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October 2, 2006

I left my heart in a pot of fondue...

Introduction to a cheese addict

A week ago I was agonizing, as I tend to do, over how to introduce myself to all of you here at Literary Chicks. Focus on writing? On my old job as an editor? On my sad, sad addictions to reality TV, cheese doodles, and Target’s Dollar Spot?

And then my mom and I went to New York for the weekend. (Let me just add here that my mom rocks like a rocking thing, and this girls’ weekend, just for the two of us, was all her idea. She gets so many Fabulous Mom points, there aren’t enough left in the world for the other moms.) And I realized that almost everything about the weekend is a perfect Introduction to Amy. How convenient!

Let’s start with the biggie, shall we? Cheese. Those “behold the power of cheese” ads were probably written with me in mind. And mom and I ate at what can only be called a shrine to cheese, a veritable Sacred House O’Cheese on Friday night – a restaurant called Artisanal. It’s French Country, but it’s also a fromagerie – there are gougeres (delicious little cheese popovers), fondue with bread, meat, fingerling potatoes, apple slices, and more, a cheese shop, and cheesecake that is almost better than sex. (Almost.) For someone who loves cheese, eating there is like the culmination of a pilgrimage. I was very tempted to kiss our waiter.

Then there’s music, or more specifically the chance to listen to my MP3 player uninterrupted. In the car at home, SkaterBoy, the fifteen-year-old, makes barfing noises if I play Sarah Maclachlan, and Jet’s “Cold Hard Bitch” isn’t exactly appropriate for Miss Information, the three-year-old (who doesn’t want to hear anything if Dora or Elmo aren’t singing it anyway). But…two flights! A couple of boring hours sitting in the airport after shuffling through security! A train ride from the airport into the city! Just me and the collection of songs my husband claims is schizophrenic. Bliss.

Let’s not forget books. New York is nothing if not a book lover’s city. Everywhere you turn, some enterprising entrepreneur is selling used books on the sidewalk, and there are bookstores in every neighborhood. Mom and I went to the Strand, which is another mecca—inside there are 18 miles of used and new books, as they like to say, stacked nearly to the ceiling. Again, there was the temptation to kiss the guy who rang me up. Only the idea of being arrested for lewd behavior in front of my mother stopped me.

We stopped for tea at Café Reggio on Friday afternoon. I’ve never learned to like coffee (although there are days I really yearn for the caffeine jolt in a cup of espresso), but tea now…give me tea or give me death. Irish Breakfast, English Afternoon, Earl Grey, Prince of Wales, doesn’t matter. I am a tea whore. There’s something so civilized about sitting down with a freshly brewed cup in the afternoon—especially when the idea of being civilized is under attack from the pile of dirty laundry in the upstairs hall, the reheated pizza I’m serving for dinner (again), and the most intelligent conversation I’ve heard all day was between SpongeBob and Patrick Star.

The last of my favorite things? Weird old stuff. Okay, sure, it’s a broad definition, but it fits. Give me a flea market and I am a happy girl. There’s something about the chance to buy funky vintage silver napkin rings as well as cheap socks (three for $5!) that makes me incredibly happy. It’s a little like looking through someone’s closet – picking through old photos, used records, mismatched silverware, Tweetie Bird T-shirts, and the kind of jewelry your grandmother might have worn that’s fascinating to someone as curious and slightly twisted as a writer. At the risk of sounding completely smarmy, there are a million stories in those tables of junk – even if some of them are about crazy old cat ladies and men who clearly have a strange attachment to Leif Garrett.

So that’s me. Or part of me, at least. I’m glad to be here! And I promise to keep the slobbering cheese love to a minimum.

Posted by at 8:13 AM | Comments (11)

Comments

Posted by: Barb at October 2, 2006 9:47 AM

Posted by: Amy Garvey at October 2, 2006 9:50 AM

Posted by: Eileen at October 2, 2006 9:59 AM

Posted by: Lani at October 2, 2006 11:47 AM

Posted by: Beth at October 2, 2006 4:17 PM

Posted by: berni at October 2, 2006 5:34 PM

Posted by: Cynthia at October 2, 2006 6:44 PM

Posted by: Janina at October 2, 2006 7:24 PM

Posted by: Whitney at October 3, 2006 7:49 AM

Posted by: Michelle C at October 4, 2006 5:27 AM

Posted by: Amy Garvey at October 4, 2006 8:25 AM