Walk to Work: Peeing in the Corner

New York has not really taken to the public toilet concept. They've been introduced and rejected over and over. I guess people think they're gross, despite the fact that the designers have gone to some length to make them self-cleaning. I guess I must think they're gross, too, because I've never used one. For any given neighborhood I'm familiar with, I have a mental map of where all the Barnes & Nobles or other pee-friendly places are, but I understand that not everyone is as, er, anal as I am, and that not every coffee shop is going to throw open its stalls to bike messengers. Which is how you get scenes like this morning, me minding my own business on 35th street, that guy urinating in an irregularity of the Macy's building.

I See Famous People

Those of my readers who are not from New York, or wait, not New York, Tennessee, might not know who this handsome fellow is. Former Tennessee Congressman, once potential New York Senator, present Morning Joe contributor Harold Ford crosses my path from time to time on the walk home from daycare. Weirdly, given how much he's been in the news lately, no one else seemed to notice him. Then again, given how badly he messed up that potential Senate run, that's probably a good thing for him.

Stopped in My Tracks

At the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones, a somewhat oddly colored door.


I wouldn't have noticed it as much for the color, though, as for the sign affixed to it.


Because this is Manhattan, and people will have opinions, and my guess is that whoever painted that door that color just did not want to hear them.

Chooseday: Swings or Slide?

On the walk home today, A. and I stopped at the playground. We had enough time for him to go on the swings or the slide, which did he want to do? Advanced kid that he is, he looked at me and said, "ducka ducka duckaaah," which I took to mean swings. Good thing, too, since there were some older kids on the slide and I really didn't want to have to muscle them out of the way.

A. has never really been on the swings before -- we stuck him in once when he was four months old, and in danger of slipping through the leg hole if we let go -- and his reaction was just what I had hoped for: pure joy. He was in between two other boy babies being swung by their nannies, who were both very friendly to A. and sweet with their charges. Then the mother of one of the boys came charging up to the fence. "Esther, how do I get in here?" Esther turned towards her to tell her and gesture to the gate. "Keep your eyes on him!" the mother shrieked. Sigh. The baby was, of course, fine in the swing for the two seconds Esther looked away.

This is one of many reasons I'm glad A. is in daycare. It's incredibly hard giving up control of what happens to your child when he's not in your direct care. Daycare can be chaotic, with its many children and several caregivers, and after the first few days, I realized I just had to go with it. But when you have a nanny she is, technically, your employee. And as a manager, you can be of the micro variety, which sadly for Esther, hers seems to be.

What Did I Tell You?

I knew that as soon as the temperature got close to 50 degrees, we'd be seeing feet, and my neighbors didn't let me down. I saw no fewer than four people shuffling along in flip flops yesterday. Most of the rest of us still needed our winter coats.

Walk to Work: No Hats

The walk to work was lighter by several hundred head coverings this morning. People are cavalierly exposing their heads to March's sunshine and warmer temperature... of 37 degrees. This is what New York is like. The least little encouragement from the weather, and we go nuts. Another ten degrees, and we'll be seeing flip flops.

Come Here Often?

In my previous post, I may have implied that the baby was preventing me from walking in the cold and dark that is February. In truth, of our little family of three (five if you count Luca and Oz, the heat-seeking cats who crowd us out of bed every night), A is the most equanimous in the face of freezing temperatures.

With the later sunset, a clear sky and a temperature slightly above freezing this evening, I thought we could brave the walk home after work. A few blocks in, it was clear A wasn't having it -- he was tired, cranky, in need of a nap an hour previously. I sang a few rounds of Doe, a Deer, and he was out.

(Tangentially: why can I only keep one or two songs at the ready at any given time? Lately, we've had a lot of Doe, a Deer; She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain, complete with the "kill the old red rooster" line which is a little shocking, but absolutely necessary to the sense of the song; and the Wheels on the Bus, god help me, a song I swore I'd never sing to my children after suffering through it with my younger nieces and nephews, but which turns out to be a crowd pleaser.)

I kept going, despite the sleeping baby, through Madison Square Park, past the Shake Shack that had no line -- I could have had my daily limit of delicious sodium, no waiting -- past several snowmen of the three-lump variety. Then there was this duo, delicately carved, lounging, enjoying the twilight.

