I guess it's about freakin' time I wrote something again.
I've been...trapped, see. Not by what one would call “writer's block.” Nope. In fact, it's quite the opposite. There's SO much to write about that I've become overwhelmed by it. And as one day slips by, then the next, and the next, so many stories pile up that I don't know how to tackle them all. It's akin to having an administrative job and going on vacation—oh, sure, you're out there enjoying the beach, pardner, but no one's tending to your stuff while you're gone. The pile on your desk continues to grow, and upon your return you realize that you didn't have a vacation at all. What you did was POSTPONE work for a week or two, not ELIMINATE it. Hence, you still have that two weeks' work to take care of—along with today's work and tomorrow's work...
Well, hold on. Now that I've actually written down my analogy, I find, once again, that I am full of shit. I mean, true enough—there ARE a lot of things that have happened about which I'd like to write. But the act of writing about them can't really be compared to a three-foot stack of personnel files or purchasing reports. So, to continue, there's a great joke that starts like this:
Two grownups, a tween, a five year-old and a toddler walk into the zoo...
And ends like this:
“Thank God I had that little pan of water!”
The in-between, as is the rest of the joke, I fear, is absolutely true.
It's Sunday morning, and I'm up before everyone else. This happens virtually every day, as my relationship with sleep has historically been a little dicey. I wander around the place for a bit and take stock: We're doing pretty well. We're down to less than a dozen boxes, things seem to be getting put where they need to be, and all three children appear to be breathing normally. Good. This is something I can build on. Yes.
We've been talking about getting over to Prospect Park, which is only three blocks from our apartment, but have yet to do so. I begin to formulate a plan. I like to do this, as J well knows. I often emerge from my bathroom office, laptop in hand, and announce things like “I've booked us a flight to Cabo. We leave this afternoon.” Or “you are gonna LOVE the new TV, guys!” Today's goal is a bit more modest. I think I'd like to take everyone to the zoo. There's a zoo in Prospect Park, and I know without a doubt that Liam and Harper will love it and that Molly will too (despite her attempts to prove otherwise, she's still got some kid left in her—mercifully). So once everyone is up and around, I proclaim, “LET US EAT, FOR SOON WE WILL GO TO...THE ZOO!” This edict is met with exactly the level of enthusiasm for which I'd hoped. The kids (well, two of them) squeal with delight and begin running in circles as fast as they can. (This continues, of course, until Harper becomes bored with it after two laps and Liam generates enough centrifugal force to fling himself uncontrollably against the wall or something.) J and Molly roll their eyes—they're used to it—but seem to be cool with the idea as well.
The zoo idea is not a new one, nor can I claim it as mine. J and I had actually talked yesterday about purchasing a family membership to the NY Wildlife Conservation Society. This would allow us unlimited access to the Prospect Park Zoo, the New York Aquarium, the Queens Zoo, and the gigantonormous Bronx Zoo. (If you've never been to the Bronx Zoo, imagine Rhode Island but with animal exhibits instead of cities and towns. It's a little bigger than that.) So, I jump online and buy the membership. There's a message that pops up that says, “The next screen will be your confirmation. You may print it out and use it for up to 30 days from now to gain entrance into the parks while you await your membership card in the mail. BE SURE TO PRINT IT NOW, BECAUSE IT WILL APPEAR ONLY ONCE.”
Man, I hate that shit. If you've EVER bought anything online, you know what kind of stress this causes. God forbid they e-mail you something, right? No! Instead, you get this veiled threat...this last-minute free-throw kind of pressure. And you become, if your'e like me, CONVINCED you're going to fuck something up when you try and print the thing.
So I proceed cautiously. I wait before I hit the “continue” button until I've hooked the Mac to the printer. I know the printer is working, because I just used it the other day. I know the Mac and it get along fine, despite the printer being an HP. I connect the USB cable, check the status, and see that yes—everything is grooooovy. I hit “continue.” It continues...it brings up the confirmation page. There doesn't seem to be a ticking clock at the top, counting down to the doomsday of my not being able to print it. So I've got time to troubleshoot once more, which reveals nothing out of the ordinary.
Cable? Check.
Printer on? Check.
Paper in printer? Check.
(See what I mean here? Holy crap...how many times when you go to print something do you become a raging lunatic? Never! Unless...UNLESS there's a message that tells you you're only going to have one shot at it! Aaaargh! I think...no, I'm SURE that the web designers who put this stuff together like this are very, very good friends with the cops who had me pull the dinosaur truck over in the middle of 6th Avenue. Jesus, I can just see their poker games now.)
So, after a checklist that rivals the pre-flight routine of launching a goddamn SPACE SHUTTLE, I hit the “print” button.
Nothing.
I wait.
Nothing.
I check the printer's status. It says it's idle. WTF? How can it be idle? I just sent it a goddamn document! What? WHAT? I try and minimize Firefox.
Nothing.
Firefox, it seems, has locked up. Completely. And so have I. My jaw, that is. Locked up completely. I am biting down so hard I can hear my teeth disintegrating in my mouth. This is great. Oh, this is fucking PERFECT. I do what comes naturally...I go to J.
R: Fuck this.
J: (as if she expects it) What?
R: It won't fucking print.
J: Why not?
R: Why not? If I knew that, I'd know how to fix it! Goddammit!
J: Did you try force-quitting Firefox?
R: What? No! I can't! The fucking page will only be displayed ONCE! Goddammit! Why do they DO this????? If I force-quit, it'll be gone forever! Aaaaarrrrgh!
J: There's gotta be some way...or...
R: ...or what?
J: Well, wait. You're saying that if you can't print, and we still want to go to the zoo...
R: ...yep. We'd have to pay admission, despite me just HAVING paid 150 bucks for...ADMISSION.
J: Aw, shit.
At this point, I notice that the kids have tuned in to the conversation. Harper, always acutely engaged when stress arises, asks:
H: We can't go to the zoo?
R: I don't know, honey...I can't print the tickets.
H: So, get other tickets. (This carries an implicit “duh, Dad.”)
R: It's not that easy...look, we'll go to the zoo sometime, but we may have to wait for our other tickets in the mail...
Liam is on to me as well.
L: I waaaaaaaaaannna go to the zooooooooooooooo.
R: I know, dude. We will.
L: (hurling himself to the floor) I waaaaaaaaaaaana gooooooooo to the zooooooooooo! (tears now)
H: Why can't we go to the zoo? You promised we'd go to the zoo! (tears here too)
J: (trying to help) Look, maybe we can go do something else fun today...
H/R: We waaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnaaaaaa gooooooooo to.......
R: I KNOW! I KNOW! I'M SORRY! THE THING WON'T PRINT! THERE'S NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT!
At this point, there's an ever-so-brief moment of silence wherein the five of us (Molly's been lingering in the doorway listening to this charming meltdown) exchange eye contact, realize there's no hope, and retreat to various parts of the house. (Well, Liam actually just stays on the floor, writhing and crying.) I go back to the office and to the Mac. I'm not sure what I'm planning to try, but I need to get away from everyone. I'm so embarrassed. Why do I open my big mouth? Again, I'm reminded of a play—this time, it's Shelly Levene from GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS:
LEVENE: Never open your mouth until you know the SHOT.
I could have kept the plan to myself, purchased the membership, failed to print it, and never announced the zoo trip. Of course, Murphys' Law prevails in situations like this: had I taken the aforementioned prudent steps, there would have been no difficulty printing the voucher and everything would HAVE BEEN JUST FINE. Leave it to me.
I'm sitting forlornly at the desk, staring blankly at the still-unprinted voucher mocking me on the screen. I certainly don't want to look at THAT any longer, so I shift-Apple key-Q to force-quit Firefox. The browser shuts down. And no sooner than it does, the printer whirrs to life. Miracle! Ten seconds later, I'm bounding through the house, waving the voucher in the air like the flag of liberty in a Delacroix. We're going to the zoo! We're going to the zoo! Joy returns to the Cowden household! Thank heavens for little victories like this!
Now let's pause for a moment to deconstruct the initial proclamation regarding the impending zoo trip from good ol' Dad. Notice, if you will, that it begins with the three words “let us eat.” This becomes intensely significant, and will divert us for a few paragraphs from the story of the zoo. Jesus, I'm starting to sound like an Albee character. (If you don't get this joke, you're fortunate enough never to have been a theatre major.)
J has described cooking in our new kitchen as analogous to cooking while camping. It is an exhaustive procedure, whereby one cannot use more than one electrical appliance at a time (because the power will go out if one does), we are still unsure where anything is located, and we have exactly nine inches of counter space in the entire room. This, coupled with trying to meet the wildly varied demands of all three children when they're asked what they'd like for lunch, can prove obscenely daunting. For these reasons, I decide simply to warm up some leftover pizza in the oven. They'll all be happy enough with that, and if they're not I will threaten to leave them at home while the rest of us go see all of the wonderful and diverse animal life at the zoo. (Works every time.)
I've never used this oven, as it's been 740 degrees outside, but when I turn it on and stick my hand inside it seems to warm up as requested. Good. It's about time something actually worked today, right? I have been enjoying using the stove top, as it's the first time I've ever lived in a place with a gas range and I really appreciate the amount of control I have over the heat. It's kept my optimism about our kitchen situation up, to be sure. I wait for a couple of minutes, then put half a pizza in the oven on our Pampered Chef pizza-cooking stone (to be sure, the only thing from a Pampered Chef catalog that's ever been used more than once in a kitchen). Very pleased with myself at this point, I head to the bedroom to change clothes for the zoo trip.
I return to the kitchen 3 or 4 minutes later, wanting to check on the pizza as I'm unsure how long it will take to reheat. What I see is not what I'd expected. I hadn't expected, in any way, the THICK BLACK SMOKE BILLOWING FROM THE FUCKING OVEN. I rush to it and throw open the oven door. A horrible, noxious type of smoke leaps at my face. J, who's standing on the other side of the thing, is the first one to notice the flames.
J: Um...it's on fire.
R: (choking) Huh?
J: It's on FIRE! IT'S ON FIRE!
I open the door again, and sure enough, she's right. Well, golly! Lookee there! There's a full-blown fire in that little oven! Shucky-darn! The flames appear to be coming from underneath the main oven chamber, and the smoke is now filling the kitchen and living room. J thrusts a pint-sized saucepan into my hands and I try and throw some water on it. The flames get higher. The smoke is now thick enough that I am actually having difficulty breathing. I shout at her to get the children the FUCK OUT OF THERE and to call 911. She rounds them up in 10 seconds and heads out the door.
I am alone in an apartment in which I've lived for less than three weeks, and it is on fire.
(All of what follows occurs in under two minutes). I try and throw some more water on the flames, which continue to intensify despite my attempt. I retreat to the bedrooms, and it occurs to me that I need to begin thinking about what to take. Seriously. I realize that I'm only a couple of seconds away from having to abandon everything I own—every photo, every memory—and flee downstairs while the building (and probably the rest of the block, to be fair, due to the attached housing) goes up in flames. For all of my flippant remarks in this blog, this carries no sarcasm or embellishment whatsoever. I'm about to lose it all.
Of the millions of thoughts simultaneously rushing through my head, the only one sticks is that I'm just a couple of seconds away from disaster. Which somehow manages to turn around in my head—instead of being a couple of seconds away, I realize that this means I have a couple of seconds to DO something. There's no time for reconsideration here. I have to save the place.
I rush back into the kitchen, saucepan in hand, and refill it in the sink. The smoke is in my eyes now, and it's very hard to see or breathe at all. No matter, I need to find the source of the flames and try and put this fire out. My fear is that we have a gas leak, in which case the entire building will explode any moment...but again, I have no time to dwell on this. I'm not just going to run screaming from the building while my family's life—and other families' lives—are taken from them. FUCK NO. I will stay, and I will fight.
I remember that the fire seems to originate from the broiler drawer underneath the main oven chamber, so I open it. This results in the single most horrifying thing I've ever seen—the flames, having gained much more oxygen with the opening of the drawer, explode into a fireball that leaps all the way up the wall, up the cabinets, and to the ceiling. I'm not sure what happens next...I think I just stay there, throwing little saucepans of water into the drawer, until finally...I beat it. The smoke turns mercifully to steam. I can't see. I can't breathe. I'm dizzy. My legs threaten to give out beneath me. But I've managed to extinguish the blaze...somehow.
I head downstairs, finding J and the kids standing on the sidewalk. I am dimly aware of sirens, and realize after a few seconds that the NYFD has already arrived. One firefighter rushes into the house with me as I explain what happened and that I think I've gotten the fire out. Four more guys join him, and they assess the situation. The scene is fairly grim. As I stand in Molly's room and give them space to work, I see five backlit firefighters standing in black-grey haze in my kitchen. It's surreal. It's from a movie. It has to be.
Or not. It's my life, or what my life has become. I explain to the lead firefighter that some idiot—probably me—appears to have left a cake pan with a plastic lid in the broiler drawer and it caught fire. The guy looks at me like I'm the world's biggest moron, which I deserve. (The truth is that I wasn't the one who put the cake pan in there, but I feel responsible anyway for not having checked. In any case, it hardly matters now, does it?) They check for gas leaks, and, satisfied that there aren't any, pack up and take their three trucks and an ambulance back to the station. It should be noted here that they arrived about 120 seconds after J called. This is astounding, and a testament to their readiness. I'm not one to throw the word “hero” around. These guys are heroes.
Dave from upstairs appears in front of the building. He, Jennifer, and Kyle were just returning from the grocery store when they noticed the commotion as they pulled onto 5th Street. J will later have the following conversation with him:
J: So...you turned the corner...
D: Yeah. And we saw the fire trucks, and we were like “Whoa! On our block!”
J: And as you got closer...
D: We were like, “Whoa! In our building!”
J: And you have to admit...
D: Admit what?
J: That you thought to yourself, “What did those Coloradans do NOW?”
D: Well...
J: ...yeah...
D: I actually said that exact thing to Jennifer.
Of COURSE he did. Ugh. We are demoralized, disspirited. But...BUT...we are safe. We have lost NOTHING in the fire. We are tremendously lucky, and tremendously grateful. We go upstairs and open up all the windows. We open the brownstone's front door and the door to the roof to air the place out. We share hugs and shrugs. And you know what?
We get in the car and we go to the zoo. And that, pardners, is another story altogether.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
I Live In Brooklyn
Residency? Day Two
The morning of July 7, we awaken to the sound of the J, M, and Z trains rushing overhead outside our hotel room. I'm reminded that this is no longer a fantasy—that as of this morning, I am in residence in New York City for the first time since 1975. I update my Facebook status:
I LIVE IN BROOKLYN.
