My Day in Pictures

Merry and I met for coffee in Union Square today. We were just about to order the coffee when we realized we were around the corner from Max Brenner, a chocolate shop/lunch place we both like a lot. And the idea of hot chocolate with schnapps in it was oddly appealing. So off we went.

On the way, we crossed Union Square and discovered that in the middle of the square, the ground was six inches deep in goose down.




Intrigued, we walked a bit deeper into the fuzz. In the middle of it, we found a swarm of about 50 people engaged in a violent, yet joyful pillow fight:





And then walked through even more fuzz:



*sigh*

And then we ate chocolate:



And then we climbed the escalator in what passes for a mall in Manhattan, so we could take these pictures of discarded pictures on the roof of the train station:




So there you have it. No bus rides, no limping, no disorderedness - not much of anything, really, except a bunch of people beating each other about the head with pillows. Oh and there was chocolate and a cheese plate and I tried on a pair of shoes later. Oh and I had popcorn for dinner. Oh and did I say thank you yet? Thank you for not walking out on me for being absolutely terrifying? Thanks. It means a lot to me.

Hope y'all had a good day.

So anyway

In the spirit of not breaking my internet promise to post every single day, I will describe the second half of my terrible Thursday, the part I find most funny, and the part that I think you will find, well. Whatever.

Background:

I haven't been sleeping well for six months. I suspect the cause is the many issues, obligations, and dramatic events of the last three years. I resolve, after two hours of restless sleep and many events, conversations and items misfiled in my brain, that I must get control of this problem. So I call the headologist and tell her I NEED to see her. She says come at 2:15.

Additional Data:

I have had, for about a week, a really sore right knee. I don't know what I did to it, but it hurts. Also, I have $10 left on my metrocard, and each bus ride is $2. Also, I have spent a heartbreaking amount of money lately on electronics - not because I wanted to buy electronics but because I had faulty existing electronics and need them pretty desperately to do my job. Also as a general rule, I am anti-taxi. Taxis are for rich people and I am not rich. (I do take them when it's late and I am drunk, but that's for a whole other safety reason). I also spent a terrifying amount of money this week on a trip to Africa. Moving along then.

What happened:

I did what I normally do on Thursday mornings, only it didn't go well. I needed to get to 5th Avenue since there is no bus up Park Avenue, but the blocks are short in that part of town so I knew I could hobble and probably make it on time. I was already in a desperately sour mood when I hobbled to the bus stop at 57th St. I waited seven minutes for the crosstown variety, and boarded it at 1:57. The crosstown bus went about half a block, and then it stopped to pick up a person in a wheel chair with no left leg and half a right leg.

Now, most people would understand that losing five entire minutes so the bus driver can activate the lowering platform, move the wheel-chair onto the platform, raise the platform, wheel the legless creature into the bus, raise a bank of seats and wheel the chair and the legless creature into position and apply the stabilizing straps to the wheels of the chair is no special inconvenience next to spending the rest of your life with the exquisite inconvenience of having no left leg and half a right leg.

As you almost certainly already know, I am not most people.

So then it was 2:03, and I was agitated about making it to 5th avenue and getting a northbound bus. We got moving again and two blocks later, at Broadway, the legless creature most deserving of my compassion and understanding needed to get off the bus. So that entire process of stabilizing, wheeling, positioning, activating, lowering and pushing had to be performed in reverse. About the silliness of this process, I will only say that I, with my sprained right knee, could have pushed that wheel chair two blocks in less time than it took to perform these ministrations.

One block later, at 2:10, the bus driver got a call on his secret wireless informing him that it was time for his union-mandated coffee break. He parked the bus, disembarked, and vanished into Starbucks for a full four minutes. He returned, looking caffeinated and happy. I was the opposite of happy in at least nine ways, but I think you could probably infer from all my previous ramblings that I would almost certainly be near hysterical when at 2:13, the bus broke down at 6th Avenue. We were all ordered off and we were not given transfers because the bus driver was "out" of them.

