It's snowing up.

That's right. Flakes are "falling" towards the clouds right now outside my office window as I contemplate plans for this New Year's Eve.

I am not at all sure what this portends in terms of 2009 ...more to follow.

"What do you do at Kiawah?"

A couple of people have asked lately “Thea, what exactly is it that you do at Kiawah?” and I sat down to try and think about it. For approximately 20 Decembers, various members of the Williamson clan have trekked from locations across the ‘States to a small island twenty miles from Charleston, South Carolina.

Why do we come here? It used to be a central meeting point, a good compromise between our family in Maryland, my grandmother in Florida, and my dad’s two sisters in Georgia.

Nobody remembers whose idea it was to rent a small condo on the beach in 1989, and it doesn’t really matter now, because there’s a critical mass of the family that adamantly believes it just wouldn’t be Christmas without Kiawah. I am part of that ornery, sentimental faction. This island, with its salt marshes, sleepy alligators, winding roads and flat beaches is one of my favorite places on the earth. It’s a little hard to explain why, but I’ll give it a go. These are my top 10 reasons.

1. Wherever we stay there is an entire table devoted to cookies. Every family brings at least three baked goods, and everyone takes turn making lefse, the Norwegian flatbread that my grandmother rolled out in hundreds each year.
2. I can walk to the end of the island. That’s cool.
3. Nobody used to come there during the winter. That used to be über-cool. Now the secret’s out (sadness). I guess that doesn’t really count as a reason.
4. We cook delicious meals, eat them, laugh and be rowdy, go for long walk/run, then repeat.
5. New Tradition: a whole roasted pig and high-stakes BBQ sauce contest, three years running
6. Best street names ever. This year, we stayed at 70 Spotted Sandpiper. You take Bohicket Road to get to the island. What is that?
7. I never, ever win at Mexican Dominoes, yet I play every year. This one of life’s great mysteries.
8. I get to see my crazy family.
9. There are endless hidden places to get away from my crazy family.
10. At sunset, as the tide rushes from the ocean to flood the Kiawah River on the western tip of the island, dolphins hunt for fish in the shallows. The pelicans fly back out to the Atlantic, skimming the sparkling orange water, along with the other water birds that spent the afternoon sunning on private docks attached to mansions on the north side. Every day, if I wanted, I could sit and watch them splash and play as the sun sinks over the waves and the stars blink on overhead.

I don’t usually look at my cell phone, I enjoy watching football with my uncle and cousins, I can sleep as late as I want.

The island clearly exists beyond the normal space-time continuum and has little correlation with reality. As I step through the marsh grass the memories of the past twenty years wash over my tired mind until each beach walk is indistinguishable from the last; when I serve my plate of Norwegian meatballs each year, the familiarity adds another layer of richness to this Dinner we’ve shared as a family; I burn my fingers pulling pork and it feels just like it did one year before. I never learn.

And that’s why we’ll keep coming back.

Blast from the past

I got home today, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? Not a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer (although that would be cool), but a clean room and semi-organized garage. This is something that I have not observed in the Williamson house since some time when I was in college. Definitely pre-2002.

In the hall sat my magical purple trunk. Magical, I call it, because it tends to make an appearance around milestone moments and elucidate some metaphorical growth or transition. I really wasn't expecting one tonight but was pleasantly surprised to unearth 2 volumes of self-indulgence labeled in the following manner

SOPHOMORE YEAR: I SWEAR I'M NOT A DRAMA QUEEN.

[unlabeled Senior Year with the following late-night quotation on the cover]

K-Y'know how we have a [big] intestine & small intestine?
T- Yeah?
K-Wouldn't it be funny if they were called the colon & the semi-colon?

Sweet.

Inside were printouts of journals and blogs that I hadn't read in years, including all the "On Air" and "On the shelf" full of thinly-veiled angst and/or reflections of my academic pursuits. These snippets were almost more fun than the journal itself, although I haven't really gotten to read most of that. Yet.

There was a warm (and not always sweet) wave of nostalgia that passed over, and this will probably spur more commentary later, but for now I submit one quote and one observation.

QUOTE regarding a torridly unrequited long-lost love. is that oxymoronic? who cares.

"He really does forget that I exist, and that's just the way he is; I'll always remember, and that's the way I am."

Wow. It's great how pronouns can make something applicable...TO EVERYONE I'VE DATED in the past two years, not to mention long-lost boys.