It ain't pretty, it ain't profound, but it's all I've got. Well, maybe it is a little bit profound in the sense that exactly one month ago we decided to embark on this endeavor. In one month's time, we've managed to coordinate a major cross-country move, rid ourselves of huge quantities of STUFF, pack the remainder into a gas-sucking giant, and arrive (more or less) in one piece. Remarkable. But, I'm also reminded as I slowly regain consciousness, none of this matters now. What matters is that we've got an apartment that's completely jammed with stuff, with a solitary air conditioning unit propped on a box in the kitchen having full responsibility for cooling the place off, and its actual installation not for another 24 hours.
This being the case, we've already chosen not to try and “move in” any further today. Instead, I've used my very good Priceline karma to get us a room at the Algonquin tonight for a hundred bucks and we'll just spend the day screwing around in Manhattan after we pop by the apartment to grab a few necessities. I take the Algonquin reservation as an indication from the city itself that we're going to be okay. (This is interesting, because in the coming days I begin to see omens everywhere. I slowly convince myself that if you're tuned in to it, you can hear the city telling you things. Many of these things, as you'll learn if you read subsequent entries in this saga, say something like “GET THE FUCK OUT. WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY PEOPLE. GO HOME.”) We pile into the car and head back across the borough towards 5th St.
My memory of this is now hazy, but I think we're greeted by Dave, our upstairs neighbor. Jess has already met him, but I haven't. I immediately love Dave. He's a stay-at-home dad who writes children's books. He and his wife, Jennifer, have a two year-old boy named Kyle, whom we will later discover begins and ends each day by running laps around their apartment for a couple of hours and exploring his vertical jump directly above wherever we happen to be sitting. Anyway...Dave tells us that the power in the building was out most of last night. Unprecedented, he says. Maria, our landlady, spent most of the night at the next door neighbor's house trying to get an electrician whose yellow pages ad claimed “24-7 service” to actually wake up long enough to get to the house and restore power. Apparently, she finally did and the lights (and AC) went back on in the wee hours of the morning. As he tells this tale, two things strike me:
1. Dave is an angel, a zen master, or has an unlimited supply of barbituates. He is completely calm, despite having spent the night in the dark and slowly roasting.
2. What did we do?
I will learn very quickly that the chaos into which the brownstone is hurled over the next days is due entirely to our presence in it. The only difference between Monday night and Tuesday night (when the power was lost) was us. Specifically, our air conditioner, which we left running. This does not bode well either for the future of electrical use in the apartment or for any chance we have of being liked by the other tenants in the building. I can hear them now:
OTHER TENANT 1: You know, as soon as those....COLORADO people...or whatever they are...moved in, everything went to hell in a handbasket.
OTHER TENANT 2: Yes. What on earth was Maria thinking? They're so...primitive. Did you see? They've got RECLINING FURNITURE. Oh. My. God.
OTHER TENANT 3: Well, colleagues. Our course of action is clear, and we must not wait.
OTHER TENANT 4: No, I suppose we have no choice.
OTHER TENANT 1: Do you mean...
OTHER TENANT 3: Yes. It's time....
OTHER TENANT 2: ...to convene...
KYLE (running laps): THE SUPREME COUNCIL.
OTHER TENANTS (in unison): Yes. The Supreme Council.
KYLE: (still running) We must draw upon the powers of our ancestors in order to force these...Colorado people...out of our beloved building. And we must do it soon lest their energy-hoarding, Coors-drinking, love seat-reclining ways infest our own homes.
But Dave doesn't let on that the Supreme Council has been convened. Instead, he reassures us that nothing we've done could have caused the power outage, and in fact it's probably a good thing because the electrician has also discovered that the building's circuit breaker system is 20 years away from being up to code and will be back Saturday to fix the entire thing. This, of course, will mean that there will be another power outage that will last the entire day, but again Dave seems nonplussed by any of this.
I wonder how our fourth-floor neighbors, Pasquale and Jaclyn, feel about this. Not only do they have to traipse up four flights of stairs to their apartment, but it must be the hottest one (given what I know about heat rising, which is very little but I know it does because my teacher said so). And, to make things even more FUN, Jaclyn happens to be eight months pregnant. I'm sure they're DELIGHTED to have spent an evening in hot, hot darkness and to be exiled for yet another day so the electricity can be made to accommodate the...Colorado people. When we meet them, though, another miracle—they are as gracious and unflustered as Dave was. Wow. Maybe there's a barbituate co-op in the building. These people are WAY too calm about all of this. I know that I would be raising holy hell were I in their shoes. Then it hits me. Lesson:
When it's 103 degrees in a city of 12 million people, one needs to weigh very carefully which events will spark an intense emotional reaction. In fact, one probably needs to do this anyway and has for some time.
See? It's the city again, this time speaking through Dave and Pasquale and Jaclyn. If we're calm when you show up and cause the power to fail, they seem to say, maybe you need to redefine what's worthy of a temper tantrum. And I hear this, loud and clear. The reason I think this to be important is that I'm looking at this move not only as a way to reset my professional life, but also my deeply personal one. I feel like I've developed or solidified a number of less-than-desirable habits over the past years and I want to be able to use the location change to make a significant personal shift. I want to get fit. I want to be more actively learning. I want to drink less. I want to mitigate my tendency towards anger as a first response to intense stimuli. And in this moment, these kind neighbors of ours are showing me a path. Over the next days, I will have many, many opportunities to lose my shit. MANY. And lose my shit I will, to be sure. But my shit will not have been lost as often as in the past, because I keep jumping back to the image of what I think ACTUALLY transpired the night the power went out:
DAVE: Well, the power's out.
JENNIFER: Oh, my. Yes, it is.
DAVE: Do you suppose it's because of the people moving in downstairs?
JENNIFER: Oh. Y'know, it may be.
DAVE: That's too bad. I hope Maria's able to get it fixed right away. Let's get the candles out. Those poor people...I don't even think they're there tonight, but they're going to wonder what they've gotten themselves into.
JENNIFER: Yeah. You should talk to them tomorrow and reassure them that this is not normal. They're probably going to be freaking out.
DAVE: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'll do.
See there? There IS no Supreme Council. We're going to be just fine. Bob the handyman will be here tomorrow morning to install the air conditioners, and then we'll get started moving in in earnest. Within a few days, we'll be good to go. So we pack up a few toiletries and a change of clothes and head to the Algonquin. We meet up with our friend Megan tonight at Dave & Buster's, drink quite a bit of Stella, and crash on the incredibly comfortable hotel bed. In the morning, I will rise early and get back to Brooklyn in time to greet Bob. And we'll be off and running. And yet, as I drift off to sleep, I'm troubled by something. Something that's missing in the revised dialogue above. Sure, Dave and Jennifer may have that conversation, but...where's Kyle?
KYLE (to himself, after his parents have fallen asleep): I think I'm gonna start my laps about 5:30am from now on. Yeah. That's it. And while I'm at it, I really need to work on landing REALLY HARD when I jump. (drifting off) I can't wait.....
And the city that never sleeps—it sleeps tonight. It's got to get some rest, because it's got war to wage on us come morning.
The morning of July 7, we awaken to the sound of the J, M, and Z trains rushing overhead outside our hotel room. I'm reminded that this is no longer a fantasy—that as of this morning, I am in residence in New York City for the first time since 1975. I update my Facebook status:
I LIVE IN BROOKLYN.
It ain't pretty, it ain't profound, but it's all I've got. Well, maybe it is a little bit profound in the sense that exactly one month ago we decided to embark on this endeavor. In one month's time, we've managed to coordinate a major cross-country move, rid ourselves of huge quantities of STUFF, pack the remainder into a gas-sucking giant, and arrive (more or less) in one piece. Remarkable. But, I'm also reminded as I slowly regain consciousness, none of this matters now. What matters is that we've got an apartment that's completely jammed with stuff, with a solitary air conditioning unit propped on a box in the kitchen having full responsibility for cooling the place off, and its actual installation not for another 24 hours.
This being the case, we've already chosen not to try and “move in” any further today. Instead, I've used my very good Priceline karma to get us a room at the Algonquin tonight for a hundred bucks and we'll just spend the day screwing around in Manhattan after we pop by the apartment to grab a few necessities. I take the Algonquin reservation as an indication from the city itself that we're going to be okay. (This is interesting, because in the coming days I begin to see omens everywhere. I slowly convince myself that if you're tuned in to it, you can hear the city telling you things. Many of these things, as you'll learn if you read subsequent entries in this saga, say something like “GET THE FUCK OUT. WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY PEOPLE. GO HOME.”) We pile into the car and head back across the borough towards 5th St.
My memory of this is now hazy, but I think we're greeted by Dave, our upstairs neighbor. Jess has already met him, but I haven't. I immediately love Dave. He's a stay-at-home dad who writes children's books. He and his wife, Jennifer, have a two year-old boy named Kyle, whom we will later discover begins and ends each day by running laps around their apartment for a couple of hours and exploring his vertical jump directly above wherever we happen to be sitting. Anyway...Dave tells us that the power in the building was out most of last night. Unprecedented, he says. Maria, our landlady, spent most of the night at the next door neighbor's house trying to get an electrician whose yellow pages ad claimed “24-7 service” to actually wake up long enough to get to the house and restore power. Apparently, she finally did and the lights (and AC) went back on in the wee hours of the morning. As he tells this tale, two things strike me:
1. Dave is an angel, a zen master, or has an unlimited supply of barbituates. He is completely calm, despite having spent the night in the dark and slowly roasting.
2. What did we do?
I will learn very quickly that the chaos into which the brownstone is hurled over the next days is due entirely to our presence in it. The only difference between Monday night and Tuesday night (when the power was lost) was us. Specifically, our air conditioner, which we left running. This does not bode well either for the future of electrical use in the apartment or for any chance we have of being liked by the other tenants in the building. I can hear them now:
OTHER TENANT 1: You know, as soon as those....COLORADO people...or whatever they are...moved in, everything went to hell in a handbasket.
OTHER TENANT 2: Yes. What on earth was Maria thinking? They're so...primitive. Did you see? They've got RECLINING FURNITURE. Oh. My. God.
OTHER TENANT 3: Well, colleagues. Our course of action is clear, and we must not wait.
OTHER TENANT 4: No, I suppose we have no choice.
OTHER TENANT 1: Do you mean...
OTHER TENANT 3: Yes. It's time....
OTHER TENANT 2: ...to convene...
KYLE (running laps): THE SUPREME COUNCIL.
OTHER TENANTS (in unison): Yes. The Supreme Council.
KYLE: (still running) We must draw upon the powers of our ancestors in order to force these...Colorado people...out of our beloved building. And we must do it soon lest their energy-hoarding, Coors-drinking, love seat-reclining ways infest our own homes.
But Dave doesn't let on that the Supreme Council has been convened. Instead, he reassures us that nothing we've done could have caused the power outage, and in fact it's probably a good thing because the electrician has also discovered that the building's circuit breaker system is 20 years away from being up to code and will be back Saturday to fix the entire thing. This, of course, will mean that there will be another power outage that will last the entire day, but again Dave seems nonplussed by any of this.
I wonder how our fourth-floor neighbors, Pasquale and Jaclyn, feel about this. Not only do they have to traipse up four flights of stairs to their apartment, but it must be the hottest one (given what I know about heat rising, which is very little but I know it does because my teacher said so). And, to make things even more FUN, Jaclyn happens to be eight months pregnant. I'm sure they're DELIGHTED to have spent an evening in hot, hot darkness and to be exiled for yet another day so the electricity can be made to accommodate the...Colorado people. When we meet them, though, another miracle—they are as gracious and unflustered as Dave was. Wow. Maybe there's a barbituate co-op in the building. These people are WAY too calm about all of this. I know that I would be raising holy hell were I in their shoes. Then it hits me. Lesson:
When it's 103 degrees in a city of 12 million people, one needs to weigh very carefully which events will spark an intense emotional reaction. In fact, one probably needs to do this anyway and has for some time.
See? It's the city again, this time speaking through Dave and Pasquale and Jaclyn. If we're calm when you show up and cause the power to fail, they seem to say, maybe you need to redefine what's worthy of a temper tantrum. And I hear this, loud and clear. The reason I think this to be important is that I'm looking at this move not only as a way to reset my professional life, but also my deeply personal one. I feel like I've developed or solidified a number of less-than-desirable habits over the past years and I want to be able to use the location change to make a significant personal shift. I want to get fit. I want to be more actively learning. I want to drink less. I want to mitigate my tendency towards anger as a first response to intense stimuli. And in this moment, these kind neighbors of ours are showing me a path. Over the next days, I will have many, many opportunities to lose my shit. MANY. And lose my shit I will, to be sure. But my shit will not have been lost as often as in the past, because I keep jumping back to the image of what I think ACTUALLY transpired the night the power went out:
DAVE: Well, the power's out.
JENNIFER: Oh, my. Yes, it is.
DAVE: Do you suppose it's because of the people moving in downstairs?
JENNIFER: Oh. Y'know, it may be.
DAVE: That's too bad. I hope Maria's able to get it fixed right away. Let's get the candles out. Those poor people...I don't even think they're there tonight, but they're going to wonder what they've gotten themselves into.
JENNIFER: Yeah. You should talk to them tomorrow and reassure them that this is not normal. They're probably going to be freaking out.
DAVE: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'll do.
See there? There IS no Supreme Council. We're going to be just fine. Bob the handyman will be here tomorrow morning to install the air conditioners, and then we'll get started moving in in earnest. Within a few days, we'll be good to go. So we pack up a few toiletries and a change of clothes and head to the Algonquin. We meet up with our friend Megan tonight at Dave & Buster's, drink quite a bit of Stella, and crash on the incredibly comfortable hotel bed. In the morning, I will rise early and get back to Brooklyn in time to greet Bob. And we'll be off and running. And yet, as I drift off to sleep, I'm troubled by something. Something that's missing in the revised dialogue above. Sure, Dave and Jennifer may have that conversation, but...where's Kyle?
KYLE (to himself, after his parents have fallen asleep): I think I'm gonna start my laps about 5:30am from now on. Yeah. That's it. And while I'm at it, I really need to work on landing REALLY HARD when I jump. (drifting off) I can't wait.....
And the city that never sleeps—it sleeps tonight. It's got to get some rest, because it's got war to wage on us come morning.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Boot Camp: July 6, 2010
Boot camp.
