Archive for the ‘mortification’ Category

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Atonement

October 7th, 2011 by Suzanne | 6 Comments | Filed in Damn, evil, Jewishness, mortification, other rants

Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, begins tonight at sundown. Tonight, people will recite the Kol Nidre, an Aramaic prayer that asks God, “May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst, for all the people are in fault.” It is a haunting, beautiful prayer, which can be heard here.

As a society, there is a lot to atone for this year, as every year. My top priority is the chasm between the rich and everyone else. I was particularly struck by this last night, when Husband and I received an appraisal for our apartment. (We are refinancing.)

We’ve lived in our place for almost nine years. In the time, the value has increased by more than 200%. In theory, I should be jumping for joy, but I’m actually appalled. When we went to buy a place, we stretched a little, but it was at least feasible. We could never do that now. I don’t understand how anyone can.

Decades ago, my neighborhood was a little microcosm of society. There were wealthy people on Central Park West, middle class people on the side streets, and mixed in with that were single room occupancy (SRO) buildings and halfway houses. My former boss lived in a brownstone on Columbus and 85th Street in the late 1980s, and across the street was a crack den. Homeless people lit trash fires to warm themselves at night. I’m not saying I want the crack dens back, but a studio apartment in that building now rents for $2000 per month and renters have to show the landlord that their yearly income is 40 times that amount before they can sign a lease. It’s a rich people ghetto and it’s morally wrong.

This whole situation is unsustainable. The real estate market is a house of cards. The only way to keep price up is to have inflated salaries in certain industries, like legal, banking, and medicine. But as a whole, we can’t afford that and we should not have to mortgage the future of the country so that an elite class can afford a one bedroom apartment on the ground floor facing the street if they stretch a bit. It’s sick.

I won’t be attending services for Yom Kippur. However, I will be hoping that not only are my family and friends inscribed in the Book of Life this year, but that some true miracle will happen and this nation will wake up and say that everyone deserves an equal shot at more than merely breathing.

Gmar chatima tova.

Irene, You Ruined My Weekend, Damn You*

August 26th, 2011 by Suzanne | 2 Comments | Filed in Damn, fuck, I love New York, mortification

My friend Dr. P’s birthday is today. (Happy birthday!) My friend Caitlin’s birthday is tomorrow. We had parties planned up the wazoo for both days. We had brunch plans with some friends from London. Now, I am stuck spending the weekend holed up with Husband. (Terrible, I know. When I “complained” to him about this, e told me that I better stock up on books. If the power doesn’t go out, I’m going to submit short works to lit magazines. If it does go out, I will work on writing until the battery on my laptop dies.)

I’m very curious to see if this turns out to be an insane storm or if elected officials are overreacting because they massively fucked up during a snowstorm in December that paralyzed the city. Coney Island, Brighton Beach, the Rockaways, and other beach areas in Brooklyn and Queens are being completely evacuated. The entire public transportation system is being shut down at noon on Sat. (Never has that been done before.) This means that no one will be able to get to work on Saturday unless they live within walking distance, which means no stores or restaurants or anything will be open. It’s going to be interesting.

In 1999, the city freaked out when Hurricane Floyd headed our way. Then nothing happened. part of me hopes nothing will happen, but then I’ll be mad that we spent all this money preparing for the storm and disrupted so many businesses and people’s work schedules. I can only imagine how much this is going to hurt them in an economic environment that already is causing so much hardship.

Unrelated to Irene, but equally horrifying, I realized that the woman who cleans our apartment must think we are total sickos. First there was the veiny dildo on my nightstand. Then last night, I realized that she folded a blanket we keep in the living room (for watching TV or when guests sleep over) and placed it dead center on the giant stuffed penis, which she placed on top of a folded up pack and play. I will not be surprised if she demands a raise.

*No cheesy jokes about rocking like a hurricane or coming on Irene!

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Cleaning

August 16th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in hilarity, I am a bad person sometimes, mortification

Husband and I finally caved and decided not to pretend that we can handle cleaning our apartment or that we are fine living in a hovel. I secured the services of the cleaning person my friend has used for years. Over two visits, she spent ten hours doing an initial dust/scrub/wipe down.

