Lawyerish

The Long and Whining Road -- And a Question

I've started this entry about fifteen times and haven't come up with the right words, so I'll just come out with it:  My brother is moving across the country.  Like, ALL the way across -- to Seattle -- and, frankly, I'm not too happy about it.

I mean, of course I'm happy for him and his family; it's the right choice for them, and on the whole it's all kinds of exciting.  My brother will have lots more time to spend with his wife and son than he did as the High-Powered New York Law Firm type -- plus they get to build their dream home in a gorgeous area surrounded by mountains and forest and trails and lakes, and they'll be in a safe community with loads of other young families, and my nephew will get to live the kick-the-can life we enjoyed as kids.  And of course, we can go out to visit and gawk at the wonder that is the Pacific Northwest; it'll give us an excuse to get to know a whole new area of the country.   

But...but...what about ME?  For ten years, I've been lucky enough to have my big brother within shouting distance, and even though we've become increasingly stretched for time with our busy lives and growing families, it's always comforting just knowing he's in the same geographic vicinity.  If things went terribly pear-shaped, he'd be a phone call away and could be at my side almost momentarily.  And even though he lives a ways outside the city, we've been able to get together for baby showers and holidays and mellow afternoons without a lot of fuss, and my parents can easily see both of us in one fell swoop of a visit.   

Sure, it's been years since the two of us went for margaritas at El Parador (for good reason; my system can't handle that much tequila -- or any tequila, really -- anymore) or caught a movie on a random weekday night; but there's still that certain calm that comes from having family around, and the gaping distance of an entire country between us is going to take some getting used to.

(Clearly, the only solution is for him to get a blog so I can have near-daily updates on exactly what he and his family are doing and just how unruly my adorable nephew's red curls have gotten.  Right, people?  Am I right?)  (Peer pressure will help, so back me up here.)  (Also, I should note with some relief that my sister-in-law and nephew aren't moving out there until later this fall, so I can cling to their legs and wail "DON'T LEAVE ME" for a while longer.) 

No, really.  It's great.  I'm fine!  (DON'T GO!) 

Anyway, so last Friday night we went to a going away party for them, and spent much of the time catching up with our friend L. (I know you're out there, L.!  {waving furiously})  L. has, bar none, the funniest damn dating stories I have ever heard.  I mean, you cannot make this stuff up.  (She needs a blog, too, in fact.)

For example, there's the guy who took her on a first date and refused to pay for her dinner (we're all enlightened modern women, sure, but I'm sorry:  the dude pays on the first date; THOSE ARE THE RULES) and then, when she (reluctantly) agreed to go on a second date, he took her out -- on a FRIDAY NIGHT, at DINNER TIME -- to an eatery that only serves {pause for effect} rice pudding.  For dinner!  On a Friday night!  This time he paid, but it was like five bucks, and she went home starving.

Then there's her friend, who is Orthodox and keeps kosher, whose date took her to a burger joint where she could not eat a single thing on the menu (because it was all meat!  and the restaurant was not kosher!), and he made her SIT THERE AND WATCH HIM EAT A BURGER AND FRIES.  And then, on the way home, he stopped in the park and forced her to watch him perform Shakespearean soliloquies. 

And then there's L.'s other friend, whose date did not reveal until AFTER they sat down in a quiet restaurant and he suddenly started howling and banging on the table that he had Tourette's syndrome.  Like, oops!  Forgot to mention this small detail that I might occasionally have a violent verbal and physical outburst!  Sorry about that.  Carry on.

And then there was the one-armed dentist. I'm not sure any more needs to be said about that.       

On the bright side, the nuttiness of the dating scene makes for great party chatter, and entertains me to no end.  So now it's your turn:  what's the worst date you've ever had?   

Fool Me Once...

Work.  O, work.  Yes.  It is very worky.  Absences may be prolonged. 

To tide you over until I can return in a more meaningful fashion, I exhort you to view this video of a poor, hapless young woman making a damn fool of herself on national television.  On Friday night, my husband and I came home from a social thing (which I will discuss in depth at a later time) only to turn on the telly and find that we'd missed the first hour of the Miss Teen USA pageant.  If there is anything more irresistable than a pageant when you've had a couple of beers (that's two, between the two of us, as in one each, because yes, we are twelve and slightly pathetic), I'm not aware of it. 

In any event, the pageant was in full swing, and while we had failed to catch the ever-important swimsuit competition, we were just in time for the evening gowns and the ensuing Judges' Questions. 

I thought I'd heard bad answers before from pageant contestants -- to say nothing of bad improvisational speaking in the manner of our ever-sophisticated current President, for example -- but this one...oh, dear.  I don't want to call it irony because, try as I might to put to use my extensive knowledge of literary mechanisms (and here mechanisms is not even the right word; however, my brain is tuned into lawyer-type things and away from English-y type things, so forgive me just this once), I live in constant fear (yes, constant fear) of being accused of failing to know the proper usage of the term "irony."  But if I were to dare use it, I would maybe say that possibly this qualifies, inasmuch as the question is about the flagging quality of our education system, and our heroine Miss South Carolina Teen USA goes and stomps on/defaces/graffitis/defiles/gives the finger to any lingering notion that our education system isn't really all that bad. 

In case you couldn't quite catch the wonder of her prose, here is a transcript:

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us."

