breakfast (prev posted at "Optimism from the Hills)

I found a quail in my peanuts this morning. Or rather, a quail-shaped peanut. It was so cute and little, with a fat little bottom and an itty bitty sloping head. I haven't eaten it yet. It's resting amongst the peanut shell graveyard that's spilling over my plate. I'll probably eat it soon. Peanuts--even quail-shaped ones--are meant to be eaten. Apparently there are lots of things you can do with peanuts, but I still think their most important use is to be eaten. How many peanuts are too many? 15? 30? The whole bag? Someone told me that eating the papery skins is good for you--fiber? I don't like to eat the skins. When I eat a peanut, I like to squeeze one end of the shell so it splits, then I pull the two halves apart and dump the (hopefully) two little nuts into my hand. The big ones are the most satisfying to crack open, but sometimes the little ones are extra tasty--I don't know why. So anyway, I like to pop the nuts out of their skins, sometimes shooting them across the table so they have to be retrieved prior to ingestion. What remains just adds to the little peanut shell graveyard. I have to dig amongst the bones and whispery skins to find more nuts, find the live ones. Peanut shells don't seem like regular garbage to me. I imagine them all getting together somewhere---peanut Heaven??--piles and piles of the stuff. Dry and light and skittering over blacktop, pooling in potholes. The saddest sight in the world is a wet, soggy peanut shell.

The Apartment

I can feel the Q train’s groaning vibrations as I struggle with the strings on our window shades. It is officially Fall, and I like to let the daylight brighten the apartment. We put down the shades at night so the crack-heads don’t feel tempted to peak into our living room, but between the hours of 8am and 7pm I like seeing the stoops across the way, our landlady’s motorcycle covered and chained to the black metal gate out front, her flowers and green things climbing, cascading over the building’s limestone.

Someone has knotted up the string ends in an effort to keep them out of the cats’ reach, but it looks horrible, and now Oscar is lusting after the tangled mess in my hands, eyes darting and tail flicking as the loops and snarls flash and jump between my fingers.

The stoop from the next apartment building over blocks a bit of our view to the left, but you can see quite a lot from these three front windows. In good weather, the Carribeans down the street play dominoes at all hours of the day. I haven’t played dominoes since the third grade, but they have it down to an art, dramatically suspending each tile in the air for a quivering moment before slamming it down to the table with a loud defiant hah! The men gathered round shout in triumph or defeat, hands in the air, clapping the stone-faced players on the back, egging on the next challenge.

I hear the squeaks of wheels on pot-holed pavement and know that John is back from the laundry mat. Through the window I can see him tottering down our dead-end street, balancing a pile of bulging, straining duffel bags his little metal cart. His tall, wiry frame is hunched over, somehow pushing the cart, talking on his cell, and smoking a cigarette at the same time and I laugh, waving between the window bars. He is probably the window shade culprit.

Jersey Girl in the Big City

So Jersey Girl has finally moved to The Big City, and she has got it made: affordable apartment (a mere hacky-sack’s “hack” away from Prospect Park), nice landlady, two cats, the Beautiful Boy to rub her belly after too much sushi (is there such a thing? Tatsu Sushi’s spicy tuna rolls—at Flatbush and 7^th—make me think: never!), a fun-filled year of wedding plans—what else could she need?

Well…perhaps…for one thing—a JOB. Yes, you know, that tiny little detail that makes the money flow INTO the wallet instead of OUT of it. It’s the thing that pays the rent…and the monthly metro card…and the gym…the afore-mentioned sushi addiction…tuition…the recently opened (as well as thoroughly thought-out, entirely responsibility-building) Roth IRA account.

The search thus far has been fruitless, and Jersey Girl is about two breaths away from becoming an egg donor—either that or hosting foot fetish parties. True, it has only been three weeks since Jersey Girl officially moved in with the Beautiful Boy, but it has been three weeks of swiftly dwindling funds and an ever-increasing number of unanswered resume submissions. Do Jersey Girl’s cover letters reek too much of desperation? Is Lady Luck lost in Limbo? Maybe Jersey Girl’s most recent ventures into The Big City will be indicative of her dealings thus far with THE JOB MARKET…

Jersey Girl, three things to remember upon returning from Brooklyn job hunt: (1) 100% Polyester does NOT “breathe. (2) September should not be called September. It should be called “Haha, We Got You to Wear Pants and a Jacket and Now You are Drowning in Your Own Sweat.” (3) It doesn’t matter what three is. The point is, the “dress up for chance meeting with possible future boss” expedition was not a huge success. However, I now know the layout of DUMBO pretty well! (Who knew it would be so difficult to find one silly street between two huge bridges?)

55 Washington Street is home to many offices/places of business, the home of a Brooklyn newspaper being of particular interest to Jersey Girl, lover of all things smelling of literature (ink, lined paper, old-fashioned type-setters, etc.). If this particular newspaper lived on the 6^th floor, and Jersey Girl entered an ascending elevator from the Lobby, how in the world did she end up on the Maintenance level, seven floors below her intended destination, with overall-clad maintenance men (though similarly perplexed) ogling her sweaty, non-breathable polyester shirt and inappropriately long khaki pants? It remains, to this day, an unsolved mystery. Chalk it up to one of those un-asked-for but ultimately probably necessary lessons in humility. The Beautiful Boy himself laughed, “See? Kind of sucks not having a job?”

Yes, Beautiful Boy, it does, indeed, suck.

Will Jersey Girl be working at her beloved Brooklyn newspaper? Will Fall ever truly arrive? Find out next time in JERSEY GIRL IN THE BIG CITY.