Memorial Weekend

The office is like a meat locker today, they seriously cranked up the air conditioning over the holiday weekend. I’m sat at my desk with a contraband space heater running so as not to freeze my bits off. Ironically its 79F and gorgeously sunny outside, I may have to take my laptop and adjourn to the park for the afternoon. I wish!!

Unfathomably, it was only a fortnight ago I was still wearing wool trousers to work, but this weekend I had to quickly bust out the summer togs from winter hibernation. It was 91F on Friday. Scorchio!! Erm excuse me, but what happened to Spring!! I was relived to find that most of it still fits, although I shudder at the memory of trying on the white Theory pants I bought last year. Big mistake, what was I thinking? Obviously I must be retaining water with it being so hot out and it has nothing at all to do with all the dessert I scoffed this weekend. Ahem!!

A great Memorial weekend anyway, relaxing and low key – except for one minor incident which I’ll come to later - exactly what I was hoping for after an intense week at the office preparing for last Thursday’s pitch – our preso apparently went down like a lead balloon with the client after all our hard work too - a week which started out just wonderfully with a team bollocking from the general manager who wasn’t happy with our progress on the presentation with two days to go until the deadline.

We left her office on Monday with instructions to drop everything to work on the pitch under her supervision. The next few days were spent with the team holed up in a conference room from 9.30am to midnight every day. Ugh. I hate having to work like that, and not even the company of the lovely Joe could lift my spirits. In fact after 2-3 days in his company I found his exuberant personality – ‘that’s great, amazing, I LOVE it - grated on me a little. Sara hit the nail on the head this weekend when she said he sounded ‘very Jerry McGuire’ from my description. That’s EXACTLY what he’s like, surprisingly fake and loud. The bloom is definitely off that particularly rose, amazing cock/cook or not. What? Fickle? Me? Nooooo!! I can practically hear Miles rolling his eyes.

What with working until the small hours for much of last week I was fit to drop by the time the holiday weekend rolled around and very much looking forward to being extremely lazy. Sara came in from Long Beach and we planned a laid back weekend of strolling through art galleries, eating gelato and availing ourselves of spa services at Acqua (sic) Beauty Bar.

Surprisingly for a Memorial Day weekend the city was absolutely chocka with people. Normally it’s relatively deserted, save for the tourists clogging up Times Square, since the weekend signifies the start of the summer rentals in The Hamptons, Fire Island, the Jersey Shore etc and everyone buggers off to the beach. It’s usually a good weekend to get a last minute reservation at a restaurant you’d normally have to book weeks in advance, but not this year, the Hampton Jitney - bus service transporting New Yorkers to The Hamptons - must have been tumbleweeds. The city was jumping with people and on more than one occasion I found myself smooshed dangerously close to some guy’s hairy armpit on the subway. Ugh, although admittedly I didn’t mind quite so much when the pits in question belonged to an incredibly gorgeous skinny French dude with piercing blue eyes and erratic grey hair. Sigh.

I’d been looking forward to feeling as if I had the city to myself that I felt slightly cheated at having to share it, especially as we were completely out of luck bagging a table at the just opened Aurora restaurant in SoHo on Saturday night. The place was packed to the rafters come 7pm and booked solid for the night. Pah!! However I overcame my resentment to the throngs and had a fabulous time hanging out with Sara, lots of eating and drinking and generally over indulging on delights such as City Bakery’s hot chocolate with giant homemade marshmallow floating on top - heaven in a cup – and gelato at Grom, a new gelato place which has had a queue of upper west siders outside ever since it opened about three weeks ago. Hellooooooo muffin top!!

All in all a lovely and relaxing day, that is until we got back to my apartment around 11pm and heard a voicemail from Alan, an ex from a couple of years ago who sporadically pops back into my life - on a strictly platonic basis I might add.

In his message Alan said that he’d given a lot of thought to how I’d acted a couple of weeks ago and had decided to call and let me know that he thought me ‘an absolute cunt’. Charming eh? And what did I do to deserve such verbal abuse? Well, a couple of weeks ago he came over to hang out and I mentioned in advance that I was really tired and couldn’t hang out as long as I usually would, because I was feeling very tired and hadn’t been sleeping well, so he’d have to leave early.

At this he stews for two weeks and then calls me to leave an abusive message on my answering machine? Blowing things a little out of proportion perhaps? He’s almost 40years old for God’s sake. It’s mind-boggling how offended he’s decided to be over something so minor!! And to think some of my friends questioned my refusal to get back together with him. The man’s an idiot. Between Alan and GS I’m sooooo done with these self proclaimed sensitive men. In my, albeit limited, experiences the only people they’re ever actually sensitive about are themselves. They’re such tiresome little fuckwits.

