THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH 8-9-20
Carpet and Teeth Cleaning; West Hartford x 2, Bull’s Bridge, Old Pals and New Parks
Dear WBW Readers . . . especially those who are still reading after the typo-infested rambling Joycean mishmash I sent out two weeks ago.
It’s August! Every psychiatrist has left town and taken all the crazies with them.
Except me, of course. That’s because I don’t have a psychiatrist. Instead, I make do with an Internist, two oncologists (a medical onco and a gyne-onco), two ophthalmologists a macular specialist (retinalist?), two oncological dermatologists and a regular dermatologist, a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist, a radiologist, a hematologist . . . plus a coterie of medically certified friends who will answer any question, any time, including the Doctors Kenney, Koo, Mann and Marotta and Gellin.
Sorry, Cousin David and sister Sarah – those Ph.D.’s don’t cut it.
How do I love thee all? Let me count the ways.
And as back in the early days of the pandemic, it’s possible to amble, ere one were so inclined, to take one’s daily constitutional down the center of Fifth Avenue at 8:00 AM on a weekday morning.
FIFTH AVENUE, 8:00 AM, RECENTLY MILLED (A PROCESS THAT IS RATHER NOISY)
The slide into August has been a gentle one. I continue to relish the pause bestowed upon me by Dr. Sabbatini (does that make it a Sabbatinical?) at the end of April and only occasionally stop to consider what evil lurks within the netherlands of my peritoneal regions.
The nagging backache I’ve had for three weeks I am almost certain is the vestigial remnant of a much broader bout of back pain following Elise and Aaron’s Big Move over several days in mid-July, plus a lot of unconstructed Ikea-furniture hauling, a couple of longish drives (though the seat warmer always provides relief), additional box lifting in downsizing my storage space in Stroud and possible some overly ambitious exercise.
Like, consider yesterday morning’s Level 3 Workout 3 Exercise #8: Lie on your back with the Swiss ball between your feet and your legs straight up. Hands at your sides. Raise your hips and lower back off the mat, pushing the ball up. Return to starting position with legs still straight up and hope the ball doesn’t escape and hit you in the face.
Repeat 14 more times. Twice.
That makes your back hurt just reading about it, right?
Or, it could be that the cancer has metastasized to my right kidney. Of course I’ve looked this up, and can rest easier knowing that it’s far more typical for Primary Peritoneal to head for the liver, the lungs, the spleen, the intestines, the brain or the lymph nodes beyond the abdomen before taking shelter in the renal system. Whew.
I expect I will get scanned in September to see just what’s going on so in the meantime will enjoy myself – in a socially distant manner of course. No need to worry about me – these are just the lunatic rantings of a pandemic-weary, sleep-deprived hysteric stuck for the first time in 23 years in New York in August without a psychiatrist in sigh and a bedroom window directly across the street from nightly outdoor Mansion parties.
Otherwise, I am perfectly fine.
ADVENTURES IN CORONAVILLE AND BEYOND
The fortnight covered in this short note began with my cashing out an entire week’s allowance of risk chips at a two-hour visit to the dentist bright and earlyish on the last Monday in July. Elise came with, we had back-to-back appointments. I left Sarah in my apartment to wrangle the Long Island Carpet Cleaners arriving to remove a year’s worth of crud out of my carpets. So at least I didn’t have to go into risk-chip debt to do that.
The dentist’s office is on 38th Street, an easy subway ride in normal times that I am still not up to facing, so we drove, an astonishingly swift journey. There wasn’t a bat’s chance of on-street parking, so I reserved at a nearly garage online, saving me a whole two dollars off the regular Early Bird rate.
Elise was seen first, and I was dispatched to another room in the suite – there was no “waiting” in the waiting room. Even the chairs and back issues of People had been removed. So, I waited and pondered whether the HVAC system had been rebuilt or not. And waited and waited. Finally, the very competent Dr. Sherry arrived in what appeared to be triple layers of PPE, with an assistant similarly decked out including arm spats making me in my thin sleeveless shirt and blue jean shorts feel rather naked.
