All About My Cats… and Maine

I am back from my “grand” vacation of the year… a week in Maine with my family and boyfriend.  It was relaxing, as was to be expected, way too full of eating (also to be expected) and not nearly a long enough escape from the hell that is my job and this wretched city (also, to be expected…).  What vacation would be long enough though? Apart from a permanent vacation….

I didn’t do as much physical activity as I had hoped to do prior to embarking on my vacation.  The hotel had bikes to take out, but the roads surrounding the hotel were not at all conducive to biking as there was no shoulder on the road at all.  I also thought the hotel would have kayaks, but sadly all they had were some pitiful rowboats, which I conned my boyfriend into taking out with me one afternoon.  We didn’t last more than 40 minutes in the row boat, as the waves around the island we were attempting to skirt around got very choppy on one end, and the oars kept slipping out from the oar holders.

Boothbay Harbor itself is a sleepy little town with not much to do besides eat, drink, and relax… or go boating.  Which is precisely what we did.  We took a chartered sail boat out one day as a family which was really nice.  We also walked around the little town and explored the shops and restaurants.  I’d have to say, my favorite meal of the week was honestly at the local Italian restaurant, Ports of Italy.  Who would have thought that a coastal town in Maine would have such a good Italian restaurant?!  Not me.  I had the frutti di mare, and this amazing cold seafood salad as an appetizer.  Everything was awesome, including the wine. My second favorite meal, was probably at the hotel’s dining room on the last night of our stay.

There was also an alpaca farm near the hotel, where my niece, my sister and myself got a lovely tour from one of the owners and learned a whole lot about alpacas and agriculture!  They also had some beautiful chickens that I was obsessed with spotting each and every time we passed their farm in the car.

We made a day trip to Freeport to hit up L.L. Bean’s and the outlets… I got some sweet plaid pants from Calvin Klein that I am VERY excited to wear this fall.  I’ve been looking for plaid pants for the last year, and these are JUST what I was looking for.  My other “big” purchase for myself was a copy of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, which I cannot put down once I pick up to start reading.  Sadly, my work schedule and demanding cats have been preventing me from picking it up more than I would like this week….

My boyfriend and I also took a drive to downtown Portland to explore.  Portland is such a nice, clean, small city with a lot of awesome bars and restaurants.  We are planning on going back for a long weekend stay this winter to do more exploring and see just how much worse winter in Maine could be than in NYC.

On our way back from Portland, we checked out a suburb called Cape Elizabeth, which had a surprisingly awesome park that we explored.  I was disappointed to find there was no beach though – just a bunch of rocks.  The rocks were beautiful, but I am sad to say I didn’t don a swimsuit once this vacation to either get in the pool, hot tub, or ocean.  I didn’t go to the beach even once this summer… now that is sad.

I know… I know… I basically take the Instagram/fashion blog shots of others that I would hope they could take of me.  Sadly, no one ever takes good candids of me.  They get me when I’m looking down and have five chins, or from some weird angle where my body looks like Jabba the hutt.  I just know people’s angles… what can I say? I mean, even the shot of the alpaca up above is flattering.

I milked my vacation for all it was worth, and scheduled a hair appointment when I came home for some red low lights (I’m going white in my temples, and color is now a necessity if I don’t want to look older than I am), and continued eating like a fatted calf for the remainder of the weekend spent in Bainbridge (you name it, I ate it… I did resist meat however, which I am very proud of).  I cooked a mean carbonara for my parents upon returning home Friday night, and then on Saturday night, feeling inspired and not wanting to let the trend of devouring seafood die, I made a linguine with clams for family dinner.

When I came back to NYC, fatter and broker than ever on Sunday evening, I entered into a dark vortex of negative thoughts and resentment towards this city and towards my job, which I am still trying to turn around.  I have to get out of this city as soon as I can… I’m just so over it. I also started resenting my choice to get low lights… I think the red is too dark and doesn’t flatter me.  But that could just be me being me.  I am hoping the color fades/lightens in the next couple of weeks.  I’m trying to eat healthy this week, so sadly, I won’t be cooking anything fun.

Ah yes, almost forgot – the second part of this blog:  while I was bored out of my mind one night on vacation (since the entire town of Boothbay Harbor shuts down after 8pm, and even the hotel bar was dead after 9pm), my boyfriend and I somehow came up with human profiles for each of our cats, which continued to escalate in absurdity until I wrote the full biographies on Sunday to post on IG.  If my cats were humans, here is the type of humans they would be:

MEET TUNA:

Tuna is a door man at a strip club in Queens. He isn’t allowed at his uncles or grandparents house for the holidays because he was caught stealing Christmas ornaments off the tree to sell for cash to buy meth. He spent his high school days in remedial math classes and detention. When Tuna comes home, his parents have to lock up their medications. He usually shows up to family dinners with a 6-pack of Budweiser, and a half-eaten box of Enntemmen’s powdered donuts. Tuna enjoys tailgating at high school football games, fixing dirt bikes, dabbling in psychedelics, and fights at dive bars. Tuna’s idea of a perfect vacation is a week at Water Safari. Tuna’s greatest aspiration in life is to own a worm farm and grow magic mushrooms, as well as to make it to the Trump 2020 rally in Cincinnati. Tuna is a Dooms Day prepper who keeps a stash of ammo, AK-47s and ramen noodles in his parents’ attic. Tuna has a girlfriend named Crystal, who is five months pregnant with another man’s baby… but he doesn’t care, it’s true love. Tuna prefers to be called Chip.

MEET MR. PEEPER:

Peeper is a professor of anthropology studies at University of Oxford. He has a Ph.D. in law and women’s studies from Harvard. Growing up, he was the pride and joy of his parent’s lives – he was a straight-A student, Eagle Scout, and spent his summers voluntarily de-worming orphans in underdeveloped nations. He speaks 5 languages fluently and works as a volunteer, teaching deaf children Cantonese. He enjoys wine tasting, oil painting, baking clotted cream scones, throwing elaborate dinner parties, and donating money to Harvard and Yale science departments. He was also a good friend of The late Jeffrey Epstein – for 10 years they ran a mathematics camp for underprivileged teenagers. When Peeper isn’t working or volunteering, he enjoys traveling to the Cayman Islands, South Africa, and to his winery in Provence. He is married to a woman 25 years his junior, and together they have three perfect, little globe-trotting protégées named Theodore, Eloise, and Amadeus who are all geniuses.