Tag Archives: Urban Life

Training Day

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In recent weeks, SOB has taken note of my quasi-buff arms and POB’s outrageously buff arms arms, and decided to inquire about FTOB (fitness trainer of blogger).

While I applaud her desire to tone and strengthen her core muscles, I worry about her gentle internal ecosystem.  SOB does the least she can do at the gym. Really. SOB doesn’t even break a sweat on the elliptical machine, which she does (ir)religiously for a “really long time” before she can’t handle the monotony of it.  In real time, that means 12 minutes, tops.

“How long can an hour-long training session be, 45 minutes?” SOB asks innocently.

Sigh.  Doctors, even non-psychiatric ones, think in different time intervals than the rest of us.  And she is a New Yorker.  So if a New York minute is less than 60 seconds, then a New York hour CAN’T be one hour.  The logic is valid, but SOB has no idea what is about to hit her.

FTOB is wonderful and “quirky”.  She dances during breaks; she uses words for parts of the body that creep me out.  In a moment of Zen, I just thought I will let SOB experience it all, without the usual warnings I might convey.

And, yet you can understand my worry.  I am delivering my dearest SOB into the hands of a fitness freak.  While I can handle FTOB, my gentle big sister may be consumed by the sweat and exertion of it all.  I knew it could be a moral crime, but I needed to check whether wanton disregard for the attention span and general fitness profile of a loved one was a punishable offense under New York law.  So far, there is no crime on the books of New York State for accessory to a fitness event.

Still.

SOB was happy that I “happened into” the gym about 30 minutes (a New York 45 minutes) before her first training session.  (Of course I was on hand for the momentous event.) I made the introductions, even though I already gave FTOB the talk (hurt my sister and you are dead meat).  As I left, I did the “I am watching you” hand signal of touching my eyes and then pointing to FTOB.

So, I lurked about to make sure that SOB wasn’t crying or leaving mid-session.  Imagine my surprise when FTOB said, “walk this way” and started doing something out of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wippooDL6WE), and SOB did!!

SOB made it to the end of the full hour and then made arrangements to start regular sessions.

Me?  Turns out I was just a stalker without a cause.

 

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This Parent’s Nightmares

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Two New York Times articles this weekend conveniently book-ended the gamut of parental nightmares — child abuse and drug abuse.

In the hallowed halls of elite Horace Mann School, unabashed pedophilia survived through willful blindness for decades.  Just another reminder for me to listen closely to my child’s discomfort and fears, if G-d forbid, there was some problem.  And any man who takes an active interest in SOS and engages in “horseplay” is suspect.

When SOS was young, we thought to have a manny (male nanny) to give him daily contact with a male (something missing in a two-mom household).  But the logistics got complicated when I realized that if we had a manny (who might just be a pedophile), we would also need a nanny to watch the manny watching SOS.  POB gave up on the idea rather than try to unravel my paranoid (and correct) logic.

The second story was about high school kids buying prescription drugs used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.  These drugs, when used properly, help certain kids function with the “appropriate” level of attention and focus in classrooms and other venues. The drugs’ effects on kids who don’t need the drug are laser-focus on task and rapid recall.  Like steroids, these drugs are now seen as performance enhancing aids so that kids can perform better on class tests and college entrance exams.

It is shocking how easy it seems to get a prescription or buy a few pills from a classmate.

(My high school alma mater was singled out as one place where there is a real problem.  The person who said any publicity is good publicity is, um, wrong.)

So, POB and I were talking about this and we both scratched our heads.  We as a society are pushing our kids into drugs “to make us proud”.  It made getting high and playing frisbee seem like something out of Mayberry.  You know, the stuff you did to rebel and make your parents fret about your future.

And now my new view is:

SOS, if you must try drugs, please smoke A LITTLE dope (and then make sure it was a bad experience).  And promise me (pinky-swear and everything) that you won’t ever, ever, snort Adderall for performance enhancement. 

I love you just the way you are.

 

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My new trainer

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My fitness trainer abruptly left the gym and I think the city about ten days ago.  I am worried about him.  But enough about him, let’s turn it back to me, because I need Michelle Obama arms for my wedding.

He texted me and suggested one of the other trainers whom I will call FTOB (fitness trainer of blogger).  FTOB is very, how shall we say, vivacious.  She spontaneously lifts people off the floor when she is happy.  She likes to take dance breaks, which makes me think of the Ellen DeGeneres’s show (the episode I saw) during which she danced with her guests. 

