Unfurled

I had one of those days when nothing that comes out of your mouth is as you intend and everything you hear grates on the friable, burned out nerve endings barely keeping your sanity from unraveling I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, today was a 3– just to give you some perspective, getting hit by a car would rate the day as a 2 (being terminated by said car wreck would obviously make the day a 1). Thoughts swim in eddies in my already tempestuous mind. I’ve got whirling dervishes from too many old thoughts, new thoughts, bad moods and a rare glimpse of what life could be like if I were a simple dish washer. Though I suppose if I were a dishwasher, I’m sure I would discover yet another set of worries and other existential crises with which I could sully this wonderful blog of mine.

It’s often days later when I realize that I’m about to get my period and all this makes perfect sense in hindsight. I never thought of myself as a moody sort of person, but I think I close look at the mirror over a 30 day period would prove the power of self denial. I simply become an intolerant frump. Must stop. Smell roses. Breathe.

I can’t lie. Recently I’ve begun to find life more overwhelming. The enormity of the next 60 years (let’s be realistic– my HDL exceeds my LDL by 30 points, unless I am hit by a car, I think I’ll be good for the long ride) lies ahead of me. What will I do in al that time– even worse, what happens if after 30 of those years, I feel the same way as I do now? This is not me worrying about the root cause of my existence (I figure at bottom, I’m like the rest of the humans– here to procreate, advance the race, eat cheetos limons until my tears run orange), but me figuring out how to not waste my time here. I’m slowly beginning to realize the value of children besides the fact they’re quite cuddly. Children give us a sense of purpose in life, a lineage to trace our past and to reinforce our existence into the future, even when we physically cease to exist. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that my work is important, I keep thinking that the relative contribution to our race is miniscule compared to having children, which already I see as quite minimal. Of course, this perspective makes it difficult at once to find value in work for work’s sake– I’d rather have children then.

I’m rambling. I suppose part of it is a reflection of my internal pandemonium, part of it is because I’m a little sleepy.

Take care all. And remember, there really is no reason at all for you to be reading my blog.

Despite the sporadic entries, keeping a blog is beginning to serve a therapeutic purpose for me. It’s the place I can always come to unwind, to reflect– indeed, to unfurl. My intent was to keep this from my friends and family so that I can have this place to write to an anonymous listener, but as I became more attached to this thing, I notice that I tell more people about it. The downside to this of course is that if they actually read it (or more likely, that I think they’re reading it), then how does this change what I write about or even how I write?

After much thought on this matter– I realize that it’s a little too late. It is what it is. Like my sister, I have to live with my big mouth. I might curtail descriptions of some of my more lewd experiences, but I’ve been trying to stay true to what is running through my mind, well, at least most of the time. Readers– if you know me, just keep what you read to yourself. Please.

Earlier, I wrote that I would try to write nightly. I fell off that wagon disturbingly faster than I’d expected. What’s that saying?

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Uh-oh.

I took some cough syrup with codeine a few minutes ago. My fingers are feeling stiff and my head’s getting fuzzy…

New Balance

Originally uploaded by sprngpea.

(I’m going to sleep right after this.) I’ve been wearing New Balance 911s for about a year and a half– I really love them. The ones I like are plain grey or black and they fit my feet and legs perfectly. I tried a pair of Saucony shoes once, but my knees didn’t appreciate the change and it took a few months for them to recover. Problem is, after at least 25 years of making them, NB discontinued the line some time last year. I found a NB store in Tampa that was still selling them earlier last year and bought five pairs, but now no one in Google-land is selling them. Except for ebay. In size two.

Which is ok, cause I’ll get them for N and maybe we can run together.

I got home at 11pm from work and probably should have just gone right to sleep, which is what most sensible people would have done. I decided however to eat kalbi and rice.

Sometimes in life you have to go a little backwards to move forwards. I never quite understood the meaning of this until I signed on to move in with three people in a tenement loft in Boston’s drug-dealing and homeless underworld– Chinatown. That’s not really fair. Boston’s Chinatown isn’t so awful except for the random crack addict who might sidle up next to you looking for a fix– or rather a way to fund the fix. Fortunately, their drug-addled brains prevent them from causing too much harm; far worse are the Old-Milwaukee guzzling frat boys.

