Baby, baby, please let me hold him

16 10 2019

Yet another absurd (-adjacent) baby: James Mark!

Like his big brother (my habibi Henry) and cousin (the angry spud Lyana), Sweet Baby James decided to pop in on the world a bit early. This necessitated tubes and lines and monitors, and after a week he’s still in the NICU, but as he’s now merely a “lazy eater” (per his mum), he should be heading home sooner rather than later.

Henry is apparently anxious to meet SBJ, and told his pop he wanted to get a toy for him. (According to my sister, the last thing that household needs is another toy, but whatchagonnado?) Let’s see how long before he wants to send the baby back.

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Two things:

One, I am deeply grateful that my nieces were able to avail themselves of the best that medicine has to offer. There’s more to these birth stories; suffice it to say that what was merely momentarily dramatic could have been tragic had they not been at the hospital.

I get why people are leery of medicalizing birth—goddess knows I’ve voiced my own critiques—but it’s not 1968, women aren’t being knocked out before delivery, and birthing rooms, midwives, and doulas are now an ordinary part of the hospital birthing experience. And good medicine saves the lives of mothers and babies alike.

Two, I’m thinking of going to the Twin Cities in January to meet these new babies and reacquaint myself with Henry (and see some old friends).

I know: the Twin Cities in January?! But the flights have gotta be dirt cheap—most folks aren’t scrambling to travel to the below-zero—and I’m not teaching then, so why not? Plus, I want to see if I can still handle the forsaken cold.

Y’all know I dig New York (most of the time), but winters here are often merely dreary. I look forward to the bracing.

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Misery

1 05 2017

Colds suck.

I know, I know: everybody gets ’em, everybody hates ’em, ain’t nothin’ special about ’em.

That’s part of the suckage of the common cold, innit? It’s just such goddamned ordinary misery.

A serious flu and you take to your bed, achy and feverish and wanting nothing more than to be unconscious, but a cold? Yeah, you’re achy and you want to sleep, but you can mostly also do whatever it is you usually do, just with more breaks.

And if you’re not knocked flat on your ass, it’s easy to think, Oh, yeah, I’ll be better soon. Only the damn thing lingers. One day you can’t stop sneezing. Another day and it’s all Give Me Fever, and the day after that you swear you’re going to cough your lung inside out.

And then you think, Oh, okay, I’ll be better soon, and STILL WITH THE COUGHING.

At one point earlier today I wondered, hopefully (!), All this coughing: maybe I have walking pneumonia?

I do not have walking pneumonia.

No, I’m just bored and impatient and tired of being tired and crabbing like any middle-aged crabby broad would do.

Just enough with the fucking coughing already, though, okay?


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I want to ride my bicycle

8 12 2014

The next time I whine-think Ehhhn, I don’ wanna take the train the gym and I don’ wanna sit on a stationary bike at the gym and It’s really not that cold out and I’ll just bundle up when I ride. . .

. . . I will remember this 30s-degree-gusty-winds day, with my dead-cold toes and quivering thighs and pissed-off tits and I will grab my fuckin’ MetroCard and a book for the bike and take the goddamned train to the gym.


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Coolsville

22 09 2014

Did you miss them?

The posts of me bitching about the hot and the mugg and the sun and the smell, capped off by the August I-hate-everything rant?

Yeah, didn’t happen this summer. Because this summer was. . . not bad.

Not bad at all; in fact, it was the best summer since I moved to New York.

There were occasional hot days, and a fair amount of humid days, but in June-July-August, there were damned few hot-and-humid days. The worst week of the summer was the first week of September, with temps in the eighties and dew points in the seventies—uncomfortable, but which discomfort was easily abated with a fan.

Okay, during one or two of those early-Sept days I could have turned on the a/c, but since I hadn’t bothered to put it in the window, I made do with the fan.

That’s right, it was so not-awful that I never needed to heave that box into position; instead, it remained hunkered down on an upside-down milk-crate beside my bed, an ersatz bed-stand for my (30+-year-old) clock radio and a couple of plants.

