Category Archives: Personal Moments in an Anonymous City

A Quiet Morning

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I can’t wait until our son becomes a sleep-until-noon teenager.  Until then, as part of our Saturday ritual, he comes barreling in at the crack of 9am to watch cartoons.

POB (partner of blogger) gives him the paper to bring in, and she follows with coffee (and yes, I am spoiled and I am grateful every day).  Our son does remember to give me a kiss before he says “controls” with his hand held out expectantly, like a Grey’s Anatomy surgeon says “Metzenbaum scissors”.

Every other Saturday, POB and our son trek off to Hebrew School downtown and leave me to putter or go to the gym or read the paper with more leisure than usual.

As much as I love my family, I am reveling in the quiet.  I am focused on not letting the political mayhem, global suffering and warring intrude on these moments of personal calm.

I wish everyone, everywhere, could have a moment of calm and recalibration of priorities.  It won’t turn Ahmadinejad or other tyrant into a dove, but it might ratchet down the fervor of his followers. It might even act like a balm over the “Progressives” (on my side of the political spectrum) whose high-pitched whining is indistinguishable from their counterparts on the right.

Ok, maybe those people — the mean, the evil, the obstructionists, the liars and the screamers of every nation and political viewpoint — need a month-long medically-induced coma.   Then everyone else could spring into action:  air-lift food and medicine and doctors and teachers to areas in need.  And, we can show them that we achieved more for humanity while they were asleep than in all the years they were awake.

A month is not long enough.  Maybe the calm of this morning is sending my brain into “kumbaya” mode with psychedelic rhythms.

Still, everything good starts with a dream and ends with a “kumbaya”.

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The Day That Was and Is (Happily) Almost Over

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Today was a bad day.  I think it is because we are so close to my mother’s yahrzeit.

Even SOB (sister of blogger), who is an uncommonly happy and cheerful person, had a hard day.  And I was too angst-ridden to lift her mood.  And that only added to my sadness.  So, we discussed whether to visit our mother’s grave THIS weekend or NEXT weekend.  [Don’t worry, no bringing in the Joni [Mitchell] until her actual yahrzeit.]  You get the mood.

Post-holiday blues set in and all the promises of deal flow in the new year now have to happen.  STRESS. The usual complement of day-to-day life.  But somehow today’s sturm und drang was harder.  And if you look at the paper, well, you start to believe that sect that thinks the world is ending on May 11, 2011.

I was surprisingly productive (angst and the fear of homelessness –inherited from your Depression-Era/children-of-immigrants parents — will do that), but I needed the stress-relief that either a bath-tub size martini or a good work-out would give.

In a fit of self-preservation, I chose the latter. When I got to the gym, I looked around at all these calm, self-absorbed people who obviously didn’t know that the end of the world is near (whether because of some religious group’s prophecy or based on today’s world news).  By the way, I reserved one of those huge airport limousines for the End of Days, in case anyone needs a comfy lift to Hell.  But there I go, on a digression, AGAIN.

So, I decided that I would see what it felt like if I acted like them and just let go of the angst and the fears (with some medicinal assistance).

“Walk like they walk; do like they do” became my mantra.  I got a towel and stripped down.  As I noticed, the women don’t use the towels to cover their bodies, so I wrapped the towel around my dry hair and contemplated the cuticles on my toes.  Just like they did.  Then I stretched, making sure that my breasts got in the way of traffic flow in and out of the locker room, all the while yawning.  Just like they did.

I walked over to the mirror and patted my tummy as I sucked it in and the open my eyes wide to reduce the more obvious wrinkles.  I applied moisturizer, just like they did.  Then, I took off my towel, bent over at the waist and shook out my dry hair.  I lifted my the upper half of my body in a whoooooosh and sucked in my cheeks (facial cheeks) like a deranged model on the catwalk.  I guess you do that to see what you would look like if you had as much plastic surgery as Joan Rivers has had.

Then I moisturized my whole body and looked in various mirrors.  I used the mouthwash.  As I spat in the sink, still buck naked, I felt liberated.

If you believe anything I wrote after “[w]hen I got the gym,” then you don’t know me at all.  I worked out, lifting weights and successfully doing (ok, only two) unassisted military pull-ups, among other stress-reducing and pain-inducing exercises.  And afterward, I changed in the most unobtrusive way possible and did so quickly so I could get home to my family before my son went to sleep.

