Here’s the thing about working retail. There are a lot of people very good at what the job entails. Social. Chatty. Patient. Perky before coffee.

Three out of four aren’t bad. I get it from my mother.

The other thing about working retail is that not many people start with the intention of turning it into their career. In New York, it’s a bit different. In New York, to run your own store is a very prestigious. It’s a mark of capability, and a very stable, lucrative living if you’re good at what you do.

Most who start the climb up the ladder, however, have dreams of private offices and power, a fluffy salary and a secretary to do the hard work. And fetch the coffee. There are no customers to deal with. There is no stock to be unpacked. There are no subversive, catty conversations around water coolers during which the greatest overthrows of power companies have ever seen are seeded. At the top of this ladder is a corner office with a view and a team of people at which you’re allowed to bark orders.

Then you sign off on what everyone else has accomplished and call it a week.

It is the end that justifies the means, right? The subversive water cooler tactics? The fuel for the willingness to work the longer shifts, deal with the difficult clients, smile bigger when the Corporate Partners are in town.

Here’s the problem. And I’m not talking smack about anyone here at PUMA City, because everyone seems to be diligent, dedicated and motivated by all the right things. But it does so put into perspective issues I’ve been grappling with since immersing myself in the professional retail arena two whole summers ago. People who do this for the wrong reason.

The people who climb by shoving others down. The people who think the higher the rank the smaller the workload. The people who can’t wait to sneer down at all those they surpassed.

I go to work in the morning because I liked what I do. I like being busy. I like feeling like I’m part of something, a team, contributing. I like business, and the strategies and the logistics and the operations. I even like the angry customers, because if I can talk them through it, if I can hear their frustration out and help work them to a resolution, if we can hang up the phone with a smile on their face, or send them from the store with a more ideal product than what angered them in the first place… I’ve made their day better. I’ve helped.

I don’t want to climb this ladder because I want less work. I want to climb this ladder because I’m here now, I have a taste for the bigger picture of what this company is capable of. I’m watching real-live role models strategize and make decisions and interact with one another, with us.

I have an insatiable desire to now climb this ladder steadily, preparedly, because I want to do this work on a deeper level. More. I want more. I want more angry customers I can comfort and please. I want more problems that need perspectives, teamwork, collaboration. I want the long hours involved in a project like this, and to go from stock room office to tiny cubby, from tiny cubby to medium cubby. Eventually, I want to walk down the hall and greet Cate Hewett as a respectful colleague.

When I grow up, I want to work harder than I ever have at a job I love a little more every day.

I know, it sounds too good to be true. With this company, though, I don’t believe it to be impossible. What can I say? I believe in fairy tales.

I also want a pony, still. Always.

I realized this week that I’ve turned into one of those insufferable girls who talks about nothing but her boyfriend. Or her article. Or her future, with her boyfriend, the success of which is based largely on the completion  of her article. All of this will get her into grad school, where she will diligently study until it is time to Finally Grow Up.

I have no idea what Finally Growing Up looks like. I believe it has something to do with the Dreaded Suburbs and eventually leads to childbaring. We’ll see how Kristin does with it all, and then we’ll decide if it’s worth investing in. You see, I’ve also learned this week that I dislike it when my hips hurt– which they’ll start to do, at the onset of your third 13 hour shift in a row, briefly punctuated by turbulent sleep. According to Kristin, pregnancy is full of awful things like unexpected bouts of vomiting before you wake up, as you’re making it to your desk at work, and then again whenever anyone smells, looks or sounds like something. Anything. Indiscriminately. It also comes with odd food cravings (never before has one human ingested so many blueberry bagels) and hip pain. Excruciating hip pain.

I’m a sissy. Childbaring may not be for me.

Enough about my hips! Let’s talk about my boyfriend.

He’s coming to visit me in Boston tomorrow, about which I’m very excited and a wee bit nervous. 1. Because I have a hard time keeping myself on good behavior when he’s there to make snarky comments and then giggle cruelly with and 2. Because I am just now able to fall asleep by myself in this giant bed all alone without him here in a timely fashion. I then proceed to sleep through most of the night, despite the lack of Body Heat To Steal and Man Body To Snuggle Against.

