Category Archives: Kids

Migraines

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I suffer from migraines.  They have gotten worse over the years.  A few years ago, an old white male ob-gyn cheerfully told me that my migraines should go away after menopause.  I have since moved on to another ob-gyn (not that I need the “ob” part anymore).  His name is Dr. Jew.  He is a great doctor and lovely man and, yes, I would go to him in any event because of his name.  Why?  Sometimes you have to laugh at the odd twists and turns of your grandmother’s every dream — a Jewish doctor.  In this case, the doctor’s last name is Jew.  He is Korean.  But I digress.

Back to my migraine.

I had a blow-out one yesterday.  The aura — no peripheral vision in my right eye, tingling in my legs — made me reach for the prescription medication and not just “tough it out”.  If I take the medication in time, it can really blunt the pain and limit the duration.  I got home at 6:30pm and took to my bed in the dark.  POB (partner of blogger) and SOPOBAB (son of POB and blogger) came home a little later.  I crawled out of bed with my sunglasses on (migraines make me sensitive to light) and looked like a holdover from Halloween celebrations.  I think I scared my son more than any Headless Horseman could.

Anyway, I had to go back to bed because it was all too much (those with migraines can understand) but I was feeling helpless and useless and getting angrier at my migraine (again, those with migraines can understand).  So, I put on my sunglasses, turned on my laptop to read up on new ideas for prevention.  Instead, I read, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/79402.php, which essentially says that having auras correlates to higher risk of stroke and heart attack in women.  I emailed it to Dr. SOB (sister of blogger) and, overwhelmed with this new information, I drowned even further in self-pity.

Luckily, SOPOBAB (who, at 8 years old, is sometimes a better doctor than Dr. SOB) came in and kissed me so that I would feel better, but really he wanted to tell me in full voice about some new train magazine.  Wallowing was over.  Happily, so, too, was my headache.  SOPOBAB is really good medicine.

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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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Uncommon Honor

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Our god-daughters come over every other Friday night for family dinner. (I think “goddaughter” doesn’t sit so well with one, but it is just too impossible to explain the depth of our relationships, so it will have to do.)

We’ve been through a lot together. J. started out 9 years ago as a perfectly lovely undergraduate with lovely light brown hair. One day she came over having gotten a blond buzz cut and some metallica in and around her face.

Then she started playing rugby which is football without all of the protective gear (and we know that even that doesn’t help much).

Then she came out as a gun owner (her family is from out in the country where hunting is the norm).  This was a difficult issue because we are good New York liberals and my mother helped found New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.  She probably enjoyed the irony of my playing with light sabers yesterday (see prior blog entry).

Then, as a senior she brought home a peppy young undergraduate for us to meet.  (See below about K.)

Then, there was the living on our couch for a while (she can come back in a New-York minute).

Then, she decided, contrary to my better advice, to go to law school.  Nooooooo comment.

Most recently, she came out as a vegetarian (remember, she is from a meat-loving, hunting family).  We are fine with that, really, we just would have preferred to know ahead of dinner that evening.  So now we are searching for good, vegetarian recipes for Friday nights. (I bet you thought I was going to say that she came out as a lesbian, but that is soooo old school.)

So, K. came into our lives about 8 years ago after we had gotten a little too much information about her for any self-respecting godparents to handle.  Also, I think I intimidated K. in the beginning or, more to the point, she didn’t really “get” me.  Maybe I was too over-protective of J.  (Ok, I was too over-protective of J. but sometimes family is a burden in that way.)

Anyway, K. schlepped J. out to New Jersey (which was beyond the three-mile radius rule I thought I had set down firmly).  Already not good.

But as time and life enfolded, we love and adore K. and she loves POB, and even I am growing on her (like moss).