It was explained to me that the ultrasonic scaler would not be used as it could spray little coronas all over the place. Thus, we time-traveled back to the world of hand-tool descaling which takes longer and always reminds me of cleaning a horse’s hooves. Except I think the horse generally enjoys having dirt and stones pulled out of its hooves, and I wasn’t as thrilled.
Dr. Sherry, who has taken care of my mouth (the teeth part, not the profanity spewing part) for at least a dozen years and goes into a dental fugue state when she works on my teeth, which I particularly appreciate after having a string of chatty dentists who would be monologue-ing away when I had not hope of responding as I lay there with the plastic drain hanging in my mouth.
At the end of the cleaning, once the fun polishing was done, Dr. Sherry gave me my dental report card. Apparently there has been much more activity in the last six months on the left side of my mouth than the right. I’m not quite sure what to do with this information, but I nodded and smiled and graciously accepted the swag bag with the “free” toothbrush, Colgate sample and dental floss for my collection.
Elise and I agreed, once we were back in the car speeding north on Third Avenue, that our mouths felt great and maybe we wouldn’t eat anything for a long time. I dropped her at work (meaning home) and headed out of town, stopping after an hour to shake up any incipient blood clots and meet Lisa Mann on a grassy knoll outside the Danbury Green Starbucks for an iced latte and a visit with six feet between us. She volunteered to collect the drinks I’d ordered online which spared me from digging ever deeper in my change purse for more risk chits to throw on the pile.
From there, I proceeded to West Hartford, hoping to meet the handyman who then proceeded to ghost me after texting me at 2 PM to text him when I arrived. Which I did. Then again 15 minutes later. And, half an hour after that and half an hour after that and several phone calls later I gave up.
I recruited another Lisa (Arons) to meet Alex and me for dinner at Max’s, the only restaurant I know where six feet really means six feet and we feasted on burgers and beer. This second time out was almost as incredible as the first.
I always sleep well at Alex’s house, it’s incredibly quiet and the guest room is spacious even if is still a mess. Between the dental anxiety, the backache, the drive, getting worked up over the no-show handyman, I was exhausted.
The plan had been to do chores and work in the morning, then participate with Alex in ET’s weekly half hour penitentiary visit, then speed off to leafy Kent CT, a posh Litchfield County enclave, to meet up with Elizabeth Baxter, who arrived a month earlier from LA for a stay at her upstate New York farmhouse. Kent was more or less a halfway point for us.
That was the plan.
I figured I’d get there around 4:00 PM, we could do a walk about, have an early supper and then head off in opposite directions.
Yet, the best laid plans never do work out, right?
I got a call from Brookdale, ET’s current legal address, at 9:00 AM. All resident visits were cancelled due to the predicted soaring temperature. After I let the pissed off-ness pass through me, I wrangled an appointment for a quick “Window Visit” at 10:30 AM. I entreated Elizabeth to bump up the schedule to meet me at 1:00 PM, we’d have lunch and then I could head back to New York and work the rest of the day. Maybe.
So I stepped up to wrap up the projects I was working on, cleaning out the shed attached to the house which had become a dumping ground over the winter for, well, everything, and while I was at it had at the coat closet, migrating the winter coats still hanging to the upstairs closet and convincing Alex that he really didn’t need 3,978 plastic shopping bags stuffed into other shopping bags shoved in the back. Then we jumped in my car and drove around the corner for the “Window Visit.”
It was hot already. We parked opposite her room – Alex knew the drill – and approached her window pushing through the shrubbery. Her blinds were down so we rapped on the window but got no response.
Let’s call her, I commanded Alex. She answered on the first ring (an unusual event). “ET are you in your room” we asked in unison on speakerphone.
“Yes,” she replied curtly.
“Pull up the shades so we can see you while we’re talking to you on the phone,” we told her.
There was no action. We tried to explain it was the long cord on the side of the blinds she needed to pull up. Nothing was happening. I considered calling the reception desk and asking them to dispatch an aide to the room to raise the blinds. By which time it would be time to leave.
Alex then glanced around. Maybe we were at the wrong window, he suggested. We sashayed left to the next set of windows and there was ET, pretty as a picture (window), awaiting us.
