Family photos

Our beautiful new bundle of joy, brought to you in part by the makers of VARDE(TM).




Our adorable little Staub, fresh from her first foray into the oven. Note the drop of sweat at her temple. Girl cooks a mean Oven Roaster.




Fresh fruit brought to you by the Amish Market, plucked from the tree before it ever stood a chance of ripening. Looks good in the bowl, though.

Mein Kampf, Part 375

For the past few days - - okay, since yesterday at least - - I've been Seeing Things. This is nothing new to anyone who knows me, as I am often prone to sharing the fact that I Sometimes See Dead People. More than just at work, I mean. But it's usually late at night in the fuzzy territory between Asleep and Awake, so I can usually explain it away to my overactive subconscious playing tiddlywinks with my REM cycle.

But last night while M. and I were constructing our new IKEA(C) VARDE(TM) kitchen island - - more on this to follow, it has completely transformed my world in less than 24 hours - - I swear I saw little black floaties scurrying around the kitchen floor. More than once.

And so yes, of course, the rational answer was a) mice or b) dust rabbits.

But then it happened again on the subway this morning. So okay, maybe c) just a lingering floaty in my aqueous humor.

Until it happened again when I came back to my desk tonight.

This leads me to one of several conclusions:

1. I'm being followed by mice.

2. I'm being followed by dead people.

2a. I shouldn't have watched the show about mediums on A&E the other night.

2b. I shouldn't have pretended just now that I watched the whole show about mediums the other night, when in fact I only watched the first half, and have every intention of watching the second half sometime later this week, probably right around the time that my brain has started to forget about the first half.

3. I have horrifically sticky eye floaties.

4. I have final and conclusive proof - - in addition to the head aches, stomach aches, random skull bumps, dizziness and general feelings of panic I've experienced over the past sixteen years - - of an enormous brain tumor.


My doomed fate is mitigated only by the fact that I have our new IKEA(C) VARDE(TM) kitchen island waiting for me when I get home, and the recently reached decision that tonight will mark the maiden voyage of our Staub chicken pot.

I persevere.

The good, the bad and the awkward

Awkward New York City social interaction No. 12,7322:
Bumping into your creepy middle-aged neighbor's HX Magazine "massage therapist" as he's fumbling out of your apartment building with his "massage" table bags. At 9AM, no less.

Best thing about working with anciently old ladies who are both cognitively impaired and hard-of-hearing:
When you go to shout in their ears, they think you're making a pass at them and they kiss you on the cheek while you're shouting. Every time.

Worst thing about deciding, with your husband, that you both officially hate doing laundry enough that you're going to start Having It Done Professionally (not unlike your creepy neighbor):
They may fold your shirts wrong and fail to use fabric softener, but there's plenty of other vendors to choose from. And there's no turning back.

Saved, Part II; or, That Damn Mouse

Last night on the ride home from work, another exotic-tongued evangelical boarded the train and, in a tone similar to that of his predecessor, began:

"Men...all you men on the train...."

Okay, I thought, Brace yourself, here it is, here's the part where he skips women who wear pants and goes right for the jugular, right for the gays.

"All you men on this train," he continued, "who look at the women butt, all men who look at the women butt, God sent you right to the fire of Hell."

I breathed a weary sigh of relief.

One soul seated beside me, clearly desperate to claw his way out of the fiery pits, pleaded with the Messenger, "Aw c'mon man, ain't you ever looked at a girl's behind?" But is was useless, he was Too Far Gone.

The good news is that he disappeared into his next car of victims without tacking on the ever-ready, "...just like the homosexuals," which leads me to believe that God really does hate the pants-wearers and butt-starers just a little more than the gays.



Meanwhile, our traps are still sitting there in the kitchen, awaiting their victims. I've been creeping out of the bedroom for the past two mornings, certain that I would find a twitching little peanut butter-covered, dread-filled rodent, but so far...nothing. Either he was just passing through, or he's allergic to peanuts, or he's purely a carbophile. What do I have to do, roast him a chicken in my new Staub chicken pot?

