TO DO IN NEW YORK: PEANUT BUTTER & CO.

okay, so here is something so very distinctly new york city: there exists a place near nyu where one can purchase--for six dollars and fifty cents mind you!--a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich. it comes to you on a blue plate with a couple of carrot sticks. 

fancy!

truly, it is completely and totally worth the price. they should charge double! 

(please adjust your sarcasm radar)

it all happened because we had gone to the village for a falafelwaffle. this being the first falafelwaffle in an awful lawful long time. (forgive me.) but the falafel was terribly disappointing! possibly because mamoun's has gone and gotten themselves a B for sanitation? what happened, mamoun??

actually. while i am on the subject. i read somewhere that even a restaurant kitchen earning a C-- which is practically a failing grade in the restaurant business-- that kitchen is still cleaner than even the cleanest home kitchen.  i mean, let that roll around in your head for a moment and call me macaroni. okay, but don't think about it for too long, i am telling a story here.

after our mamouns was mamouned, and as we stood there at the waffle shop, mouths agape at the boarded up, depressed-looking, closed-forever waffle shop (nooooo!),  the holbs said to me, "want a fluffer nutter instad?" upon which time the wife (that's me) said, "dude yes i want a fluffer nutter." 

well. now you know how it happened.

and sometimes! i mean, sometimes this city is so strange. two perfectly rational adults had just agreed to spend six dollars and fifty cents on a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich and not one of us had the sense to say--"but wait a minute here." 

UNADVISABLE SIDE STORY: when we lived in brooklyn there was this mexican restaurant on our street we wanted to try, and so one day, having just returned from thanksgiving weekend in california, we decided to finally go. so we walked there, only it wasn't there! we figured we must have passed it. so we walked back, then walked there again. still not there! so then we walked up and down the street twice, and then all the way up to the promenade, and we still couldn't find it, and just when we'd started to wonder whether we'd both simultaneously lost our minds (which isn't likely; likely i'd go first and then drag brandon slowly and painfully down with me into my delusions), we realized--hey wait, how long has this mattress store been here? is it possible this mattress store was a mexican restaurant three days ago? 

the cliffhanger spoiler is: yes. 

and now you know that story.

so. six dollars and two quarters for a peanut butter sandwich. shoot. in america, as i was pointing out to my dearest husband once it was finished, one could buy an entire loaf of bread, plus the fluff and the butter, for about the same price. but here in new york that'd only get you the bread and maybe a quarter of a jar of fluff. because the city . . . i mean, she pricey.

and yet, it's okay. 

the sandwich was dry and depressing, 

but this was our view as we left and you know what?

sometimes you get what you pay for.

and anyway, the stereo there was pumping 90s-era britney and the little mermaid soundtrack. and no, i was not the only one singing along. (although yes, i was the only girl singing along.) and so yes, in this regard, i do feel that those sandwiches were possibly worth the $6.50, after all.