Brr

There’s this scene I remember from Sex and the City. There are a lot of scenes I remember from Sex and the City, but there’s one in particular I think of at least once a year. Carrie’s sad because of course and it’s a scene of her alone in bed, then she gets up and opens a wardrobe and pulls out a blanket. The whole thing is accompanied with a classic Carrie voiceover where she couldn’t help but wonder something. In this case it was her waxing poetic about the first cool night after a summer of hot ones in New York City, and how magical it felt to grab a blanket and get high and watch Netflix and order Levain cookies on Seamless. That might not be it exactly, it’s been a long time since I’ve actually seen the scene, but some version of that weirdly pops into my head every year when the heat breaks for the first time. Summer’s not over but we’re coming out the other side of the woods.

As previously shared, I watched Sex and the City all the way through during the year I lived in Thailand. I crossed the Burmese border and bought a set of pirated DVDs. Baby’s first binge watch. The DVDs would play but every once in a while they would just emit a piercing noise and the video would freeze (some attempt, I imagine, to prevent the very piracy I was in engaging in) and I just accepted that when that happened I’d have the start the episode over.

I gotta say, my first time through, I loved it, but for a weird reason- I wouldn’t realize until later in my life how much I actually wanted an incredible, Carrie-Lite NYC life. At the time it was almost exclusively because it was literally anything in English. It could have been Ren and Stimpy, or 7th Heaven. It could have been corporate training videos. I took learning Thai really seriously (to the point where I can still form some sentences, even 15 years later) but it was full time, no other options, so when I did get to hear some English I would just let it wash over me. Compared to Thai, English is just… extremely shitty sounding? And the potty mouths on those SATC ladies. I was funneling the verbal garbage into my ears and could not get enough.

Anyway. The weather has been what can only be described as stupid good. Freakish. I’m starting to get those people who think we’re in a simulation. I wish I could freeze time. I mean I don’t, I want time to always be marching forward because I can’t do all of this forever but I can’t overstate how beautiful the combination of 75 degrees and a gentle breeze actually is. My sister tells me that’s what it’s like in LA. Maybe I should move. I don’t love driving. It’s like blow jobs. I don’t love doing it, but I’ve accepted that it’s part of life. I knowwww I’m such a Samantha.