December/Christmas

 Ah, December.  Where are we.  Our Christmas tree this year is a thing of beauty.  It's taller than last year's, and Alice seems impressed by it.  We have rituals during the day when we plug in the lights and turn the tree "on," after the fanfare of Alice's countdown (parents: "one..." Alice: "two...three!"), and she and I have a ritual at night of watering the tree (both of us kneeling on the ground, an incantatory "pour pour pour," following a similar counting exercise).  We have taught her to treat the tree gingerly -- after a few early ornaments made the ultimate sacrifice -- and now Alice eyes it warily, an object of beauty stricken with risk. 

I'm trying to compile my lists of my favorite songs of the year and the best books I read, so it's time to take stock of the year.  When I look backwards I see a lot of great things.  In chronological order: I took an amazing writing class; we went to Spain; we went to Rehoboth; I ran a marathon; we cooked Thanksgiving dinner.  Throughout the year I felt good about my work professionally, and I've had a good semester with my students.  Alice has brought an absurd, abundant measure of joy into our lives.  We worry about money, but we sleep well most nights. 

In some ways, though, I also feel like this year has been affected by an undercurrent of exhaustion, or compromise.  There is never enough time or energy to do what I think I should be doing.  Time spent pursuing my own endeavors -- exercise, running, writing -- often feels like time taken away from my family.  After spending much of my work day staring at a computer and pinging back emails, I struggle to want to come home to write for pleasure, or to write the personal emails that I should be sending to maintain important ties.  After a workweek spent sprinting through our precarious routines, I can't find it in myself to get up early for the gym on Sunday mornings.  It just doesn't make sense right now.  And yet there's always time for garbage television.  But I'm trying to revise my internet consumption to get away from the things that don't really excite me -- no more Gawker, less Facebook.  Less time wasted, hopefully.   

I think as 2012 begins I want to try to be more purposeful about the decisions I make, how I decide to expend my time and energy.  Because this was a good year, and I think a great one could be around the corner.  It feels good to put words together.  I want to do more of that.

More to come in the next few days.

The old mattress

Today the sleek new sofa came.  This arrival initiated a cavalcade of change around the apartment.  To make room for the new sofa, we are converting the extra bedroom into a sitting room, so we had to move the old sofa -- the ancient sofa, the sixty year-old sofa that my grandparents had originally brought to Charlottesville, that I had brought to Charlottesville fifty years later, that I had brought to New York after that, that my daughter had scratched and tumbled upon -- into the extra bedroom.  I spent the morning dismantling the old bed in the extra bedroom, the first bed I had owned as an adult.  We put the deconstructed bed frame in the baby's closet but the mattress had to go to the garbage.  She was good, but she was old.

Every time I open the door to our elevator I wonder if a wall of water will come tumbling out.  This time, as always, no flood emerged.  I wheedled the mattress into the elevator and began the journey down to the basement.  The mattress was abutted against the wall behind me.  I felt a rush of affection and nostalgia.  I leaned back into the mattress one last time, thinking of everyone who had slept on it.  I prayed the elevator would not stop on its way to my destination so that no one would see me trying to stand and lie down on the vertical mattress.  The mattress was firm and familiar against my back.  I thanked it.

In the basement I dragged the mattress through the hallway and out into the alley.  I knew as soon as I brought the mattress into the cold unfamiliar outdoors that its side would become etched with ice and salt.  I shoved the mattress along the cold pavement until it came to rest against the building.  Now it was cold and wet and unusable.  The old bed was now stacked in the closet.  The new sofa was sleek and firm and beautiful.  The new sitting room was warm and inviting.  There was no space for regret.

Morning sprint

L's alarm goes off at 6:15, but chances are she's already awake. I may stir when I hear the soft morning voices of NPR float from her nightstand, but L is probably sitting on the couch half-asleep nursing A. Some mornings I find L and A asleep together, L's neck arched to rest her head on the couch and the baby lying still in her lap. On occasional mornings the alarm actually wakes her up, as the baby has deigned to let us sleep -- but these mornings are rare.

My alarm goes off at 6:45, but I am usually awake by then. Once I have showered and dressed I find out how A has dealt with her morning; whether she is placid or fiery, whether she slept soundly or battled through the night. L leaves around 7:30, propelled by currents of unconditional love and professional ambition and a subtle but unrelenting guilt; these are the forces that drive us.

If I am lucky A will let me eat my cereal and read the paper. A happy compromise is to hold her in my lap and let her wreak havoc on the bottom half of the paper while I read something on the top. I always worry about her ink-smeared hands but apparently her constant coat of saliva repels the stain. At 7:55 we are out the door; the baby is in the stroller, my work bag is stuffed underneath her seat, the baby bag (my old backpack, which has seen me from college through Asia to A) is draped over the handlebars with my lunch sack. If I am smart I have remembered the daily log to be completed by the nanny, and A's food. Then the apartment is silent.