I considered walking. My right leg really, really hurt. So I waited until 2:17 for the next bus, paid another $2, and we got to 5th Avenue uneventfully. It was then 2:23. Between me and the headologist, there remained 1 long block (which I already knew I had to walk) and twenty two short blocks. That's 1.1 miles, total. If my knee had not felt like it had been Nancy Kerriganed, I could have walked that in about 17 minutes. But I had gotten mysteriously clobbered right square on the knee. I just couldn't remember who did it or how it happened because I am suffering from sleep-deprivation amnesia.

So I waited, and waited, and waited for a northbound bus. It got to be 2:30. It got to be 2:32. I hailed a cab and spent the last $5 I have to get to the headologist's office, where I arrived to find that since I was a half hour late, I would have to be worked in whenever she had a spare moment. It was then 2:45, and I needed to get to Soho by 4:40, which might as well be Kansas as far as transportation in New York City goes. I was getting very nervous.

At 3:00, I was given a questionnaire to fill out. It asked me circle words that describe my feelings.




I won't sport with your intelligence or violate patient confidentiality by telling you what my form looked like. Go ahead and assume I circled a lot of words. Including stupid.

I turn in my form and after a number of minutes I can't recall, I was called into Headologist Bootstraps' inner chamber. She picked through my file, read my form, looked back at my form, and then gave me the compassionate perfectly mentally well smile that lots of people give me. Don't have any problems? Come on over. You can have some of mine, and then maybe you'll stop smiling at me like that.

Anyway, here is a truncated version of the conversation we had.

Headologist B: I think we must get your sleep problem under control.

Nina: I agree.

Headologist B: I want you to try Restoril --

Nina: WAIT! Isn't that an anti-psychotic???

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) No, it's a sleep aid. You are thinking of Risperdal.

Nina: It was just a tuna-fish sandwich! I didn't really throw it! It was more of, like, a toss! A gentle toss!

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) Restoril is a sleep aid. Have you been throwing things?

Nina: No.

Headologist B: (compassionate smile, raised eyebrow) No?

Nina: Absolutely not. I have no idea what gave you that idea. As ideas go, that's the wrong idea.

Headologist B: would you like more Xanax?

Nina: yes, please.

Headologist B: OK. We could also try putting you on a very low dose of anti-depressants. Does that sound like a good idea?

Nina: What would be wrong with a whole big walloping mouthful of them?

Headologist B: I suspect that you have a mood disorder, and anti-depressants might aggravate the problem.

Nina: I don't have a mood disorder. I just have problems.

Headologist B: Don't you have a cousin with classic manic-depression?

Nina: Yes, but I have not talked to her in years. We are not friends, so I couldn't have gotten it from her.

Headologist B: (flipping through chart) I see that you once described your mother's behavior as erratic.

Nina: My mother was Mary Poppins. Shut up.

Headologist B: Did you throw a tuna fish sandwich at the wall recently?

Nina: Gentle toss.

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) Would you like to try some Lexapro?

Nina: Would you like me to try some Lexapro?

Headologist B: I am more concerned with your insomnia. Let's try to solve that first.

Nina: I agree. But can I still have Xanax?

Headologist B: Yes, but not the big ones.

Nina: (scanning the room for things to throw) You totally don't get me.

Headologist B: Actually, I do. (hands me a pile of prescriptions with notes and directions on them).

Nina: I don't have a mood disorder.

Headologist B: You might have one, and you might not. But I do have a feeling about you.

Nina: What is your feeling? That I am crazy?

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) I have been doing this a long time. Don't worry about labels. We'll discuss this after you try this new sleep medication. Come back next week.


So I left Headologist B's office at 3:30, thinking that surely I could hobble over to 2nd Avenue and catch the M15 bus down to the pharmacy and at least drop off the prescriptions before trekking over to Soho. So I board the bus with my slips of paper and my backpack and my sore knee. The bus goes two blocks before... care to guess? No?

A woman in a wheel chair (this one had legs but hers didn't work) needed to board the bus. So I lost an additional five minutes watching the bus driver activate the lowering platform, move the wheel-chair onto the platform, raise the platform, wheel the legless creature into the bus, raise a bank of seats and wheel the chair and the legless creature into position and apply the stabilizing straps to the wheels of the chair. I am pretty sure you know that we got stuck in traffic around the 59th street bridge and that the wheel chair passenger most deserving of my compassion and understanding had to disembark somewhere in Turtle Bay. And that it was fully 4:00 pm before I got within hobbling distance of the pharmacy, and that by then I knew if I got off the bus instead of taking it all the way to Houston St and catching an M27 bus to Spring St, I would be late.