Snow Day

I haven't been doing much walking, or Excellent Walkering for that matter, for lots of reasons, most of which have to do with the cold, and the dark, and taking A in the cold and dark is a pain, plus yesterday, there was snow. So much snow, or so much promise of snow, in fact, that there was an official Snow Day -- NYC public schools were closed. Our daycare follows their closings, so despite the fact that only five inches fell and the city did a bang-up job of keeping those plowed away as soon as they fell, the baby and I stayed home.

I love daycare. I can say many positive things about it -- A has always been a sociable little guy and being around so many different people every day has only reinforced that. He's has some separation anxiety from time to time -- not when he's left there, but when I leave a room -- but never any stranger fear. This could be a bad thing later on, but for now, when he's charming the tired after-work bus riders into a smile and a ba ba ba, it's great. Plus, I assume he'll effortlessly learn to wait his turn and share his toys at some point in toddlerhood, saving his father and I from actually having to discipline him.

I need to work for the usual reasons, so don't spend a lot of time second guessing our daycare decision, but if there's anything that brings on my deep-seated guilt reflex (Catholic upbringing, see), it's this: A takes huge developmental leaps every time he spends a day with my or my husband's undivided attention. The multi-consonant chattering, the tentative steps clutching on to our hands, the commando-style clawing his way across the floor -- these all happened at the ends of weekends, not the beginning.

Yesterday was no different. Around 6, I was starting to get weary, playing on the floor of A's bedroom, waiting for it to be bathtime. I put my head to the carpet, in Child's Pose. I looked up to see him doing the same. I bent down again, he bent down again. Over and over, my little yogini followed me.

What could he be doing if he had me home all the time? Reading? Sorting the recycling? Saying more than one word, or applying that one word to only the thing it actually represents and not several things it doesn't? Then I remembered. In addition to other kids and sharing and French lessons for god's sake, daycare has a yoga instructor in once a week. Maybe the snow day was keeping him back.

Single Issue

I'm not a single issue voter, and I don't know anyone who is. Except, by proxy, my friend's 70-year-old neighbor who told her that, though she'd been planning to vote for Obama, with the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket, she's going to vote for McCain. Despite against everything they stand for. She's old, she doesn't think there's enough time left for her to see another woman in the White House. She's been fighting for abortion rights all her life. She's not going to need one anymore; let the young women take over.

If I were a single issue voter, I might, for instance, object to the fact that Obama voted to authorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with its provisions for warrantless wire taps. In fact, I do object to it, but not enough to keep me from voting for him. I have to hope that as a former constitutional law professor -- one of his former jobs you didn't hear mocked at the RNC, I guess because it's kind of hard to make fun of someone for being an expert in the document that guides, or at least is suppose to guide, the way our country is run -- that he understands that FISA can never be allowed to become part of the landscape.

The only issue that comes close to singularity for me is homeland security. By which I don't mean building more walls to keep out undocumented Mexicans, though I accept the fact that terrorists could be intermingled with those future landscapers and restaurant workers. (Remember, however, the 9/11 hijackers came in not over the fence, but through the front door, step right this way, sirs, and please do attend all the highly unusual, but apparently not at all suspicious flying lessons you like.)

Homeland security means one thing to me: preventing another attack on my and other big cities. America may be voting small-town values this election, but oddly enough, 70% of us live in urban areas. A New York Times op-ed yesterday talked about the high likelihood of a nuclear attack on Manhattan in the next ten years, and how each of the candidates are likely to prevent it. The author was not particularly sanguine about either Obama or McCain, but did say that of the two, Obama understands the threat better.

That's what I want. Someone who understands first, then acts. Not someone who, like John McCain, believes the 9/11 terrorists had ties to Iraq, then gets us into a long war with massive casualties and distracts us from the real tasks at hand: finding Osama bin Laden, dismantling his organization, and preventing a new al Qaeda from forming.

Just a Couple of Northeastern Elites

Overheard on my walk to work this morning, one truck driver on the sidewalk to another:

"She was not nice. It was just really mean spirited."

Now, I don't know that they were talking about the Sarah Palin speech last night, but I like to think they were. In any event, I'm fired up. I gave more money to the campaign this morning -- the Obama campaign, that is. I'm also contemplating a career change -- to community organizer.

Happy Goddamn Halloween

OK, sure, every other woman on the street last night was a slutty barmaid, or a slutty referee/umpire, slutty pirate, baseball player or cat. I even saw a slutty Sherlock Holmes. We get it; Halloween is firmly established as a safe time for otherwise only mildly slutty woman to become full-fledged slutty fantasies for men whose most creative costume attempt is carrying a football while wearing a football jersey and sneakers. If I were 15 years younger, I might think it was fun to do, instead of just funny to ridicule as the sluts pass.

