A day at the zoo!

New York City or "The city" as I like to call it is a strange and fascinating place.  Growing up on Long Island not too far away, The city became a familiar place to visit and after  four years of college, living upstate, in the middle of nowhere, I was desperate to move to this beautiful, exciting, shiny place.  I have now been living in Queens as close to Manhattan as you can get for over a year and I now have a different perspective on living in this great city.

I dreamed about living here for so long and thought that this would be the perfect place for me what with the endless distractions and countless people to meet, but I never realized how isolating this city can be and how lonely it can make you feel.  8 million people live here and tons of tourists visit everyday; you can find any activity you can imagine and some of the best food and drinks in the world.  But of those 8 million people only a handful are my friends and of all those things to do 99% of them require a 30 minute plus subway ride and a significant amount of money.  I often find myself at a loss for things to do when work is slow.  Who do I call?  Where do I go?  How much money do I spend on meaningless distractions?  Usually I just curl up on my couch and watch 80 episodes of Say Yes to the Dress and wind up cooking and baking until it is time to go to bed, but often I long for fresh air and a small town to explore where no one will bother me while I sit for hours sipping a cup of cappuccino and reading or writing.

Today is the most gorgeous kind of fall day - it is overcast and has been drizzling from time to time, but in my jeans and light coat I am neither cold nor hot and I am relatively without work to do.  Since the weather shifted into fall I have been having a particular ache for fresh air and today I finally decided to do something about it.  So here I am hanging out with a peacock and the flamingos, eating lunch and writing this blog!

My lunch buddy!

Of all the things I dish out money for my favorite and most well spent yearly expense is my zoo membership.  I have an individual premium membership, which allows me and a guest to get into any of New York City's 4 zoos and the aquarium.  I highly recommend this deal as it supports a good cause and I have certainly gone enough times for it to be worth the money.  I think I go to the zoo (one of them) about once a month both on my own and with my boyfriend (who never complains!)  I absolutely love zoos, especially the New York ones!  I just love getting in some fresh air while the animals simply captivate me.  I could never get bored of going to the zoo.  Every time I go I see something new and something incredible.  And I always have my favorites that I must see as if I were visiting an old friend.

Today I took an hour trip all the way up to the Bronx Zoo by myself while everyone else is still at work or in school.  Going back to the strangeness of big city life is the intimidating, yet satisfying ritual of doing an activity completely by yourself.  Again, you would think that I could find someone to go to the zoo with (especially since I can get them in for free!)  But of the limited people that I would want to go with all of them tend to be terribly busy and therefore unavailable when I finally find the time myself.  So it is up to me to rally my motivation, which can be limited too, and get my butt on the subway.  It is all on me to entertain myself for the hour trip there and back and when I get tired or frustrated or bored I have no one to complain to, except the polar bear.  But as hard as it can be to take that first step out the door, it can be so refreshing to know, in an extrapolating kind of way, that I can take care of myself and am truly independent.  My reward for my efforts are the 3, now grown tiger cubs napping together and my pal and all time favorite polar bear playing with an ice-berg like toy and even the rarely spotted grizzly bear swimming in it's pond.  Already I am feeling revitalized, refreshed, and happy that I came and I still have so many more animals to see.

He's playing!!!!!!!!!

I just find such peace from the smells, sights, and sounds of these lovely creatures, living their lives, playing and enjoying themselves and their friends.  I love New York City dearly, but it is nice to come here and feel like I am surrounded by friends.  I know that here everything I need is within walking distance and that walking around my lungs will be filled with fresh air instead of the rank smells of the subway.  The zoos, and especially the Bronx Zoo today, are my little escape, my little paradise.  After today's trip I will have a little more patience for the noise of the subways and the stench of the streets or maybe I will even have a bit more willingness to line up my schedule with a good friend of mine's.  But even if tomorrow I return to my pajama and tv watching ways, at least instead of a day of stress and pressure I had a day or smiles and peace.

Time to go find the baby sea lion!

Baby got bigger since the last time I saw her :)

The Perils of Taking Online Dating Offline

*This is not an exploration of the pros and cons of online dating - nor offline dating, for that matter. This is just a story about a Friday night. Or more accurately, it's a story about a Saturday morning.

This was too perfect...

I woke up on Saturday at 1:24 p.m. - which is about four hours later than I ever sleep in. I rubbed my eyes, my head, wondering if the previous night was just a bizarre dream. I check Facebook - the most reliable and uncompromising record of recent history in most of our lives.

Status update from the early hours of Saturday morning: OH. MY. GOD. NO.

I wish I could just leave it there. I wish a lot of things with regard to Friday night. However - in the interest of processing what happened, and hopefully preventing someone else making the same mistakes - I will share my experience with you, albeit with a bit of reluctance.

The picture: I'm sitting in my gorgeous apartment on Friday night, having finished work late. I'd eaten a delicious dinner, read my book, and had settled down with Netflix and a glass of red for the evening. At a few minutes past midnight, my evening bliss was broken by the buzz of my phone ringing.

It was the guy I'd been talking to online for a few days, with whom I'd made plans for Saturday afternoon. We'd talked about going for a walk through Bute Park, which runs alongside the River Taff in the centre of Cardiff, then maybe finding a pub for a quiet drink. I hadn't felt butterflies, but he seemed nice enough, cute enough, just enough for a Saturday afternoon.

I assumed he was calling to talk about our plans, or possibly to cancel. It was late, and I was tired, but I picked up the call, curious to hear his voice before meeting in person.