We walk up Tiemann to Riverside, heading forcefully up the hill that flattens out around Grant's Tomb, near 120th Street. At this point I have broken in a sweat. The walk to our friends' is about a mile from this point; it's a mile and quarter from door to door. I walk quickly through Riverside Park, under the canopy of leaves and over the uneven paving stones. I pass a few joggers, a few kids in strollers staring outwards with a look of tired perplexity, a man doing some kind of martial art in the middle of the way, and dog-walkers. Today one woman informed me that A's blanket was dragging along the ground with an unnecessary measure of spite. I don't listen to any music, but I do make inane comments to my daughter occasionally to remind her that I'm still there. She is content to stare at her surroundings and feast on her blanket, or perhaps her hand. There is an unexpected measure of balance and companionship.

We cut over on 108th Street and head down Broadway for a couple of blocks, and then we have arrived. After visiting with our friends and passing A, who is aware yet compliant, to the nanny, the dash continues. I walked ten more blocks north and arrive in my office. Despite my efforts to pace myself I am sweaty by the time I get to work; damp under my shirt, the occasional bead trickling down my neck. The back of my hair is wet. Compose yourself. You have arrived at work.

In the evening, on a good day, L will pick up A and continue walking north to retrieve me from work. The three of us stroll home together, enjoying the slow pace and temperate breeze that is an unattainable luxury in the morning. If we are smart and diligent, A is in bed by seven. Then L is still working to make us dinner. In the evening we watch television, because it asks nothing of us. L will pump more milk. At eleven we shut down the apartment. L sleeps immediately, and I try to read a few pages before I can't even remember the words on the page. At some point A will wake herself up by rolling over, or she will interrupt the quiet with a piercing cry that must represent a nightmare. Her eyes won't open, yet she is inconsolable.

And then, after whatever kind of night we have, it will all start again. This is how a home becomes a household.

New TV

We have some really exciting news -- yesterday we got a new TV, one of them fancy flat-screen ones with the HD's.  We opted for the "Dynex" brand.  At first I thought Dynex was a new prescription drug I should ask my doctor about ("side effects may include dry mouth, chronic persperation, and nymphomania") but it turns out they just make TV's.  We spent a frustrating hour or so trying to get the screen resolution just right, trying to make sure our inputs were correct, comparing our zoom options, and checking to see that we weren't wasting our time on AV-2 when obviously we needed to be at HDMI-3.  What are we, farmers?

We christened our new television, which is the culmination of decades of innovation and technological breakthroughs and is designed to capture every individual raindrop, blade of grass, and glittering city light caught on camera, on a fantastically bad episode of "The Bachelorette."  I think the new TV heightened my own sense of shame and personal embarrassment on behalf of the participants, but otherwise it wasn't that different from normal, low-definition "Bachelorette."

What strikes me about this show is the weird cult mentality that seems to infect all the participants like a cold sore.   All of these people -- the bartenders, pharmaceutical representatives, teachers, lawyers, and medical equipment salespeople -- are linked along a sordid chain of previous contestants, starting with the Ur-Bachelor, who lived 3,000 years ago and rejected one contestant who went on to become the first Bachelorette, who in turn sent one of her cast-offs to be the next Bachelor, and on and on in perpetuity.   All of the participants reassure each other constantly that they are there for "the right reasons," such as serial making out and the opportunity to recreate pathetic school-girl fantasies of fairy tale romance.  And all of them aspire to be one of the lucky few who get to drag their chipper Bachelor or Bachelorette (with their telegenically capped teeth, angular jawbones, and classy hair extensions) back to their home towns, where their poor innocent family members have to spend a day ogling the couple and dividing into weird little interview clusters to talk about how all of them are all there for the right reasons.  It seems like a particularly exquisite hell to have to explain, justify and defend your make-believe-let's-pretend-TV relationship on camera to your grimacing parents, siblings, and in-laws.

All of this became much clearer thanks to the Dynex ("call your doctor if your retinal discoloration lasts longer than a week").  We have learned to fast forward through the actual date parts of the show, unless it looks like people are fighting.  Bring on the conflict!  Bring on the artifice!  Bring on the ugly cry!  These are the real right reasons to watch.

("...Please don't use Dynex if you're a werewolf.")

