I’ve been feeling down lately. It’s a multitude of things, but mainly it’s the omnipresent 20-something oh-my-God-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life blues. It’s not knowing if I want to stay in New York, but also not knowing where I want to go. It’s daydreaming at work of flying to Paris, living in Montmarte, and taking real good care of a box of window flowers. It’s all nonsense, but it still gets me down.
The problem is when I’m feeling down, I feel so low to the ground, there’s no farther down to go. I’ve always thrown my full weight into sadness. I always think of a stanza from “Elegy for Jane,” one of my favorite Theodore Roethke poems,
“Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.”
That’s exactly how I feel when I’m down. To get into English major nerdery, Jane takes the action of casting herself down. She does it to herself. Yet that adjective “clearest” indicates that there’s nothing mentally wrong with her. It almost seems contemplative.
Anyways, when I’m down, I like to read blogs about how to be happy, how to cheer yourself up, how to become one of those shiny women who seem to have it together. I study Buddhism. I try so hard to find ways to be more complacent, to be at peace, to wake up every morning smiling, and return to bed at night satisfied. But don’t we all strive for happiness in one way or another? Aren’t we all in one way or another trying to become happier? I’m just more type A and obsessed with it.
Then I came across this amazing post about how to survive a personal apocalypse. I was already well aware of the whole “This too shall pass” mantra. The thing where you tell yourself that struggles will eventually subside and that happiness will happen again. But what struck me is how she mentioned that sadness will come again too. That when you’re happy, you have to accept that one day, you won’t be. It sounds so pessimistic, but to me it’s peaceful.
There’s no way to be happy all the time, and it’s not healthy to strive for that. It’s all part of the balance. It’s why I love rain so much. Rainy days have their own feel, and their own sense of quiet life. When the rain clears, and it’s sunny again, we all appreciate it more, we all feel more thankful. But without the rain, the sunny days get mundane. I’ve lived in Nevada, and I’ve experienced that phenomenon first hand. So the sad days are like that as well. They make the happy days brighter.
So in sadness, I often think how it will be over, and I will be happy soon enough. But I think in happy days, I should live with knowing that I will one day be sad, angry, frustrated. It’s all okay. It seems so simple, but it struck me as something truly important to know.
In the time that I’ve had this blog, I have gotten less and less personal with my posts. This has been a conscious decision, as I like to keep my personal life relatively quiet. I don’t like to talk about who I’m dating, and I don’t like to talk about private matters. But this has been bothering me, and I’m trapped in my apartment because of Hurricane Sandy, and I’m bored, and I want to write about something. So this will do.
Saturday night, I went out on Halloween as an M&M. I know a lot of girls my age subscribe to the idea that Halloween is a time to wear a skimpy outfit. This sort of thing makes me wildly uncomfortable, so I opted for the green M&M look. I still wanted to look nice, so I wore bright green and black stockings and high heels. Under my costume, I had on short shorts and a tank top. I planned on coming home that night.
My costume was a complete success. Lots of compliments, lots of laughs. Around 1AM, the prospect of going back to Queens did not appeal to me. The guy I’ve been seeing lives much closer. So we arranged to meet up. We got pizza and went back to his place where I spent the night.
The next morning, we went across the street to grab bagels and coffee. I hadn’t planned on spending the night away from home. So I ended up wearing the tank top, short shorts, my heels, and his flannel shirt to the bagel shop. I felt a bit silly, and my legs were rather cold. But there was not much else to be done.
The line at the bagel shop was loooong, and he was anxious to get back in time to watch the Jets game. I told him to run across the street to the grocery store to buy coffee grounds, and I would hold our place in line and order for him if the line moved fast. He smiled, kissed me, and ran across the street. While standing in line, I noticed a couple of girls my age in line behind me. They looked at my bare legs and the cute boy that was running across the street and snickered. I told myself I was paranoid.
But I could definitely hear them whispering. And as my ears perked up, I realized that they were definitely talking about me. And I most definitely heard the uttering of the word, “slut.”