As I previously mentioned, I don't sleep much the night before we hit Brooklyn. J often describes me as the little kid who can't sleep the night before Christmas (which I was, as a matter of fact) writ much more extreme. That is, I can't sleep the night before ANY significant event—the first day of school, prior to an important meeting, the opening of a production, anything. So one might imagine how little I sleep this particular night. Zero. Which is important only inasmuch as it may help to explain some of what happens in the subsequent paragraphs.
The trip in the dinosaur truck to NYC is actually quite uneventful. Google Maps and I have made up (still not sure what I did to piss it off so badly in the first place, but we have reached a quiet detente and I don't feel like spending my morning discussing it...you know how moody these apps can be), and I'm confident that the directions from Westchester to Brooklyn are accurate. Traffic gets ridiculously heavy on the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, for you foreigners (like how I start to mock you, now that I've lived here a week (or how I put parenthetical phrases inside other parenthetical phrases so I can end the whole mish-mash with completely unintelligible punctuation?)?)), but that's to be expected. A little over an hour later, we're...home.
Home. This term will take on added significance over the coming days, as we seek to redefine it for ourselves—but especially for the kids. Each of them has a unique and developmentally-appropriate definition of the term, and we find we have a great deal of work to do in order to help them come to terms with the finality of the move. More on this as we go on.
One of my major apprehensions (and there have been many, boy howdy) has been where to park the truck while we move in. 5th Street, where our apartment lies on the second story of an early 20th-century brownstone, is one-way, with cars parked on both sides and MAYBE enough room for two car-widths in between. How exactly one parks a 26-foot moving van so as to allow for traffic to flow unabated, I've no idea. It turns out that neither does Kenny Warren.
When I booked the dinosaur truck on uhaul.com three weeks ago, I made the decision to hire moving helpers on each side of the trip. Clarence and Jeff had pulled this duty in GJ, and I had chosen the highly-rated Warren Brothers Moving Co. in Brooklyn. As I circle the neighborhood trying to determine the best course of action, I come across a thin, 20-something dude in a ballcap and carrying a Nalgene bottle. He seems vaguely to be signaling to me as I drive by, but for all I know he needs money or a job or wants to rent my wife for a while so I drive past. Three times I do this. Finally, as I approach for the next lap, I notice that he's on his cell phone. I also notice that I'm on MY cell phone, talking to Kenny Warren. Aha. No dummy, this guy. I realize the dude is in fact Kenny Warren and that I've now driven right past him three (almost four) times and ignored his salutations each and every one of them. Idiot, me.
I pull up alongside him and we make our introductions. He's got a buddy with him, whom I take to be the other of the Warren brothers. It turns out later that Kenny's brother is still back in Colorado—yep, you got it, Colorado. Kenny is actually from Highlands Ranch. No shit. Anyway, the buddy's name is either Greg or Grey. See, I'm never actually introduced to him and by the time Kenny calls him anything it's over 100 degrees and he is slurring his words almost as much as my ears are slurring everything I hear. So, let's call him (with all due respect to the Gregs in my life) Grey, if only because it sounds cooler. Kenny and Grey are here to move us in. I like them immediately, because they seem wholly unfazed by the following bits of information:
1. Our stuff takes up a 26-foot truck. The entire volume of our apartment is somewhat less than that.
2. Today will turn out to be one of the seven hottest days on record in New York City. Not for July 6th, mind you, but EVER. It will end up being 103 degrees with 90 percent humidity. Despite the opening of dozens and dozens of “cooling centers” around the city, more than 20 people will die today from the heat.
3. Our apartment lies up a very steep, very narrow staircase.
4. Our furniture was purchased in Colorado, where one has the premium of space. Hence, there's nothing sleek or light or slender about it. It's big-ass, real-wood, fluffy reclining kind of shit and it weighs a ton.
5. The majority of our boxes are filled with books. Anyone who's ever moved knows how much they hate their library when they have to actually lift it from one place to the next.
See, they know this stuff already—and they just don't seem to care. They are instantly my heroes. I figure that since Kenny's the expert at this, he'll know how to position the truck without disrupting traffic too much. So I ask him. He shrugs and lets me know he's never moved people from a truck this big parked on a street this narrow into a place so small. But he's willing to give it a shot. Once we figure out that if we maneuver the velociraptor to within one foot of the row of vehicles on the right side of the road (a process that I am certain costs me three years of my life due to the stress, 'cause, well, I didn't want to pay for the extra insurance on the truck, see) we reckon that cars will be able to pass on the left. Which turns out to be correct. What DOESN'T work, though, is when trucks, vans, or...ambulances try to pass. In which case they pull up behind the truck, honk, shout all kinds of obscenities at me, and force me to close the cargo door, jump in the truck and drive it around the block again. I repeat this exercise no less than seven times today.
By the time we start unloading in earnest, it's about 11:30 and 100 degrees. Fortunately, the front of our brownstone is shaded by a number of big, very old trees so we are spared 10 degrees or so of summer's wrath. Cold comfort, though. (Pun only intended halfway through writing that, by the way.) It may be of interest to note that I hired moving HELPERS, not movers. The important distinction between the two is that moving HELPERS are people who HELP you move—not who actually MOVE you. Therefore, I'm all in when it comes to lugging my stuff up the stairs. In fact, my guilt over the amount of crap we have and how unbelievably bulky it is causes me to feel compelled to lift all of the heaviest stuff myself. When it's time to bring that wardrobe box up, I'm your guy. When the couch needs hoisted, look no further. In retrospect, I think Kenny and Grey must believe me to be a very, very disturbed man. I pay them to watch me move all of the heaviest stuff I own. I've sort of become a reverse cuckold to my possessions.
It is becoming unbearably hot in our new house. When they were constructed, brownstones were designed to hold in heat as much as possible—folks worried about heat deaths far less in those days, and having to choose between cooling off at Coney Island in July or simply turning into frozen goods in February, they made the obvious call. Also, folks in 1910 weren't dumb enough to own all of the stupid shit we own. They lived simply. Good for them. (Side note: in the coming days, we will haul several hundred pounds of stuff BACK down the stairs in the form of donations to Goodwill and trash. Of course we will.) J has figured out a way to jury-rig one of the two A/C units in the kitchen, which provides a nice blast of cool air...that extends exactly two feet in front of the unit itself. Consequently, she and the kids spend most of their day (wisely) camped...exactly two feet in front of the unit itself.
We MEN, however, have WORK TO DO. And do it we shall! I'm actually feeling pretty good, considering my lack of sleep and impending heat exhaustion. At one point, another truck of a similar size to the U-Haul pulls up behind us, forcing me to move it once again. As I approach the stoplight, I see a heartwarming and typically Brooklyn scene: a group of day care kids crossing 5th Street in front of me with their teachers. They are dressed in identical yellow shirts, and most carry backpacks and bottles of water. Identical shirts notwithstanding, what is so nice about this group of kids is how diverse it is. Wow! Look at THAT! There are black kids and brown kids and white kids and tall kids and short kids and older kids and younger kids and the teachers are also black and brown and white and tall and short. New York is known to be one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet, and this mixture of kids illustrates that perfectly. I can't wait for Harper and Liam to get to know kids whose parents also made the journey here, but from much farther afield. Very cool.
My light turns green. The kids, however (as kids will do), have not quite finished crossing the street. Their teachers are frantically waving them across, holding their hands, picking up dropped water bottles and looking at me with “sorry!” written across their faces. I'm in no hurry to get through the intersection, taking particular pleasure in continuing to piss off the jerk in the truck behind me. So I wait for them to cross. My light turns red. I make a right turn. No big deal...did it 10,000 times before. As I turn, I notice the NYPD car sitting in the opposite lane of 6th Avenue (the street onto which I am making this right turn). To my surprise, a voice over a loudspeaker says, “THE LIGHT IS RED.” I'm thinking, “very good! You're learning your colors!”--smart ass that I am—when I realize that the loudspeaker voice is intended for me and that I've just...broken the law. Can't turn right on red in NY, see. Duh. I know this on some level, but exhaustion and heat and a myriad of other excuses prevent me from remembering it now. The cop in the driver's seat motions me to roll down my window as I pass. He barks, “Pull it over right THERE. Have your driver's license and registration READY. We will be right BACK.”
Aw, goddammit.
I do as I'm told. I double-park the dinosaur truck on 6th Ave. and wait for my comeuppance. Three hours in the city and I'm already busted. Wow. Nice job, daddy-o. As I wait, though, I'm struck by the irony of the situation. Because I committed a violation, the police are having me commit another violation in order to hand out their punitive measures--double-parking on an infinitely busier street than the one on which I was previously double-parked, thereby dramatically increasing a) the danger to surrounding pedestrians and traffic, and b) the odds that the drivers of one of these trucks who NOW cannot pass me will actually leave his vehicle, shoot me in the face, and go around me anyway. In addition, while I have my driver's license, I most certainly do NOT have the registration for this truck. I have a little slip of paper telling me I get to use it until this afternoon and thanking me for the $2,000 I remitted for this privilege. I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to tell them when they get here, and Kenny, Grey, and the fam might start wondering why on earth it's taking me so long to drive around the block this time.
So I wait. I mean, what else am I gonna do? Leave?
And I wait.
And wait.
I wait for almost 20 minutes. The cops have not returned. I have this image in my mind of them driving away after telling me to pull over, looking deviously at each other, and bursting into uncontrollable laughter as they drive to another part of the city. Or making a bet on how long the dipshit in the dinosaur truck will actually STAY in the middle of the street, waiting for their return. On the other hand, I have another image in my mind of me finally deciding to drive away, only to be tracked down later (how hard would I be to find, really?) and charged not only with making the illegal right turn but also with evading capture and thrown in jail. This image is obviously generated by the little angel on my shoulder, whom I have discovered is not only responsible for representing sound moral judgment but is also an acute, raving paranoiac. Finally, the New Yorker inside me emerges and I decide.
Fuck THIS.
I drive off. I make legal right turns which bring me back to the brownstone and reposition the truck. I had called J to let her know of my dilemma, and she seems somewhat surprised that I drove away. But the fact is, we have stuff to DO here. Let the cops find me. I'm willing to trade a night in lockup for the completion of the task at hand. While this may not be a rational stance, bear in mind that it is now 103 degrees, we have only finished unloading half the truck, and I can no longer think straight. Oh, one more thing: I have not yet eaten today. The perfect storm.
Early in the afternoon, three guys show up from Park Home Furnishings to deliver and install the new bunk beds for the little kids and the new double bed for the big kid. This results in seven adults and two children alongside one another in a 1,200 square foot apartment being stuffed with 2,000 square feet of stuff. Nice. The radius of cooling provided by the air conditioner in the kitchen is now down to about six inches. I cannot seem to feel my legs. J asks me a simple question...
J: Are you guys going to put the other boxes in our room or the kids' room?
R: Llll. Mmm. Brrm.
J: Huh?
R: We...flebble. Prrp. Cridge.
J: What???
R: I'm just...glll. No, it's. We.
J: Honey.
R: Hmm?
J: You don't look so good.
R: No?
J: You're beet red, man.
R: Nah. Grrrm.
J: And you're not making any sense.
R: Yeah, I.
J: You need to take a break. Now.
R: Mmmm. K.
I stick my head in the six-inch cooling zone for a few minutes, and only then do I realize that I am on the verge of a medical emergency. It's funny...I took EMT classes. I'm a certified first responder. I regularly diagnose myself with terrible maladies that I cannot possibly have. And yet here, in this instance, I completely overlook the fact that I'm about 10 minutes from heat exhaustion. ACTUAL heat exhaustion. I'm dehydrated, flushed, and my cognitive functioning is decreasing rapidly. And yet, even once I realize this, there's something in me that will not succumb to it. I'm driven by an insatiable need to finish what I've started. I'm not going to let anyone down here...not J, not the kids, not even Kenny and Grey. And especially not the skeptics. Their voices continue to ring in my ears... “I give 'em six months...” and I dig a little deeper. I know there's a reservoir of strength inside me somewhere, untapped. Just isolating this allows me to access it. I stand up, and I go on. I'm reminded of Pozzo in Godot:
Vladimir: What do you do when you fall far from help?
Pozzo: We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.
So, I get up. And I go on. The haze passes. I drink some water, and in an hour Kenny and Grey and I have completed the unload. The apartment is a fucking disaster area. As we survey it, we realize how much bigger it seemed in our memories and how much work we're going to have to do just to be able to LIVE here. Obviously, there's no way to stay here tonight so J books a hotel room on the phone. While this will turn out to be directly under the elevated J-Z-M lines in a neighborhood of some...um...character, we won't care. We'll all sleep like the dead.
I drive the dinosaur truck across Brooklyn to drop it off, and when I do I feel 20,000 pounds (gross) lighter but also a bit sad. It represents a week in our lives, a bold step, a manifestation of the belief we have in one another and in this ridiculous plan of ours. The truck and I became friends of sorts. I came to know its eccentricities (see also running out of gas while showing ¼ of a tank) and it mine (see also arbitrary bursts of profanity while navigating urban areas), and it performed its task of transporting a family across a continent admirably. And as absurd as it is to thank an inanimate object, I find myself doing just that as I walk away from the U-Haul center towards the subway. So, this is it. We're HERE now. There's no turning back, and I'm pleased to say that we wouldn't have it any other way. I'm proud of J, the kids, Kenny, Grey. And I have to begrudgingly admit that I'm proud of me, too. Today has most likely been the most physically and emotionally grueling one of my life, and I've conquered it. With all due respect to those who serve, I feel like I have a good idea of what it's like to be...a new soldier in basic training. At least for one day, that is.
Oh, I get it. That's why the cops let me go. They knew this soldier had to get back to boot camp. Thanks, guys. I owe you one.
As I previously mentioned, I don't sleep much the night before we hit Brooklyn. J often describes me as the little kid who can't sleep the night before Christmas (which I was, as a matter of fact) writ much more extreme. That is, I can't sleep the night before ANY significant event—the first day of school, prior to an important meeting, the opening of a production, anything. So one might imagine how little I sleep this particular night. Zero. Which is important only inasmuch as it may help to explain some of what happens in the subsequent paragraphs.
The trip in the dinosaur truck to NYC is actually quite uneventful. Google Maps and I have made up (still not sure what I did to piss it off so badly in the first place, but we have reached a quiet detente and I don't feel like spending my morning discussing it...you know how moody these apps can be), and I'm confident that the directions from Westchester to Brooklyn are accurate. Traffic gets ridiculously heavy on the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, for you foreigners (like how I start to mock you, now that I've lived here a week (or how I put parenthetical phrases inside other parenthetical phrases so I can end the whole mish-mash with completely unintelligible punctuation?)?)), but that's to be expected. A little over an hour later, we're...home.