I’m confident I could find all these things in Boston, but they’re not the specific brand of My Boyfriend of which I’ve become so fond. And so, I  simply cannot accept any substitutes.

I also can’t spend the week after he leaves wondering aloud to myself in the wee hours of the morning how I ended up being a girl who talks about nothing other than the boyfriend she can’t get out of her mind and without whom she is incapable of sleeping.

I’ve always loathed those girls. I can’t tell if I feel the same about myself now that I’ve crossed over to the dark side. The fiercely independent person I used to be is the girl that, theoretically, James fell in love with in the first place. Of course, she also had a lot of emotional issues through which she had just finished really sorting. Trust issues. Abandonment issues.  Matching Socks issues. She was sort of a mess.

But she was a mess who could sleep alone, in any bed, and did not talk incessantly about her boyfriend. Oh, God. I’m doing it again.

I’m also nervous about him coming to visit (No, I am not going to stop talking about this) because I’m in the middle of picking out my future (graduate school) as a tribute to Finally Growing Up, and the more I look at specializing my career, the more I see that that feeds into my personal future as well.

Where I thought, ten months ago, that Global Fashion Management would be ideal for me– I was going to jet-set, travel the world, parler francais avec les locales, and eat as much cheese and fresh bread as I could find– I realized that honing my career for jobs that would require semi-frequent global travel wasn’t ideal for raising a family.

I was a nanny. I loved the job just enough to know that I want to raise my own kids.

Oh, life of a chic jet-setter, I bid you adieu. And the girl I was ten months ago is pouting in her designer stilettos. She so wanted to play, you see.

I don’t know what my personal future looks like. So it’s hard to plan anything else, seeing as I have this whole other person whose life I am now taking into account. Even if that’s never been my style. Even if I’ve been given little or subtle or implied reasons to believe his future and my future even coincide. I hate riding in airplanes, anyway.

And, of course, instead of bringing this up to him, I choose instead to pretend the issue is not driving me up every wall. Because there is no tactful way to say to your boyfriend, “So… How about forever? Because, I have to get my Grad. School applications in, and I don’t want to plan around raising your children if you’re not planning to support my shoe fetish. Sound fair?”

Kristin, of course, thinks this is the best course of action. And she’s never been wrong before, except that one time that she encouraged me onto that bar in that mini skirt, but really… who’s keeping score? I just have a serious case of the I Don’t Knows going on.

Maybe we’re not even ready to  be talking about such heavy things. And I’ll always be able to own my future, make my education work for me, right?

This is just the first legitimate time that someone else’s dreams… our dreams, our goals, as a couple… They carry as much weight, if not more, than my own. More than I care to see myself excel, I want us to be OK.

This must have been written all over my face right before I left, another reason I’m excited and nervous to see James again. I tend to fall apart around him; he’s my safety zone. I re-opened to him a part of my heart I swore would be kept in quarantine forever. So I’m allowed.
The night before I left, I kept having small meltdowns, where I’d end up in his lap, semi-wimpering. And finally, when he realized that his meant he’d be stuck packing my whole apartment, he looked at me and said, “We are going to be fine. We’re going to be more than fine. We’re going to be amazing. It’s only a month. We’re going to be awesome. Everything is OK, and we’re going to be fine.”

And of course, because I am a jerk, I looked at him and responded to this sincere, heartfelt reassurance with, “What about The Meantime? I know that after all this, we are going to be fine. But getting there? I don’t know if I’ll be OK without you. I don’t know if I remember how to be the girl I was before I met you. I know that after the dust settles, this will be an amazing experience that I had, and that all kinds of doors have the potential to open up, and that you’re going to be there, waiting for me when I make my way home to you again. … But what about The Meantime? Because from where I sit, it just looks hard.”

It has been hard. When I hear his voice, when I roll over at night and he’s not there. It just started being bearable. To reset all this? … I know it’ll be OK.

