In Which I Decide to Stay Home on Saturday Night

Tonight I was invited to a party, a 40th-birthday party for a friend in the neighborhood. This friend and his wife always have fun, boisterous parties and I was looking forward to going. But I am too tired, and fighting off something, some kind of cold or allergy or virus. When I got back from the library this afternoon, after a long subway ride, all I could think about was, "I have to eat mango sorbet and take a nap."

So I did both of those things. When I woke up I called a friend to discuss the situation. I said, "I'm supposed to go to a party but I'm sick." She said, as I knew she would, "So stay home. Go to sleep." I said, "I've already been sleeping, but maybe I'll have a bowl of soup and go back to sleep."

It felt good to give up the idea of the party, to not think about what to wear and putting in my contacts. You know, just in case.

I had soup, more mango sorbet, dosed myself up with whatever over-the-counter remedies I could find, and watched TV. Miraculously, there was a baseball game on network TV, the second game of the Mets' doubleheader against the Washington National. Which the Mets lost, sadly. But it was a close game, and exciting to watch. I tried to understand the announcers' analysis of the manager's decisions, one of which, a complicated series of replacements for a player who injured his hamstring (or should I say, as they did, his "hammy"), they both found puzzling. I find it amusing how the announcers tend to return again and again to pondering whether a particular decision was a mistake or not (perhaps because I do this too!). During the suspense-filled ninth inning, with the Mets down by one run, one of them would say, "Willie Randolph has backed himself into a corner." Then the other would say, "Yes, and it didn't have to be that way. By putting in X player when Y hurt his hamstring when he knew he would have to use Z anyway, he left himself in this position, with no one to bat against the Nationals' closer except . . . . A PITCHER." You could almost hear them shaking their heads. Then the first guy would say, "He left himself with a short bench." Then the other would say (for about the tenth time), "Yes, and the reason the bench is short is of course because of the double header. He had to send A and B down so that C and D could come up for the second game." Yes, I know that they have to keep repeating things in case people are "just tuning in," and it is helpful for those of us who are having trouble following the intricacies of the manager's strategy in the first place, but I still find it amusing. But I also find it questionable as a strategy for life--I mean, it's everything I try to get myself not to do, go over and over a decision that's already been made. And then, also, do they have to seem so pleased about being right? Poor Willie Randolph I'm sure is raking himself over the coals without their help.

I wrote above that I went to the library today, but what I meant was that I went to the campus where I teach to pick up some books--examination copies--from the office I share with a number of other adjuncts. The campus library is not open on Saturdays in the summer, and I thought I would then take the books to another library and do some reading and preparing for teaching, but when I got to the adjunct office I found myself happy to just stay there and read. It was entirely empty--in fact, there was nobody at all on the floor, all the offices were locked--but the air conditioning was on, and it's a big room, and I have pleasant associations of being there and talking to my adjunct pals, so I like it there. There is one desk that has an old-fashioned desk lamp with a cloth shade that casts a nice glow, so I put that on to counteract the flourescent ceiling lights (no windows in this room), and I plugged in the boom box next to the desk and was able to listen to music while I read poetry that I am going to teach in the fall. It felt good to be preparing and to be thinking about teaching.

And now, although it is warm and humid outside, there is a little breeze coming into my apartment, and I am enjoying that--and being home--very much.

Not Much in the Way of News

I have been reading other people's blogs, the few that I read regularly, and following the stories, and enjoying them, but somehow have not had much to say myself. The summer has been speeding by--every weekend there has been some sort of event or out-of-town gathering, quite a bit of traveling for me on buses and trains, and then the five-hour drive each way to the conference I went to a couple of weeks ago. Still have not made it to the beach, but I have hopes.

Because I have been traveling so much, I have missed a few Sundays of playing volleyball with my friends in our local park. I did get to play last Sunday, though. Because it was so hot--over 90 and humid--and because a few people were away, we had a very low turnout, barely enough for three on three most of the afternoon. After the first game, we all staggered back to the blanket and collapsed in the shade. I basically felt like I was going to have a heart attack. I announced to the guys (it was just me and the guys at that point) that I felt like my body temperature was through the roof. NewAge Guy suggested helpfully that I pour some water over my head. I poured it not only over my head but my whole body. That helped a little.

Then my cellphone rang. It was one of the absentee friends, who had promised he'd show up later in the afternoon, but was feeling lazy. I tried to cajole him to come, saying we needed him because we were so short on players. I reported on who was there so far and how we had been playing three on three. I said, "We played one game and then we all felt like we were going to die."

Of course that couldn't go unchallenged by the male contingent. New Age Guy, lying prone in the shade with his eyes closed, woke up long enough to mutter, "Speak for yourself."

