Some Crazy Garbage

Exhibit F in the Divorce Proceeding

2009-01-05T20:45:00.000-08:00

I am a baseball fan, and a relatively serious one at that. Of 162 Mets games every year, I figure to watch all or part of well over 100 of them. I feel happy when the Mets succeed; I ache when they struggle. I am in a baseball fantasy league and before I joined it, I still read the boxscores in the paper every morning.

I love, absolutely love going to the ballpark -- the sights, the sounds, the smells. And the only thing I love more than just going to the ballpark is going there with my kids. I'm not sure why I enjoy that experience so much...I don't have lots of memories of going to Mets games with my father. I do have very clear memories of watching games with him; when Dwight Gooden was a young phenom, electrifying Shea Stadium with his pitches, my father would keep a tally of Gooden's strikeouts on his own sheet of paper, as if Gooden's strikeout count wasn't a fact of constant discussion on the game broadcast. But that's what you do when you're excited about your team.

I have taken Max to a Mets game every year since he was born (except when he was 1 1/2; that year we just went to a Cyclones game), and Eliza joined us for the first time last summer. Max really likes going to baseball games, almost exclusively for the food. He likes the atmosphere, too -- cheering "Let's go Mets" and "every-body clap your hands," and he gets excited when a Mets player hits a home run and I point out to him the gigantic red "Big Apple" that emerges from an upside-down tophat beyond center field. But he's never given a rat's ass about the game itself. Whether at Shea, or sitting at home on the couch with me, whenever I've tried to explain what is going on he either tunes me out or tells me to stop talking. I figured that he'd eventually come around.

Who knew that a book about a team of monkeys losing a hotly-contested baseball game to a team of hippos would facilitate his eventual interest in the rules of baseball, but he wasn't understanding certain references in the book and he was demanding answers. Last night I started explaining some of the basics as we read the book. Tonight Cathleen read it to him and he again was asking questions. I grabbed a handful of small Shrek and Star Wars action figures and set up a mock baseball infield with boardbooks as the bases (1st base had to be replaced after Eliza took interest with our choice).

I started to explain how the pitcher (dragon) throws the ball into the hitter (blind mouse); if the outfielder (donkey) catches the hit on the fly, the hitter is out and sits. But if the ball gets through or drops through, it's a hit, and the hitter goes to 1st base or perhaps farther. I then played through a series of hitters (gingerbread man, Han Solo, some Shrek character I couldn't identify) getting consecutive hits, leading up to the point where one of them was finally forced home.

As I showed Max the blind mouse crossing home plate, I stated "and then this guy..." when suddenly Cathleen, who had been relatively quiet and deferential during my tutorial, jumps up and exclaims "hits a home run and the apple comes out of the hat!" Max jumps up in responsive joy. Cathleen shouts "home run! home run!" Max jumps up and down shouting "home run! home run!" Eliza is also jumping up and down.

I am staring in utter disbelief. Are you shitting me, Cathleen?

I started shouting, "no, no, it's not a home run, it's just a run." But Max would hear nothing of it. He even accused me of being a liar at that point. Lesson ended. Baseball knowledge warped.

Surpriseless

2008-12-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Late this afternoon our doorbell rings. Because our intercom is broken, these days I hit the buzzer to enable the front door to open, and then I walk out of my apartment to see who is entering our building. Nine times out of ten it is a package courier who shouts up hello and places a package on the bureau we have in the downstairs hallway (unless, of course, they need a signature). So imagine my surprise, today, when the guy carrying the package into my building was not only not wearing a uniform, but he came bolting up the stairs to meet me.

Holding out a small-ish Amazon.com box, he starts rambling, "I live next door and we got this package and since my mom's name is Cathleen I didn't even look at it carefully and just opened it, but then I realized it wasn't meant for me, and so I'm sorry that the box is opened but it's a Garmin sportswatch and it's all in there."

I looked at him, blankly.

He extended his hand, "I'm Justin." I think he said Justin. He just ruined the surprise of the birthday gift that Cathleen got for me; why the fuck should I care what his name is? As he descended back down the stairs, he apologized again for opening the box, and then added an enthusiastic, "enjoy that Garmin sportswatch!"

This is December, right? Justin might not have known that it's my birthday in five days, but it's my impression that lots of people are ordering gifts for other people for other reasons at this time of year. I kind of wish he had taken that into consideration before ruining the surprise.

Not that anything was truly ruined for me. Most of the enjoyment of the actual surprise is all for the surprisor. Hell, I'm gonna be really psyched to have that Garmin watch whether I know about it now or first learned about it five days from now. But Cathleen has been robbed of the joy of watching me unwrap and discover the cool, thoughtful gift. Stupid Justin.

Intimate moment

2008-11-24T21:27:00.000-08:00

Hey blog, I miss you.

I miss you, too, rick.

After Thanksgiving. I'll be back. I promise.

Sweet.

Poop Game Revisited

2008-10-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Cathleen and I were chatting in the kitchen this evening, when we looked over and witnessed the kids playing the following game:

Max was laying on the floor, and Eliza would walk over and step on him, at which point he would yell out, "you stepped in poop!" and they would collapse into each other, laughing hysterically, before repeating the entire scene again.

I mean, even if we were to magically find a way to completely housebreak our dogs, it is just too damn late. Our kids are indelibly warped.

There can be little doubt now, right?

2008-09-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

I mean, you have to be a true believer at this point, one with unshakable faith in the greater power, to deny that capitalism is a complete failure. After years and years of deregulation, what do we get -- the greatest financial catastrophe since the catastrophe in the 30s that prompted us to start regulating the banks in the first place. You don't have to get caught up in the fact that capitalism inevitably creates class divisions, concentrations of wealth and deprivations of wealth, winners and losers. Shit, we've known that for years and are little bothered by it. But with every capitalist on Wall Street running to the government for help right now, and only the monied reactionaries in Congress adamantly holding out for a market correction (i.e., grand-scale suffering for those who do not have money or are about to lose it all), there can be no doubt now. Capitalism is a failure, and the only way that we can continue with our capitalist system is by propping it up, again, with government intervention.

Anybody feel like whipping out the "socialism" card in our next discussion about universal healthcare?

What a fungi am I

2008-09-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

It has been a bizarre six weeks for this guy's body. At the end of July I wound up with ringworm all over my torso. Ringworm, for the uninitiated, is the most misappropriately named medical condition out there. Worm? Not at all. It's actually a skin fungus -- the tinea fungus, to be exact. If you get the tinea fungus on your feet, it's called athlete's foot. If you get the tinea fungus on your crotch, it's call jock itch. Anywhere else and it's called ringworm. Granted, it does end up forming a ring-like patch on your skin that itches a little, but the very name ringworm makes it that much skeevier an experience.

It turns out that ringworm is wickedly contagious, and you can spread it all over yourself by scratching it (which I wasn't doing) or by something as innocuous as rubbing a towel on your body to dry yourself off after a shower. By the time I had figured out what was going on, I had it all over my stomach and back. Fortunately, they do amazing things with topical ointments these days, and within a couple of weeks it was gone.

Then, about a month later, I woke up with an earache. It was pretty severe, so I made an appointment to see my doctor the next day. He looked in my ear, declared it an ear infection and put me on antibiotics for ten days. Of course, I hadn't had any congestion leading up to the ear infection (or any other typical cause), so my doctor told me that if it hadn't cleared up within a week to call him. Well, I saw marginal progress at best by week's end. Although the ache had subsided from "chronic" to only "most of the time," my head felt like someone had pounded my left ear full of clay. I was half deaf and felt like I wanted to clear my ear out with an awl. I called my doctor, and he referred me to an otologist (ear specialist).

The ear guy peeked into my ear and said "antibiotics aren't going to take care of that." Turns out that I have, you guessed it, a fungal infection. This one is called aspergillus, and is treated with the same stuff you put on the ringworm, except in eardrop form. One week of the drops later, and the fungus is almost entirely gone.

A couple of thoughts, of course, come to mind. Ahem, why the hell am I suddenly so vulnerable to every little fungus? According to the doctor, and based on my own obsessive online research, it's just one of those things that happens.

And it's bad enough to get ringworm, but a fungus in the ear? The ear? I basically had the equivalent of a yeast infection in my ear. I mean, if that's not some sort of bizarre twist on a Nantucketian limerick. I have no idea what to expect next.

The Hiatus is Over

2008-09-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted a blog in almost two months. Does that make me a bad blogger? Perhaps.

I've been busy...vacation in Canada, sleep-depriving Olympics-watching addiction, unhealthy Democratic National Convention watching, swamped at work, etc., etc. Sure, there was plenty to blog about. Hell, rarely a day went by where I didn't think that X or Y would be good blog fodder, but then I'd find myself waking up the next morning, postless.

But it is time to move on. Last week marked the one year anniversary of this blog, and damn if I don't feel a year older for it.

Dinner at our house

2008-07-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

Cathleen cooks up a savory dish of sauteed organic vegetables (from our Community Supported Agriculture share) over pasta. After a few bites, Eliza starts placing her pasta into her glass of chocolate milk. Cathleen and I glance at each other and silently shrug. Eliza then picks up her glass and drinks the milk.

Moments later, Max starts talking.

Max: This winter I am going to find two snowflakes that are exactly alike.
Cathleen: You know, Max, that there are no two snowflakes that are exactly alike, just like humans.
Max(without even looking up): You'll see.

Still here

2008-07-22T20:13:00.001-07:00

Wow, it has been 19 days since I last posted. I'm finding it more difficult to find the time to wax poetic in this forum. I typically post at night, and lately I've been consumed with watching baseball, playing ultimate, and going to sleep, all of which seem to preclude a certain amount of blogability.

Not that I've been without thoughts and experiences. July has been a busy month, with highs and lows.

I flew out to L.A. by my lonesome on July 6th to attend Sameer and Shruti's wedding. It was a marvelous happening at a semi-exotic locale. It was a traditional Indian (Gujarati) wedding, or at least as traditional as I could tell, which made it a fascinating cultural experience for me, on top of the fact that I was so damn happy to watch Sameer get married. I felt a little bit of the outsider all weekend, given that I was "the high school friend" who did not fit neatly into any of the larger groups of friends, but Sameer, not surprisingly, has surrounded himself with warm, sincere and interesting people, and they welcomed me into their fold with open arms. Very good time for me, though I missed Cathleen and the kids. This past weekend Cathleen and I attended a larger Connecticut reception hosted by Sameer's parents. Mike also attended and we were most interested in hanging out with each other (something that we don't get to do too often anymore, certainly not as adults).

I then had to return to my office to fully confront the reality that Bloomberg and the City Council, in what can only be described as an odious and cowardly move, completely gutted HIV Legal Services funding as part of an approximately $70 million wack at human services programs. Sure, they managed to find a way to keep the middle class property tax rebate in the budget (thank goodness I'll still get my $400!) but they abandoned the City's most vulnerable residents. My program took a $111,000 hit -- I'm not only at risk of having to lay off two-three employees, but unless I find alternate funding we are going to be without funding to provide housing legal services (eviction prevention work), which just happens to be the most important issue our clients face. Needless to say, I was pretty depressed for a few days, but adversity kind of gets my juices flowing and I'm resolved to find alternate funding. Game on. We already completed a grant application that I feel pretty good about it, and we're pursuing a couple of other avenues.

SLIPPING has been garnering great reviews. We don't know yet how well it has bee selling, but there's an incredibly positive vibe about the book lingering in the air. Maybe that's a bit naive, but Cathleen has been receiving such overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback that I feel confident in saying that some identifiable level of "success" has been achieved. So far two otherwise-unconnected young readers have emailed her after having read the book to express how much they enjoyed it. Fanmail! How cool!

Finally, for reasons I need not get into here, I was recently forced to confront my father's death in a way I had not had to do in years. And you know what? Twenty-three years later and his death is still painful for me. As difficult as it was to be taken back to that time and encounter those feelings of loss and grief, it was strangely reassuring, like I hadn't lost my connection with him after all of these years. In a choice between feeling something or nothing, I'll always take the something.

Slipmania

2008-07-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's here. And there. And somewhat everywhere. SLIPPING is out. June 24th was the official release date, which mainly meant that amazon.com shipped out it's pre-orders. Our pre-ordered copy arrived the next day. Yes, I said our pre-ordered copy. Cathleen's contract with Bloomsbury guaranteed her 25 author's copies, but she was so excited at seeing the book listed on amazon a few months ago that she ordered one.

A day or two later Lorri emailed around photos of Ari standing in a western New York Barnes & Noble pointing to copies of SLIPPING on the bookshelf, and holding it in the store. Very cool stuff.

Around mid-week, Cathleen's editor forwarded to her a PDF from Publisher's Weekly with their forthcoming review. SLIPPING received a "Signature" review, and it was fairly glowing. Here's a clip from a New York Sun article in 2005 explaining the significance of such a review:

PW reviews are important because they can jump-start the publicity for a book or can, just as easily, push a book a lot closer to oblivion. PW claims that its policy of unsigned reviewing is done not to shield reviewers but to ensure a consistency of standard and tone.

The magazine's new editor, Sara Nelson, who is making major changes in the publication, said, "We hope to have a signature review in many issues. We want to match up a fairly prominent book with a fairly prominent reviewer. Frank McCourt is, of course, a very prominent reviewer. We will still have non-bylined reviews. But certain books just seem to scream out for special treatment."

So, you know, it was pretty exciting to see that review. It was published in the June 30th edition of Publisher's Weekly.

Last night we hosted a book release party at Pacific Standard, a great little pub around the corner from our home. We had platters of food from Fairway, I had ordered custom-made M&Ms in two different shades of blue that had "Slipping" printed on them, and there was an employee of a local bookstore, Book Court, hawking copies of the book. Approximately 30 friends and family showed up to celebrate with Cathleen and listen to her read from the book, but she had laryngitis! Are you kidding! Thanks to drastic measures, she had enough of her voice to socialize, but I had to step in as her reader proxy. On one level it was disappointing for her to not be able to read to this crowd; on the other hand she really enjoyed listening to her book being read out loud. And I had a lot of fun reading it. Woohoo, we were all having fun!

We still haven't seen it in a bookstore ourselves. Maybe we'll do that this weekend. It's pretty good times right now.

I am fuel, you are friends, we got the means to make amends

2008-06-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hey look at me, titling consecutive blog entries with song lyrics. And hey, look at me, writing consecutive blog entries about Sameer.

He and I went to the Pearl Jam concert in the Garden on Tuesday night. Eddie Vedder has to be the most essentially cool person in the world. Could not take my eyes off of him, no matter what was going on in the concert. The band played for three and a half hours, and it was sensational. I was particularly psyched that they played "Leash" and "Given to Fly"; was kind of hoping to hear "World Wide Suicide" and "Jeremy" but didn't. The concert featured a healthy mix of old, new and everything in between. There are few experiences that approximate the energy of 20,000 people singing along in unison to a completely electrified band. It was so loud that I would not have been able to tell if I was singing along or not had my throat not been hurting from the effort.

Delight, delight, delight in our youth...

All summer long, we sang a song

2008-06-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sameer Ashar and I have been friends since the 8th grade. At the end of the 8th grade, some high school kids came to our middle school to recruit folks for the debate team. Sameer and I attended that meeting, listened to their nerdy pitch, and decided we would be debate partners the next year. We spent the next four years of high school developing a debate partnership that turned us into a nationally competitive team (arguably a top 10 or 12 team in the country)(arguably...get it?), while cultivating a deep, deep friendship. Since high school it has seemed, with some exception, like we've never been farther than 20 minutes apart from each other: we went to colleges 20 minutes apart from each other, law schools 20 minutes apart from each other, we worked for a while in downtown Manhattan near each other, and now we live about ten blocks from each other in Brooklyn. He is terrible at returning phone calls, is almost guaranteed to be late to any appointment, is a frickin Yankees fan, and is one of the very best people I know in the world. And, finally, that boy is getting married.

Last Saturday I gathered with four other of Sameer's friends (Ajit, Deepu, Tito and George) to engage in that right of passage called "the bachelor party." We drove up to Cornwall-on-Hudson and kayaked on the Hudson River. It was a gloriously sunny day, and I could not have imagined doing anything better than kayaking on that expanse of river (and off through a marshy tributary). When we finished the kayak trip, I had to teach Tito how to use his keys to get into his car, and then we dined on pizza and ice cream at a local joint. We drove back to Brooklyn, dined at a trendy but middling Mexican restaurant in Red Hook called Alma, and then headed to a karaoke bar.

I've never done karaoke. Honest. It's not just that I've never sung karaoke; I've never actually been to a karaoke gathering of any sort. The bar that we went to (the Hope 'n Anchor in Red Hook) had the kind of karaoke where it is basically open mike at the bar. You would peruse a book that listed the 15,000 different songs that you could sing, and then submit a post-it with your song on it to the 7-foot trans woman who was hosting the karaoke. Really, she had to be 7 feet tall, and she wore a glorious blonde afro wig. Sameer led off for us with Pearl Jam's "Elderly Woman behind the counter..." and then it was game on. Deepu, Ajit and Tito sang a range of pop hits (Sweet Home Alabama, I'm Just a Gigolo, etc.). Sameer and Ajit performed a duet to The Killers' "All These things that I've Become" ("I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier..."). The pressure on me to sing was mounting.

I don't know what other karaoke scenes are like, but with the exception of our little crew, this seemed like a fairly serious karaoke scene. Every member of the bar's staff, including our 7-foot hostess, would take turns singing a song and they were all amazing. There was another woman in the bar who simply had a professional-sounding voice. When she belted out "Me and Bobby McGee," you almost believed that Janis Joplin had been resurrected. I was intimidated, yes.

But a couple of whiskeys in me, and singing became an inevitability. I searched for a short song, and came up with Sinatra's "Summer Wind." I started in a bit late on the song but ended admirably -- heck, a drunk couple even got up and danced while I sang. When it was over, sure, I felt like a man. A man, that is, that doesn't need to sing any more songs in a bar for quite some time.

Sameer's wedding is in L.A. in a little over a week, and I'm looking forward to partying with those crazy boys again.

Hey, drunk lady

2008-06-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

One of my dogs is taking a crap.
The other one is barking hysterically at you.
And I'm not making any eye contact, while trying to walk away.

What is it about this set of circumstances that leads you to believe that I want to have a conversation with you about anything, no less your aunt's five dogs?

Thank you, however, for repeatedly telling me that my dogs are beautiful. Not everyone appreciates them, like you do, when one is squatting and the other is yapping his head off.

Cruisin'

2008-06-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

On Friday we headed up to Bloomfield so that Cathleen could run in a Run for the Cure 5K (re breast cancer) with some high school friends in Hartford on Saturday morning. Cathleen and the kids drove up to my office school and arrived at around 4:30. There was some trouble with the car, Cathleen informed me, that had developed in the latter part of her drive to the Bronx; there was a bad bumping noise coming from around the front passenger side tire.

Oh. That's right. A few days earlier, while driving home from summer league, I encountered a horrendous patch of newly-scratched up under-construction roadway on the BQE that had not been so scratched up the week before. The car had gone bang and bop, and then I seemed to be feeling every bump from every piece of gravel on the road. By the time I awoke the next morning, however, I had forgotten about it, and Cathleen had not noticed anything driving either to or from school in the ensuing days.

Now we were in the Bronx, with all of our stuff, shortly before dinner time. We took the car to the local Midas guy near my office, whom I've used before and trust. At 15 minutes before closing time, he put the car up on the rack and showed me where the right-front spring was shattered. Well, that would explain that. No spring in stock; he could get one and repair it Saturday. When I told him we were actually en route to CT for the weekend, he recommended we go to the Enterprise rental place half a block away. So we did.

I never know what to expect from the service sector in the Bronx. Rude? Shoddy? Perfectly fine? It can be a gamble of sorts. The Enterprise on East Fordham Road was interesting: there were six guys in suits walking around, only two of whom appeared to be actually servicing any rental customer at any given time. The other four would take turns asking you what you were there for, and if you had signed in yet. Everyone was nice and friendly and seemed to be accommodating, but it didn't look like anything was getting done. And the place was packed with customers. My wife and I, with our two young kids, and our two small dogs, spent an hour there. To all of my small creatures' credit, they all did quite well given the circumstances: the dogs were under control the entire time; Max was incredibly well-behaved, but for periodic whining about how bored he was because it was taking so long (neither of which I minded, because it gave me an opportunity to audibilize patient, yet needling responses, that the men in the office were working as fast as they could to get us a car); Eliza became antsy after a while, so Cathleen took her outside for a walk. It could have been a lot worse.

When it was time for me to pick out a car, I was led into an adjoining garage. I told the guy I just wanted the cheapest rental they had available. Well, he told me, the cheapest they normally have is a Ford Focus sedan, but he'd give me a PT Cruiser for the same rate.

The PT Cruiser has been around for, what, a decade or so? Let me tell you something about that car: I have never liked it. A car that looks like a miniature hearse? Who the hell came up with that design idea? I have been so convinced of the absurdity of the Cruiser's appearance that to this day I cannot believe that there is anyone who takes that car seriously. One year I played at the Poultrydays ultimate tourney in rural, western Ohio on a combo Haverford-Swarthmore graduates team. One of the Swat grads, whom I of course did not know, had rented a PT Cruiser as his car for the weekend. I eventually learned that he was very excited about this rental, and had paid a lot in order to get it. Indeed, while everyone else camped at the fields in tents that weekend, he slept in the Cruiser (like a cadaver?). Not even giving a moment's consideration that someone might actually think that the Hearsemobile was cool, I started making fun of it from the get-go, and quickly alienated this complete stranger. I have a talent for that kind of thing. All was made up when, early in our first game, I cut deep and laid out to catch a swilly, overthrown huck that the guy had put up (most interpersonal conflict, I have learned, can be resolved if you simply catch someone's crappy throws).

So, standing there in the Enterprise car rental facility at 6 pm, I grabbed the Cruiser. I am all about maximizing the irony in my life.

The PT Cruiser is pretty much as ridiculous on the inside as it is on the outside. We were in a 2008 model, and yet the dashboard display was in old-fashioned dial readout form. The only digital display was a function where you could observe what kind of gas mileage you were getting, a piece of information that you'd think Chrysler would not want to make readily available given that this car was topping off at 20 mpg on the highway. Although the car handled the road quite well, it had the turning radius of a large elephant.

Eliza spent much of the drive up to CT, and much of the ride home yesterday, asking about and discussing why we were in this car.
"Why are we in this car?"
"Our car is broken."
"Our car is broken?"
"Yes, a man is going to fix our car, and then we'll get it back."
"Man going to fix our car?"
"Yes."
Pause. "Why are we in this car?"
At first I thought it was just her two-year-old brain processing the entire experience, but then I realized this is Eliza, my brilliant daughter. She is not asking why are we in a car that is not our car; she understood that the PT Cruiser was an absurd vehicle. "Why, Daddy," she was basically asking, "are you driving me around in this asinine joke?" Geez, I do love that little girl.

The balance of the weekend was great: Cathleen had a great run on Saturday (did the 5K in about 30 minutes flat), the kids road on the local carousel, we took a long hike in the sweltering afternoon up a nearby mountain (at Max's insistence; he is really into hiking and did not waiver once in his enthusiasm for the experience), took a cool dip in the neighbor's pool, had a terrific dinner and then drove home at night. This morning I went out for a 4-mile run and nearly died in the heat, and then we went to Max's classmate's birthday party in Prospect Park, before coming home, installing the AC in the livingroom window (mercifully!), grilling and bedtime.

Up and running

2008-06-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite websites: cathleendavittbell.com. Check it out.

The Break-In

2008-05-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

Woke up a little groggy on Saturday morning, having stayed up late to watch the Mets lose in extra innings. When Jose, the Executive Director at Bronx AIDS Services, called me at 7:30 I had yet to consume a needed cup of coffee or even attempt to communicate in full sentences. When I heard his voice on my cellphone, my brain couldn't even compute that it was him calling. "Why is Jose calling me, at 7:30 am, on a Saturday morning?" This three-part question could have been answered rather immediately had I been listening to him and not groggily formulating that three-part question in my mind. Gradually, I regained communication cognizance, I understood him to be telling me that someone had broken into the BAS offices and had done a number on the legal department.

