The Ultimate Suburban Rite of Passage: We’re Having a Baby! Or, At Least, We Will Be Having One

April 5, 2011 by

So we’re having a baby.  To be more precise, the baby has actually already been had.  He was born back in January to a young woman in Taiwan, someone I’m hoping doesn’t change her mind or anything in the next few months while we complete the adoption process.  His name is Tien-Yu, he goes by “Yo-Yo,” he’s absolutely gorgeous, and in a few months that will be unbearable to endure, he will be ours.

I’ve written before that one of the reasons we moved to the suburbs was that we were planning on having kids.  I didn’t mention that we’d been in the adoption process for the past few years, impatiently waiting for our name to get called.  It’s one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever had to do, sitting and waiting and filling out forms and waiting and checking in and waiting and listening to conference calls and waiting — it just drives you crazy.  You want to be a parent, you’re ready to be a parent, you moved yourself out of your comfortable home in the city so that you could have a home better suited to being a parent, and you’re not yet a parent.  Drives me nuts.

So now that we have a “referral,” it’s more waiting while the adoption paperwork gets processed. More forms, more money, more interviews to make sure we’re not pedophiles.  You would think that it would get easier now, since at least we can see the endgame approaching, a trip to Taiwan to meet him and pick him up.

But it’s actually even more brutal. It’s amazing how quickly the bonding process starts for parents who have been waiting years for a child.  You get a picture of that baby, you get told that he’s going to be yours, and he immediately becomes your son.  That’s the good part.  The bad part is the torture of having a son who is right now being cared for by someone else.  I know it’s crazy, because I haven’t even met him, and all I have right now is three baby pictures and a report on his medical condition, but HE IS MY SON.  And he’s in someone else’s care. Someone else is feeding him, bathing him, taking care of him if he gets sick, putting him to sleep at night.

Imagine having your baby in the hospital, and then being unable to see him for six months while he sat in foster care.  That’s how I feel right now.  I have to sit and wait for probably the next six months while Taiwanese bureaucrats process a bunch of papers that will allow me to take my son home.  To paraphrase Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally,” when you realize that you are going to spend the rest of your life as a parent, you want the rest of your life to start RIGHT NOW.”

So I’m going a little crazy here, even while I exult in this new feeling of being a father.  This is, after all, what I signed up for.  Six months.

Filed Under: Best of, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

Why Everyone Should Own a Dog, Including and Especially Single Men

January 22, 2011 by

We’ve had the Kozy dog for a little over a year now, and I will say without reservation that it is the best decision that I have every made, other than marrying my wife, a clarification I feel obligated to make because I do enjoy the occasional sexy time that I would almost certainly never have again if I said that buying a dog was a better decision than getting married. Not to mention that, with the real estate market struggling like it has, I don’t quite have the wherewithal to give up half my money.  So the wife is the best decision, no question.  But the dog was a pretty good one, too.

Here’s why: no one has ever been as happy to see me, at any point in my life, as that dog is every single time I come home.  I’ve never seen such joy. It’s at a level of Times Square at the end of World War II, but EVERY SINGLE DAY.  I come home, and he’s practically quivering with joy, shaking his tail so vigorously that he basically is shaking his whole body.  My wife? She might rouse herself from the couch to give me a kiss hello.  But my dog loses his mind.

So far, that’s really the best part about living in the suburbs. I never wanted a dog in the city, because I could not bear the thought of having to climb up and down those stupid stairs every day to walk him all the time.  But in retrospect, I was wrong.  I should have gotten a dog years ago, although that would mean I wouldn’t have THIS dog, and I honestly can’t imagine having any dog than Kozy.  Yes, I know that if I’d gotten a dog five years ago, before Kozy was ever born, I’d love that dog too and be unable to imagine owning any other dog.  But that hypothetical imaginary version of me is simple wrong: THIS dog is the best.

So I should have gotten a dog back when I lived in the city.  Frankly, everyone should have a dog: urbanist, suburbanite, people living on the moon.  Get a dog.

In fact, I’d particularly recommend my single male friends looking for female companionship to get a dog.  First of all, having a dog is a signal to women that you have at least some basic nurturing skills, which women find sexy.  Nothing turns a woman off more than to come back to your apartment and find some long-dead plant festering in the corner, a sign that you’re so incapable of taking care of anything that you couldn’t even manage to WATER A PLANT.  You bring that young lady back up to your place, and show her that you’ve actually managed to keep a dog alive, and you’re well on your way to Sexy Time.