Absentee Friend never showed up, but a few other friends did, and we got some bystanders (or bysitters) to play, also, so we actually managed to get in a couple of games of four on four and, I think, one or two where we had five on five. But it was hard to play in the heat, and people started giving up and going home, and then we were back to three on three. So then we had to pack it in kind of early, take down the net and go home ourselves. At a certain point you just have to admit defeat.

Writing not Sleeping

I have been meaning to point out an interesting article from the New York Times about six weeks ago, about the stories we tell about our lives and how they seem to influence our life's course. Seems particularly relevant to blogging in some ways. I can't seem to link to it without my "real" name coming up on the page, so I won't link directly, but you can go to the Times site yourself and look it up. (Of course, maybe it's your name, not mine, that would come up when you follow the link, but who knows . . . .) The title is "This is Your Life (and How You Tell it)," the author is Benedict Carey, and it appeared May 22nd. It seems to be free even though it is older than one week old, perhaps because it is considered related to science or medical news.

Insomnia has brought me to the computer tonight as at other times. I just finished writing a paper for a conference I'm going to tomorrow and I should be sleeping so I can get up early and pack and then get on a couple of trains to go meet my friend who lives in the suburbs and is going to drive us the five hours it will take to get to Campus in the Middle of Big State to the Southeast. Or, I could in fact be packing now. But you know about me and packing.

I'm not sure why I'm not sleeping, except for some travel and conference anxiety. And the heat wave that has settled over Big City and my apartment in particular.

Notice how blase (you can imagine the accent over the e) I am about actually "finishing" a paper before the conference begins. The last conference saw me trying to write the paper in the hotel business center the morning of my presentation. I swore I would not let that happen again--the stress was too much even for me. This one is pretty much done, although I could tweak it a little and probably will if I have a moment. But in a pinch I could go on with it. Hurray for me.

Okay, time to go pray to the sleep gods.

Edited several hours later: Umm, that would be Big State to the Southwest--the conference is not taking place under water. Thought I should clear that up.

The Kindness of Conductors

Sunday morning I was on the way back from a family gathering in another state. I had traveled up by bus on Saturday to visit my cousin who lives in Northeastern State Where Pilgrims Landed, in order to celebrate her daughter's sixteenth birthday. The bus ride takes over four hours, but on Sunday, I went back by train, which is much quicker, partly because my cousin was nice enough to drive about an hour and a half to take me to the northernmost stop of the commuter line that goes directly to Manhattan. We got up early to make the drive--I had to be back in the city by early afternoon because I was going to another party on Sunday, a barbecue to celebrate the birth of a friend's baby. So when we got to the station we were both pretty sleepy, especially since we had been up late the night before with the teenagers. My cousin said good-bye and I made my way up to the platform. I saw a ticket machine and thought I had better buy a ticket so that I didn't get charged extra on the train. I put some money in the machine, followed all the directions as best as I could in my half-awake state, and grabbed a white piece of paper that landed in the bottom tray behind the plastic door.

The train came, I found a seat and settled myself into it. Probably I was sleeping already by the time the conductor came around. I roused myself when I heard, "Tickets, please," pulled the little white piece of paper--cardboard really--out of my wallet, and handed it to the conductor, a youngish, well-scrubbed-looking chap.

He looked puzzled.

"This is your receipt," he said. "It's not your ticket."

"Oh," I said. "That was the only thing I saw in the machine when I bought the ticket."

"So you didn't take the ticket," he said.

"No," I said, a little quaveringly. I added, "I'm really sorry."

He responded, quickly, "Well, it's no big deal. Except somebody got a free ride off you."

Then he punched the receipt and gave it back to me.

I held onto the receipt carefully because I knew I would have to show it again when I changed trains at a station called, enigmatically, "Southeast."

This time when the conductor came around I had my explanation ready as I handed him my pathetic excuse for a ticket.

"This is all I have," I said. "When I bought the ticket in the machine I forgot to take the ticket, I only took the receipt."

"I'm really sorry," I added again.

The conductor, an older man with a gray mustache and that jaunty air conductors sometimes have, looked at the piece of paper I gave him.

"Where did you get on?" he asked, which seemed like his polite way of saying, "What the hell are you talking about?" The piece of paper obviously made no sense to him.

I told him where I got on, and then his face cleared. "Oh, so he punched this," he said, reading the story of the ticket in the punched-out-hole language only conductors can understand.

"Yes," I said.

Then he took out his little ticket-puncher and proceeded to punch my pseudo-ticket himself.

"You get a frown for losing your ticket," he said.

I said, "Oh, I can stand that, I guess," thinking he meant that he was going to frown at me. I thought it was a cute thing for him to say. Also I was relieved that I wasn't going to be thrown off the train or asked to pay for the ticket again.

Then he handed me back my little cardboard receipt, and I saw that he had punched in the features of a face--eyes, nose, and, yes, lots of little holes all together to make a mouth turned upside down in a frown.