But every now and again, it would be fun to pretend . . . .

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Holding fast to the old and ringing in the new

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Over New Year’s, my worlds collided in the most spectacular way.

We hosted our group of friends who have rung in the New Year together (in various iterations) for the past 8 years.  Our god-daughter (at whose wedding I will officiate this year) joined us this year and made a DELICIOUS confection that made me wonder anew why she is a lawyer and not a baker.  So, our nuclear family was complete (except for her partner who was stuck in THE HEARTLAND).

So, it would seem that it couldn’t get better than this.  And you’re right.  Except people from those dear, sweet (and sometimes naughty) childhood summers also guest starred.

First, a day before New Year’s.  This person is a dear friend (her handle is Janet2) whom I never see and yet to whom I feel bound in this deep abiding way, so much so that if she showed up on my doorstep, penniless, I would take her in, without a question. Maybe because she and her three sisters (one of blessed memory) and my sister and I shared summers — among us all — for maybe 18 years. Maybe also because her father and my uncle served and were scarred in the War together and her parents (now her mother) have been a part of my extended family all my life.  Maybe it is just, that deep down, there is just a connection that doesn’t need to be explained.

So, my friend is now a really big-deal in the music industry (and if she isn’t, I don’t care, because she is to me) and under the guise of a “family that plays music together, stays together” sent us the hugest package I have ever seen, with two Wii guitars, microphone and drum set.  Now I know she thinks I am this really successful lawyer, but it was hell to find a storage space for all of this because we live in a lovely box in New York City — but a box, nevertheless.  (We don’t have a suburban den, Janet2.)  We will discuss this more in depth as the story progresses.  (We do have storage for it, thank G-d.)

Then, because there are only two degrees of separation among Jewish lesbians, a friend called to say that they were coming with one more person for New Year’s and that person knows me from Camp Wingate!!!  Another person from camp in two days?  The circles of life about which we sang around the Saturday night camp fire are now creeping me out.

Of course, I remember this person, who shows up at my door essentially 30 years later and who looks EXACTLY the same (except, sweetie, the gray roots were showing and only someone-who-know-you-when can tell you this).  Almost exactly, except that she wasn’t wearing the Gilligan-like hat that she wore every day one summer as she walked around making wry and far-too-insightful-for-a-ten-year-old comments about the life unfolding before her eyes.  It also turns out we both had strangely close, yet chaste, relationships with the same women.  But that will be for another blog entry.

So we rang in the New Year, with family and old friends and even older friends (I include the box of Wii stuff as a stand-in for Janet2).  But not before I shilled for HOSOB.  He is a painter and we are determined that his fame not be posthumous.  So, I had him prepare cards with his watercolor of SOPOBAB with an indricotherium (sp?) (from the Extreme(ly Ugly) Mammals show at the Natural History Museum) as a sample of what he could do for those of our party with children.  No studio pictures, please.  Instead, watercolors courtesy of HOSOB.  I really put on the hard sell.   I poured it on thick.  My house, my Tupperware party.  So, eat our delicious food (courtesy of POB) and drink our wine but listen to my shpiel.

Happily, we were all of an age where we struggle to stay awake until midnight and everyone wants to get home almost immediately afterward.   We had dear friends and their kids sleep over that night (who can find a sitter on New Year’s Eve?).  One of our friends is very technically adept so when the kids woke up at 7am, she got to work on setting up the Wii extravaganza courtesy of Janet2.  By noon, SOS was mastering the drums, our friends had a guitar each and I was on vocals.

What I didn’t know is that after the song (from the Beatles greatest hits), the Wii grades your performance.  I figured that, not wanting to alienate users, Wii might stop with “Don’t quit your day job.”  But no, my vocals were such that I got “human? If so, an abomination.” Don’t worry, Janet2, if you appear on my doorstep, I will take you in AND I will not sing to you because you don’t need to go even lower emotionally.  But since you seem happy now, I may send you a tape of my performance.  I am way worse than Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello, but their voices also suck.  And, I can do a mean impression of both especially Elvis Costello when he looks like he has to pee and is holding it in.

So, let’s sing together the old camp fire song, “make new friends, but the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”  (http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/makenew.htm).  And those of our childhood are like priceless gems.

Pearl Wolfson, thanks is not enough.

