To Heck with Tradition!

In my experience, in some respects, breaking tradition is a great and refreshing thing. Other times, it's like pulling teeth.

This past week, while on Thanksgiving hiatus between traveling and raiding my parents' fridge, I managed to break a tradition of the most sacred sort...at least according to WE TV. Behold, I have committed an unforgivable trespass by wearing my wedding ring...BEFORE my wedding! (Shocked gasps.)

We purchased our rings (bling!) the day before Thanksgiving at Northeastern Fine Jewelry. Our friend Joseph over there hooked us up with two of the most perfect rings—mine, appropriately glittery, and RM's, appropriately looking like it was sheared straight off a lead pipe.

When we got back to the car, the temptation was too much. Well, we're already technically married...and the rings are safer on our fingers than tucked away in a drawer...So with glee, we placed them on each other's fingers. I let out a really loud giggle, which elicited laughs from the people getting out of the car next to us.

And of course, the first thing my mother said to me when she saw it was, "you're not supposed to be wearing it yet!!!"

But Let me tell you, it feels damn good to be wearing a wedding ring. It's like those friendship necklaces we used to split with our friends when we were kids, except way bling-ier. I'm one half of a championship team. I don't feel that I need to save the act of wearing a ring because tons of brides before me have done so. I also don't feel like my wedding is going to be the event horizon of my life. It is just another reason to get my party on and celebrate life! To heck with tradition!!!

But as I was dancing gleefully around the dying embers of wedding tradition, the simultaneous demise of another tradition in my life was really killing my buzz.

For every single Christmas Eve of my life (and I ain't as much of a spring chicken as I used to be), I've gathered with a gaggle of extended family at Auntie Ray's house to eat lobster spaghetti, listen to family lore, and wait excitedly for a drunken Santa Claus riding atop a fire truck to drive past the house in East Boston.

That evening seems always to take on an air of magic and mystery, if for no other reason than we were all together and happy for another year. Cares just melted away for the entire night! We kids would tear around the house in our excitement, but settle in at the "kids" table at the first whiff of lobster spaghetti. The sounds and smells of Auntie's have come to define Christmas for us. Even the inebriated avatar of St. Nick had an air of fantasy about him...at least I thought so, because even at my ripe old age, I am still the first (and sometimes only) cousin to tear out of the house and down to the street corner at the first sound of a siren.

But this year, Auntie is not hosting Christmas Eve. It will be the first year in my life that Christmas will come and go without it. On that note, it will be the first Christmas Eve of my mother's life, all my uncles lives, and all my cousins' lives without it as well. I had always believed with certainty that one day I'd bring my own children to Auntie's house on Christmas Eve. That I won't sits heavy on my heart, and it's not something I can just let go of...it has been woven so deeply into my life!

Yet, times must and do change, and we all have to accept it. So this year, we will let it be the start of another new and wonderful tradition! The memories of Christmas Eve at Auntie's house that are burned into hundreds of photographs are also burned in to my soul, and I can revisit them every Christmas in my heart, no matter where I am.

Here are a few of those photos, for old times' sake:

The Cousins Club

Andrew threatens the family with a butter knife

The last Christmas Eve at Auntie's (Dec 2008)

**Editor's note: Incorrect assumptions were made re: the reason Christmas Eve will not be at Auntie's this year. Bad communication is to blame. Sorry!!!

Ivy League Quality

My little brother forwarded me this piece from the Times today. It profiles the "Ivy Plus Society," a networking/social club of sorts open to the young alums from certain schools (aka Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Brown etc). The article itself portrays the club as more of a place to meet and mingle with Ivy League singles...aka the smart and the sexy.

My first reaction, of course, was to Google this Ivy Plus Society and see if either of my alma maters made the list of colleges and universities "eligible" to participate.

I was dismayed to find that not a single one of the Seven Sisters was on the list! (Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Radcliffe and Barnard, thank you) Neither was Northwestern. Shit, I thought, there goes my chance to meet hot Ivy League singles.

Oh wait, I'm married! Married to a brilliant, thoughtful, creative man. The kind of which every Wellesley gal dreams. Only, he didn't go to Harvard, or Yale, or Princeton...

He went to a state school! Hah!

In fact, one of the first conversations we ever had revolved around the differences between hoity-toity private colleges versus state schools. RM was describing life at Plattsburgh State, and mentioned something about lectures and school functions. I don't remember exactly what he said (and neither does he, for that matter), but I remember blurting out, "you didn't have refreshments after lectures and functions?" He turned and stared at me, astonished. I continued, incredulously, "We always had at least brie and crackers!"

Even as he laughed in my face at the ridiculousness of such an utterance, I continued to describe to him the candle ceremonies, Flower Sundays, hoop-rolling and other Wellesley traditions. After I thought I had really backed myself into a pearl-necklaced, tea-drinking corner, he stopped joking with me. When it really came down to it, our experiences weren't all that different. Except I probably paid hundreds of thousands of dollars more for my brie and crackers...