God bless America.

Two Wings and a Prayer

(Herein, my brother's guest post, about something I wouldn't do if someone had a gun to my head.  No, really.  Just reading this makes my feet sweat.)

The wind blasted my face as all of my senses went into hyper-alert, trying to process exactly what was happening.  I was strapped into the rear seat of an open cockpit 1940s era biplane, plummeting straight down toward the water below.  There was no sky.  All I could see was the greenish-blue of the Lower New York Bay, the silver hair of the pilot, and the bright yellow wings that were, unnervingly, constructed more than 60 years ago and were now bearing a phenomenal amount of aerodynamic stress. 

I stole a glance at the altimeter in front of me.  The hands were crazily spinning counterclockwise:  3,500 feet. Now 3,000. Now 2,500. The gauge looked like a close-up in an airline disaster film as the heroic pilots desperately tried to pull back on the yoke and avoid the crash. Through the headset, I heard high pitched screams.  Then I realized I was the one screaming.

More than a year ago, my wife got me a gift certificate for a scenic bi-plane ride.  While I appreciated the gift, I lagged in booking the flight.  Ostensibly, it was because I couldn't find the time; we were new parents, and time had a way of getting sucked out of every weekend.  But the unstated reason was that the very idea of climbing into an ancient bi-plane with an open cockpit made me nervous as hell.  Eventually, though, my impending move to the Seattle area, coupled with an annoyed wife who emphasized that she had paid a lot of money for me to have this experience, forced the issue.  I booked a noon flight on August 19.  I was to show up at 11:45 for what I assumed would be a 15 minute briefing before takeoff, to better acquaint me with such topics as what to do if you feel the urge to vomit:  do you aim over the edge of the open cockpit or for your own lap?

I arrived at the small, private airport at 11:40, but couldn't find "Baron Scenic Flights."  Running short on time, I went into what was labeled as a flight school and asked if they knew where I should go.  A friendly older woman gave me directions to a hangar that I would have never found on my own.  She commented as I left that I should feel confident, since "Bob" was a great pilot.  Then she paused and said with a smile, "Well, except for when he's flying upside-down."  I smiled back at her little joke and hurried out to my car.

I arrived at the hangar, but it was empty.  Moments later, I heard a sound unlike the high-pitched drones of the small planes that were taking off and landing.  This one sounded deeper and more robust.  I looked up just in time to see this plane touch down on the landing strip in front of me.  It taxied over to the hangar, and the pilot hopped out, then helped his passenger climb out of the rear cockpit.

We all have a picture in our minds of what a good pilot should look like.  He should be in his early 50s with a peppering of gray in his hair and an aura of quiet, steely confidence.  Bob was not this man.  Instead, the person before me was easily in his mid-70s (about 15 years past mandatory retirement age for airline pilots) with a slight aura of good-natured wiseass.  His hair was pure white and, although he was certainly fit for his age, I began to ponder scenarios involving his sudden expiration, and our resulting death-plunge to the earth below.

To his credit, his passenger (a 50-something executive type who fit my pilot profile much better) was elated and kept saying things like "that was just wonderful, what a fantastic trip" and "I feel so exhilarated."  So that helped my confidence a bit.  And I figured the odds were weighted pretty heavily in my favor that my flight wouldn't just happen to be the one during which The Blue Baron met his maker.

The three of us stood and chatted amiably about what a nice day it was for the flight.  As the conversation wound down, Bob politely gestured toward me and said that it was my turn now.  With a wink toward me he said, "I've gotta go fly upside down with this young fella."  We all shared a chuckle, but I was starting to get a bit nervous, as this was the second "upside-down" joke I'd heard.  I remembered, though, that the description of the flight said nothing about aerobatics of any sort, which is the kind of thing you'd probably want to mention in advance to people expecting a leisurely bi-plane ride. 

In response, I said, "Hey, I'm a pretty big guy, so you'd have to have me strapped in pretty good to keep me from falling out."  Bob responded quickly with, "Straps?  We charge EXTRA for those!"  We all shared another big chuckle and I felt reasonably assured that the upside-down comments were his little way of having fun with his nervous customers.

So, on to the pre-flight safety briefing.  Except that there was none.  Bob led me to the cockpit, helped me get in, buckled me into a lap belt and two shoulder harnesses, and suggested that I tighten them a bit as it can be bumpy.  He asked me not to grab on to the windscreen, put a headset on my head, and...that was it.  Bob climbed into the front cockpit and fired up the engine, which sputtered disconcertingly before assuming a more confident hum.  We taxied to the active runway, Bob announced his intention to take off, and off we went.  Within 15 seconds, we were airborne.

The sensation of lifting off from the earth in a small, open cockpit plane was very different than the one you get in a commercial airliner.  The wind whipped by and I could look in any direction to take in the sights both below and in the air.  Other than the noise of the wind and the engine, it was quite serene -- although I could have done without the smell of the gasoline powering the propeller, as one might tend to associate that smell while on-board a plane with "we're all going to die a fiery death."

We flew at 1,000 feet to the southern tip of Manhattan, heading up the Hudson River with the tops of the towering skyscrapers at eye-level.  It was a spectacular view, the entire majesty of Manhattan spread out before me.  I held on tightly to my tiny video camera while soaking it all in. 