Twenty minutes later I was on my way to Kent feeling a bit ashamed that I had been thinking my mother was too geriatric to know how to raise a set of blinds.
Kent is pretty much a straight 90-minute shot west out of West Hartford, though there are several options on the back roads. Waze put me on the Depressed Mill Town Route which took me through some sad territory before entering swanky tony Litchfield County once I cleared Torrington, where not much interesting has happened since the abolitionist John Brown was born there in 1800.
If you go due north from Torrington, you hit Winsted (birthplace of Ralph Nader!) and Riverton (where the Hitchcock Chair was born) and eventually East Hartland where I went to Girl Scout Camp three score ago. So, there are lots of memories buried in them thar hills that surfaced as I drove through.
Perhaps the most crisp of these that came to mind was that of my father driving me to one of the towns in the upper left corner of the stat, I think it was Lakeville, to look at a farmhouse he wanted to buy, I guess as a weekend place for the family. I was five or six. It was just him and me, my mother and the other three were not invited, and we must have toured the house which I don’t remember, but what I do is asking him about the stone fence surrounding the property. “That’s to keep the Indians out,” he told me, in jest of course but it terrified me, and I cried all the way home. I didn’t want to live in that house or for that matter, leave my bedroom in West Hartford ever again.
Kent Falls, our agreed-upon rendezvous spot was chained up. Just as I got there Liz called to say she’d driven by and on into town. We met up on Main Street, quite charming though it has been a waste of effort to ask around among my pals familiar with Kent for the names of restaurants as basically everything was closed.
I’m happy to report the town’s public restrooms were not, and as a bonus were squeaky clean. We paid a visit twice and the same A-Trail Thru-Hiker was there both times, charging his phone. We found a place for lunch with plenty of outdoor seating and then walked in circles around inspecting Kent, which was like a movie set for a western ghost town. We’d both heard of a covered bridge of some renown, but it seemed like we’d have to drive there so didn’t purse the option. Instead we walked the length of Elizabeth Street.
We parted company in mid-afternoon, and I set Waze to guide me home. Within five minutes I was driving through the covered bridge.
NO BULL, IT’S A COVERED BRIDGE
Another minute later I had crossed the New York State line, thinking as I turned onto Route 22 toward White Plains it would be great if there was a farm market along the road. Abracadabra, I turned a corner and there it was.
And that’s the end of that shaggy dog story.
AND IN OTHER NEWS . . .
By Wednesday I’d revived enough to show up at Jane Safer’s with dinner in hand which we enjoyed on her terrace where she has set up a stand fan to blow the mosquitos off course, or at least off our bodies. We decided to ditch the slow-moving False Flag after six episodes (life is just too damn short sometimes) and give the highly touted “new” Peacock Channel series The Capture a go. So far, so good.
Thursday was the perfect beach day, and happily I planned to be one the beach. It was also my “meet an old friend who I haven’t seen for a long time” day. I picked up a masked Sally J. Cummings, who once described me decades ago as her “closest old friend I almost never talk to” outside Hoboken’s Joboken Café and off we went to Sandy Hook’s North Beach, which is now feeling like home. This was my eighth trip there, verified by my EZ Pass records, which means I have amortized the cost of my beach pass down to $6 (so far), not bad. Sally’s contribution was pure gold: a hunk of “mutz” from Vito’s Deli which I stashed in a cooler I keep in the back of the car with ice packs and drinks for when we stagger off the beach following the half mile trek (790 steps, I counted) to the parking lot.. We had much to discuss and got it all in before returning mid-afternoon. As for the Manta Tent folding – I’m a pro now. I am even getting adept at WFB – Working From Beach. The secret is: a clipboard.
I ate most of the mozzarella, slice by slice, standing in my kitchen on returning home. I followed it up with a few secretly stashed birthday truffles and called it dinner. I have almost, though not quite, forgiven Eric Asimov of the Times for killing a story back in 1990 I wrote about Vito’s mozzarella-making operation, which is nothing short of the equivalent of immaculate conception. I remember being in the back kitchen when a fresh ball was lifted from its amniotic fluid and slipped into my hands. It was like holding a newborn, all quivering and wet. No umbilical cord, though.
