Displaced

This is my trip so far. I have been away from home for some thirty-six hours. My luggage was left in Chicago and, while I was filling out lost baggage customes paperwork, the rental car office closed, leaving me with no baggage and nothing to carry it in. After a mild breakdown and narrowly evading the Canadian fruit police, I rented another car – a tiny, tiny expensive Matchbox car which I will call The Speck – and drove from Toronto to Buffalo in the middle of the night after a very long day. My father was still up and very sick. Having just had his hip resurfaced, he was already on crutches, so illness is a dangerous and inconvenient thing. I slept for a few hours and then he headed to the emergency room. A day of chasing luggage and tracking down doctors and buying back-up T-shirts and girlie underwear at the Gap with my seventeen-year-old stepbrother hovering at my elbow followed. He didn’t even blush, staunch boy. The hospital addmitted my father in the evening and my bag did arrive in Toronto as planned. Of course, instead of bringing it to me as promised, they put it on the next flight back to Chicago to be re-routed to Buffalo. ETA: 11:59PM. Excellent news on all fronts.

Courtesy of The Morning News, I saw this exciting item today: the Swiss Army knife to beat all Swiss Army knives. And most armies too, I ‘d imagine. As long as the other army is made up of midgets hobbled by faulty golf shoe spikes. It’s like having a 2-lb. MacGyver in your pocket.

I used to have a tape of a guy laughing. He laughed for five minutes straight. After ten seconds, I laughed too. I couldn’t help it.

This is a long clip but you can watch the first minute to get the gist of the story and then scroll ahead to 3:30 to catch the breakdown.

I’ve been benched. For twelve weeks. First six, now twelve. “No hanging from anything,” were her exact words and by “anything” she meant the trapeze or other bars of any kind.

I’ve seen more doctors and trainers and acupuncturists and physical therapists and chiropractors than I care to count and the verdict is still frustratingly fuzzy. What was first thought to be a sprained fifth rib that might have caused a strained muscle became a torn pectoral minor on further examination. Now, they think it’s a stress fracture in the fifth rib and a dislocated first rib that has resulted in an arrangement of strained ligaments and muscles. I have sheets and sheets of films from my MRI, none of which I can read, but I do see the big white spot where that first rib is protruding like a mini alien out of the top joint on my sternum. It’s disconcerting to see in the mirror, more so to feel the bump, but, strangely, it doesn’t hurt. The places that do hurt are just outside the range of the MRI, which it seemed like they would be when I was at the hospital. There is no protocol for scanning the chest. The lab has instruction sheets for every place on the body where there are joints. I saw them. But there’s no chest slot, so they made it up as they went along. Apparently if you want the top of the chest, you can’t have the side too. Cake. No Eating.

Since the fifth rib isn’t in the picture, that leaves the stress fracture as pure conjecture, but it hurts like it’s cracked, so I’m going with it. I’d be more uncomfortable with an unsubstantiated diagnosis if I thought it would make any difference in the treatment plan but it won’t. There is one plan for cracked, broken or stressed ribs: don’t move it. This is the same plan as the one for torn chest muscles or ligaments. Not very inventive, if you ask me, but I see their point. To immobilize it, they’d have to put me in a body cast for six weeks to prevent me from lifting my left arm. The strain of living with me might break R, so I’m glad we’re not doing that. Keeping your ribs from moving is well near impossible. My rib cage shifts when I do anything. Arms, abs, shoulders, all of it. The only things I can move without danger are my legs. Riverdance, here I come.

…everyone’s seen Matt except me. Don’t be lonely like me – join the group. Have a look at Matt.

The day our young landlady’s wild-haired and insane parents told me and my ex-boyfriend that we could not have our dog or any plants whatsoever on the half acre deck was the day we suspected we were doomed to leave our newly rented apartment in the tony Marina neighborhood. They were ‘concerned about the weight’ of my ficus and, apparently, window boxes. I lived resentfully with the barren expanse for three months before I left both the apartment and the boyfriend. When I drove by a year later, after the crazies had reclaimed the apartment for themselves, I saw that they had installed a large stone fountain on the deck. I’m sure it didn’t weigh nearly as much as my ficus.

Since then, things have been looking up. My next place was owned by the wonderful Jose and Bob. Bob is an all-American George Clooney type with a superhero profile and Jose is a gentle, smiling and boyish Asian. The two of them handed over their beautifully renovated Victorian flat to me and two friends and cheerfully made improvements at the slightest suggestion over the next three years. They didn’t even blanch when they saw the state of their pristine palace under the reign of my roommates.

The current living situation is even better. The studio is too small for two people but R and I stay for the deck and the landlady. The building is owned and managed by a woman who a.) knows how to build and fix things, and b.) does. Since R moved in and I joined him a year later, she’s put in a dishwasher, a new garden downstairs complete with goldfish, and built our deck, which is now a redwood expanse home to flourishing roses, lavender, iris, herbs and the happy ficus tree. Her boyfriend is an electrician, which is very handy. He blows leaves, washes our cars and has installed prison-grade floodlights that discourage the scary vagrants who used to sleep in the doorways.

Also, a big plus, she only rents to interesting people, like the photographer in the studio downstairs who specializes in pregnancy portraits. The other live-work space is rented to another photographer and his slim, Rollerderbying writer girlfriend. In the storefront, there’s a quiet and accommodating guy who repairs guitars and racing bicycles. The apartment across from us has seen more turnover. Amanda and her beautiful photographs used to live there in splendid organization. When she left – we were very sad – we got a recent divorcee who lasted three months before retreating back to the suburbs. Now, we have a hip and private technology girl who has a cool job at a travel site that takes her off to Belize and other places extraordinary.

It’s all very trendy and integrated into the community. Which is to say, I guess, Californian. Right?

When we stay at R’s parents’ house in Sonoma, we work across from each other at the dining room table. R is finishing the last of his overdue taxes.

E: Do you need the table?
R: No.

Ten minutes later, he lays out four rows of four envelopes each, pushes my laptop and papers out of the way and lays out a fifth row.

E: Excuse me?
R: Eminent domain.

(I wish they’d taken Justice Souter’s house by the way. Brilliant idea.)

A conversation between me and my Russian trainer. I am currently injured and down for the count.

Me: I can feel my pull-ups slipping away with each day I have to sit on the couch.
E: You should not be so…
Me:…frustrated?
E: Paranoid.

Neighbor: I just took your clothes out of the dryer. I’m not sure they were dry. But they were done.
Me: Um…OK.

Question #1: In dryer parlance, don’t “dry” and “done” mean the same thing?*

Question #2: Do you often leave the house and realize halfway to work that your pressed shirt is clinging to your recently showered body and that your hair is dripping onto your New York Times?

I guess it’s possible that the word “dryer” means, “A machine that will render clothing dryer,” rather than the writer’s assumed meaning, “A machine that will render clothing dry.” Maybe. Could be. Maybe.

This is the kind of thing that put the fear of God into my mother that I would go into advertising. Honda came out with this ad a while ago. I hear it’s the real thing: they kept running it until it all worked. No CGI, no editing.

Check it out here.