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Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland

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Today was the truest snow day ever.  18 inches of snow in New York City.  Stalled car and buses every where.  Blizzard-scale winds that made me believe in Mary Poppins.  Law firm offices closed.  Let me say that again.  LAW FIRM OFFICES CLOSED EVEN AS THEY TRY TO MAKE BUDGET FOR 2010.  Now, that, THAT, is saying something.  I live in the City and there was no way I was going to make it to the office except by walking, and the blizzard-scale winds would have taken me way off-course.  The Upper West Side of Manhattan is not even plowed 12 hours after the last snowflake fell (don’t they realize that we vote with our ballots and pocketbooks?  Has anyone noticed the UWS demographic has changed????)

POB (partner of blogger) was supposed to go east to the beach with our son (SOPOBAB) and his cousin, our nephew.  Oh, I think Mother Nature is a teeny tiny bit stronger than the sheer will of POB.  Although Mother Nature won, she was bruised and hospitalized.  Anyway, my beautiful prizefighter POB thought that we needed to go sledding.  I thought we needed to drug the boys (just kidding, for all the Child Protective Services personnel who read this).  How else do you keep two rambunctious 8 year-old in check?

So, a-sledding we went.  A winter wonderland.  Sheer, treacherous beauty on West 108th Street.

As I was fretting about the absence of protective gear while trying not to fall down the hill at scary velocity (I remember all too well flying down the hill with SOPOBAB when he was a littler kid.  I also remember buying another life insurance policy the following day, because SOPOBAB would bounce, as children do; I would not have survived another run.)

But, then, life has a way of keeping it all real.  A child, whose family apparently fell on hard times (they must have been slumming by spending year-end at home), stated with disgust, “There isn’t even a hot chocolate shack!” If that were my child, he would be enrolled at military school tomorrow.  Yes, I am passing judgment (and also stating a fact).

Toto, I have a feeling we are not in Aspen anymore. It was so pathetic and sad at the same time that I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, take a picture of the spoiled brat who uttered that line.  Ok, I almost did, but G-d intervened and the battery of my camera failed.  Lucky kid, but karma, as we know, is a boomerang.

BUT, THE BATTERY DID NOT DIE BEFORE I GOT A PICTURE OF A SARTORIAL/PSYCHO-SOCIAL TRAGEDY.  Before I share this vignette, I will note that my own outfit could remind a person of Pippy Longstocking — everything was mismatched in that way that you wear whatever will keep you warm.  In fact, I was wearing a serial-killer hat (depicted in every artist sketch in an all-points bulletin) that made me look particularly deranged and very much like a predicate felon.  But that isn’t what I am talking about.

I am talking about an outfit that could scar a child for life.

A MOTHER IN A SUMMER’S PEASANT SKIRT, WINTER JACKET WITH FUR LINING, CARRYING A BRUSHED COPPER COLORED PURSE, TOTALLY IGNORANT OF THE GRAVE EMBARRASSMENT AND LIFETIME TRAUMA SHE WAS CAUSING HER LITTLE SON:

Later she yelled at her son who is out of control as he sled down the hill, “watch your kepilah [head]!!!” as if summoning G-d to deliver her from this pagan ritual that assimilation has thrust upon them. The only saving Grace is that this the Upper West Side of New York, with a Jewish population larger than the whole of Israel.  So, we understand.  Because was heard these humiliating stories from our parents as part of their own, very personal, Exodus stories.

A bastardized adage still holds true:

One person’s winter’s wonderland is another person’s proof that Hell DOES freeze over.

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That magnetic, NEON, S on my forehead

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I am on a crowded subway.  I am seated at the end of a row and a huge woman tries to wedge herself between me and the person a few inches away from me.  On the aisle side, there is a couple — er — um — attempting to couple, and jabbing me with elbows and bags.  Reminds me of that song, “I’ve got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right . . . “ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg

The couplers take a break and the over-sized  woman gets up and I think all is going to be okay.  But I should have remembered the magnet in my forehead in the shape of an S.  S is for SCHMUCK.

In Seinfeld Show’s Kramer-like fashion, a woman nearly dives for the seat next to me.  I look up, startled.  She is a little freaked out.   She tells me in a breathless voice that she had to change seats because the woman next to her was invading her space tooo much.  (You didn’t see what I just went through, I think.)

