This has been a cold, cold week in New York City. With the wind chill it's been averaging about 5 degrees. But over the holidays my oh so lovely partner A bought me a new bike for winter (a steel Ritchey Swiss Cross that I had built for me at my local bike shop, Echelon Cycles in the West Village, shout out to Pablo), and of course when you have a new bike you have to ride it. No matter what.
So, on Tuesday I headed out, no idea what the cold was going to feel like, with a goal of doing just one loop of Central Park. Getting dressed for cycling in the cold is a process. Pearl Izumi AmFib tights, another pair of Izumi shorts on top, wool base layer, short sleeve jersey, Giordana FormaRed Carbon jacket, Gore beanie under helmet, lobster gloves, SmartWool socks, Sidi boots, Gore shoe covers, wool neck gaiter.
Within 5 minutes my thumbs were frozen, then my fingers. Then strangely, they got warm. The exposed skin on my face that wasn't covered by wool or sunglasses stung. But I made it to the park, only to realize that the outside of the gaiter was encrusted with ice. I have to admit that I was nervous about what I was doing to my body riding in weather that cold, but I felt okay, even though I knew I couldn't stop because my body temperature would plummet and I would freeze.
There were no other cyclists in the park, only a few runners and tourists, until I neared the hill and saw a woman riding a hybrid with ski pants, ski jacket, wool cap and sneakers. Here I am wearing a thousand dollars worth of cold weather kit and she's pedaling away in whatever she could find in her closet.
It's a pretty great day when the only badasses up to facing a New York City cold snap are two women.
When I got home I was frozen, and had to sit in a hot bath for 20 minutes just to get my temperature back to normal. But it felt good knowing that if I really want to ride, no matter what the temperature happens to be, I can do it.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Other people
A. and I are friends with a couple who drink a lot. Who have a standing order at Union Square Wines, delight in finding new forms of booze from faraway places that you can't get your hands on unless pulling a variety of strings, and who have an eight-year-old daughter whom our girls enjoy playing with.
We had brunch with this couple on Sunday at a neighborhood restaurant. Now as much as I would drink in the evenings, I can count on one hand the amount of drinks consumed in the afternoon. I am more of a drink, eat sleep kind of alcoholic. Anyway, this couple drank a couple of glasses of white wine, a few bloody Mary's. Neither seemed particularly intoxicated, but when the natives (our kids) started to get restless and we decided it was time to leave, S, who had the wine, volunteered to take one of my daughters into the bathroom so she could pee (always a good idea with 4-year-olds - drain them before leaving any location). When C came out of the stall, she looked at me with worried eyes and said she was wet on her bottom. I lifted up her shirt to see that the back of her pants were soaked with pee. Now I don't know if it's because S was drinking too much, but she didn't pull C's pants down all the way when she put her on the toilet. I am standing there, wondering what the hell to do with pee pants when the temp outside is around 35 degrees and we have a 15 minute walk home. Meanwhile, my other daughter is in the stall now with S, and God knows what I'm going to have to deal with when the door opens.
Long story short - remove pants, take off underwear, wrap in paper towel, try to dry pants in Dyson hand dryer, S is laughing, no big deal, I'm silently unhappy, C wants to go to the shoe store despite sodden pee pants. E has emerged from stall unscathed.
This all got me thinking. How many times have I done stupid shit like this while drinking? And I'm not even talking about being completely pickled, just a little buzzed. Given that I haven't really had the opportunity, given that the girls were usually asleep when I was at my worse, there have been times at parties when we were with the girls where the defenses would drop, I start feeling a little too relaxed, and I would depend more on A to make sure we all made it home in one piece. I remember those moments, I remember that little thought in the back of my head: You shouldn't be drinking right now. Not with the girls around. Because this isn't you - even if you are being kind and loving, this is not you. And the memories that you want your children to have are of one Mother - one personality - yelling or patient, sad or happy, because this is the kind of Mother who is present, warts and all.
We had brunch with this couple on Sunday at a neighborhood restaurant. Now as much as I would drink in the evenings, I can count on one hand the amount of drinks consumed in the afternoon. I am more of a drink, eat sleep kind of alcoholic. Anyway, this couple drank a couple of glasses of white wine, a few bloody Mary's. Neither seemed particularly intoxicated, but when the natives (our kids) started to get restless and we decided it was time to leave, S, who had the wine, volunteered to take one of my daughters into the bathroom so she could pee (always a good idea with 4-year-olds - drain them before leaving any location). When C came out of the stall, she looked at me with worried eyes and said she was wet on her bottom. I lifted up her shirt to see that the back of her pants were soaked with pee. Now I don't know if it's because S was drinking too much, but she didn't pull C's pants down all the way when she put her on the toilet. I am standing there, wondering what the hell to do with pee pants when the temp outside is around 35 degrees and we have a 15 minute walk home. Meanwhile, my other daughter is in the stall now with S, and God knows what I'm going to have to deal with when the door opens.