OBSERVATION
There used to be a different tagline for Amarga, which I had completely forgotten. In a smack of dramatic irony, it surprised me at it s bitterness:

And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque
-Lord Byron, Don Juan

First Snow

Of course, I picked tonight to run errands and do last--minute Christmas shopping. The flakes that threatened all day came tumbling down on my umbrella while I tried to balance my work stuff and a load of goodies from Sahadi's.

It's not the first snow of the year tonight, but nearly that. The freakishly warm weather this week is completely messing with my head. I can't believe that a week ago I was walking through Caroll Gardens on my way to a tree-lighting party, my footsteps muffled by a layer of white flakes. 'Tis the season, as they say, but I'm not sure what. Blind dates? 60 degree weather? These both sound improbable, and yet...

I'm ready for the holidays, and if I could just get my damn printerr to cooperate, I'd be ready with cute holiday cards too! Grr, Epson, and your stupid drivers.

Oh, and I should mention my pre-new-year's resolution: I'm back, posting again and trying my darnedest to do it regularly =). Hasta pronto

A New Team

Soccer is fun, I think we can all agree on this. But throughout my illustrious soccer career team dynamics have been a thorny issue. Soccer is the kind of sport that attracts a wide variety of personalities, which is not always a good thing.

In high school, I rarely got along with more than 1 or 2 people on a team, at school and on my club team. Soccer was the sport for the "cool" girls, a group I was very clearly not a part of. Back then, I didn't want to be liked by the team, I was on the field to play soccer, defend the goal, and get the hell out of there.

When I met my college teammates, I was stunned to find them all to be intelligent, well-adjusted people that wanted to socialize with me and interact in friendly ways as well as play sports. Who were these alien "soccer girls" who had brains as well as cleats? And why was I invited to all their parties? My cynical self warmed to the idea that not all soccer players are horrible bitches, and quickly joined the fun.

Then coaching began, and while I loved leading a team of gregarious high school girls, there was part of me that just wanted to get in the mix. Along came my first co-ed soccer experience in nearly twenty years. On the roster were:
-a Senior VP of Telemundo
-a New York-born son of a shipping magnate
-a racing yacht crew member
-a corporate financier and his girlfriend
-me
Sweet.

We rocked. We had fun. We lost many a game due to poor attendance =). Everyone else drove a Mercedes or a BMW to practice, and I rolled up in my rusted minivan.

While I traveled, I knocked the ball around a few times, but never really got to play. Then, once I finally settled in NYC i decided it was time to try my hand at the co-ed soccer.

ZogSports, the largest co-ed league in the city, was the first to get my money, and in August I dug my cleats out for my first full-field game since 2004. It was great to get back in the game, and running around on a gigantic pitch certainly helped whip me back into shape, but something was missing. Most of the team hadn't played soccer before and didn't really 'get it.' There were some big male egos and a lot of yelling at the refs. I'm sorry, but if you're a good player yelling about it doesn't help. Pushing, shoving and belittling the other team from the sidelines doesn't compensate for an embarrassing lack of skill--all this in a league that's designed to benefit *charities.* Yes, I do catch the irony. Then, if that weren't enough, nobody really wanted to socialize after the games, and we hardly ever hung out as a team. Lame.

So when an old college teammate called me up on a Friday afternoon and asked me to moonlight in another Brooklyn league to fill the female quotient, I zipped over to McCarren Park in a hurry. It was really the logo that hooked me, apart from the friendliness of the team, the 7-a-side format, and the proximity to M's apt. A cheeky take on the timeless "I [heart] NY", I desperately wanted a t-shirt that said "I [soccer] NY."


And so I signed up. Man, it feels good to have a new team.

...New York Morning

I woke up late this morning after pressing snooze no les than four times. I’ve been making a bad habit of this lately, but it’s probably related to stress at work, my home publishing project that is now mercifully finished, and my utter lack of enthusiasm about showing up early at the office. The evening before I was at a Board of Directors’ meeting at one of the member’s apartment—a quaint little thing: eight rooms on the 15th floor on 5th Avenue overlooking the Park and Temple of Dendor’s glass cage at the Met. It’s like a set on Gossip Girl…but it’s real. I don’t even *want* to know what that flat cost in the early 1900’s when her family bought it, let alone its current market value. Anyway, I woke up in my own decidedly humble but cozy abode about an hour later than I’d wanted to and rushed out to work only having packed about half of what I’d need for this weekend’s excursion to Florida.