Now she tells us about her crazy externships and the dangerous crisis circumstances (without breaking any confidentiality) in which she does her clinical work, and we try to stay calm and not scream, “Get the HELL out of that place!!  Who the HELL needs that kind of insanity?? Can’t you find a wellness clinic and practice there???”  Neither POB (partner of blogger) or I actually say it.  We listen with concern and interest and try to keep the internal screaming, well, internal.

And there have been sad and heart-breaking bumps in the road that needn’t be re-hashed.

So, when on Friday night, they said they had an announcement and a question, POB and I were both panic-stricken.  They saw this in our eyes, so they tried to calm us but not give away the surprise.  I think I reminded them that we have middle-aged hearts and sudden shocks to our systems are dangerous and cruel.

It was good news: they are having a wedding!!!  So, I figured the question was, would we host the rehearsal dinner or help pay for the caterer.  They talked about the place they picked and told us every detail and all the time I am thinking about the question.  Maybe it isn’t about money.  Maybe we are not invited and they want to explain why.  Maybe they want our son to the ring-bearer.  Maybe they ARE converting to Judaism (they are Jewish culturally now anyway) and want recommendations for rabbis to lead the service.  Ok, ok, ok, ok, I think.  Please ask the question because I am still concerned that it is a scary, sad or bad question.

Drum roll.  Since they are married in Connecticut and New York doesn’t allow same-sex marriage, they asked me to officiate the wedding and be the general emcee of the weekend.  I was honored, humbled, scared, disbelieving all at once.  What an immense honor.  I couldn’t speak.  I kept trying to say something, but I couldn’t formulate a sentence — I was still shocked that they would give me this honor. Tears started to well up.  I am still so overwhelmed and honored.

And as J. and K. probably figured, I couldn’t sleep on Friday night because ideas about the ceremony were flooding my brain.  (Some were really good; some not so much.)

What an honor and privilege.  I am indeed blessed.

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Play dates

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Yesterday, my son had a friend over in the afternoon.  The ground rules were no electronics — no computer, no video, no TV.  His parents are rather concerned about the amount of time he spends on Wii and on the computer generally.  So, low-tech play date.  No problem, right?  Now, remember it is 2010 and we are taking about an 8 year-old and a 10 year-old.  BOYS.

First my son refused to stop what he was doing when his friend arrived.  His friend was kneeling in front of the Wii remotes.  Ok, ok, ok.  POB (partner of blogger) took out all of this cool building sets, some even have circuitry (electric ok, but electronic, no).  No one tried anything.  Variably mournful and angry eyes were watching us.  I started helping the friend put some circuit boards together and we made lights flash on and alarms ring.  Just like those awesome kits that you could do at camp if you brought an extra $5 dollars which in 1972, was a lot for an 8 year-old.  We were having an awesome time although my son was still pouting by reading train books, hoping that I would cave and let them watch a train video.  Nooooo. Then his friend got up and knelt by the Wii again.  I said no, and we had a tense moment when he kicked something over angrily.  We walked back into my son’s room.  At that point, the friend tried to make conversation with my son, but my son, who figured he was punishing me by being rude to his friend, was unresponsive.  So I sat down with this friend and played scrabble and asked my son to help me.  Finally, finally, my son decided that fun was a good thing to have and they started to play together.  Phew.  All is good, right?  Ten minutes later, “we’re booooored.”  Really?  Really?  With all of the toys in this house, you kids can be bored?

Then I remember what withdrawal was like when I quit cigarettes.  And, I realized that neither of them bargained for a non-electronic play date, although we did tell our son the ground rules.  So, in a lapse of parental judgment, I started a pillow fight in the living room with the couch pillows — some cushions, some just decorative.  All fair game.  POB looked on in horror and amusement as there were many near-misses with the lamps, etc.  But the humans were each in one piece.