Long story short - remove pants, take off underwear, wrap in paper towel, try to dry pants in Dyson hand dryer, S is laughing, no big deal, I'm silently unhappy, C wants to go to the shoe store despite sodden pee pants. E has emerged from stall unscathed.
This all got me thinking. How many times have I done stupid shit like this while drinking? And I'm not even talking about being completely pickled, just a little buzzed. Given that I haven't really had the opportunity, given that the girls were usually asleep when I was at my worse, there have been times at parties when we were with the girls where the defenses would drop, I start feeling a little too relaxed, and I would depend more on A to make sure we all made it home in one piece. I remember those moments, I remember that little thought in the back of my head: You shouldn't be drinking right now. Not with the girls around. Because this isn't you - even if you are being kind and loving, this is not you. And the memories that you want your children to have are of one Mother - one personality - yelling or patient, sad or happy, because this is the kind of Mother who is present, warts and all.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Being me in New York City
I always tell people that I should have been an organic farmer. This is how far removed my personality is from the kind that can thrive in a city as loud and fast as New York.
I've had issues around noise, odors, crowds and heat for as long as I can remember. I never played any team sports where the likelihood of a sticky arm touching mine was better than average. So no basketball for me. I grew up with a pool but I found the coldness of the water jarring. Getting splashed wasn't high on my list, either. I never really liked the beach as much as other kids, hating the sand in my bathing suit. So then I move to a city where I constantly hear other people and their appliances as I try to sleep. I can hear them sneezing, coughing next door. I find this absolutely appalling. I go to restaurants where conversations are impossible because of the din. Ambulances scream down the street. People yell into their cellphones about how so and so owes them forty dollars and that mother fucker better pay. Or they're looking down and texting right before they walk right into you. You walk outside your door on a nice spring day and there it is - a street fair - taking up three blocks of Eighth Avenue. A street fair that fills the air with the smell of burned meat, overflows onto the sidewalk with garbage, and is selling what always seems to be socks, t-shirts and corn on a stick. Now your Saturday has begun with the obnoxious hum of generators and hundreds of gawking, slow-moving morons making fast work of greasy mystery meat and funnel cake. It was on a day such as this that I finally lost my shit with the city - when A. and I were walking out of our building and some little bastard threw a firecracker at my feet. It was as if the city wanted to see just how far it could push me, and it knew exactly what it would take to make it happen.
We ended up around the corner from the apartment with me sobbing by a particularly sad tree. I begged A. to let us rent a house in the country for the weekends. I was starting my first of several IVF's at the time, and truly felt like I was going mad. We lived in an apartment above a gay sports bar (the space was empty when we moved in, and had been for several years, and the landlord assured us that he would not rent to a bar or restaurant. Yeah, right.) that played music until three in the morning every night, where people smoked out back and the smell wafted into our bedroom. Our upstairs neighbor was nuts (what else is new), and so were the floorboards in her apartment, which sounded as if ten preschoolers were bowling when in fact it was only the crazy lady walking around in slippers.
I feel like I earned my bones. We now live in a beautiful, quiet apartment in TriBeca, which whatever anyone says about the lack of diversity, the gated community aspect, the banker/nanny-riddled sidewalks, the stick-thin trophy wives jumping out of their black cars and into SoulCycle - I like it here. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. I like that I don't start and end my day seething. That I don't envision dropping bags full of warm urine on smoking gay guys at four in the morning off my fire escape. I don't have revenge fantasies anymore - the kind where I kill someone temporarily, and they wake up from my murdering them to realize that wow, I must have done something really bad and gee, I'll never do that again.
Yes, I was that white woman with two children in the double stroller taking up the sidewalk. Now I am that white woman heading out for a 25-mile bike ride while her little darlings gently play in their over-priced Montessori pre-school.
Yes, I am that woman with one of those trash cans with a sensor that opens and closes the lid so that I never have to manually open with (god forbid) my foot. I am that woman whose kitchen drawers silently close with a gentle push, so (god forbid) I never have to take a second to push it securely closed.
I am that woman that while I will never ask you where you summer, I have been asked that question more than once, and can't help looking a bit dazed when I realize that yes, my family does "summer", and often in the Hamptons or Connecticut.
