I haven’t really left you. If you want to reach me, put your hand over your heart and talk. I’m there.

I’m not really gone. I’ve just changed my address. 

Ciao, Barbara XOXO

More to come on this when I’m ready, but this was just too lovely not to share for now.

We miss you, Barbara.

I’m also listening to this these days, but that’s mostly just because I think Lana Del Rey is hot.

I think it might be time for some more Tylenol now.

I have a very fluffy cuddlebunny to keep me company on the couch.

I have watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey.

The cuddlebunny has watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey (she specifically enjoyed the episode where they go hunting, and all those dogs run across the screen.)

Lots of people seem to want to bring me soup. I am especially taken by the offers from a- the girl who has helped me to survive countless hangovers, some in her childhood bed; and b- the neighbor who works in the ER during the day (seems like she knows what she’s doing.)

My wedding dress, which I am trying on for the first time on Monday, should be swimming on me. Underachieving bride tip: order your dress one size too big, and then get the flu right before your first fitting!

minuses:

I feel like crap.

I had to take a sick day during the one day of the year when my job duties involve writing about twinkies.

My weekend plans (chock full of churros, old maps, pretty paper, visitors and maybe a party or two) seem to be in jeopardy.

The one person I want to take care of me is at the hospital across the street, taking care of everyone else.

Tuesday, 6.27.11: No Dave, no Franny, no furniture. Just me, opening the door to 660 square feet of parquet floors, empty off-white walls and more closets than I remembered. Dave had already started his first rotation of intern year, so we couldn’t officially do the full move-in until that weekend, but I was in charge of getting a few things set up so he could crash here for the week. I rolled a suitcase stocked with necessities – toilet paper, garbage bags, snacks – up the East Side, not even recognizing, on first glance, the hulking tower that was to be our home. The doorman who gave me the key told me 13A was a great apartment, one of the best one-bedrooms, and I know now that he’s absolutely right.

That first day, I couldn’t get the shower curtain liner in, Bob’s Discount Furniture took forever delivering my first big girl bed (told you we’d have that Queen, one way or another) and I couldn’t reach past the first shelf in the kitchen. But it felt thrilling, even just lining those cabinets, hoisting myself up onto the counter, looking out onto our new space, thinking I was the luckiest.

Monday, 8.22.11: We woke up without an alarm, took Francine for a walk along the East River, ate onion bagels with lox spread from the good bagel place one avenue over. Took the subway to Houston, had an adrenaline-powered walk cross-town through new streets, nerves already twitching (ok, just mine.) The funniest part was that the whole thing was my idea (of course): a trapeze class! Something new and different! Perfect for celebrating the start of Dave’s twenty-seventh year.

Perfect if you’re not terrified of heights. Which it turns out, I am?

I mean, I guess I should have known this already? Considering I’m well past 26? But I swear I used to be braver, used to ride roller coasters, climb trees. You probably don’t believe it, but it was me who first climbed rocks, too: not the boys.

Alas, those days seem to be long gone. I climbed up that shaky rope ladder, reluctantly ascended to the platform at the top, gripped the bar, and insisted I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can do it,” I said, through clenched teeth. Ok, I’d say. This happened multiple times.

Down below, the other people in our group would point at me.

“Look at how bad that girl is shaking,” they’d say, according to Dave’s report.

And dude, I was. Like I said: turns out, I’m utterly, physically terrified of heights. Even when they include gorgeous views of the Hudson from a rooftop on Chelsea piers where I get to swing from a trapeze.

And the thing was, the swinging part was actually fun. Once I finally got through the shaking and the refusals and took that terrifying leap off the platform, I felt wonderful.

But, man. I will never do that again.

Sunday 9.18.11: We took a very long walk down this admittedly small island. It was one of the last days for shorts, one of those early spring afternoons where you’re constantly stripping off your long-sleeved shirt in the sun, pulling it back on in the shady spots. We made lots of stops – some in New York legends I only really know from the blogs I read (Russ & Daughters) and some in….not (Whole Foods beer shop.) Eventually, there was moderate confusion over how, exactly, one gets to that borough to the South. (“Do you think the Brooklyn Bridge is the same as the Williamsburg Bridge?”) But we defied the odds and made it over anyway, proving that we have, in fact, accomplished something since finally finding our way to the Lincoln. When we spotted Diner in Williamsburg, I was initially excited, then terrified when we made it in the cramped railroad-car-turned-hipster-dining-room. Dave was wearing – horrors – a shirt that said Abercrombie & Fitch – and I was sure they were going to kick us out for good, maybe even ask us to leave through the back so as not to hurt their cred any further. But mercifully, they let us pull up two stools at the bar, and even let us pay them in exchange for a raspberry plum scone with clotted cream and the country breakfast platter: scrambled eggs, biscuit with gravy, greens and cranberry beans and a grilled nectarine. We took the subway back, and I felt like we were finally starting to live here, really.