The only downside to the many cloudy days was the sadness of my windowbox-basil. It enjoyed the sun and rain thru most of June, but there was a big windy storm at the end of June, and it never fully recovered. I got enough leaves throughout the rest of the summer for salads and sandwich toppers, but not enough for pesto.

Still, that’s a trade-off I will make every time. And hell, isn’t that what greenmarkets are for, anyway? I bought a coupla’ bunches for a few bucks and whipped up another year’s worth o’ basily and garlicky goodness.

Of course, me being me, I’ve already had moments of dread about next summer—which is a decent argument for trying to get away from oneself from time to time.

And hey, it’s supposed to be a cold winter! That I can look forward to!


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A hazy shade of winter

5 01 2014

And lo! the heavens opened and offered upon us the blessings of winter:

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And it was good.

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And so I ventured forth into the wintry landscape, donning the footwear of the snowy deep, to deposit my earnings from searches far and wide, and to partake in the gifts of the wind and the cold.

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And it was good.

Alas and alack, the heavens grew surly and the winds spat warmth and rain upon us, degrading the glorious banks of icy down into mean crystals and slush.

And so will this punishment continue for yet one more day, upon which ending will return the promised cold—unto which we shall rejoice! tho’ yet we mourn the loss of our snowy firmament.


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All things weird and wonderful, 24

7 08 2012

Cousin!

And, to steal the line from Cute Overload (from where I also stole this picture): Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo that’s cold!

(Image via Uzoo Facebook page.)

And remember: Ape, not monkey. A-P-E.


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Oh, the weather outside is frightful

1 07 2012

I don’t like air conditioning.

Silly, I know, given my antipathy to summer, and it must be admitted that this dislike does not get in the way of my using my own a.c. (purchased for me by T. and P. some summers ago) or my gratitude for it on the train or at work.

Yes, I’m a hypocrite—sue me.

My friend J., who grew up in Arizona and went to school in Minnesota, didn’t like central heat, something which I, the as-yet-had-never-lived-anywhere-outside-of-the-midwest, found unfathomable. Don’t like indoor heat? Why it’s the greatest: You come in from a snowy day and peel off your jacket and mittens and hat and scarf, kick off your boots, and you feel the warmth seep into you.

That made sense: You bundled up for outside, and when the bundle was no longer enough, you escaped back into cozy warmth.  How could that not be good?

But J., I think, looked at winter much as I look at summer: That was a season when you were supposed to be able to roam free, and not be trapped indoors. Arizona in July was like Minnesota in January—brutal—so when the opposite (winter for her, summer for me) doesn’t bring relief, you go after the proxy, that which makes the brutal bearable.

Hm, that wasn’t clear. J. doesn’t hate summer and I don’t hate winter. Neither of us likes our respective brutalities, but we’ve each found a way to deal with them; what we have not found a way to deal with are the seasons which are supposed to be “better”. (Yes, I still think winter is easier to deal with than summer, what with the possibilities of bundling-up versus the limits to stripping down, but that’s another argument.)  Summer for me and winter for her is supposed to be a time of weather-liberation, and when it is not, well, we hate the things that keep us penned up, trapped indoors by the sun or the snow. Thus: I hate a/c, she hates central heat.

J. is long back in Arizona, so I hope she’s got her winter mojo back; regardless, she’s likely as calm facing summer as I am facing winter.

I just wish Brooklyn summers were as mild as those Arizona winters.


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Oh the weather outside is frightful

10 02 2010

Not really.

The snow is currently only wisping down and barely covers naked sidewalks; the wind is not howling.

This is not a blizzard. This is winter.

I’ve noted that I grew up and went to school in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and spent a few (beautiful) years in Montreal, so I bring a certain snobbishness to an ability to handle the cold.

A city should have plows, sand, and ice—and know how to use them.

A person should—I—have a kick-ass jacket, a hat, scarf, mittens, long underwear (if necessary), and boots. Heavy duty boots.

Today is just a day in February; there’s no reason to shut the city down.

Still.

If my bosses decide to close the office for the day and wish us all a happy snow day, why then I’ll be that obedient office drone and stay home.

I’m adaptable that way.


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