Baby blakspring is about to turn one, so we figured we’d put her to work getting candy for mom and dad:
She did pretty well for someone who needs 15 minutes to walk halfway down the block. Who’s gonna resist this mug?
I’ll write more after my stomach ache.
I was lucky enough to end up working with a really nice and very dilligent detective. He took my case seriously, got the surveilance video from the subway station, followed up on some leads. Two weeks ago, I went in to look at the video. The guy is too far away to see his face, but he is there, dressed all in white, trying to look like he’s just hanging out but really scopin’ people out. The video started 15 minutes before I got to the station and he was already there, then he went down the stairs, probably trying to steal from someone else. Most likely he didn’t get lucky because he came back up and stood in the same exact spot. Less than one minute later, I was going through the turnstile and towards him. Less than 60 seconds - it blew my mind. If I had walked faster, if I hadn’t stopped to buy that bottle of water, if, if, if. The detective knows I play the what-if game, and makes me promise him that I will stop. I watch myself, walking, until I am inches away from the guy. He is standing against a wall and there are two staircases on either side. I turn left, his head turns after me, and he follows me down the stairs. Bam!
The detective shows me a paper with six photos and asks me if I recognize anyone. And there he is - number 4 staring at me. I am so sure, my actual words are, “I have never been so sure of anything in my life.” I practically yell it in the police station. The detective smiles, has me sign papers, and tells me that now it will be quick - they will pick this guy up and bring him in for a line-up. I start to get worried. Am I really that sure; what if it’s not him; what if I just want it to be him, be someone? The detective tells me that once I see him in person, all my doubts will go away. A photo is not as good as the real thing. He makes me promise that I will stop what-iffing. I tell him that I don’t think I can.
Last week I get the call to come in for a line-up. I get so nervous. I know the guy can’t see me, he probably robbed a bunch more people since that time, he most likely threw away my driver’s license so he won’t remember my name. But now I have a daughter and all I can think about is keeping her safe. Why am I doing this? I won’t get anything back anyway. What’s the point? But then I remind myself that if everyone let it slide, these assholes would keep doing it . I don’t want this to happen to someone else.
I am in a waiting room for so long, watching a random soap opera to occupy my mind. Finally I am taken into the viewing room and look through the two-way mirror. I barely notice the other five guys because there he is. I know it is him. The detective was right - all doubts are gone. It’s the bastard from the subway station. I have no more fear - just anger. I want to punch him. I identify him, sign the paperwork, and go home. Three hours later I get a call from the District Attorney’s office. I make an appointment to see the ADA the following week.
I meet the ADA and tell him exactly what happened. He asks questions. I demostrate where my bag was, how I was carrying it. He tells me we are going in front of the grand jury, but that the guy will probably try to cut a deal. That is what I want; I don’t want to go through a trial and see him again. My detective shows up and I feel more secure - he’s a great guy and I am very grateful for everything he has done for me. The DA’s office not only has a grand jury room but a small jail as well. The guy is in jail and his lawyer (court-appointed, I’m guessing) is with him. Just as we’re about to head out to the grand jury, the ADA gets a call - the guy wants a deal. The ADA steps out for 15 minutes and returns, telling me it’s a done deal. The sentence for this felony is 1.5 to 3 years; he pleaded down to nine months. He is officially off the streets, at least for a while.
Almost four weeks to the day, it is over and I feel so relieved. The detective walks me out and all the way to the subway. I tell him that I want to be a decoy for the NYPD, and walk around in the subway stations with my bag unzipped, getting these bastards. He thinks this is pretty funny, especially since I had been so nervous earlier.
It is a beautiful day. I go into the subway station - the same exact station where my wallet was stolen. I look around, a new sense of awareness. My bag is zipped. I got closure.
