Joshua Bryce Newman

Via my sister-in-law Nina, who noted that this somehow reminded her of me and Jess:

Sadly, she’s totally right.

Jess: AND TAKE OUT THE TRASH!!

Me: You know you don’t have to yell at me just to get me to do something.

Jess: Yes I do! You’re voice activated.

Three years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I said yes to the best decision I’ve ever made.

So, today, on my third anniversary, I just wanted to quickly post about how wonderful Jess is. (Which, frankly, I should probably do more.) (And which, actually, Jess tells me to do: “what should I blog about?” I’ll ask her. “Me,” she invariably replies.)

Blog instruction notwithstanding, Jess is the yin to my yang, not overly boastful, rarely looking to be the center of attention. So far too many people – including my friends and family – have never discovered that she’s much funnier than I am, and smarter, and wiser and kinder and more insightful, too.

Which is why, even when she yells at me for not cleaning correctly (and mind you, I’m fairly OCD – just apparently not OCD enough), even when she tells me ‘you’re not my boss’ any time I tell her to do anything at all, even if we sometimes want to kill each other (“We’re best frenemies,” she recently proclaimed), I couldn’t be happier or more in love, I still can’t spend enough time with her after even days and days together in a row, and I wouldn’t want to be married to anyone else.

Happy anniversary Jess. I love you with all my heart.

After weeks of work (into which I was conscripted as coder-in-chief), Jess just launched an awesome redesigned website for her consulting company, JG & Co., as well as a new accompanying blog, Truth Plus.

By comparison I’m now even further behind, both in the long-needed update to Cyan’s site, and in any sort of regular posting here. Is some competition the kick in the butt I need to finally get moving again on both fronts?

Either way, go read her blog. It’s well written, and a great window into the business side of the fashion world, which I otherwise only get to see from the sidelines (or when dragged to parties as arm candy; short but very charming arm candy).

Early this week, struck by a slew of business insights, I spent three or four straight hours madly scribbling on yellow pads and wall whiteboards.

Certainly, this was a longer stint than most, but nearly all my good ideas, business successes, and small victories trace back to just such frenzied sessions of ‘Eureka!’ idea capture.

These bursts of thinking leave me energized to the point of manic, and I want, more than anything else, to share them. I want somebody else to get equally excited. And, unfortunately for her, the person who usually bears the brunt of that ecstatic, high-speed explaining is Jess.

Though Jess is the realist to my optimist, she’s kind enough to listen supportively, ask interested questions, and only later tell me the full list of problems she immediately sees that I haven’t even begun to consider.

Still, I can’t imagine it’s an easy task. Which might explain why, when Jess walked in to the office, and found me scrawling elaborate diagrams and flow charts on the wall, her first reaction was to roll her eyes, and say, “Beautiful Mind time, is it?”

A bit more than four years back, I got a message on Friendster (a Facebook predecessor that was both cooler and far less cool, all at once) from a girl named Jess. The message was long and rambling and said that she didn’t really write this sort of email (as cliche as she knew that sounded), but that I kept showing up on her home page as part of the ‘singles near you’ feature, and that she had Googled me up and found my website, etc., etc.

Ah, I thought. A crazy girl.

So I deleted the message.

Then, a few hours later, I got another message. This Jess girl had shared the first message with her younger sister who had said that you absolutely couldn’t just send that kind of thing to someone you hadn’t met, because they would think you were totally insane. So, to prove she wasn’t nuts, she then proceeded to essentially do a deep reading of her own first email, explaining jokes, etc., in a message even longer than the first.

Due to apparent technological ineptitude, she sent this second message three times.

By now, I was intrigued.

So, after much back and forth, exactly four years ago today, we met for drinks at Russian Samovar.

I was smitten. After that date, I was the one sending long messages (or, as previously discussed, faxes). And, long story short, Jessica Gold Newman is now sitting next to me as I write this on laptop on a flight back from Portland, Maine, where we celebrated our four year date-iversary, with huge amounts of foodie eats (a win for me), equally large amounts of terrifying vintage stuff and antiques (a win for her), and some time at the beach getting our first sun of the season (a win for both of us, though somewhat reduced for me, as she tans and I [after a solid twelve months locked indoors] hop straight to medium-well done]).

To which I say, god bless the internets. All my love to Jess, and looking forward to another four and four and forty and forty.

In the wake of yesterday’s post about the magic (to me, at least) of the fax machine, Jess reminded me that, early in our courtship, we actually flirted by fax.