More things we did in New York this year: walked the high line in summer, fall and winter; tried to eat soup dumplings correctly (failed); ate Ramen on St. Mark’s; had cereal milk soft-serve at Milk Bar; passed by the Bethesda Terrace and the Imagine mosaic on our way to the grocery store; ate our way through Smorgasburg; threw a birthday party complete with pumpkin cupcakes, a tiara and three puppies, accidentally drank a whole bottle of rose on a Friday evening; bowled in Brooklyn, pretended we were still 23 at Sessions 73; walked walked walked

Best of the holiday season: tried on wedding bands; got lost in Soho; peeled off our gloves to eat a banana walnut donut on a bench in front of Balthazar; finally let al di la make that pear cake for us; wandered through Williamsburg with Chelsea; zipped down a two-story slide at the New Museum, decided we weren’t cool enough to appreciate modern art after all; manned the fryer at a Chanukah party (in an Anthropologie apron, of course); squirted pomegranate juice all over the kitchen in the pursuit of a fancy recipe; said hello to a new year from the financial district

Best of 2012: Working on it.

Dave and I both instinctively flick it off with both hands.

Dave’s entire family looks on in horror.

“I’m not even sure that guy actually cut you off,” Dave’s brother, Michael, said. “That was kind of aggressive.”

We shrug.

I detest January and gyms and diets and even the night itself, which is almost always a letdown cloaked in a ridiculous cover charge.

But I spent this past leap into the new calendar on the 31st floor of a building in the financial district, drinking champagne from a plastic cup, taking in a lite-brite version of the city from the balcony, wearing something sparkly and sleeveless. And at midnight, I teared up a little bit.

It may have been all the bubbly, or the creepily high temperatures (yay global warming) or the fact that we were in the dead middle of a remarkable weekend, spent in every corner of the city living exactly the kind of life I want to have here.

But more likely, it’s because of 2012.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been waiting for those four digits to line up for nearly a year and a half now, when you count it one way, and nearly my whole life, when you count another. A long engagement is wonderful in many ways, and it was, without a doubt, the right choice for us – for me, specifically, the type A planner who has unexpectedly had to work her way through some shit in the past year in order to be in the exact right spot to tie the knot.

But this extended limbo has been difficult. I hate the in-between obnoxiousness of the word ‘fiance,’ I hated layering another period of waiting over the countdown to Match that defined last year. I spent a lot of time feeling embarrassed about being a bride, feeling like the whole engagement thing was a sham because the date was so far off and I’m not changing my name and our relationship isn’t picture-perfect and smart non-sorority girls aren’t supposed to like wedding planning, duh.

Its had its exceedingly lovely moments, this time, but mostly, I’ve just felt a little awkward, a little in-between, and always like it would never, ever end.

Saturday night – with people screaming “happy New Year!” and 2-0-1-2 flashing on the screen and everyone kissing – made something change, shift, click. It felt so much more real, and the severity of what we’re about to do hit me in a way that it hasn’t since that hot August day in the district that Dave asked me to marry him.

In less than four months, I’ll make good on my Yes.

I hope that somehow this long engagement will prove to be totally worth it, that it will become clear that our wedding – and maybe even marriage – wouldn’t be the same if we hadn’t moved toward this day at this exact pace. But I know that even if that little moment of transcendence doesn’t happen, I’ll be just fine. It really won’t matter. Because in April, come hell or high water (even Hurricane Irene: The Sequel) I’ll be married.

April of this year.

The cake was delicious – the kind of delicious where even though you really, really adore your guests you find yourself fantasizing about when they might leave so that you can just be left alone, just you and your cake, in an environment in which you might be able to eat said cake straight from the pan with a fork without judgment. Also, the kind of delicious where you refuse to take a second slice in your guests’ presence, for fear that that would signal that it was ok for them to take another slice, and then you’d be less with even less cake.