Hey, that's my department. My pride and joy. My homely home away from home.

I showered, brewed that much-needed cup of coffee and jumped in the car...zoom to the office.

BAS "main office" is at 540 East Fordham Road. It's a busy road, even by urban standards. Our offices are on the second floor of a two-story building. The legal department occupies the eastern side of the street-facing portion of the building. We have four windowed-offices, with the secretary/senior paralegal office at the easternmost end, then a pair of two-attorney offices, and then there's my office. Opposite these offices, in the interior of the building, is an alcove where our two other paralegals sit.

My would-be burglar entered BAS through one of the windows in the secretary/senior paralegal office via a glass-smashing crowbar. He proceeded to spend some time trying to get into our safe - he managed to break off the door handle and the number-dial thing, but couldn't get the door open. Not sure how we're going to get that door open now, but I suppose that's for the locksmith to figure out. Burglar dude then played around with the computers in the office, knocking them over to see what he could easily transport out of the place I suppose. He rifled through cabinet drawers, spilling all sorts of paperwork on the floor, looking for items of the value (none to be found). I imagine he was in that office for a good 10 - 15 minutes or so, before heading out into the hallway at around 4:15 am. That's when the motion-sensor alarm system discovered him.

Not sure when he decided to fnd the alarm keypad and smash it off the wall, but I suspect it was soon after the alarm went off. He then (or before then) went into the two attorney offices and tried dismantling the computers. He made some more of a mess as he continued his search for valuables. In the third office, he actually took a pair of scissors and cut the cords that connect the monitors to the computers. He then wrapped the two monitors in that office in a brown hooded-sweatjacket and took them into the secretary/senior paralegal office. That's where we found them.

He then probably headed down to my office, stopping at the supply cabinet outside my office where he rifled through the supplies, spilling many of them onto the floor. In my office, he took almost all of the loose change I keep in a dish on my desk (hey, how the hell am I going to pay for that afternoon package of Skittles, asshole!), and he opened a cabinet where I keep all of my funding binders (the government contracts, correspondence, data reports). These binders have often given me the urge to want to flee the building, but I bet that it was right around this time that the cop cars, responding to the triggered alarm system, finally appeared, because lame-ass burglar dude bolted out of the legal area towards the back of the agency, where he escaped via a roof hatch in the ceiling. I've worked in that office for seven years and never knew that there was a roof hatch.

Well, when I arrived at the office at around 8:30 am on Saturday, surveying all of the damage was a bit shocking. Here's a tip for all of you asiring legal directors out there: staring at a ransacked office is about the only time that it is OK to say "that dirty motherfucker" in front of your executive director.

The good news is that, with the exception of about three dollars in loose change from my office, it does not appear that he got away with anything. Some of our computers might be damaged (at the very least we've lost those two monitors), but insurance will cover that kind of loss, and all of our data/records are on a network so the hardware is completely fungible. He made a mess, particularly in the secretary/senior paralegal office, but clean-up should not take much more than an hour or two on Tuesday morning. Bozo the burglar left behind his sweatjacket (duh) and no doubt a bunch of fingerprints, so I'm optimistic that the police have something to work with. And we have a good story to tell.

Booooooooook!

2008-05-23T20:30:00.001-07:00

The real thing -- Slipping, in it's hardcovered glory -- arrived the other day. It won't be in the bookstores for another four weeks, but Bloomsbury sent Cathleen a copy from the first batch they received from the printer (she'll get a handful more "author's copies" soon as well). The cover looks excellent, the blue a bit deeper and more metallic looking than that in the advance copies, and pieces of added text are well-placed.

If you take it and wack it on your head, as I have done, it feels like a real book.

Swab the Rick, matey

2008-05-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

Ever since the summer of 2005, in the wake of an attack in the London subway system, the NYPD has been conducting "random" searches of travelers' bags at the entranceways to various NYC subway stations. When the policy was first announced, I still retained a shred of naivete about the protections afforded by the US Constitution, and I figured that there was no way that this practice would stand judicial scrutiny. Well, in a "post-9/11 world" there is no measure of civil rights that can't stand to be sacrificed at the altar of "making us safe" and so here we are, three years into the bag-searching regime.

I live near one of the larger subway stations in the city -- the Atlantic Ave/Pacific Street Station-- and I pass through it twice every day during the week. At least once a week during the morning rush the police are set up at the Pacific Street entrance (where I enter) conducting random bag searches. For three years I've walked by them, never quite knowing how to play the situation. Somewhat to my relief, I think, after three years I remain irked by the trappings of a police state, but I never figured out in my mind how much my consternation should influence my conduct if I were to be stopped for a search.

Two mornings ago I entered the subway station with Dinosaur Jr's Start Choppin' blaring through my iPod headphones. Sometimes, depending on the song and my mood, I likes to hear the music loud. A police officer stood in front of the turnstiles, and as I walked towards him he beckoned me towards a table on the left, behind which stood three more officers. One of them said something to me, but I was still fumbling with my iPod in an attempt to turn it off. I placed my bag on the table and defiantly stepped backwards. You want to search my bag, open it your damn self. Instead of searching the contents of my bag, however, the police officer took a small piece of paper, swabbed it across the top of my bag a couple of times, and then stuck the paper into a small machine that resembled a small credit card machine that you might find in a bodega or a dry cleaners. They were testing my bag for explosives.

Did the high-tech screening make it any less invasive? Was the relatively de minimis extent of the inconvenience supposed to render me more complacent? Is anyone feeling safer? Was anyone feeling that unsafe to begin with?

Scared into war, and eventually war becomes the state of being. Scared into giving away some civil rights, and eventually the absence of civil rights becomes the state of being.

Oh there's no goin back to that, I'm so numb, can't even react.

Transporta-zen

2008-05-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

For my daily commute home, I take a Metro North train from Fordham to Grand Central; there I take the Grand Central - Times Square Shuttle (the "S" train), and then the N or Q home from Times Square. The S train, as the full name implies, runs exclusively between Grand Central and Times Square, with three trains operating pretty much every two minutes during rush hour. At these times, the S is always packed like a cattle car because, as it turns out, many a New Yorker passes between Grand Central and Times Square during the business day. I have learned, however, that if you miss one S train, you'll really only have to wait two minutes for the next one -- and I mean two minutes for it to be fully-boarded and leave. It is not a long wait.

Nevertheless, commuters who would think twice before hastening their pace to save their mothers from an oncoming vehicle suddenly feel compelled to break into a full sprint in order to make it into whatever S train they see sitting in the station. I have seen fat people, old ladies, groups of friends holding hands...all running for their lives to make it into a train in order to avoid the two-minute wait for the next one. I have seen folks of all sorts shove parts of their bodies (or their children's bodies -- once I saw someone propel a baby stroller forward as a door jam) or their possessions into the closing train doors in order to buy themselves a spot on a train. Before today, I had never seen an elderly Tibetan monk make that effort. To his credit, when the train left him standing on the platform, he didn't curse or yell. He barely looked anguished. That's called being at peace with yourself.

Half, as fast as I could have imagined

2008-05-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

Ran the Brooklyn Half-Marathon this past Saturday. Having trained at a 9-minute per mile pace, my goal was to finish in under two hours (9 minute pace translates into 1 hour and almost 58 minutes). I am proud to report that I finished in 1:53:26, which is an 8:39 pace per mile. I placed 2,553rd out of 5,832 participants. But the race, obviously, wasn't about me against the other 5,831 runners; it was about me against the 3,279 slobs that finished behind me. No, I mean it was about me running against myself, challenging myself to do my best.

The morning had not started so well -- I made it to the subway platform as the N train was pulling out, meaning I'd have to wait for more than ten minutes early on a Saturday morning for the next train to arrive. I made it out to Coney Island about 20 minutes before racetime, had to put my bag on a bus for pickup later at the finish, had to use the port-a-potty and then get in the race corrals. The lines at the potties were long, and I basically had enough time to do about a quarter of my normal stretching routine before the gun sounded, and I was able to slip into the race corrals as the horde began to move forward.

The first 2 1/2 miles were along (and double-back again) the Coney Island boardwalk. That was cool. I mean, the weather was chilly, but the sight of the beach and ocean to the immediate left, the creaking and thumping of the wood underneath you, the occasional sand hazard to run through or around...a whole different "race" experience. The beginnings of these long races are always so cool...everyone's in a good mood, optimistic about what lies ahead; there's a folksy comaraderie. Did I spell comaraderie right? It looks funny. In any event, I was at exactly nine minutes at the first mile marker, which surprised me, as the crowd was thick and although I was attempting to weave through the thick parts to get some sort of pace going, I assumed I'd be behind the mark until we hit the more open streets. I was still on pace at two miles, and by the fourth mile marker, on Ocean Parkway, I was slightly ahead of pace. Interesting.

Ocean Parkway is a grand boulevard of Brooklyn -- large median down the center, beautiful homes line the sides. A friend who had run the Brooklyn Half in the past had joked that the Ocean Parkway run is frustrating because the cross-streets are all lettered in reverse alphabetical order ("Avenue Z" and then "Avenue Y" and so on), and so you spend time trying to figure out what number letter "M" is in order to calculate how much longer you have until you make it to Prospect Park. Lo and behold, by the middle of the alphabet I was stumped as to how much more Ocean Parkway lay ahead of me.

By the sixth or seventh mile I was more than a full minute ahead of my nine-minute pace goal. On the one hand, this was great. On the other hand, I was concerned about gassing out at the end. The last four miles of the run are in hilly Prospect Park, and I did not want to be the idiot who tanked with a mile to go. But I was feeling exceptionally well. Without a running partner for the first time in a long race (you know, of the two other long races I've ever run), I was able to focus exclusively on my running, making myself relax my body, maintain a pace and good form on hills, etc.

I entered Prospect Park at the nine-mile marker, and I was about a minute and a half ahead. Now I could turn on the psychological games: this was my park, where I run all the time...get out of my way, shitheads. I know, it's a bit simple and juvenile, but I'm not a very sophisticated runner. When I hit the big hill at the northern end of the park, I was practically laughing to myself -- I own this hill! Around the bend to the west side of the park where I knew that Cathleen, Max, Eliza and my mom would be waiting for me near the Third Street entrance...and then I saw them from about 50 yards away. Such a lift! I kissed them all, and then ran away with a new bounce in my step. Literally. I had about two miles to go, and I was psyched. Down the big hill at the southwest corner, and then the last big hill (in the unchartered, for me, interior part of the park). As I ascended the final hill of the run, some guy on the side shouted out "the 13-mile marker is right around the corner." That's all I needed; I bolted into a full-out sprint to the end, weaving in and around folks ahead of me as a I flew to the finish line.

I often use the experience of the two marathons I've run in other contexts: the mental determination I employed in those runs to overcome physical pain and fatigue in order to finish...it is helpful to look back and know that I have the ability to dig deep in the face of challenges. The half-marathon -- a dramatically more humane and less punishing distance to run -- provides me with something different. Not sure yet what that is, perhaps something about what it takes to exceed a goal, but I'm filing away the 1:53:26 of moments that were that race, and they'll be there when I want or need to use them.

Hold My Hand

2008-04-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

In March 1996 Cathleen and I flew down to West Palm Beach, visited my grandmother (Kahn), and then spent a few days in the Keys. Of the four or five nights we spent in the Keys, we dined twice at a little restaurant called Mangrove Mamas. It was the lone structure on Sugarloaf Key to have survived The Hurricane of 1919, or something like that. Half of the building lacked a roof, and the other half looked like it was a shanty that had been assembled with pieces of scrap earlier that afternoon. The seafood was out of this world, their Key Lime Pie had been voted "Best in the Keys" by the Miami Herald for several years running, and the place had a magical ambience that I can still feel when I think about it. The first night that we ate there we were directed to the bar while we waited for a table to open up. We drank beers out of mason jars while listening to two guys play guitar, and whenever I hear Hootie and the Blowfish's "Hold My Hand," I am immediately transported back to that place. If the sum of one's life boils down to a collection of moments, for whatever reason -- youth, the first vacation with the woman I loved, the beer -- that was one of my moments.

I had another moment today. On the heels of a productive weekend at home (built shelves in the livingroom for our TV components; assembled shelving unit for storage room and organized a portion of the mountain of crap in there; grilled a whole fish Saturday night), the four of us were pretty spent by the end of the day. Helen (with Grace) came over for a playdate with Eliza, and Max was finding himself the object of nobody's attention and none too happy about it. So I dragged him out to run an errand with me. We drove to the local CVS for soap, shampoo, sunscreen and some other odds and ends. As we walked around the store, I was holding his hand, a not unusual arrangement when we are out. This time, however, as we walked through the aisles of the store, I felt Max blithely stroking the inside of my palm with his thumb. Comforting himself, connecting with me, or just enjoying the texture of my hand...I'll never know. But when we approached the cashier to pay for our items, it took a great deal of willpower for me to let go.

Evil, and the people who take it

2008-04-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

I went on a home intake today in the Baychester area of the Bronx. The client was a 30-year-old woman in a wheelchair who lived with her son (approx. 10 years old) in the bottom of a two-family brick rowhouse. The landlord of her building lived upstairs until February, at which time a fire burned out his apartment. He turned off the gas and water in the building and moved out. My client's apartment was undamaged, and because a decent, affordable, wheelchair-accessible apartment is hard to find, she stayed in her apartment. But she hasn't had any water or gas (and thus heat) in the apartment for two months. But only now did she call for legal assistance.

No gas, no water for two months. And she's in a wheelchair. And living with a young kid. I kept repeating questions to her during the intake, as if I couldn't believe what was going on.

So you had no heat during the end of February and throughout the cold days of March? How have you been cleaning yourself? (Bottled water). How have you been cooking? (On a hotplate).

Unasked: what the hell finally angered you enough to want to do something about it?

I find that many of my clients suffer from what an old coworker of mine referred to as "battered tenant syndrome." They are poor, and are so used to being poor and the substandard quality of everything that you get when living in poverty that they don't expect to live in an apartment that meets the minimal requirements of the City's housing code. They accept fourth-rate living as a fact of life. So they'll live, without much complaint, with broken windows, peeling plaster, ceiling leaks, rat or cockroach infestations...but then there'll be that one thing that they just can't take anymore, that pushes them over the edge, like a ceiling collapse, and they'll finally seek help. This severely-disabled woman lived two months without gas or water.

And get this -- her scumbag landlord...he shows up a couple of times a month to get his mail out of his mailbox. My client never sees him, but she knows from her Social Services worker that he is still dutifully cashing his rent checks every month.

We're filing an emergency application in court tomorrow morning, seeking an order compelling him to get the gas and water back on.

A Rat ran into my Foot

2008-04-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

It did. I was walking the dogs tonight, and everyone had set their trash out on the sidewalk for pickup tomorrow morning. On late, warm nights when the trash has been put out, I've occasionally seen rats scurry from buildings and across the sidewalk to the trash bags and bins that sit curbside. But never too up close. And certainly never so up close that the fucking rat ran smack into my foot. I sort of yelped and did a little awkward jig, and the rat ran back towards the building and down the stairs to the basement. For those trying to do a little mental mock up at home, it was a big rat, such that I felt it on the side of my foot and ankle.

Walking back down the block towards our home, Oprah stopped to sniff at something. I tugged at her leash and said, "c'mon, I'm scared." She could identify with that.

Ready for the race

2008-04-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

The Brooklyn Half-marathon is in three weeks and I think I've finally gotten my body to a point where I can run it. I ran 12.5 miles today and felt reasonably well enough in doing so. I've managed to maintain a 9-minute pace throughout the past few weeks of long runs, and now I have the next couple of weeks to "rest up" by tapering my distances (10 miles next weekend; 8 the next). I've been experiencing some calf and hip tightness on my left side, and had a severe lower back spasm for about 48 hours after last weekend's 12-mile run, but no serious injuries. I think I'm ready to take this one on.

It's not the real thing

2008-04-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

A Billy Joel quote! Anyone reading this blog would have the most distorted sense of my musical tastes. I know a lot of Billy Joel lyrics because I was alive during the 80s, but the only person that I know who still listens to Billy Joel is my sister-in-law Theresa. This blog entry title is for you, T.

I have not posted in a while (almost two weeks) and although it might have been because I had nothing to say, the truth is that I always have something to say. I generally write posts late at night, but lately I've been spending those late-night hours obsessing over the at-bat by at-bat performances of my baseball fantasy team's west coast players.

Oh yes, I am in a fantasy league.

Last year, Mark coaxed me into joining a fantasy league with him. Mom always told me to stay away from friends like him. I had always suspected that I'd enjoy participating in a fantasy league because I am a huge baseball fan, I love stats, and I can be as OCD about something as the next guy. But I resisted joining one in the past precisely because I was afraid that the OCD in me would take over. Little did I know.

So Mark and I joined this league last year where, among the other 11 team owners, two of the guys are producers for a major networks sports' programming (yes, we are competing against guys who do sports for a living). Mark and I literally did not know what we were doing as draft night approached. We did not have a full grasp of how rosters were slotted, how the salary cap worked, how the scoring worked, how the free agent pickup rules worked...hell, we didn't even know how much the league cost. And yet we were steamrolling into the draft like we had a chance. The draft took place in a bar in midtown, but Mark was at a medical conference in Baltimore and so we communicated by cell phone for two hours until my phone battery died. In a straight draft situation, this would have been an abysmal setup; matters were made worse by the fact that our league has an auction draft, and so by the time I had communicated to Mark what player was on the board for bidding and we had decided whether to bid $5, the bid would already be up to $8. And so on. We compiled a terrible team and by May it was clear that we were far out of the running. We spent the remaining four months of the season trying to trade for "keepers" (you get to carry 12 guys over to the following year's roster, and so we were trying to get good players with low salaries). We set a record in the league for lowest number of points in a season (the league is scored in four offensive and four pitching categories).

This year, armed with the knowledge of, oh -- the rules -- we began our research on players during the winter. By January we were reading articles and top ten lists, and by February I was spending my entire lunch hour on baseball and sports websites. Mark and I sent dozens of emails back and forth debating the merits of keeping this player over that player, whom we should be targeting in the draft, etc.

I am, at heart, a competitive mother. I'm not a claw-your-eyes-out-so-I-win kind of guy, but I do not like to lose. It is why I loved debating in high school, it is why I still love to play ultimate frisbee, and it is certainly part of what I like about lawyering (preventing my client's eviction is rewarding, but beating the crap out of that landlord attorney in oral argument is its own reward). Now that I'm playing a lot less ultimate (and almost no truly competitive ultimate), fantasy baseball is where I can get my competitive jones up.

The draft this year was a far better experience than last year. Mark missed the first half because he was teaching his meditation class, but he was there for the end when my brain was beginning to melt (the draft is a four-hour experience). The draft did not go entirely to plan (and we had spent many an email and phone call hammering out an overall strategy), mostly because I was a little gun-shy early on to spend big bucks, but we put together a reasonably-balanced team. Two weeks into the season and it is unclear exactly where we stand. The baseball season is, as they say, a marathon, not a sprint, and so I can't read much into the fact that we went from 3rd place to 10th place over the course of this past weekend, though I can be concerned that we're not getting stolen bases and our pitchers can't seem to record any wins. But we're in it. Oh yes, we're in it.

Fiver

2008-04-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

Five years. Max celebrated his fifth birthday yesterday. He looks so much different than he did five years ago.

Sleeping on the floor next to my bed (will that end before his tenth birthday?), he bounced up from his sleeping bag at a little after 6 a.m. and proudly declared, "it's my birthday!" Whipped from less than five hours of sleep, I pulled him into bed with me in a desperate effort to keep my eyes closed. At five, fortunately, he still likes to cuddle. That didn't last too long, and we eventually made our way to the livingroom where a brand new bicycle sat underneath a bedsheet and ribbon. Upon pulling off the sheet, Max looked over the new bike and asked, "why did you get me a bike? Why didn't you get me something I wanted?"

Ummm, a week ago your mouth was agape looking at a bike in a store window. Five years, and it just doesn't get easier, does it?

He realized before the morning was over that he actually liked the bike, but not before Cathleen had engaged in some serious self-flagellation about our decision to make this his gift. Later that morning Cathleen brought corn muffins and honey to his class for snack (the healthy option was his idea), and I left work early for us all to hang out together. We sang Happy Birthday and consumed local bakery-made cupcakes (oh, sooo rich), and then we headed out to the courtyard of a local elementary school with the bike. Max did a pretty good job for his first riding effort, and even after he fell over once he was willing to get back on for a final ride. We walked home in the rain, rested for a bit and then headed out for sushi for dinner. Max is very into sushi these days, and although he basically sticks to eating rice, shrimp tempura and eel-based maki rolls, I think it is pretty darn cool of him.

It is so fascinating to see him at five...such a real little person, and yet so evolving and unformed in so many ways. He bubbles with sophisticated thoughts and philosophies, and yet there is so much that he can't wrap his brain around. He is beginning to formulate a sense of justice in his (and the) world, and yet he practically has "id" stamped on his forehead. Sweet, loving, rebellious, rude, giggly, funny, angry, needy, independent, creative....you see all of it within any 30 minutes you spend with him. And few things in the world make me happier than when I see his sincere and unfettered smile breaking across his face.

Sugar, We're Goin' Down

2008-03-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

If I use a Fall Out Boy song as my entry title, does that make me young, hip and cool? You betcha, much in the same way that my using the phrase "you betcha" makes me young, hip and cool. As an aside, I just bought the Fall Out Boy cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and I'm not sure how that affects my youngishness, hipsteration or coolocity.

In any event, here I am. A week removed from single parenting. As noted earlier, Cathleen went to western New York for her first "Slipping" reading. She took Max, they both had a great time, and she learned a lot about what and how to read "Slipping" passages to a young audience. Eliza and I spent some quality time together. The only crisis moment occurred on the first night at bedtime when I sat down to read to Eliza. Normally, I read to Max and Cathleen reads to Eliza (a system that grew out of the fact that I could read but not breastfeed), but now it was just me and E. It was only at that moment that she came to terms with the fact that mommy was not there, and she promptly burst into tears. She got over it, and by the next night bedtime was no problem. Of course, on the second night after the lights were out she tried pulling out all of the tricks to get me to come back into her bedroom. "Max hit me on the head." "Umm, Eliza, Max is not here. He's more than 300 miles away from here right now." She stares at me. "Max hit me on the head."

Cathleen and Max returned on Thursday, on Friday we baked hamantaschen, and on Saturday morning we packed up the car and drove up to Bloomfield for Easter weekend.

Claudia and Walter live on a few acres of mostly-wooded property, and I had long noticed the abundance of Sugar Maples around the area. Always one to think of gifts that give back to me, I came up with the idea of giving Waler a maple sugaring kit for Christmas. We enjoyed our first jar of homemade maple syrup last month. When we arrived at their house on Saturday, I could see that the gallon jugs that Walter had hooked up on the trees were filled with sap, and by midday we were collecting the sap from six trees and boiling it down over a fire on an outside grill that Walter had constructed for the task. We basically filled a tin lasagna pan with sap and stuck it over the fire; when it boiled down a couple of inches we'd add more sap. The trick was to keep the fire as hot as possible to keep the sap at a rolling boil. I split wood on Walter's wood splitter and fed and stoked the fire all afternoon. We boiled 8 1/2 gallons down to about one gallon or so. By then it had taken on a slightly amber color, sort of like a weak iced tea. When Walter collects enough of the ambered-sap, he then finishes the syrup-making process inside, in a pot on the stove where he can carefully monitor the process to prevent under- or overcooking (he purchased a hydrometer to aid in the process). We didn't get that far on Saturday, but that didn't matter. I still came home with a jar of homemade syrup from an earlier batch.

