fish&grits

Summer is coming, and its time I start taking advantage of being in such close proximity to cities like DC, Baltimore, Boston, and….

PHILLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

^^ Im going to this! I just got my tickets this week. I am SO FUCKING EXCITED. Beyond seeing all of the artists, Ive never been to Philly. This is going to be a damn good time. Like I cannot even. The Roots for the firs time, Solange again, Joey Bada$$, Sonnymoon, Robert Glasper, DJ Premier, and Im hearing whispers of Frank Ocean? WHAT.

My birthday was great. I spent my first hour of being 25 on a mostly empty 4 train, headed back to Brooklyn after a dope Quadron concert. The next morning I got woken up with a phone call from my family. They asked me what I was doing for the day, I told them I didnt know, and they said “how about you have dinner with us!” They were in NYC. Totally surprised me. It was so good seeing them, I was sure I wouldnt see them again until Christmas. 

I got to play with Mookie on a playground in Brooklyn Heights by the water. I took some great pictures, and we walked down the sidewalk while he taught me to whistle. My mom and grandma got to see my apartment, which was great because it was sunny out, music was playing on the streets, the fruit vendors were out, people were selling socks and incense, shea butter, books, whatever. They could not have come at a more perfect time. 

We later went to Canal Street where they got a real NYC welcome when we witnessed a shop owner attack a thief with a purse, WHACK WHACK WHACK, only to have him crank his arm back and punch her in the face. She took it all in stride, and the thief was caught. I spent the walk back to the train station telling Mookie to never steal and to never hit a girl. 

I spent the rest of the weekend with a couple friends and had one awkward encounter lol. Lets just say I tried to end the weekend with a bang and it just….didnt work out. Haha. One day I’ll combine all of my awkward stories about guys into a small book. 

A few days later, something came over me. I was at work, listening in on a call. It was a long demonstration about a new type of software that builds flash and web banners for you. I wasnt paying too much attention, I was tweeting, looking at instragram and tumblr, when I just….smiled. I think I was missing something on my birthday. I texted Justin for the first time in 4 months. 

I said “dude..what are we doing?”

He said (paraphrasing here) “Idk man…just being stubborn, wanna come to my house and smoke about it?” 

And thus, our friendship was reborn. And in good time, because Im gearing up to have a good summer. 

Theres a ton of free concerts coming up, Mos Def, Lianne La Havas, and Quadron among others. And Justin and I have tickets to go see John Stewart at the end of June. Theres also my trip to Chicago that Im planning for the end of sumer, and then theres….the collective.

Ok so basically, I had this idea a long time ago, before i moved to NYC, that I wanted to throw shows in my apartment. And after moving here, the idea fought its way to the top of my head again, but I expanded on it. I just want a group of friends, who really love or really do music, and I want this to be a place they can come, hang out, and do music. Small intimate shows, only my friends, or close friends of friends. And theres a few other pieces of it as well that Im trying to piece together. 

The key word here though is friends. people I really trust and connect with, so I cant say how soon this will happen, but Ive been thinking about it more and more after going to a small show in Justin’s friends apartment in Soho. 

It got me thinking. I took in everything as I walked around her apartment. The lighting, and the fact that they were actually selling their CD in her apartment. So thats something Im really looking forward to building organically, no matter how long it takes. I know that if I take my time, and naturally make my friends rather than being a “socialite”, it’ll turn into exactly what I want it to. 

Theres no name or anything for it yet. And theres a lot of little details that I have swirling in my head. The subtle branding, the social aspect. idk, I think itll be really subtle, underground, and hip hop. Im excited. I hope it happens. 

I have to get dressed now. Yes, its 10:45, but Justin actually has his first NYC show in an hour in Bushwick and I told him I’d come support. :) 

I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for Wednesday morning. Just my annual check-up. But I just pushed it back two weeks because Im tired of doctors appointments. Blah. I have a cloud over my head today. But my birthday was pretty nice. Id like to have a nicely written post up about it by the end of the day. 