Still, the clock was ticking and I have an unforgiving dress.  I called FTOB and scheduled an appointment.  She is high energy and very effective.  But while I was learning from FTOB, I had to teach her two things: (i) I don’t have a booty and (ii) I don’t have ta-tas.  As to the first, I have a tushie, behind, derriere, butt or any number of variations of those words.  As to the second, I have breasts, a chest or, if necessary, boobs. 

No-no-no to ta-tas.

FTOB was awesome about this.  The second session contained no references to the “b” or the “t” words.  Strong work, FTOB.

FTOB has a FauxHawk (modified Mohawk, where the the sides aren’t shaved, just very short).  In this last session, her hair was slicked back and it looked like it was all one length.  “I love your hair!!” I exclaimed, almost matching her general exuberance.  “You think so?  It got wet and I gelled it back.  I am getting it cut soon.”  Ahhh, it was only a temporary NoHawk. 

So, in a moment that can best be described as my mother inhabiting my body, I blurted out, “You know, I asked [my old trainer] once to introduce us, because I wanted to say to you, ‘You have such a lovely face, why do you have your hair cut that way?'” 

“Really?”

“A good haircut can make all the difference,” I said.

I think we were both shocked at the exchange and I was a little weirded out having had a Freaky Friday moment with my mother in my body.  And FTOB is so good natured that she took it in the spirit in which it was meant — concern.

It turns out she has a girlfriend who likes her hair.  “Well, then, don’t listen to me; listen to her.  But if you are single again, listen to me.”

Oh, Mom, next time, give me some warning, ok?

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Aggressive, the defensive way

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On Wednesday nights, POB and I have dinner “just us”.

Sidebar:  I guess it would be better if we had Saturday night date night (for which presumably we wouldn’t be as tired as on a work day) but we have sitters for SOS whom we trust and they are often not available on Saturday nights.  Continuity and dependability totally trump date night convention.

We went to a local-ish place.  It was on the early side because I was too tired to go to the gym after work.  I asked for us to be seated in the empty part of the restaurant (away from bar area, service stations and kitchen).

POB and I were looking forward to a quiet evening since I was recovering from a really bad migraine and POB had endured an entire day of workmen hacking out part of our ceiling because our neighbors seem determined to flood our apartment room by room.

Sidebar: First, improperly installed pipes in our upstairs neighbors’ jacuzzi caused the ceiling of our maid’s room to come crashing down.  Then, as we were repairing that, water gushed down from the light fixture in the maid’s bathroom (can you say dangerous?).  The neighbors offered to have their contractor fix her “ooops” but I refused to allow that contractor to touch anything in our apartment. Now, the third time, on the other side of the apartment, there is water damage in the ceiling of SOS’s bathroom and the hallway. What are they doing upstairs?  Building a water park?????

Shortly after we were seated, the hostess brought over three people from the bar — tasty, cosmo-like, drinks in hand — to the table right next to us.  I looked around this massive (for New York City), empty, dining room.  Of all the tables in that whole room, they had to sit down next to ours.

One of the women had a whisper as loud as someone else’s scream.  She, of course, was the one talking the most.

I know all about her son the swimmer at Harvard who breaks all these intercollegiate records.  She also passed around her iPhone to show her friends all of her son’s “hot” teammates. Ok, stop gawking at your CHILD’S friends. That is just gross. EWWWWWWWW.

I know her politics:  “I cared that he was pro-choice but I was not happy that he killed that young girl”.  I bet Mary Jo Kopechne’s mother and father were not so psyched either.

I know she likes to gossip.  A teacher at a well-known prep school is suspected of having an affair with a student.  According to the maven next to us, the student was entrapped the teacher because she was bad news from the start — “over-sexualized” and thrown out of another tony prep school.   Really, you are talking about this young girl like a man-eater, yet you are gawking at your son’s friends in their Speedos and ok with Chappaquiddick?

I know she likes alpha males.  She went on a date with a nerdy, slight guy and she was dubious but he was “very MALE” when it came to “making out”.  (Who talks like this?)

And she was

LOUD,

LOUDER,

LOUDEST.

Despite it all, POB and I tried to have a low-key conversation, focused on the wedding.  It wasn’t working.  POB was horrified at this woman’s bad manners and grotesque discussion topics and I was losing any salubrious effects of migraine medication.

Then POB got an idea.  “Let’s aggressively chat!!”

“Aggressively chat? over thaaat?” I croaked, motioning to the table next to us.

“Yesssssss!”