I’m just struggling now to get through The Meantime.

As most of you know, I’m in Boston for the month. I left April 19th, I’ll return to NYC May 19th.

Yes, the first week has been absolutely amazing.

Yes, I like Boston easily as much as I like New York.

No, I have not slept or shopped yet, but I’m working on both of those things today.

Yes, PUMA’s team came in fourth, everyone was safe, and the sailors are now enjoying peaceful relaxation with their families.

More, you say? Oh, alright.

www.pumaoceanracing.com

And that’s all part of www.volvooceanrace.org.

More once I figure out if $40/week for WiFi is worth it. : )

Last weekend started the great Bin and Purge that shall dominate my life until I leave for Boston. And I’ve found in all the numerous, overwhelming amount of times that I’ve packed my entire life and moved into a new place throughout the five years I spent in undergrad that when you have to put all your worldly possessions into boxes, you’re forced to face yourself, quite literally.

I was surprised, though, at how easy it was to begin. Usually it takes me a long time to get started, and then I get 80% done, and I sit in the biggest empty container I can find and sob. (All my coping methods are remarkably healthy.)

But! There are several things about this pack-and-move that make this time around easier. 1. Kyran Pittman, to whom it seems I spend my blogging hours building linguistic shrines, has a site all about organizing your life. And it’s snazzy. And her tips are applicable, useful and practical. They’re also easy to implement, and very cost efficient, all things I look for when I try to organize my life. Cheap and easy. What can I say? And! 2. I am packing up so that I can move in with James, and that makes everything worth it. Because the other day he looked into my haggard little face and said, “I know this week is rough, but just think. When we get our place, we’ll be cooking meals together and we’ll have a new Morning Routine. We’ll start the whole healthy lifestyle together.” And then I melted, right there in Starbucks, and boy where they upset that they had to mop me up off the floor.

So revealing as it is, I’m not hesitant at all to dive head-first into this packing process. Also, James gave me direct orders about what to pack first and second, so there was very little thought involved. Last Sunday was Shoes and Books.

Things I learned about myself that day:

1. I have no idea how to pack books. First of all, I own more books than anyone else my age that I know. This stems from a childhood condition that my mother calls PackRat-itis. You need a French Dictionary, you say? I have one! What’s that? You can’t find your copy of Le Petit Prince? Why, I have that, too! The Catholic Girl’s Guide to Sex? No problem, it’s right here. Everything Jodi Picoult ever put into print? Sure, it’s right there, next to my homage to Nora Ephron and that entire shelf of cookbooks and books about slasher films.

They were scattered on various shelves and surfaces throughout the entire apartment. This meant that I had to walk— wander through the whole space and make sure that I had every single book inside the Big Box James promised me they’d all fit into.

For the record, they DID ultimately all fit. Also for the record, I’m very glad I’m not going to be the one carrying any of the heavy stuff up the stairs because HOLY SHIT, that box weighs more than I do.

I also realized that in the past five years, I don’t think I’ve actually finished any of the Reading for Fun books I’ve started. Consequently, I’d get halfway through transferring a pile of books from the floor to the box and a bookmark would catch my eye and an hour later I’d realize that I’d just lost an hour reading a book I started in 2005. Sigh.

I also have an inability to spacially judge the way books fit together. They just stack, right? Even looking back, it seems to me that they should all just fit into the damn box like little LEGO pieces snapping together. Alas, it was not meant to be. They’re all in the box, but I can’t say they’re all happy about the Maguiver-ing it took to get them in there.

And the last thing you want to think to yourself as you look down into the canyons and plateaus that constitute your big, heavy box is “… I probably should have packed the Harry Potter box set first…”

The box is so heavy that I’m fairy certain we’re going to break it down into smaller boxes. So that I can be helpful on Moving Day, instead of just an adorable obstacle that keeps making the boys eat stuff.