Home. This term will take on added significance over the coming days, as we seek to redefine it for ourselves—but especially for the kids. Each of them has a unique and developmentally-appropriate definition of the term, and we find we have a great deal of work to do in order to help them come to terms with the finality of the move. More on this as we go on.
One of my major apprehensions (and there have been many, boy howdy) has been where to park the truck while we move in. 5th Street, where our apartment lies on the second story of an early 20th-century brownstone, is one-way, with cars parked on both sides and MAYBE enough room for two car-widths in between. How exactly one parks a 26-foot moving van so as to allow for traffic to flow unabated, I've no idea. It turns out that neither does Kenny Warren.
When I booked the dinosaur truck on uhaul.com three weeks ago, I made the decision to hire moving helpers on each side of the trip. Clarence and Jeff had pulled this duty in GJ, and I had chosen the highly-rated Warren Brothers Moving Co. in Brooklyn. As I circle the neighborhood trying to determine the best course of action, I come across a thin, 20-something dude in a ballcap and carrying a Nalgene bottle. He seems vaguely to be signaling to me as I drive by, but for all I know he needs money or a job or wants to rent my wife for a while so I drive past. Three times I do this. Finally, as I approach for the next lap, I notice that he's on his cell phone. I also notice that I'm on MY cell phone, talking to Kenny Warren. Aha. No dummy, this guy. I realize the dude is in fact Kenny Warren and that I've now driven right past him three (almost four) times and ignored his salutations each and every one of them. Idiot, me.
I pull up alongside him and we make our introductions. He's got a buddy with him, whom I take to be the other of the Warren brothers. It turns out later that Kenny's brother is still back in Colorado—yep, you got it, Colorado. Kenny is actually from Highlands Ranch. No shit. Anyway, the buddy's name is either Greg or Grey. See, I'm never actually introduced to him and by the time Kenny calls him anything it's over 100 degrees and he is slurring his words almost as much as my ears are slurring everything I hear. So, let's call him (with all due respect to the Gregs in my life) Grey, if only because it sounds cooler. Kenny and Grey are here to move us in. I like them immediately, because they seem wholly unfazed by the following bits of information:
1. Our stuff takes up a 26-foot truck. The entire volume of our apartment is somewhat less than that.
2. Today will turn out to be one of the seven hottest days on record in New York City. Not for July 6th, mind you, but EVER. It will end up being 103 degrees with 90 percent humidity. Despite the opening of dozens and dozens of “cooling centers” around the city, more than 20 people will die today from the heat.
3. Our apartment lies up a very steep, very narrow staircase.
4. Our furniture was purchased in Colorado, where one has the premium of space. Hence, there's nothing sleek or light or slender about it. It's big-ass, real-wood, fluffy reclining kind of shit and it weighs a ton.
5. The majority of our boxes are filled with books. Anyone who's ever moved knows how much they hate their library when they have to actually lift it from one place to the next.
See, they know this stuff already—and they just don't seem to care. They are instantly my heroes. I figure that since Kenny's the expert at this, he'll know how to position the truck without disrupting traffic too much. So I ask him. He shrugs and lets me know he's never moved people from a truck this big parked on a street this narrow into a place so small. But he's willing to give it a shot. Once we figure out that if we maneuver the velociraptor to within one foot of the row of vehicles on the right side of the road (a process that I am certain costs me three years of my life due to the stress, 'cause, well, I didn't want to pay for the extra insurance on the truck, see) we reckon that cars will be able to pass on the left. Which turns out to be correct. What DOESN'T work, though, is when trucks, vans, or...ambulances try to pass. In which case they pull up behind the truck, honk, shout all kinds of obscenities at me, and force me to close the cargo door, jump in the truck and drive it around the block again. I repeat this exercise no less than seven times today.
By the time we start unloading in earnest, it's about 11:30 and 100 degrees. Fortunately, the front of our brownstone is shaded by a number of big, very old trees so we are spared 10 degrees or so of summer's wrath. Cold comfort, though. (Pun only intended halfway through writing that, by the way.) It may be of interest to note that I hired moving HELPERS, not movers. The important distinction between the two is that moving HELPERS are people who HELP you move—not who actually MOVE you. Therefore, I'm all in when it comes to lugging my stuff up the stairs. In fact, my guilt over the amount of crap we have and how unbelievably bulky it is causes me to feel compelled to lift all of the heaviest stuff myself. When it's time to bring that wardrobe box up, I'm your guy. When the couch needs hoisted, look no further. In retrospect, I think Kenny and Grey must believe me to be a very, very disturbed man. I pay them to watch me move all of the heaviest stuff I own. I've sort of become a reverse cuckold to my possessions.
It is becoming unbearably hot in our new house. When they were constructed, brownstones were designed to hold in heat as much as possible—folks worried about heat deaths far less in those days, and having to choose between cooling off at Coney Island in July or simply turning into frozen goods in February, they made the obvious call. Also, folks in 1910 weren't dumb enough to own all of the stupid shit we own. They lived simply. Good for them. (Side note: in the coming days, we will haul several hundred pounds of stuff BACK down the stairs in the form of donations to Goodwill and trash. Of course we will.) J has figured out a way to jury-rig one of the two A/C units in the kitchen, which provides a nice blast of cool air...that extends exactly two feet in front of the unit itself. Consequently, she and the kids spend most of their day (wisely) camped...exactly two feet in front of the unit itself.
We MEN, however, have WORK TO DO. And do it we shall! I'm actually feeling pretty good, considering my lack of sleep and impending heat exhaustion. At one point, another truck of a similar size to the U-Haul pulls up behind us, forcing me to move it once again. As I approach the stoplight, I see a heartwarming and typically Brooklyn scene: a group of day care kids crossing 5th Street in front of me with their teachers. They are dressed in identical yellow shirts, and most carry backpacks and bottles of water. Identical shirts notwithstanding, what is so nice about this group of kids is how diverse it is. Wow! Look at THAT! There are black kids and brown kids and white kids and tall kids and short kids and older kids and younger kids and the teachers are also black and brown and white and tall and short. New York is known to be one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet, and this mixture of kids illustrates that perfectly. I can't wait for Harper and Liam to get to know kids whose parents also made the journey here, but from much farther afield. Very cool.
My light turns green. The kids, however (as kids will do), have not quite finished crossing the street. Their teachers are frantically waving them across, holding their hands, picking up dropped water bottles and looking at me with “sorry!” written across their faces. I'm in no hurry to get through the intersection, taking particular pleasure in continuing to piss off the jerk in the truck behind me. So I wait for them to cross. My light turns red. I make a right turn. No big deal...did it 10,000 times before. As I turn, I notice the NYPD car sitting in the opposite lane of 6th Avenue (the street onto which I am making this right turn). To my surprise, a voice over a loudspeaker says, “THE LIGHT IS RED.” I'm thinking, “very good! You're learning your colors!”--smart ass that I am—when I realize that the loudspeaker voice is intended for me and that I've just...broken the law. Can't turn right on red in NY, see. Duh. I know this on some level, but exhaustion and heat and a myriad of other excuses prevent me from remembering it now. The cop in the driver's seat motions me to roll down my window as I pass. He barks, “Pull it over right THERE. Have your driver's license and registration READY. We will be right BACK.”
Aw, goddammit.
I do as I'm told. I double-park the dinosaur truck on 6th Ave. and wait for my comeuppance. Three hours in the city and I'm already busted. Wow. Nice job, daddy-o. As I wait, though, I'm struck by the irony of the situation. Because I committed a violation, the police are having me commit another violation in order to hand out their punitive measures--double-parking on an infinitely busier street than the one on which I was previously double-parked, thereby dramatically increasing a) the danger to surrounding pedestrians and traffic, and b) the odds that the drivers of one of these trucks who NOW cannot pass me will actually leave his vehicle, shoot me in the face, and go around me anyway. In addition, while I have my driver's license, I most certainly do NOT have the registration for this truck. I have a little slip of paper telling me I get to use it until this afternoon and thanking me for the $2,000 I remitted for this privilege. I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to tell them when they get here, and Kenny, Grey, and the fam might start wondering why on earth it's taking me so long to drive around the block this time.
So I wait. I mean, what else am I gonna do? Leave?
And I wait.
And wait.
I wait for almost 20 minutes. The cops have not returned. I have this image in my mind of them driving away after telling me to pull over, looking deviously at each other, and bursting into uncontrollable laughter as they drive to another part of the city. Or making a bet on how long the dipshit in the dinosaur truck will actually STAY in the middle of the street, waiting for their return. On the other hand, I have another image in my mind of me finally deciding to drive away, only to be tracked down later (how hard would I be to find, really?) and charged not only with making the illegal right turn but also with evading capture and thrown in jail. This image is obviously generated by the little angel on my shoulder, whom I have discovered is not only responsible for representing sound moral judgment but is also an acute, raving paranoiac. Finally, the New Yorker inside me emerges and I decide.
Fuck THIS.
I drive off. I make legal right turns which bring me back to the brownstone and reposition the truck. I had called J to let her know of my dilemma, and she seems somewhat surprised that I drove away. But the fact is, we have stuff to DO here. Let the cops find me. I'm willing to trade a night in lockup for the completion of the task at hand. While this may not be a rational stance, bear in mind that it is now 103 degrees, we have only finished unloading half the truck, and I can no longer think straight. Oh, one more thing: I have not yet eaten today. The perfect storm.
Early in the afternoon, three guys show up from Park Home Furnishings to deliver and install the new bunk beds for the little kids and the new double bed for the big kid. This results in seven adults and two children alongside one another in a 1,200 square foot apartment being stuffed with 2,000 square feet of stuff. Nice. The radius of cooling provided by the air conditioner in the kitchen is now down to about six inches. I cannot seem to feel my legs. J asks me a simple question...
J: Are you guys going to put the other boxes in our room or the kids' room?
R: Llll. Mmm. Brrm.
J: Huh?
R: We...flebble. Prrp. Cridge.
J: What???
R: I'm just...glll. No, it's. We.
J: Honey.
R: Hmm?
J: You don't look so good.
R: No?
J: You're beet red, man.
R: Nah. Grrrm.
J: And you're not making any sense.
R: Yeah, I.
J: You need to take a break. Now.
R: Mmmm. K.
I stick my head in the six-inch cooling zone for a few minutes, and only then do I realize that I am on the verge of a medical emergency. It's funny...I took EMT classes. I'm a certified first responder. I regularly diagnose myself with terrible maladies that I cannot possibly have. And yet here, in this instance, I completely overlook the fact that I'm about 10 minutes from heat exhaustion. ACTUAL heat exhaustion. I'm dehydrated, flushed, and my cognitive functioning is decreasing rapidly. And yet, even once I realize this, there's something in me that will not succumb to it. I'm driven by an insatiable need to finish what I've started. I'm not going to let anyone down here...not J, not the kids, not even Kenny and Grey. And especially not the skeptics. Their voices continue to ring in my ears... “I give 'em six months...” and I dig a little deeper. I know there's a reservoir of strength inside me somewhere, untapped. Just isolating this allows me to access it. I stand up, and I go on. I'm reminded of Pozzo in Godot:
Vladimir: What do you do when you fall far from help?
Pozzo: We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.
So, I get up. And I go on. The haze passes. I drink some water, and in an hour Kenny and Grey and I have completed the unload. The apartment is a fucking disaster area. As we survey it, we realize how much bigger it seemed in our memories and how much work we're going to have to do just to be able to LIVE here. Obviously, there's no way to stay here tonight so J books a hotel room on the phone. While this will turn out to be directly under the elevated J-Z-M lines in a neighborhood of some...um...character, we won't care. We'll all sleep like the dead.
I drive the dinosaur truck across Brooklyn to drop it off, and when I do I feel 20,000 pounds (gross) lighter but also a bit sad. It represents a week in our lives, a bold step, a manifestation of the belief we have in one another and in this ridiculous plan of ours. The truck and I became friends of sorts. I came to know its eccentricities (see also running out of gas while showing ¼ of a tank) and it mine (see also arbitrary bursts of profanity while navigating urban areas), and it performed its task of transporting a family across a continent admirably. And as absurd as it is to thank an inanimate object, I find myself doing just that as I walk away from the U-Haul center towards the subway. So, this is it. We're HERE now. There's no turning back, and I'm pleased to say that we wouldn't have it any other way. I'm proud of J, the kids, Kenny, Grey. And I have to begrudgingly admit that I'm proud of me, too. Today has most likely been the most physically and emotionally grueling one of my life, and I've conquered it. With all due respect to those who serve, I feel like I have a good idea of what it's like to be...a new soldier in basic training. At least for one day, that is.
Oh, I get it. That's why the cops let me go. They knew this soldier had to get back to boot camp. Thanks, guys. I owe you one.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Before Battle
The evening of July 5th, we arrive in New York state. Our aim is to stay at a hotel in Westchester County, about 30 miles north of NYC, and use it as a staging ground of sorts for our impending assault on Park Slope. Also, everyone's closed that day as it's used as the official Independence Day observation, so we can't move in anyway. No matter, because it takes us FOREVER JUST TO FIND THE DAMN HOTEL. Google Maps, upon which I've relied exclusively to get me from one place to the other during this trip and which has performed its duties in a superlative manner, decides at the 11th hour not to tell me whether to go north or south on the Saw Mill River Parkway. This is fairly significant, because one direction (north) boasts a sign saying “passenger cars only” (even in my road-based delirium I know that the velociraptor doesn't qualify) and the other (south) heads off towards an incredibly intimidating series of on- and off-ramps and must, by default, lead to the city itself. No matter—Google Maps is like the buddy you had in high school that would smack-talk a bunch of dudes much bigger than himself and then stand by, feigning absolute innocence, as said dudes kicked YOUR ass instead. Or, better yet, just run like hell. My trusty directions are useless, and I have to make a choice. Being the law-abiding citizen that I am (in most instances...really) I cannot take a road which specifically prohibits my vehicle—never mind that the prohibition may be due to low overhangs that would rip the truck in two. Nope. So I head south.
