at the bus stop, continued

Yesterday, in the barely misting rain, it was, "Quite the dedicated walker, even out in the rain, eh?"

This morning it was an exuberant, "How are you today, Miss Walkin' Lady?" I said wonderfully, and that it's such a beautiful day! He replied, "It is indeed, it is indeed..."

Perhaps it's silly that I get such pleasure out of these moments, but they're just such a nice way to start yet another work day. I probably should've started doing this years ago.

a confident stumble

Somehow I've gotten in to my oh-so-embarrassingly couch-potato-y head a notion to take up jogging this spring. I was talking about this to friend Nick not to long ago and he said, "That'd be great! I always like running. We'll run together."

To which I replied, "Well, running might be a strong word. It will probably be more of a leisurely jog."

To which he replied, "Oh, okay. We can stumble along together at a slightly faster rate than usual then."

This morning I emailed two of my neighborhood friends exhorting them to join me in this perhaps ludicrous effort. I told them not to worry, though, and relayed Nick's quip.

To which one of them just replied, "I was going to say: I can do a confident stumble!"

So, there you go. Our modus operandi, our rallying cry, our raison d'etre: to achieve the confident stumble.

class wars. also family histories.

One of the nice things about spending so much time with family friend Bill these past weeks has been hearing little stories -- beautiful little fragments -- about my father.

As you may have gathered by now, family friend Bill was one of my father's best friends. The two Bills, if  you will! (Though thinking about it now, as an adult, I am sort of amazed that they became such close friends. They are very, very different in so many ways -- my father the westerner, rugged, a little ragged, a country mouse in the big city.  Bill comparatively sophisticated, in touch with his feelings, urban and urbane, well-versed in cosmopolitan living.)

Somehow last week, during our weekly get-together, we ended up talking about money. Specifically, we were talking about how some people just seem to have too damned much of it.*  Suddenly Bill said, "Now, your father, his politics were good of course. But he wasn't by any means a radical when you guys first got to New York."

He went on to tell me how, not too long after we moved here from the west coast, Dad had taken Mom out on the town.  Part of their wanderings that day involved a leisurely stroll down 5th Avenue, and this leisurely afternoon stroll led to some surprising results.

"After that walk," Bill said, "he came to the conclusion that it was time for a revolution."
 
*When there are hotel rooms that go for tens of thousands a night, and hamburgers in the hundreds, well, clearly some people just have too much money! But on a more serious note, this is of course a real and growing problem here in America. Check it out.

not-sad things

I was talking to Evan the other day about how nice it's felt to be writing a bit more lately, though I feel sort of silly writing mostly about sad things. He kind of chuckled and said, "Write about whatever you want. If it means you write more, sad is okay."

If I keep it up long enough, he said, I might just run out of sad things to write about.

So today I've been remembering another conversation he and I had a couple weeks ago instead of obsessing over sad or not-sad things.

It must've been right after one of the lovely little photo-shoots I've done with one of my dearest friends recently. I was telling him, all gleeful, about my idea of getting this friend and my other awesome willing-to-model friend together this spring for a combined photo-shoot. I was rambling on excitedly about getting them all dolled up in white and pretending to be a couple coming to me for their bridal-shawl needs.

This particular chat, mind you, was of the typing-online-type, and after my rambling he said, "Wow, that'd be so cool. And this made me chuckle out loud -- you three adults getting together and playing make-believe -- which is so fucking awesome."

See? Not-sad things.

bus conversations, overheard

Yesterday, it was one of those people: the ones we avoid making eye contact with, hoping we will remain magically invisible, untainted by their imbalanced minds. Except this particular one of those people was one of the friendliest of any people I've ever seen. He smiled huge smiles and greeted everyone who got on and off the bus and blessed us with his rosary and his love of Jesus Christ. He complimented the mothers on their well-behaved children and asked the children about their classes and their favorite colors and insisted on telling the bus driver (repeatedly) that he was the best bus driver, the most accomplished driver, he'd had the pleasure of traveling with. And what was so sad about all of this was that we all, myself largely included, continued to treat him as one of those people with whom its best to avoid eye contact. The children ignored him, the parents silently condemned him, and I buried my nose in my (admittedly very compelling) book. Eventually he got off the bus at 162nd Street and stood on the corner cheerily waving at us as we pulled away. And I've found myself thinking about this, tainted by his imbalanced mind, wishing I'd had the moral fortitude to catch his eye and warmly grin from ear to ear.

