Smile, listen, agree. Then do whatever the f#$k you wanted to anyway. ~Robert Downey Jr.

          There are many magical things about pregnancy; taking that first positive test, seeing your baby’s profile via ultrasound, and feeling the little bean’s dance parties of one rollin’ around down there.  For some women, the most magical time might be the day they finally stop throwing up all the time.  One of the not-so-magical things about pregnancy in my experience so far, is the abundance of unsolicited advice from acquaintances and strangers on the topic.  The amazing thing about babies is that they are a lot like people… only smaller.  What I mean is that they come in a multitude of sizes, shapes, and personalities.  In fact, every pregnancy, even in the same woman, has its own personality and symptoms. 

Particularly in America, women are precious and fretted over when they are a vessel for a child and then are chucked out of the hospital in practically a matter of hours.  Then postpartum time is this sequestered thing that others aren’t always privy to.  We don’t have that “it takes a village” kind of society anymore, where everyone chips in and is exposed to infants on a daily basis and everyone has a similar child-rearing philosophy.  Part of this is good, considering what we know about communicable diseases today, but it almost seems that the less exposure we have to very young babies ahead of our own children, the more our one or two stories become the largest truths in our minds.  Combine this with very little mandatory parental leave and parents being faced with a decision to return to work or not, and early parenting has thus become the most commented on and criticized topic in the lives of women in particular.  Not only are doctors giving expectant mothers more restrictions on diet and health than ever, but the regular people want to chime in too.  Can you think of another context, for example, in which it is appropriate to ask where the people in one's home are sleeping?  It seems that when you make a person, people suddenly think they have some sort of free pass to make statements about your decisions as a family.  

It also seems that a large amount of people tend to forget the gamut of individual pregnancy and postpartum experiences when doling out recommendations and are just anxious to share their stories.  Most of the time, these are done out of love for one’s fellow man; i.e. “Learn from me!”  People don’t want you to be stunned by something that they wish they had known.  However, in my limited experience so far, I have some ideas of what could be left out and what could be included instead.  Though I think I have a lot of baby experience compared to the average bear, I haven’t done the whole baby-living-in-my-house thing yet.  What I can speak to here is what I think has been personally helpful to me as a mom-to-be.

Everyone from my mother, (appropriate), to my dental hygienist, (inappropriate) has put her two cents in to advise me on how I should handle my medical care or how I should raise our baby.  And yes, I say “I” here, because the husband has received none of this advice.  Zero amounts of advice for him.*  

          Let me give you an analogy about a new pet peeve of mine.  I have a friend who’s been a server at restaurants for years.  And by far, the most common everyday annoyance he has to withstand is that same old joke about empty plates he is clearing.  About 14 times a week, diners will indicate to said empty plates and say; “Well, I obviously hated that... [insert hearty chuckle]”.  Admit it.  You’ve done it.  We’ve all done it.  So in the same vein, let me say: Good People who talk to pregnant women; listen.  Resist the urge to commit the oh-so-easy, but equivalent, not-funny joke of pregnancy.

The pregnancy version of that default empty plate joke is; “Get sleep now while you still can!  Once the baby comes you’ll never sleep again!”  Hilarious, right?  I mean; “REALLY?!  You’re saying babies don’t sleep a full eight hours at a stretch?! This is shocking news!  I do wish I’d known this before I got knocked up.”  

Newsflash: I am aware, if not on a visceral level, at least on an intellectual one, that my sleeping patterns are likely to be very much interrupted going forward.  I am a person with an ardent love for sleep.  Any one of my friends can tell you that I have succumbed happily to many a plaintive siren call of a weekend sleep-in session.  If you think that I am ignorant of the fact that future little ones will rob me of my sleep, I can assure you I am not.  It is, in fact, one of the reasons I put off this whole procreating thing longer than I could have.  I’m not having my first baby at 22 years of age after all.  And I just don’t love people saying; “No, you have NO IDEA what tired is until you have a baby.”  Well, I have some idea of what tired is.  This world wasn’t exactly designed with my circadian rhythm in mind, where I would naturally go to bed at 1am and wake up at 11am.  My own mother says she did not sleep for two years after I was born, mainly because I was born and have remained a night owl.  I also didn't imagine this entire process to be like frolicking through a field of butterflies.  Of course I have no idea what it will be like to have another person added to my family.  That is part of the beautiful risk that one takes when making this leap.  We haven't even met the kid yet, so I don't know what it will be like for us.