I hopped on the Vespa and all was going according to plan despite my lack of morning coffee: the skies hadn’t opened up with rain and traffic getting to the Manhattan Bridge was reasonable. I pull up beside a small school bus, one of those miniature 20-seater cheese wagons that don’t take up the whole lane, and I waited calmly for the light to turn green, allowing me to zoom across the bridge and onto the other island. I was more than a little confused when the traffic cop supervising the HOV lane on the bridge waved me over in the middle of the intersection.

“License and registration,” the painful phrase that makes every motorist wince, regardless of his or her offense. I’d been caught lane-sharing by one of New York’s finest, and wouldn’t you know that he was actually going to enforce the law, unlike scores of his colleagues. I pull over, take off my helmet and shake out my dark blonde hair, hoping that some element of cuteness will predispose the officer to treat me kindly.

The problem was that I knew I was in the wrong. Lane-splitting is against New York State law, and things would only get worse when I opened my wallet to show my documentation. I will submit it for you, humble reader, in list form, so that it mystifies less. My good friend the police officer was quite confused, although I did my best to explain.

1. From New York State: license plates and vehicle registration
2. From Virginia: standard class diver’s license
3. From Florida: motorcycle test waiver (temporary license) expired in…December 2006 (oops!)

After a long lecture on my personal safety and several trips from the patrol car to my vehicle to the other detained vehicle (traffic violation unknown) back to my vehicle, the officer finally realized that in a bureaucratic SNAFU I was not licensed to drive a motorcycle in the state of New York. This meant the Vespa was also verboten.

If I were more of a talker, I could have gotten into all of the particulars, as I tried to do at the DMV the following week:

1. that I had been conscientious about plates and registration and updated them when I moved (and this is the most obviously observed violation)
2. that the only reason that I’d transferred my license to Virginia before leaving the country in 2006 was to vote against the arch-villain George Allen in the Virginia senatorial elections, and it wasn’t really my state of residence.
3. that I used to be a legally licensed motorcycle (and Vespa) driver in Florida, where they had out these things like candy compared to the New York test requirements, but I left the without switching my temporary paper license to a real one due to some minor “events” in my life at the time including but not limited to the subsequent inconsequential happenings:
a. the World Cup
b. the end of my indentured servitude to the Miami-Dade Public School system
c. being diagnosed with and getting rid of CANCER (skin cancer, yes, but still serious!)
I was a little busy. I am also a terrible procrastinator easily incensed by behemoth bureaucracies.

Thank you for indulging my excellent rationalization.

That Friday, I was unbelievably lucky. This luck would not continue to hold out, but for the time being the Fates smiled upon me. The officer let me go without so much as a ticket, free as the summer breeze that whips through the cables of the Manhattan Bridge. “Hallelujah!” I cried in my head, this could have been so much more of a hassle.

I continue on my merry but nervous way up and over the East River, then down to Canal and up Allen, like I had done on so many mornings before. I make it to First Ave and get stuck behind (you guessed it) another schoolbus.

There is absolutely NO way am I getting in trouble the traffic cops twice in one morning, so I wait patiently behind the cheese wagon until traffic clears up. As I stare blankly ahead into the back windows of the bus, it occurs to me that there are a bunch of teenage girls there, acting far to rowdy for an early Friday morning. Safe in my helmet-bubble I sigh a little thanks for the fact that I’m cut off from the noisy chaos that seems to be happening in the back seats.

That’s when I got flashed.

Yes, the ringleader took off her shirt in the window and jiggled her bra-less chest in my direction. I was so pissed that I just saw breasts before 9:00 am that I didn’t even crack a smile. No reaction whatsoever, except perhaps a small scowl. Apparently this was not the reaction that little miss exhibitionist was going for, and continued to bounce about, encouraging her friends to lift up their shirts too. At this point, I’m fairly incredulous that I have to sit here on my bike and wait for the damn light. I almost wanted to unzip my jacket and gesture at my own modest A-cups, the gesture equivalent of “Hey, dumb fuck—I’m a woman too, what now?” but after about 15 seconds of pondering that I realized that the girls on the bus probably thought I was a man, on my scooter dressed in pants and a wind jacket.

Where else are you going to find moronic teenage flashers in Chinatown on your morning commute? Only in New York.