“Ok, YOU start….”  Frankly, I didn’t know what it meant.  POB started:

“I like your lipstick.  Did I buy that lipstick?  It is a lovely spring shade.  Are you getting your hair colored before the wedding?  oh, do.  It will look good in the pictures.  Speaking of pictures, I spoke to the photographer and asked him whether the heavier make-up style of the lady at Saks would look good in the photos or creepy.  Ok, now your turn.”

“Wait? What?  I was reveling in the sound of your voice.  Was I supposed to match that?  You’re kidding?”  The way she looked at me, she was NOT kidding.  I did the only thing I could do.  I caught the eye of our server and mouthed, “check, please.”

And a new defensive mechanism for leaving cheek by jowl with strangers was born….

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The Old Neighborhood

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I grew up in the East 50s near Sutton Place.  DOB still lives there.  Most times, he likes to come see us on the Upper West Side — “The travel gives me a way to pass a few extra hours,” DOB says.

Nevertheless, every now and again we take out our passports and travel to the East Side for lunch.  DOB has started to favor a coffee shop closer to the house.  I think because the old coffee shop is three blocks away and down a hill.

When we were seated, an old man next to us asked if we were new to the neighborhood.  “Our family has lived here for over 50 years!” I replied jovially (at least I thought so).  The old man said, “I was just going to tell you what’s good,” and then he sighed in that loud annoying way to show he was exasperated and feeling under-appreciated even though his help was unsolicited.  Or, maybe I yelled at him, “What’s it to you, bud?”  Of course, I didn’t but you would think so based on the tone of his response.

Wow, I thought, the old neighborhood has gotten cranky with age.  Maybe because all of my parents’ contemporaries (who are still alive) have grown old and cranky in the old neighborhood.

Shortly after we shut down that random act of neighborliness gone horribly wrong, I saw an old (old) friend of my parents walk in the door.  He was with his female companion of 30 years or so.  Our families had gone to the same synagogue and we kids went to Hebrew School with his daughter.

I immediately got up and went over to greet them. They thought I was SOB because they said that they see her on the street when she visits Dad, implying that I am never around.  I paused, counted backwards from 10 and determined that they didn’t mean it the way it sounded.  Except, they certainly did mean it the way it sounded.

Sidebar:  As nice as this man is — he really is — he took me aside at a gathering shortly before my mother died and after having met POB, “make your father happy; find a man.”  But back to the situation at hand.

There were so many ways to handle this affront to my being a good and attentive daughter:

  • I could dredge up ancient gossip and unpleasant truths about his long ago divorce.  Nah, that is too aggressive.
  • I could just smile.  Nah, too passive.
  • I could be could let slip that Dad usually comes over on Sunday nights for a home-cooked dinner.  Ahhhh, passive yet aggressive.  Perfect.

Sidebar:  Don’t you love when being passive-aggressive is the reflection of your best impulses?  So, so, rewarding.

I did let that fact slip using a tone that suggested that his daughter never cooked for him.

“You must be a good cook!”

Really, that’s your response?  That’s all you got for me after my exhaustive mental gymnastics to figure out how to preserve my dignity and protect my mother’s pride in her children?  Really?

There were two other people whom Mom knew who walked in during the course of our lunch.  But I was too exhausted to go over and say hi.

 

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Confluence of events and blogs

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Last night I was at the gym, in my usual (and clean), well-worn yet dorky gym attire, when I came upon the Sniffer at the water fountain.

As you may recall, the Sniffer (http://40andoverblog.com/?p=3247) feigned an allergy to perfumes so that he could come over to where SOB and I were companionably and half-heartedly “working out” (read, “chatting”) on side-by-side elliptical machines.  He sniffed and sniffed around us and then said, “I knew by looking at you that you weren’t the type to wear perfume. . . . ” And then he took the elliptical machine next to mine.  I think that line would turn off straight girls much less an almost-married lesbian.

The Sniffer has since tried to make conversation with me about various, incredibly odd, things.  I now think that he is socially inept and just wants to chat the way others do at the gym.  I started to feel bad for him, until . . . .

Back to the water fountain.  Sniffer half-turns to me and says in that loud voice that suggests he doesn’t know how to modulate volume:

“I almost didn’t recognize you without your “Friendships are Recession-Proof” t-shirt.  Do you have just one or is the recession over?”

This is what the shirt looks like.

For the story behind the t-shirt, click http://40andoverblog.com/?p=127

Really, sniffer?