This morning was less tragic and more plain old awesome. Two kids, probably about five years old, got on the bus in the midst of a very serious discussion about zero. One boy, perhaps a little older, perhaps just more attuned to the abstract world, was explaining to the other boy that zero isn't just a number. That, in fact, zero is nothing, but nothing can be zero or else it is something. This seemed to blow the other boy's mind. In a good way.

father's day

I had this sort of funny, sort of sad exchange with a friend the other day. She said she had to work this Sunday and I said, "Why? New schedule? Some holiday I don't know about?" And she said, "Umh, it's Father's Day. The one you blocked out." 

Dad and I used to go out for a special Father's Day/Birthday dinner every June, just the two of us. I always felt like such a big girl on those dinners. Dad, here's to your gorgeous cantankerous scruffy self. Happy Father's Day.

conversations on knitting, part II

Me, excitedly: After this chuppah is done I'll be down to having just five projects!

Evan, super encouragingly: Great!
Me: And then I can start another project!

Evan: Well, why don't you try finishing all of these before starting another one.

Me, super excitedly: Right! And then I can start FIVE NEW PROJECTS!

Evan: Umh. That wasn't quite what I had in mind...
(Part I)

conversations on knitting

Conversation One, between a friend of mine and her five-year-old who just recently got a Clover Wonder Knitter:

H: Can we go for a nap drive so I can knit in the car?
C: If we go for a nap drive, then yes, you can knit.
H: Can I knit on the way to Daisy Scouts?
C: Sure, Helen.
H: Can I knit at Daisy Scouts?
C: Well, you're supposed to be listening and doing things with your friends.
H: But can I knit during snack time at Daisy Scouts?
C: That might get messy.  But I like the way you're thinking.  You're thinking like a knitter.
 
Conversation Two, between Evan and myself:

Evan: You remembered to take the leftovers for lunch this morning!
Me: Yup.
Evan: What time did you have lunch?
Me: Ummm...
Evan: Come on, fess up.
Me: Well, 8:30. I wanted to have time to knit on my lunch break.
Evan: Let me get this straight. You ate the lunch you brought with you to work at 8:30 this morning... so that you could knit on your lunch break?
Me: Well, yeah, I guess.
Evan: You do know that you have a problem, right?

guilty pleasures

Over our now traditional lunch of a shared Sezz Medi pizza and a salad,  I asked Richard yesterday what he's reading these days. (This, too, is tradition, and we often trade notes on good books.)

This time, though, he looked embarrassed.  He hemmed and hawed and eventually I told him to just fess up already.

"Tom Clancy," he mumbled, and only half-jokingly cringed away from me, hiding his face with his hands.

I burst out laughing.

He glared at me, disconcerted and blushing, and grumped, "Well? What's so funny?"

"Me, right now? Robert Ludlum."

"Nooooooooooooo!" he said. And that was the end of that.

the ivory tower?

(Friend Mick & his students extraordinaire. I thought it was too bad the kid worked up the nerve to ask.  I mean, just imagine the papers Mick could have had the pleasure of grading...)

Mick: So make sure your thesis is stated explicitly and foregrounded at the beginning of your paper. Make sure I immediately understand the claims you make in each paragraph by making clear, again--EXPLICIT, claims at their beginning. Make sense?
Student: Dr. Souders?
Mick: Yep? Got a question? Go ahead.
Student: Doesn’t “explicit” mean, like, something…like rude? Or like pornography?

overheard at the pizza place

Kid: Where are you going?
Father: I'm stepping outside for a minute.
Kid, plaintively: Okay. But make sure to still keep an eye on me!

the perfect phone call

(Office phone rings.)
Me: Lehman Library, this is Emily.
Staff person: Oh, never mind, Emily! I've figured out the solution to my problem!
(Click.)

concrete

I've been thinking about concrete lately, thanks to this Goshen controversy, and how its relatively weak nature (low elasticity and tensile strength) can be turned into something approaching indestructible by imbedding bones of steel at its core.