Second, having a dog is a pretty well-known way to meet women. You don’t realize how many other people have dogs until you have one yourself.  It’s like how when you buy a car, you start to notice all the other people who have the same car.  So now that I have a dog, I’ve started to notice all the people walking their dogs when I’m in the city, something to which I was completely oblivious back in my ignorant dog-free days.  And a lot of those people are young, attractive women who have clearly recognized the value of unqualified adoration, something they apparently aren’t getting so much of from the likes of you.  They’re out there, walking their dogs, waiting for you.  Not to mention how cute dogs, and my dog is awfully cute are like catnip (okay, mixing animal metaphors a bit here) to women.  Walk a dog, meet a woman. It’s that simple, and a lot easier than trolling bars.

Third, dogs are great for screening out women that you probably shouldn’t be dating or marrying.  If you’re dating a woman who doesn’t like dogs, that’s a really bad sign.  If she likes cats, that’s even worse, because cats are terrible, awful, evil things.  A woman who loves dogs has an appreciation for mindless, stupid creatures who give unbounded affection but make a lot of messes, which is exactly what men are. A woman who hates dogs is probably not going to like living with you, especially you, because you’re a pig.

Of course, all that wisdom comes too late for me, already happily married.  But it’s not too late for you.  You married people?  Get a dog.  Single people.  Get a dog.  Everyone should get a dog.

Filed Under: Advice, Best of, Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Humor, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

Return from Exile: Santa’s Five Rules for Enjoying Santacon

December 5, 2010 by

About five years ago, we were on the C train coming back from getting dim sum with some friends who were visiting from out of town.  We were toward the front of the train, and as we approached the 81st street stop we could hear some wierd chanting coming from the cars behind us.  It sounded like “Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh”, and it was getting louder as the train started to slow.  When we got off at the stop, and climbed the stairs up to the corner by 81st and Central Park, we realized what it was — a horde of people dressed in santa suits all chanting “HO HO HO”, who were now flooding off the train in droves.

It was frightening, if hilarious.  Hundreds of people in santa suits, all in red, with one small group of “reindeer” holding up signs indicating that they were protesting working conditions at the North Pole.  They just kept pouring out of the subway exits, hundreds of them, a sea of red, chanting “Ho Ho Ho” and herding toward the park.

I asked one of the Santas what was going on, and he explained that it was “Santacon,” a yearly “convention” of Santas that takes place in cities across the world, sort of a combination of flash mob and pub crawl that is scheduled each year by self-appointed (dis-)organizers who have created informational websites where you find out the where and when, download the dirty Santacon carol-book, and even now sign up for Twitter feeds so you can join the herd as Santa gets “on the move” from place to place in the city.

After seeing it that day. I was hooked.  I’ve been at every Santacon since.  If you’re going to do it, though, you need to follow the rules:

1.  You ARE Santa

The most important thing to remember about Santacon is that it’s your chance to BE Santa.  We’re all Santa.  So you have to stop talking in the first person, as in “I am hungry.”  Rather, it’s “Santa is hungry.”  “Santa is thirsty.”  When you greet people at Santacon, you don’t say, “hi,” you say “Hi Santa,” and they say “Hi Santa” back.  It’s glorious.