I am that woman who has help, who has a wonderful partner, amazing children, and who still struggles with the complications and contradictions of living the kind of life I live. Who is trying to embrace what I am, what I have, and what I'm trying to overcome. I live in a constant state of guilt and happiness, worry and contentedness. But I feel that all the things that used to eat at me, all that noise, figuratively and literally, have been silenced by having money, so now I am free to focus on the real issues, like my drinking, my anger, my relationships. I know that most people aren't so lucky. That they have to fight the city alongside the fight to fix whatever they feel is flawed and imperfect in themselves. I don't know if I could have made it, and I have to admit, I think about this all the time. I think about where I would have ended up, if I would have stayed here and suffered or fled to a quieter place. I think about all the turns, right or wrong, that have brought me here. And I feel extraordinarily lucky that I don't regret any of them.
I've had issues around noise, odors, crowds and heat for as long as I can remember. I never played any team sports where the likelihood of a sticky arm touching mine was better than average. So no basketball for me. I grew up with a pool but I found the coldness of the water jarring. Getting splashed wasn't high on my list, either. I never really liked the beach as much as other kids, hating the sand in my bathing suit. So then I move to a city where I constantly hear other people and their appliances as I try to sleep. I can hear them sneezing, coughing next door. I find this absolutely appalling. I go to restaurants where conversations are impossible because of the din. Ambulances scream down the street. People yell into their cellphones about how so and so owes them forty dollars and that mother fucker better pay. Or they're looking down and texting right before they walk right into you. You walk outside your door on a nice spring day and there it is - a street fair - taking up three blocks of Eighth Avenue. A street fair that fills the air with the smell of burned meat, overflows onto the sidewalk with garbage, and is selling what always seems to be socks, t-shirts and corn on a stick. Now your Saturday has begun with the obnoxious hum of generators and hundreds of gawking, slow-moving morons making fast work of greasy mystery meat and funnel cake. It was on a day such as this that I finally lost my shit with the city - when A. and I were walking out of our building and some little bastard threw a firecracker at my feet. It was as if the city wanted to see just how far it could push me, and it knew exactly what it would take to make it happen.
We ended up around the corner from the apartment with me sobbing by a particularly sad tree. I begged A. to let us rent a house in the country for the weekends. I was starting my first of several IVF's at the time, and truly felt like I was going mad. We lived in an apartment above a gay sports bar (the space was empty when we moved in, and had been for several years, and the landlord assured us that he would not rent to a bar or restaurant. Yeah, right.) that played music until three in the morning every night, where people smoked out back and the smell wafted into our bedroom. Our upstairs neighbor was nuts (what else is new), and so were the floorboards in her apartment, which sounded as if ten preschoolers were bowling when in fact it was only the crazy lady walking around in slippers.
I feel like I earned my bones. We now live in a beautiful, quiet apartment in TriBeca, which whatever anyone says about the lack of diversity, the gated community aspect, the banker/nanny-riddled sidewalks, the stick-thin trophy wives jumping out of their black cars and into SoulCycle - I like it here. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. I like that I don't start and end my day seething. That I don't envision dropping bags full of warm urine on smoking gay guys at four in the morning off my fire escape. I don't have revenge fantasies anymore - the kind where I kill someone temporarily, and they wake up from my murdering them to realize that wow, I must have done something really bad and gee, I'll never do that again.
Yes, I was that white woman with two children in the double stroller taking up the sidewalk. Now I am that white woman heading out for a 25-mile bike ride while her little darlings gently play in their over-priced Montessori pre-school.
Yes, I am that woman with one of those trash cans with a sensor that opens and closes the lid so that I never have to manually open with (god forbid) my foot. I am that woman whose kitchen drawers silently close with a gentle push, so (god forbid) I never have to take a second to push it securely closed.
I am that woman that while I will never ask you where you summer, I have been asked that question more than once, and can't help looking a bit dazed when I realize that yes, my family does "summer", and often in the Hamptons or Connecticut.
I am that woman who has help, who has a wonderful partner, amazing children, and who still struggles with the complications and contradictions of living the kind of life I live. Who is trying to embrace what I am, what I have, and what I'm trying to overcome. I live in a constant state of guilt and happiness, worry and contentedness. But I feel that all the things that used to eat at me, all that noise, figuratively and literally, have been silenced by having money, so now I am free to focus on the real issues, like my drinking, my anger, my relationships. I know that most people aren't so lucky. That they have to fight the city alongside the fight to fix whatever they feel is flawed and imperfect in themselves. I don't know if I could have made it, and I have to admit, I think about this all the time. I think about where I would have ended up, if I would have stayed here and suffered or fled to a quieter place. I think about all the turns, right or wrong, that have brought me here. And I feel extraordinarily lucky that I don't regret any of them.
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