THE BEAUTY OF OCCAM’S RAZOR
Occam advised to keep it simple, stupid. The most obvious solution most often works. Like, how after weeks of avoiding calling the appliance repairman to diagnose the grinding noise coming out of the freezer of my NEW GE refrigerator, I decided to check the Owner’s Manual. Then I walked over, opened the freezer and switched off the automatic ice maker, which is not connected to anything and was clearly registering its protest to being turned on accidentally. Problem solved.
It seems like each of these past two weeks I have been confronted by an issue which I have frittered hours away trying to solve, only to discover that the answer was right there all along. Last week, it was the issue of installing the Zagg Invisible Shield Ultra Clear on my new Samsung S20. I followed the instruction booklet precisely, no mean trick, then a few hours later realized it wasn’t that the Zagg was truly invisible, there was no “protective shield” on my cell at all.
I fished the packaging out of the wastebin, and it appeared I had thrown the “shield” out, still adhered to its protective paper. I reversed course and tried to get it on, watched a few too many YouTube videos, the damn thing just wouldn’t adhere, so I threw caution to the wind and just peeled it off and slapped it on. Problem solved. Except for the large thumbprint on the underside of the shield, it is just fine.
This week’s tech challenge was programming a Wi-Fi extender to place in my kitchen. The Google Home I set up in there is just great but has a distressing tendency to lose the internet connection right at the punchline of The Moth Radio Hour. I surmised that the signal from the router was having difficulty rounding the concrete corner to the kitchen and the Netgear extender was just the answer. In looking it up, however, I realized that it was not merely a matter of plugging it in and it would do its magic. This may explain why it never worked before. It actually had to be programmed. Another 14 YouTube videos later and I mostly had the hang of it. But then there was the issue of getting the Google Home on the same network, and to do that my phone also had to be switched. This was one big headache.
Ahh, technology. Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it. Raise your hand if it ever struck you as ironic that for all this sophisticated equipment we deal with every day, the solution to every problem is this:
THE SECRET TECH TOOL
I reset the extender, I reset the Google Home and have enjoyed uninterrupted storytelling ever since. Meanwhile, I have discovered that the Google will “call” my phone if I’ve left it on the back of the toilet tank in the guest bathroom and can’t find it, which has earth-shattering implications for me: I can finally give up the landline in the apartment, the sole purpose of which for the last five years at least has been to use to call my cell phone when I put it down and can’t find it.
Not for nothing, my electric orange juicer was also acting up this week. I unplugged and replugged it, I made sure the thing was set up right and it just wouldn’t work. A couple hours later it dawned on me to hit the reset button on the outlet I’d plugged it into (and out of and back into) and bam. No longer did I need to plot how I’d sneak Alex’s out of his kitchen to take back to New York.
Perhaps the best illustration of Occam’s brilliant advice was when I had to collect a very heavy box at Ikea a few weeks back that in fact was too heavy to pick up to shove in the back of the car. There was no one in sight to help me, either. Then, the light bulb went off. I opened the box, slid several pieces out of it, lightening it enough to then lay it in. D’oh.
A NICE DAY FOR A WHITE WEDDING
This was last Saturday on the north side of the Harlem Meer.
WHAT YOU MIGHT FIND WHILE SLOGGING AROUND THE MEER ON A SATURDAY MORNING
GROUNDHOG DAY ALL OVER AGAIN
Back I went to West Hartford on Monday this past week, this time with Sarah in tow. We met Lisa Mann again on the grassy knoll, then moved under the shade of a tree further away from the parking lot. Then on to West Hartford where our first order of business was to set ET up on an Amazon Echo Show which is God’s gift to people with elderly parents in captivity.
I’d been tipped off by my neighbor Denise about this device, who explained it could be programmed to work like an intercom. ET would not have to “accept” calls and we could “drop in” anytime and there she’d be on the screen and she could see us on the device.
