Midget Feet

7 Sep

I am so good at going to bed early during the summer. I can usually manage to pass out around 11 PM. No stress, no worries, just sleep. Even when I was up in the air about my living situation, I managed to sleep. But there seems to be something in the air in NYC where I have to stay up even though I know how bad it’s going to be in the morning. I can already feel my body groaning at the idea of waking up and getting ready for class. And what I hate most about getting ready is that I can’t just throw on some sweats and call it a day. No I go to fashion school and girls dress nice here. This is the school that gave me funny looks because I wore sweats to the cafeteria after yoga. So getting ready to go to class has to include at least some attempt at looking pretty, which sucks because my lack-of-sleep makes me want to curl up in a ball and ignore the entire world. Thus, the prognosis for tomorrow morning is lovely.

Another fun issue I have is that either my AC is on really cold or it can’t be on at all. Even when I choose the middle ground, the warmest cool setting, it still ends up making my room penguin-friendly. But not turning the AC on makes me feel like all I’m missing is a few camels and some sand. Speaking of which, I haven’t gone to the beach all summer. How sad is that? Last summer, when I was working at home, I went to the beach weekly. I was tan. Right now my skin is so white I’m pretty sure I’d be able to blend in against a piece of paper. I contrast nicely against my new black Uggs, which I am totally dying to wear.

I’m going to let ya’ll in on a little secret. Ready?

I wear children’s shoes.

Oh wait, I’ve already confessed that once before on this blog. Fail.

Either way, I wear children’s shoes and it usually sucks because finding high heels is horrific. And because asking the sales people for a size 3 shoe at the age of 20 is a little bit embarrassing. Especially when they decide that I have no idea what shoe size I wear and bring me a 6 convinced it’ll be perfect. And then when I try it on and my foot slips out, they insist on giving me a size 5. No honey, I promise it’ll be too big. Trust me, I’ve had these feet for 20 years. I’m pretty sure I know what size shoe I wear. Especially since it hasn’t changed since the 7th grade.

The beautiful thing about having midget feet, though, is that I can save money. I managed to save $60 on my Uggs today because my feet are freakishly small. Score one for the weirdo. And I don’t care if Uggs are completely uncool and hate-worthy. If my feet are warm, they rock. They’re keeping me warm, dry, and happy. What more can I ask for from a pair of shoes? And my new ones are these.

For a pair of Uggs, they’re pretty freaking cute. And don’t fear, they come in adult sizes too. There are a lot prettier styles for adults though. Maybe someday my feet will grow?

PS. As ya’ll obviously know, Ugg has never ever heard of me except to take my money when I buy their shoes. This wasn’t even meant to be a shoe post. I was going to talk about my wall. Clearly I suck at getting to proper conclusions.

Goodbye Coffee

4 Sep

The dark chocolate colored floor of the Coffee Shop reflects the golden brown tiled ceiling. The flowers in the middle of each tile meet as squares and continue until they reach the walls. One is brick, the colors resembling what a mixture of the glassed in display of red velvet cake and cheesecake would look like. The wall carries the ordering boards, created by the mysterious Seraphina in 2008. My hot chocolate, medium at $2.75 with an extra quarter for my whipped cream, sits upon the counter and is truly some of the best I’ve ever had. I sit down at a table, a round wooden thing just perfect for my steaming cup and a book. I never sit upon the wooden chair they provide. Instead I lean against the pillows, maroons and greens with embroidered beards, they provide on the counter-like couches. The pillows lay against the khaki stucco walls.

The back corner of the Coffee Shop has 5 PCs for everyone to use with Internet access. Their screensavers are the prices of minutes being used. I’ve never used their Internet and turn my cell phone off the moment I enter and choose to listen to the music they provide. It’s calming, the old-fashioned 70’s beats that echo through the small space. The heaters chirp, the noise so similar to the croaking of frogs. It mixes with the hum of voices and the occasional outside street sound.