Soon, Bob turned the plane into a long, graceful bank, heading southbound.  Once we were over the Statue of Liberty, he tilted his wings and we flew a full circle around it.  We were close enough to the ground that I could make out tourists waving up at us.  Bob headed back south again, and I relaxed in the back, thinking about how foolish I had been to be nervous.

And then I noticed something odd.  As we passed over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and over the Lower New York Bay, Bob eased back on the stick and we began slowly climbing.  A chill ran throughout my body.  He was ascending over a large, unpopulated body of water so that he had a margin of error to do something crazy and no one to kill below should it end badly.  My mind played back all of the previous conversations of the day, which took on wholly new meaning. 

Utterly terrified, I decided that when Bob radioed back to ask me if I was ready to fly upside-down, my answer would be a sheepish "no."  I glanced down at the flimsy-looking straps across my lap and on my shoulders.  These were decidedly NOT the solid contraptions that pull down over your head and bolt you to your seat when you're on a big roller coaster.  These were fabric.  And not even particularly tight.  Just in case Bob took matters into his own hands, I pulled on the straps until they dug into my shoulders.  This was made more difficult by the sudden sheen of sweat covering my palms.

We leveled off at about 3,500 feet.  There was a click on my headset.  Before I could say a word, Bob announced, "Ok, here we go!"  Perhaps for Bob's own sadistic reasons, my microphone remained open as he throttled the engine up to full power. 

The plane's nose shot skyward, and I was pressed down into my seat as we headed straight up into the sky.  I could feel the plane suddenly slowing down -- the propeller was unable to keep the plane going straight upwards.  Just before we stalled in midair, Bob yanked the controls to the left and the plane veered sideways and the nose continued downward until we were pointing straight toward the ground.  For a moment I had a sensation of complete weightlessness as the plane went from straining upwards to plummeting downwards.  After the few seconds of freefall, Bob pulled up on the stick and leveled off.  I saw him glance up at me in his rear-view mirror.  Presumably relieved that I was not dead from a heart attack or missing from my cockpit, he launched into the same maneuver once again as I emitted a surprisingly giddy scream -- straight up again, a sharp bank, a sensation of weightlessness, and then down toward the ocean below.

It was all utterly horrifying, yet equally fantastic.  He followed up by pointing the nose downward and rolling the plane sideways until we were completely inverted for a few seconds before rolling it back right-side up. While upside down, I had the bizarre sensation of looking up at the water below us, while hanging in my recently tightened straps.  We launched into another series of pitches and rolls that I could no longer piece together.  All I knew is that I was being rapidly alternated between feeling crushed into my seat and being lifted out of my seat with a lightning-fast visual sequence of sky, water, sky, water, sky.  Finally, Bob leveled off again and radioed back, "You doing ok?"  Buzzing with adrenaline, I thanked him profusely for the once in a lifetime experience but added, "I honestly thought you were joking about flying upside-down!"

He responded with genuine surprise and exasperation.  "Why the hell do people always think I'm joking?"

It's the Little Things

I feel it is my civic duty to inform you all of the wonder that is Fresh Brown Sugar Body Polish.  I have been devoted to Fresh products for some years now, beginning with the Hesperides body wash and lotion and migrating to the  Lemon Sugar scent over time.  But one product always eluded me.  On many a trip to a Fresh store or Sephora, I've lingered over the display for the body polish, but couldn't bring myself to fork over that kind of coin for a freakin' scrub.  Well, finally, my waiting, wondering and longing has come to an end. 

My mom got me a jar of it for my birthday, and I am here to tell you it is every bit as heavenly as I'd imagined.  It smells even better in the shower than it does in the store, and it makes your skin ever-so-baby-soft.  The grains are big and exfoliate-y, and the scent has a hint of citrus to tone down the sweet notes.  I exhort you to try it.  It's expensive, but the jar is huge -- it might better be described as a drum -- and will last a good long while.  So go!  Go forth and purchase! 

In other groundbreaking bathing news, I have located the coveted Softsoap Pomegranate and Mango body wash, which was initially recommended by Metalia and which I first tried when visiting Jonna.  After weeks of searching (or, uh, looking on the shelves of my drugstore), I found a stash at the nearby Duane Reade.  Between that and the scrub and my Fresh stuff, I may never leave the shower. 

(The thing is, none of that was particularly interesting or funny.  I realize that.  Awareness is the first step to recovery.)

Last weekend, I had my first experience ever with a personal shopper.  As part of my birthday extravaganza, my husband found a stylist who would come to our apartment, assess my wardrobe, and shop with me for whatever she felt I needed (i.e., everything except button-down shirts and v-neck sweaters).  After the big reveal of my gifts, though, I did some careful calculations and figured out that paying someone's hourly rate in addition to the cost of the clothing meant that I would net less clothing.  (I know!)  And the thought of having someone drag me around the city to shops that may not be J Crew made me tense and a little shaky, so I cut out the middle man and made an appointment with a personal shopper AT J Crew.  Right there!  At the store!  Does it get any better than that? 