2. Wear a Suit
Most women don’t wear classic Santa outfits, God Bless their beautiful hearts, but get creative with some outfit from Ricky’s or something else that puts a feminine spin on the Santa theme.  But if you’re a guy, put on a suit.  No hanging out with the group in your jeans and t-shirt, with some lame-ass Santa hat on.  You’re not too cool to be Santa. This is like a black tie affair at which you’re going to look like a dumbass rube if you’re not in costume.
3.  Layer Up
 The worst thing about Santa suits is that they’re usually made of paper-thin material that doesn’t exactly provide warmth on a cold December day.   The nice thing about most Santa suits is that they’re big and baggy, so you can put clothes on underneath them.  Do that.  Nothing worse than a frostbitten Santa. And if you’re a woman putting on some sort of sexy costume, wear it OVER tights or something, not just because of the cold but because you’re going to be hanging out with a lot of increasingly drunken and occasional lecherous Santas.
4.  Have Fun, But Not Too Much Fun
Take a huge group of people, add alcohol, and you’re likely to end up with at least a few people getting arrested or breaking things.  Don’t do that. While it’s hilarious to see a Santa carted off in handcuffs, think of the children…
5.  Stay with the Herd
A few years ago, we were at Santacon down in Tompkins Park and ran into Ted, a friend who happened to live in the area.  He didn’t know it was going on, so he wasn’t dressed, but he enjoyed the vibe so much he hung out with us for the rest of the long night while we traveled from place to place as part of the herd.  All night, he complained about feeling out of place, as the only one in the group who didn’t have a suit on.  Late in the night, though, the Santa herd moved on, and we just stayed at a bar we liked on the LES.  After about midnight, he looked around, turned to me and said, “Santa, the worm has turned.”  Sadly, at that point, I was the only Santa in the place, and looked like a complete jackass.  Never leave the herd.
See you, Santa!
Filed Under: Advice, Best of, Humor, Living in Manhattan, Return from Exile Tagged With: , , , ,

What I Won’t Miss About the City: The Pressure to Go Better Myself

August 23, 2010 by

I’ve tried to be cultured, I really have.  When you live in the greatest city in the world, you feel almost a compulsion to do add a little refinement in your life.  The feeling just nags at you: what are you doing living here if you’re just going to sit at home watching “The Office”?

So even if you don’t like opera, you try to go once in a while, even though opera is absolutely HORRIBLE.  It really is. I’m sorry, I know that it’s really great and all that, and I’m a terrible person because I don’t appreciate it enough, or really at all.  But to me it’s a lot of not-such-great acting and singing in that wierd voice that doesn’t sound all that human in a language that I don’t speak.  I pretty much only speak English.  Not a lot of opera in English.

And you also have to go to galleries and museums and all that.  I tried to do that, joined the Apollo Circle at the Met — okay, let’s be honest that it was my WIFE who joined and brought me along — which was fun because we got to go to parties and stuff.  And I like looking at art a lot better than sitting through opera, although I know almost nothing and, at this point in my life, don’t have the time to learn.  But I like me the pretty paintings.

The problem is that there’s just so much pressure when you live in the city to do those types of things, a built-in guilt trip every time you pass the Moma or the Guggenheim and realize that you haven’t actually walked inside in like five years. I’m sure a lot of people who live in the city have done a better job than me at all that stuff, and I tip my (baseball) cap to them.  But I’ll bet a lot of other people are more like me — more  in love with the IDEA of being in such a cultured city, but less in love with the actual, you know, going out and doing stuff.

So while I miss the energy and excitement of the city, I don’t really miss that guilt trip.  Now, I have an excuse as to why I haven’t been inside a museum in five years, or haven’t gone to an opera in as long as I can remember.  I live in the suburbs, after all!  So much less is expected of me now. No more guilt. No more pressure.  Sort of the silver lining in the cultural wasteland that is becoming my life.

So that’s one good thing about living in the suburbs — no one expects that you ever do anything cultured and refine.  So you don’t have to.

Off to the couch.  Law and Order is almost certainly on.

 

Filed Under: Best of, Humor, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

Suburbs in the News: Is it Actually Cheaper to Live in the City Than in the Suburbs?

July 20, 2010 by

A really interesting article in the New York Times recently by Tara Siegel Bernard asking the question whether, contrary to popular perception, it’s actually cheaper to live in the city than in the suburbs.

The answer, of course, is that it is MUCH more expensive to live in the city.  There. Now you save a few minutes of your life, and you don’t have to go read the article.

But if you have some time, go check it out:

Here’s what we found: a suburban lifestyle costs about 18 percent more than living in the city. Even a house in the suburbs with a price tag substantially lower than an urban apartment will, on a monthly basis, often cost more to keep running. And then there’s the higher cost of commuting from the suburbs, or the expense of buying a car (or two) and paying the insurance.

The Times says the city is actually cheaper for a family making about $175,000 a year, mostly because people in the suburbs have two significant additional costs: property taxes and cars.  The only caveat was that if the couple is going to put their kids in private school in the city, then the suburbs start to become more competitive.