Perhaps seeing the skepticism in my eyes (or was it that “I don’t give a sh@t” look?), the woman continues, “when I told [the offending woman] that she needed to sit up, she said, “I have a disability, I LEAN“.

“I have a disability, I LEAN“? REALLY?

Crazy, but great line.

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Excuse me, did you just call me a whore???

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Ok ok ok ok ok ok .

I was nearly getting beheaded on the subway by the Grizzly Adams-sized backpack being wielded by a tall, outdoorsy-looking tourist (why is he in NYC, do you think?).

Then I take a cab and after repeatedly asking the cab driver not to talk on his cell phone, because my head was pounding (concussion?), and having him slam the divider shut, I got angry.  I opened the divider and told him that as a matter of law, he had to stop talking on the phone.  He denied he was talking on the phone.  Maybe he was talking to his demons, but I am not a shrink.  He started speeding to my destination because he was angry at me.  I yelled “Stop!!” followed by a heart-felt “WHAATTT IS WRONG WITH YOU???”

He called me a whore.  Ok, no one has ever called me a whore (or at least not in such a dismissive, contemptuous tone).  I started yelling that he needs to learn how to drive, etc., but no cursing.  I was being as polite as possible under the circumstances.  He jerked the car forward and started to call me things related to my womanhood in a very condescending way.  Such denigration of women was so foreign to me that I was a little gobsmacked and so I didn’t end up denting the car.

I believe that people can find common ground, but right then I wanted to haul him over to the police and have him stripped of his hack license (assuming he had one).  I think I would still want to kick him you-know-where even when I calm down.

I lodged a complaint with the Taxi and Limousine Commission.  I am ready to appear at the hearing.

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Dinner on a Saturday night in the big city.

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It is Saturday night and POB (partner of blogger) and I have a babysitter, so we can have dinner out.

We take a long walk and happen upon a new-ish Italian place.  It is a double store-front sized space, with tables too close together to meet fire safety standards.  We know it will get crowded at prime time which is within the half hour.  But we are in the patch on the West Side that is a restaurant wasteland.

So we squeeze in between two tables and are close enough to share their food and, unfortunately, their conversations.

POB and I focus on each other and our conversation but the random bits and pieces of the surrounding conversations threaten to enthrall me in the way that bad movies are so horrible that they become intriguing.  Just a flavor of the conversations:

The guy at the table to my right, who cannot afford school or dinner (prior soupçon), says to his date, “I am trying to diversify myself,” in trying to explain why he can’t finish any particular course of study.  (I, of course, want to suggest remedial English because using big words in the wrong way is not really a career advancement technique.)  He goes on to talk about how netting $1million after taxes each year is barely enough to cover living expenses and school for your kids.  Hence his self-diversification because he is thinking really, really, really big.  Makes me wonder whether dinner will stay in my tummy.  But enough scatological musings.

A woman to my left is discussing a terrible tragedy about a family.  However, her point is that she is so personally affected by it (and so her friend should soothe her) because her cousin’s best friend’s sister lives in the same town.  Ok, somehow the tragedy is all about her.  I am staring at this woman a little too long with this gobsmacked look on my face, so much so that POB has to say, “Eyes on me.  Bring the focus back.”  In this instance, she is not out of line.

But, I digress . . . .

Back to the freakish restaurant. The food is quite tasty and the service staff is earnestly incompetent.  So earnest, in fact, that you think they are trying to get everything wrong. For comparison purposes, service staff needs more experience to reach the level of practiced, aggressive incompetence that would qualify for a job at Duane Reade, Rite Aid or CVS.

Luckily we are not in a hurry.  In fact we are taking our time because we need to make sure our son is in bed and falling asleep before we come home, or we lose one of the perks of a night out — no bedtime drama, etc. So, the earliest we can get home is 9:30.  If the service were not so head-shakingly bad, we might have stayed for dessert.

When we try to ask for the check, we end up pleading for someone to ring up our bill.  We couldn’t get anyone’s attention for twelve or so minutes.  I am handed someone else’s bill, for about 1/3 of what our bill ought to be.  It takes me another seven or so minutes to get someone’s attention to get me the right bill.  After ten minutes, I am given the right bill.  I pay cash but I need some change.  We wait, and wait and wait and wait — ten minutes.  I cannot imagine that in their earnest incompetence, any of them expected a 25% tip (if I didn’t get change).