I would love to tell you about the fun things I did during spring break; about Ron Russo’s birthday, darts & drinks, lazy afternoons in the park, UFC night with good friends, finally treating myself to a facial. But all I can think about is how my wallet was stolen in the subway, about the six hours I spent at two different police stations, the feeling of being violated even though no one touched me, the playing over and over in my head of what I should have done instead, all the moments where I could have prevented this from happening.
If I hadn’t grabbed that bottle of water before entering the subway, if I had decided to walk two blocks further to the other entrance, if my hands weren’t full with groceries so that I could have zippered my bag, if I had turned around sooner when I felt him walking behind me, if I had stopped and let him pass, if (when I finally turned to confront him) I hadn’t fallen for his I-can’t-find-the-6-train routine, if I had checked my bag sooner instead of waiting till the next transfer, if, if, if…
He used my three credit cards to buy Metrocards for the subway and he tried to get money out of an ATM machine. Before I even had a chance to cancel my cards, they were already calling me about suspicious activity. I normally don’t carry much cash with me but that day I had about $100 because I’d recently gone to an ATM and forgot to leave some at home. All the stuff I need to get replaced - driver’s license, health insurance card, library card, all those little seemingly insignificant things. I had my Metrocard in there, as well as a few gift cards and two movie ticket vouchers. And the wallet itself, which I got a few years ago in Montreal and held a special place in my heart.
I talked to police officers, undercover cops, captains, detectives…repeating my story. I think I can identify the guy but his image is fading more and more each day. I looked at over 1500 mugshots with no luck. If the police can trace my credit card numbers to the specifc Metrocard numbers maybe they can nab whoever is using them (probably someone in his neighborhood happy to get a cheap monthly card) for possesion of stolen property and find out who they bought it from. The detective promised me they will look at video surveilance to see if he was caught on camera - he was wearing all white from head to toe. (And what kind of criminal wears all-white - is he that dumb or that arrogant?)
The credit cards will not charge me for the purchases, most of my cards are replacable, even adding up all the gift cards and such, it is less than $200. But the time he stole from me - the time I could have been enjoying with my family, the time I could have spent reading my book instead of having my thoughts drifting to that bad place, the time that I would have been happy - that I can’t replace. I just have to move on. Lesson learned.
It would be so easy to blame the baby for this horrid lack of posting. But even with all the feeding, bathing, diaper changing, park strolling, and goofing around with her at home, I’ve still got plenty of time to write something. So why don’t I? Before, when baby blakspring was very little, I rarely had a chance to leave the house. But lately I’ve been getting out more and doing things. So, the answer is laziness and procrastination. I’ve got plenty of things I want to write about but my fingers don’t feel like typing.
The last few weeks have been pretty nice (even with a cold and now a cough that can’t seem to get lost). I thought I “discovered” a new Vietnamese restaurant on a stroll with the baby. I had a bahn me sandwich (LOVE those things) and went back the next day with Ron Russo for more. I asked the waitress when the restarant opened and was told that it’s been a year and a half. And I walk on this block at least once a week. How did I miss that?
And since we’re talking about food, Ron Russo and I had a few nice dinners by ourselves lately. We finally went to our favorite seafood place (a tiny hole-in-the-wall with excellent yet inexpensive lobsters) and a fantastic Turkish restaurant. Not to mention Japanese since I can’t live without sushi. And last week we went to the restaraunt where we had our wedding dinner. Everytime we go there I get the same exact oven-baked pizza, but this time I had red beet and goat cheese gnocchi. It may sound weird but it is divine, and a very cool purple color.
I went out with some friends to a comedy club. I’m a comedy club’s dream audience member. I laugh at everything, and if I get on a roll I even snort and make crazy high-pitched hiccup sounds and have tears rolling down my cheeks. I’m glad we were sitting in the back. The headliners were the Sklar brothers who are identical twins and have this crazy shtick where they finish each other’s sentences. It’s pretty intense; I’ve never seen anything like it. Some of my friends knew who these guys were though I had never heard of them. When they finally came on, one of my friends said to me, “Are you sure you’ve never seen them?”. “Well,” I answered, “the one on the left looks familiar.” My friends thought that was hysterical since they are identical twins, but one had a beard and the other didn’t which explains my comment.