It's perhaps also important to remember that many pregnant women are not dozing blissfully all night.  This could be due to heartburn, back and hip pain, and a myriad of other reasons, so maybe this shouldn't be everyone's go-to contribution to conversation.  For other ideas on not-so-sound input from acquaintances, see also: questions/comments on weight gain, horrific stories of labor, horrific stories of postpartum depression, and horrific stories in general.  I'm not even particularly afraid of labor because it's a very finite thing in a controlled environment, but you can just go ahead and leave those tales out of conversation for now.  Of course I want to know the stories of my good friends, and share their experiences with them, but if it was distinctly traumatizing, maybe we could wait until after I'm done with this whole gestating thing.  For the most part, I do know that labor is not the way it's portrayed in the movies, but movies are more fun, so people glob onto that.

If you are completely stuck on what nice things you can offer to a couple whom you know, who are expecting, here are some lovely things that I have heard said and have felt very well about:

- You're glowing. (One day, when someone said this to me it was surely a a very kind lie, because on the same day, someone else told me I looked tired.)

-I know a great website for maternity clothes!

-We'd be happy to bring over some casseroles you can freeze in the first few weeks.

          -In retrospect, infants don’t need a lot of “stuff”.

          -The first three months will be hard, but you’ll be running on adrenaline and you can do it!

          -I wasn’t successful at nursing and was so disappointed in myself.  I have accepted it and moved on though, so don’t judge yourself if something doesn’t go to plan.

          -Going back to work is hard, but if it is something you are particularly scared of like I was, you should know that my baby and I are doing really well with it.  She loves her caregivers.

          -If you have any questions or just want to vent, please feel free to call.

-I’m done having children, but I’m almost envious, because what you are about to experience is just such a wonderful journey.

          -You don’t need to listen to anyone’s advice.  In fact, you can cut someone off mid-advice.

          -You’re going to be a great mom/dad.

-Actually, I really don’t know why we waited so long to have kids.

So there you have it; my definitive advice on how to give advice to an expectant pair.  Feel free to ignore it, of course.  That is ultimately, your prerogative.

*The only advice that I am aware of the husband having received is; “Get a stockpile of alcohol your wife might like for after she delivers”.  I support this advice.

Our Real Home is Home Depot

          After feeling like we had to sell our mothers to gypsies in order to even buy a house in the Greater Boston area, (the first home out of four that we bid on in this brutal Boston winter had 14 other offers on it), and after getting through the massive amounts of superfluous paperwork for the bank, we are now being introduced to the joys of home ownership. 

          When one rents an apartment, and this may just be me, if there is a hole in the wall it’s usually best to just find the nearest piece of artwork/poster/tapestry and just throw that shit over it, right?  I’ve been known to grab plates for the same purpose; perhaps even a well-appointed plant.  (Those did not exist in my home alive until I moved in with B, mind you).  Now that we own though, we feel obligated to fill and spackle every damn hole and actually find the ideal placement for every wall hanging.  Annoyingly, we can’t seem to get the steps of any process complete without a period of several days going by and multiple trips to Home Depot.  And no matter how many times I go in there, I am completely mystified about where to find anything and, much to the husband’s dismay, I have to bother every employee I can find on the floor of the store.  I am completely missing the handy gene.  The entire canon of my carpentry and home repair knowledge can be boiled down to the phrase; “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” which a friend’s father once taught me.  My own mathemetician father has earned the title “Captain Theory of Relativity” among his friends in part because of his tendency to call the repairman when a lightbulb goes out. Thankfully, B knows the difference between a phillips head and whatever the other screwdriver is called… along with a lot of other basics I can’t claim to ever have any interest in learning.  He's already saved the day a few times.