I am finally able to flag down someone in this small (did I mention tiny?) restaurant to ask for my change.  The service person nods, and five minutes pass, and — viola! — I am handed the first bill again.  AAAAAaaargh.  The service person tries to dash away.  At this point, I yell in an annoyed, commanding tone, “WAIT!! STOP!! COME BACK!! I want my change.  I do not want another person’s bill AGAIN!!”

Then three people come over, each wanting to handle the problem.  All of sudden, everyone wants to pay attention.  I tell everyone to go away and designate someone to bring the change.  Finally, the change comes.  Another five or so minutes have passed.

Then I start to calm down and feel bad that they are so inexperienced at their incompetence that maybe they need the bigger tip to take some classes to perfect their art.  Really, I feel bad.  I turn to POB and ask, should I leave 20%?  She laughs at me.  She wonders if I have reached the tipping point of dementia.  She reminds me that we have spent more time waiting for and paying the bill than ordering and eating.  I remind her that we couldn’t go home anyway because our son is not yet asleep. So, they did us a favor by forcing us to stay and giving us a bloggable moment.

I still say the bigger tip was in order.

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Unintentionally keeping up with the Kardashians

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I went into the local General Nutrition Store to look for topical remedies for peeling cuticles. (Already TOOOOO much information.)

Like most consumers, I left the store with many things — none of them was the purpose of the visit.

Not only did I buy skin emollients which promise youthful transformation in minutes, but I bought whitening stuff for my teeth.  I picked it out and then saw that it was the kind that the Kardashians use.  I paused.  As a point of principal, I should put it back.  But, it is the only non-gunky kind of teeth-whitening I have found in a while.

So, add me — age 46 — to those, reluctantly, keeping up with the Kardashians.  Just the thought alone will make me seek therapy for years.

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Mi Cherie Amour

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On Thursday afternoon, I slipped into the bathroom of my office and transformed into a girlie-girl.  I traded my clogs for pantyhose and heels and my turtleneck and blazer for a sleeveless black number that swirls when I walk, along with some serious bling and a full face of make-up.  POB (partner of blogger) insisted on the serious bling (she wanted anyone who might flirt with me to know I was expensive).  G-d bless her to think that someone at this outrageously hetero event (for which I was dressing up) would even look twice at me.

Of course, I ripped the hose as I put them on and — uh oh — this was not my pair of hose.  POB and I are different sizes, so I felt the sli-i-i-i-ide down below my waist happening almost immediately.  Ripped and sliding.  Dressing up is always epic.

The event was a fundraiser for one of the most worthwhile organizations (outside of refugee relief) — The Hole in the Wall Gang camps for kids with life threatening illnesses.

I left my office to meet a colleague who was flying in for the event.  We were going to the pre-party that started at 5pm.  Nothing like alcohol at 5pm for pickling your brain.  And goyishe hors- d’oeuvres — meat and cheese or pork.  Not even mixed nuts for the Jews.  I realize this is going to be a long night featuring a liquid buffet.  And that is so not my cultural upbringing — run out of booze, ok.  Run out of food? Change your name and leave town because you’ll never live it down.

We attended the main event — a concert at Avery Fisher Hall, featuring Meryl Streep (looking fab without plastic surgery), Emmy Lou Harris, John Cougar Mellencamp, Bill Cosby, Lyle Lovett (I kept thinking, Julia Roberts, really?), Bette Midler (who got middle-aged), Renee Zellwegger (she looked so much better before all the plastic surgery) and Stevie Wonder.

More important than these luminaries were the campers who helped emcee the show, and the video of Paul Newman, who together with Joanne Woodward, founded these camps.  One of the campers belted out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.  I think everyone was crying.  Here is a terminally ill tweenager singing THAT song.  A song of the downtrodden, the sad, the defenseless, those with hopes and dreams that seem destined not to be realized.  THAT song.  My heart ached and my mascara ran all over my face.

Paul Newman (may he rest in peace) was so eloquent — in the video made some years ago — about why he started these camps.  (I am paraphrasing, but I recollect it this way:)  “I have been lucky all my life and I wanted to help people who only knew the other side of luck.” He is a good man but I hate his salad dressings.