Finally, last weekend I went out to my favorite neighborhood bar, which I hadn’t been to since I was super-pregnant. I love this place for many reasons: it is small and decorated almost exclusively in wood so it feels like you’re in a cabin by a lake, it is not completely overrun with hipsters, the bartenders are great, the food is surprisingly delicious, and there is always some crazy movie on the big TV like Warriors or Pink Flamingos. I often bump into people I haven’t seen in a while - which is exactly what happened on Saturday. I walked right into a couple I hadn’t seen in about two years; the guy was wearing a kilt. He told me it was National Scotland Day though I’m not sure that he didn’t make that up. And just when I thought my favorite bar couldn’t get any better, it turns out that Saturday is now official movie night. There are now three TVs, two slightly smaller ones on either side of the large one. For $2.00 you get unlimited M&Ms, Gummi Bears, and fresh popcorn from a popcorn machine. At first I wasn’t paying attention to what was actually playing on the TVs but then I realized that on the right was Predator, on the left was Alien, and in the center was Alien Vs. Predator. How freakin’ cool is that?
I’m going to pretend that the forecast is not calling for snow tomorrow because March, so far, has been pretty decent. The weather is warmer and the days are shorter, baby blakspring is getting bigger and more fun, and I’ve been getting out a bit more. My triumphant return to volleyball a few week ago was probably the best thing I’ve done for myself in months. The killer serve has lost a bit of it’s edge and my reflexes are not all there yet, but it feels so good, so alive, to run and jump.
Ron Russo and I usually get to go out for dinner on Friday by ourselves. I’ve got a list of all the restaraunts we want to go to that will last us till May at least. (Practically drooling thinking about the upcoming lobster.) There’s been a few nights out with the girls. And, on Saturday night, we grabbed some drinks with Little Sister and friends at a local spot that we’d wanted to check out for a while. The bar had a dartboard in the backroom that no one (!) was using. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like a big deal but we LOVE darts. Ron Russo has a spastic wrist-flicking basketball-freethrow-looking way of shooting those darts that looks crazy but is killer. He kicks my ass about 99% of the time but it’s so fun that I don’t care. I need more time to find my rhythm. The first two games, I just end up making holes in the wall and floor, but by the third I have managed to control my arm enough to be decent. I won the last game out of five - it was brilliant.
After darts, we rejoined our friends. The lovely Dene was there and I was telling her how the baby had woken up three times in the middle of the night - “So it’s 2:30 AM and she’s turned at a 90 degree angle from how she went to sleep and when she sees me she gives me the biggest smile like, Yay let’s play. So I flip her back to how she should be laying, soothe her, and go back to sleep. Then at 3:30 I’m awoken by a rhythmic clanging. She’s flipped 90 degrees again and she’s swinging her legs up and down, making the zipper of her sleepsack hit the slats over and over. So again I flip her back. And an hour later she’s awake again, this time at 180 degrees…”
As I’m telling this story, Dene’s friend was listening, his face looking more and more perplexed. He finally points at Little Sister and asks if we live together. So now we’re confused because it seems such a random thing to ask. We tell him that we don’t and I continue the story, “So I flipped her back in the crib, gave her the pacifier and she finaly slept till almost 7:00.” Then his eyes light up, “Oh you’re talking about a baby. I thought you were talking about your sister and that she was so drunk that she kept flipping on her mattress. I was wondering why she sleeps in a sleepsack.”
Yeah, we just cracked up. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages. I just kept picturing Little Sister in an adult-sized sleepsack swinging her legs up and down and grinning.