Several miles later, we have passed through two more tollbooths and are utterly lost. We pull over, at wit's end. We are not only lost and miles from our destination, but completely out of cash. Assuming we have to return on the expressways that got us into this mess in order to find the hotel, we will have to go BACK through the tollbooths—but have no resources to do so. J, in fact, is now negotiating with Harper in the back seat to borrow some or all of the money she's got in her pink kitty purse. Harper, shrewd as always, at first refuses. J becomes firmer in her resolve, and, following some heated discussions about the terms of the loan, secures 20 bucks and we turn around. She calls the hotel and gets directions from our location and we're back on the road. She leads, paying tolls for me as we go and, for the first time on the whole trip, being the chase car.
Yeah. About that.
Physics: Mercury Milans are more maneuverable than dinosaur trucks. They turn more adeptly, they accelerate much faster, and they change lanes quite smoothly. 26-foot behemoths? Not so much. This is important if one wants to understand the cat-and-mouse game we play over the next half an hour or so. J assumes (rightly, to be fair) a rather aggressive driving style on the expressways. She cuts in and out of lanes, zooms ahead to get to the correct exit, and does everything else a reasonable person would do in order to reach the hotel. I, on the other hand, have only a foggy memory of the directions she wrote down...something about 9A north...maybe....or is it 2A?...and NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of keeping up with her. She pulls ahead, loses me at a stoplight, and I am on my own. The whole time, of course, we are in constant phone contact—that is, when our calls are not being dropped, which is EVERY FUCKING TIME. So, to set the scene: J is nowhere to be found. I am far behind with no directions to guide me. I am calling her every thirty seconds to scream at her, to no avail. The calm, measured approach I have taken to this entire trip—of which I have been quite proud, thank you very much, considering my tendency to blow my top—has been thrown out the window entirely. I am a screaming, flailing madman hurtling down the NY Expressway at 80 miles an hour in a 15-ton missile.
Then, I see it. The sign for 9A north. I cut across four lanes of traffic (if anyone was killed, it isn't on the news later that night) and give it a shot. I call J, hoping she's seen the same exit. She has, but ignored it in favor of the specific directions given to her by the hotel. I scream at her again:
R: AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO END UP ON 9A NORTH??????
J: Yes, but...
R: WELL, I'M ON IT, GODDAMIT. I'M ON 9A NORTH!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?
J: I am heading towards exit 15, LIKE SHE SAID.
R: WELL, WHAT'S THE POINT OF THAT?!? IF WE'RE SUPPOSED TO END UP ON 9A NORTH, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU JUST TAKE THE EXIT FOR 9A NORTH?
J: Because, honey...I'M FOLLOWING THE ACTUAL DIRECTIONS SHE GAVE ME.
R: OH, GODDAMIT. GODDAMIT! FUCK IT. I'M TAKING 9A NORTH AND I'LL JUST MEET YOU AT THE HOTEL. GODDAMIT.
J: Goddammit. (hangs up)
And so I begin a mini-journey up 9A. 9A, of course, is less a highway—or even a route—than it is a road. Or a street. I follow it through town (Which one? Who the HELL knows? There aren't any signs for things like THAT which would be HELPFUL.) for about 4 or 5 miles when I start to become concerned. The hotel is nowhere to be found, I've lost my family, it's getting dark, I have no directions, and my cell service is virtually nonexistent (can you hear me NOW, you Verizon bastards?).
And then, mercifully, I see it. The Comfort Suites of Hawthorne, NY. Perched atop a little hill, cradling an Applebee's in its parking lot. At last. I pull in, find a parking spot (never an easy task in the velociraptor) and wait. I breathe...deeply...and call J. She's only a couple of blocks away and arrives almost instantly. We are here. In New York. In one piece. Tomorrow we invade the Borough of Brooklyn. Tonight we dine on comforting, chain-restaurant fare. We don't sleep well, even with the Xanax. Tomorrow, everything changes. Tomorrow, we find out what we're made of. Tomorrow, the family and friends who've been pulling for us pull for us even harder.
And as I realize all of this, even through the anxiety/apprehension/terror/second thoughts/remorse/insecurity, my resolve stiffens. I'm charged with shepherding this family—this beautiful woman, who believes in my dreams, and these beautiful children, who believe in everything I say, simply because Daddy said it—and I will not fail. I will not disappoint them. I will make all of them proud, and in so doing I will be even more proud of them. This is what some haven't understood. When people very close to us have expressed doubts about our plan, about our ability to pull it off, about our INability to put into words exactly why we're leaving Happy Valley or what we plan to do in NYC, what they've overlooked is that they should never bet against us. Six months, y'say? You're betting we'll only make it six months? Just watch us.
Oh, by the way...you'll still be allowed to visit seven months from now.
Several miles later, we have passed through two more tollbooths and are utterly lost. We pull over, at wit's end. We are not only lost and miles from our destination, but completely out of cash. Assuming we have to return on the expressways that got us into this mess in order to find the hotel, we will have to go BACK through the tollbooths—but have no resources to do so. J, in fact, is now negotiating with Harper in the back seat to borrow some or all of the money she's got in her pink kitty purse. Harper, shrewd as always, at first refuses. J becomes firmer in her resolve, and, following some heated discussions about the terms of the loan, secures 20 bucks and we turn around. She calls the hotel and gets directions from our location and we're back on the road. She leads, paying tolls for me as we go and, for the first time on the whole trip, being the chase car.
Yeah. About that.
Physics: Mercury Milans are more maneuverable than dinosaur trucks. They turn more adeptly, they accelerate much faster, and they change lanes quite smoothly. 26-foot behemoths? Not so much. This is important if one wants to understand the cat-and-mouse game we play over the next half an hour or so. J assumes (rightly, to be fair) a rather aggressive driving style on the expressways. She cuts in and out of lanes, zooms ahead to get to the correct exit, and does everything else a reasonable person would do in order to reach the hotel. I, on the other hand, have only a foggy memory of the directions she wrote down...something about 9A north...maybe....or is it 2A?...and NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of keeping up with her. She pulls ahead, loses me at a stoplight, and I am on my own. The whole time, of course, we are in constant phone contact—that is, when our calls are not being dropped, which is EVERY FUCKING TIME. So, to set the scene: J is nowhere to be found. I am far behind with no directions to guide me. I am calling her every thirty seconds to scream at her, to no avail. The calm, measured approach I have taken to this entire trip—of which I have been quite proud, thank you very much, considering my tendency to blow my top—has been thrown out the window entirely. I am a screaming, flailing madman hurtling down the NY Expressway at 80 miles an hour in a 15-ton missile.
Then, I see it. The sign for 9A north. I cut across four lanes of traffic (if anyone was killed, it isn't on the news later that night) and give it a shot. I call J, hoping she's seen the same exit. She has, but ignored it in favor of the specific directions given to her by the hotel. I scream at her again:
R: AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO END UP ON 9A NORTH??????
J: Yes, but...
R: WELL, I'M ON IT, GODDAMIT. I'M ON 9A NORTH!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?
J: I am heading towards exit 15, LIKE SHE SAID.
R: WELL, WHAT'S THE POINT OF THAT?!? IF WE'RE SUPPOSED TO END UP ON 9A NORTH, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU JUST TAKE THE EXIT FOR 9A NORTH?
J: Because, honey...I'M FOLLOWING THE ACTUAL DIRECTIONS SHE GAVE ME.
R: OH, GODDAMIT. GODDAMIT! FUCK IT. I'M TAKING 9A NORTH AND I'LL JUST MEET YOU AT THE HOTEL. GODDAMIT.
J: Goddammit. (hangs up)
And so I begin a mini-journey up 9A. 9A, of course, is less a highway—or even a route—than it is a road. Or a street. I follow it through town (Which one? Who the HELL knows? There aren't any signs for things like THAT which would be HELPFUL.) for about 4 or 5 miles when I start to become concerned. The hotel is nowhere to be found, I've lost my family, it's getting dark, I have no directions, and my cell service is virtually nonexistent (can you hear me NOW, you Verizon bastards?).
And then, mercifully, I see it. The Comfort Suites of Hawthorne, NY. Perched atop a little hill, cradling an Applebee's in its parking lot. At last. I pull in, find a parking spot (never an easy task in the velociraptor) and wait. I breathe...deeply...and call J. She's only a couple of blocks away and arrives almost instantly. We are here. In New York. In one piece. Tomorrow we invade the Borough of Brooklyn. Tonight we dine on comforting, chain-restaurant fare. We don't sleep well, even with the Xanax. Tomorrow, everything changes. Tomorrow, we find out what we're made of. Tomorrow, the family and friends who've been pulling for us pull for us even harder.
And as I realize all of this, even through the anxiety/apprehension/terror/second thoughts/remorse/insecurity, my resolve stiffens. I'm charged with shepherding this family—this beautiful woman, who believes in my dreams, and these beautiful children, who believe in everything I say, simply because Daddy said it—and I will not fail. I will not disappoint them. I will make all of them proud, and in so doing I will be even more proud of them. This is what some haven't understood. When people very close to us have expressed doubts about our plan, about our ability to pull it off, about our INability to put into words exactly why we're leaving Happy Valley or what we plan to do in NYC, what they've overlooked is that they should never bet against us. Six months, y'say? You're betting we'll only make it six months? Just watch us.
Oh, by the way...you'll still be allowed to visit seven months from now.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Aftermath: Of the Immediate Variety
A week later, I finally get a minute free.
Really.
I'm writing this eight days after we moved into our apartment on 5th Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, and as I wake up this morning I see, for the first time in that period...the floor. We had a general sense of what the physics would be behind going from 2000 square feet in our Junction house to 1200 square feet in NYC, which is why we furiously liquidated so many of our belongings in that frenzied week leading up to the epic trip in the dinosaur truck. The reality, however, is that you never know exactly how your crap is going to fit in a new place—no matter how many floor plans you draw, photos you take, or measurements you conduct. And so, after a week of some of the most creative storage ideas ever to be generated (see, the apartment has a total of two closets...each measuring less than three feet wide and two feet deep) we are beginning to see success. Finally. And it only took one truly radical act to accomplish this:
GET. RID. OF. EVEN. MORE. STUFF.
As of this writing, we have four garbage bags and two large boxes of various toys, kitchen gadgets, clothes, and electronics sitting on the kitchen floor waiting to be dropped at the Goodwill on 4th Ave. later today. What's interesting about this particular pile is that each and every object in it was the recipient of “no, we can't live without this” status during the very Machiavellian process we undertook to lighten our load. Now, though, those precious items are the recipients of the “what in God's name were we thinking?” status which has relegated them to the donation queue. What a difference 2,500 miles, two weeks, and nowhere to put things make.
Regardless, we have been making solid progress each day. To be honest, though, we are EXHAUSTED. I wake each morning to the realizations that a) I've been woefully out of shape for a long, long time; b) I'm spending each day right now lugging box after box (each of which of course averages something like 75 pounds) from one end of the place to another with no regard whatsoever for point “a,” above; and c) I appear to have turned 40 in the last couple of months, and this means I am sore all the time. Two days ago, I found the bathroom scale and eagerly placed it on the floor and stepped onto it, certain that my grueling week (not to mention the gallons of sweat produced by it) would have given me a good jump-start on my stated goal to drop 25 pounds asap upon moving to the city. Nope. Somehow, I have GAINED five pounds. WTF? Huh? How is this even POSSIBLE? I feel like John McEnroe with no chair umpire to berate...I can't exactly scream at the scale, can I? “YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS!” But that's what I feel like doing, because I cannot for the life of me comprehend how the week I've just had could result in a net GAIN in my physical mass. J tries to comfort me by saying things like “you've probably gained a lot of muscle mass” and “well, I think your belly looks a lot smaller so I don't get it either.” She's good that way.
Me? I think I've been hexed by the girl from the Six Flags beer counter who tried to kipe J's driver's license. You bet. Or, as I think about it, I'm led to recall a conversation I overheard in Cabo once between a woman who was there to produce a commercial about the wonders of botox and some of the people on her crew. This conversation has been on permanent reserve in my mind as an example of the most ridiculous, banal, idiotic reasoning I've ever heard another human being use to describe a simple phenomenon, yet now, as I need such reasoning to explain my physical proliferation, I'm thinking of employing the logic. The dialogue that follows is between the woman (W) and her minions (M)--which particular minion is speaking is as unimportant to the dialogue itself as it was to her incredibly narcissistic ass. In fact, most times all of the minions were chiming in simultaneously as it was clearly their primary function to agree with Herself, regardless of the topic. So, it's like this:
W: Y'know, I went downstairs to the hotel gym this morning...
M: Hmmmm. Mmmm?
W: Well, yes. I mean, I have to do my workout every day, you know.
M: Mmmm. Yes. Mmmm.
W: Except Sundays, unless I'm in the Palisades. Because you know, there's a lovely trainer man there I like to work with. He's very good.
M: Oh, yes. Mmmm.
W: Anyway, you're not letting me finish the story. You're getting me off track.
M: (silence)
W: That's better. So I went to the hotel gym...
M: ...mmmmmm...
W: ...and I went up to one of those machines. You know, the Nautlius things or whatever they call them?
M: Yes.
W: I put the same amount of weight on it that I always do...it's the same machine as I have at home, see.
M: Mmmmm. Yes.
W: And do you know WHAT?
M: Mmmm?
W: I COULDN'T LIFT IT.
M: (general gasps of shock and horror)
W: I'm serious! I always start with 15 pounds and work up to 20. So I put 15 pounds on it, and I COULDN'T LIFT IT. Seriously! Now why do you suppose that IS?
M: Mmmm....can't imagine....mmmmm....so strange....mmmm....mumble mumble mumble feigning surprise so well aren't we but she can't hear this over all the “mmmmming” we're doing....mmmmmm.
W: And then I figured it out.
M: Mmmm? What?
W: I figured out exactly why I couldn't lift 15 pounds.
M: Why? Do tell! Do tell!
W: It's because....are you ready?
M: Yes! We're ready! Please! Please!
W: It's because...well, look at it this way.
M: Mmmmm?
W: We're in Cabo, right?
M: Mmmmm...
W: NOT in LA, right?
M: Right.....
W: And Cabo is closer to the equator than LA, right? That is right, isn't it?
M: (general consultation) Mmmmm. Yes.
W: So there's only one possible explanation.
(long dramatic pause....the tension is unbearable as she prepares to reveal her wisdom)
W: Gravity, my friends, must be stronger at the equator. So much stronger, in fact, that I couldn't lift my usual 15 pounds here! Now isn't THAT something?
M: (various subdued but enthusiastic applause) Mmmmm!