Man, did that sting. There are few words in the English language that can make a girl feel as worthless and low as that one. I tend to dress conservatively, and it’s not a word I’ve been called often in my life. But hearing it felt like a shot to the gut.
My first reaction was to brush it off. Who were these girls to judge me? They were in sweatpants and Uggs, and I had great legs and a cute boy who was going to come back my way. I also justified to myself that I really wasn’t doing anything wrong. These girls were unfairly judging me. I’ve been dating him for months. I really like him. It’s the day after Halloween, and I didn’t have anything else to wear.
But then I had the most important thought of all. NONE OF THAT SHOULD MATTER. The fact that they felt high and mighty enough to call me a slut is unacceptable. They don’t know my situation, and they shouldn’t have to. I absolutely hate that we live in a world where women are so vilified with this double standard. Boys will be boys, but girls carry the Madonna/Whore complex around with them everywhere. One of the biggest lies people in our culture believe is that women have achieved equality. We haven’t. Please, let’s all stop kidding ourselves with this.
And the worst part of this to me is that other girls were calling me this. I thought of Tina Fey’s speech in Mean Girls
Calling each other sluts and whores just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores
And that’s really the problem. It isn’t necessarily men holding women back from equality, we’re holding each other back. Every time we pick on each other for our appearance, for looking fat, for dressing scantily, we’re damning ourselves.
All I’m saying is that I want to live in a world where women don’t have to claw at each other because they feel as though they need to compete for men, social status, jobs, anything. It’s horrible. Maybe I’ve been watching a lot of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” the last couple of days, but I’d really like it if women saw other women dressed scantily and say something along the lines of “Damn, she looks fierce!” And that same woman could feel secure and proud to walk down the street, wearing what she wants to wear, without fearing the condemnation of those around her.
I don’t know why those girls felt the need to call me a slut, and I just wish it wasn’t something I heard. Can we all just not use that word anymore? Can we all just agree that it does nothing but hold us ladies down? Wear what you want to wear. Sleep with whomever you want to sleep with or don’t. And as Salt ‘N Peppa say, “Don’t keep sweatin’ what I do, cause I’m gonna be just fine.”
While the barrage of phone calls/text messages/emails from my friends makes me feel more loved than anything, it also reminds me that the nation is looking to New York City in this catastrophe. Those that aren’t here keep asking me what it’s like, what’s happening. While I’m blessed not to be in the thick of it or strongly affected, this is what it’s been like.
FRIDAY: For days, we have been hearing about a storm brewing that could possibly affect us, but this is the first time that I’m hearing the terms “Frankenstorm” and “Superstorm.” People are starting to get nervous, and it is just about the only thing people are talking about. Most people are making jokes in reference to Hurricane Irene (correction Tropical Storm Irene) that hit us last August. All the media hype amounted to about two hours of rain and winds that knocked leaves off of the trees in Central Park. No one was taking this year’s storm seriously, and absolutely no one was cancelling their Halloween weekend plans.
SATURDAY MORNING: The head doctor arrives at the clinic in the morning with bags of flashlights and batteries. My co-workers and I laugh at him, telling him he is over-reacting. He fights back that the storm is coming, and that we should all be prepared. The standard response is still “I’ll believe it when I see it.” He was in Morocco one year ago and didn’t experience the over-hype that was Irene. As he leaves for the day, he solemnly wishes me luck. I roll my eyes.
SATURDAY EVENING: I’m texting with a friend about what her last-minute Halloween costume should be. We come up with a brilliant idea that she should be the Hurricane itself. Hair all messed up, an inverted umbrella, a spray bottle to squirt people with water, and a poodle skirt to identify her as Sandy from “Grease.” We joke and laugh about this throughout the night on the town.
SATURDAY NIGHT: Bars are overflowing with drunken New Yorkers in skimpy costumes, no one speaks of the storm. I start to see reports on my phone that the subway system is going to be shut down. I start to feel a little nervous.