The girl next to me taps into her Macbook and studies. Her hair, the color of the light brown vegan loaf next to the register, is crimped and pulled back into a messy bun. She reminds me of a hippie, a studious one, as she highlights dutifully. Beside her sits a blonde haired motorcyclist. He’s a walking contradiction, his glasses against his edgy black shirts that scream the names of bands no one has ever heard of. He sits and writes, a lawyer in the making as he scribbles on his yellow legal pad. The girl behind the counter, Lauren, stares at him and smiles. He’s just her type. They make awkward conversation as she makes his second shot of espresso tonight. She’s on the verge of flirtation, that thin line both easy and hard to cross when his phone rings. “Hello baby,” he coos into the receiver. Foiled again by the omnipresent and invisible girlfriend, Lauren looks at me and shrugs. Another day, another taken guy. She goes back to fixing his espresso and leaves me to my reading.

As I finish a chapter, I glance up and see the cupcakes on the counter beside her. They are these large magnificent things, simply oozing with sweetness. The one that catches my eye is vanilla with icing the color of wood and a party of pastel sprinkles adorning the top. It’s the last one of its kind left, unsurprisingly. Its neighbors are all varieties of chocolate combinations. No amount of chocolate chips or promises of almond bites can sway my mind from the cupcake, which I debate getting. I’m about to stand up when I see him, a boy of about fifteen with chunky black headphones, stand at the counter and point to my exact cupcake. He snatches it into his hand as soon as Lauren slides it onto the counter. Then, with a wide grin, he sits down on at a table on the other side of the small café. His headphones slip from his ears onto his neck, creating a necklace of sorts. He sits down, awkwardly moving pillows from his chair, and begins to eat.

During the time it took for him to sit down, hippie girl has disappeared. In her wake she’s left two policemen, both young and clearly proud of what they’re doing. Their waists are filled with various gadgets and pockets. The guns are there too, the constant reminder that they can and will protect at any cost. One of them orders a café au lait as the other sits down at hippie girl’s now empty table. He’s tired as he leans against the wall and closes his eyes. Lauren, on her next crush of the day, chats up his partner. This time there is no phone call from an unseen girlfriend and their conversation flows until it’s evident to all observers that some type of meeting will result. He’s about to leave, staying only to promise that he’ll come back for more later but Lauren tells him her shift is over. Her replacement, a short brunette in a black fedora, has walked in and taken the next customer’s order during Lauren’s conversation with the cop. He waits as she runs to the backroom to grab her coat and walks out with her, talking a mile a minute as his partner trails behind.

Lauren’s replacement quickly settles into a rhythm, pouring drinks and talking to her friend who’s seated on the couch in front of the window. They talk about the party they went to last night, some big shindig (do people still say shindig?) and the boys they met. They talk as people place orders, laughing at inside jokes.

I think the reason why I like it here so much is because it reminds me of home, of the place I used to go when I was a little kid with my brother. He’d take me to a café inside a bookstore where he’d sit and study for hours while I read and read. There was some kind of massive appeal to sitting there and reading books I didn’t have to buy but could, if I wanted them. It was like having my own little library for which we paid the cost of hot chocolate. Granted the Coffee Shop is quite different from Joe’s where we’d go but it still had the same atmosphere. It was the same type of place, one where you could go to get lost in the crowd and the people but still retain that sense of personality. I jot down in my little notebook to bring with me for next time a book, some thick novel appropriate feeling for this place. Two other people are reading, the ones sitting in the back near the computers. They’re reclining upon the benches and staring at black words on white pages. One, the girl about fourteen, reads some copy of Gossip Girl while her friend has The Bell Jar in her hand. Both two utterly different books, they accurately represent the crowd here at the Coffee Shop.  You don’t have to agree with everyone to get in, you just have to have your own idea.

I wrote the piece my freshman year for my creative nonfiction class. The Coffee Shop I wrote about is no more. In between last year and now, it seems to have become a Jamba Juice. Rest in peace, little coffee shop. I’ll miss you.