Barrow Street

We just finished packing for the move tomorrow morning. It has been too busy a night to feel sad or anything besides relief that we are finished with the task at hand. Taking the pictures off the wall was kind of sad, though. The movers estimated that we would have 15 boxes per person, yet I think that we have about 50 total. A couple of minutes ago we shifted a few boxes to the side to veg out and watch some TV for a little while before bedtime. This week has been another epically bad week at work and all of my thoughts have been clouded by anger and sadness for the last 48 hours. I needed to clear my head, and packing up our house/lives has been a good distraction.

Barrow Street. We have enjoyed four good years here. This has been the home we returned to as husband and wife. We earned a couple graduate degrees here. We had some good professional experiences and some bad ones. Our marriage was formed here, and we endured those early crucibles here. Hell, the baby was created here. We've started new traditions here, like Faux Thanksgiving and those rituals that punctuate our daily lives together. I could tell you dozens of stories about every room in the house -- the places where we have laughed and wept and fought and made up and made out. It was all here. I am so thankful we had this time together, in this place. L and me. How we will bore our children with stories of these days.

I am really tired right now. I tell myself that we could always move back to this neighborhood someday -- there's always that possibility of return. I'm the kind of person who needs to find that doorway back.

Faux Thanksgiving 2008

Last night, for the third year in a row, we celebrated Faux Thanksgiving, the annual event when we have our friends over to make a full Thanksgiving dinner and then play Taboo until the clues become overly offensive. As usual, it was a fantastic meal. We started out with a twelve-pound turkey:

I was very proud of myself for successfully detaching both turkey legs, which required only a minimal amount of sawing away at the bone. In another lifetime I would have been an excellent surgeon. The final spread looked like this:


All in all, it was great. Good friends, good food. Despite coming a week early, and despite the absence of our family members and other loved ones, I'm not sure you could find a better way to celebrate the Thanksgiving spirit. You look at the six of us and think of what the last year has brought (marriages, pregnancy, graduation, new jobs, new apartments, new opportunities) and there's a lot to be thankful for, in addition to homemade pumpkin pie and the nice bottle of champagne that was chilling outside on the fire escape.

Shop by numbers

Like a fool, I went to Macy's (excuse me, Macy*s) today to take advantage of their one day sale, which was technically two days. I had a simple objective: buy a couple of pairs of pants and a few dress shirts for my new job, which starts in a couple weeks. This is a very auspicious occasion, as it marks my triumphant return to a regular income and adulthood itself. So what better way to mark the event than to battle hordes of bargain-crazed shoppers for the last Fitted Wrinkle-Free Large Satin Stripe in all of Manhattan?

I wandered all over the store, up and down the rickety old wooden escalators, until I made it to the Mens Department. Recently the New Yorker had an article on how department stores deter shoplifters, and they noted that men shopping by themselves automatically raise a red flag among security personnel, since men are typically not avid shoppers. As I wandered through the store I tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, which actually made me sweat a little bit, which probably really reassured the thugs in the security camera room of my good intentions. (It actually reminded me of what I learned about false imprisonment for the bar exam, where a common scenario is when shopkeepers detain suspected thieves; good thing I know my rights as a law school graduate and bar exam applicant!)

The actual dress shirts section of the store was a madhouse, predictably. Hordes of people tussling among piles of shirt wrapped in plastic, clutching at the bags, reading the numbers furiously, then tossing them aside. Some people were actually just sitting on the floor, looking for their numbers, like sad old bingo players. I tried to stick with my standard exciting sartorial palette of blue and white, and was blindly picking shirts based on my collar size a year ago, on the assumption that my neck fat has not really increased since then. After I had wrestled four shirts away from some New Jersey moms and an old lady in a wheelchair, I descended to the pants section.

Compared to the mind-boggling array of options in the pants section, the many varieties of shirts seemed about as different as prison uniforms. I knew I wanted flat front pants, since I've heard pleated pants are uncool. But do I want straight leg? Is "relaxed fit" a signal for dumpy-butted people? I couldn't remember. Fearful that I would end up prancing into the office in flared jeans or capri pants, I sought out the familiar shelter of the Dockers area. I managed to find two pairs of their super premium khakis, the ones in a variety of somber colors with a stiff sheen of professionalism. These are not the ratty khakis I slouched around in as a preppy undergrad; these are khakis that say, "I probably have a Blackberry."

So I came home without actually trying anything on, by selecting items by the numerical sizes I already had. I figure I can try things on at home and get L's approval, or else we'll both return to sort it all out. I couldn't spend any more time in there, and I am not going back there alone.

L is America's sweetheart

Three things happened today to remind me of how good I have it:

1) At Chipotle yesterday, the nice woman behind the register asked me where my wife has been. I explained that she had to work during the day, so I could afford to eat there. Then today, the woman said, "Did you tell your wife I asked about her? I hope she comes in." But of course.