I almost didn’t recognize the place, it was so shiny. My gratitude swelled. Then I went into the bedroom. When I saw what happened there, I was surprised that she was willing to return.

Over the years, I have accumulated many items. Some of these items may have been sitting on my nightstand, gathering dust, forgotten. Not only did the cleaning person uncover two boxes of contact lenses (one box per eyeball), but she also cleaned up the ginormous dildo I won in a Planned Parenthood fundraising raffle in March 2006 (see below).

This dildo is so ridiculously enormous that I don’t know how a person could fit it in any orifice. It provided me with much amusement for a while. Husband once accused it of staring at him with one eye, so he taped two googly eyes on it to make it more normal. When the eyes fell off, I moved it from the living room to the bedroom, where it lay abandoned on my nightstand amidst the clutter.

The nice cleaning woman dusted off the dildo. I wondered what she thought of me, and fell into giggles of mortification. Then I buried it back under a pile of things. I hope next time she is cleaning, she does not think I hid it from her. Although, of course, I sort of did. So embarrassing!

That Smell

June 14th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in Damn, evil, mortification, other rants

My worst moments of subway ridership involve the times that a homeless person in the saddest stages of humanity pass by me. It is heartbreaking to see people in such base conditions. The smell of people who have gone without basic care for a long time is overpowering. Even after the person passes, the smell of rotting peaches, rancid garbage, and decaying small rodents clings to the air for a long time. It is really the worst stench I have ever encountered, and that it comes from a fellow human always upsets me.

Until today. I was at the gym this evening, running on the treadmill. It’s been more than a week since my last run, which was the half marathon. I was excited and nervous to get back to it. Would I have lost my stamina? Could I handle running again?

Everything was going great. I was about 1/2 mile into my planned 1.5 miles and feeling comfortable running a ten minute per mile pace. The movement was incredibly enjoyable, and I felt great to be running again. Then the smell permeated the air.

I looked around. What the fuck in my absurdly overpriced gym could be generating the odor of 10,000 rotten eggs mixed with vomit? I realized that it was the buff blond guy who just stepped onto the treadmill on the other side of the woman next to me. It blew my mind that someone who was otherwise in impeccable condition could emit such a foul smell. The woman next to me pretended that she didn’t notice anything, but she got off the treadmill within two minutes and moved to other equipment.

I didn’t want to end my run. On the other hand, it was really hard to breathe when all I inhaled made me gag. I decided to ramp it up, get to a mile as quickly as possible, and move to another machine on the other side of the gym.

The good thing about that was it led me to realize that I could run much faster than I thought. Once I was safely breathing clean air on the other side of the gym, I decided to go another mile, which I loved. But I’m curious what I will do if I ever see that guy again. Husband had been working out further away from him, and he smelled the man, too. I did feel bad for the guy, as probably there is something wrong with him that he would smell so god awful, but at the same time, I figure he has the resources to do something about it. It’s a weird situation.

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Fit and Fat

May 24th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in mortification, random

One of the many things that continues to mystify me about American society – and maybe it is not only American society, but Western society in general – is the way we equate “thin” with “fit” and “healthy.” I’ve seen several studies that showed that people who fall into the BMI range currently classified as “overweight” live longer and are healthier than those who fall into the “healthy” range. This, of course, makes me think that what we define as healthy is not really healthy, but rather some sort of beauty aesthetic that has pervaded the medical establishment and convinced us that “thin” is “healthy.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’ve been running a lot to train for a half marathon on June 5. At the start of my training, or maybe even a little before, I successfully used Phase I of the South Beach Diet to drop a few pounds. However, during that phase it took me almost 77 minutes to run seven miles, and I thought I might burst my lungs and that my thigh muscles would rip themselves from my femurs. Thin, but not in great shape.