Roxy Rox (Sorry. I Can Be So Punny).

2 Sep

This is my new favorite blog. Roxy describes things in ways I wish I could.

I WANT first kisses that make me crave seconds. Movies that spawn good sequels. Originals that leave me eager for remakes, but only if they’re good. Good like Corinne Bailey Rae’s cover of Razorlight’s Golden Touch good.

I WANT boys that pick out all of the pink Starbursts for me because they know that those are the only ones that matter. Boys that appreciate my quirks, my neurotic tendencies, and my scars. Especially my scars.

I WANT to have nights that last forever or at the very least, nights that feel like forever. Nights like the one where we chugged wine out of coffee mugs and stared up at the stars – content, drunk, and alive.

I WANT relationships that aren’t complicated, not even on Facebook. Phone calls returned promptly without three days of waiting by the phone. Friday night movie dates followed by goodnight kisses. Stability without predictability, because that would be boring.

I WANT love that doesn’t require falling into. Falling terrifies me. Besides, I’ve never been that good at picking myself back up.

I WANT to be the kind of girl who bossily asserts that she’s not that kind of girl. The kind who doesn’t wake up with bags under her eyes, mascara smeared everywhere as if she were still a kid who has yet to discover how to color inside the lines. The kind that knows the good guys from the bad guys.

I WANT to take risks. Talk to strangers, ride motorcycles, that sort of thing. A roller coaster type of life with more highs than lows, where the dips don’t actually make my stomach drop.

I WANT to get far away from this thing we call the real world. So far away that what I want starts seeming less like a fantasy and more like the real deal, closer to the realm of possibility than that far off alternate reality where most of my hopes and dreams seem to reside.

-Roxy

Everything she’s written resounds with me. It makes me want to be a better writer and it inspires me.

Alive Again

30 Aug

Anddd I’m back, at least momentarily.

After the first two weeks in Paris, I stumbled around London for a week. While there, I ended hanging out with Dan and Jim for a few days. And I took a free tour with a drunken tour guide. Good times.

The other tour that I took and absolutely loved was the Jack the Ripper tour. Maybe I’m a morbid person but I eat that crap up. I think it’s fascinating. I got to hear all the gruesome details about the murders and learn about the suspects. And there were pictures. I love visual aids. There was a picture of Mary Jane Kelly (the last of the “Canonical Five”) and he went to town on her.

Mary Jane Kelly

Afterwards, I popped back over to Paris, where I spent my last week running around frantically seeing everything again. That’s when I saw Leighton Meister, Selena Gomez, and Katie Cassidy filming in front of the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, I totally thought I wrote about that. Whoops. Sorry, my bad. I suck.



Then the next day I hopped on my flight to Krakow and spent two weeks relaxing in Tarnow, meaning my mom and my grandma sent me on various errands and made me pick roses. Picking roses, sounds fun huh? Relaxing and pretty? No. It requires jeans and long sleeve shirts and plastic gloves so the bees won’t sting. Picking roses is taking them off the bush a certain way, shoving them into a bag, and praying it doesn’t all fall out. The rose petals get sold to a baker, who makes delicious pastries, but still. Loads of work.

But after that, I went back to Krakow for a month. Krakow. Yeah. That was a good time. It was a month at a university where I theoretically was learning Polish but in reality spent most of my time speaking English and going out. Seriously, nightly. I’ve never gotten as little sleep as I did there. But I did end up having an amazing time. I met some epic people and have some interesting memories.

Krakow

Salt walls in Wieliczka, a Polish salt mine

After having a truly amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience in Krakow, I went back to Tarnow and ended up with strep throat. So that sucked pretty bad. Then I finally came home to NYC and moved in to my dorm and went back to being an RA. Fun.

PS. A huge thank you to Maddie for reading my blog! I’m not sure why you do either ;)

Dear Rose, Love Jack

7 Aug

I always thought the same thing. Rose could have scooted over like half an inch. It was a big raft.

