hey pretty

A Field Guide To DC Apartment Hunting, Vol 1.

As I'm obsessed with dwellings, and reaching the end of my tolerance for group-house living, I have started to look for a new place to live. My own apartment, as it were. I haven't always lived with roommates. Back in the early years of this decade, I shacked up in a 550 square-foot studio apartment that straddled the boundary between Mount Pleasant and Adams Morgan. My rent was $870 a month, which seems like a bargain now, but on my entry level non-profit salary it proved beyond my financial capabilities. I moved out of there and into a room in a group house in Dupont circle for the low-low price of 470 dollars a month. Which rocked, for exactly four months and then the house was sold  to developers and I moved to my current location. I've lived in my current group house for almost five years. Throughout that time I've endured a battery of roommate experiences both good and bad. I contemplate leaving now because not a day goes by where I do not yearn for my own space. My roommates are fine as far as people with whom one could share space go. But I long to walk across the threshold of my home and not be confronted with a person expecting me to exchange pleasantries, other people's furniture, or another person's set of dirty pots in the sink (although I have no problem with my own pots being in the sink--for some of my roommates that's a problem as well). And as I spend less and less of my social life hanging out in bars, I want to be able to invite people over for small dinner parties, game nights and viewings of Gossip Girl. While I have on occasion done this at my current place, these small parties are very often interrupted by roommates traipsing through, often very loudly, in a less than mellow sort of manner. Of course, what has always prevented me from moving is the fact that I am completely spoiled by my low rent and close proximity to a major metro line.

Therefore, when I first started to contemplate the idea of moving, I decided I could do it on my own terms, on my own time line. I will move in due time, whenever I find the apartment that speaks softly of home the moment I pass through its front doors. Because of this, I am becoming a semi-expert on the topic of apartment listings on Craig's List. Here are some thoughts.

1.) I understand that the nature of gentrification in DC dictates that neighborhoods that border on the newly desirable, cool neighborhood get lumped in with that neighborhood for the sake of promoting apartments in less than desirable ones. That is why six years ago Logan Circle was still called "Dupont East" and two years ago Petworth was called "Columbia Heights." However, this new practice of claiming that your apartment is in Petworth when actually it's in Fort Totten has to stop. Petworth implies "reasonably distanced walk to Columbia Heights  should it be light out and you're feeling brave." Fort Totten does not. Moreover, it has its very own metro station, aptly named "Fort Totten."

2.) No, I do not want to live in your basement apartment for $1300 a month. Especially if, judging from the photos you've posted, it has no windows. I especially don't want to live there if I'd have to adhere to a vegan lifestyle or promise to never smoke in the apartment or within a 50 foot radius of it.

3.) Yes, that's a very nice 1 bedroom apartment listing in Dupont Circle for $900 a month you got there. No, I do not want to take place in your apparent real estate scam. Yes, I do see that you're currently located oversees and searching for a "God Fearing" individual to rent out your alleged apartment. No, I will not send you a cheque for the security deposit in exchange for the alleged keys which you will supposedly mail to me.

4.) If I am looking for an apartment in the District of Columbia and specified that in my search on Craigs List, I do not also want to see listings in Springfield, Vienna, Congress Heights, or any other completely un-interesting location not in the District of Columbia. When I say DC, I mean DC. If I wanted to search in Maryland or Virgnia, I would include that in my search.

5.) I am looking for my own apartment, not one to share. Therefore, it is especially annoying when listings are included in my results that are obviously rooms in group houses. There is a special place on Craigs List to advertise your group house share. I believe it's under the heading of "shares." Counter-intuitive, I know.

6.) Yes, this is a very nice apartment that you're showing me. Under some circumstances, I would love to live here. However, common courtesy requires that I give my landlord and roommates at least two weeks notice of my intent to move, and you want me to move my stuff in right this instant. Since this apartment has been available for quite some time, would it have killed you to list it two weeks ago?

And finally...

7.) Would any of you readers care to weigh in on the subject of Petworth? Rents are still super cheap, but paranoid me is afraid of getting knifed on the way to the metro. Your thoughts?

