Displaced

Party City is a paradoxical place. For starters, it’s not really a city. Just FYI. And the party they refer to is not being thrown by them and is not currently underway. So that’s disappointing.

It turns out you have to throw the party. You go to their non-city, their geographical coordinates corresponding more to what you might call a “store” and pay them for all the supplies you will need to throw your own party. As long as your party theme is “Barbie Princess,” “Mylar Gone Wild,” or “Spongebob,” that is. If your party theme is “I have taste and class,” you might want to collect your goods from a place of commerce whose name is not spelled out in giant, crooked, primary colored letters.

I do not always have taste nor class and I am sorry to report that I have a substantial cache of both irony and sarcasm, so I stop by Party City regularly. Not to be too hard on myself, I also have a one year old balloon fan living with me, so there’s that.

There are two things I used to be able to count on at Party City: a.) the goods would be poor quality, and b.) the experience would be moderately depressing. The latter was a function of the former + minimal wage staff + aisles and aisles of tackiness stacked ceiling high. At least I knew what I was getting: noisemakers, plastic plates, and a taste of permanent recession.

But that’s all a thing of the past. Now it’s a different story. Now, there’s Hi Float.

What is Hi Float? As if the store were not already pushing the limit on plastic per square inch, now you can coat the inside of your plastic helium balloons with it. It’s supposed to keep them high and, er, floating. And it adds ten cents to every balloon sale. Which is why I declined the first time they offered it. My reasoning was that balloons themselves are plastic, so what’s the point of a little jacket of more plastic laminated to the inside of plastic?

I’ll tell you: awesomeness is the point. Airborne awesomeness coming out of an industrial-sized squirt pump.

Since we had already spent upwards of a six bazillion dollars on Astrid’s birthday party, what was another $3.60 to test out the limits of our balloons’ floatiness?

Two weeks. That’s how long one of the yellow balloons lasted. And it only died at two weeks because it was murdered by the housecleaner, not because it was lying without dignity on the floor. It had sunk to the level of the door handle but it was still floating. The other 35 balloons had called it quits sooner, but at least half lasted a week. Read my lips, people: one week.

This is revolutionary. Helium balloons historically have the lifespan of a fruit fly. Can you imagine seeing that same fruit fly that was working on your bananas on Thursday still having at it a week Sunday later? No. You can’t. Neither can I. And that’s not just because all fruit flies look alike. And you shouldn’t be saying things like that anyway: it’s racist. Although, let’s be honest, fruit flies probably say that about us too.

Here’s what I want: lifestyle Hi Float. Let’s find a real applications for this miracle of plastic. My Life: Now With More Hi Float! Hi Float, The Lifestyle Pump. Feeling a midweek lull? Stop by for some Hi Float! Abandon reality television marathons! Stop watching from the floor – start living at the ceiling! Learn to whistle! Loom rugs! Win friends! Influence people! Run a mile without stopping (once)! Feel optimistic about your pointless corporate job (briefly)! Become more waterproof!

I think I’m onto something. If we can consume a McDonald’s Happy Meal made mainly out of saturated fat, what could possibly go wrong consuming shots of liquid plastic? Nothing, that’s what. I’m ordering some. Don’t try to stop me. Really. Don’t. My mouse is hovering over the “Order Now” button. I’m not kidding. I’ll see you on the ceiling.

I know it doesn’t mean much to your day, but getting our pot rack hooked up to our ceiling has meant a lot to the OCD gnome on my shoulder who has been breathing heavily every time he sees the pots and pans stacked on top of each other’s non-stick surfaces because they have nowhere else to go. I know my gnome could be spending his energy elsewhere – like on reorganizing the dryer lint – but there was no convincing him, so we finally put up the pot rack.

In the process of hanging it, we uncovered further evidence that our house’s skeleton was put together by a crack addict. There is no clear pattern of studs in the walls or ceilings: the stud finders we’ve used (all three of them) indicate that the “crossbeams” start and stop at random. Which means the house might come down at any moment. I either try not to think about this threat, or, when I do, I channel my anxiety into getting excited about the quirky and unknown nature of the future. Ha ha. Ha. Hmmm.