They were able to amuse themselves for a little while.  But the electronic-free play date was running a little too long for anyone’s patience, let alone those of pre-tween boys.  Recently, I bought a Star Wars light saber to match our son’s (Mom, please forgive me, for buying something that is a weapon, but your grandson is a boy.)  My son didn’t want to play but his friend did.  So, I handed him a pair a protective glasses (see, Mom, you did raise me right) because I cannot live in a world where a child is blinded while playing while fencing with light sabers in my house.  Ok, I never, ever, imagined that I would be condoning, much less partaking, this behavior, but, sometimes, one has to stand less on principle in order to survive your child’s play date.  Then the boy’s father came to pick him up just as he was striking me in the gut with his light saber.  Score one for Luke Skywalker.

Luckily, POB and I had a dinner date with our machertunim (the parents of the girl that our son is intent on marrying).  Machertunim is the Yiddish word that describes the parents’ relationship when your children are married to each other.  This play date also did not have electronics.  We coped very well with these parameters, since we have great fun talking and laughing, and there was wine and great food.  Did I mention the wine?

Both play dates were fun.  But I suspect that they won’t need my facilitating non-electronic play dates after a while.  And to tell you the truth, the second play date was awesome.

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Tuesday, The Day My Pampered Child Called Me Lazy

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Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok.  I am not good in the morning.  Mostly, because I have very unrestful sleep.  All day, every day, I am tired to the bone.  That is just life for me.  I yawn even when I work out because even that much adrenaline doesn’t keep me awake.  I would drink coffee all day if that burning sensation in my stomach or esophagus would quit.  You get the point.

POB (partner of blogger) has been away on business and is coming home late tonight.  Our son remarked that “Mommy will be so tired tomorrow she’ll seem as lazy as you, E-Mom.”  Shock.  Disbelief.  Dismay.  My son is calling ME, lazy?  At first I think maybe he understands the concept through comparison with his own exemplary model of laziness.  But then I realize there is neither an introspective aspect nor an attempt to bond with a fellow lazy person.

This is what “we in the Tribe” would call a Jewish compliment — an insult made less stinging by including someone, i.e., POB, with otherwise excellent qualities in your category of degeneracy.  So, since he has never been around Yiddish speakers or members of the immigrant generation, there must be a genetic component to his uncanny ability to deliver a stinging, yet subtly amusing Jewish compliment.

I would have appreciated it more had I not been appalled and yelling.  Yelling is the one throw-back parenting technique that is still grudgingly allowed by the good parenting police.  But it can only be used when you have had another stressful day at the office, working ever harder to mute the effects of a bad economy on your sense of self-worth and your ability to provide for your family.  So, I properly invoked the technique.

But then I know that my son was just expressing things as they appear to him, unencumbered by a social filter.  I know that others his age have some form of social filter.  My son is different that way.  And most times we work through the issue without my resorting to yelling, “how dare you say something like that?”  My son was a little freaked out but not the least bit bowed by the event.  Only now I have to put me in a time-out and have a serious talk with me about my behavior and how to channel my emotions in more socially acceptable ways.

And my son?  He had dinner, shower, books and music before bed.  I told him I love him and nothing changes that even if I was angry at what he said.  And I do love him, and I always will.

But I am NOT lazy.  (Ok, not compared to him.)

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Sunday night dinner chez nous

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Further reinforcing my hypothesis that older people progressively allocate more time to traveling and invariably arrive early, our fathers came for 6pm dinner at 4:30pm, which coincides with the time-honored “early bird” hour.  Which makes one wonder whether restaurateurs named, rather than caused, the phenomenon.

I don’t know about other Jewish families, but the first dinner after the Yom Kippur holy day involves comparing Yiskor books (books of remembrance for those who have died) and book plate honors (having someone’s name put in a prayerbook) from the various synagogues to which various members attend.  It is a morbid combination of “Bingo”, “Wheel of [Mis]Fortune” and “Celebrity Match-ups”.  I like to think of it as “Did You Remember to Name that Dead Person?”