2) This morning, L and I slept through the weights class we usually attend bright and early at 6:45 on Thursday mornings. The alarm went off, but we were both beat -- ultimately we flipped a coin and decided to sleep in. Well, tonight at the gym I saw our teacher, and he said he missed us in class, and I did my little song and dance about us being tired, the alarm, the coin flip, etc. "Who flipped the coin? Did she flip the coin?" he asked. No, I said, it was me who did it. "Good," he said. "If it was her I would've been disappointed." What? I don't know if I understand, but I think it's something good about my wife.

3) A few days ago we tried a new Chinese place in the neighborhood, and a woman from the gym came up and started talking to us for a little bit. Tonight she came up to me and started gushing: "Your wife is so beautiful! You are so lucky to have her!" (Since apparently my face makes paint curl.)

Well, that's my wife for you. A combination of Mary Tyler Moore (turning the world on with her smile), Jane Fonda (fitness-wise, not with the crazy leftist politics) (well, maybe), and Helen of Troy (beauty-wise). I am indeed a lucky guy.

And tomorrow we're off to Ashville, North Carolina for another love fest: John and Anna's wedding!

Filled

Right now I am filled with self-pity. I just got back from the dentist's office, where I had multiple fillings done, after a two-year hiatus of professional dental care. Words cannot express my shame at requiring multiple fillings; that kind of thing happens to other people, not good, floss-conscious people like me.

The left side of my face is numb, if you include the part of your neck down to the adam's apple within the idea of "face." My lip is droopy and heavy, and my words were slurred when I profusely thanked the dentist, like a cretin, for drilling in my mouth and making my saliva spray onto my shirt and glasses. He used a variety of implements today, including: drills, the suction tube that always traps my tongue, a wedge designed to keep my mouth open, an egg beater, a staple gun, and a blow dryer. When he was drilling I could hear the high-pitched whine like a scream coming from someone else inside me. I tried to pretend I was on an airplane, but this was a failure. There wasn't enough anesthetic in my upper teeth, so I could feel the drill in a particularly specific and uncomfortable way. I was gripping the seats of the chair and clenching my butt and flexing all my leg muscles until I couldn't keep it in and grunted for help. So, I got an additional dose, which means I should be able to resume making facial expressions by the weekend.

Once again my dentist was about 14 years old; at one point I swear he said, "hold still, man," although it was hard to tell over the roar of the blow dryer. The important thing is that I'm back on the straight and narrow dental track, and have my next cleaning set up for November. My only hope is that by then I will once again have feeling in my face. Honestly, right now I could be drooling out of the side of my mouth -- what the hell, I probably am -- and I wouldn't even know it.

Spring fever

Since L got ferociously sick on Thursday, my normal husbandly duties have been replaced by my efforts in my new role as a home health aide. Is she comfortable? Does she need a blanket? Would she like a sad little peanut butter sandwich made of one piece of bread? Should I discreetly move into the other room while she yaks into the toilet?

These are the questions that haunt you, as a home health aide. Poor L has been convalescing on the couch for multiple days now, sleeping fitfully on the bed and in the living room, watching VH1 marathons and trying not to do anything that hurts (like swallowing, moving, or breathing). They say it's a virus, and in my expert opinion, it's disgusting. L made me look in her throat, twice, and there is quite a battle raging down there. Her gland is really swollen and is protruding from her neck. Although she has been on antibiotics for a couple days, there is not much improvement going on. So like any happy newlywed couple in Manhattan, we thought we'd spend this Sunday afternoon at the ER!

Going to the emergency room really puts things in perspective. L has been a trooper during this whole process, trying to stay out of the way and heal and put up a strong front. For almost three hours today we watched the ER buzz around us, as the IV dripped fluid into L to rehydrate her. We saw some guy come in for a cocaine-related issue. We saw a woman come in who was so tanked on drinks or drugs that the doctor was threatening to have her stomach pumped (which I was secretly hoping for, since it would have been more interesting that figuring out how many milliliters of fluid L had received). We heard all about an old man's rectal temperature. We heard another old man yell forlornly from behind his curtain, "Hello! Is anybody here?" to which no one ever responded. We saw one very large woman shuffling around in multiple hospital gowns, draped around her front and back like a sandwich board. And we heard a lady have a frank discussion with her doctor about her stools and their qualities (she also discussed her extensive list of medical woes, her menopausal state and her active sex life). And, in a moment that made me want to strangle myself with the IV tube, we heard a nurse ask an old man: "sir, are you trying to urinate or defecate right now?"

Indeed. After they discharged us we hustled out of there as fast as L's withered legs could go. We went to Tasti D, then picked up more supplies at CVS, and now we're home, so L can convalesce in peace and I can return to my nursing responsibilities.