Below, a cover page I made up for the Newman / Gold Paint-by-Numbers Gallery, an inside joke I can no longer recall nor explain:



And then, a good illustration of why we ended up together. Inexplicably, Jess apprended this to one of her counter-faxes, with the caption “I couldn’t leave this out. I just love a good mugshot.”

One night a couple of years ago, Jess and I were in the Rite Aid across the street from our home, buying shampoo or toilet paper. Somewhere along the way, I lost Jess. She wasn’t with me at the register, so I retraced my steps, back into the bowels of the store, where I found her, transfixed, staring at a row of giant dolls on the top shelf. Each was nearly three feet tall, and totally terrifying.

Which is how we bought Whitney Houston. She came wearing a mini-skirt and halter, though Jess, worried about the moral implications of that outfit, quickly added tights and an old children’s sweater. We tried to style Whitney’s hair, too, though it remained largely matted to her perforated scalp. Her head was oddly shaped, and her sleep eyes permanently lolled half-closed.

We took her with us, once, on a weekend trip to Jess’ parents’ house, as we didn’t want to leave her alone. On the way back home, I dropped off Jess at our apartment, and headed to return the car, before remembering that, while I’d dropped off our bags with Jess, Whitney remained seated in the back.

So I tucked Whitney sideways under my arm, and started walking home. A few blocks in, a van full of cops flagged me down from across the street. From a distance, I suspect it looked like I was kidnapping a small – though oddly stiff and imobile – child.

“What’s that under your arm?”, one of the cops asked me.

“Oh this? It’s a doll.” Then, by way of explanation, “it’s my girlfriend’s.”

“That thing is your girlfriend?”, he asked, incredulously.

“No,” I laughed. “It belongs to my girlfriend.”

He eyed Whitney suspiciously.

“Scares the fuck out of me.”

I agreed. She scared the fuck out of me too.

Whitney was doubly scary at night. Parked on our couch, I’d pass her when I headed to the bathroom. Each time, I’d jump at the sight of her – sitting, watching.

We thought about getting rid of Whitney. But Jess and I were certain she’d come back and kill us in our sleep. So we put her at the top of our hall closet, tucked behind an array of bags and boxes.

We came across her again just recently, while packing up some of our summer clothing, preparing to swap it with the winter wear we’d been keeping in storage.

And it occurred to us that a year or two of confinement might similarly have raised Whitney’s wrath. So we took her down. We laid her comfortably on a bench in our bedroom, which made a perfectly-sized bed. And we tucked her in carefully with a small spare blanket.

Fortunately, she’s mostly out of my line of sight. But every so often, I see her there, and I freeze. She’s as terrifying as ever. Which is the main reason we’re keeping her comfortable. And keeping her close by.

After we had been dating for a couple of months, Jess turned to me one morning and said out of the blue, “it’s nice to have a friend.”

It is. A year ago, I said yes and she said yes and we got married, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done.

So today is our one year anniversary. Though, to be frank, the whole anniversary thing always seems a bit odd to me, because our first date was on a June 20th a few years before we got hitched, and shouldn’t that time count for something, too?

Anyway, I think we love each other even more now than we did a year ago. Or, at least, we’re better at loving each other, having faced together another year’s happinesses and disasters, big and small, knowing that much more of each other’s heart and mind. We’re an even stronger team. And, to a possibly sickening degree, we still just like to be with each other all the time.

As is apparently traditional, we froze the top of our wedding cake a year ago. I put it in the refrigerator on Saturday, to thaw out in time for our having a few anniversary bites today. Jess has pointed out that this is basically the scene from Mother where Debbie Reynolds serves Albert Brooks three-year-old frozen cheese. And also that, by now, the cake has doubtless taken on the flavors of the spinach and gelato and chicken nuggets stored adjacent for the past year. All of which likely makes it totally inedible.

But, still, we’ll have a few bites, and it will be terrible, and we’ll laugh and have a wonderful time. It’s nice to have friend.

Today is the three-year anniversary of my first date with Jess, the best thing that ever happened to me.

To celebrate, we had wanted to go away somewhere fun for the weekend. But it’s raining torrentially here in New York. And, at least according to forecasts earlier in the week, it should also be pouring in the Hamptons, Miami, New Orleans, Connecticut, and nearly every other fun, two-night destination we could come up with.

In this weather, our living room seems like a comparatively excellent idea.