I ran 9 miles on Sunday at a nine-minute per mile pace...crazy fast for me, and I've begun entertaining the idea that I might be able to finish the Brooklyn Half-marathon in under two hours. Speaking of which, they moved the race date from April 26th to May 3rd, and now Mark and Elizabeth can't do it. So I'm flying solo, which increases the odds of me running faster, as I will focus on running and not socializing the entire time. I'll have to see over the next few weekends if I can keep up a nine-minute pace as I extend my distance to 10, 11, 12 miles, but I'm mildly optimistic.

After my run, Sam and I "hid" the Easter eggs around the yard while everyone else was at church, and then there was a huge luncheon (26 people, I think) and Easter egg hunt. I am always surprised to hear when kids believe in the Easter Bunny. It seems so absurd to me that I can't imagine how anyone would buy it, and so when I hear Miriam excitedly proclaiming that the Easter Bunny got her a particular book on Pets because he must have known how in to dogs she is these days, I assume that Miriam has an incredibly sophisticated and sardonic sense of irony. As it turns out, she doesn't. Last year Max figured out that Cathleen and I hid the eggs in our backyard and I was all Jewishly proud of him, but this year he was pulling Peep after Peep out of the eggs he had collected and he was wondering out loud why the Easter Bunny hadn't given him any jelly beans. Yeah, I wonder.

Five Years of Love and War

2008-03-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

The war turned five today, just under two weeks before Max also hits that milestone. Five years of violence, death and hate, sharply contrasted with five years of unadulterated joy and love.

After the war began in March 2003, a very pregnant Cathleen and I marched against it in Manhattan, and I coined my favorite rally chant: "the war is stupid, you dumbass motherfuckers" (sing it in a cadence, you'll get it). Just before Max's first birthday, we again marched in Manhattan, right outside our apartment, and I affixed a poster to Max's stroller that read, "War bad, pacifier good." Later that year, I again marched in Manhattan in protest of the Republican National Convention, but naptime I think precluded Max's attendance. We didn't march again until last year -- the almost inconceivable fourth anniversary of the war -- when Max and I traveled down to D.C. in a minivan with Joseph, Miriam, Claudia and Joseph's father David. Max and Miriam ran around on the lawn in front of the Capitol while the rally speakers denounced the impending "surge." This year Max is with Cathleen in Rochester (her first "Slipping" reading!), and I was trying to figure out a way to get back to D.C. while setting up childcare for Eliza, but when I realized that I stood a decent chance of getting arrested at the day of action and civil disobedience that United for Peace and Justice had been planning, I figured that I couldn't risk that with a two-year-old waiting for me in Brooklyn. I then thought I'd leave work early and take Eliza up to the march and vigil at Grand Army Plaza, but rainy weather interfered with those plans. And so here we are, five years into this debacle, and I'm alone with my rage tonight.

We try to teach Max about the inherent good in people, and the value of life, and across the globe we are locked into a war that has taken over half a million lives.
We work to instill in him an understanding of the importance of telling the truth, and we are mired in a war that was begat by one long lie after another.
"No hitting," we say. "If you are angry or frustrated, we talk it out in this family. It is OK to be angry, or to be frustrated because you can't have what you want. It is not OK to hurt someone else."

Every day I tell him I love him at least two or three times, and it is the last thing he hear's from me before he goes to bed at night.

I hope the war ends before he can even understand that it began.

When I was in law school

2008-03-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

I never imagined that I'd have a client say to me, in reference to an ex-boyfriend from whom she believes she contracted HIV, "and so one time he cock spit in my mouth."

Rick 1, Florida 1

2008-03-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

In the new-millenia competition between Rick and Florida, the score is now tied. In 2004, I ventured down to said state to work as a lawyer on the Kerry team. Basically, the Kerry campaign was asking for lawyers to come down to monitor the elections to ensure that the democracy debacle of 2000 was not re-lived. As history sadly knows, Florida went red again, and I flew home on the day after the election with my head hung low. Florida 1, Rick 0.

Almost three and a half years later, I returned to the land of Ponce de Leon (one of my favorite explorers as a child, if indeed children are allowed to have favorite explorers), and this time I came home with my head held high. I had a great time -- heck, my entire family had a great time -- and so Florida and I are now even.

Here's my write-up on the trip. It is not a short write-up (or, having not yet written it, I anticipate it to be not a short write-up). But I'm writing it more for me than for you, unless you want to pretend that I am writing for you, in which case, eat your heart out.

Thursday.
Cathleen and I arise at 5:30 am and after having packed the car, we confirm with Sophie that she can actually move our car in accordance with alternate-side parking rules if we leave it there, so I unpack it and we call a car service. Wake the kids, pack them into the car service and off we go to the airport. We do alright getting through check-in and security with two kids. At boarding time, as we descend through the tunnel towards the airplane, Max grips my hand and says, "I'm afraid." I tell him, as I've told him innumerable times before, "you are with Mommy and Daddy, and as long as you are with one of us, we will protect you and keep you safe." I, of course, have not flown on an airplane in over two years, and I too am experiencing some pre-flight anxiety and so, like the time Max and I were both having heart attacks on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, I am really just talking to calm me down in the hopes that he gains some derivative calm. It seems to work. We have three seats in a row on the plane, and one in the row behind. I sit in the one. While Cathleen has to entertain two kids, I get to finish the Times crossword. Parenting, sometimes, is about sacrifices. Max does great on the flight and Eliza, never one to be happy in her carseat, does generally well in her carseat on the plane. Some folks in neighboring seats might beg to differ (her occasional screams, arguably, could be construed as "not cute and charming"), but it could have been much worse for them.

We get to the car rental place and though we've reserved a compact car, they upgrade us to a mini-van. Suddenly, we're hanging out in an incredibly spacious Kia Sedona. It becomes obvious to me why people like mini-vans: they're enormous. Max insisted that he and Eliza sit in the back, and it was almost like Cathleen and I could pretend they weren't even there. Within minutes we have covered the available seat and floor-space with garbage, proving once again that no matter the size of available space, you can cover it with kids. I set up my GPS (finally able to use it in unknown territory) and off we go to South Hutchinson Island (in Fort Pierce). We quickly realize that it is lunchtime, and if we wait until we arrive at the hotel, we'll all be starving. So we have the GPS direct us to the nearest McDonalds...and it takes us to the Burger King across the divided highway. WTF? It might as well have driven us into Lake Okeechobee. These tasteless potato stalks are what passes for french fries in the world of the creepy looking Burger King? C'mon.

After Eliza naps for a whopping 20 minutes, we finally arrive at our hotel -- the Dockside Inn. It is a series of I think four buildings of rooms situated on an inlet of sorts (South Hutchinson Island is a barrier reef island, and the hotel sits on the interior waterway). The water is about 30 yards from our hotel room, with various docks situated about, and pelicans hanging out on the docks. It is a big fishermen's place, and so most of our fellow hotel residents are retirees or salty dog fishermen (aye, matey). Our room is a one bedroom with efficiency; in the front is a small living area with kitchen (and sofabed), and through a door is a bedroom and bathroom. A decent-sized place, but Max spent the entire time questioning why the hotel room was so small. Because Mommy's book isn't a bestseller yet.

The kids run around outside the room - Eliza became obsessed with running up and down a wooden ramp, almost as if she normally spends her time in an overcrowded, rampless urban environment. We walked around the docks and down a little sandy beach nearby, and then we got ready for dinner. By then, the skies had clouded up and rain was a coming. We dined at Chuck's, a local seafood joint where the outside tables are inside a large tent. Eliza is totally hyped-up on sleep deprivation, and she spends most of the meal jumping up and down in a small puddle of water next to our table, as I chow down on fish n' chips and Cathleen eats some yummy muscles. After we've put the kids to bed, Cathleen and I watch some bad television.

Friday.
We arise too early, Cathleen goes for a run, and we eventually pack ourselves into the minivan and head over to an orange grove called Al's, which purports to have a restaurant on-site. The restaurant turns out to be a roadside shack that serves Mexicanized breakfast fare and freshly-squeezed orange juice. Is there anything in this world that is better than freshly squeezed orange juice? Let me tell you something -- there are exactly two ingestibles in the world that I ever get cravings for: Watermelon Jellie-bellies, and freshly squeezed orange juice. I, therefore, am enjoying every drop. The grove is not a pick-your-own place, so we head into the store/packing plant, we sample all of the citrus fruits that they're selling there, and we buy a half gallon of juice and a sampler bag of citrus. The oranges, honey tangerines, grapefruits are as sweet and juicy as you can get. This was a brilliant move.

We then head back to the island and over to the beach. The sun is shining, but it is wicked, wicked windy. Max plays in the sand (he LOVES to play in the sand) and a very tired Eliza tries to bury her head into whatever parent is holding her. Cathleen and I take turns swimming in the fairly warm, but fairly violent windswept water. Eliza falls asleep in Cathleen's arms, so we all head over to a bench to eat PB&J sandwiches and to watch these crazy guys who are kite surfing on the other side of the inlet. This is some crazy shit, as they are literally doing 30-foot jumps in the air. It was quite a show.

We head back to the hotel, eat some more food, the kids run around, and then we get ready for a dip in the heated pool. Max is reluctant to get into the water until he sees Eliza jump into Cathleen's arms, and so he agrees to jump into mine. Over the next 30 minutes he makes great progress in terms of his comfort in the water -- it was a very rewarding experience. After swimming we get dressed and then head down to the little beach where the kids play in the sand.

At around 4 pm, Mark, Elizabeth and Zachary arrive! The kids run around like mad while the adults drink Florida Gin & Tonics (I added a wedge of fresh orange with the wedge of lime). Max and Zach were pretending that Eliza was a monster, a game that had the potential to be exclusionary and cruel, were it not for the fact that tough little Eliza took immense pleasure in roaring out loud and setting them off running from her.

We head into downtown Ft. Pierce for a street fair, assuming that there will be something that our vegetarian (but seafood-eating) friends can consume, but we are wrong! It is too late to sit down at a restaurant so we head back to the hotel, feed the kids our leftovers from Chuck's and eventually put them to bed, at which time Elizabeth and I went out obtain dinner for the adults. We wound up at Mangrove Mattie's, a severe step down from Mangrove Mama's (a spot in the Keys that still ranks among my top five favorite eating places I've ever been to), where we ordered a couple of fried seafood platters, and where Elizabeth regaled me with a story about floss (moral: buy the cheap stuff). She's one hell of a date.

Saturday.
Mark and I go off on a five-mile run together where we plot fantasy league draft strategy and discuss insurance policies. Oh my god, are we incredibly dull together. After everyone has breakfasted, we drive over to a playground and hang out there for a while, and then we pack into the minivan and head down to Port St. Lucie. It is time for Spring Training. Mark and I both sport shit-eating grins as we walk towards Tradition Field and although I can't quite explain why, I am just feeling giddy. Our seats are in the top row of the stadium behind the first base line near home plate, but we are as close to the field as we ever get at Shea. It is still wickedly windy and so we are forced to wear sweaters. Although the game starts at Eliza's nap time, she is way too stimulated to sleep and doesn't nod off until we are on our way back to the hotel. Only three or four Mets regulars are in the lineup, and their pitcher is Mike Pelfrey who is fighting to perhaps steal the last spot in the team's starting rotation, but he gets smacked around by the Florida Marlins and the Mets lose badly. With two kids at the game, it is almost impossible to really experience the baseball, but I'm just enjoying the atmosphere of the stadium, the crack of the bat, the aura of the game. After the seventh inning stretch, by which time it is almost impossible to recognize anyone who is left playing in the game, we decide to head out. We pass the players parking lot and spy Jose Reyes on the other side of the fence; I get a nice photo of his white Mercedes coupe.

Back at the hotel, some guy is feeding shrimp to the pelicans, and so we head over to watch. In an effort to get good photographs, I wind up standing in what turns out to be the landing zone for the pelicans. These are large birds, folks, with beaks that look like gigantic rotisserie skewers. I am shitting my pants, but I get some good photos. That's called professionalism.

We dine at a Greek restaurant in Fort Pierce, and twice during our meal Greek music starts blaring from the speakers in the restaurant and a belly dancer appears. The boys hardly notice her, even when she is gyrating next to them at our table, but Eliza is transfixed, partly out of fascination and partly out of substantial fear. When the dancer appears a second time, Eliza insists that I hold her, and she alternates saying "I scared" and "I wan dancer." So true, so true. During the meal we have a phone conversation with Miriam (at Max's behest, because he misses her) and learn that she has lost her first tooth that day!

Sunday.
Cathleen, and then Mark and Elizabeth go off for runs. After breakfast, we head over to North Hutchinson Island, to a nature preserve where we go on a two-mile round-trip hike among mangrove trees. The kids do a lot of running, and we get to see some extraordinary foliage, as well a scenic view atop a wooden tower.

After the hike, the women head back to the hotel, and the boys head back to Tradition Field for Day 2 of baseball. At the game, I meet up with my home-town friend, Rich Handler. Hey Rich, you've made it into the blog. Rich and I spent a lot of time together in high school on the debate team, but we haven't seen each other in around 15 or 16 years. I was a bit anxious at the idea of seeing him -- what would we say to each other? But the moment he and his wife and son arrived, I was really excited. He may be a big-wig Florida nephrologist these days, but at heart he was the same Rich, and it was fantastic catching up. There are more regulars in this game, and the Mets shut-out the Astros, 3-0

After the seventh-inning stretch, I turned to talk to Mark about our departure plans just as the pep squad on the field began shooting t-shirts into the stands. Suddenly I hear the folks around me shouting and WACK, I am knocked in the hip by a t-shirt, which bounces off of me and into the hands of some guy two rows away. What kind of asshole gets hit near the buttocks by a promotional t-shirt?

By the eighth inning, Max has quietly gorged himself on pizza, a hot dog, hot cocoa, some french fries and ice cream. Although he resisted sharing in my Taco-in-a-helmet (hey, it was called Taco-in-a-helmet -- how could I resist?), he finally tells me that his tummy hurts. It is time to go. He then chastises me for taking him to Spring Training two days in a row. This trip is a learning experience on many levels.

Driving home, we meet up with the ladies at the Manatee Center in Fort Pierce, where Elizabeth had spent the latter part of the afternoon hanging with some local manatees. By the time we arrive, the manatees are less interested in surfacing for the benefit of watchful humans, and so we are only able to catch passing glimpses of these marvelous creatures.

We head back to the hotel, and down to the little beach where the kids play in the sand while we drink Lone Shark beers. We order in food from a recommended restaurant (Blue Water Grill?) and the food is amazing -- finally some delicious seafood. The adults stay up late talking (though not too late because we are all just wiped) and then we bid adieu; they are leaving an hour before us tomorrow morning.

Sunday.
Get up, pack. Max is unhappy about the encroaching end of the vacation. We head off to West Palm Beach, return the minivan, get to the airport. It appears that our flight might be delayed three hours, but then suddenly it isn't. We figure that Eliza will nap on the flight but, guess what, she doesn't. No, she falls asleep in the sling as Cathleen carries her from the plane to the baggage claim area at LaGuardia. Max has another good flight -- he tells me that he used to think flying would be scary, but that it wasn't scary at all. Once on the ground, however, he is a bit anxious about the baggage claim, and when his booster seat emerges from behind the rubber curtain and onto the conveyor belt, he is so purely overjoyed that he starts jumping up and down with unabashed glee. I have had a great vacation, but that was one of my favorite moments.

Half, my goal

2008-03-02T19:27:00.000-08:00

I just registered to run in the Brooklyn Half-Marathon (13.1 miles) on April 26th. The race begins in Coney Island (where you run on the actual Boardwalk) and finishes in nearby Prospect Park. I sort of did that run while training for the marathon in 2006 -- I had set out to run an 18-miler to and from Coney Island on a day when it was around 80 degrees outside, and I had been suffering from a vicious sinus infection. I was lightheaded at the start of the run, but felt well enough until I hit the 10-mile mark upon leaving Coney Island; I then struggled for five more miles before throwing in the towel because I was so gassed and lightheaded that I was seriously concerned that I might fall on my face. Was not a pleasant experience. Can't wait to re-visit most of that route.

It's funny, 13.1 miles is, by most standards, a fairly long distance to run. But having done the full 26.2 a couple of times, training for the Half-Marathon seems like a cakewalk. Hell, it's eight weeks away and I've barely been doing any training. Ha ha? Yesterday while in the shower I started doing the math to see if I could reasonably train over the next seven weeks to get my distance long enough to survive a 13.1 mile run. Beyond smaller runs (at least two each week), I'd need to do long runs of six this weekend, eight the next, then ten, then twelve, then even thirteen or fourteen. Oh my gosh, I could be in shape to run the race in some form in four weeks. It would be poor form, but I could do it. With another three weeks of training, I might actually not feel like total crap at the end of the race.

So I ran six miles this morning in the frigid, windy cold. Temperature was in the mid-20s but the windchill made it feel worse. The wind was really bad at times up in Prospect Park and I vowed to break off my friendship with Mark and Elizabeth, as it was those fools that wrangled me into running this race. Because, you know, I have no free will.

Always on my my my my my my mind

2008-02-28T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to BAM and saw The State Ballet of Georgia, featuring its artistic director and principal dancer, Nina Ananiashvili.

We live within walking distance of one of the top cultural institutions in this here city, and in the past two years we've barely, barely utilized it. We saw a cool production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" last year, and I think that's been it (other than to see a couple of movies at the movie theater). So I got us a spring subscription (four shows) as a Christmas gift for Cathleen. Yes, "got us" ... "for Cathleen." I'm clever that way. When you get a subscription, you choose four shows out of their smorgasbord of options. A couple were no-brainers for me: Patrick Stewart in a modern adaptation of MacBeth; John Turturro in Samuel Beckett's "Endgame." I threw in an Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe performance, and I figured that Cathleen, at the very least, would really enjoy the ballet. I had never been to the ballet, and I at least had an intellectual curiosity, though I wasn't sure that that curiosity would hold for a more than two-hour performance.

Oh. My. God. It was amazing. First of all, it turns out that Nina Ananianshvili is some sort of international ballet star...she dances with the Bolshoi Ballet and was recruited by the Georgian president in 2004 to take over the State Ballet of Georgia in an attempt to restore that country's ballet to its former glory (you know, from back in the 19th century). Last night's show consisted of four performances, broken up by two intermissions, with music provided by a full orchestra which travels with the ballet company. A full ensemble piece (Chaconne by George Balanchine), then only two dancers accompanied by a pianist and violinist (Duo Concertant by Balanchine), then a piece with six dancers (Bizet Variations by Alexei Ratmansky) and finally a lively set where a dozen or so men and women danced to Georgian folk songs (Sagalobelli by Yuri Posskhov). The show moved from traditional to more contemporary, and so we were able to experience a variety of music and dance. Nina danced in the first and third of them, and as good as the other dancers were, she was noticeably dancing on another level.

But they were all on another level from normal humans. Perfect body control displayed with unimagineable grace. Even their bows at the end of the performances made me feel clumsy. As they danced, it was as if the rules of gravity and friction did not apply to them. Not that they were jumping particularly high, but that as they flitted about, it was as if the floor was resisting them. And it all appeared as if it was effortless for them, whether they were spinning, dancing on their toes for outrageous periods of time (how do they do that??), leaping about...but then they'd stop, and you'd see these small signs of heavy breathing only in the top of their chests, or strains of sweat on some of the guys, and you realized that you were gazing at truly gifted athletes. It was entrancing to see these beautiful people moving that way.

Victory? Defeat?

2008-02-26T20:28:00.000-08:00

I am sure that someday I will look back on this bedbug experience and laugh a mighty guffaw. I am sure of it.

Although I've been quiet on the bedbug postings of late, they have not been far from my mind. Even after we had our third extermination six weeks ago, I was still seeing bedbugs everywhere. Well, as it turns out I was never seeing bedbugs, but every small dark speck anywhere in the apartment posed the immediate concern that a bedbug was apparent. Then there was the Hoy (Spanish newspaper) cover story: "Chinches!" with a ten-inch photo of a bedbug. I was tempted to cut out the picture and accompanying declaration, frame it and hang it in the hallway, but then that struck me as a little bit off -- kind of like if you had an intestinal polyp removed and then taped it to your computer monitor.

I've also been suffering through an annoying body hyper-awareness: is that a bug I feel crawling on me? Is this itch from a bite? Is this a new welt or, oh wait, it's my thumb.

And, of course, living out of ziploc bags is taking its toll. I miss my polar bear boxer shorts (how did they not make the cut?), my fraying khakis, and the roughly 75 tee-shirts that are sealed in a large contractor bag in the top of our closet.

But the light at the end of the tunnel seemed like it was dimly coming into view after five bite-free weeks. We were reluctant to declare victory, especially after Cathleen's friend told her that she had heard that six weeks was the big hump to get over. Sure enough, at around six weeks, Cathleen asked me to look at her face -- three barely perceptible bite-markish bumps in a row, on her left cheek. It didn't make sense -- me, Mr. Canary in a Coal Mine, had not the slightest hint of a bite, and Cathleen, who had barely evidenced a bite reaction over the course of more than three months, suddenly has one? But they were undeniably bite marks.

I had had enough and I reckoned we needed to bring in a bedbug dog. These dogs are trained to sniff out bedbugs (their pheromones, it seems), and my guru on www.thebedbugresource.com was quite high on them. So I hooked us up with the folks at Advanced K9 Detectives, and last Thursday we were visited by Jada. Sadly, I was at work and missed it. For $250, Jada sniffed all around the apartment and alerted (whining and barking) at our wrapped up bedframe and headboard.

On the one hand, it was a relief -- the bugs were nowhere else in our room (anymore) and had not spread through the apartment. On the other hand, we still had bugs, and despite our best efforts to encase our bedframe and headboard in plastic wrapping, they (or at least one) were still getting out. Cathleen spent Friday on the phone and located a container fumigation place where they take infested furniture and gas the hell out of it. With pickup and fumigation, this was going to cost us $500, and then we'd not be able to use the bed for another month or two until we were sure that our bedroom was 110% bug-free. The other option was to toss the bed and eventually get a new one.

Now let me tell you something about this bed. Cathleen and I have a long history of crappy sleeping arrangements. From cramming our bodies onto my twin bed when I was in law school, to the leaky waterbed when visiting Mike and Theresa (yes, I woke up befuddled, wondering if I had peed myself and, if so, how come it seemed to be that I was peeing out of my hip), to the compromised air mattress at Lorri and John's (brrrrr, I'm cold and, ouch, this floor is hard), to the basement at my mom's when we were the only childless couple in the family. When we moved in together in 1995 at 4 Lexington Avenue (the Sage House), we bought a cheap, wooden frame at Ikea to hold the full-size mattress that Michael bought for us on the car ride home. I remember putting that frame together with Michael, neither of us able to bend one of our knees, and so we were screwing it together from some rather odd angles, with a lot of strange grunting going on. Cathleen and I slept on that full-sized bed with two dogs, and then intermittently with a child, for a decade. When we moved to Brooklyn, and that cheap wooden bedframe splintered in the move, we decided that enough was enough, we're getting a real bed, a queen-sized bed. We spent a morning at West Elm down in DUMBO and ordered what we thought was a comfortable and handsome bed for a pretty self-indulgent $700. We lunched at Garibaldis and, afterwards, as we waited to pay for the bed and arrange for the pieces to come out for us to load in the car, I told Max the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" for the first time, and wound up having to tell it to him three or four more times over the course of the afternoon because he loved it so much (nowadays he only wants me to tell the "scary" version, where the bears are viciously violent, and throw furniture and dishes against the wall in order to emphasize their disgust). Cathleen and I put the bed together that night, and I remember feeling like it was this humongous sea of furniture. As much as one can, we loved that bed.

And on Saturday night we hauled that mother out to the sidewalk. Yeah, bedbugs, you wanted that bed from the beginning. You got it.

We beckoned the exterminators back yesterday for a fourth spraying of all things good and poisonous, and spent last night sleeping in the basement again (the allure of which, for Max, has faded quickly). But for the first time in four months, I feel like we have finally conquered the bugs. They won the battle, but we won the war. They won the bed, but we won the right to make really bad metaphors.