SUNDAY 10AM: I wake up in Murray Hill where I slept over at the boy’s apartment. Cuddled in his warm bed, the sky outside is dark, and it sounds windy. I can hear the noise of what sounds like an abandoned swingset, that metal creak of post-apocalyptic movies. Things start to feel foreboding, and I try to figure out in my head when I should plan on heading back to Queens. We spend the morning looking up news reports on his computer and listening to a Velvet Underground record. For an hour or two, the hurricane once again feels like a joke.
SUNDAY 1PM: We finally make our way across the street to buy bagels and coffee before the Jets game. The lines are around the corner out of every store. We make jokes about our last meal.
SUNDAY 2PM: While watching the Jets game, his roommates start showing up with cases of water and forties of Bud Light.
“Maybe we should get some pasta or something?” one of them says.
“Make sure you get some solo cups for beer pong.”
“Do we have flashlights?”
“I think I need to head back to Queens,” I tell the boy.
I still only have my Halloween costume, so I borrow a flannel shirt from him, and head home. Among the raincoats and rainboots, I’m wearing two inch heels, short shorts, a flannel shirt and a trench coat while carrying a large foam M&M suit. The most epic walk of shame of my life. Correction: Stride of pride.
SUNDAY EVENING: Back in my Elmhurst and changed into jeans and chucks, I decide to stock up on some supplies myself. I prepare thusly:
two very large bottles of water
a box of cheez-its
a flashlight
two candles
generic breakfast bars
pasta
a People magazine
a liter of Diet Ginger Ale…because I already have the whiskey
SUNDAY NIGHT: I reassure my mom over the phone that I’m in the safest neighborhood possible and that, yes, I bought bottled water. I watch the New York Giants edge out the Dallas Cowboys while consoling the boy over the phone about the tragic New York Jets loss. I watch the San Francisco Giants win the World Series with the mildest of interest, as I mildly dislike the Tigers. I look out the window to see no rain, although there is a light breeze.
MONDAY DAY: In the morning, still no rain, not even very windy. Cabin fever sets in early. Texts start pouring in from worried friends. I watch “Breaking Bad”, “Ru Paul’s Drag Race”, “American Horror Story,” and read a bunch of pointless articles on the Internet. I check facebook every 20 minutes, to see my New York friends are pretty much all fine and drinking either wine or whiskey.
MONDAY EVENING: Winds start to sound fierce outside my window, and I start to feel nervous. I keep my blinds shut in case the windows blow in, which sounds completely possible. It sounds so strong, that I imagine cows swirling past my window a la “Wizard of Oz” although what a cow would be doing in Queens, I can’t tell you. I live close to a hospital and the ambulance sirens have been going for hours, back and forth, up and down.
MONDAY 9PM: I haven’t been watching the news, so I finally start browsing photos on CNN, checking live blogs. I see my friends posting about the transformer exploding on 14th street, the fires in North Queens, the extreme flooding in Brooklyn, the blackout in Manhattan, the failed generator at NYU Langone Medical Center. I start to feel blessed and extremely lucky to live where I do. I send out texts to the people I care about in those areas to make sure they’re okay.
TUESDAY MORNING: I awake to a flood of text messages from worried family and friends. I reassure them that I’m okay. I turn on the news and stare jaw agape at the destruction around my city.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: My roommate and I dare to go out in our neighborhood. We walk the 15 minutes to a 24-hour diner. Along the way, we see leaves strewn and one fallen down tree. The streets are crowded with people trying to get fresh air. The diner is also crowded. But my roommate and I bond a bit over cups of coffee, greasy diner food, stories of boys and hurricane updates we’ve read. We browse the dollar store. We buy Uno.
TUEDSAY EVENING: I figure out that walking to work tomorrow will take me two hours and debate whether I should or not. I sign up for a volunteer list serve. I sit down, bored, to write this, which if you’ve made it this far, you must be equally bored. C’mon over! We have plenty of whiskey, and that rousing game of Uno is about to start.