          Our third night in the new place, we had mattress adventures, and not the good kind.  After the movers couldn’t get our box spring up the stairwell, we had to wait for a split box spring to be delivered.  In the meantime, our bedframe had already been assembled and there wasn’t much floor space for the mattress, so B took extra planks from the guestbed to support the mattress on the bedframe.  This worked for the entire weekend until Sunday night of course, because that was obviously when we had to get a good night’s sleep for work the next day.  

          At 3am, the planks nearest our heads started loudly falling out from underneath us.  Next thing I know, I’m groggily sitting on the floor while B is like a car mechanic sliding under the bed with a flashlight.  He’s able to fix it and we crawl gingerly back into bed.  At 4:30, they fall again.  This time, I yell; “Screw it!  Just roll over and go back to sleep!”  When we wake in the morning, our feet are so far above our heads, which are practically on the floor as part of some sort of weird reverse-acid-reflux position.  B had a stroke of brilliance later that day, when he took my car’s brand new jack and propped up the frame.  This did the trick.

 

          My main problem right now, is that when I come home after my office job, I have all these unrealistic expectations about what the husband can accomplish while he’s home for the summer from his teaching year.  He just is way more detail-oriented than I am.  Inevitably, I walk into the foyer every day to see that two blaringly dingy doors with actual holes in them have not been touched, while the husband gives me a proud smile about the third coat of trim touch-ups he did in the upstairs hallway.  I assure you, I never would have noticed the difference, but perhaps in the long run, slow and steady, the details will make a difference for resale.

None of this, however, goes along with my fantasy of returning home every night and eating bon-bons on the couch.  In fact, we are still waiting for our living room couch because of course, I ordered it custom.  I think B died a little inside when he heard me tell the consultant at Jordan’s that I was “looking for an English rolled arm.”  I think, and he agrees, that I was spectacular at negotiating a couple thousand off my last car.  I sure don’t care about many car features, but when it comes to things like furniture, that lady had my number so fast she probably could see the virtual commission amount before her eyes.  Oh well.  Our last sofa cost less than a small dog and is sitting in the basement collapsing slowly.  This new fancy one will hopefully hold up for more than three years…  One of the myriad choices we had to make on this piece was whether we wanted detached or semi-detached back cushions.  In response, we stared perplexedly at the sales lady.  “It’s got to be either detached or not detached, no?” said B.  The woman paused and said; “You can make forts with the detached cushions.”  Sold. 

          Also, when you buy a new place, you must gird your loins for everyone who comes through to speak his or her mind.  When the house and decor are still in flux, people go: "Yilch, that light fixture!  I mean... unless you like it and want to keep it?"  I recall a story about my aunt heading to her daughter's house and giving my uncle a pep talk about how they weren't going to say anything about the decor this time.  They were going to bite their tongues.  When they walked into the front hallway, they nearly got whiplash because just the ceiling had been painted.  My uncle's first words were; "Well, that's brothel red."

          I think my proudest success on the house so far has been our half bath off the kitchen.  It’s the room in the house that is nearest completion and that may well be because it’s the smallest.  We painted it a deep peacock/teal and it looks smashing against the white trim, like a little jewel box.  And our critics agree.  Our friends came over this weekend and their three year old boy said; “What a beautiful bathroom!”  He’s welcome back anytime.

Saying 'so long' to JP, but bringing the weird with us

Ah, we’re moving again.  It’s a great reminder that we have too much stuff, as well as the absurdity of the stuff that we own.  It’s also a reminder that my parents have a lot of stuff and that my mother is trying to foist a good percentage of it in our direction, sometimes while we are not looking.  Don’t try to question it: it’s one of her love languages.