But when the slut parade interferes with my ability to get home quickly, that's when it's gone too far. The cab we were in after the theater last night was held up for several light cycles and meter clicks too many on 42nd Street. The cause of this late-night traffic jam? A Halloween party at Cipriani, to celebrate the launch of Roberto Cavelli's new vodka line (doesn't he know that designer vodkas are so 2004? but get this, it's filtered through crushed Italian marble), at which there was a line of black SUVs standing in what would otherwise be a no-standing zone/bus stop, funneling the traffic into one lane instead of two, their drivers napping while the D-list celebrities they were waiting for slutted it up inside. People like Petra Nemcova and Katrina Bowden. Who? Right; exactly.

At least Petra's costume is a little beautiful. What's Katrina supposed to be? A slutty Donald Trump? Ew.

Sometimes It's Just Not Your Day

I knew I shouldn't get out of bed this morning. I lay there, awake, for at least a half hour, trying to work out how I could avoid it. Why does my job have to be an every day affair?

But I finally did get up, too late to make breakfast at home. I stopped in the bagel store, so far so good. Decided I should have coffee on the way to work, since I hadn't woken up yet. Asked for, as I always do at a deli, hazelnut with milk.

There are people who think flavored coffees are evil. But my thinking is: if I'm not going to have a very-high-quality cup of coffee, in a ceramic mug, sitting down at a table that doesn't have a computer screen on it, I should at least have the softening effects of the toasty hazelnut.

Except that the woman who gave me my coffee gave me regular coffee, which I didn't find out until I opened it several blocks away, too late to do anything about it. This is also the woman who, when I once asked for "not too much cream cheese," gave me the amount you would put on if you were putting on butter at home, i.e., not very much at all. Sure, it's probably better for me that way, but if I'd wanted better for me, I would have gotten up early enough to make my own damn breakfast at home.

Where was I?

Right, so I chucked the coffee, figuring life was too short to drink bad bagel-store coffee and I would get a cup of hazelnut at the deli in my office building. There they make you pour your own coffee, which means you always get what you want, even if what you want is half caffeine/half decaf, with a drop of half-and-half and a swush of skim milk. Not that I would ever want such a thing.

Up at my desk, bagel at my left hand, coffee at my right, I settled in to a day in front of the computer, when, whoops! I knocked over, no, I flung over, the coffee, all over my desk, underneath my monitor and keyboard (fortunately not on the keyboard, or I wouldn't be writing this now), leaving myself with approximately one sip of coffee.

And then, and then, I get a message from the bridal salon I went to last night to try on wedding dresses, telling me I'd left a pair of Spanx in the dressing room. Insult indeed, added to injury.

So I have had a total of three sips of coffee today: two of the bad-woman-bagel-store cup, one of the knocked over hazelnut. Where is my bed?

Sad

I was at my lawyer's this morning, signing some contracts (don't you love the way I write "at my lawyer's" as if I have a lawyer independent of this one very specific transaction I hired him for? I always love the moment on crime dramas when, as the Lenny Briscoe character is putting the cuffs on, the bad guy says to his secretary or his girlfriend in the cut-off shorts and tank top who made the mistake of opening the door to the cops, "call my lawyer," as if that person is on speed dial. Who are these people who have personal lawyers?) and while I was waiting for him to get off the phone, I read the top page of a contract that happened to be within easy sight.

The contract was unusual looking, in that it looked typed instead of printed, which was explained when I saw the date in the first paragraph -- 1988. Though there was no heading on it that said this, as I read it it became clear that it was a pre-nup, because it outlined what property would remain in individual ownership after the marriage. I can only imagine it was on my lawyer's desk because the signatories were getting a divorce.

Not Said in All of This

It's raining again this morning, and while the subways are all running normally (except mine -- there was an "earlier incident" at 125th Street that took out the 1/2/3 for a half hour), the MTA is on high alert.

In the first days of the post mortem of the GFof07, there's one thing that keeps coming up that I find really interesting. One of the reasons for the track flooding was that the MTA didn't have enough workers on the tracks to clear debris that was blocking the drains. Newspapers, principally. There's a reason you use newspaper for elementary school papier mache projects. It takes a long time of sogginess before that stuff disintegrates.