My dad was upset that he forgot to list POB’s (partner of blogger’s) mom (z”l).  I said, “Don’t worry.  You’ll remember next year, Dad.  We had her covered.”

I mentioned that we also covered several uncles and cousins and he mentioned a few we forgot and also the grandparents.  Oooooh.  Darn!!!  Missed that!  Harumph. We need to have a huge list for next year, even if the dollars pile up (wait, you thought it was free?).

But we had a book plate put in a prayerbook for Dad’s 90th birthday.  SCORE!!!  (POB is sooooo awesome.)

POB’s father and our son were watching the football games.  The other Jews shrugged and then started to talk about concussions and debilitating diseases, as a way of showing interest in the football game.

Then SOB (sister of blogger) wanted to take out the old family pictures so we can mount them on poster board for my Dad’s birthday party.  We all got a little teary-eyed about how young and vibrant everyone looked and how most are now gone.

So, to recap:  we have talked about death, destruction and death again.  Just what Jews need to work up an appetite.

POB made a delicious dinner, over which we discussed the importance of building that Islamic Cultural Center right where they planned it and argued about the meaning of life, chaos theory and the mysteries of the universe.  It got rather heated when we were contrasting a Jewish, G-d-centric approach that assumes that actions have meaning and can cause change versus the view that most of what we do doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.  I ventured that, while I am not so sure that I believe the former, if I in fact believed the latter, then what’s the point and POB should just get my life insurance.  At that point, POB’s father then asked, “how much?” in a very oddly interested tone.  My brother-in-law (the bird nerd from other entries), quietly advised me not to go anywhere alone with my father-in-law.  All this while I was choking over the salad course.

Dessert brought calm to the table as we talked about the Million Moderate March on October 30th and exhorted our TV-challenged relatives to tune into Jon Stewart on the web.  (I could not speak to Stephen Colbert, because I remember him when he was really a right wing-nut at Dartmouth.)

So, death, destruction, death, religion & chaos, politics and comedy.  Another excellent family dinner with the extended family.

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This Atonement Day and Beyond

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Yom Kippur started Friday at sundown.  We have our services at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.  It is a free service — no one is turned away.  Keeping an open door policy is part of who were are as a community because the synagogue was started nearly 40 years ago by gay Jews who were not welcomed anywhere as gays, as Jews or as gay Jews.  Now our synagogue welcomes people of all sexual orientation (including straight) and all gender orientations (I only know the two main ones, but I am told that there are as many points on that spectrum as, let’s say, colors in the rainbow).  Almost 4,000 people attended Kol Nidre on Friday night.

The senior rabbi is a woman in her late forties but she looks like a pre-pubescent, book-ish boy.  She is a thoughtful and insightful speaker.  And, she does have moments of levity, as when she announced that she would like to be known now as “Lady Syna-Gaga“.  Ok, there is a reason why our synagogue can never really go mainstream.

We ended around 10pm last night and started up again this morning.

This morning, we all went to the children’s service which had a fair amount of substance.  The rabbis talked about seeking forgiveness, saying, “I’m sorry,” etc., and otherwise tried to distill the elements of the Holy Day without dumbing it down too much.

Then we came home and I fixed our son a sandwich for lunch.  He is 8 years old, so he does not fast but we do put techno-toys away for the day.

I was about to sit down at the table to keep him company while he ate, but he said, “E-Mom, I would like to eat alone so I can think about all of the things I need to say sorry for and all the things I need to do better.”

Ok, my son is wonderful and all, but this is out of hand.  Reflexively, I asked, “Really?”

Right after blurting that out, I thought “I need work on not being so cynical and more trusting of my son’s motives, because we were at this substantive kids’ service and maybe something spoke to him —-”

My thoughts were interrupted by my son — ever the honest little boy, “Nah, I just want to play with the iTouch and I didn’t want you to see.”

At least he is honest.