He looked at luck as a zero-sum game.   And if luck is a zero-sum game, then our luck means someone else has less (or no) luck.  Contrast that with people who say today, “I make my own luck.”  As if to impart that those who are “unlucky” don’t deserve success.  Ok, let’s super-impose this paradigm on children.  Can anyone with a sense of humanity say to a terminally ill child, “you could’ve made your own luck”?

Surely, we can share our good fortune — our luck — with the children.  The children.

Of course the evening got lighter when Stevie started playing Cherie Amour and a few other standards.  My colleague and I were standing and singing in Avery Fisher Hall while everyone else politely sat.  After an evening of ill children with fight in their hearts, it was good to be on our feet and singing.  It was life-affirming.

There was an after-party.  Cheeseburger sliders were served.  Really?  Goyishe v’hetzi (150% non-Jewish).  Still with the vodka drinks.

There was a Motown band and singers who were awesome.  I dragged my colleague out on the dance floor.  I told her, it’s New York, no one cares if two women dance.   We totally rocked out.  Of course, at that point my hose were dangling dangerously low like the pants on some young men and I was scared that they would just drop.  And it was getting late and really I wanted to get home, get in bed and feel the serenity of having my family safe and asleep around me.  We were waiting for Stevie Wonder to show up at the after-party so my colleague could meet her idol.

Finally he showed up and she was star struck and frozen in place.  The batteries in her camera ran out.  I had to elbow my way to spend a few minutes talking to Mr. Wonder while I motioned for her to get next to me.  Mr. Wonder’s bodyguards were concerned that I was doing something dangerous and were ready to drop me.  Finally she got near enough to put her hand on his shoulder and I snapped the photo using my blackberry.  I thanked Mr. Wonder for his patience (and holding on to my hand for what seemed an eternity as my colleague got close) and the conversation and I receded into the crowd.

My colleague is on Cloud Nine.  We have bonded.  I can call her “friend” now.  Without a hard-headed New Yorker, she would not have even gotten close to Mr. Wonder.  As a friend, I tell her, “I have been in heels for seven hours, my pantyhose are almost falling off, and I need to go home now that we have a picture with you and Stevie Wonder.”  I am walking you to your hotel and I am throwing myself in a cab.  The alternative is to put a sign on you that says ‘return after 3 days to . . . .’  I would get to sleep but I would get fired.  So you decide:  How is this evening turning out?”

Having gotten a picture of Stevie Wonder, she didn’t put up a fight.  Thank G-d.  I got her back to her hotel and in 15 minutes I was in my comfy apple-green jammies in my comfy bed and ready to sleep.

I laughed, I cried, I danced, I shook hands with a celebrity, I was moved to help others.  A great day.

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Driving and Fishing

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Just last night over dinner out, POB (partner of blogger) and I were discussing our different approaches in dealing with annoying people or circumstances. 

POB is from a “good home”, has wonderful manners and rarely curses.  Even though I , too, came from a “good home”, I have a potty mouth. 

The practical difference is that POB can be baited for a long time before she boils over.  Someone has to dangle that fish hook at her for a good, long while.  In contra-distinction, I will drive to some barely noticeable bait, put in the water by a sleepy fisherman and impale myself on the hook, squirm and cuss.

Who knew that our theoretical conversation would almost immediately have practical application.

Our son’s teacher sent around an email that all the kids need to bring 2-litre clear bottles for a science experiment.  Because POB is a class mom (and so am I, by extension), we decided to get some extra ones in case some of the kids’ parents did not receive the email blast. 

Thinking, “reduce, re-use, recycle,” we went to the basement of our building to get used soda bottles.  It was an event so I had to document it (pictures are a little unclear; darn that blackberry camera).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night late, POB sent around an email suggesting that the recycling in everyone’s apartment buildings’ basements would be a good place to look for this particular “school supply”.  Just keeping with the “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra.

One of the parents needed to send around an email this morning,  “I was rummaging around our basement recycling area at around 7:00 AM this morning – not part of my usual morning routine. . . .” 

Ok, AS IF any of us rummage through our building garbage as part of our daily regimen?

So, I had to, had to, had to email back (hitting reply to all, of course), that it was foreign for us, too, so much so that I took pictures to document the event.

POB emailed back to me (not reply to all, thank G-d — that good upbringing is so important):

“you just had to impale yourself on that hook, didn’t you?!”

Yes, yes, I did.

 

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