I haven’t done a proper Sweet Nothing Du Jour in a while, and oh man do I have a GOOD ONE for you.
Roommate and I caught up for drinks at Grand Central one Friday a few weeks before Christmas. We lived together for our first four years in New York, as we both learned (she much more quickly than I) that maybe as much as we loved acting, we didn’t want to be actors. I watched in admiration and she dove head-first into a new field that calls upon her to use her vast stores of compassion, intelligence, and creativity in a way that the theatre work we were getting never could. She’s a totally amazing person who works insanely hard– I’m always dazzled when I see her. We now live about an hour’s subway journey away from each other, and as much as I love having my own place and my own stripey furballs, I really, really miss knowing that I could come home and hang out with a totally awesome lady who would help me eat whatever I happened to bake that day. I always cherish our visits, most of which begin with me asking how the Lily-dog is.
Lily Dog! With her Christmas bow tie.
(She’s beautiful and perfect, in case you wondered).
We sat wedged together in a packed restaurant, clutching criminally overpriced but pretty damned delicious cocktails, and we watched the holiday light display in the terminal windows. We caught up on each other’s lives and families, and made plans to try to at least wave at each other when we were both in Virginia. We talked about some of the ups and downs of our chosen careers, of our hobbies and friends, and of homemade Christmas presents, and how inevitably you wind up with at least a few that are tragic disasters but a majority of which turn out okay. As we collected our bags and prepared to descend into the chaos of rush hour commuting, she said to me, “Oh, by the way, speaking of homemade Christmas presents, would you mind if your present was … Sweet Nothings-themed?”
For the record, the answer to this question is always no. No, I wouldn’t mind at all.
A week or so later I went to Brooklyn to watch Little Women with her (our NYC holiday tradition, although we couldn’t get the DVD player to work so then we HAD to watch Pride & Prejudice on Netflix instead, because her boyfriend was out and because DUH), and she handed me a wrapped Christmas present. This in and of itself is notable, because she’s more than a little famous for wrapping my gifts in a pillowcase about 30 seconds before presenting them to me, so I knew there was something magical inside. I carefully unwrapped it to find THE GREATEST BAG EVER:
EEEEEEEEE.
It’s a homemade bra-and-cupcake tote bag. I KNOW. I literally ran out of positive words and expressions to convey the depth of my emotions about this bag, so I weirdly switched to negative expressions and swears (“Oh my god, it’s so amazing I HATE IT”, “fuck me this bag is the shit”, “this is so great it’s STUPID”, etc.), so Roommate, I’m really sorry if you got any mixed messages, but I LOVE IT SO MUCH. If you see a tall brunette cruising around NYC with her one-of-a-kind bra-and-cupcake-blog-themed tote bag, you can be pretty sure it’s me.
A very happy New Year to all! Stay warm, polar-vortex-sufferers.