So I remained on the bus, rolling the words "mood" and "disorder" back and forth across my brain. In the hour and fifteen minutes I was on that bus, which, by the way, only travelled four miles in that amount of time, I discovered the appalling truth: worrying about whether you have a mood disorder can seriously disorder your mood. I had slumped against the window and closed my eyes, determined to shut it all out. Right about the time I started to feel slightly less disordered, a woman boarded the bus carrying a duffle bag with two cats in it, two very pissed off and uncomfortable cats. She sat down across from me, and the two cats poked their heads out of the top of her bag, looked me square in the face, and screamed at me for forty of the minutes I was on the bus. It was as if someone had picked up cat-head, cloned him and wrapped both crazy felines around my head. By the time I got to Soho, I was twenty minutes late and very nearly crying. As I got off the bus, I turned to the driver to say thank-you, as I always do. He put his hand on my arm and said, "It's gonna be ok, baby."

This concludes my narrative of my terrible Thursday. I only told you about half of it. The first half I won't be talking about.

Have a good pre-Easter Saturday.

Pulling the cage to pieces

"I was interrupted... with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained: 'it could not get out,'...and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung up in a little cage. I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering towards the side which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity--'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee!--said I--but I'll let thee out,cost what it will; so I turned the cage about to get at the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces... The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it...--I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty.--'No,' said the starling; 'I can't get out--I can't get out.'

I vow I never had any affections more tenderly awaked."


Don't google it. Or do, as you wish.

Boring, much?

I wonder if you nice people ever get tired of seeing different versions of the same things:

1) me bitching about anything from noises in my head to faulty electronics to my backside, and

2) me posting pictures I took while leaning out my window.

Today I'll assume that you can stand two more pictures. I took the first yesterday at 5:45 in the morning, after I had given up entirely on going back to sleep:



When I got home at 9pm, I took a picture of this third and rare kind of sparkle hour:




I am trying to construct a narrative of the events of yesterday and still be entertaining.

Preview: an unexpected guest, a lot of limping, one angry oh wait make that two angry letters, a one hour bus ride, a surprising (not in a good way) conversation, two yowling cats, a lot more limping, another bus ride, and a whole lot more money going away capped off by a sad-making email.

But I did sleep last night. Perhaps this is all you ever needed to know about yesterday, anyway.

Friday

If you are paying attention to the Catholic calendar, today is Friday of the Good kind, but don't let the name fool you: things didn't go well for God and Jesus on Good Friday. They went very poorly. Things went better for Christian people, who in essence get the balance of their unpaid sin-bills met by God on this day. That's right, God picks up the remainder of your tab if you repent and repent sincerely. It's an excellent deal, especially if you consider that you don't have the currency yourself. So it's good for you, rather unpleasant (to put it mildly) for God, but we all end up better off on the third day, Easter.

If you have been reading for any period of time lately, you know that in terms of spiritual progress during lent, I achieved absolutely none. I made it to confession once, I resolved to try not to be 100% shifty and mean, and the result was that I ended up screaming at God like a spoiled child, which is an apt description of me from pretty much any perspective, spiritual or otherwise.

So where does that leave me today? It leaves me getting up, going to church, listening to a four hour sermon on the last words of Christ (this is a much more fun way to spend an afternoon than you might imagine, really) and then meeting one of the many friends I have neglected in during my six month bout of Crazy for dinner (and groveling because I have neglected her).

I used to think that people who showed up at church when their hearts were not in it were hypocrites and cowards for not having the strength to bail out of something that wasn't working for them. Now that I am one of those people myself, I take a different view. Showing up when your heart isn't in it could be strength of a different kind. Perhaps perseverance? Perhaps an act of a different kind of faith? Possibly, hope that someday it (meaning my record as a Catholic and a Christian), might improve? Or at any rate I guess it can do no one any real harm. So off I go.