The intricate preparation combined with the resulting deliciousness gave me a bit of a big head, I can admit this now. “This is the best thing I’ve ever made,” I told myself, “and definitely the most advanced.” I ran through a list of my culinary achievements over the years, and made the executive decision that I’d come quite a long way and was basically a professional now. “I never could have handled this in 2009,” I thought. “I am a baking expert.” I was getting so high on my achievement that I decided to leave a comment on the blog where I had found the recipe, essentially announcing my official entry into the world of culinary excellence. While scrolling down to the comments section, I caught a few words from the post: “super easy”; ” a cinch.” Hmph. The other comments seemed to concur: my piece de resistance was everyone else’s walk in the park.

I decided not to post a comment after all.

2. As previously mentioned, Francine’s best friend is under the weather, leaving her (and us) a bit desperate to find new playmates. In the laundry room, we ran into a girl on Dave’s rotation who has a two-year-old dog. We were trying to figure out if they would be a good match and I mentioned that Franny was a bit on the psycho side. “Oh,” she said, “she should definitely meet this other goldendoodle we ran into the other day. It was totally nuts, and the girl said it was the craziest dog on the Upper East Side.”

The thing is, that’s my line. I’m that girl. That’s our dog.

3. We’re chugging along with wedding planning stuff and are finalizing our ketubah, or Jewish marriage contract. The most recent step was to have our rabbi proof it. He had only two concerns - one, that we maybe adjust the date listed so as not to make the fact that we’re blatantly disregarding Jewish law and getting married on Shabbat painfully obvious and two,  ”I think they flipped something around. It looks like you’re marrying your father.”

Turns out, my dad’s Hebrew name is David, and David’s Hebrew name is my dad’s name. Yes, for those of you keeping score at home, that’s one more tally in the “ways your fiance is creepily like your father” category.

So, the rabbi was wrong…but also, let’s be honest, kind of right.

Least favorite thing about the holidays in New York so far: Working in Rockefeller Center. As if the hoards of tourists weren’t enough, I actually got felt up by a holiday Minnie Mouse outside my office the other week. It was wildly inappropriate.

Francine’s actually been having a bit of a rough time of it recently. She’s past her initial “you moved me to New York and now I shall destroy everything you hold dear” phase – thank god – but her best friend here, Madeleine, recently got sick, and Franny’s feeling the loss acutely. I tried to arrange a few other play dates, but nothing’s worked out, leaving her lunging at every dog on the street, trying to find someone, anyone to play with.

A few nights ago, she even tried to go at it with a five-pound dog…with no hind legs…that was in some kind of doggie wheelchair.

“Getting desperate,” Dave said, as soon as we were out of earshot.

I, on the other hand – and dude, I don’t want to jinx this – have been on social overdrive. When you live in a city where you actually know people, holiday season apparently becomes a marathon of parties. Last week we had my friend Bridget’s holiday soiree/high school reunion (she lives with our high school prom queen, for real) on Wednesday and then Dave’s internal medicine department holiday party at the Central Park boathouse, where I wore heels I couldn’t walk in and ate at a socially unacceptable pace, on Thursday.

Weeknights are fun again. Who knew?

Hopefully all members of our household will feel just as socially fulfilled very soon.

For starters, she refuses to wear beige. She’s not exceedingly interested in tablecloths or lighting or bridesmaid dresses, unless of course there’s a possibility she could wear one of those to my wedding, hold the sparkly floor-length gowns favored by Jewish mothers the Long Island over, please. She dropped more eye rolls than tears in Kleinfeld. She’s just not really into much of this wedding stuff, and she wants you (seller of dresses, seller of bands, daughter who insists on emailing her five times a day about guest books) to know it.

Which is why it is extremely difficult to understand why I spent last weekend attempting to dissuade her from buying a $100 cut-glass cake stand wedding centerpiece from a shop in the antiques capital of Southwestern Pennsylvania, to which we had traveled at her insistance.

It was a long strange road from feminist who built tables to the ten minutes I spent prying the Eyewinker patterned piece — reduced to $50, let it be known — out of her hands. We first got the idea to use vintage, pressed-glass cake stands for our centerpieces from our florist, who had just completed a gorgeous wedding where they were also used for a cake buffet and flanked an escort card table. I thought it was beautiful but was a bit daunted by the task – we would have to snag 40 to 50 cake stands to pull it off for our wedding. And, of course, the mother of the bride for the original wedding had been the model of wedding devotion, collecting her cake stands over a period of years. (I know this, of course, because our first thought was to try to take the easy way out and just buy the damn cake stands from that wedding. It didn’t go over too well.)