Anyway, tracking down the half-beams to sink the pot rack’s screws into meant making a lot of pencil marks on the ceiling. The gnome, pleased as he is about the rack, is a little irritated by the marks. Erasing them however required a.) an eraser which might or might not be somewhere in R’s very cluttered office upstairs, and b.) some time standing on a stool.

Two steps seemed like a lot.

I know. Don’t even. I have a small child and a lot of competition for my time so just back up on off me. We’re not even at the worst part yet, so save some energy.

I didn’t erase the marks.

Instead, a few days later, when I was in a 5&10 type store, get this: I bought an eraser. Yes, I was that daunted by the prospect of possibly fruitlessly climbing a flight of stairs and spending two and a half minutes tracking down the eraser we probably already have, that I paid a bored clerk 99 cents to give me another one.

And you know what? I think that was a brilliant solution to my problem. It was worth every one of those 99 pennies.

Well, until it didn’t work on the pencil marks at all, that is.

I can feel you and the gnome judging me for my $1 solution to my tiny problem, but I’m still not ashamed.

So now we’re back to square one of the new, not-at-all improved process: a.) drive back to the 5&10 and find a different eraser which might or might not work, b.) give them money for it, and c.) spend some more time on a stool.

No, it hasn’t occurred to me to go upstairs and find that eraser we already have. Just be quiet.

I don’t know if this is going to happen. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Maybe you and the gnome should go get a stiff drink and check back later.

It’s been time for a while. Everyone else did it when they were teenagers or college students, but I’ve been holding onto mine as those around me fell to necessity and society’s pressure. Last month, I met the man who would handle it for me and, after brief social banter and a discussion of technicalities, I scheduled a time to abandon the few and become one of the many.

My wisdom teeth were coming out.

They were “erupted” (good) but not “impacted” (bad), so it was determined that only two of my remaining three would be taken and recovery would be brief.

(I was surprised I only had three. I thought I still had four. My dentist never mentioned one was missing and I don’t remember ever having it out, so either it’s still in there (bad), it fell to a particularly raucous bit of my late twenties (bad), or the tooth fairy has become professionally over-aggressive. Well, or I was abducted. Bad and bad.)

I scheduled the operation carefully to fall on a day when R. wouldn’t be traveling, the nanny would be with A., and I could devote a couple days to recovery.

That didn’t so much work out.

I cracked one of the two teeth two weeks ago, the day the nanny left on vacation, and rode out the week on Vicodin and Codeine until the earliest available surgery date, which was, naturally, the day our Labor Day weekend guests arrived from New York. Great start.

Thirty seconds before the anesthesia kicked in, the doctor offered to remove a little salivary cyst on my lip as well. Excellent. Two for one. Turns out complementing stitches top and bottom on the back left of your mouth with a set on the front left of your mouth makes for some serious pain and impediment. You know what else doesn’t help? Slamming the left side of your face into the bathroom doorframe the next day when you swing around too quickly on pain medication that, apparently, affects your ability to judge distances.

I hit the frame so hard that I and everyone in the other room thought I broke my nose. I took a chunk out of my tongue because it was between my teeth fiddling with my lip’s stitches, and I narrowly averted a black eye by icing my face for the next two hours as the bruising pooled below my left eye. Yeah, left side again. My glasses saved me: the upper frame has a slide of white paint an inch long.

The next morning, I careened down the last five steps of the staircase while I was carrying the baby. I slid on something beneath my heel (an hilarious banana peel?) and nearly threw A. into the wall at the bottom of the stairs, but managed to save us both by taking some additional bruises on the arms. You can’t say I don’t have follow-through, right?

I thought I was done, but no.

Yesterday afternoon, I fell on our steep concrete front stairs, also while carrying the baby, this time going up. My knee and shin are blacker for it, my pain quotient continues to climb, but again, the baby remains unscathed.

The nanny is still out, and R. is on the other coast for a few days, so A. and I are muddling through the pain and its killers on our own. It’s been a difficult week, to say the least. I have to say, with all the accidents, I do feel as though my wisdom has been diminished. I wonder how you get that back. I think I need it, or I’m going to end up in the hospital. Or as the lost Marx Brother. One or the other.