Now, a couple of things about that.  I absolutely agree with the point that sometimes people miscalculate the additional costs of living in the suburbs from needing a car, or multiple cars, and having to pay property taxes.  I’m not so sure that the average family taking a lot of cabs every month doesn’t narrow that gap, but I will absolutely agree that property taxes in the city are ridiculously low.  My brownstone in the city had four units, which altogether were probably worth about $7-8 million, and the property taxes on the building were about $25,000. In Westchester, you pay property taxes like that for a $1M house.  No question that’s an issue.  Property taxes are horrible.

But I think that the analysis in the article missed a couple of things.  First, the article cheats a little, because the theoretical couple in question ends up buying a median priced ($675,000) home in Park Slope.  I know that the people in Brooklyn might hunt me down and pelt me with artisanal cheeses, but let’s be honest — Park Slope is itself a suburb.

(Sounds of a fine handmade gouda hitting flesh).

Seriously?  We’re going to try to compare living in the city versus living in the suburbs, and the Times’s idea of “living in the city” is Park Slope?  Why not go out to Bay Ridge?  Or Flushing?  I’ll bet it’s even cheaper there. Sheesh.

Second, on the other side of the equation, I would have liked to see the Times look at some homes other than in South Orange, New Jersey, where the median price for a four bedroom home is apparently about $600,000.  For one thing, that’s a lot higher than the median price in a lot of the other suburbs of Manhattan.  For another, if the basic gist of the article is to make side-by-side comparisons, I’m not so sure that a two-bedroom, one-bath coop in Park Slope is the analogue to a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house anywhere.  If you have two kids, that two-bedroom is going to be a wee cramped.  Forget it if you have three. You’ll have all that extra expense of defending yourself in court when you kill one of them, or your wife, or a hapless cabbie in a fit of parental rage.

So if you were to look at, say, a 3 bedroom coop or condo in Manhattan, a REAL city (ducking a handmade wheel of brie), against a four-bedroom home in some other counties ringing Manhattan, you’d have a much bigger spread.

Third, and most importantly, I don’t see anything in the Times’s analysis of the increased cost of everyday living in the city compared to the suburbs.  That’s the real savings that you get for foregoing all the wonderful things that the city has to offer.  Everything is cheaper. Everything. Your food, your drinks, your dry cleaning, your toilet paper.  Everything.  I would think that this would add up.

Listen, I love the city. I lived in the city for 17 years. I miss it, and would still live there if: (1) I didn’t actually work outside the city (which makes me different from most people making this decision), and (2) I wasn’t looking to raise a family and realizing that I really wanted the extra space.  I recognize all the drawbacks of living in the suburbs — hell, this blog is basically one long post about the drawbacks of living in the suburbs — but increased expenses are not one of them.

Filed Under: Best of, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, News Tagged With: , , ,

Lessons for Exiles: The Challenge of Decorating an Actual, You Know, Home

April 22, 2010 by

When you live in Manhattan, the biggest challenge you face in designing your home is trying to find places to put all your stuff.  When you’re living in 800 square feet, pretty much everything you buy has to be multi-purpose — your dining table doubles as a desk, your living room couch is your guest bed.  Most of my life in the city, I ate dinner on a tv tray sitting on the couch.  Our dining table, which we only pulled out for guests, was this clever foldout that seemed to defy the laws of physics in its ability to convert from about an 18-inch end table to seating for six.

In the city, square footage is at a premium. I actually convinced my wife that we needed flat screen TVs with the argument that they were SAVING us money, because they freed up floor space that cost like $1,000 a square foot.  You put a TV on the wall, you open up like 10 square feet — that’s $10,000!  That was a good argument to win.

But when you move to the suburbs, no matter where you move, you’re going to double or triple your square footage, so you all of a sudden have this enormous obligation to buy a lot of stuff.   Now you have a dining room, so you have to buy an actual dining table that doesn’t fold up like an accordian when you’re not using it.  And you have actual guest bedrooms, so you need places for them to sleep.

Sadly, they don’t just give you all that furniture when you cross the border into the suburbs, you have to go and buy all that stuff.  It’s one of those hidden expenses of living in the suburbs, like property taxes and car insurance, that you don’t generally prepare for when all you’re thinking about is how much cheaper the actual real estate is.  Congratulations, you now have a 4,000 square foot colonial with five bedrooms!  Now take out your credit card so you can fill it up with a bunch of stuff!