Over-sharers (Semi) Anonymous (i.e The Blogosphere)

Poor Emily Gould. The former Gawker vilified over the internet for sharing too many details of her personal life on-line is once again under attack. This time for writing an article for the New York Times magazine about how she shared too many details of her personal life on-line and people attacked her for being a narcissistic attention-whore. Because that's totally the thing to do when you draw too much attention to yourself in all the wrong ways. Draw even more attention to yourself.  It kind of reminds me of people who go on reality TV shows and become famous for doing nothing much other than drink too many Long Island Ice Teas and participate in hot tub orgies and then go on other reality TV shows where they basically do the same thing again, the only difference being that they weren't really expected to do any of those things the first time around and the second, that's all they do and all anyone cares to know them for.

Having never met Ms. Gould it's impossible to make any accurate judgements on behalf of her character. Yes, it's easy to mock and criticize; use her as an example of all that is wrong with blogging, and by extension the Internet as a whole. Indeed, many a pixel has been tarnished doing so. But these comment board jeers ignore one critical component of the situation and that is this--people read what she has to say. Emily Gould doesn't write tortured missives detailing her personal and romantic travails that are largely ignored or overlooked. Indeed, the whole fact that people go to great lengths to mock her illustrates that people are paying attention to what she has to say, whether or not they support her desire to say them in the first place. While her critics may accuse her of "over-sharing" the fact remains that she's widely read.

I guess my advice to the Gould-haters is akin to what their mothers probably told them when they were 4 years old and found themselves badgered by the neighborhood bully: If you don't like what somebody has to say, ignore them in hopes that they go away. Writing angry comments about a person on comment boards, whether they be ones sponsored by a major online media empire, or simply humble personal blogs simply draws more attention to a given controversy.

Of course as a blogger, and a long-time over-sharer, I can't help but relate to this and draw it back to myself a bit.

In my last post I pointed to my recent online reticence and explained that I'd rather update my friends about my life in real-time than online. That's still true, but there's another aspect of the situation that I didn't spell out. Long-time readers of this blog know that dating and male-female relationships have been a central theme of Hey Pretty. In fact, a fellow-blogger once described HP as a "quasi-dating blog" on her own blog roll. While that was never the intention of the site, it's what it morphed into because, as single woman experiencing a host of ups and downs in her romantic life and a desire to work them through via the creative outlet and quasi-group therapy nature of blogging, that's what it turned into. But then I started "seeing" or "hanging out with" or whatevering with one person in particular and suddenly his privacy meant more to me than working out whatever issues I might be having with him for all the world to see. Which was a perfectly fine and a seemingly selfless act, I suppose. But with my standard coping mechanism for life's challenges removed, I've found it harder to deal and easier to internalize, which has made me a bit more volatile these days and sort craving the semi-anonymous outlet I once had for kvetching about those problems. Not that there are a ton of major issues and I go through life totally seething and wishing I could spill all, but I do sort of miss this nice little medium where I can scrawl out a quick post about what's bothering me, sort through some comments either telling me to get over myself or sympathizing whole heartedly, and work through the issue until I feel like I've attained some sort of handle on it. Instead, I'm trying other methods, like meditating and yoga and the oh-so adult "putting things in perspective". All of which reap fewer immediate benefits and all rely on my own resolve for any iota of success.

And there's the crux of the matter for us over-sharers. Blogging offers sort of an instant gratification when it comes to venting about personal issues. Write a post, read comments. Things start to feel a bit better. Rather than listening to them reel in a constant inner monolog than grows wearily more boring and maddening by the moment. All this suggests to me that there's probably some specific personality type that's drawn to all this in the first place and that blogging is probably  just a manifestation of it. Were we not living in an Internet age, we'd probably be the same people who write bad poetry in coffee houses or make Woody Allen movies. And people patron those forms of expression just as even the most uncared about, dumbest personal dating blog gets a few hits a day. Because even a few hits indicate that somebody out there is listening and that ear may be a sympathetic one.