I have not been well for 2 weeks. Can you believe it? 2 weeks man. With something or other.

The day after my last post, my voice got the worst its ever been in my entire life. I woke up and tested my voice and it was so bad that i got scared. I went and looked in the mirror. I took my cellphone and turned on the flashlight app and opened my mouth. There were white spots on my tonsils and they were swollen and  a deep dark red. It was 7am and I didnt have to be up for another 30 minutes, but I got dressed and went to the doctor.

I was told I had some sort of virus or infection in my throat and that the white stuff was pus on my tonsils. I didnt even know you could get pus on your tonsils. 

The doctor said I had tonsillitis. And also Laryngitis and that there was nothing I could do but take the antibiotics prescribed to me and “ride it out”. So thats what Ive been doing. 

I was so hoarse that people at work cringed and looked at me with pity whenever I spoke lol. But today, my voice is significantly stronger. Theres only the slightest hint of hoarseness whenever I try to speak in a high pitched voice and Im sure even that will be gone by maybe Wednesday. I still hurts to swallow, especially in the mornings. Hopefully that’ll be gone soon too.

What I have been doing the most of, is coughing. I assume its my body just trying to expel some of the infection. It started this weekend, perfectly on Saturday morning being shaken violently awake by a cough. The first of many. If someone had been counting and said I’d coughed over a 100 times this weekend, I wouldnt be surprised. So I mostly stayed in  except a small trip to Chinatown/Soho and today when I hung out in Williamsburg for awhile, just walking around. You know…as much as people love to hate that place, its a cool place to be. Probably in my top 3 favorite neighborhoods in NYC. Chinatown/Soho is #1. 

I was out in Soho shopping at Muji for a small notebook and pen. Hemz has me reading his script and writing notes on it and I didnt like any of the pens I had at home nor how they reacted to the paper, so I decided to buy new ones. Any excuse to buy new pens and notebooks is fine with me. 

Going out really hurt me though. I would be fine walking around, maybe a couple of coughs, but being on the trains..idk…something about the air. I would cough uncontrollably. It was torture. I tried to hold it in so I wouldnt seem gross, but I couldnt help it. I shouldnt have been out at all, really. 

Work is the same. Ive been working on my first big report. Its called a wrap-up, and it basically breaks down everything that happened within and around the campaign. We report on how well it did, where and why it didnt do so well, and what next steps were gonna take. It scares me a little just because my campaign had so much drama associated with it, and I don’t want to fuck this up. We present the report to the client on my birthday, which at first annoyed me, but then it was pointed out to me that as soon as its over, Im done with them and I can breathe easy. And maybe my throat will be clear too, and maybe I wont be sick anymore. That would be so poetic, right? To turn 25 and leave so many things behind, literally and figuratively. To be able to breathe easy.

My voice is weak. I don’t sound very much like myself right now. I got hit hard by something terrible. Tuesday was the worst, I had to call out of work. That was one miserable fucking night for me.

Im slowly recovering, the headaches are gone (for now), Im not sneezing anymore, I dont have the chills anymore, my glands arent swollen anymore, and my sniffles are down to a minimum. But my voice….

It hurts to cough, and Im coughing alot. It hurts to laugh, and my friends are hilarious. When I sing my stupid songs that I make up in the morning, my voice breaks at every other word and comes out as air. And it definitely hurts to swallow.

I aint been right since last Monday, and this shit is getting old. Wtf is wrong with me man. Literally. What is wrong.

I’m beginning to think that it’s just my “thing” to get really really really sick and then go to the hospital and have nothing wrong with me.

The first time this happened was around last year while I was waiting for a callback from the interview for Brightline. I woke up one morning and I had a headache. this didn’t worry me because I get headaches more than the average person (I have one right now). I got a little worried when I was on my way home and I realized I still had that same headache from that morning. The headache raged all through the night and into the next morning, and finally that afternoon, I got really worried. I started doing what I should NEVER do but what I ALWAYS do when Im sick and that is type my symptoms into Google. 

