

Summer, winter – it’s become my seasonless favorite. Jeans, sundresses – it goes with everything and it gets complimented everywhere I go. In fact, sometimes I carry it to draw attention away from less desirable aspects of my appearance. Bad haircut? A few extra pounds? Take the pink bag and no one will notice!

I had been waiting in girlish anticipation for some new somethingorother from Nepacena to complement this summer’s new colors (and frankly, buying things is a temporary happiness fix) when shazam! The heavens opened!

And the email said, let there be new bags. And behold, I saw the bags and they were good. So I bought two. Amen

On Saturday, I baked.

And on Tuesday, I came home from work to a kitchen that looked as though baking was still in progress. Flour dust, chocolate-trimmed utensils, a hastily twist-tied bag of walnuts. Oven slightly ajar. Baking had been the fun part, but even that required effort. Getting up early while it’s still cool enough to use the oven. Sifting. Stirring. Napping while it does its cooking thing. After all that, shouldn't cleaning up really be someone else’s gig? But three days later, that someone had yet to get to it.

Home after a long day yesterday, I eyed the mess on the counter, dropped my work bag to the floor and sighed. Not moving from the hallway, I hung my dry-cleaning on a hook, pushed up the sleeves of my cardigan and, spinning on my heel, went right back out of the apartment.

How’s that for not dealing?

I did manage to grab a bag of laundry on the way out, so it wasn’t a total loss. And at the Laundromat, I did manage to meet a nice man named Dennis who lent me quarters and later bought me a drink at the sushi joint next door. So really? Kitchen be damned.

Until this morning anyway. My love for aesthetics and my fear of ants got me up at 6:30 and into a pair of yellow rubber gloves. All that early-morning-preparedness also got me into a skirt and some previously-absent undies. I am well pleased.

“Do not test me this way!”

I don’t know who I was talking to – the Universe? God? My keys? Where the fuck were they anyway? Not on the hook (because, why would I have put them where they belong?), or in the couch cushions or even the freezer (yeah, I found them there once. Long explanation involving Popsicle emergency).

I wasn’t late. I was early. But I needed to be early and being thwarted by my keys was really the last thing I was ready to deal with. There was dry-cleaning to drop off and shoes to pick up and reports to prepare and… and no keys! Out of options, I tucked my laptop under my comforter and headed out, prepared to leave Sir Hal in charge of guarding my life’s possessions only to find that...

the keys were in the door.

Fucking brilliant.

I shrugged, locked the door, dropped off my laundry and headed for the subway. A block from home, I realized that though keys were in hand, not all was right. Things were off. Things were… breezy. Probably due to the fact that I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Also fucking brilliant.

Understand this is much less hot than it is frustrating. I’d thrown on a long skirt right out of the shower (it was hanging conveniently on the bathroom door) and had entirely simply skipped the skivvies.

Guess, I’ll be spending my lunch hour running to VS and not running at the gym as previously planned.

Are we sure today is not Monday?

I'll explain the title later. Maybe.

I remember a scene from Wings where Helen is in the kitchen chopping away at something on a cutting board. She’s sniffling and brushing tears back with the cuff of her sleeve. Joe comes in and asks the obvious:

“Are you crying?”
“No.” She sniffles. “It’s the onions.”
“Helen, those are potatoes.”
“Then, I’m crying.”

I thought about that scene at least a dozen times this week. I found myself sitting at work with my palms pressed tightly to my eyes, fingers curled up over my forehead, buried into my hair, willing myself not to cry. What would I blame it on? White Out fumes? Allergies?

The kicker is that nothing particularly bad had happened that should make me cry. For whatever reason, I was just feeling…tender about life. Easily ruffled. Vulnerable. I felt like running away and hiding out under the covers while I waited for the world to get easier and kinder. But since that’s not exactly how things work, I toughed it out.

Sort of.

I smoked a few cigarettes, wrote a few (dozen) whiney emails and went to bed early every night. I drank Riesling from the bottle and cried at CNN. I paid bills and cleaned the bathtub and did those other things that I do to feel some sense of accomplishment. I watched mindless film and ate steak-cut French fries. I reacted badly to many, many things.

Emails, jokes, criticism.

By the end of my tender week, I had to apologize to him for being snarky. Over cubicle walls, I had to thank her for being my friend even when I’m crazy. Her reply brought a small lump to my throat.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked. “I love you.”

I thanked her, took a deep breath and went back to my work. It seems that when tender strikes, it’s all onions on a cutting board. Everything turns into a reason to come apart -- one flimsy excuse after another to cry, because maybe I just needed to.

Those are potatoes.
Then, I’m crying.

Dear Ben,

I beat you to blogging. No, it’s not a real post, but I’m a girl who hates to lose a bet.

So, consider this a placeholder until all hell has been reigned back in and I can wax poetic about how much it sucks that my bathtub is backed up and how I probably won’t have water in my apartment for the next two days and if not be able to shower freely twice a day doesn’t make a girl persnickety, I don’t know what does.

But still. I won. And that feels nice.

Love,

Heather

PS. We are such nerds.