In any case, so this is what I did. I decided to live cheaply in Boston so I can live in New York too. Perhaps reader, like everyone else, you might ask, why I don’t just leave and find a job in New York? Really, I don’t have a terribly good reason. It does seem perfectly insane for me to try to live in two cities four hours apart from each other at once. I used to be so good at moving on to my ‘next stage’– it seemed perfectly natural for me to move from city to city and easy for me to pick up new pieces and start all over. For some reason, moving out of Boston for me is like trying to pull a knife through old honey. Here are the reasons I’ve come up with:

1. I have a perverse need to accomplish something substantial before I let myself move on. Certainly, this is easy to do when you’re in school– that degree was worth a whole lot more than I realized… it was my ticket to the next step. Perhaps I feel that I can’t leave until I feel like I’ve gotten my ticket.

2. I’m a creature of comfort. I like to stay put. I’m well-rooted. I’ve been called all these things at some point in my life. Usually in the context of staying in on weekends. Interestingly, I’ve always had quite sociable friends; for myself, however, I quite prefer to stay home and twiddle my thumbs. Many people think this is why I can’t leave Boston, but I find this hard to believe– if I were truly a creature of comfort, I’d be hanging out in front of my sister and brother-in-law’s 32-inch LCD TV with access to every premium cable channel and an unlimited supply of scooby snacks. With free delivery.

3. I’m frightened to make my next move. I think ‘frightened’ is too strong a term. Let’s say apprehensive. There is probably some truth to this. I think all my life, my path was laid out in front of me etched in stone. There were moments when I deviated, but not too far off the path– just enough to make me feel like a rebel, but not really be one. Perhaps, now I’ve come to some realization that this is *not* where I want to be. That this path I’ve been following has been not quite the right one. I don’t know if this is true, but I can’t deny that this is a possibilty. And if so, how do you take 30 steps back and where do you begin? On the other hand, I can’t decide if this is just the banal existential (read: mid-life) crisis that afflicts all single women over 30, and perhaps, I should just chill, sit back and just enjoy my life for what it is. Funny. Even as I wrote that last sentence, I did feel chill, laid back and felt a wisp of happiness.

What number was I on?

4. I’m lazy. I don’t feel like writing cover letters and looking for another job.

Whatever the cause, I think I need to do a little jostling. And I guess if it takes living with three people in a tenement, I suppose that’s only a good thing.

Noah

Originally uploaded by sprngpea.

So I break my long silence with an introduction. This is N. My nephew born last Sunday after a particularly arduous course through the birth canal. Fortunately, it seems he’s forgotten about it already. Which I suspect is for the best. I, on the other hand, am traumatized by the whole experience. After I heard that N was on the way, I took the next bus down to NY which happened to be at 12:30am. Arrived in Port Authority at 4am, bleary-eyed and still in my pajamas (somehow I forgot to change, but didn’t realize on account of my long puffy coat which conveniently covers everything). Ran off the bus ahead of everyone– my brother-in-law texted me only a few minutes before I arrived telling me that ‘it’s almost time’. It would hardly be appropriate for me to ask my sister to hold of pushing for a few until I arrived. The thought did cross my mind, but I remembered that this was a surprise visit and clearly I was more interested in keeping my arrival a surprise than making sure I was there to see the arrival of the baby. Typical. In any case, found myself alone in this room with the kind of people that seemed quite comfortable loitering about the bus station at 4am in the morning– the kind of people, that I was perhaps not too comfortable around without some, well, police support. In any case, after looking to see that all the hallways gated off, I had a brief Thriller moment, rebounding only when a wizened Greek man who followed me off the bus directed me to the stairs which were hidden behind a pole and presumably, a male hooker.

I arrived at NYU shortly thereafter, ran to the L&D, got confused by the room numbers (somehow Room 6 is 804, not 806 which is Room 4), but finally found my sister with my brother-in-law (heretofore, known as BBA) by her bedside stroking her hand, no. where. near. delivery.

That’s ok because we just chilled. I ate her BMT sandwich and drank her sprite. I played with radio which started off classical, but then turned New Age-y and BBA told me that there was no way that his son would be born listening to New Age music. I turned off the radio.