Our clothes will remain bagged up for at least another six weeks, but I'm optimistic. Again.

Spring Break

2008-02-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

It was 60 degrees today, and I took full advantage of it. After Mike and Jacob ended their brief visit (a 36-hour trip to NYC to take in a Rangers game), I went out on a 6.8 mile run, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and then back across the Manhattan Bridge, and over to the Lincoln/Berkeley playground where I rendezvoused with Cathleen and the kids. I hadn't done a bridge run, I think, since training for the marathon in '06, and it was magnificent. Running up the Brooklyn Bridge, with a view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty to your left, the sprawling majesty of downtown ahead of you...I can't imagine a better view for an urban run. Coming back across the Manhattan Bridge was a little tougher -- early on at one point I had the N train passing next to me, and as I turned my head away to the other side for fresh air, I caught a wave of raw fish smell arising off of a Chinatown side street. But I needed the challenge of that run (and given my current level of conditioning, it was a challenge), and as I descended off the bridge I could feel my face radiating heat...one of those "I'm alive" feelings you get from a hard workout.

For dinner, we grilled (grilled!) spice-rubbed chicken parts, and ate them with potato salad and a green salad. All of me felt like it was two months hence, and it was revitalizing. Although this winter has been disappointingly tame weather-wise, it has felt long and hard, no doubt as a result of how sick I (and we) have been. Tomorrow aims to be cold again, but today's weather should keep me going strong right up to our Florida trip (a mere 17 days away).

Ahrs Go to Eleven

2008-02-16T20:47:00.000-08:00

She coaxes me into watching Jane Austen movies on Masterpiece Theater.
She often suggests that we "split" a bottle of beer.
She sometimes throws all of the leftover Chinese food into a baking dish with rice for dinner, and then distributes this as a casserole recipe to friends and family.
She takes my suggestion that we go to Florida in March and embellishes it into a "Rick duped me into going to baseball spring training" story, and tells it to others in front of my face because she knows that I'll laugh along with her.
No matter how hard she tries not to, she still laughs at my jokes.
She laughs even harder at her own jokes.
She supports me in whatever I do, no matter how noble, constructive, peculiar, or fantastical my endeavor.
Today we've been married eleven years.

V-Day

2008-02-14T19:34:00.000-08:00

You're supposed to do a blog entry for Valentine's Day, right?

I woke up at 6 today and went for a run. It was frickin cold -- low 30s and windy, especially up in Prospect Park. My iPod battery died without about a mile and a half to go in the run which forced me to focus on my thoughts, and my only thoughts were, "who are these other assholes running in this cold?"

I have fluid in my left ear. This has never happened to me before. I mean, sometimes I get water in my ear when I go swimming, but then I do some crazy "get-water-out-of-your-ear" trick, like hopping on the foot on the opposite side of your body from that of your water-logged ear, while shaking that ear down towards the ground, and eventually I feel this warm trickle come out of my ear, sort of what I imagine a brain hemhorrage would feel like, minus the pain and paralysis. I think I learned that ear-clearing trick in the third grade, around the same time that I learned my "get-rid-of-hiccups" trick (light match, put it out in a cup of water, drink water). You learn one of these tricks at an early age, I think, and then you are stuck with that one for life. I, however, in my highly-evolved state, learned a new anti-hiccups trick about five years ago maybe and it is unbelievably good, but it is one that I can do on others, but not on myself. Darnit. You should be so lucky to have hiccups around me. But the fluid in my ear now is not swimming related, but congestion related I guess. Now I have to sit around and hope that it doesn't become an ear infection. And they wonder why I'm going bald.

I think I consumed around 40, maybe 50, Necco hearts today, and I didn't read a single one.

I did, however, read the book Pretzel to Max tonight. It's the one about the extra-long dachshund whose affection for another dachshund, Greta, goes unrequited until he is able to use his length to rescue her from the bottom of a ditch. Then, after having snottily rejected his romantic overtures for the previous six pages, Greta consents to marrying Pretzel. There, I ruined it for you. I hate this book because a) it has a terrible message about relationships and what makes a person virtuous and appealing and b) like in real life Greta is going to be disinterested in the guy who is shaped like an extraordinarily enormous penis.

Happy Valentines Day.

Not so Terrible

2008-02-11T20:03:00.000-08:00

Eliza turned two yesterday. Her birth -- the tense drive to the hospital, the rapidly-developing realization that there would not be time for an epidural, Cathleen's bone-rattling screams, Eliza's emergence -- the entire experience is crystal clear in my mind. I can distinctly see her under the heat lamp, and I can feel the swell of emotion I felt talking to her for the first time. But everything between those moments and yesterday are mostly a blur. I will match my memory up against anyone's, but I can barely remember where the hell I have been for the past two years. Some day, some day I will sleep.

Eliza had a pretty good birthday. She loved the small, wooden toy kitchen we bought for her (and which I allen-wrenched together the night before). Max was refreshingly excited for her, and not jealous as he himself had predicted he would be. We had a decent-sized but smallish party of friends and family. Smoked fish platter and bagels from Fairway. Lots of coffee. To honor Eliza's recent "cow jumping over the moon" obsession, we played "pin the moon underneath cow" and we ate a fantastic ice cream cake that Cathleen had made (with Max's able assistance) in multiple stages the day before. She decorated the top of the cake with a cow jumping over a moon, drawn out in sprinkles (having rejected my idea of a cow jumping over my butt imprint in the icing). The candle ceremony was right out of the book for a two-year-old and an almost-five-year-old: as we sang, Cathleen tried to put a party hat on Eliza; the elastic band grabbed her hair and she began wailing out loud as we were in mid-verse. Max was so anxious to "help" blow out the candles that he was practically hyperventilating before "...dear Eliza, Happy Birthday..." and he obliterated the two flames before Eliza could even manage an unintended breath between her sobs. She recovered in fine order once a spoonful of cake was placed in her mouth.

Eliza is a ray of light, and I do not hesitate to declare that truth. She has such a zest for life, an excitement for the happenings of her daily existence, and an infectious laugh that she employs at every possible opportunity, that to be around her is to enjoy your own life that much more. Yeah, I love her a little.

Year of the Rat

2008-02-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

We celebrated the Chinese New Year tonight by ordering in Chinese food for dinner. We don't need much of an excuse to order in Chinese food, but one was available and so we jumped. Cathleen had read (or heard on the radio?) that you're supposed to eat dumplings (I forget the reason) and lo mein noodles (for a long life). We threw in some egg rolls too because, well, the Kahn boys like their egg rolls. They are, after all, the perfect vehicle for transporting large quantities of duck sauce to one's mouth.

This Chinese New Year is notable because this year begins the first year of the 12-year animal cycle on the Chinese calendar -- it is the Year of the Rat. As the first year in the cycle, the Rat Year is supposed to be one of renewal, or one in which to make a fresh start in some aspect of your life. Sounds like a plan to me.

I, however, am not a big fan of the Rat. Sure, I always get a little warm feeling whenever I see a giant, inflated rat sitting outside an office building, the centerpiece of some union's protest or picket line. But my affection for anything rat-like pretty much ends there. It is hard to live in a city where there is an estimated rat population in the neighborhood of 60,000 critters and feel any love for them. When I stand on subway platforms and spy a rat crawling around the tracks below, my first instinct is to scout the vicinity for an exit plan for myself should one become necessary. And then there was that episode with the mammoth dead rat in our backyard a few months ago. That still gives me the willies.

Max, in his tender innocence, likes rats. This misguided affection derives solely from watching Ratatouille, a good movie for sure, but a deceptively propagandizing one it turns out. Late one afternoon, as we walked down our block, we passed by the garbage storage area of one of our neighbor's buildings. Much to my horror, a large, hideous rat was sitting there in the open, staring at us, his face rendered that much more repulsive by virtue of the fact that his nose was somehow disfigured or bloody. Max exclaimed, with a note of glee and fascination in his voice, "look, a rat!"

Not, "ahhh, a rat!", but, "look, a rat," much as one might expect a young child to say "look, a koala bear" or "look, its Dora!" I was so stunned by his reaction -- I think I would have been less stunned, and more pleased, had he said "holy shit, a mother fucking rat" -- that I lurched into a lecture on how rats actually are not talented chefs in upscale restaurants, but are repulsive creatures that bite and carry disease. All that he heard, however, was Miss Othmar. A couple of weeks later, when he made some other favorable remark about rats, I concluded that the power of Disney is much greater than the power of Rick.

Superduperbowl

2008-02-04T20:48:00.000-08:00

It is hard to get excited about a championship when your team isn't in it, especially when your team had the sixth-worst record in the league, but as a dedicated Patriots-loather, watching last night's game was about as much fun as I could have in a game that did not end with a Jets victory. The Tyree catch was crazy nuts amazing (I get to tell my grandkids that I was one of only about 97.5 million people to have seen it!), and I fell asleep with warm images of Bill Belichiks deflatedly dour expression dancing in my head. No larger classless boar could deserve to have his undefeated team lose the big one. It's been nauseating with all of the pro-Giants hype buzzing around the city, but I'll take it.

Pitchers and catchers report in what...a week? We booked our plane tickets and hotel reservations today for an early March trip to the vicinity of Port St. Lucie, Florida with the Bertin/McGoldricks. Spring training baby! I cannot wait!

Going with Obama

2008-02-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

With Tuesday's Primary coming up tomorrow, I have been forced to make up my mind as to whom to vote for. It was surprisingly difficult. Months ago -- many months ago -- I had pegged Edwards as my candidate. Kucinich, of course, was really my candidate, but Edwards presented an electable option for me: straight-up-progressive on pretty much every domestic issue (hell, he set the domestic agenda for the entire Democratic campaign); made a regrettable war vote in '02, but understood enough to apologize for that vote, and to advocate for a modestly-aggressive withdrawal plan. Not perfect, but I was very excited about supporting him. Knowing that he had not been coronated by the media, I figured he was a longshot but I also figured that I would be pleased with pretty much any one of the dozen folks who were standing on the Democratic debate stage. But now that we're down to Clinton and Obama, two candidates that I desperately want to be excited about, I find myself decidedly unexcited about both.

Hillary is too hawkish, too poll-driven, too Clinton for me. On the other hand, given her political skills and her incredible command of the issues, she is probably the person still standing in either party most qualified to assume the presidential mantle. She is on target on many issues (health care, global warming), but her war vote, her campaign handling of her war vote, and her continued war-ish votes concern me deeply. Finally, she's a woman, the significance of which should not be dismissed, and cannot be overstated -- what a radical change it would be in our society if the President was a woman! I would love for Max and Eliza to grow up in that kind of society. But four (or eight) more years of the Clintons? I would listen to Bill give State of the Union addresses, and I would hang on every word, feeling truly inspired. And then there would be the inevitable letdown (Don't Ask Don't Tell, Welfare "reform"), and the squirming over every little controversy, no matter how true or contrived (by the vast right wing conspiracy which, by the way, certainly existed, you were dead-on about that Hillary). I'm not sure I can stomach another term or two of that if there's a presentable alternative.

Barack is too centrist, way too centrist for me. It seemed to take him forever to come out with a platform on anything, and everything seems like a compromise (Paul Krugman explained in The Times today that although universal healthcare may not be achieved under a Clinton administration, there's no way it could happen under Obama). Much to his credit, he was against the war from the get-go (though, having been out of office, had less of a political consideration to make in opposing it). And he's a person of color -- talk about radical changes in society, and the world that I want Max and Eliza to know and understand. But the guy can give a speech. I feel like not only could he lead this country through difficult times and perhaps make great headway in restoring this country's credibility, but he could inspire a whole generation to greatness. Oh, and my friend David's father, Richard Danzig, is an advisor to the Obama campaign. Given that Danzig's name was bandied about as a possible Secretary of Defense had Kerry won the election (he was Sec'y of the Navy under Clinton), I can only assume that he would be up for similar positioning in an Obama administration. Having a connection to someone like that, no matter how wafer-thin and tenuous, can't hurt if, for example, they reinstate the draft and expand it to include myopic 38-year-olds with bad knees.

So, tomorrow it's Obama for me. I wish I was more pumped about it, but maybe my excitement will grow over time. After 7+ years of the current nightmare, I crave an option to be pumped about.

Primarily a Loser

2008-01-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

John Edwards dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President today which means that, yet again, "my guy" isn't going to win. My track record sucks. I can't recall ever voting for the winner in the primaries (Dennis Kucinich in '04, Bill Bradley in '00, I think I voted for Paul Tsongas in '92, and I think I might have voted for Paul Simon in '88 or maybe I missed that vote because I was away at college and not together enough to get an absentee ballot). The bottom line: my support is the kiss of death. Or I remain too far out on the fringe. Still.

Will I ever see the day when a candidate can stand up and say "we need to do something about poverty, we need to provide universal healthcare, we need to fight against corporatist interests," and have the vast majority of people support that person? I don't know. Edwards' failure to gain any momentum at all is disheartening. I suppose that I should feel good that we have evolved enough as a society that the last two Democrats standing are the woman and the person of color, but I need a day or two to mourn Edwards' departure before I can gain any other perspective. Then there will be plenty of time for me to rally around Obama -- the guy does inspire me when he speaks, and his capacity for leadership (what the nation "yearns for" as the NYT noted in an editorial yesterday) cannot be overstated. But for now, I'm on the outside looking in. Again.

Sick Family Robinson

2008-01-26T20:01:00.000-08:00

As alluded to in my previous post, this kid's been illin' for the past week, and it hasn't been a lonely experience. Eliza's nose has been running nonstop for weeks, and she's the healthiest person in the family.

It all started way back when, in a simpler time, on a day called Thursday the 17th. Max came home early from school, and I came home early from work to be with him (Cathleen had to leave to attend to an emergency that mercifully turned out not to be emergent). I took Max's temperature, he had a fever of at least 101.7, and he was asleep in bed by 5:30. By the next morning his fever was gone.

Saturday night Cathleen and I went out to the movies (There Will Be Blood -- Daniel Day Lewis, as advertised, was brilliant and he will no doubt win the Oscar, but the last 20 minutes of the movie had me shaking my head...I get the entire point of the movie, but Plainview's descent into a farcical monster at the end was, pacewise, such a radical departure from the rest of the movie that it left a bad taste in my mouth.). We were supposed to go out to dinner too, but we went straight home because Cathleen wasn't feeling well. By later that night she had a fever which didn't fully disappear for another three days.

I took the kids myself to Alani's fourth birthday party on Sunday while Cathleen remained at home in bed. She almost never gets sick and so I was surprised that she would be this sick and yet I, the pale, wan sickly kid, would have emerged unscathed. By nightfall on Monday, however, I was registering 101.7 on the thermometer.

I had a fever. Cathleen had a fever. This situation was further complicated by the fact that we didn't have heat in our apartment that day either. Our apartment and Sophie and Joseph's apartment were both without heat; the basement and the first floor had heat. Our plumbers quickly diagnosed the problem as frozen pipes! They spent about 40 minutes applying a blowtorch to the heating pipes in the bedrooms in our apartment before giving up on it for the day. They would return on Tuesday with their pipe-thawing equipment (which was in use on another job). We put an electric heater in the kids room, and buried our fevered selves under our comforter. Mercifully, the plumbers got the heat back on by midday Tuesday and, because Cathleen and I were both passed out in our bed when their work was done, we temporarily cut out on the $650 repair bill!

Beyond the fever, and an I-feel-like-I've-been-run-over-by-a-truck feeling, I was also experiencing these really severe stomach cramps any time I put solid food into my stomach -- so severe that I was feeling it in my back, as if I was having back labor. So bizarre, the way my GI tract just throws up a white flag anytime the least bit of trouble presents itself to the rest of my body. In any event, I'm sick as a dog, and basically not eating food for three straight days. And Cathleen is sick. And there's these two little kids running around in our apartment with this expectation that we're still going to parent them! Fortunately we had babysitting for Eliza during the days, at which time Max was also in school. Cathleen and I were literally tag-teaming it on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with one of us passed out in the bedroom for an hour and the other tending to the kids, and then swapping when circumstances demanded it. On Wednesday, as my fever was subsiding, my nose turned into a faucet; even though it hadn't been runny at all for the previous two days, now it was so leaky that at times I couldn't get a tissue up there fast enough. It was like I had some freakishly mutating plague.

Fortunately, Cathleen mended sufficiently by Thursday that she could carry the load, and by Friday (my fourth straight day of missing work...I have no idea when I last did that, not even when I had two surgeries within six days of each other back in '04) I was able to contribute significantly, largely abetted by the fact that I ate my first actual meal that day. Today I'm feeling closer to normal, though I've got a cough and my stomach doesn't quite feel 100%. Cathleen has a seriously badass cough, reminiscent of one she couldn't shake for weeks a couple of years ago.

All the while, we've mused that Max had escaped with one night of fever, and here we were with something approximating the flu. Tonight Max had a slight fever and he threw up in his sleep, the poor thing.

I wish that there was something a bit deeper or more philosophical about this blog entry, but there isn't. We are some sad specimens in these parts.

Amaz-on-ing

2008-01-23T18:54:00.001-08:00

Theresa discovered today that Slipping is now available for pre-order on Amazon. That makes Theresa almost as big a Slipping nerd as I. I'd write more, but I'm just buried with some flu-like illness right now. Yuck.

My favorite weanie

2008-01-18T20:30:00.000-08:00

I used to make fun of late-weaning babies. It was a hobby of mine. I'd stand on the corner and mock the 16-month-old who looked recently breast-fed.

And then I had a daughter who was still demanding "nursey" from her mother at bedtime as the days ticked down towards her second birthday. Three weeks to go before I had a two-year-old La Leche poster child! Talk about a crisis of self-loathing!

But I put the kids to bed on Wednesday and Thursday night sans lactating mother, and tonight we decided to see what would happen. At first we were going to try switching who read books to whom, but Max is a stickler for form, and he insisted that I read to him, as has been the course for almost two straight years now. Cathleen read to Eliza and, when we were all done with books and stories, deposited her into her crib. No protest from the girl, and she was asleep within a short time. And tomorrow night we're heading to the movies (the movies!), with a babysitter handling bedtime duty.

It's not official yet, but we appear to have reached the point where Cathleen has become expendable.

Slipping update

2008-01-14T20:29:00.000-08:00

In glancing back at my posts over the past couple of months (as scant as they have been), I am stunned that I have not written more about the progress made in the publication of "Slipping."

First, right before Thanksgiving, Cathleen received in the mail her first advance copy of the book. It was remarkable, holding the book in my hand, staring at the cover, flipping through the pages and seeing "cathleen davitt bell" at the top of each page. The advance copy is just a paperback, and so it's a bit less than what the real deal will feel like, but I found myself just picking it up and feeling it several times over the first couple of days. We brought it to Bloomfield with us, of course, to show everyone. I couldn't wait for Cathleen to drop her cool to show it off, so I took it out to show to Sophie and Claudia, the latter of whom promptly burst into tears. "She really did it, didn't she?" she asked. I kind of think that's how all of us who have been rooting for her for so long feel right about now.

On the night after Thanksgiving, we sat around in Claudia and Walter's livingroom after the kids were in bed, and Cathleen read the first three chapters of the book out loud to us. Beyond revised bits and pieces that Cathleen had asked me to look at over the past year or so, I hadn't actually looked at the text since I first read her initial completed draft about three years ago, and so the actual prose had become a bit of an abstraction for me. So listening to it again, almost as if for the first time, was so refreshing because it is so damn well-written. For example, she would never use "so" three times in a sentence.

Then, just before we left for Bloomfield again for Christmas, Cathleen received a copy of Bloomsbury Children's Books' spring catalogue. Bloomsbury, it appears, is intent on promoting "Slipping." You look at the back cover of the catalogue, the cover of "Slipping" is one of four pictured. You look at the Table of Contents inside, the cover of "Slipping" is again featured. You turn to page 16, you see the two-page spread for the book. Bloomsbury done good by "Slipping" so far.

Not to beat the word exciting to death, but it is very exciting. I walk by Posman Books in Grand Central every day, and I half expect to see "Slipping" in the window already. Calm down, rick, calm down. Six months to go still.

Sometimes work is hard

2008-01-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

This morning I had to do a hospital visit with a client. Her mother and social worker had been trying to get me to visit her for a couple of weeks in order to help her execute a Designation of Standby Guardianship. It's a form that we complete for our clients, which they sign, that grants guardianship powers over the client's children to a designated person if the client ever becomes incapacitated or deceased. The short form that we fill out provides a 60-day grant of guardianship powers (once there is a triggering event), and then if permanent guardianship powers are needed, you have to go to court. I had been scheduled to visit with the client before New Years, but then her mother canceled, and we rescheduled for today.

There she was in her hospital bed, stick-thin and drifting in and out of sleep. I learned, upon entering the room, that she was blind. When awake, she appeared to me to be lucid enough -- we had a significantly clear enough conversation about the guardianship designation that I felt completely comfortable in having her sign off on the designation. But I needed her to sign five other intake forms as well (retainer, client rights and responsibilities, HIV disclosure release, general release, medical release), and by the time she got to the fourth or fifth signature, she was too weak to write out an approximation of her entire name. By the last form, she scribbled a barely-recognizable first initial. I can only assume that she will be gone within a month. She is probably in her early 30s and her daughter, for whom she was designating a standby guardian, is only 10.

What do you say when concluding a meeting like that? Take care? I hope you feel better? I went with "nice meeting you," and reassured myself that she was pretty much asleep by that point.

She just wants to have fun

2008-01-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

We went out to dinner on Saturday night at The Smoke Joint in Fort Greene, one of our favorite local eateries, and when I say our, I'm talking about all four of us. We walked over there, the four of us holding hands together for the better part of the trip. Once inside, we ordered our food and grabbed a table on the glass-enclosed porch in the front. Rack of ribs, bbq beans, mac 'n' cheese, grilled corn on the cob, and a cold bottle of Three Philosophers...my kind of dinner. But halfway into it, there is Eliza, standing in her high-chair, a cheek-to-cheek smile barely concealing a mouthful of corn, dancing away to the reggae that is blaring over the speakers. When I asked her to please sit down, she stopped for a second, looked at me as if I was high, politely said "no," and started dancing away again, knees bending up and down, arms waving in the air.

I may not know how to parent this one, but damn if I'm still not smiling about that entire scene.

Still Buggin Out in '08

2008-01-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

It is getting to the point where I can barely remember life before bedbugs. Or when I didn't tend towards hyperbolic pronouncements, with a penchant for overdramatization and wistful bouts of self pity.

The bedbugs, folks, are still with us.

The exterminators came back to our apartment on the Friday after Christmas because I had seen a bug crawling across Max's pillow (in our room) and had received bites on the night of the 26th. We had left for Yorktown on Thursday, so Sophie graciously greeted the exterminator (this time it was Jeff) and led him to our room. I spoke with him on the phone, and he indicated to me that he had been told he was coming for a mice extermination, so although he had some Bedlam in his truck, he normally would have wanted to drill holes in our walls but lacked his drill. Oh well. He completely redid our room, from spraying the perimeter to the various parts of our bookshelves and dressers. He told Sophie that he used an entire canister of Bedlam, despite the EPA's apparent recommendation not to do so. Great?

We then went through a week and a half of bug-free living. We vowed not to unpack our clothing from the plastic bags until I had been bite-free for three weeks, but we felt in our hearts that it was only a matter of days before we would be able to declare a tenative victory.

Then, this past Monday night, after I had read Max his books and told him his bedtime story, I noticed that the top of my right wrist was feeling a little itchy. I looked down and saw three small little bumps. No way. Impossible. I stared at them some more. Within minutes they had developed into distinct little hives. I was so dumbstruck that I couldn't figure out what had happened, but when I told Cathleen, she instantly concluded that the bugs had made it into the kids' room. The bites were on the exact hand that I was resting on Max's bed as I told him his bedtime story. I was bitten three successive times, while awake, while recounting "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to my son.