W: And I am SO glad I figured that out. Because for a minute there I thought I'd lost my strength completely. And that would never, ever do.
So, as I continue to defy physics myself and gain weight despite sweating more and eating less, I've decided to apply a variation of her argument—its logic intact, though, to be sure—to my situation. Rather than latitude, I'm going to use ALTITUDE as a scapegoat for this predicament. See? I'm going to engage in some big-time cognitive dissonance as I cast aside everything I know about science and tell myself that I weigh more at sea level! It's perfect! Were I to step on a scale in Colorado, I'd be down a good 10 pounds already! And off I go to unpack the rest of my crap. Blithely so.
Oh. Two things:
1. Now that I've got a little time on my hands, I'll be putting together some of the more memorable stories from the move-in week and posting them. You'll get to meet our wonderfully eccentric landlady, spend one of the 7 hottest days in NYC history with me, the Warren brothers, and a flight of stairs, compare southpaw-ness with Bob the handyman, and find the only truly bad Italian restaurant in the city. Just stay tuned.
2. If you haven't already figured it out...the reason that the stupid bitch couldn't lift 15 pounds in Cabo had nothing at all to do with gravity. They were kilos, see. The weights were listed in kilograms. Which means she was trying to lift 33 pounds. Wow.
Really.
I'm writing this eight days after we moved into our apartment on 5th Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, and as I wake up this morning I see, for the first time in that period...the floor. We had a general sense of what the physics would be behind going from 2000 square feet in our Junction house to 1200 square feet in NYC, which is why we furiously liquidated so many of our belongings in that frenzied week leading up to the epic trip in the dinosaur truck. The reality, however, is that you never know exactly how your crap is going to fit in a new place—no matter how many floor plans you draw, photos you take, or measurements you conduct. And so, after a week of some of the most creative storage ideas ever to be generated (see, the apartment has a total of two closets...each measuring less than three feet wide and two feet deep) we are beginning to see success. Finally. And it only took one truly radical act to accomplish this:
GET. RID. OF. EVEN. MORE. STUFF.
As of this writing, we have four garbage bags and two large boxes of various toys, kitchen gadgets, clothes, and electronics sitting on the kitchen floor waiting to be dropped at the Goodwill on 4th Ave. later today. What's interesting about this particular pile is that each and every object in it was the recipient of “no, we can't live without this” status during the very Machiavellian process we undertook to lighten our load. Now, though, those precious items are the recipients of the “what in God's name were we thinking?” status which has relegated them to the donation queue. What a difference 2,500 miles, two weeks, and nowhere to put things make.
Regardless, we have been making solid progress each day. To be honest, though, we are EXHAUSTED. I wake each morning to the realizations that a) I've been woefully out of shape for a long, long time; b) I'm spending each day right now lugging box after box (each of which of course averages something like 75 pounds) from one end of the place to another with no regard whatsoever for point “a,” above; and c) I appear to have turned 40 in the last couple of months, and this means I am sore all the time. Two days ago, I found the bathroom scale and eagerly placed it on the floor and stepped onto it, certain that my grueling week (not to mention the gallons of sweat produced by it) would have given me a good jump-start on my stated goal to drop 25 pounds asap upon moving to the city. Nope. Somehow, I have GAINED five pounds. WTF? Huh? How is this even POSSIBLE? I feel like John McEnroe with no chair umpire to berate...I can't exactly scream at the scale, can I? “YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS!” But that's what I feel like doing, because I cannot for the life of me comprehend how the week I've just had could result in a net GAIN in my physical mass. J tries to comfort me by saying things like “you've probably gained a lot of muscle mass” and “well, I think your belly looks a lot smaller so I don't get it either.” She's good that way.
Me? I think I've been hexed by the girl from the Six Flags beer counter who tried to kipe J's driver's license. You bet. Or, as I think about it, I'm led to recall a conversation I overheard in Cabo once between a woman who was there to produce a commercial about the wonders of botox and some of the people on her crew. This conversation has been on permanent reserve in my mind as an example of the most ridiculous, banal, idiotic reasoning I've ever heard another human being use to describe a simple phenomenon, yet now, as I need such reasoning to explain my physical proliferation, I'm thinking of employing the logic. The dialogue that follows is between the woman (W) and her minions (M)--which particular minion is speaking is as unimportant to the dialogue itself as it was to her incredibly narcissistic ass. In fact, most times all of the minions were chiming in simultaneously as it was clearly their primary function to agree with Herself, regardless of the topic. So, it's like this:
W: Y'know, I went downstairs to the hotel gym this morning...
M: Hmmmm. Mmmm?
W: Well, yes. I mean, I have to do my workout every day, you know.
M: Mmmm. Yes. Mmmm.
W: Except Sundays, unless I'm in the Palisades. Because you know, there's a lovely trainer man there I like to work with. He's very good.
M: Oh, yes. Mmmm.
W: Anyway, you're not letting me finish the story. You're getting me off track.
M: (silence)
W: That's better. So I went to the hotel gym...
M: ...mmmmmm...
W: ...and I went up to one of those machines. You know, the Nautlius things or whatever they call them?
M: Yes.
W: I put the same amount of weight on it that I always do...it's the same machine as I have at home, see.
M: Mmmmm. Yes.
W: And do you know WHAT?
M: Mmmm?
W: I COULDN'T LIFT IT.
M: (general gasps of shock and horror)
W: I'm serious! I always start with 15 pounds and work up to 20. So I put 15 pounds on it, and I COULDN'T LIFT IT. Seriously! Now why do you suppose that IS?
M: Mmmm....can't imagine....mmmmm....so strange....mmmm....mumble mumble mumble feigning surprise so well aren't we but she can't hear this over all the “mmmmming” we're doing....mmmmmm.
W: And then I figured it out.
M: Mmmm? What?
W: I figured out exactly why I couldn't lift 15 pounds.
M: Why? Do tell! Do tell!
W: It's because....are you ready?
M: Yes! We're ready! Please! Please!
W: It's because...well, look at it this way.
M: Mmmmm?
W: We're in Cabo, right?
M: Mmmmm...
W: NOT in LA, right?
M: Right.....
W: And Cabo is closer to the equator than LA, right? That is right, isn't it?
M: (general consultation) Mmmmm. Yes.
W: So there's only one possible explanation.
(long dramatic pause....the tension is unbearable as she prepares to reveal her wisdom)
W: Gravity, my friends, must be stronger at the equator. So much stronger, in fact, that I couldn't lift my usual 15 pounds here! Now isn't THAT something?
M: (various subdued but enthusiastic applause) Mmmmm!
W: And I am SO glad I figured that out. Because for a minute there I thought I'd lost my strength completely. And that would never, ever do.
So, as I continue to defy physics myself and gain weight despite sweating more and eating less, I've decided to apply a variation of her argument—its logic intact, though, to be sure—to my situation. Rather than latitude, I'm going to use ALTITUDE as a scapegoat for this predicament. See? I'm going to engage in some big-time cognitive dissonance as I cast aside everything I know about science and tell myself that I weigh more at sea level! It's perfect! Were I to step on a scale in Colorado, I'd be down a good 10 pounds already! And off I go to unpack the rest of my crap. Blithely so.
Oh. Two things:
1. Now that I've got a little time on my hands, I'll be putting together some of the more memorable stories from the move-in week and posting them. You'll get to meet our wonderfully eccentric landlady, spend one of the 7 hottest days in NYC history with me, the Warren brothers, and a flight of stairs, compare southpaw-ness with Bob the handyman, and find the only truly bad Italian restaurant in the city. Just stay tuned.
2. If you haven't already figured it out...the reason that the stupid bitch couldn't lift 15 pounds in Cabo had nothing at all to do with gravity. They were kilos, see. The weights were listed in kilograms. Which means she was trying to lift 33 pounds. Wow.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Days Five and Six: Defying Gravity (sort of)
Days Five and Six
I didn't write anything yesterday for two separate but equally valid reasons. First, I have to admit that the type of (mis)adventures so common on the rest of the trip heretofore simply didn't occur on the journey from St. Charles, Missouri to Zanesville, Ohio. The trip was remarkable in that it was wholly unremarkable. It was long, to be sure—10 hours on the road in total, including a stop or two for food and to satiate the velociraptor. Otherwise, not much to report. All in all, while it provides me little fodder for the type of self-satire in which I've been engaged over the past week, I find myself grateful for the respite.
The second reason has to do with what I suspect was a cruel joke played by either a previous guest in our Zanesville hotel room, the housekeeping staff, or...perhaps the Albanians are on to me. In any case, we are to meet Frank Dickson, my ex-father-in-law (or Beth's dad, as some may know him) for breakfast at—you got it—Bob Evans. After waking up and checking the clock, which reads 9:30, I call Frank and set a meeting time of 10:30. Despite the kids still being asleep, I've no doubt that they'll be easily roused when they realize it's time to hang with “Grandpa Pop.” “Grandpa Pop” is the name given to Frank by Harper, who couldn't quite wrap her 2 year-old brain around “Pap-Paw” when she first met him. It's actually a very wonderful name, though, because it's one that both of my younger kids have taken to calling a man who is no relation to them at all. Rather, as he's prone to do, Frank has adopted my two youngest as part of his own family—in exactly the way he's done for J, and in the way that he's continued to consider me a close relative despite having divorced his favorite daughter ten years ago.
I have cause here to reflect upon how unique and terrific our particular extended “family” really is. See, because some asshole set the clock in our room back by almost forty minutes (which means that when I'm talking to Frank it's actually after 10:00 already), we are 15 minutes late to breakfast. (Since I always write in the mornings, this precludes me from doing so today.) This is significant because it gives us a much better vantage point of the scene on the front steps of Bob Evans, where Frank awaits. It just so happens that he's joined by Beth's brother, Dan, and his two kids (although the moniker hardly applies any more since they're both so damn old now) Jessie and Slade. Also present is Beth's sister, Corinne, her husband, Rick, and their two boys, JC and Alex. We are in total shock. These people, unrelated to us in every way but the one that counts—mutual care and affection—have turned out to greet us on our cross-country odyssey. And on the 4th of July, no doubt. Our little group numbers 12, and we proceed to take over the Bob Evans for two hours. There is no awkwardness here. No signs of forced kindness, no disingenuousness. Just the wonderful Dickson clan, coming out to support some of their own. I cannot begin to describe how much this means to us, and how it buoys J and me as we prepare for the last legs of the trip. We make plans to host any and all of the Dicksons should they want to come to NYC, and also to drive out to Ohio sometime when we have Molly (or even when we don't) to stay a few days. I find myself missing them terribly as we drive away.
We drive to the Zanesville Lowe's, where I drop 800 bucks on two air conditioning units for our new place. As I later find out, it's supposed to top 100 degrees on the day of our move-in (welcome to the Big Apple, SUCKERS!) and our apartment has no built-in A/C. Well, this is simply unacceptable. Right? So I load up with about 1.75 times the BTUs we need to cool our 1,200 square feet. I throw both units in the back of the dinosaur truck (whose payload has now been completely thrust into disarray thanks ENTIRELY TO THE WONDERFUL STATE OF INDIANA WHICH CANNOT SEEM TO MAINTAIN ITS GODDAMN INTERSTATES AT ALL). We stop for gas (of course) and head out.
Harper is back in the truck with me, and we have a good time looking out for bridges, rivers, cows, and other roadside novelties. I find myself missing Liam a good bit. The only chances I've had to see him for the past week have been in hotels and restaurants, and in both of those types of places I've been far more occupied in my role as enforcer of social order than as dad and playmate. I've noticed that it's taken its toll, too—every time I go to push a straw through his kids' cup or buckle him in to his car seat he says, “I want Mommy do it.” Ouch. But I understand. I tell myself that one of my first orders of personal business upon our arrival in Brooklyn is to reintroduce myself to him. And to let him hit me in the balls with a baseball bat, which is something I suspect he misses doing a great deal. Ah, the old days.
The drive to State College, PA—where we plan to meet up with my friend Keith Bailey, who is the Director of the e-Learning Institute of the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State (helluva job title, ain't it?)--is great. We leave the comfort of I-70 in favor of a shortcut right up the gut of central Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains. This shortcut, unlike any other I have EVER taken, works perfectly. It takes us through Greenburg, Johnstown, and other places I'd never have occasion to visit and culminates with a stunning view of the Alleghenies from I-99 as we drop into State College. We plan to attend the Penn State fireworks display (on its website listed as the third largest in the country), but are deterred by the huge crowds and our own fatigue. We settle for watching the display in NYC on the television. Jess asks if we could see it from our new apartment. I tell her probably not, but we could walk to where we could. She smiles. We share a “we're really doing this, aren't we?” moment; these have become more and more frequent over the past few days. Also, this evening the children discover fireflies. Harper first notices them outside the hotel window, and so, while the NYC fireworks shoot off on the TV, we dim the rest of the lights and enjoy fireworks of a more natural variety. It's as if the lightning bugs knew we couldn't see the PSU fireworks from our hotel, so they got together by the hundreds and put on a command performance for us. We'd like it on record that we are very grateful to them for that.
We briefly Skype Nana, who has her friends Mary, Betty, Susan, and Lee with her. This makes us all happy in different ways. The kids love to see their Nana, and think Skype's pretty damn cool. Jess likes to see the kids happy, and she's recently realized how much friendship she has come to enjoy with my mother. As for me, well, I have to admit that it's just good to see my mom. Dammit, we always fight like crazy but I do miss her a ton and have not an insignificant amount of mixed feelings about leaving her with no grandkids in Happy Valley. But she seems to be doing well, and I'm glad she's surrounded by friends. Betty had pulled me aside last Sunday when I went to say goodbye to my mom's crew at Immaculate Heart and assured me that they would take care of her. Again, another reason to be grateful.
So I suppose that's the theme of this. Gratefulness. Appreciation. For all of those people (and fireflies) who have chipped in to lift us up along the way, to give us a place to feel welcomed, and to overlook their own needs to help us through the long, strange, trip it's been. J and I talked the other night about our increasing excitement about arriving in Brooklyn. I noted that the farther away we've gotten from the gravitational pull of the Grand Valley, the closer we've come to that of New York City—so it would follow that our anticipation would be on the rise. What I didn't consider until now, though, is that those two gravitational fields are not mutually exclusive. That is, we'll always be pulled in both directions at once. We'll never be 100 percent at home in the City, just as we were never 100 percent at home in the Valley. This doesn't mean, though, that we belong to neither. It means we belong to both. And in so belonging, I suspect we'll find this balance we've been seeking.
At least that's the plan.