My job is very physical, and I work 10-11 hour shifts. In recompense for this, my co-workers and I are allotted a three-day weekend. All of my friends gush over this and tell me how lucky I am, but in my line of work, it’s really necessary. For the last couple of months, I picked up an extra shift and was working 5-6 days a week, clocking in on average between 50-60 hours. While a lot of people do this, a lot of those people sit at a desk. Not that their jobs aren’t challenging or tiring, but there’s a difference between staring at a computer all day and lifting 60lb dogs and trying to avoid getting killed by a cat.
So now, I finally have my three-day weekends back. While I spent the last two weekends relaxing and catching up on so many things that fell by the wayside, I can already feel that three days off can get a bit much. I’ve picked up my knitting, I’ve become a football fan, I’ve been reading and writing. But I also decided that I wanted to explore my city more. I’ve been in New York for two years, and I fear I’ve fallen into a routine. With so much in the city to do and see, this is unacceptable. I subscribe to a ton of email lists, people are always telling me about cool things to do and see, I even own a 1001 things to do in New York book!
My three-day weekend is Sunday-Tuesday, so I have designated Tuesday: Tourist Tuesday, on which I will try to force myself out into the city to see something new. This week “A Salt and Battery.”
One of the best parts about New York are all the ethnic neighborhoods. It has your obvious Chinatown, Little Italy, and Spanish Harlem. But there’s also Koreatown, Little Bombay, a Dominican neighborhood, a Haitian neighborhood, a Hasidic neighborhood. Every nationality is represented, even the ones that don’t seem to need representation. For instance, there is a small street in the West Village that has a string of British places. A pub, an amazing tea house, a grocery store of British thing, and this amazing fish and chips place.
I’d been craving fish and chips for weeks. But all the places near my work were too expensive, and when I went to local bars with friends, I’d already eaten a healthy dinner at home. So I left it to Tuesday to go to the most authentic place in the city for a traditional British snack. The weather was perfect, and by perfect I mean 55 degrees, cloudy and drizzle. The perfect London weather for my British day. I threw on my raincoat and went.
The place itself is very hole in the wall, with only a couple of stools against the walls for seating. I got the Pollock and chips, as they don’t serve cod anymore. It was exactly what I wanted. I doused it in the Heinz vinegar, sat on a stool, and looked out onto the streets of the West Village, watching people scamper home from work.
The men that worked there were adorable, slinging fish with their British accents. The radio was broadcasting a station from London. It was perfect. My meal came to be about $13, including a bottle of water I bought. And it was filling. I didn’t even get to finish all my chips, which is not a common thing for me. I only wish I had room for their deep-fried Mars bars.
In my 27th year of life, I’m attempting to do 27 new things. Full list here.
Soon after I made my list, I saw a Groupon for a 60-minute Swedish massage in Chinatown. I jumped on it quickly as it was a 50% discount. Probably one of the main reasons I’ve never gotten a professional massage is because it’s just not the kind of thing I spend money on. I like learning what people spend the majority of their money on. For a lot of girls my age, it’s clothing. For some people it’s travel, concert tickets, fancy electronics, dinners out. I keep a lovely Excel spreadsheet of my finances, and the majority of my money goes to books and booze. A winning combination.
But I thought this would be a nice way to treat myself. My job is physically demanding, and this would help me relax. The place was a little bit sketchy, as the sign for it was on neon green posterboard with clip art glued onto it. But the place itself was nice. I was so nervous. I’m a private, and oftentimes shy, person, and I was freaked out by the idea of a stranger touching me. So one of my favorite parts about the massage was that she started by covering me in a towel and massaging me through the towel. It wasn’t until 5 or 10 minutes into the massage that she started to remove the towel. By that time I was comfortable.