Denise had me at hello. I Amazon Primed it and spent the weekend fooling around with the options, making sure all of the immediate family was connected. Once we got to Connecticut, we got the *new* handyman working on our punch list, then brought the Echo Show over to Brookdale where we plugged it into an outdoor outlet and grabbed the Brookdale Wi-Fi to reprogram it, then sent it into ET’s room with a note that instructed her to plug it in and say “Alexa, video call Mary.” We weren’t five minutes away standing in line to get into Trader Joe’s to pick up some dinner fixings when there she was, on the screen.
Once we get used to the calling function, we can do things like program it to play music or show movies or play Jeopardy. This was all very exciting, as ET finds the cell phone as complex as launching a space shuttle. Either it’s turned off, or it’s not charged, or it’s hidden somewhere in her room. We could have connected the Alexa through her cell but got a tip to instead pick up a Google phone number and use that – it’s always on.
All was going along swimmingly. Sarah, Alex and I cooked up a feast which we enjoyed on Alex’s newly paved patio. And then, Tuesday morning, just as Sarah and I were gearing up to tackle the mess of papers and tubs of unknown items and other flotsam and jetsam in the guest bedroom that we’d dumped there in February, we got The Call again, Due to the hurricane/tropical storm/whatever that nobody could pronounce, this week’s Tuesday visits were cancelled. Again.
Again, I conned my way in – this time for the in-person visit for Sarah and me at 11:00 AM. We stepped up our clean up and cleared out and over to Brookdale. ET was in great form, this time maskless. We weren’t afforded the same privilege.
ET BEFORE THE STORM
The table monitor only had to approach us twice for veering too close to her. On the third incident I fear she might have a ruler. An aide arrived to escort ET back for lunch, Sarah and I chatted with the director of the memory care unit for a few minutes and at 11:50 AM we pointed the car in the path of the storm which we encountered just west of Westport. By the time we hit Greenwich, Waze advised us to get the hell off the Merritt, and we detoured into the estate district of Greenwich, or maybe the entire town is an estate district.
It was pretty exciting; I only hoped that if a tree fell on us it would sufficiently damage the car so that I could stop stressing about how devalued it has been from the keying inflicted on it 18 months ago. But we rolled into the City eventually. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the podcast that was playing throughout, but we were safe and home.
ET had a more prolonged experience with the storm – almost 100 percent of West Hartford power was knocked out, and only Saturday night was it restored. Which meant our fabulous new toy was useless, without electricity or Internet, but we are already playing catch up and “dropping in” on her.
Other social engagements last week included created an experimental concoction out of coconut cream and lime juice blitzed the blender with ice cubes. I shared it with Terry Trucco when we met for our Weekly Wednesday cocktail hour at dusk in Central Park (“weekly” rather loosely interpreted, as in we manage to pull it off monthly, not unlike the “Weekly BiWeekly”).We had a serious discussion about what to do with the bottle of Listerine I discovered whilst cleaning out my linen closet, opened, use-by dated August 2016.
I was thrilled to discover the amazing Thursday greenmarket at Columbia University’s front door and later spent a lovely balmy evening in Rockefeller Park which is a vast expanse of green at Battery Park City. My “meet an old friend” for the week was Angela Benfield who promised me there’d be parking and sure enough, there was.
This was the second park in New York City I visited that day that I had never passed through; the first was Morningside which for my almost 50 years in Manhattan I had always skirted. The skyline view of Jersey City from downtown (with probably a bit of Hoboken thrown in) was astonishing. We feasted on panini, drank rosé disguised as Vitamin Water and finished with chocolate-dipped madeleines. It was a perfect summer night.
JERSEY CITY AT DUSK
After I hit the send button on this note . . . I’m off to the beach. And after that, who knows? An adventure awaits me at every turn. Perhaps, even . . . tennis. My partner in tennis crime may be back this week. Or may not.
Cheers
mbl
Fabulous to catch up with you. The echo show story has me wondering if it would work for my dad. I'm going to check it out. Nice to be, through you, connected to nyc a little. Dave and I coming in tomorrow for the day so I can see my chiropractor.
Laughed out loud at the phone screen story! That thumb print would drive me crazy😂