My spiritual guru Gabby Bernstein always says that when people tell her they don’t have time to meditate, she asks them if they have time to feel like shit. I think this is a pretty good way (although somewhat forceful) to convince people to meditate.
I noticed as soon as I got into the office yesterday that I felt different and very anxious. I devolved into that hyper-paranoid person that I was (and still am, sometimes, just rarely) in previous years and it took a while to get back down to normalcy (what normalcy means to me, anyways).
I spent a large part of the weekend with my dude and when I do that my meditation schedule usually hits the fan. I was still meditating for the last four days in my yoga classes but the morning and evening sessions weren’t happening. It’s not his fault; I usually just forget. Sometimes, and I’m trying to be better about this, I will sit for a session while he’s in the shower.
Because J is great, he took note of my anxiety and ended up surprising me with a flower delivery yesterday afternoon. It was completely unexpected and immediately brightened up my Monday.
But incase a flower delivery isn’t an option for you, you can always turn back to your breath and sit in silence for a few minutes, coming back to a state of calm that’s always hiding somewhere inside of you.
One of my favorite things about New York is wandering. You never know what hole-in-the-wall restaurant/bar/bakery/shop is around the corner just waiting to be discovered.
Saturday started out almost exactly like every other morning: get up (though a couple of hours later, of course), go to the gym, shower, eat, etc. Of course it was all much slower and more relaxed because I didn’t have to go to the office, duh. Anyways, I digress, around 1:30 I made my way to Times Square to meet Justin and see when the earliest date we could buy tickets for Hamilton was. Spoiler alert: It was far away, so now I’m planning on going through my contacts to try to pull strings for house seats in a couple of months. We’ll see what happens.
We walked over to 44th and 10th Ave to try pizza from Claudio’s after hearing it was good on RG. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but probably not worth the walk to 10th Avenue to Times Square. Still: good to check it off the list.
mmmmmmm, health food.
After pizza, Justin wanted sneakers so we headed down to SoHo to Under Armour. After successfully procuring the aforementioned basketball sneakers. we wandered down and around SoHo. I saw the graffiti below somewhere south of Houston and Mercer but I can’t remember the exactly location. Can someone do this in my apartment? I couldn’t get a good photo of it either because some tourist was trying to take her best casually-walking-with-my-latte-in-front-of-some-gritty-street-art-how-cool-am-I selfie. Spoiler: tourist + selfie-stick = not cool.
We wandered to Broome Street to Black Tap Burger and thought there was no line when we walked in, but the line was actually outside around the corner and down 6th Avenue. So completely ridiculous. We aborted mission and popped into Broome Street Bar for sustenance instead.
Our last stop on our wanderings we decided would be Meow Parlour. I had no idea what the wait would be like but we wandered for a while (it’s probably a mile or maybe more from Broome/6th to Hester/Ludlow), passing through streets and around corners that we were both unsure whether or not we’d ever passed through before in 10+ years of residency in New York. It’s definitely gritty in some parts, hipster-ish in some parts, and gross in others. Upon arriving, we were told there was a list and it could be up to 45 minutes to an hour. They had a cafe you could wait in around the corner, we headed there and a few minutes after receiving our lattes, we were called back.
This place is worth a separate post, but here’s one photo to hold you over:
That’s Matt, a Maine Coon cat and so pretty. Here are the other cats we hung out with. I wanted to take him home with me but he was kind of skiddish. He’d give you a few minutes of petting time before running away.
We journeyed home on the D train and stopped for dinner and a drink at Amsterdam Tavern before calling it a night. As the weather gets nicer again, I look forward to having more of these days because I think if you’re living here and not exploring on a regular basis, you should probably just save your money and live in the suburbs.
And it’s beginning to snow.
I went to a 9am yoga class today, had my ass kicked, and then bought a ring (above) because I’d been eyeing it and had enough Perk points to reduce the cost from $68 to $18 (woot!). After exchanging a dress at Old Navy, I went into JOE in Columbia’s Atrium and it started to snow.
I walked the 15 blocks home in the snow. It was nice. Now it’s time for some Law & Order SVU.
The Best Way To Spend a Rainy Saturday
That is by going to 9:15am yoga class, having your ass kicked, and then going to see Birdman, where the above speech by Emma Stone knocks the wind out of you, and then possibly movie-hopping into another theatre to see Mockingjay: Part 1 again.
So, it’s been about 5* in New York City lately, with lots of snow and freezing rain, too. Do you know what that means? It means leaving the house is a lot harder because it’s just so much damn warmer inside.
Since New York City was basically a sheet of ice today and I stood outside in it for about two hours (waiting to meet Mayor de Blasio at Gracie Mansion – he was super cool!), I was over The Great Outdoors and knew that I wasn’t going to make it to either a yoga class or my meditation class.
What’s a person to do? Google for podcasts on YouTube. I did and I found my new It’s Too Damn Cold Outside meditation and restorative yoga regime for Sunday nights.
This “Oneness” meditation is about 25 minutes long and it’s quite nice. I’m used to sitting for 35-40 minute meditations on Sunday night, but this works too.
Part two of my new Sunday night regime is this restorative yoga podcast. The teacher’s voice is kind of grating but the poses are good. I felt totally relaxed after. They don’t call it Nap Time For Adults for nothing.
Now I’m going to go drink some sleepy time tea, read, and pass out.
Namaste.
Sometimes there’s a moment when you’re at a friend’s party and you see someone across a room who you might recognize but you don’t know from where. You exchange glances until one of you (him) breaks the silence and comes over to say hello. You talk for hours and when you decide to leave the party and there’s no paper to be found, he writes his number on your arm and, with pleading eyes, says you really have to call or text him. You both know that you have to see each other again.
And you do text him, the very next morning because why play games? He says he’s waiting for the bus and going back DC, where he lives. You text and talk daily for the next weeks and you somehow gather the courage to ask him to be your date to your girlfriend’s wedding, since he’d planned to come up the next day to hang out anyway. To your absolute shock he accepts, excitedly even.
He’s a wicked dancer and super personable. You’re totally impressed. You spend the weekend together, talking and getting to know one another. You eat pizza, drink wine, stroll through Central Park, watch an awful movie on Netflix.
Before he leaves he thanks you for a brilliant weekend, and for showing him a part of New York that he’d never seen before that he quite liked. As you watch him drive away, you smile and think how nice it was to get to know a new person and you admit that you might not see him again for a while. But you definitely enjoyed the escape from reality for the weekend.
I’ve been kind of over drinking lately. Maybe it’s my liking staying in my yoga pants from Friday night to Monday night. Or it’s the dislike for being hit on my drunk slobs at the bar. Or the slight hangover the next. But really it’s probably just the amount of money that I’d spend.
And it’s cold.
So on Sunday, when I texted one of my friends and asked what he was up to, I was thrilled when he suggested getting tea. We decided to meet at 4pm, in time for high tea at the 72nd Street Le Pain Quotidien.
Over our bowls of hit beverages and a croissant, we caught up on each others lives for under $12.
Next we walked (yes, in 20* weather) up to the JOE on 84th and Columbus. Named the best coffee in the city, I insisted he try it. He said it was “really good” and we warmed up for a bit inside. This cost $6.50.
Our last stop of the afternoon was Two Boots on 96th and Broadway. Possibly overrated pizza, but we enjoyed it. Two slices were around $8.
The whole afternoon cost around $25 collectively, with no hangover included “free” of charge.
That Girl Allison 