Oh, mama.  Did I have a time!  I emailed with my designated shopper to tell her what I was looking for and how much I wanted to spend, and when I waltzed into the store she'd reserved a dressing room for me and pulled tons of clothes for me to try on, and a couple of hours later I emerged with a boatload of new outfits.  New suits!  A cute corduroy dress!  Sweater vests!  Sweater sets!  Printed shirts!  Sashes!  Jeans!  Somehow, the planets converged and this fall's collection is right up my alley.  I love love love it.  It's cute and preppy but feminine and fun and I want to run skipping down the street laden with shopping bags as in a Pretty Woman-esque scenario, except without having to be a hooker and with much smaller lips.  Also less money. 

It's weird -- if my husband hadn't done this for my birthday, I never would have taken it upon myself to set up the personal shopper (or go buy a bunch of clothes at all), even though it's free and it's the perfect solution for someone like me who loathes setting foot in a store (let alone a dressing room) but has hit-or-miss luck online (even at J Crew, my size varies by garment/fabric/tidal patterns in a maddening way).  I have trouble giving myself permission to spend money, even on things I need (except, apparently, anything that is meant to be used in the shower), so without his endorsement it would have seemed wasteful and indulgent, like treating myself to a spa day for no particular reason.  Which is silly, of course, since I work hard and bring in plenty of dough, and it's not like updating my fall wardrobe at J Crew involves profligate spending in the vein of Michael Jackson and his 20-minute, $10 million shopping sprees in Vegas.  Although now that I've had a taste of the good life, I'm not going back.  Oh, I'll still shop the online final sale compulsively and hold the line on my arbitrary spending limits (no shirt over $80 and so on), but now I've got a personal shopper, and I'm not afraid to use her.

To close this most pointless and frivolous of entries, I shall give you all a little something to look forward to:  an entry written by someone other than me!  Yes, people, it's time for another guest post.  We've previously been graced with the literary stylings of my dad and his true tale of the Man from Wuhan, and my brother with his cautionary tale of inadvertent cross-dressing.  Well, my brother is coming back again with a hair-raising story of his recent aviation adventure.  I hope you'll all listen carefully and raise your hands if you have any questions.   

The Story of Us

I never thought I would have a dog.  After my parents gave away the family dog when I was three (and my brother tormented me with the Pretend Puppy), I begged Santa for a puppy every year, with no results.  At some point, I decided that perhaps if I aimed higher and asked for a horse instead, Santa would compromise and get me a dog.  Santa never did see the logic of this.  Sometime around high school, long after I'd stopped writing Christmas Eve letters to the North Pole, I decided that I was instead a cat person, and I longed for the day that I could have a cat of my very own. 

In January 2001, a friend of mine rescued a wee kitten from the Dumpster behind his building on the Lower East Side; he'd been watching football and kept hearing this yowling from the alley below, so at the urging of his girlfriend he clambered over trash and mountains of snow (we'd had a record-breaking blizzard) and found this ball of fur -- a very loud, angry ball of fur -- huddled in a snowdrift, shivering and soaking wet.  I leapt at the chance to take the cat.  I didn't even bother to consult my then-boyfriend, who was less than enthused with my unilateral decision (although he'd have been even less so if it had been a dog -- he was definitely a cat person).  I named the cat Atticus.

He's very cat-like.  Very love-withholding and somewhat ornery, and for the first couple of years I had him, he would frequently try to bite the living hell out of your arm.  You'd be reading the paper, and all of a sudden you'd have this cat hanging from your wrist, his teeth sinking into your flesh.  He made up for the random attacks by meowing at all hours of the day and night and scratching up every fabric surface in the apartment.  Oh, and vomiting profusely whenever possible. 

We got him back good, though.

When I was in law school, I saw an episode of "Frasier" in which Niles brings home an Italian greyhound -- the joke was that he had to get rid of it because Maris could not stand to have anything in their home that was thinner than she was.  When they showed the dog, I practically shot up off the couch and said, "THAT IS THE DOG FOR ME."  A year or two later, I saw one at Newark Airport, his paws stretched up on his owner's legs, tail wagging furiously.  For some reason, those dogs made me giddy, all sleek and skinny and doe-eyed.  I occasionally searched for breeders on the Internet, just to look at them, and when I ditched the ex and my husband and I got together -- he being staunchly a dog person -- I would sometimes send him links to particularly cute puppies.  I never thought seriously that we would get one, though, and I still didn't think I was that into dogs as a general matter.

When I had designated myself a cat person, you see, I had aligned myself with the view that dogs are messy and a little desperate.  They slobber, have bad breath, and demand attention all the time.  They're needy.  And needy was bad; kind of desperate, really.  No, a cat was for me, only receiving affection on his own terms (in Atticus's case, he will put his paws around my neck in a kitty-hug, but ONLY in the bathroom -- that's the only place he will nuzzle and be nuzzled), needing humans only to refill the food bowl and turn on the sink for sips of water from the faucet.

And then that Saturday in August 2003, out of nowhere in our newlywed newly-weddedness, my husband suggested we get a dog, and, as though driven by a force outside of myself, I sprang into action.  We went straight to Barnes & Noble and pored through dog books, and when we got home I immediately emailed several area breeders of Italian greyhounds (I know, I know; my next dog will be a rescue, I swear).  One wrote back that she had a 12-week old boy puppy, red with white markings.  I made an appointment to see her that Friday.  When I got to her apartment, she had me sit in the living room while she went to get the pup (which goes against everything the books tell you, about how you should see all of the dogs and where they live and so on, but...yeah) and when she brought him in, I almost cried.  Or peed in my pants.  Or both.