As I ran more, I discovered that I was getting fatter. Some people suggested that I was gaining weight because I added muscle, although I am sure that I have. Unfortunately, as proven by my jeans not wanting to button around my increasingly rotund belly and wider hips, I am actually getting flabbier. I had a very ugly incident this morning with a shirt that used to fit fine and now is most unattractive as I bulge out of the side slits. I know that the weight is from the ravenous appetite that I developed to feed to running. I try to eat healthy, but it is really hard for me because I am almost always hungry, which inevitably leads to binging on, say, cheesecake after dinner last night. (It would have been a very “Golden Girls” moment if I had three lady friends sharing it with me, but alas I just stuffed it in my face while on the phone.)

Yet I am also far fitter. When I ran 12 miles last Saturday, my average mile was 9 minutes, 40 seconds. I didn’t get tired until the 10.5 mile. Part of the reason I could run so well was because I fueled the run with carbs beforehand, had energy supplements during it, and ate a protein bar afterward. So although I burned 1200 calories, I consumed 600 just to accomplish it. Then I binge ate because I was hungry an went to a 12 hour birthday extravaganza that involved enormous quantities of candy (Take 5 is possibly my new favorite candy bar; sorry Mars…) and on my way there I passed a Polish bakery, so of course I had to stop in and buy a paczki (donut, pronounced panchki) or four, but I am getting off the point a little bit.

The point is that I am definitely fatter. I am also definitely fitter. I am insanely proud of how far I’ve come with this running thing, especially given my asthmatic childhood which involved at least one ER visit each spring and fall when I did strenuous things like, say, sleep. I just wish that my fitness was not buried under so much flab.

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Repenting

April 21st, 2011 by Suzanne | 3 Comments | Filed in Damn, evil, fuck, hilarity, I love New York, Jewishness, mortification

That little joke I made yesterday (but somehow did not publish to my blog until a few minutes ago) about eating lobster rolls over Passover? I am definitely sorry. It was not funny to joke about endangering my soul, although I am not going to lie: I really, really wanted a lobster roll for dinner. (Instead, I ate a crisp bread sandwich of herbed turkey and cheddar – not exactly kosher for Passover, either, I know – and plain microwave popcorn.)

Now that I have semi-repented for my sacrilegious ways, I hope that the plagues will stop raining down on me. Last week I developed an annoying rash which continues to annoy me (the allergist thought it was a mild case of hives). Husband and I were forced to kill to water bugs/roaches on Sunday. This morning the third plague revealed itself.

I swore that I saw something dash from the kitchen pantry under the stove while I made breakfast, but was not sure if it was a shadow, a figment of my imagination, or something small with multiple legs. Regardless, it would not hurt to put out more MaxForce insect killer, I decided. When I opened the pantry door, I was surprised to see shredded parts of a bag of pita chips on the ground.

“That’s odd,” I thought as Maurice the Brain Hamster began running faster on the wheel that powers my brain. “Roaches don’t tear things up…”

Right. As I picked up the bag of pita chips (something that does not belong in my home over Passover anyway), I surprised the little gray mouse nibbling on a chip behind it. We both screamed (OK, I screamed loud enough for both of us), and he/she ran out of the pantry under the stove while I stood in place screaming.

The irony of this Passover plague saga is two-fold. First, if I had cleaned out the chametz, the mouse would not be eating it. I suspect the mouse would starve to death because matzah and other pre-packaged Passover foods are gross. Second, when Husband and I attended a lovely Seder on Monday night, someone shared a story of finding a mouse stuck on a glue trap in her apartment and how awful it was. Of course I thought that I was glad that I never had had to deal with mice. Of course.

I don’t even want to know what comes next.

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Plagues

April 17th, 2011 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in Damn, evil, fuck, hilarity, I love New York, Jewishness, mortification

Passover begins Monday night at sundown. During Passover, Jews celebrate our liberation from slavery in Egypt. Last year, I wrote about how my family observed Passover when I was growing up, and I spent some time exploring the ten plagues: (blood; frogs and lice; flies and dead livestock; boils and hail; locusts and darkness; and the death of the first born. After the tenth plague, Pharaoh more or less really let the Jews free, except that he changed his mind, had his troops chase them to the Red Sea, and they wound up drowning.

