Flotsam: June 2008 Archives

Today's tally. Fits of crying: 3. Shouting matches with strangers: 2. Mysterious bike problems brought on by my own ignorance and/or inattention: 1. Horrible late loud obnoxious outdoor parties given by neighbors who get louder and louder as it approaches midnight: 1. This is your brain. This is your brain on NYC.

Once in a great while I have a day that makes me feel like I just want to float, float far away, up and up into the air and hide in a bank of cloud for about a thousand years.

I don't want to go on any more dates and leave myself open to feeling crappy. I don't want to go the grocery store where some crazy woman will start laying into me for telling her kid to knock it off after she's hit me with the ball she is kicking around the narrow aisles. I don't want to leave the house at all. But of course, the house itself is not peaceful because of the neighbors' party. Who throws a loud party on a Thurs. night, anyway?

My back hurts. My shoulder hurts. I have to (hopefully) locate the dustcap that fell off my pedals months ago and which, had I known what it was and replaced it, would have prevented the now-permanent creak and vibration in my left pedal.

My head feels like someone has beat it with a sledgehammer, again and again. There were a few other people's heads I would've liked to beat with a sledgehammer again and again. My poor, hard-working bike mechanic has several broken ribs after attending an international cycling competition. I mean, it was just a bad day all 'round. Fuck you very much, New York.

Oof. Hot. Spent all day on bicycle in near-triple-digit heat. Didn't really affect me too much (or so I thought) until I was riding home and wondering why I was so strangely exhausted and why my head kind of hurt, and then looked at temperature gauge on handy-dandy bank time & temp sign, and saw that it was 87 degrees at 11pm. Oy.

I know, I'm crazy, right? Riding in that mess.

But while I was pedaling and moving, there was a breeze, so I thought, oh this is fine. And it was. Until it was all dark and felt somehow hotter than it had all day. I think maybe I need to drink more Gatorade before collapsing onto bed in hot (unairconditioned) bedroom.

Ha. And the blonde wanted to go for a (bike) ride tomorrow. Oy.

(Shut up. Don't nobody say nothin'. I can play with naughty little blondes if I want to. Plus, this other boy emailed me.) (Not that that means anything these days, since they just email and then disappear.) (Poof!) (Anyway, where did I put that Gatorade? Hey cat! What are you doing with my Gatorade?)

Dag! That was a long pause in blogging (for me, anyway). I use the middle-school idiom here because I was off visiting my sister, who'd had recently been to a reunion (something I myself have never done and never will do), and well, I suppose it calls to mind the slang of my not-nearly-sufficiently-misspent youth.

Anyway....

She said it was just like having about twenty blind speed-dates in a row. Yuck.

You drift from person you vaguely recognize to person who vaguely recognizes you, and you do painful chit-chat about your jobs and families for five minutes, and then drift on to the next round. I'll say it again: Yuck!

Whoops, got pulled away to IM with Boywich about the terror of writing. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

I am addressing my own dealio by having decided to set myself a schedule for meeting grad school deadlines, which is analogous to deciding to decide to try to decide. But you know, I kinda feel better about the whole thing for some reason. Maybe it was watching my sister at work, doing a job she really likes, which gives her what she needs from it, and lets her wangle in all the other things she needs to do, too (like be with her young daughter most days). I dunno. It kind of cheered me up about the whole thing.

Or maybe it was just hanging around her. I really like her. Which is a nice thing to be able to say about someone you love. Does that make sense? Well, it does to me. I had a good time. Pretty sure she did, too. Damn sure my niece did. We had a blast together, laughing over eggwhites. (Yes, you had to be there, but really, it was a private joke between me and my niece, so I'm glad you weren't there.) (How cool is that, having a private joke with a preschooler?)

Gotta go. Bike beckons.