Poppy Cedes

I’m not going to BlogHer, but I want to suggest that anyone who is coming to NYC as a visitor pay attention to some tips from an NYC import:

- Make sure that any printed, PDF, app, or website versions of the subway infrastructure you use for reference is updated to June 2010 version. If your version of the subway map includes a V train you’ve got an old map. (The V train no longer exists.) MTA.info has the latest map in PDF form.

- Make sure to read ALL posted signs about service changes, paying close attention to train letters/numbers, dates, and times and whether the times are in AM and/or PM. Service changes are very tricky, take the time to process what you read. Ask someone else if the sign confuses you.

- Don’t hang out on deserted parts of the subway platform alone. Just don’t.

- If you see a red glowing light at a subway entrance it just means there’s no human there to help you. Go in, it’s ok. If the station is completely closed there will be gates up to tell you.

- If something is barracading an entrance to a station DON’T GO IN. :)

- Don’t flash your money or personal belongings around on the train, on the platform, going into the station, etc. unless you want to be robbed or followed then robbed.

- Your cell phone won’t work on the trains. Don’t rely on it to save you. Be smart, stay alert, all that good stuff.

- If you get lost ask someone who looks ok to ask. If that turns out to be a mistake, walk away and ask someone else. You have no obligation to continue engaging with a crazy person.

- We all get on the wrong train or end up going the wrong direction. It’s ok to be embarrassed, but it’s ok to get off at the next stop too. And it’s ok to look at a map.

- If people solicit you on the train it’s ok to ignore them.

- If someone makes you feel fear while you’re on the train, move away from them. Change cars at the next stop if you need to, but unless you’re in actual danger DO NOT go between cars via the doors that say not to use them. You don’t want to fall and you don’t want a ticket.

- If you drop something over the side of the platform do not jump down on the tracks to “save” it. That’s a death wish.

- Hold on tight while the train is moving. The drivers love to jostle us around. :)

- Don’t freak out at the turnstyle if your Metro Card doesn’t work. Just try swiping it 5 billion more times, and if that doesn’t work then run it through a card reader to the side of the turnstyles to verify it has money. If you were trying to use a single user card for multiple people the card is smart enough to know what time it was swiped and will deny you. You need to buy multiple cards.

- New York City is a grid. When you come up from below start walking in a direction that feels right. If the street numbers don’t go the way you were hoping, just turn around. It’s ok. You can turn around. No one even cares.

- Expect escalators and/or elevators to be out of service. That means you have to walk. WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES.

- The doors to the trains are operated by a human in the middle car of the train. They’re automatic in the sense that they re-open if they hit an object, but a person pushes the button to close them initially. So, be quick about getting on and off the train, but don’t FREAK OUT that you’re going to get stuck on the wrong side.

- Let people off before you get on, assert yourself off the train before others get on. Glare at people who violate these rules, but keep walking. :)

If I didn’t cover something you were wondering about subway navigation please ask me, please, please, I beg of you.

Friends who live in NYC – other tips?

You are the best freak, freak, freak of the week!!!!! <3

Go wish Robin a happiest of birthdays!!!!!!

I’m 14 again! Ok, really I’m 36, but does anyone think I actually act my age? Well, maybe people I work with. I’m like a mullet — business in the front, PARTY IN THE NOT FRONT PEOPLE!

So, Friday I decided to go see Inception by myself. Great movie, made me really depressed and contemplate life as I was walking out of the theater, but I am looking forward to seeing it again with other humans. Friday night I watched wrestling with Dawg before he had to go do overnight vollies with KC then I watched In a Day on Netflix. It’s a movie about a woman whose day starts our very unwell then goes well then there’s a conflict about whether it was really a good day at all.