I mean, come on. 

She put him in my lap and he reached his little paws up onto my face (and scratched the bejesus out of me), his tail whooshing back and forth at the speed of light, and he licked me and made little whimpery noises and I would have done ANYTHING for him at that moment.  I would have sold my soul, given up an appendage, or listened to Broadway music every day for the rest of my life for that puppy.  It was, to put it mildly, an easy sale.

I brought him home and as I entered the apartment with Miles under my arm, Atticus puffed up into a blowfish-like ball and hissed and did the sideways dance of a cat that is very, very pissed off.  (Bwah-ha-HA, cat!  Not so cocky now, are you?)  (He's still pissed off about it, in fact.)  That first night, Miles slept in a crate next to our bed.  He whimpered a little bit, but soon fell asleep, the day's events having drained him of the ability to protest.  The second night, he whimpered for about two seconds, and I opened the crate and held up the covers, and he curled up against my legs, and we've slept that way ever since. 

To be honest, having a puppy was kind of a pain in the butt -- he was constantly destroying stuff and getting stuck under the bed and he couldn't sleep through the night without getting up to pee.  And then there was the time he broke his leg, and for six months I had to take him to the medical center THREE TIMES A WEEK for bandage changes and checkups and to clean out our bank account.  Even so, as I carried him outside and into a cab and sat with him in the waiting room (FOR HOURS ON END), I would kiss the top of his head and sniff the supersoft spot on his neck and talk quietly into his ear, trying to keep him calm and reassured, and at night as we fell asleep I'd hold his cast to keep from licking at it.  The love I felt for him was startling.

The dog didn't have to do much to build this relationship, is the funny thing.  The thing about dogs is that you love them just for being there, for being the tail that wags when you get home and the warm body that curls up with you while you read on the couch.  I haven't the faintest idea what goes on Miles's head or what, if anything, he feels toward us -- other than gratitude, maybe, for keeping him fed and walked and warm -- but it turns out that doesn't matter.  What he does for me is he allows me to love him to the ends of the earth and back.  He happily accepts all the kisses I want to give him, all the snuggles and pets that I have, all the goofy songs I like to sing to him and about him.  He goes along with our daily routine and knows his role in it -- to poke his nose against the bedroom door when I ask, "Are you ready to go to bed?", to run to the foyer when he hears the velcro of my husband's mandals, which signals an impending walk.  There's nothing desperate or needy about that, and there's nothing messy about him (well, dog breath, maybe, but lo and behold that doesn't bother me too much).  He just is; but in that simple act of being, he returns everything we give a thousandfold, by being there, being what he is, which is beautiful and funny and up for anything.  And that's enough.

   

It turns out I'm a dog person, after all.  Happy fourth anniversary, Miles!         

When the Lights Go Down in the City

August 2003 was quite a month.  We were ensconced in newly wedded bliss, spending our weekends staring into each others' eyes and making panini by the metric buttload with our new sandwich press, and I was eight months into my leave of absence from work, larking my way from ballet class to Pilates class to acting class to auditions to afternoons of writing, all la-la and carefree. 

And then, one afternoon, the lights went out.

I was sitting at my computer piddling away on my to-this-day-unfinished novel and I, of course, panicked, assuming it to be September 11: The Sequel.  I spent several minutes hysterically clutching at the cat and hiding under the desk. I managed to reach my husband at work by digging out an old non-cordless landline phone that was buried in an obscure corner of our front closet.  We managed to piece together that it was a blackout -- nothing more sinister than grid failures and intense summer heat -- and he started the several-mile trek home from the financial district on foot.  I watched from our tenth-floor window as people streamed up lower Park Avenue like refugees, women carrying their heels, men holding their suit jackets out in front of them, shirt sleeves rolled up to bare glistening arms in the searing heat. 

Some hours later, my husband made it home, his shirt plastered to his torso, his arm having grown a few inches from carrying his briefcase, which he'd loaded with work (after all, productivity must continue at all costs).  I met him at the deli downstairs, where a queue had already formed and the shelves had dwindling stores of canned food and bottled water.  We bought a few boxes of Wheat Thins and some jugs of Poland Spring, then trudged up the ten flights of stairs with our purchases, using my bike light -- a relic from college; I hadn't had a bike in at least five years -- to illuminate the way. 

The ensuing days are something of a blur -- or a haze, really.  We basically sat in our apartment.  Sweltering.  And commenting on how sweltering it was.  We couldn't shower or flush the toilets, since the building's water pumps ran on electricity. We had little other than the Wheat Thins and a handful of Balance Bars to eat.  I suppose we read and maybe played some Scrabble, but we engaged in as little activity as possible, since merely shifting your weight from one butt cheek to the other on the couch caused a deluge of sweat to surge down your body.  When night came, we lit a few candles to try to continue reading, but we blew them out after their radiant heat became unbearable.  We spent the night staring into the blackness under the blanket of oppressive air. 

On the second day, we braved the stairs again to go in search of sustenance.  Nothing appeared to be open.  It was a rather post-apocalyptic scene; few people were out, iron grates covered every storefront, and only the occasional taxi would drift slowly by. We thought all was lost, but somewhere along Second Avenue, we caught a scent.  The scent of pizza.  Sweet, sweet pizza. 