So I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say about blogging, or about the fate of HP as I struggle on a daily basis to be a saner, less neurotic individual. Sometimes it's difficult to know when a problem is worth worrying about and when it's something you just need to get off your chest and complain about for a bit. Blogging, despite all that its detractors have to say about it, makes that distinction a little bit clearer.

All the Sad Young Interwebs

So there I was quite justly about to burst into tears when I received an IM from good ole' EJ directing me to this little site.

All is better now, hateful company website software and fellow communications staff be damned.

On an alternate note, many of you have been wondering of the fate of HP in recent days, since I have obviously not been updating this site very often.

Yes, you are all correct. Your powers of observation are all quite developed.

The answer is...I don't know. But I am considering jumping ship again and moving this baby over to Tumblr. I have grown tired of constantly feeling the need to explain myself to the world, naval gaze, and rant about issues that are of no consequence to the majority of the denizens of teh intraweb. Long-format blogging is begining to lose its luster. Moreover, as I have found myself pointing out to various (semi) interested parties recently, what's the point of sustaining real-life human relationships if your friends mostly just learn about your adventures via a website? So, friends and strangers, if you're all that interested in knowing what I am up to, feel free to give me a call or drop me an email. I am done with this particularly drawn out isolationist portion of my life and would prefer to bond over wine or coffee, not pixels and comment boards.

A Painfully Great Salon.com Article

Step 1: Read this.
Step 2: Get over yourself.

I really loved this article. Mostly because it affirms a realization I had several years ago when in the depths of online dating misery: just because a person likes all the same cultural artifacts as you (Don Delillo; Joan Didion; the film Memento; the OC; whatever the indie band of the moment is) doesn't mean that you'll hit it off and that this person will forever be your soul mate. In fact, most of the guys I met online who claimed to love what I loved proved to be major douchebags (which could have called into question my allegiance towards said artifacts but it never did--maybe it should have).

To this day, whenever I meet a man in his 20's/early 30's who claims to love postmodern fiction and the band Spoon, my knee-jerk reaction is to feel something of sense of weariness towards him. Double that reaction if he has sideburns and attended Wesleyan University. Which isn't to say that all male alums of Wesleyan who love Spoon and pretentious literature are assholes, only that this is what my experience has been.

Try as we may to construct public identities pieced together by a love of all the right intellectual-approved books and other pieces of ephemera, we are not the sum of those parts. Probably because these sums are false calculations. They omit certain details that we'd rather not share. Like our love of Ashlee Simpson, cosmetics shopping, and the show One Tree Hill.

Which is a shame, because in my opinion, a diversity of interests points to a better-rounded individual. Yes, you can be an intellectual and still like cheesy pop songs, teen television mellow-dramas and whatever else your little heart desires.

So come one, come all, get off your high horse and get down to some US Weekly, TMZ, Gossip Girl, or whatever else your little heart desires.

Noted: Miley Cirus

Perhaps, if you are old enough to cause a semi-stir when you pose semi-nude for a famous photographer, it is officially time to pack it in as a tween idol. Unless of course, you're the children of Sally Mann, but as far as I know, they were never tween idols.

Yes, Miley. I am looking at you.

Note to Disney: Can I have an ETA on the timeline for rolling out the next new tween entertainment/marketing sensation?

Broken

My finger hurts. Since I don't have health insurance there's no way to get an actual diagnoses, so I will just go ahead and assume it's broken. I bought one of those splint thingies at CVS for 5 bucks, and it's doing its thing. I'm sure it will heal and life will go back to normal shortly.

Until then however, I can't help but feel a little battered and fragile. It has not gone un-noted that the finger in discussion is the fourth one on my left hand. The unadorned one. Now mangled and battered, further mocking my spintsterhood.

Reducing My Carbon Footprint: The Dark Side

So, thinks I. Perhaps I should take the stairs rather than the elevator today. Using the elevator sucks up electricity and using the stairs will be good exercise.