Migraines? 

Cluster headaches?

Brain aneurysm? 

I freaked out and called my mom crying and she, in the way that only she knows how, calmed me completely down, shut me completely up, and told me to schedule a doctors appointment that next morning. And so I did. And 2 MRI Scans later, my tests were negative. They didnt find anything wrong in my brain.  I was given some pills and that was it. So my 3-days-long headache will remain a mystery. I also get headaches pretty frequently and I guess Ill never know why that is either.

This time it was my stomach. I woke up Wednesday morning feeling bloated, which I thought was strange because it was not the “time” for me to be feeling bloated and I also hadnt eaten any dairy. I figured it was just really bad gas and it would pass but I felt uncomfortable the whole day. That day was supposed to be special because I happened to be wearing a pair of jeans that were a size smaller than my starting size, but as the day progressed and the pain got stronger, they only became a hindrance. My belly literally swelled. It hurt to even try to suck it in. I didnt even like sitting because of how my stomach felt. And I had lost my appetite. 

Later that night I was at a show in Williamsburg and the pain had graduated to long sharp painful stabs. I struggled to hold on. I was in so much pain that I had already decided that I wasnt going to make it to see the headliner, Blu. I tried to stay out of the way, in the back, in a corner, leaning against a beam for support. I guess I looked terrible because I was asked if I was okay. I smiled and said I was fine. I met a cool guy that night. His name was Justin and he rapped on the first track on Blu’s compilation album “Open”. He complimented me on my shirt (the Jay Electronica shirt) and we talked hip hop. I managed to hold back any winces and appear normal. At one point, he asked if I wanted a drink and I said no. (i had NO appetite for ANYTHING) but he got me a water anyway. I was holding out for Tiron & Ayomari and talking to Justin helped pass the time, they finally got on stage and (fortunately) opened with my favorite song of theirs. About 5 songs in, I had to go. Had this show had been in Atlanta, I maybe would have stayed until the end of their set, but T&A have been here at least twice since I moved here, and I promised to catch them next time no matter what. Ive also seen Blu twice already. I gave Justin my number (my phone had died) and left. 

I must have looked so crazy walking back to the train station. I finally gave in to the pain and started moaning and wincing as I walked. It hurt sooo bad. Worst pain I had been in that I could remember. At one point I stopped and doubled over and just held my stomach. I walked into the first bodega (this was Williamsburg so 24 hour organic deli) and asked the guy behind the counter for some Pepto-Bismol. I had to lean a little over the counter to provide me some relief and so Im sure he knew why I decided on the more expensive “maximum strength” after he had told me the regular was cheaper. I am REALLY good with pain. i have a couple tattoos and tons of piercings and none of them “hurt”. i sat straight faced through them all. But this was not a normal stomachache. This truly rocked me. And I was starting to be afraid that it wasnt gas either. 

I sat on the L train filled with people leaving the Liane La Havas concert that was happening next door to the one I had left. A couple next to me were joking around, and talking to someone about how amazing Liane is, but all I could do is lean against the railing and breathe slowly like a woman having contractions. I opened the Pepto Bismol and drank from the bottle and slunk back against the railing.  I must have looked miserable. I didnt even care.

At home, I was finally able to use the bathroom after being constipated all day. My stomachache even died down. I thought it was just the worst case of gas id ever had. Just in case, I texted my friend Joanne and asked what it was like when she had appendicitis. When the stomachache continued (albeit not NEARLY as intense) the next morning I left work and went straight to the emergency clinic. 

I was waiting to get a CAT scan and I was thinking about how sad it was that I had no one here in case I had to go into surgery and have my appendix removed. Id have no one by my side. I went to use the bathroom and I miraculously had a little bit of cell service in that dungeon of a doctors office and texts flooded in from Sylvia & Sean asking if I was okay and if I needed anyone to come with me. And when I got back to the office that day, my boss told me that I shouldnt feel like I have to go through something like that alone. 