There are people who love the gym and the people who don’t. I don’t. I use the gym to further my plans of world domination. Meaning, if you’re not planning on going to the Olympics, why go to the gym? Why bike if you aren’t headed for the Tour de France? Why run if you aren’t after the New York City Marathon?

“Well,” you say, “there’s also the issue of your basic health and fitness to be attended to.”

I see your point. I do. It’s just not my deal. The gym is super boring. Competition is where it’s at in sports for me. I tend to be a athletics bulimic: binge when there’s a goal, purge when there isn’t. Aim for everything or just skip it.

“But sports can be fun,” you persist.

I agree. Especially when you triumph.

I know. I hear you. This isn’t the healthy approach for body or mind. If the most adaptive of the species survive, I’m in trouble, ’cause my attitude hasn’t worked well for me. Or my knees. Or ribs. Or hips, neck or back. And I’m still not world champion of anything.

The last time I was in a binge phase, I was training 30-40 hours a week on the trapeze. It was awesome and nerve-wracking. I had bloody palms, huge shoulders and rope burns and bruises all over my limbs and joints. I’ve never been stronger or more tired. That career ended with some irresponsible spotting leading to a couple bad falls that led to a fractured rib and a dislocated one that will never heal.

That event was the equivalent of running my Ferrari into a brick wall: now I have to get a Volvo and drive the speed limit because I can’t survive another accident. Well, maybe not a Volvo: they’re nice and the little ten-year-old Bostonian Izod-lover in me has a soft spot for them. Let’s say I’ve been downgraded to one of those rolling bubbles at the gym so I don’t hurt myself again. Or more.

So you know what I do just to get back at the universe for not being able to obsessively overcompete? I don’t go to the gym at all. So there. I’m sure someone out there is learning a lesson… Right? RIGHT???

*sigh*

Lately however I’ve cracked. I’ve kind of started working out. Accidentally. And only kind of. Even though I don’t think I’m going to be the get a yellow jersey for it. It’s a big concession.

And it’s not really working out per se. It’s walking. But we live on the side of a giant San Francisco hill, so a straight sprint skyward with a baby and a stroller probably counts as a workout, especially since I haven’t gotten any organized exercise in a while.

And by “organized,” I mean, “doing repetitive things on machines where the weight stays in the same place unless you personally stop and move it.” What I have been doing is disorganized. It involves suddenly lifting or catching or pushing up a slide an ever-growing weight (OK, “child”) which is usually in motion itself and whose bulk usually falls on my muscles at an uncomfortable angle that is not ergonomically healthy, tested or approved by the National Council on Fitness, a very thin blonde celebrity or a inhumanly fit former monk/kickboxer.

I’ve taken on the vertical walk in the mornings because there is an odd hour between breakfast and naptime (our daughter’s, not mine – I’m not that much of a sloth) and there is espresso at the midpoint of the rainbow. It’s too early to be too hot to climb the hills, or for me to be awake and focused on anything including hating that hill or not being the Most Best Hill Climber Ever. The need for coffee carries me upward.

But do you think they have that Best Hill Climber thing? ‘Cause if they do, I should definitely get on that. Or maybe Most Moderate Worker Outer? No. That’s not a thing.

I do have a yellow sweatshirt around here somewhere. Maybe I’ll start wearing that to make myself feel more competitive.

I noticed you before in the gallery. You were being loud and sounded angry even though it was a Maira Kalman exhibit. She’s not loud or angry. She’s all about being good-natured and wry and taking things in stride. And being amused. You didn’t seem amused.

I don’t know what’s up with you today. Maybe it’s every day. You are in a wheelchair so maybe it’s that. That would be difficult. I don’t know what I’d do if I were in a wheelchair. I hope I’d be one of those inspirational people who take up extreme skiing or sailboarding and get profiled in People or on Good Morning America. I think it would take me a really long time to get there though. I mean the being great about it, not the sailboarding. The sailboarding might take me forever. (I’ve never had very good balance.)