So the MTA has to put more track workers out to clear tracks, is the conclusion that seems to have been reached, by the MTA at least. But you know what? How about asking -- or even telling, there's a crazy thought -- passengers not to throw newspapers and other trash on the track? How about sending a bill to the publishers of the Metro and AM New York, the two free newspaper that are pressed into your hand outside of every subway station?

Yes, it feels like we pay a lot to ride a subway that's dirty and hot and breaks down in the rain. But does that give everyone the right to treat it like their personal dumpster? Has the concept of personal responsibility completely evaporated in this city?

The Great Flood of Aught Seven

It's hard to be an Excellent Walker in August, particularly the hot August we've been having. But I had no choice but to hoof it to work today, since all the subways were shut down after the three-inches-in-an-hour of rain we had this morning. By the time I got to the office, sweaty and on my way to a sunburn, I was in no mood for the cheery greeting I got from the receptionist, who, on a normal day has a problem getting here as early as 10am, so who is she to be all "I'm at work before you" on me?

People are complaining that the MTA should be better prepared for these situations (apparently many of the water pumps date from the 1930s, though I can't find a source for that), and I guess they should be. I think it's unrealistic, though, to expect a fully modernized system when that system is over 100 years old, operates 24/7, and transports millions of people a day. If you've tried to take the subway on the weekend, you know that they are always working on it. There's only so much they can do, though, without shutting the whole thing down. With that kind of daily use, they might as well be bailing water out of a sinking ship with a teaspoon.

What I do think is possible is a better communications system, both in terms of the hardware in the stations and the updates on the website, and getting instructions to the MTA workers who are -- rightly -- interrogated by commuters when something is wrong. All of those things failed this morning, and are still in failure mode at 2:45pm. The best information I got was from the media, who had dispatched reporters to various sites to, you know, report what was happening. Considering how likely it is that we'll have a true emergency in the subway one of these days -- i.e., a terrorist attack -- and that it's been six years since we've put urban terrorism on the top of our "to worry about a lot" list, you'd think we'd have at least made some progress there. You would, however, be wrong.

When Your Nose is in the Yogurt, Have You Reached Rock Bottom?

I told myself that if, when I emerged from the subway at the southeast corner of 35th and Eighth, there wasn't a line at Starbucks, I would treat myself to an over-priced, and overly precisely ordered (non-fat, half-caf, blah blah blah) iced coffee. There was a line, which, according to my prior agreement with myself, meant I should have just walked on by, but a man sitting in the window caught my eye. He wasn't so much sitting as shlumped, face down into the cup of granola and yogurt set in front of him. Was he dead? It was my responsibility to find out.

I paused for a few seconds inside the doorway; he took a breath. Not dead. But at least three-quarters of his nose was in the yogurt. If he hadn't been sitting in a Starbucks with a six dollar cup of yogurt in front of him, I would have said he looked homeless. I got on line, over precisely ordered, keeping half an eye on the man as I waited. No movement. Maybe he'd had a heart attack? A stroke?

As I was about to leave, I shook the man on the shoulder. He startled, lifted his head about an inch, cocked it my way, gave me a look that said, "ehhhh, leave me alone," then turned and dropped back into the yogurt. No one else seemed to notice.

What Happened Next

You may be wondering what happened to my entry in the Smallest Coolest Apartment contest.

In brief, I didn't win.

However, I did spend a full day as the "most viewed" post on the site, several days after my initial posting, a fact for which I have no explanation.

I knew I wasn't going to win by the time the announcement party rolled around a couple of weeks ago, but I went anyway. It was held at Design Within Reach in Soho -- a fancy furniture store that sells Herman Miller chairs and Philip Starck Bubble couches and the like. A few years ago, around the time the store opened a branch in Cambridge, I had brunch with my friend Sam at a restaurant next door. I mentioned that another friend of ours, Will, who is very design conscious, must love it. Sam replied that in fact Will didn't like it at all; Will would prefer design to remain a little bit out of reach. But I digress.

The winner was London Urchin's Jewelry Box, shown in the picture above. There were many details to like about this apartment -- I particularly like the blue of the kitchen, and the fact that the owner used black rubber flooring -- but come on. Since when is London part of the East Coast of the United States? This entry should have gotten an honorable mention and a promise to include a international category next year.

Or perhaps I am too rules-dependent.