You've got to hand it to the bedbugs. They are some serious little mothers. Objectively, I have to admire their elusiveness and evolutionary capacity to persist. On the other hand, I have not felt this level of annoyance, frustration and hopelessness since the Bush administration. I mean, when the exterminators give you a 15% discount because "you've been having a hard time," you know you are in the shit.

The exterminator returned this Thursday (this time we had Dave!). He completely sprayed the kids' room and our room (including drilling a few small holes at the base of our wall and injecting insecticide into the wall). While Cathleen prepped our bedroom that morning (disassemble bed, empty ziploc bags out of dresser drawers, disassemble bookshelves), she saw a bedbug on our bed's headboard. That thing -- the headboard -- had been leaning against our bedroom wall ever since, in an effort to eliminate a favorite harborage spot, we had unbolted it from the bed's mainframe a month ago. The headboard is padded and covered with a cloth material, and if there was a bug crawling on it, then it was likely that there were more inside the actual headboard. That night we encased the entire headboard in plastic (two contractor bags and a lot of ducktape), and then last night we did the same to the padded sides of our bed frame. I am investigating steam-cleaning options (heat is an effective bug/larvae/egg killer), because it is either that, keep the things wrapped in black plastic and ducktape for more than a year, or throw out the bed. We've bagged up all of the books in the kids' bedroom but rather than freeze them for 2+ weeks as we did our books, we're going to search through them page by page for signs of bugs or eggs. We can't do bedtime all that well for 2+ weeks without the books. Thursday night we slept in the basement, but returned to the fold last night. No bites or bug sightings for one night and counting...

Holidays wrap-up [elongated version]

2007-12-30T19:05:00.000-08:00

Back at home, after having spent seven of the eight nights around Christmas and New Years sleeping out of home. Spent the 22nd through the 26th in Connecticut for Christmas with Cathleen's family, and the the 27th through the 30th in Yorktown for a belated Chanukah gathering with my family. The schedule was roughly as follows:

22nd: Drive to Bloomfield. Participate in Claudia and Walter's annual Caroling Party. Eliza spent almost an hour sitting next to Walter at the piano, quietly toying with the right side of the keys, and pushing away Walter's hand any time he tried to play the high notes. Earlier in the day we went sledding in the back, and discovered that Max had turned into this kid who loved the snow, loved sledding, loved playing around in the snow. Parenting doesn't just allow you to enjoy your kids' lives, it allows you to relate back to your own childhood; as we sped down the hill in the toboggan, I channeled the rush I would feel sledding down the Lim/Zuliani hill as a kid. Loved it. Regrettably, our digital camera spent the night of the party outisde. On the snow. In the rain.

23rd: Attended church service at the Unitarian church Claudia and Walter like to attend (Walter played the music for back-to-back services). I spent most of the service down in the playroom with Max, Eliza and Alani. We dined at Macaroni Grill afterwards, and then hung out at the house.

24th: Went sledding again, but the snow had frozen over from the previous day's rain, and the hill was slick and fast. I brought Max and Alani halfway up the hill and, early in the descent, I discovered that I could neither slow down nor control the toboggan. We wound up hitting a bump and spinning around backwards. "This," I thought, "can not end well." The next bump jammed the edge of the toboggan, and Max and Alani turned into projectiles. As I held the two crying kids on my lap, I unconvincingly tried to sell them on "wasn't that crazy and fun?" Cathleen and I then built them a snow fort that they didn't use at all. Late in the day we went to (Great) Aunt Catherine's for tea. It was a bit stressful this year, with Max hyped up on a combination of sleep deprivation and cookies, running around and being loud (like a four-year-old), but Aunt Catherine remained unfazed and as charming as ever, and I had an interesting talk with her son Steven about the hot air balloon ride that he and Sheila took for their 50th wedding anniversary. Later that night, back at the house, the adults exchanged gifts. I presented my "spring subscription to BAM" gift to Cathleen by way of a Mad-libs which pretty much worked.

25th: At Claudia and Walter's, we sleep in a humongous bed. Max loves that bed, and it is the only place that we allow him to sleep in bed with us. That morning, Cathleen got up with Eliza at around 6:30, and I remained in bed with Max until he woke up around 40 minutes later. As consciousness slowly washed over him, I quietly asked him, "do you know what today is?" He didn't jump up, or even perk up. He just looked at me and replied with a question: "I wonder if Santa left us two notes (in response to the one that he and Alani wrote the night before)?" I then got out of bed and began to get dressed. Max remained in bed and told me that he wasn't quite ready to get up. A couple of minutes later he announced that he was ready. Having never celebrated Christmas as a child, I have no personal experience with the "wake up early and run downstairs to rip open gifts" phenomenon that one sees in Christmas movies. Chanukah's a night-time event, and so the excitement of gift opening is preceded by the tension-killing wait for the sun to set. But here was Max, content to lounge in bed for a few more minutes before calmly going downstairs to check out what gifts lay in wait. I thought that was cool. He was less cool by the time the small cadre of guests arrived for Christmas dinner, but a good dinner was had nonetheless. Ann Chilton still makes a mean trifle.

26th: Woke up, packed and drove home. Unpacked slightly. When I turned in for bed, Max was asleep in our room, on the floor, and I spotted a bedbug crawling across his pillow. I killed it, and then brought out the vaccuum. Still wound up with three bites on my right arm by the next morning. Those motherfuckers.

27th: Woke up, packed and drove up to Yorktown late in the afternoon. Mike and T and the kids were already there; Lorri and John et al. arrived later that evening. Eliza is obsessed with Jacob and Ryan and if one of them was not paying her constant attention, she would stand and shout one of their names repeatedly until due attention was provided. But damn if she is not cute doing so.

28th: We packed into cars, drove to Croton and took Metro North into Manhattan, to then head up to Rockefeller Center to see The Tree and other sights. It was, in civil engineering terms, crazy-ass crowded. Max, despite his firm urban roots, does not like thick crowds, and so he began yelling at all of the people to leave New York City. It is with great pride that I note that he has developed a precocious distaste for tourists. Maybe we'd like you better, people, if you didn't stand in the middle of the sidewalk. Duh. We also saw the Penny Harvest at Rockefeller Center, where NYC schoolkids -- Max among them -- had collected $1 million in pennies to be used for charitable causes. Thems a lot of pennies.

29th: We exchanged presents for the kids in the morning, and then Mike, John and I headed off with the kids to the local bowling alley. Other than some technical upgrades, that place has not changed in 30 years. Oh shit, I have become a guy who can say "that place has not changed in 30 years." Oh well. Max was pretty much wasted by this point. With the exception of the night of the 26th, he had been losing on average 2 to 3 hours of sleep each night for a week (getting to bed late, not sleeping in late), and then had been playing at full pace with his beloved cousins non-stop. At the bowling alley, it all came crashing down. There was impudence, defiance and eventually screaming. With a crying Max hanging onto my left arm, I still managed to bowl a strike in one frame. That night the adults exchanged gifts. Lorri and John gave me, inter alia, a stuffed Giardia doll. You know, something to cuddle with when I want to reminisce about crapping away 13 pounds of my bodyweight in a month's time.

30th: Apres breakfast, we packed up and headed over to the cemetery to visit my dad and grandparents' graves. Lorri figured out that she is four years younger than my mom was when my father died, a fact that drove home how young he -- and we -- all were when he died. Or maybe it drove home how old Lorri is? Probably the former. We then poured into our respective cars and departed. Not "departed" in the traditional cemetery sense. We all went home. I think that it is interesting that as notably different as I am from the remainder of my family, how happy I am when we are all together. And it is not just that I cannot get enough of my nieces and nephews. I come home from family gatherings exhausted because we adults insist on staying up late talking with each other. Imagine! We are a pretty lucky family. I stayed up that night to watch the final football game of the regular season, between Indy and Tennessee. I don't care about either of these teams, but it was in this game that I dropped out of first place in my winner-takes-all ($350) season-long NFL Pick 'Em pool. I led the pool all season, until the last game (of over 200 games) of the entire season. I suck that much.

31st: I woke up illin, probably a healthy dose of actual exhaustion. I tried to rally for a family dinner party at friends' house, but I left 30 minutes into the shindig, leaving Cathleen behind to contend with both of our kids and dinner party conversation. I was in bed well before midnight, the first New Years that I didn't witness the ball drop or the clocks change in close to 30 years. Here's to 2008...

A Boy and his Dogbite

2007-12-20T21:16:00.000-08:00

As I approached our front door this evening coming home from work, my cell phone rang. It was Cathleen. She started talking to me in pig latin. She was saying two words, and I couldn't figure them out. My linguistic skills are pretty bad, but even I was embarrassed that it took me several "whats?" to understand what "og-day ite-bay" meant. I swear I was once a pretty smart kid, honest. After we were able to move beyond "dog bite," I was able to glean from her that Oscar had bitten Max, on the face, near his eye. "Be prepared for it to look bad," she advised me.

So I came in through the apartment door and Max rushed me for a hug as he (and Eliza) normally do (hands down, my favorite moment of the day), and then I saw his face. It was stunning that Oscar could do such damage. Nothing deep, but a pronounced scratch and cut just under Max's right eye, and another scratch-ish cut on his cheek. Max, apparently, had been cornering the dogs in the kitchen, preventing them from moving away from him, and despite several warnings from Cathleen that he was scaring the dogs and to back off, he didn't. And Oscar bit him.

Oscar is not a good dog, and by most standards is a bit of a bad dog. But this was new territory for him. Now what do we do? Turn the other cheek?

As for Max, Cathleen called our pediatrician's office. We now have the answer to the question, "what does it take to get a doctor on the phone?" The answer is, "my dog bit my child's face." She prescribed antibiotics, so he is now on amoxycillin for five days, and we smeared his face with bacitracin. He doesn't seem to be experiencing any level of discomfort, so either the bitemarks were indeed superficial, or Oscar severed Max's facial nerves. Most likely the former, but I'm no medical expert.

Eyewitness to an anomaly

2007-12-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

A coworker who has season tickets to the Knicks couldn't make it to last night's game, so she offered me the tickets. I actually had to think about it for a second. But a game in the Garden is a game in the Garden, and despite my loathing for Isiah Thomas, once I realized they were playing against Lebron and the Cavs, I had to go. Sameer wound up as my date, so we dined on some Be Bim Bop at Kum Gang San and then made it to the seats about a minute after tipoff. It is good hanging out with that fella. We've only been friends since the eighth grade.

The seats were pretty good, and the Knicks kept it close in the first quarter. Then they built a 17-point lead by halftime and wound up winning the game in what had become a laugher by midway through the fourth. Hooray, all is right in Knicksville.

The Indignities Mount

2007-12-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

After Ben the Exterminator visited this past Monday, I went five consecutive nights without a bite. "A few more nights," I was thinking, "and we can cautiously conclude that this is over." Last night, however, the bedbugs were up and at em. I woke up with a bite on my upper right arm, three on the back of my neck, and one on my lower lip.

My lower lip.

A bedbug got me, right on the kisser. Talk about adding new meaning to the notion of sucking face.

I have tried to convince myself that I was probably laying on my side, with my mouth pretty much touching the pillow or the bedsheet, and so my luscious, Botoxish lips were the most accessible flesh for some random bedbug in search of a meal. The other option, that a bug crawled onto and across my face, gazed lovingly at my impish-yet-pouty smile, and planted a tender chomp on my lower lip...it is almost too much to bear.

Today I vacuumed the room, the bed and the bookshelves with the intensity and anger of a frat boy who has realized that he had sex with the dog last night.

Hey, guy I fired

2007-12-13T19:19:00.000-08:00

"Rick, I'm ready for some more cases if you have any to assign," typically means, in modern office parlance, that you've actually done work on the cases I already had assigned to you.

38 Special

2007-12-11T19:16:00.000-08:00

38, today am I. I think that I was born at like 9:50 a.m., and Mike came out ten minutes later? I know for a fact that Mike came out ten minutes later. Hell, that has been a fact that I have lorded over him for, oh, about 38 years now. Of all the ways that I psychologically tortured him as a child (and an adult), among my favorites was saying, after he sought clarification on some passing reference that he likely had merely not heard, "oh, I can't explain it now. In ten minutes you'll be old enough to get it." I'm good, no?

Today was a roller coaster ride of a birthday. Morning celebration with Cathleen, kids and the Entin Bells featured a "doughnut cake" -- Max's genius alternative for normal cake. At his behest, Cathleen bought three Dunkin Donuts, uh, doughnuts, piled them up on each other and implanted candles. A bit much of a sugar jolt for me pre-coffee, but the kids seemed to like it. Miriam made me a great card ("You are the jokiest boy I've ever met.").

I arrived at work late and over the course of the day I had to fire someone for the first time ever, and I learned that a former client of mine, whom I had worked with many times and liked, had died. Firing the guy was a no-brainer, as his screw-up was monumental and was not, unfortunately, unprecedented, but it was stressful nonetheless. Fortunately, to his credit, he was gracious and professional in accepting his dismissal, but that in the long run may have made it all that much harder for me. In a sense it would have been easier had he screwed up and then had been angry with me for holding him accountable. I mean, I wouldn't be worth shit as a program director had I not fired him, but I can't escape thinking about the impact it had on his life. As for my former client...well, a few times every year I am reminded that my clients have AIDS and, despite the amazing advances in treatment that have been made over the past decade, it is still a terminal illness. I remember this client as a friendly, vibrant, chatty woman who would get all dressed up to attend what I considered low-level administrative hearings regarding her benefits and whom, despite the number of times I asked her to call me Rick, would always call me Mr. Kahn in her thick, high-pitched, Puerto Rican accent.

After work, I met Cathleen in Manhattan for dinner at Casa Mono, a Spanish tapas restaurant opened by celebrity chef Mario Batali. It was smaller than I had expected, and the tables adjacent to ours were practically on top of us. And it was loud, with music booming over us as if we were in some hipster bar. But once we had ordered our food, and began consuming our bottle of wine (something red, I cannot believe that I have no recollection of what it was), and adjusted to our surroundings, I realized that I was hearing Up the Junction coming from the speakers. Oh my god, they were playing Squeeze! A really good restaurant just became sensational. What are the odds of walking into a semi-trendy Manhattan restaurant on your 38th birthday and having the night's soundtrack be one of your favorite bands from 20 years ago?

The food was great: bacalao croquetas with an orange sauce; mussels with chorizo; duck with cranberry mostaza; lamb shank with jerusalem artichoke puree; grilled brussel sprouts; sauteed mushrooms with garlic. We polished off the bottle of wine by the end of the meal which meant that either Cathleen finally had gained the capacity to drink a half bottle of wine at dinner, or I was a bit cocked. She alleges the latter. For dessert she managed to make it through only half of some amazing chocolatey chocolate thing, and I managed to wolf down my entire burnt vanilla custard (sort of a creme caramel) which featured battered and deep-fried bay leaves on the side (you eat the fried dough, but not the leaves). We headed home and spent a while talking with Claudia who had put the kids to bed; she regaled us with tales of how Max was this incredibly helpful, caring and thoughtful older brother during the entire process, supplying her with ideas and assistance in trying to pacify a congested and ear-infected Eliza.

I can distinctly recall the days when 38 seemed old to me, and yet I still feel like a goofy kid most days of the week. It's more of an "in denial" thing than a "young at heart" thing, but old is as old does, I suppose. Back in those days of actual youth, I'm not sure I had any sense of what 38 would be like for me, but I imagine that had I had some measure of focus, I would have hoped to have married my true life partner, and perhaps have fathered two amazing kids whom I cherish more than anything. Regrets, I've had a few, but I could not be in a happier place.

Are the bugs winning?

2007-12-10T20:13:00.001-08:00

If you can't tell already, this bedbug experience speaks directly to the obsessive side of my personality. Screw my other blatherings and falderal; I just might turn this blog into Bedbugs 24/7. Of course, then I'd be forced to compete for viewership with my new favorite website: http://www.thebedbugresource.com/.

Six days post-extermination and I'm still waking up with multiple new bites each day. This is not entirely unexpected. The insecticides do not necessarily kill on contact -- they typically wreak havoc on the bugs' nervous systems, eventually causing death -- but they require contact for death to ultimately occur. Because bedbugs feed only once every five to seven days and otherwise spend their time in their "harbourage," up to a week after a spraying adult bedbugs will still venture out for a night-time Rick meal. Also, eggs that were not hit with insecticide will hatch and eventually turn into bugs which will likewise seek my flesh. The goal with spraying is to coat the areas that the Rick-seekers will traverse so that they encounter the insecticide and, after leaving me with a new itchy welt, finally meet their demise. Indeed, the professionals recommend that you continue to sleep in your room after a spraying so that you can act as bait to lure the bugs out into the poisoned environs.

We, nonetheless, had concerns about the scope of Ben's spraying the other day, so we called and requested that we take another hit. I was at work, but Ben arrived before noon. He helped Cathleen disassemble our bedframe (separating the headboard from the mainframe), at which point they saw two bugs. Then, as Cathleen was moving items off of my small bedside table, they noticed two tiny little newbies scurrying off. Ben sprayed the entire bed and table directly with Bedlam. With each passing day our comfort level with the insecticides grows. In another week I will no doubt be willing to bathe in a vat of Ben's favorite pyrethroid mixture.

In the meantime, reality has forced us to cancel our annual holiday open house party, which had been scheduled for this coming Sunday. The bugs appear to be contained within our bedroom, but if someone were to come to the party and take a bug home with him...it would be an unforgivable act. On the one hand, our apartment is such a war zone right now: bagged clothing here, boxed up stuff there, that prepping it for the party would have been a huge effort. But I look forward to that party every year, and I'm bummed that we're putting it on hold. The new plan is for a bedbug free party maybe in January, but it won't quite be the same.

Chanukah

2007-12-08T20:24:00.000-08:00

The "Hannukah" spelling really irritates me. As a language, Hebrew's intrinsic value lies in its ability to not just forgive, but to encourage, a good gathering of back-throat phlegm in nearly every sentence, what with it's baruchs and melechs, not to mention its chutzpah and chanukah. Vernacularizing it further by dropping the initial "c" would be like spelling Christmas with a "G," people.

Chanukah has seemed a little extra special this year. Maybe it's that both kids are into the menorah-lighting -- Max, because he kinda knows what is going on; Eliza, because she is wide-eye entranced by the dancing flames. Maybe it's that we've been able to share the experience with others a bit more -- two nights with the Entin Bells, this night with Jeff and Laura (after I spent a great day with Jeff, catching up with him mano-a-mano for what seemed like the first time in years). On the second night, we gave Max a Playskool pirate fisherman set-up, and he needed my help assembling the pieces. As we sat on the livingroom floor putting the toy together, with the menorah flickering on the table next to us, I could feel and see myself 30 years ago, on the livingroom floor in Yorktown, excitedly putting together some new Micronauts figure, with the menorah lighting up the front bay window.

Then, last night, as we were herding the kids to go to bed, they wanted a last look at the menorahs (we have two). With Cathleen holding Max, I picked up a protesting Eliza, and to calm her down I suggested that we sing a Chanukah song. With the apartment lights off, and the candles casting a glow about the room, and two tired kids barely keeping their heads up to stare at the flames, Cathleen and I sang through our limited Chanukah repertoire. It was one of those moments when the chaos dissolves, and we're only aware of each other, and all we have left is our happiness.

Away, ye critters

2007-12-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Extermination Day. We had spent the prior week washing all of our clothing and sealing it up plastic bags. Most of the clothing now sits in large plastic bags, to remain unworn for the next few weeks. The essentials -- a handful of shirts, pants, underwear, socks, running clothes -- are in large ziploc bags that will sit in our dresser drawers. When we have determined that our long, national bedbug nightmare is over, we can take all of the clothes out of the bags and resume normal living. Cathleen fantasizes about living in this downscaled manner in perpetuity, but she is crazy. We all know that.

Ben the Exterminator arrived at a little after 9:30 in the morning. Ben has been to our home a couple of times before to deal with what we like to call "the mouse problem." Ben seals up holes, and "the mouse problem" goes away. Bedbugs, of course, don't respect the seal-up-the-hole method, and they require a good dose of toxic juice. Ben came armed with toxic juice.

When we first scheduled an exterminator to come, Cathleen asked what insecticides they'd be using. We were told they'd be spraying something in the walls -- one of three frighteningly named poisons: Suspend, Bedlam or Tri-Di. Then they'd spray Steri-Fab on the surface areas in the room. I called my brother-in-law, John, who has a Masters in Industrial Hygiene, and asked him to weigh in on whether it was judicious to have these things sprayed in the midst of our young children. John, bless his toxicologically-educated soul, did some quick research and gave us enough information that we felt comfortable having our home so insecticided. John also seemed to suggest that we were doing a greater disservice to our children's health by raising them in the big city. John, you country bumpkin.

Well, when Ben the Exterminator arrived, Cathleen asked what he'd be using that day. "Onslaught" was his reply.

I am a total sucker for a good name. Onslaught, however, is not a good name.

We then set about calling John (no answer), researching Onslaught on the web, calling the company that makes Onslaught, and having a mini-conference call with Mike the Exterminator Boss. We learned little, except that Onslaught is a residual insecticide. This is a good thing to have when dealing with bedbugs, because when you inevitably miss the eggs or the larvae that are hidden in crevices somewhere, when they grow up and venture out the poison is still there for the killing. This seems like a bad thing when you have young children and small dogs who might venture amongst the poison. Like we do.

Ben the Exterminator does not have much of a bedside manner. He looks a bit like all of the kids in my high school that came from Putnam Valley, which is to say that he looks like he just came home from a Megadeth concert. Long hair and a dour demeanor, except that Ben is in his forties, and not an angst-ridden 15-year-old. He is a bit rough around all of the edges, and was unapologetically impatient with our chemicals-might-be-harmful paranoia. I eventually explained that we had two concerns: getting rid of the bugs, and protecting our children's health, and that he had better respect that. He finally calmed down enough to focus on working out a solution, and we ultimately decided that he'd spray the hell out of our room but nowhere else; he'd put traps in the kid's room and under our couch, and if we later found bugs in them, we'd have to revisit our gameplan.

I then worked with Ben in our bedroom, moving furniture and the like. First he unscrewed the lightswitches and outlets and sprayed stuff into the walls. Then he sprayed all over our bedframe, and throughout our dressers (in every drawer, etc.). I took apart our four-piece "lawyer's bookshelves" and spied a live bedbug sitting happily in the crevice where two of the component pieces meet -- eeeewww. Ben sprayed every piece. He then sprayed the base of the wall, where it meets the carpet, all along the perimeter of the room. And that was it. He then checked around in Sophie and Joseph's apartment for signs of bedbugs (nothing visible), and did the same in the basement. And then he sprayed in the rental apartment because they recently started seeing roaches. Total bill: $500.

Having confirmed that our lawyer's bookshelves were infested by at least one bedbug (and no doubt others), I was concerned that the 30 or 40 books in those shelves were perhaps laden with eggs. So I bagged up the books and stuck them in our freezer where they will sit for a couple of days. Bedbugs can't survive in the freezing temperatures, and so we have a little Francine Prose and Jonathan Lethem squeezed in between our sun dried tomato ravioli and our espresso-ground Gorilla coffee.

Cathleen and I had earlier talked about sleeping that first night in the basement, but I convinced her that it would be safe to sleep in our apartment. Max, however, was so excited to sleep in the basement that it really wasn't even up for discussion. Kids are weird. So we celebrated the first night of Chanukah and then slept in our basement. A great miracle happened there...

Over the Hills and Far Away

2007-11-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

iTunes recently obtained permission to sell Led Zeppelin songs, and so a couple of weeks ago I downloaded about 15 of my favorites. As I cleaned our apartment two Sundays ago, I listened to a little Led Zep on my iPod, and I was immediately transported back to high school.