I didn't write anything yesterday for two separate but equally valid reasons. First, I have to admit that the type of (mis)adventures so common on the rest of the trip heretofore simply didn't occur on the journey from St. Charles, Missouri to Zanesville, Ohio. The trip was remarkable in that it was wholly unremarkable. It was long, to be sure—10 hours on the road in total, including a stop or two for food and to satiate the velociraptor. Otherwise, not much to report. All in all, while it provides me little fodder for the type of self-satire in which I've been engaged over the past week, I find myself grateful for the respite.
The second reason has to do with what I suspect was a cruel joke played by either a previous guest in our Zanesville hotel room, the housekeeping staff, or...perhaps the Albanians are on to me. In any case, we are to meet Frank Dickson, my ex-father-in-law (or Beth's dad, as some may know him) for breakfast at—you got it—Bob Evans. After waking up and checking the clock, which reads 9:30, I call Frank and set a meeting time of 10:30. Despite the kids still being asleep, I've no doubt that they'll be easily roused when they realize it's time to hang with “Grandpa Pop.” “Grandpa Pop” is the name given to Frank by Harper, who couldn't quite wrap her 2 year-old brain around “Pap-Paw” when she first met him. It's actually a very wonderful name, though, because it's one that both of my younger kids have taken to calling a man who is no relation to them at all. Rather, as he's prone to do, Frank has adopted my two youngest as part of his own family—in exactly the way he's done for J, and in the way that he's continued to consider me a close relative despite having divorced his favorite daughter ten years ago.
I have cause here to reflect upon how unique and terrific our particular extended “family” really is. See, because some asshole set the clock in our room back by almost forty minutes (which means that when I'm talking to Frank it's actually after 10:00 already), we are 15 minutes late to breakfast. (Since I always write in the mornings, this precludes me from doing so today.) This is significant because it gives us a much better vantage point of the scene on the front steps of Bob Evans, where Frank awaits. It just so happens that he's joined by Beth's brother, Dan, and his two kids (although the moniker hardly applies any more since they're both so damn old now) Jessie and Slade. Also present is Beth's sister, Corinne, her husband, Rick, and their two boys, JC and Alex. We are in total shock. These people, unrelated to us in every way but the one that counts—mutual care and affection—have turned out to greet us on our cross-country odyssey. And on the 4th of July, no doubt. Our little group numbers 12, and we proceed to take over the Bob Evans for two hours. There is no awkwardness here. No signs of forced kindness, no disingenuousness. Just the wonderful Dickson clan, coming out to support some of their own. I cannot begin to describe how much this means to us, and how it buoys J and me as we prepare for the last legs of the trip. We make plans to host any and all of the Dicksons should they want to come to NYC, and also to drive out to Ohio sometime when we have Molly (or even when we don't) to stay a few days. I find myself missing them terribly as we drive away.
We drive to the Zanesville Lowe's, where I drop 800 bucks on two air conditioning units for our new place. As I later find out, it's supposed to top 100 degrees on the day of our move-in (welcome to the Big Apple, SUCKERS!) and our apartment has no built-in A/C. Well, this is simply unacceptable. Right? So I load up with about 1.75 times the BTUs we need to cool our 1,200 square feet. I throw both units in the back of the dinosaur truck (whose payload has now been completely thrust into disarray thanks ENTIRELY TO THE WONDERFUL STATE OF INDIANA WHICH CANNOT SEEM TO MAINTAIN ITS GODDAMN INTERSTATES AT ALL). We stop for gas (of course) and head out.
Harper is back in the truck with me, and we have a good time looking out for bridges, rivers, cows, and other roadside novelties. I find myself missing Liam a good bit. The only chances I've had to see him for the past week have been in hotels and restaurants, and in both of those types of places I've been far more occupied in my role as enforcer of social order than as dad and playmate. I've noticed that it's taken its toll, too—every time I go to push a straw through his kids' cup or buckle him in to his car seat he says, “I want Mommy do it.” Ouch. But I understand. I tell myself that one of my first orders of personal business upon our arrival in Brooklyn is to reintroduce myself to him. And to let him hit me in the balls with a baseball bat, which is something I suspect he misses doing a great deal. Ah, the old days.
The drive to State College, PA—where we plan to meet up with my friend Keith Bailey, who is the Director of the e-Learning Institute of the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State (helluva job title, ain't it?)--is great. We leave the comfort of I-70 in favor of a shortcut right up the gut of central Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains. This shortcut, unlike any other I have EVER taken, works perfectly. It takes us through Greenburg, Johnstown, and other places I'd never have occasion to visit and culminates with a stunning view of the Alleghenies from I-99 as we drop into State College. We plan to attend the Penn State fireworks display (on its website listed as the third largest in the country), but are deterred by the huge crowds and our own fatigue. We settle for watching the display in NYC on the television. Jess asks if we could see it from our new apartment. I tell her probably not, but we could walk to where we could. She smiles. We share a “we're really doing this, aren't we?” moment; these have become more and more frequent over the past few days. Also, this evening the children discover fireflies. Harper first notices them outside the hotel window, and so, while the NYC fireworks shoot off on the TV, we dim the rest of the lights and enjoy fireworks of a more natural variety. It's as if the lightning bugs knew we couldn't see the PSU fireworks from our hotel, so they got together by the hundreds and put on a command performance for us. We'd like it on record that we are very grateful to them for that.
We briefly Skype Nana, who has her friends Mary, Betty, Susan, and Lee with her. This makes us all happy in different ways. The kids love to see their Nana, and think Skype's pretty damn cool. Jess likes to see the kids happy, and she's recently realized how much friendship she has come to enjoy with my mother. As for me, well, I have to admit that it's just good to see my mom. Dammit, we always fight like crazy but I do miss her a ton and have not an insignificant amount of mixed feelings about leaving her with no grandkids in Happy Valley. But she seems to be doing well, and I'm glad she's surrounded by friends. Betty had pulled me aside last Sunday when I went to say goodbye to my mom's crew at Immaculate Heart and assured me that they would take care of her. Again, another reason to be grateful.
So I suppose that's the theme of this. Gratefulness. Appreciation. For all of those people (and fireflies) who have chipped in to lift us up along the way, to give us a place to feel welcomed, and to overlook their own needs to help us through the long, strange, trip it's been. J and I talked the other night about our increasing excitement about arriving in Brooklyn. I noted that the farther away we've gotten from the gravitational pull of the Grand Valley, the closer we've come to that of New York City—so it would follow that our anticipation would be on the rise. What I didn't consider until now, though, is that those two gravitational fields are not mutually exclusive. That is, we'll always be pulled in both directions at once. We'll never be 100 percent at home in the City, just as we were never 100 percent at home in the Valley. This doesn't mean, though, that we belong to neither. It means we belong to both. And in so belonging, I suspect we'll find this balance we've been seeking.
At least that's the plan.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Day Four: Six (Red) Flags Over Mid-America
Day Four
An off day. We had decided that somewhere in the middle of the trip, we'd all need to have a day to relax and stay as far away from the dinosaur truck as possible, and St. Louis seemed a good option given a) its location at almost exactly halfway for us; and b) the fact that I think it's a pretty kick-ass city. So, we let the kids sleep until after 10:00, take our time getting dressed, and head off to the southern suburb of Eureka to hit Six Flags Over Mid-America. I think it'll be good for all of us to blow a couple hundred dollars on roller coasters, LED bunny ears, and cardboard fried chicken. It is, but not in the way I expect. As usual.
On our way to the park, we stop and get some lunch at Bob Evans. If you haven't spent much time in the midwest, you wouldn't know that Bob Evans is a chain of bright red barn-like restaurants specializing in home cookin' that are based on the vast Ohio farm of—you guessed it—a guy named Bob Evans. They're ubiquitous from Missouri to Pennsylvania, and I was introduced to them on my first trip to southeast Ohio while interviewing for the graduate directing program at Ohio University. I provide this biographical information for the place for one particular and important reason: Bob Evans represents to me the Mecca of all things breakfasty-good. (And lunchy and dinnery, too, I guess.) The sausage gravy is one of the few food items on the planet for which I would probably trade my own children, or at least sacrifice an arm. It's that good. And I haven't been to a Bob Evans in YEARS. J has never been to one. The kids could give a shit—in fact, Liam is already complaining because we made the mistake of telling him that we were going someplace where he can play games (resulting in a 90-minute ongoing mantra of “I wannnn play gaaaaaames....I waaannnn play gaaaaaaaaaaames”). Alas, no amount of whining will deter me from introducing them to the joys of the red restaurant.
We arrive at the Bob Evans off I-44 somewhere around Kirkwood, get seated, and look over the menu. This, for me, is an illusory act since I know exactly what I'll be having: THE HOMESTEAD BREAKFAST (add chorus here). The Homestead Breakfast is a protein- and carbohydrate-lover's paradise—two eggs, three sausages, home fries, two biscuits, and a bowl of the aforementioned sausage gravy. I recall that I used to replace the home fries with mashed potatoes, so that's just what I do today. With a little country gravy on top, of course. Mmmmmm. J has some sort of “healthy breakfast” thing comprised of egg whites, a dry English muffin, and a fruit parfait. Liam, inexplicably, orders macaroni and cheese. Harper? The chocolate chip pancakes, of course. Duh.
Meanwhile, Liam is continuing—if not intensifying—his diatribe about “gaaaaaaammmmmes.” I know that he needs to eat something, or he'll be a miserable little demon all day and could spoil our great time at the amusement park. But I'm not worried. Even though he's never shown any preference whatsoever for mac n' cheese, there's plenty of other Bob Evansy goodness to get him satiated. Our food arrives. My God, it's as beautiful as I remembered. I'm basking in the glory of what must be well over 2,000 calories on my plates (that's right! PlateS!). J looks a little ambivalent...I ask why. She tells me that her egg whites appear to just be scrambled eggs and her dry muffin has butter on it. I suggest she send it back, but she can tell I don't mean it. She's sensitive to my elevation of Bob Evans to mythical status, and is nice enough to eat something she doesn't want so this particular myth remains intact. Harper dives in to her pancakes.
Then there's Leejers. When J offers him some mac n' cheese, he refuses. He looks at us like we've ordered him a bowl of strychnine. Says...no, whines, “I don't wwwwaaaaannnn any mac n' cheeeeeeese.” Also refuses the smiley-face fries that come with it. I remember his discovery of breakfast sausage from the other day, so I put one of mine on his plate. He eats...one bite. Meanwhile, his “gaaaaaaaaaaaammes” whining is increasing in its fervor, and my Bob Evans utopian vision is crumbling all around me. I have no choice. I begin threatening him.
R: Liam....
L: I don't waaaaaaaannn any mac n' cheeeeeeeeeeeese......
R: LIAM......
L: I don't waaaaaaaaaaana eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaat....
R: Liam. EAT.
L: No!
J, who knows just where this is heading, is looking down at her mis-made breakfast and trying hard to stay out of the fray.
R: Liam, if you don't eat you're not going to play any games.
L: I WAAAAAAAAAAAAANN play GAAAAAAAAAAAAMES!
R: I. Don't. Care.
L: Don't talk me.
R: WHAT?
L: Don't talk me, Daddy!
R: You want me to take you to the car? Eh?
L: No!
R: Then EAT!
L: No!
R: (to J) All right, that's it. I'm taking him to the car.
Trips to the car for Liam and I are opportunities to share an experience. They are very rare, but have in the past proven to achieve a desirable outcome: Liam's compliance. I lift him from the booth, and storm out to the car. I put him in his car seat, throw myself into the driver's seat, close the doors, and yell at him. Basically, I do this to scare him to death—which it does. I also do this, apparently, because I've been feeling too good about my parenting skills and need to do something FUCKING STUPID to bring myself down a few notches. This kind of thing really does the trick—shouting at a two year-old in a Mercury in a Bob Evans parking lot on a DAY OF FUN. Nice, dad. Very nice.
I succeed in intimidating him—such a tough guy, me—and we go back inside. Where he proceeds to astound me by refusing to eat again. By this time, my Homestead Breakfast is cold, my temper is hot, J has given up on the whole thing, and the whole plan seems to have fallen off the tracks. We're on the verge of deciding to head back to the hotel and forego the Six Flags endeavor altogether. But wait...we forgot our secret weapon:
Harper.
This whole time, she's been working on her pancakes and coloring her kid's menu and has hardly uttered a peep. When the chips are down, however, she seems to psychically summon her little brother to our side of the booth. He ducks down beneath the table and resurfaces a few moments later between Harper and me. His mood seems to have lightened during the journey. I'm beginning to catch on...so I offer him a bite of chocolate chip pancake (an item he'd refused prior to our car trip). He eagerly chomps down on it. Then another. Then a few more. Before two minutes have elapsed, he's eaten almost two entire chocolate chip pancakes! (Hardly a nutritional boon, I know, but gimme a break here—especially those of you who have children who will eat things like...vegetables.) We're back on track. And on our way to Six Flags, where some serious coaster action awaits me.
We spend an hour or so trying to orient ourselves to the amusement park, when it occurs to us that this is simply not possible. Six Flags St. Louis is the most randomly organized public space in which I have ever stood. Its map is virtually incomprehensible, its pathways lead in circles, its signage is nonsensical at best. However, it does have a nice feature: when staff members see you standing in the middle of the path looking like an idiot as you try and determine your location, they hurry up to you and ask if they can be of assistance. How nice! You say something like “we're trying to find the Bugs Bunny National Park,” and they cheerfully direct you to it. There are only two minor issues here. First, their directions are in keeping with the park's layout itself, so they are basically just audio versions of the incomprehensible map. Second, as J later pointed out, the staff members who rush to assist you may all be mildly retarded. So, once they're done with you you find yourself feeling more confused than ever, coupled with a strange sense of social guilt. And you're still no closer to the goddamn Bugs Bunny National Park.
Eventually, we more or less get the lay of the land. After a mind-boggling process of locating one of exactly two places in the entire park where one can get a beer (the park is a bizarre contradiction, as it's very anti-beer while ensconced in the home of Anheuser-Busch) we decide to beat the heat and head to the attached water park, Hurricane Harbor. We have a great time there, despite my having to save Harper's life when the double tube we're riding in pitch black down a waterslide capsizes and she ends up sliding, underneath me, on her face at 30 miles an hour. This is where my self-image as a father goes up a bit, because without thinking I grab her, clutch her to my chest, and reassure her all in less than two seconds while we continue to plummet through the darkness towards the receiving pool below. It turns out that our tube has become stuck crossways in the slide, and they have to shut down the entire attraction on our behalf. I don't give a crap, because I've convinced Harper that she's okay and that these things happen all the time. Later, I cry myself to sleep because I realize how close my little kid was to getting seriously injured—but I cannot afford this sort of breakdown at the time.