Sorry, I would have gotten here sooner but the cobwebs around the computer have gotten out of control. Not to mention the dust bunnies and the tumbleweeds. You would think that with the whole week off I would have gotten much done. Yeah right. I had been very optimistic - even prepping a stack of nine movies to watch. I got through two of them. I was all set to make my grand return to Monday night volleyball but it was cancelled due to the holiday. And I do realize that today is Monday again, but with my five hours of sleep (my fault for staying up with the Oscars and then some, since baby blakspring slept from 9:30pm to 6:10 am) and Ron Russo’s band practice tonight (did I ever mention that my man sings and plays guitar?) I probably won’t make it. A few nights ago I dreamt that I’d lost my wicked serve, couldn’t even get the ball over the net. Hopefully my arm strength is still intact thanks to carrying 16 pounds all over the place.
The padres were away for two weeks so we couldn’t escape on our own for an evening out, but we did take baby with us. She visited her other grandparents as well as friends of ours. We took her out to our favorite Mexican place and a hipster brunch place. She is a happy kid and rarely cries so it’s fairly safe to take her to “adult” places. If she gets a little cranky we just take her out of the carriage for a bit. (And who can blame her, I wouldn’t want to be lying down staring at the ceiling when there is so much going on.) The only mishap was that I got ketchup and tomatoe stains on her pants since I was eating with her on my lap. Not that she noticed.
I think we’re ready to take her with us for sushi in another week or two. Konnichiwa ya’ll!
Being a school librarian I feel like I have the best gig ever. I am on a sweet school schedule but I don’t have to be in the classroom. Honestly I don’t think I would make it as a teacher. You have to deal with knuckleheads, disrespect, and a lot of apathy. In English classes it is a struggle to get the students to read, and having a discussion about the book can be even more frustrating.
Sometimes the kids get it, even if they don’t explain it all that eloquently. One of the English classes was reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy. When the teacher asked why Richard would rather be punished for something he didn’t do than tell the teacher who the real culprit was, no one said anything. Finally one of the boys said, “Cause snitches get stitches, son”. Not eloquent, yet in essence correct. Ron Russo was teaching Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and a girl in the class said that “evil nurse be up in the mix”. Again, perhaps it could be expressed better but Ron Russo liked the answer because it was true.
Unfortunatly, especially in the remedial classes, there are so many kids that clearly don’t read or don’t understand the material. On one of Ron Russo’s midterms, he asked the students to explain some key phrases from the books they’ve read. One boy in particular was obviously making things up as he went along:
1. - $50 a week - a reference to the money that Willy Loman borrows in Death Of A Salesman
“$50 a week can be your allowance. You can spend it on something nice for you or your parents. It can be a down payment on a house video game.”
2. - rabbits and wolves - one of the characters in Cuckoo’s Nest explains how some people are rabbits by nature (timid and scared) and some are wolves (the aggressors)
“Rabbits are small and furry animals. They eat karuts and letus. You can have one for a pet. Wolves are big and dangerous. They live in forests and the North/South Pole.”
3. - the forbidden word - in Ayn Rand’s Anthem, the forbidden word is “I”
“The forbidden word is a curse word. F*** is a curse word. Ass is a dunkey but it can also be a curse word. B**** is a female dog but it can also be a curse word.”
Now what do you do with that?
Winter is not my favorite season. I’m always about 10° colder than the average person and even the new winter coat I got for Christmas does not keep me as warm as I’d like to be. The Northeast has been slammed with so much snow this January, and while I love how it looks so crisp and fresh that first morning, by the next day it’s just nasty sludge. It’s hard to get around and as I found out today, even harder to get around with a baby carriage. At least when I used to snowboard I looked forward to the snow, but haven’t hit the slopes in about three years now. The only good thing the snow has done for me this year is given me two snow days and one early release from work.
Perhaps this makes me a bad mother but I wistfully think of days gone by where I had not a care in the world. When Ron Russo and I could spontaneously decide to go out for dinner and drinks. When I could stay out as late as I wanted. When my days weren’t divided into four-hour increments and my nights interrupted by sorrowful cries. And though I’ve lucked out with a happy, good-natured baby, it’s still a lot to handle. So I wait for the winter to pass, for spring to eventually arrive giving us more opportunities to be outside and break out of the monotony.