Some time around my junior or senior year of high school, I officially entered my Led Zeppelin phase. It was short-lived -- I pretty much stopped listening to any of their tapes once I got to college -- but in the latter year or two of high school, after U2, they were my favorite band. Listening to a bunch of their songs now took me back to a small room in the basement of a Northwestern University dorm, Thanksgiving week 1986. Two of the larger high school debate tournaments of the year were held in the Glenbrook high schools (Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South) in the Chicago suburbs on the weekends that bookended the Thanksgiving week. During the week, the top 10 or so teams in the country participated in an invite-only round robin tournament. My partner Sameer and I believed that we were one of those top 10 or so teams, but we had failed to convince the right people. Indeed, in one of our last tournaments of the year as juniors, we debated in front of the guy who made the Chicago round robin invite decisions, and we had our worst performance of the year. As such, no invite to the round robin. So we spent the week in between the Glenbrook tourneys with the other team from our high school (my friends Rich and Bob), researching in the Northwestern library, and sleeping in a cramped basement room in a dorm where Sameer's cousin, Bimol, lived. Rich brought his boombox with him, and we listened to Zeppelin almost nonstop. We did some half-hearted research in the library, gawked at the unobtainable college girls, and got on each other's nerves. I discovered that the nearby campus cafeteria served an amazing Patty Melt, and I ate one for lunch almost every day. I have been searching for a Patty Melt of equivalent virtue ever since, and have yet to find one. I don't remember what we did for Thanksgiving dinner that week. Did our coach, Greg Varley, take us out to dinner? Probably.

Validating our opinions of ourselves, Sameer and I had the second-best overall performance by any team that participated in both Glenbrook tourneys (each tourney featuring over 100 teams from all over the country): we made it to the quarterfinals of the first, and the semifinals of the second . We figured that that performance had sealed our invite for the final prestigious round robin of the year, at Harvard, but when those invites were released, four New York teams were invited, and we were not among them. We were so crushed by this rejection that we went out the next weekend at the Lexington, MA debate tournament and beat two of those round robin teams en route to winning the tournament without losing a single judge's ballot all weekend (the debate equivalent of pitching a no-hitter). I suppose there was some valuable life lesson to have been learned there, or maybe what didn't kill me made me stronger or something. Mellow is the man who knows what he's been missing. Many, many men can't see the open road.

Thanksgiving Recap

2007-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've meant to post something about my Thanksgiving weekend ever since, you know, that weekend. If I don't do it right now...

So, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, just when I thought I was on the mend from an exhausting cold, I woke up with a stomach bug. The day before the one day when you have free license to eat an ungodly amount of food! My timing, in life, is terrible. By evening time I was feeling mostly fine, and so we packed our bags in anticipation of an early departure for Bloomfield, CT the next morning.

The next morning I awoke at 5 a.m., hoping that I'd fall back asleep. Cathleen got out of bed around then, and when she hadn't returned by 5:45, I got up to see what was going on. She had just packed our car (with assistance from Joseph, who was also traveling to Bloomfield, but by train , Sophie and kids having driven up on Tuesday). Cathleen suggested that I shower while she went back to bed. Boom, boom, boom, we're in the car with the kids in their pjs and driving by 7 a.m. I am the definitive not-a-morning-person person, but a strong cup of coffee can make me almost human. Problem was that I was on the rebound from a stomach bug, and coffee was not on the rehab menu. Bummer. Tea and a plain bagel for breakfast as we flew through open roads to CT.

Thanksgiving, itself, was nice -- a crowd of 20 family and friends. I thought I'd resent not being able to eat most of the offerings, but I barely had any appetite, so I was content to eat a few pieces of turkey and some mashed potatoes. I threw caution to the wind at dessert time, because Joseph makes a mean mixed berry pie (with an orange pecan crust!), so I had a small slice. I was still definitely in recovery from my bag of ailments, and so I barely helped with any of the set-up, cooking or clean-up, and I lacked the energy to socialize with any vigor. Oh well.

Claudia and Walter had purchased the Ratatouille DVD which the kids watched twice on Thanksgiving Day, and another one or two times before the weekend was out. It made me really want to go back to Paris. It made Max want to go to Paris and eat at the restaurant in the movie.

On Saturday, I left the house at before 8 am and drove down to Bridgeport for the Turkey Bowl ultimate tournament. I had played at Turkey Bowl for something like eleven straight years until Max was born. It used to be one of my favorite tourneys -- I'd scramble together a team of friends, we'd play ulti for a day, and end the day with a turkey dinner at the fields. Because Claudia and Walter were taking all of their kids and grandkids to The Hartford Stage's production of "A Christmas Carol," Cathleen suggested that I use that opportunity to play in the Turkey Bowl again. She can be brilliant at times. I submitted a bid, solicited friends to play with me, and lo and behold I had a team. Saturday was a cold, cold day -- highs in the low 30s -- but the sun was shining and we were playing disc. It was sort of competitive ultimate, in that good players were playing, but nobody was taking the games too seriously (alcohol is not typically consumed mid-game at most tournaments). We went 3-1, and wound up tieing for 5th among 20 teams. I am so far out of ultimate-playing condition that it isn't funny. I could run, catch, throw. Even play some defense. But I had no burst or stamina; none of that little extra that allows you to get the block, or to get that first step to get open on a cut. It is frustrating to be running on a player's heels, and have the disc thrown to him and realize that that used to be a gimme defensive block for you. Of the many things I miss about not playing ultimate regularly anymore is that when I do play, I can't play at the level that I was used to playing at. Mind you, I still had one hell of a fun time. I still do love playing ultimate, and especially when I am playing it with friends. My ultimate game might not be sharp, but I haven't lost a step in my heckling game.

On Sunday we left Bloomfield at mid-morning to head home (no traffic!). Eliza sang "Happy Birthday to you" for about 30 straight minutes. Nobody called her on it.

Good night, sleep tight

2007-11-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I haven't posted in over a week. Been a bit under the weather. We've had two different illnesses running their course through the Bell Kahn clan this past week: a narsty cold, and a quick stomach bug. Eliza and I scored both, Max had only the bug and Cathleen only the cold. I missed three days of work for the first time (for health reasons) in quite a while (a few years?).

In any event, I have lots of bloggable stuff to write about, including our Thanksgiving weekend experience, but that will have to wait another day or two. Tonight, I am buggin'.

A couple of posts ago I described my flea nightmare. After a few more attempts at handling the nightmare ourselves, and me still being chomped on like a communal shard of laffy-taffy, we decided to throw in the towel and call an exterminator. Cathleen spent 45 minutes on the phone with our exterminator today and they don't think we have a flea problem. Great! They think we have a bedbug problem. Shit!

I spent the afternoon in denial, which included an hour of lunchtime reading up on bedbugs on the internet. Here's the deal with bedbugs. They were pretty much eradicated by the 1960s thanks to DDT. Thanks to Rachel Carson, DDT was pretty much eliminated by the 1970s. Thanks to a distinct lack of highly toxic and carcinogenic home pesticides on the market now, bedbugs are back on the rise, and they are reaching epidemic proportions. Anecdotally, we in the tenant advocacy business are seeing a lot more bedbug cases in housing court.

Bedbugs are flat little bugs, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch in length. They come out at night and feed on your blood, first injecting you with an anesthetic so that you don't feel their bite, and then they suck out a meal. You are left with a welt that later becomes itchy. Or you are like Cathleen and you have no physical reaction at all. Bite marks are often grouped together (breakfast...lunch...dinner). After feasting, the bedbugs recede to their hideouts -- creases and seams in furniture, fabric, walls -- where they can hangout and produce more bedbugs. They can go months (up to 18 months!) without eating.

How do you get rid of them? You have to wash every article of clothing and linen in the affected space, and then have your furniture treated by a pest removal professional (chemically or not, depending on your circumstances or preferences). Often it requires a couple of treatments for success to be achieved.

It seemed impossible that we would have bedbugs. Oscar definitely had flea dirt on him. What would the odds be that we would have a minor flea issue at the same time we were developing a major bedbug problem? Pretty good, it turns out.

After dinner I took apart our bed and inspected the wall behind the bed and the parts of the bed where the headboard pieces (covered with fabric) come together. I saw my first bedbug carcass on the floor, where the carpeting meets the wall. Its shape and color were undeniable -- 100% bedbug. I think I screamed, or cursed, or maybe both. I then vaccumed the hell out of the bed and room, ramming the thin nozzle attachment into every crease and corner. I think that it might hold things at bay for a night or two. We have exterminators coming on Thursday to inspect our apartment and develop a complete game plan, but we will at a minimum need to wash every piece of clothing Cathleen and I own, and likely will need to do the same for the kids as well. Friends of ours who had bedbugs said they kept their washer running almost nonstop for a week. The extermination will likely cost $1000.

I am so unhappy.

When I thought that it was fleas that were biting me, the concept didn't bother me too much. Fleas jump on you, chomp away, jump off. But bedbugs crawl out of their hiding places, crawl on you, bite and suck, and then crawl away.

Eeeeewwww. How am I going to sleep tonight?

Aaaaagggghhhh

2007-11-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

My brand new HDTV finally arrived on Friday night. An Olevia 537h. I spent an hour and a half today at a Time Warner "store" exchanging our old cable box for an HD cable box. I then went out and bought the various cabling I'd need to hook this sucker up. I then tried to hook it up. Got the video going -- looks great. No audio. After futzing around a bit, I called me bro Mike, the only one in the entire family with a techno gene in his body (and as a computer engineer, it appears that he horded a bunch of them), and he gave me some direction. Still no success. I printed out the user's manual. I stared at the pages. I tried this. I tried that. I tried this and that several more times. I tried calling Olevia customer support (not open on weekends!). I downloaded the user's manual. I tried this and that several more times. Thinking the speakers just might be broken, I hooked up the DVD player and turned it on...audio sound came out of the TV! This, I think frustated me even more. The solution, no doubt, is simple and straightforward, and yet it eludes me.

Oh, cruel audio. Why do you taunt me?

If I had my life to do over, I would more carefully plan out my circle of friends so that I surround myself with folks whose talents and expertise fill in the gaps and shortcomings in my life. The top two friends I'd hunt for are 1) an auto mechanic, and 2) a techno geek who can get the effing audio on my TV to work.

My God I've Fleas

2007-11-13T20:12:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we noticed the dogs were scratching and biting themselves, and closer inspection revealed visible flea dirt on Oscar. I then determined that what I had thought was a mosquito bite or two on me was likely a flea bite or two. Cathleen went to the pet store a day later and bought some anti-flea shampoo, and we followed that up with that toxic anti-flea oil you put on the back of their necks.

And that is when the flea biting of Rick began in earnest. Two or so weeks later and my arms and lower legs are covered with upwards of two dozen flea bites. Last year the dogs had fleas, we bathed them in the shampoo once and that was the end of it. This year, not so lucky. When it became clear that the flea problem persisted, we washed every sheet, blanket and pillow case in our room. We've now done that another three or four times. Two days ago I sprayed the room with some undoubtedly carcinogenic anti-flea chemical, and we've vaccuumed a couple of times. We intend to maintain this vigilance over the course of the next week and hopefully our blood-sucking friends will cease to exist.

In the meantime, I am fairly miserable. I apparently fall into that category of people who are highly allergic to flea bites and have severe reactions. My reaction is following a classically-described pattern: small bites with red halos eventually turn into large welts; the itching at times is intense, and it takes days for a bite to fade away entirely. It is not even amusing to me to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, "you sad, flea-bitten sack of shit." Well, it's a little amusing. The itching and burning, in and of itself, would be especially annoying, but what is driving me over the edge is that Cathleen has nary a bite on her. "I think I had one," she has mused. We sleep in the same bed with the same dogs, and I am being slowly consumed by a Biblical plague, and she is bite-free. Where's the equity in this partnership?

Poop game, revisited

2007-11-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

After I posted about Eliza's "Oscar pooped!" game a couple of weeks ago, she pretty much ceased playing it, a quiet form of resistance to serving as fodder for my blog posts. Tonight, however, she was walking around the apartment after dinner with a piece of toilet paper in her hand, bending over and picking up imaginary objects from the ground, which she would then hold up and pronounce, "I got poop!"

Ha, ha, we chuckled to ourselves...parenting is all about teaching life skills, right?

A few minutes later, however, she actually held out for me a piece of toilet paper with a small piece of dog crap in it.

Foundations of character

2007-11-12T19:57:00.000-08:00

We had a pretty good, if not unexciting, weekend. On Saturday, Max (with Cathleen and Eliza) attended the 4th birthday party of his former classmate, Kika -- a completely mercenary act for Max; he had little interest in engaging with Kika or any of his friends from school last year, and basically put in the appearance in order to a) get cake, and b) get a goody bag (which was, for him, disappointingly short on candy). Cathleen, at least, had an enjoyable time reconnecting with some of the parents of the kids. On Sunday, after a morning excursion to Fairway, Max and I went out for a run in the afternoon while Eliza napped. He goaded me into making it a long-ish run (5.8 miles, as opposed to the standard 4.2), while also insisting that we stop along the way for him to get a bagel. He's one hell of a training coach. On Sunday night, Cathleen and I finished off Season 2 of The Wire....sooooo good.

The highlight of the weekend for me, however, occurred on Saturday evening, as we made our way to a dinner invite at the house of Max's friend, Henry, the only Rivendell classmate whom Max still sees for playdates, mostly because Cathleen and Henry's mom, Annabelle, developed a real friendship over the past year. Our families have gathered together a couple of times before, but I still can't remember their last name. On our way to their home, we stopped to acquire some accoutrements for the meal: Cathleen and Eliza went into Sip to get a bottle of wine, while Max and I went into the high-end bodega on the opposite corner to get some vanilla ice cream to have with the apple crisp we were making. We grabbed the ice cream and got on line at the register behind an older man who was carrying a boom box which was playing Elvis Presley. This struck me as a slightly unusual sight, and my eyes followed the man as he stepped out of line and promptly dropped his boom box on the floor, the CD popping out and the batteries splaying about. The man looked like he was bending over to pick everything up, but then it appeared to me that he was actually hunching over. I touched him and asked, "Papi, are you alright?" He swayed a little big, and staggered a step or two away from me. I could see now that he was drooling profusely, and I grabbed him with both arms to keep him from falling over -- a not easy task, as he was much larger than me. One of the guys working in the store brought over a stool, and I guided the guy onto the stool. Everyone else in the store seemed to be doing nothing, so I turned around towards the counter and said, "perhaps someone should call 911." The guy behind the counter said, "He'll be OK. This happens all the time." And sure enough, within moments the guy was standing back up and refocusing hiimself. I looked down at Max, and he looked pretty scared -- not terrified, but he had a very worried look on his face. Not only had events in the store been inherently scary for him, but I was intimately involved in those events, and not there for him to hold onto. I told him that everything was OK. He asked what had happened to that man, and the guy behind the counter explained that he has seizures all the time. Not a clear answer for Max, so I reduced it to, "the man was not feeling well, and needed help sitting down." I then paid for the ice cream, and we started to leave the store. Max then turned to me and quietly said, "I feel sorry for that man."

That was an incredibly powerful moment for me. Not the collapsing man -- I think I inherited this sort of "crisis cool" from my father (an EMT for many years), but dealing with that guy didn't phase me at all. What was powerful was hearing my little boy, overwhelmed by a scary and dramatic sequence of events, and in the immediate aftermath while he was sorting it out in his head, his honest and most pronounced reaction was one of compassion. It spoke volumes to me about his developing character, and I was proud beyond words.

Where the lights are shinin' on me

2007-11-08T20:24:00.001-08:00

It occurred to me this evening, as I was singing Rhinestone Cowboy while doing the dishes, that it is probably the song that I've liked for the longest amount of time. My musical tastes, of course, have changed over time (oooh, did I actually once know the lyrics to not one but two REO Speedwagon songs?), and Glen Campbell would certainly not make it onto my list of "the five CDs I'd want with me were I stranded on a remote island," or even "the 62 CDs I'd want with me were I stranded on a remote island," but I really liked that song as a young kid, and I still like it.

And I'm not the least bit ashamed to say so.

Funny thing is, I barely know any of the lyrics, except the chorus. I should learn them.

If I ever make a feature-length film, the odds of which happening seem fairly remote, you can bet your money that "Rhinestone Cowboy" somehow makes it into the soundtrack.

Watching Athletes X 2

2007-11-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

Sunday was Marathon Day in New York. I, of course, ran it last year (for the second time) and the fact that at this time last year I was in substantially better physical condition than I am now has not eluded me lately. When I've huffed and puffed through four mile runs in the past month, I've gently reminded myself that on the weekend before the marathon last year I *coasted* through a ten-mile "easy" run. Sigh.

In the spirit of pre-race carbo-loading, we went out for bagels early in the morning and by the time we returned home, Fourth Avenue was closed off. Just walking across the wide open boulevard of Fourth Avenue shot me right back to last year. I was immediately jealous of all 39,000 runners who were, at that time, still huddling in Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island.

Cathleen and Max took a bunch of baked goods over to a bake sale to raise funds for our Community Garden, and Eliza and I made it back out to the street by a little after 9:30, just in time to see the wheeled athletes coming by (the marathon runs right by the end of our block, just short of the eight-mile marker). If you can watch these folks in various forms of wheelchairs working it and not be incredibly moved, you just do not understand the human condition.

By a little after 10 we joined up with Sophie, Miriam and Rachel to wait for the elite runners. First came the elite women (Paula Radcliffe, 8 months post-partum!), and a half hour later a pack of elite male runners. If you watched the TV broadcast and froze the still frame of the elite men as they passed our block, and if you knew what clothing we were wearing and roughly how our bodies were positioned, you could see blurry little images of people that were definitely us. We were on TV! Gradually, pockets of fast runners gave way to thicker pockets of fast, but not as fast, runners, which gave way to hordes of average joes taking on a big challenge.

At eight miles, the runners are feeling really good. They've only been encountering a long stretch of thick, supportive and loud crowds for about a mile or two and so there is a newness and an excitement for them, and their bodies aren't even close to experiencing the pain that will be leveled upon them by the time they hit Mile 20. I tried to cheer for as many people individually as I could, based on names or other information written on their shirts. Each "Go Rick" cheer that I received when I ran the race lifted me greatly, and so I knew the mitzvah I doing. I did not anticipate the visceral reaction I would have watching the race -- I was completely in touch with the exhiliration that I had felt running it, and was almost completely overcome at moments. When it was time for Max and me to leave, I didn't want to go. But we had Jets tickets, ya know?

A coworker offered me the tickets for free late in the day on Thursday, and after confirming the weather forecast (sunny, high 50s), I jumped at the opportunity to go to a game with Max. He does not bother himself with the nuanced differences between football and baseball, but he has said to me for some time that he'd like to go to a Jets game with me. So we grabbed a few layers of clothing and headed for the subway to Port Authority. There, we boarded a bus for the Meadowlands. Max was very, very excited to be riding on a big bus. He had never done so before (beyond an MTA bus), and th experience was, apparently, significant. When we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel, he asked if we were on a highway. When I confirmed that we were, he spurted, "I can't wait to tell Mommy that I rode a bus on the highway." I have got to get my kid out more.

Our seats were in the fifteenth row of the upper deck, right behind one of the endzones. We reached our seats just as Leon Washington was running the opening kickoff back for a TD. Sweet! The sun was shining, the view was great, the Jets were winning. Hell, even the Bud I was drinking seemed flavorful (that didn't last much beyond about five sips). Like baseball games, Max was not at all interested in what was going on in the game, but he really seems to like the stadium experience, particularly the consumptive part of it. Hot dog, hot chocolate, Cracker Jacks, soft pretzel, chocolate chip cookes. I spared no expense or trick in keeping him there for three straight hours. When the Jets sent the game into overtime with an end of regulation field goal, Max informed me, for not the first time, that he wanted to go home. Good parenting won out over devoted sports fan, and we left. This enabled me to a) keep him happy, b) beat out the crowds leaving the game, and c) miss the inevitable Jets loss.

It is almost embarrassing to me what pure joy I derive from attending sports events with my children. It is not just a simple matter of "I enjoy spending time with my kids." Duh, of course I do. But there is something else about being at the game with my boy, just looking over at him sitting next to me as I am shouting at the players or the refs, he enraptured at the raw density of his hot chocolate...I just cannot get enough of those moments. On the way home he told me the game was boring ("there's nothing there to do") and he ranked his favorite moments of the day as follows: "I liked the bus ride the best, then the marathon and Jets game."

Spectral Sugar High

2007-11-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

It was Halloween a couple of nights ago, but I haven't had the chance to post anything about it. Until now. Boo.

Two years ago, when Max was two and a half years old (was he really that young so recently?), he was in the waning days of his ceiling fan obsession -- he'd recall the exact number of ceiling fans in homes he had visited once the prior year, and we'd have to stop in the fan section of Lowes on every trip there; the obsession died down when we moved to Brooklyn, into an apartment with four ceiling fans -- and so Cathleen figured she'd create a fan costume for him for Halloween. But when Max learned that his cousin Miriam was going as Batman, he wanted to go as Batman also. He had no idea what Batman was, but that didn't matter much to him. Cathleen wasn't ready to part with her ceiling fan vision, and so she created a brilliant Batfan costume for him. I can't describe it, but you've got to trust me that it was brilliant, and he loved it. Last year, Max was in direct touch with his obsession, and said he wanted to go as a TV. Cathleen made him a clever TV costume, and he was psyched.

This past year has all been about pirates for him (ask him to sing "The Pirate King" from Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" for you), and so we naturally assumed he'd want to go as a pirate. Nope, wasn't the least bit interested. He wanted to dress up as...a whole musical band, and Eliza could be the singer. Cool idea, we thought; we could deck him out in several instruments, he'd have fun creating a ruckus, Eliza's inevitably derivative costume wouldn't be too demeaning for her. A week later he decided he wanted to be a fire-breathing dragon. Oy. That would require an effort, but we could have Eliza go as the marshmallow that he was toasting (not sure if that was his idea or Cathleen's). Mercifully, he moved on from that idea after a week, and finally settled on wanting to dress up as a ghost. My boy and his classic sensibilities. Cathleen. who normally reserves her well of creativity for her writing, started describing a semi-elaborate costume plan that involved flowing strips of white cloth and clear plastic and the like. I turned to Max and asked him what a ghost costume looked like. "You stick a towel over your head and cut out holes for eyes," he explained. Bingo. The kid had completely internalized "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." We decided that Eliza, too, would be a ghost, but given her legendary resistance to any form of restraint or cover, she'd be a ghost that resembled more of a cute little girl with a flowing white cape.

When it was time to don the costumes for trick-or-treating, Cathleen could not find the ghost cape she had sewn for Eliza, and so she quickly put together a new ghost costume for her, which basically left Eliza looking like she was dressed in a white potato sack toga. I left work early that day and met up with Cathleen and the kids on our block, where they had just begun there trick-or-treating. Max was in full costume for those five minutes, and then he decided that he was having too much trouble seeing out of his eye-holes; his costume morphed into the cute little boy ghost with a flowing white cape.

Sophie and Joseph, decked out in almost luminescent wigs, with Miriam (Supergirl!) and Rachel (Screw your costume fascism!) joined us for the long haul. Max began a little meltdown tantrum action, and I was naive enough to try to reason with him about what was irking him in life. Just when all looked lost, Cathleen dipped into his plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin bag and produced a lollipop for his consumption. Let the sugar begin!

Trick-or-treating in Brooklyn is a vastly different experience than doing so in Yorktown. Growing up in a 60-lot housing subdivision, we would go to every single house, ring the doorbell or knock on the door and acquire a haul of candy. Well, you didn't knock on the Gans' door because their son allegedly had committed suicide, and it was risky to go to the Kronen's house because Mrs. Kronen actually might have been a witch, but definitely go to the Fatigates because they have money and no doubt will give big candy. In Brooklyn, you only go to the houses where people are sitting outside on their stoop with a bowl of candy. No knocking on doors or ringing doorbells; it's simply approaching people who are already out there, hoping to be approached. It simplifies the transaction and reduces everyone's anxiety, and allows you to measure a block's worth by the number of stoop-sitting candy providers (our block, for those keeping score at home, sucks).