Of course, I have to tell him in an equally loud voice that I had them made for my friends and they were popular enough that I had to do a second “printing” and ended up with six or so EXTRA of them.

“And they are always clean!” I bellow in a last exhausted gasp.

“So the recession isn’t over in your eyes?  Technically, it ended in . . . .”

Ok, I had to walk away.  His disquisition on economic markers (which I had overheard before) is mundane yet pedantic, jargon-y yet shallow, almost exquisitely so.

I met POB for dinner after the gym.  “How was your day?” she asked.  “I need new gym clothes,” was my response.

 

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The Undergarment Day

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Today was the day.  It is a ritual in every woman’s life, especially on the occasion of one’s wedding.

At least once in your life, you go to a place where a woman says, “just as the doctor says, naked from the waist up!!” and then leaves for five minutes.  When she comes back, she sizes up your breasts.  All this in the elusive search for undergarments that give us shape, without the need to re-enact post-partum Scarlett O’Hara trying to get into her pre-pregnancy whale-boned corset.

With the wedding looming large, POB and I walked into The Town Shop, a storied place, where the owner (until the day she died) would “cup” each customer.  WITH HER HANDS.  So you stand naked from the waist up and an old lady comes over  (WITHOUT drawing the curtain on your dressing room) and grabs you and yells out the size and model.  First, humiliation and then triumph.

Even though the proprietor died, her family keeps up the place, and there are enough old women who are brutally honest to make the process just as humiliating and then triumphant.

Bessie helped us today.  She had the air of a Southern black woman whose mama taught her well. Except, she started by telling us she just got the cast off her right arm and made me feel the pin that the doctors inserted.

We told her that we needed help getting the right, supportive undergarments for the wedding dresses we brought with us.

“Which one of you is the bride?”

“We both are”.

“Hmmmm,” with some incomprehension.  It never ceases to amaze me how this still happens in New York City.

She turned to me.  “Let me look at you first.”  Ok, Bessie studied my breasts.   She looked at the dress.  “I am going to have to concentrate very hard here.  Come out here where the light is better.”  That meant I had to step outside the dressing room in full view of everyone in the store — man, woman, child and cat.  “I am thinking D cups for all that! And [looking at the bra I had been wearing] you have some ratty old bras, doncha?” she yelled.  I looked at the floor hoping that the earth would open up so that I might crawl in.

“I also need something for the waist down . . . ” I said as force-ably I could muster after she was off for my new bra.

Bessie came back with a bra.  She strapped me in and then said, “Lean over and let them things settle!” I did as bidden.   “I said LEAN, not pray!”  “Now sit down and jiggle.  Hands up!!  Jump up and down!”  I have never been to Club Med, but this is sounding familiar.  “Ok, now PRAY!” Bessie asked for quiet while she concentrated “fiercely”.  “We need to get you something tighter ’cause you all over the place.”

We settled on a bra that lets me shake, rattle and roll without falling out all over the place.  Then we got to the knee to waist issue.  She brought something so tight, I didn’t know how I was getting into this.  “Well, this will cover that pooch,” as Bessie pointed to the area below my two-pack abs.  “Water gain — she has been traveling,” POB said indignantly and in my defense.  (I ♥ POB.)

“How many people are helping you get dressed?”  A question that implied it would take a village to get us ready on the morning of our wedding.  And she hadn’t even started on POB.  I was ready to call off the wedding, until I thought of Elinor Donahue in Father Knows Best winning the basketball game and having her friends crowd around her and get her into her prom dress so she could be crowned queen.  So, I am thinking about a scrum in rugby, except that we will emerge looking FABULOUS in our dresses.

In order not to embarrass POB, I will just say that POB fared only a little better with our straight-talking Bessie.  POB doesn’t have ratty bras because she came from a good home (as she reminds me).  Ok, except when it came to the zipper for POB’s dress.  “Did you try this dress on before you bought it?” Bessie offered “helpfully” as others needed to assist us because of Bessie’s healing arm. REALLY?

After we were finished, I asked POB if she had arranged for us to be Medi-vac’d home.  “No,” she said, “but we could have a snack on our way to the shoe place.”

This wedding stuff is NOT for the weak. (As for Bessie, I am going next Saturday for some new bras.)

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The Gym

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It is a cruel truth of quantum physics that if there are five people in an otherwise empty gym locker room, all five will have lockers in the exact same corner.

And, two of the five will be half-naked and bent over shaking out their wet hair, another two will be full-on naked about to get into the shower and there will be one (me, in this case) who contorts herself in such a way as to avoid being with in a hair’s breath of someone’s sweaty or writhing body while she tries to open the lock on her locker.