Some parts of the massage felt incredible. I liked having my hands rubbed, and I enjoyed when she pressed points along my spine. Other parts really hurt though. I suppose it was my fault. Early on, she was massaging my neck, and it was hurting me. The masseuse asked me if it was too much pressure. Trying to be tough, I denied that it hurt, and said it was perfect. Ergo, she used that amount of pressure on the rest of me, causing me to wince in pain often, which the lady obviously couldn’t see as my head was tucked into a weird hole in the table. But something in me thought that maybe the pain was a good thing, maybe she was getting out knots or something in my muscles. I don’t know how that shit works. I thought it might be good for me.
The next day I woke up with pain all over my body. I felt like I had an intense workout at the gym the day before, and I felt stiff. Not sure if that is a common feeling the day after a massage, but I was a little thrown by it. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour of my time, and I think it would be better if I just spoke up and said what I wanted. Oh God, that’s too true in every aspect of my life.
Last Saturday night, I met up with a group of friends at the Washington Husky bar to watch the UW vs. UO football game. Over beers, my friends Patty and Grant started asking me if I wanted to go with them to the New York Giants game the next morning. They had asked me previously, but I absolutely could not afford it. But, it was getting down to crunch time, and no one had bought the tickets, so they offered to give them to me, so that they wouldn’t go to waste. It was too good a deal to turn down. So we drank through the crushing defeat of the Huskies and headed to the UCLA bar to meet up with our other Pac-12 friends and watch UCLA get crushed as well. All in all, we drunkenly stumbled out of the bar at 2AM. As I headed into the subway station, Grant called after me to remind me that we were all meeting at Penn Station at 9:30AM the next morning. Awesome.
I got home around three, and my alarm went off at 8AM. I head to Penn Station so that we can all catch the train to New Jersey together. This is when I learned that both New York football teams play in the same stadium, and that stadium is in New Jersey. Confusing, right? The train is full of Giants fans, so we know we’re headed in the right direction. Patty and I are sipping coffee, trying to numb the hangover, while everyone else on the train is doing jello shots and chugging beer…at 10AM.
Part of the package we had signed up for was a pre-game tailgating extravaganza. I was told there would be unlimited food and alcohol, but I was convinced that there was no way I’d be drinking that day. I definitely needed a burger or two for energy, but I had every intention of passing on the booze. Once we arrived at the stadium, we began the journey through the parking lot of MetLife Stadium toward section L8, where our tailgating party was. It was a world of which I have never seen before. People had campers, barbeques, Giants canopies, DJ booths, portable grills, seats, buffets. What?!?! How have I never partaken in this sort of thing before? People do this every week? Football fans are pretty legit.
We arrive at our section, and it’s incredible. I think I might have muttered the word “magical” a couple of times. There was a full bar, with coolers and coolers of beer, fifths of every alcohol imaginable. And food, oh God, so much food. Cheeseburgers, breakfast sandwiches, Buffalo chicken, pulled pork, meatballs, sauerkraut, hot dogs, perogies, steak sandwiches. The grills were running constantly. And there were waitresses walking around with trays of everything. You didn’t even have to leave your canopy if you didn’t want to.
Needless to say, I ate…and drank. I still can’t believe I was capable of imbibing even more beer, but it was just there, and Grant and Patty don’t let you say no to more drinks. It was cloudy and about 50 degrees and that parking lot. I had worn layers, but not nearly enough and was rather cold. When it started to rain, Patty and I were able to secure two large trash bags. We ripped holes in the top and wore them as make-shift ponchos. I felt a little silly, but oh so much warmer. A couple of people in our tailgating group reassured me that I was football-chic and a garbage bag is a sign of honor. A guy selling Giants hats was walking around, offering 2 for $15. Patty and I each bought a royal blue one to make our football outfits complete.