More from here.

Radio Silence.

5 Aug

From here.

When I was little I wrote an entire story about people living in mushrooms. I also wrote about a girl who was on the Titanic when I was seven. It’s too bad I have nothing to write about now.

Reasons Why My Little French Cousin Is Awesome

25 Jun

Amelie is ten years old. She’s almost as tall as I am, skinny as a stick, and a blonde to boot. She’s got a Cindy Crawford-esque freckle and is pretty freaking awesome. Why?

  • When asked what her favorite musical artist is, she paused for a minute and then said, “Chopin”. Um hello, ten year old loving Chopin? Pretty sure most ten year olds are obsessed with Justin Bieber (whom my little cousin wrote off as “lame”).
  • Thus, understandably, her favorite type of music is classical.
  • She has a collection of images she likes from the web. There is a large amount of Google logos. She also really likes the Chrome logo.
  • She also has a few lolcats.
  • Selena Gomez > Miley Cyrus, according to Amelie
  • Her email address involves cookies.
  • Upon learning about the magic of Photoshop, she requested she ‘shopped underwater, being chased by Godzilla, and in a movie.
  • Her new favorite site is Flickr.
  • She is so far over me being an American, even if her friends were absolutely in shock and asked me questions like “what do Americans eat for breakfast?” and “are there cereals there?”.
  • She doesn’t throw ten year old tantrums, which is incredibly awesome of her because when I was ten, I totally threw a lot of tantrums.
  • She’s looking forward to coming to Poland because she “gets to be responsible for animals” here.
  • Amelie can rollerskate 16 kilometers. I can’t even rollerskate a meter.
  • When she was two, she hit me on the head with a strawberry bucket. This isn’t really a reason why she’s awesome but I mean, she was two and really cute so it was okay.
  • She knows her way around Paris. And walks to school by herself.

I mean, is there a better ten year old out there? Because I’m thinking no.

Never Losing Anything

22 Jun

Ania doesn’t lose anything.

Those words have been said by my mother for years. I don’t remember the first time she said them to me but I do remember being five and always bringing home both mittens after playing outside in the snow. I would come home and promptly plop myself on the cold tiled floor, pulling my snow boots off. Off came my hat, my scarf, my gloves. Everything perfectly accounted for. It was the same in the summertime. My mom would send me out to play and I’d manage to come home, everything neatly in its place and clean. My brother, according to my mom, wasn’t as good about staying clean. That was me, along with never losing anything.

The first time I nearly lost something I was nine. For my first Communion, my family gave me plenty of rings and jewelry. I’m not sure if it’s a Polish tradition but I raked in the gold. There was one ring in particular I loved. I think it had a tiny ruby in the middle. I loved wearing it. Seeing it on my finger made me feel so grown up. And then one day, it disappeared.

I didn’t blame anyone. I didn’t think it was stolen. It had simply vanished into thin air. Ghosts, possibly. But I was distraught over the idea of losing something, anything. “Ania doesn’t lose anything.” I searched my room, tearing it apart, and to no avail. The ring was gone.

A few days later, I sat at my desk playing with a Polly Pocket castle, one of the real ones that actually fit in your pocket. The phone rang and I grabbed it. My oldest cousin was on the line and to speak to him, someone fourteen years older than me, was a Big Deal. So I held tight to the phone and refused to hang up, even when my mom answered. I sat there, phone in one hand and Polly in the other, listening in. After a while, I grew bored of their conversation but I still refused to hang up. I put the phone to one ear and started rummaging around my desk.

“I FOUND IT!” I suddenly screamed. My poor mom and cousin. I must have broken their eardrums. Somehow, in the corner of my desk, was my ring.

I’ve never lost anything.