30 seconds later I found myself sliding down the stairs on my ass, having needlessly tripped over my own two feet. Again.

Yup, thought I. I am falling down the stairs. I guess I should put my hand down to stop myself. Wait, why is the fourth finger on my left hand bent to a 60 degree angle? Woah, that's rather gross. Ew. MY FINGER. GOD DAMMIT, IT's dislocated. Ew, oh wait, it just popped back into place. Oh my GOD! My dislocated finger just POPPED back into place. Gnarly!

From here on out, I will be taking the elevator. Carbon footprints, be damned. Besides, this article in the New Yorker assures me that they're quite safe.

Gainful Once More

Three days into my new job I am wondering how I ever managed to be bored at my old one. I remember all those hours I idled procrastinating on work with 3-week deadlines, checking the gossip sites several times a day, updating my Facebook profile, strategically planning my next cigarette break.

Today I arrived at work at 9:00 a.m. sharp. I read Nexis and Google Mail alerts for an hour before today's assignments crashed down around me. Three press releases in one day, interspersed by a three hour long campaign and communications meeting. I ate lunch with one hand, while I typed with another, every now and then reminding myself to breath. Somewhere in there my boss came in and said we'd have to get together to evaluate another of our colleague's strengths and weaknesses so we could better assign her work.

We. Us. Assign work. Now there's a first.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

This week I became a parent of sorts. I adopted three plants. My goal is not to allow them to befall the fate of those that have come before them--long, slow death brought on my neglect and malaise. I do not have the best track record as a plant mother.

As members of the succulent family, these plants are not expected to grow at a very fast rate, but like all parents, I swear that these have sprouted alarmingly since I brought them home on Wednesday.

It is my personal belief that all plants need names in order to thrive. More precisely, they need to be named after male rock heroes from  the 1960's. Throughout my life I have mothered an Arlo and a Jerry; my roommate A has a plant that I named Keith Richards. He was whithered-up and practically dead before I named him, and now his heart-shaped leaves are gloriously large and glossy. Coincidence? I think not.

So today I am throwing around names. I suppose Mick, John, Paul, Ringo and George are rather obvious. So obvious that I will probably overlook them for their obviousness to dig a little deeper. Perhaps Denny or John in homage to the Mamas and the Papas, a band that I have been enjoying on repeat on my iPod all week thanks to the weather. Something about summer screams 60's California folk-pop to me.

Speaking of planted, earlier today, I literally had a Hey-Kids-Get-Off-My-Lawn experience. I left my house around 3:00 pm to enjoy my very last mid-afternoon gym excursion to find two skanked-out hos my neighbors from next door sunbathing on my lawn as if they lived here. One of them asked me if our house was an apartment or a house. I told her it was a house in my very best baffled old lady tone. I guess they were banking on it being an apartment and me thinking they also lived in the building? They promised to leave soon. I scowled and skulked off, not sure what about the situation bothered me other than the fact that it's simply wrong to camp out on another person's lawn without permission. I guess it was their sense of entitlement that bothered me the most.

I later related the story to A, mostly to confirm that it's not okay to sunbathe on a stranger's front lawn. She said it might be if you brought beers or wine with you to share with the home's occupants. Note to my neighbors from next door: Next time bring beers with you. I prefer Sierra Nevada, but anything a notch above Miller Light will do, as long as it's not darker than a Porter.

And on that note I am off to prettify for dinner.

In the comments section suggest some names for my new plants.

The Curmedgeon's Guide To Shopping

Yesterday I went to the mall. While I love clothes and the concept of fashion-as-art, I truly hate to shop. I am all about end product and not at all about process. When it comes to HP and shopping, the destination is so not the journey.

The destination is, or should be, a collection of items appropriate for work and play, affordable, beautiful, and unique. But I find that this is rarely the case, most likely for two reasons:

1.) I don't relish the idea of looking like everyone else, thus it's difficult to shop when certain trends dominate every store.