Today, however, two plagues seem to have struck my home. First, I broke out in an insane heat rash a few days ago. The itchiness is killing me. I’ve been using generic Benadryl, which helps, and smearing cortisone cream over my body as though it were sunscreen. While I’ll gladly take the rash over lice and/or boils, it is still really unpleasant. Nothing but cold showers for me in the foreseeable future. Ugh.

Then Husband and I were visited by the six-legged plague of many a New York apartment, and I am not talking about locusts or flies. As I rubbed cortisone onto my back, I heard Husband scream, then seem to stumble. I ran out of the bathroom and found him pressing his shoe into the ground? “Did you trip? Are you OK?” I asked. “No, there’s a roach!” he yelled. A ginormous waterbug had run across the hallway. “Get a paper towel!”

The problem with one roach is that there is never one roach. We sprayed raid, I spread more Maxforce gel, and replaced old bait stations with new ones. Then I scratched my itchy skin a lot. We didn’t have to wait long. Husband yelled and I smashed the vile critter with an empty Kleenex box.

Whatever I need to do, I will do it. Just end these plagues and don’t send more my way!

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Louise Was Right

March 9th, 2011 by Suzanne | 10 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, evil, fuck, mortification, other rants, sadness, What is wrong with people?

Again, this is why I should not read the newspaper while eating breakfast. Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town read the headline in The New York Times. “Students Among 18 Arrested in Gang Rape of 11-Year-Old.”

What’s enraging is that the headline is not the worst part of this story. The suspects range in age from middle school students to 27 years old. According to The Times:

Five suspects are students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member. A few of the others have criminal records, from selling drugs to robbery and, in one case, manslaughter.

Of course, they made at least one video while raping the girl. Another student received a copy on her cellphone and showed it to her teacher. That’s when the town was shaken. As one woman told The Times, “It’s just destroyed our community. These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” (Emphasis mine.) Yes, her sympathy lies with the rapists. Oh those poor boys who hung out with grown men with criminal records and raped someone! They can’t go to school now.

Really, it isn’t their fault, others said. The girl was asking for it. She “dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground.” The same woman wringing her hands about the boys’ future reminded readers that it was as much the girl’s mother’s fault as anyone’s. “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?”

What I would like to know is this: who the fuck raised these boys to think it is OK to hang out with older men, kidnap girls (or women, for that matter), and rape them? If the girl’s mother is a bad parent, what about the member of the school board whose 21 year old son participated in raping and videotaping? What about the parents of the middle school students who let their sons hang out with men in the same age group the girl seems to have spent time with?

Another woman said, “I really wish that this could end in a better light.” A BETTER LIGHT? Really? A person was fucking gang raped and she is worried that the incident end in a “better light?” What kind of light would be better? That we find out the girl actually hypnotized the boys and men and tricked them into raped her and videotaping it? WHAT THE FUCK?

I’m so angry I can’t sit still. Twenty years ago, the movie “Thelma and Louise” came out. In it, one woman is about to be raped outside a bar after dancing with a male patron and drinking with him. Her friend tells him to leave the woman alone, and when he tells her to fuck off, she shoots him. The movie hints that she was raped a long time ago in Texas and nothing happened to her rapist because “she asked for it.” I guess things still roll that way in Texas. Even if you are eleven.

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The Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done

March 3rd, 2011 by Suzanne | 3 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, Damn, fuck, mortification, What is wrong with people?

Last Thursday, I agreed to help my friend Dr. H move a few things into her new apartment. My role was to sit in her car to ensure that it was not towed while she ran upstairs to drop off various items. She is well aware of my utter hatred of driving in general, and my specific terror at the very idea of driving in Manhattan. Oh, and it was rush hour. And we were in Midtown. However, she assured me that it was unlikely that I would have to move. I told her that I would rather ferry her stuff from the car to the apartment, but she insisted on doing it herself, so I sighed, sat in the driver’s seat, and hoped to hell that I would not be required to actually move the car. (In fact, I decided that should I be approached by a policeperson and asked to move, I would consider taking the ticket ($150) and paying it rather than drive in rush hour traffic. I kept this to myself, though.)