Meanwhile, I say this as a person who has recently spent a good amount of time patting herself on the back for getting rid of the majority of her VHS collection.  I say the majority, because, yes, we do have AppleTV and Netflix, but we also still have a functioning VCR.  And no, you can’t always just replace some of those videos taped from TV!   I mean, can I view the Claymation version of Rudolph around the holidays without those 80’s M&M commercials included?  Yes.  Should I have to?  No.  (Please imagine the husband listening to this monologue as I say it aloud to myself on the floor of our living room.)  And Netflix doesn’t carry all the classics.  I mean, seriously, Easter Parade may only be in demand if you are an octogenarian, or me, but I need to watch it annually, so get it together, Netflix!

And then, there have been the other surprise items we own, things generally forgotten about, that emerged from our cabinets like old, weird friends on Facebook.  There was virtually an entire kingdom of bizarre crap covered in dust on the top shelf of our hutch.  It had been so long since he’d seen it that B didn’t even know what the hookah was, for example.  It was a housewarming gift from a Jordanian friend for my first apartment in Boston.  Then there’s the half yard beer glass from my grandparents’ trip to Germany.  While these pieces may be a little strange for display, I assure you they've both been used fondly at many a party, along with our porron, that fanstastic booze-guzzling gadget also from my grandparents' attic:

But do not try to imply that my Yul Brynner commemorative plate is too strange for display, because I currently lie awake at night wondering where his next uplit throne will be in the new house.

And in between all this packing, we also have had to have a few sad moments where we say farewell to the apartment itself; the charming walls that kept us safe and warm and happy, the good old bones of our first home together.  I guess we are both like our families in this way. We get attached to places.  They become infused with meaning.  In the ten years I’ve been in Boston, I’ve only lived in two apartments, after all.  We’ve seen our friends come and go in this neighborhood for the past four years.  We’ve made a lot of jokes about our very quiet neighbors across the street in beautiful Forest Hills Cemetery.  We’ve hosted birthday parties, holiday parties, and even engagement parties.  In short, we’ve eaten a lot of cheese and toasted a lot of friends as we went from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife.  In our time here, I’ve made sure to take advantage of every fest Jamaica Plain has to offer.  I’ve been to Wake up the Earth Fest, the Fermentation Fest, Porchfest, JP Open Studios, the Lantern Fest; all the Fests.  We will miss living in Jamaica Plain in all its kombucha-brewing, art-creating weirdness.  We’ll still be able to visit of course, and without much effort, we’ll take some of the weirdness right along with us to our new home.

Then, I punched an elevator...

          This past Thursday, I punched an elevator. I am not typically prone to violent bursts of anger, but there were many things that led me to be stuck in that hot basement that day, full of minor physical maladies and frustrations. Let’s take a look back, shall we?

           Let’s start with my general experience over the past few years with our current medical system. I am lucky enough to have no major health problems, but rather, it has taken several years to find the root of my relatively minor GI issues. Unfortunately, on the path to ultimately finding out that I have a tomato allergy and something called “abdominal wall pain”, I was re-routed to one urologist, one nephralogist, two gynecologists, two gastroenterologists, and a partridge in a pear tree, because they kept finding things that “might” have been the cause. And each time, there was a co-pay and work time to make up and follow-up visits required. And nearly each visit, I was offered the option of surgery or no surgery and told that it was my decision. (For example, the suggested removal of an asymptomatic kidney stone I have had since age seven; not exactly likely to be the root of my recently formed GI issues).  This surgery as a choice made by the patient thing is a new trend in healthcare apparently. Let’s not even get into the amount of scans and paperwork that don’t get transferred, followed up on, and so forth. 

          So, thankfully, my problems are managed fairly well now sans surgery, but forgive me if my opinion of our overly specialized medical system is not exactly sky-high. In the end, I should be grateful that I am not actually very sick, and I am grateful. I am also one of the lucky ones with good health insurance, and access to some of the best hospitals in the country, but it’s no wonder bills run so high in a business where people are swamped and no one seems to care about efficiency or economy because "insurance will cover that". I have met some wonderful, caring, clinicians and some not so wonderful ones and some great front desk people and some impressively bad ones. Just please keep this in mind as you read about my last few weeks.