Finally around 5:50am, Dr. A thought she was ready to start pushing. The cervix was dilated and effaced. The baby was at +2. Well she tried. They dialed up the pitocin. She tried again. They turned down her epidural. She tried once more. They turned off the epidural and turned up the pitocin. She stopped pushing because it hurt so goddamned much. At 7:50, N hadn’t really budged from +2– clearly he was ok with his head stuck. Dr. A offered c-section or forceps as it seemed N needed a little help. Well Dr. A is a master at the forceps, so this route was the predetermined route. After three pushes and a bit of pulling, out came a slimy N at 8:22am. (This last descriptor comes compliments of his father who was in the OR where they performed the forceps-aided delivery.)

N and sis arrived to the recovery room a little afterwards where we had to wait for the epidural to wear off. I wasn’t fully aware of how high the regional anesthesia goes, but I quickly found out after I gave my thirsty sister some Sprite. She drank a little quickly and some of it must have gone down the wrong tube because she started coughing these pathetic weak coughs– for a second I thought she might choke on her Sprite. She finally recovered and we nixed the drinking until she had a stronger cough. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t until noon when she could finally wiggle her toes. With her cough reflex back, we decided it was time for the family to feed. BBA got a sandwich and 4 treats from a deli (what was the name?) on second avenue and I got my sister and me some Chinese take-out (always a good thing to eat in the recovery room). We sent N to the nursery (none of us thought about feeding him until my sister finally got to her room at 4:30p…) and we had a little post-labor mini celebration in the L&D recovery room.

I suppose those hours in the recovery room were a little anti-climactic, particularly with N in the nursery. BBA read his New Yorker and my sister and I cooed through the digital pictures we had taken over the course of the last 12 hours. At some point, I think I might have fallen asleep, but it wasn’t long as I was quickly nudged to move to the next frame.

Finally got to her room at 4:30pm. They brought N to us– he looked reasonably clean and was sleeping soundly. Occasionally he would startle, if say, we bumped into his crib, or tickled his leg, or left the flash on when we took a picture. A & P came to visit and cooed at the now awake Noah (we finally had to just jostle him). Sis tried to breast feed which N seemed to ‘get’ pretty quickly. We played with him afterwards, but realized that we had forgotten to burp him when we heard the hiccoughs. BBA did the honors; it didn’t look easy on account of the wobbly body, but it seemed to do the trick. He started cryng and we thought maybe it was time to change the diaper. Sis was the volunteer this time. It wasn’t clear if there was any activity down there, but we decided to go ahead and change him anyhow. The new diaper did seem to sag a litttle lower towards his ankles on the redressing, but it seemed to be covering the important areas. Sis lifted him but kind of forgot about his head and it kind of bobbed a little, but he seemed ok with that too.

It was now about 35 hours since we had woken up the previous day. We were pretty tired– we left my sister with N and the rest of us headed home. I arrived back in Boston at 11pm, got home, showered and fell into bed.

What a great day. Welcome N. I love you so very much already.

I was looking forward to waking this morning. The promised rain had arrived and I could hear the light tapping against my window.  It’s not so much the grey icy wetness I like to indulge in when I peek outside; rather the extra-ordinary warmth and shelter  I feel being on the inside.

One of the practice I work in had their holiday party tonight. It was held in a beautiful old Georgian home of a sprite, manic internist and her husband.  In addition to the usual detritus of family living, they had a pet corn snake acquired a year ago from a biologist friend who could no longer care for the 14-year-old snake.  It was a surprisingly friendly sort of thing, curling around my arms and finding it’s way into my bag.  We defrosted a small frozen mouse in the microwave and left it with the snake. Josh (the family’s Jewish) contemplated the rigored (and microwaved) mouse for a few minutes, before identifying the tail end which Josh grabbed with his mouth, slowly sucking the mouse whole into it’s widened jaws.  In a few short moments, the snake appeared to be a freak two-headed creature with the mouse’s head sticking out of it’s mouth.  This too slowly disappeared.

I didn’t wait to confirm this, but evidently a small fur ball is the only evidence that will remain of this mini-carnage. Best work-related holiday party I’ve been to.