There are more stories. Miraculously finding the back of my white-gold earring in a gravel parking lot outside my school. A vanished credit card. Countless hidden phones. The problem is, I can’t determine why. Is it because when I was little, it was inserted into my head that I never lose anything? Or is it because that even when it seems bleak, I keep on looking? And now, by writing this, am I opening up the door to twenty years of never finding anything?

I don’t think so.

Welcome to London

20 Jun

Woo, I suck. I was doing so well with the updating! And then, silence. Radio silence. Not a word. Nothing. Not because my life and Europe have suddenly become boring but because they haven’t. They’ve stayed interesting. The only problem is being able to write or talk about it.

I’m a firm believer in distance. You need time and space to get over things, to think things through. I like closure. I like analyzing. I like details. I like to understand before I go and run my mouth. So while I had a fantastic time in London, staying with my beautiful cousin, I still need some time to mull over certain details.

I’ll try though. Try to write about certain days and ignore the others. I can do that.

First off, getting to London.

I am one of those ridiculous people who show up to airports ages before the flight takes off. I’d rather be early than late. Thus, I left at about 10 AM for my 1 PM train into London. It was a good call though because when I was on the RER A near Charles de Gaulle, the train decided to take a page out of a horror movie and turn all the lights off. Then, we slowed to a stop. The brakes screeched like a thousand screams. The lights were out and a woman near me started moving about nervously. The car was silent.

We sat there, waiting. Nothing was happening. No one was talking. A train full of people, silent and underground. I switched between calmly listening to my iPod and the certain knowledge that I was going to be killed on a train beneath Paris. Staring out the window was no good because next to me was a little half-cave that had a flickering light and the refuse of a homeless person. It was the perfect setting for a horror movie.

Luckily, it wasn’t one. After a good ten minutes without movement, the train began to go again. The lights turned on. The woman stopped fidgeting. I turned my iPod up.

Garde du Nord is a big station. I took the RER C there from Chatelet so I came up from underground. Maybe I’m blind but the signs pointing towards the Eurostar are crap. I thought it was hard to find and, even though I hate asking for directions, I had to do it twice. Once the woman was like “screw off”. The other guy helped me though.

Getting through security and border control is a breeze. I traveled on my Polish passport for the first time, which was great. The cute British guard told me my accent doesn’t sound Polish, which it wouldn’t when peppered with “ya’ll”. I explained my dual citizenship and he told me he tried to learn Polish once. It was much more exciting when it happened, I promise.

The train was nothing that exciting. I mean, it’s cool that you can get from Paris to London in about 2 hours and you go underwater and all but it’s just a train. The girl next to me was a stylist and had fantastically colored hair. Time flew because we spent most of it talking fashion and life.

After I got to London, I took the tube (so weird to write that) to the station near where my cousin works. Then I sat in Starbucks, waiting for her and people watching.

British kids wear uniforms. It’s awesome. They look like extras out of Harry Potter and I’m mad jealous that I didn’t have a cute uniform back in my Catholic school girl days. They also have ridiculously cute accents.

Speaking of which, there were some accents that I just could not understand. I mean, I’m a native English speaker. I was born in the US and I’m just about as American as apple pie, only with a Polish crust. So it baffled me that I couldn’t comprehend some of what they were saying. It didn’t matter though, because the cute boys tended to speak slowly and clearly.

After all that, I met up with my cousin and called it a night. Stay tuned for a partially more exciting Day Two.

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London

16 Jun

Sorry for going so MIA while in London but lack of sleep got to me. I’ve been busy here so I haven’t had all that much time to type it out. However, I have had some pretty incredible experiences I plan to write about soon. Like a night so totally perfect and out of a movie it’s hard to believe it happened. And of course followed by two properly crap nights. I’ve met a few fun people and been out to pubs so now it’s time for me to put metaphorical pen to paper and write. In the meantime, how about some pictures?

Parliament

Westminster Abbey

Changing of the guard

Changing of the guard

Changing of the guard

Tower Bridge. Supposedly it's good luck if you see it go up.

The London Eye. And the picture with the most story behind it. Oh the story behind it.

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