          So more recently, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my foot— my second metatarsal to be exact. Years of pronating, (essentially spinning my foot to an extreme point while walking), have done more than just put holes in all my left shoes. The husband has long observed my strange gait: “Yes, you could get orthotics... or you could just learn to walk.” I actually did try to learn to walk in Alexander Technique lessons, and as it turns out, it is surprisingly difficult to walk like a normal person. At any rate, it was in mid-November, when I was onstage in character shoes that I first noticed the pain. But I also ignored the pain, because I had a nerve-wracking, three-hour long German opera to continue performing. By December, the pain was making it difficult to walk and even more difficult to walk downstairs. Apparently podiatry appointments are notoriously hard to come by though. When I looked into seeing a podiatrist in December, I couldn’t get an appointment until February. But you know, it wasn’t like we had a tough winter here in Boston….

          So, two of my appointments were snowed out and I finally limped into the podiatrist’s office in March, where I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. He McGyver’d a makeshift orthotic insert for me out of medical tape and sent me on my way to check back in in three weeks. Wonderful, swell, pain diminishing. Follow-up appointment booked. Check that off my list.

          In the meantime, I caught a really stellar stomach bug that was making its rounds through my office and I had to leave work in the middle of the day. I managed to time it for my trip home so that I threw up out the door of the cab at a stoplight. One of my finer moments, I must say. I highly recommend this: great for re-living your college days, only with the added humiliation of broad daylight.

          About a week later, I had just finished dinner, and I inexplicably felt very weak. I remember it being weird. The next day, I woke up with an itchy rash on my back that I assumed was a spider bite. The day after that, I woke up and it was bigger, redder, and itchier. So, into the doctor I went, where I was told that I had shingles. So yes, I know I have joked a lot on this blog about how I am actually 85 years old at heart, but now I have ARTHRITIS AND SHINGLES! I am lucky I was able to treat it early, because I did not experience the intense nerve pain that often goes along with shingles. Thanks to an anti-viral, it mostly stayed constantly itchy, unless I scratched it, in which case it also burned. But I’ll take it. Ice packs were very helpful in taking my mind off of it.

          The nurse practitioner who saw me asked if I had been stressed out lately. I told her I’ve been stressed out for about ten years. That very week, I was starting the six performances I had on the docket in the evenings after work and Sunday afternoons. (In this same appointment, she thought maybe I should go see an allergist about my nasal allergies, but I told her that seeing another specialist was not going to alleviate my stress at all—far from it.) She suggested that stress plus the stomach bug can often bring on shingles and pointed out that that weakness from a few days earlier was the beginning of my chicken pox's re-emergence. For all you over 60 who are reading this: (I'm talking to my main readership, i.e., friends of my mom), who are procrastinating getting your free shingles shot; DO NOT PASS GO. CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY AND GET YOUR SHOT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. For those of you under 60, for whom it is not covered by insurance, good luck…

          At any rate, I had full-blown shingles. (Such a weird disease term. Singular or plural? I have been mostly referring to them in the plural: i.e., threatening the husband with rubbing my shingles up against him.) I had my return podiatry appointment, during which I was told my treatment would be custom orthotics from another facility. Instead of making me another makeshift medical tape contraption, I was given a cortisone shot. So there I was, with my hand on my shingles to keep them from itching, getting fluid injected into my foot. It felt not awesome, BUT, the results were pretty baller. Within a day, I was freakin’ Ginger Rogers- I could do anything with that left foot.

          Like a junkie anxiously fearing the end of the current fix, as soon as I could, I made an appointment to get fitted for custom orthotics at the facility closest to my workplace. I asked if I could have an appointment on any day but Fridays so they booked me on that coming Thursday.

          I show up to the orthotics office and the receptionist in the front of the building is gabbing on the phone. I have to wait for her to look up because I can’t find the orthotics office on the directory. This is because it is located on an elevator bank that goes to the basement. She tells me there are no stairs for the basement.