We spend the rest of the day at the park, gradually unlocking its secrets and enjoying our time together. One particularly bizarre occurrence takes place as we return to Calico's Chicken to get another beer and some of the previously-mentioned cardboard fried bird. J is asked by Daniela, the very cute, petite, and eastern European brunette who's tasked with pouring beers at the outside patio bar to provide her driver's license as Daniela needs to punch the license number into her computer to comply with park policy. Five minutes later, J realizes she returned sans license and goes back outside to retrieve it. Daniela claims not to have it. Meanwhile, Stephen, the guy working the food line inside, catches on and goes outside to try and locate J's license. He doesn't seem the least bit surprised that this would happen. Which seems very, very weird to us. When J had come back in after querying Daniela about the license, I looked through the window and noticed that Daniela had never actually looked for it. Not when J was there, and certainly not when she had come back inside. This strikes us as very odd—wouldn't you be looking frantically for a customer's driver's license if you were the last one to have it? It strikes us both simultaneously: Daniela is almost exactly J's twin. They're virtually the same size, the same hair color, same everything. Daniela is trying to kipe J's license! She's running some sort of illegal immigrant fake ID or human smuggling operation! She's in cahoots with the Albanians! She may even BE an Albanian! Holy crap! We're finding ourselves in the middle of an international incident right here at Calico's Chicken! We allow our conspiratorial minds to continue to ferment these notions until, unceremoniously, Daniela returns with the license. She apologizes and smiles (she's very cute...well, I told you she looks like my wife) and all is well. But you wanna know what? I had continued to look out the window at her, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that she never located that ID where she should've...not in the cash register or on the counter. She never made a MOVE in that direction. She had it on her, dude. And she made a wise decision in returning it, because I have a fantasy that I'm Liam Neeson in “Taken” and I would like nothing more than to get wrapped up in Daniela's web of intrigue. Take THAT, Daniela. And tell your Albanians I said so.
At 9:00, there's what they call the nightly “Glow in the Park” parade featuring characters from DC Comics and Looney Tunes, and J stays with the kids during this event while I capitalize on short lines in order to hit as many roller coasters as I can within the last hour of the park's operating hours for the day. Which I do. Full of cardboard chicken and Bud Light, I manage to hit five of the park's most intense thrill rides in less than 60 minutes—Ninja; Batman: The Ride; Evel Knievel: The Roller Coaster; Tony Hawk's Big Spin; and Mr. Freeze. By the time this whirlwind tour of vertigo is complete, I'm dizzy, nauseous, my legs are killing me, I'm sure I won't be able to move my neck from side to side in the morning, and I'm utterly exhausted. But I've got happy kids, who have purchased the LED bunny ears (for Harper) and sword (for Liam) during the parade. I've got a happy wife, who loves nothing more than to see all of her kids happy (myself included here). And I'm a happy dad, because Liam ate some goddamn chocolate chip pancakes and because I saved Harper's life and because despite the fact that my fears of heights and falling have intensified as I've gotten older, I'm still a sucker for speed and the coasters indulge me in this.
And maybe I drive home extra fast. And maybe I tell myself it's because I want to get back to the hotel before the kids fall asleep. But that's a lie.
I'm evading the Albanians.
An off day. We had decided that somewhere in the middle of the trip, we'd all need to have a day to relax and stay as far away from the dinosaur truck as possible, and St. Louis seemed a good option given a) its location at almost exactly halfway for us; and b) the fact that I think it's a pretty kick-ass city. So, we let the kids sleep until after 10:00, take our time getting dressed, and head off to the southern suburb of Eureka to hit Six Flags Over Mid-America. I think it'll be good for all of us to blow a couple hundred dollars on roller coasters, LED bunny ears, and cardboard fried chicken. It is, but not in the way I expect. As usual.
On our way to the park, we stop and get some lunch at Bob Evans. If you haven't spent much time in the midwest, you wouldn't know that Bob Evans is a chain of bright red barn-like restaurants specializing in home cookin' that are based on the vast Ohio farm of—you guessed it—a guy named Bob Evans. They're ubiquitous from Missouri to Pennsylvania, and I was introduced to them on my first trip to southeast Ohio while interviewing for the graduate directing program at Ohio University. I provide this biographical information for the place for one particular and important reason: Bob Evans represents to me the Mecca of all things breakfasty-good. (And lunchy and dinnery, too, I guess.) The sausage gravy is one of the few food items on the planet for which I would probably trade my own children, or at least sacrifice an arm. It's that good. And I haven't been to a Bob Evans in YEARS. J has never been to one. The kids could give a shit—in fact, Liam is already complaining because we made the mistake of telling him that we were going someplace where he can play games (resulting in a 90-minute ongoing mantra of “I wannnn play gaaaaaames....I waaannnn play gaaaaaaaaaaames”). Alas, no amount of whining will deter me from introducing them to the joys of the red restaurant.
We arrive at the Bob Evans off I-44 somewhere around Kirkwood, get seated, and look over the menu. This, for me, is an illusory act since I know exactly what I'll be having: THE HOMESTEAD BREAKFAST (add chorus here). The Homestead Breakfast is a protein- and carbohydrate-lover's paradise—two eggs, three sausages, home fries, two biscuits, and a bowl of the aforementioned sausage gravy. I recall that I used to replace the home fries with mashed potatoes, so that's just what I do today. With a little country gravy on top, of course. Mmmmmm. J has some sort of “healthy breakfast” thing comprised of egg whites, a dry English muffin, and a fruit parfait. Liam, inexplicably, orders macaroni and cheese. Harper? The chocolate chip pancakes, of course. Duh.
Meanwhile, Liam is continuing—if not intensifying—his diatribe about “gaaaaaaammmmmes.” I know that he needs to eat something, or he'll be a miserable little demon all day and could spoil our great time at the amusement park. But I'm not worried. Even though he's never shown any preference whatsoever for mac n' cheese, there's plenty of other Bob Evansy goodness to get him satiated. Our food arrives. My God, it's as beautiful as I remembered. I'm basking in the glory of what must be well over 2,000 calories on my plates (that's right! PlateS!). J looks a little ambivalent...I ask why. She tells me that her egg whites appear to just be scrambled eggs and her dry muffin has butter on it. I suggest she send it back, but she can tell I don't mean it. She's sensitive to my elevation of Bob Evans to mythical status, and is nice enough to eat something she doesn't want so this particular myth remains intact. Harper dives in to her pancakes.
Then there's Leejers. When J offers him some mac n' cheese, he refuses. He looks at us like we've ordered him a bowl of strychnine. Says...no, whines, “I don't wwwwaaaaannnn any mac n' cheeeeeeese.” Also refuses the smiley-face fries that come with it. I remember his discovery of breakfast sausage from the other day, so I put one of mine on his plate. He eats...one bite. Meanwhile, his “gaaaaaaaaaaaammes” whining is increasing in its fervor, and my Bob Evans utopian vision is crumbling all around me. I have no choice. I begin threatening him.
R: Liam....
L: I don't waaaaaaaannn any mac n' cheeeeeeeeeeeese......
R: LIAM......
L: I don't waaaaaaaaaaana eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaat....
R: Liam. EAT.
L: No!
J, who knows just where this is heading, is looking down at her mis-made breakfast and trying hard to stay out of the fray.
R: Liam, if you don't eat you're not going to play any games.
L: I WAAAAAAAAAAAAANN play GAAAAAAAAAAAAMES!
R: I. Don't. Care.
L: Don't talk me.
R: WHAT?
L: Don't talk me, Daddy!
R: You want me to take you to the car? Eh?
L: No!
R: Then EAT!
L: No!
R: (to J) All right, that's it. I'm taking him to the car.
Trips to the car for Liam and I are opportunities to share an experience. They are very rare, but have in the past proven to achieve a desirable outcome: Liam's compliance. I lift him from the booth, and storm out to the car. I put him in his car seat, throw myself into the driver's seat, close the doors, and yell at him. Basically, I do this to scare him to death—which it does. I also do this, apparently, because I've been feeling too good about my parenting skills and need to do something FUCKING STUPID to bring myself down a few notches. This kind of thing really does the trick—shouting at a two year-old in a Mercury in a Bob Evans parking lot on a DAY OF FUN. Nice, dad. Very nice.
I succeed in intimidating him—such a tough guy, me—and we go back inside. Where he proceeds to astound me by refusing to eat again. By this time, my Homestead Breakfast is cold, my temper is hot, J has given up on the whole thing, and the whole plan seems to have fallen off the tracks. We're on the verge of deciding to head back to the hotel and forego the Six Flags endeavor altogether. But wait...we forgot our secret weapon:
Harper.
This whole time, she's been working on her pancakes and coloring her kid's menu and has hardly uttered a peep. When the chips are down, however, she seems to psychically summon her little brother to our side of the booth. He ducks down beneath the table and resurfaces a few moments later between Harper and me. His mood seems to have lightened during the journey. I'm beginning to catch on...so I offer him a bite of chocolate chip pancake (an item he'd refused prior to our car trip). He eagerly chomps down on it. Then another. Then a few more. Before two minutes have elapsed, he's eaten almost two entire chocolate chip pancakes! (Hardly a nutritional boon, I know, but gimme a break here—especially those of you who have children who will eat things like...vegetables.) We're back on track. And on our way to Six Flags, where some serious coaster action awaits me.
We spend an hour or so trying to orient ourselves to the amusement park, when it occurs to us that this is simply not possible. Six Flags St. Louis is the most randomly organized public space in which I have ever stood. Its map is virtually incomprehensible, its pathways lead in circles, its signage is nonsensical at best. However, it does have a nice feature: when staff members see you standing in the middle of the path looking like an idiot as you try and determine your location, they hurry up to you and ask if they can be of assistance. How nice! You say something like “we're trying to find the Bugs Bunny National Park,” and they cheerfully direct you to it. There are only two minor issues here. First, their directions are in keeping with the park's layout itself, so they are basically just audio versions of the incomprehensible map. Second, as J later pointed out, the staff members who rush to assist you may all be mildly retarded. So, once they're done with you you find yourself feeling more confused than ever, coupled with a strange sense of social guilt. And you're still no closer to the goddamn Bugs Bunny National Park.
Eventually, we more or less get the lay of the land. After a mind-boggling process of locating one of exactly two places in the entire park where one can get a beer (the park is a bizarre contradiction, as it's very anti-beer while ensconced in the home of Anheuser-Busch) we decide to beat the heat and head to the attached water park, Hurricane Harbor. We have a great time there, despite my having to save Harper's life when the double tube we're riding in pitch black down a waterslide capsizes and she ends up sliding, underneath me, on her face at 30 miles an hour. This is where my self-image as a father goes up a bit, because without thinking I grab her, clutch her to my chest, and reassure her all in less than two seconds while we continue to plummet through the darkness towards the receiving pool below. It turns out that our tube has become stuck crossways in the slide, and they have to shut down the entire attraction on our behalf. I don't give a crap, because I've convinced Harper that she's okay and that these things happen all the time. Later, I cry myself to sleep because I realize how close my little kid was to getting seriously injured—but I cannot afford this sort of breakdown at the time.
We spend the rest of the day at the park, gradually unlocking its secrets and enjoying our time together. One particularly bizarre occurrence takes place as we return to Calico's Chicken to get another beer and some of the previously-mentioned cardboard fried bird. J is asked by Daniela, the very cute, petite, and eastern European brunette who's tasked with pouring beers at the outside patio bar to provide her driver's license as Daniela needs to punch the license number into her computer to comply with park policy. Five minutes later, J realizes she returned sans license and goes back outside to retrieve it. Daniela claims not to have it. Meanwhile, Stephen, the guy working the food line inside, catches on and goes outside to try and locate J's license. He doesn't seem the least bit surprised that this would happen. Which seems very, very weird to us. When J had come back in after querying Daniela about the license, I looked through the window and noticed that Daniela had never actually looked for it. Not when J was there, and certainly not when she had come back inside. This strikes us as very odd—wouldn't you be looking frantically for a customer's driver's license if you were the last one to have it? It strikes us both simultaneously: Daniela is almost exactly J's twin. They're virtually the same size, the same hair color, same everything. Daniela is trying to kipe J's license! She's running some sort of illegal immigrant fake ID or human smuggling operation! She's in cahoots with the Albanians! She may even BE an Albanian! Holy crap! We're finding ourselves in the middle of an international incident right here at Calico's Chicken! We allow our conspiratorial minds to continue to ferment these notions until, unceremoniously, Daniela returns with the license. She apologizes and smiles (she's very cute...well, I told you she looks like my wife) and all is well. But you wanna know what? I had continued to look out the window at her, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that she never located that ID where she should've...not in the cash register or on the counter. She never made a MOVE in that direction. She had it on her, dude. And she made a wise decision in returning it, because I have a fantasy that I'm Liam Neeson in “Taken” and I would like nothing more than to get wrapped up in Daniela's web of intrigue. Take THAT, Daniela. And tell your Albanians I said so.
At 9:00, there's what they call the nightly “Glow in the Park” parade featuring characters from DC Comics and Looney Tunes, and J stays with the kids during this event while I capitalize on short lines in order to hit as many roller coasters as I can within the last hour of the park's operating hours for the day. Which I do. Full of cardboard chicken and Bud Light, I manage to hit five of the park's most intense thrill rides in less than 60 minutes—Ninja; Batman: The Ride; Evel Knievel: The Roller Coaster; Tony Hawk's Big Spin; and Mr. Freeze. By the time this whirlwind tour of vertigo is complete, I'm dizzy, nauseous, my legs are killing me, I'm sure I won't be able to move my neck from side to side in the morning, and I'm utterly exhausted. But I've got happy kids, who have purchased the LED bunny ears (for Harper) and sword (for Liam) during the parade. I've got a happy wife, who loves nothing more than to see all of her kids happy (myself included here). And I'm a happy dad, because Liam ate some goddamn chocolate chip pancakes and because I saved Harper's life and because despite the fact that my fears of heights and falling have intensified as I've gotten older, I'm still a sucker for speed and the coasters indulge me in this.
And maybe I drive home extra fast. And maybe I tell myself it's because I want to get back to the hotel before the kids fall asleep. But that's a lie.
I'm evading the Albanians.
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