Despite the enormity of the task at hand, my mom seemed both nonplussed and uninterested in dealing with the issue in a timely fashion. We could just get them at Homegoods and Pier One, she reasoned. Her decorator friend would take care of everything! It was around the time the decorator friend’s own son got engaged – leaving her to plan a wedding of her own, as a model mother-of-the-groom no doubt – that the panic started to set in.

We made our way to a few junk shops in Connecticut, but came up empty-handed. I started to become resigned to the idea of mass-ordering them from Target. And then we stumbled upon Adamstown.

We were on the way to the wedding of an old friend of mine in Lancaster, Pa., driving through a part of the state where there are no highways, just long roads with stoplights and bad diners and – hey,  is that a table with a bunch of cake stands on the side of the street?

As it happened, it wasn’t (it was mostly just junk that sparkled in the July sunshine) but that table was a harbinger of shops ahead that specialized in, oddly enough, pressed glass. (Turns out most of the cake stand patterns we were in search of were mass-produced in factories in Pittsburgh in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and most hadn’t gotten very far over the next 120 or so years.) We rolled up to Meriel’s wedding with a trunk filled with cardboard boxes filled with cakestands. We collected 20 – maybe 30? – that weekend. We were very proud of ourselves.

And, honestly, that’s where it ended for me.

I returned to New York, where my puppy was still eating my possessions and my fiance was still working crazy hours and the only cake stands around were pricey specimens of the non-vintage variety at Fish’s Eddy.

My mother, meanwhile, was becoming more and more obsessed. She bought a copy of Early American Patterned Glass Cake Stands & Serving Pieces and started cataloguing our cake stands by pattern, labeling each one with a post-it note. She waded through muddy puddles in search of more cake stands at a Massachusetts flea market, hours away, in the wake of Hurricane Irene. She started stalking eBay, eager for another cake stand hit. And, after a few too many of those cake stands were stolen from her grasp by last-minute bidders, she insisted we return to Adamstown.

I honestly didn’t know how bad it had gotten until were curled up in our Holiday Inn Express in Allentown and she started referring to the authors of EAPGS&SP by first name (Bettye and Jane, of course.) The next day, she declined to let me get the simple, cheap cake stands I liked, in search of bigger fish to fry: the Ribbon Candy pattern, the intricate, yet ugly, Eyewinker. We were beyond the little Harp pattern I adored, she said.

This was quite the role reversal from the woman who gives me dirty looks when I veer from the Banana Republic sale rack. We finally left with no more than 20 cake stands, at my insistence.

When we got home, I suggested we start tallying up our total take, past purchases included. She was reluctant, but allowed me to start bringing down a few boxes from her closet. Soon we had about 50 cake stands gathered on my parents’ dining room table.

The stash.

Mom with her cake stands - and precious cake stand bible.

Dad looking on in confusion/resigned horror.

It was a scene, and maybe a promising one – if not for the fact that we soon realized the bounty didn’t include any of the cake stands we had scored this summer. Meaning there’s still about 30 more where that came from. Meaning, my mother’s out of control.

We joked that we would have to pile them up in the bathroom at the wedding. We joked that next Thanksgiving, everyone would be given a cut-glass cake stand in lieu of a plate to take their food. We joked that my mother would have to build a new room in our house to hold all the cake stands, that she needed to start thinking about an exit strategy.

As is my way, I joked a lot at the expense of my mother.

But the truth is, our cake stand expedition has been one of my favorite parts of planning this wedding. I wrote her a note afterwards, and the only thing I could think to write was that it had been such a “special time” for me – a phrase we usually only employ sarcastically but one that I really, really meant this time.

My parents weren’t the biggest fans of this whole wedding thing at first – they love Dave, and they love me, but they wanted to make sure I didn’t lose sight of my career, wanted to make sure I didn’t settle down too early. And, in many ways – see: the saga that is trying to get my mother into a mother-of-the-bride dress – they still are the antithesis of all typical things weddings. But they’ve also become our biggest advocates throughout this whole process in their own way – generous, flexible, supportive and, as always, sarcastic - which, while it may not be model parents of the bride behavior, is fine by me.

And so it really has been a special time — a time when I’m living close to my family, when we have a big party to plan and a big occasion to celebrate. Eventually, things will be different – this wedding will happen, Dave and I might move away, I will no longer be able to test three kinds of cake and six kinds of filling without gaining weight. None of it’s forever (least of all my astonishing New York metabolism.) And so I’m so very grateful for the right now, for all of it, even if it means my mom completely decimated our budget for centerpieces.

And for the record, she was right about the Eyewinker. We should have just gotten it. It’s a special time, a special collection.

Also, Bettye and Jane say it’s worth $250.