          I walk out of the elevator to the basement to find that it’s approximately 100 degrees there, likely because it’s right next to the furnace. I enter the orthotics office and it is more comfortable. I introduce myself to that receptionist. She takes what feels like five minutes to find my name and appointment and asks me my name no less than three times, interjected with “Are you sure you have an appointment today?” She finally finds it. I tell her I don’t have my prescription in hand, but that my husband scanned it to my email, at which point she tells me she doesn’t know her email address… I should have gone back to work at this point…

          We experiment with different variations on her name and the office domain and she eventually successfully receives my email. Mind you, they’d already told me the orthotics are not covered and will cost me between 300 and 450 dollars, soooo not sure why they need the prescription that badly when they have my health insurance card. But I am told I couldn’t be seen without it.

          The specialist I see in my appointment is great. The prescription from the podiatrist apparently isn’t even very clear and I am able to fill in holes for her. Without prompting, she sympathizes with all the rigmarole patients have to go through, bouncing between doctors and assures me that my custom orthotics would be in in three weeks and that they would work well for a pain management plan.

          I go to check out with a receptionist at a different desk within the office and remind her that any day but Friday would be good for me for my three week follow-up appointment. She tells me that my specialist only works Fridays and that that day had been an exception. They prefer that you see the same specialist consistently.  Awesome.

          Then, I leave to hustle back to my office and here’s when shit really goes down. After ten minutes of waiting in a 100 degree basement, there is still no elevator to arrive. I check the door marked “emergency exit”, which leads me to a weird storage room full of industrial vacuums that I am afraid of getting locked into. I walk back in to visit my receptionist friend who did not know her own email and she exclaims; “You’re still here?!” “Yes,” I said “because I am still waiting for an elevator. Are there really no stairs here?” She says no, there are no stairs. I ask if I can go out the emergency exit and she says she doesn't know where it leads. She walks out with me to the elevator and sees that the elevator light is still lit but nothing has happened yet. She does this super helpful thing of trying to hit the button again, as though that hasn't occurred to me yet... I ask her to please call the front desk at which point she says SHE DOES NOT KNOW THE NUMBER FOR THE FRONT DESK. She is totally unashamed and unapologetic about this. She then answers a call and doesn't put the person on hold or show any other kind of urgency.  I mean, what if there had been a fire or actual emergency?

          I walk out to the boiling elevator lobby again. The “up” button is still green and still no elevator. I wait some more. I walk back into reception, all the while anxiously keeping an ear out should the elevator door open, and this time, the receptionist isn’t even there. It is at this point, at my own boiling point, that I consider creating an enormous scene in front of the three total people in the office, a scathing rant about her gross incompetence, demanding that she find a front desk or security number. And trust me, I am an opera singer. I can scream if I want to... loudly. I take a moment to think of myself as an innocent bystander in that office and instead, walk out into that lobby and slam the side of my fist into that elevator door. Then, I kick it... hard... twice. It has now been 17 minutes since I first attempted to leave their office via elevator. I had been jerked around by the American healthcare system for too long. I was hot, late for work, and pissed as all hell. So that, you see, is how one finds oneself punching an elevator. Fortunately, I am neither strong, nor accustomed to punching things, so I only bruised my hand instead of breaking it. That could have been bad because it may have resulted in another specialist appointment.

          About three minutes after my tirade, which I honestly hope was caught on security camera, an elevator finally showed up. As I walked out through the main entrance, the gabbing receptionist in the main lobby was nowhere to be found to even hear my complaints or suggestions. Perhaps this was for the best…

You might be in Boston's Snowmageddon 2015 if...

I remember thinking at the end of January, that this year's Farmer's Almanac prediction of heavy snowfall like that of last year must have been wrong.  But those guys are almost never wrong.  I just didn't know that it would all fall in a two and a half week span in February. 

If the following list gets rather specific, infer from that what you will...

You've lost track of what number blizzard we are on.

There is a bottle of Berkshire Brewing Company's "Cabin Fever" in your fridge right now.

You check Instagram every three minutes, just to remind yourself that real people exist outside the icicles covering your windows.

You cook, eat, and bake all the things because there is just no need to feel hunger for more than half a second, if at all.

You take pictures of all the things you cook, eat, and bake and post them on Instagram, to delude yourself into thinking you have a life.