Yesterday was one of the worst days of my life. I won't describe it (oh wait... parts of it are very funny and you might find them fun to read... let me rethink that) because the world-wide first horseman of the apocalypse has probably heard about enough complaining from me. Or at any rate, I would be ashamed of myself if I posted yet another long diatribe about how life is to friggin' unfair to me. 'Nuff said.

Have a g(G)ood Friday. Thank you for reading.

MySpaces and Faces

Hi.

Would someone, anyone please tell me why it is necessary for me to be "on" Facebook"? Or "MySpace"? Please? As far as I know, MySpace is a clearinghouse for underaged people who want to find similarly inclined underage people to be naughty with. Oh and it might also be for predators who want to teach those kids a thing or two about naughtiness. Ok, to be fair, I have one friend who is clear into her thirties and is not a predator and who uses it to blog. But you know what? I rarely read because in order to do so, I would have to SIGN UP for MySpace. So I don't read it unless I am looking over the shoulder of someone who is.

And I have now been told for FOUR - yes, that's one person short of a whole hand - people that I JUST HAVE TO GET ON FACEBOOK. Three of those four people act like it is my life that is being ruined by my lack of presence on Facebook. The fourth person admits that it is really her life that is suffering because she can't "friend' me on the creature (Facebook) that I consider the third horsemen of the apocalypse. (My Space is the second).

I figure I'll know it's all over when "they" bash my door down, slice me open, and insert the pentium duo MySpaces and Faces chip straight into my neck. This has nearly already happened, by the way. That fourth friend created a Facebook account FOR ME and added me to her swarming "network" of connecto-mania. Can you top that? ON FACEBOOK, against my will. I also hear that there are pictures of me on Facebook in hers and other people accounts and that the pictures are an attempt to CALL ME OUT on the fact that I won't join their horseman.

Guess what? I ain't doin' it. Do you have any idea how much I would NOT enjoy "networking" with and by and through everyone I have ever met? If I want to find that guy I used to have a crush on in seventh grade, I'll look him up. I think I know where his momma lives. Do you have any idea how much I do not want to be "found" by that psycho swinger I briefly dated between Nice Guy 4 and Nice Guy 5? I don't need to be found. If I am lost to you, what's the big deal? I am other kinds of lost that strike me as far more important. Re"connecting" with everyone I swam with on my high school swim team is not the answer for me. OK? Can that please be OK?

Please click comment and defend Facebook if you must. But I am hoping there is at least one person left on the planet who agrees with me on this issue. This is one grid I am determined to stay off.

Oh and if you are reading this and looking at the time it was posted, you pretty much know that I am not sleeping, like, ever. The resulting confusion is reaching biblical plague-like severity. I was on the phone with someone for an hour last night (yes, I just checked the call history in my shiny new iPhone) and I don't really know what we talked about. You reading this, honey? If we exchanged any vital information, please email* it to me. I remember "sock" "housekeeper" "it's kind of painful after 60 miles or so" and "we meet half way." Thanks.

All this is a long way of saying I am going straight to the doctor when I get out of class this afternoon. (I wonder if I will remember what I teach my students today? Never mind. They definitely won't, so I don't guess it matters). Anyway when I get to the doctor I will tell her my sad story and she will tell me how I am working too much and under too much stress and how what I really need is step away from the computer and do what creatures of my mental, physical and emotional disposition ought to be doing, which is physical work. These are modern times, so that means I should be in the gym, wearing my body out instead of my brain. If these were not modern times, I would have made an excellent serf in medieval Europe. I am indestructible. I never wear out. Oh except if you make me sit at a desk all day and read papers written by nineteen year olds who were typing with one hand and MySpacing with the other.

Apocalypse, I tell you. The end is near.

* I know it's absurd to ask you to email me information you already spoke straight into my ear, but please note that I specified "vital' information, such as anything you think I might want to remember. Thank you.

Am I missing anything?

I have not had a television for over a year. The events leading up to the banning of television had little to do with television and much to do with my nemesis, Time Warner Cable. I have not regretted the decision one day since I terminated my relationship with those ungrateful, sleezy chickens, but at the same time, I have to wonder what all of you are watching and I am not.