As I waited, I thought about the last time someone asked me to sit in a car and move it if the cops came. It was in 2000 or 2001. I can’t remember what led me to run errands with my friend after work one night, but he had to stop at a software store on 23rd Street, which is a pretty busy street. (At least Dr. H was on a side street.) I said OK, and remained in the passenger seat. He left the keys in the ignition and ran inside.

Before I knew it, a policewoman was peering into the window of the driver’s side. “Um, he’ll be back any second,” I told her. “That’s nice,” she replied and pulled out her pad to write a ticket. I debated what to do. As the wheel turned slowly in my head (Maurice, the hamster in charge of running on the wheel that powers my brain, was frozen with fear – he is scared of driving in Manhattan, too), a man approached the car.

“Do you need help? I could drive it for you,” he offered.

“Oh, OK,” I said.

Yes. That is what I did. I told a strange man that he could get into my friend’s car and drive away with it – and me.

As the man opened the door, my friend emerged from the store. “What the fuck is going on here?” he said.

“Well, I didn’t want to drive, so he offered to move the car,” I told him. The guy had already begun walking away, muttering “Just trying to help.” The po-po stood there, watching everything. My friend got in the car and asked me what the hell was wrong with me. Now that the situation was passed, I wanted to cry. Did I seriously almost let that happen? Yeah, I did. I wanted to puke.

In the ensuing years, I’ve thought about that incident once in a while, and I still want to puke. How could I have been so stupid? I am so lucky that my friend showed up when he did. Maybe the stranger really was just a good Samaritan who would have driven me around the block and returned to get my pal. I’m glad I never found out.

Sales

February 18th, 2011 by Suzanne | 2 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, Damn, evil, fashion Suzanne-style, hilarity, I love New York, mortification

All week long, I looked forward to running in the park today. My plan was to push myself a bit and do a 10K. I did two short runs at my parents’ house on their treadmill earlier in the week and a strength training session on Wednesday morning. My muscles were ready. I was psyched.

Then my throat started hurting around 4 pm on Wednesday. I wondered if it was because I was watching “Jersey Shore” and making me sick, but then I remembered that my mom had a sore throat on Tuesday and my sister had a cold over the weekend. I was sick. I hoped if I kept it quiet on Thursday (which was another day that would have been perfect to run) I’d feel better by today. Not so.

I woke up miserable. I moped around the apartment cursing the gods for inflicting me. I knew that I would wind up eating approximately 14 pounds of pretzel M&Ms if I stayed in all day. My mobile phone alerted me to a text message. My friend wanted to know if I would face off against the bridezillas at the annual Filene’s Basement bridal dress sale with her. I accepted. There’s nothing like a sale on items I absolutely do not need to cheer me up.

We met at 11:30, as she heard that the mob dies down by 10. It was still crowded and dresses were flung about everywhere. These shoppers made wild packs of dogs look calm. I don’t think more than two women in the store said excuse me as they shoved past me in the aisles. Women came in teams, with brides wearing t-shirts that read “BRIDE” in puffy paint and her friends in coordinating colors or hats or scarves. Women also ran around in their various special gown undergarments, as fitting rooms were not available. Brutal! My friend did not find anything, unfortunately.

On my way home from the Running of the Brides (I think that is the official name of the event, as Filene’s was selling t-shirts that said “I survived the Running of the Brides at Filene’s Basement”), I noticed a sale rack outside the Super Runners Shop. I managed to get a pair of Brooks worth $130 for $39.99, so that made me partly happy. It also frustrated me because I wanted to use them right away. Ce la vie.

My last sale score was a pair of running pants with zippered pockets. They were 20% off. I would have bought them full price, though, because I have noticed that women’s running pants no longer come with pockets. This makes it difficult for me to carry my inhaler, which is pretty essential to my ability to stay alive if something goes wrong.

Then I came home and found out that the House of “Representatives” passed a bill defunding Planned Parenthood’s cervical screening, STI treatment, and pre-natal care programs, along with the community development fund and public housing capital fund. To celebrate our descent into a third world country, I ate approximately 14 pounds of pretzel M&Ms.

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