And it’s not like you can put it off. There’s nothing sadder than popping in on someone who moved out to the suburbs a year ago, and you find that they’re still storing boxes in the guest bedrooms.  You gotta suck it up and buy some furniture for those rooms.

So that’s what happened to us.  We had a little bit of a head start, because in 2005 we combined our apartment with the one below us, so we went from 600 square feet to a relatively, for the city, roomy 2,000 square feet.  We bought a lot of stuff back then, but we still were going from 2,000 square feet to 4,500 square feet, with all sorts of new rooms to fill up.

Here’s what happens when you start trying to fill it up:

  • You’ll start to resent your friends.  The idea of spending a few thousand dollars for a bedroom set for guests is galling.  A bed is like $1,000 right there, plus they need a headboard, and a table, and some sort of dresser, and, you know, towels and stuff.  Who do these people think they are?  What is this, a hotel?  Bring a blow up mattress, you’re lucky I’m not making you sleep on the couch.
  • You realize how much stupid, useless furniture you need.  When you live in the city, every piece of furniture is important.  In the suburbs, you just need lots of stuff so that your place doesn’t look all empty.  Who has end tables in the city? Who has a foyeur?
  • You realize how expensive it is to cover walls.  In the city, you maybe have five or six actual walls to cover up with art and stuff, once you take out the walls with lots of windows, kitchen walls, etc.  Now, in the suburbs, you have like thousands of feet of bare walls.  Start shopping.

Assuming you end up keeping the stuff you had in the city, that you haven’t been living all this time with the milk crates that you bought in college as your bookshelves, you’ll probably at least be able to use some of your city stuff in the suburbs.  What happened with us is that everything we had got downgraded a level.  The stuff that we just bought for our living room ended up in the family room, requiring us to buy all new stuff.  And our bedroom set became a guest bedroom set (which frankly is more than you deserve, you freeloaders).  I guess it makes sense: as you get older, you hopefully have more money and can afford better stuff, so your new stuff is nicer than your old stuff.

So be prepared.  If you’re moving to the suburbs, don’t put all your money into your down payment, because your real estate closing is just the beginning of all the crap you have to buy…..

Filed Under: Advice, Best of, Humor, Living in the Suburbs, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

A Fan of New York: Confessions of a Sports Polygamist on the Eve of Another Glorious Baseball Season

March 1, 2010 by

Thank God it’s baseball season. Yes, I know that we’re only starting spring training, but March is an important month for sports fans, because it means that we’ve just gotten through the worst part of the year– the fallow cold depths of February, when football is over, baseball hasn’t begun yet, and basketball doesn’t matter yet.  When the highlight of the month is the Basketball All Star Game, we’re talking sports wasteland.

But once we stagger through February, we start a beautiful run:

  • March: March Madness, bracket pools, spring training.
  • April: the glorious return of baseball!
  • May and June: baseball in full bloom, and basketball playoffs.
  • July and August: more baseball, and football training camps
  • September: King Football!, and baseball pennant drives.
  • October: More football, and baseball playoffs.
  • November: Even More Football, and maybe some people get excited about basketball coming back.
  • December: FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL
  • January: Football playoffs, made sweeter by the looming specter of February.
  • February: You want to kill yourself. (Yes, I know you get the Super Bowl, which is fine, but it’s just one stinking game).

So we made it through another horrible, horrible February, which means that we have months and months of wonderful sports to come.

As you might have guessed, I’m one of those guys who loves sports, watches a ton of games, follows all the major sports (King Football, Baseball, Basketball), plays fantasy sports, all that stuff.  It’s the one “guy” thing that I do, since I don’t know anything about cars, can’t do much more than screw in lightbulbs around the house, have shot guns like twice in my life, etc.

And when it comes to sports, I have a confession to make: I am a New York fan.  As I’ve noted before, of course, I’m absolutely in love with New York City, which is one of the driving forces behind writing this blog — my commitment (however wavering) to maintaining my connect to this city that I love to death even while I was forced into exile.

But when I say I’m a “New York fan,” I’m more precisely referring to my relatively odd and unusual quirk as a sports fan — I root for all the New York teams.  Virtually everyone else pledges their allegiance to one team or another — if you’re a Mets fan, you hate the Yankees; if you’re a Giants fan, you hate the Jets; if you’re a Knicks fan, you barely can even muster up enough passion to be mildly disinterested in the hapless Nets.  For most people, rooting for a team is like making a commitment to a spouse — you have to forsake all others.