You start chomping on your vitamin D pills as though they were Xanax.

Even if you are just responsible for a sidewalk, the Sisyphean task of constant shoveling throws you into an existential crisis about the futility of work in general.  (Not true for everyone?  Just me, you say?)

You work with your neighbors to designate jobs for the bi-weekly shoveling out of cars; there are assigned diggers, cleaners, pushers, drivers and scouters of oncoming traffic from beyond the six foot tall snowdrifts.  What could be worse than completing the triumph of finally liberating one's car from the driveway, only to have it totaled upon entering the as-yet invisible street?

It's like one of those nightmares where no one heeds your warnings.  You tell everyone that Mayor Walsh has said not to bother digging out your cars with the parking ban still in effect until the next day.  When no one listens, you feel shoveling-induced guilt and you bundle up and help the husband and neighbors with the cars.  With ecstatic screams of collaborative victory when the vehicles are finally unleashed, you find 15 minutes later that you all got $45 parking tickets.  No one saw this while it was happening because of the six foot tall snowdrifts, (see previous).

You live in Jamaica Plain, where everyone but you seems to have at least one dog, so you pass no less than 14 electric yellow urine spots throughout the snowbanks in every block.

There is not enough room in the sidewalk pathways for two pedestrians, so every encounter with a person, (and/or dog), means an awkward interchange about who is going to step aside first.  If you are like me, you will hopefully slip and fall in front of the other person.  Don't worry though, there is no place to really fall.  You just sort of inelegantly bounce off the snowbanks.

On a similar note, leaving the house requires ski pants.

The mere thought of entering the T station has you already breaking into a twitch, thinking about the vast mass of humanity, waiting on the platform to claw its way onto the same car as you.  You have entered the land of no manners, where people's dark cannibalistic underbellies are exposed to all.  This is not the typical part of people you are used to seeing exposed on the T.

You start wishing we had those people whose job it is to push you into the train cars like in Japan:

The idea of a normally functioning public transit system makes you break out into maniacal laughter.

You find yourself saying for the first time ever; "At least I'm taking the green line tonight".
After you take the green line five stops and it takes 45 minutes, you think; Well that wasn't bad.

After you get off the train, you walk into a local coffee chain only to find that it's the end of the world because they have ACTUALLY no food.  They are completely out of sandwiches and salads.  You are in some kind of bizarre twilight zone.

Minutes after you find no food at a usually food-filled establishment, the news hits the internet that the General Manager of the MBTA is resigning, surprising no one.  Let the jokes about Boston Olympics 2024 commence!

A two mile uber ride now costs $69 and the taxi company you call requesting a cab for 20 minutes hence actually laughs at you.

There was no snow on Christmas or even the entire month of January.

When it stops snowing for several minutes, the temperature will not be above seven degrees, just to insure your misery.

Also, your down coat's zipper is broken but the good people of the North Face tell you it will take two months to fix and return to you.  So you use the buttons and are constantly trying to adjust the vents that the lack of zipper has now created, because the air is painful.

Your dryer breaks mid-storm one day, so you are surrounded by your own wet underwear which never seems to dry. 

Meanwhile, your skin is quite dry and is actually staging a revolt against your body for independence.

You really wish your face would stop peeling on your coat, because you can't get it cleaned until Spring.  You need that shit.

You seriously doubt the existence of Spring.  They talk about it being four weeks away, but you've forgotten what basic things like "the sun" and "happiness" feel like.

You stop obsessively looking at the weather forecast, because you can't even.

You think fondly of all those rainy seasons when you said; "At least it isn't snow!", because now 
IT IS SNOW, FRIENDS. SNOW. EVERY. DAMN. DAY.

A slow walk through a hot kitchen

                 On the list of things I would not recommend doing when landing in a brand new destination, is to get off the plane and skip dinner on your way to your New Years’ Eve celebration. “Heavy hors d’oeuvres included” can just mean so many different things. Apparently, at this lovely “social club” in Charleston, South Carolina where the husband and I had booked reasonable NYE tickets, “heavy hors d’oeuvres” simply meant two hours of all-you-can-eat raw oysters. While I used to think of raw oysters as the equivalent of slurping down snot, they are now actually a thing I have developed a taste for as a 30-something. So, I ate some.