Nudity, a brief shakedown with the NYPD, and then off to work. Just another morning, I guess =)

Jersey Weekend...

May 30-June 1

Last Sunday I fell asleep under twinkling fiber-optic stars in the chrome sky of a white stretch Hummer driven by a man from Staten Island named Tony. I woke up scant hours later at the Staten Island ferry terminal, having hitched a ride from Atlantic City (AC as the kids call it) after a late night of partying at a friend’s bachelorette party. A pink dawn rose over Brooklyn as I struggled to stay awake on the boat ride.

Five hours earlier I’d been rolling the dice at a craps table at the Borgata, living the life of a Bond girl on the arm of my banker friend. We were playing with her money at the $10 high roller table. Later on I was guilted into buying my own chips by a surly casino croupier but came out ok in the end—only a net $5 loss. I’d never gambled before, so the novelty of the casino was entertaining. They are bizarre places full of false promises and “free” things that encourage people to drop loads of money. It also amazes me how gender-biased the places are; women working there wear barely anything, and the major selling point is the free drinks. Okay, you caught me, I enjoyed the free drinks too.

It was a pretty fun night out, all drama considered, and I can truly say that I’ve painted the town. I’ll tell you though, I was pretty psyched to see hthe sun cume up over the Long Island horizon telling me I was almost home. Tony was quite the gentleman for agreeing to give me a lift from our host’s house on the Jersey Shore back to NYC (I always forget that Staten Island is one of the boroughs…oops!). Sleeping off the evening’s entertainment on the undulating leather seats, I barely noticed the highway zooming by beneath me.

In an odd turn of events, the most fun that I had that weekend was in transit to different locations.

I barely caught the train out of the city due to a last-minute lingerie search in Time Square. I’d forgotten to buy a present for the bride-to-be, and the blasted web filter at the office wouldn’t let me look up Victoria’s Secret locations online. Running frantically around 42nd street I settled for Gap, which had surprisingly cute sleepwear appropriate for a bachelorette.

I met my fellow VaBeach ladies at Penn Station and had just enough time to grab a butter pecan ice cream cone before joining the mad rush down the moving stairway to board the NJTransit Shore line 3:55 train to Bay Head. My ice cream barely survived the horde of sweaty commuters but I defended my afternoon snack with pointy elbows.

The three of us scored great seats on the train and piled into two sets of opposing chairs with a load of luggage. We giggled like high schoolers as we caught up on the gossip from home, local politics and our recent personal lives. My two best friends are both in serious long-term relationships and we know a lot of people getting married. It seems to be the thing to do in one’s mid-twenties.

Shamefully the discussion turned to rings—you know, the kind with diamonds? Large ones? The scandal being that a friend of a friend recently became engaged to a man she’d known for about six weeks and he bought her a 2.5 carat ring. Me being the gauche idiot about diamonds had about zero knowledge of what that meant. My banker and publicist friends did and tried to explain to me using various metaphors and size equivalents, my favorite being “T, if R [banker friend] bought the ring herself with six months’ salary it wouldn’t be 2.5 carats.” I was about ready to let the subject drop and surrender to incomprehension when a burly blonde man across the aisle took a small waxed-paper envelope out of a nondescript black backpack and passed it over to us. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation—just professional curiosity. You can show your friend, this is about what it would look like.” R’s eyes went wide as she unfolded the envelope. Mine did the same when I gingerly unwrapped a 2.8 carat light blue diamond approximately the size of my thumbnail. This stone (without a setting, mind you), retails in Point Pleasant NJ for $35,000. They love their bling in the Garden State. That’s a whole lot of money. Can you imagine carrying around the value of a luxury automobile on your ring finger? And it doesn’t do anything but sparkle! It can’t even vroom-vroom or speed by someone on the highway. Madness. That’s a year’s college tuition and well over half my salary. Crazy shit.

We learn through our subsequent conversation that this guy—about 5’5 mid twenties with lots of tattoos—works in his dad’t jewelry store on the shore and makes runs to the Diamond District in Manhattan every few months. He buys the stones wholesale and then takes NJTransit back with almost half a million dollars worth of diamonds in his backpack. Apparently he also flashes them around to impress girls. Hilarious. That made my fucking day, man, what a character.

That was my Jersey weekend: diamonds, neon, gambling, the beach, cheese-spiraled pizza, copious drinking and a limousine ride home. If only I could have stopped at the mall too.