Grab your torches

Tonight is one of the most decadent nights in the TV season: the night of the "Survivor" finale on CBS. Two hours of the finale, bleeding into the ridiculous live vote-count announcement, followed by the nearly unwatchable reunion show, which I somehow usually find watchable. I really love "Survivor," which I know puts me squarely in the 2001 time capsule, but it can't be denied. I love it.

I rediscovered "Survivor" a few years ago and it became a staple of my Thursday nights. I like talking about strategy during the show, figuring out how scenarios might play out, who should vote for who, etc, and I even find myself thinking about these things during the rest of the week. The theme music is good (vaguely ethnic, vaguely world-beat) and you can pronounce the contestants' names in funny accents as they appear. Plus, the challenges are usually pretty creative and well-organized (unlike MTV's lame Real World/Road Rules challenges, which always end up in disqualifications and ties because the producers make things too difficult for their hung-over, drug-addled and over-sexed cast; don't get me started) and CBS dumps a whole lot of money into making hokey things like "tribal council" somehow seem vaguely cool (if not really authentic).

Like most other reality shows, I definitely would not want to be on it, for a lot of reasons. I don't know if I could handle the rest of the weirdos they cast; I don't want to put myself in gym-class-like scenarios, with money on the line; and I don't think being on a reality show would be good for my life, overall. But on the other hand, I would really enjoy the part where you write down somebody's name to vote them off, and then whisper into the camera your rationale. I would write in big block letters, every time, and the producers would end up coming out from behind their duck blind or whatever to make me stop writing, because after I voted out somebody in the game, I'd continue writing down names of people who simply need to go, and explaining why to the camera: George W. Bush, my copyright professor, Osama Bin Laden, etc. So that when the wankerish Jeff Probst read out the votes, the results would be like: four for Regine, two for Diego, and one for Mitt Romney. And I'd be sitting there wondering why my anti-Mitt alliance only scored one vote, again.

Anyways, so I'm excited for the finale tonight. This has been a fairly boring season: no real David and Goliath success stories, or miraculous triumphs, or good guys vanquishing bad guys, but there are still some interesting possible outcomes. It's something to look forward to at the end of a cold and slushy Sunday, when the city gets stuck with all the horrible leftover parts of a nor-easter (meteorological meat loaf), rain and wind and cold without some thick fat snowflakes to pretty things up and muffle the noise. But there will be time for that later; tonight it's time to eat a lot and yell at the tv. Grab your torches, head back to camp.

Laundry lessons

This morning, when I was planning on picking up the laundry I had dropped off at the nice Chinese laundromat around the corner, I realized I had lost my receipt. I remembered the price, $20.20, both because it was unusually expensive and because it reminded me of how I used to spend Friday nights. I searched around the apartment, but I could not find that stupid slip. Immediately the nervous old woman inside of me launched into action. "Do you think they'll let me pick up my clothes?" I said to L, knitting my hands together worriedly. "Of course," she said. "What if someone finds the receipt and steals my clothes?" I whimpered. "That's not going to happen," she said.

But it might happen, I thought as she turned away. As I walked to the subway, dejected, I tried to make a mental inventory of my clothes at the cleaners -- basically everything I own, plus assorted bedding. I know those Chinese ladies pretty well, but would they stop a potential thief from handing over my receipt and receiving all of my clothes, valued in the tens of dollars?

Immediately after class ended this afternoon I went to the laundromat. "I DON'T HAVE MY RECEIPT," I said. I spoke loudly, since they're not native English speakers. I looked around for my white mesh bag, and the nice lady pulled it down and brought it to me. "It's heavy," she said. The bag looked familiar, but something wasn't right. "THIS ISN'T MINE," I said helpfully. Suddenly it clicked in my head. "THIS IS MY WIFE'S, IT'S NOT MINE," I explained. "I WANT MINE." With relief I located my bag, with my clothes, with the proper price ($20.20), safe for me to retrieve before some receipt-wielding thief rushed in and caused some sort of wash & fold dilemma. Thank God. "OK, I'M ALL SET," I said, indicating that the situation had been resolved.

The nice lady was looking at me. "I'LL TAKE MY BAG," I said. She looked at me still. Then something clicked in my head. "YOU KNOW WHAT? WHY DON'T I JUST TAKE BOTH BAGS, MINE AND MY WIFE'S."

The nice lady nodded. "Good boy," she said. "Good boy."

*****

And on a completely unrelated note, this happens to be my 250th post on ol' Clarity. Not too bad.