2. I am incapable of throwing anything away. More specifically, I am physically incapable of discarding Gourmet Magazine, WWD, any catalog J.Crew sends me and any sheet of paper that may or may not have been associated with school. Because until I prance across that stage, twirl, snatch my diploma and run away laughing, I know in the very center of my being that if I discard even one single paper, Pace University’s Henchmen (OSA) will call me and state that I need to produce that very paper to graduate, and also, I owe them $4,000.00. Anyone who has graduated from Pace University will vouch for me. This is a completely rational and valid fear. And so, I have a lot of things slated to be recycled, but nothing that I’ve managed to recycle just yet.

And so, piled across the Futon James and I bought from Christine are stacks and stacks of papers that may or may not be overdue to be packed or discarded.

The good news is that almost all my shoes fit into three large boxes, and so they are no longer spilling all over the place, consuming everything in their path. The bad news is that I’m working with roughly 10 pairs of shoes for my full-time life and my feet are a little confused. The other day, they wanted to wear the adorable green mary janes that we love so much, but, alas! They are buried deep within the depths of the middle-box. And if my feet think that my arms are going to hoist those babies around any more, they have another thing coming.

At the end of the day, the clothes are in garbage bags, labeled but not tied, because the pile of laundry I’m going to do next Saturday needs to be filed away under respective headings. Monday is my last day to pack, Saturday the 18th is my day to paint, and on the 19th I’m flying out, leaving all my worldly possessions that make the cut to rest a bit in New Jersey before their big move to Manhattan once more.

Enjoy the down-time, green-mary-janes. You’ll want to be well-rested for Summer on the Upper East Side.

James turns 22 today, and to celebrate, he flew to Texas with his boss, leaving me to do the last 36 hours of puppysitting by myself, armed only with chocolate ice cream and ribs. Delicious, delicious ribs.

What’s in Texas, you ask? Wrestlemania, I tell you. And I’ll also add that evil puppies and junk food is a perfectly fine alternative for me, considering WWE aficionados aren’t my style (despite my country roots) unless they happen to also have obsessions with Tom Ford suits (Arune, James’ boss), or answer to the name James Viscardi.

I can’t think of a way I’d prefer him to turn 22 than surrounded by a group of men, cheering on other greased-up men wearing spandex and body-hugging one another. (Las Vegas? You scare me. Houston, TX? You are my friend. You and all your wrasslin’ fans.)

Maggie Mason wrote a great blog about her husband Bryan on his 40th Birthday.

I’m sure I could come up with 40 Great Things about James Viscardi. But he’s only 22, so I’ll all-but-half spare you.

This is as close to a love letter as he’ll probably ever get.

J.-

1. You tell a mean fart joke.
2. You have an awesome tee-shirt collection.
3. You also look very, very good when dressed as a grown up.
4. You can’t pass an olive bar without sampling two or ten of the variety.
5. You truly don’t mind all my shoes.
6. You’re my favorite person to People Watch with. (You’re my favorite person in general.)
   
7. You are an incredibly reliable person with an incredibly big heart. You give unconditionally, never begrudgingly, and never with conditions.
   
8. You’re very understanding when I wake you up three hours earlier than you need to wake up, turn the bed into the fort, tap you on the temple and instigate a pillow fight.
9. You didn’t bat an eyelash when I told you that my fish’s name is Fish.
10. Being your girlfriend never feels like work.
    
11. When I ask you to drop by work with cookies, you do.
12. You also bring me sushi, coated with deliciousness, because cookies (unlike chocolate ice cream) are not an acceptable meal substitute.
13. I can point at a list of beer and ask you what I’ll like and you order something I love every time.
14. “I didn’t say anything!” “I heard you think it!”
15. My father really likes you.
16. You will cancel a first date for a second time to be a sign language interpreter for your mother’s program…
17. … at Church.
18. You value and prioritize your family with the same importance I do mine. You love and protect your little sister the way a big brother should. You do the same for your parents. Being the cornerstone suits you.
19. You have all the coolest nerdy obsessions.
20. You always, always, always ask me how my day was
21. When you kiss me after we’ve both had very long day, I can feel how much you mean it in my soul.
    
22. Zombies.

xo

-M.