We trick-or-treated down Dean Street in Boerum Hill (including along the block featured in Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude"), down to Hoyt Street. I was carrying Eliza pretty much the entire way, as she got her money's worth out of a sticky pink lollipop, and as we walked down Hoyt we fell behind the rest of our crew who had crossed the middle of the street to gain access to the only candy available on the block. By the time we caught up, I found the kids receiving candy from Hope Davis. Hope Davis! I've always loved her in all of those movies that I can't remember that she was in, though I do remember seeing her act live in a production of Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real" at the Williamstown Theater Festival almost a decade ago. And here she was, having beckoned us to come across the street to her home, chatting up Sophie and Joseph to the point that I quietly asked myself, "Sophie and Joseph know Hope Davis?" She was crazy friendly, and as pretty as you'd expect. Brooklyn, folks, Brooklyn. Take that, Hollywood.

We completed our candy gathering tour up Wyckoff to St. Marks. Eliza wanted to walk a lot of the way home, she being so jacked up on tootsie rolls and lollipops that she was running and levitating at times. We returned to our stoop, met up with Claudia, brought out our building's five jack-o-lanterns and began distributing candy to costumed passersby. Max, at first, balked at the notion that we would actually give away candy, but then he got into the routine, alternating ingestion with dissemination. Miriam was really into giving out the candy, and ultimately who held the candy bowl became a power struggle. By 7:30 we decided that we had set back our children's nutritional development sufficiently, and we took them inside to get ready for bed. Crash! That was the sound of Max's blood sugar, followed by his inability to cope with the world (after his stories were over, he cried that he hadn't seen me tuck him in, and twice cried that he hadn't seen me turn out the lights).

After dining on some Cathleen-made pumpkin soup, we watched some TV and called it a night.

He just might be a prophet

2007-10-30T20:52:00.001-07:00

Crazy man on the N train on the ride home tonight, preaching up a storm about 1000 years of damnation in hell and other good stuff. I couldn't hear him too clearly - he was at the other end of the subway car, and he had a reasonably thick accent -- but the buzzwords were adequately punctuated so that I could get the gist. I seem to be seeing/hearing a lot more of these folks lately; not sure if it's me, them or the times. I recall walking past a short, stout woman in the Atlantic Ave station a few weeks ago, she belting out a whole lot of religion. "I bet," I remember thinking at the time, "that she'd be a feisty dance partner."

In college, I sort of minored in Religion. Well, we didn't have "minors," but I took enough Religion courses such that if we did, I'd have minored in it. I took two or three courses at Bryn Mawr with this amazing professor named Sam Lachs. He was a professor and an ordained rabbi, and looked a little bit like what you might imagine God might look like (full gray beard, face wreaking of wisdom). And he had a wickedly sharp mind: he'd lecture for three straight hours without a single note or reference in front of him. He'd mix in Letterman references with scriptural analysis, with a booming yet melodic voice that you never really tired of. He retired after my senior year because he found himself having to pause to think of the next word he wanted to use, and that was his sign to himself that it was time to call it quits.

I will never forget Sam Lachs' lecture on the Book of Amos. Ever read it? Amos was a minor prophet whose "book" in the Old Testament is a rant against the sins of Judea. I read it before the assigned class, and found it to be an archaically-worded sermon, as boring as any my own rabbi had delivered at a drawn-out religious service. Then I got to class, and an animated Sam Lachs set the stage...Amos is working the crowd, railing on Damascus for its wicked ways, then Gaza, the Ammonites, and so on, describing the punishment that God has coming for those sinners. The Jews are buying in, nodding their heads, maybe shouting a few "Amens" in agreement...those nasty Ammonites, they've got it coming. After a few rounds of this, when he completely has their attention and support, Amos zings them with a shot to the gut: "For three transgessions of Judah..." and then "For three transgressions of Israel..." What? What did he say? Is Amos coming after us? And Amos takes it from there, and delivers the big warning: shape up, bad Jews, or it is going to get ugly.

It was some of the best theater I had in all of college. Sam Lachs was some good professoring.

The thing about Amos the prophet, like all prophets, is that he likely looked and sounded like every other crazy man ranting on a hillside. You were never unkind to a crazy man ranting, Sam Lachs explained, because he might be a crazy man, or he just might be a prophet.

Clothesline Project

2007-10-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

Monday was the twice-postponed-for-rain Second Day of BAS' Traveling Clothesline Project. This is an "event" that we hold every year during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October). We string rope up between trees, poles in a public setting and we ask passersby to stop and write or draw some anti-domestic violence thoughts on a tee-shirt (we provide the shirts and the markers), and then we hang the shirts on the lines. The more shirts that go up, the more folks become interested, and it feeds on itself. The idea is to enable folks to air their dirty laundry, and to make public what was once considered a private issue.

On the 18th we ran the project in the Monsignor Del Valle Plaza, outside our Southern Boulevard office (at the juncture of Southern Boulevard, Hunts Point Ave and 163rd Street) and yesterday we ran it at Fordham Plaza (Third Ave and East Fordham Road). We hung 161 shirts the first day, and another 269 yesterday. Some of the shirts bore simple messages ("Stop the violence"), others included elaborate messages to former abusers. Some were in Spanish, some advised a turn towards Jesus, some had pictures or poems. It is powerful stuff to see a collaborative project like this, collaborated on by complete strangers who happen to be walking through a public plaza but who are interested in taking five or ten minutes to make a statement against domestic violence.

After seven years of watching DV survivors come through our office, seeking legal assistance, the cases still make me cringe. You just cannot get into the head of a DV survivor to understand why she (most often she) is where she is. This week's "case that defies the imagination": our client "Sue." She first came to us two years ago, pregnant with her second child, and tired of being beat on by her boyfriend. She was in our office every day for weeks, but ultimately decided not to follow through with the Order of Protection we helped her obtain. And then we didn't see her again until about six weeks ago. Still with the same abuser, and he had now moved several of his family members into their apartment, and they had locked Sue out of the apartment, depriving her not only of shelter, but of access to her kids, her HIV meds, and her psych meds (she is bipolar). We helped get her back into the apartment (which involved getting the family out), and she and boyfriend "came to an understanding," until he continued to withhold her psych meds, and then had her hospitalized when she inevitably had a psychotic episode. He then moved out, took the kids with him, and has now filed for an Order of Protection against her (a bullying tactic to keep the kids away from her). We're probably going to help her defend against the Order of Protection and fight for custody, but ACS might also have filed a neglect petition against her? Unclear as of right now.

You just can't make enough tee-shirts to deal with this kind of shit.

It's not about me, after all

2007-10-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

For the second time in about a week, someone connected to Cathleen but not in daily contact with her, while searching for news of her or her book, came across my blog. Turns out that if you Google "Cathleen Bell," this simple but honest little blog comes up as the seventh result listed out of 365,000 results. If you Google "Cathleen Davitt Bell," my blog comes up as the third result (out of 568). The first result there, of course, is cathleendavittbell.com, the spectacularly template-ish and pachydermy website I "created" for Cathleen as a Mother's Day gift this past year.

What will happen, one wonders, if Cathleen's book does well, and young, impressionable kids start Googling her name, looking for information about their new favorite author? They'll find this blog. My visitors counter would skyrocket.

As I sit here in the nude, clubbing baby seals and listening to iTunes songs with explicit lyrics, I am humbled by that prospect.

Natties

2007-10-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the UPA Championships in Sarasota, FL. I have several friends playing across all four divisions (Open, Womens, Mixed, Masters) and today they collectively went 1-11. Wow, I think I need new friends. Hopefully they'll have better second days.

I went to Club Nationals once, in 2001, with a Mixed (coed) team called Tattoo Hottie. It was just after 9/11, and we were riding some sort of a bizarre NYC survivors high. One of our players literally had sprinted from his worksite around the WTC as one of the towers fell; he happened to have his camera with him that day in an effort to document why he didn't deserve a parking ticket, and so he has these amazing shots of the tower collapse that he took as he ran away from it. He would give these pep talks in team huddles, urging us to play our hearts out because you literally did not know what life had in store for you tomorrow. It sort of motivated us. I mean, I could laugh ironically at the hubris of it all, and yet I also took it to heart. We wore FDNY shirts and made ourselves the loudest team on the field, and we swept through sectionals and regionals without a loss. At Nationals we won our first two games by relatively commanding leads, and then we proceeded to lose seven in a row. I was injured in the finals at Regionals (bruised rib) and saw limited playing time at Nationals (though I deserved to get more PT, right?), but I'll never forget the feeling of being there, on what for the tiny world of ultimate frisbee is "the big stage." When I got a sweet, but meaningless, diving block in our penultimate game, our captain said to me, "you can tell your grandkids some day that you got a big diving block at Nationals." Well, no, I won't, but I still remember that block pretty darn clearly. The game has evolved dramatically in six years, and the teams are much more athletic and well-balanced now, and I doubt -- hell, I know -- that the 2001 Tattoo Hottie would not stand a chance these days.

But damn, I wish I were playing disc right now.

Keep Chopping Wood

2007-10-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

We spent the weekend in Bloomfield, CT, at Claudia and Walter's house. It is a 19th-century farmhouse (circa 1875, I believe), down the street from where Claudia lived as a little girl (and where Claudia's father also grew up). It is a very rural area, though in the past decade it has started to succumb to a lot of new development. Claudia and Walter have about six acres of mostly-wooded property that abuts a state park, so unless you venture out to the street, you still feel like you're in the country.

We drove up Friday night. Both kids fell asleep in the car, but Max woke up upon arrival at the house at 10:30, and he didn't fall asleep for another two hours. Claudia got Eliza when she woke up at just after 6, so the rest of us could sleep in. Eliza, apparently, spent the morning praising Claudia and Walter's German Shepherd, Tatum: "Booboy, Tatum." She, of course, spent the rest of the weekend terrified to be on the same floor as Tatum, and needed to be picked up if he was visibly within the house.

I went on a 4.5 mile run in the morning. I love the run up there in cooler weather because so many people have wood-burning stoves or fireplaces; you run along in the cool, crisp air with the distinct smell of firewood smoke mixing in. While I showered and ate breakfast, Cathleen, Claudia, the kids and the dogs went for a little hike through some surrounding meadows. We then hung out, had some lunch, played some more, and then Eliza went down for her nap.

I then set about splitting wood. My subject heading, of course, refers to Jacksonville Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio, and his backfired motivational ploy in 2003. I was not actually chopping wood, as I was splitting it, using Walter's wood splitting machine: you lay a log down on the machine, and it slowly pushes the log against a stationary blade which eventually splits the log along the grain. It is far less effort than weilding an axe, and you can split about five times as much wood in equal time. I worked for over an hour and, despite the machine's efficacy, I worked up a real sweat. Max hung out with me for the first 20 minutes, wearing an oversized pair of ear-protecetors (the machine is rather loud) and sucking his thumb while sitting on a big log next to the machine. Finally he told me he was going inside.

After Eliza's nap was over, we drove to Gramby to pick apples at a local orchard. We picked Cameos and Jonagolds, but for some reason none of the apples were particularly sweet. I think this is because there hasn't been a frost yet, which for some reason is needed for the sugars to come out. Nevertheless, we took home a full bushel, and we pounded some yummy cider donuts before hitting the road. Kick-ass grilled steak dinner, with roasted potatoes, creamed spinach and broccoli. That meal and the wood splitting made me feel rather testosteronic, which was nicely offset by the fruit-gathering interlude in the mid-afternoon.

During the night Max woke up with a croupy-cough. I took him into the bathroom and sat with him during a steam bath. As his throat cleared, he was suddenly all a chatter, and I was like, dude, its 3 am and I'm sweating like a fat man at the local sauna, please give me a break. There is something about bathrooms that brings out the contemplative side of Max. He'll sit on the can at bedtime and begin to engage you in these deep, thoughtful discussions about life, or death, his plans, his friendships, his ideas for the world. He stops making corny jokes, or interjecting the word poopy into every sentence (ironic, no?), and he even gets a little serious look on his face. I absolutely love those discussions (but for the inevitable odors that accompany), but at 3 am, in the moist heat no less, even I have little capacity to appreciate my child on that level.

On Sunday Mike and T and their kids drove down to spend the day with us. We brunched outside in the glorious sunshine (mid-70s on October 21st!), and then set off for a hike through the State Park up to the not-really-a-tower Fire Tower. We put Eliza in a kiddy-backpack that Mike and T had borrowed from neighbors. It sucked, and by the time we made it up the mountain my body was killing me. The one that we own (an expensive model that old neighbors gave to us, having never used it themselves) is so much better, I will never leave it at home again, even when my kids are full grown. The view at the top of the hike was gorgeous -- lots of trees beginning to turn color, the town of Simsbury (where we were married!). I am never going on a hike with my nephew Jacob again, unless it is at sea level. The kid has no fear whatsoever, and he was not only walking along the edge of cliffs, but jumping from one cragged rock to another. Had we spent another five minutes at the top of that mountain, it would have been a race to see who died first: he from a disastrous fall, or me from a heart attack.

Before and after the hike, all five kids played together around Claudia and Walter's barn, far away from where the adults were hanging out. When Claudia went over to check on them at one point, Eliza proudly proclaimed "I playing!" Playing with the big kids; how cool is that? When they packed into their minivan to go home, a very tired Max burst into tears, explaining that he wanted them to come back so that he could play with Jacob, Ryan and Kelsey some more. I felt sorry for him, but those kind of tears make you feel good, to know that your kid loves his cousins.

Eliza's new game

2007-10-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

She walks around the apartment, declaring in a concerned and whistleblowing tone, "Oscar pooped!"

Oscar is one of our two not-quite-completely-housebroken miniature dachshunds.

When you point out to Eliza that, no, on this rare occasion Oscar has not actually soiled an area of the apartment, she walks over to a new area to announce that "Oscar pooped!" This goes on and on. This afternoon she was making false exclamations in her room, in the bathroom, in our bedroom, even under the bar in the livingroom. Each declaration as convincing as the last.

This game, I trust, is not played in many other households?

Roll me in designer sheets

2007-10-17T20:03:00.001-07:00

With covers on my mind, and with Deborah Harry releasing a new album, I harken back to the lyrics from Blondie's "Call Me" ("Cover me with kisses baby, cover me with love").

Tonight, Cathleen's editor emailed her the cover design for her book. It is quite beautiful -- a deep blue water background with a boy seemingly floating/drowning/slipping in it. The title letters are in bold white at the bottom, but appear to be fading (or slipping) away. My eyes, however, were completely drawn to the letters at the top of the cover -- cathleen davitt bell, in the same bold white. Hey, I know that name. Cathleen was so pleased with the design, she was simply beaming...it is so refreshing to see her enjoying this process after having seen her deal with the self-doubt and struggle of the unpublished life.

I had no idea what to expect of the cover because, as I have long known, I have very little in the way of aesthetic vision, if any aesthetic sense at all. At work right now I am spending considerable time on creating a new brochure for our program and I am completely dependent on our development director and my staff for the brochure's actual look. Cathleen pretty much wanted to pull her hair out two years ago when we were trying to design our apartment because I had so little ability to not only visualize possibilities, but to even understand ideas that she was describing to me. Luckily, I can make a pretty good omelet and throw a frisbee pretty far, or I'd have almost no measurable utility in this world. Thus, up until tonight, every time I'd try to imagine what her cover might look like, I'd see nothing more than a Harry Potter book with her name on top. It is so unbelievably cool to finally see what the book is (most likely) going to look like. It makes the whole thing that much more real.

Slambin'!

2007-10-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

I love it when a social event creeps up on me unexpectedly, in the middle of the week, no less.

Sam Bell is Cathleen's cousin. Next week is Sam Bell's 38th birthday. Tomorrow Sam starts his new job at Spot Runner, a new-media advertising company. Last night Sam wanted to celebrate his birthday. Last week he emailed friends and family about gathering for a dinner at a restaurant in Brooklyn Heights. I had planned to stay home with the kids while Cathleen went to the dinner, but when Claudia appeared at the house to stay over for the night (like she does pretty much every Tuesday and Wednesday), we handed her the babysitting reins and Cathleen and I took off for the Heights.

At 8 pm we met up with her other cousin, Madeline, outside the restaurant, on Atlantic Avenue, and we then headed across the street to the Waterfront Ale House for pre-dinner drinks with Sam, Crazy Uncle Frank and Linda, and some of Sam's friends. At around 8:45 the fifteen of us headed back across the street (well, down a block if we're to be honest) to the Yemen Cafe and Restaurant.

Sam had pre-arranged dinner: we were having the lamb. Not "a lamb dish" or "the lamb dish," but the lamb, as in the entire lamb. We were first served a soup -- a lamb consomme which was outrageously flavorful. This was accompanied by plates and plates of flatbread, a few platters of hummus/beans/babaghanoush, and then salad. Just when you were wondering if you were getting too full, they plopped down four humungous platters of roasted lamb parts on the table. A single lamb, it turns out, makes a lot of lamb. We gorged ourselves, and there was enough left over for pretty much everyone to take home a substantial lambie bag of food. Then came dessert -- pieces of the flatbread soaked in honey and sprinkled with nuts. The place needs to get a liquor license, because we could have used a few bottles of red to go along with the eats, but that was one hell of a meal. And had Frank not generously treated everyone, it still would not have been an expensive meal for anyone.

Cathleen and I walked back home, arriving at 10:45. On a school night. We crazy.

J-E-T-S, wretch, wretch, wretch

2007-10-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Twas a pretty good weekend. A lazy Saturday morning led into a bike ride up to Prospect Park with the kids, a stop at the Green Market in Grand Army Plaza (bought some cheese made by Haverford classmate Mark Gillman), received a visit from Sameer and Shruti (finally), and then Cathleen and I saw another movie (in a movie theater): The Kingdom. I think it had good intentions in providing a more nuanced take on terrorism, but the first half was pretty dull, and the ending just settled for heart-racing, but unimaginative shoot-em-up conventions. Oh, if you happened to be at that movie last night and you are reading this by some random occurrence, ummm, it is not OK for you to bring your 8-year-old child to a movie like that. Really.

Claudia and Walter (my beloved inlaws) stayed over last night, and took the kids for the day: first out to breakfast, and then out to Staten Island to visit with Walter's daughter, Polly. Cathleen and I each got in a run, and then I headed into Manhattan to meet my college friend, Schweitz (nee Jen Schweitzer) at Port Authority to head to the Meadowlands for the Jets game. Jen had received tix to five home games as a birthday gift (17th row in the corner of the endzone!) and had invited me along. My first football game in a good four or five years.

The Jets looked terrible all game, and somehow managed to lose only by 16-9 to the mediocre Eagles. I have finally gone over to the "dump Chad Pennington" camp, as he looked ineffectual all game. With a running game working, and getting good field position over and over again, he could not get the ball in the endzone, or even near it. But the weather was beautiful, seats were great, and it was good to catch up with Schweitz after several months of being incommunicado.

Some other game related thoughts:

First, the conversation I overheard in the crowded bathroom, right after the announcement is heard that the Jets have won the opening toin-coss:
-- Guy #1: "At least they won something."
-- Guy #2: "C'mon, they're going all the way to the Superbowl." (chuckling among the urinators)
-- Guy #3: "Try taking your hand off your dick and saying that."

Obesity an issue in America? I have never seen so many thick-necked, XXXL-wearing dudes as I did in that stadium today. I weighed probably a third of the average dude there today. Or maybe green just makes you look exceptionally fat.

I signed up for season tickets with the Jets about three or four years ago, at which point there were over 10,000 folks ahead of me on the wait-list. Now that number is down below 7,000, and with the new stadium due to open in 2010, I can reasonably expect to get tickets by then. Today I allowed myself a few moments to fantasize about coming out to the games on a regular basis, tailgating with the kids (and Mike, who will no doubt come down for games), and coping with the crushing disappointment of being a Jets fan from a more live perspective. That will be cool.

Sugar Mommy

2007-10-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

It's official. Cathleen Bell is a cash-generating fiction writer. Sure, she made some pocket change when she published Oatmeal a few years ago, but yesterday the first check, from the publisher via the literary agent, arrived for "Slipping," her first novel (for children/young adults) which is due out in summer '08.

I remember reading the first draft of "Slipping" two years ago, finishing the last 100 pages or so on an Amtrak to Hartford for Christmas. It was this amazing experience, reading what I knew to be a fantasticly written story...by Cathleen. I mean, I think everything she writes is great, but this manuscript seemed to be on a different level. And so there I was on the train, basking in the warmth you feel after you've just put down a good book, but also exploding inside with pride at the fact that Cathleen had written it. I knew then, and I told her so when she picked me up at the train station that night, that "Slipping" was going to be published, no doubt. I was so right, and I am so getting an HDTV by the end of this week.

Salutations, oh grandiose sphincter!

2007-10-11T19:47:00.001-07:00

There's this building on Fourth Avenue that I walk past every night when I walk the dogs which bears two different billboard-sized advertisements. Actually, maybe they are billboards. For the past few weeks, there was this McDonalds ad that had a huge picture of a burger, and then the words: "Hello New York. Meet Big Angus."

Almost every single time I would glance up at that sign, my eyes would fail to see the "g" in the last word, and I would do the same double-take over and over again. The ad has finally been replaced.

Any thoughts, Dr. Freud?

Must they?

2007-10-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

Be such assholes?

I don't think that I had been in Bronx housing court for almost two weeks, and so returning there this morning felt a little numbing. It is easy to forget that the world inside that building operates on its own rules, where it is OK for dim-witted and sleazy landlord attorneys to exploit every angle in manipulating low-income, uninformed, and often under-educated pro se tenants into signing crappy and abusive settlement stipulations that are eagerly rubber-stamped by corrupt or disinterested judges.

Maybe I'll share stories some other time, as the stories often horrify, but it is the day-to-day injustices that are doled out in the hallways and courtrooms there, and the utter lack of professionalism regularly displayed by the majority of the landlord's bar, that continues to make my blood boil after more than seven years of legal practice there. Grrrrr. I do, however, love to fuck them up. Rarrh.

Girlz got werdz

2007-10-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

Eliza turned 20 months old today to little fanfare. She went to the playground with her babysitter, Aartie; helped Cathleen make a tamale pie for dinner; and splashed water on me as I bathed her before bedtime. All the while, no doubt, she was talking up a storm. The standard language development of a 20-month-old child is 15-20 words. While it is not uncommon for a child to possess a vocabulary larger than 20 words at this age, that's the baseline you should be expecting if your child is developing along a standard trajectory. At dinner the other night, Cathleen and I figured that Eliza probably has a working vocabulary exceeding 100 words. If we sat down and listed the words that she completely commands, I suspect she's closer to 150 or more. On top of that, she speaks in two and three-word sentences (again, not uncommon, though the regularity with which she does impresses me), and she asks questions appropriately -- not just "what Max doing?" or "where Mommy going?" but she's even asked "why" in its proper context, a pretty heady concept for her age, methinks. Always question authority, little girl, always.

On the one hand, it makes a certain sense that a lawyer and a writer -- and a couple of Chatty Kathys, at that -- would produce kids that were language-accelerated (Max, too, for the record, was an early and advanced talker), but I can't deny the role that chance plays in it all, and I am awed by the smallest of achievements, linguistically or not, that she displays on a daily basis.

Soccer got no succor

2007-10-06T20:31:00.001-07:00

I'm beginning to come to terms with the fact that I just may have started this blog thing solely for the cheap thrill I get out of creating painfully bad entry titles.

Wow was today not so autumnal. High in the mid-80s on October 6th? WTF?