I've known plenty of people who have gone to Ivies, the majority of whom are intelligent, thoughtful human beings. But just like at any typical American school, with the good eggs come the not so good eggs. The Ivies are no exception.

Which is why I find it ridiculous that such things set up for the purpose of hooking up "Ivy League" singles. You can be smart and sexy, even though your resume says you went to Wellesley instead of Yale. Or Plattsburgh State instead of Harvard.

It's not a new or by any means original argument. But I did feel a little relieved to have the burden lifted from my shoulders of feeling like I should show up at one of the society mixers.

High Five!

This video exemplifies why I both love and hate New York City.




High five! C'mon! What? No? Screw you!

Wait, yes? You rock!

Heard It Through the Grapevine

If you were hiding under a rock this past weekend, or perhaps you didn't check your Facebook accout, you may not have seen my husband's tweet.

Did you get that? Yes, I said my "husband." Because as of Thursday, I do legally have one. It's a new development. I'm still getting used to it.

In case you don't already know the story, or were confounded by cryptic Facebook status messages, here it is:

RM and I were married by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York State Court of Appeals, in the beautiful and historic COA building in downtown Albany on a sunny Thursday afternoon. The ceremony was private, with only our immediate family in attendence. It was short yet very meaningful. The bride wore royal blue and the groom wore his favorite $10 sport coat.

Now, I had intended for this information to stay relatively private--I was afraid that widespread knowledge of this fact would subconsciously cheapen the ceremony and exchange of vows we hope to conduct in front of our larger circle of family and friends next year. (I was also half-afraid people would think "shotgun," and shake their heads with a series of tsks.)

I was a little naive to believe that this could be contained. I am, after all, a member of the press.

The day after the ceremony, RM and I were driving out to Cooperstown, where we were to enjoy a lovely mini-honeymoon, when he casually revealed that he'd tweeted the news of our nuptials. Only when I was able to regain control of the car after swerving off a country road in the Central Leatherstocking region, was I able to comprehend the magnitude of what just happened.

Between the two of us, we have thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, most of whom instantly read the status message, and many of whom started to issue confused public congratulations. Next came the barrage of voicemails and text messages. And one slightly agitated call from my parents (aka my publicists) asking what the heck they should say to the people calling the house wondering about the news. Once it has leaked to the press, there is no covering it up...

But like most leaks, a statement is made in the aftermath to clear up any misinformation. So here is my statement:

We decided to get the legal stuff out of the way for one of two reasons: (neither of which is that I am pregnant, so cross that off your list) First, we needed to get Rick on my health insurance plan, because his job will not afford him such a luxury (sad, right?). We also wanted to begin our financial lives together, and get a head start on all matters tax-related. Secondly, we wanted the freedom to do as we please at the wedding we are planning for next year.

Because by gum, there will still be a WEDDING. Replete with walking down the aisle, vows, ring exchanges, champagne and cake. Oh yes, CAKE. Details are TK and close at hand, so please stand by to mark your calendars!

So there you go.

Cooking the Books

I thought that attempting to read on the subway was not as fulfilling as reading on a longer Metro North train ride. Turns out, most of New York City disagrees with me, as per this interesting article in the Times a week or so ago.

Since I've been cramming power-reads in between bumps, starts and "we're experiencing delays due to train traffic ahead of us (SCOFF SCOFF)," I've wracked up what I think is an impressive reading list, thank you very much. And I'm sharing it...because I care. (And I want people to stop misspelling things left and right. You are not getting away with using appalling grammar, either! Read, for crissake...or at least pick up a copy of Strunk & White!!!)

(If you take issue with the former parenthetical statement, please read about the 5 Grammar Mistakes that Make You Sound Like a Chimp. Then talk to me.)

Je voudrais mon livre....I'm a one-woman book club!

1. The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. A chilling work of historical fiction (or is it fiction?), detailing the "real-life" exploits of one mysterious and bloodthirsty European Count Dracula. It's an adventure story, a romance, a mystery and a psychological thriller with a little bit of gore worked in. I'm getting the spine tinglies just thinking about it, and I have a feeling if I pick up the book to reread it, I'll enjoy it more than I did the first time. The only downside...if you don't like dense writers, you might not make it far enough into the story to get to the good stuff. But I promise you, it's GOOD stuff, worth the effort.

I saw a dude on the subway reading this the other day, and interrupted him to gush over the book. I couldn't help myself.

2. The Lost, by Daniel Mendelssohn. If memory serves, I've written about this book in a previous posting. (But who even reads this blog enough to remember? I certainly don't. ) For the sake of refreshment, this book is amazing. It's a memoir of sorts, about a writer so fascinated with his family's history that he travels the world in search of the truth of what happened to his relatives during the Holocaust. As he searches, he ends up finding out a lot more about modern Judaism and the power of family than he thought possible. Amazing, amazing read. Also dense, but I didn't care.

3. Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Saffron Foer. I was on a Holocaust kick, can you tell? A young, dweeby, obsessive-compulsive Jewish American goes on a quest to find the mysterious Ukrainian hometown his grandfather was always babbling about. What he find is both nothing and everything. The quirky narrative, which involves a lot of fragmented, butchered English by the young man's Ukrainian guides, is interwoven with a peculiar stories of the town since it's inception hundreds of years ago. I like it. Can't say I totally understood it, but I liked it. I rented the movie later on and it cleared a few things up for me, but it also confused me more...

4. The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. Pure, unadulterated fantasy. It would take a novel to explain this book, which is part of a 15-book series. The author died before he finished it, and I'm hoping I get through reading all the books before I kick it too. If you liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but got sick of Tolkien's endless babbling, (as I did...snore!) you'll LOVE this.

5. My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. The subject matter was interesting--a young girl sues her parents for the rights to medically emancipate herself, having been born a genetic match for her cancer-ravaged older sister to serve as a bag of harvested organs--but the writing lacked finesse, the touchy-feely-ness felt forced and the end of the story was just plain unrealistic. With other books I normally wouldn't be so concerned about the latter fact, but that this book sold itself as something that was grounded in reality makes it a harder sell for me. I'm sorry, but in this case, I liked the storyline in the film adaptation BETTER because it was MORE realistic. That's a rare thing, folks. Rare indeed for Miss Green Eyes here.

6. First Blood, by David Morrell. When I read the author's introduction to this book, I guessed that I might not finish it. Not because the story wasn't well-written or intriguing--I'd gotten a sense of that from Sylvester Stallone's 1982 hit--but because David Morrell wanted to write a story that was as realistic as possible. And post-traumatic stress syndrome and gory senseless killing aren't really my bag. I made it through about half of the book. It was depressing. It was dark. It was interesting. I was not in the mood. I'm aiming to pick it up again sometime in the future.

7. The Twilight Series, by Stephanie Meyer. I haven't done enough reading of cheesy teen vampire literature to know if Steph Meyer is pulling a George Lucas. Despite her pitiful Dick-and-Jane writing style, I found the stories to be entertaining reads. It's easy to get sucked into the saga, as it caters to every teen fantasy I ever had. Although in retrospect, I was an idiot back then and no longer yearn with angst for skinny, dark troubled young men. Now I'm totally Team Jacob.

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I'm currently reading the second book in Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It's just as rockin' as the first so far. Next, I might pick up that World War Z book everyone's raving about...but I'll have to fit it in between 34th St./Herald Square and Broadway, as I zoom under the East River...

Because I don't have time...

Or because I'm lazy...here are a few things to check out. (er...shameless plugs)

1. Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia talk some interesting shop on Newsweek.com. If you've ever wanted to know what kind of underwear Tim and Michael wear, do not wait a minute more to watch this! (And if you don't care about that, watch it because I spent a lot of hours of my life editing it!)

2. Do you like to cook? Do you think your culinary concoctions are the sh!t? Well, regardless of whether they are the sh!t or they taste like sh!t, you might like Julie & Julia.

I thought it was a pretty decent film by Nora Ephron: great adaptation of two books + blog into a film without getting too cheesy or too confusing. Amy Adams was meh in it, but Meryl Streep was fantabulous. Definitely smell an Oscar nod coming from her kitchen...watch my review at Guideposts.com!

3. I just discovered Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...and I'm hooked. It has all the Tolkien-esque medieval fantasy that I love, in readable form!

For the life of me, I barely slogged my way through Fellowship. With the exception of one hair-raisingly terrifying passage, Tolkien bored me to tears. Jordan, on the other hand, sticks to the topic at hand--namely rip-roaring, on-the-edge-of-your-seat adventure--without Tom Bombadilling. I love it. Love it love it love it!

4. Do Hwa. 55 Carmine Street. My new favorite bar ever. Tarantino owns it, and I had the pleasure of his animated presence last time I went in for a cocktail. That's not why I like it though--I can do without the wannabe actresses and social climbers that crowded the place when he was there. I like it because it is hip, relatively low-key and the douchebag factor is pretty much nonexistant.

5. PS1. The Museum of Modern Art's extension in Long Island City could not have hooked me more. I was expecting some of the intrigue I felt for MoMA, but I wasn't expecting to be as stimulated as I was by some of the exhibits.

I'm not really an "arty" person. I don't have the patience for it. I feel kind of stupid and uncultured when I don't immediately get the point of a painting that looks like something I drew in the fourth grade. (I'm sorry if I didn't immediately get that it was supposed to represent the unjust objectification of the feminine psyche. It looks like the artist took a lunch break and spilled mustard on the canvas.)

But the art at PS1, particularly the courtyard architecture exhibit, actually spoke to me. That particular exhibit comprised a series of diagrams, photos, graphics and blueprints for construction in the museum courtyard. Every year, the museum chooses a design that they implement there, and host a big party in the space. It was so interesting to see how the idea of a public party space inserts some palpable psychology into the design process.

The other exhibits were seemingly unpretentious too! I didn't feel stupid making the associations that immediately came to mind when I looked at the art. If you want to know what I'm talking about, go see it yourself!

Mecca

At last, I have found it...




It's the giant pink rabbit of my dreams!!!

Frank the bunny can eat his heart out.