Whatever it is that’s bothering you though, it’s not nice for the rest of us if you take it out on a stranger who didn’t know you were waiting for the mom-with-kids/handicapped bathroom stall in the really nicely designed ladies room at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Honestly, I didn’t know you were waiting when I took my time sorting A. out. Do you think I would’ve kept you waiting on purpose? I hope not. That would be a tough way to go through your day, thinking people who don’t even know you are purposely being rotten.

Not to sound like a mom, but you really didn’t need to take that tone with me. If you’d just politely said you were waiting or made your presence known – a slight cough, an amusing note under the door – I’d have been just as obliging, I promise, but you wouldn’t have put that little bit of unpleasantness into the world by making me and little A. feel bad. I know you can’t feel good about it either. No one does when they’re mean, however justified they feel they are. It backs up on you. I know. I’ve been there.

Please, next time give me a little more credit for being a person who doesn’t knowingly inconvenience strangers. And remember: other people don’t think about us as much as we’d all like to think that they do. Which means that when they drive by you in their cars, even if they seem like they’re looking right at you, they probably didn’t register your amazing ensemble, the one with the alluring hat and the matching socks that you wore specially. (Don’t worry: the people who love you did and that’s what matters.)

But it also means they didn’t mean to cut you off in traffic. They were probably thinking about something else entirely. Like how their boss yelled at them this afternoon or that maybe they married the wrong person. Or maybe they’re rushing to save a kitten, one of the really adorable ones.

Of course, there’s a very slight possibility that you’re right, that that person really did mean to intentionally rain on your day. I’m sorry if that happens to you regularly. That has to be difficult to bear. But take a moment, just today, to consider whether that’s really true, even if you really, really believe it is deep down inside. Think hard. Is the world really not on your side on purpose? Between ourselves, I doubt it. You know why? Because I wasn’t, even though you thought I was.

We – everyone, all of us – are exceptionally bad guessers. It’s the scared part of us that thinks we’re great at guessing and tells us our worst guess is the correct one. The fact is, most of the time, we just don’t have any idea what’s going on with other people, so we may as well decide to believe the nice thing, right? Because in the end, it will make everyone’s day, including yours and mine and tiny A.’s, a little brighter. And we can all use a little sun.

Have a nice afternoon.

Thanks to numupdraft for the photo.

Overheard: “When I was in rehab, I drank Listerine and, in the spirit of rigorous honesty, I revised my day count.”

That sounds like the statement of a rigorously honest man. Unfortunately, the man’s voice sounds like the voice of a middle-aged jerk who probably doesn’t call his kids on their birthdays.

Another few steps ahead:

She stands four feet away from him, her body already half-turned towards the subway stairs, “Well…thanks for dinner!” He looks disappointed.

No kiss.

I try to type, “I’m at Pegu,” into my phone. My phone suggests, “I’m at Orgies.” No. I’m not. Stop it, phone.

I am going on a hike today. I am not a hiker. This is what hiking is to me:

You drive somewhere so you can walk somewhere. There is no there there when you get there and you do nothing while you are “there”. Then you come back.

I’ll let you know how it goes. I think my attitude about the whole thing is going to be a big help.

There is a man who stands out in the Business Class lounge. He is wearing one of those square European suits and rimless glasses. He looks successful. This is not what makes him unique.

He is talking very quietly into the voice piece of his cell phone headset. I’m sitting ten feet away and I can’t hear what he’s saying. He’s been at it for almost two hours. It’s starting to get to me.

Is he just moving his lips, like a Braille phone? Or something. I don’t think they have Braille phones where you just whisper. They might though.

Is he a mobile phone sex operator? Do they have those? Like in those movies where the techie bad guy bounces “the signal” all over the world so it’s untraceable. I thought it was just “the signal” bouncing around, but maybe there’s really a guy and this is him.

Or maybe he’s just the one, single, only polite public-cell-phone-using guy on the planet. Could be. I think the phone sex thing is more likely though, don’t you?

Note: This is one of two entries this weekend. The first was a perfectly harmless review of Cellular, which I hope you read. It’s below. In its second version because of what happened in this first piece.*sigh. Well, now there’s more of me to go around.

