Love

A few weeks after I met my future husband, he invited me to a fancy dinner party for some very dear friends of his from Milan – Neil and Maria Empson, exporters of great Italian wines. It was the early 80’s, Northern Italian cuisine and wines were just catching on and many of the ingredients he wanted for the dinner, including the wines, were hard to find. We spent almost a week shopping for the food and a variety of their wines to serve that Saturday evening.

It's no secret that some of us urban dwellers face commitment issues. Embrace them, even. The greener grasses and more infinite infinity pools are a form of optimism. Some of us arrested developers avoid opportunities (read: obligations) by holding out for the perfect job, the perfect relationship. But perhaps getting stuck between a responsibility rock and a commitment place isn’t so bad.

In my case, that place showed up at midnight in West Hollywood on my birthday. Now I'm the kind of girl who can't keep a pet rock alive and can barely assemble a PB & banana sandwich. So in acknowledgment of another year of supposed maturity, I’m imbibing elderflower champagne at the Palihouse. I mean I’m really not expecting any sort of responsibility. And suddenly, there it is. A responsibility-filled, Ziploc bag containing a tiny goldfish (translation: my birthday present). The carnival winning of two friends back from the San Gennaro Italian Festival.

I have a complicated relationship with my Keurig. It was given to us at Christmas by my husband’s children. It was an amazing gift, thoughtful, inventive, and big. It is big. It is also streamlined and beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it before, which made them laugh hysterically (as it did half my friends). Confession: I don’t work in an office and when I do go to offices, they don’t usually invite me into the kitchen. The fact that I’d never seen anything like it before made me feel a little bit like Abe Simpson.

I also felt a little bit the way someone probably felt in the ‘50s when they got their first blender. “Wow, I can actually make a margarita at home. I can make a milkshake. I wonder if I can make gazpacho?” The Waring blender was probably invented in the ‘30s and someone is probably about to correct me. Yep. I just looked it up, the blender was invented in the ‘30s and the waring blender was named after Fred Waring, a musician who financed the fine tuning of the Hamilton Beach invention. (Don’t ask me about the patent rights.) But I wonder if my Grandmother wanted to buy stock in the Waring company. (My Grandmother bought stock in Campbells’ Soup when they invented Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup – I don’t know how she did with that, but there was no way you could get her to sell that stock.)

I have a friend who wanted to buy stock in Keurig and is mad at her husband because they didn’t. Apparently it was a good stock buy. I’m not sure I would want to buy stock in Keurig because I’m not sure it’s ecological and I have an issue with that. Also, I missed the boat. The time to buy the stock was when the Keurig came out, not when it arrived in my kitchen last December.

I have yet to go on a date in New York without breaking into a mental sweat.  When scouting for potential mates, I have learned pretentious is better than shallow, irritatingly intelligent better than vapid.  But every time I find myself two blocks away from any appointed date destination, panic ensues.

I literally go through the syllabi of every course I can remember from NYU and every legitimate news article I have come across in recent memory.  A friend of mine once told me she discovered the best conversation starters from a semester seminar she took called 'The Darwinian Revolution.'  To this day, I regret not enrolling in that class.  I could be married by now. 

Recently, I went on a second date at Casa Mono in Gramercy Park with a screenwriter.  As we sat at the crowded bar, reviewing the tapas menu, all I could think of was the impending birth of the "Brangelina" twins.