I've been thinking about concrete and how ugly it is, and yet how a certain kind of visionary can take it in all its brutish ugliness and turn it into something brutally, Dr. Seussily beautiful.

My mother and I were chatting Saturday evening, in the midst of Passover and on the eve of Easter, about the idea of a holiday baby and how nice it would be to have such a joyous day, a baby's birthday, in what is even still a month tinged with loss.

My nephew, at four days old, is having a difficult beginning to things, and thoughts of him and of my brother and his wife have been permeating everything that I do, even (or perhaps especially) from nearly three thousand miles away.

We McNeils are not a religious bunch, despite my amusement and odd satisfaction at the idea of this Easter/Pesach baby. But on Sunday, during one of many panicked and heartbroken phone calls as it became apparent that all is not quite right with my brother's little one, my mother mentioned that she had been out walking.  And she said, in an almost embarrassed voice, that while she had been out walking, she had found herself talking to my father, and to his parents, and to her parents, demanding that they put things right.

My friend Zak, first thing Monday morning, congratulated me on finally being Auntie Em.  We talked about my nephew and his name and everything that is going on. Zak said that with a name like that, you just have to imagine he'll swashbuckle his way through all of this.

Zak went on to say (and with his permission, I quote it here in full because it caught me by such sweet surprise and because such is the beauty of online chatting -- our conversations never disappear), "One of my student employees just told me her dad has cancer and this stuff with your nephew... it's one of those things that makes me wish I prayed. Not because I think it would do anything, but I think it's just such a nice thing to say to a friend who's having some troubles. 'You're in my prayers.' The best I can offer is, I'll worry about you and your nephew, which doesn't have the same generous spirit somehow."

I have been thinking about this ever since, especially after short, cellphone-fuzzy conversations with my brother that leave me searching for better words, for more powerful words, to make this not hurt so much, or to not seem so frightening.  What I would like to say to him, and to his wife and to their tiny Wynn Moses, is that they are in my prayers, and that in the midst of this ugliness, I know they already have inside them all the steel that they need.

'they trod on the chicken!'

This afternoon, as I was processing Offsite books for pick-up, a woman came up to me at the circulation desk and said, "Excuse me. There seems to be pasta and... and chicken... on the floor over here."

I looked at her uncomprehendingly.  "Chicken?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, and then added quickly, "It isn't mine."

I walked around to the front of the desk and yes, lo and behold, there was pasta and marinara sauce and chicken strewn across the floor. With footprints smeared through it, here and there.

Infuriated, I found a roll of paper towels and a bottle of no-name cleaning fluid and got down on my hands and knees and proceeded to clean up the mess, grumbling under my breath about this being why, in a nutshell, we have a No Food policy and this is a library for God's sake and didn't their mothers teach them anything?!?

Karen came over to see what was going on, looking slightly alarmed at my quiet tirade. I told her what had happened, caught in one of those moments of teetering between laughing and crying, finishing with a plaintively shrill, "And they trod on the chicken!!!"

Karen just looked at me wide-eyed for a second and then burst out with a loud guffaw, at which point of course it hit me how ridiculous I must sound, and so I started laughing too.

It is better to chuckle over such things, I suppose, than to rage over being surrounded by idiots and barnyard animals.

chromosomes

I sold a shawl yesterday to a lovely Brooklyn woman who made the trek all the way up to Morningside Heights to take a look at my work. We parted ways thrilled: she heading south to go home, pleased as punch to have the perfect shawl to complete her Easter outfit; me heading north to meet my boys, tickled pink to have enough cash in hand to treat us all to drinks and have plenty left over for a little self-indulgence.