I don’t use my lock that often, although I carry it around in my bag. The other night, I just couldn’t get the combination to work, even after many of the women left so I could stand straight up in front of the locker. After many unsuccessful attempts, I decided that I needed to ask the manager to cut the lock. It was late and I was meeting POB and Cousin California for dinner.

The only person at the front desk was a young man with Justin Bieber hair (or is it the other tweenage idol?). Without looking up, he said, “you’ll have to wait” while he attended to certain meaningless tasks.  I was tired so while I was irritated, I simply waited a few minutes. 

As I waited, I noted various serious looking managerial types (i.e., the adults) going into a “closed door” meeting (except there are glass walls so nothing is ever secret). When the young man finally listened to my predicament, he told me that the manager went into a closed door meeting and I would have to wait until the meeting ended.  How did I know that would be his response?

“When will it be over?”

“I don’t know. It could be long.  And, I can’t interrupt.” Customer service at its best.

“Well, I can interrupt!”

He saw that I was serious and he ran around to beat me to the door. It is amazing how quickly “can’t” becomes “can” when a lazy person realizes that his bad service could be detrimental to his continued employment.

The manager came out immediately. He was very cordial, although he did ask if I was sure it was my lock and locker. As I was about to get angry, I realized that he had a point — locks and lockers look alike and I am sure people make mistakes. I was quite sure because I bought my lock for its unusual design.

A young woman accompanied me with jaws-of-life size clippers – the kind that TV police use on locks when they don’t shoot at them.  As she 0was about to engage the jaws of life, she said, “I’ve never done this before and I am a little scared!” At that, everyone ducked and I yelled, “Cover your heads, we are in foul ball territory!”

Luckily, I was right about it being my locker and no one got hurt by the flying debris.  The young woman pivoted and started to walk out.  I had to stop the young girl so I could show her some identification but she waved me off saying, “I trust you.”

“You don’t know me. You need to ask for identification.”

The young woman left, still not comprehending why she ought to ask for some corroboration of my story.  She would hold the door open for a man in a ski mask and machine gun.

After all started to calm down in the locker room, a half-naked woman started telling me about the time her locker was mistakenly cut by a confused gym user.  And then she showed another woman and me that her combo is on the back of her lock, so she doesn’t worry about remembering it.  A little like telling a stranger at the bar how to disable your home alarm system.

The other woman was then looking at the first woman’s stuff,  “to see if I like any of it enough to steal.”  REALLY??? 

Ok, neither is a fashion plate.  And the second woman, whom I see a lot, could use a wardrobe refresher, but now I was thinking that the young ingenue who trusted me had already let in the thief.  I reminded both woman that, in women’s locker room, everyone looks fabulous and has fabulous stuff but we don’t burgle.

Exhausted, I crawled out of there so ready to be welcomed into the bosom of my family.

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Bedroom Farce, Rated G

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On weekend mornings, SOS and I often rough-house on POB’s and my bed — we wrestle, tussle, the usual.  (At other times, even POB and I can fit in a little tussle, but I digress).

The bed held up as best it could, for 12 years.  So, last night when SOS jumped on the bed to reach me for a kiss good-night, we heard a ◊craaaack◊ followed by a creeeeeak!!!!! followed by a THUUUUNK of a falling “decorative” wood brace in the headboard.

After assuring SOS that it was not his fault, I set about trying to repair the bed before it sloped into total collapse.  Mind you, this is no IKEA-born-to-break-in-three-months bed; this is — or should have been — a stand-up-to-kids, Odysseus-built-around-a-tree-trunk type of bed, notwithstanding its modern aesthetic.

After getting the mattress off, I saw that the hinges and the connectors were bent.  Ok, so this is not a bed deserving of any analogy to that in the Homeric epic.

POB just thought we should dismantle the whole thing, set it aside and put the mattress on the floor.  “I am too old to sleep on some kind of a FUTON!!” I exclaim, shocking even me.  “We are sleeping on a proper bed because we are going to fix it.  All I need is a hammer and screw driver!!”

POB dutifully brought a hammer and screw driver.  She is always doing sweet things like that, like the time she gave me enough rope to hang myself.

It is a heavy bed, as in more than our combined body weight.  We took turns heaving the pieces into the correct position while the other tried to hammer the pieces into the correct grooves.  Let’s just say I would be in traction if I hadn’t been working on my abs.