Not me.  I root for them all, as long as they play in New York.  I’m like a New York Sport Polygamist.  I root for the Yanks, the Mets, the Giants, the Jets, the Knicks, and try to muster up a passing interest in the hapless Nets.  I don’t really follow hockey, but I root vaguely for the Rangers, and don’t really have any hate for the Islanders or Devils.  I love them all, so long as they are from New York (let’s just ignore the fact that the Giants and Jets actually play their games in New Jersey, which is an accident of geography and good taste).  That said, like any good polygamist, I do have my favorites — Yankees over the Mets, Giants over the Jets — but that’s only when they’re playing each other.  Otherwise, I always root for New York teams over any other city’s teams.

Most “real” fans hate me for that. Sporting polygamy is heresy.  Even fans that have weird non-geographic allegiances, like New Yorkers who like the Mets or Yankees yet somehow became Dallas Cowboy fans (largely, of course, because the Cowboys were good when they were growing up, and the Giants and Jets were terrible), look down on people like me who root for two teams in the same sport. I also get a lot of flack from out-of-towners who insinuate that I root for them all so I can talk smack about whatever team is good, which is totally true.  My friend Scott, a true Boston fan exiled to LA right now, get apoplectic that I can mock him for both Bill Buckner (Mets) and Bucky Dent (Yankees).

I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how “New York” fans can root against New York teams.  I mean, I see their point about committing to one team, but how can they ever root against a New York team?  You see these Met fans, who are also usually Jets fans who absolutely HATE the Patriots, but who will root for the Red Sox over the Yankees.  I totally don’t get that. I wouldn’t root for the Red Sox if they were playing Al Queda.

And there are, of course, some great advantages to being a polygamist New York fan. I get to count all the championships when smack talking with people from other cities. I double the odds that I’ll have a good team to follow in any given year. I can cherish the memories of all the great teams: the 1986 Mets and the 1998 Yankees, the 1969 Jets and the 1986 Giants, the Patrick Ewing Knicks teams and, okay, not so much with the Nets.

Most importantly, I get to save all my hate for the people who deserve it, like the people who root for Boston and LA.  I don’t waste that hate on the New Yorkers that I love.

Filed Under: Best of, Humor, Living in Manhattan, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Suburban Rite of Passage: Getting a Dog — The End of My Poop-Free Life

December 28, 2009 by

My wife always wanted us to get a dog.  She’s allergic to like every kind of hair except dog hair, oddly enough, so I think that part of her just wants a dog so she can curl up next to something hairy without getting all itchy.

But she bugged me for years about getting one, to the point that one year she asked if I wanted a hint for what to get her for Christmas.  I said, “sure,” and she responded by going like this: “Ruff Ruff.”  Which I think is unfair, insofar as barking like a dog is not really so much of a hint as it is a command.  So no dog for her that year.

It’s not that I don’t like dogs. I love dogs.  But I didn’t want to have a dog in the city.  It’s just too tough.  You can’t take the dog anywhere you go, you can’t even take a dog off leash in Central Park, and walking the dog seems like it would horrible to both human and dog.  Walking city streets is great, walking a dog is great, walking a dog on city streets is horrible: hard pavement, constant fear of passing cars, etc.  And if you don’t have outdoor space, you either train the dog really, really well to hold it in while you’re at work, or your apartment slowly becomes a poop zone.

On top of all that, it was the stairs. I’ve mentioned the stairs before. Four flights.  The idea of schlepping that stupid dog up and down all those stairs every time he had to take a poop was just unfathomable.

So no dog while we were in the city.  It was one of the few arguments I ever won with my wife.  My life was a complete poop-free zone.  No kids. No dog.  The only poop I had to deal with was my own, which was frankly all I could handle.

But then, of course, we moved to the suburbs — otherwise known as “Doggie Heaven”.  Big back yards, lots of dog-friendly parks, dog runs, people with dogs, kids with dogs, dog stores, everything a dog could want. And although we didn’t have a yard, we had an elevator, so walking the dog would be a lot easier.

I held out for as long as I could.  I really enjoyed that poop-free life of mine.  We’re going to have a kid at some point (the next great Suburban Rite of Passage), at which time my life will become heavily invested with OPP (“other people’s poop”), so my hope was to hold off on getting a dog until I had no other choice.