Prussian style

I painted our study a new color, comically named Prussian Blue, over the weekend L was away in Armenia. For the last year and a half, our study has been a salmon color that was pretty in theory, but was actually like being inside a human organ once you entered the room. If you tried to eat or study in there, you were confronted with the stressful visual scream of this bright, pinky, pucey, gross color. Something had to be done.

So, after running 13 miles on Saturday morning, I was struck with a sudden (uncharacteristic) burst of ambition in the afternoon. Given the sorry state of my legs I minced over to Ace hardware and bought primer, paint, and a few random paint supplies we lacked at home. I dragged all the furniture out of the study and taped up all the edges. I laid newspaper on the ground, busted out the boombox and some Fleetwood Mac and John Mayer cd's (what can I say, painting calls for white music) and applied the primer. As soon as I first dripped primer on myself, I realized that our efforts to donate away our old clothes meant that I had no clothes for painting, so I made an executive decision and just painted in my underwear. That is a tip you won't get on "Extreme Home Makeover," but trust me, it works. Anyways, priming the walls was a uniquely hellish experience: it never seems even, it's always splotchy and seems resolutely bound for ugliness. So, being someone who must always be stressed about something, I spent Saturday night feeling anxious about my primer application and disconcerted by the furniture from the study that was clogging up the hallways and other rooms.

I woke up on Sunday, eyed the misplaced furniture with angst, and opened up the Prussian Blue. It's a nice color, carefully chosen by L and me amidst a rich palette of: Celery, Impressionist, Light Sky, Shoreline Blue, Bellflower Blue, Surfboard Yellow, Lisbon Blue, Cloud Blue, Blue Mesa, Basalt, Spanish Bluebell, and Shoreline Blue. Our selection was a gorgeous color that really seemed to capture the spirit of the Prussian people, as far as I can tell. After all the prep work of Saturday, and the hell of applying a coat and a half of primer, yet with remaining streaks and clouds and foggy bits of the old color shining through, the actual painting didn't take long at all. It only took about an hour and a half, and by mid-afternoon I had restored the room to its former glory.


The new room looks great. Miraculously the color seems to match all of our wall stuff, as well as the woods of the desk and the table and the floorboards. The room is now calm, and serene, and a great place to eat and read. It only points out how gross the room was before. Why did we tolerate it for so long? Who wants a room they hate? I'm just happy that the least favorite room vaulted into first place. L was thrilled with it, too -- not bad for a weekend's work.

Get tested

Last night we learned that L is not pregnant, and, equally important, neither am I. For surprisingly uninteresting reasons, we ended up with a couple of home pregnancy tests in the apartment last night. Obviously, we had to try them out. And I came to the conclusion that a home pregnancy test is like a gun in a couple of ways.

First, if you have one around, you're going to use it. After L told me we had an extra one, I obviously dropped whatever I was doing to try it out. I was impressed with its light weight and comfortable grip. I decided it would be easier to use if I sat down, but I quickly began to worry about how much time you had to spend peeing on the stick to get an accurate sample. As a result, when I was finished I held the test at an awkward angle, lest a flood of unnecessary urine rush past the sample area, window panels, and out onto my hand. Fortunately this didn't happen, but there was a tense moment where the liquid (which somehow turned blue) seemed to meander through the whole thing, revealing both a control stripe and the results panel, which indicated that I am ... not pregnant. Damn. Kind of bittersweet.

The second way a home pregnancy test is like a gun is that practice makes you more comfortable using it. What happened last night, with me liberally peeing on a stick while yelling through the door to my wife, is like a trip to the firing range. I got to know the home pregnancy test, to understand it, to feel comfortable with it. So that when the real moment arrives, if and when we ever have occasion to use one -- like (God forbid) the day I need to shoot an assailant or a wild boar to protect myself and my loved ones -- I will be ready to go (and not freeze up or get confused, ending up peeing on my assailant, or throwing a home pregnancy test at the boar).

Here's to a great, non-pregnant weekend -- sushi and beers for everybody.

On shampoo

Today I realized that I finally finished up the bottles of shampoo and conditioner that I purchased in Hawaii lo those many months ago. Back in late December, as the honeymoon began so promisingly, we bought standard-sized bottles of Suave shampoo and conditioner, and we carried them around with us from Oahu to Hawaii to Oahu again, and then back to New York. They were exotic; they were Hawaiian; they were souvenirs. And now, five months later, I finally finished them (L having her own well-established haircare regime which sadly does not involve Suave products, but somehow involves 14 other bottles in our shower).