I realize that I am not the first to comment on the Evil Empire of the North. I am not even the 4000th. I am likely also not the first to make another erroneous decision to stay on the Windows platform when faced with a choice of new computers. A couple years ago, Apple aimed a whole ad campaign at people like me, intent on winning over the sunk-cost Windows crowd. I feel like a Nader supporter in Florida: I just didn’t think this through properly.

I have one reason for my stupidity and recalcitrance in not having gotten that Apple: I have an outstanding boyfriend with a Windows server who provides patient and (unfortunately for him) frequent tech support, Windows only. Of course, I ignored the oft-made point that Apple doesn’t require that kind of support. Which brings us to the second reason I didn’t think of before. I am a baroque, macro-using New Yorker who wants what she wants now and cannot fathom a system-shift with so many shortcuts to set up. Frankly, it would make me feel inadequate and we all know that if mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy. So really, I did it for you.

Of course, today, I feel worse than inadequate. I feel that violated, object-less fury you get when you know that your righteous anger will make not even a scrap of difference in the situation or have even the slightest effect on the offender. The schoolyard bully has moved into my home. Hell, he’s moved into my office and there isn’t enough room in here for the both of us, so someone had to go. Last night it was me.

Here’s the backstory. I got a brand, spanking new IBM in June (see above for irrational justification). It was a package deal: new computer = Windows XP. So far, “XP” seems to be some sort of numeral/acronym meaning “We have round cornered pop-ups now.” That’s really the only perceptible difference. Until last night. MS (short for “Microsoft”, or, aptly, “Multiple Sclerosis”) prompts users to update their operating systems often because they have no conscience and keep releasing shoddy code. (They don’t tell you that, but I can read between the lines.)

At the end of the update, the window asks if I’d like to reboot now or later. Invariably, as I am generally doing what people do on computers, namely WORK, I say “later” and go on with my day. This system has always worked for me and Windows 2000. We understood my “later” to actually mean “later” and we all trusted that I would eventually reboot and that working on a newly and possibly incompletely updated system was not in my best interest but was, at the end of the day, my friggin’ stupid choice. Good riddance and done deal.

XP, however, has a new “feature”: a window pops up every 20 minutes asking me again and again if I’d like to reboot. This is, needless to say, an annoyance and only makes me more belligerent in my refusals.

“Bastards!” I say. “Get off my screen and return from whence you came!” (I assume the “whence” is someplace punishing and unpleasant.)

It turns out however that Windows is one step ahead of me now, having set up a fully functional base in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Once I’ve refused their request to intrude on my day several times, they start getting pushy. It’s like MS thinks that because they made the op sys, it’s really their computer that they’re just letting me use. A window comes up:

“Pshaw, silly user: we’re just going to go ahead and reboot now because we know what’s best for you. How you like them apples, be-atch?”

or words to that effect. Unfortunately, when they posed this rhetorical question, I was away from my computer, having left open several Word documents on which I was working and which I had not yet named or saved because I was writing furiously and then on my way out the door (to a mediocre night, just to heighten my misery). Why would I worry about this? Never before has my computer shut itself down spontaneously in my absence without my permission. I understand that my audience will be chortling,

“Oh that wacky Emma! What a rookie mistake!”

But here’s my point: aside from my bad habits, what #$(*#&$ computer program closes down the entire system without permission and ignores all program warnings that data has not been saved? You know which ones? VIRUSES, that’s which ones. Except you can generally recover data from a virus strike, given enough time. Even in a blue-screen system crash, Word will offer temp file auto saves of your open docs. In my case, that means the version from two minutes ago.

Not XP and that jolly crew up in Redmond: they run my world now, so they’re fine with agreeing amongst themselves not to save the temps and shutting me down. It’s their own little masterful virus: you can’t uninstall it, you can’t clean it, you can’t live on the faith that some Norwegian virus-tracker guy whose main personal relationship is with a tiny painted figurine is going to eventually get ’em with his rapier-like code and triumph for us all. All you get is another window,

“Now isn’t that better? For your added convenience we had a look at some of your other saved documents and went ahead and deleted a bunch of stuff out of them too. Plus, we messed with Quicken, just to give you an added sumpin’ sumpin’ to look forward to. You can thank us later. Cheerio!”

For all of you whom I promised to call this weekend, I apologize: I’m busy re-constructing the last week of my life.