On Wednesday,
Fryeolator invited people to her house for a pork roast dinner. Once I confirmed we were eating of the pig and not the cow, I bought a few eclairs and headed over. I was the only one of the ladies who knit to take advantage of this offer and I thought that was strange because
Fryeolator is such a good cook; then I remembered that it was 7 degrees outside and that the
Fryemama lives in
Greenpoint. I love the
Fryeolator's cozy apartment and I even like
Greenpoint, but it's so goddamn far away from everything, and no, I don't consider
Williamsburg anything to speak of.
The
Archduke came over and we had a nice dinner. I politely ignored the vegetables on hand and no one made me eat anything green. We learned from
Time Out New York why we're still single (i.e. we're short, fat, overweight, ugly, talk too much, afraid of
commitment, etc.). Don't sugar coat it,
TONY, we can take it, you big bitches. I helped teach the
Archduke to knit by employing a bunch of
filthy sexual innuendo as pedagogic devices.
Fryeolator and I knit for a while and nattered on and on until the
Archduke threw down his needles and his two rows and said, "I can't believe you can talk while you do this. I'm so stressed out. My shoulders and neck are all tight." It reminded me how difficult it was to learn how to knit and of the time before I could churn out rows of stockinette stitch like
Rumpelstilskin.
Getting back home to to Prospect Heights was a frosty adventure. Sure, I'm aware that there are cities that get significantly colder than New York, like Fargo or Buffalo. But these aren't cities where you do so much walking. You just get into your car which has been plugged into some kind of generator in the garage to keep the engine from turning into a block of ice. Or something like that. I think I saw a documentary once on how they do it in
Sweden. Meanwhile, back in the Big Apple I walked in single digit temperature to the G Train platform to wait for the train which took it's sweet time to arrive. It was so cold, one of the three men waiting on the platform with me would periodically kick the wall and yell, "Fuck! Where is the train! Fuck! Fuck!" I cannot imagine how much it hurt to kick a frozen boot into a frozen wall, but some things are just a man's
prerogative.
I finally got off the G Train in Clinton Hill to wait for a bus. Yes, it was 11:30pm and I was waiting for a bus on a freezing cold night because there is just no good way to get home from
Greenpoint. I did a lot of foot stamping to keep moving. It was a very pretty part of Brooklyn and it was very still; also it was the kind of cold that when you breathe in, it feels like your lungs are being stabbed from the inside. It was peaceful, in a way. Amazingly, I only had to wait about eight minutes from the bus and when I got on there was just one hipster who probably also had been to visit friends in North Brooklyn.
The next day, Thursday the day of dear
Hooly's glorious birth and birthday party, I began to feel and sinister tickle in my throat after lunch. I went home after work, laid low, took fluids, but I couldn't cut it off at the pass. Friday morning I woke up to find that I had overslept through my alarm and that my throat was on fire. For rather complicated reasons, I knew I could not call out of work, so I took the orange pills that are the global universal sign for non-drowsy cold medicine and bundled up and headed in late to work- minus a shower but plus one funky head scarf.
I don't know why, but cold medicine has a serious effect on me. Maybe it reacts with another one of my medications in a funny was but it sends me to planet see-ya-later. Sure, it's great for the symptoms of my cold but it also turns me into a blathering idiot. I lose time, stare off into space and am basically useless. Also, I get really sleeping even when I'm taking the non-drowsy pills. When I got to work, late, I saw that Robbie the
Rubberband Ball Boy had been defaced again. He had a scary face with no pupils in his eyes. Also, he had a magic wand, I think made out of some kind of
Lego toy. But scariest of all, it looked like his original face had been shredded, and I was finding pieces of it in my desk.
Two colleagues came around offering food that was left over from a breakfast meeting. One of them is usually quite nice to me. "What's going on with the head scarf," he asked.
"I'm sick and I didn't have time to shower because I was late and they attacked Robbie again, look! look! They've given him a magic wand! I can't take it anymore! It's the not knowing that's the hardest part." At that point, the junior colleague, too scared to break eye contact just started backing away and the senior colleague said, "Right, then, we'll just leave you here, to, uh, get on with it, then." And I realized, every single thing I've ever done at this job is a disaster but I can't help it. It's like some kind of career suicide
Tourette's syndrome. But it wasn't worth worrying about the day I was stoned out of my mind on cold medicine. I did a lot of staring at my computer monitor that day. At one point I went to the ladies' room and fell asleep on the toilet. I woke up when someone opened the door and it made a loud noise. I came to with my pants around my ankles and no idea how long I'd been out for. I realized the music I'd been hearing in my dream was the sound of a toilet flushing. I ask you, is this any way for an adult to live?
Somehow I made it to five o'clock and was the first one out the door aside from the guy who has to leave early to get home before sundown. I made it home to have a very sweet reunion with my bed and will probably spend the rest of the month picking up wadded up Kleenex off the floor. Plus, I've probably managed to infect everyone in the office with the rot in just my 8 hour germy joy ride, so I'll probably be real popular in the office tomorrow.
This photo from taken far away is of me. I'm sure if you could see me, there would be a scowl on my face. This particular coworker insists on calling me by my initials, "NM", so it was one of those things where someone calls your name and you turn around and see a bright flash. As you can see, they like to keep me hidden behind a plant. This happens to me a lot. Also I am in close proximity to three printers, which is helpful since I am the one who is always the one fixing them when they break. Also, everyone in the office has at least two computer screens. Some people have four. I have one. I think that pretty much says it all. I face away from the action, towards the other divisions of Greater Oz. Behind me, spectacularly interesting things are happening. 
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