Am I missing anything life changing?

If I saw, for example, an episode or two of Idol, would that be a truly enriching experience for me? If I saw Lost, would my whole view of the universe change?

If there is a show you watch that you feel is to fantastic that I am committing self-harm by not watching it, clue me in.

Gracias.

PS I now have an iPhone.

AOUS

I sold the last lot of my beloved US Steel stock today. I bought it five years ago for $7 a share, and I sold the last of it for $119.26 this morning to cover the cost of the enormous plane ticket to Tanzania.

Oh wait. The ticket is of the usual size. The bill for the ticket is of unusual size. I have never spent so much money with a single click of a mouse in my entire life.

What does this mean?

Aside from the fact that I am now a lot less afloat than I was, I am now a lot more afraid of not summiting because I am out of shape. That's right. In case you have not noticed, I have spent the last six month square on my ass in front of the computer feeling sorry for myself and sharing it with all of you instead of working out. My credit card bill is not the only thing that is enormous (and of unusual size) around here.


So I hereby request, since you all are such nice people, that the next time I post a bunch of stuff about hating everything, you kindly tell me to shut up and go run some stairs. Nothing shrinks a girl's ass and relieves her morose self pity like mind numbing cardio, and I need to do a whole lot of it to get myself back in the kind of shape I was in when we did the inca trail. (We smoked it. Non-event. I probably couldn't clear Dead Woman Pass now).

You (not I) should have a cookie. It's Tuesday.

Sparkly

Yeah so maybe yesterday really sucked and maybe I completely freaked out. I might have thrown things. (OK I totally threw something. But it deserved it).

The last time I wrote about Sparkle Hour, it was too late to take this picture:



Oh and that thing I said about God yesterday? OK, both things? I am not quite ready to unsay them, but I might be later, after I get back from paying another $400 for a phone. (I have bought the same phone over and over and over and over again because of its email push function that makes it possible to do my job even if I am out of the country. It might be approaching not worth it status).

Have a good Monday.

Oh my God

In the area of getting utterly fucked over, I racked up another de-merit (or is that merit?) just about two minutes ago. In case it was not clear earlier, God Can suck my non-existent dick. My cell phone is inexplicably soggy. When I say inexplicably, I don't mean I might have thrown it into a pitcher of martinis. I meant INEXPLICABLY SOGGY.

Name of this blog should be, heretofore, JESUS HATES ME DOT ORG.

**updated** Jesus still wants to turn my brain into pudding, and my phone still does not work.

Administrative note

Many people openly disagree with the many inconsequential things I post here. They have the sac to do it after having carefully read my post and carefully written a response. OH! And they do it without creating a fake identity.

I might be crazy, but stupid I am not. If you want to disagree with me in the future, it would be great if you actually READ the post before composing an ill-conceived response. At a minimum, you shouldn't try to pretend you are someone you are not.

Thanks.

Steeped happily in *disaster*

Remind me that I am not allowed to post in the middle of the night when I haven't slept and I am acting like a big titty baby. Sheesh.

Anyway.

I took these pictures yesterday during the three hour opera of sirens whirling up 1st Avenue toward the crane collapse eight blocks north of my building.





If I had thought to point my camera out the window a few hours earlier, you would have seen far more fire trucks. But I didn't think.

Today I looked out the window and saw something else.



I went down to the sidewalk, 41st between FDR Drive and 1st and took these pictures.





I happened to walk up to the car at the same time as the owners, who were taking pictures too. When I said I was sorry that their car got trashed, the man half of the people said, "We weren't in it, so we're happy."

It's a shame the liquor store is closed on Sundays. (If it weren't, I would have bought them some whiskey). (Stop assuming I'd skip church and get obliterated. I am not that gross. Yet).

Sin of the Week, 3/16/08

You might want to leave if you are a good person. Definitely leave if you are Catholic.