We broke into a run.  There, on the corner of 27th Street, surrounded by a halo of heavenly light and accompanied by choirs of angels, was a pizza place with a coal-fired oven.  A non-electric coal-fired oven.  The line stretched around the corner; the look of gratitude and anticipation on people's faces was something akin to those awaiting a blessing from the Pope.  The restaurant, those dear, dear men, had imposed a limit of two slices per person so that there would be enough to go around.  We would have waited for ten hours and paid a thousand dollars for our four allotted slices, but the line moved quickly and they didn't jack up the prices much, if at all.  We gave them a hearty tip and nearly wept as we shoved that pizza down our gaping maws.  It was one of the greatest meals I've ever had.

We heard from some people on the line that certain parts of Manhattan had already had their power restored.  We went home, bellies swollen with cheese and pepperoni, to await the return of our lights and air conditioning with bated breath.  And...we waited. 

Dusk descended on the city, and still we were shrouded in darkness and heat.  Occasionally, we would hear a distant cheer erupt into the evening air as another block blazed to life.  I could stand on our windowsill and peer uptown and catch glimpses of glittering lights in Murray Hill.  We shook our fists in the air at the travesty of it all.  Finally, just before we resigned ourselves to another sleepless night in our white-walled oven, it happened. 

The lights blinked on, the clock on the cable box winked at us, and all was right again with the world.  We immediately disregarded the warning to use as little power as possible, so as not to overload the delicate grids, and blasted the A/C while turning the TV on, firing up the computer, flushing the toilet repeatedly, and taking long showers.  Even the cat seemed to be in a celebratory mood.  Our thirty-some hour trial had ended.

A week later, my husband and I were having our then-customary Saturday morning brunch at a nearby diner.  As I dug into my chopped salad, I asked, "What should we do today?"  He took a sip of his coffee and, as he maneuvered a piece of his cream cheese omelet onto a bite of toast, said, "We could get a dog." 

After the paramedics revived me, I sprang into action.  More on the Dog Story to come.

(GO DANNY!  WIN!  WIIIIIIIIIIIN!)   

Pass It On

When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be old enough to go to summer camp.  I read Yours Till Niagara Falls, Abby about 85 times, and dreamed about long sun-filled days of canoeing and lanyard-making, afternoons of pillow fights and letter writing in a homey bunk, nights of campfires and ghost stories and sneaking out to raid the counselors' fridge. 

Lots of people I know went to those ritzy sleepaway camps in the Northeast, the ones with "cabins" with enough wattage for 15 hairdryers to run simultaneously, sleek motorboats for waterskiing and parasailing, and SAT prep classes between dressage lessons.  The first time I told my husband, who had attended just such a camp, about my own summer camp experience, he looked at me as though my parents had shipped me off to Stalag 17 for the summers.  Suffice it to say, if we'd wanted to waterski or parasail at my camp, we'd have had to get about 40 girls into a canoe and have them paddle like rowers in a galley trying to avoid walking the plank. 

My first sleepaway experience, when I was around 8 or 9, was at Camp Pine Valley, a Girl Scout camp at a heavily forested site somewhere in middle Georgia.  I only went for a week, but my memory of it has expanded that week into a several-month-long slog to hell and back.  Aside from not having to subsist on bugs or be confined to crouch-tight spaces for hours on end, I am fairly certain that this camp also served as a Survival School for the armed forces.  It had a lake and some hiking trails, but there the resemblance to my idyllic camp experience ended.

Girl Scouts, incidentally, was an ideal activity for my, uh, methodical nature -- the hierarchical structure (Brownies, Juniors, Girl Scouts), the clearly articulated expectations and rewards (sell X number of cookies, get a stuffed penguin!), and the ever-so-stylish uniforms (who doesn't look good in high-waisted green polyester pants?).  I loved to page through the Badge Book and go through the checklists for each badge -- sometimes I would find that I'd earned one without even meaning to, or that I could add another by completing one or two simple tasks.  The goal, clearly, was to obtain as many as possible.  That I had to wear two sashes to contain all of my badges was a major point of pride.  And probably why I was shunned by society for years to come. 

Camp Pine Valley was divided into three units, each holding maybe 20 or 30 girls in a hillside grouping of canvas-topped platform tents huddled around a campfire and a meeting hut, and an outhouse flanked by open-air, cold-water showers.  Oh, yes.  It was luxurious.

The first day of camp, Allison and I (of course we went together!) sat with our fellow unit-mates in a circle on the concrete floor of the meeting hut as Stephanie, our head counselor, who was wearing a RATT: Out of the Cellar t-shirt to celebrate the campers' arrival, bellowed out the rules for our stay:  No food in the cabins, no talking after nine p.m., no wandering out into the woods on our own.  We were expected to make our beds and sweep the floor of our tents every day; inspection was after lunch.  And, by the way, she reminded us to be sure to shake out our shoes every morning, as scorpions could crawl into them overnight.

This last part affected me deeply.  For the rest of the day I hyperventilated over the possibility of having my toe stung off by a scorpion as I innocently stuck my foot into my velcro E.T. sneaker the next morning.  I came up with an easy solution:  I wouldn't take my shoes off for the duration of the week.  Well, aside from swimming lessons -- but they didn't say anything about scorpions at the lake, so that would be ok.  At night, though, I would sleep with my shoes and socks on, thereby eliminating the scorpions' access to my feet and shoes, and conveniently allowing me to trek to the outhouse as needed without fumbling in the dark for proper footwear.  My plan didn't interfere with bathing, by the way, because we showered with our bodies outside of the corrugated metal stalls, only our heads subjected to the pounding arctic spray, since to immerse yourself would be to bring on certain death by hypothermia.