Call me crazy, but I feel that five months is a really long time to nurse the same bottle of shampoo. Of course, maybe I'm doing some showering at the gym that would otherwise occur at home, but this is unlikely, since I shower at the gym at nine o'clock at night. Since my hair has been fairly short, maybe I'm applying smaller dollops than usual. But if this is actually the case, then over the course of my lifetime I've only used about 65 bottles of shampoo. As a pampered American who has been on this planet for 27 years, obviously I feel a bit shortchanged by my consumption here. Have I been underwashing? Is 65 bottles even a whole crate or pallet or shipment of shampoo? What the hell?

This is what I think about in the shower every day, mindful of the exotic curves of the Hawaii Suave bottles, and the remnants of the price stickers on the plastic. Years ago I heard that it takes six weeks for all of your skins cells to flake off and be replaced, to leave you with a completely new outer layer, so I would always think that for six weeks after I returned from anyplace, I still wore some of the same skin that had been far away and experienced different breezes or water or sand or light. I guess I can add the five-month shampoo yardstick as another measurement of time and distance. It will be mildly sad to toss out those two bottles -- not many of my toiletries are native Hawaiian.

Look the part

Today L and I went on a shopping extravaganza to buy me work clothes for my new job, which starts in a couple weeks. We walked into Macy's this morning armed with nothing more than a set of extremely specific guidelines to help define "business casual," as well as moxie in abundance, and we left the store two hours later carrying two bags apiece and beaming with a glow of triumph. Here is what I purchased, starting at the top and working down:

3 dress shirts, two white and one blue (and slim fit, no less) (hubba hubba) (thanks James)

4 extremely cool neckties, none of them paisley and none of them from the Donald J. Trump collection

4 pairs of premium Dockers (khaki, olive, navy, black), all with a special sheen of quality

12 new pairs of socks, with extra-stay protection, to make sure they cling to my calves in a most flattering way

2 pairs of shoes, kind of dressy, kind of orthopedic, in black and brown.

This amount of clothes, which could dress an entire Somalian village for a summer internship at a law firm, cost me about $575. But I saved a total of about $197 on all of my purchases, thanks to the one-day sale we unknowingly stumbled into.

All in all, this was an extremely successful shopping adventure, and even L was impressed with our efficiency. Special thanks to Ashesh for his sartorial guidance, since no one rocks the young professional look quite like he does. Sweater vests for everyone!

It's hard to take a good picture of a coffee table

Two Sundays ago we went over to Nicky's apartment, where he kindly donated a coffee table to us. We didn't know how badly we needed a table until we had one, and then we nearly began weeping with delight every time we were able to put a plate or a newspaper on top of it. "It's not on the floor," we would choke out, as the tears kept coming. And since so far the table hasn't been revealed as a Trojan horse full of bedbugs or termites or al Qaeda operatives, it's just good news all around. Some people think it brings the room together; other people just like not eating food from your lap, like we're at some kind of perpetual family barbecue.


Anyway, here are a couple photos of the newest addition to our meager little city-mouse home. It's hard to take a good picture of a coffee table, especially when it is in constant use, like ours. But a few features to note: the lower shelf, perfect for laptops and magazines; the beveled glass top, perfect for making your heart skip when you think something is about to spill due to the unexpected angle, only it doesn't because the bevelling is just shallow enough to catch it; and the fine layer of dust that clings to the entire surface area of the table like the fur on a tarantula. (Not good at similes.) We wondered where all this dust had been hiding before we got the table to act as a magnet to catch it. Was the rug absorbing it? Or what?

But I'm not a whiner! Even if our place is now hay fever central, it's great to have a table. Thank you Nicky.

***

And with that, I am going to Barcelona in two days to see James. More news to come.

Things I've recently dropped in the toilet

A bandaid
An entire book of matches
Numerous q-tips
My laptop
My birth certificate
Textbooks
My running shoes
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
A Faberge egg
My wife
A second toilet
A gingerbread house

...anything else?

Sliced and diced

Warning: this post is kind of gross, and not for the faint of heart.

This afternoon I went to go visit Enzo, John and Anna's cat, who we are feeding and chatting with while they're away in Mexico. Enzo is really one of the best cats I've ever known, because he's very dog-like: friendly, outgoing, affectionate.

Well, today I was standing at the counter, curling open a tin of wet cat food, Enzo mewling at my feet, when the edge of the can lid cut into the skin at the last joint of my pinkie finger. Suddenly there was blood running down my hand and onto the counter and into the sink. I was shocked at first - pressing the cut with a paper towel and simultaneously trying to clean up the mess. I dumped the food into Enzo's bowl to distract him and focused on the cut - I ran it under the cold faucet and watched the diluted blook wash away. The cut was like the open mouth of a smiley face. It hurt like hell. Every paper towel I pressed into it became a sodden bloody mess within a few minutes. Enzo was everywhere: between my legs, on the counter, rubbing against my arm. I thought, the last thing I need in the wound is cat hair. I thought, bury these towels deep in the trash so they don't freak out when they see them. I thought, don't let Enzo touch the blood or he'll turn into a vampire cat.