Saturday I had Special K Blueberry for breakfast and harvested my FarmVille farm, then Dawg woke up and we went to the Georgia Diner for lunch, the mall to get me A DROID X (we are now a Droid family on a family plan, woooooot!), then to the Lego store where we hung out with R2-D2, then we went to Radio Shack to buy a slim line phone for my PHONE INTERVIEW FOR A JOB ON MONDAY (people, don’t get all excited, I don’t have the job yet), then we went over to Mama Dawg’s and I opened an adorable cat coming out of a box gift from Adam with instructions only in Japanese as well as gifts from Dawg’s parents — money for underwear and money for A CLEANING LADY TO COME OVER ON FRIDAY (people, quit getting so damn excited, it’s not like you’re coming over to use my bathroom anytime soon, jeez, it’ll be dirty again by then). After prezzies we went to dinner at Barosa and waited an obscenely long time for them to kill the animals with which to make our dinners but we had a great time just talking about family stuff then after dinner we went back to Mama Dawg’s and had Twilight ice cream cake. Team Wolf Boy, rawwwwwr! Then we went home and at midnight I turned around from my desk to say “Dawggy, it’s my birthday!” but he was already stealthily walking over to me to give me a kiss and wish me a happy birthday so I caught him in mid-step, hehe. Then on the way to bed I found cards from Dawggy and each of the kitties. In Ripley’s card was a FarmVille gift card!!!! In Georgie’s card was a birthday wish in RUSSIAN (she’s a Russian Blue). In Allie’s card was a birthday wish in FRENCH (she speaks French as her first language because of when I got her in life). In Twitter’s card was a stinkbomb (kidding, it was her talking in her NEUROTIC ALL CAPS VOICE). In Dawg’s card was a hula girl on a car dashboard, which is our trip to Hawaii (as in, the card is as close as we’re getting to Hawaii).

In the morning Twitter woke me up at 6:30am to eat my toes and scratch my face so I got up for a minute and added my FarmVille gift card to my farm so I could buy a golden retriever named Zoe, the final nail for my beehive, and a birthday cake then Dawg dragged me back to bed and I slept until 10:15am! YAY! Then I got out of bed and we sat down at the couch and I opened presents from Bdogg, Dawg’s Aunt Honey, my grandmother, and myself. Then we made pretzel bites and watched The Crazies on Movies on Demand (loved it! see it! have a hand to hold!). After the movie I got ready to go out to dinner with Dawg to the Waterfront Crab House where I proceeded to stuff myself silly with a Coke, a bloomin’ onion, salad with blue cheese (they do an Italian vinaigrette with gorgonzola for their blue), baked potato, filet mignon, a glass of French Merlot, a key lime tart TO DIE FOR, a single shot espresso, and a coffee.

We then came home and went into food comas while watching Terminator: Salvation. The rest of the night will be spent watching True Blood and hanging with the kitties, then a little bit of well deserved birthday sex. :) A fantastic birthday.

Thank you all so much for your calls, blog posts, tweets, FB wall messages, text messages, email wishes, cards, gift certificates, tangible items, and your general caring for my existence. You contributed to an awesome birthday.

<3

Pictures of my fantastic birthday (hover for captions) ...

I keep having clusters of dreams with themes attached. I just transitioned from one theme to a new one, and now I kinda want the old theme back even though it was driving me a little craaaaaaaazy. (No, I won’t be telling you what that one was. But think of things that might drive me crazy and insert one in your mind.)

The new theme is: being pulled over by the cops.

Today’s dream was complicated at best, because of all the subtleties. I’m not adding in all the subtleties here but suffice it to say the location of the dream makes this VERY complex and confusing.

It’s dark, and Dawg and I are just arriving back “home” from a long road trip. Except “home” is Vermont and where we stop is a student-parking-only spot on the property’s edge of my high school. Dawg gets out and wanders off to work (?) so I move to the driver’s side and know that I am in a spot I can’t be in, but I also can’t be in the general parking lot of the school because it’s not open right now so the gate to the lot is up. I move my car to a space across from the gate, the one free space along that road, since many other cars are parked there as well. For some reason I have no pants on, just a long shirt, and I don’t have my license or wallet. I adjust mirrors and the seat so that I can actually drive the vehicle any distance. When I’m done I turn the car back on to leave, at which time a cop behind me turns on his lights. I turn my car back off and we have a conversation about why I’m parked there. He doesn’t care, and issues me a $201 ticket for parking where I shouldn’t. I say to him, “I will pay this on two conditions: (first condition I don’t remember) and secondly, please ticket all these other people who are also parked here.” He looks embarrassed but then decides that I need some sort of help and takes me to the police station.

Suddenly I’m in a room with people who are saying that Dawg is abusing me and I need to break free from him. I look at them all like they’re crazy and I say “I have no idea where you’re getting this impression, I love that man and he is REALLY good to me!” and then Georgie scratched my face to wake me up so that was the end of the dream.

What the hell?

Two of my favorite things combined: Star Wars and the NYC subway system (that’s the 6 train)

Also, Dawg and I ate cereal today. Maybe you’d like to check that out too.