Our unit was the farthest from the dining hall, so we were roused before dawn by Stephanie barking "GET UP, FIVE MINUTES TIL BREAKFAST" from her bed before she rolled over and went back to sleep.  We'd stagger, bleary-eyed, to the entrance to our campsite, where another counselor known as Foo-Foo (thanks to her love of the exceedingly grating song "Little Bunny Foo-Foo," which we were forced to repeat, including hand movements, to and from every meal) would escort us to the camp's main building.  On the mornings when we had to set the tables -- the units rotated between setting up for, serving, and cleaning up after each meal, because no camp experience is complete without some forced labor -- I swear we must have risen at 4 a.m.

The food was, it probably goes without saying, inedible.  Leaden pancakes, cement-like grits, flabby bacon; whole dinners lost to me due to the presence of fish sticks or fried okra.  By the time we reached the dining hall, though, we were near collapse from starvation, the s'mores from the last night's campfire having been long since metabolized by the freezing showers, fear of bugs, and singing under duress, so we would choke down the petrified offerings with our lukewarm, bluish milk and watery orange juice.  By the end of the week, we'd walked something like 20 miles to and from our meals, and I'd lost nine pounds.     

After breakfast came swimming, for which we donned rubbery bathing caps and sticky sunblock, and some girls hung nose clips around their necks.  The water was so warm you'd sweat while practicing your backstroke, and so murky that you'd emerge with plant life and dirt clinging to your legs.  As we hurried into our clothes again, urged on by a whistle and barked orders, a counselor would come around and put alcohol into our ears to ward off infection.

The afternoons were filled with arts and crafts (at which I failed, time and again; the folk arts have never been my strong suit), canoeing, and general sweaty misery in the smothering Georgia humidity.  My second year at camp, I took horseback riding, which helped fill the time with loping around a tired ring on a tired horse named Rojo.  I loved Rojo with furious ardor, and I cried for weeks after returning home to my horseless existence.  That first summer, though, we had little to do but write letters home, clean our tents, and sweat.

Even with all this, with the heat and the forced marches and our tentmate crying herself to sleep every night, the last night of camp reduced me to a bawling mess.  The whole camp would gather on the sloping lawn by the lake and float slabs of bark adorned with candles out onto the water, and as the tiny lights drifted into the distance, reflected off the surface into thousands of shimmering flames, we'd sing "Barges" and "Pass It On" and "Linger" until the last candle went out in a distance hiss.   

Like the Weather

It's always amazing to me when we have a huge snowstorm in New York; you'll see people cross-country skiing down Broadway, the streets swathed in white, and for a day everything's kind of messed up so you cozy up at home with a mug of mulled cider and your laptop, but the next morning you get up and the streets are clear, flanked by mountains of slush but passable, and it's all business as usual. 

Rain, on the other hand, apparently has the power to paralyze the whole of the five boroughs, and beyond.  RAIN, people. 

Yesterday morning, a crack of thunder, strobe-like lightning and a fugue of rain on our air conditioner woke me up around 6. I rolled over for an extra half-hour of sleep since running was not an option.  By the time I got up and did my morning toilette, the storm had passed, so I headed off to work as usual, paddling my way through the soupy air to the subway station around the corner. 

As I stood in my suit and heels on the sweltering platform, my feet gradually inflating to the size of honey-baked hams, a garbled announcement informed everyone that, due to water on the tracks and an electrical problem, the train would only be going as far as Columbus Circle.  No problem, I thought, as I could switch to another line and make my way downtown in stages.  Nay.  (Neigh!) 

We stopped halfway to 59th Street and sat for an eternity, and then stalled at the next station, so I got out and walked over to another line.  That one was packed to the point of airlessness, and it CRAWLED, stopping about every two feet to sigh loudly and consider whether it wanted to go any further.  I was convinced I was going to pass out (and delay us even more, not to mention piss off all of my fellow passengers), so I crouched down against the doors and pressed my back against the cool metal.  A lifetime later, we inched into Penn Station, where we were informed it would be the last stop; every train was turning around to head back uptown. 

Once again, I trekked over to another line, which wasn't going downtown, either, so I admitted defeat and stood on the inferno-like platform AGAIN to wait for the uptown train and go back home.  By the time I staggered down my street, jacket draped over my glistening arm and hair plastered to my face, I'd spent two hours going NOWHERE.  All from rain.  Rain! A lot of rain, fine; but should an inch or two of water devastate the MTA in this fashion?  I think not.

On a related note, this morning I got to work just fine, but this DOUCHE on the subway decided that the four-inch space between me and the guy next to me was plenty of room for him to sit down; he squished his way into a spot that one of my legs would not have fit into, and proceeded to do that spread-eagled thing that guys are wont to do, his legs in a V-formation, which meant that my thigh was in constant, full contact with his thigh.  Um, ew.  I mean, we weren't bare-legged or anything, but it was gross.  And invasive.  And UNNECESSARY. 