Luckily I didn’t let Alan’s tirade mar the weekend. I’ve had so many ups and downs with him and his sensitivities off and on over the last few years that I’m beyond caring anymore.

Sunday was another idyllic day, even though I woke up ridiculously early for a holiday weekend - too stuffy to sleep in - so I was showered, dressed, made up with my hair blown out and ready to face the world by 8.30am. Sara wasn’t far behind and we were enjoying a hearty brunch in Annies, which was packed at 9.30am – again, who exactly went away this weekend?

My original plan had been to take a trip out to water taxi beach – a man made beach in Long Island City - and loll about for the afternoon before our spa treatments downtown, but it was so hot I didn’t think it was a good idea with my lily white skin, so we walked off brunch with a stroll through Central Park, admiring out the hot, shirtless but clearly crazy male joggers running laps of the park in 80F heat - Mental!! - and headed down to the air conditioning of Grand Central instead to check out the Celluloid Skyline exhibit (http://www.celluloidskyline.com/main/splash.html) at Vanderbilt Hall which explores New York’s portrayal in film.

It was interesting, the scenic backdrops on display are stunning, but it was lacking something for me, and a lot more reading than I expected. I found it a bit disappointing as an exhibit, although I think the book by James Sanders that it’s based on is probably interesting reading.

I also thought the exhibition would be larger but by the time we were done we still had over three hours to kill before our spa appointments so we headed to the Upper West Side for gelato at Grom, taking the shuttle train from Grand Central to catch the 1,2,3 trains from Times Square.

We were sat on the shuttle train waiting for it to leave Grand Central when who should hop on as the doors closed, but Alan. Can you believe that? Seven million people in New York and I have to bump into HIM on that day of all days. It’s not as if he has a specific reason to be in that neighborhood either, it was completely random. Bizarre. He gave me a quizzical, semi-amused look as he walked through our carriage and into the next. I looked at him in disgust and nudged Sara to point him out.

As we got off the subway I held back to let him get ahead of me, but he waited for me to pass and tapped me on the shoulder to apologize for his message, but I shrugged him off and carried on walking. I really don’t want anything to do with him anymore. I’ve been a good friend over the years and if that’s the way I’m going to be treated then I’m done. Sara seemed a bit worried he might physically lash out after hearing his message, but he left me alone as I walked away. However he did call and leave two voice mails which I picked up as we were queuing for our gelato.

The first message started off by apologizing for his message on Saturday, and then for everything terrible he’d ever said and done in the past, but then concluded by telling me it was a mistake for him to have got back in touch with me this year since I clearly harbored a lot of resentment towards him for him being such ‘a taker’ in the past. Ohhhh so that’s why I’m obviously annoyed with him, because I’m resentful towards him, nothing at all to do with him being verbally abusive. I love a man who takes no responsibility for his actions. What a pillock!!

He followed up that gem with a brief message telling me not to return his call if I was going to say something nasty to him. I promptly deleted his number from my phone.

The spa appointment couldn’t have been timed better and I put myself in the capable hands of Mandy, for a relaxing facial. Well, relaxing except for the extractions. My God they hurt like hell and I have to say I thought Mandy was a brave woman as she did not smother my hands in lotion, wrap them in plastic and place them inside heated mitts beforehand as they’ve usually done when I’ve had a facial.

They do this under the guise of giving you lovely soft hands, but it’s an aspect of the treatment I’ve always felt is primarily designed to stop you from smacking the aesthetician in retaliation for the pain inflicted from the pimple squeezing.

Afterwards, proudly blotchy faced, we gave Aurora a call to see if they had any tables available and hurrah, they did, so we hopped in a cab and headed down there for dinner.

Sooooooo good, it’s a new favorite. Divine. Plus the staff there are so nice, very attentive, the food is amazing and Sara will definitely give top marks to the manager with whom she was thoroughly smitten. He was drop dead gorgeous albeit in an ever so slightly Euro trashy way. She could barely take her eyes off him and I was worried, when he came over to resolve a problem at the next table, that she might lean over and sink her teeth into his, admittedly, very biteable bottom. Thankfully she managed to restrain herself and the police didn’t have to be summoned.

Sadly I’m back at work now, although happily it’s a three day week for me. I booked Friday off as that’s when the Satya jewelry sample sale starts. Yippee. I need something to cheer me up as at my dental check up on Friday Dr. A told me that I need to ‘make an appointment immediately’ with the oral surgeon to have the last of my wisdom teeth pulled. This would be the wisdom tooth at the bottom right which the oral surgeon previously told me would be ‘tricky’ to remove. Great!!

I suppose I was just putting off the inevitable by waiting, but still, I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect, although on the positive side there is that lovely prescription for Vicodin to look forward to.