Sunday, February 12, 2006

A Little Off the Top

On the advice of Mondo, I made an appointment for myself at a salon downtown called Dopdop. I went today to the cavernous, sunken space in SoHo with lots of colorful art on the walls. When I arrived, they handed me a robe to change into and showed me to a dressing room. In the dressing room I saw a sign that asked you to remove your shirt before you put on your robe because the stylist needs to see you neckline and, in the event you were getting a color job, they didn't want to get any dye on your clothes. Mondo, you could have told me about this part, luckily I was wearing a nice bra so the poor shampoo boy wasn't scarred for life when my robe gaped open during my shampoo. Of course, my hair was later destroyed by walking around in the wet snowy weather, but I seem to recall it looked great when I left the salon. My hair is much less flat and stupid looking now, you can all rest easy.

Then I met up with G4 in Midtown. He leaves New York this coming Thursday. As his English has gotten better, he feels more and more comfortable teasing me. Also, he says "make sex" instead of "have sex". It's very cute. G2 used to say "jerk up" instead of "jerk off". And now you know what I talk about with these guys. Most of our conversations are totally benign, I swear. This past week I found out G4 will have 41 vacation days, since he carried over a few from last year. I nearly pushed him into oncoming traffic. Why are American's such push-overs when it comes to wimpy vacation packages? FrauFoxtrot called it "slavery" when I told her it's in my contract that I get 12 vacation days a year. Friday night I went out for drinks with G4 and FF. They thought that it was hysterical that I couldn't pronouce the difference between "Friseur" (hair stylist) and "Frisur" (hair cut). Oh, those wacky Germans!

I got the second half of Season Six of Sex in the City on DVD from Netflix so now, two years later, I finally learned how the series ended. 2004? Check. Time to start catching up on everything that happened in 2005. I've never had romantic ideas about what it would actually mean to another country, but watching Carrie Bradshaw in Paris I said, say, leaving New York City and plunking yourself down in a foreign country can be a bit sticky. Do I really want to pursue moving to Germany? I don't know what comes over me, but it's like once I finally get settled someplace I want to leave and start all over again. I like the challenge, I like proving to myself that I can do it. And so far, I've been very lucky. Every place I've ever lived I've been able to cultivate new friendships, build ersatz families and just generally cobble together a nice little life for myself. I guess the only thing I haven't found is someone with whom to have a meaningful relationship. You know how they tell kids that if they ever get lost they should stay where they are? You know, "Stay in one place, someone will come find you." I'm just totally resistant to that way of thinking, I don't allow myself to stay in one place and I won't wait for someone to find me. I'm always moving around; is that the most beautiful aspect of my life or is that what is screwing me up? Oh well, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. I've got at least another year in New York.

I know the blog has been a little light lately, but I feel like all the free time and creative energy I have should be channeled into my writing class. Unless any of you want to start paying me to churn out these posts. No? Didn't think so.

And I just received a "multimedia text message" containing a photo of LittleBrother and Queenie. God only knows what the hell is going on there.

5 comments:

Dawn Z(ed) said...

Can I pay you in virtual cupcakes?

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=98591709&size=m

lebrookski said...

i remember once when i got made fun of by germans for not being able to hear/ pronounce the differences in the words

die Szene - scene
die Zähne - teeth

Beta said...

Mine were:
Der Pfarrer
Der Fahrer
Die Pfarre.
I also had a bitch of a time with zurück. I was forced to repeat it several times by my host sisters, nearly gagging on the word. Glad we can all laugh about it now...

I have to admit, I never knew those were 2 words (Friseur and Frisur). Also I never realized that the 2 very different words (Szene and Zähne) sounded so alike. I´m sure that means I was butchering them.

Cupcake said...

Szene and Zaehne sound different to me, but good freakin' luck with Der Pfarrer
Der Fahrer and Die Pfarre. GOTM said I pronounced every "u" sound as if it had an umlaut and he made me say "Gesund" over and over again. G2 made me repeat "bischen" trying to get the "ess" sound going into the "ch".

J said...

How come all your friends speak German Cupcake? Should I be worried? Just kidding, I love Germany!
That's kinda of an interesting way of putting things, if you're lost just stay there and someone will find you, even if that's probably not the best plan. I think your writing class is already starting to pay off.