I ended up basically laying on the woman on my other side to try to create some space between me and Mr. Full Body Contact.  But he kept shifting around to get his BlackBerry out of his back pocket and his book out of his bag and DEAR GOD.  I was tempted to give him a swift elbow to the ribs, but my arm was pinned to my side so I suffered in silence and gave him withering looks at every opportunity. 

Separately, last weekend when Allison and I took Maggie to the Children's Museum, there was a scale outside one of the exhibits and Maggie toddled over to it.  Instead of numbers, it had animals on it, so one might weigh, for example, somewhere between a dog and a horse.  (And isn't that fun for everyone?) 

Much to our surprise, Maggie took her shoes off before getting on the scale.  Allison and I were agog -- Allison's never done weighed herself in front of Maggie, so where in the world did she learn that particular compulsion?  (I, for one, never even breathe on a scale without taking my shoes off, but how would she think of something like that?  She's not even two!)  These kids, I swear!

Have a great weekend! 

Together At Last, Together Foreverrrrr

We didn't do any spying, but we sure did have ourselves a good time this weekend.  We went to museums and had dim sum in Chinatown and shopped and played in Central Park and ate a whole bunch of good food, including cupcakes.  Appropriately enough, the Museum of Natural History was having a special exhibition on Mythical Creatures, including -- sound the triumphal trumpets! -- unicorns.  (Clearly, the characterization of unicorns as "mythical" was in error.)  At least twice over the course of their visit, I laughed so hard my stomach hurt and I was gasping for air and tears were rolling down my face. 

Little Em Be made out like a bandit, as Allison is something of an enabler when it comes to buying things for our as-yet-unknown daughter.  Baby Lawyerish got a wee stuffed unicorn from the museum (I have to pass the belief on to the next generation, after all), a stuffed dragon, a teeny wrap-front t-shirt with angel wings drawn on the back from Lucky Wang (I could clean out that store in about 45 seconds flat, but I restrained myself since I can't buy too many clothes before we have a referral and know her size and all), and, best of all, a sailor dress.  A SAILOR DRESS.  It is well nigh the cutest article of clothing I've ever seen.  The only thing that could trump it in cuteness is possibly a wee school uniform, with a navy cardigan and a white shirt and knee socks. 

Also ranking extremely high in the cuteness department?  Maggie.

This may sound naive, but I had no idea kids could be so much fun.  She is at the most fun age I've witnessed (although she was already quite fun when we saw her in January); she's curious and thoughtful and funny and she has this sweet little voice.  She uses sign language to supplement her growing vocabulary, and whenever we did anything she liked -- going down a slide, eating steamed pork buns, bouncing her on our exercise ball -- she'd tap her fingers together and say, "Mo!"  She also likes to say, "Ewwwww" when her hands are sticky or she has a hair on her arm, and when she says it her face scrunches in on itself and you can't help but laugh. 

It's sort of like this, except here she's doing more of an "Ehhhhhh," which is the sound she makes when things aren't going exactly according to her plan, such as when we told her the bottle of "bu-bos" couldn't be opened inside:

Since bathing anything but an adult human in our shower requires contortions worthy of the Cirque du Soleil, Maggie had her evening bath time in our kitchen sink, which is something near the size of a swimming pool.  She didn't seem to mind. 

She warmed up to me after I plied her with presents and put her hair in a ponytail for her -- she loved to toddle up to the big mirror in our living room after I finished wrapping the elastic around her hair and grin at the cute baby she saw.  She'd point to herself and say, "Bay-bee" and then when we'd ask her what the baby's name was, she'd say, "Mah-jee!"  IT IS THE CUTEST THING EVER. 

One of the best parts of the weekend came after a long stint at the Children's Museum, where Maggie got to drive a fire truck and play in a big sand box and get mowed over by rambunctious unattended children (I resisted the urge to pick the offending children up by their collars and shake my finger in their face like some kind of 19th century schoolmarm, although the urge was great, let me assure you), we met up with my friend B. and her adorable girl O., and took the girls to swing and slide and run in a sprinkler thingy in Central Park. 

I think Maggie liked that, too.

And now they're gone.  Wah.  When I was leaving this morning and Maggie gestured that she wanted a hug and a kiss, I started to tear up and Allison was like, "STOP IT.  LEAVE.  GET OUT OF HERE."  (But in the nicest possible way.)  So I snuffled my way through my commute and tried to play it off like I had allergies.  I miss my be/fri.  (Although, happily, now we have grown-up versions of our old Best Friends necklaces -- Allison got me a necklace for my birthday that matches the one I got her for Christmas last year, with the Chinese characters for "Sisters" on it.  Aw.  We are corny, but we really mean it.)

(Oh, yeah.  I'm 32 today (or tomorrow -- there's that blog time warp again; it's Tuesday, to simplify matters).  Whoopdie.  How about...a referral for a child as sweet as Miss Maggie?  Heh.)   

More, Please

For the clamoring hordes (i.e., Mom) who are awaiting pictures of Allison's visit, please see Flickr for a sampling of the boundless cuteness that is Maggie.  I'm still busy munching on her cheeks and reading my old diaries with Allison (OH, the drama!), so a full update will have to come later.  Suffice it to say that I really, really do not want them to leave.  We are thinking of un-renovating the kitchen, turning it into a third bedroom and having them move in for good.