We returned to synagogue for the late afternoon service through to the end of Ne’ila, the last service of Yom Kippur.  After services were over, as we poured into the street to find our ways home, two attendees who were, just minutes before, wrapped in prayer shawls, stole cabs from us. I started screaming at one in the cab that was then stopped for the light, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”

Then, I realized that my son was watching me and I thought to myself, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”  So, I stopped.

We hailed another cab and we went home, a tired but happy family.

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The Children’s Hour

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Every year, before and during Yom Kippur, I wonder if I will forgive G-d.  Then, I wonder if I believe in G-d.  (Ok, the order makes no sense.)

I wonder whether either or both statements are blasphemy, although the rabbi of my synagogue believes that G-d accepts non-believers.  Ok, so I may be in trouble for the first statement.  (Big trouble.)

And even if anyone (other than me) would venture that I had the right to stand in judgment, one has to tread lightly with the One who created Heaven and Earth, etc., because, well, power is as power does.  (If I were to make these statements in my sister’s presence, she would step away from me in anticipation of a lightening bolt striking.  It has gotten so routine that, with an almost imperceptible nod to her, she knows to move for safety and brace herself for the heresy that will follow.)

(As an aside, I wonder why G-d or anyone else would want to hear from me if I don’t have caffeine in my bloodstream and my teeth brushed.  Also, Yom Kippur is the one day each year when you have a guaranteed, no cancel-at-the-last moment date with G-d.  What’s wrong with a little lipstick?)

I recognize that humans created most, if not all, of the problems that are endangering our planet. But G-d let evil and injustice in the world, assuming one accepts the existence of G-d.  (You can see that I am having trouble both believing and not believing.)

Ok, so where are the miracles?  Where is the redemption?

Children.  They are the miracles and they are humanity’s redemption.  (Let me say that I feel this mostly when I am cuddling with my child or checking in on him after he is asleep.  Some of the time I think the devil lives in our house and he is our son, as evidenced by unseemly tantrums.)

Children.  They have wonder in their eyes.  Their emotions are real.  They play with any kid who is around, without regard to differences that parents point out.  They embody the best of humanity, until we ruin them.  They also embody the frustration and angst that we all feel, except they do it in tantrums in shopping malls or in front of our in-laws.  But, compare their tantrums to those adults in politics these days and you’ll find that they are more becoming on a 5 year-old than a 50+ year-old.

Children.  My mother (z”l) and my father always worried about what we were teaching “our” children.  They always looked to the children as a measure of society’s successes and failures.

Children.  Jews only believe in original guilt, not sin, so we are responsible for how our children treat Earth and each other.  In these times, when I feel a little lost and a lot hopeless about our country, our world, our common humanity, I look to the children.  My child, your child, our children.  They can change the world and we have to do our part.

G-d bless the children.

G-d, (assuming you are there), are you listening?  If so, tap me on the shoulder and freak me out.

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Back to School — FINALLY

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So we have been torturing our son with our rendition of the parents’ back-to-school jig made famous on last year’s Staples commercials.  Our son is alternatively amused, and a bit peeved, at his parents’ dancing around like we’ve won the lottery.

After much lobbying, we agreed reluctantly to buy our son Lunchables for the first day of school only.  Lunchables is some chemical and saline combo-fest that passes as food per the FDA.  There is a special place in hell for parents who feed Lunchables to their kids.  Of course, the mushballs that we are, we also ate dinner out and let our son have french fries since it was — after all — the night before school FINALLY starts.  He did have a grass-fed beef burger at least.  POB (partner of blogger) swears we are just going to put a salt lick in our son’s room to satisfy his salt lust; we are not sure how to deal with the grease lust.  Seriously, he would give us up in a New York minute if someone guaranteed him french fries every day for life.  No contest.