Ok, I ate a lot....

          I figured; “Hey, these are full of protein for my hypoglycemic hand shaking”. I lost count at about oyster #8 or 9. Mind you, I did not stop there; I just lost count there. And what goes better with a small boatful of raw oysters on New Year’s than a glass of Rosé Brut? Fatal mistake, my friends. The husband, who is obviously infinitely more in touch with the bottom of his stomach than I, declined to eat more than 3 raw oysters without supplementing by ordering something else from the menu. So it stood at about 11:50, with the live music in full swing and the ball about to drop, that his Wagyu beef tartare was placed in front of us. That’s right; another pile of raw meat for me to contemplate. For those who know me, this would not normally be a problem. I usually request that my beef and lamb take "a slow walk through a hot kitchen", but this time... damn. With nothing but a pile of slimy gifts from the sea and bubbles having gone down my gullet, I thought I was going to vomit right there. I wish I could say that my nauseated New Year’s was caused by wild times, but alas, I am apparently past those. At any rate, after desperately ordering a glass of water, I did not end up throwing up at the bar, or at all in the end. For me, 2015 just came in riding several waves of queasiness. We were out of there and walking in the fresh air by 12:08.

          The husband and I really did have a great trip to Charleston though. We ambled down the prettiest little streets you’ve ever seen, full of cobblestones and scattered with charming porches. It was almost infuriating just how every little corner of the old town is so picture perfect, between the live oaks with the Spanish moss and the historic homes with the gaslights out front. You’d turn a corner and wonder; Where even are the ugly parts of this city? (We managed to find only one unattractive tube of a Holiday Inn on our way out of town.) In this way, the area really plays to my fantasies of living entirely in another time period. We woke up to church bells on Sunday morning, drank the hotel’s sherry offering, and strolled up lanes with architecture that only seemed to reach as far as the art deco period. And since it’s become such a foodie town, we ate updated Southern classics like hipster kings. It was splendiferous.

          For people who are over-extended, (of their own doing, of course), this was the perfect New Year’s Eve long weekend getaway, and just what we needed after the holiday rush. Our last vacation was in July and since we have both had overlapping singing gigs since then, we basically have been going non-stop for six months. So here is an interesting thing: Why were we both momentarily hung up on the like, two or three things we didn’t have time and/or energy for there? For example, I had wanted to go inside the home of the 19th century abolitionist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, whom I had recently read about in a historical fiction novel. (Incidentally, this is The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, and it is beautiful and you should read it.) Alas, the home was closed by the time we got there on Saturday and not open the following day of our departure. B had wanted to see the Vietnam exhibit on the waterfront and one more tour where we had just walked through the USS Yorktown, but I was trying to get to the historic home. We just were trying to do too many things, which is very un-southern of us. And the bitch of it is, that had we not known those things existed, we wouldn’t have missed them at all, because we also toured a tea plantation and a historic rice plantation. And you never know what will surprise you as you go. So after my disappointment at the Grimké home being closed, it was on our second plantation tour that B discovered something. It was a building where a Reverend, who was the nephew of the Grimké sisters, and highly influenced by them, had taught the slaves on the plantation to read, which was illegal. Under the auspices of teaching them Bible studies, which was permissible by law, he taught all his "black roses", as he called them, to read! This, as you can imagine, had me all verkempt.

          The thing I constantly learn about travel is that no matter what, I will always feel enticed to go back, but I also know I likely can’t get back to every place I have already visited more than once. Life gets in the way and there are just some places you likely won’t have a chance to return to. This is both frustrating and beautiful. There is something really lovely about the impermanence of a fleeting moment. Maybe we will get back to Charleston and maybe we won’t. I’d like to get back to all the beautiful places I’ve been and fallen in love with, but new places also call… At any rate, we'll never need to go back to Charleston for their raw oysters. We've had our fill of those.