Size 142

It's beautiful in New York today. It's finally the April we've been yearning for: crystalline, warm and glistening with spring's familiar clarity of purpose.

As the weather shifts I launch into my quarterly practice of trying to make seasonally inappropriate clothing thrive out of their element. In that weird post-winter, pre-spring transition period for instance, I often try to make flip flops work as regular shoes even though the chill April wind cuts across my bare toes like swift swipes with a shard of glass. I'm also guilty of wearing slinky summer dresses with a pair of tights in mid-winter, justifying them sheepishly with a scarf and blazer in hopes no one will remember they saw me in the same dress at a barbeque in July.

Today I'm especially uncomfortable. I walked out of the house in my cheap Target chain link print summer dress made smarter (I thought, at 7:30 a.m.) topped by a velvet blazer. But the dress is flimsy and too big on top and I made it work with a mini safety pin covered in cat hair that I found in a jewelry bowl on my dresser. As I walked to the subway holding the bottom part of the dress closed against the wind, my mother's words came at me from the recesses of a Penney's fitting room when I was 10: "ill-fitting", "unbecoming", "pulling around your middle". I've spent the morning tugging the front of the chain link dress closed, pulling at my boot tops to meet its hem, buttoning and unbuttoning my blazer. And the simple truth is it doesn't fit. It doesn't matter how expertly I hid my mini pin, my bra is still nearly in full view when I sit at my desk, which further confirms my image as part-time office worker/summer intern at a brothel.

It's all got me thinking about trying to make things fit when they don't. I'm doing that outside my closet too.

As part of the "chrysalis curriculum", we've decided it's time to move. Now, I'm not going to bore you with tales of rental woe, broker shenanigans or apartment atrocities. It's pretty obvious that moving in New York is no joke. The entire cosmos has to be in line (as does your bank statement, w-2, employment history and at least 6 months' worth of pay stubs) in order to even begin the search. But I'm finding that the desperate need I feel to keep my hot summer moments in heart and hand by walking around in a sundress in December is similar to the desperation that has me trying to make our perfect apartment out of what is very often just a mini bar with a bathroom. It's a stick of dynamite created by two polar opposites: needing to move forward and wanting to hold on.

The clawing insanity that accompanies hours spent on Craigslist browsing listings intensifies, hour by hour, making each and every little ridiculous blue link look more and more possible. "One bedroom studio". Okay, what is that? If it has a room, it sounds like it could work. A "one bedroom studio". Sounds painterly. Sounds artistic. Done. It's our apartment. "New walk-in apartment". You can walk in it? Well, thank God. That's what we want! To be able to walk in it. Done. It's our apartment.

And on I go, just like that, trying to make things fit. Pulling, tugging, hiking. Convertible 2 room? Junior 1 bedroom but on the Upper East Side? Bushwick? Flatbush? Give it to me, lemme see it, wrap it around me, try to fit us inside it, inside the neighborhood, bedroom, bathroom. Make us, it. Pretty soon, I think, I'm gonna realize I can put it on and zip it up but I might not be able to breathe in it. And that's not progress, that's just a filmsy chain link dress on a chilly April day.

So there's this little red building at 142 Franklin Street in Greenpoint. We're kinda hoping for it. We don't know enough about it yet. It might be a chain link dress, it might be a fuckin' Versace. Either way, this post is my vow not to pull and tug so hard but to instead a.) wear seasonally appropriate shoes and b.) shop around, look for the best fit, then move ahead.