wishing you a surreal birthday

to continue on with two themes, the first being 'happy birthday' and the second being 'isn't facebook a strange thing', i post the following image, taken by someone i've never met, of someone i haven't seen in years, standing just two weeks ago in my kitchen, when i was in california.
happy birthday adam! what i'm appreciating so much at this moment is Friendship. yes, friendship with a capital F. the one that can drift off into the remote pastures of life yet come back as familiar as yesterday.

adam was coming to nyc with his girlfriend. i would have loved to see adam, and i'm so happy he contacted me. turned out i would be busy in california sick as a dog. yet still, he made the appearance (and some supposed gang signs--is this an homage to brooklyn?) in my kitchen.

and today is adam's birthday. happy birthday old friend. so glad that life seems to be good for you!

photo by jodie ross, poached from facebook

oh, and props to emre for hosting two strangers in my absence. i knew they'd be lovely guests, even if they are obviously pc users and couldn't find the 'eject' button on the keyboard for the dvd player...

birthday boy

thirty-one.

for me? really?

last night emir and haley (emre's brother and sister-in-law) stayed over. since they live in the not so close reaches of new jersey, this has become an almost weekly tradition that i love, whose days are numbered, because, drumroll please....at the beginning of november they will heed our call and move into an adorable garden apartment in greenpoint. when i say garden apartment, i really mean it. you walk through the street side building and out to the garden to get to their little 'granny' apartment. so cute. if i didn't love them (and my oft-plagued apartment) so much i'd be so green with envy as to consider hating them.

to thank them for taking care of our excruciatingly finicky old cat while we were in turkey, emre made kuru fasilye (a white bean dish) and i made borek (spinach pie). we used all turkish ingredients that somebody who shall remain nameless who is so painfully law abiding that she was sweating bullets like she was maria full of grace or something, smuggled through customs. what officer? fifteen pounds of white cheese? no, i definitely did not pack that!

after dinner i played a slide show of the bazillion pictures i took in istanbul. damn that gorgeous skyline of glorious domes and pointy minarets that resist perfect essential capture yet INSIST you shoot shoot shoot more more more photos while desperately trying!

emre teetered off to bed. and when i say teetered i actually mean groaned, rubbed his bloodshot eyes and collapsed. while the jetlag devastated me on the turkey side, emre's getting it on this end.

and then, midway through the slide show, emir disappeared into the other room. perhaps it was my own jetlag, but i was completely clueless to the fact that he was lighting candles on a cake. i can't remember being so taken by surprise. forgive me if you've surprised me and i'm forgetting, but really, when was a birthday cake a surprise? though this trip to turkey was a beautiful big birthday gift, perhaps because i was out of the country, my birthday passed pretty uneventfully, with shopping at the grand bazaar for little turkish trinkets for christmas gifts and a bowl of soup under the galata bridge. (spoiler alert: you may receive a little turkish trinket from me in the near future). pretty nice. but pretty unceremoniously did the ultimate ex-hovy's selfish holiday slip by.

so the cake. it did take me by surprise. all these words to explain how happy the above sight in my kitchen made me this morning...

let's think of birthdays, not taxes!

happy birthday to mieke! like so many of my friends, mieke turns 30 this year. it deludes me into thinking i also just turned thirty. three years is practically the blink of an eye, no?
mieke is actually in belgium now, celebrating. in my tradition of taking full credit for her relationship, as i introduced her to her fiance (yes, i know, you've heard it before, but i can't stop braggging!) i can also claim some rights for this surprise birthday gift from ezra. gee, isn't it nice that the man that i introduced you to suprised you with a trip back home for your thirtieth? i sure picked a good one.

but doesn't it seem like i just wished mieke a happy birthday here? where does the time go? a look back at the archive confirms that yes, it was a year ago! which brings me to another birthday--that of this mighty blog! a year and a couple days ago (april 12), i begrudgingly posted a photograph in lieu of emailing it to share with my sister, and insisted this was not a commitment to blog. one hundred forty five posts later, i've made good on that non-commitment. and boy is the world a better place for it!

but back to mieke--so much has changed since last year! sadly, i said goodbye to her as my neighbor (but drag her out here as much as i can for nostalgic brunches), but for the exciting reason that she decamped to the upper east side with (and got engaged!) to ezra. she also co-founded the manhattan chapter of ambassadors for children with barbara. not a bad year, mieke--you are surely no fish out of water here in the u.s. of a.!

happy birthday, little anika

my niece allyson and i making an anika sandwich. anika turns 8 today. i loved being 8.

welcome to the old people's club

if today is indeed the winter solstice, that means that it's tristan's 30th birthday. tristan is a conscientious friend, an amazing front-seat father of twins, an insane marathon runner, a bicycling fanatic, master gardener, talented multi-media artist, possessor of great style and impeccable musical taste--and perhaps most importantly to me in that it concerns my dear friend kim--likely the greatest husband i've ever known. happy birthday, tristan--enjoy big sur.

i took this portrait of tristan in the pre-photoshop days, looking through a set of binoculars backwards at his city garden plot in berkeley.