We made our second attempt to inculcate Max into the world of organized sports by bringing him to his second Super Soccer Stars practice (class?) this morning in Prospect Park. Well, I guess it wasn't his second -- he had gone to 3 or 4 over the summer, but this was his second of the so-called autumn season where the group size is much larger. Super Soccer Stars, for the uninitiated, is soccer initiation for the pre-school set. Every Saturday morning, for 45 minutes, three or four fairly-talented soccer dudes run the kids through goofy drills as a means of teaching them basic soccer skills and concepts. The class begins and ends with a singing of the Super Soccer Stars song, sung to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it." ("we never touch the ball with our hands.."). Max had seemed not too into it when Cathleen had brought him over the summer, except for once when it was just he and his friend Henry there. We figured he'd be into it this fall, maybe, because Henry and another friend were going at the same time. Three weekends ago was the first class. There were over a dozen kids, and Max was visibly overwhelmed from the get go. He insisted on having either me or Cathleen stay with him (not at the field, which all parents have to do, but physically within the class), and he pretty much refused to participate in any of the drills/games. We stuck it out for the entire class, with Max basically watching the other kids kicking the ball around, and then after much debate decided to give it a second try. Today was that second try and produced the same result, and I threw in the towel ten minutes into the class. It is not on my agenda to make my son miserable if it can be avoided. Max takes a while to adjust to new groups of kids (a concern he clearly articulated to me this morning as we were getting ready to go), and I think that in the back of his head he was probably thinking, "what is up with a game that deprives me of use of my frisbee-catching hands?" He had much more fun sitting in my lap, observing an ant that was crawling all over his hand and arm. When the class was over, he still wanted to go and get some stickers that the coaches hand out at the end. No play, all reward. That's my boy.

We returned to Prospect Park in the afternoon for a get-together with our neighbors Jessica and kids Sophia and Jack and had a significantly-improved experience. Sophia is a few months younger than Max, and they simply love each other. They played nonstop for a couple of hours, allowing me to beg off on a tough run around the Park loop in the sweltering heat (after I had biked Max to and from the Park this morning, and then had run Eliza up to the Park in the jogging stroller for the afternoon get-together).

Tricked Out

2007-10-06T20:28:00.001-07:00

I added a "visitor counter" to the blog page today. It counts each visit to the blog. I'm not sure why I added it, except that I envision grand parties when I hit some significant numbers, like "10" and "11."

Mom, you need to visit the blog repeatedly, every day, so that I feel good about myself.

Let's Go

2007-10-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

I hate to write about this so close to the conclusion of the 2007 Mets debacle, but tonight as Cathleen and I sat in the livingroom, preparing to watch an episode of The Wire (Season One), Eliza was yapping away in her crib in joyful defiance of her absolute fatigue. Cathleen turned to me and asked if I understood what Eliza was saying. I listened carefully, and I heard my 20-month-old daughter chanting "Let's Go Mets" from her crib.

Max, bless his innocent soul, has taught Eliza how to cheer "Let's Go Mets." They also like to cheer "Let's Go Cyclones" together (which I've heard them do). I feel like a totally shallow cad, but I cannot quite explain the depth of the warmth that I feel when I think about Max teaching Eliza this cheer.

The circle is complete. The curse, bestowed upon me by my father, has now successfully enveloped both my children, and with much less effort than I thought would be required.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

2007-10-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

OK, I know, two U2 references in a row. I'll stop that for a while.

Well, it has taken me a good 48 hours to be able to write about this past Sunday. The Mets completed their late-season collapse with a lifeless loss to the Marlins which, coupled with the Phillies' win over the Nationals, jettisoned the Mets out of the playoffs on the final day of the season. The game was almost unbearable to watch. Even when Tom Glavine vomited up seven runs in the first inning, I still thought they had a chance, and I spent the next few innings living and dieing with every pitch. My heart was pounding, I was eating compulsively. It sucked. Eliza awakened from her nap somewhere around the fifth inning and, for some reason, she was cranky, crying and inconsolable. I was standing there like, "little girl, I have no emotional resources left to make you feel better." But I did anyway. She's really cute. I watched all the way through the penultimate out, and then turned off the TV because I couldn't bear to watch the conclusion. I can stare at a gruesome car wreck for only so long.

Unlike some folks who were described in newspaper articles, I did not cry and I don't feel like this was the greatest disappointment of my life. But, for some reason, it stings. Why would I do this to myself? Why would I come back for more? Because although this sucks, I also know how good the good times feel, and like an addict seeking that amazing original high, I'll be there next spring hoping that 2008 is the magical season.

Of course, I thought that watching the Jets game would make me feel better. I had taped it and watched it that evening (that seems to be the way I watch football these days), and suffered through their loss to a formerly-winless Bills team that was starting a rookie QB. Uggh.

Thank goodness the news about the Thomas/MSG sexual harassment suit verdict didn't come out until two days later, or I might have packed the bags and moved to, uh, some other place. Man, if they don't fire Thomas it is going to be really hard to root for the Knicks this year. Not that they've made that a particularly easy thing to do within the past decade anyway.

The coup de grace for Sunday? At around dinner time I took the dogs out to the backyard to do their business (which, if you know anything about economics, isn't actually "business"), and I discovered a dead rat lying on the ground. The rat was around 10-12 inches long --- easily half the size of Oscar, if not bigger, and was somewhat reminiscent of a Warg from the Lord of the Rings series. I screamed. Well, it wasn't so much a scream as an, "Ahhhh!!! Ohhhh. Oh fuck. Ahhh, Eewwww. Ahhhh!!" That big-ass dead rat scared me more as dead than it might have if it were alive. I'm not 100% convinced of that, but I can't imagine being much more scared of it than I was. I took the dogs inside before they discovered the mammoth, fetid carcass, and went upstairs. I returned downstairs after the kids were in bed. I donned gloves and grabbed a shovel and two plastic bags. I doubled-up the bags and set them out in a bucket shape. I then approached the mighty beast and, summoning every ounce of courage I had, scooped it up and dumped it in the bags. It left behind a zillion little maggoty-creatures on the ground.

Are you puking yet? I was damn near close. I let out a few more loud and colorful protestations while pacing around in a circle, and then went back inside to get a bigger bag. I deposited the smaller bag of decaying monster rat into the larger bag and tied it up, hosed off the ground and the shovel, and brought the festering sack up and out to the garbage cans in front of our building. Not sure I breathed the entire time. Mercifully, the Department of Sanitation came and picked up our garbage this morning, because I was scared to go near my own trash cans.

Mets. Jets. Maggotty gigantic rat. It is so not easy being me.

Sing with me, this is 40

2007-09-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

If your close friends are getting old, does that mean you're getting old?

Mark Bertin turned 40 today (9/30), and he marked this transition to manhood by hosting a gathering of his closest friends at his parents' weekend home in Medusa, NY, up in the Catskills. It was a terrific time.

I started the weekend on Thursday night. First, Cathleen and I attended "curriculum night" at The Brooklyn New School, where we sat on tiny little (ridiculously uncomfortable) chairs and listened to Max's pre-K teacher discuss what the class structure, philosophy, goals were. The experience confirmed for me many of the reasons why we stayed in New York / moved to Brooklyn -- his class is stinking with diversity and he will be learning in a progressive environment. That, and Cathleen discovered on Friday, one of his classmates (his favorite classmate, it would seem), is the daughter of an accomplished novelist, Myla Goldberg. Cathleen read her novel "The Bee Season," and I really like to listen to "Song for Myla Goldberg" by The Decemberists. After the one-hour meeting at school, we headed home, put the kids to bed, I quickly packed a bag and than hustled to Grand Central where I caught the 8:52 train to Katonah, armed with a pulled pork sandwich and a bottle of Boylan's Birch Beer.

Mark picked me up at the train station at 10 pm, and we then stayed up until 12:30, sipping a few glasses of the Clynelish single malt I had brought him for his birthday ("notes of buttescotch," the guy at Smith & Vine had told me), and we just shot the shit about everything and nothing (the scotch facilitating the discussion of both). We used to have time to do a lot more of that, especially when we would just hang out at ultimate tournaments (or practices, or summer league games), or on runs together or dinner parties or whatever when we lived three blocks apart, but now life changes have changed all that. It was nice to just be hanging out again. And a little drunk.

Zach got us up the next morning at around 6:30, and by 9:00 or so we were on the road to Medusa. We arrived at the house about two hours later, with Zach asleep in his carseat. Elizabeth agreed to stay alone with him while Mark and I went for a run. By the time we had changed our clothes, inserted contact lenses and stretched, Zach woke up from a disappointingly short nap, but Mark and I took off anyway. It was, after all, his birthday weekend...

Medusa sits just north of the Catksill mountain range, about 45 minutes southwest of Albany. It is, by most yardsticks, the middle of nowhere. Mark's parents bought 180 acres of that nowhere about four or five years ago, and constructed a modest but comfortable house on the hillside top of a meadow in the middle of the property. They have spent the past few years carving hiking trails around the property (the northern side of which abuts a state park), and Mark and I set off on one of those hiking trails, then crossed over into the state park before reconnecting with paved roads. It is the Catskills, and the run was uphill and downhill the entire way. The final half mile of the run (which in toto was probably in the neighborhood of about four miles) featured a killer uphill climb that led to an amazing view of meadows, mountains and valleys. Breathtaking by all possible understandings of the term.

After the run we lounged around in the house and then the four of us (Mark, Elizabeth, Zach and I) set out for a short hike in the woods. We spotted many red efts (yes, spotted is a pun!), and Zach and I had a nice time bonding over the water spigot from his Camelbak. Upon our return to the house, we ventured into the garden and ate sugar snap peas right off the vine, picked a small bucket's worth of sweet cherry tomatoes, and pulled a dozen squat carrots out of the ground. Country livin'.

Elizabeth and I then invented a new game called "Squid," where we sat on a couch on a screened-in porch, facing a stone fireplace; you had to pick a stone on the fireplace and then, while seated with your back against the back of the couch, throw a whiffle ball off that stone and catch it. If you made a successful throw and catch off of the pre-called stone, your opponent would have to replicate the effort, failure to doing which would earn him or her a letter spelling out the game's name. First to SQUID loses. It is with pride that I report that I took home the championship trophy. Making "squ" you jokes midway through the game was a highlight.

By mid-to-late afternoon, Mark's college friends Don and Stefan arrived from, respectively, Richmond, VA and somewhere in the East Bay (CA). Mark's parents also arrived from a week in the Adirondacks -- as babysitters for the weekend, they left for home with Zach in tow at his bedtime. That is when the drinking began in relative earnest. Opening beers were followed by the four or five bottles of wine that Mark had been stowing away for a decade or so for the right occasion; they were steadily consumed through the late afternoon, dinner of fish burritos, and late-night lounging until another college friend, Dave, arrived from Fort Collins, CO at a little after midnight. I finally went to bed at a little after 1 a.m.

I awakened at around 8:30, determined that sounds of life existed somewhere else in the house, and was out on the back deck with a cup of coffee by 8:50. Mark, Elizabeth, Dave and I (eventually joined by Don and Stefan) sat on Adirondack-style rocking chairs for about four straight hours. The view, looking south, is magnificient: a meadow surrounded by trees beginning to succumb to the beckoning autumn, and giving way in the distance to the Catskill mountains (approximately 15-20 miles away); looking southeast you could see clearly for probably 100 miles. Over this entire expanse, signs of industrialized living were few and far between. Hawks intermittently flew by. The sun was shining bright, the air was crisp but warm. There was no reason to move anywhere else.

A bit past noon, Dan Katzive arrived from Manhattan, and then Cathleen and the dogs arrived from Brooklyn (Max and Eliza under the care of Sophie and Joseph for the day/eve). We booted up and took a one-hour hike around the property, wending our way on trails through the forests, across old stone walls and small, dried-up river beds, and through the meadow which was blazing with the colors of small wildflowers.

Back at the house, we had a small horseshoes tournament (Cathleen and I were smoked by Elizabeth and Dave), tossed the disc for a bit, and relaxed some more. Mark's friend Elio arrived (from California), rounding out the well-traveled group of revelers. Eventually we motivated towards dinner (veggie lasagna that our hosts had prepared beforehand) with particular joy in the air at the news that the Mets had re-tied the Phillies for first place that day. While waiting for the endlessly-poaching pears to poach for dessert, I delivered a rap "toast" I had written on the train-ride up, the highlights of which included my concluding a verse about Mark's move to Katonah with a line about that town's having "houses so pretty they give me a bonah," and then using 31 different words to rhyme with Zach in another verse. Cathleen and I packed into our car by 10 pm and hit the road for home, arriving in Brooklyn at about 12:45.

It was a pretty darn good weekend as weekends go and I am certain that it transpired exactly as Mark had desired. If you can truly judge a man by the company he keeps, Mark Bertin at 40 is doing alright for himself.

Just for the goof

2007-09-26T20:15:00.001-07:00

Got up at just before six this morning and went out for a run. I ran my standard Prospect Park Four-mile run in 35:15. It's a crazy run for someone like me who takes so long to get warm and loose -- first mile is uphill, but at least you can sprint the last downhill mile home. I ran it with Max in the jogging stroller a few weekends ago and almost died. I'm not in great shape, and there I was pushing all 43+ pounds of him, plus the stroller, up that damn hill. He really likes coming in the jogging stroller -- always has -- particularly since we've made a ritual of ending the runs together at Blue Sky Bakery. In any event, no Max this morning, no delicious muffin awaiting me at the end; just the ridiculously beautiful weather and The Killers blaring through my iPod.

This is the first fall that I've been running just for the goof, or to just keep in shape for shape's sake, I suppose. Last year, of course, I was training for the marathon, and for the several autumns before that I was running to keep in shape for ultimate. For me, at least, it is hard to push myself with no tangible goal driving me. When confronted in the past with the opportunity of shortening a difficult run or taking a more leisurely pace, I could always say to myself, "you're cheating nobody but yourself," or I could kick it in for the final stretch of a run by visualizing myself chasing down a disc. Now? All I got now is the fear of becoming the fat guy. And let's be realistic, I'd have to work pretty hard to become the fat guy. Mark and I have talked about running a half-marathon or two next year, and I've been thinking about trying to find a good team-relay long distance event to run with folks. I think I need to focus on a future event or it is going to be hard to get out there when the weather turns cold.

Also, a good cardio regimen is likely keeping me alive through this final week of the baseball season. Mets' lead is down to one frickin game. I can't stand it.

Observations and Observances

2007-09-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

Been up to my neck in Judaism of late. That happens to a lot of Jews at this time of year but sort of caught me by surprise.

First, on the 13th, we hosted my mom and Irv for Rosh Hashanah dinner. I took the day off work, which I haven't been doing on the High Holidays for several years, and hung out with the kids. Cathleen had cooked up a beef brisket the night before and had asked me to put it in the fridge before going to bed. I, of course, was distracted by a rare Mets victory that eve and neglected to put said brisket in said fridge. This led to a classic Rick-and-Cathleen tete-a-tete the next morning, not so much as about my gaffe, but about Cathleen's insistence that we still eat the beef that had now been sitting out at room temperature for more than 10 hours. My smarmy line about "basic 20th century food care" and a threatened boycott of dinner by all people blood-related to me won out, and I spent the morning cooking up our second brisket (which, Cathleen noted, undoubtedly did not taste as good as the first would have). It was still pretty good. I also grilled up some goat cheese-stuffed figs (from a recipe I read in the Times the day before) and it was good, but unsatisfying, mostly because I don't know how to pick out ripe figs. The Entin Bells joined us for apples and honey, wine and challah, and the figs. Max discovered an inner distaste for the motzi, and then was a bit hyper through dinner, all explained away by his sleeping in past 8 am the next morning.

A few days later I finished reading Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union." In this book, Chabon brilliantly reconceives the world without Israel having become the Jewish homeland after WWII. Instead, the Jews have settled Sitka, Alaska, under a 60-year grant from the U.S., and the book follows a complex and troubled Sitka police detective named Meyer Landsman as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, just months shy of Sitka's reversion back to the state of Alaska. Brilliant stuff. One of my favorite lines: “...but the craving of a Jew for pork, in particular when it has been deep-fried, is a force greater than night or distance or a cold blast off the Gulf of Alaska.” Cathleen has long lauded Chabon's writing, and it seems that I probably now should read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," for which Chabon won the Pulitzer. But that would require me to read three pieces of fiction in one year (my having already read Potter #7), and that would be somewhat unprecedented.

In any event, this past weekend was Yom Kippur. Cathleen and I had both been struggling through a tough week and so we decided that we just needed to go to the movies on Friday night while all observant Jews were attending Kol Nidre services. We went to the Cobble Hill Cinema and saw 3:10 to Yuma. We don't get to the theater much (first time all year by ourselves?), and we totally struck gold.

The next morning I slept in until a little past 8 (thanks again, Cath), and when I arose, Max let me know that he did not approve of my fasting ("You must eat, daddy! I don't want you to not eat!"). Fasting is never the type of thing that you should have to answer to an angry four-year-old about. I generally do not have a hard time fasting (and I am pretty sure I have fasted every year since I was 12, even during college when I was sorting out my atheism and trying to figure out what traditions and rituals were relevant and meaningful to me), but I really, really wanted/needed a cup of coffee at that point. I managed to move on, though I couldn't bring myself to serve the kids lunch later, and had to call Cathleen up from the basement where she was working so that she could do it.

After Eliza's nap we packed into the car and headed to Yorktown. We had intended to first visit the Rose Hills Cemetery to visit my dad's (and grandparents') grave, but a late start and traffic precluded us from doing so. We drove straight to the Sixth Grade School in Yorktown (an arts center in a converted school, that Temple Beth Am uses for high holiday services each year), arriving at a little past 3:30. Mom had advised me that Yiskor was to begin at around 4:30, so we hung out on the neighboring track, walked the dogs, and then I left Cathleen and the kids in a playground at 4:00 and went inside to get me some religion.

I dread going to services. I have pretty much loathed religious services since I was a young child. For a brief period around my bar mitzvah and for maybe a couple of years after that, they were meaningful to me, but I pretty much can't stand them (the lack of drama? the endless tautology? the cloud of hypocrisy?). Or so I thought as I was walking into the school/synagogue. I found mom and Irv and sat down. Mom pointed out that the Gussaks (boyhood friends from down the road) were seated two rows in front of us, and I soon enough caught Howard's eye. I spent a lot of time watching the cantor, Jamie Tortorello-Allen. Jamie was a year behind me in college (tho she a BMC grad, actually), was good friends with some of my best friends in the Class of '92, and married Max Allen, one of those close friends, and here she is, the cantor of my old synagogue. This was my second time seeing Jamie cant (cantorize? cantoricate?), and it was no less surreal. Maybe I'm still not in touch with the fact that when in your late 30s, it is not surprising if you've actually accomplished something, but I look at a college friend doing something responsible and I kinda giggle. So, looking around, there were these familiar elements to the service, and then there were these other weird things going on that made it seem oddly unfamiliar (was mom really davening during the avot?). But not only was I still able to read Hebrew, I could sing along with the vast majority of the prayers without having to even look at the prayerbook. And that experience was a little comforting to me, kind of like reconnecting with an old friend.

Mind you, I have no need to see that friend regularly.

The break fast was at mom's best friend Sylvia Epstein's (Jewish? Perhaps). Huge crowd, mostly of mom's generation. Cathleen and I spent much time getting to know Rachel and Sean, the former of whom is somehow related to Sylvia; they are in their 20s and living in Cobble Hill (right across from the movie theater!) and seemed exceptionally cool. I can envision us hanging out with them in non-multi-smoked fish settings in the future, maybe. Eliza was the star of the party, charming every single person with her smile and zest.

We drove to Warwick today to Masker Orchards where we picked a bushel of Empires, Macintosh and Jonagolds. Max loves apple picking not for the food gatherer aspect, but because he loves grazing for two straight hours. I can totally respect that.

Office Talk

2007-09-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Wow. I look back on the first post I had for this blog and I am stunned by how young and naive I was back then. I sounded like a young kid who had the whole world before him. Oh yeah, it's been one hell of a week since then.

I work in an office. I am the Legal Director of the Bronx AIDS Services Legal Advocacy Program. I run a program consisting of four staff attorneys, four paralegals and a secretary. We provide free legal services to low-income Bronx residents who are living with HIV/AIDS. I operate the program on a shoestring budget which compromises my ability to pay my staff competitive salaries. And when I say "competitive salaries," I'm not talking about vis-a-vis other lawyers (as director, I make less than half what a know-nothing first-year associate makes at a large private firm), but the salaries I can offer barely compete with what other public interest law offices (e.g., The Legal Aid Society) can pay. Last year I had to fill two attorney vacancies and, hoping to hire folks with at least a modicum of experience in housing court litigation or public benefits advocacy, I wound up hiring two attorneys with virtually no practical experience. That meant that I had to spend a lot of time training them to become housing court litigators and public benefits advocates. They were bright and motivated. It was a fun and interesting challenge for me. I like supervising, I like teaching, I like the way I approach the role of zealous public interest advocate and so I like molding others after me. But it was also hard trying to keep the program running at full speed when two of the attorneys needed six or more months to get ramped up to the point where I could begin to trust them with a full caseload or complex cases. They worked hard and blossomed into two very good attorneys -- still much to learn, skills to develop, etc. -- but I was psyched that I now had this staff of talented attorneys to work with.

On Monday, those two attorneys came to me, independently of each other and unbeknownst to the other, to tell me that they were leaving; one to take a job for higher pay, the other to follow her partner to D.C. for her partner's job. I went from panicked to angry to resentful to depressed to I don't know what I'm feeling right now. As a manager, I think that I put so much into these guys and now they're both walking away before I can fully reap the rewards of my efforts. As their friend, I'm hoping that they're both making the right decisions for themselves (they aren't).

Max, my four-year-old son, has been very interested of late in what I do in my office. This evening, after he pretty much refused to give me a straight answer to my questioning him on what he did in school today ("we threw the teacher out the window," I trust, was not an accurate description of the day's activity), he asked me what I did in my office today. I tried to give him a straightforward but digestible answer, which may have been too digestible, given that he asked me if it was boring. I tried to explain how it wasn't boring, that I spent a lot of time talking with my co-workers, that I was actually the boss. He said, "the boss of all those other people?" (whom he has met on his numerous visits to my office), and I said "yes." He then wanted to know if I took care of them because I was bigger than they were.

Beyond his lack of spacial relations (I'm 5' 7 1/2" and am bigger than pretty much no one), Max understands what is important in life, and what kind of boss I aspire to be. I will find two new attorneys, and they will likely require training and mentoring, and I will try to provide that, and life will go on.

Unless, of course, the Mets do indeed blow their fragile lead in their division and miss the playoffs. And then I might throw myself out the window.

Gotta start somewhere

2007-09-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here I am, dipping my toes into the blogosphere. Eeeeh, that tickles.

Why shouldn't I have a blog? Lord knows, I have a lot to say, about nothing and everything. I've often thought, over the past year or two, that "if I had a blog, I think I would write about X event that just happened or Y thought I just had, and then someone will read it and they will change their diet, sports allegiances, or maybe even their middle name."

Like my iPod telepathy. That should be written about. Every once in a while, but more often than one would expect, I'll get a random song in my head and then that song will come up as I'm listening to my iPod in shuffle mode. I have over 2600 songs on my iPod. That one of them randomly comes up in shuffle mode after I've thought about that song...it makes you wonder what someone like me could do if I became an evildoer. For example, the other night I'm bathing my kids and the song "Slit Skirts" by Pete Townsend pops into my head. This raises a few interesting questions, such as "why would bathing small naked kids make you want to sing about slit skirts?" or "Pete Townsend? Are you fucking kidding me?" All reasonable questions, not to be answered right now. The very next day, however, walking up Fordham Road from the train, got the iPod on in shuffle mode, and the second or third song that comes on is "Slit Skirts."

Spooky.

I also feel like I need a blog because my wife, Cathleen, started her own blog as a repository of observations and anecdotes about our two amazing children but she writes blog entries with the frequency of a lunar eclipse. I need to pick up the slack.

I was going to start this blog two days ago. On September 11th. But then I realized that that was probably the worst day to begin a venture into self-serving self-absorption. So I didn't. But I was walking the dogs at night, and I saw the Towers of Light, and I was briefly in touch with all of my 9-11 thoughts that surface from time. Such as my memories of the day (and the next day and more of the next day). And, of course, I inevitably think of my high school friend, Lisa Beamer (nee Lisa Brosious), and I wonder what she is up to. Oh, she has a wikipedia entry. Eeew.

In any event, this is the beginning. Its mostly purposeless, but it might be fun. Or I might abandon it before I even tell anyone I've started it.