At one point, when POB was doing the heavy lifting job, I tried to get at the mangled joint.  That required that I slither between her legs — just below the knees — with a hammer, all the while sweating and panting from all of the lifting I had just been doing.

“What are you doing?” POB screeeeeched in horror, as she was now in charge of holding up a really heavy bed frame. 

As if I needed to say this, but I did:  “Sweetie, this is not a novel attempt at seduction.  Right now I don’t care where I am relative to your anatomy.  I care that I am close to the mangled joint that I need to fix!!”  At that point, I realized I needed a pliers.  “Don’t move,” I told POB.

Since this is rated G (General Audiences), I will not repeat her response.

After I hit my fingers with the hammer and squeezed part of my finger in the pliers, I made the damage to the bed parts (they were then officially “parts” not a “bed frame”) even worse.  But the decisive factor is, well, I suck at home improvement.  Another lesbian myth blown sky-high.

The long and short of it is that we slept futon-style with the mattress on the floor.  And the bed frame company is sending someone up from its SoHo store to fix the mangled mess on Thursday.  If a gay man show up and puts the frame back together without anyone’s help, then I will give up my lesbian boot camp standard issue: hammer, pliers, screw driver  and variable speed drill (both with various size bits).

But I am keeping the toaster oven.

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A night out on the town

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POB (partner of blogger) and I went out to dinner with the parents of SOS’s (our son, source of sanity’s) betrothed.  As a couple, they are our MT (machertunim, a Yiddish term for the relationship between the parents of the married couple).  For the record, HMT (husband MT) finally went to WMT’s (wife MT’s) hairstylist, and he looks younger and fabulous (said with that sing-song falsetto).  Why didn’t he go sooner, you ask?  WMT wants to know, too.  But I digress. . . .

We met at an Indian restaurants in the west 20’s.  It used to be a club/late night lounge.  You can just tell by the layout, and by the incongruous clubby music playing ever so quietly in the large entryway and bar and lounge area.  In the restaurant, it was more traditional.  It was definitely a “fusion” of some sort.

It was an odd place.

The sommeliere brought out the bottle, tasted it first, then poured more in her glass and took a second swig (hey, she may need that extra swig just to get through the pomp and ceremony in front of us, the philistines).  The rest was more traditional — she poured more in the glass and proceeded to coat each glass and the decanter.  Then she poured for HMT to approve.  If, after all of that, HMT sent back the wine, she would have spit in the next bottle. I was tempted to test my theory, but the place was already a little disorienting.  Also, the sommeliere spoke heavily Japanese-accented English, in an otherwise heavily Indian-accented environment AND we were drinking Spanish wine.  No wonder my stomach felt like a UN general assembly meeting.

Anyway, it was fancy and expensive enough to have microscopic portions, so as POB and WMT talked, HMT and I kept grabbing at any extra morsel.  I leaned over at one point, and said, “you eatin’ that?” while pointing to something already on his fork. You understand why POB and I don’t go out much.

Before we ordered dinner WMT excused herself to the women’s room.  When she returned, she said, “[Blogger], there is a comfy couch outside the restrooms that looks perfect for you!!” (She knows that, on the weekends, I will nap on her granite counter if that is my only opportunity for a little extra snoooooze time.)

POB visited the women’s room and upon her return, noted that a couple was chatting on the couch. 

MY couch?  The one that was going to host my pre-dessert power nap?  Whaaaaat?

I needed to go investigate.  Everyone at the table made me promise I wouldn’t ask them to stand so I could test out the couch.  We made eye contact and smiled.  They didn’t look so happy or so into each other.  And she was sitting uncomfortably (maybe it was the hue of her red dress?) as the man (who could have been better dressed) slouched somewhat dejectedly.  Still he has time to check his smartphone incessantly.

Since we are all in our forties, even HMT could not last without a trip to the men’s room before dessert.  Upon his return, he confirmed that they were still there.  We ordered and ate two courses and the wine ceremony and they were still there!!

HMT recognized the couple as having been seated when we arrived.  The young man gave the young woman a necklace.   I confirmed that the woman definitely wasn’t wearing a necklace around her plunging neckline.  Were they breaking up?  Did the necklace just not fit?  Why were they hanging out in the lounge in front of the restrooms in an Indian restaurant in the West 20s, after they have already paid and their table was re-set?

So many questions and I needed answers; too many people (POB, HMT and WMT)  restraining me as they escorted me out of the restaurant.

ODD (and I am not just talking about me).

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