Slobbing in is the new going out

Posted: February 10, 2010

New York is an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Problem is, when faced with a smorgasboard of choice, if you try and eat everything it just makes you really sick-best to have a little nibble now and again.

So last week I didn't leave my apartment for three days. Not as tragic as it sounds, although I was wearing sweatpants for most of the time. This was a real treat for The American, who no doubt wanted to jump my bones every time he caught site of the grey marl fabric caressing my unexercised backside.

There are many thing I should be doing in New York. I should be going to musuems and exploring Harlem and jogging around Central Park. I should be finding the perfect cupcake and getting to know Brooklyn. I should be, but very often I am not.

Asides from the sub zero temperatures I have another justified reason for my hermitation and that is "Getting serious about my freelancing" because now I am now "Freelancing full time". This is a phrase I will repeat over and over until It becomes actual reality. I do this in accordance with the advice in 'Six Figure Freelancing'-a book written by a former lawyer who approaches her writing with the organisational skills of a Whitehouse press secretary.

The thing with New York is that as well as facilitating a great social life that means you need never need be home, it also facilitates you never leaving home. I mostly blame delivery.com where you can order everything from Thai curry to a pack of toilet rolls.
Why walk to the corner shop in minus 2 degrees when you can get a man to deliver you a pint of milk and a loaf of bread right to your door? Or as delivery.com puts it 'Why cook when you can click?'. Even though I love to cook, it's a sentiment I find hard to disagree with.
On delivery.com you can even get bars of Dairy Milk delivered. They should use that as their advertising slogan.

In any case my corner shop's not much cop. It's a Yoga health food supermarket that sells Acai berry smoothies and tortillas made of sprouts. The receipts say "Om Shanti" at the bottom in place of "Thanks for your custom". It may as well not be there for all the good it serves on weeks like this when I'm hormonal and would step over human flesh to get at chocolate. They don't even have anything with sugar in there. The closest is Agave Nectar, which is something to do with a cactus.

But it's not as if staying in means I have to become an unhealthy slob. This is what I tell myself on day one of not leaving the apartment as I order a new diet book from Barnes and Noble online while inhaling a Hersheys Cookies and Cream bar. The only flavour that doesn't taste of vomit.

I then go on Fresh Direct to order food required by the new diet book and begrudgingly some other stuff for The Teenager and American to eat. I work full time now, they should shop for their own dinner.

Next I open the box to the Davina workout DVD that Paul sent me for Christmas. And they I shut it again. And open. And shut...

On Wednesday while procrastinating some pitching emails I buy myself a vintage coat from Etsy. It's for Fashion week, so technically purchasing it is 'work'. It will serve the function of keeping me warm on days when sweatpants won't be part of my ensemble. Days I look forward to with mixed emotion.

That night I realise that I don't even need to go to the video store as I can order films from the tele or from the 'Roku', which is one of 657 unfathomable technical gadgets that The American has bought into the apartment-the result of which is a kind of electrical version of Day of the Triffids.

On Thursday The Teenager sends me an I.M. from her bedroom next door and when I get up from the sofa I realise my arse has gone numb

In the summer I will take myself to parks. In the spring probably even coffee shops?

On Friday I am forced to leave the house to go to Connecticut to work with my NYFW partner. That's short for New York Fashion Week. Did you like that acronym? It's amazing how quickly you can become a wanker when fashion is involved. Anyway, I get out of the house super early (well, before 8a.m.) and I am like a newborn blinking into the daylight.

I skip around to 8th avenue and hail a cab to Grand Central station in 3 seconds flat. When I get there I come in through one of the second floor entrances I am greeted with the sunshine streaming celestially through the floor to ceiling window ahead. I stop. It makes my breath shorter. New York buzzes it's business around me. It's how I imagine heaven would look, well a busy heaven anyway.

I breathe it in and it tastes all the sweeter after my enforced starvation.

Now eat me New York.