It wouldn't stop bleeding. After about 20 minutes I called L, and she called the student health people. I already had visions of my immaculate Thursday night being shot to hell - no great gym class, no good tv, just me in an ER waiting for stitches. I found band-aids in the bathroom, but I bled through two of them. After talking to L and deciding not to get stitches, I stumbled out of the apartment, doing everything with my left hand, promising Enzo, like a little feline deadbeat dad, that I would come back for more quality time tomorrow.

On the street I clutched my hands together and tried to hide the bloody paper towel from other people. In the pharmacy I jerked open the lid of the band-aid box and tried to apply it myself, with mixed results. As I returned to the street, though, I was shocked to see that the bleeding had abated. Instead of a gaping smiley mouth the wound was more like a ... parenthesis. A bold one, in a thick, unsubtle font, but only a parenthesis.

I went to the gym with high hopes. I made it on the treadmill and the pull-up thing, but then in class, we were ten minutes in when I saw that there was blood all over my hand. There was blood on the hardwood floor, too. Disgusted, I grabbed my towel and scrubbed at it, Lady MacBeth-style, and retreated to the lockerroom. With a fresh band-aid I returned, but it was only a few more minutes until I noticed blood again on my hand, and even traces on my shirt, and on the floor. I felt like that scene in "Carrie," when she gets her period in the locker room and the girls taunt her, except in my case, I expected the other hip hoppers to throw cans of cat food at me. I scrambled out, grabbed my stuff and returned to the lockerroom utterly cowed. I took a shower and left. I thought about staying to apologize to my teacher but I realized I was too angry to talk. I look forward to Thursday nights like no other; I was so disappointed.

Now I'm home, on band-aid number 4, fully expecting another tsunami of blood at any given moment. It really hurts. I figure, it must be better in the morning, right? I don't want stitches, I'm not going to the damn hospital. I tell you, these things always happen on the brink of something good (say, a chock-full birthday weekend: fun drinks tomorrow with Ashesh and Mona, a James cameo and rollicking party on Saturday, a lovely Sunday to follow). It even occurred to me that the blood stains on my hand are maybe reparations for the ashes that didn't stain my forehead yesterday.

Anyways, hopefully this will look better tomorrow morning. I hope the bleeding calms down, after a night of rest and no movement. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to returning to the scene of the crime and making amends with Enzo, getting some of the quality time that was cut short today, assuming of course that he hasn't developed a taste for human blood.

State of the apartment address

My fellow residents:

We gather each year to look around us and assess the conditions of this glorious apartment of ours. As we summon the courage and wisdom to survey our several hundred square feet and all that it contains, let us remember the spirit of adventure and enterprise that has propelled us forward unto this task.

My fellow residents, the state of the apartment is strong. Strong, yes, yet not as tidy as it could be.

I continue to drape clothes over the blue chair, sometimes for days at a time. This just makes sense to me - you can't put clothes straight in the laundry bag, you should let them sit out for a while. Most people understand this. Other people in the apartment are not as adamant as some other people might be about putting used mugs and glasses in the sink, or better yet, the dishwasher. Let us not leave this problem for future generations to solve.

Bedmaking is a tedious task, but a necessary one. As is cleaning the bathroom. As much as even I would like to believe it, two paper towels and a liberal squirt of glass cleaner are not enough to clean the bathroom. Perhaps for the toilet, though.

I would like to pause for a moment in memory of the tragic loss we suffered this year. While we were away in Hawaii, several of our beloved plants, namely the spidery vine thing on top of the book case, perished under conditions of drought. We honor the memory of this beloved plant, and vow, with love and compassion, to forge ahead with new plants. The resilience of the other spider plant, and especially Buddy the bamboo plant, are an inspiration to us all.

Despite these setbacks, we approach a new year with bright eyes and open hearts. We gaze fondly on our teeming stacks of books, piles of detritus from law and public health schools, respectively, and the wad of plastic grocery bags stuffed under the sink. We occasionally consider the dust that gathers in awkward places, like the edges of picture frames and over the tops of my dress shoes, but we focus on the brighter days and dreams to come. We are an apartment of hope, optimism, and charity; an apartment dedicated to the ideals of literacy, equality, and gender-neutral hierarchies; an apartment that is rented with the distant yet immortal aspiration of condo ownership.

My fellow residents, the state of the apartment is strong. God bless, and please keep it down since the walls are paper-thin and we can already hear the neighbor snoring next door.