As soon as I picked up the phone, I could tell he was having a good night. He laughed a lot, I could hear the smile in his voice and it was infectious. He cajoled me into agreeing to meet him for a drink, and I dragged my butt off the couch and got dressed - nothing too impressive, I didn't want anyone to think I was prepared to put in effort for a last-minute meeting after midnight.

As I walked toward the buzz of Cardiff Bay, I couldn't keep myself from yawning and hoped the guy wouldn't be too put off by my obvious exhaustion. Turns out, I needn't have worried about what he was going to think - about me or about anything else. He was already wasted, with the sole intention of getting even more so, and no interest in getting to know me at all.

As we walked into a bar, we ran into three boys - I can't call them anything else, they looked like they were about 14 - and ended up chatting with them for a while. One was tall with Bieber-sweep hair, and formed an instant drunken bond with my date. One wasn't drinking, and was kind of cute (for a man-child.) The third one . . . well, he at least had some interest in getting to know me. Over lunch, the next day.

I politely declined, at first out of respect to my date and the plans for the following day, which I could tell I was probably going to cancel at this point, especially after he went outside with his new little bro to smoke a cigarette. Dating smokers just isn't my thing.

Before they went outside, Bieber asked me what I wanted to drink and then bought me some sickly pink cocktail that I couldn't drink. I pretended to be sorry, he pretended to be offended. Or perhaps he was truly offended. Either way, I ordered three shots of tequila and said thanks for the drink, while his two friends, and my date, looked at me with bewildered admiration.

Manchild #3 asked me again if he could meet up the next day for lunch. I asked him how old he was.

"I'll be 22 in nine days." I couldn't help myself, I burst out laughing. I almost told him I was 24-and-three-quarters, but caught myself.

He was persistent, showing his age as he began to beg - beg! - me to let him take me to lunch, or coffee, or anything. At a couple points, he leaned in to kiss me, and my own laughter wasn't enough to stop him, though pushing him away to arms' length was.

He told me he was mature for his age, in spite of my efforts to explain that a mature man knows what "No" means without continuing to beg for what he's already been denied. I continued to decline his offers, less politely, for a myriad reasons, some more legitimate than others - but none of them were enough.

Weary from trying to explain why I didn't want to go to lunch and trying to inflate the kid's self-esteem, and feeling tired from the booze, though unfortunately nothing else, I watched Bieber stroll in with my date and announce he had to leave. Who knows what happened out there, but suddenly I was left with a swaying, slurring guy who kept calling me dude (which I kind of like) and accidentally hitting my boobs every other emphatically gesticulated sentence (which I didn't like.)

Now he was sufficiently shit-faced, the topic of conversation (read: monologue) turned to getting high and coming back to my place to hang out. He leaned in to kiss me, his tongue rapidly going from right to left as it approached my face. He didn't even register my look of disgust or my laughter as I pushed him away and told him I'd be going home alone.

Regardless of any "stranger danger" element here - the guy was clearly harmless, just someone who'd had a bad week and gotten too drunk to do anything but drink and rant about work - there was no way in hell I was bringing anyone home with me. I told him as much. I didn't want to help him walk anywhere, I didn't want to help him up four flights of stairs, I didn't want him crashing at my place, I didn't want to deal with him in the morning, I didn't want to meet up in the park.

I. Don't. Want. You.

I wasn't sending mixed signals, I was being completely unequivocal. I was done here.

Well, almost done. He'd lost his sense of direction, and I knew he had to get to the other side of the city, probably two miles from where he currently stood, leaning on me for support. I hailed him a cab, took out the cash I'd withdrawn to pay for drinks, and gave it to the driver, telling him to take my date to wherever he could unlock the door.

Waving them off, I turned, shuddered, and walked home, where I finished the bottle of wine I'd started earlier, and looked at the clock. Almost 3 a.m., I though, shaking my head. What a weird night.

After finishing the wine, the movie I was watching on Netflix, and skyping with my best friend to regale her with my crazy night, I collapsed into bed at around 4 a.m., struck by the surreality of the night, and laughed gently to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

Now, I realise I shouldn't have gone out for a drink with a guy who calls at midnight. But when he said, "Why not?" I literally didn't have (or perhaps want) a reason why not. I just moved to a city where I don't know anyone, and was getting pretty tired of sitting on my own in the evenings. I wanted the spontaneity of deciding to go out at midnight, having a wonderful time with a guy I'd just met, and coming home again. The potential was there. Unfortunately, the guy was not.

I think I'll keep my spontaneous meetups to the daylight hours from now on.

But I want to!

My significant other and I are both journalists. That means we're really in-tune with observing emotions and are aces when it comes to open communication. Right? Nah.

Today I tried something new. Mountain biking. He thought I didn't want to. I did. He was happily surprised. It was great. I got muddy. Like, really muddy. Now we have a new “couple hobby.”

It's strange how perceptions are often – okay almost always – so wrong. I like being in the woods, I like getting covered in dirt on very rare occasion. In the end he was very proud of my awesome biking skills too. Seriously, I was pretty surprised.

And that's the other thing – I was terrified of trying it at first. It seems like such a “dude” sport. I like to throw around a ball or stretch my body in seemingly unimaginable ways, but the idea of hurdling around trees on a hunk of metal didn't seem like the greatest of ideas. Hearing the man talk of bumps and bruises, branches and bugs (there were a TON of those. Ick) didn't help either. I was really unsure. I'm admittedly quite chick-y, so there's that, and wasn't sure how my bosses would respond to me trying to type with a broken arm. But all was well, I stuck to the easy trails, a great decision because, you know, the whole broken arm thing.

It was fun. I'm glad I tried something new and that he wanted me to. Opening the door to even tiny things like this can be a great couple accomplishment.

Safety first kids