That said, I didn’t really hold out for long. I made it until Christmas, the first gift-giving holiday following our move to the suburbs.  So really, I didn’t hold out at all.  First holiday, new dog. A cute little half-Pomeranian, half-Shitsu puppy that we named “Kozy,” after a little stuffed animal called “Kozy Bear” that I’d gotten my wife a few years ago.  He’s a really great dog, and my wife is committed to teaching him how to poop in specially designated poop areas.  So I have some guarded optimism.

Move to the suburbs, then get a dog.  One of the great Suburban Rites of Passage.

Filed Under: Best of, Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Humor, My Life in the Suburbs, Suburban Rites of Passage Tagged With: ,

Why Movers Hate Me

June 22, 2009 by
You know who hates my stairs, the three flights leading up to my apartment?
Everyone.
Like, for example, every guest I’ve ever had. People show up here for parties, and as they reach the main level landing they invariably say something clever along the lines of “Whew.” Usually, it’s a call for a drink, very quickly, since the apparently Everest-like climb has made them extremely thirsty.
Then they realize that if they want to go to the roofdeck, it’s another two flights. Usually they sit down after that.
Another example: delivery guys. They trudge heavily up the stairs holding a rapidly cooling bag of food, and then shoot me a look that says, in Mandarin, “if I had known you wanted me to climb three flights of stairs, I would have opened up your moo shu and spit right into it.”  So I overtip them.
But no one hates my stairs as much as movers.  From the time that I moved in, I never ever had a mover who did not remark upon the heinousness of the task with which I have charged them — to carry heavy pieces of furniture and boxes up and down three or four flights of stairs.  They stop now and then, breathe out heavily, and say, always, the same thing. “Man, that’s a lot of stairs.”
I understand their feelings (both legitimate and an unsubtle attempt to wheedle a larger gratuity at the end of the day), but it always bothers me a little.  If it weren’t for the stairs, I wouldn’t need so many movers.  The very fact that there are so many stairs is what has created the need for the employment.
It’s as if I was at the dentist, and he looked at me and said, “man, teeth. I am sooo sick of effing teeth.”

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Filed Under: Best of, Humor, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

What I’m going to miss

April 30, 2009 by

I’m going to miss Manhattan.

I’m going to miss the Upper West Side.

I’m going to miss the owner of my local dry cleaner, Ms. Kim, who has been in that store just about every time I’ve gone there in the past 15 years.

I’m going to miss the ability to get stone drunk, crawl into a cab, and be able to get safely home so long as I can properly recite my address. (I’ve always thought of getting a temporary tattoo on my forearm with my address on it, so I could just thrust my arm into the front seat and show it to him on particularly tough nights).

I’m going to miss the first really nice day of Spring, when the horrific winter weather breaks and everyone bolts into Central Park. The best park day of the year, because everyone is just so happy to be out of their apartments. And the crowdest, much more crowded than any summer weekend, since so many of those fools choose to drive five hours on Friday night to sit in what is actually a suburban house all weekend reading Hamptons magazine trying to find a hot party to go to and fooling themselves into thinking that they’re having a great time.

I’m going to miss being a 15 minute cab ride from the best live theater in the hemisphere.

I’m going to miss my neighbor Cindy, who owns the building next door to me, a four-story townhome that she bought in the early 70s for what she now gets every two months for renting the top two floors out.

I’m going to miss my wife’s “Menu book,” room service from like 50 restaurants, arranged by cuisine type (seriously).

I’m going to miss the mushroom veggie burger at the UWS Shake Shack, and regret that Danny Meyer didn’t open the damn place five years ago.

I’m going to miss going from a hot platform to a cold subway car.

I’m going to miss taking that subway car to Yankee stadium, 25 minutes from my apartment by the D, if you catch the trains right.

I’m going to miss the joy of seeing a new storefront opening up in the neighborhood, and peering into the windows to see what’s coming.

I’m going to miss going into Gin Mill on Amsterdam on football sundays to see the same group of guys, one of whom is the most dedicated displaced Eagles fan I’ve ever met.

I’m going to miss not going to museums. I’d like to say I go to museums, but…not so much.

Last, I’m going to miss telling people that I live in Manhattan, and feeling that this fact alone entitles me to a certain level of respect.

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Filed Under: Best of, Living in Manhattan, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , , ,
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