alice, this one's for you

coincidentally, or serendipitously, i write this entry after midnight, on what i realize would be my recently departed grandmother's birthday. so grandma, this one's for you. see, we used to love to do crossword puzzles together. or rather, she loved to do crosswords, and very tolerantly allowed me to steal the daily puzzle when i'd come visit, then throw out answers, since i'm really not too good at crosswords. still she would tell anyone around how smart i am and what short order i can make of crosswords. but only the daily one in the press democrat. give me a difficult puzzle and i'm useless. the day of her memorial as i entered her house, i followed my usual pattern. grabbed the newspaper, flipped to the second page of the D section, and ripped the strip of puzzle out. flopped myself down in her chair, feeling her presence so strongly, and proceeded to knock that puzzle out in no time flat. and there she was, looking back at me from the very blocks of the puzzle. 12 across--tv waitress: alice.
happy birthday grandma! i know it's not clam chowder, but it'll have to do.

happy birthday sissy!

so it seems to be all about birthdays around here lately, no? today my sister abbie turns 37? wait, how old am i? i can't keep track of any of this anymore. emre thinks it's personal and asks me periodically, "how old am i, kitty?" i usually answer with "ask me how old i am, i probably have to think first..."
the above photo wins the prize for the coolest photo of abbie ever. she was a month shy of 5 years old. i was three days shy of being born. at the sonoma county harvest fair (which used to be all about apples, not grapes and wine), a photographer from the local paper in cahoots with a security guard 'framed' abbie to get this fantastic front page photo--told her to go ahead and pick the best looking apple from the display of gleaming boxes (they really polish them for this event!) and take a bite. naturally this went against everything little abbie had been taught by our very strict father: don't touch the display, don't cross the roped off area. but the guard said it was okay. he had authority even over daddy. yet as soon as she took a few bites, the guard turned on her and reprimanded her for sneaking an apple. and she gave the photographer the perfect horrified guilty face. brilliant. though i think she's still traumatized by this event and sometimes answer to 'eve'.

the resurrection (ooh--so dramatic!)

pop quiz:

a) the rumors are true: i've died. here is photographic proof.

b) my stylist and life coach messed up (britney--i feel you)

c) i'm impersonating the beloved and mysteriously dead laura palmer. twin peaks. google it. stop looking at me with that blank stare, you make me feel so old!

if you chose c, you win! sorry, no prize.
i threw a costume ball/turkish dinner party for emre's thirtieth birthday. in case he snowed you into thinking i'm the social one around here, it's a lie. 40 people showed up to our "little" dinner. thankfully, i had prepared food for 120. i should say 'we' as it was truly a collaborative effort, dish for dish. it's surprising we got such great feedback on the food considering most of it was prepared in the wee hours of the mornings leading up to the party. thank goodness for cold turkish appetizers that actually demand being made in advance!
other than the full time working, full time schoolgoing (that's right, i've deciding to stop saying i'm only in school part time, as i take an additional class at the education alliance and am the teacher's assistant to a fourth class), unpacking of our entire apartment from boxes, applying for jobs i didn't get, hunting high and low for a shoulder gun holster so emre could be the agent cooper to my laura palmer, and filing back taxes for three years, i'd been totally idle all week. what's new.

supposedly it's national blog-a-day month. how do we ever keep up with the grueling list of monthly themes, overlooked people and issues to honor? i know, i know, i'm late. but hey, i just heard! i figure i owe it to my adoring and heartbroken public to return and blog every day. like jesus christ on resurrection day (can i say that?!) i will roll the rock from my cave of slumber and hit you full force with the fun details of my life. um. maybe tomorrow.

by the way, eddie and maria as axl rose and slash--amazing. but we'll discuss that later in another 'national blog month' post (c'mon! i gotta save some material--i'm rusty!)

photo courtesy of haley balik

did i not know at age two that i hate german chocolate cake?

okay, separate story.
on my eighth birthday, my dad brought me out to the camper (what--you didn't grow up with camper shells on your property that occasionally hosted extended family?) for a secret birthday surprise. i sat down on those thin tweed cushions at the dining table that converted to a bed--the ever-present scent of stale pepper in the air--and he placed before me the much coveted box of strawberry shortcake SUGAR cereal. birthdays were taboo. sugar cereal was taboo. and strawberry shortcake was everything to me. quietly he poured me a bowl, slicing up a banana on top to somehow offset the intrinsic evil of this particular breakfast. these were no cheerios! my heart soared with excitement. so today, it's corn pops, um, and tofu scramble.

thirty-two

tomorrow's the big day. usually i'm a childish birthday fiend. this year, not so enthusiastic, just ready for this year to be over. abbie says thirty-two is a magical age. cheers to that. and thank you to mieke and ezra for having a handful of us over, despite my grinch-like protests, for 'exotic dishes you've never had', cake and belgian beer. my contribution was peanut butter and pickles sandwiches. don't knock 'em till you try 'em. they were quite the hit on twig avenue in the 80's and now the upper east side.


and oh, i just can't help myself (click here). i wanted to be short and elegant with just the candle blow out. but it's just not my style.

happy birthday to my little man

my nephew, colin, turns three years old today. he's such a little ball of fire that it's incredible i got a portion of his body to stay still for this snap as we hiked through armstrong grove...congrats to naomi and alex on 3 years of parenthood.

birthday gift, anyone?

the big thirty-two is knocking on my door, and so, coincidentally, is pj harvey, playing just two nights after my birthday at the dreamy beacon theater! and of course i'll need to take a date, so you may need to win the lottery in order to fund this dream of a show. maybe some of my anonymous fans want to pool together to get on my good side. maybe the bedbugs want to surprise me, just to say, "hey, thanks for the blood. what extreme hospitality! really, you didn't have to pack up all your stuff on our account!"


in other celebration news, today i can officially say, "i've lived in new york for eleven years!" it's high time for dad to come visit!