Things did not end well with me and the ex. I haven’t spoken to him in about two years. We just don’t see eye to eye on life, and he has no interest in being a positive part of my life. This also means that it has been three years since I’ve seen his family. I don’t really think about them much because they’re not mine anymore.

Isn’t that weird? I was in his life for 10 years and yet our inability to resolve our issues results in me losing the status of sister, daughter, cousin, niece, granddaughter to an entire family.

Some days that’s pretty overwhelming, particularly on the days when my boyfriend is invited to family functions by his ex’s family because they are still such good friends and he is still considered important to her family, although his title is Family Friend now instead of stepdad, brother, son, grandson, cousin, nephew.

Most of the time I just push my complete erasure from my ex’s family to the deep, dark, uncharted territories of my mind. And then something unexpected happens and I flash back.

Saturday night Dawg and I wanted to stay in and watch a movie on demand. We looked through the movies together and settled on Dear John. We knew we would cry through it, because it’s a tear-jerker. Minutes into the movie John meets Savannah. Minutes more into the movie the two are at a party together and Savannah introduces John to Allen, an autistic boy who is the son of Tim.

Triggering my flashback.

Allen was the biological four-year-old son of Hay’s aunt. The first time we met we fell in kid love. I loved his spirit, he loved that he could call me his girlfriend. Allen and I played for hours each time we saw each other. Allen looked exactly like the boy in the movie. And so I burst out crying because I realized that I had forgotten Allen ever existed.

Because I’m not allowed to be part of that family anymore. Or that boy’s life. And I never got to say goodbye to him, I just disappeared from his life.

And that was a choice I made, knowing the consequences.

sigh.

Today is a very good day.

Lots of kitty kisses from Allie ♥, Ripley ♥, Georgie ♥, Twitter ♥, and Poppy ♥

Last night we were at the FHVAC awards dinner at which Dawg was sworn back in as captain after two years off from the job. The Steff had mentioned something about seeing me. I said, “well, he wants to stay home” and she said “that doesn’t mean we can’t go out” and I took the careful pause to consider why that statement does or doesn’t make logical sense, and then answered “that’s true.”

Back in mid-2008 I came to NYC a few times before permanently moving here to live happily ever after with Dawg and the kitties. One visit we went to a fund raiser for a friend in need, another time we did a fund raising event for the FHVAC itself. At each event I met Dawg’s World. Remember all those people he used to talk about on his orange blog that were like a soap opera on steroids? Dude, those people are real. And I was meeting them. AND THEY CALLED ME POPPY BECAUSE THEY KNEW WHO I WAS! And then they would look into my eyes, all serious, and softly but firmly state “you break his heart, I’ll break your legs.” Welcome to Queens! Every single time someone said that to me I would start giggling because I knew in my heart how much I loved Dawg then and I am pretty sure not one day has gone by since where the level of love hasn’t maintained or grown more. But how were they to know that from watching a Boo Berry cereal video?

In case you’re newish to my life or just want to reminisce, here is said Boo Berry video from October 2007, when we were just good friends and I was popping his Meeting a Blogger in Person cherry:

Adorable, right?

To bring this back around to full circle and to show you my point of writing this whole entire post: Until now I have quietly considered all of Dawg’s friends my friends, but I haven’t felt like they were mine mine because I don’t hang out with them alone since they were Dawg’s friends first. I have always felt like I’m really only supposed to hang out with my own friends (that’d be Robin and Rachel, and Mena back when I worked at the last job) because to hang out with Dawg’s friends without him was in some way disrespectful.

But they want to hang out with me even if Dawg is busy or tired. It’s happened more and more frequently lately that his friends invite me to stuff even if he can’t come. Dawg encourages me to hang out with them when he can’t, so this mental block is only in my head. So I’m going to stop having a hang-up about whose friends are whose and just accept the kindness and generosity of these people who will still break my legs if I break Dawg’s heart, but who accepted me with open arms, this girl from the Internet who randomly picked up her life and replanted it from the Vermont country roads life to the Big City life just to be with a guy they all respect and admire as much as I do. And I think now that he has met my Vermont friends (we met a bazillion of them last week during our Very Short Visit) I feel even more comfortable that the friend field is now magically leveled… the brain of Poppy at work.

I have no clever, uncorny ending, so I’ll leave you with an awesome photo of your 2010 vollies captain, 1st lieutenant, and 2nd lieutenant:

Dawg, The Steff, and KC

:)