We had a few drinks and a delicious dinner and then headed east on 125th toward our respective trains. At some point during this walk it was made clear that Nick had his drum sticks stashed in his bag. Evan demanded he fork one over, and promptly began running it along a metal fence and a brick wall and whatever else we passed.

I demanded one too and found the ensuing noise most satisfying. Apparently I found it so satisfying, in fact, and proceeded to make a clackety clack clacking ruckus with such relish, that Nick turned to me and said, "Clearly, Em, you should have been born with a Y chromosome."

For some reason this made me smile all the way to the train station.

quite possibly both

My coffee stand man asked me this morning, after clarifying that I would like only one sugar in my coffee, if I am looking forward to the weekend.  I said yes, very much so.

I must have said it with a bit more force than I'd intended because he looked at me quizzically and said, "Very much so? Any particular plans?"

I mentioned that I would be getting together tomorrow evening with some dear old college friends.  He smiled knowingly and said, "Ahh, wine or whiskey?"

I laughed a little and said, "Well, given how it went the last time we all got together, quite possibly a little bit of both!"

He just laughed in return, and nodded, and said, "They must be very good friends."

They are, and I am looking forward to my Saturday -- a day of knitting on my chuppah commission followed by an evening with these old friends and their spouses and their little ones, filled with funny bits and delicious bits and yes, in the midst of all the revelry, probably a nip of this and a nip of that -- with a bit more than the usual Friday morning anticipatory weekend glee.

in which emma enters the modern age

I was rambling to Nick at a friend's party the other night about recently making a mix, and about how it involved compressing songs into a zipfile and then uploading said zipfile to Dropbox and then sending people the URL so they could listen to this mix I'd been so arduously putting together. I was very pleased with myself over my grasp of this alien vocabulary, but as I rambled on I noticed Nick beginning to look at me rather oddly.  Finally, after I'd run out of words, he just said, "Yes, that's how it's done these days. Why are you talking as if every word is underlined?"

I, abashed, went in search of another round of drinks.

student workers, or, a moment in the life of a library supervisor

One of our favorite former student workers stopped by this afternoon for a quick hello, in town on a business trip from sunny California.  We joked about how far he's come since his first job here in the library, and how much he likes San Francisco, and how Oakland across the bay is where he goes to party and, these days, to practice not getting arrested. He said, though, that he misses this city, its un-Bay Area urban grittiness, and is keeping his fingers crossed for a transfer to the New York offices.

Karen turned to me, grinning, after he left and said, "Doesn't that just make you feel a little bit like a proud mother?"

Strangely enough, it does.

the antithesis of agreement

EM: You are the antithesis of agreement.
ES: What?!? On this one topic, maybe, but generally you're the antithesis of agreement.
EM: Fuck that!

And so it goes...
(too late at night, 10/17/11)

inner monologues

A friend of mine was talking on our drive up to the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival this past Saturday about different modes of talking. Now mother to two young daughters, she's had to learn to navigate between adult-speech and kid-speech. While she's gotten better at curbing her occasionally curse-prone tongue, she explained, she now finds herself letting loose sometimes with a wrathful "Oh heck!" even when the kiddies are well out of range.

"But," she made sure to point out, "in my head, every other word is fuck."*

This just did me in for the rest of the drive north and in my head her voice, usually so reserved, kept up a running commentary:  Fucking stoplight. Fuck those pedestrians. Fucking traffic. Oh fuck! A horse!

At which point I burst out laughing, prompting an imagined, "Fucking crazy Emma," which just made me laugh all the more. Luckily the other women in the car seemed to find this amusing too, and "Fucking horses!" became a bit of a thing for the rest of the afternoon.

I've had good fortune lately with things making me laugh intermittently for hours, or even days, on end -- sometimes at inopportune moments (while brushing my teeth, just for example, or riding the train, or, you know, other things). Or maybe I'm just in a laughing kind of mood. Either way, it's been nice. Even now the thought of eyeglasses is enough to send me into gales of laughter. And now, "Fuck this, and fuck that!" has been added to the laughing lexicon, much to Evan's amusement and, quite possibly, dismay.

*Just for the record, I love the word "fuck."