Giants Chic
We finally headed into the stadium to watch the game. The rain came and went, and Patty was very diligent about scolding me about when to take my bag off and put it on. I know the basics of football, and our seats weren’t too bad. I got really into the game, and lo and behold we won, by a lot. The Giants have a rookie punt returner (look at me with my football knowledge!) named David Wilson. Before this game, the only Giants player I knew of was Eli Manning. I only know who Eli Manning is because his name comes up a lot in the New York Times crossword and the Dunkin Donuts I frequent has a cardboard cutout of him holding a delicious breakfast sandwich. So I enter the stadium, hearing rows of people behind me screaming, “Wilsoooooooon!” a la “Castaway” with Tom Hanks. As I am fond of other Wilsons, he became my guy, and I cheered him on as much as I could.
“So, is it official? Are you a Giants fan now?” Patty asked me.
“Oh, definitely!” I easily responded.
“You know, ” my friend Gian piped in. “The Jets are really the New York underdog.”
I pondered this for a moment. I’ve followed underdogs my whole life. I’ve never experienced a winning rally with a winning team. I love me an underdog, and my long-standing love of the Seattle Mariners is my biggest defense against ever being called a bandwagon fan.
“No, I’ve put my time in. Nothing against the Jets, but I’m a Giants fan.”
“After all,” Patty added pointing to my new Giants hat. “You have made the financial investment.”
When I arrived at work on Friday morning, the overnight tech let me know that there was a new patient, rescued from the euthanasia list at a nearby shelter, in our isolation unit. I went to the back room to see a ball of matted fur curled up in the back corner of the cage. I wish I had taken a before picture, because he was huge. And, heavens, the smell that came off of him. He reminded me of the mentally ill people who live on the subway.
New Yorkers all have this experience when they’re being broken into the city. A subway train approaches, every car that passes is full of people, jammed in together. Then a subway car approaches that is magically, nearly empty. There seem to be one or two people in the car. You think it’s your lucky day, the stars are aligned. You don’t notice the other, more seasoned New Yorkers quickly opting for the crowded car. You board your train, and the doors shut. All of a sudden, your nose begins to sting with the most foul, burning smell you can imagine. It’s a combination of B.O., urine, vomit, and God knows what else. You try to hold your breath and not physically wretch, because the people from which this smell is emanating are watching you closely, curious as to why you boarded their train. At the next stop, you run out the car and onto the next, happily crammed into the car, thanking God you can breathe again. It’s honestly a smell like no other.
That’s what this dog smelled like.
He came in under the generic name “Puppy” with a bleeding growth on the side of his mouth and obvious months of neglect. Dr. C decided that he was going to put him under anesthesia to remove the mass, demat him, and perform a dental cleaning. I couldn’t wait though. I got out the clippers and set to work on the inch and a half of mats all over his body. I would take him out between appointments and set to work, starting with the shell-like mound of fur on his back. I cannot tell you the satisfaction of getting those mats off of him. Just seeing him made me itchy and uncomfortable, and I can only imagine how it would feel to finally have air touch your skin again.
Finally we were able to knock him out, and while Dr. C performed the mass excision, I continued to hack away at the fur on his body. His limbs were so matted, it looked like he had a five-inch diameter cast covering them. When Dr. C finished the procedure, I passed the clippers to my co-worker and set to work on his teeth. They were coated in heavy plaque and tarter which I had to physically crack off. Then a full scale and polish with a bit of fluoridated sealant for good measure. By the time I had performed the full dental, my co-worker was still working on the dematting. I moved on to trimming his nails which were so long they were curving back into the paw pads. We also cleaned his ears and expressed his anal glands. All in all, it took about two hours in total to turn this dog back into a dog. My back was sore from bending over him for so long, and my fingers were stiff from all the dental scraping.
While under anesthesia, dogs cannot regulate their body temperature, and he was very cold in recovery. I put him on thermal support, but he kept trying to crawl away. So I wrapped him in a towel and held him close to my body. He laid comfortably in my arms. He really had bloomed into an adorable dog, a true Cinderella story and I christened him “Frankie” for unexplainable reasons.