In the meantime, I take little bits of freedom where I can get them. Last Saturday I went to the movies to see Black Swan, which was really excellent and kinda scary though I get scared easily, and yesterday I saw The Fighter, which inspired me to do push-ups when I got home, and not the girlie kind. About once every two weeks, Ron Russo go out for dinner alone. That is quite the rare treat, forgetting for an hour that we are parents.
At home I’ve been trying to read more whenever I get a chance and I have also been entertaining myself with one of the most awesome Christmas presents I’ve ever gotten- a Canon Rebel DSLR. I can’t wait to start taking the camera out, taking pictures of flowers finally booming, of baby blakspring outdoors. But for now I amuse myself by goofing around with aperture and shutter speeds and trying to get artsy photos. I don’t have a macro lens (though I really want one) but I think these are pretty decent regardless:
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Still trying to figure out the blurry-foreground-sharp-background shot:
I just love how everything seems crisper, more intense:
And of course I’ve been taking loads of baby pictures, though I will impress you with my great restraint and just post one:
Judging by these photos, it’s pretty clear that I need to leave the house more often.
As much as I love being back at work, being around other adults, and getting away from baby blakspring, I am even more exhausted than ever. At home I have so little time and chores seem to pile up. When I do have a chance to read a book, I usually fall asleep after about three pages. So I tell myself that I will blog from work, but that never happens either because running a library takes several people but I have to do it by myself. I’m the librarian, the clerk, the page. I answer reference questions, offer book suggestions, order all the books, process them, shelve them, check them in and out. And in between all that, I show kids how to double-space their documents, fix printer jams, explain how to use the photocopier, give out tissues to runny noses, and bring down the law on those who deserve it. So at the end of the workday I tell myself that I will blog from home, and the cycle repeats itself like Groundhog Day.
Of course the baby is getting bigger and more mature. She eats about every 3.5 hours during the day so once in a while I can plan something or get away. Last week I went to brunch with Ultra and it was a rare treat. Baby is also old enough to go on errand with us sometimes. Yesterday we took her to Bed Bath & Beyond where she slept the whole time while I drove Ron Russo crazy debating which shower curtain and laundry hamper to buy, to Sports Authority where she was wide awake no matter how fast I pushed her carriage around the store, and to the grocery store where little old ladies oohed and aahed over her.
But in the evening I had a treat planned for myself. My mom came over to babysit and Ron Russo and I went to the movies with some friends. Ron Russo doesn’t watch TV unless it’s an NBA game or the weighing-in part of The Biggest Loser (and that’s only because of me) and he is not much for movies. As far as he is concerned, the movie industry started and ended with What About Bob and nothing will ever compare. But he does tend to enjoy the Coen brothers, something we both agree on, and True Grit was pretty darn good, even if I didn’t understand half of what Jeff Bridges garbled. The young girl was such a great character, full of spunk and confidence and bravery. And I am now such a mom that all I could think of everytime she was on the screen was my daughter, and my heart ached for her quest even more.
Cross my heart, I’ve been meaning to post and catch up with everyone. I even had exciting non-baby stories, like how the house across the street was on fire, and how there was a matricide/attempted fratricide/attempted suicide a few blocks away from my school. And how I went back to work for the short week before holiday break, and ordered $5000 worth of library books and how it was so nice to be around adults for a few days.
And I was peeking in on everyone’s blog and telling myself that I was too tired to write a proper comment and that I would commet tomorrow, and then tomorrow the same thing happened…
So maybe if I make a New Year’s resolution to be a better blogger in 2011, you can all forgive me.
In the meantime, let me distract you with a few baby picks. (Ugh, I am one of those parents that I swore I wouldn’t be, forcing people to look at my little monster.):
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Viva La Revolucion!:
