I swoon for you

Let me bring you back to Saturday. What a decadent adventure Saturday was. I spent almost the entire day in Brooklyn, my heart's happy place. I took the train in from Melbourne, New Jersey. And instead of riding straight out to Brooklyn from NY Penn Station, I decided to partake of Manhattan a bit first. Also I had an ulterior motive. I all of a sudden hated the dress I was wearing and felt not at all New York savvy and needed to make my way to the nearest H&M for a little fashion emergency.
Honestly, if I don't feel good in my clothes it can ruin my whole day and there would be none of that. And a little foreshadowing here, I had a very posh dinner that I could not be looking schlepp-y for.
On my leisurely stroll away from the train station I happened upon the Flat Iron Building, which I have seen dozens of times in photographs and have always wanted to see myself in NY but had not.
I felt like a kid who just spotted a toy store, as my pace quickened and my pulse started to ratchet up, while my neck craned to get a better look. I resisted the urge to point and look around, like, do you guys see this? Do you know this is here? How can you blithely go about texting when there is a piece of architectural genius towering over you?
I got up close and began to take pictures and just stare. It doesn't always hit me that I am actually in New York now. I mean even when I am, like at that moment, roving the city, I still feel a little like a guest. Especially when I have to pull out my stinkin' subway map which boldly declares that yes, I am still finding my way. It pains me to do this. I feel like with my innate directional skills--you may doubt them as my many references to getting lost as of late, but they're there--I should have the entire subway system down pat by now.
Plus I hate that I am marching along, head held high seeming to fit in and then as soon as the map comes out, even when I try to be sly about it, it unfolds so large and conspicuously the New Yorkers, think, oh tourist, this city doesn't belong to her. Or at least this is what I think is happening. They probably are giving me no regard whatsoever. But I still feel compelled to pull out an old wooden milk crate, tap it with a cane and a flourish, hop up and say,

"Attention New Yorkers: I do belong here. And this city belongs to me too. I don't technically need this subway map but I feel it's a proper precaution as I tend to be overly dramatic and if I didn't have it as a slight crutch I may assume I'd end up with the bodies in the Meadowlands, courtesy of the Mob. That's what I'd assume without this map. So please excuse and don't judge while I peruse. Thank you, kind sirs."

Then I would hop down and take a gracious bow. I feel I should probably have a cape for the bow as well, for full effect, but then I'd just look like a magician and no one would take me seriously at all.
Since I took a detour there with that little pretend picture, let's fast forward to Brooklyn in my new light blue, folksy dress, $15 on sale, paired with a cream United Colors of Benetton scarf that I'd had the good foresight to bring.
I had a date in Cobble Hill that night and needed to look my best. My hair had proper jungle qualities to it, that is to say, frizzy but not too frizzy, and I brought my teaser comb to amp it up when it started to look wilted, which was every hour or so. I love when I have jungle hair. I don't know that anyone else loves it as much as I do, but that's all that matters, no?
Anyhow, as any girl knows, you need to look prime for a date. So when I was haphazardly trying to take a photo and hold my coffee, big mistake, the coffee tipped onto my new dress. I resisted the urge to scream in the middle of the street. My new dress! My designer scarf! Drats! Double drats!
Thankfully the scarf didn't really take the worst hit with the coffee so it covered the spot on the dress, but if I know anything about coffee, I know that it stains right fierce so I made my way to the nearest pharmacy for a Tide Stick. But after much perusing of beautiful Cobble Hill, patisseries, bookstores, churches, I found my dress to be a little wrinkled and that was simply unacceptable. After trying pharmacy after pharmacy for a wrinkle reducing spray, I became obsessive in locating this mysterious magical spray that I all of a sudden had to have to avoid looking like I'd been trampled by a stampede of wild boar.
I knew there was a Target quite a ways off and had an hour and a half before my dinner plans. I had to have the spray. So I walked the fourteen or so blocks, there and back to buy the $8 spray which I'm not even sure did anything, but soothed me mentally. But now I was a bit disheveled, had a light coffee stain hiding under my scarf, my hair was a little more jungle than I liked at this point, and my dress was still markedly wrinkled. And I had a headache.
I was not going to be cranky though. It is not every day you get to attend an unveiling of a restaurant for, wait for it... Kitchen Nightmares! Yeah, my date was with Gordon Ramsay! Okay, to clarify, my date actually was with a girl friend, to attend the relaunch of Mama Maria's in Brooklyn. But it was for Kitchen Nightmares and one Mr. Ramsay would be in attendance. So is it any wonder I was a spazz-case McGillicuddy about my appearance all day? No. No wonder.
By the time we made our way into the hip little downtown restaurant, my anxiousness had settled down and I was ready for some Italian pizza and celebrity spottings! I was satisfied on both counts.
I tried the Garden Bianca. It had zucchini, garlic confit, ricotta and goat cheese. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! My friend got the Margherita pizza. We swapped a couple slices, so we both got to try each. I am not kidding, the sauce on the Margherita pizza was the most exquisite sauce I have ever tasted. And I hate sauce on pizza and always scrape it off, so this is some feat, that I wanted to pour it into a cup and drink it.
Also the twinkly lights strung across the restaurant gave me such a warm and fuzzy I'm in Italy feeling. There's nothing better than when cozy ambiance marries savory food. The perfect dining experience if I do say so.
And on the way out, I passed right by Mr. Ramsay who touched my shoulder and said, "ladies."
So I felt compelled to touch him back. Didn't want to be rude. I touched his shoulder and squeezed, I couldn't help myself, the only thing more delicious than that pizza was this man's muscular shoulder that I was touching. "Big fan," I beamed, then let go, begrudgingly and waltzed out.

Oh what a night!