Dr. L, who used to work at the ASPCA and deal with many cruelty cases needed me to help her with an appointment. She had to put together health certificates for a Maltese to travel to Cancun.
“Sorry to take you away from your fun dematting project,” she said as she handed me the pristine little dog.
“It is actually so satisfying to give that dog a full makeover.”
“I’ve seen this a million times. You’re going to fall in love with him.”
“I think he’s going to be a nice dog without all that fur and dirt.”
“He already looks happier, and you are going to go home today feeling really good about your job today. It’s nice to actually help animals with real issues, instead of this bullshit,” she said pointing to the nippy dog with the studded collar.
And it did. I couldn’t stop thinking about Frankie after I left work that night, and I ran straight to his cage when I arrived at work the next morning to bring him a piece of turkey meat. He hesitantly took it from my hands and seemed terrified to have a human so close to him, but eventually he let me pet him, and he seemed to revel in the feeling of a warm hand upon his bare skin. Working with animals can be unbelievably rewarding sometimes, knowing that you actually improved the quality of life for a wee beast. Even though I was exhausted, I felt so good about what I had done that day.
In my 27th year of life, I’m attempting to do 27 new things. Full list here.
This was a fail. But I’m still crossing it off.
I was excited to do this one, because it’s rewarding to give back. It wasn’t going to cost me money, like other things on my list, and I was going to get free juice and cookies out of it. I’ll do just about anything for free cookies.
It was simple to just google “Donate Blood NYC” to find a blood bank conveniently near me to donate through. I showed up rather early on a Monday morning (early for me since it was my day off), hydrated, full of a healthy breakfast, and ready to give a pint.
Blood banks make you fill out a rather lengthy form about your health history. But I honestly didn’t think there would be any problem. I’m a healthy, young lady. Used intravenous drugs? Nope. Slept with a prostitute? Nope.
So the nurse calls me into the room. She starts by pricking my finger and putting some droplets of my blood into a neat, little machine. She then took my temperature. Finally, she pulled out a blood pressure reader. I gulped.
I knew how this was going to go down. It happens to me every time I visit any sort of doctor. She took my blood pressure, then got a screwed up look on her face of pure disbelief. She took it again. She took it again. I sighed. I knew what was coming.
“Your blood pressure is very low.”
“I know.”
“It’s normally like this?”
“Yup.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yup.”
“You don’t feel like passing out right now?”
“Nope.”
My blood pressure is 80/50. This isn’t normal. But it’s also not bad. There’s nothing really to be done about it, except to wait for time to raise my blood pressure as it does with people. Technically, a blood pressure like mine should mean I’m passing out all the time or at least feeling rather dizzy. But I’m not. I’m a medical miracle. But this medical miracle cannot donate blood. Apparently, losing a pint of blood could possibly throw my body into shock and make me very ill.
I’m sad that I’m ineligible, but maybe in a couple of years. Alas, I need all my blood right where it is.
Tuesday at work I was feeling pretty exhausted. I had Monday off after working a 60-hour work week Tuesday-Saturday the week prior. Monday was not enough time off, and I spent most of the day running around, trying to catch up on errands. So Tuesday, I still felt tired, but still found myself back at work. About half way into my 11-hour workday, I get an email from my friend Danilo inviting me to karaoke/trivia night at a bar in Midtown with some of our other softball friends. I was on the fence about it. But in life, your odds of having an amazing night tend to go far up when you force yourself out of your comfortable little home bubble. So out I went. I figured I’d have a beer and head home.
The bar was about two blocks from the UN, and towards the end of the trivia game, a group of about 10 very official looking people came in the door. We didn’t pay them much attention aside from making the joke that they were going to kill us in the Geography round.