Still, it was surprisingly fun to enter the contest. Though the pictures I submitted looked really simple, it took a whole morning to stage them just right. And reviewing all the other entries, which I did obsessively to size up the competition, gave me a lot of great ideas to try in my apartment. Next up, I'm thinking of entering the Fall Cool Colors Contest. I'll win something yet!

I Have the Coolest Apartment

Apartment Therapy is running their annual "Smallest Coolest Apartments" contest, and since I have a very small, very cool apartment, and since, a few weeks ago when I looked to see what the competition was like, I discovered that my apartment was much cooler than the others, I sent in an entry on the last day they were accepting them.

Then I discovered that everyone else had also waited until the last minute, and AT had gotten a ton of entries. I was disappointed not to see mine chosen, but since the quality of the others went up signficantly, I wasn't that surprised.

Except that yesterday, on the next-to-last-day of the preliminaries, they posted mine!

This is where you come in. The way it works is that the entries that get the most popular votes go on to official, professional-type judging. There are so many fantastic apartments up there that I don't think I have a chance of actually winning, but I'd like to get to the "it's an honor just to be nominated" stage, so I need votes from the site's viewers. And you. And the person who sits next to you at work. If you were inspired to leave a comment, like "gee, that's kind of amazing that she fit a bed into that small space, " or "wow, that green wall is so cheerful; that apartment must be one pleasant spot," so much the better, but it's not necessary.

You have some very limited amount of time in which to do this -- I think until Saturday. If I do end up winning, I'll be sure to mention you all in my acceptance speech!

The New York Times Hates Me

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published an editorial about how Americans needed to use fewer plastic bags. Ireland, South Africa, San Francisco (that's not really America, is it?) have all either banned or taxed them.

I am very keen on this issue. It seems such a simple way to start to cut down on waste (and petroleum-derived waste at that). But here's the thing: Yes, state and local governments should encourage people to bring reusable bags to the store. But the bigger problem is that stores need to be willing to accommodate those customers who do that, and apart from Whole Foods, I've never been in a store that hasn't tried to snatch up my purchase before I can protest that I have my own bag, or don't need one at all.

Which is what I wrote in my very first Letter to the Editor.

I know they get hundreds of letters, and the fact that I hadn't heard from them within a couple of days made it pretty clear they weren't going to publish mine. But they weren't publishing any letters on the subject, so at least I didn't have to feel personally rejected.

Until today, when they belatedly ran this, from someone named Nathalie (there doesn't need to be an h in Natalie, does there?) in North Hollywood, California.

"Nathalie" thinks we need to be more like the French, who she recently visited and was impressed with. Well sure, be like the French, but the French have a long history of shopping at markets and such with a basket tucked under their arm; they may have Les McDonalds, but they do not have the vite-vite-vite culture so ingrained in their tetes that it's much of a stretch for them to stop using plastic bags. Also, "Nathalie" emphasized the role of the individual, which is what the editorial did. I tried to take the conversation a step further.

But no, the New York Times will not be challenged. Plus, they hate me.

"I Hope You All Are Cozy"

On my warm, damp subway car this morning, just past 72nd Street, the conductor's voice came over the PA. "I hope you all are cozy," he began, and right away, I felt people tense up. This is one of the newer subway cars, the ones with the recorded announcements about the upcoming station. It's unusual to hear the live conductor's voice, except when there's a problem.

"I hope you all are cozy," could mean, "we're going to be stuck in the tunnel for a while." But he went on, cheerfully, about how we all needed to be considerate of each other, and make sure to stand out of the way to let people on and off the train. To a sodden and cranky group of people -- I describe primarily myself here -- he struck just the right tone of friendliness. Too much of that and you want to stick things in your ears. Like pencils.

"If you are traveling in a crowded car," he continued, "look at it as an opportunity to get to know your fellow New Yorkers." I heard only one person groan at that; the rest of the car was laughing (though not taking him up on the getting to know your neighbor part). He wished us to have a safe and pleasant day, to get to our destinations and be happy to be there.

There's something about an unexpected deviation from the script that we seem to like here in the city. Maybe it's the idea that the conductor might actually like his job, instead of being one of those resentful civil servants who hate everyone. Maybe it's that it reminds us that no matter what very serious thing we're thinking about, we are, after all, traveling in reasonable comfort around a reasonably safe city. What do we have to complain about?

Whatever the reason, I ended my journey at 34th street in a considerably better mood than when I started, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.