2.) I am shaped weirdly. I guess that many women think that their shape is freakish and strange and in dire need of fixing, and I am no exception to this sad trend. What's strange though, is if it weren't for the clothing industry, I would probably be pretty content with my figure. Not to brag or anything (actually dammit, I have spent most of my life feeling the need to apologize for my shape, so perhaps some bragging is overdue) I happen to be shaped like an hourglass. I have largish boobs, a small waist, a nice booty. In other words, I am stacked. Sure, I could use some toning up, but the basic foundation is there and pretty solid. Perhaps luscious, even.

Whenever I read those columns in women's magazines, ideas for "fixing" my body type are never addressed. That fact, combined with the overflow of images in the media of buxom beauties whose cups runneth over in a variety of ways, leads me to believe that I pretty much got it going on.

Unfortunately, this information has yet to reach the ears of the clothing manufacturers of America, Taiwan, China, and wherever else clothes are mass-produced these days. According to such manufacturers, my body is weird. I mean, it must be because no pants seem to be cut for it. Yesterday at several stores I tried on at least three different cuts of pants in three different sizes and still walked away with no new pants. I must have tried on twenty pairs.  While I considered ordering up a size and getting several pairs tailored down, this idea seemed like a waste of money given how cheap and insubstantial most of the pants felt to begin with.

Eventually I abandoned the pursuit altogether, resigned to the suspicion that perhaps I am simply destined to live my life in dresses and skirts. Which when you think about it, sounds like a far healthier approach to shopping than letting an inanimate object dictate your self esteem.

Other things that happened on my jaunt to the mall:

-I was addressed as "ma'am" about two dozen times, which I hate and makes me feel like an old woman. I don't even look my age. I should not be addressed as "ma'am". Ever. I don't care if it's considered polite in some parts of the country. Where I'm from it translates to "old person." Even my 61 year old mother has a problem with it.

-I was accosted not once, but twice by a sales rep from a hair flat iron kiosk. Since yesterday was an awesome hair day, and my ringlets were tumbling over my shoulders in wonderfully lazy, totally unfrizzy curls, I considered both instances to be something of an insult. I can't understand what society has against the naturally curly. Sure, I've been known to flat iron from time-to-time, but I've also been known to meticulously apply curling lotion section-by -section, to hair that has been only finger combed in the shower under running water and then carefully blotted with a tee shirt (terry cloth towels create frizz) and air dried for exactly ten minutes before having any product added to it. Presentable curly hair is a science, and I have it down. Thus, when the mall rats emerged from their shadows brandishing their curl-killers I felt that the only correct reaction would be to shriek like a little girl and run for cover in the closest Banana Republic.


-My secret favorite eating establishment in the Pentagon City Mall was confirmed: Nordstrom's Cafe. Clean, quiet and never crowded, it boasts a pleasing menu of salads and sandwiches. Bring a book and munch on some passable fare. It blows that creepy, stinky food court out the water. Look into it.

Despite the inherent negativities of the mall, I did accomplish a small chunk of what I set out to do. These tasks were both difficult, and I am pleased to report that I emerged with colors flying.

1.) I bought two pairs of comfortable, relatively attractive shoes. Given my old lady feet, it's extremely hard for me to find shoes that feel good on my feet that aren't incredibly ugly. I have lived in Dansko clogs for ages, but they're not right for summer and they're really spectacularly ugly. So to find two pairs of reasonably priced shoes that don't hurt my eyes was a bit of a coup. I even showed tremendous disciple in not buying the black Cole Haan slip-ons that felt like butter on my feet. Next time, maybe.


2.) I found a bra that fits. You know how sometimes when you try on bras in the store they fit fine, and then once you get them home they morph into these bizarre beasts that totally do not fit at all, whatsoever and you wonder how on earth you convinced yourself that the garment was a good buy in the first place? Well, I am pretty sure that is not the case with this bad gal. Granted it's beige and pretty boring, but it seems to be the correct size and shape for me, which is way more important than frills and sex appeal at this point.

In typing that, I realize that caring more about undergarment fit than sexiness is a definite sign that I am getting old. Perhaps all those people with their ma'ams weren't so far off after all.