It is the middle of September and he is just now going back to school.  Now I understand it when my parents used to say — sarcastically, I assure you — that they paid private school tuition so we could have more vacation than at public school.  In 1971, when SOB (sister of blogger) started at a private school in Manhattan (where nearly all the students were Jewish), my dad had to go to school and speak to the headmaster to make sure that a teacher had to postpone a test scheduled for Yom Kippur.  Even in 1981 at our little private school, Jewish students were excused from class on the High Holy Days but school was open.  Now, schools in Manhattan give off the major Jewish holidays, as a matter of course.  A lot has happened in 30 years.  Maybe next year, the kids will have off for the festival end of Ramadan.  It is only fair.

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Our day today

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POB (partner of blogger) had a great idea this morning — go to Governor’s Island for a picnic.  Governor’s Island is a decommissioned military base island in New York harbor (right next to Ellis Island and Liberty Island) that has been turned into a park and fairground.  It is an easy subway ride followed by a ferry ride.  Ok, “easy” refers only to the directness of the route.  When on the subway or in line for the ferry, a person is subject to the sea of surrounding humanity and their insipid conversations.  (For the record, our (i.e., this blogger community) conversations are never insipid — too revealing? Maybe. But insipid? Never.)

First, there was a more-unsteady-than-elderly lady for whom POB gave up her seat.  (I was already standing.) POB asked if she wanted a seat and the woman turned to her friend and said, in a cartoonishly nasal voice, “Oh, see!! A seat opened up!!”  Poof, like, magic.  Really?  No, because a well-mannered person got up (in contradistinction to the mopes and slouches around us).  Her friend started to talk about food processing in a loud, screeching voice.

What the woman said was important and true — that if you saw how fast food is made, you would never eat it again and that most processing is bad for humans in both nutrition and the environment — but did we need to hear it in outrageous volume with a holier-than-thou tone at 11am on a holiday weekend?  And, just across the aisle, a scary-looking, tattooed dad with a beer gut (who was playing with his child by pretending to strangle him — really) was giving the child huge helpings of Pepperidge Farm flavor-blasted gold fish (hmmm, salt, chemically reconstructed “cheese” and polysorbate 60, anyone?).  Our son loves them, too, and we know we are going to a special place in hell for parents who let their kids eat this junk.  None of the kale or broccoli or grass-fed beef that our son eats will save us from this punishment.

And why DO men need to sit so wide that they take up nearly two seats?  I note that the smaller the shoe size of the man, the wider he sits.  Is this some psychological melodrama playing out?

Fast-forward to the line waiting to get back on the ferry to Manhattan.  A group of women and one man was behind us.  The man, who was overweight, and a bitchy effete garden gnome, was commenting to women passersby, “hey, do you think you could have tighter clothing?” or “do you think you could be any fatter?”  All I wanted to say to him was, “come out of the closet and stop being bitter with baggage”.  But I didn’t.  I could take him down in a minute.  The women, however, would lay me out.  One of the women had a son who was going to grow up to be the bully of his neighborhood.  He dropped a juice carton on the street and someone picked it up and handed it to her and said, “I think your child dropped this.”  I thought it was an elegant way to force the woman to deal with the litter.  She got all huffy, with heavy hip and neck action, saying to her friends, “the baby drops this and he gives it to me?” Ok, who else?  She is his mother for G-d’s sakes.  And the baby?  BABY?  Try 6 years-old, going on 12.  And mean.

Too much humanity.  I wanted to take a private water taxi followed by a cab.  I couldn’t handle any more.  But we did continue on the public transportation route.  On the subway, three 20-somethings were talking and POB and I were transfixed by the car wrecks that were their conversations and their outfits.  One was falling out of her skimpy outfit and had used eyebrow pencil to highlight her auburn eyebrows into a Groucho Marx effect.  I think she thought I was admiring her instead of not being able to take my eyes off this mobile crashing unit, so when she got off, she shimmied at me and smiled.  I was sooooooo grossed out I could barely breathe.

I took to my bed for a nap.  Oh, I forgot, once you get to Governor’s Island, it is perfectly lovely.

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