So I was waiting for this CAT Scan. I was wearing nothing but the thin doctors gown, my panties and my shoes. It was freezing so a nurse had thrown a blanket over me. I got scared for a second, I looked in the room and saw the MRI machine and thought I was going back in that thing. That machine awakened the claustrophobic in me. I hated it. The CAT Scan machine was much less scary. It was smaller and I wasnt going in head first. A doctor game out and took some blood and inserted a tube into my arm. I laid down on the table and after a few passes through the machine, he warned me that he was going to put a contrast (aka a dye. helps the doctors see the organs better in the X-rays) in my blood and that it may feel warm. I nodded and about 10 seconds later my veins felt like they were being filled with hot water. I felt it all over my entire body. Everywhere. It almost tickled. 

Everyone was super concerned when I got back to work. I told about 20 people I was okay and later got a call that my tests were negative but to keep an eye on myself. 

And so I have. To be honest, I can point out right now a place in my stomach that still kinda hurts to the touch, so Im going back if its not gone in a few days. 

So another false alarm? I sometimes I feel like Im maybe one of those Mystery Diagnosis patients where l keep going to the Doctor and no one finds anything until I have some crazy ass symptom and I find out I have some rare disease. 

At least then Ill have an explanation for these things.

In my grown up news, In addition to signing up for my credit card, I also got put on a payment plan to start paying down the rest of my car loan. The good news is, instead of the 8K that I owe them, I took a settlement for 2.4K, so that’ll probably be paid off hopefully in another year and a half, maybe less. 

Grownupping is hard.

I planned on pretty much staying in this entire weekend. As a matter of fact, this had been decided LAST weekend. I was gonna sit inside for 2 days straight, and clean, and do my hair, and eat. But then I was on twitter and this slid across my timeline 

Holy. Fucking. Shit. 

See, I havent posted about the current predicament I’m in. I bought tickets to see this kid AND James Blake on the same day and didnt realize. So I figured I’d go to this, see him perform, get my fill, and call ticketmaster for a refund, freeing me to see James Blake. 

The show started at 8, so I decided to be there at 7. But at some point during the day, my brain confused be there at 7 with leave at 7. 

I got off the train at 8:20, but whatever, Danny Brown is a crazy ass rapper, it’s not gonna start on time. The Uniqlo truck was so big I could see it even as I waited across the street from the plaza. And I could hear Danny. I heard him say his catch phrase “CHUT!!”,or at least thats what I think he says, you be the judge. 

He says that at the beginning of alot of his songs. I had made it just in time, he was starting. As I crossed the street, it took me a minute to realize that I felt like I was swimming upstream. All of these people were rushing past me in the opposite direction. And then it sunk in. They were leaving. I had missed him. Wtf. The show actually started on time and I had missed him. My train ride from Brooklyn was pointless. 

And I had gotten all dressed up dressed too!

Instead of waiting around, I just got back on the train and hung at Tea Lounge (my new favorite place) until I got sick. 

Ok. So. Im lactose intolerant. Like…super lactose intolerant. I cant eat cheddar flavored chips. I cant eat candy bars. I can’t eat really rich cookies, etc. Sometimes I forget that. So I ordered a Salted Caramel Latte, without asking them for soy. I realized it as I started drinking, and figured i may as well finish and just get home before the sickness started in. 

There was a band of kids playing. They had to be in highschool. There was this adorable kid playing guitar and singing, and his shy pink-haired friend who was supposed to be singing with him was just standing there with the mic at her mouth looking down. He kept looking at her and smiling, trying to warm her up, but she was really scared. They were wonderful. I wanted to at least stay until they finished. They were on their last song (called Brian can’t turn on the keyboard) when my head started hurting and my stomach started aching. I stopped at a bodega (but this was Park Slope, so it was a Gourmet Grocery) and got a Woodchuck as consolation for missing Danny Brown and being sick and Ive been sitting on my couch drinking it and watching Wayans Brothers. My Saturday just sort of…fizzed out. *sigh*