Yesterday, I was determined NOT to do two things:

1) work
2) be stressed

That was going ok up until about noon, when I got an email message from someone. The person who sent the email wants something from me that I don’t especially think he or she needs, and in any case I think is absurd to ask for, especially since I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT on a pretty grand scale. Let me be less clear: I don’t want to give it for all the above reasons and one more: the person asked me for the wrong thing. Go to all the trouble to ask, and you ask me for a carrot instead of an apple and ruin my entire day – oh wait – weekend, by forcing me to reflect on everything that has happened. Nice going.

So yesterday I was trying really energetically not to be upset and it was not working. I found myself running the monologue in my head – all the things I would like very much to say and can never say because why hurt people if it won’t change anything? Especially since I know it won't make me feel better anyway?

I got into the shower in an attempt to wash off the badness. While scrubbing, I had the following extraordinary, even for me, thought:

Stop expecting me to pretend everything is ok. It is not ok. When you decided to heap a whole lot of withering misery on me, you, who are supposed to know everything, misunderstood how much I could take. In case you have not noticed, it was too much. I can’t recover. I can’t sleep at night without a gross of drugs and sometimes alcohol because you trashed everything that meant anything to me, including any hope I ever had of having a family of my own – at the same time as you destroyed the family I had. I don’t even like my dad anymore because of the way he’s treated me in his undeadness. As you know, fuckhead, you've heaped some additional losses on us for no real reason except that you suck, and today, apparently, I am forced to engage in a whole real lot more drama - and I don't have a choice, since refusing to play this game will negatively effect my dad. UNTHANKS FOR THAT. So, officially, heading into Holy Week, I’d just like to say fuck off with your yearly commemoration of what went really wrong for you. I don’t want to hear it.

And then I got out of the shower, dried my hair and reflected that I meant every word of that and much worse,* too.

I have been trying hard to act like I am not angry, like I am confused or sad or something less ugly. It’s just not true. I am furious. I am not grateful that I am a fat, privileged American woman with clean water and diamonds and climbing gear. The only things that really matter in life are things I don’t have and never will, and I am sick to death of acting like it’s ok, of acting like I am not mad, of acting like I can bear up and take it. I can’t, which is why I am awake at 4 in the morning after having taken a full complement of supposedly sleep inducing drugs, writing this.

Have a better Palm Sunday than this, please. I'll see you tomorrow (unless a crane falls on me for no apparent reason and the whole thing thusly ends).

*This version has been cleaned up by about 800%. Don't even try to imagine what I really said unless you want permanent brain damage.

You can come out, now

Soon to be former NY governor Eliot Spitzer has reportedly not been seen outside his apartment since resigning his office on Wednesday.

Mr. Spitzer (isn't the rhyming kind of fun?),

No one likes you anymore - true. Everyone thinks you are kind of gross, absolutely. (Some people who will not be named think you are a super-hero; but I don't speak for them).

That said, do you really think everyone in the city would wish you to skip your morning jog that you love so much, just because you just got your ass handed to you? Do you really think we'd all like for you to live on take out four days straight, just because you behaved like a jackass? Do you really think anyone would wish unending confinement with your wife on you - just because you fucked up (pun very intended) in exactly the same way, uh, let's just say "lots" of people fuck up?

Well ok. Maybe we do wish a lot of Chinese food on the couch with your wife on you. Maybe we don't feel bad that you've had to skip your workouts and face your kids. But you can't hole up in there forever, and I was happy to hear that you at least made it to the lobby last night.



It's ok to actually leave the building tomorrow, in case you were wondering if you would be instantly smacked upside the head by a crabby yellow-haired private citizen who is desperately short of blog material, really tired and recently ate a slice of extra cheese pizza. So come on out and go to church tomorrow. You are quite safe. (From me, anyway).

Not liking you,
Nina
(Thanks, NY1.)

Daylight

Here's how tired I am:

1) I had three late night IM conversations last night, and I can't remember the details of any of them.

2) I am wishing daylight savings time hadn't taken effect yet so I could go to bed at 6pm.

3) Mischa asked if I could meet her online to book Africa tickets at 11pm. I said no, because I plan to be unconscious.

4) Insead of cooking, I apply Fanta flavored lip balm every ten minutes. I am sure it has calories.

5) I have convinced myself that showering before bed is not strictly necessary, since I am wearing clean underwear.

6) I probably won't remember posting this, either.

See you tomorrow.