Because I will. If that's what it takes.

I'm just that determined.

Mouse for Sale

This morning, as is the case every Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6AM. Whilst standing in my dark kitchen making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch -- part of my new Monday/Wednesday Budget Lunch Plan -- I couldn't help but notice that something had chewed a whole in the paper-bagged loaf of Italian bread I'd left out on the counter overnight, leaving a nickel-sized spot of bare bread and a thousand shreds of white paper bag.

It would appear we have a mouse in our house.

Now all that remains is What To Do With It.

The savior in me wants to buy a Hav-a-Hart trap and set it free in the wilds of Ninth Avenue.

The realist in me knows that the only realistic route is going to be a snap-trap or one of those sticky pads.

Having recently entered my office to find a still-squeaking, still-breathing, still-kicking mouse stuck to one of these pads, and then watching helplessly and unhelpingly as my medical colleague disposed of it first in a plastic bag, then under his show, then in the trash basket, I am well aware of my weakness around sticky pads. I've also heard the urban legends about mice that chew off their own limbs just to escape the sticky pads, leaving a sticky bloody mess in their wake, and we only just recently cleaned our kitchen floor.

At the same time, the last thing I want to be left with is a half-dead mouse left twitching with its little crushed mouse trachea under the oppressive-but-not-quite-deadly bar of the snap-trap. The snap-trap is most likely a swifter and more painless death, but the sticky pads provide a more generous dead-mouse-to-human-hand berth.

I keep coming back to the 40-pound chicken pot sitting on the shelf but this only gives me the What, and not the How.

It's true what my therapist says, life really is Uncertain.

Train of the Damned

Today on the subway, after a long day of hard work, following a long (last) week of hard work, a man came onto my subway car armed with a Bible.

I held my breath, waiting to be excoriated.

"Women who wear pant," he intoned in an unplaceable accent, "is abomination before God."

I swallowed a deep sigh of relief -- safe -- and glanced furtively around the car, taking silent, self-righteous stock of who would be Saved and who would Not. Three on the first sweep, with more likely waiting in the periphery.

"That is right," he intoned once again, slapping the Bible with his left hand. "Just like homosexuality...women wearing pant is abomination before the Lord."

Fuck. Three sets of eyes trained right back at me. Three cocked eyebrows.

Failing to find a willing, trousered ally with whom to share a quick one-liner -- "Well, looks like we're both screwed" -- I took solace in the fact that, in this subway car anyways, there were more of Them than there were of Me.

My Masseuse

This afternoon, in lieu of yoga, I decided to test out the semi-new storefront Chinese shiatsu-foot-rub-reflexology-paybytheminute place around the corner, in an attempt to alleviate my chronic upper back and neck misery which has been particularly flare-y this week.

Here's a minute-by-minute internal account of my thirty minute massage:

Minute 1: Should I have taken my shorts off too? Why is she rubbing my back when I told her all I wanted was my neck and shoulders? What if she didn't understand what I was saying?

2. What's that funny perfume smell? What if she tries to love me long time? She looked fifty, surely she's too old for that. I wonder if the business men at the happy-ending places get a real backrub first? When is she going to get to my neck and shoulders?

3. Aaaahhh. Massage oil.

4. Does massage oil stain? She's touching my shorts with her massage oily hands.

5. Did she just swing her foot up onto the table? Did she just jump over the table?

6. How long has it been? I only paid for thirty minutes. What if she set her little portable timer wrong? Would she really cheat me? What if I fall asleep and the beeper goes off and I scream like I did last week when my yoga teacher rubbed my forehead during savasana?

7. I feel like I'm in a peep show. Or a women's shelter. Or an emergency room. Why don't they put up little walls instead of curtains? I wonder if the girl next door can hear my back being massaged as much as I can hear hers being massaged?

8. Has that tinkly New Age music been playing the whole time? Why aren't they playing Chinese music? Are they even Chinese?