At the bar we were at, they shift from trivia to karaoke, so we likewise moved to a table next to the stage and also next to these UN people. I was planning on leaving, but my friends talked me into staying and doing one song, my iconic “9-5” by Dolly Parton. We were the only ones singing karaoke in the bar as most everyone else was invested in the Yankee game on the television screens. But my crew was a diverse set. Maybe the best karaoke performance I’ve ever seen was by my usually quiet friends Trisha and Octavio who banged their heads through Three Little Pigs by Green Jelly. Before I was destined to hit the stage, a man from the UN delegation got up to sing “Satisfaction.” First though, he looked out toward his group and said, “I just want to welcome the president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus and dedicate this song to him.”
I looked toward the table he was pointing at and sure enough, it was the president of the Czech Republic. I’d had a couple of beers by then and was so excited. My friend Danilo began insisting that I meet him and show him my tattoo, a humble homage on my left foot to my time in Prague. As the Rolling Stones karaoker descended the stage, Danilo grabbed him and asked if I could meet the president. The man seemed as excited about it as I was. We got up, and everything happened so fast, I was quickly ushered through a large group of security, all speaking in Czech. All I could make out was “student” and “from Prague.”
In a blink of an eye, I was shaking hands with the president. I searched my inebriated mind for any remnants of the Czech language. I managed to say, “Na Zdravi!” and point at his beer. He didn’t seem to speak English or maybe he just wasn’t interested in speaking English to me. So I was at a loss as to what to say. So, I lifted my left foot up into the air to show him my tattoo.
“Život nezničitelný vždycky jásavý”
I read to him what it said, as he looked confusedly at my foot. He responded by saying something in Czech, and I smiled and nodded having no clue what he had said. I told him “Thank you” in Czech, and he laughed at my feeble language skills. Danilo and I returned to our table, incredulous as to what happened. We all had another round of beers, and I got up to sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
Whilst I was singing my heart out (I don’t mess around when it comes to karaoke), the UN Czech group was heading out. As the president walked past the stage, he reached out and grabbed my hand. It was surreal, but I serenaded him as best I could. I guess he’s a big Bonnie Tyler fan as well.
In my 27th year of life, I’m attempting to do 27 new things. Full list here.
I can hardly believe it, friends. I am one week into my 27th year on this blue dot, and I’ve already knocked something off my list! All that birthday drinking had to stop at some point, so I could get down to business.
Writing a fan letter in some ways feels awfully childish. In fact, when I started this one, after I wrote the opening “Dear Ira Glass,” I giggled at the peculiar nature of it and read it aloud in a high-pitched teenage girl voice. I was nervous to do this, because it’s putting oneself out there. Trying to contact someone who has no idea who you are, yet is someone that you wholeheartedly admire.
So I went with Ira Glass. I thought about Bonnie Hunt, but I didn’t have much to say other than I though her talk show she had a couple of years ago was pretty awesome. I thought about Tina Fey, but she’s truly a celebrity. I don’t think my letter would ever reach her, and I’d bet she receives a lot of fan letters. But Ira Glass, although a celebrity amongst hipsters and nerds, seemed less out of reach. I’ve heard him speak in a ballet studio in Brooklyn. He seems like a humble, likeable, kind guy. Plus I felt like the fact that I’d seen him speak was a jumping off point.
My letter basically thanked him for speaking at the New York Writer’s Coalition event and detailed how I admired him so. There wasn’t much else to say, because I don’t necessarily want anything from him. My dream is that he will be touched by my sincere yet brief note, write me back, and we’ll begin an old-fashioned correspondence like Rilke and his young poet. Ira Glass will become my mentor and my friend. That’s my dream, but I know the chances are slim to none. The one thing that I realistically hope for is that the letter actually makes it to him and that it makes him happy for a day. I sent the letter to him at the “This American Life” address, so I believe there’s a fairly good chance of it making its way to him.
I feel silly about it, but sometimes a kind note can make someone’s day. I’ve worked many jobs, many, many, many jobs, and I was always touched when someone took a moment to mention that I helped them or did a good job, so it’s something that I likewise try to do for others. Perhaps even Ira Glass needs a little pick-me-up now and then.
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