9. What if its a pinched nerve instead of a neck muscle? What if I get paralyzed some day? What am I going to eat at Chipotle tonight?

10. She found the enormous knot over my left shoulder blade. Do her hands hurt? What kind of face is she making? Is she bored?

11. Holy shit, she's moving the knot down my back.

12. Where did she learn this? Is she magic?

13. How much more would it cost to come here every week instead of yoga?

14. Did she just swing her foot up on the table again?

15. Oh my God, she's squatting over my head.

16. I want to pick my head up and see if her feet are really straddling my head. Are her feet clean? What color nail polish is she wearing?

17. Oh no, my face is sticking to the paper on the table.

18. The new girl next door just told her lady she only wanted her shoulders and neck done, too. Does everyone say that? Am I a cliche?

19. I'm never going to yoga again. I'm only coming here. She's fixing everything. I love her. I need to come here every week. Why did she just bend my arm back like she's handcuffing me?

20. Whose phone is ringing?

21. Did that girl's massage lady seriously just stop the massage and start talking on her cell phone? My massage lady wouldn't do that, would she? Does she know she looks like Sandra Oh? Did she look like Sandra Oh? What did her face look like?

22. Do I have zits on my back? How did she get her hand in my skull?

23. Are those her elbows? Her arms must be covered in massage oil. Is she used to that? Does she want to wash her hands? Was she really wearing bright pink lipstick and teased hair? Or was that in a movie?

24. Wait, where did she go? I didn't hear her phone ring.

25. Why is she covering me with hot towels? Did she just cover me with a rain tarp? Did she just sit on my butt?

26. Are those her hands or her feet? Or both? How is it that she's nowhere at all but everywhere at once? Why am I always so stressed out? I am one with the Earth. Was she in the circus?

27. Is this when she lays her breasts on top of me and licks my neck and whispers in my ear that she wants to make me happy?

28. My God, I'm burning up. These hot towels. Did I just hear running water? Is she going to hose me down? Why am I wearing a tarp?

29. She's straddling my back. No, she's standing on my back. She's so light.

30. I can't breathe. She's heavy. Why doesn't she have a bar over her head?

31. OH my God, the beeper went off. That was frightening. Did she say "I'm all finished, you want more time?" or "I'm not finished, you want more time?"? Why is she still rubbing my back? Did she hear me say "No, that's great" or "Oh, that's great"? Is she still charging me by the minute?

32. That was amazing. How did I miss the Please don't take off your underwear sign on my way in?

A Mother's Shame; or, Chicken Pots at the Point

Yes, clearly (or not so much, as the case may be), I need one of those newfangled telephoto lens.

They're just so hard to discreetly whip out in the middle of a Williams-Sonoma semi-annual sale to, say, take a picture of, perhaps, a chicken pot whose asking price has now been reduced by, hypothetically, 75%.





I blame myself, for focusing 110-percent of my energies on keeping my new marriage afloat while clearly neglecting the rest of my family to the point where their only source of empowerment comes through discount self-marketing.

But at least now she has a mommy and a daddy to come home to in the middle of the night.

Cup of sugar?

I was going to write something nice and romantic about missing M. while he's out of town for a few days. I swear, I even had the haiku syllables worked out.

But then I sat down at my computer and looked out the window and saw what is evidently our humpy new neighbor, sanding or buffing something in his humpy new bedroom. Shirtless. And sweating. With his shorts teetering precariously on the edge of his sweaty, new neighbor buttocks.



And that's when I remembered that having one's home to oneself for a few days isn't the absolute worst thing in the world, because it allows one to take some Me Time and do the things one wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to do. Like pine at the window for thirty straight minutes waiting for the shorts to drop another inch.

And also, after putting it off for a solid twelve hours, finally sitting down to work on one's novella-in-progress after a three month hiatus. Which is what I'm going to do right now. Until M. calls to say goodnight. Or the shorts drop.

Vicarious posting

I just read this tragic and angering but also romantic inspiring story on Towleroad.